Work Text:
FIVE CENTURIES AFTER Makoto’s passing, Ei sees her.
Anyone would have easily told her it was merely a figment of her imagination, the product of her grief. Anyone who knew of her loss, that is. Only a handful of people did, and they were the handful that was alive during her time, who had felt and suffered her death as much as Ei did. Even then, they would have asserted the reality and dismissed the hallucinations as the next mortal would.
But Ei swears she did see Makoto, weaving through the bustling streets of Inazuma City, past food vendors and adventurers, past petals of violet and ink-stained wood. She would not have missed the sight of her among the widest of crowds, among the darkest of realms. She has always looked up to Makoto, the greater, wiser twin, so much that she could never have rid the image of her from memory—even the miniscule differences that set them apart, she could list out without batting an eyelid, in a single breath.
And foremost, Raiden Ei is a god, the current Archon. Her eyes would not have been so easily deceived—she knew what she saw. Makoto, dressed in hues foreign to the land of the Sakura, shaded by an umbrella too close to her violet crown, the gentle frays of indigo that adorned her porcelain skin.
No. She knows Makoto, and this stranger was a little different than any version of her Ei’s seen. But gods are nothing if not omnipotent, and she did not for a moment doubt that this vagrant, too, would have something to do with the late Archon. The brimming Electro, the air of transience and ethereal scents that they leave in their wake… The vagrant is undeniably linked to Makoto. To her.
Never stop searching, even if only for a brief flash of light.
Five hundred years. It’s been five hundred years of huddling in the shadows, in the comfort of the shade, all that is familiar. Five hundred years spent in an eternity of loneliness. Five hundred years without a single ray of hope.
And here it is.
If nothing else, we have the present moment.
Without having to think twice, Ei charges through the people in pursuit of the vagrant. No need for her to swerve or excuse herself—the crowd parts itself into a path too vast for one. And yet it leads to none but the horizon; Ei’s head swivels left and right, but she can no longer find them. The vagrant is gone, their exit quieter than the calming breeze.
Could she really have imagined it? Was it simply the wind playing tricks on her, under the will of its mischief-prone god? Or was it really just grief, striking unwarranted as it does? She wouldn’t know if this was something that happened to all, or even to the divine—she doesn’t normally leave her Euthymia, after all.
Perhaps this is all part of her erosion—the beginnings of delusions, where nightmare manifests itself in reality.
Thunder claps against the still seas, and the clouds give way to restless rain that has people scurrying about back into their homes. A lone warrior marching through ill storms is hardly a foreign sight to the people of Inazuma, even if a shiny teardrop leaks out of her resolute eye—yet the few who linger watch in awe as their god makes her way back to the foreboding palace, swathed in grief, horror, in a memory bygone.
THIS IS NOTHING in the face of Eternity, she would once say. Not many have been able to sway the destinies laid out through time, spare for the starborne outlander, but even that has come to pass.
Yet Ei herself is not so steel-hearted, she’s come to realize. For where the world remains spinning despite wars and catastrophes alike, Ei finds herself reeling after every nightmare, visions that aren’t even real. This time, yet again, it is a cold reflection of her past, rippled by insecurities and fears. This time, it is an image unlike she’s ever seen: Makoto, with so much rage, so much disappointment, that she had never so blatantly shown in her lifetime.
It had always been up to Ei to be callous and strict. The war general, the half who bore all blood and burden. Makoto’s job had been to pertain hard-won peace, keep up the smile and mingle with opinionated gods. She did a brilliant job at it, naturally, because she was the most patient of gods, the most understanding.
Among all the gods Ei’s ever seen, it wouldn’t be an understatement to claim that her sister, God of Light, was truly the brightest star. If the true concept of divinity was summed in one, it would have to be Makoto.
This vision could never have been the truth, even if five centuries have passed. Surely, it must have been her mind, twisting and tainting her own memories through her fears. But Ei could not deny the tears that scorched her cheeks—the nightmare was all too real, in the hollowness of her realm. The way wrath contorts Makoto’s face, how the shadow dawns upon indigo eyes, how the frown deepens as the night darkens… they were real, as though Ei’s seen her this way before. She ransacks the deepest of her crystallized mind in search of some buried memory, but even she knows she would never forget such a grueling sight.
None of her dreams concerning Makoto have ever been so visceral. Try as she may, the images reappear behind closed eyelids. The further she pushes herself into deep slumber, the more tangible the ghouls around her become, screaming fury and drawling insults too cruel, too close to the truth, even for a god. Even for her.
For a good moment—an hour, a day, a month, who can tell?—Ei wrestles with imaginary whips of obsidian, with claws and blades that leave no scar but throats too sore. This is just the way it is; is it not a soldier’s fate to love and lose, to grieve and to go mad?
Until one day, a little boy joins her dreams. Instead, the boy sports a smile brighter than the hanging sun. Instead, the boy is handing her the floral parasol, his hands as soft as that of a newborn.
A boy, wrapped in windswept silk, adorned in golden feathers.
That vagrant… he must be real.
When Ei opens her eyes, she is faced with the dim walls of the lofty castle, towering and lonely in sight.
“I AM IN no mood to jest,” Ei prefaces, before even presenting her countenance to her eternal friend. “Lightning sees all your truths and fears, so do not try to deceive me. Tell me this—has Makoto left anything else behind? Anything I should know about?”
Getting Yae Miko to falter on her paws would be a challenge tantamount to awakening those who dwell in Celestia—possible, perhaps, but not nearly; certainly not for the average god, let alone mortal. If anything, the Kitsune lets out a scoff.
“I thought, at the very least, you would pose a question as serious as your tone.”
“Do you believe anything regarding Makoto can be more serious than this?”
Miko’s sigh is dismissive, not a far cry from her usual self, but it would be an understatement to say Ei’s miffed at her condescension. “I don’t know why you expect me to know anything about your sister. What brought about this curiosity? Surely you aren’t still dwelling on the thing with the sword—speaking of which, I had no idea about that , either. I really can’t see why you’d expect me to know anything else concerning her.”
Ei can only hope her frustration is apparent through the way she squeezes her eyes shut, lips pursed. “I saw her. Makoto.”
“You saw her. Saw Makoto,” Miko repeats, circling her hand in the air. “A dead god. A god who's been dead for five centuries.”
“You don’t have to remind me.” Ei shields her face away from Miko’s piercing violet gaze, hiding herself in the Sacred Sakura’s shade. “She—well, it wasn’t Makoto herself, but the child looked very much like her. They had her… her breath. Her eyes.”
The tremble in her voice goes unmentioned, but perhaps Miko’s taken it into account, because she pulls her tongue this time. “So you saw someone that looks like her. And you think she must have something to do with it?”
“A nagging intuition,” Ei says. Except the truth is closer to a haunting mirage, a living horror. If she is to admit the full truth to her friend… Miko might have deemed her insane already, and she wouldn’t be wrong.
“She’s already gone through such lengths to retain the last of her consciousness in the Musou Isshin, and to prepare the seed of the Sacred Sakura for you. She’s already said her goodbyes, even.” Only truths are said, and Ei’s heart further crumples upon the reminders, so easily uttered by her friend. “Consider this, Ei: she didn’t have much time before heading into the fray, during that final battle—do you really think she could have prepared for what was to be her death, given how busy she already was with the current situation in Inazuma, and with the invasion of Khaenri’ahn beasts?”
Yae Miko is a lot of things, a pain more often than not, but far be it for her to sugarcoat all rationality and sweet talk her way through Ei’s foolishness. Like bitter herbal tea, Ei swallows her words without argument, even if the taste isn’t to her liking.
But how else is she to explain what she saw, the boy, the dreams that plague her incessantly?
IT’S A FAMILIAR sight, actually, the crimson that floods the Plane of Euthymia. Except now, it has never felt more like blood—like drowning in burning, viscous blood. Ei thinks she’s long since gotten used to this thing called loneliness, the nightmares, but these horrors are nothing like those she’s come to befriend.
Something’s changed, in her nightmares with Makoto, or that vagrant yet unnamed. Recently, Ei herself has joined the pool of ghouls, and when it comes to her own mirage, the expressions are limitless. Most of them are all the same: rage, scorn, lostness and emptiness. Sometimes there’s the flash of inferiority all too familiar, all too real to see in her own face. Sometimes, she appears heartbroken—a little different from grief, but pain nonetheless, and Ei can’t quite pinpoint what it is that had led to it, what could have caused her such agony.
It’s a little more like a kaleidoscope than the ordinary mirror: the emotions she sees plastered on ‘Ei’s’ face are not things she feels, the same way the ones on Makoto aren’t really hers. She thinks these emotions belong to someone else… the stranger, perhaps, who keeps appearing in her dreams uninvited, unexplained.
But it wouldn’t make sense. Ei knows not this child, nor has she seen him in more than a glimpse. She would not know if he really is so contained with wrath, with regret and sorrow, so potent that it should haunt her dreams. And even then, what mortal could make its way into the most guarded mind in all of Inazuma? She is always here, after all—locked within her own consciousness, untouchable to the rest of the world.
Then again, she had been played a fool once, not long ago. The realms of possibility no longer remain concrete; there is no truth she knows for certain, nothing that is truly eternal. She would be the mockery if she is to ignore this glaring fact, after all that has transpired.
Dreams, illusions… In the Plane of Euthymia, the borders between reality and imaginary blend and break, and one becomes the other before the eye can even blink. It is a manifestation of her mind, after all, and her confusions are made all the more corporeal here.
Dreams. Illusions.
There’s a god well-versed concerning the two, and last Ei heard, she’s been released from her involuntary state of meditation, five centuries long.
Perhaps it’s time Ei, too, leaves the meditation that only further suffocates.
BEING WELL-INFORMED IS not a particularly strong asset belonging to the God of Thunder—not of the world beyond Inazuma, at least. It surprises her nonetheless to see a child, no taller than her waist, greeting her by the doors of the Sanctuary of Surasthana.
Funnier still is how terribly disparate the breadths of their knowledge are, so much so that Ei feels like the child between them—even though Buer, or Nahida, as she insists, technically has the wisdom of a five hundred year old, practically a sprout among the trees of divinity.
And yet, Nahida’s eyes twinkle with wisdom’s reassurance as she walks Ei through the carefully tended greenhouses just outside the Sanctuary. “Dreams are… just an amalgamation of anything that occupies the mind,” she’s explaining, playing with bits of Dendro particles in the air before them. “There is hardly any truth to be found behind them, although the same could not be said for wisdom.”
“But— but the vagrant is real,” Ei argues yet again, because that is the only thing she knows—and even then, she could never tell if her truths are true, never quite like the Goddess of Wisdom could. And then it hits her: “You can confirm it through my memories, and see if I really saw… her.”
There’s a strain in the smile Nahida gives her. “If you thought you saw her, then your memories would only seek to confirm it. It’s akin to me watching a documentary of events directed and narrated by you,” she informs, a sigh too wistful for the youth. “Hardly a reliable account at all.”
The disappointment in Ei is so palpable, yet she quickly shrugs it off, willing to try another train of thought. Never stop searching. “You can do an Irminsul search for anything related to Makoto, can’t you?”
She needs to know this truth, if nothing else.
Nahida opens her mouth, pauses for a moment. She closes it, pausing again.
“It’s… not that simple, I fear,” she finally says.
If that’s all there is to it, Ei has her arsenal of rebuttals at hand. Just because it’s not simple doesn’t mean it’s not possible, she’d say. You are the Goddess of Wisdom, after all—there’s nothing the power of two gods can’t achieve. Two gods with forever in their hands. Even if it takes her an eternity, there’s nothing Ei wouldn’t do to clear this mystery—this, which has consumed her mind, her world, so endlessly.
This isn’t a matter of the difficulty of an Irminsul search, she quickly realizes. The wind carries with it a vengeful storm, eyes violently indigo even behind the rim of his hat, in a face that looks so much like…
In a flash, the boy escapes her sight, leaving nothing but thunderous sorrow in the elder god’s heart. A sorrow she can’t put a name to, one that catches her breath short, has her hand clenching her chest without rest.
“That… that boy…!”
Nahida, too, is looking at where the elusive vagrant has just been. Solemnity and weariness descend upon her eyelashes, casting sharp shadows upon the striking green of her eyes. “This is not within my rights to trespass…” she says in the silence that unfolds. “This world has plenty of rules, after all, and I am still bound to them.”
When she turns to face Ei, there’s a different glint across her clover irises, a determination previously dormant.
“But the truth never really disappears. I hope you find your way to it soon—however long it takes, whatever form it takes.”
OF THUNDEROUS GRIEF: Ei is hardly the only entity acquainted with it, even if she more often uses thunder as her weapon against all fear of loss.
Far less than those who knew the truth of the twin gods, the Great Thunderbird’s tales are hardly ever told—it’s no surprise, considering Tsurumi’s desolation, and the foreboding thunderstorm in the epicenter of Seirai that repels even the most curious of adventurers. The story is clear, not quite as eventful as most: Ei killed the Thunderbird, for it brought harm to the people of her nation and could continue to do so. The truth is simple: the Thunderbird had been ravaging her own people out of a grief they could never understand. Ei wouldn’t hesitate if it ever came to it again—her duty, first and foremost, is to protect her people against harm—even if it meant she had to be callous, to set her heart aside to do the deed.
It is what gives her any worth, after all. She serves as the shadow bearing the weight of Makoto’s light. There’s no grievance to be found in it.
Yet it’s only now, when she has the stillness of time to be strolling by the violet terrae of Seirai, that Ei sees the vicious cycle: in the Thunderbird’s grief, she’s wiped out an entire island of people, put them under a curse. In Ei’s grief, she’s struck her own blade against countless friends, put her own nation behind bars immovable, subject them to senseless suffering and years of hollow skies. And then those upon whom she’s inflicted this pain will be consumed with as much hatred, as much fear, and they too, will come to lift their blade—such is the unbreakable loop that drives loss, fear, death, in their nation. The nation she swore to protect.
Balethunder sparks through her stomach acids, stinging through every inch of her guts. It’s a reality so tangible, so close to Ei that it unsettles her so.
Emotions—particularly divine ones—are never to be underestimated, Ei’s come to witness after years of slaining stray gods and beasts. The Thunderbird’s wrath could be felt even miles away, several islands from Amakumo Peak, in every land overseen by the deep purple, spare for stifled effects from worn-down shrines and a court long since abandoned.
The court… it’s home to no one, Ei confirms after a quick journey through. But clearly something is different about this court. No Kairagi have chosen to dwell here, even though it shelters one away from merciless thunder, from bottomless sorrow. It’s the remnants of godhood, Ei thinks, that have driven mere mortals far from the court—faint, a speck of dust to even the weakest of gods alive, but a drop of divinity nonetheless.
Free of thunder, of despair and wretchedness—free of the filth that stains the world. Who could have lived in such a place?
The tranquility that the maple leaves bring about is quick to lull her into slumber, yet Ei forgets—she is the will of Thunder herself. She brings the storms along with her, even as she spirals into the recesses of her inured heart, into where all her demons dwell deep inside.
“THE WAY TO the truth,” Ei echoes into the howling wind, accompanying the crows’ languid caws in the gloomy eve by Tatarasuna’s shores. “He who is not bound to the rules of this world.” It should have been obvious, in retrospect, and it baffles Ei how such a simple solution eludes her until he stands right before her, in all his radiant golden glory.
“I suppose that description somewhat matches me,” Aether mumbles a little hesitantly, Paimon next to him looking equally as lost.
“Is there something you’re looking for, Ei? We never would have expected you to go so far out here, so it must be something important. Right?”
“Indeed, I am,” she replies, wasting not another minute. “I have been informed, prior to this encounter, that there are things—truths—I am not privy to, so I suspect you cannot tell me everything. But—” Ei has never been the best with words, biting down her tongue in careful contemplation. “There’s a child, a boy, roughly your height. He looks—” Like Makoto are the proper words, except the traveler couldn’t have known what she looks like, so Ei settles for the next best thing: “He looks like I do, I suppose.”
If Buer’s reaction hadn’t been enough to confirm her suspicions, then Aether’s—or more accurately, Paimon’s look says everything she needs to know. She is looking at Aether with eyes wider than ever, while the latter bites his lower lip, arranging his sentences cautiously in his mind.
The weight of the truth is not for every head to bear; Ei finds that her eyes cannot steady, constantly shifting behind the flurry of emotions that course through this body’s feeble veins. “You don’t—you don’t have to tell me more than you’re allowed to,” she clarifies, clearing her throat as though it should return some of her remaining dignity. “All I need to know is—is, if he truly is related to me, to her…” But the answer’s been laid out before her, and Ei knows very well she’s only trying to deny the destruction of reality unfolding before her.
This boy—who is he, truly?
And as though the heavens have heard her desperate plea, said vagrant appears before her, in the flesh—beyond a nightmare, beyond just your imagination—face as impassive as the unbending flow of time and wind.
“Don’t bother the traveler with needless concerns,” he says curtly, as though the one to which he speaks is not a reigning god, the Archon of this very nation. The boy regards her with eyes that are… that are hers. Makoto’s. And Ei would easily believe she is nothing more than a little sister, too, to the boy before her. “What reason do you have for seeking me?”
Where else can you find a god grasping for the last of air in the midst of a windstorm? Ei’s lungs are clogged with the throes of memory, fighting guilt and remorse she can’t retrace the source of. Or perhaps she has always been apologetic—for failing to do her job, when she needed her. Of not being able to take the mantle of warrior in the war that devastated most. Of being so foolish, of bringing down harm and loneliness to her own people in the face of her grief, instead of learning and following her footsteps and moving forward, for their nation.
“Forgive me,” Ei breathes. She sees the shock that paralyzes the wanderer, the way it startles the traveler and his flying companion, yet she does not mask her remorse.
And though she has never spoken it aloud, not even in Makoto’s realm of remaining consciousness, the words spill out of Ei helplessly: “Forgive me, for ever letting blood fall upon your porcelain cheeks, for the scars that spoil your blameless flesh.” She is not crying—no, no, she would not allow tears to fall where mortals could see it; no, she is the symbol of the people’s strength, of faith, of unconquerable power and grit. “For… for not being a good enough sister, for not being a good enough defender, a double, to you… even if it was all I was ever meant to do for you.
“Please, forgive me.”
She hates the look of pity Paimon gives her. Hates even the empathy that Aether shows her, as he takes a few steps backward to give her some space. Gods were not supposed to be weak—they should be ruthless as Seirai’s storms, indurated like Eternity’s hold on mortal and divine fates.
It is the one who drifts who does not make a show of pity, of compassion, to Ei’s violent waves of sentiment. He blinks, albeit weighted, and nods with deliberation.
“I see. Is that all?”
“Thank you,” Ei admits. This time, she does so to the boy himself—not to the remnant of Makoto, which she knows, she feels, has long since departed. “Thank you, young traveler, for hearing me out. Even though you had no reason to.”
Whoever this boy is… if the truth is so heavily guarded from her, then perhaps it is best for her not to poke her nose so sharply into the matter. Ei does not doubt, still, that his fate is inextricably woven to her own. Ei does not doubt, either, that nothing good will come out of knowing this concealed reality—that some things truly are meant to stay hidden for a reason.
Whatever the boy feels, too, remains hidden from her watchful gaze; he turns on his heel and leaves without another word, restless as the sunset’s gales. Aether and Paimon bid their farewells in haste, before catching up with the vagabond, whose name Ei will never learn.
This, too, is for the best—let her past regrets be cast away into the void, rather than have them remain in the corners of her mind to haunt her for years to come.
Let her tumultuous sobs, too, fade into the lapping streams of Balethunder, that it should be consumed by lingering rues far from the city. Far, far away from where her mind rests, within the confines of her grand palace.
“CARE TO EXPLAIN your decision? I’ll reward you some Lavender Melon candies, depending on how satisfied I am with your reasoning.”
The Wanderer is well aware that the Lesser Lord is simply abusing his disinterest in entertaining her, with how his mood has hit rockbottom. “You told me to hear her out,” he says plainly. “That’s all I did. All there is to it.”
Buer—Nahida, as she insists, though the Wanderer isn’t particularly fond of using such a mundane nickname for she who is anything but —stares at him for a good minute with her eyes narrowed. She walks up to him gingerly, barely having to duck to look him in the eye, despite the fact that he is seated, his hat angled to cover half his face.
“Well, color me surprised that you would listen to my humble advice.”
“One would have to be a fool to ignore the God of Wisdom’s advice,” the Wanderer scoffs.
“You’ve always considered yourself on equal footing with me, and I’ve never exactly opposed the idea,” the childlike god shrugs, plopping down next to him on the couch. “And you know that’s not really what I’m asking. Surely, as someone who claims to be on the same wavelength as I am, you won’t need me to spell it out?”
Of course. No, of course he could have so easily revealed himself to her, his mother, make her face the breadth of her transgressions in full color. It wouldn’t take too many blades to unravel the barely-contained wires that make up his flesh, to unleash all the rage that’s kept his joints oiled, his brain running.
Would it have made a difference, if she knew of the truth? Beelzebul had already once abandoned him, after all—would history not only repeat itself if she were to be faced with a conundrum she’d never dealt with? In the end, he would be the only one suffering twice. In the end, it would have only brought deeper sorrow for either of them, perhaps a little more than the weak god before him could bear.
“Likewise, you know already the reasons behind my actions,” the Wanderer drawls, playing with the trinket in his hands. The cool touch of gold he can’t quite seem to release. “Don’t act like a child that needs to be humored, Buer.”
“That’s hardly true. I can come up with logical inferences as to which decisions you’d make, based on how favorable the outcomes would be, how much each sacrifice is worth. But in the end, you’re the one with the lever,” she clasps her hands together, a union of two to one. “In the end, we make decisions based on what our hearts decide. And that’s what I want to hear, Wanderer.”
If it was anybody else saying that, he would have laughed so carelessly into the wind. Would’ve put up a shrine out of mockery for the fool who dared assume this puppet could ever have anything akin to a heart. But Buer stays immune to all his ruses and masks, drawing out truths even in the hollowest of silences—she need not say anything for him to feel the lightning that struck his chest, harsh reality replaying itself in the back of his mind like a broken record.
He never would have told Beelzebul the truth. Not even if she forced it out of him—not that she could , with the nature of Irminsul a secret even to her—he wouldn’t give into her. And after their little confrontation on the shores by his old crib, he doesn’t think he could, anyway.
The Wanderer’s cheeks were already stained with tears by the time his hat fully shaded his face, a sight that did not go unnoticed by the outlander. Like this, he was always born to be helpless… helpless, weak, because no matter how he tried to deny the reality, no matter the gaping hole in his chest, the tears and the ache would always testify to the existence of a heart. A heart he did not understand, could not see, but has always felt painstakingly.
In the end, he could not bring it upon himself to loathe Beelzebul, his mother , for whatever reason. The Wanderer likes to think that it’s simply the way he’s created: a puppet, one that naturally kneels before its creator, yet a faulty one—one who did not live up to her expectations. It wouldn’t be so blasphemous of him to blame it all upon her, who made this being of a mistake—a mistake she so easily discarded, left to rot in thunderous waters, never to be seen again.
But he knows better. When he saw Beelzebul in the flesh for the first time, he saw no other than himself—everything that disgusts him, everything he loathes about himself, everything that brings his worth to ashes—in her body. If the flash of surprise had never shone in her violet eyes, he wouldn’t have escaped her sight so quickly. He might’ve dealt a vengeful strike. He could’ve, even without the glorified divinity that he was meant for—the one always out of reach.
The Wanderer knows now, for he’s seen, two truths he perhaps should have never been allowed to peer into:
One, that he bore the resemblance of her deceased twin—too heavy to behold with a god’s grievous gaze, and—
Two, that he held the very soul of Beelzebul herself—weak, fragile, thunderous under the weight of puny emotions. He could never have been freed from emotion, of “filth” as he calls it, for it has been his very essence all along. Her biggest mistake. His driving force, the core of his destiny.
So it was simply weakness, then, that cut the Wanderer’s tongue short, and pushed him to turn his course of fate. Away, away from her.
No matter. Let him simply be a trick of the light to her, to the rest of the world, as he’s willed it to be. Whatever he feels about it shall be left behind dried petals, beneath petrified roots, between layers of limestone and among grains of sand by the shores, in every hidden corner of the land, in verdant whispers only a certain friend can hear.