Warnings: blood, a bit of gore, lost will to live, death

“.”

Minseok groaned as the ice block aura wobbled but ultimately pulled back into his being, setting off another rattle in his bones. Sweat dripped down the curves of his face, and he fought his own ribcage to take even one breath. He gripped the aura container. Kai’s aura flickered within, but the object couldn’t be at its limit, right? Did this thing even have a limit?

Taking another breath, he drew on the ice pillar as if he were using it, molding it, before kneading the power towards the container. A piece cracked off and flowed down to his palm, and he felt the object absorb it. Fatigue immediately drained into where the aura had been, and Minseok felt his arms shake under his weight.

He grunted as a squall of insults and threats reregistered back in his mind. Hayong had been shouting at them and swaying from her position on the wall, and the ice that he had used to glue her there wouldn’t last for much longer. The container could take the aura he expelled, but at this rate, he wouldn’t be able to last through having to concentrate, the utter exhaustion, and Hayong breaking free. Footsteps dashed in, and a voice called.

“Minseok hyung!”

“Sehun? Hurry and leave. Before Hayong breaks free.”

“But I got—”

“Just try, human! I will hunt you down and take my happiness for myself!”

“Your so-called happiness is a delusional hole of an attempt to fill your pathetic life!”

Hayong made the smallest of flinches, hesitations, and Minseok wheezed out a laugh. The worry he felt for his life vanished, replaced by a grasp of darkness, of power. If he just rode that tide of dark and followed it back—

His thoughts jarred as his face swung sideways, a sting flaming his cheek. The darkness fled, and the clashes of aura within him erupted to the surface again. Minseok groaned, holding his chest and his cheek, but he recognized that his mind was his own again. What he said… had been awful even towards a criminal like Hayong.

“Are you back?”

He blinked at that voice and looked up, crying out in relief, then in alarm. Yixing knelt at his side, alive, but his eyes washed with white, he barely had any remains of his shirt, soaked in blood where it remained, and parts of his skin looked as if he was bleeding internally.

“Yixing, are you okay?”

“More or less.”

“Hyungs!”

They both turned to Sehun, then Hayong as she ripped her limbs from the wall, dropped to the ground, and lunged at Sehun. Yixing shoved Sehun out of the way and rolled with Hayong until they hit the wall. Summoning an aura knife, Hayong brought the blade down, but Yixing caught her hand and uppercut her to the chest, knocking her back. Faster or more aggressive than Minseok has ever seen his friend move, he swung his leg over, propelled himself up, and nailed his shin across her right wrist and lower torso, pinning her other hand with his own.

“Give up, Hayong!”

“On your ashes! You got to have everything! Why can’t I be happy too?”

“Changing my species wasn’t what made me happy. Maybe in the beginning, I thought that it would. But my real happiness was because I found people who understood me and would always turn me back to the right path when I strayed.”

“Don’t preach when your success was so contingent on your circumstances! You had it easy—from the beginning you were wanted. You found and made your choices. I found and made mine, so why aren’t I allowed to achieve my happiness?”

“Because you made people believe that permanent death was right!”

“And why wouldn’t it be? We both know the curse of eternity. You should know it better than anyone else. Isn’t that why your demonic ability always seeks out life? To end it mercifully? out my aura and kill me then, Yixing. Give me happiness! Kill me! Kill me! Kill me!”

Yixing shackled to a standstill. In his hesitation, Hayong threw him off and whirled around, but Minseok anticipated his friend’s reaction. He grabbed Sehun and shouldered him behind him and punched her as she came up. Pain recoiled through his body, him collapsing as she hit the ground. She screeched and charged forward.

Only to smack into the ground again. Ropes of light had caught her ankle, and more shot after her, twisting around her body. Minseok looked to the source, and his eyes would have ballooned out if pain wasn’t squeezing his eyes together.

“Lord Bibi?”

“I got Hayong!”

She flashed them a worried smile and yanked the ropes out, dragging a shrieking Hayong out of the open-air cave mouth. Minseok hurried to his friend, stumbled over, and managed to shake his shoulder. But his friend stared wide-eyed at nothing. Fear had silenced him still. Minseok felt a jab in his chest to see Hayong’s words affect him like this but also a jab in his chest from the aura internally rending him apart.

“Yixing, help me. I can’t—Hayong’s aura is—”

A crack of pain stopped his words, and he hit the ground again. He sensed his ribs cracking within the cloud of aura, shards of bones jabbed and sliced against his insides. Each breath was too sharp and too short.

“Minseok hyung!”

That seemed to snap Yixing out of his shock though because his friend gasped and leaned to him.

“The aura container—”

“I got it for him.”

Minseok felt his fist opened and the aura container taken from his grip. The aura of the ice pillar swelled and drilled into him, and there was barely any of his own flurry to soften the blows. They suddenly pushed away from each other and left Hayong’s aura to lash. He couldn’t help the whines escaping from his throat as the pillar was tugged out only to snap back within him. He felt another rib bone crack.

“It’s resisting being pulled away from a connection to hell. There’s not enough of your own aura to keep it into submission, and I’m too weak to force it out from you. No one else knows how to do this except for me, Suho, and Lord Satan, but they’re fighting outside.”

Minseok looked up at his friends. Helplessness and panic overwhelmed their expressions, and that struck another pain in him. His hand found Yixing’s, and he held it fast. His consciousness fogged, thoughts scrambled and ran through his head, and he wondered if he should give up. His mind slipped back, towards a darkness that held nothing, not even the empty power of before, not even pain. And maybe—

“Minseok hyung! What about what you said? You told me that you need to be alive to love Chen-shi, right? Then stay alive!”

Fingers dug into his shoulders, warm, and hard enough to pull him away from the edge. Sehun was right, but how was he supposed to take out an aura eating him alive? The hand in his squeezed, and an epiphany through Hayong’s own horrible words lit in Minseok’s mind.

“Xing, what’s your demonic ability exactly?”

Yixing flinched, and how perfect that he understood Minseok exactly.

“No! I know what your plan is, and I won’t! I said to myself that I would never use that accursed ability again!”

“Please, Xing I want to live. I want to live and love Chen without guilt. I… I love him, and I’m too selfish to just be okay with the time I had with him already. I’m being selfish and not fair to you but please.”

His friend was gasping, almost hyperventilating. His eyes blazed so white, and Minseok could imagine wisps of energy flickering from them in his delirious state, but as much as they shook, realization and desperation dawned in them.

“My demonic ability works by taking the aura, then the soul, of another. It doesn’t work with the same principles as my healing, so if I take it too far—”

“Do it, Xing. I trust you.”

His grip tightened to the point that Minseok’s hand could only slacken in response, but he found reassurance in the action. The depths of Yixing’s aura that had grown under his glow now stirred, sharpened into greedy jaws. Fangs sank into his existence and ripped it apart, tearing, devouring, howling for more.

Minseok’s world fell into darkness.

~~~~~

“Suho! I also have to pick some herbs to make the healing tonic, so come help me! We can watch the Mid-Gate volcano spew lava afterwards!”

He watched his friend, his lieutenant, pull him into a hell port. Kyuhyun’s hell port always reflected his mood, and from the way he felt as if he were sliding through a viscous darkness, he knew that Kyuhyun was sad. Later, when he had finally gathered the courage to ask him why, his friend gave him a bitter smile.

Stones clattered above him, and Suho wiped a wave of water above him, redirecting them to the side. The rock under him shot upward, and he leapt back, landing on a board of water that he rode along the wall of the perimeter, waves of earth snatching at his heels.

“I always wondered what it would be like to fight you, Suho of Tehom! Are you as cruel as the rumors say? Will you show me the ruthlessness that let you kill your own second in command?”

“Suho, there’s something I need to tell you.”

Kyuhyun looked out over the Howling Mountain. They had finished their joint mission today, and a bit of pride bounced in Suho’s chest. Not only had he fought well, but he also got to fight alongside his lieutenant. It was awe-inspiring to see Kyuhyun manipulate the Raudkembingur once they found it in the seas near what humans had deemed the Icelandic Commonwealth.

Without his teammates having to do much anything, Suho heaved the monstrous whale to the ocean surface before his lieutenant leapt onto its back, implanted the desire, and controlled the beast to stay away from humans for the next hundred years.

Suho had taken his hand as his silent praise, and Kyuhyun had given him a squeeze back. He also looked back at the other angelics of their team, so Suho did too, but he couldn’t understand why disgust showed in their faces.

Kicking off his board, Suho dove for Tongza and swung his water blade down onto the angel. He easily pierced through the rock acting as a shield and threw Tongza back, straight into the earth. Suho pulled the board under his feet again, staying in the air as the earth angel looked up at him.

“Is that all, Suho of Tehom? You didn’t even make a dent into the rock with me. Where is the wrath you told me to survive? Are you giving me the mercy that you didn’t give your lieutenant?”

Suho charged down and lanced his weapon towards the angel. Earth swallowed Tongza, the blade splashing against the rock. Suho darted his eyes left and right to sense for the criminal.

“It’s not just that, Suho.”

Kyuhyun stopped walking, so he did too. His lieutenant looked out into the courtyards of heaven that sat near the Havadia Library, his eyes flickering in blue. His blue was deeper than Suho’s own, like the gradient that appeared during earth’s sunset, after the sun dipped below the horizon but before the violet twilight. A precursor.

“I’m also wondering why you’re so okay with this. Whenever I bring it up to the commander or our other unitmates, they don’t take me seriously or they tell me the same answer of doing missions, protecting humans, and being there for each other. You’re not just going along with everything I say just because I’m your superior, right?”

Suho shook his head.

“Oh. Then why?”

Suho blinked, thinking. Lately, he would approach his friend, and Kyuhyun would break into a smile when he saw him, asking about his most recent mission. But it was in the moments before where Suho would see the embers of something more destructive than just sorrow. Those instances pained him in a way that he didn’t know how to describe, but he found that if he stayed with his friend and listened and understood his desire to find the secret to life, then those embers wouldn’t light.

But Suho didn’t know how to explain this out loud. They were feelings, inklings, that he wasn’t sure actually made sense. No one taught him about emotions, but he felt that his emotions were less important than his friend’s right now, so he did what impulse spurred him to do as his reply.

He took his friend’s free hand, the one not stuffed in his pocket, and pressed the back of it to his lips.

“S-Suho?”

He wasn’t someone who spoke unless absolutely necessary or called upon by a higher position, but it was just him and his friend right now, and Kyuhyun understood him without needing words.

At least, up to that moment, that had been the case.

He was too late. His left side exploded in pain, and he felt the earth magic poisoning drain through his aura, damming parts of its flow. He swung his arm back and only allowed himself to stagger when Tongza had jumped out of the way. The angel was tired too, evident by the way he breathed heavily. His attacks had been unrestrained and imprudent, and he could tell from the start of their battle that Chen, Kai, and a few others he didn’t know personally had managed to wound him too.

“You’re distracted, Suho. I thought that you would give me the fight of my life. How upsetting! I will give you one thing though. You were right in that I wanted to taste purpose. I want a reason to live that doesn’t belong to God or the glories or the angelics.”

“Then why didn’t you just leave?”

Tongza spit and funneled the earth into a tornadic rockslide, driving it straight towards Suho. He blocked with his arms and tried to gather water in his palms, to slow the motion. The force pushed him back until his feet hit a raised part of the uneven earth, and Suho braced himself against it.

“You and that proxy are insolent in your minds and words. Do you think it’s easy to leave? To live a life of disgrace and humiliation? To be no one?”

Feeling the power in his hands, Suho whipped out a wave of water. Tongza’s earth stopped, and Suho dove behind his blade still stuck in the cracks. He flipped the blade and forced the water wide, just in time as Tongza’s earth cannon blasted against the makeshift shield.

“If you were no one, would that matter? You would have what you wanted. You would be free.”

“So you say! I know my responsibilities, Suho. Running from them is foolish when they are ordained by God and angelics who crafted their system to obey that god. Rogues have no one, and Hayong would be human.”

“Then why have Hayong become human? Why separate? Why not just abandon the angelics together as rogues?”

“Because we understand that of all the sentient creatures in existence, humans are the