Theano and Pan ji belong to the same universe as Sol

The great Magesters of Nieboheim; Gods in a Greenhouse City.

In his teenage years, Theano would leer at those sheltered fools as they passed by. Without their robes, masks, or tower, those feeble mages would wilt under the weight of their true incompetence.

The only thing separating him from the so-called mouths of the Shapeless was the poisonous magic that ran through their veins. Why should Theano and his family have to wallow in the First Halo over circumstances left to chance?

“Do not lose your footing aiming so high. There are places Empties shouldn’t reach for,” A Magester had caught him glaring once, noticing some sort of spark in the young man lurking outside of a nondescript home. “You wear your envy so plainly on your sleeve, and with enough time, it will fester into wrath.”

They spoke, merely gazing ahead. Theano was apparently a child throwing a silent tantrum, not warranting enough importance to look down on.

“Such ills can only be cleansed in the belly of the Shapeless.” The Magester warned, hearing the sound of the Empty’s teeth grinding too late to see him lunging for them.

“Theano!” A girl with gold braids clasped his wrist, stopping him just in time. “Did you come all this way to visit me? Even after uhm…” She floundered, trying to come up with small talk. Quickly, she addressed the Magester. “Lovely of you to come by, we bought a brand new set of tools. The flowers you ordered should—”

But the Magester was already on his way. Poor Persephone had such problems finding chances to finish her sentences. She was always disappointed about it, never angry. Theano made up for the both of them.

“New tools? Are they still too heavy for you?” Theano asked dryly, setting aside his indignation for more immediate goals.

He had sounded annoyed, shedding not a hint of concern, but Persephone smiled. She held his hand and her ears glowed pink just from being around him.

“They’re better, not lighter,” Persephone admitted somewhat sheepishly. “I used to be able to carry them to the gardens outside by myself, I swear! I don’t know why I can’t anymore.” Her tone drooped to a sigh and Theano began getting impatient.

“What are you waiting for? Ask me to carry them then.”

The blunt proposal took Persephone aback at first, and Theano thought he had ruined yet another attempt, but the girl started to giggle.

“You’re really kind.” She said, sounding less winded by awkwardness. Why had Theano been worried? Persephone was easy, practically charming herself. “If you aren’t busy today, would you stay with me in the gardens. I like taking care of the flowers but they don’t make for good conversation.”

“If you insist.” Theano pretended to relent.

“Oh, if you’re actually busy or if you don’t want to, I won’t push!”

“I’m going!” He blurted out suddenly, fuming at how Persephone had clamped her hand over her mouth, trying not to grin.

The door to her home opened and the irksome owner of the flower gardens shambled outside.

“Persephone, your mother woke up! She wants to wish you good morning before you go,” He called for his daughter, mood souring at the sight of Theano. “You again! I thought I told you to leave my family alone!”

He shoved himself between Theano and Persephone, posturing like he was ten feet tall.

“Go before I tell the guards you came back to harass us!”

“Father!” Persephone tried to argue, easily being dragged back inside.

Holding back a snarl, Theano retreated to the space between Persephone’s shop and the next building. Leaning next to a window, he listened in on their spat.

“Is this because his family isn’t as well off as ours? Father, that’s shallow!” Persephone accused but her father wouldn’t have any of it.

“That doesn’t have anything to do with this! There’s just something about that boy.”

This wasn’t the first time Theano heard those words though not once have they failed to rile his ire.

“I hear that he scant speaks to anyone with respect let alone treat them kindly. Worse, it’s obvious that he has some sort of ill will towards the Magesters. Just yesterday, I heard from the guards that he’s been seen stalking some of our customers. Wares get stolen when he visits the forum.”

“No one can prove any of that! Theano just isn’t a people person.” Persephone made weak excuses that she fully believed.

“Even if the rumors aren’t true, he gives me a bad feeling. There’s just something off about him. Something lacking…”

Lacking. It was always about what Theano lacked. He couldn’t have anything or be anything because it was meant to be. The Magesters saw Theano this way, and so did the wretches they lumped him in with.

He dug his fingers into his palms, holding back from striking the wall should Persephone’s father notice him.

“That boy isn’t like the rest of us.”

Leaving the shade of Persephone’s home, Theano committed her father’s words to memory. The man had been right.

Theano wasn’t like the others.

He was the only one who knew that Magesters could get busy, like anyone else. They let their guard down and forget to watch their backs. Worse, they thought they were above the vermin scuttling through Nieboheim’s Halos. They forget that they could die like one, from a blow to the head with a tool Persephone realized had gone missing.

Magesters could be butchered like any animal too. After a while, their insides couldn’t be told apart from the butcher’s specials.

They fed Persephone’s flowers well, haphazardly buried in the dirt so the guards could find them before the worms gorged themselves.

What kind of an idiot would leave the bloodied shovel in their own home? Well, Persephone’s father was a laborer that worked with dirt. Definitely no scholar.

“You don’t have to look if it upsets you.” Theano stood by Persephone on the day of the Harvest. She had cried until her eyes had grown so puffy that she could barely keep them open.

Still, she refused to look away from her screaming Father. That murderer’s cries were drowned out by the jeers of the crowd. They threw rocks at him until the Shapeless’ godly form leaned down to swallow his sins whole.

Persephone’s father stopped crying injustice, and cried for his wife and child. His voice was muffled in the throat of his god, until it was finally silenced when his feet slipped past its lips.

Theano’s arms closed around Persephone’s shoulders when she collapsed against him, sobbing pitifully.

“It’s going to be alright,” He promised, whispering to her as he stroked her hair. The people’s cheering made the sky quake but his voice was the only one that mattered. Soon, it would be the only one Persephone would have left. “From now on, I’ll take care of you.”

The dead men’s words were now a fond memory.

Don’t aim so high. There are heights not meant for you.

You are lacking.

But Theano knew he wasn’t meant to wither where he lay, hoping fate would cast him a fond glance. He was meant to be powerful; to get back at the mages that disgraced him.

The reality of it was that others were too weak to reach their goals, and Theano would use their backs as stepping stones to reach his.

That fact hadn’t changed long after he escaped Nieboheim.

At the base of the stairs in the Espina Rosa’s third level, the members of the patrol kept a keen ear out as they stood guard. If they strained their hearing hard, they might hear the new inmate break those annoying researchers.

Their wishes came true and Sennidy’s body smashed head first on to the ground.

Silent abject horror tainted the air until the leader shouted to mobilize and aid Sennidy, despite his twisted limbs.

Sennidy had always been a coward, pressured into joining the Rose by his friends before they urged him to fall in with the Thorn. He may have been smart, but with enough bullying, the sea jelly would agree to the sky being green.

The Commander of the Thorn realized he was glad that Sennidy was dead. His corpse was light and easy to throw off the edge of the stairs.

“Now, I have the perfect excuse.” Theano muttered to himself, fixing his coat. He scanned his surroundings, and glanced down the stairs, locking eyes with a Rose soldier clutching their sword.

“I-I came up to check on you all…” The private stammered, reduced to a shaking mouse by Theano’s disdaining stare. “Don’t move!” He regained composure and seeing Theano disappearing back into the hall of cells, the soldier raced to apprehend him.

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Outside of the chaos in the cells, Bradley showed the Prison’s researcher guest a heavily fortified crate. It stood apart from the other confiscated items within the vault. The seams were welded shut and its chains and locks held it heavy to the floor. All of these measures made the container itself seem like a sleeping beast. Tariche was waiting for it to start thrashing.

He whistled, finding more interest in Bradley’s nonchalance around hundreds of potentially dangerous artifacts.

“You run a busy doggy kennel,” He noted, watching Sofist’s assistant push a large utility dolly over to the crate. “I’m guessing these eventually pile up with how busy the labs are. What do you do with them? Keep’em on ice until we make room for you?”

Bradley paused, considering the question. Though the stuck-up labcoats had been on a scale of weird to outright rude, he supposed he should reward civility. Prisons were supposed to reinforce good behavior after all.

“Were you Clarence or Rand?”

“Just call me Tariche.” The researcher shrugged, already prying at the lid of a smaller crate.

“Oh.” Figuring it was a middle name, Bradley went and unlocked the box Tariche had become curious of.

Amulets, gems, wooden carvings; a whole array of magical items were tumbling to the floor. Tariche felt a breath of fresh air flowing out from the box, like a breeze through a warm meadow. From the scratches on these previous items, he could tell that some of the inmates had fought to try keeping these small comforts close to heart.

“These aren’t dangerous, per say. Just a lot of junk we have to take off of new inmates before we take them to their cells,” Bradley said, tossing a silver pendant on the pile. “We know what most of them are and it’s not worth bothering the labs. Objects like what the weaver had get snatched and don’t end up taking space for long.”

Checking his magic agenda, scrolling through the busy schedules of the Espina Rosa’s personnel, the private pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing.

“I tend to handle the storage and I don’t want to keep them crowded. It’s just that there aren’t enough people to move this junk.”

“Move them where? An off-site warehouse?” Tariche asked.

Rather than answering him, Bradley lifted the crate and lead the researcher to a row of closed hatches. Leaning his elbow on a rune carved on the wall, Bradley let Tariche watch layers of metal slide away, pulled back by the grinding gears beyond what they could see. Tipping the box, the private poured the magical items into the nondescript hole.

The inside was too dark to see inside and Tariche saw that the openings were pretty small. Sofist’s arm would have gotten stuck.

Once the box was empty, Bradley lifted off the rune and the hatch slammed closed. The final shift of metal against metal sounded like the weighty blade of a guillotine.

“Cleaning is a slow process but better safe than sorry,” The private flicked a different switch and the smoke hit Tariche’s nose before the fire had started. “We never know exactly how magic reacts so they don’t get filtered out until they’re safe ashes. I end up watching some of ours handle the chore in case its more volatile than usual.”

Tariche watched the hatch.

It didn’t make a noise. No crackling. No sparks.

All very boring for a process so sickening.

To the front of the room, the heavy doors swung open and Tariche could hear his Commander’s boots angrily pounding on the floor towards him.

Those doors were heavy and Theano had shoved them out of the way like nothing. Tariche hoped the Commander would keep being this sloppy, they might get caught. Better yet, there was an ugly tear across Theano’s chest but Tariche doubted any of the blood was his.

“We’re leaving,” Theano ordered, reigning in his snarl for later. Narrowing his eyes, he glanced at the largest sealed crate. “It’s come to my attention that conducting proper research on the subject will be impossible with the incompetence so thoroughly infecting this dog pen.”

“Wow, I was just saying.” Tariche scratched the back of his head, barely bothered by Theano’s haggard appearance. The Commander kept such a straight laced bored-slightly-annoyed frown that Tariche was beginning to think someone splashed him with juice instead of there being an actual disaster on day one.

Looking to Bradley, Theano and Tariche figured he hadn’t been this awake in a long time.

“What happened?” The private demanded, holding his shaking agenda up as if to shield himself from Theano. He had good instincts.

“Funny, telling me what to do,” Theano didn’t want to waste energy rolling his eyes. “I hope whoever replaces you and the warden will know their place.”

Bradley, flushed from fright and shock, bit down until his jaw ached.

“I would call the warden to discuss this but I think he’s already on his way.” The private ground out.

Sure enough, Sofist and a gaggle of the members of the patrol that escorted Theano through the third floor arrived at the vault. Tellingly, the minotaur politely entered with his paling entourage following like sheep.

“Fine,” Theano closed his eyes, pretending to get more frustrated, but Tariche could see the corner of his mouth twitching up. “If you’re here, I won’t need to leave the instructions with your underlings. My remaining partner and I will be leaving for Swordhaven the moment a ship sails from port.”

Sofist’s pause was so deafening, the pressure under the vault’s high ceiling became crushing. They could hear his sweat dripping on the floor.

“The patrol told me what happened,” Sofist was far smaller than he was when they first met. “All of what they…admitted. Was that true?”

“Them abandoning Rand and I, allowing for some creature to attack Rand from its cell, spurring him into blindly running off the edge of a sheer fifty foot fall?” Theano listed casually. “I should hope that was the case. Or else I had come down to the patrol to see that they had snapped his neck.”

Mouth falling open, Bradley couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Sofist taking Theano’s barbs with a dipped chin made it worse.

Then, the story continued.

“…Went...missing…” The leader of the patrol mumbled, piercing the air like cannon fire.

“WHAT?” Sofist turned on a dime and just about lifted the offending patrolman by the neck.

“It was Matthew!” The soldier’s chest heaved. “He went to go see why they were taking so long to come--” He quickly cut himself off.

“Go on now. You’ll only make it worse by lying.” Theano sneered.

Unable to take his gaze off the ground, the soldier continued.

“He went to go see why it was taking so long for them to get scared and come running back. Mathew’s been missing since.”

“Wonderful,” Theano interrupted Sofist before he could tear into the leader of the failed patrol. “I’ll be sure to emphasize that in the report to General Akanthus.”

On the sidelines, Tariche began waving sadly to the patrol and Sofist. He didn’t imagine they’ll see the light of day when high command caught word.

“Wait!” Bradley piped up, struggling between coming up with a solution and organizing a search for the missing soldier. “If we just….couldn’t we—” He looked to the warden desperately, and immediately regretted it.

The other Rose soldiers were looking to Sofist too, knowing their future was bleak, and were guilty they had taken the warden down with them.

“What a waste of time,” Theano turned to Tariche, knowing they could all hear him. “First the fire setback, and now this. We won’t have another chance to examine the subject for months at best. Far longer thanks to that idiot Rand putting his corpse in the way.”

Sennidy really was an idiot but this was all a show to lead the bull into his cage.

“All of you,” Sofist addressed his men. “Leave us.”

The soldiers marched out discreetly. Theano expected Bradley to follow but he stubbornly stood his ground. That one was going to be trouble.

“General Akanthus hearing of this—” Sofist’s lip curled. “—Failure on our part will cost both of us greatly. But, if we were to…”

Compromise.

Sofist obviously hated the concept, almost as much as Theano did. Even when it was others compromising for him, the Thorn Commander preferred that they bent completely.