#on the bright side my altar was okay and remained relatively untouched

[thrashkink-coven]

asking for financial prayers for the first time because my apartment just caught on fucking fire!!!! NOT my fault I promise, our fucking dryer EXPLODED ☹️

our whole apartment is covered in soot ☹️ Thank Gods all the cats are okay and made it out safe. But we can’t spend the night there, smoke is way too intense. 😔 Hoping to Gods that our condo board doesn’t sue or push the fire fighting expense onto us ☹️ we’re still not entirely sure who’s fault it is, ours or the building.

v nervous v stressed v unsure what’s going to happen next. aaaa Ra protect us aaaa

[transvavsquad]

title: infinity times infinity pairing: freewood, jerevin, jeremwood, jerevinwood au: skyfactory warnings: temporary character death summary: The darkness was painful, some had said, and without a torch to guide you and to warm you, then you would surely be torn apart by it. Some thought it was victory‒ the god of Night had won in his battle, and in celebration was wiping out the weak. Others, like Jeremy, thought it was sadness, or anger. The night god had lost his love, and the people had lost their light. The sun was gone. The Solar one had been taken.

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chapter 8: the day

The next few days were slow, but a comfort to his health and his mindset.

Jeremy spent some time in Michael’s forest, glad to be beneath the trees while light filtered through their canopy. He’d known bits and pieces of botany and found it an easy task to point out the natural magic flowers that grew at the garden’s borders. In return, Michael showed him the portal he’d been lead to by the faeries, and explained their interest in his masks and cloth. Jeremy appreciated his company the most‒ it wasn’t that Jack and Geoff weren’t nice to be around, it was simply that conversations with them were so often about the state of his ascension, and his godhood, and the magic he didn’t seem to use.

Jack had caught him in the daytime, staring at the altar in the corner of the gardens.

“It scares us,” Jack had said, but gestured towards the knife at Jeremy’s belt. “Because we’re not meant for it. The way you look at it though? The way it calls? That’s yours, kid, all yours. Sometimes what we’re for is terrifying.”

Jeremy knew.

He knew the way the altar looked was threatening, and dark‒ because his magic was threatening and dark. To use the blood of another for the purpose of something selfish wasn’t a good thing, but Jeremy had been trained to do that. Had been raised to do that. Had lost his best friend to it. Had saved a god with it.

Behind him, Jack turned to where another dragon egg was cracking open violently.

“Turning mortals into gods is not an easy thing, I think.”

At night, he sat with ravens on the rooftop, and spoke to the moon while he drank orange nightshade tea, and watched the altar from the corner of his eye, how it shone unnaturally in the stars.

Hesitantly, he left blood in the basin before he went back to the cabin to sleep.

The next morning, the blood remained. A raven sat at the fencepost of the bridge to the altar, a pendant in it’s claws.

Geoff had built a house at the edge of his chicken coop, and Jack lived in a tent where the dragons were being raised. Michael had his treehouse in the forest, and quietly admitted to Jeremy one day that Lindsay was coming soon too. Jeremy had laughed, and looked out to the altar.

Behind it, there was just enough room for the entrance to a bunker.

Time passed, as it was meant to.

The amount of blood in the basin grew, and shrank, accordingly. If the others noticed, they said nothing, and Jeremy continued along, the runes in his staff stronger now, the dagger at his belt satisfied for once.

The bunker behind the altar had a bed and healing supplies, and a small stone with the initials M.B. engraved sitting next to a pendant with a red gem, still glowing despite the cracks. Someday, Jeremy thought, he’ll do it right.

He got bold enough to catch a few of the monsters that roam the untouched sections of Michael’s forest, and made a second part to the bunker that’s directly beneath the altar. It drained them of their energy, and Jeremy was only sorry for the people they used to be for a small time.

Geoff tended to his chickens, and offered Jeremy the iron and copper he needed‒ supplements, building supplies. He steered clear of the altar‒ they all did, of course‒ but he offered Jeremy his company anyways. The trips Geoff took are long, and Jeremy quietly understood the need to be in the world again.

Michael still asked for help with botany, especially when Lindsay finally came. She brought the strays, and a smile bright as a flame, and hair the same color, and a shine of magic that Jeremy recognized.

Michael grumbled about it goodnaturedly. His wife was, of course, a goddess of pure energy. Of chaos and of joy and the simplicity of fun.

Gavin and Lindsay really would get along well, Jeremy thought as he tied a shining flower to the fencepost nearest the cabin. Ryan and Michael might too.

But naturally, they weren’t here.

Jeremy thought about what it might be like if they were. What it must have been like in Etherium, right now, the two of them together and yet alone, as they always had been.

He drew blood for the altar and continued to work, and wondered if it was okay to wait for them to come back.

There was a stray Jeremy had taken a liking to, that had taken a liking to him as well.

His name was Booker, and he slept on the bed in the bunker, and sat far enough away from the altar to be affected by it when Jeremy was using its power. He was a smart kitten, if not lazy as all cats tended to be, appreciating the sunlight more than the rest of them at the doorstep of the old cabin.

Booker liked to curl on Jeremy’s chest where the pendant lay and purr in the night, kneading at the blankets and rubbing against his cheek. He was only affectionate with Jeremy, really, and that was fine with Geoff, who trusted neither the new strays nor the dragons near his chicken coops and was starting to make his trips longer than before, out to a little alcove away from the rest of them.

Jeremy had been working on spells- for Matt, and for other members of the academy that had fallen to long set plans of the magistrates there. And at some point, the day he finished his plans, he turned towards the cabin to get the gem and pendant, and saw someone sitting on the step, Booker curled happily in their lap.

“Oh my god,” he whispered. A second figure was knelt next to the first, and Jeremy felt his heart stop, wiping at his eyes. “You motherfuckers.”

Both of them looked to him with smiles, and Jeremy made an angry noise that had no real anger behind it.

“Hi again, love. I’m so sorry it’s been so long.”

Gavin’s tone was achingly sincere, and Jeremy felt everything drain from him, if only to be filled again with relief and hope, tangible at his fingertips‒ he felt like he was glowing, too. Ryan stood and took Jeremy’s hand in his with a small smile. “We wanted to visit before but... there are rules to this sort of thing, you know?”

“I guess,” he mumbled. He didn’t know, actually, but he didn’t mind not knowing. “I just thought you...”

There was a long silence after he trailed off, and then Gavin seemed to understand. “Oh, Jeremy...”

“Never,” Ryan swore. “You saved my life by saving his. We love you, Jeremy.”

Jeremy flushed a bright red and pushed forward to hide in Ryan’s chest‒ Gavin started laughing and stood, being careful with Booker as he set him down and pressed against Jeremy’s back. “From the day we met, you’ve done nothing but protect me despite barely knowing me‒ of course we love you.”

“We want you to come with us,” Ryan whispered, pushing Jeremy away to tilt his head up. “But I think you have something else to do, first?”

Jeremy sighed. “In a second,” he murmured. “Allow me this.”

“Always,” Gavin said quietly behind him. “For you, always.”

Michael lead them all past the altar, deeper into the forest, just beyond the barrier of the garden.

“What Jack’s done won’t allow you to do what you need there,” he explained, smiling grimly. “Be careful doing it, because whatever it summons won’t be contained by anything but you.”

“I know what I’m taking,” Jeremy said with a tight grimace. “He shouldn’t attack, but...”

“He won’t,” Gavin piped up beside him. “I know he won’t.”

In full glory, he looked radiant, as he should have been. His eyes were once again aglow, and his skin had returned to it’s warm tone, his hair made of pure gold and shining as bright as the rest of him. Instead of the robes Jeremy had met him in, he wore a loose white shirt with a green vest, and tan pants, all with golden highlights and adorations, runes written in thread in the cuffs and pockets. He looked calmer, and loose‒ a god of summer instead of sun, and it gave Jeremy a feeling of freedom and playful joy every time he looked over.

Ryan, on the other hand, looked relatively the same‒ his cape was now again a soft white-blue, untouched by the midnight, his hair a softer gold than Gavin’s, touched by moonlight to be a gentler, not as bright shade. His eyes were no longer storming, and he smiled often, hovering close to his lover’s side, like something would take him from him again in an instant.

Before they had left the cabin, Ryan had taken Gavin aside and pulled something from beneath his cloak‒ Gavin hadn’t said a word as his scarf was wrapped around him once more, just over the pale scar left on his neck. There was something about it that made Jeremy look away, with the feeling of intrusion on something incredibly private, but not before he saw Gavin reach up to Ryan’s face with a soft, sorry look.

As he had turned away, though, Gavin had tugged him back, smiling to him as well, before pulling away from Ryan and taking something from his pocket.

“Close your eyes,” he’d said, and when Jeremy had, he’d felt Gavin move closer and secure something around his neck.

Now, as Gavin smiled as him reassuringly, he reached up to his chest and touched the pendant, toying with the gold between his fingers. Michael gave his shoulder a hearty pat and a two fingered wave.

“Do what you gotta do,” he said, and the botanist disappeared into the trees again, little faeries following him as the flowers dimmed.

This part of the forest was emptied out of trees, a large flat circle of rocks and grass left alone. Jeremy picked up a few stones from the ground and laid them out in a small pattern‒ Gavin and Ryan watched from the side, smiling and leaning into each other. On each stone, Jeremy left a small amount of blood, a mix of his own and a vial he’d taken from the cellar at the mage school.

In the middle, he left a small ruby and an old skull.

“It may not work,” Ryan said quietly, but over the roar of his heartbeat, everything seemed silent and amplified all at once. “It usually never does, the first time‒ then again, though, it’s not exactly the first time, is it?”

Gavin hit Ryan’s chest and hissed, but Jeremy only gave a quiet laugh.

“If it doesn’t work,” he said, “I keep going. He deserves my best. He deserves a lot.”

No one answered him, but he took a deep breath and started the incantation anyways, letting his dagger blade draw across his palm. The ruby glowed as he continued, brighter and brighter by the second, by the word‒ the skull was lifted by the magic, and a form began to take shape, and Jeremy felt very, very tired, very quickly.

Before the soul was fully returned, Jeremy stumbled, and everything crashed to the ground again. He was caught by the gods, who looked down at him worriedly, but he only smiled.

“I can do it,” he whispered, and Ryan huffed when Gavin giggled. “I can do it‒ I need more time, and more energy, but I can. I can get him back.”

“I told you,” Ryan said, pulling him to his feet. “You’re going to be incredible.”

“And Matt would agree,” Gavin murmured, and Jeremy picked up the ruby and held it tight.

He took them to the peak of the mountain that night.

At the top, the garden was no longer visible unless one was to look straight down off the sheer edge of the cliff, but the view wasn’t lacking. The forest was spread across the hills like a blanket, and just beyond it laid the wasteland and grass fields, a silver sea-like horizon in the moonlight. Nestled among the trees was the trio of temples, glowing like a small beacon in the shaded leaves, but that wasn’t what he brought them to see.

Just on the cliff’s edge sat an overgrown weeping willow, it’s roots curled around the rocks and grass, deeply ingrained into the mountaintop, flowers blooming in the heavy branches, and when he parted the curtain of leaves, they saw. In the shadows, lit by the fireflies, they saw a small altar made of white stone, cracked and worn, overgrown with vines and flora, etchings and place in the world long forgotten.

Jeremy closed the branches again, and the gods looked at him in gentle confusion. He sat, resting against one of the larger roots, and gestured upwards, where the stars seemed to dissolve and multiply, streaks of faint color coating across them.

“I don’t know whose it is,” he said quietly, like speaking any louder would disturb the sky. “But I’d like to think it was theirs, once.”

Gavin sat to his right side and curled against him, humming his agreement. “They were known, once,” he murmured. “But the stars didn’t require any worship. Just for their stories to be heard was enough. Eternity was... always like that, even when I barely knew them. Everywhere and nowhere, and that was just fine.”

“Could you have been like that?”

“Oh, yes,” Gavin said, as Ryan sat to Jeremy’s left. “But I preferred to watch, and know that I was doing right by the world I was made for. In any case, I’ve ended up right where I need to be.”

“And the stars have quite the tale to tell now, I should think,” Ryan whispered, pressing a kiss to Jeremy’s head. “And we have plenty to show you‒ and the others‒ in the meantime.”

Jack’s dragons chitter from far below, and Jeremy feels both Ryan and Gavin curl closer to him as the three of them watch the stars put on their performance, writing the tale into infinity in the constellations.

end