"Diarthe, Pleasure of Inferno, the God of Cold Anguish and Torturous Murder, such entity somehow draws his strength and will from the God of Beauty. An unholy love that even Viri herself can't fathom."
-Magnum Opus
©
It was like death of a nightmare. The torch freshly lit from the Alchemist's Tower reached the Sailor's heart from afar to warm every psychopathic depth in his ribs. It meant that either of the two ladies had already found Sion with a promise that the boy would be locked in Amanita's tower.
And soon, his blood-washed legs broke into the swiftest motion, leaving accidents for the guests as he storm through the halls of Graygreen Castle to reach the tower. The paintings from the walls watching the dangerous juggernaut who hasn't eaten a single bite since Sion had fled, the vile spider barely provides him nutrition... he just can't function without the lad, his company was the sole anchor of his sanity, keeping it on calm shallows far from the deep-raging seas.
He was breaking roots and vines in each strides while running towards the spiral stairs, almost bending its metal rails with his every grasp. He ran past Drina like a violent breeze, she was standing beside the window where the torch was and not a word was spoken between them. But Amanita was the one who halted his tracks, or better yet, the robes she was holding stunned the juggernaut in place.
"Smells like snowberries..." She buried her nose in the garment before draping it slow on the shoulder of the restless man.
"He's getting cold Sailor..." She remarks, adding salt to the wound.
With that, Ian'drah darted inside the tower. Earlier was his first time tasting the bitterness of frost and he doesn't want Sion to feel it ever.
"Apathetic much, Drina?" The Grey Lady smirked as the Sailor's footsteps echoed upstairs.
"Perhaps, I just knew that he had let many maidens warm his bed only to compare it to the warmth of his friend's hand. It just sickens me that I fell for it." The Silver Lady wasn't even jealous anymore, she just wants to shave her head from the burning irritation of how foolish she was. Her self-worth staring back at her from the carpet dirt.
As soon as Ian stepped inside, the moonstone door behind him was locked from the outside, the sound of bolts and bars bouncing through the tall ice cabinets. He finds himself standing in the dark; uncertain, unaware, untidy, unkind, unhinged, and unstable.
"Snowberry..." he called out through the darkness, the chandelier above has candles of smoking wicks fresh from cessation. The only source of light was the fading moonlight and the fire of the burning cauldron by the shut window, an unusual mistake since Lady Graygreen is a slave of perfectionism.
"Ian."
He turned to the calling of his name, taking one of the firewoods of the cauldron to light the direction. And there he saw a trail of torn clothes leading to an Ice Cabinet, when his eyes followed the end of the trail, the torch he was holding dropped on the floor.
Enclosed within was his childhood friend wearing only a crown of perfect Ice on his head, his long hair sticking to his nakedness while trembling from a paralyzing shiver. The shattered bottles of potions and poisons on the floor were evidence of his struggle to lock himself inside.
"D-don't c-come clo-s-se.." The naked boy inside cried out through the awful shaking. A sight that twisted the Sailor's nerves.
"Was that a warning, or do you hate me that much? " Ian doesn't care anymore, he punched on the the locked cabinet in rhythm with what's been hammering his brain and chest. And now, with hands pierced by ice shards, he pulled the shivering boy out for a tight embrace, the cold anguish relinquished upon Sion's touch.
"D-don't, please I b-beg you..." Sion was too weakened to fight off, the aphrodisiac still clawing his joints, his skin slimy, and his body cold.
"Shhh, you're safe now, you're safe, you're safe..." The Sailor stared wide-eyed at the darkness behind Sion, "I'm here." He near-inhaled the boy in his arms, stroking with trembling hands.
A terrible mistake.
A whiff of the aphrodisiac from Sion's neck and it was too late, no strength left to resist. Even gods themselves won't find inner peace. And what he did next was the easiest decision in his life, to throw the naked alchemist on the tabletop, the rough paper rolls and scrolls sticking to the cold sweat of the boy when he landed on his back.
The lazy haze from the cauldron doesn't do well to censor intentions as the alchemist watched the Sailor undress in front of him. He doesn't worry that Ian'drah would violate him, he worries that the torch the Sailor had dropped on the carpet might burn the whole tower.
The Sailor stood there naked with the dying flames dancing on his eyes, the tower was too cold yet his humid breaths reached far to stroke the quivering boy on the tabletop- warmer than the burning carpet. And Sion were crossing at every vision of disaster in front of him. From the Sailor's iceberg eyes of sunken tales, his chaffed lips of dry frost, the vast sea of sweat on his chest to the tiny shards of perfect ice stabbed in his hands. Upon looking down, he saw crescents of deep red engraved on his palms, even down his blood-dried legs and the frozen flesh on his feet- Ian'drah's nakedness doesn't speak of lust, it spoke of suffering.
Even then, the Sailor managed a last squeeze of warmth from his blue corpse to offer him a smile. And when Sion had seen this, guilt swallowed him.
"You were only gone for one afternoon Snowberry." he raised a shaky finger, "One afternoon, and look at me..." He bit his lip, he doesn't want to speak no more.
"Miss me?"
To answer, the Sailor knelt, picking up each of his clothes he had stripped on the floor to cover up Sion. After seeing that he was completely covered, he sat on the floor beside the boy's hanging legs, holding them in place to warm Sion's feet with his palms. Rubbing them with his fingers and heating them with his breathing, pouring his heart in each exhalation. Every warmth left within him, he gave off.
And they remained there as-is, enough time for Sion to surrender to this improvised comfort. For Ian, everything is alright again as he holds firm to the legs that ran away from him that morning. He could barely feel the beating of his heart against his chest as its rate slows down, an overworked little thing.
It didn't take long before Sion broke the silence with a soft laughter, choking on his saliva a little since he lies flat on his back.
"Why the laughter?"
"Mum was right. The Gods certainly gave you a wonderful body and a kind heart to compensate for the brain..."
The fur cloak that blanketed him Sion reunited with the floor, Ian watched as each of his previous clothing met him underneath the table, falling piece by piece like petals of superstitious love and denial. He stood up to know why his childhood friend had removed these covers, and what he saw squeezed the air out of his lungs.
"Because... all these summers that you've loved me, how can I not love you back?" Sion lay bare before him, the androgynous Choan anatomy now tattoed forever in Ian's brain. It was as breathtaking as he fantasized it to be.
Once again, The Sailor finds himself in the dark; uncertain, unaware, untidy, unkind, unhinged, unstable... unbelieving...
Undressed...
"Snowberry I know that I'm your tool but..." he hurriedly picked up the cloak once more to cover his friend, tucking him gently.
"I just hope your sober lips would say those words again when tomorrow comes, only then I'll know what I've earned." with shaky hands he caressed the slick head of the boy again, always in careful restraint, framing his thumb on the crease of his forest eyes.
They've taken hold of each other's gaze, intense yet receding to comfort, unbeknownst to Sion that the careful hands caressing him had murdered innocents for his sake.
"This crown looks good on you." he rubbed the crown of perfect ice with his thumb, his indifference to coldness came back.
"You think so? it once belonged to a child I've met here."
"A child in Graygreen Castle?"
"Funny, turns out she was a ghost... and I might be a medium." the boy confessed since they've been recently transparent to each other.
And a hammer had dropped on the Sailor's empty gut.
"No, don't say that, you can't see the dead, not you. You're drugged right? You're drugged..." He pulled the boy as close as possible to his chest, his mind commencing a headcount before madness; Small Brock, Astrid the Shepherd, Jorgen the Scout and his dog, Old Beltild, the Farmer near the Whitecliff, a foreign lass washed away at the black beach... Sion's pet, Eonnii.
And countless more he had forgotten to be shameful for.
He wanted to pray to the Gods that Sion won't ever hear their voices, but he knows no God would back him up and he's all alone in this.