Summary: Eden hadn’t always been a city beneath the ocean. Eden hadn’t always been six feet under and lonely, corpses lost to the ocean’s creatures and to the gods who deemed the entire city and its people fit to die.
The fall of Eden, as depicted by Vessel.
Word Count: 7.6k words
TW: Blood, implied suicidal ideation and thoughts, implied self-harm, so many people die (both on-screen and off-screen)
Please take care of yourself
Author’s Note: crawls out of my pit
I give to you another offering.
It builds on the hinted flooding of Eden, and hopefully builds the world that's somehow spawned in my brain.
Title is from Take Me Back To Eden by Sleep Token.
This is me playing around with their stage personas. There's nothing related to their real identities here, and I don't intend for there to be.
Also on AO3
The AO3 version features more ramblings on the end notes
Eden hadn’t always been a city beneath the ocean. Eden hadn’t always been six feet under and lonely, corpses lost to the ocean’s creatures and to the gods who deemed the entire city and its people fit to die.
Eden used to be a flourishing place, its borders reaching far inland to reel in rich farmlands for fresh produce to export to neighboring towns and villages. Eden had lush greenery that was underneath its protection, signing treaties with the fantastical creatures within if it benefited both parties (protection in exchange for powerful magic never sounded like a bad idea; after all, the gods had not hurt the citizens of Eden for it yet). Eden had clear beaches that had certainly been a main draw for tourists, boasting of teeming marine life if one sailed just far out into the depths.
The only true equal that Eden had was Arcadia, a similar city on the other end of the continent. The cities were on good terms with each other, but its people almost never visited each other; after all, why would they when they had everything they could ever want within their city’s borders? Eden had powerful mages, clerics for various gods, healers in various guilds, and jobs aplenty. What more could someone ask for?
Then, the illness started.
It had started with the elderly.
Families reported mood changes: grandparents becoming anxious or aggressive, yelling at others and causing children to cry and parents to become upset. Caretakers reported increased confusion, elderly patients and family members becoming unaware of what day or time it was, or of where or who they were. Sometimes the caretakers were followed by the people who were affected by the illness everywhere they went, only to be met with negative mood changes when the caretakers tried to reestablish boundaries. There were reported hallucinations and delusions, sensory input lying to the brain and the same organ spinning up false beliefs. The two were often intertwined with each other, leading to frustration.
The affected beings would cease to sleep all night, wandering through the homes and buildings where they resided, knocking on doors and standing in hallways, oblivious to their body’s need to close their eyes and rest. Only when the sun rose, burning away the darkness of the night and coaxing the citizens of Eden to leave their homes to contribute to society and learn and play once more, did the affected beings suddenly feel the need to sleep.
One might think that it would end there.
And they would be wrong.
From there, the affected beings would sleep all day, unable to be woken up.
And the cycle would continue: Restless when the sun sunk below the horizon, sleeping when the sun rose once again.
Someone had suggested mass senicide, but it was quickly shot down (how cruel that would be! A mass killing of their elderly, the ones who held knowledge beyond one’s years!) in exchange for money to be piled towards understanding the root cause of the problem.
Then, the illness spread.
Children started getting it, then the healthiest of the population.
Well, this wouldn’t do!
The citizens of Eden started to flock to the temples, large structures built from magic-harvested stone and carved by hand. Chiseled in the walls were runes dedicated to several different gods: gods that granted good harvest, gods that granted protection, gods that granted peace. People laid their offerings on the altars (fresh pieces of fruit usually), lit fresh candles and burnt incense, then knelt and prayed.
Please, what was going on?
What had they done to deserve this?
Was there anything they could do to stop this?
But the gods did not answer.
------
There was a young man who lived in Eden when it was flourishing. If someone were to ask him what his name was, he couldn’t tell them. Not because he was being secretive. Quite the opposite: there was nothing in his brain that could remember what he was called before.
He could only remember his name now: Vessel.
Whenever he tried remembering what his life was when he lived in Eden, he couldn’t recall specifics. He couldn’t remember the nicknames people gave him (both the good and bad, which he was thankful for, though he could remember being called “the shy kid”), nor the school he went to or how many times he knelt to the ground to pray to the gods.
Vessel remembered his mother though.
She was a beautiful woman, a bit on the taller end but she used it to her advantage, always hiding the best treats away from Vessel when he was younger. She had hair that drew attention to her eyes, which were a soft hue that teared up whenever something sad happened. She smelled of pleasant blossoming flowers and sweet baked goods that were dusted in powdered sugar, something that Vessel sometimes craved when he was feeling down.
She was a devoted worshiper of the gods, hiking her way to the temples each week and urging Vessel to do the same. It didn’t matter if it was a scorching hot day or a day that made their teeth chatter from the cold. “The gods will bless you if you show that you’re willing to visit them even when they don’t visit you back.”
He remembered asking her why. Why would he do that? Why would he spend so much time pouring love towards something that only loved him back if he never faltered in loving it first?
She instead kissed the top of his head (and he remembered that it would be his cheek later on, for he hit a pretty hefty growth spurt) and whispered to him to not worry. The gods would bless him if he loved them unconditionally.
Vessel loved and respected his mother, so he listened to her.
When she told him to be a dear and do an errand for her, he did it.
When she told him to come back from music practice with a close friend before nightfall, he did it.
And when she pushed forward a waxed paper packet filled with seven pills that smelled of strong herbs and even stronger magic imbued within it, telling him to take it each night, he hesitated.
Why?
“This will prevent you from getting the sundowning disease,” she told him. Her voice was strong and steady, but her eyes betrayed her worry. There were wrinkles on her face that weren’t there before. “The clerics are trying to communicate with the gods to see if there’s anything that we can do to stop it from spreading. But the healers have made this for now, as a temporary solution. Please, take it darling.”
But what about her? Where was her medicine?
She held up her own small packet. “Don’t worry, my dear. We’ll take it together if you’re scared.”
He was a fresh adult, so he hated being patronized. But he couldn’t deny that he was frightened of being infected. So he sat at the edge of his bed while his mother watched him. One capsule rolled in his palm and a pit of worry filled him as he stared it down.
He remembered taking medicine when he was younger, small hard tablets that the healers said would boost his mood and energy after his mother failed to get him out of bed for several months. He was eventually weaned off of it and still visited one of the healers for check-ups pertaining to it, but seeing the capsule triggered some sort of premature gag reflex in him.
He closed his eyes, popped the medicine in his mouth, and washed it down with a full cup of water. He stuck his tongue out and made a noise of disgust after he did so. Was it childish? Yes. But this particular medicine was the worst-tasting one he had ever tried.
“Good job, darling,” his mother praised. “And just like I promised.” She took her own dosage without much dramatics save for a small wrinkle of her nose. “That’s bitter.” He remembered laughing at that, then the kiss to his forehead. “Sleep well, my dear.”
Vessel enjoyed dreaming. Sometimes, his dreams were nonsensical bursts of emotion that left him waking up with a tight feeling in his chest and tears falling from the corners of his eyes (he always wiped them away and choked back a whimper that arose from his unconscious reaction; he didn’t need to worry his mother again). Other times, his dreams were pulled from his memories, so tangible that he could touch them; the only problem was that they were warped with sleep, painted over with all the wrong colors, and distorted so he couldn’t properly remember what anyone said.
Rarely, Vessel could control what he did in his dreams. The first time he did so, Vessel simply hugged his best friend as he drummed away without a care in the world, breathing in the subtle scent of some gifted cologne that his mothers had given for his birthday. Upon awakening, Vessel could still feel his friend’s back pressed against his chest and smell the soft fragrance. He buried his face in his blanket and longed to jump back into that dream.
It meant everything and nothing at all.
However, ever since he started taking the preventative medication, his dreams came to an abrupt halt. He would take the capsule before sunset, would get hit with a strong wave of drowsiness, and hit the bed. But that was it. No strange emotions to rouse tears from. No distorted memories.
No dreams that he could control.
No dreams at all.
At first, Vessel didn’t mind that. He would sleep, wake up, go about his day, take the medicine, and repeat the cycle. His memories were crisp and clear, his senses primed and ready to take in the day. The smell of burning sticks of incense weekly, he could do without. But the sound and vibration of drums beneath his feet and the imagined colors bursting from a laugh? He could get drunk on those every day.
Eventually, Vessel yearned to dream once again. His ideas for music were becoming stale from just relying on the waking world, often leading to unproductive work sessions where his friend would play with his hands in an attempt to “ward off your stress”, as he would say. He would rub Vessel’s fingers between his own, commencing on the calluses as if he were pointing out the best achievements that one could obtain. Sometimes their knees would touch, and other times his friend would take it upon himself to drape his legs over Vessel’s lap.
“Because you’ve got enough real estate for it,” he would say, “and because it’s a waste to let it go unnoticed.”
Vessel often retaliated by intertwining their hands together with a boyish grin, feeling some sort of pride build up in his chest at watching his friend’s face flush a beautiful red. “Why don’t you hold something other than your drumsticks all day, hmm?” he teased one day.
His friend — his best friend from anywhere, yet he couldn’t remember his name — didn’t pull his hand away. Didn’t remove his legs from Vessel’s lap. Just looked at him, eyes darting everywhere and never settling on one location akin to his hands when they were flying across the drumkit. “Because it implies things that aren’t true,” he whispered, eyes locked downwards. He squeezed Vessel’s hand as he added, “And I can’t stand it.”
Something in Vessel contorted, something familiar that he didn't like thinking about. Something about letting his mother down (he loved and respected her, he promised, but sometimes it got too much when she commented on not wanting him to grow up alone). Something about searching for something that wasn’t there. Something about finally finding it, but being unable to describe it in a way that matched everyone else’s view of it. And if he dared to express it, then it was devalued.
Vessel took a deep breath in and exhaled all in one go: “Do you ever feel like you see colors that others don’t?”
His friend, bless him, furrowed his brow and shook his head. “No?”
“Hypothetically.” Vessel could feel his own face start to heat up, so he avoided looking at his friend as he rambled on. “If someone asked you what your favorite color was, then they’d say something like ‘red’ or ‘blue’ or ‘green’, or something super specific, like ‘electric blue’.” He waited for the small nod from the corner of his vision before he continued. “But if you say something really odd, like ‘my favorite color is the way that the sun reflects off the water as it rises’, then people look at you weird. They tell you that it’s not a real color. But it’s a real color to you.” He wanted to fiddle with his fingers, but one hand was currently latched onto his friend’s hand. He didn’t want to let go just yet, so he rubbed the fabric of his tunic between his fingers instead.
“So, hypothetically,” his friend said, “what would your favorite color be?”
Vessel chuckled and shook his head. “It’s hard to explain.”
“I have time.”
“It’s…” Oh gods, the words were fighting in his throat again, scratching at his vocal cords and begging to be heard. Vessel swallowed them down and organized his thoughts. “It’s the colors that burst out of you when you laugh.” And it wasn’t just anyone’s laugh that produced his favorite color. No, it was just his laugh.
“Oh.”
“It’s stupid, I know.”
His friend, his best friend and drummer of the idea that Vessel suggested to him, pressed his forehead against Vessel’s upper arm. “Shut up, it’s not stupid,” he murmured. “That’s a wonderful color.” He shifted his position so he could wrap his other arm around Vessel, holding him like he was the most precious thing ever. Vessel’s face warmed even more at that, and his heart stuttered when he heard his drummer add, “My favorite color is your smile when you sing, all lost in the music you make from your soul.”
Oh, if Vessel wasn’t currently sitting down with his friend practically in his lap, he would’ve pranced around him in excitement. Unfortunately, it was a bit hard to do that at the moment, so Vessel instead laughed shyly and let his friend cling onto him. “You could be my favorite color, if you’d want.”
“I hate the implications of what that could be to others.” There was hesitation there, like a brief rest or a cymbal choke that he did so well. Like he wanted to agree to it but. But there would be questions and assumptions and things that Vessel knew that the drummer didn’t want to have to explain.
Vessel leaned over and planted a kiss on his friend’s head, exhaling an easy sigh. That pit still swirled in his chest, but it was dampened and filled by something else. Something warm and musical and rhythmic like a heartbeat. “I could be your favorite color. I could be your provider, and I could promise a lot of things to you.”
“You’re persistent, you know that?”
“Mm, love you too.”
The grip around his hand tightened. “I didn’t even say it, why did you — ?”
“Because you get it.” He understood. He understood and that was all Vessel could really ask for right now. “And I do love you too. Even if you don’t say it back.” It was all he could say for now as he balanced between cracking open his chest for his friend to look inside and bleeding out on the floor as he hoped and prayed that he wasn’t slicing himself open for nothing.
But he did that enough with the gods. And he still took that bitter medicine. If that was what he surmounted to with his friend, then that was —
“I love you back.”
Scratch that. If the two of them could ascend to divinity right there, then Vessel wouldn’t have minded it. But he would still like to play music with him, and ascending to divinity sounded like it would reduce the number of chances for that. So he settled for letting out a loud whoop of joy, giggling at how his friend startled for a second before he lightly hit Vessel’s shoulder. Vessel ate up how his gaze averted when he said it again: “I love you too.”
“Don’t wear it out now.” But the drummer laughed when he said it, and those beautiful colors burst forth once again.
------
One night, Vessel stopped taking his medicine.
It had been a long time coming for the musician. He couldn’t stand his ideas only coming from his waking hours. The prospect of getting sundowning disease scared him (the gods were still unresponsive; the infected were wasting away from their abnormal mental state and sleep schedule, and some had died already from not drinking or eating), but becoming stuck in a never-ending loop of stale projects scared him more.
Vessel hid his stash of weekly sleeping medicine underneath a loose floorboard that only he knew about. Gods forbid if his mother had found it somehow; he knew that the only reason why he was allowed to control his medicine was because the healers suggested it. To prove that he was well enough to make decisions that benefited his daily living. To prove that he didn’t need to go back on his previous medicine.
To prove that he wanted to live.
He did, he promised. He just…made a lapse of decision a few years ago. And kept making lapses of decision for a while before that.
(He didn’t need to be resurrected, but he still remembered his mother sobbing at the bedside of the healers, hands clasped together in rapid prayer. He still bared his bad decisions on his arms, particularly the ones that managed to open up his arteries.
(He regrets it. At first, he regretted waking up. But now, he regrets even trying to sleep forever.
(He was more scared of dying than he was of living now.)
He closed his eyes and hoped that sleep would take him before sundowning disease did. His mouth tasted empty, lacking the bitter taste that the medication usually delivered after he swallowed it.
When Vessel woke, he was in a field. The world was washed out in shades of grey akin to charcoal drawings. The soil beneath his bare feet was loamy, getting in between his toes and underneath his nails. But the thing that attracted his attention was the piano floating in the middle of a beam of gentle light.
He stepped towards it apprehensively, as if stepping too quickly would cause it to disappear. When he laid his hands on the black and white keys, he gasped. He was dreaming again. He was dreaming and he was in control of his dreams for the first time in a while.
He pressed a few chords out, feeling the keys smoothly sink down and for their sound to ring out loud and true. Grinning, he started to play a song that he planned to record with his friend soon. They would need good crystals for sound quality and a few other things, but he played it freely just because he could in a dream. Time seemed to dilate as he played. It sounded even better here and he almost wished that he could bring it into reality.
Saltwater stung his nose.
Blood rushed in his ears.
A choir of three started singing from all around him.
Vessel looked up from his hunched-over playing, his fingers hitting a few keys incorrectly as he did so. His breath quickened and he stepped back from the piano only to be urged back towards it by water swirling around his legs.
Wake up, he thought. Wake up, wake up.
NO.
NOT YET.
Vessel screamed. But the dream continued.
KEEP PLAYING.
YOU ARE THE FIRST.
YOU ARE THE FIRST IN A LONG TIME.
KEEP PLAYING FOR ME.
Vessel hunched over the piano, gripping it as if it would help him wake up. It felt real, it all felt too real. Something tasted in the back of his throat, metallic and thick. Swallowing it back, he played the chords of the song. He opened his mouth and sang. He managed to sing one verse before he choked on something soft in the back of his throat, and upon hacking it up into the saltwater soil soup he stood in, he saw that it was bright red blood that had coagulated.
Oh gods.
YES.
YOU WILL DO.
The space split in front of him and out stepped three beings from a bright split in the dark sky. They wore shapeless dark robes that seemed to melt into the night around them, arms folded together and hoods of night with curls of gold covering their eyes. Only their mouths were clear, formed by swatches of black lipstick against human skin.
SING WITH HIM, MY CHOIR.
They opened their mouths and sang the first verse of the song Vessel just played, voices curving around in harmony. They swayed slightly with the song, hands eventually freeing themselves from their long sleeves and moving mesmerizingly.
Vessel sang the chorus, the post-chorus, the second verse. Somewhere along the way, the music in the soupy, charcoal-colored fields reverberated and grew. Oh, how he wanted to pull this into reality and make it real! But there was something missing, something wrong.
The percussion sounded off.
He wasn’t his friend, he wasn’t a drummer. But he knew that this dream couldn’t build up into the proper reality that was his drummer prattling on about how he was a fan of the standard paradiddle as he hit the drums and cymbals with precision that he might as well be threading a needle with his eyes closed.
“Who are you?” he whispered.
MY NAME WOULD DESTROY YOUR ESSENCE.
“Who are you?” he repeated. “Why did you come to me?”
I CAME BECAUSE YOU DREAM AT NIGHT.
NO ONE DOES ANYMORE.
DREAMS OF THE DAY ARE NOT AS POWERFUL FOR AS LONG AS THEY LAST.
BUT YOU.
YOU DREAM AT NIGHT.
“Who are you?” Vessel screamed. “I’m not worthy to– To be in the presence of the gods. I– You don’t even respond to the prayers of Eden’s people! So why me?” He coughed on another piece of blood, and he spat it out in anger, tears forming on the edges of his eyes for reasons he couldn’t explain. “Why me?”
THE GODS HAVE ABANDONED EDEN.
THEY SEE IT INFECTED.
THAT IS MY FAULT FOR SEEKING OUT HUMANITY’S IDEAS ONCE AGAIN.
BUT MY CHOIR HAVE ASCENDED TO DIVINITY. THEY ARE NO LONGER TETHERED TO HUMANITY.
BUT YOU.
YOU ARE THE FIRST IN A LONG TIME.
BECOME MY FIRST.
“No.” Vessel took a step back, the pitch black water around his knees swirling with soil and blood. “No. I can’t. I– I shouldn’t.”
YOU WILL DIE OTHERWISE.
THE GODS HAVE ABANDONED EDEN.
“I didn’t mean to– I tried to, but it — ” Vessel tripped over his words before pressing his lips shut, breathing sharply through his nose. “Let me wake up. Let me think.”
EDEN WILL FALL.
YOU ARE NOT EXCEMPT FROM IT.
And Vessel woke up.
------
Vessel continued to stop taking his sleeping medication from then on.
His hidden stash continued to grow, and every time his mother stepped into his room, he worried that she would find it. Accuse him of saving up the medicine to take it all at once. The sleeping medication was fatal when taken in large doses; its normal mechanism of action affected how active the brain was, dimming its activity so one could sleep throughout the night.
It also prevented people from dreaming.
But large doses dimmed the brain activity too much, and people struggled to breathe. With that, they die.
Vessel quite liked breathing.
Living, on the other hand…was a complicated subject.
He continued to dream and visit that sleeping realm. He continued to play music within it. He stopped coughing up blood after a few visits, and he managed to play through the songs that he had planned for the first small release. He never became truly comfortable in the dream realm, but it slowly changed.
The charcoal colors of the slowly faded away into something more coppery. The black colors still stayed, but it slinked back into strong lines that defined towering buildings akin to cathedrals. Vessel himself was still colored as he was in the waking world, but he always felt off looking at his hands and the scenery around him.
SOON.
“What’s soon?”
SOON EDEN WILL FALL.
YOU WILL NOT BE EXCEMPT FROM IT.
UNLESS YOU BECOME MY FIRST.
Vessel had kept denying the eldritch god’s offer. Saying that he was scared, too much of a coward. He had ties to the mortal world, he didn’t want to forget anyone he deemed special.
YOU WILL NOT BE LIKE MY CHOIR.
THEY CHOSE TO ASCEND TO BE CLOSER TO ME.
THEY CHOSE TO ABANDON HUMANITY.
THEY CANNOT CONNECT WITH YOUR KIND.
BUT YOU, BEING HUMAN AND VESSEL, WILL.
YOU WILL FORGET, YES.
BUT YOU WILL REMEMBER WHAT IS IMPORTANT.
Vessel swallowed. He breathed in and out, focusing on the seconds between each one. A count of four. “Why would I become your vessel?”
PROTECTION.
FAME.
MUSIC.
DANCING BETWEEN HUMANITY AND GODHOOD.
YOU WOULD TASTE GODHOOD. I WOULD TASTE HUMANITY.
DECIDE QUICKLY. EDEN’S END COMES TONIGHT.
Vessel’s breath hitched in his throat. “Tonight?” He stepped back from the piano and looked around him frantically.
No.
No, no, no.
“How will it end?” His voice was quiet at first, but then it quickly rose to a panicked cry. “How will Eden end?”
THE GODS’ AVATARS. THE HOLY GODS. THE COMMON GODS.
THE AVATARS HAVE CIRCLED EDEN FOR SEVERAL NIGHTS.
THEY WILL FLOOD IT. CLEANSE MY PHYSICAL PRESENCE FROM THE EARTH.
A GOD THAT IS NOT UNDERSTOOD IS NOT WELCOME TO TOUCH HUMANITY.
Vessel’s breath was coming in and out too fast to properly process it. Tonight. Soon. Eden will be flooded. Everyone will drown. Everyone will die.
For a moment, he considered abandoning the god. Waking up, seeing the ocean rise and crash into the city. He considered stepping outside of his small house and letting the violent waves strike him. He wondered if he would die from his skull hitting something hard like stone, or if he would die from water filling his lungs and choking out all the air from him. It wouldn’t be too bad, he rationalized. It would be like falling asleep permanently. It would be like watching his blood drain from his veins and nicked arteries, feeling his body cool and his consciousness waver.
No one would be able to save him this time.
But then, Vessel thought about laughter, and how his favorite colors would die with it.
His body froze as his blood ran cold. He was scared of this offer, yes. But he was more scared of dying, and he was even more scared of losing his favorite color.
He pinched the skin on his arm, next to one of his scars. Steeled his thoughts. He opened his eyes and looked up. “I surrender myself to you.”
The choir rose from the water, hands raised above their heads. They opened their mouths and sang along with the voice in the dream realm. It was a harmony of female voices that sounded so human, Vessel almost forgot that they were divine.
SWEAR BEFORE THE NIGHT.
SWEAR BEFORE WHAT THE NIGHT BRINGS.
SWEAR BEFORE THE DREAMS THAT DARKNESS BRINGS.
SWEAR BEFORE THE COUSIN OF DEATH.
Vessel swore and swore and swore again. Then, a name inched its way into his head, woven together by the choir. It exhaled gently into his mind, worming its way into the crevasses before it became clear.
He swore before Sleep.
The water in the dream dragged him under, and Vessel had barely enough time to grasp for air before his chest was constricted, forcing all oxygen out of his lungs. Out of instinct, he gasped. Water flooded into his open mouth and choked him. Hands scrambled to try to claw his way to the surface, but he saw red dancing out from dozens of scars reopening, salt water stinging at his wounds. His skin felt as if it were on fire despite the water surrounding him, bubbling and sloughing off rapidly as the depths violently thrashed him back and forth.
Then, his entire head exploded in a violent fury of pain. Despite himself, he screamed. Around his eyes, he felt the skin split as if something was clawing its way in and spreading it open. It hurts, it hurts, gods please make it stop — !
But the gods had abandoned him.
All his praying did nothing.
The only god that listened to him was the god that he never looked for in the first place.
MY FIRST.
WAKE UP.
------
The water was already rising when Vessel shot out of bed with a scream. His throat felt raw and bloody, and upon spitting outside, he saw a hint of pink in what he spat out in the moonlight.
“Sleep. Sleep, can I save someone?”
NO.
“Please. I– Just one. Please. He’s my drummer, he’s my best friend.” I love him too much to live without him.
DESPITE THE NIGHT STRENGTHENING ME, I CANNOT SAVE ANOTHER.
TO SAVE MORE, YOU MUST SPILL BLOOD WITH YOUR OWN HANDS.
“I have to kill someone?” Vessel laughed bitterly. Of course he had to. He grabbed his stash of stored medicine as potential lethality and was about to bolt outside when he passed by his mother’s open room.
His mother.
Time seemed to dilate as he stepped into her room. Her chest rose steadily, and her hair fanned away from her head like a halo. Despite the almost sickening scent of the ocean nearby, she still smelled of flowers and sweet baked goods. Vessel knelt by her side and held her hand in his own as tears spilled from his eyes. He tried to memorize her face the best he could, but despite his best efforts, Sleep was already rendering her unrecognizable to his mind.
“I love you, mum,” he whispered as he placed a soft kiss on her forehead. “I hope you know that.”
And without a further look behind him, Vessel left his mother with his old name and old life, shedding it as soon as he closed the door to his house.
------
There was no getting around a few things.
One: The water was rising quickly, the ocean pulling away from the beaches and towering over the city, precariously waiting for the signal to drop.
Two: Vessel needed to find a sacrifice for his drummer. Quickly.
He couldn’t kill his mother. He didn’t know if he could live with spilling her blood in exchange for sparing his friend’s own. How fucked would that be?
He needed to decide quickly, running a ways down the empty streets and avoiding the gazes of anyone who was awake (they were few in number now, not that it mattered much anymore). He counted up to four before bursting into the first house he saw. Scrambling to the kitchen, he grabbed the sharpest looking knife and held it up to the moonlight. Good, it was clean.
Why was he sweating over the details at a moment like this? It wasn’t like getting the wound infected would matter in the end.
In that same moonlight, he saw his skin. It wasn’t the same shade he remembered. Instead, it was dark like the night, shimmering slightly with runes that looked as if they were delicately carved into his skin. They juxtaposed the scars on his arms, both in how ornate they were and their purpose. The runes were holy. The scars were not. The runes were given to him by a god. The scars were his own undoing.
The runes were because he was scared of dying.
The scars were because…
For a second, Vessel wondered if his own spilt blood would do the trick. It would be easy: drag the knife across his skin deep enough to slice open the veins and arteries. He’d sit down to do that, knowing how quickly his limbs and head would respond to a lack of blood. Then he’d wait for the god to resurrect him, and his friend would be there and alive and…
He put the knife down and slapped his cheeks with both hands, gritting his teeth and shaking his head.
No.
No no no.
He wanted to live.
He picked the knife up again, and walked into one of the rooms where people slept.
This room, apparently, belonged to a young woman that Vessel had admired for a while. In what way he admired her, he couldn’t properly deduce. It was different from his friend; while his favorite color with him was his laugh, his favorite color with her was her confidence. How proudly she would carry herself and others she deemed worthy of extending her confidence towards. She was everything that he was not.
Perhaps that was why he had gravitated towards her when he was younger, not seeing how she didn’t feel the same. While he had praised her continuously, following her like a lost animal in hopes of picking up even a scrap of her exuded certainty for himself, she had only tolerated it until she didn’t and snapped.
Vessel always felt as if he had a problem with that. Feeling too much, extending that toward others, then getting hit with the harsh reality that, no, it was all in his head.
Was it too much to ask for a soft life sometimes?
The woman had thankfully taken the sleeping medication, chest rising and falling in unaware bliss of what her fate would become.
Vessel put down the knife and grabbed the waxed packet of his saved medicine. He opened up a few of the capsules and emptied the powder into her mouth, shifting her position so she was sitting somewhat upright and tilting her head forwards. He should've brought some water to help the medicine go down, but it wouldn’t matter in the long run (well, it did sort of; it mattered to clear his mind that she wouldn’t feel a thing), so he just rubbed at her throat and hoped that it would do the trick. He lay her back down on her bed and picked the knife back up.
No turning back.
No hesitation.
He raised the knife.
A flicker of unnatural color at the edge of his vision, and he hesitated.
Vessel looked out the window, curtains fluttering in the wind. Outside, figures moved near the beach. They were a distinct flat beige with dark lines that defined their existence. There were at least five, moving slowly as if it were an afternoon stroll.
The gods’ avatars.
Vessel’s breath hitched in his throat, hands shaking and threatening to drop the knife completely. His mother’s voice drifted into his head, whispering promises of blessings if he had loved the gods unconditionally.
The gods’s avatars, a drop of their power on the mortal realm, were here.
But they were not here to bless him, and he was done praying to someone that never paid him any attention.
His hands steadied. He turned away from the window and plunged the knife into the woman.
------
Running.
Vessel ran. His hands smelt of blood, but it wasn’t his own this time. He ran as fast as he could.
His friend, his best friend, his drummer, his favorite color when he laughed.
He had to wake him up.
He had to get to him before the water crashed down.
“Sleep!” he cried out. “Sleep, I have to get to him. Please, give me more time.”
The night was quiet. Wind howled in his ears and saltwater bit at his nose.
He cursed at living so far from him sometimes.
A roar.
He was swept off his feet, his sense of direction lost. Air forced itself out of his lungs with the power of the impact, and he unconsciously inhaled. Water flooded his lungs, and unlike the dream realm, he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t promise living after this.
Please.
The truth is
I want
To want
To live
I am afraid
If we are to be submerged, then please. Let the heart and soul be submerged. Together.
------
Air.
Speckles of warmth.
And a definitive warmth that clung to his side.
Vessel shot up, coughing up water from his lungs. He gasped in air and lay back down, groaning with pain. Everything hurt. He was cold and wet. Strangely enough, he was also a bit hungry.
“Ugh…”
Vessel startled, turned to his side, and let out a strangled cry. Next to him, slowly sitting up, was his drummer. He had the same night-black skin as Vessel did, along with a faint white sigil on his face. Vessel’s tongue formed an unknown yet familiar name, but what came out was “Two!”
Two’s eyes blinked open, unfocused from sleep. When they settled onto Vessel, they cleared. “Vessel?”
“Two!” Vessel’s mind was a broken record of ‘Thank you’, face splitting into the widest grin he could physically accomplish. “Two, you’re…you’re here, you’re alive, you’ve changed.” He tilted his head at his friend, familiar yet not entirely. “Sleep found you too, oh thank you.”
Two suddenly tackled Vessel into a full-body hug, burying his face in the crook of his neck. “Oh god, I thought I died,” he murmured. “I woke up in some weird place, and someone was talking to me — ”
“Sleep.”
“That eldritch god was talking to me. Telling me that I could only be reached now because of the medicine and how I was between life and death — ”
“Because Eden was flooded.”
“And how you had killed someone to save me. You idiot, Vessel.”
“I had to. I couldn’t let you die.”
“And I told Sleep to give me an hour to think this over. I got five whole minutes instead.”
Vessel snorted. “And?”
“And, I accepted.”
“That was fast.”
“I didn’t want to die.” Two lifted his head from Vessel’s neck and just stared at Vessel. Their breath intermingled and if either of them moved just a little bit forward, they might as well kiss (and Vessel wouldn’t have objected to that). But no one moved, except to speak. “I didn’t want to lose my favorite color, or the soul of our music.”
Vessel chuckled, his voice all wet and tired and full of some emotion that he couldn’t place except that it made him happy and loved and he would do anything for Two ten times over. He opened his mouth to say something, anything at all, but nothing came out. Instead, he just pressed his forehead against Two’s and held him.
Somewhere in the distant reaches of Vessel’s auditory attention, waves crashed against the borders of what was formerly known as Eden. Those waves held dead promises and bodies that slept through it all, unbeknownst to everyone except for two. Vessel tried to remember anything at all, but all he came up with was a nostalgic feeling that soothed his mind.
Later on, the pair made three shabby shrines. They were made of sticks and contained flowers and other bits of easy significance they could find from the nature around them. Pebbles, a shell or two. Vessel spent a lot of time on his shrine, fussing over the details and adding small pieces of white cotton fluff that had been floating in the wind. Two on the other hand, held the pieces for his shrines for a long time before setting them down and kneeling in front of them. “Do you regret it?” Two asked after the pair sat in silence, leaning against Vessel (he was doing that a lot more now, and every time Vessel relished it like it was the first time).
“Regret what?”
“Regret becoming one of Sleep’s vessels.” Two held up a hand as he counted. “Regret killing someone to save me. Regret leaving this all behind.”
Vessel shrunk into himself, eyes glued onto the shrine to his mother. “Of course I do.” Despite trying to build up his resolve and lock away any guilt over it all, it still stung when he poked at it. “I don’t think I’ll ever not regret it in some way.”
Two hummed. “You’ve always cared so much.”
Cared so much. It wasn’t ‘cared too much.’ It was ‘cared so much.’ Vessel swallowed and nodded. “I have, haven’t I?” He let silence build up before he asked, “Did you ever say goodbye to your mums?”
“Something in my gut told me to do so that night,” Two admitted. “I told them that I loved them a lot, and they called me their little drummer boy.” When he laughed, those colors didn’t bloom. They were locked behind a sudden wall of grief as he whispered, “I’m forgetting them.”
Vessel couldn’t tell him that everything will be alright. He had things that he’d rather remember too, and it would be a lie to say that this didn’t pain him too. “What’s something you’d rather not forget?” he asked in an attempt to raise Two’s mood.
It was a gentle affair, the following events were. Two shifted in his position and placed his lips on Vessel’s cheek, gently turning his head so he was facing the drummer. Two kissed his other cheek, then his nose. Vessel huffed out some sort of laughter and let Two pepper his face in quick, soft kisses. His cheeks, his forehead, his nose, and six eyelids.
(Vaguely, Vessel remembered feeling those new eyes on his face as he ran in his flurry to find Two. They dizzied him as they turned every which way and introduced him to views that he never thought he’d see.
(But he didn’t think too much about that right now. He was being kissed by his best friend after all.)
Then Two cupped Vessel’s chin in one hand and hesitated. His eyes flickered between Vessel’s eyes and his mouth, his skin shimmery with a blush. He didn’t move, frozen by some sort of doubt in him.
So Vessel did them both a favor and closed the distance. He felt Two stiffen up at first, so he made it short. But then Two was tugging him back with those round eyes of his and Vessel could do nothing but gladly indulge his drummer.
It was nothing like the kisses that were depicted in plays or books. There was no excessive passion or spit or big fireworks that were shot from a spell. There was just a subtle quirk of a smile and so many colors that Vessel couldn’t hold them all in his hands. They flooded his mind and heart and soul, soothing them all and letting everything go quiet for a moment longer.
“Do you still hate the implications?” Vessel murmured as he stroked Two’s head and held him for just a while longer.
“The implications live at the bottom of the ocean,” Two replied, sighing as Vessel scratched his nails against his scalp. “Speaking of the ocean, what do we do now?”
“Don’t remind me,” Vessel groaned.
“Too late.” Two shook his head and said, “One of my mums was from Arcadia. We can go there as refugees. It’ll be just like Eden, only — ” He gestured to the water that covered the former city that was Eden. “You know. Livable.”
“We could.” Vessel peeled Two off of him and stood up to stretch, feeling something in his back pop. He heard Two loudly clear his throat and he managed to catch the aversion of Two’s gaze from him (what a delight that was to Vessel!). His foot nudged against something sticking up from the ground, and he knelt down to gently tug it out. A white mask with six dark eyeholes stared back at him, complete with the bloodred sigil of Sleep. There was barely enough room for his mouth to poke through, and despite being buried in the soil for Vessel to find, the inside was clean.
He placed it over his face, feeling it latch on and flood his mind.
The gods’ avatars, chasing them. They would know they were alive. They would sense Sleep’s influence within them, and they would drag them back to where Eden lay to eradicate Sleep’s presence completely.
A long journey to Arcadia to cleanse themselves. From what, it wasn’t clear yet.
Two others, a bassist and a guitarist. They wouldn’t be safe as Sleep blessed them too, yet they would stick with them through it all.
An adoring crowd.
Pink flowers and the smell of saltwater.
Overwhelming affection for the journey and what it would bring.
Several months later, several Sleep-mandidated changes later, and several towns closer to Arcadia (but still so very far), Vessel whispered to Two in the dark of the night, “I’m going to tell Three and Ivy now.”
“Do you need me there for it?”
“Please.” Vessel gave Two a small kiss on the lips, something he quite enjoyed doing. “After all, you’re part of the story too.”
For the first time since it happened, against the embers of the fireplace, Vessel and Two recounted the fall of Eden. It wasn’t without digging up buried pain and long pauses, but telling it brought about something reassuring. Something that proved that it happened, and if the bedrolls being pulled together to create a better place to cuddle against each other wasn’t proof that people cared, then Vessel didn’t know anymore.
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