Post by Sleipnir Harbard on Sept 26, 2023 7:51:54 GMT -6
Sleipnir Harbard
"Fools. Your ignorance unbecomes you."
I. BASICS
FULL NAME:: Sleipnir Harbard
NICKNAMES:: The Immortal Knight
GENDER:: Male
AGE:: 52, physically around 20
ORIENTATION:: Homosexual
GAME OF ORIGIN:: Final Fantasy XVI
ALIGNMENT:: Villainous
EQUIPMENT:: Only a dagger currently but proficient with a longsword and heavy armor
NICKNAMES:: The Immortal Knight
GENDER:: Male
AGE:: 52, physically around 20
ORIENTATION:: Homosexual
GAME OF ORIGIN:: Final Fantasy XVI
ALIGNMENT:: Villainous
EQUIPMENT:: Only a dagger currently but proficient with a longsword and heavy armor
HEIGHT:: 5'10"
HAIR/EYES/SKIN:: White, Blue, Fair
DISTINGUISHING MARKS:: Sleipnir carries with him an aura of impenetrable smugness, unfettered by even the most dire of situations. He is easily identified by his white hair, braided on the right side, his pierced ears, and his small, lithe form which is, hilariously, capable of inhuman feats of strength.
II. PERSONA
Sleipnir is seemingly impossible to phase, always either at his liege's side or on business for the sake of Waloed. He is unintimidated by the human populace and generally considers them with an air of superiority, speaking cryptically, sarcastically, or poetically as he sees fit. Whereas Barnabas would prefer to silently solve his problems with nothing more than his blade, Sleipnir has a mind for scheming and manipulation and thus will often handle matters of diplomacy for his liege, speaking for him when the king of Waloed would much rather have stayed in Stonehyrr, brooding.
He is renowned for his unwavering loyalty though, in truth, he has little choice in the matter as his loyalty comes as first, second, and third nature to Waloed's Lord Commander. Unbeknownst to most of Valisthea, Sleipnir is not truly human, and is instead an egi -- a kind of familiar to his dominant creator. As such, Sleipnir serves his king with a passion bordering on fanaticism and though he is an individual in his own way, he shares many traits with his creator and king. For instance, they both take an almost maniacal passion to the ferocity of battle and, when faced with the rare opponent who poses a challenge to them, become lost to its ecstasy.
Though Sleipnir is hopelessly devoted to his creator, he harbors a secret anxiety that perhaps he has strayed too far from his master's will. He has, like Barnabas, been indoctrinated into the beliefs of the Circle of Malleus and knows his king's disdain of humanity for its sin of free will. As such, Sleipnir himself wonders if he too has been afflicted by this curse, the inevitable conclusion of over fifty years of life in his near human state, separate from the heart of his creator.
He has never considered what existence might entail without a master to serve. Truly, such a wretched life could be nothing but agony for a being of his nature. Thankfully, his life is tied to that of the Warden of Darkness, and thus, such a hell could never afflict him.
Certainly not.
He is renowned for his unwavering loyalty though, in truth, he has little choice in the matter as his loyalty comes as first, second, and third nature to Waloed's Lord Commander. Unbeknownst to most of Valisthea, Sleipnir is not truly human, and is instead an egi -- a kind of familiar to his dominant creator. As such, Sleipnir serves his king with a passion bordering on fanaticism and though he is an individual in his own way, he shares many traits with his creator and king. For instance, they both take an almost maniacal passion to the ferocity of battle and, when faced with the rare opponent who poses a challenge to them, become lost to its ecstasy.
Though Sleipnir is hopelessly devoted to his creator, he harbors a secret anxiety that perhaps he has strayed too far from his master's will. He has, like Barnabas, been indoctrinated into the beliefs of the Circle of Malleus and knows his king's disdain of humanity for its sin of free will. As such, Sleipnir himself wonders if he too has been afflicted by this curse, the inevitable conclusion of over fifty years of life in his near human state, separate from the heart of his creator.
He has never considered what existence might entail without a master to serve. Truly, such a wretched life could be nothing but agony for a being of his nature. Thankfully, his life is tied to that of the Warden of Darkness, and thus, such a hell could never afflict him.
Certainly not.
III. HISTORY
For most of Valisthea's history, Sleipnir did not exist. And then, one day, he did.
It was a strange thing, this sudden and inexplicable existence. He felt it somehow natural despite its novelty. He could name each of the foreign yet familiar aspects around him -- the sky, the sun, its light and heat upon his face, the ground beneath his feet, the smell of fire as homes crackled and burned around him. He gazed at it all impassively, his eyes subconsciously searching for something which he could scarcely define.
And then they found it. A form knelt at his feet, one more familiar than all the rest, as though he had known it throughout the entirety of his nonexistence and had longed for it past the expanse of eternity. His heart surged with that longing, that purpose which had finally, beyond the reaches of reality been granted to him. He stepped towards that figure, a man of darkened, tussled hair whose pain was palpable, and knew his identity as instinctively as he knew the sun, the earth, the sky.
My Creator.
At the moment, his creator was kneeling in the dirt, muddied with blood. Sleipnir heard his soft cries of pain and anguish above the crackling of the flames which surrounded them and saw how his shoulders shook with grief. Sleipnir's own heart ached with his creator's pain. He longed to place a hand upon his shoulder, but knew instinctively that this would not be a comfort. Instead, he dropped to one knee, his head lowered in submission as, finally, he spoke.
"You called upon me."
He heard his creator jolt to his feet, saw his boots scuffling in the mud, heard a sword drawn, but did not raise his head. No matter how he longed to gaze into his creator's eyes, to behold his face, to revel in his perfection, he remained as he was.
His creator's voice was rough and shaken. "Who-Who are you?"
"A being of your creation," Sleipnir answered. "Sleipnir. And I am ever at your service."
He could not say how he knew his own name. He could not say how he knew anything at all. But as he slowly, cautiously, raised his head, he knew beyond all else that this much was true. He lived to serve the man before him, dark eyes rimmed with tears, reddened face round and youthful. Sleipnir would do anything for the sake of that service. He would die for him. He would kill for him. He would be ever at his side.
And so Sleipnir was.
Barnabas, as he soon learned his creator to be called, was not quick to trust him, and the survivors of the attack on their village were far slower. Despite their apprehension, Sleipnir did his best to aid them as well as his master's caution would allow. By day, he used his unnatural strength to help the townspeople dispose of their dead and rebuild housing. By night, he would intrude on his master's desired solitude only long enough to feed him, draw him a bath, and clean the squalor that his grief had made of the temporary housing.
Sleipnir himself was capable of sleep, he found, but did not need it and often chose to go without in favor of positioning himself outside his master's lodgings to ensure he would not be disturbed. This behavior prompted the townspeople to whisper among themselves, calling him "Barnabas' Guard Dog" which Sleipnir could not parse as the insult that was clearly intended.
One night, as Sleipnir finished his sweeping and set the broom against the wall, preparing to depart, a quiet voice called to him through the gloom.
"Don't go."
Sleipnir started in surprise. He'd thought his master long asleep, and while the young man had not so much as raised his head, that voice had been undeniable. Sleipnir felt his heart quicken with excitement. For the first time since his creation, he had been called to serve.
Sleipnir bowed his head, placing a hand over his heart as he answered, "As you wish."
He approached his master's bedside to find the boy's hair tussled upon his pillow, his body curled deeply beneath his blanket of furs, and his dark eyes open, glinting in the moonlight of a nearby window. For the first time, Sleipnir felt uncertain how to proceed. He dared not overstep his bounds, and yet his master had called on him.
He hesitated for only a moment before choosing to simply sit beside his creator, kneeling on the floor rather than settling at the foot of his bed so as not to assume an unwarranted level of intimacy. One way or the other, Barnabas did not comment.
Instead, they spoke of other matters. Barnabas asked as to his nature to which Sleipnir admitted he knew very little. Barnabas told Sleipnir tales of his mother, of how they had set sail for Ash to escape the Blight which had consumed their island home. Sleipnir treasured these small parts of himself that his master had chosen to share, holding them close to heart. It was clear that Barnabas had loved his mother dearly and that the grief of her passing was agony.
After some time and deliberation, Barnabas asked, "Are you human?" to which Sleipnir shook his head, "I shouldn't think so."
Barnabas thought for a moment longer before adding, "If you are not human, are you cursed with free will?"
It was Sleipnir's turn to pause, puzzling over those words. Free will. The phrase had a form and definition as most concepts did, but he had never considered its meaning before. In time, he answered, "Since the day I drew breath, I have had but one desire, and that is to serve. Your will is my own."
His master's eyes slid to meet his. "How must it feel? To lack a will?"
"When I am able to act as you will it, to fulfill my purpose, the feeling is..." Sleipnir closed his eyes, lingering on the few times he had been allowed such a thing, the soaring of his heart, the eagerness which propelled him forward, before letting out a long sigh. "Bliss."
And so it was that Sleipnir earned his master's trust and their stories, while already bonded through the expanse of eternity, became even further intertwined.
At first, they did not speak often except under the light of the moon in the deepest hours of night. They preferred instead to express themselves through the sheer physicality of combat. Slowly, the light began to return to Barnabas' eyes, and though he never quite seemed happy, per say, he at least seemed alive in those short, desperate moments when their swords clashed and the sheer adrenaline urged them forward. Sleipnir, for his part, felt a strange familiarity with the weight of a blade, and as he shifted naturally into an offensive stance, he found himself mirroring his master's technique -- inherited, he supposed, from the depths of his creator's heart.
Sleipnir, too, had inherited that mad thrill of the fight, as tame as their pretend blows may have been. He may very well have been the only one who understood that deep, predatory drive that slept within their hearts -- or perhaps their single heart, divided into two and made manifest. Sleipnir learned much more of his master through swordplay than he ever did through conversation.
Barnabas made no attempt to connect with the rest of his village except for the priests whom he held council with every now and then with Sleipnir standing to the side, no more noticed than the rocks and shrubs of the mountain scrubland. The priests told their tales of how Barnabas, struck by his grief, had become engulfed in aether and when the light had faded, he had transformed into a black-clad swordsman the size of the tallest towers of Veldemarke carried upon the back of a darkened steed which bore him across the sky. Priming, they called it, though they knew not the form he took. There were legends lost among their people, but even these tales had no name for the Eikon which granted him power.
Sleipnir made no comment and was asked for none. The mountain village was suspicious of outsiders, even those born of their newfound savior wielding the power of God.
Instead, he and Barnabas spoke of it amongst themselves, whispering almost conspiratorially under the cover of night as their sparring ended and they sat together on the dry earth, watching the pulsing glow of fireflies drift past them. This was not the original homeland of their people, Barnabas informed him. If they were to learn more of his nature, and of Sleipnir's nature as well, the records could only be in the old ruins to the west where his ancestors had once presided.
And so Barnabas resolved himself towards an expedition of these ruins and Sleipnir, ever faithful, vowed to accompany him.
This caused a rift in their tribe. The elders insisted that they find higher ground and barricade themselves into the mountains before another attack. Many of their strongest warriors, however, believed in Barnabas' power to guide them and wished to help him harness his God-given gift. Their numbers split beneath the power of Barnabas' unyielding resolve, and in the end, they left with a small band of followers who looked to their young leader with the reverence that naturally befit him.
Their journey was long and tiresome. They overtook every obstacle with ease, their swords more than a match for any monsters or bandits which would wish them harm, but their greatest enemy was sheer exhaustion. Though the loyalty of Barnabas' followers was steadfast in their reverence, he paid them little mind. Instead, he kept to Sleipnir's company, often silent unless a particularly pressing thought came to mind. Sleipnir preened with his master's attention as subtle as it was, every time that Barnabas chose to sit beside him near the fire or stumbled unquestioningly to the tent which Sleipnir had prepared for him, offering a nod of thanks in return.
It was funny how Barnabas' eyes could sharpen, the eyes of a killer as he slashed his blade across the neck of his opponents, basking in his victories, and yet how they softened afterwards, vulnerable and exhausted and hunched over like the child he very nearly was. On the worst nights, Barnabas would not take to his tent at all, choosing instead to stay by the fire, by Sleipnir, as the rest of their cohort disappeared one by one leaving only their breathing and the crackle of the campfire to accompany them.
On the worst nights when Barnabas' hands were stained with blood which would not wash away and his eyes reflected black in the flames, he would sit in silence until the force of exhaustion slowly crushed his resistance, and just as slowly, he would drift until he leaned against Sleipnir's shoulder, eyes finally closed. On more than one occasion, Barnabas' fitful sleep would position him so that his head lay in Sleipnir's lap where he finally drifted off, breaths slow and deep with the short rattle of a snore.
In these times, Sleipnir could only marvel at the world and his place within it, right here keeping watch over his master's sleep like a sacred vigil, exactly where he was meant to be. He longed to stroke his master's hair, to soothe him of his ills, to shoulder his pain and whisper that all would be well. Instead, he contented him to this. To silence. To his master's warmth atop him. To his sacred vigil that lasted long after the fire burned to embers and the stars dimmed with the approaching sunrise.
Did his master feel the same connection? The same bonds, deep within him, that told him that Sleipnir would never stray, never doubt, never fail to protect him? Together, they made a deadly pair, their swords flashing a flurry of black and white. Some unlucky enough to meet their blades would stutter that they were but children -- as they both appeared to be -- but there was no denying their skill or their unity. Dead men denied nothing.
They traveled and they searched. They traveled and they searched. For a year, they traveled, and in that time Barnabas slowly aged and Sleipnir did not. Sleipnir kept a mental note of his master's height, once level with his own then a hair's breadth taller and then taller still. His back straightened. His shoulders broadened. His body strengthened against the resistance of every battle. It was not a stark change, not in a year, but Sleipnir made note of it when they had once been the same height, the same stature, the same form.
It was a neutral observation. Barnabas' hair grew in unruly waves past his shoulders. Sleipnir's did not. Barnabas' chin began to sprout with darkened stubble. Sleipnir's did not. Barnabas bled from the light cuts and broken callouses of battle. Sleipnir's wounds seeped only with the blue light of aether, drifting away like fireflies until that same power stitched his flesh together again. He wondered if he would ever change from his initial shape and appearance, dreamed to life by the cries of a grieving child. With each step they took, with each clue they acquired from suspicious townspeople in the villages they passed through, Sleipnir's anticipation grew. It was an anticipation all his own -- for his master's sake, yes, but also largely for himself.
With every step, he felt them draw ever closer to answers which would unlock Barnabas' potential and finally put a name to Sleipnir's nebulous, inhuman existence.
Their inquiries led them, at last, to a site of Fallen ruins on the western coast of Ash. Here, the native inhabitants recalled tales of a black-clad rider, a lost eikon faded to legend and obscurity. They linked these legends with the nearby ruins, and yet when Barnabas' band arrived, they were faced with nothing more than a door which had been tightly sealed for centuries.
Something stirred within Sleipnir at the sight of it, a familiarity that extended past the expanse of nonexistence to somewhere else entirely. As the rest of the band grew crestfallen with yet another defeat, Sleipnir found his voice and simply said, "It will open for you."
Barnabas looked to him, puzzled, but when Sleipnir did not waver, his master slowly approached the bleached white door and raised a hand as though to push it inward. At his touch, the door glowed an aetheric blue and, to the shock of all but Sleipnir, shuddered open on its own.
Inside was a trove of myth and legend beyond all imagination. There were murals depicting the Eikons -- one unfamiliar, revered among them, one lost to time, and one the spitting image of Barnabas' Primal form. They found dust-laden scrolls which nearly crumbled in their hands, written in a text nearly illegible to the modern tongue. Sleipnir could read them, however. By whatever power slept dormant within him, he understood them all perfectly.
Odin. That was the Eikon's name. Odin, Warden of Darkness. It was darkness which flowed through him and his master and beat in an ecstatic frenzy through their hearts. Odin was once known as the most formidable of Eikons, his sword capable of cutting through anything unlucky enough to meet its path. Barnabas was the dominant of Odin, capable of harnessing his power when their wills most aligned, and among that vast repertoire of power was...
The summoning of an egi.
Sleipnir felt his breath catch as he read that word, unfamiliar and yet settled deep in his heart. The dominant could summon an egi and often did so naturally when fully Primed. Sleipnir touched the page reverently, running his gloved hand down the aged parchment until it paused as he found his very name sketched into the print.
Odin, the dark rider. Sleipnir, his formidable steed. That was his nature, well and truly. He had been called to existence before he gained his own consciousness, a part of Odin's merciless rampage, their souls connected as one. The thought brought a chill down his spine.
He could almost remember that moment, he thought, like an echo through his entire being. He longed for that moment again.
With their answers found, their band left the ruins and began east towards their mountain home once more. Barnabas said little of their venture, his eyes more clouded than usual with thoughts that only he knew. Sleipnir did not ask what lurked behind them. He merely waited, patient and content, knowing that it would all come in time.
And so it did. One night as they sat together, Sleipnir bandaging a wound Barnabas had taken at the claws of a wild aevis, his master finally spoke.
"I am Odin," he said.
"The dominant of Odin," Sleipnir corrected.
Barnabas sat with his silence a minute longer before adding, "I should have his power. Other dominants are capable of magic."
Sleipnir hummed in agreement.
"Then why has it not come to me?"
Sleipnir thought for a moment before answering, "Odin was known for his skill with a sword. You are linked in that way. Perhaps it is because you have not trained in matters of darkness?"
Barnabas seemed to accept this answer. He even deigned to look over his shoulder as Sleipnir tied the bandaging. Their eyes met. "Will you teach me?"
Sleipnir had not yet manifested magic himself, and yet at this request, he could only offer Barnabas a small smile as he placed his hand over his heart with a slight bow of his head. "Most certainly."
He would learn such magicks for his master's sake. He would learn to harness the darkness which composed his very being. While the rest of their band slept, Sleipnir sought out the core of his aetheric heart and brought that power to the surface, experimenting first with merely alighting his hands in its violet-black aura and then shaping it to his will, whatever that may be.
When they had an afternoon of rest, he would attempt to share his discoveries with his young master. He felt a sense of shame at his master's frustrations, struggling to mimic what came so naturally to Sleipnir. It felt wrong to cause such distress in his creator, but Barnabas had requested it of him and would return, time and time again no matter how he struggled.
"It is only natural," Sleipnir purred in comfort, "I am comprised of the aether. You must channel it through flesh and blood. One day, you shall surpass me, and I await it eagerly."
Barnabas said nothing as he so often didn't. But there was a slight change in his eyes from the brooding of a warrior bested to something close to gratitude. Sleipnir reveled in this small praise.
The return trip took only months -- a straight path up towards the mountains. When they finally arrived, Sleipnir wished for his master's sake that it had lasted longer.
The elders of their people had argued that they should flee farther into the mountains, set up better fortifications, and rebuild as they had for centuries whenever some heretics who worshipped crystals or some other false gods came with bloodlust in their eyes. This time, however, they had been hunted down like rabbits.
There was little remaining of the new settlement when Barnabas came. Perhaps very little had been built at all. There were signs of makeshift housing, weathered down by time and neglect. There was the scorched rubble of a half-finished temple, charred into ash. And then there were the bones.
They had not been buried. They had not even been burned. They had been left out upon the mountainside to be picked clean by scavenging birds. They were picked clean for the most part with some hair here and tattered clothes there, the skulls and bones picked apart and scattered across the windswept earth. The air felt particularly quiet here as though hushed by the divine. Or perhaps it was merely that their band, often so talkative but for Barnabas, had gone completely silent.
The other men wandered about the ruins in a state of shock, muttering amongst themselves. Sleipnir had eyes only for Barnabas. His master stared straight ahead, expressionless as he so often was, but this was different than his usual neutrality. This was stoic, controlled, a young man, truly, grappling with a pain too immense for human hearts.
Sleipnir's own heart ached for him. Just as he had at his first moment of consciousness, Sleipnir longed to reach out a hand for his master's shoulder, but he knew it would be no comfort.
Instead, he spoke. "I am here," he said softly.
Barnabas started as though he had only just realized that fact. He looked at Sleipnir and then out at the destruction before him. Slowly, he moved towards the ruins as though guided by some invisible force. He knelt down where a helmet was mounted upon a rusted sword and plucked a tattered flag from where it had been folded at the sword's base.
"Veldemarke," he muttered.
Sleipnir waited patiently for an explanation.
"They sent soldiers," Barnabas went on. His grip tightened on the dreadful flag. "But why would they set eyes their upon us?"
Sleipnir knew very little of Veldemarke, only what he had heard in the villages upon the path of their journey. It was supposedly a kingdom of steel and stone far to the north. Without further knowledge, it was useless to speculate, and yet he felt compelled to consider his master's question to the fullest. After a moment, he answered, "Perhaps they heard rumors of a newly awakened Eikon."
Barnabas tensed, and Sleipnir wished he had not spoken at all.
"They came for me," he said.
"It is only speculation."
"Veldemarke has never come for us before." Barnabas raised his head to the sky and gave a short, humorless laugh. "They will be judged by the hand of God."
Sleipnir could sense the wild impulses which ran through his master's heart for it ran through his as well. It was the call of their shared darkness. It was the irresistible will of Odin.
"They seek battle with the Warden of Darkness," he said slyly as he approached, stepping lightly over the ruins of the dead. He knelt beside Barnabas until he could almost whisper in his ear. "Let us bring it to them."
Barnabas shuddered, and yet as he lowered his head, Sleipnir saw a twisted smile upon his lips. When his master rose, he did so with confidence, his head held high as he strode towards the center of the clearing. His eyes did not waver towards the dead. Their spirits had already left this place.
Barnabas spoke louder and stronger than he ever had, turning the eyes of every man in his direction. He spoke of the crimes of Veldemarke. He spoke of Odin's power. "We shall hide in the shadows no longer," he said. "For it is the will of God that we fight! We shall raise an army in His name, and the blasphemers to the north shall pay for their sins!"
These men were no soldiers. Warriors, perhaps. Courageous, certainly. Before that day, they had been nothing more than a ragtag band of brutes bound only by their own religious conviction, but as they rallied around Barnabas and set up a cheer into the gray skies, they became something more. And all that time, Sleipnir stayed where he was, knelt upon the earth with his own contented smile.
What was it that he felt? Pride, perhaps? But it was not the usual pride that came from fulfilling his master's requests, like a dog eager for praise. It was...something else. Something deeper.
He was proud of Barnabas, transformed by his own strength, and he was proud of himself for the part he'd played in it.
From that day on, everything changed, and it changed for the better.
The first few villages were blindsided by Barnabas' attack. They had known, of course, of the cult of fanatics ever hiding amongst the mountain peaks, but they had never known them to instigate violence. Some villages which had a history of persecuting their beliefs, Barnabas eradicated entirely. To others, he gave a choice. Assimilate and join their crusade or die by his hand.
Most chose the former.
It did not take long for their reputation to precede them. Towns along their route began preparations in their defense, and their battles could no longer rely upon the skill of Barnabas and Sleipnir alone. Barnabas remained undeterred, ever training with his sword and his fledgling magic, determined to slew all in his path. He had no interest for the growing band of makeshift soldiers they had amassed and so Sleipnir took it upon himself to attend to them.
It was always the same. At first, these jaded newcomers, some decades older in appearance, would scoff at Sleipnir's apparent youth. They would mock his light frame, his slender shoulders, his boyish, beardless face. Then Sleipnir would make an example of them. With their pride broken, their training could finally begin.
Sleipnir taught them in the way of the blade as he and Barnabas knew it. He ordered the armories of their conquests raided for whatever weapons and armor they could salvage within. He acquired a map of the lands of Ash and marked off each conquered territory in turn, keeping notes on their resources and managing their orders for supplies to keep their men clothed and fed and sheltered along their march.
Gone were the whispers calling him Barnabas' Guard Dog. Now they called him Barnabas' general. His right hand. A commander, of sorts. Sleipnir neither confirmed nor denied these claims just as he paid no mind to the whispers of how a mere boy, a teenager without so much as a hair upon his face, could possess such strength. Barnabas had instructed him to pretend at his own humanity. And so he did. Terribly, he thought, but no one ever dared to question him on the matter.
Only that original band among the Circle of Malleus would know his true nature, and they too were sworn to secrecy. These new men impressed into their growing army would have shock enough already without being drilled by a creature derived from darkness and sculpted by the aether itself.
And so by day, Sleipnir attended to the soldiers. By night, Sleipnir attended to Barnabas.
Despite their mounting ambitions, little had changed between them. As always, Sleipnir would ready his master's tent and wait through the night outside it though now he had to at least pretend at sleep. As always, he would be the one to bandage Barnabas' wounds and rub salve into the broken, bleeding callouses upon his hands. Sleipnir would launder his clothes and trim his hair and while Barnabas mostly chose to keep his silence, a current of understanding always ran between them.
Barnabas had many different kinds of silence. There was the brooding kind when a particularly dark thought was on his mind. There was the contemplative kind when his thoughts were considerably lighter. There was the haunted kind whenever he was reminded of his mother and the determined kind when another battle rose on the horizon. Then there was the softer kind. The grateful kind. These came more often now as Sleipnir busied himself with his master's wellbeing, all with the most gentle of touches.
Sleipnir would tell him of the day's events as he combed out his master's hair, and Barnabas would listen, interjecting only occasionally if he had some command to give. He rarely phrased it as a command, however, for he knew that Sleipnir would have no choice but to follow it. More often, they came in the form of a question. "Would you care to spar with me next evening?" "Could we secure the supply lines before our next assault?" Other times, the command was veiled behind suggestion. "The soldiers need more discipline," he would say, and Sleipnir would hum along, always happy to follow his master's desires and grateful that he had been left a choice in the matter.
Barnabas was the face of their crusade, as feared as he was admired. While Sleipnir managed the intricacies of conquest, Barnabas trained himself in the ways of the blade. Sleipnir was now the only one who could challenge him, and their spars became a kind of public spectacle for their men who would gather to watch as blades struck and seemingly impossible maneuvers were managed with pinpoint accuracy. Their own styles developed as well, born from the same source and yet a mirrored opposite in practice. Sleipnir's was light and playful, body swaying through the field of battle like a dancer. Barnabas in contrast chose to stand his ground, moving as little as possible to dodge even the most certain of blows.
Sleipnir almost never won their little games. He had far more to manage than the development of his swordplay alone. Barnabas, meanwhile, had devoted every waking moment to his own strength and strategy. Still, their spars were as delightful as ever, more so now that they no longer clashed as equals. Sleipnir needed only the strength to pose a threat in order to bring back a flare of life to his master's dark eyes. Sleipnir, for his part, found new and exciting ways to bring their contrasting styles to conflict, and often erupted in laughter each time his maneuvers were thwarted. When Sleipnir was finally brought to yield, he would gaze up in pride past the sword at his neck as the men erupted into cheers at the strength of their king.
My creator. My master. My liege. That was what Barnabas had insisted Sleipnir call him now that he was to play at being human. My liege. The words slipped effortlessly from his tongue. My liege, Barnabas Tharmr, Dominant of Odin, Warden of Darkness.
I shall see you rise ever higher.
Their victories over the disjointed villages and tribes of Southern Ash were swift and effortless. As their army grew better disciplined and supplied, even their opponents' best defenses could not match them. One by one, they fell. One by one, they joined their conquered neighbors in this new kingdom with no name. More often now, the settlements would surrender at their very arrival, hailing Barnabas as their new king. Then he and Sleipnir would be led to the best accommodations that the town had to offer.
A feast in their honor. New clothing, the best their tailors had stitched, dyed in all manner of vivid colors. Precious metals and jewelry which held little interest for Barnabas, but which Sleipnir accepted eagerly, experimenting with his appearance with the most opulent accommodation of all -- a mirror. He found that he quite enjoyed the plaited hairstyles common for the women in Southern Ash and tried their braids out on himself, testing the look and weight of it upon his shoulders.
The town's offerings would first be presented to Barnabas himself who would then pass along the majority of it to Sleipnir who reveled in these small gifts, braiding the various beads and ornaments and ribbons into his hair. He chose the fabrics and styles which he liked best, amassing something of a collection of clothing as he saw fit. The rest he passed down to those soldiers who had shown the most initiative in their cause and on and on the offerings were dispersed, the happy spoils of war.
As they attended their feasts, Sleipnir found that that he delighted in greener dishes, fresh and leafy and bright. He adored the rare treat sweetened with honey or the ever elusive sugar imported from the Southern Isles. He rather enjoyed apples and pears and other crisp fruits, but had little interest in root vegetables, found fish unpleasantly inoffensive, and abhorred the hearty meats and stews of which the tribes of Southern Ash seemed most proud. His tastes, he found, differed profoundly from those of Barnabas, and this troubled him for some time.
One night, while settling into the former home of a town's chief, Sleipnir paused as he helped Barnabas dress after his bath and said, "You and I are not very alike."
Barnabas hesitated, the only sign of his surprise. "You have served me well."
"I am ever in your service."
Sleipnir quickly finished dressing Barnabas for bed and then stepped away, turning to gaze into the fiery hearth. "I am a part of you," he said, worrying at his lip. "I have no will of my own."
Barnabas said nothing. This time, he was the one to wait and listen.
"Why then should we differ so greatly?" Sleipnir asked, fearing the words even as he said them. "Our talents, our inclinations, our interests. They are all..." Sleipnir turned his hand in the air, searching for the word. "...distinct."
He heard Barnabas' footsteps behind him. "No man is the same," he said, and Sleipnir spun around to face him, an unidentifiable something in his eyes.
"I am no man!" he exclaimed, and Barnabas stopped where he stood, watching him. What did his master see in him? Desperation? Fear? Sin? "I may play at humanity, but it is not my nature. What then am I to make of these feelings? I live to serve you and yet our hearts are not the same."
For the first time, Sleipnir felt pain. Not pain for his master's sake, but pain of his own. What could this be but selfishness? Sin? That which he should have been without?
Barnabas spoke slowly, uncertainly. His discomfort was plain. "Perhaps that is why we differ."
Sleipnir's eyes rose to meet his, and Barnabas' discomfort seemed to double. Sleipnir could not find a way to relieve it or even to push the conversation further, and so Barnabas continued as though plucking the words through gritted teeth.
"I am not a servant," he said slowly. "So how could you best serve me if we did not differ?"
Sleipnir recoiled, shocked by this revelation. Yes. It was true that Sleipnir could not act upon his duties if he were a mere copy of his master. From the start, Barnabas had stood alone, confident in himself and needing no other. He had been quiet and had little interest in aiding those around him. Perhaps then Sleipnir had not been born from Barnabas' heart, but from what his heart most needed. Perhaps he was a complement to his master's vibrant strength so that he might lift him up and shed glorious light upon him.
But that did not explain it all.
Sleipnir's eyes lowered shamefully, his arms crossed tightly across his chest. "I used to find pleasure only in your service," he admitted. "But now...I adorn my hair with trinkets. I admire my otherness in the mirror. I...treasure apple tarts and honey cakes." He bit his lip once more, turning his head away. "Have I been corrupted by this human form? Why has my heart drifted from the purpose of my existence?"
A weight fell upon his shoulder. A hand. Sleipnir was startled out of his thoughts and looked up directly into his master's eyes. It was not a comforting sight. How could it be when Barnabas looked so uncertain of himself, so pushed beyond the bounds of his confidence? But his hand was on Sleipnir's shoulder. He wished him comfort. Sleipnir knew the meaning of the gesture quite well.
I am here.
For a long moment, they only looked at each other. And then Barnabas quickly, sheepishly, pulled back.
Sleipnir said nothing for a moment, picking at a loose thread on his shawl, before he finally asked, "Is this...acceptable to you?" sounding very much like the child their men thought him to be.
Barnabas simply answered, "Yes."
Sleipnir sighed in relief, a great and ecstatic gratitude washing through him which he had no means to return. Then he shook his head, turning his attention to his master once more. "But I am not as I should be!" he protested. "I have grown distracted!"
"It is enough," Barnabas answered before slowly, disjointedly adding, "You are three years old."
"Three years, two months, and twenty-seven days."
"You are discovering your nature. That is all." Barnabas looked as though he would rather have been stabbed through the chest than continue. But he did. "Preferences and interests do not constitute a will."
Sleipnir looked at his master and felt such a flood of relief that it took every ounce of his control not to throw himself upon him. He wished to return the same gesture of comfort he himself had been shown -- a hand upon the shoulder which he knew Barnabas would not appreciate. More than that, he wished to throw his arms around him in the tightest embrace. He wished to hide his face in the hollow of his master's neck and let loose the tears which would form the final catharsis of his pain.
Instead, he merely nodded, drying the corner of his eye on his sleeve. "Yes. You must be right," he said. "I did not mean to burden you."
Barnabas stood quietly, uncertainly, eyes very much averted. Sleipnir averted his own eyes as well. "Thank you," he said after a long moment of silence before he continued on to fluff the pillows and stoke the fire.
They did not speak of it again.
The whispered rumors changed around then. There were the usual, of course, about the strange white-haired youth who could defeat any man in battle. There were others, though, about him and Barnabas. They questioned the relationship between the fearsome Barnabas Tharmyr and his boy-faced second-in-command who so loved braiding his hair with ribbons and who would, more often than not, spend the night at his liege's side. Sleipnir could not understand the origin of these rumors or what logical consistency these details carried. As always, he let the people whisper and went about his own business.
They battled and they conquered. They battled and they conquered. The next two years went by in this familiar fashion until every tribe in southern Ash belonged to them. It was quite a task, keeping all of their new territories in line, but Sleipnir didn't mind the challenge. Every day, he experienced the thrill of battle alongside his master and every night, he reveled in his newfound luxuries. But of course this was but a single step towards their ultimate goal. Veldemarke had paid no mind to some barbarous warlord from the mountains uniting these equally barbarous tribes into a nation without even a banner to its name.
This, as it happened, would be their downfall.
Food, armor, shelter, weaponry, all of this paled in comparison to the greatest resource they had acquired -- soldiers. In their years of conquest, they had amassed an army. Not the most regimented, perhaps. Not the best equipped. But an army nonetheless. And so it was that they finally stood ready for war.
Sleipnir did not die in the first battle against Veldemarke. Nor did he die in the second. The fighting was fierce and casualties were high, but none could stand against the might of Barnabas and Sleipnir fighting in unison like two halves of the same whole, their blades perfectly in sync and their hearts alight with ecstasy.
No, it was not until the third that they struck a complication. Word must have reached the opposing generals of the combined strength of the two as there was, on the day of that third battle, a concerted effort to separate them. Sleipnir and Barnabas could both hold their own separately, but it left them vulnerable, and Veldemarke took advantage of this vulnerability with a volley of arrows from above.
Sleipnir kicked a bleeding, disemboweled soldier from his blade and looked up to see the arrows on a direct course towards his distracted master. He saw it almost in slow motion, the arc of those arrows, their intended target -- Barnabas's exposed back -- and in an instant Sleipnir disappeared in a shroud of darkness.
He had only a moment to appreciate his new proximity to his master as he stepped from the shadows before he was struck not once, but another and then another as he shielded Barnabas from his fate. The pain struck him as it would any mortal man as some of the volley merely glanced off his armor and the rest struck flesh, burrowing deep where his ill-forged armor did not cover. Sleipnir gasped in surprise, that gasp turning to kind of strangled sound as an arrow pierced his neck. Barnabas finished his own opponent easily before he turned, eyes widening at the sight of Sleipnir behind him, all torn flesh and aether escaping him like blood.
Sleipnir managed a pained smile before he collapsed at his master's feet. Barnabas stared down at him in shock as voices surrounded them, warning of the archers, calling for someone to storm their hillside vantage point. Barnabas said nothing, and for a moment, the battlefield fell to silence between them.
Sleipnir did not mind his position in the dirt and the mud as he hadn't the strength to rise, but soon he found his master's hands upon him, gently turning him over and propping him upright in his arms. This was better, Sleipnir thought, for now he could see his master's face swimming before his eyes.
Barnabas' own eyes were dark -- nearly black in that pained way unique to him. There were no tears to be shed. Barnabas had lost too much already.
"You are...well, my liege?" Sleipnir gasped through broken ligaments and the deep call of oblivion.
Barnabas did not answer, but Sleipnir could tell that he was unharmed. From his stance and his strength and the blood that was not his own. Sleipnir sighed in relief.
"Then I have...no regrets." Sleipnir felt his eyes sagging closed. Oblivion was close at hand, calling him ever closer to the same nonexistence from which he had spawned. "You need not fret. You need only call upon me...once more."
He saw Barnabas' eyes cloud with an agony unimaginable and then his vision left him and his strength gave out and nonexistence welcomed him like an old friend.
Then, quite suddenly, Sleipnir was carved into existence once more.
He looked around, slightly puzzled at this change of events. He felt no more pain. His mind was quite clear and the darkness surging through him felt stronger than ever. It took a moment for his eyes to adapt to what appeared to be a candle-lit tent under the cover of night. He had little time to truly ground himself, however, before a pair of rough hands grabbed him the shoulders and he was wheeled around to face his master.
"Sleipnir." His master's voice was rougher than usual and almost dangerous in its urgency. "You are Sleipnir, yes?"
Sleipnir tilted his head. "Unless I have forgotten my own identity," he said, a mischievous smile playing at his lips. Barnabas let out a short breath and let him go as quickly as he'd taken him, turning away pacing towards the back of the tent. Sleipnir's curious eyes followed.
"How long have I been away?" he asked.
"Three days," Barnabas answered curtly. "I faced difficulty in...That is to say...You were always better in magic than I am."
"Ah." Sleipnir examined the tent more thoroughly. The cot was bare, the blankets ruffled and tossed aside. Pieces of armor were strewn about haphazardly. There were half-filled water skins next to barely touched plates of food that had amassed an infestation of ants. Sleipnir wrinkled his nose at the smell. "Have none come to serve you in my absence?"
Silence. Which meant that Barnabas had something on his mind. Sleipnir fought the urge to tidy their quarters that instant, instead waiting patiently for his master's thoughts to reach their fruition.
Eventually, they did. "How did you reach me?" Barnabas asked in that same croaking voice that Sleipnir could only imagine came from dehydration.
"I stepped through the darkness," Sleipnir answered. "It is a technique I discovered only recently. I could teach you if you wish."
More silence. Sleipnir sighed and approached, stopping a few paces behind him. "I do not mind the time that I missed. I imagine it must take some great power to summon an egi." He rarely used that term to describe himself. He was always a man or not quite a man -- inhuman in some nebulous way which had no name. But of course it did have a name, and he used it now.
Barnabas tensed. "You died," he said.
"Only temporarily."
"Why did you throw yourself before me?"
"Why, to protect you," Sleipnir said, a hint of amusement rising to his voice. "Compared to yours, my life is expendable."
Only then did Barnabas turn on his heel to face him. He was unshaven, his hair equally unkempt. Dark circles swelled beneath his bloodshot eyes which glinted in his rage. "Do not say that," he sneered. "Not ever again."
Sleipnir felt the command like an arrow to his heart, dark and shameful. He opened his mouth before closing it again, lowering his eyes mournfully. He usually delighted in his master's commands, but not this one. This one spoke of his own wrongdoing, and a terrible guilt rose within him. "I only meant that I can be revived and you cannot."
Barnabas' gaze faltered and he paced towards the cot, collapsing into a rough sitting position, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands as he let out a deep sigh. Propped against the cot was Sleipnir's torn and bloodied armor. What had become of his body once Sleipnir's life had ended, he wondered. Had it been disposed of or had Barnabas dragged it within his tent and positioned it there at his bedside until the whole of him had disintegrated into the aether?
"You should rest," Sleipnir suggested gently. "I shall tidy your quarters, and then might I suggest a bath?"
"Don't go." Barnabas did not raise his head. He was twenty-three now, a man shaped and scarred by the strains of battle, and yet in that moment, he seemed so much like that grief-stricken boy, calling only for some comfort in the company of another.
Sleipnir nodded slowly before perching on the cot beside him. When Barnabas did not react, Sleipnir leaned in closer until their shoulders were touching and he rested his chin upon his master's. "I am here," he said softly. "I shall be ever by your side."
Barnabas tensed and then relaxed again, leaning heavily into his hands. They stayed like that for some time until Sleipnir whispered, "Rest, my liege. I will not leave you."
Sleipnir was not thrust aside for his daring. Instead, Barnabas seemed amenable to his touch and obliged as Sleipnir guided him to his pillow, found the crumpled blanket, and draped it around him before settling into the small space beside him, head buried into the back of his master's neck.
They said nothing as Barnabas drifted to sleep, and Sleipnir remained, unmoving beside him, reveling in the closeness between them as though he might somehow return to his proper place within his master's heart. Hours passed in this strange and wondrous bliss. Dawn lit the tent in pinks and violets, accompanied by his master's slow, peaceful breaths. The sun continued to rise until it reached its peak and began its descent again. All the while, Sleipnir remained motionless until his master stirred and looked up at him with bleary eyes.
"You look much better," Sleipnir said with a mischievous smile. Barnabas made a noise somewhere between sleep and indignance before he rose, stretching himself. Sleipnir joined him to initiate their morning routine which lasted far longer than usual to erase all signs of exhaustion and neglect from his master's face. They emerged together at dusk to the general shock and awe of their men.
When asked how he had returned from the dead, Sleipnir answered only that he had not been truly dead. When asked how he had been perfectly revived, he said only that his liege had been granted powers beyond their comprehension. These were not lies, per say, and in their telling, Sleipnir couldn't help but smirk with all that he knew that these ignorant humans knew not. He had found that he quite enjoyed such little jokes, the kind to which only he and his master and a scant few of the Circle of Malleus could make sense of. He left the rest to the men's imaginations.
The battle had ended quickly after Sleipnir's death. Tales told of darkness pooling at his master's feet in ever-growing tendrils before it had consumed him entirely, forming impenetrable black armor which covered him from head to toe. From the darkness, he'd pulled a kind of strange, sword which pulsed with a spectral blue light, and with it, he had struck down every one of the archers in a single strike which traveled at a distance like a shockwave. He'd then turned to the advancing army of Veldemarke and subjected them to the same fate.
"Ah, that sounds about right," Sleipnir said thoughtfully much to the confusion of the storyteller. Then he'd gone to congratulate his master on achieving his semi-primed form.
With this new power, his master was able to strike down countless men and then another countless more. What had been a miserable stalemate of an invasion quickly turned in their favor, and they'd won their first city from Veldemarke within a fortnight. Deep in the throes of his bloodlust, Barnabas had been tempted to raze that city to the ground just as Veldemarke had slaughtered his own people, but a few sly words from Sleipnir culled the idea.
"Our campaign would be short-lived indeed if we did not take advantage of the resources our new territories would provide. Or do you not wish to see their king kneel?"
They were welcomed uneasily with a march past sobbing widows and orphaned children to the city's house of governance where they were showered in the spoils of war, this time more decadent than they could have ever dreamed. Barnabas, as always, seemed uninterested in it all, but Sleipnir took to ever more elaborate manner of dress, braiding his hair with silver trinkets though the act felt different somehow.
It was not until they took to their new accommodations that Sleipnir discovered why.
"I have...changed," he said somewhere between amusement and wonder. He touched his face, now angled in a more mature fashion. His hair had grown longer as though to better accommodate his braid, and if it wasn't his imagination, he thought himself taller than he'd once been.
It was a subtle change, the kind that only those most used to his ever static features would notice, but to him it was a kind of magic. He looked...older. Not by much, but by a few years at least.
His thoughts returned to his master, how Barnabas had grabbed him by the shoulders with such urgency and demanded to know if it was still truly him. Yes, of course he would have noticed the change. After all that time toiling away in his summoning, what tragedy it would have been if he had created a different Sleipnir! One without the memory or experience which they had shared!
Sleipnir was glad for his master's sake that this was not so.
He was glad for many things in this new form which was almost the same as his last but not quite. He would often smugly compare his height to his master's, smirking all the while at this joke that only they could share. His hair styles became more elaborate, and he finally appeared adult. It did little to win the respect of the soldiers, particularly those newly impressed into their army from Veldemarke, but he did not mind. This new self perfectly matched everything he had desired from his image.
Was that how it had come to pass? Had his subconscious mind manifested this change as Odin's darkness formed his physical being? Regardless, he found it endlessly satisfying.
With the city's successful capture came several key changes from their daily lives. First, his master was recognized as a true and proper king -- if not by the state of Veldemarke then at least by those over which he ruled. Secondly, they now found themselves in a true and proper war. Warfare, they found, was a far more laborious and time intensive endeavor than mere conquering. And so time passed.
It took Veldemarke another two years and three cities lost to realize the extent of the situation. Sleipnir found no end of amusement in this. Had they not believed the reports of a man clad in armor, wielding the powers of darkness and sending deadly shockwaves with his aether-forged blade? Hubris. It was the only word that Sleipnir had for the leadership in Veldemarke. All the while, it had given their own forces time to settle into these opulent border cities. They tried not to treat the citizens cruelly as this, Sleipnir advised, would hinder their supply routes and the war effort in general.
Barnabas listened. He generally did when it was Sleipnir who spoke. As for the rest of their advisors...
Well, Barnabas trusted that Sleipnir would relay whatever information was most important and delegate the rest to someone with less authority.
They continued to make slow but steady progress across the lands of Veldemarke until one day, the battlefield darkened with the clouds of an oncoming storm.
It was sudden, this inexplicable oncoming storm. Sleipnir, dressed in fine new armor of gleaming white, glanced at his liege who wore his own set forged in steely black. If his master had noticed, he made no sign of it, eyes still set on the battle before him. The clouds shifted. The air crackled with tension, and Sleipnir had approximately five seconds in which to push his master out of the way of an oncoming lightning strike.
He took those seconds, naturally, and as his master stumbled out of the way, looking shocked at Sleipnir's audacity, those seconds ran out and Sleipnir was struck in a flash of blinding violet light. The heat of it was overwhelming. Sleipnir's limbs convulsed with uncontrolled electricity and then...
He was carved into existence once more in his master's bedroom accommodations from their most recent conquest. Sleipnir took a moment to get his bearings, eyes searching as they always did for his master until they found him, seated in a plush armchair, dark eyes gleaming with excitement.
Sleipnir knelt as any subject should to his king. "Apologies, my liege. It seems you've had to exert yourself on my behalf once more."
"I've found a worthy challenger."
That was all that Barnabas said, and Sleipnir could tell that he'd been waiting to say it until Sleipnir was at his side to listen. And so he listened at rapt attention, keeping his own concerns to himself.
Veldemarke had sent out their own dominant, it seemed. A dominant of lightning bound to the eikon Ramuh. Barnabas described their battle in great detail. Neither had won nor lost and their invasion was at a stalemate, but that did nothing to cool the rapture in his master's eyes. Sleipnir smiled quietly at this display of sheer, unbridled joy.
Once dismissed, Sleipnir examined himself in a mirror for any changes and found none. He was apparently still quite taken with his current physical form. He could not say that he was disappointed.
A year passed. And then another. Sleipnir no longer fought at his master's side as that space was reserved only for the dominant of thunder, and any man who might stumble his way into the clash of darkness and lightning would find only death to greet him. Instead, Sleipnir directed their troops around this long-running battle and never mentioned to his liege that while Barnabas entertained himself, the real progress was being made inch by inch as armies clashed and the dominants were distracted.
What did the war effort matter to Barnabas? Indeed, what did it matter to Sleipnir except that it must continue if they were to take revenge? Every day, his master looked more alive than Sleipnir had ever seen him, invigorated by his life or death battles. Secretly, Sleipnir hoped that he would never slay his foe for then who would be left to bring that manic gleam to his master's eye?
It was at this time, during the clash of the dominants, that matters between Sleipnir and his master first changed.
One night, as Sleipnir was fluffing the pillows and readying his master's bed, Barnabas spoke. "Why do you still manage these tasks?"
Barnabas was sat in his favorite armchair of their newest acquisition, his eyes dark in that contemplative way of his. Sleipnir tilted his head in confusion. "Is it not to your liking?"
Barnabas answered without pause which meant he must have practiced this beforehand. "There are maids who could perform it just as well."
Sleipnir vehemently, silently disagreed. No maid would know exactly how Barnabas preferred his bedsheets folded. No maid would know exactly when to dim the lanterns and then extinguish them entirely. They would not know how Barnabas preferred his next day's clothing folded in neat little piles, one after the other in sequence with his morning routine or the exact mixture of scented oils that best suited his baths.
But Sleipnir did not argue. Instead, he merely asked, "Would you prefer a maid?"
"You have other tasks to attend to," Barnabas answered just as quickly as before. "Those tasks are yours alone. I would rather you devote yourself to them."
'I am devoted to you,' Sleipnir did not say. Instead, he merely placed a hand over his heart, bowed his head, and answered, "It will be done."
Barnabas looked relieved as though he had expected a fight. He should have known better. Sleipnir would never argue against his wishes, no matter how they pained him.
And this pain...It was unlike any he had felt before.
The next morning, he recruited a team of maids tasked with attending to his master. They were of Veldemarke, used to serving nobles and with decades of experience between them. It would not be good enough. Sleipnir drilled them meticulously in every facet of Barnabas' preferences, making certain that not even the smallest of details went overlooked. He thought he saw fear in their eyes at the manic gleam in his own. He supposed it was not often that they were tasked by the lord commander of an army.
And their silent assumptions were correct, of course. If any were to fail Barnabas in a significant way, Sleipnir would not hesitate to slay them where they stood.
The following months were...tedious. Sleipnir poured every moment not on the battlefield into into tactics, supply lines, diplomacy, and governance, and still he had far too much time on his hands. The men still expected him to sleep as any human would, but now without the task of attending to his master, he had little choice but to spend those useless sleeping hours lounging about his separate room (wherever that may be on a given day) and simply...brood.
There were books to entertain him. He could take some of his work to his lonely little gilded bedroom and continue it by lanternlight. Not all of it. Most nights, he simply reflected on the emptiness inside of him that Barnabas had once filled.
The men took notice. He was less patient than usual, his tongue more barbed. There were whispers that he and his master must have had a "bad breakup." For once, Sleipnir did not simply pretend not to have overheard, but disciplined the gossipers in whatever manner his rage saw fit. If they were outside his jurisdiction, he would merely make it clear that he had overheard and watch the blood drain from their faces.
It was...satisfying, this cruelty. It did nothing to ease his pain.
It did bring attention, however. One night as he sat perched on the balcony of his room, carved from part of an old Veldemarke fortress they had occupied, he heard a knock at his door.
His heart leapt into his throat. He had hardly spoken to his master since he'd been asked to cease his service, and he could think of none other who would seek him in this hour. However, as he opened the door, he was sorely disappointed. It was merely a man. A rather insignificant man despite their shared history.
It was one of the older members of their followers in the Circle of Malleus. Bowden, he thought his name was. Though they had spent much time traveling together, they had rarely had reason to share words. Most of the Circle had seen him as an accessory to Barnabas, and he had given them the same consideration.
"Have you perhaps found the wrong door?" Sleipnir asked coyly to which Bowden shook his head.
"I've come to talk, lad. If you have the time."
Sleipnir wished he had something better to do. He wished it so intently that he thought he might make some more useful work materialize by the strength of imagination alone. But he didn't, and so with deep regret, he opened the door wider, offering the man a dry smirk. "By all means."
Bowden cautiously entered and Sleipnir closed the door behind him and then he crossed his arms, simply watching the man with his head tilted, not caring to start whatever conversation this practical stranger had in mind. After a long, awkward moment, Bowden cleared his throat.
"I remember when Barnabas and Dinah -- that's his mother, mind -- first found their way to us. They were bloodied, sea-torn. Dinah was skin and bones when she made it to us, but her son...She doted on him. He couldn't have been older than six, but he made the trip better than she did."
Sleipnir watched him. He'd found that if a man truly wished to speak, he'd need little prompting. He was not disappointed.
Bowden shifted. "We took them in. Not without our reservations, though. You have to understand, we'd had men coming in pretending to be our kind before only to turn on us. We took them in because they were followers of God. Plain and simple. But we never trusted them. Her or her boy. I remember he was quiet, only really talked around his mother or Steffen. Good man, Steffen. He taught him how to use a sword. A shame what happened. He died protecting who he could -- that was before God gave Barnabas His power. Before you showed up..."
If the man was trying to gain his sympathies, he was doing a terrible job of it. Sleipnir raised an eyebrow. "Should you not approach my liege with these...apologies?" In truth, Bowden had never apologized. Perhaps that was why he cringed.
"It's too late for that, lad. He knows what kind of men we are. He's known from the start. That's why he's kept his distance, I think. From all of us except for you."
More silence. If this pitiful human wished for him to speak to Barnabas on his behalf then Sleipnir would make him squirm for it.
Bowden hesitated. "I ah. Just thought you should know. The rest of us, we could die any day. But you, you'll be with him for as long as he keeps bringing you back, won't you? It's only best that you know something about him from...before." The man looked very much like he'd rather Sleipnir just kill him than keep up his silence and so he didn't let the next round of it last long. "But really, I came to talk about you."
"Me?"
"Would you care to sit down or...?"
Sleipnir understood then. Sleipnir had no need for money. He had a love of trinkets, but those were nothing he couldn't take from conquest. What he valued most were those small, almost inconsequential details of his master's life and remembrance which he gifted so rarely. Far from a plea for pity, Bowden had come with an offering.
Sleipnir eyed him carefully, a mocking gleam to his eyes. "Do your feet tire you? By all means..." He swept a hand towards the dual armchairs beside the wardrobe. He did not take a seat himself.
Bowden sat as though drawn there by chains. "I'd heard you've been...different as of late."
"I didn't take a man of God as a gossiper."
"I have ears. I never said I joined in the talk myself." Bowden hesitated. "This is between you and Barnabas, isn't it?"
Sleipnir's gaze grew colder.
"Right," Bowden sighed. "None of my business, I know. I just thought...As someone who knows him and as a, ah, human being that I might help mend the rift..."
"There is no rift!" Sleipnir spat far more viciously than he'd intended. With his hand thoroughly shown, he scoffed and looked away, arms crossed just a little tighter. "We've been apart. My liege wished for the maids to attend to him."
"And you've grown...jealous?"
"Jealousy is a tad below my kind," Sleipnir said with a cool smirk. "He seems happy enough. The maids care for him as they should."
Bowden's eyes flit to the dagger strapped to Sleipnir's boot. "I don't see the problem then."
"The problem," Sleipnir said through gritted teeth. "Is that I was not ordered away. He implied his wishes without making his intentions plain. It is in my nature to serve him. Every moment away from his side is agony."
Why did he care to answer the questions of this man who had never once shown an interest in Sleipnir's wellbeing until the power imbalance between them became clear? A man who, by his own admission, had neglected Sleipnir's master until he became useful to their cause? He was a slug that Sleipnir might as well have crushed beneath his boot, and yet...
And yet he had said the exact words to rile the darkness in Sleipnir's heart. Oh, how he wished to simply step through that darkness and appear at his master's side! How it would soothe him merely to revel in his presence!
Bowden cleared his throat again and Sleipnir's eyes slid to his dangerously. The man waved his hand aimlessly as though trying to grasp words from the aether. "I might have overstepped," he said. "But have you tried...asking him?"
Sleipnir sighed. "I would never impede my liege's wishes. I cannot."
"But you don't understand why he would send you away?"
Silence.
Bowden nodded slowly. "Well, speaking as a human man myself, he might just need a little space and privacy. He's, what, twenty-seven now? My God, how time flies..."
Sleipnir failed to see how his master's age bore any relevance. He did not say so.
"Well," Bowden went on. "He can't stay eighteen forever, can he? I doubt he's forgotten you. He's just growing up is all. You're the only one he's ever seemed to care for around here anyway."
"My competition is scarce."
Bowden gave a short laugh. "That it is." He shook his head and stood. "Think about what I've said, would you? We're both men of faith. There's no reason for strife between us."
As he left, Sleipnir couldn't help but disagree. These men may have faithfully followed God, but Sleipnir followed only Barnabas.
Sleipnir received a summons from Barnabas only three days later -- to his room no less. Dusk had fallen, and Sleipnir dropped his work in an instant, hurrying up the stairs wish a speed rarely matched by mortal men. He half-suspected that some disaster had struck. The other half of him wondered if Bowden had spoken to him. It didn't matter the reason. He straightened outside the door, knocked, and his heart leapt to his throat as he heard his master's voice bid him entry.
He kept his expression neutral as he slipped through the door, closing it behind him before slipping into a bow. "You called for me, my liege?"
Barnabas looked uncomfortable from where he stood in the center of his bedroom, the most opulent in the fortress and seemingly too large for one man. A fire crackled in the hearth, shielding them from the cool night air. They were, to Sleipnir's delight, quite alone.
"Yes," Barnabas said and then paused in that contemplative way of his. "Sleipnir, I want..." He trailed off, looking frustrated before he straightened authoritatively and looked him in the eye. "Sleipnir, you are to leave domestic tasks to the maids unless they are absent."
It was as though a terrible weight was lifted from in an instant. The pain. The strife. All of it dissipated into glorious nothingness. There was only his master and his master's will and Sleipnir sighed in relief. It was clear now that Bowden had advised Barnabas on his behalf, but it hardly mattered. As his own conflictions turned to dust and ash, Sleipnir could only gaze lovingly at his master and answer, "Thank you."
Barnabas looked uncomfortable again. His confident facade slipped away now that it had served its usefulness and he seemed uncertain what else to say. Sleipnir waited, merely marveling at his own existence.
After a long moment, Barnabas added, "You may stay the night if you wish."
Joy sparked in Sleipnir's eyes. He tried to hide his smile as he bowed his head in reverence. "I would be honored."
Sleipnir spent the night sat near his master's bedside as he always had, listening to the crackling fire and watching the gibson moon. For a time, his life had once more fit into place. From then on, he did not mind his other tasks which brought him away and Barnabas, for his part, made certain to invite him more often to his side.
It was as though an unspoken compromise had been made. A promise. Sleipnir may not have understood the complexities of a human man of twenty-seven, but so long as he was still allowed near, he would allow his master the space and privacy that seemed to satisfy him.
"Wait a moment," thought Fin the Narrator. "This is not an application history which I am writing, but a fanfiction!"
"Why yes," agreed the reader, tortured by the endless scrolling, their hand cramped on a mouse wheel, "I could have told you that five thousand words ago."
"Oh bother," said Fin who had become quite invested herself. "Well, I suppose I'd rather wrap this up then."
And so she did.
Sleipnir and Barnabas conquered all of Ash including Veldemarke within the next twenty years using both their rather large army and their rather large form as a swordsman who can cut through anything and a six-legged horse who likes to dramatically neigh. With Veldemarke conquered, Barnabas convened with the Mothercrystal at Drake's Spine from which Ultima appeared. His god! In the flesh! Barnabas offered himself to him in both body and mind and became Akhashic which was fine because he was a dominant and even had the added benefit of curing him of the curse and making him never age again.
Barnabas became quite bored now that the conquering was done. Sleipnir continued to do all the tedious work of keeping a monarchy running all while attending to Barnabas' depression which was not easy. At some point, they probably became lovers. I don't care what anyone says. This is my ship and I'm going to ride it.
Just like Barnabas rides Sleipnir. Neigh.
Eventually Cid came to Ash surprisingly awoke as Ramuh which was quite convenient for Barnabas who really wanted more dominants to play with. He gave Sleipnir's job as lord commander of Waloed's armies over to Cid even though Sleipnir had been doing that job for literal decades, but it was fine because Sleipnir literally was not capable of feeling bitter about it. Then Cid found Benedikta who also turned out to be a dominant which was even better.
Suddenly, Barnabas had two whole dominants on his side. That's like almost half of the ones that are left! He also had two loyal, witty bitches to be polysexual with. Then Cid learned that Barnabas was certified crazy and betrayed Waloed to go be a mild nuisance for everyone so Sleipnir got his job back. Benedikta was old enough by then to become his new second bitch which was convenient for him. He brought both of them along with him whenever he was forced to get out of bed to go do diplomacy so they could do the talking while he looked like he'd rather die.
Benedikta was sent out to go try to find Ifrit in Sanbreque while Sleipnir stayed with Barnabas so they could prime at the Battle of Belenus Tor and fight Bahamut which was probably very satisfying for Barnabas for approximately four minutes. When Benedikta didn't return, Sleipnir split himself into two and had one of his duplicates go find her. He found her dead and had a thought. He had a scheming, vindictive thought which he found quite funny.
So he beheaded her corpse, shoved that head in a box, sent it by post all the way to Dhalmekia, and wrote "From Cid" on it. Then he went back and told Barnabas about it. I'm sure they both laughed.
Waloed was pretty quiet for about five years until Clive and Jill started smashing Mothercrystals like they were pop rocks. This released more and more of Ultima who told Barnabas about his overcomplicated Mythos body snatching plan. Sleipnir followed Clive around to make sure it went well, saving Kupfka from Clive and bringing him back to his house so that he'd eat the crystal, prime, and then Clive could smash more crystals.
Sleipnir also bullied Kupfka while he was at it. Because he's just that much of a petty bitch.
Ultima tried to seduce Barnabas by shapeshifting into lots of dead people, confirming Barnabas' bisexuality and incestuous feeling for his dead mom. But Ultima also tasked Barnabas with severing Clive's bonds of consciousness. Clearly he meant to kill Joshua, but because Ultima is the worst boss and refused to elaborate, Barnabas understood this as "Why don't you go fuck with Clive for a while?" and so he did.
First, they lured Clive to Kanver by releasing hordes of Akhashic on the city and then sitting in the council room with the corpses of all the people they killed. Sleipnir went out to fight Clive and enjoyed it very much even though he died. It was fine though because death is meaningless when you're made of aether.
Once he was revived, Barnabas was like "You know what would really fuck with them? If you teleported in, but there were like. Twenty of you. I know that would make all the duplicates way weaker, but it sure would fuck with them." So he did. Then they took off on a ship with Jill kidnapped.
Now if I had been told to sever someone's bonds of consciousness, I might have killed Clive's ambiguous love interest, but Barnabas isn't used to following orders. He's really bad at it. So it was time to fuck about some more.
Clive caught up with a steam engine and so Barnabas and Sleipnir primed and cut the ocean in half. I wonder what they would have told Ultima if the ship had fallen into the crater and Clive had died. Or if he'd died when Sleipnir fought him. Or if he'd died when Barnabas cut every sinew in his body. Barnabas only made it halfway through villain school before he dropped out because there wasn't enough swordfighting.
Once Clive and Joshua are in Ash, Barnabas kind of forgets about severing his threads of consciousness and just dramatically primes with Sleipnir to bait him to the top of a tall tower. Why? Because the two are dramatic and made for each other.
Barnabas is very invested in making Clive the "perfect vessel of God" even though it's clear that Ultima wanted Clive's body when he'd only absorbed Garuda. Ultima has very bad communication skills though so this dramatic tower fight needed to happen. I wouldn't want to work for Ultima is all I'm saying.
Barnabas primes again and fights Clive. Sleipnir tries to smash Clive under his gigantic hoof once which would have also been very awkward to tell Ultima, but him and Barnabas are just kind of like that. Sleipnir died when Clive broke Odin's sword in half and then slashed horse Sleipnir so hard with it that he poofed.
He didn't get resurrected this time either because Barnabas died shortly after and an egi can't exist without the dominant who created them.
So then they were both silly and dead. The End.
It was a strange thing, this sudden and inexplicable existence. He felt it somehow natural despite its novelty. He could name each of the foreign yet familiar aspects around him -- the sky, the sun, its light and heat upon his face, the ground beneath his feet, the smell of fire as homes crackled and burned around him. He gazed at it all impassively, his eyes subconsciously searching for something which he could scarcely define.
And then they found it. A form knelt at his feet, one more familiar than all the rest, as though he had known it throughout the entirety of his nonexistence and had longed for it past the expanse of eternity. His heart surged with that longing, that purpose which had finally, beyond the reaches of reality been granted to him. He stepped towards that figure, a man of darkened, tussled hair whose pain was palpable, and knew his identity as instinctively as he knew the sun, the earth, the sky.
My Creator.
At the moment, his creator was kneeling in the dirt, muddied with blood. Sleipnir heard his soft cries of pain and anguish above the crackling of the flames which surrounded them and saw how his shoulders shook with grief. Sleipnir's own heart ached with his creator's pain. He longed to place a hand upon his shoulder, but knew instinctively that this would not be a comfort. Instead, he dropped to one knee, his head lowered in submission as, finally, he spoke.
"You called upon me."
He heard his creator jolt to his feet, saw his boots scuffling in the mud, heard a sword drawn, but did not raise his head. No matter how he longed to gaze into his creator's eyes, to behold his face, to revel in his perfection, he remained as he was.
His creator's voice was rough and shaken. "Who-Who are you?"
"A being of your creation," Sleipnir answered. "Sleipnir. And I am ever at your service."
He could not say how he knew his own name. He could not say how he knew anything at all. But as he slowly, cautiously, raised his head, he knew beyond all else that this much was true. He lived to serve the man before him, dark eyes rimmed with tears, reddened face round and youthful. Sleipnir would do anything for the sake of that service. He would die for him. He would kill for him. He would be ever at his side.
And so Sleipnir was.
Barnabas, as he soon learned his creator to be called, was not quick to trust him, and the survivors of the attack on their village were far slower. Despite their apprehension, Sleipnir did his best to aid them as well as his master's caution would allow. By day, he used his unnatural strength to help the townspeople dispose of their dead and rebuild housing. By night, he would intrude on his master's desired solitude only long enough to feed him, draw him a bath, and clean the squalor that his grief had made of the temporary housing.
Sleipnir himself was capable of sleep, he found, but did not need it and often chose to go without in favor of positioning himself outside his master's lodgings to ensure he would not be disturbed. This behavior prompted the townspeople to whisper among themselves, calling him "Barnabas' Guard Dog" which Sleipnir could not parse as the insult that was clearly intended.
One night, as Sleipnir finished his sweeping and set the broom against the wall, preparing to depart, a quiet voice called to him through the gloom.
"Don't go."
Sleipnir started in surprise. He'd thought his master long asleep, and while the young man had not so much as raised his head, that voice had been undeniable. Sleipnir felt his heart quicken with excitement. For the first time since his creation, he had been called to serve.
Sleipnir bowed his head, placing a hand over his heart as he answered, "As you wish."
He approached his master's bedside to find the boy's hair tussled upon his pillow, his body curled deeply beneath his blanket of furs, and his dark eyes open, glinting in the moonlight of a nearby window. For the first time, Sleipnir felt uncertain how to proceed. He dared not overstep his bounds, and yet his master had called on him.
He hesitated for only a moment before choosing to simply sit beside his creator, kneeling on the floor rather than settling at the foot of his bed so as not to assume an unwarranted level of intimacy. One way or the other, Barnabas did not comment.
Instead, they spoke of other matters. Barnabas asked as to his nature to which Sleipnir admitted he knew very little. Barnabas told Sleipnir tales of his mother, of how they had set sail for Ash to escape the Blight which had consumed their island home. Sleipnir treasured these small parts of himself that his master had chosen to share, holding them close to heart. It was clear that Barnabas had loved his mother dearly and that the grief of her passing was agony.
After some time and deliberation, Barnabas asked, "Are you human?" to which Sleipnir shook his head, "I shouldn't think so."
Barnabas thought for a moment longer before adding, "If you are not human, are you cursed with free will?"
It was Sleipnir's turn to pause, puzzling over those words. Free will. The phrase had a form and definition as most concepts did, but he had never considered its meaning before. In time, he answered, "Since the day I drew breath, I have had but one desire, and that is to serve. Your will is my own."
His master's eyes slid to meet his. "How must it feel? To lack a will?"
"When I am able to act as you will it, to fulfill my purpose, the feeling is..." Sleipnir closed his eyes, lingering on the few times he had been allowed such a thing, the soaring of his heart, the eagerness which propelled him forward, before letting out a long sigh. "Bliss."
And so it was that Sleipnir earned his master's trust and their stories, while already bonded through the expanse of eternity, became even further intertwined.
At first, they did not speak often except under the light of the moon in the deepest hours of night. They preferred instead to express themselves through the sheer physicality of combat. Slowly, the light began to return to Barnabas' eyes, and though he never quite seemed happy, per say, he at least seemed alive in those short, desperate moments when their swords clashed and the sheer adrenaline urged them forward. Sleipnir, for his part, felt a strange familiarity with the weight of a blade, and as he shifted naturally into an offensive stance, he found himself mirroring his master's technique -- inherited, he supposed, from the depths of his creator's heart.
Sleipnir, too, had inherited that mad thrill of the fight, as tame as their pretend blows may have been. He may very well have been the only one who understood that deep, predatory drive that slept within their hearts -- or perhaps their single heart, divided into two and made manifest. Sleipnir learned much more of his master through swordplay than he ever did through conversation.
Barnabas made no attempt to connect with the rest of his village except for the priests whom he held council with every now and then with Sleipnir standing to the side, no more noticed than the rocks and shrubs of the mountain scrubland. The priests told their tales of how Barnabas, struck by his grief, had become engulfed in aether and when the light had faded, he had transformed into a black-clad swordsman the size of the tallest towers of Veldemarke carried upon the back of a darkened steed which bore him across the sky. Priming, they called it, though they knew not the form he took. There were legends lost among their people, but even these tales had no name for the Eikon which granted him power.
Sleipnir made no comment and was asked for none. The mountain village was suspicious of outsiders, even those born of their newfound savior wielding the power of God.
Instead, he and Barnabas spoke of it amongst themselves, whispering almost conspiratorially under the cover of night as their sparring ended and they sat together on the dry earth, watching the pulsing glow of fireflies drift past them. This was not the original homeland of their people, Barnabas informed him. If they were to learn more of his nature, and of Sleipnir's nature as well, the records could only be in the old ruins to the west where his ancestors had once presided.
And so Barnabas resolved himself towards an expedition of these ruins and Sleipnir, ever faithful, vowed to accompany him.
This caused a rift in their tribe. The elders insisted that they find higher ground and barricade themselves into the mountains before another attack. Many of their strongest warriors, however, believed in Barnabas' power to guide them and wished to help him harness his God-given gift. Their numbers split beneath the power of Barnabas' unyielding resolve, and in the end, they left with a small band of followers who looked to their young leader with the reverence that naturally befit him.
Their journey was long and tiresome. They overtook every obstacle with ease, their swords more than a match for any monsters or bandits which would wish them harm, but their greatest enemy was sheer exhaustion. Though the loyalty of Barnabas' followers was steadfast in their reverence, he paid them little mind. Instead, he kept to Sleipnir's company, often silent unless a particularly pressing thought came to mind. Sleipnir preened with his master's attention as subtle as it was, every time that Barnabas chose to sit beside him near the fire or stumbled unquestioningly to the tent which Sleipnir had prepared for him, offering a nod of thanks in return.
It was funny how Barnabas' eyes could sharpen, the eyes of a killer as he slashed his blade across the neck of his opponents, basking in his victories, and yet how they softened afterwards, vulnerable and exhausted and hunched over like the child he very nearly was. On the worst nights, Barnabas would not take to his tent at all, choosing instead to stay by the fire, by Sleipnir, as the rest of their cohort disappeared one by one leaving only their breathing and the crackle of the campfire to accompany them.
On the worst nights when Barnabas' hands were stained with blood which would not wash away and his eyes reflected black in the flames, he would sit in silence until the force of exhaustion slowly crushed his resistance, and just as slowly, he would drift until he leaned against Sleipnir's shoulder, eyes finally closed. On more than one occasion, Barnabas' fitful sleep would position him so that his head lay in Sleipnir's lap where he finally drifted off, breaths slow and deep with the short rattle of a snore.
In these times, Sleipnir could only marvel at the world and his place within it, right here keeping watch over his master's sleep like a sacred vigil, exactly where he was meant to be. He longed to stroke his master's hair, to soothe him of his ills, to shoulder his pain and whisper that all would be well. Instead, he contented him to this. To silence. To his master's warmth atop him. To his sacred vigil that lasted long after the fire burned to embers and the stars dimmed with the approaching sunrise.
Did his master feel the same connection? The same bonds, deep within him, that told him that Sleipnir would never stray, never doubt, never fail to protect him? Together, they made a deadly pair, their swords flashing a flurry of black and white. Some unlucky enough to meet their blades would stutter that they were but children -- as they both appeared to be -- but there was no denying their skill or their unity. Dead men denied nothing.
They traveled and they searched. They traveled and they searched. For a year, they traveled, and in that time Barnabas slowly aged and Sleipnir did not. Sleipnir kept a mental note of his master's height, once level with his own then a hair's breadth taller and then taller still. His back straightened. His shoulders broadened. His body strengthened against the resistance of every battle. It was not a stark change, not in a year, but Sleipnir made note of it when they had once been the same height, the same stature, the same form.
It was a neutral observation. Barnabas' hair grew in unruly waves past his shoulders. Sleipnir's did not. Barnabas' chin began to sprout with darkened stubble. Sleipnir's did not. Barnabas bled from the light cuts and broken callouses of battle. Sleipnir's wounds seeped only with the blue light of aether, drifting away like fireflies until that same power stitched his flesh together again. He wondered if he would ever change from his initial shape and appearance, dreamed to life by the cries of a grieving child. With each step they took, with each clue they acquired from suspicious townspeople in the villages they passed through, Sleipnir's anticipation grew. It was an anticipation all his own -- for his master's sake, yes, but also largely for himself.
With every step, he felt them draw ever closer to answers which would unlock Barnabas' potential and finally put a name to Sleipnir's nebulous, inhuman existence.
Their inquiries led them, at last, to a site of Fallen ruins on the western coast of Ash. Here, the native inhabitants recalled tales of a black-clad rider, a lost eikon faded to legend and obscurity. They linked these legends with the nearby ruins, and yet when Barnabas' band arrived, they were faced with nothing more than a door which had been tightly sealed for centuries.
Something stirred within Sleipnir at the sight of it, a familiarity that extended past the expanse of nonexistence to somewhere else entirely. As the rest of the band grew crestfallen with yet another defeat, Sleipnir found his voice and simply said, "It will open for you."
Barnabas looked to him, puzzled, but when Sleipnir did not waver, his master slowly approached the bleached white door and raised a hand as though to push it inward. At his touch, the door glowed an aetheric blue and, to the shock of all but Sleipnir, shuddered open on its own.
Inside was a trove of myth and legend beyond all imagination. There were murals depicting the Eikons -- one unfamiliar, revered among them, one lost to time, and one the spitting image of Barnabas' Primal form. They found dust-laden scrolls which nearly crumbled in their hands, written in a text nearly illegible to the modern tongue. Sleipnir could read them, however. By whatever power slept dormant within him, he understood them all perfectly.
Odin. That was the Eikon's name. Odin, Warden of Darkness. It was darkness which flowed through him and his master and beat in an ecstatic frenzy through their hearts. Odin was once known as the most formidable of Eikons, his sword capable of cutting through anything unlucky enough to meet its path. Barnabas was the dominant of Odin, capable of harnessing his power when their wills most aligned, and among that vast repertoire of power was...
The summoning of an egi.
Sleipnir felt his breath catch as he read that word, unfamiliar and yet settled deep in his heart. The dominant could summon an egi and often did so naturally when fully Primed. Sleipnir touched the page reverently, running his gloved hand down the aged parchment until it paused as he found his very name sketched into the print.
Odin, the dark rider. Sleipnir, his formidable steed. That was his nature, well and truly. He had been called to existence before he gained his own consciousness, a part of Odin's merciless rampage, their souls connected as one. The thought brought a chill down his spine.
He could almost remember that moment, he thought, like an echo through his entire being. He longed for that moment again.
With their answers found, their band left the ruins and began east towards their mountain home once more. Barnabas said little of their venture, his eyes more clouded than usual with thoughts that only he knew. Sleipnir did not ask what lurked behind them. He merely waited, patient and content, knowing that it would all come in time.
And so it did. One night as they sat together, Sleipnir bandaging a wound Barnabas had taken at the claws of a wild aevis, his master finally spoke.
"I am Odin," he said.
"The dominant of Odin," Sleipnir corrected.
Barnabas sat with his silence a minute longer before adding, "I should have his power. Other dominants are capable of magic."
Sleipnir hummed in agreement.
"Then why has it not come to me?"
Sleipnir thought for a moment before answering, "Odin was known for his skill with a sword. You are linked in that way. Perhaps it is because you have not trained in matters of darkness?"
Barnabas seemed to accept this answer. He even deigned to look over his shoulder as Sleipnir tied the bandaging. Their eyes met. "Will you teach me?"
Sleipnir had not yet manifested magic himself, and yet at this request, he could only offer Barnabas a small smile as he placed his hand over his heart with a slight bow of his head. "Most certainly."
He would learn such magicks for his master's sake. He would learn to harness the darkness which composed his very being. While the rest of their band slept, Sleipnir sought out the core of his aetheric heart and brought that power to the surface, experimenting first with merely alighting his hands in its violet-black aura and then shaping it to his will, whatever that may be.
When they had an afternoon of rest, he would attempt to share his discoveries with his young master. He felt a sense of shame at his master's frustrations, struggling to mimic what came so naturally to Sleipnir. It felt wrong to cause such distress in his creator, but Barnabas had requested it of him and would return, time and time again no matter how he struggled.
"It is only natural," Sleipnir purred in comfort, "I am comprised of the aether. You must channel it through flesh and blood. One day, you shall surpass me, and I await it eagerly."
Barnabas said nothing as he so often didn't. But there was a slight change in his eyes from the brooding of a warrior bested to something close to gratitude. Sleipnir reveled in this small praise.
The return trip took only months -- a straight path up towards the mountains. When they finally arrived, Sleipnir wished for his master's sake that it had lasted longer.
The elders of their people had argued that they should flee farther into the mountains, set up better fortifications, and rebuild as they had for centuries whenever some heretics who worshipped crystals or some other false gods came with bloodlust in their eyes. This time, however, they had been hunted down like rabbits.
There was little remaining of the new settlement when Barnabas came. Perhaps very little had been built at all. There were signs of makeshift housing, weathered down by time and neglect. There was the scorched rubble of a half-finished temple, charred into ash. And then there were the bones.
They had not been buried. They had not even been burned. They had been left out upon the mountainside to be picked clean by scavenging birds. They were picked clean for the most part with some hair here and tattered clothes there, the skulls and bones picked apart and scattered across the windswept earth. The air felt particularly quiet here as though hushed by the divine. Or perhaps it was merely that their band, often so talkative but for Barnabas, had gone completely silent.
The other men wandered about the ruins in a state of shock, muttering amongst themselves. Sleipnir had eyes only for Barnabas. His master stared straight ahead, expressionless as he so often was, but this was different than his usual neutrality. This was stoic, controlled, a young man, truly, grappling with a pain too immense for human hearts.
Sleipnir's own heart ached for him. Just as he had at his first moment of consciousness, Sleipnir longed to reach out a hand for his master's shoulder, but he knew it would be no comfort.
Instead, he spoke. "I am here," he said softly.
Barnabas started as though he had only just realized that fact. He looked at Sleipnir and then out at the destruction before him. Slowly, he moved towards the ruins as though guided by some invisible force. He knelt down where a helmet was mounted upon a rusted sword and plucked a tattered flag from where it had been folded at the sword's base.
"Veldemarke," he muttered.
Sleipnir waited patiently for an explanation.
"They sent soldiers," Barnabas went on. His grip tightened on the dreadful flag. "But why would they set eyes their upon us?"
Sleipnir knew very little of Veldemarke, only what he had heard in the villages upon the path of their journey. It was supposedly a kingdom of steel and stone far to the north. Without further knowledge, it was useless to speculate, and yet he felt compelled to consider his master's question to the fullest. After a moment, he answered, "Perhaps they heard rumors of a newly awakened Eikon."
Barnabas tensed, and Sleipnir wished he had not spoken at all.
"They came for me," he said.
"It is only speculation."
"Veldemarke has never come for us before." Barnabas raised his head to the sky and gave a short, humorless laugh. "They will be judged by the hand of God."
Sleipnir could sense the wild impulses which ran through his master's heart for it ran through his as well. It was the call of their shared darkness. It was the irresistible will of Odin.
"They seek battle with the Warden of Darkness," he said slyly as he approached, stepping lightly over the ruins of the dead. He knelt beside Barnabas until he could almost whisper in his ear. "Let us bring it to them."
Barnabas shuddered, and yet as he lowered his head, Sleipnir saw a twisted smile upon his lips. When his master rose, he did so with confidence, his head held high as he strode towards the center of the clearing. His eyes did not waver towards the dead. Their spirits had already left this place.
Barnabas spoke louder and stronger than he ever had, turning the eyes of every man in his direction. He spoke of the crimes of Veldemarke. He spoke of Odin's power. "We shall hide in the shadows no longer," he said. "For it is the will of God that we fight! We shall raise an army in His name, and the blasphemers to the north shall pay for their sins!"
These men were no soldiers. Warriors, perhaps. Courageous, certainly. Before that day, they had been nothing more than a ragtag band of brutes bound only by their own religious conviction, but as they rallied around Barnabas and set up a cheer into the gray skies, they became something more. And all that time, Sleipnir stayed where he was, knelt upon the earth with his own contented smile.
What was it that he felt? Pride, perhaps? But it was not the usual pride that came from fulfilling his master's requests, like a dog eager for praise. It was...something else. Something deeper.
He was proud of Barnabas, transformed by his own strength, and he was proud of himself for the part he'd played in it.
From that day on, everything changed, and it changed for the better.
The first few villages were blindsided by Barnabas' attack. They had known, of course, of the cult of fanatics ever hiding amongst the mountain peaks, but they had never known them to instigate violence. Some villages which had a history of persecuting their beliefs, Barnabas eradicated entirely. To others, he gave a choice. Assimilate and join their crusade or die by his hand.
Most chose the former.
It did not take long for their reputation to precede them. Towns along their route began preparations in their defense, and their battles could no longer rely upon the skill of Barnabas and Sleipnir alone. Barnabas remained undeterred, ever training with his sword and his fledgling magic, determined to slew all in his path. He had no interest for the growing band of makeshift soldiers they had amassed and so Sleipnir took it upon himself to attend to them.
It was always the same. At first, these jaded newcomers, some decades older in appearance, would scoff at Sleipnir's apparent youth. They would mock his light frame, his slender shoulders, his boyish, beardless face. Then Sleipnir would make an example of them. With their pride broken, their training could finally begin.
Sleipnir taught them in the way of the blade as he and Barnabas knew it. He ordered the armories of their conquests raided for whatever weapons and armor they could salvage within. He acquired a map of the lands of Ash and marked off each conquered territory in turn, keeping notes on their resources and managing their orders for supplies to keep their men clothed and fed and sheltered along their march.
Gone were the whispers calling him Barnabas' Guard Dog. Now they called him Barnabas' general. His right hand. A commander, of sorts. Sleipnir neither confirmed nor denied these claims just as he paid no mind to the whispers of how a mere boy, a teenager without so much as a hair upon his face, could possess such strength. Barnabas had instructed him to pretend at his own humanity. And so he did. Terribly, he thought, but no one ever dared to question him on the matter.
Only that original band among the Circle of Malleus would know his true nature, and they too were sworn to secrecy. These new men impressed into their growing army would have shock enough already without being drilled by a creature derived from darkness and sculpted by the aether itself.
And so by day, Sleipnir attended to the soldiers. By night, Sleipnir attended to Barnabas.
Despite their mounting ambitions, little had changed between them. As always, Sleipnir would ready his master's tent and wait through the night outside it though now he had to at least pretend at sleep. As always, he would be the one to bandage Barnabas' wounds and rub salve into the broken, bleeding callouses upon his hands. Sleipnir would launder his clothes and trim his hair and while Barnabas mostly chose to keep his silence, a current of understanding always ran between them.
Barnabas had many different kinds of silence. There was the brooding kind when a particularly dark thought was on his mind. There was the contemplative kind when his thoughts were considerably lighter. There was the haunted kind whenever he was reminded of his mother and the determined kind when another battle rose on the horizon. Then there was the softer kind. The grateful kind. These came more often now as Sleipnir busied himself with his master's wellbeing, all with the most gentle of touches.
Sleipnir would tell him of the day's events as he combed out his master's hair, and Barnabas would listen, interjecting only occasionally if he had some command to give. He rarely phrased it as a command, however, for he knew that Sleipnir would have no choice but to follow it. More often, they came in the form of a question. "Would you care to spar with me next evening?" "Could we secure the supply lines before our next assault?" Other times, the command was veiled behind suggestion. "The soldiers need more discipline," he would say, and Sleipnir would hum along, always happy to follow his master's desires and grateful that he had been left a choice in the matter.
Barnabas was the face of their crusade, as feared as he was admired. While Sleipnir managed the intricacies of conquest, Barnabas trained himself in the ways of the blade. Sleipnir was now the only one who could challenge him, and their spars became a kind of public spectacle for their men who would gather to watch as blades struck and seemingly impossible maneuvers were managed with pinpoint accuracy. Their own styles developed as well, born from the same source and yet a mirrored opposite in practice. Sleipnir's was light and playful, body swaying through the field of battle like a dancer. Barnabas in contrast chose to stand his ground, moving as little as possible to dodge even the most certain of blows.
Sleipnir almost never won their little games. He had far more to manage than the development of his swordplay alone. Barnabas, meanwhile, had devoted every waking moment to his own strength and strategy. Still, their spars were as delightful as ever, more so now that they no longer clashed as equals. Sleipnir needed only the strength to pose a threat in order to bring back a flare of life to his master's dark eyes. Sleipnir, for his part, found new and exciting ways to bring their contrasting styles to conflict, and often erupted in laughter each time his maneuvers were thwarted. When Sleipnir was finally brought to yield, he would gaze up in pride past the sword at his neck as the men erupted into cheers at the strength of their king.
My creator. My master. My liege. That was what Barnabas had insisted Sleipnir call him now that he was to play at being human. My liege. The words slipped effortlessly from his tongue. My liege, Barnabas Tharmr, Dominant of Odin, Warden of Darkness.
I shall see you rise ever higher.
Their victories over the disjointed villages and tribes of Southern Ash were swift and effortless. As their army grew better disciplined and supplied, even their opponents' best defenses could not match them. One by one, they fell. One by one, they joined their conquered neighbors in this new kingdom with no name. More often now, the settlements would surrender at their very arrival, hailing Barnabas as their new king. Then he and Sleipnir would be led to the best accommodations that the town had to offer.
A feast in their honor. New clothing, the best their tailors had stitched, dyed in all manner of vivid colors. Precious metals and jewelry which held little interest for Barnabas, but which Sleipnir accepted eagerly, experimenting with his appearance with the most opulent accommodation of all -- a mirror. He found that he quite enjoyed the plaited hairstyles common for the women in Southern Ash and tried their braids out on himself, testing the look and weight of it upon his shoulders.
The town's offerings would first be presented to Barnabas himself who would then pass along the majority of it to Sleipnir who reveled in these small gifts, braiding the various beads and ornaments and ribbons into his hair. He chose the fabrics and styles which he liked best, amassing something of a collection of clothing as he saw fit. The rest he passed down to those soldiers who had shown the most initiative in their cause and on and on the offerings were dispersed, the happy spoils of war.
As they attended their feasts, Sleipnir found that that he delighted in greener dishes, fresh and leafy and bright. He adored the rare treat sweetened with honey or the ever elusive sugar imported from the Southern Isles. He rather enjoyed apples and pears and other crisp fruits, but had little interest in root vegetables, found fish unpleasantly inoffensive, and abhorred the hearty meats and stews of which the tribes of Southern Ash seemed most proud. His tastes, he found, differed profoundly from those of Barnabas, and this troubled him for some time.
One night, while settling into the former home of a town's chief, Sleipnir paused as he helped Barnabas dress after his bath and said, "You and I are not very alike."
Barnabas hesitated, the only sign of his surprise. "You have served me well."
"I am ever in your service."
Sleipnir quickly finished dressing Barnabas for bed and then stepped away, turning to gaze into the fiery hearth. "I am a part of you," he said, worrying at his lip. "I have no will of my own."
Barnabas said nothing. This time, he was the one to wait and listen.
"Why then should we differ so greatly?" Sleipnir asked, fearing the words even as he said them. "Our talents, our inclinations, our interests. They are all..." Sleipnir turned his hand in the air, searching for the word. "...distinct."
He heard Barnabas' footsteps behind him. "No man is the same," he said, and Sleipnir spun around to face him, an unidentifiable something in his eyes.
"I am no man!" he exclaimed, and Barnabas stopped where he stood, watching him. What did his master see in him? Desperation? Fear? Sin? "I may play at humanity, but it is not my nature. What then am I to make of these feelings? I live to serve you and yet our hearts are not the same."
For the first time, Sleipnir felt pain. Not pain for his master's sake, but pain of his own. What could this be but selfishness? Sin? That which he should have been without?
Barnabas spoke slowly, uncertainly. His discomfort was plain. "Perhaps that is why we differ."
Sleipnir's eyes rose to meet his, and Barnabas' discomfort seemed to double. Sleipnir could not find a way to relieve it or even to push the conversation further, and so Barnabas continued as though plucking the words through gritted teeth.
"I am not a servant," he said slowly. "So how could you best serve me if we did not differ?"
Sleipnir recoiled, shocked by this revelation. Yes. It was true that Sleipnir could not act upon his duties if he were a mere copy of his master. From the start, Barnabas had stood alone, confident in himself and needing no other. He had been quiet and had little interest in aiding those around him. Perhaps then Sleipnir had not been born from Barnabas' heart, but from what his heart most needed. Perhaps he was a complement to his master's vibrant strength so that he might lift him up and shed glorious light upon him.
But that did not explain it all.
Sleipnir's eyes lowered shamefully, his arms crossed tightly across his chest. "I used to find pleasure only in your service," he admitted. "But now...I adorn my hair with trinkets. I admire my otherness in the mirror. I...treasure apple tarts and honey cakes." He bit his lip once more, turning his head away. "Have I been corrupted by this human form? Why has my heart drifted from the purpose of my existence?"
A weight fell upon his shoulder. A hand. Sleipnir was startled out of his thoughts and looked up directly into his master's eyes. It was not a comforting sight. How could it be when Barnabas looked so uncertain of himself, so pushed beyond the bounds of his confidence? But his hand was on Sleipnir's shoulder. He wished him comfort. Sleipnir knew the meaning of the gesture quite well.
I am here.
For a long moment, they only looked at each other. And then Barnabas quickly, sheepishly, pulled back.
Sleipnir said nothing for a moment, picking at a loose thread on his shawl, before he finally asked, "Is this...acceptable to you?" sounding very much like the child their men thought him to be.
Barnabas simply answered, "Yes."
Sleipnir sighed in relief, a great and ecstatic gratitude washing through him which he had no means to return. Then he shook his head, turning his attention to his master once more. "But I am not as I should be!" he protested. "I have grown distracted!"
"It is enough," Barnabas answered before slowly, disjointedly adding, "You are three years old."
"Three years, two months, and twenty-seven days."
"You are discovering your nature. That is all." Barnabas looked as though he would rather have been stabbed through the chest than continue. But he did. "Preferences and interests do not constitute a will."
Sleipnir looked at his master and felt such a flood of relief that it took every ounce of his control not to throw himself upon him. He wished to return the same gesture of comfort he himself had been shown -- a hand upon the shoulder which he knew Barnabas would not appreciate. More than that, he wished to throw his arms around him in the tightest embrace. He wished to hide his face in the hollow of his master's neck and let loose the tears which would form the final catharsis of his pain.
Instead, he merely nodded, drying the corner of his eye on his sleeve. "Yes. You must be right," he said. "I did not mean to burden you."
Barnabas stood quietly, uncertainly, eyes very much averted. Sleipnir averted his own eyes as well. "Thank you," he said after a long moment of silence before he continued on to fluff the pillows and stoke the fire.
They did not speak of it again.
The whispered rumors changed around then. There were the usual, of course, about the strange white-haired youth who could defeat any man in battle. There were others, though, about him and Barnabas. They questioned the relationship between the fearsome Barnabas Tharmyr and his boy-faced second-in-command who so loved braiding his hair with ribbons and who would, more often than not, spend the night at his liege's side. Sleipnir could not understand the origin of these rumors or what logical consistency these details carried. As always, he let the people whisper and went about his own business.
They battled and they conquered. They battled and they conquered. The next two years went by in this familiar fashion until every tribe in southern Ash belonged to them. It was quite a task, keeping all of their new territories in line, but Sleipnir didn't mind the challenge. Every day, he experienced the thrill of battle alongside his master and every night, he reveled in his newfound luxuries. But of course this was but a single step towards their ultimate goal. Veldemarke had paid no mind to some barbarous warlord from the mountains uniting these equally barbarous tribes into a nation without even a banner to its name.
This, as it happened, would be their downfall.
Food, armor, shelter, weaponry, all of this paled in comparison to the greatest resource they had acquired -- soldiers. In their years of conquest, they had amassed an army. Not the most regimented, perhaps. Not the best equipped. But an army nonetheless. And so it was that they finally stood ready for war.
Sleipnir did not die in the first battle against Veldemarke. Nor did he die in the second. The fighting was fierce and casualties were high, but none could stand against the might of Barnabas and Sleipnir fighting in unison like two halves of the same whole, their blades perfectly in sync and their hearts alight with ecstasy.
No, it was not until the third that they struck a complication. Word must have reached the opposing generals of the combined strength of the two as there was, on the day of that third battle, a concerted effort to separate them. Sleipnir and Barnabas could both hold their own separately, but it left them vulnerable, and Veldemarke took advantage of this vulnerability with a volley of arrows from above.
Sleipnir kicked a bleeding, disemboweled soldier from his blade and looked up to see the arrows on a direct course towards his distracted master. He saw it almost in slow motion, the arc of those arrows, their intended target -- Barnabas's exposed back -- and in an instant Sleipnir disappeared in a shroud of darkness.
He had only a moment to appreciate his new proximity to his master as he stepped from the shadows before he was struck not once, but another and then another as he shielded Barnabas from his fate. The pain struck him as it would any mortal man as some of the volley merely glanced off his armor and the rest struck flesh, burrowing deep where his ill-forged armor did not cover. Sleipnir gasped in surprise, that gasp turning to kind of strangled sound as an arrow pierced his neck. Barnabas finished his own opponent easily before he turned, eyes widening at the sight of Sleipnir behind him, all torn flesh and aether escaping him like blood.
Sleipnir managed a pained smile before he collapsed at his master's feet. Barnabas stared down at him in shock as voices surrounded them, warning of the archers, calling for someone to storm their hillside vantage point. Barnabas said nothing, and for a moment, the battlefield fell to silence between them.
Sleipnir did not mind his position in the dirt and the mud as he hadn't the strength to rise, but soon he found his master's hands upon him, gently turning him over and propping him upright in his arms. This was better, Sleipnir thought, for now he could see his master's face swimming before his eyes.
Barnabas' own eyes were dark -- nearly black in that pained way unique to him. There were no tears to be shed. Barnabas had lost too much already.
"You are...well, my liege?" Sleipnir gasped through broken ligaments and the deep call of oblivion.
Barnabas did not answer, but Sleipnir could tell that he was unharmed. From his stance and his strength and the blood that was not his own. Sleipnir sighed in relief.
"Then I have...no regrets." Sleipnir felt his eyes sagging closed. Oblivion was close at hand, calling him ever closer to the same nonexistence from which he had spawned. "You need not fret. You need only call upon me...once more."
He saw Barnabas' eyes cloud with an agony unimaginable and then his vision left him and his strength gave out and nonexistence welcomed him like an old friend.
Then, quite suddenly, Sleipnir was carved into existence once more.
He looked around, slightly puzzled at this change of events. He felt no more pain. His mind was quite clear and the darkness surging through him felt stronger than ever. It took a moment for his eyes to adapt to what appeared to be a candle-lit tent under the cover of night. He had little time to truly ground himself, however, before a pair of rough hands grabbed him the shoulders and he was wheeled around to face his master.
"Sleipnir." His master's voice was rougher than usual and almost dangerous in its urgency. "You are Sleipnir, yes?"
Sleipnir tilted his head. "Unless I have forgotten my own identity," he said, a mischievous smile playing at his lips. Barnabas let out a short breath and let him go as quickly as he'd taken him, turning away pacing towards the back of the tent. Sleipnir's curious eyes followed.
"How long have I been away?" he asked.
"Three days," Barnabas answered curtly. "I faced difficulty in...That is to say...You were always better in magic than I am."
"Ah." Sleipnir examined the tent more thoroughly. The cot was bare, the blankets ruffled and tossed aside. Pieces of armor were strewn about haphazardly. There were half-filled water skins next to barely touched plates of food that had amassed an infestation of ants. Sleipnir wrinkled his nose at the smell. "Have none come to serve you in my absence?"
Silence. Which meant that Barnabas had something on his mind. Sleipnir fought the urge to tidy their quarters that instant, instead waiting patiently for his master's thoughts to reach their fruition.
Eventually, they did. "How did you reach me?" Barnabas asked in that same croaking voice that Sleipnir could only imagine came from dehydration.
"I stepped through the darkness," Sleipnir answered. "It is a technique I discovered only recently. I could teach you if you wish."
More silence. Sleipnir sighed and approached, stopping a few paces behind him. "I do not mind the time that I missed. I imagine it must take some great power to summon an egi." He rarely used that term to describe himself. He was always a man or not quite a man -- inhuman in some nebulous way which had no name. But of course it did have a name, and he used it now.
Barnabas tensed. "You died," he said.
"Only temporarily."
"Why did you throw yourself before me?"
"Why, to protect you," Sleipnir said, a hint of amusement rising to his voice. "Compared to yours, my life is expendable."
Only then did Barnabas turn on his heel to face him. He was unshaven, his hair equally unkempt. Dark circles swelled beneath his bloodshot eyes which glinted in his rage. "Do not say that," he sneered. "Not ever again."
Sleipnir felt the command like an arrow to his heart, dark and shameful. He opened his mouth before closing it again, lowering his eyes mournfully. He usually delighted in his master's commands, but not this one. This one spoke of his own wrongdoing, and a terrible guilt rose within him. "I only meant that I can be revived and you cannot."
Barnabas' gaze faltered and he paced towards the cot, collapsing into a rough sitting position, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands as he let out a deep sigh. Propped against the cot was Sleipnir's torn and bloodied armor. What had become of his body once Sleipnir's life had ended, he wondered. Had it been disposed of or had Barnabas dragged it within his tent and positioned it there at his bedside until the whole of him had disintegrated into the aether?
"You should rest," Sleipnir suggested gently. "I shall tidy your quarters, and then might I suggest a bath?"
"Don't go." Barnabas did not raise his head. He was twenty-three now, a man shaped and scarred by the strains of battle, and yet in that moment, he seemed so much like that grief-stricken boy, calling only for some comfort in the company of another.
Sleipnir nodded slowly before perching on the cot beside him. When Barnabas did not react, Sleipnir leaned in closer until their shoulders were touching and he rested his chin upon his master's. "I am here," he said softly. "I shall be ever by your side."
Barnabas tensed and then relaxed again, leaning heavily into his hands. They stayed like that for some time until Sleipnir whispered, "Rest, my liege. I will not leave you."
Sleipnir was not thrust aside for his daring. Instead, Barnabas seemed amenable to his touch and obliged as Sleipnir guided him to his pillow, found the crumpled blanket, and draped it around him before settling into the small space beside him, head buried into the back of his master's neck.
They said nothing as Barnabas drifted to sleep, and Sleipnir remained, unmoving beside him, reveling in the closeness between them as though he might somehow return to his proper place within his master's heart. Hours passed in this strange and wondrous bliss. Dawn lit the tent in pinks and violets, accompanied by his master's slow, peaceful breaths. The sun continued to rise until it reached its peak and began its descent again. All the while, Sleipnir remained motionless until his master stirred and looked up at him with bleary eyes.
"You look much better," Sleipnir said with a mischievous smile. Barnabas made a noise somewhere between sleep and indignance before he rose, stretching himself. Sleipnir joined him to initiate their morning routine which lasted far longer than usual to erase all signs of exhaustion and neglect from his master's face. They emerged together at dusk to the general shock and awe of their men.
When asked how he had returned from the dead, Sleipnir answered only that he had not been truly dead. When asked how he had been perfectly revived, he said only that his liege had been granted powers beyond their comprehension. These were not lies, per say, and in their telling, Sleipnir couldn't help but smirk with all that he knew that these ignorant humans knew not. He had found that he quite enjoyed such little jokes, the kind to which only he and his master and a scant few of the Circle of Malleus could make sense of. He left the rest to the men's imaginations.
The battle had ended quickly after Sleipnir's death. Tales told of darkness pooling at his master's feet in ever-growing tendrils before it had consumed him entirely, forming impenetrable black armor which covered him from head to toe. From the darkness, he'd pulled a kind of strange, sword which pulsed with a spectral blue light, and with it, he had struck down every one of the archers in a single strike which traveled at a distance like a shockwave. He'd then turned to the advancing army of Veldemarke and subjected them to the same fate.
"Ah, that sounds about right," Sleipnir said thoughtfully much to the confusion of the storyteller. Then he'd gone to congratulate his master on achieving his semi-primed form.
With this new power, his master was able to strike down countless men and then another countless more. What had been a miserable stalemate of an invasion quickly turned in their favor, and they'd won their first city from Veldemarke within a fortnight. Deep in the throes of his bloodlust, Barnabas had been tempted to raze that city to the ground just as Veldemarke had slaughtered his own people, but a few sly words from Sleipnir culled the idea.
"Our campaign would be short-lived indeed if we did not take advantage of the resources our new territories would provide. Or do you not wish to see their king kneel?"
They were welcomed uneasily with a march past sobbing widows and orphaned children to the city's house of governance where they were showered in the spoils of war, this time more decadent than they could have ever dreamed. Barnabas, as always, seemed uninterested in it all, but Sleipnir took to ever more elaborate manner of dress, braiding his hair with silver trinkets though the act felt different somehow.
It was not until they took to their new accommodations that Sleipnir discovered why.
"I have...changed," he said somewhere between amusement and wonder. He touched his face, now angled in a more mature fashion. His hair had grown longer as though to better accommodate his braid, and if it wasn't his imagination, he thought himself taller than he'd once been.
It was a subtle change, the kind that only those most used to his ever static features would notice, but to him it was a kind of magic. He looked...older. Not by much, but by a few years at least.
His thoughts returned to his master, how Barnabas had grabbed him by the shoulders with such urgency and demanded to know if it was still truly him. Yes, of course he would have noticed the change. After all that time toiling away in his summoning, what tragedy it would have been if he had created a different Sleipnir! One without the memory or experience which they had shared!
Sleipnir was glad for his master's sake that this was not so.
He was glad for many things in this new form which was almost the same as his last but not quite. He would often smugly compare his height to his master's, smirking all the while at this joke that only they could share. His hair styles became more elaborate, and he finally appeared adult. It did little to win the respect of the soldiers, particularly those newly impressed into their army from Veldemarke, but he did not mind. This new self perfectly matched everything he had desired from his image.
Was that how it had come to pass? Had his subconscious mind manifested this change as Odin's darkness formed his physical being? Regardless, he found it endlessly satisfying.
With the city's successful capture came several key changes from their daily lives. First, his master was recognized as a true and proper king -- if not by the state of Veldemarke then at least by those over which he ruled. Secondly, they now found themselves in a true and proper war. Warfare, they found, was a far more laborious and time intensive endeavor than mere conquering. And so time passed.
It took Veldemarke another two years and three cities lost to realize the extent of the situation. Sleipnir found no end of amusement in this. Had they not believed the reports of a man clad in armor, wielding the powers of darkness and sending deadly shockwaves with his aether-forged blade? Hubris. It was the only word that Sleipnir had for the leadership in Veldemarke. All the while, it had given their own forces time to settle into these opulent border cities. They tried not to treat the citizens cruelly as this, Sleipnir advised, would hinder their supply routes and the war effort in general.
Barnabas listened. He generally did when it was Sleipnir who spoke. As for the rest of their advisors...
Well, Barnabas trusted that Sleipnir would relay whatever information was most important and delegate the rest to someone with less authority.
They continued to make slow but steady progress across the lands of Veldemarke until one day, the battlefield darkened with the clouds of an oncoming storm.
It was sudden, this inexplicable oncoming storm. Sleipnir, dressed in fine new armor of gleaming white, glanced at his liege who wore his own set forged in steely black. If his master had noticed, he made no sign of it, eyes still set on the battle before him. The clouds shifted. The air crackled with tension, and Sleipnir had approximately five seconds in which to push his master out of the way of an oncoming lightning strike.
He took those seconds, naturally, and as his master stumbled out of the way, looking shocked at Sleipnir's audacity, those seconds ran out and Sleipnir was struck in a flash of blinding violet light. The heat of it was overwhelming. Sleipnir's limbs convulsed with uncontrolled electricity and then...
He was carved into existence once more in his master's bedroom accommodations from their most recent conquest. Sleipnir took a moment to get his bearings, eyes searching as they always did for his master until they found him, seated in a plush armchair, dark eyes gleaming with excitement.
Sleipnir knelt as any subject should to his king. "Apologies, my liege. It seems you've had to exert yourself on my behalf once more."
"I've found a worthy challenger."
That was all that Barnabas said, and Sleipnir could tell that he'd been waiting to say it until Sleipnir was at his side to listen. And so he listened at rapt attention, keeping his own concerns to himself.
Veldemarke had sent out their own dominant, it seemed. A dominant of lightning bound to the eikon Ramuh. Barnabas described their battle in great detail. Neither had won nor lost and their invasion was at a stalemate, but that did nothing to cool the rapture in his master's eyes. Sleipnir smiled quietly at this display of sheer, unbridled joy.
Once dismissed, Sleipnir examined himself in a mirror for any changes and found none. He was apparently still quite taken with his current physical form. He could not say that he was disappointed.
A year passed. And then another. Sleipnir no longer fought at his master's side as that space was reserved only for the dominant of thunder, and any man who might stumble his way into the clash of darkness and lightning would find only death to greet him. Instead, Sleipnir directed their troops around this long-running battle and never mentioned to his liege that while Barnabas entertained himself, the real progress was being made inch by inch as armies clashed and the dominants were distracted.
What did the war effort matter to Barnabas? Indeed, what did it matter to Sleipnir except that it must continue if they were to take revenge? Every day, his master looked more alive than Sleipnir had ever seen him, invigorated by his life or death battles. Secretly, Sleipnir hoped that he would never slay his foe for then who would be left to bring that manic gleam to his master's eye?
It was at this time, during the clash of the dominants, that matters between Sleipnir and his master first changed.
One night, as Sleipnir was fluffing the pillows and readying his master's bed, Barnabas spoke. "Why do you still manage these tasks?"
Barnabas was sat in his favorite armchair of their newest acquisition, his eyes dark in that contemplative way of his. Sleipnir tilted his head in confusion. "Is it not to your liking?"
Barnabas answered without pause which meant he must have practiced this beforehand. "There are maids who could perform it just as well."
Sleipnir vehemently, silently disagreed. No maid would know exactly how Barnabas preferred his bedsheets folded. No maid would know exactly when to dim the lanterns and then extinguish them entirely. They would not know how Barnabas preferred his next day's clothing folded in neat little piles, one after the other in sequence with his morning routine or the exact mixture of scented oils that best suited his baths.
But Sleipnir did not argue. Instead, he merely asked, "Would you prefer a maid?"
"You have other tasks to attend to," Barnabas answered just as quickly as before. "Those tasks are yours alone. I would rather you devote yourself to them."
'I am devoted to you,' Sleipnir did not say. Instead, he merely placed a hand over his heart, bowed his head, and answered, "It will be done."
Barnabas looked relieved as though he had expected a fight. He should have known better. Sleipnir would never argue against his wishes, no matter how they pained him.
And this pain...It was unlike any he had felt before.
The next morning, he recruited a team of maids tasked with attending to his master. They were of Veldemarke, used to serving nobles and with decades of experience between them. It would not be good enough. Sleipnir drilled them meticulously in every facet of Barnabas' preferences, making certain that not even the smallest of details went overlooked. He thought he saw fear in their eyes at the manic gleam in his own. He supposed it was not often that they were tasked by the lord commander of an army.
And their silent assumptions were correct, of course. If any were to fail Barnabas in a significant way, Sleipnir would not hesitate to slay them where they stood.
The following months were...tedious. Sleipnir poured every moment not on the battlefield into into tactics, supply lines, diplomacy, and governance, and still he had far too much time on his hands. The men still expected him to sleep as any human would, but now without the task of attending to his master, he had little choice but to spend those useless sleeping hours lounging about his separate room (wherever that may be on a given day) and simply...brood.
There were books to entertain him. He could take some of his work to his lonely little gilded bedroom and continue it by lanternlight. Not all of it. Most nights, he simply reflected on the emptiness inside of him that Barnabas had once filled.
The men took notice. He was less patient than usual, his tongue more barbed. There were whispers that he and his master must have had a "bad breakup." For once, Sleipnir did not simply pretend not to have overheard, but disciplined the gossipers in whatever manner his rage saw fit. If they were outside his jurisdiction, he would merely make it clear that he had overheard and watch the blood drain from their faces.
It was...satisfying, this cruelty. It did nothing to ease his pain.
It did bring attention, however. One night as he sat perched on the balcony of his room, carved from part of an old Veldemarke fortress they had occupied, he heard a knock at his door.
His heart leapt into his throat. He had hardly spoken to his master since he'd been asked to cease his service, and he could think of none other who would seek him in this hour. However, as he opened the door, he was sorely disappointed. It was merely a man. A rather insignificant man despite their shared history.
It was one of the older members of their followers in the Circle of Malleus. Bowden, he thought his name was. Though they had spent much time traveling together, they had rarely had reason to share words. Most of the Circle had seen him as an accessory to Barnabas, and he had given them the same consideration.
"Have you perhaps found the wrong door?" Sleipnir asked coyly to which Bowden shook his head.
"I've come to talk, lad. If you have the time."
Sleipnir wished he had something better to do. He wished it so intently that he thought he might make some more useful work materialize by the strength of imagination alone. But he didn't, and so with deep regret, he opened the door wider, offering the man a dry smirk. "By all means."
Bowden cautiously entered and Sleipnir closed the door behind him and then he crossed his arms, simply watching the man with his head tilted, not caring to start whatever conversation this practical stranger had in mind. After a long, awkward moment, Bowden cleared his throat.
"I remember when Barnabas and Dinah -- that's his mother, mind -- first found their way to us. They were bloodied, sea-torn. Dinah was skin and bones when she made it to us, but her son...She doted on him. He couldn't have been older than six, but he made the trip better than she did."
Sleipnir watched him. He'd found that if a man truly wished to speak, he'd need little prompting. He was not disappointed.
Bowden shifted. "We took them in. Not without our reservations, though. You have to understand, we'd had men coming in pretending to be our kind before only to turn on us. We took them in because they were followers of God. Plain and simple. But we never trusted them. Her or her boy. I remember he was quiet, only really talked around his mother or Steffen. Good man, Steffen. He taught him how to use a sword. A shame what happened. He died protecting who he could -- that was before God gave Barnabas His power. Before you showed up..."
If the man was trying to gain his sympathies, he was doing a terrible job of it. Sleipnir raised an eyebrow. "Should you not approach my liege with these...apologies?" In truth, Bowden had never apologized. Perhaps that was why he cringed.
"It's too late for that, lad. He knows what kind of men we are. He's known from the start. That's why he's kept his distance, I think. From all of us except for you."
More silence. If this pitiful human wished for him to speak to Barnabas on his behalf then Sleipnir would make him squirm for it.
Bowden hesitated. "I ah. Just thought you should know. The rest of us, we could die any day. But you, you'll be with him for as long as he keeps bringing you back, won't you? It's only best that you know something about him from...before." The man looked very much like he'd rather Sleipnir just kill him than keep up his silence and so he didn't let the next round of it last long. "But really, I came to talk about you."
"Me?"
"Would you care to sit down or...?"
Sleipnir understood then. Sleipnir had no need for money. He had a love of trinkets, but those were nothing he couldn't take from conquest. What he valued most were those small, almost inconsequential details of his master's life and remembrance which he gifted so rarely. Far from a plea for pity, Bowden had come with an offering.
Sleipnir eyed him carefully, a mocking gleam to his eyes. "Do your feet tire you? By all means..." He swept a hand towards the dual armchairs beside the wardrobe. He did not take a seat himself.
Bowden sat as though drawn there by chains. "I'd heard you've been...different as of late."
"I didn't take a man of God as a gossiper."
"I have ears. I never said I joined in the talk myself." Bowden hesitated. "This is between you and Barnabas, isn't it?"
Sleipnir's gaze grew colder.
"Right," Bowden sighed. "None of my business, I know. I just thought...As someone who knows him and as a, ah, human being that I might help mend the rift..."
"There is no rift!" Sleipnir spat far more viciously than he'd intended. With his hand thoroughly shown, he scoffed and looked away, arms crossed just a little tighter. "We've been apart. My liege wished for the maids to attend to him."
"And you've grown...jealous?"
"Jealousy is a tad below my kind," Sleipnir said with a cool smirk. "He seems happy enough. The maids care for him as they should."
Bowden's eyes flit to the dagger strapped to Sleipnir's boot. "I don't see the problem then."
"The problem," Sleipnir said through gritted teeth. "Is that I was not ordered away. He implied his wishes without making his intentions plain. It is in my nature to serve him. Every moment away from his side is agony."
Why did he care to answer the questions of this man who had never once shown an interest in Sleipnir's wellbeing until the power imbalance between them became clear? A man who, by his own admission, had neglected Sleipnir's master until he became useful to their cause? He was a slug that Sleipnir might as well have crushed beneath his boot, and yet...
And yet he had said the exact words to rile the darkness in Sleipnir's heart. Oh, how he wished to simply step through that darkness and appear at his master's side! How it would soothe him merely to revel in his presence!
Bowden cleared his throat again and Sleipnir's eyes slid to his dangerously. The man waved his hand aimlessly as though trying to grasp words from the aether. "I might have overstepped," he said. "But have you tried...asking him?"
Sleipnir sighed. "I would never impede my liege's wishes. I cannot."
"But you don't understand why he would send you away?"
Silence.
Bowden nodded slowly. "Well, speaking as a human man myself, he might just need a little space and privacy. He's, what, twenty-seven now? My God, how time flies..."
Sleipnir failed to see how his master's age bore any relevance. He did not say so.
"Well," Bowden went on. "He can't stay eighteen forever, can he? I doubt he's forgotten you. He's just growing up is all. You're the only one he's ever seemed to care for around here anyway."
"My competition is scarce."
Bowden gave a short laugh. "That it is." He shook his head and stood. "Think about what I've said, would you? We're both men of faith. There's no reason for strife between us."
As he left, Sleipnir couldn't help but disagree. These men may have faithfully followed God, but Sleipnir followed only Barnabas.
Sleipnir received a summons from Barnabas only three days later -- to his room no less. Dusk had fallen, and Sleipnir dropped his work in an instant, hurrying up the stairs wish a speed rarely matched by mortal men. He half-suspected that some disaster had struck. The other half of him wondered if Bowden had spoken to him. It didn't matter the reason. He straightened outside the door, knocked, and his heart leapt to his throat as he heard his master's voice bid him entry.
He kept his expression neutral as he slipped through the door, closing it behind him before slipping into a bow. "You called for me, my liege?"
Barnabas looked uncomfortable from where he stood in the center of his bedroom, the most opulent in the fortress and seemingly too large for one man. A fire crackled in the hearth, shielding them from the cool night air. They were, to Sleipnir's delight, quite alone.
"Yes," Barnabas said and then paused in that contemplative way of his. "Sleipnir, I want..." He trailed off, looking frustrated before he straightened authoritatively and looked him in the eye. "Sleipnir, you are to leave domestic tasks to the maids unless they are absent."
It was as though a terrible weight was lifted from in an instant. The pain. The strife. All of it dissipated into glorious nothingness. There was only his master and his master's will and Sleipnir sighed in relief. It was clear now that Bowden had advised Barnabas on his behalf, but it hardly mattered. As his own conflictions turned to dust and ash, Sleipnir could only gaze lovingly at his master and answer, "Thank you."
Barnabas looked uncomfortable again. His confident facade slipped away now that it had served its usefulness and he seemed uncertain what else to say. Sleipnir waited, merely marveling at his own existence.
After a long moment, Barnabas added, "You may stay the night if you wish."
Joy sparked in Sleipnir's eyes. He tried to hide his smile as he bowed his head in reverence. "I would be honored."
Sleipnir spent the night sat near his master's bedside as he always had, listening to the crackling fire and watching the gibson moon. For a time, his life had once more fit into place. From then on, he did not mind his other tasks which brought him away and Barnabas, for his part, made certain to invite him more often to his side.
It was as though an unspoken compromise had been made. A promise. Sleipnir may not have understood the complexities of a human man of twenty-seven, but so long as he was still allowed near, he would allow his master the space and privacy that seemed to satisfy him.
"Wait a moment," thought Fin the Narrator. "This is not an application history which I am writing, but a fanfiction!"
"Why yes," agreed the reader, tortured by the endless scrolling, their hand cramped on a mouse wheel, "I could have told you that five thousand words ago."
"Oh bother," said Fin who had become quite invested herself. "Well, I suppose I'd rather wrap this up then."
And so she did.
Sleipnir and Barnabas conquered all of Ash including Veldemarke within the next twenty years using both their rather large army and their rather large form as a swordsman who can cut through anything and a six-legged horse who likes to dramatically neigh. With Veldemarke conquered, Barnabas convened with the Mothercrystal at Drake's Spine from which Ultima appeared. His god! In the flesh! Barnabas offered himself to him in both body and mind and became Akhashic which was fine because he was a dominant and even had the added benefit of curing him of the curse and making him never age again.
Barnabas became quite bored now that the conquering was done. Sleipnir continued to do all the tedious work of keeping a monarchy running all while attending to Barnabas' depression which was not easy. At some point, they probably became lovers. I don't care what anyone says. This is my ship and I'm going to ride it.
Just like Barnabas rides Sleipnir. Neigh.
Eventually Cid came to Ash surprisingly awoke as Ramuh which was quite convenient for Barnabas who really wanted more dominants to play with. He gave Sleipnir's job as lord commander of Waloed's armies over to Cid even though Sleipnir had been doing that job for literal decades, but it was fine because Sleipnir literally was not capable of feeling bitter about it. Then Cid found Benedikta who also turned out to be a dominant which was even better.
Suddenly, Barnabas had two whole dominants on his side. That's like almost half of the ones that are left! He also had two loyal, witty bitches to be polysexual with. Then Cid learned that Barnabas was certified crazy and betrayed Waloed to go be a mild nuisance for everyone so Sleipnir got his job back. Benedikta was old enough by then to become his new second bitch which was convenient for him. He brought both of them along with him whenever he was forced to get out of bed to go do diplomacy so they could do the talking while he looked like he'd rather die.
Benedikta was sent out to go try to find Ifrit in Sanbreque while Sleipnir stayed with Barnabas so they could prime at the Battle of Belenus Tor and fight Bahamut which was probably very satisfying for Barnabas for approximately four minutes. When Benedikta didn't return, Sleipnir split himself into two and had one of his duplicates go find her. He found her dead and had a thought. He had a scheming, vindictive thought which he found quite funny.
So he beheaded her corpse, shoved that head in a box, sent it by post all the way to Dhalmekia, and wrote "From Cid" on it. Then he went back and told Barnabas about it. I'm sure they both laughed.
Waloed was pretty quiet for about five years until Clive and Jill started smashing Mothercrystals like they were pop rocks. This released more and more of Ultima who told Barnabas about his overcomplicated Mythos body snatching plan. Sleipnir followed Clive around to make sure it went well, saving Kupfka from Clive and bringing him back to his house so that he'd eat the crystal, prime, and then Clive could smash more crystals.
Sleipnir also bullied Kupfka while he was at it. Because he's just that much of a petty bitch.
Ultima tried to seduce Barnabas by shapeshifting into lots of dead people, confirming Barnabas' bisexuality and incestuous feeling for his dead mom. But Ultima also tasked Barnabas with severing Clive's bonds of consciousness. Clearly he meant to kill Joshua, but because Ultima is the worst boss and refused to elaborate, Barnabas understood this as "Why don't you go fuck with Clive for a while?" and so he did.
First, they lured Clive to Kanver by releasing hordes of Akhashic on the city and then sitting in the council room with the corpses of all the people they killed. Sleipnir went out to fight Clive and enjoyed it very much even though he died. It was fine though because death is meaningless when you're made of aether.
Once he was revived, Barnabas was like "You know what would really fuck with them? If you teleported in, but there were like. Twenty of you. I know that would make all the duplicates way weaker, but it sure would fuck with them." So he did. Then they took off on a ship with Jill kidnapped.
Now if I had been told to sever someone's bonds of consciousness, I might have killed Clive's ambiguous love interest, but Barnabas isn't used to following orders. He's really bad at it. So it was time to fuck about some more.
Clive caught up with a steam engine and so Barnabas and Sleipnir primed and cut the ocean in half. I wonder what they would have told Ultima if the ship had fallen into the crater and Clive had died. Or if he'd died when Sleipnir fought him. Or if he'd died when Barnabas cut every sinew in his body. Barnabas only made it halfway through villain school before he dropped out because there wasn't enough swordfighting.
Once Clive and Joshua are in Ash, Barnabas kind of forgets about severing his threads of consciousness and just dramatically primes with Sleipnir to bait him to the top of a tall tower. Why? Because the two are dramatic and made for each other.
Barnabas is very invested in making Clive the "perfect vessel of God" even though it's clear that Ultima wanted Clive's body when he'd only absorbed Garuda. Ultima has very bad communication skills though so this dramatic tower fight needed to happen. I wouldn't want to work for Ultima is all I'm saying.
Barnabas primes again and fights Clive. Sleipnir tries to smash Clive under his gigantic hoof once which would have also been very awkward to tell Ultima, but him and Barnabas are just kind of like that. Sleipnir died when Clive broke Odin's sword in half and then slashed horse Sleipnir so hard with it that he poofed.
He didn't get resurrected this time either because Barnabas died shortly after and an egi can't exist without the dominant who created them.
So then they were both silly and dead. The End.
IV. AUTHOR
PLAYER ALIAS:: Fin
OTHER CHARACTERS:: Kuja, Celes, Faris, Sephiroth, Prompto, Dion
ROLE-PLAYING EXPERIENCE:: -endless laughter-
HOW YOU FOUND US:: Somehow, Adventu has always been a part of me, through time, through space, we are inextricably linked
NOTES FOR CONSIDERATION:: Sleipnir will have his own will and won't be able to duplicate himself or remanifest upon death. As an egi, he does not bleed
ROLE-PLAY SAMPLE:: Nope
OTHER CHARACTERS:: Kuja, Celes, Faris, Sephiroth, Prompto, Dion
ROLE-PLAYING EXPERIENCE:: -endless laughter-
HOW YOU FOUND US:: Somehow, Adventu has always been a part of me, through time, through space, we are inextricably linked
NOTES FOR CONSIDERATION:: Sleipnir will have his own will and won't be able to duplicate himself or remanifest upon death. As an egi, he does not bleed
ROLE-PLAY SAMPLE:: Nope
