#mageil

Before leaving, Jake had said, "I won't let them imrpison him. They won't want to anyway. I just need to negotiate on his punishment."

His face had been sullen, disappointed.

Mageil remembered how delicately Jake explained Tyru's situation to him; cursed to live a life of immortality, given when he was barely a teenager, born to serve the prison under a blood bound contract with their god Keypi. It had been in place for 2000 years, he'd said with a soft, sympathetic voice, and the only way to die was to pass it onto their child.

Since Mageil had stepped foot into the prison officially sworn in as an apprentice, he'd been trying to befriend all of those who would soon be his coworkers. But Tyru rarely spoke to him, and if he did, he'd tell Mageil to fuck off back to his prissy little mansion where his family lived in Province 12. Mageil kept trying, and trying, to do anything that could break that hard shell of his, but truth of the matter was that Tyru did not trust people. He spent his meals alone, his training alone, did all his lessons alone or silently in the back of class.

He didn't even learn Tyru was a host until he'd snapped, and that was the same moment everyone else found out.

And then he disappeared. It had been three days now. Nobody else tried, or even bothered, to find him, and he never showed up.

Mageil had a bad feeling about it though. His symbiont, a three headed dragon, whispered to him that maybe Tyru had finally found a way to do. The head he'd dubbed anxiety, who exuded worry and fear, suggested that he went off to find someone else to kill. He didn't like that disgusting feeling it gave him, anxiety for no reason, and he scoffed.

"That's stupid," he said out loud, ignoring the looks from passersby. "You were a war general, don't play these baby games with me. Besides, he'd never killed anyone before this. I asked Jake."

'That you know of.' All three heads laughed in his mind, rattling his skull.

"Shut the fuck up. I'm going to go find him."

He slammed his meal tray down and left the table.

Most of the guards, upon seeing Mageil's enormous and terrifying dragon form sprinting down the hall, jumped out of the way.

He maneuvered through the maze of hallways in the dorms, glancing in every open room he could. Most were vacant. Even Tyru's assigned room was empty, which he expected, but had hoped to be wrong.

It was unlikely he left the prison at all, so Mageil kept his eyes and ears open. And though it hurt his head, he was able to sort of see through the eyes of all three dragon heads, and commanded that ability at will. His dragon complained about it, but with careful listening the head situated to the far left just barely picked up the sound of sniffling.

---

His hands trembled.

He stood in a pool of his own blood. The blood never stopped flowing from gashes on his arms.

He could not die.

He could not hear the voice of his symbiont. The poor sweet creature who he blocked out with a sedative he'd stolen from his father would have retreated to the farthest corner of his mind.

Domestic dragons watched him from the storage shelves. Some hung in the rafters the chefs used to hang garlic and dried meats. They gave him curious trills, none willing to approach the grizzly scene.

Tyru could only replay the terrible memories in his mind-- Aeloz giving him the cold shoulder since before he could recall. Food being withheld for threatening to report him. The arguments. Brutal trainings that lasted hours with little to no break. Getting called weak. Being backhanded and cursed out for talking out of turn, or at all, really.

The dozens of ways Aeloz found to blame Tyru for his mother's death.

How Tyru's hand wrapped around Aeloz's neck as he pulled out the knife he'd been stashing away for that very moment. Aeloz's eyes were full of fear and then relief- as if he'd been waiting to die this entire time.

Aeloz never fought back.

He dropped to his knees, gripping the handle of his knife tight.

Aeloz was gone, whisked away by an undertaker. He'd planned this for months. He felt no relief though.

What was going to happen to him?

He couldn't die.

He was forced to serve the prison because of his ancestor's mistake.

The first Aeloz. The first host to ever exist and cause the barrier to the soul pool to break.

Aeloz, a cursed name.

Tyru's breaths came short and shallow. Tears rolled down his face. But still he bared his fangs in anger and fear.

He stabbed right through his midsection, gasping in pain. His body shook and his vision swam but no matter how hard he tried to die it wouldn't work.

Death would be better than any punishment the prison and government could possibly think up for him.

/But he could not die./

Yanking the knife back out, Tyru leaned forward, pressing his forehead against the cool storage room floor. It was coated in blood from three days of this... /breakdown/.

What kind of prison warden would he be if he freaked out at the first death be ever caused?

He stabbed his middle again, for good measure he guessed, leaving the knife sticking out of himself as he curled up further.

The dragons frills stiffened and they prepped their wings for flight. Tyru's eyes snapped open; turning too fast to see who was at the door made his vision fuzzier and his stomach lurched.

He kneeled back over, propping himself up with his hand.

"The fuck do you want, /prince/." His words slurred as he became weaker. He wouldn't die, but he still felt the blood loss, especially when he yanked the knife out with dreadfully shaky hands.

Mageil stood in the doorway, a wide, shocked expression on his face.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked.

Tyru didn't have an answer. He got to his feet, wobbly, and tried to throw the knife at Mageil, who merely stepped to the side to avoid it.

The dragons above them trilled louder, some even jumping down to stand intimidatingly next to Tyru. They were a few feet taller than him, with more fangs and sharper claws than he could ever dream of, and in a split second decision he told them to stand down. They were the closest to friends he'd ever had in this god forsaken prison but this wasn't their issue to fight.

Mageil, stupid sickly little prince Mageil, didn't move, his glowing yellow eyes staring straight through Tyru.

Tyru gripped his midsection as more blood seeped into his shirt. His knee gave out, and if it wasn't for the dragon that hurriedly caught him, he thought he'd be face down on the ground.

"Tell me why you're doing this," Mageil said again, "if you can't even die."

"You're not supposed to fucking know that!"

Mageil took a step toward him. A dragon raised its wings. "I want to be friends with everyone I'm supposed to work with. I was concerned about you so I asked why you're like that."

"Like /what/."

"You don't talk to people, you sit alone all the time, nobody even knew you were a host until three days ago."

"Cause that's not their business," Tyru spat.

His bloody nails tried to find a grip on the smooth scales of the dragon to no avail. His other leg started to give out, his vision blurry, and he bit his tongue so as to not vocalize the whine in his throat.

For some reason, the dragons didn't move as Mageil approached. He reached down to roughly grab Tyru by his wrists and yank him up, lifting him a good foot off the ground due to their height difference. Tyru cried out as the gashes on his arms got scraped and agitated by Mageil's claws.

Tyru started kicking Mageil but that stupid man was built like a brick wall. His kicks bounced off of him like a ball of paper. The two foot height difference and build didn't help.

"Just fucking let me go!"

"Answer my gods damned question."

Tyru started twisting his body despite the pain in his arms. He tried to twist enough to slap Mageil in the face with his wing. "Like you'd ever understand wanting to just die! Let me go!"

"You think I don't /know/?" Mageil asked, unbelievable laughter slipping into his voice. "Maybe you'd know if you bothered talking to people!"

"I. Wasn't. Allowed. To." Tyru bared his teeth and kicked again.

Mageil's face fell. "What?"

"You fucking heard me."

He could barely get the words out. His head rung, his arms going numb. He was starting to slip from Mageil's grasp from the blood coating his arms. Whatever strength he'd had left to hold his head up dissipated and his head fell forward.

Mageil lowered him gingerly onto the ground against the cool scales of a dragon. Tyru wasn't unconscious yet, but couldn't keep his eyes open, and could only feel that Mageil was moving his arms around, checking the gashes on his arms and stomach.

Not to mention the scratches he'd dug into his own face with his claws. Mageil's stupid soft fingers brushed over them, making him hiss.

"Just leave me alone," Tyru muttered, barely above a whisper. "I'm not gonna die. I'll just wake up when the skin heals and blood replenishes and move on."

"...you've done this before?"

Tyru stayed quiet. He just didn't have the energy to talk anymore.

He felt himself get jostled around, picked up behind his back and knees as if he weighed nothing. He whined.

"They're gonna put me in my family's own prison," he slurred.

"Jake's making sure they don't. He doesn't think they will so he's looking for alternatives to deal with it. Talk to me if you can."

Alternatives? His heart beat faster.

"Don't have anything to say..."

Mageil hummed. Tyru could feel Mageil's arms trembling.

A young man pampered and spoiled growing up. He wasn't used to seeing someone act like this, let alone blood probably, is all Tyru could think.

"All anyone knows of me is that I was the sick prince," Mageil says absentmindedly. Tyru groaned. "But they never saw that behind the scenes I never saw my parents. My father divorced my mother for giving him a sickly child and I didn't even meet my father until I was almost six. I was taken care of by a hired nanny. I was sick because they didn't know I was a poison host at first and the doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong. When my father remarried, my step mother was cruel to me. My half brother was cruel to me. They only started talking to me when my rare symbiont manifested."

"Spare me the exposition."

"You won't talk so I will."

"Motherfucker just shut up."

"Mm...I don't think I will. You insist I don't know what it's like to want to die when I very much do."

"Shut up," Tyru whined.

He didn't get to hear anything else Mageil said. Exhaustion clawed at him and he drifted into unconsciousness.

---

"He'll be fine," the doctor, Azel, said as he walked out from a back room, having just spent the better part of an hour fixing up Tyru. He tossed his gloves into a trash nearby and sat down heavily at his desk, holding his head in one hand. He looked at the notes Mageil had written for him. "I can't discuss private information. All I can really say is that it will take a day or two for him to wake up, if you want to come visit him."

Mageil's face fell. "I don't think he'd want me to."

"Jake already gave the order that he's to be put on leave for an undisclosed amount of time." Azel sighed. His black jaguar ears flicked. "Once he's able to stand on his own and get the stitches removed, he won't he back for a long time."

"Can I visit him now?" Mageil asked.

Azel was quiet at first. "Do you really want to?"

"I mean what I said," Mageil insisted, already standing up.

He walked past the silent doctor and went into the back rooms without permission, where some large rooms were sectioned off for injured guards being tended to and others were fully private. One door was propped open, the inside illuminated by a dim, warm lamp.

Tyru, one of the smallest people Mageil had ever met, looked dwarfed in the hospital bed made for people much larger than him. Unlike other patients Mageil had passed, he only had a single IV with no other medical devices attached. Pain meds, he guessed, because Tyru was right-- he wasn't going to die. Better to use most of the resources elsewhere, right?

He stood next to the bed, stoney faced and silent. Tyru looked peaceful, more so than Mageil had ever seen him, almost cherub-like with his round face and small proportions. He was pale and cold though, like a living corpse, breathing slow and shallow.

It took almost a week for Tyru to wake up. Mageil visited every day after his lessons until he walked in, just as surprised to see Tyru awake as he was to see someone walk in the door.

The color had returned to his face and the pain meds were gone. His blue eyes were bright and vibrant as they stared each other down. Thick, fresh bandages covered his arms up past his elbows. Bandaids stuck to three spots on his cheeks.

"Oh fuck me," Tyru snapped. He dropped his food onto his tray in protest. "You're like a rat that just won't go away!"

Mageil only smiled. "We're coworkers. You'll have to work with me until we retire. Or I die."

"Fuck," Tyru said under his breath.

---

The Smith family had lived in a large manor for generations now, but as they started to despise the curse more, they had less and less children. Tyru wasn't able to visit his home often until now, greeted by dust, cobwebs, and hundreds of packed up boxes full of memorabilia from generations past.

He didn't know why his father or his grandmother boxed it all up, but it was just him now to do with them as he pleased.

The last direct descendent of Aeloz the first who worked in the prison, all alone at home.

There was no trial as he expected. It wasn't often a warden was killed by someone in the prison itself and usually if one died the apprentice took over. But because of the situation, one of the on call wardens stepped in to fill the job as Tyru was put under a leave of absence.

His superiors asked a lot of questions. Namely about how he was treated, but he kept it short and sweet. They didn't say much about it, but since he was still here and not locked up, he decided not to complain.

They gave him stipulations though.

They didn't want a future warden like him, but since he was born to serve the prison, they let the local psychiatrist decide what to do with him.

1) no sharp objects without supervision

2) no alcohol

3) no recreational drugs or symbiont sedatives

4) monitored medications

Tyru hated it. But how could he possibly say no?

Multiple guards had come with him and spent the better part of a day unboxing everything and confiscating whatever they considered a sharp object. Aeloz's old stash of cheap alcohol was trashed. By the time they left almost everything was unpacked and not put in their correct places. He opted to just go to bed.

He wondered if, had he been born into a normal province under normal circumstances, he would've been left alone. He felt infantilized, like he'd never had a life under his superiors anyway, merely patted on the head like a dog for being unable to die. A curse that they salivated over, because it meant they could use him for whatever they wanted with little to no bad PR.

A few weeks into leave, Tyru found himself sitting at the kitchen table across from Mageil and Samantha, one of their other apprentice coworkers. The dim lamp above them barely lit up the kitchen and he had some easy snacks tossed into the center of the table.

He never had anyone visit before. They stayed for a few hours despite the awkwardness, and Samantha had brought him new coffee and snacks he couldn't get in town or in Scarlet City. Since she couldn't fly, she ended up heading back home earlier than Mageil, and Tyru suddenly felt...exposed under his stern gaze.

Tyru coughed. "What."

"How are you feeling?" Mageil asked. His voice was surprisingly soft and genuine.

The question he was dreading. "I'm fine. I'm not going to try and kill myself again right now if that's what you're asking."

"Right now?" Mageil whined hopelessly.

Tyru held his hands up in surrender. "I swear right now I'm fine." He held out his arms with the gnarly healing gashes and lifted his shirt to show him the stab wounds. Mageil made a face. "I'll be healed soon. They...have me on a lot of medications. Antibiotics n...shit, I guess. You know."

"You don't have to tell me. It's okay."

They fell into an awkward silence. Tyru never really talked this much before, and let his mind drift off to talk with his symbiont as he waited to see what else Mageil might say.

Nothing came.

Tyru suddenly became interested in picking at the edges of the scabbing on his arms and between his scales. Mageil puffed out his cheeks, exhaling slowly. He tapped his hands on the table surface.

"Do you want me to visit more often?" Mageil asked hesitantly. "I mean- I'll visit anyway but I want to hear you say yes."

"Why are you so fuckin obsessed with me?"

"I thought we could be friends. It's not...fair that Aeloz did that to you. It doesn't have to stay like that."

"You're not my therapist."

"Come on, man!"

Tyru clicked his tongue. "Fine. Not like I'm fucking doing anything anyway."

"Do you want me to bring anything from Scarlet City? I can hit it on my days off."

"I don't want anything." He wasn't allowed to really want anything. He stared blankly at Mageil. "Surprise me. If you want. Or something."

Mageil pushed his chair back and stood up, clasping his hands together. "I'll see you next week then alright?'