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Mydei hadn't meant to eavesdrop, really, nor had he intended to follow Anaxagoras anywhere - it just so happened that they were heading in the same direction, and he wasn't so much of a coward that he'd change route just because of that. It seemed that the professor was in rather a hurry, anyway; mere minutes after they initially crossed onto the same path, Anaxa had already outpaced him and disappeared.
Hence, Mydei simply proceeded forward at his own pace. He made to round the corner and take the stairs up to the Garden of Life, then paused. Anaxa had stopped just ahead, and he was speaking to someone.
"—identified the ring," He was saying. "I thought you should know."
Ah, right - Anaxa had been running quite the lap around the city, relaying the names of the Grove's dead to those who needed to know. This must be another one. Mydei certainly didn't envy him for this duty.
Whoever he was speaking to didn't respond for a while. Anaxa wasn't the type of person who fidgeted, but now Mydei heard the shuffle of heels against concrete, as if he was shifting uncomfortably.
"...Hyacine," said the scholar a long while later. "Would you like to sit down?"
"Huh? No, I'm alright, I—" A short sigh. "—I was just... shocked."
"It's only natural. You should take a rest."
Now things were falling into place. Mydei had seen Anaxa imparting news in several places all over the city, and each time he'd taken helpers with him. The scholar knew the dead's families with both enough familiarity and enough detachment to deliver the news without platitude or tact, and enough awkwardness to prefer to have back-up, but his own dear teaching assistant was a different case.
Mydei hadn't seen the remnants of the Grove himself - he had no desire to. He had, however, seen the swathes of wounded hobbling their way into Okhema, and what few bodies they were able to retrieve. The survivors barely even seemed to mourn; they all turned to shows of concern with the same ashen faces, and they gazed at their dead with more resignation than horror. He couldn't say he didn't know the feeling.
Footsteps. In the time he'd spent thinking, it seemed Anaxa had deemed his own consolations inadequate and taken his leave. Before Mydei could retreat, the scholar rounded the corner to come back the way he'd arrived, coming face to face with Mydei as he did. He braced himself for a snarky comment, but Anaxa only spared him a passing glance, then trudged away, muttering to himself, expression dark and clouded.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Hyacine hadn't left. When Mydei decided to continue on his way, he found that she was sitting just behind the wall, staring blankly down at her hands.
"Hyacine," He said gruffly, before he'd actually had time to formulate a greeting or condolence.
"Oh, Lord Mydei." Her demeanour was much subdued, but the smile she offered him was almost as sunny as usual. "Do you need something?"
"No, I'm alright." Mydei hovered for a moment, then finally chose to sit down beside her. Like always, Hyacine folded her hands in her lap and turned to gaze up at him, to let him know that he had her full attention. "I was nearby. Did Anaxa have... bad news for you?"
He knew he'd picked the wrong way to phrase it when her face fell, and she took a moment to look up to the sky and compose herself before replying. "...um, yes. Another name for the list of the dead. She... doesn't have any next of kin, so Professor Anaxa told me instead."
"Who was it?" He asked.
"Xanthe."
A face didn't spring to mind immediately, but the name was familiar enough for something to go shivering up his spine. Hyacine must have noticed the soft crease of his brow; she giggled a little and explained, "You've met her before, Lord Mydei. The 'frightful old lady' who smacked you for picking up her journals too roughly."
Frightful old lady was what Phainon had dubbed her after they'd finally escaped her wrath. Mydei thought of a stooping woman with tattered scarfs tucked into a pristine white coat, who'd once applied a salve to a burn on his hands with the ruthless efficiency of a war medic.
Hyacine's eyes were shining with tears, but she took a shivering breath and continued to smile. He wanted to tell her to stop, for it was making his chest hurt, but he couldn't take that away from her as well.
Her eyes fell shut now, as if hiding her grief from him. "...I was in Okhema when the black tide attacked Grove. We had a lot of students and scholars in and out of the Twilight Courtyard, but we only had seven patients staying in the clinic. I thought it'd be alright to leave them to the others for a few days while I helped out here. In fact, one of them should have already recovered by the time I got back."
"And?" He prompted softly.
Hyacine opened her eyes. "They're all dead now."
"...I'm sorry."
She didn't respond. There was silence for a long while.
"I expect I'll get used to it eventually," She murmured. "Losing patients. Every physician has to. Some cases just... aren't salvageable."
"You couldn't have known what was going to happen," Mydei said quietly. "It isn't your fault."
"Maybe I couldn't have saved them, but maybe I should—" She cut herself off, eyes widening as if she hadn't realised what she was saying before it almost came out. "—no, that doesn't do anyone any good, I'm... sorry. Oh, ignore me."
Maybe I should have died with them, Mydei's own mind supplied in an uncanny imitation of her voice. A doctor's place is by her patient's side.
He stood up abruptly. Hyacine blinked up at him. "Are you leaving?"
"No," He said, a little too sharply, then cleared his throat and said, gentler, "If you aren't busy, come walk with me."
She looked surprised, but touched. "...thank you, but... aren't you busy? You're leaving soon, aren't you? You should be preparing."
"I am always prepared for battle," Mydei declared with perhaps a little more grandiosity than necessary. (Phainon surely would have mocked him if he was here.) "Something like this is hardly going to dull my senses."
"Well, if you say so." She stood up neatly, clasping her hands behind her back. "Lead the way, then, Lord Mydei."
He wasn't actually sure where he was intending on going, but his feet took them to the Marmoreal Market, where his eyes landed on a fruit cart. Hyacine followed curiously as he made a beeline towards it. A basket of pomegranates had been set out centre-stage, and even as he approached he recognised a pair of Kremnoan child sharing one on the pavement.
Pomegranates were common in Okhema nowadays, but they'd been a rare sight when he first came to the Holy City. Hyacine, visiting to consult with Aglaea, had overheard him arguing with a fruit seller about it. The next day, she had come by his room and offered him a chalice of imported pomegranate juice - Nikador knew where she'd gotten it from.
It had already grown bitter from what he presumed was a long day sitting out in the Okhema sun, but he thanked her nevertheless, and made sure he downed the whole thing afterwards. Somehow, though - either by deduction, or by overhearing a Kremnoan's scathing review - Hyacine had realised the juice's insufficiency. And, the next time Mydei visited the Twilight Courtyard, there were pomegranate seedlings growing in the garden.
Some months later, he came by again, although this time he was mostly only here to supervise Phainon, who had sprained an ankle and was being an enormous baby about it. Upon spotting Mydei, Hyacine's eyes had blown wide with what he thought was unwarranted surprise - later, while the already-healed Phainon sunbathed by the garden's wheatgrass, Mydei wandered into the back courtyard and found her juicing pomegranate seeds with fierce abandon.
She had looked up, both face and clothes stained with red juice, and for a moment looked uncannily like a blood-covered warrior. Then she giggled, and Mydei had found himself chuckling too; only a Kremnoan child crushed pomegranates with such clumsy vigour. An elder would have scolded her for all the product wasted on the tiles of the ground and the fabric of her sleeves.
Nevertheless, it had been one of the sweetest goblets of juice he had ever tasted. He wondered if Hyacine even remembered it. Her attentiveness was so all-encompassing that things like these seemed second-nature to her.
He hadn't realised he'd been stood there staring at the pomegranates for a long while until the vendor cleared his throat pointedly. Hyacine, stood next to him, said in whisper, "Um, Lord Mydei, I can pay."
Did she think he'd forgotten his money pouch? He held back a snort and shook his head. "...no, I'm just assessing."
"Assessing?" said the vendor indignantly. "This is fine produce, sir!"
It had been an excuse, but now that Mydei actually paid attention to the fruits... they didn't look particularly fresh. Most were discoloured in places; still edible, but most definitely past their prime. He glanced at the price tag and almost immediately felt his blood pressure rise.
"Your 'fine produce' is overripe," He said, only just avoiding growling it through clenched teeth. If he were any snootier a prince, he would have called it a royal affront. "And you still charge this much for it?"
"It's imported, isn't it?!" snapped the vendor. "If you want fresh fruit, go pick it yourself! The price is final."
"Shameful," He muttered under his breath. "HKS! Fine. Keep it."
The vendor made a spitting noise as he turned on his heel and left, Hyacine following closely behind. She didn't reprimand him for being rude; rather, she seemed to be giggling at him. As much as he usually hated being laughed at, he couldn't find it within himself to even be slightly irritated.
"I can't believe you called him that!" She said in a voice just above whisper as they came to a stop at a different corner of the market, out of the vendor's view. "You're not going to be in trouble, are you?"
"It's hardly the strongest insult I know," He dismissed, unable to bite back a smile.
"Can I try, then?"
"Feel free."
She concentrated for a moment, scrunching her face, then repeated in an adorable (wait, what?) growl, "HKS!"
"...good effort, but not quite." Hyacine made it sound softer - almost sibilant - and playful. HKS was meant to be short, sharp and peppered with disdain. "You sound more like you're calling someone a dromas than a scoundrel."
"So that's what it means."
"It's the closest translation," He corrected. "Nothing in the common language has the same contempt."
"Harsh." She giggled again. "You're always using it on Lord Phainon."
"...he provokes it himself." Mydei paused, having spotted a different fruit vendor up ahead. This one didn't have any pomegranates, but he'd bartered with them before, and their selection was usually sound. "Hmm. Wait here."
The transaction proceeded smoothly this time. He held the melon under one arm and waved to Hyacine with the other, and together they walked out to the Path of Parting.
Several Okhemans stared as they passed by. Mydei ignored all of them, walking with purpose to the very edge of the Holy City. The great maw of the valleys below opened wide beneath him.
They sat down at the edge together. After a moment, Mydei split the melon on the rocks, checked the flesh for dirt, then held out the largest and cleanest piece to Hyacine. She took it and thanked him quietly, but didn't start eating until he pointedly took a large bite of his own piece.
For a while, they simply sat in companionable silence, sharing the fruit and each other's company. It was a bittersweet memory of those more carefree days in the Twilight Courtyard. That was a place they could never return to, not the same way it was before - nor was that a time they could return to, now that the end seemed to be approaching with such swiftness.
"When are you leaving?" Hyacine asked him quietly.
"...tomorrow. At the first Entry Hour."
"It's strange to think that you're a demigod now," She said, turning to gaze at him again. "You look just the same as always. Are you ready?"
"I have always been ready." Not to become the demigod of Strike, perhaps - that had been a more recent development - but to take his place on the battlefield. He'd always had a feeling that that would always be his final destination, regardless of these periods of peace.
"Just... remember to say goodbye to everyone before you go, okay? Especially to Lady Trianne. She'd be... really mad if she didn't get to see you off."
For a moment, it felt like there was something sharp and suffocating in his throat, but the feeling was gone as soon as it came, and he gave a mute nod. Somehow... it didn't feel like their losses would end here. Hyacine surely knew this as well. The only two remaining fragments of Tribios. Anaxa's time limit. Aglaea's fleeting humanity. Castorice's journey. The prophecy.
"We always remember heroes, but everyone else just becomes a footnote in the history scrolls," Hyacine said suddenly, and her eyes turned to the horizon, to the direction where the Grove lay. "A name at the bottom of a list. Isn't it... unfair, Lord Mydei? We must lose so many Heirs before we ever meet them. And so many more ordinary people before we can save them...
"...so many patients wither away before I even get the change to treat them. I can't stand it."
"You are a Chrysos Heir, Hyacine, not a miracle worker," Mydei said with some degree of sternness. It was a ridiculous notion, after all. "No one would ever expect you to be able to heal everyone under the sun."
Hyacine smiled softly. "Then what about everyone under the sky?"
He wasn't sure he had an immediate answer for that.
She took a deep breath and looked up, blinking in the harsh light of Dawn. For a moment, everything fell away, and her figure seemed hopelessly small under the endless blue.
"Do you think I can do it?" Hyacine asked him.
Mydei blinked. To be honest, he'd had his own reservations in the beginning. Hyacine was anything but weak, but she was still not a warrior. The idea of pitting her against the tyrannical Eye of Twilight seemed akin to sending a sparrow directly into the jaws of a crocodile.
What had the prophecy said? At the end of the skybridge, the skyfolk will mend dusk and dawn. 'Strife' had been conquered, and soon the Chrysos Heirs would need to take the 'Sky', too. But to rip the Coreflame away by force would be tantamount to pulling the skies down onto themselves. Of course the Heir to Aquila's divinity was a healer. Of course the Heir to Aquila's divinity was Hyacine.
He wasn't sure whether or not he mourned that fact.
Mydei looked her dead in the eyes and said, "I think you are the only person who could ever do it."
Her eyes widened, just a little, and she offered him another of her smiles - this one brighter and sadder than ever before. But, despite his own courage, his own resolution to see this prophecy to Era Nova, Mydei couldn't summon the strength to smile back.
"After I leave—" He began abruptly. "—it is... likely that I will never return to Okhema."
"I was afraid of that," Hyacine said with a little laugh. "You know - I hoped, once, that when this was all over, we would gather in the Twilight Courtyard, and tell each other about our heroic journeys. That we would all come out on the other side and witness Era Nova together, even though that's not what the prophecy says. That was silly of me, wasn't it?"
"There is nothing wrong with hoping," He told her, though the sentiment was sickly sweet on his tongue. "You've always been the most optimistic out of us."
"Is that good, though?" She looked a little bitter for a moment. "...it doesn't matter. I'll rebuild the Twilight Courtyard as many times, in as many places as I have to. And, when we all come back... I'd really like to tell you what the fortress in the sky looks like."
When.
"I'll be waiting to hear about it," Mydei said quietly.
Tomorrow, he would be on the battlefield again, and all of this would feel an eternity away. The fight would be endless. The deaths would be unavoidable. Tomorrow, he would say goodbye to all of his companions, knowing well that the next time he saw them could very well be in the sea of flowers. Just as a king entered a war knowing he would lose soldiers - he would leave the fate of the world to them, knowing that any of them could fall for its sake.
But - just for tonight - he could allow himself to imagine a kinder future.