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Ivan re-wrapped his forearm as he traipsed down the hall, tucking the loose ends under his leather vambrace just in time to bump the next door open with his hip.

The dim corridor burst open into a riot of glass and jewels and living things. He found himself standing on the low balcony of a vast, crystal atrium, hemmed by pillars of quartz thick as ancient trees and wreathed in climbing ivy. The smooth stone flooring of the palace proper gave way to an intricate mosaic underfoot; he followed its winding pattern all the way to the very edge of a mezzanine overlooking this grand cathedral to natural light. Far, far overhead hung a clear, faceted skylight, held aloft by soaring arches, high enough to kiss the cosmos (for all he could tell–puny, craning his neck to admire it from the first-and-a-half floor).

The hall was lit on all sides, sort of, by what passed for daylight here. Even cast in the cold pallor of a relentless drizzle just outside its semi-translucent walls, the geometry of this place glittered prismatic in Ivan’s periphery with every step he took, framing everything in a dreamlike opalescence that moved as he did. Every column, every tile, every image worked into the stone around him held every color he could imagine and some he may have never spared a single thought for until now. It was easy to envision this room dazzling in true daylight: flooded with rainbows, sun pouring in from all angles and igniting every smooth surface it could touch. Sunless as it was now, the hall did not fail to impress, but it was a hazy sort of wonder–a precious gem cocooned in cobwebs, weary in its beauty. Elegant, but asleep.

Ivan leaned over the railing.

Rooted at the center of the expanse sat a polished sundial of mottled stone, twice his height or more in diameter–inert, but brilliant. Its face was carved with orbits of elaborate glyphs and rich veins of malachite, etched in every mode of demarcating time or fortune that its architect could have possibly learned before their own ran out. With only the endless, unbroken grey overhead and all around, its stiff arm failed to cast any meaningful shadow. It could not tell him the time and, frankly, he could not blame it. It simply sat, portentous, pointing its static gnomon accusatorily at the heavens, holding the tension of an entire citadel in its burnished splendor.

Ivan heard the gentle rattle of a latch and watched one of many ornate doors swing open half a floor below. A hooded figure slipped through, closing the door carefully behind with a soft click before drifting across the room in the direction of the sleeping clock’s midnight. The soaked hem of a dark cloak trailed along the floor behind–rain-blackened in most places, gradienting to a deep violet at the shoulders where it had begun to dry just enough for little whorls of embroidered acanthus to stand out on the surface again.

Ivan felt a rush of sparks course through him.

The only sight he would have welcomed standing in a hall of precious stones.

He planted his boots between the rungs of the balustrade and stepped up, easily, onto the railing. Balanced there, he felt the world turn under his feet and forgot ever having been at-odds with its machinations. Rain began to pluck at the glass ceiling, and a well of sunlight filled the emptiness in his chest.

“Hail, sorcerer!” his voice rang out in the high arch of the hall. Light as a ghost, he drifted over the railing and dropped the short distance to the sunken tiles below. “Your reputation preceded me,” he said, straightening up with a crooked grin. “Else I’d’ve gotten here much sooner.”

Amaranth did not flinch, but turned to face him, slowly.

In the instant the sorcerer’s gaze fell upon him, Ivan caught a glimpse of something that forced his brazen gait to falter. He could feel the push of some unearthly veil between them, radiating in the residual gleam of uncanny light emanating from somewhere behind Amaranth’s eyes. They had been apart for days, but never more than in this moment. Something in the fathomless distance held in the tension around his eyes, the rain-slicked hair still clinging to his brow, or whatever burned inside of him now that Ivan was not supposed to see–even just for one suspended second, it hollowed him out with a terror unknown. How easy it was to imagine him like this, holding a storm in the palm of his hand, features hardened with fury and indifference, his attention lit from within by waves of boundless destruction that took more effort to restrain than to unleash. Ivan felt something he could not know settle between his lungs and squeeze. He had never had to stare it down like this, had never seen him this way, but knew, for a moment, that he was seeing through the eyes of all who had, and who had seen nothing more after that.

Worst of all, it wasn’t enough to stop him. This cruel engine drove him forward still, no glimpse of fear enough to unseal his fate.

Amaranth’s expression softened immediately. Recognition dawned, and the warm dark returned to his eyes. “Ivan…” he breathed, voice heavy with relief, awash with such devotion that it could have split Ivan in two. By the time he was within reach, his eyes reflected no afterimage of carnage, no window to any hellish magicks that he carried within him always–only the waning light from the hall and an utter adoration.

Wasting no more time, Ivan pulled him into an aching embrace–clapped him on the back and felt himself exhale. In spite of himself, his grip tightened, clutching a fistful of the back of Amaranth’s cloak, hard enough to make himself wince as the friction seared his hastily-bandaged hand. Still, he only sunk into it deeper, leaned against him, full-bodied, and was lost. Allowed himself to be held for just a moment. How long didn’t matter. Time wasn’t welcome in this doomed space.

Eventually, Ivan laid both hands on Amaranth’s chest and eased himself up so that they may speak face-to-face. He looked down to find his own chest now damp with rain and shook his head, making a show of brushing it off with a cheerful scoff.

“Where have you been?” he admonished teasingly, reaching back down to pinch the hem of Amaranth’s cloak, squeezing until water ran down the heel of his hand before he released.

He felt a quiet chuckle rumble through Amaranth’s chest more than he heard it. “Nowhere nice,” he replied with a coy half-grin. He pivoted a half-step away and pressed the back of his wrist to his nose, looking off absently for a moment, before he continued with a sniff. “Catastrophe can never seem to strike twice somewhere warm, can it?”

He committed to detaching and, in a half-shrug or less, a subtle shiver ran through him, scattering raindrops from the surface of his cloak in every direction, evaporating before they hit the floor. Ivan laid a hand on the damp patch transferred to his own clothes and found it dry, as well. Amaranth swept the cascade of dark hair out of his eyes with one hand. His gaze alighted on the sliver of white poking out from beneath Ivan’s dark leathers. He let his hand hover over it, without touching, looking it over with curious solemnity.

“What happened here?” he asked, softly. Ivan felt a hot stinger of shame shoot through him. His jaw tightened defensively. “Nevermind,” he grumbled with an evasive smile. “I’ve gotten too used to fighting with you by my side is what happened. Sometimes it’s healthy for me to remember how to do it without the boost.”

Amaranth was quiet for a moment. Feeling pinned to a shadowbox by the look of amused skepticism on his face, Ivan decided to look anywhere else.

“A fight broke out on the ferry from Citrine,” Amaranth said calmly, as though delivering unrelated news, courtly and detached, but the corners of his eyes sharpened with oblique mischief. “--I heard.”

Eyes averted, Ivan still blinked a few times at the impact, glaring resentfully across the hall at the useless gnomon. “Oh, you heard that,” he mumbled, unable to smooth the wrinkle of defiant pride from his voice as his gaze flicked back to Amaranth, reverently looking him over.

It was unclear exactly what was off about him.

Something missing, or something weighing him down. There was nothing new in Amaranth’s posture, in the way he held himself, sharp and striking as ever. Unfair, Ivan thought, to stand before him after all these days in such unbearable, agonizing beauty. What, then? Ivan could study every contour of his face, find poetry in every muscle and bone, and never learn to read him in moments like this. But he could almost see the storm clouds that had followed him inside, watch them circling his head now. Even in all this warmth and attentiveness, he seemed somber. Worn out. Desaturated in a way that transcended the pervasive gloom of the cloud-covered hall. It was as if all these days spent standing in the rain had washed some of his colors out.

Ivan sighed, any rising mirth buttoned back up by confronting this. “Amaranth,” he said quietly, “I am not optimistic.”

He glanced over his shoulder at the formless swell of movement somewhere past the foggy, crystalline walls. Watching the shifting grey of the distant sea through this clouded prism didn’t help. It felt like standing on his toes and peeking out the windows of purgatory.

“I haven’t been to this part of the world in awhile, so maybe the local folk have gotten a little cagier, a little less trusting of strangers…” Ivan raised his eyebrows at the grumble of distant thunder. “But I think this really did come out of nowhere for them, too. Either way, it must be serious if the best answer the council could come up with was collecting every wizard who fancies themselves the greatest who ever lived at a long table and expecting them to problem-solve.” He realized he was pressing his fingers into the palm of his hand until it burned anew and hastily uncurled them. “Of all the greatest-alives I saw on that ship, none of them had the answer. And they were all full of themselves enough that they wouldn't have kept it quiet if they did. They cannot work together. Cannot set aside their egos long enough to even try. So, what’s the point of all this? They will eat each other alive before any curse gets the chance–”

He cut himself off there, feeling a prickle of self-awareness, and glanced back to Amaranth with eyes wide and apologetic, sucking in an anxious breath to delay any further flogging of his peers.

Amaranth simply looked back at him, fondly, the ghost of a rueful smile flickering across his lips as he cleared the creak from his voice. “If this is the end, they have ensured an entertaining one.”

Ivan looked up at him.

“How are you feeling?”

Amaranth frowned, puzzled. “Why do you ask me this?”

“Because I am looking into your eyes and I can tell you don’t feel well at all.”

Amaranth stared back at him, steady, unmoved, then wilted with a guilty smile. “I have not slept quite the same without you."

A heavy door beside the one through which he'd entered swung open with a sudden groan. Both of them turned.

Standing on the threshold, an angular attendant–veiled to the eyes, a set of matte horns curling from the top of their head–peered in at them with empty curiosity. Still holding the door open with one hand, they addressed Amaranth in a sibilant tongue Ivan did not understand. They were brief about it–one steady string of syllables, followed by a practiced pause. Amaranth nodded politely in response. The visitor hovered in the doorway a moment longer, but seemed satisfied with this reply. They offered a few more words, loosely, over their shoulder, with more air and thought between, before they disappeared behind the door again, shutting it without a sound.

Amaranth turned back to Ivan and, finding himself unfreed from his scrutiny, lowered his voice to a hush. “... and I will be happier when this day is done and I can return to our room,” he confessed with a disarming flash of handsome canines. He reached into his cloak and produced a silver key whose bow was bent into a sigil for the sun and offered it to Ivan in an upturned palm.

Ivan barely looked at it as he stepped forward. He reached up to stroke his hair instead--overturned the little streak of silver at his temple, then let it fall back into place. “Go now,” he murmured, running his thumb along Amaranth’s cheekbone. “I can keep my eyes and ears open.”

Amaranth sighed and blinked slowly under the tender touch, as if the rejection both of them knew he was nocking was about to wound him, too. “O, to be invisible to everyone but you…” he said in a quiet, plaintive hum–one that anyone who had ever gotten close to getting close to him might still hear in the back of their minds on a still night. One that Ivan had not passed a single one of the last thirty without imagining in his ear as he drifted off to sleep.

His hand closed around the key, lingering for a moment when he felt the chill still clinging to the surface of Amaranth’s skin. “Have it your way,” Ivan said with a smirk, making quick work of tucking the key away into his pocket.