Chapter Text
In the battle of Imperia, Fluixon is slain in the Capital by a nameless soldier’s axe, cleaved through his chest.
Life drains from him, and he feels a strange sensation as the pain ebbs away, then begins anew tenfold as if every atom in his body is being torn apart and stitched back together in the wrong places.
For a moment, he blacks out.
When he wakes up, the concrete structures and fluorescent lights of the Capital have disappeared from view, replaced with a tropical beach and a blood-orange sunset.
Before him stands a solitary gravestone made of mudbricks and dripstone. The name on it is his own.
Fluixon
Goodbye, friend.
He doesn’t quite believe what he’s seeing at first.
But then he notices the faint translucent appearance of his hands, and that his feet do not feel the ground beneath him.
He really is dead.
Fluixon turns around to observe his surroundings, and he sees someone walking up a long wooden staircase built into the side of a massive hill, their back turned to him. They are dressed in simple white fabrics that match their white hair, their spotless cloak swaying with every step they take.
If this is an angel, Fluixon thinks, they’re doing an awfully terrible job of greeting me to the afterlife.
Moving his ghostly body the way he wants is instinctual. He floats up the stairs until he’s just a few steps behind the white-cloaked figure. They don’t even notice him.
“Hello?” Fluixon says.
The white-cloaked figure stops. They turn around, and their eyes widen in shock. Their jaw drops without a sound.
The surprise and relief that wash over Fluixon as he recognizes who stands before him bring a smile to his face.
“Saps. You really are here!”
“No. How…?”
Fluixon hesitates at the tremor in Saparata’s voice. Perhaps an explanation was an appropriate way to greet a fellow dead man. “The battle against Imperia was today, I dunno if you’ve heard already. I was killed by some guard.”
Saparata’s expression doesn’t change for the better. Instead, something heavy and discerning seems to churn in his mind. The sight is rather unsettling.
“I had to do something,” Fluixon continues, and the words tumble out of his mouth from there. “As if I was going to just stand by after—after what they did to you. I joined a group from our district, and we all tried to escape—not everyone made it, but I was able to fight back in the end. Imperia is going to fall. They deserve what’s coming for them.”
For too long, Saparata stares him up and down.
It makes Fluixon falter.
“You alright? Saps?”
“You’re not him.”
Fluixon freezes. “What are you talking about?”
Slowly, Saparata lifts his pale hand, pauses midway, then passes it right through Fluixon’s arm. It’s only then that Fluixon realizes Saparata is not a translucent ghost like him, and is rather very much alive.
“You’re not him,” Saparata repeats, this time with cold certainty. “Do me a favor, Flux, and go back to wherever the hell it is you came from.”
Fluixon doesn’t move as he watches Saparata turn around and continue up the stairs.
“What…? What’s going on? Saps!”
But Saparata doesn’t look back.
***
In the battle of Infernus, Fluixon is slain in the Colosseum by Saparata’s sword, pierced through his lungs.
For a moment, all he can feel is pain.
When he wakes up, he doesn’t immediately register the floating islands and clouds in the sky, or the absence of gravity lifting him higher and higher, or that he’s wearing a cape made of black feathered wings.
He grasps at his chest with a trembling fist, and the phantom pain finally fades.
The island he sets foot on is covered in ice and snow. Far off in the blue horizon, he can see the climate of the other islands transition to an evergreen forest.
Nobody else is in sight.
Fluixon takes a step back. And another. And another, until he sits down, and half-collapses on the snow. He doesn’t feel the cold—or rather, it’s not as cold as snow should be. He doesn’t really feel anything at all.
It’s the first time he has ever felt like doing nothing.
He sits there, the final moments of his life running vividly through his mind. He knows Infernus lost; he saw their Queen fall. He recalls Thomas staying by his side, being the last of his men to survive. He remembers looking Saparata in the eyes from the stands of the Colosseum, nothing but cold calculation reflected back at him.
He doesn’t know how long it’s been until he finally decides to test his wing-cape and explore. Like a newborn bird leaving its nest for the first time, he learns how to catch the wind and travel from island to island. Even when he makes a hard landing on his ankle and knee, he feels almost no pain at all. When he flies to the top of the tallest tree he can find, the view is nothing short of divine.
Still, Fluixon thinks, this can’t be heaven. He wouldn’t be here if it were.
And when he arrives at what must undoubtedly be the center of it all, the utter chaos he finds drives another point to his theory.
From the top of a forested hill, he watches hundreds of people with wings of different colors and sizes gathering on a large platform around a strange aquamarine structure, composed of four staircases leading to a raised dais with arches. The crowd shouts and chants things Fluixon can’t make out from his position.
Distantly, he hears someone approaching him from behind.
“Yo, Flux, is that you?”
Calmly, Fluixon turns around to see a complete stranger. It’s a man wearing a brown wool jacket, his hands tucked casually in his pockets. His cape of rust-red wings is folded behind his back, and he appears to be unarmed.
“Oh shit, man, it really is you. Were you fighting in the battle against Imperia?”
Imperia?
“Yeah,” says Fluixon, because it feels like the right lie to say. He’s good at lying.
“Sorry about that,” the man says. “Though you made it quite far, all things considered. Stupid lava in the walls really got me back there. Heard you made it out with nothing but ladders. Is that true?”
Fluixon shrugs. “Who can say?” Perfectly vague and interpretable.
The man laughs. “Maybe I should’ve done that if I’d known the guards were slacking.”
Fluixon huffs out a laugh with him. Each new piece of information slots neatly into a folder somewhere in his brain.
He glances over at the mass of people surrounding the strange dais. “What’s going on down there?”
“Ah, that… They’re all trying to revive themselves, but I’m not really sure it’s all that effective.”
“Seems that way,” Fluixon agrees, judging from the angry shouts coming from the platform.
“Personally, I don’t mind missing out on a war. Why go back to the place where you died trying to escape only to go back there and die again?”
“Sounds ridiculous.”
“You get what I mean.”
There’s a pause as they both watch the chaos below. Fluixon takes a brief moment to survey the modest structures people must have built after they died, wooden cabins and bridges scattered and disorganized. To his left, a small ship floats in the air, and all around, waterfalls cascade into the endless sky beneath the clouds. The laws of physics don’t seem to apply here.
“This place…”
“It’s a lot to take in at first,” the man says. “Don’t think there’s an underworld of any sort, if you can believe it. Everyone comes here. Murderers. Thieves. Farmers and miners who did nothing wrong. Citizens and government officials.”
That may be the most surprising thing Fluixon has heard so far. He shudders to think of what would happen if he and Cass had to coexist in life after death.
“I’m guessing not too many people are happy about that,” he mutters.
“Well… That’s not really the case,” the man says as he scratches his chin. “For one, we can’t kill each other here, since we’re already dead. Some people still have their biases, but most of us have kind of… accepted it. We don’t want any further conflict.”
In the back of his mind, Fluixon remembers a similar conversation with a diplomat from Yggdrasil, of when he was told the Covenant was supposedly the only faction against peace.
“What’s that you’re wearing, by the way?” the man asks, interrupting his thoughts.
Fluixon glances down at his dark overcoat and its gold-crested buttons, trying to think of an explanation that would fit within the limited information he had.
“I picked it up for disguise,” he says eventually.
The man tilts his head to the side. “Doesn’t look very convincing to me.”
Worth a try, Fluixon figures, suppressing an eye roll before changing the subject. “Anyone else here that we know?”
“Some of the other Bifrost members are settling to the south from here. I’m probably gonna head back there now. You should come join us when you get the chance.”
“Maybe,” Fluixon says, hiding the doubt he feels.
“Don’t be a stranger.” The man turns to leave, but then hesitates, looking over his shoulder. “Oh, I forgot to mention. Your buddy Saps has his tower up on that cloud over there,” he says, pointing to said structure in the sky.
Fluixon’s expression shutters. “Oh. Thanks.” The words taste like rot in his mouth.
With that, the man spreads his wings and takes off.
Fluixon gazes up at the tower rising from the clouds. Apart from its blue-green roof, it looks nearly identical to the one he scouted in the snow on Yggdrasil during his stay at Infernus.
Briefly, he wonders if the Saps of this world would figure out he doesn’t belong here. If he were able to see through his lies.
He quickly buries his curiosity and decides he doesn’t want to know.
He takes off, flying as far away from the tower as possible to look for another way out.
***
“Well, this is messed up.”
Lengo sighs as they watch the wrong Fluixon fly off into the horizon. “We should probably tell Ish.”
Beside them, K.K. raises an eyebrow with a sense of sick, twisted dry humor. “And pass up an opportunity like this?”
Lengo narrows their eyes. “...You’re serious, aren’t you?”
A smirk breaks out across K.K.’s face. “Maybe accidents are what make the best kind of experiments.”