This statent hung in the air like the death cry of an infant.
"No," Pri said. "He thought, he thought you were gone. When Enoch entered Existence, and your presence could still not be found, he thought you were most likely dead; however, Vraegar was sent even before that ti to dig his way to the past, while I was sent into the future. If not for the war still ongoing, Eos would be here himself and not ."
Sothing passed across the child's face, and Pri could not tell if it was grief or relief.
"Oh," the last Incarnation said. "That did not surprise . I was made to die, and forcing myself to live for so long is just sothing I have beco. I had expected to be here forever, and I don't know what I would do without this dead place keeping company."
Pri blinked, not knowing what to think about these words, but knowing they were all the truth. Eos had split up a part of himself many tis, knowing that they would perish. It was one of the most painful and awful prices he paid to be able to reach this point.
It was not fair that one man should be forced to make such sacrifices, but he was the only one who could do it, and without soone like him showing them a path beyond self-interest, how could any of them be brave knowing the price that cos with failure?
Pri put the thought aside. The child had been alone for eternities beyond reasoning. Of course, his language had drifted as the small warmth of familial grammar had worn thin with disuse.
"He thinks of you often," Pri said, gently. "I carry many of his mories. I know how much he has regretted your fate, trapped in the depths of End."
"Does he?" Rowan said.
Pri did not have an answer prepared for that, because he had not expected a question. Frankly, he did not know what to expect. He was the bloodline avatar of Eos, but to say he understood the mind of the Grand Creator was a lie; Eos had long reached a place where his thoughts were beyond strange.
Vraegar, behind him, said nothing. The dragon's eyes, Pri noticed for the first ti, had narrowed very slightly.
"Of course he does," Pri said.
"That's good," Rowan said. Then, softly: "I have missed him too."
Pri smiled, but his smile did not reach his eyes. He looked at his surroundings and shuddered. How long could he have survived inside this place before he went mad?
End continued to take from you the longer you remained inside its core. It was the price you pay for staying in a place like this, and Rowan had stayed here for eternities beyond counting; it was a miracle that he was still alive, and even sane.
Yet there was sothing about the way he was talking that made Pri feel a bit… uncomfortable.
Still, he told himself that Rowan had been alone for eternities, singing a song to keep himself from forgetting he existed.
Of course, he would sound strange when he talked and expressed himself for the first ti to others.
The fact that he could even speak with them was a testant to the impossible power of Rowan's soul.
"Can you stand?" he asked.
"I don't know, to save energy, the only thing I could do to still preserve my mind in this place was to sing," Rowan said, with the small tired honesty of soone who had not attempted it in a very long ti. "My legs have not needed to work for a while. Will you help ?"
"Of course."
Pri reached for him, and Rowan lifted his small arms to be lifted, in the uncomplicated gesture of a child who trusted the adult picking him up. Pri's hands closed around the thin ribs, and for a brief mont, his hands felt sothing underneath the skin that did not match the shape his eyes were seeing.
Sothing hard that shifted slightly under his grip, the way a fish shifts under a riverbed of stones.
Then the mont passed, and he was lifting a small bleached child out of a hollow in the substrate of End, and the child was light in his arms, as light as he should have been, and Pri's hands were holding nothing but the thin ribcage of a boy who had been alone in the dark too long.
Fury stepped closer. His phoenix-light, which had been muted since the crossing, was flickering in a way Pri had not seen before, as if it were registering sothing it did not have the full power to na. Fury glanced at Pri, and Pri saw in his eyes a question that Fury himself did not seem to understand.
"Is he—" Fury began.
"He's fine," Vraegar said, too quickly.
Pri looked at the dragon. Vraegar was not looking at him. Vraegar was looking at the child in Pri's arms with an expression Pri had never seen on the ancient dragon's face, sothing careful and guarded, and that expression broke sothing inside him.
The child, Rowan, smiled up at Pri.
"Thank you," he said softly. "It has been a long ti since anyone touched ."
Circe, who had been standing a few paces back with the hunted expression of soone whose dreams were finally telling them sothing they could understand, took a half-step forward. Her hand went to her mouth. She did not speak.
"Are you all right?" Pri asked her.
"Yes," Circe said. Then, more quietly, "No."
"What is it?"
Circe looked at the child. The child looked back at her, and in the long, quiet exchange of their eyes, sothing passed between them that the others did not share. Circe had been hearing this voice in her dreams for eternities, in the past, present, and in the future that she had ventured into.
She had taken a vow of silence about it, at Eos's request, before she had even understood what the vow was about.
She had expected, when she finally t him, to feel the relief of a riddle solved.
She did not feel that.
'What did this place do to you, my lord?' she whispered inside her heart.
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