The Second Archon War: Sol Invictus 8 (Patreon)

Sol Invictus 8: A Dream of Peace

The sun was just setting on the sandy beach, and not far away, someone was playing slack key guitar and singing softly in ʻŌlelo Pūnāwai. It was an old, familiar song.

Morning mist on Coatepec Mountain,

Golden sun on the winding trail,

Yumkasa calling through the treetops,

Warm wind rising through the vale. 

She smiled, and reached out a hand to squeeze Tupac’s. The giant had his eyes closed, lying back on an enormous blanket, his own hand enveloping hers completely. He squeezed back, and Mavuika looked out to see Mualani and Hina surfing on the waves, laughing as they played with a pod of koholasaurus. Not far away, Tumani and Citlali were talking with Sanhaj and Ororon over what remained of their feast. 

It was calm, and peaceful. Mavuika lay back, and closed her eyes, shedding a tear.

This is how it should have been. 

Yes. And, here, in the Dream, it is. If only for a short time.

Mavuika’s eyes flew open and she surged to her feet, A Thousand Blazing Suns falling into her hand as her nostrils flared. She kicked up sand, causing Tupac to yell and Hine to fall off her surfboard as Tumani and Citlali summoned weapons.

She was familiar with strange voices in her head. And the only response was always to burn everything away.

“Hello, Qiqi.”

Mavuika froze, then blinked down at the two little girls in swimsuits looking up at her. The taller of the pair had lavender colored hair and the unfocused eyes of someone who had suffered a great blow to the head. The other was a silver haired fae with green eyes. Both carried baskets with odd looking fruit in them, and smiled up at Mavuika.

“I apologize, I should have introduced myself first,” the silver haired one said. “Be at peace, Lord Harbonym. Forbidden knowledge has no place here.” The silver haired fae girl bowed. “I am Lord Buer, but here, in private, please call me Nahida.”

“Qiqi go play now?” the other girl asked, tugging at the smaller’s hand and looking hopefully at the beach.

“Mavuika?” Hine asked, sounding worried.

Slowly Mavuika let go of her sword, allowing it to vanish back into her soul space. She knelt down, smiling at the strange girl. “Hello, Qiqi. That girl there is Hine. She likes surfing. Do you like to surf?”

“Qiqi likes cocogoat,” the girl said, and held up a large nut-like fruit covered in bristly hair. 

“Coconut,” Lord Buer corrected gently. “Why don’t you go show Hine how to open one?”

“OK,” Qiqi agreed happily, and trotted off to show Hine the fruit.

Mavuika watched Qiqi go, frowning slightly. She felt…different. “Is she…real?”

“All things in the Dream are real,” Lord Buer said soberly. “The people here are your true memories given form and life, here and now. But I suppose that is not your true question. My sister is here with me, though her body remains behind in our bedroom. She becomes lonely if I do not let her accompany me to the Dream, and there have been scant opportunities for me to do so of late.”

Mavuika looked back at Tupac, who had stood up, arms folded over his chest. He was relaxed, but that didn’t make him less dangerous. He seemed to recognize that something beyond him was taking place, but he trusted his lover and Archon enough to let her resolve it without interfering.  For the moment, he simply watched over Hine and Qiqi as they smashed the coconut open and sucked at the juice.

“Then…” Mavuika swallowed. “How long do I have?”

“As long as you will grant yourself. Time flows differently in the Dream, and you know enough of the realm of Souls and Spirits to guide it, according to your will,” Buer said, sitting down. She produced a small metal flask, poured tea into two tin cups, and held one out to Mavuika. 

“So I suppose the true question is this: How long will you allow yourself Peace, Lord of War?”

Lowering herself to the sand, Mavuika sat cross-legged and gravely accepted the cup. She sniffed at it. It smelled faintly like tea from Liyue, which had been a rare treat in Mavuika’s times. She quaffed the tea, then set the cup down beside her.

“Not long, then. Twenty-three died today. I cannot allow myself true Peace until the fallen find true rest. And War will not end simply because I decide to lay down”

The little god nodded soberly. “You are of War. It is not in the nature of fire to rest. For a flame that ceases to burn will soon gutter and die. I only hope that you understand that you need not be only a flame that devours. One day, this too shall pass. And on that day, I pray that you accept the Peace that is your reward with the same wisdom with which you have led.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Mavuika said, looking out over the beach to where Tumani and Citlali were holding hands and laughing. Her brow furrowed, and she turned back to Buer. “Are you truly the Dendro Archon of Teyvat? How came you here? Did you hear the voice as well?”

Nahida lifted her hands in a weighing gesture. “I both am and am not the Dendro Archon you perhaps knew. Yes, I am of a Teyvat, but it is unlikely that I am of your Teyvat. Six of us have been drawn to this world, and none of us share the same point of origin. And yet, there are many similarities. My world had the Seven, and there was a Harbonym matching your description. But she was the Pyro Archon around the time of my birth, five hundred years ago by my reckoning. The others and I have been drawn from a similar time. I wonder, do you break this pattern?”

“Ah, that was me, or, well, another Mavuika.” Her head was beginning to hurt. This was a matter for gods, which she most certainly was not. “I was the Archon at the time of the disaster my people came to call the Cataclysm. That is, the Fall of Khaenri’ah. The story is a long one, but I gave myself to the Sacred Flame, and was preserved within it for nearly 500 years. I emerged into an era unfamiliar to me, and took the Mantle of the Pyro Archon again. I knew of a Lord Buer, called by some Lesser Lord Kusinali, who was the Archon of Sumeru. We had never met, however.”

“Ah. That explains the presence of the Fourth Descender, called the Traveler by the others,” Buer said, and nodded to Tumani. “I have met this world’s echo of the Travelers, though I know not what they shall grow into in the tapestry of Earth Bet.”

Now Mavuika’s head was truly throbbing, and she massaged her forehead gently. “I knew of both Aether and Lumine, though Lumine had fallen into the Abyss, taken by…” Mavuika hesitated. No. Not even here would she speak that name. “-a Lord of the Abyss, similar to the great serpent that attacked my city.”

She paused, and blinked. Then smiled. “My city…yes. I suppose it is, now. I do not claim it as ruler, but…yes. Mexico has become my home. I…feel it. Though I know not this land and people, nor even their tongues, they are…home.”

“I should hope so, otherwise I brought this Tequila for nothing.”

Mavuika blinked, and looked up to see Diego and his lover, Adoncia, standing there in swimsuits of their own, carrying a cooler. He held up a bottle and waggled it. “Want a drop? Made it myself.”

“No, he didn’t,” Carlo called, and Mavuika started to realize he had been the one playing guitar all along. 

Diego shouted something back, but Mavuika just laughed and took the bottle. She poured some of the amber liquor into her tin cup, made to pour more into another, and then hesitated. “Forgive me, Lord Buer, but…it would not feel right to give you such an offering.”

Nahida laughed, and poured herself more tea. “Nor would I accept such! Not only am I too young physically to drink such, but Allah the Merciful forbids intoxicating drinks to his followers, and I count myself among them.”

That, Mavuika decided, was a theological question. And she only ever pondered those when sufficiently drunk. “Leave the bottle,” she told Diego. 

After finishing one small cup, however, Mavuika didn’t pour again, instead regarding the little god sitting on the beach with her. “Alright. This is wonderful, and I confess, very enlightening. But why did you come here? Surely there were other dream beaches you could have taken your sister to.”

“Would it shock you to say I simply wished to greet you, and welcome you to this world?” Nahida said, smiling somewhat impudently. 

“Seeing as how I had served as Archon for two decades across two ages, and have never spoken more than a handful of battlefield words to the Seven…yes,” Mavuika said, meeting the fae’s eyes.

Nahida sighed. “The rules of this land are different. For one…have you met the one we oft mistake for the Sustainer of Heavenly Principles? Dominus Cycli. King of Demons.”

“He was mentioned by those I have met. They call him the Antichrist Zion,” Mavuika said, shaking her head. “What is he?”

“He is a swarm of locusts—a being of vast power, born of a race that scours the stars and devours all before it in a perverse cycle of parasitism and propagation. I sense you have already encountered one of that vast host, and reforged it into an Ancient Name. An elegant solution. Each of us has tackled this problem in our own way.

“I must caution you, though. The demon you remade belonged to the Dead God known as the Thinker, or Eden. To do the same to one of his living host might draw his ire.”

Nahida’s expression grew troubled. “It might equally intrigue him. What passes for thought within him remains largely unknowable, and what will provoke him is something we five have yet to understand entirely.”

“Hmmm,” Mavuika considered that. “Then he is an enemy like the Abyss. An endless, devouring hunger that would consume the land and people, using their culture and memories as nothing but grist for his perverse mill.”

“Yes, and like the Abyss, he is sterile. He cannot truly create. He has no understanding of beauty, no wisdom. He can only mimic, and what he mimics, he seeks to dominate, then destroy,” Nahida said, shuddering. 

“I see. Then when do we make War upon him?” 

Nahida smiled sadly. “When the time is ripe, and there is no other option. Our hope is that when all Seven have arrived, we will have the strength. But though your arrival comforts me, we yet await the coming of our eldest member. Even with him, I do not know if victory is attainable. Only that we must fight, and that it will be good to have War to lead us.”

That was a small relief. “That is good. Then I must complete my current campaign as quickly as possible. My forces are small and untested, but better to finish the battle on one front than to be crushed between two.”

She started to rise, but Nahida waved a hand. “Wait! There is…a personal matter. One that I must beg your indulgence in.”

“I will do what I can, Lord Buer, but we must each attend to our own lands and duties,” Mavuika said, settling back on her haunches.

“This is not Teyvat. Here, on Earth Bet, we do not stand alone. None of us will tell you how to conduct your affairs or interfere in your lands overmuch, save perhaps Lord Dantilion, who-”

“Who?” Mavuika interrupted, frowning. She had never heard that name before.

Nahida brightened in the manner of a child who had just been handed a delightful new puzzle. “Ah! Then you are like me! Barbatos, Beezebul, and Focalors knew Dantilion as the Cryo Archon! I knew another. Tell me, what was the Tsaritsa’s name in your world? Was there a Tsaritsa? A Tsar, perhaps?”

“Uh, I believe her name was Anastasya Feodorovna Snezhnaya,” Mavuika said, feeling rather confused. There had been a Tsar, but Monomakh Snezhnyi had perished in the Cataclysm, though Mavuika hadn’t learned that until her return.

“That is the same as me!” Nahida said, her hands dancing along excitedly, eyes bright with delight. “Was her predecessor the Belyi Tsar?! Did your Tsaritsa also attempt to acquire the Gnoses?! She did not seek mine yet, but the others speak of it, and Bronya also-”

Nahida cut herself off, putting her hands over her mouth as Mavuika’s expression grew increasingly perplexed. “Forgive me. It is just, I do find the differences between our various Teyvats so fascinating. The points of divergence and convergence tell us so much about Fate, and perhaps give clues to why we have been called here.”

“...because there is a foe to fight?” Mavuika ventured. She really hadn’t thought about it that hard. There wasn’t time, and the answer didn’t change what she had to do.

“That is much the same answer that Ei has come to, I am sorry, that is, Lord Beelzebul. Perhaps you will form your own theory in time. But I suppose we must set that aside for now.”

Mavuika nodded as Nahida very obviously collected her thoughts. Ei? Was that the personal name of the Raiden Shogun? Odd. Were the gods on this world so informal and willing to speak with one another? That could be only a good change in Mavuika’s book.

“You said we stand not alone. Do you mean to offer me material aid?” Mavuika asked, returning to what to her mind was the most pertinent line of inquiry.

“I…I mean to send you my mother,” Nahida said quietly, looking down and fidgeting her thumbs. 

“You mean to offer me Irminsol itself?!” Mavuika gasped, half panicked at the very thought. While the Tree of Life was surely powerful, only a madwoman would risk it in a campaign. That was the sort of thing you spent your last drop of blood to protect, not deployed against the Abyss!

“No, no! I do not mean Greater Lord ████████████!” Nahida said hastily, shaking her head.

That was another name that- Mavuika frowned. What name?

Lord Buer had said something. She knew that. She had heard the words Greater Lord, and then…an emptiness. Not silence, exactly. Mavuika could remember that Nahida’s lips had moved. She could remember the shape of a name being spoken.

But not the name itself. 

The Abyss? No, that wasn’t quite right. Well, that was presumably another point of divergence for Lord Buer to put in her chart somewhere. Best not bring it up now.

“No, I mean…my mother from this world. She…adopted me. I would tell you the entire story, but, it is long, and I know you do not mean to tarry,” Nahida said shyly, looking down.

She was the Root of Irminsol; the Lesser Lord of Kusanali. A well-respected scholar, a leader in her own way, Nahida was an Archon with all that it entailed.

Yet all Mavuika saw… was a child who had known great grief and sorrow, and was now begging a captain to ensure that the mother she loved would return to her safely. 

That, Mavuika understood.

“You have said time passes differently here. I think I can find time to hear your mother’s story. Perhaps I will share one of mine, as well,” Mavuika said gently, putting a hand on Nahida’s head. 

Nahida sniffled, then scooted closer to Mavuika, resting her head against her side as Mavuika tenderly stroked her hair. 

“I…I shall start from the beginning then. You see, when I awoke, I was riding in a flower carriage…”

The story that poured out made Mavuika wonder, for the first time, whether perhaps a city did deserve a Divine Nail or two. Those Sages were monsters. To find a newly born child, regardless of their heritage, and then imprison them without care or comfort for 500 years?!

She hoped they were all devoured by beasts and their memories forgotten. 

“And then…and then I found myself in another flower carriage. It smelled of radishes, and was traveling through a land I both did not know, and yet, belonged to…”

Before, Nahida had been tense. Weeping. She spoke of Teyvat as one would a prison cell, and Mavuika did not blame her. But when she described Baghdad and its people, Nahida spoke with the love and affection of a child describing a safe home.

“The first person I met stank of death, and demons. She wore black, and carried a bloody spear.”

“Her name is Farasha.”

“And she is my mother.”

The woman Nahida proceeded to describe was a contradiction the likes of which Mavuika had rarely encountered. She was a bloody murderer, the instrument of a cruel regime that had slaughtered countless thousands. She was a frightened child, formed into a weapon and sent to war after being possessed by a powerful demon. She was terrifying and crass. She was cheerful and kind. 

She was War. 

And she was Rebirth.

“-and so, the tyrant was cast down. I do not rule over Iraq. That is not my place. I teach, and give counsel when asked, though I try to let the people find their own answers. Grandpa Ali says that if I ever answer a question outright instead of asking another one, he will check to see if I have been replaced by a mimic.”

“And your mother?” Mavuika asked.

Nahida blushed. “Um…well, you see…I may have…slightly coaxed her along a path towards…becoming the Pyro Dragon.”

Mavuika blinked. You could do that?

“I, ah, may have also…accidentally on purpose created the Dendro Dragon of Bet. And, um, also helped Ziz realize that she was the Anemo Sovereign as well,” Nahida admitted. 

“How, exactly, does one accidentally on purpose create a Dragon Sovereign?” Mavuika asked incredulously.

“Mostly with conceptual hugs and pizza,” Nahida said soberly. “And a few dreams.”

“Perhaps I should try some of this pizza,” Mavuika muttered. 

“It is very tasty!” Nahida said with a wide grin. “My favorite is black olives, feta, and lamb!”

Then her face fell, and she turned back to look to where a very uncertain Qiqi was now being coached on how to use a boogie board by Mualani and Tupac. Qiqi wobbled, but managed to stay upright. A small smile formed on her face, and she gave a soft cheer as Mualani and Tupac applauded. 

“The Seven Sovereigns of this world have risen, and you will meet them all. All have taken up the fight against the Abyss, and three will come to serve under your banner. But my mother is your dragon, the dragon of Pyro. She is…young. Twenty-nine years by this world’s reckoning, and that is close enough to what you would know from Teyvat.  She does not yet understand fully what it means to take up the mantle of Divinity.”

Nahida traced some lines in the sand with a finger, her expression pained. “Unlike you, she has left mortality behind. That she did before I could warn her. In her effort to save me when I was captured after the first Dance of Samsara, she fully merged with her demon, becoming a lifeform that was neither truly mortal nor divine. She would have succumbed to madness and the drives of the Cycle without my intervention. So I took a far more direct hand than I would have liked.”

“I am young myself. I have lived only 35 years in truth,” Mavuika admitted. She smiled at Hine, who grinned and waved back at her. “I too left behind a family I love to take up my War. I did it for them, but it did not make the pain of loss any easier to bear.”

“No. And…and she is my mother. I have had one only a short time, but…” tears filled Nahida’s eyes. “My father is dying. He…I know the hour of his death. I have not told…there isn’t much time. I cannot… But my mother…I…I can’t lose her too…Who…who would take care of Qiqi, and Saleem, and…” 

The god of life swallowed, and asked in a very small voice, “...and me?”

Mavuika held the frightened child for a long time. The sun had set, and the stars came out. Carlo had come over and was flirting with Mualani, who was shamelessly flirting back. Mavuika would have been more offended; Mualani was with Kinich, and Carlo had his Captain Mina, but it seemed rather like the two of them enjoyed this game for what it was, and neither would take it further. 

Hine and Qiqi had fallen asleep, and Tumani and Citlali had slipped off somewhere alone. Tupac watched over the sleeping children, talking and drinking with Diego and Adoncia. 

At last, Mavuika shifted slightly, and Nahida turned her head to look up at her.

“I cannot promise that your mother will come home to you,” she said, repeating a line she had said more times than she could count. “But this I swear to you: I will do all I can to ensure that she does. This is War. Your mother understands that. She has joined the fight willingly, because she loves you. Because she knows it is the duty of the parent to sacrifice themselves for their children, just as the Archon gives of themselves to the Sacred Flame for Mexico.”

Odd. She would have said Natlan before. But now…this felt right, too. 

Nahida nodded, closing her eyes and resting her head on Mavuika’s arm. “...thank you.”

Mavuika nodded, and looked up, studying the stars. Interesting. They were not the false stars she was used to. How wonderful, to at least see the night sky in truth.

She closed her eyes, and breathed out. A few minutes longer. No more. 

She lay back in the sand, Nahida’s breathing slowing, and closed her eyes. “Would you like to hear the story of my own mother?” 

Nahida nodded. “Yes. I would like that.”

“Once, when Hine was just a little baby…”

Peace. What a wonderful Dream. 

One that could not last.