Thar coughed against the stone, clearing his throat and the last of the bad blood that had been stuck inside him. After the… whatever it was that just happened with D’Argen, he felt his mahee healing his body. Every cold breath in felt like refreshing water and it patched up the tears inside his throat and further down into his lungs.

It took a few more deep breaths in the awkward silence of the cavern before Thar felt like he was strong enough to raise his head.

He did not dare raise his eyes to look at the runner.

Thar knew that what he felt for the other was not reciprocated and that it never would be. That was just who D’Argen was. That was also one of the reasons why Thar loved him so much.

Even though he had always known this, that did not stop the pain inside him that was neither physical nor from his mahee. Something else was squeezing so hard on his heart and who he was. He had always known that D’Argen could never love him the same way he loved the runner, but that did not mean it did not hurt. They were one. He felt his own desires raging out of control at that connection—a connection he had never felt before and probably never will again—and then he felt how strange that felt for his other half.

“Stop that,” D’Argen grumbled from where he was still sitting on the ground.

Thar dared to raise his eyes but he only did as far as to see D’Argen’s boots, sprawled in a lazy tangle.

“I feel that. Stop it.”

Thar startled at D’Argen’s words and his eyes finally raised to look at D’Argen. The runner was not looking at him. He reached inside himself, for that unfamiliar pain that was too strong to ignore, only to realize that it did come from his mahee. But not…

“What happened?” Thar finally asked.

D’Argen only moved his shoulders up and down. When they came down, his entire body looked like it slumped and he melted further into the stone formation at his back. Thar reached for that pain and felt it turn into an itch against his ribs. D’Argen reached up and scratched at his side over his robes. The runner did not even seem to realize he was doing it until Thar pushed that itch to spread.

Finally, D’Argen turned to look at him and those beautiful eyes—every single blue that ever existed in the universe fighting for attention and forcing the darkest depths of the ocean to the forefront—finally locked on his.

“You are healing,” Thar said.

D’Argen frowned and stopped scratching at his side. Then he nodded.

“And I feel it,” Thar continued.

D’Argen nodded yet again and looked away again.

Thar looked down at himself. His lungs were already fine if a little sore from the wounds and all the coughing. Even the large scratches on his back from when he fell and tumbled through the rough ice when he and D’Argen split up were healed up. He closed his eyes and reached for his entire body.

“Yeah, ow,” D’Argen said the moment Thar touched a tender spot on the small of his back with his mahee.

Then Thar closed it off.

He imagined a wall of ice so thick that it would be impossible for anybody to break. It built up so fast that his mahee screamed and tore at him. He concentrated, ignoring the pain and forcing it as far back behind that wall of ice until…

“Huh…”

Thar opened his eyes and looked at D’Argen. The runner was looking at his own hands, turning them over and over as if they were something completely new. Then D’Argen got up. The moment he stepped on his bad leg, Thar was ready to rush him to help, but D’Argen did not even wince. In fact, he shifted all his weight to that leg, lifted the other off the ground, and even hopped a few times.

Even with Simeal’s strongest spells the bone of that break that Thar had felt would not heal that fast. Something happened.

Something that made no sense at all.

Then D’Argen started moving and it was neither toward Thar nor toward where they came from. His figure disappeared behind another rock formation and his footsteps got quieter. After a moment, they stopped, but D’Argen did not say anything.

Thar reached for his mahee, muttered one of Abbot’s spells, and then let the light settle on his chest instead of moving to his hand or above his head. It was so bright that he had to close his eyes for a moment and then let some of his mahee go.

There was so much.

D’Argen continued to wait at the entrance of one of the paths out of their cavern but Thar did not go to him. Not right away.

He let Abbot’s light go and instead focused deep inside himself. His mahee was… there was so much. He could feel his veins hardening with the ice crystals of his power and then the blood itself singing and screaming at him. Without thought, he formed a long ice crystal in the palm of his hand. Its tip was so thin and sharp that it could cut through skin with ease.

“I think it’s this way,” D’Argen said, finally tired of waiting for him.

Thar let the crystal shatter into sparkles as he muttered Abbot’s spell once more and let the light shine from his chest as he walked up to where D’Argen was waiting for him. D’Argen did not wait any longer and started walking. This time, Thar was able to tone the white light down so it would not blind him but still shine bright enough to where D’Argen walked in front of him.

D’Argen did not say anything and Thar followed silently behind, so focused on his mahee and those chains inside him that were just gone. It was like they were never there at all. He remembered what it felt like when each of them wrapped around him. Acela’s hurt only because it was the first. Darania’s hurt because she had been on his side up until that moment. The chain Upates wrapped around him was like barbed wire that struck through the holes of the other two. Zetha’s was last and by then Thar had almost grown numb.

Vah’mor’s chain, however, was the one that truly felt like a punishment. Thar knew that Vah’mor was unhappy with him – not scared, like the others. But he also knew that Vah’mor had control over something else that none of the others did.

Thar focused on D’Argen’s back as the runner walked in front of him. He never did understand the relationship between D’Argen and Vah’mor, but he knew that Vah’mor had a lot of influence over the runner and he hated it. When Vah’mor wrapped their chain around Thar’s mahee, Thar could have sworn Vah’mor let out a sigh of relief. Thar could have sworn that Vah’mor was happy not because they limited his powers, but because it meant that Thar could no longer be with D’Argen.

Not for a thousand years.

Little did Vah’mor know, D’Argen was the one to find him first.

The tunnel they were walking through was rough and natural, a stream of water having carved it in both the ice and rock. It looked felt like it was older than how long they had even been on this land. Thar reached out to touch the wall beside him when suddenly he stumbled and the light went out.

A moment later, he heard a scuffle of boots against stone and D’Argen swore something under his breath. It did not sound like he fell though.

“What happened?” D’Argen asked in the pitch black around them and his voice echoed up and down the tunnel.

Thar reached inside for his mahee as he muttered Abbot’s spell and then—

He felt something in the way. The words failed to complete the spell and he concentrated on that something different. It felt like a stream of water was lapping at the edges of the ice wall he had built earlier.

Thar tried to look for D’Argen in the dark, to get a confirmation of where that water was coming from, but he could see nothing but pitch black. He forced his mahee to expand the wall and it turned out that the stream was just the shores of the ocean. Thar pushed past that, expanding the wall further, and then spoke Abbot’s spell, guiding his mahee away from the wall of ice and the ocean lapping at its edges to reach for the sun.

When the light started shining, a slow glow so their eyes could adjust to it, Thar was surprised to note that it did not come from his chest. Not only. Instead, it had a twin shining from right in front of him. When he focused on the light that gave a sharp outline to D’Argen’s figure, it faded away until the tunnel was once more lit in the cold light that Thar’s mahee bent Abbot’s sunlight into.

D’Argen started walking once more and Thar followed him at the same pace. He did not need to focus on walking the tunnel carved by time or the light shining from his chest and instead reached inside him for the ice wall. The crystals in his blood were fighting for attention, trying to distract him, churning his blood in a way that he had never felt before and forming and disappearing so fast that it was dizzying.

Then Thar was sure what was happening.

“Stop it,” he said, voice low, to the man in front of him.

With the light shining on his back, Thar easily noticed D’Argen hesitate on his next step and then continue as if nothing happened. The ocean waves calmed and stopped lapping against the wall of ice. Thar reached with his mahee for the water and felt it there, on the edges of his consciousness along with his mahee, already a part of him as it had been earlier but at the same time calmer. He reached for it—

A sound not that far ahead of them had them both turning quickly in that direction and focusing in the darkness. D’Argen visibly perked up.

“Over here!” D’Argen called and his voice echoed.

Then there was a response and Thar felt something inside him. It was strange.

It was both relief and at the same time a loneliness that just did not make any sense. Even worse. Thar could not tell which one of those emotions came from him and which from the man in front of him.