Darkos stared very hard at his fingers while Hari regaled him with an unpleasant story about Sinistrina clogging a volcano and drowning its inhabitants. It was sometimes too easy to dismiss his siblings’ wickedness after listening to so many stories of them bickering, so Darkos had really been tempting fate by asking which of the siblings had caused the most one-time destruction. He’d wanted to toss Hari a softball, something to keep the man’s ego sailing high and keep his anger away from Darkos, who’d been skating on thin ice for pretty long but was now more like treading water and begging the ice to freeze again. Darkos had never been a very strong swimmer given the lack of good places to swim in the mountains. And he didn’t have his fishtail anymore, the one bestowed upon him by Jane’s abysmal alchemy. So he wanted the ice back so he could rib Hari a bit more without worrying about his brother cutting his limbs off.

That meant he’d have to listen to some horrifying stories.

“Oh, it was priceless. Sinistrina did a fantastic impersonation of the townspeople drowning.” Hari wiped a tear of laughter from his eye. “I know you’d mentioned Geela was rather offended when she learned that the volcanic people feared Sinistrina more than they feared her, but really, Geela’s antics are more petty, ‘take over the world style.’ I tend to find most generic peasants fear torture and death more.”

Darkos gave him a weak smile. “Yeah, you’re probably right on that one.” He’d never thought of taking over kingdoms and plunging them into a dark reign of evil to be petty, but compared to his sadistic siblings, yeah, he guessed it was. “Did Noire—sorry, Noirela—get a lot of power from that? Drowning or burning or whatever it is lava does to people?”

Hari shrugged. “Sufficient. I think Sinistrina’s issue was always more that she loved the chase more than the kill. In a sense, she’s like our dear Geela. Her schemes were never as ambitious or, well, useful as the rest of ours. Terha, for example, got all her power from forbidding the island people from worshiping their Gods. On our home island, a lot of people worshiped Roslen, Goddess of Mourning. Terrible thing, but Terha made an art out of stringing up those dove followers.”

Darkos didn’t enjoy this.

“She’d sometimes knowingly let some little sects worshipping their Gods grow so she could make a bigger spectacle of them.”

Darkos didn’t enjoy this at all.

“Give them something to really mourn.” Hari took a moment to laugh at his own joke. “It really is a shame you don’t like this as much as I do.”

“I don’t get what’s to like.” Darkos reached out a hand, trailing his fingers along the thin wall of the tunnel. “You got all your kicks from word of mouth, right?” he asked. “People singing your praises, stuff like that.”

“Mhm. More or less— don’t touch that!” Hari slapped Darkos’s hand away from the wall with far more force than was necessary or really possible from the slight wrist flick.

“Ow!” Darkos clutched his hand to his chest. “How come literally everything you do hurts so much more than it should? I know we’re in the void, but I can’t just turbo punch everything because my parent runs the place.”

“I mean, you could if you were in tune with your parentage.” Hari kept a dirty look trained on Darkos. “But yes, as it stands, you can’t. I want your dirty hands off the walls.”

Darkos’s jaw dropped. “My hands? Dirty?! This place is literally made of filth. Like I don’t even really know what that means but it’s in the description. I couldn’t muck them up if I wanted to!”

“You could get sucked through and tossed about the realm and then it’d take crow knows how long to get you back.” Hari sniffed. “Besides. Your hands are coated in dirty, dirty light magic.”

“They are not.” Darkos rubbed a hand on his pant leg, self-conscious. “I can’t do light magic, same as you. My healing is void-based.”

“Still can’t believe that was Mal’s big secret plan.” Hari had expressed quite a bit of irritation upon learning that Darkos had learned everything he knew about healing from the words of his unbeknownst-at-the-time older brother. Apparently, this had been a reasonably well-kept secret on Malevo’s part, which bugged Hari even more. “He always said he was teaching his priests foul, corrupt magic, which, I mean, if the boot fits. But you have to understand how much time Terha and I spent guessing what kind of magic it was. We assumed he was testing out a new branch of magic to teach us.”

“I mean, healing’s kinda an important bit.” Darkos didn’t need to defend himself to Hari but he still felt the need. “Like it’s probably the most important branch of magic.”

Hari snorted. “Who told you that?”

Darkos opened his mouth before clamping it shut, lips puffed out.

“Well?”

“Uggggh. High priest Leoth.” It was honestly hard to dismiss 28 years of life lessons, even upon learning all his teachers were void worshipping cankerblossoms that sacrificed eighteen-year-olds. “So I guess that was a lie. But lie or not, it’s still true.”

“That’s not how lies work. If it’s true, it’s not a lie.” Hari was so sure of himself that it made Darkos want to argue the point, even if he was right.

“It’s a lie if you think it’s not true when you’re telling it,” Darkos said. “So if I told you that the reason I wasn’t corrupted was because of the moon phase when I was born, and I don’t think that’s true, then I’m lying. If it turns out that it’s true, then I was still lying because the intent was to lie. It’s the principle of the thing.”

Hari’s face had gone from a screwed-up perplexed to a blank-faced ‘huh?’ “Did you ever pursue a career in law?” Darkos grinned, opening his mouth to respond, but Hari continued. “Not that I think you’d be good at it or anything like that, but you seem like you think you would be.” Darkos frowned and closed his mouth. “You seem like the kind of person my sister would go up against in model government. The kind who would say words and just keep talking because they’re convinced if they continue adding words to their statement, they’ll end up right about something. Or at the very least, their audience will stop listening to their words and just nod along to their authoritative tone.”

Darkos’s jaw was now very locked. Hari being mean wasn’t a surprise by now but he did sometimes marvel at just how quickly he could puncture Darkos’s ego.

“I’ll have you know,” Darkos finally said, “that I effectively convinced a Blood Witch to switch her prophecy from eating the Celestial Directors of the Celestial City and instead got her to eat Nefaria.”

Hari looked over his shoulder, face back to perplexed. “You talked to the Blood Witch? Convinced her of all that? I apologize if I sound skeptical. It’s hard to believe you would stare down a spooky otherplanes witch and demand she change her prophecy.”

“Well.” Darkos tucked his chin, cheeks reddening. “I convinced Geela. Geela convinced Berta. But same difference really. It was my idea.” Darkos reached out a hand absentmindedly towards the wall again but slapped it away before Hari could. “Besides, claiming that healing is perverted is already some kind of warped wordsmithing anyway.” He crossed his arms. “Healing is the only redeeming kinda result you can get out of void magic.”

“Ugh. I’m so tired of your self-righteous drudgery. When we get to Noirela—”

“We’re how far out exactly?” Darkos wasn’t at all looking forward to meeting the force of nature that had birthed his soul into the cosmos but the more information he had, the more he could try to find something that might help Geela when she caught up with them again. He just wasn’t sure why she hadn’t yet. A few days had passed by now, she hadn’t been that far back.

“About a week,” Hari said. “Excited?”

“Confused. You said a week three days ago.” Hari could make fun of Darkos’s word skills all he liked, but Hari had the timekeeping skills of a parent hours out from the family’s destination, desperately placating the children by informing them that there were only fifteen minutes left to their journey. Or maybe it was a misguided attempt to keep Darkos in the dark about how far they truly were out, kinda like a heroic priest telling his trusty but physically feeble companion that they were only one mountain peak away from their foe’s lair.

“Well, the Void Realm changes form! I can’t control the tunnels, Darkos.” Hari crossed his arms tightly. “And the currents are too strong in the walls to jump, so stop suggesting that.”

Darkos had never suggested this. Darkos was pretty sure that suggesting this would speed up his demise so Darkos wasn’t sure why he would ever suggest this. No, more likely Hari was insecure about his inability to jump through the walls and was lashing out.

“I bet Geela could.”

Hari gave a laugh halfway between a laugh and a snort. “Based on what? Her only relevant skill here is her paltry amount of void magic, which pales especially in comparison to mine. If I can’t, she can’t.”

Darkos laughed at this, a full laugh, no crosses between anything else. “You’ve learned absolutely nothing, have you? Like you seriously haven’t done any research on Geela’s past. Just in the last two years.”

“I haven’t had to do research,” Hari said back, tone a venomous hiss. “I’ve had all her information delivered to me directly by her dear ex-husband.”

Darkos wasn’t impressed. “An ex-husband who conveniently leaves out all her victories in order to make her look bad. Do you think that when she liberated the Volcanic people, she just let them go back to worshipping Salamy?”

Hari cocked an eyebrow, lips still twisted down in an ugly frown. “You think she went toe-to-toe with a Goddess?”

Darkos shrugged, trying to look casual even as he gained steam. “Why not? She’s impersonated Gods before. Didn’t you hear about how she won over the people of Sunnyville, Sunnydale, and Sunnyland.” Sunnyland had been a bit more of a tossup as to whether you could claim she’d ‘won them over.’ She’d trashed their town with a stampede of cloned mules, but she had left them with said cloned mules to move all their belongings to a larger, local city. Whether or not they had enough goodwill to continue worshipping her was a coin flip, but Hari didn’t need to know that.

“She pretended to be a false God and temporarily converted three villages to follow her.” Hari’s words indicated he wasn’t impressed, but his tone indicated… maybe not that he was impressed but maybe that he was a little concerned. “It’s all temporary.”

“Maybe so, maybe so.” Darkos nodded, as if conceding the point. “But after converting Celeste’s following to worship Geela, Deity of Light and Darkness alike, she’s got quite the devoted cult now. And if you’re right about how time passes while we’re in here, over three weeks, well—” he had to stop for a moment, to keep a big grin from appearing on his face and breaking his unconcerned tone. “That’s about seven months. Seven months on top of the months we were at sea. The Church of Geela has had plenty of time to go around and bolster the faiths of those who might have flagged after she left.” He crossed his arms again, as if to say ‘so there’ without actually saying ‘so there.’ Really, he couldn’t be sure if any of this was true, but it was stressing Hari out without deliberately pulling up any of his sensitive history, so that counted for something.

Hari didn’t respond for a long time. Long enough that Darkos started to worry he was about to get the silent treatment again. It would’ve been worth it though. He’d let Hari make fun of Geela far too much and it was really starting to grate on his nerves.

Finally, Hari stopped and wheeled on him. Darkos cringed, expecting a smack, but instead, Hari held out his arm. “Heal me again. I’m still injured from your stupid explosion, and I was beginning to forget what I kept you alive for.”

Darkos nodded, relieved at Hari’s change of subject, and gently put Hari’s arm down. “Okay, can do.” He’d been giving Hari healing in small bursts, claiming easy fatigue from not eating much. Hari didn’t know that Darkos had actually devoured the banana mousse he’d been entrusted with and was feeling pretty fine. As long as his brother remained ignorant of all things healing, Darkos could claim virtually anything to delay the healing process and keep his own limbs necessary for the trip.

While Darkos began to heal Hari’s lingering burns, Hari began to speak, again sounding more like he was defending his own decisions than trying to convince Darkos of anything.

“Geela may be proficient at whittling down the convictions of mortals, but she doesn’t understand the risks she’s taking here. She’ll get bitten soon enough by it. And if she doesn’t…” Hari trailed off and a horrible smile crossed his face.

Darkos’s stomach twisted. “What.”

“What?”

“What happens if she doesn’t?”

Hari flicked a nail. “Nothing I’m sure.”

Darkos frowned as hard as he could. “Why are you being cagey now? What can I even do to help her? Like, okay, I get it, don’t tell me Noirela’s huge scheme but I’m never gonna even find her so what’s the point.” Then he paused and hung his head, sighing sadly. “Honestly, it's probably better you don’t. I don’t want to spend the next week thinking about what might be happening to her. I like the idea that she’s out there, fighting her way to rescue me, skipping through walls like you wouldn’t dare to.”

The bait worked, but Hari probably hadn’t been trying too hard to keep his secret.

“She isn’t. Even if she did manage to slip past Terha, she’ll be doomed the moment she enters the void. We’ve got a special weapon crafted over the course of half a century and designed specifically to hurt her in ways she doesn’t know she can hurt.” Hari shuddered. “I dare not even talk about it. I would personally rather die than endure what she will endure at its hands. Let us both hope that she will succumb, abandon you here in favor of a quick and painless death. It’s not what she deserves but it is most certainly what is coming for her!” Hari let out a laugh, almost a cackle, a bit too extreme for what Darkos expected.

Darkos raised an eyebrow at the laugh, trying to keep his hands from shaking as he took in his brother’s words. A secret weapon?

Hari, for his part, looked a bit embarrassed. “This trip down memory lane is getting to me.” He sighed dramatically. “I haven’t laughed like that… or rather, when I was younger I would cackle a lot. Thought it was intimidating, but I might have just ended up looking a bit hysterical and melodramatic.”

It was the most self-aware Darkos had ever seen Hari, though the fact that the statement was phrased in hindsight made it all the more amusing. Darkos wanted to snicker and make a comment about how Hari was, in fact, still hysterical and melodramatic, but then he remembered Hari’s dire comment about a secret weapon and felt sick again.

“Geela’s smarter and craftier than your whole family,” Darkos said. “She’s outfoxed at least three of our siblings. Terha too, I’m willing to bet. So I wouldn’t be so smug.”

“Oh I would be.” Hari didn’t even flinch at the barb. He flexed his newly healed limbs and let a smirk spread across his face. “In fact, I’m perfectly smug. I don’t think you understand just how bad your position is.”

The two started walking again, and Darkos’s eyes drifted to the wall. Hari had been so defensive about his inability to jump through it, but now Darkos was second-guessing his actual motivations towards not wall-hopping. Maybe it was Darkos’s newfound anxiety, but could Hari have another reason?

He’d delayed their arrival in Noire’s nest by days. He wasn’t afraid of Geela, probably because of the secret weapon, but he was still stalling.

“Now time for my question,” Hari said. “I want to know… What artifacts our dear enchanting friend has bestowed upon you?”

Darkos grumbled as he started reciting the list. The ring of fields, his favorite. The sapphire ring that was technically not enchanted but he’d used thinking it was a ring of frost while actually—and accidentally—using his void powers. The sonar emitters that were technically still surgically implanted in his head.

Hari didn’t seem pleased with the responses. “Okay okay, but what about any other enchanted objects you’ve been given over the years?” he asked. “Before Geela.”

“Not part of your question!” Darkos said, his objection spiking.

Hari leveled a cool look at him. “Yes, it is. I never specified who our dear enchanting friend was. So continue.”

Darkos wanted to object further, but now wasn’t the time. Hari was just plying for intel on things that might explain why Darkos was immune to the lure of the void. It made sense that he’d be extra invested in getting that done before reaching Noire.

Actually, it made too much sense. Hari had Darkos on a leash and Geela was being hunted by some kind of secret weapon. With how slick Darkos had been, resurrecting Geela and all, Hari had no idea how close she’d gotten. Hari had all the time in the world as far as he was concerned and he wasn’t going to bring Darkos to Noire until he knew for sure that Darkos didn’t have some super, anti-Noire power.

Knowing what he did now, Darkos was regretting not trying harder to stay with Geela. For the longest time, Darkos had been primarily worried about himself, but now he realized Geela was really the one at risk. Darkos had a veritable infinite amount of time with Hari while the two danced circles around each other, trying to answer a question without an answer. Geela was the one under attack. The one struggling through the Void Realm, trying to find Hari. The one trying to rescue Darkos.

The one being targeted by a secret weapon, one so harrowing Hari wouldn’t even gloat to describe it.