Preview on my next NRMT DJ, coming soon in end of 2026!
some of the front parts might get redrawn just to update on my artstyle... aiming for a convention in Dec 2026! hopefully.........!!!!!! (internally crying)
either way, my last year's nrmt DJ [ReMinDer] is now free to download. Please enjoy!
Title: Substance
Summary: [full summary on AO3] A look into what happened between Sorey's resonance being blocked the first time the group meets Cardinal Forton, and Mikleo ripping through her domain with his bare hands. And then a little of the aftermath.
Warnings: None
Notes: Read on AO3. Oops my hand slipped. Also I don't think this needs any particular cws, which is unusual for my writing, but I guess there is the barest hint of lifespan angst for like. One sentence.
Humans aren't like us, Mikleo. There'll be things only you can do, and things only Sorey can do, and burdens one of you carries the other won't understand.
The first time Mikleo heard it, he was so furious that he summoned his first storm cloud. As if wringing every bit of indignance out of Mikleo's heart, the cloud followed Zenrus for almost two hours, and it only went out when Mikleo burned so much of his power that he fell asleep.
Zenrus repeated that lesson many times. When he explained that the family meals Elysia held were purely for Sorey, and that Mikleo didn't need food to survive. When Mikleo tried his hardest to teach Sorey his artes, but nothing came of it. When Sorey was injured falling out of a tree, but Mikleo was untouched.
Mikleo remembered it well, when they met Alisha and she saw only Sorey; when he and Sorey argued about the pacts of a Shepherd and a Sub-Lord; when the malevolence of civilization weighed on Mikleo like he'd pulled the belts of his coat three notches too tight but Sorey could still run up the steps to the shrines and have enough breath left to haggle with the merchants.
For the first time, Mikleo understood what Gramps meant. He could feel with his whole soul why his and Sorey's dream was complicated, and why it was going to take their whole liv—Sorey's whole life—if they were lucky, to even partially achieve it. And yet, even if he and Sorey could not be the same, they could choose to be together. They could live in the same world and walk the same path and get excited about the same ruins and pursue the same dream.
Of course, just as Mikleo was making peace with the lesson now engraved onto his heart, they faced Heldalf. And lost.
As a team, they lost the fight, but Mikleo lost something else. Sorey called out for him, even though Mikleo was stood right at his side. Mikleo reached for his shoulder, and touched nothing. Not the rough fabric of the Shepherd's cloak, not the subtle human warmth of Sorey's skin, not even the comforting cold that accompanied plunging his hand into a river.
Sorey and Rose—at the time, just the assassin—fell from that cliff, and while Mikleo was filled mostly with relief when he realized there was a river below that he could coax up to catch them, there was a part of him that was hollow with fear that his artes, too, would have as much effect on Sorey's body a bucket on the ocean.
(It was a good thing, Lailah tells him, much later, that Mikleo had been anchored to a vessel, or that doubt would certainly have sparked malevolence.)
Humans aren't like us.
Sorey had worries, and too many burdens to carry, yes. But the fear that took root in Mikleo after meeting Heldalf, the fear that even if he found words to explain, Sorey could never feel for himself, was this: that his lot as a seraph was not to live in the world, but to read it like a book, invested in the outcome of events written by someone else's hand and never able to change a single letter short of drowning the pages in ink.
Studying the past knowing it couldn't be changed was one thing. But Mikleo couldn't live like that.
Another of Edna's reasons for pulling away from humans clicked in his mind, just as his heart broke and admiration swelled for Lailah, who had lived Mikleo's greatest nightmare for centuries, waiting for any sign of hope.
So Mikleo had thrown himself into training. If they could defeat Heldalf and get rid of his cursed domain, maybe Mikleo could sleep easier, knowing his chances of being shut away in plain sight would go back to somewhere between slim and none.
And then, Pendrago. Then, the shrinechurch. Then, the cardinal.
Then, there was a single, human woman, who spoke so politely of her ideals that the rot of it dissolved like poison in wine.
Now, there was Sorey, conscious enough this time to reach for Mikleo, and Mikleo, made silent and numinous as the human's hand passed through his arm and chest without a single trace.
But this time, Sorey was conscious, and so was Rose, and neither Edna or Dezel were all that concerned. Mikleo's stomach twisted into knots, but he wondered if Sorey and Rose could be able to talk their way out of it.
Until Lailah's hand landed delicately on his shoulder, and she said his name with the undercurrent of steel that held up her pacts as a Prime Lord. "Mikleo-san," she said, "we cannot fight her. We must break through her domain and escape."
Mikleo turned to her. "How?" he asked. It came out less afraid and petulant than he felt, but the warmth in Lailah's eyes returned just long enough for Mikleo to know that she understood. Maybe she could even feel it.
(He really hoped Edna couldn't.)
(Dezel, he thought, at least…got it. Or something like it, by the way he still loomed over Rose's shoulders like a guard dog.)
But the question remained—if Lailah, the Prime Lord and a centuries-old seraph under a capital-O-Oath, and Sorey, the Shepherd she was empowering, didn't have the strength to overcome the cardinal's domain, Mikleo couldn't reasonably think that a water seraph with less than two decades under his belt had a better chance.
"Well, Sorey's awake this time," Edna said, twirling her parasol over her shoulder in a gesture Mikleo now recognized as a nervous fidget, despite her voice being dry as a desert. "So that helps."
"It does," said Lailah. "Sorey-san's domain is still there; it's just covered up. We only need to break through for a moment…"
"Won't help," said Dezel, who hadn't taken his eyes off the cardinal. Mikleo was only half-listening to her—something about uniting the people, but the way she spoke about it made his skin crawl. "Even if you rip through, she'll wipe him out again. We either run, or we kill her."
One of the knots in Mikleo's stomach lodged itself in his throat instead. He shook his head, and his lips opened to protest, when Lailah used the hand still on his shoulder to swing around him, blocking Dezel from sight. "If anyone can break through to Sorey, it's you," Lailah said. "And once we have an opening…" She clapped her hands. "Well, just like we practiced."
Mikleo stared at her for a second. Her eyes were closed, her stance relaxed, her smile chipper, as if this was nothing. As if the weight of the cardinal's domain wasn't bearing down on her like the ocean itself, and as if she was just asking Mikleo to pass her a gel.
Like we practiced. The veiling arte that Mikleo had trained exhaustively after their experience on the battlefield—he was sure that's what Lailah meant.
But it wasn't as easy as Lailah clearly wanted it to sound. Gathering the power or the focus necessary to sustain a veil of mist wasn't the problem. And if slogging through that human war like a bloody swamp hadn't been enough, Mikleo had learned long ago from Gramps that there was plenty of value in avoiding a fight. He knew that, the same way he knew that humans aren't like us.
Mikleo was taught the reasoning and had built up the strength and drilled the artes to hide himself from the world. But no matter how many times he practiced, Lailah could always still see him, and the culprit was that little dark current in the back of Mikleo's head that whispered, What if no one ever finds you again?
There was a break in the cardinal's voice—Mikleo had stopped listening, he realized, but just as quickly, Sorey's voice filled the shrinechurch instead. There was an echo to it, off the beautifully scuplted and painted walls, through the grand ceiling which was a living memory of its culture and people, and Mikleo felt the vibrations ease the tension in his stomach. Just a little. He took a deep breath.
"How do I get through this domain?" he asked.
Lailah beamed.
"Sorey's reaching out to us, too," said Edna. "You can't tell? I'm surprised, Touchy-Feeleo. Just reach back."
It was almost certainly not that easy. If it was, Edna wouldn't need him to do it in the first place. But Mikleo closed his eyes and…
On the edge of his consciousness, like realizing one of his limbs was numb from sitting in one spot too long, there was something. Something firstly warm, like Lailah, and steady, like Edna, and fierce, like Dezel, and at its core, incorrigably curious and open, and there, that was Sorey, and yes, he was reaching for them.
A little too far to touch, a little too ethereal to grasp. Mikleo struggled to hold onto even the idea in his head, and he realized he couldn't feel Rose at all.
"If you can feel him, focus as much power as you can into your connection. Like you're pourifying it," said Lailah.
"Ugh," said Mikleo. It was a low-effort pun, which was how he knew Lailah was really stressed. So he let the power of purification flow through him, as if trying to erode away the cardinal's domain. I'm here, he promised.
And as he focused, with the cardinal's calm but cold voice washing over him, Mikleo couldn't help thinking that she wasn't the first power-hungry human to try and isolate the Shepherd for her own ends. Wasn't this exactly what happened in Ladylake, with that chancellor and his "council," when they separated Sorey from Alisha?
—and if that were true, a flash of something took shape in Mikleo's mind, about isolation and power and Lailah's warnings of the Shepherd's burden, and the Earthen Historia, and the abandoned general from the visions, and the way the Lord of Calamity's play to rip away any illusion they had of victory was to cut Sorey off—
"You reject my vision!" cried the cardinal. Mikleo opened his eyes to see her raising her staff, and the thought dissolved as Dezel hissed something about paralysis. Rose and Sorey visibly struggled to move.
"Sorey!" Mikleo cried.
Rose gasped, and Sorey's chin jerked, just a little, and Mikleo felt something in him burst with relief. There was the crack, the single spot in the cardinal's domain worn thin by his power and determination and love, and by Sorey reaching back with all of the same.
Mikleo ran right in front of Sorey, staff up to defend them both. Lailah and Edna had moved just as fast, and in a few minutes, Mikleo's heart would be warm when he remembered.
But right now, all that mattered was that he wouldn't let this woman's vicious, stifling domain fall in between him and Sorey again. And the only way to ensure that was for them both—for them all to get out. To slip beneath her notice and drift away, together.
Mikleo's power clung to his skin like morning dew, forming so naturally that it really did seem like he was simply borrowing a natural cycle. He could feel the veil forming like he'd done it a thousand times. And maybe he had, with all of his practice.
But—
What if he turned around, and only he was missing? What if Mikleo vanished from the cardinal's wrath, but Sorey was left to face it, alone?
"Mikleo—"
"Sorey—"
They spoke over each other, and Mikleo felt Sorey's breath on the back of his neck, warm and real, and the cold in his chest melted. His artes flowed free, first to Sorey, and then to Lailah, and guided along the bonds of her contracts a Prime Lord, to Edna, Rose, and Dezel, to wash all of them completely clean of the cardinal's influence and out of her sight.
The cardinal lunged forward. Her staff, heavy with its holy ornament, swung down towards Sorey. Mikleo's arms twitched as he prepared to bring his own weapon up to block.
Would it even work? The cardinal couldn't see him, he thought, and if her staff passed through him, it would hit—
Warmth and weight latched onto his side. The cardinal's staff struck the floor with the dissonance of a shattering bell, and Mikleo crashed against Sorey's chest with a soft gasp.
Mikleo looked up to see a question already forming in Sorey's eyes, and he nodded before it needed to be asked. I'm okay. "Let's go," he said out loud. Sorey nodded and took off running for the door with Mikleo right behind him.
It wasn't until Edna looked at him strangely from the corner of her eye that Mikleo realized he was still touching his side, where Sorey's hand had pulled him to safety. Warm, solid. Real.
Humans aren't like us.
The dream he shared with Sorey was to create a world where seraphim and humans could live in harmony. But here, in the threshhold of the Pendrago Shrinechurch, holy bastion of Maotelus himself, Mikleo resolved a new dream to go with it. He would aim for a world where no seraphim had to live in fear of fading away without ever being seen, where every seraphim had the chance to feel the weight of being loved, and not just loving from afar.
Where isolation was a choice seraphim could make, not their lot in life.
Maybe that was a goal that was uniquely seraphic, and maybe Sorey's motivation was entirely human, but they were still walking the same path, chasing the same goal, and carrying each other without needing to understand exactly why they stumbled.
Humans aren't like us.
Mikleo fled the shrinechurch into the rain (which Sorey said hung in his hair like gemstones and Mikleo said matted Sorey's bangs like a prickleboar).
There'll be things only you can do, and things only Sorey can do...
Mikleo used his veil arte to slip them past the city gates with the guards none the wiser, while Rose and Sorey plotted how they were going to face the holiest man in the Empire without it turning into a fight.
…and burdens one of you carries the other won't understand.
But Sorey turned to Mikleo as soon as they were beyond the sight of the walls, took his arms, and spun him around, asking a dozen questions about how Mikleo had done what he did when even Lailah hadn't been able to fix his resonance last time…
Mikleo checked just once, to make sure that Edna wasn't watching, and then wrapped his arms around Sorey's shoulders.
"Wh—Mikleo?"
I was afraid. I couldn't lose you again. I practiced for weeks. There was no other choice. "Shut up," Mikleo said. I don't have the words.
Sorey's arms settled around his back, and a soft cheek squished against his hair.
"Okay."
When Sorey was overwhelmed, Mikleo was his safe harbor, and when Mikleo was adrift, Sorey was his guiding star.
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