We're happy to hear from you I hope you're doing well! Would you ever write a side story where we spend a bit of time with xerxes and his 'opposing' side? Idk how it would fit into the plot of the story but it would be pretty cool to learn more about his character. Especially since I'm pretty sure they were alluded to in the main fic? (That was them right?), it would also be pretty funny to see Iskander's reaction since he got pretty aggro last time lol. ANYWAYS thank you for your incredible stories they are all truly inspiring.
Apologies for the ultra-late response! I have no real intention to explore the Oracles in depth simply because I want to keep everything anchored in the human perspective. Although I really do wish I could translate what they are saying, and write in Iskandar's POV. So no, no side stories planned for Fermi, and definitely not for Xerxes, since he comes with spoilers :')
But yeah, Xerxes is the unnamed white Oracle who appeared in the last chapter. Lol quotev readers will never know his name. Anyways, as an apology gift for my delayed answer I give you the below little thingy I wrote which has some Xerxes content I guess:
SIREN OF THE SOIL
To distinguish the royal from the common, the title of “king” was created. To distinguish primality in regency, the term “king of kings” was thus made. Khan of khans, shah of shahs, sultan of sultans—all to mean emperor, to mean someone simply superior. That above the powerful, there exists a singular omnipotent entity. A not-quite god, but something indubitably close.
The Iranian king of kings—‘𐎧𐏁𐎹𐎠𐎼𐏁𐎠’. Khshayarsha. Renown for his invasion of Hellas. Now he is known by their tongue, Old Iranian cuneiform alphabetised to Phoenician Greek; Xerxes. To be remembered in your enemy’s language. Whether this is humiliation or honour is up to personal interpretation.
You gave him a ruler’s name because that is what he is. Unlike Iskandar, a commander. Or Boudica and Subutai, warriors. Solomon, a king maybe, but a sage first and foremost. No, Xerxes is not a product of wartime, despite observed Oracle culture insofar being inseparable from war. Xerxes is very much administration. Yes, for all their marvellous innovations in violence, the Oracles too are bogged down by the banalities of bureaucracy. To be civilised from chaos is to be shackled by systems in the end. Pity.
When you first glimpsed him, white like Solomon yet liveried like Iskandar, you did not know what to think. You only knew to acknowledge that what floated before you was no mere Oracle grunt, but a revelation into the complexities of an alien society. Was he a monarch or a democratically-elected representative? A despot? A feudal lord? Chieftain? Would human concepts even describe his role? Or does there exist a phrase in your human languages that already does so perfectly?
King of kings.
His governance is supreme. He oversees the battlestation, the Sword of Damocles. Iskandar reports to him. Solomon reports to him. Subutai, that monster, obeys him like the mad dog he is—crazed but loyal to his owner. Yet he does not exude the same dangerous energy they do. No, he is tranquil in an utmost unusual contrast to every other Oracle you’ve seen.
You wonder if Xerxes does paperwork. If he sits in his office all day sometimes like Aegis, dutifully signing documents in triplicate. Or does he have a hobby similar to golfing? Something rich dads with time to waste do for recreation. Yes, he does seem like a rich white suburban dad…upper-middle class in the very least…
Solomon, who has the unfortunate burden of monitoring you, must have realised you were losing your mind. So, for enrichment purposes you presume, he’s enrolled you into the care of some of his colleagues—other random white Oracles. You’re passed around in rotation like a foster child. Some choose to conduct tests. Others just have you tagging along on their duties.
You’re playing with weird Oracle goo under the supervision of a workaholic white Oracle when you meet him again.
Both she and you look up when the door scales away into the wall, revealing Xerxes in all his glory; white as ghost in a blizzard, as a mountain peak before the dark sky of his cloak. You squint at it, trying and failing to find where the black hole warps the smattering of stars on the interior.
Your babysitter erects herself immediately with a cross salute. Xerxes tilts down his helm, signalling for her to be ‘at ease’. They chime a conversation, voices shimmering like aurorae. The babysitter salutes again and quickly leaves.
You move to follow. Only to find Xerxes unbudging, blocking the door. He has no guards with him, no security detail or Subutai (thank all the gods). His helm is angled at you. And though you cannot see his face, you are certain the weight of his gaze is crushing you right now. Why else would you be struggling to breathe?
“A-Ah…” You croak out, too high-pitched to be even remotely charismatic. “Hello!”
Xerxes makes a noise. It glitters. A greeting perhaps? You’re not sure. But it’s acknowledgement. Unlike the other losers who’ve had to look after you, Xerxes actually cares enough to attempt communication.
“I’m [name]!” You chirp, still nervous, still stiff.
Xerxes warbles again. A cosmic choir of sounds, languid and lush. It makes you wonder if Oracles do ASMR.
“Solomon wants me to hang out with his friends—ah…I mean, coworkers?” You explain, itching your cheek, gaze escaping sheepishly.
Xerxes sings out a symphony. Another response. He really is talking to you. You light up, giddy and pleased, glancing back at him with an almost luminous hope.
“I don’t understand what you’re saying, but it’s great! Thank you for speaking to me!” You bleat out.
Xerxes steps closer, cape drifting behind him, and circles around you, as if giving you a once over. You remain still, eyes tracking him patiently.
Eventually, he swats away the floating goo and places his talons on your shoulders, guiding you forward. You freeze up—of course you do, your body still remembers everything these creatures have done–but nevertheless you let him move you. Solomon has never harmed you. No white Oracle has. And perhaps this is just racism at its purest, but you trust the white ones more.
As you walk down the hallway in Xerxes’ tow, every Oracle stops to salute him. He doesn’t pay them any mind. A daily occurrence for him, probably. Reverence is the standard protocol.
Some, however, do a visible double take seeing you at his side. Yeah, the stinky human cramping his vibe. That’s you. You give out waves. No one waves back.
Xerxes takes you on a stroll. You pass through the helical corridors of the Sword, catching snippets of what normal life is like for the Oracles aboard. They eat together, they manage inbound and outbound logistics, they monitor communications; just like the humans of Babylon. You even see them messing around with their liquid-light contraptions. It’s almost like some kind of video game, and they’re playing multiplayer, jostling each other.
Your hands bunch to fists. There’s a fury stoked in the low throes of your heart at the sight of them happy. How could they? Would they have so gleefully slaughtered humanity if they had seen you playing Helldivers or Counterstrike together? Did they think only themselves as deserving of this sort of fun? Perhaps the observable universe, as vast as it is, is really too small after all.
Xerxes doesn’t notice your minuscule quivers. He guides you along to some kind of private lounge. It opens up to a nice viewport of outer space. Not that you’re in the mood to enjoy it anymore.
Relaxing over one of the low couches is Subutai. His solar eyes flare to Xerxes and he stands up immediately, saluting like all the rest.
You wrench back, hiding behind Xerxes, who doesn’t move, but seems to find amusement in your timid nature regardless. All Oracles are psychopathic to some degree. They simply cannot fathom feeling empathy towards humans.
Xerxes lifts an arm and spares a few words to Subutai, who makes a low and pleased growl. The latter doesn’t even look at you. Yet your neck burns hotter than the surface of the sun, ringed in phantom phosphoric pain.
Xerxes pushes you onto his lap as he settles on the couch. He doesn’t seem to mind touching you, unlike most other Oracles who find your human flesh icky. In fact, he actually strokes you—a talon running up and down your arm, feeling your shape and ensuring you stay put.
Subutai takes his spot behind Xerxes, standing at attention. Not once does he look down on you. You’re grateful for it, yet his looming doesn’t ease you in the slightest.
The far wall fades, revealing itself to be a translucent membrane. The room behind it is vacant of all things. It only has four walls, one of them being an airlock hatch to space.
You fall very still. Dread gnaws at your gut.
Xerxes lounges back and raises a claw. A cube lowers into the room. You lock eyes with the creature imprisoned within it.
Your lungs shrivel, dried of air. It’s nothing you’ve seen before. You count six eyes. Insectoid. Flesh like mud, yet rippled with incandescence like water being hit by light. Its body is viscous.
An alien not Oracle. Nor worm. And those eyes, beady and dark, it can’t be mistaken—consciousness shines within them. A beautiful yet damning glow belying soul.
You whip your head to Xerxes, who hasn’t stopped stroking your arm all this time. He trills a sound that’s almost sadistic. A laugh. You assign it to laughter.
He croons something. A charming little melody you cannot decipher. His free claw rises up to curl near your cheek.
“What,” you gulp, eyeing that claw, “are you doing?”
Xerxes’ claw stills. He glances behind him to Subutai, whose radiant eyes narrow ever-so-slightly in perceptive delight.
The chamber behind the glass hisses. White mist rises from the floor, forming clouds, forming storms. The muddy alien within recoils back, but it’s no use.
It takes less that a minute for the mist to touch it. It’s not immediate, but a slow agony. Torture. The alien’s flesh begins to melt. It bleeds black. Five minutes and the entire chamber becomes fogged.
You watch, unblinking, desperate to hear something. But the chamber is sound-proofed beyond belief. Whatever violent, distressed screams that alien is making is inaudible here in this lounge.
Until a loud thud has your skeleton freezing beneath all the tissue. A dark smear contaminates the glass as the alien thrashes against it. Pleading? Professing? Enduring penance for a mercy that will never be granted. You watch it become a puddle, just as you watched Sirius become rain.
When it's finally over, the airlock opens. The cold vacuum of space sucks away all the remains. A liquid hoses down the window and the blood, the chunks—it’s gone. Just like that, the chamber seals, and it's like nothing ever happened inside.
You don’t turn around. You don’t want to see what lies behind you. The truth of it, the reality.
But Xerxes merely forces you by your chin. You stare into the stark white emptiness of his helm, seeing only yourself reflected in its sheen.
He twinkles out a sentence; so soothing, so gentle, so at odds with what he’s just shown you. A voice of an angel, the very same that brought Sodom to sulfuric ruin.
His thumb brushes near your eye, wiping away a tear before it can drool down your cheek. You choke on a sob, unable to feign courage any longer. It could be you next in that gas chamber.
But it’s not. Another cube descends. Another alien. He croons again. The exact same syllables, the exact same prosody as before. Only now do you realise what this is. He is asking you for judgement. Using you as verdict.
You had chattered earlier, without understanding, simply enjoying the music of each other’s voice. You thought he liked yours, just as you did his. You were mistaken.
Your voice is merely ornament. A momentary novelty he has decided to make instrument for his executions today. And if you cannot learn how to say “No!” or “Stop!” before the next alien is cubed in, you will be no better than the blade of a murderer—the guillotine of Robespierre, the stakes of Vlad the Impaler.
You cry loudly. You remain silent. You try harsh sounds, soft phonemes. Monosyllabic murmurs and mumbling monologues. And you watch the aliens die each time, bleeding different colours, different materials. Yet all ejected into the frigid infinity of the cosmos in the end, lives lost and deaths to be forgotten.
The last one that comes in is an Oracle. Xerxes keeps his claw tight around your neck, where Subutai’s burn traces, forcing you to remain still despite how still you already are.
Then he asks you the same question. The one you cannot understand yet understand perfectly.
Does this one die?
You meet the Oracle’s gaze helplessly. Can he see your tears. Does he know what it means? You hate him and his kind. Yet even you know that to kill one’s own species is a special sort of cruelty. Perhaps he is a traitor. Perhaps you don’t have the full picture. Perhaps every alien you’ve sentenced to death was a prisoner of war. A criminal in their own right.
But it does not make this just.
“No!” You leap up. You grab Xerxes. You scream. “Don’t do it! I say stop! I command you to stop! I beg you! Please—please! Please…”
You descend into whimpers. Weak noises that make Xerxes cock his head in intrigue.
Mist hisses behind you. Your head dips. The tears fall freely now.
Xerxes brings his hand up. This time, instead of his thumb, a click reverberates. Silver feelers—Bioluminescent? Irradiated?—glide over your skin, sizzling away everything that drips from your eyes. He touches you tenderly. But you wish he wouldn’t.
Subutai watches, gaze lowered over the sight. His master nursing a feeble human. He makes no comment, but his eyes flare and narrow. The slightest indication of irritation.
The door to the lounge opens. In steps Iskandar. Unaccompanied and unexpected. Xerxes looks up, feelers still nipping at your cheeks, at the tapers of your eyes. Iskandar sees it.
One second, he’s by the door. The next, he’s right before you, golden feelers protracting and swallowing you into an energised embrace. Everywhere Xerxes had touched, he reclaims with his own glands. Cleaning you and stinging Xerxes away like a sea anemone.
Xerxes makes a remark, which Iskandar ignores. The black Oracle checks you with rough handling, prying open your mouth and peering into your ear canals, almost anxious in his movements. He speaks. Silent, enigmatic Iskandar speaks. Low and succinct, but still—he’s saying something, and he’s saying it to you.
His feelers retract beneath his armour and he pushes you behind him, protected between his sturdy stature and drape of his cape.
Iskandar cups your cheek one last time. He coos again. Soft and sibilant. But you don’t answer, too parched and too scared.
Subutai flashes out his lance. In an instant, Iskandar has Xerxes pinned against the couch, one arm on each side of his head, talons tearing into the couch, ripping out foam. He leers over Xerxes, oozing threat and fury. Xerxes shimmers laughter. You have learnt to identify it.
Subutai doesn’t attack Iskandar. He doesn’t dare. Instead, he raises his lance to joust you. Xerxes holds up his claw immediately, commanding him to desist.
Subutai vanishes his lance and takes a step back, cowed completely. Xerxes drapes out his arms over the back edge of the couch, still relaxed, pleased even beneath Iskandar’s colossal shadow. He drawls out a noise, one that makes the couch foam combust under the black Oracle’s clenching grip.
Iskandar rumbles something deep. Primal. Then he straightens himself, leaving the couch to burn and Xerxes, arrogant but unharmed.
They share a moment of intimidating quiet. One that speak volumes, though you’ve never understood Oracle speech, so you certainly won’t try their silence.
Iskandar moves. You are pulled along by the sheer force of his presence. He doesn’t check that you follow, but he definitely checks that Xerxes and Subutai don’t. You are taken back to his docked warship.
He stops before his private chambers—always the safety and privacy of these chambers—dragging you inside. Once the door shuts, and only then, does Iskandar try anything at all.
He talks. His voice, not soft nor sweet like Xerxes’, coaxes for your own. He holds your elbows, drawing you near; helm tilting in confusion. Why aren’t you speaking? You always speak. He drones again.
You remain silent. The mist swirls in your mind. You were almost touched by it once. Aegis had saved you. But you are alone now. Alone and so close to death. Your neck scalds, reminding.
Iskandar leans down to your height and murmurs words. Gentle, with great difficulty—matching human vocalisations you’ve made in the past.
“Ah—nn—phh—?”
It wobbles with the taint of Oracle timbre. You stare at him, wide eyes somehow so hollow. At a loss for words, and a fear of enunciation.
Iskandar’s helm dips. He looks away, claws twitching, and walks over his door panel, illuminating the wall with ripples as he taps away.
Moments later, the door opens to reveal Solomon. His red eyes land on you. Then glide to Iskandar, mildly perplexed. Iskandar murmurs something brief. Solomon pauses, then glances to you again.
He approaches, hand held open in a rare display of comfort. Then, he coos. Solomon speaks to you. And despite everything, despite all your fright and scorn for his people, you cannot deny how his voice reminds you of your mother’s. Gentle yet firm. Calming, kind.
“S-Solomon!” You run to him, catching his hug.
And maybe he didn’t intend for you to hug him at all, but you don’t care. All you want, all you’ve ever wanted, is for someone to tell you that it’s okay. And you know it’s not. It will never be okay. But you want that lie. You want to feel safe, just once, just this time.
“You’re the worst.” You sob into his shoulder, nuzzling desperately into it. “You’re all monsters, every last one of you…”
Solomon holds out a finger, greyish skin melting into something glowing and red. A primitive feeler. He traces it along your jaw in a reluctant attempt to soothe you.
You lean into this rare Solomon warmth, chasing it. His breath hitches, you feel it, but he doesn’t pull away.
Suddenly, a weight is added to your back. Iskandar draws you both into a hug, mimicking your form. Solomon grunts and utters what is most certainly a complaint. Iskandar rumbles something back. Their conversation twinkles above you like stars.
For once, you don’t concern yourself with puzzling over what they might be saying. You just cry into Solomon’s shoulder, pretending that instead of these aliens surrounding you, it’s your parents instead. Their faces, still fresh in your mind. You don’t know for how long it’ll stay that way. The mist will touch and dissipate all things.
Iskandar’s claw rests atop your head. His hand is large enough to envelop your skull and crush it whole. But you don’t force him away. For once, you feel protected. So you let him cradle you.
Your hand flutters up and encases over the welt around your neck, rubbing it absently. You wonder—how far can Xerxes go? How much torment could he feasibly subject you to before Iskandar intervenes?
You wonder—is this what Xerxes is thinking too? Is this your true utility as a tool? A mere measurement device for Iskandar's reactivity. You wonder—is your life worth it? To trade for Xerxes’ death?
It’s not a question that really needs to be asked, is it?
And you wonder—if you do die, what name will they call you? Will it be human? Or will it be Oracle? Perhaps the tragedy, really, is that legacy does not allow agency. You will not decide how you are remembered. So let these selfish intentions you claim to be for humanity to be for your own sake too.