You Damn Silent Gods!

"In my pilgrimage from the twilight forests to my pyramid I contemplated upon the thousand steps; the 13 moons chase each other endlessly in the eternal skies with the same reason why the Alditians celebrates the dawn, the Zhoutanians oil their machines, the Mezenians meditates with crops, the Navenxii moves jungles, the Latamese migrates with the stars, the Akans authorize diplomacy, the Schynths fruits the swamps, and the Sovenians fight the Ocmenians- all these are meant to be in Lord Vartholo's perfect architecture."

-The Celestial Vaults by Scholar-King Ethweltexco of Navenxii-

©

"Miriam?" Hildred whispered, halo'd behind stained the thick light of the afternoon over the dreary insides of the apothecary.

"Hildred?"

Lady Blackmercy sprang back to life when she saw a familiar smile by the door bringing all the warmth from a distant country. She came sprinting towards the bald queen to envelope her with arms of longing and pain.

Hildred caught her body like a dead flower of spring. Laguna was surprised by how frail-looking and short the Nightshade Heroine stands, unlike those said from history books.

"Let the tears nourish your gloom, pain is forever built in us women- so bear with it with a woman's strength..."

"Memory is a pleasure I wish I never had..." Her voice cracked like a lonely pillar holding a forgotten temple.

"Hush now Miriam, don't say such things or Ane'deralya might hear! Vallin was just forced. It is not your fault."

"Ane'deralya is a cruel bitch!" All souls present was stupefied with the blasphemous profanity to the goddess of dreams and memories.

"Unmah lih, osa adut Modiaja Gona leo Im dof fromosko daemdo. Efa'am osa skob hentu osa M'bongosh. Gariso"

(Young one, the Nightshade Heroine and I need some time alone. Leave the room with the Sailor. This is urgent.)

Laguna turned to the sailor sitting on a torn-out couch of fur and leather, aged out of its glory.

"The fuck you want?" The sailor welcomed.

"Your friend's hand for marriage. " Laguna answered, almost amassing a laugh from his grandmother if not from Miriam's dreary state. Of course, it was just a mental answer.

"We need to leave." Laguna voiced out politely.

"Oh I don't need to leave here my 'friend', it is only you who needs to leave." Ian replied in calm spite.

"You'll find out soon that your desire won't be easy 'friend'." The diplomat smirked on Ian.

The Sailor stood and blazed his blue eyes on the Ocmenian, his chin pointing at Laguna's neck like a weapon ready to slip a crimson smile. The height of their bodies towering each other as if one would siege the other soon enough.

"What a waste." Ian bumped his shoulder on the Ocmenian on his way to leave the room, Laguna followed his potential murderer afterwards.

"Ampo Caro." Miriam faintly warned in Ocmenian tongue before Laguna could exit.

(Good luck.)

"So, what are your plans here really, mate?" The sailor grabbed Laguna's vest as soon as the diplomat stepped outside to the snow-buried gardens.

"Diplomatic matters are exclusive only for the Sovenian Queen's ears." Laguna grinned down from his raised chin.

"Don't fuck with me Mud-skin, or you'll find all seas from here to your home rather unfriendly." the exotic vest ripped from Ian's grip.

"Understood? Mud?" Ian's knuckles turned bloodless.

"Orahime ocmen, mathaq guthe..."

(Mirage of the sands, trick the eyes...)

"Huh?" the sailor tightened.

"I said, as clear as Ice." Laguna replied in a calm demeanor.

Ian'drah retreats his grip to reveal a rip on the diplomat's vest.

"Oh rest assured that I won't fuck with you..." Laguna grinned.

"Your friend is reserved for that occasi-"

A spear of ice was sent spiraling towards Laguna's face, but his wings had shielded him fast enough, feathers as strong as steel that had shattered the ice into hundreds of pieces emerged from his back.

"Ian'drah, I came here as an envoy of peace, and I'd like to keep it that way." Laguna raised the full extent of his wings to overshadow the whole enclosed garden.

"Fucking ironic." Ian had conjured a trident of ice, crystalizing a pair of transparent wings from his back in full detail, emerging like a glass-feathered god of forgotten myths- stretching the same span as Laguna's brown ones. Cyromancy is a must for Sovenians sailor's since ships are made of ice.

"Violence won't solve your endeavors, better keep that in mind." Laguna smiled, his wings began to engulf in golden flames to welcome the provocation.

"Oh? But I think... it can force an answer out!" Ian'drah charged with one strong flap of his icy wings, his trident piercing both wind and sound intently aimed at Laguna's neck. A flaming Scimitar impeded the trident which delivered a sharp noise upon the clash of the weapons. Ian leaped away a long distance from Laguna, he didn't expect the Ocmenian to conjure a weapon too.

"My turn..." Laguna snickered as the flames in his Scimitar turned so hot that it melted the blade down the snow like dripping steel from a forge, leaving a long fiery trail of melted steel burning down the ground.

He slowly walked towards Ian, and then, lashed out his new weapon that cracked the cold Sovenian air in traumatizing echoes- a steel whip engulfed in glorious flames.

"We Ocmenians are made out of Sand and Beastial Blood... " He flexed his wrist skillfully and another crack broke through the winds. "Not Mud!"

"I knew you had the savagery within, you fucking dung-of-a-race!" Ian crystalized a spike of ice underneath Laguna in an attempt to impale him but the diplomat flew off quickly enough.

"Divine Oserio have pity on you..." Laguna tried to conjure up a fireball as large as a boulder but the Sovenian climate weakened his magic, it came out as a firebolt instead that Ian had fended off easily with his wings.

"Oserio this, Oserio that, I'll make you meet your Ocmenian god if you really revere him that much!" Ian'drah threw the trident at the diplomat in the sky, foreign blood spilled on the snow gardens as the trident managed to graze through Laguna's shoulder, causing a small rip. Before Laguna could react from the pain, another trident was sent flying to his chest- but it was shattered by a lash of his whip.

"Time to end this immature association..." His steel whip raged in larger flames, lashing it thrice at Ian'drah in a single heartbeat. The sailor was quick enough to shield himself with his wings but this time, it was a frail attempt, the whip sliced through ice easily like sword on butter.

"Be mindful of your manners, Sovenian. You should at least pay me respect for saving your life earlier in the sea."

"All souls in Viridia knows that respect is a waste for the likes of you!" Ian conjured two ice tridents once more, ready to be thrown at Laguna.

"Truly? Unlike you, your friend had repaid me rather willingly by letting me enjoy his private company in my chambers."

Those words broke the Sailor, his tridents fell down the snow, Laguna chuckled from seeing the sailor's undescribable response; eyes widened, lips parted and shoulders slouched in despondence- all in a melancholy that cannot be named.

With a flick of his wrist, Laguna completely rendered the static sailor wingless, but Ian'drah did not move a muscle, he just slouched there staring into nothing- a place where his sanity was once were.

"Lost the will to fight?" Laguna landed like a feather, waving his hands with foreign incantations to trap his unmoving prey in a circle of golden flames, melting the snow below them.

"Now that you've realized that I've won since the beginning of the battle, you should learn that the same would apply with our contest for affection to a certain individual." Laguna licked the blood from his arm in a malicious grin, walking slow towards the Sailor only to stop behind his wall of flame, caution had always been a diplomat's trait in all aspects.

"Oh don't be hopeless now, it's your own wrongdoing. Hildred told me that you've tasted almost all the finest faces Dirge has to offer and yet you never made a move on the one that could turn them all faceless." Laguna gripped a fistful of Ian's hair to face him up to the sky.

"Foolish enough that you are even willing to bring down potential peace to mask your own cowardice."

There were no response, Ian'drah remained absent to the world.

"Rethink this through Sovenian, you've spent and wasted enough time with Blackmercy so I guess it is rightful even to the eyes of the Divines if I'll take him fo-"

In a blink of an eye, Laguna's body was propelled far through the air by a gargantuan force- of aquatic mythology spilling into inferno fire. His back was about to hit the garden walls but a freezing grasp had caught on his neck mid-air. He couldn't scream nor breathe, his feet floating a few inches above the snow, the magic coursing through his veins blocked by the grip on his neck.

The tables turned in less than a second that even Laguna's trained mind couldn't comprehend how it just happened.

"I don't care what you are or what you did for this world." Ian'drah whispered,voice traveling like a thousand howls in dead winter, and his eyes, turning white and ghastly as the pale ghosts who haunt the Glacial Maze- He is glimmering, as a different entity.

"But if you ever try to dictate the time which I could spend with my love..."

"Then I'll dictate the time which you can spend with your life." with one hand gripping, Ian'drah raised Laguna's heavy entirety to the sky, like offering a timely sacrifice to the forgotten gods who were forgotten for the greater good.

Laguna's lungs began to churn along with his heart as the veins of his eyes starts to bloom out petals of blood on the white corners from his iris, bathing his blurry view of this winter world with red.

"WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?!"

"Tuna?" Ian had instantly let go of Laguna's neck.

"What in Viridia are you thinking!?" the boy ran towards the diplomat's motionless body, kneeling beside it to assess signs of life. "I feel no pulse from him, Ian!"

The Sailor lost the knowledge to form a sentence.

"Laguna, Don't meet your god yet..." Sion's fingers scattered to pull a pouch of klaster seeds and dried spring-grass, he took a pinch of seeds and three strips and chewed them in his mouth. He then opened a vial of bitter green then drank the content of it to mix with the chewed ingredients.

He opened Laguna's mouth to transfer the brew from his mouth down to the diplomat's. The sight of the kiss twisting the blade of jealousy in Ian's chest.

"Was that kiss really fucking necessary?" Ian finally managed to form a sentence, pulling Sion's shoulder away from Laguna.

Having finished transferring the improvised mixture, Sion stood, and slapped the sailor across the face with palm to cheek resounding across the sky. The world around them muted that even the soft landing of snow could be heard.

Then Sion shouted with glassy eyes:

"You just love to suffocate everyone not acting on what you wish! huh!?" A few seconds of quiet followed before Laguna finally gasped for air; the miracles of a Blackmercy's alchemical prowess at work.

"Easy, easy, don't rush the life back in quickly..." the boy catered to the dying diplomat.

"H-he'll... kill me..." Laguna managed to mumble out. In Sion's eyes, he is dying, but from Ian's, he is appealing to pity.

"That's the least of your worries around me, don't worry, I'm here." Upon hearing Sion's assurance, the Diplomat closed his eyes.

The boy grabbed Ian by his shoulders, slamming the larger man against the thorny garden wall. The strength Sion exerts is but a blow of wind for Ian and yet his body felt extremely weak upon his touch.

"What's gotten into you lately boy? Huh? Trying to kill a figure of peace?! Are you a fucking terrorist now?!" Ian just looked down on him, unable to speak a word again. He's just enjoying the fact that Sion is back.

"This is madness Ian'drah! Madness beyond Askala's fucking madness!"

Ian had to lean back harder to the thorny wall to pain himself to know if he really was in reality. Sion is so close to him. He was always dazed and speechless whenever he is this close to Sion, no matter the circumstance, he couldn't even feel the pain from the hundreds of thorns pressed upon his back.

"I'm... mad?"

"No shit!" Sion gave up, knocking on Ian's head as if it's an empty nut.

"You're a grand shipwreck Ian'drah, anyone who built a ship only to wreck would be kind enough to not sail with his loved ones on it." The boy whispered. "And I know thay you're not just anyone in my life. You're better than this..."

"Fix your shit together Fish-head, come back to us once you did." Sion had let go of the Sailor, walking away to cater back to the once dying diplomat.

"Steady, don't rush yourself, can you stand?"

"Yes... I think I'm still... able." Laguna's body trembled while standing with Sion's support.

"Here let me help you, let's stride off before more suffocation falls upon us..." He took a last look at Ian only to see him looking back like a chained feral on the wall, he knows that if he let go of Laguna, Ian'drah would berserk and skin the diplomat alive with the nearest stone. This same deadliness is why he is well known in the Sovenian seas in the first place, he reinvented danger in the seas.

Once the pair limped back to the apothecary, Ian'drah was left alone in the garden. Taking two steps forward to reveal a fully scarred back of reddened flesh that lines hundreds of open-wounds from the thorns. He fell on his face, embracing his knees as he wept on the ground. His blood and tears staining the white garden as snow falls to embrace his morbid, state like a white blanket of comfort. His hands slowly reached for his throat, holding it tightly.

"Akantanel, Santifar..." he started to murmur.

"Fonclere, Ane'deralya..."

"Vartholo, Eldro, Aldite, Mozdin, San'dio, Viri, Ili, Syrosh..." He called out each of the Sovenian Pantheon.

"You damn silent gods!"

"Give me arms to caress instead of ones that holds him tight!" The Sailor wept.