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He’s all she can see when she opens her eyes. The light glaring in from the broken floor is surgical in its glare, but the only thing cutting through it is the towering form of Sumeru’s mechanical usurper.
She can see the body of the Traveler nearby— curled over Paimon and her small, archon companion, almost still but breathing shallow. The cloying suffocation of his voice in her head rings like a death bell, her mind cracking like porcelain. Every utterance is deafening. She feels the electro energy, the culmination of his blasphemous ascension, burn under her skin as he directs it towards the crumpled bodies of her comrades.
She can't hear a word he's saying. She can't hear a word she's thinking. But still, even in the face of her own decimation, the astrologist finds it in her to reach out, heart bursting with the desire to burn in their stead—
Mona wakes with a start, tears in her eyes and a scream fizzling out on her tongue. Those were the memories that festered— the reminders of every truth she failed to predict, every bit of control that she surrendered to a cruel and unyielding will.
Her sheets are silk and her room is opulent. She detests appreciating anything of the decadence, if only because it was bought with something far more precious. She rises and dresses herself, because that’s all she has the power to do right now. Her wardrobe is an infinite blend of purples and reds and blacks gilded with gold— colours which would strike fear into the heart of any who wasn’t wearing them, if only because of the association.
The Everlasting Lord of Arcane Wisdom’s first sage had to look the part, after all.
She eventually settles on something light; an embroidered violet robe with deep, maroon trimmings on the sleeves and a pair of gold, cuffed bracelets to secure her wrists. The irony of such a choice in jewelry is not lost on her, but any amount of pettiness she can convey is its own victory, shallow as it was.
She needed to keep her spite in check, today. He’s sent for her.
Mona approaches the entrance to his temple alone. The escorts she usually expected to see outside her chambers were nowhere in sight, which either meant they weren’t coming or they were already dead for being late. Mona, the faithful devotee that she was, had no desire to share in their fate— hopefully taking initiative doesn’t give him another reason to accost her.
She enters and starts down the large hallway with her head held high, heels clicking against the gaping, opulent hall with a dissonant echo. The sound of it has rhythm, but it’s so achingly empty.
To this same sound, she ruminates on everything else she should be doing instead of this right now. She had lectures to organize, diplomats to meet and public appearances to make. Her subordinates were working as hard as they could, which she appreciated, but there was only so much they could deal with at a time.
For the Akademiya, the new term was fast approaching, and there was so little time to prepare. Not that their new archon cared for such trivialities.
The doors he waits behind swing open before she can touch them herself. The first thing she sees is the giant, mechanical thing he’s entombed himself in. She refuses to call it a body, because acknowledging it as any sort of meaningful extension of him sparks an irrational anger in her heart (and there’s nothing he feeds off of more than her anger).
Being beneath its skull-piercing gaze is always enough to enrage her on its own. Every time, it takes her back to that fight. The overturning of fate, an outcome she couldn’t predict, and the failure she doomed this entire nation to because of her own ineptitude. The worst part was that she could never discern his expression when he hid behind the panels comprising its ‘face—’ just as he would likewise never face his guilt. It was all revoltingly unjust.
To avoid cursing him as soon as she makes her presence known, Mona smooths her skirts (if only to give her hands something to do) and lowers herself into a kneel. The key of it was to bow her head as deeply as possible— it gave him no excuse to doubt her reverence or sincerity, and it (occasionally) spared her an entire audience from looking at its grotesque visage.
“You… summoned me,” she hisses through gritted teeth, “my lord?”
She can feel the whirring vibrate between her eye sockets long before she hears his voice. It’s anywhere from an echo to a dulcet whisper and it never fails to make her skin crawl.
”Oh, joy. My first sage finally deigns to grace me with her presence.” It seems divine ascension had done nothing to curb that scornful tone of his. “You’ve been avoiding my summons, lately.”
Mona represses a shudder. How could she not, after everything?
”My responsibilities to the Akademiya have kept me especially busy, of late,” she responds coolly, “I apologize if that is upsetting to you. I was just under the impression that the almighty god of wisdom would fare better without me than his flock would.”
There's a moment of silence, as though Scaramouche is contemplating this. Or perhaps he's simply imagining how her expression looks as she says this: cold, defiant and biting as always. Perhaps he was wondering what she'd look like right now, if she was a fraction more fearful. It was impossible to tell behind that obtrusive panel of a face.
“Do not presume to know the will of your god,” he rumbles, “and those impudent scholars should not impede you from answering my call.”
Now, Mona is very intelligent— she wouldn’t be here now if not for her mind, but her scholar’s heart (a spiteful, burning prideful thing) was something she couldn’t easily suppress. In her time before this role, she had endured skeptics at best and hecklers at worst, but Sumeru was a nation in pursuit of the stars’ secrets as she was.
The students and scholars who weren’t intimidated by her status would approach her after lectures, and the conversations she’d have were nothing short of illuminating. She wasn’t merely explaining the same base principles over and over to people who’d forget it as soon as she stopped talking, but actively engrossing herself in the talk of theoretical applications she’d only ever had in her head, before.
The lightness this inspired within her was perhaps the only silver lining to the crushing weight of her new existence, and that made her feel the worst guilt. Mona loved her homeland so deeply and fully that any such similar affection for Sumeru made her feel like a turn-cloak.
Even still, entombed in the nation of wisdom as he was in his godhood, Mona could never forget the freedom that flowed through her veins. They held the honour of pursuing unadulterated truth, they were the foundation of the Everlasting Lord’s reign, and she could never abide the dismissal of the lowly humans she had come to advocate for.
“You’re the impudent one.” She hisses it without thinking, and everything goes deathly still.
There’s a slow exhale. It’s impossible to tell if it's exasperated or amused. It's entirely deliberate, likely the former, but it's no secret that Scaramouche is one to find sick pleasure in her defiance. There's another long pause, the sound of metal joints moving as the god shifts just the slightest bit in his resting place.
“Is that right?” No, her insight whispers. It’s not just amusement, it’s—
“Rise, Mona Megistus.”
She obeys (perhaps a bit too quickly) and glares up at him with all of the contempt she couldn’t be bothered to hide anymore. The sound of gears shift as one of his mechanical hands begins to slowly lower itself towards her; fingers splayed and outstretched in the mockery of an invitation. She knows what else it is he wants, so she steps into his waiting palm with the same indifference as a fly would to a corpseflower.
The ascent is slow. Anticipatory. Mona debates sitting against the cool metal of it, but decides against the pretense of submission. She stands upright all the while, willing her resolution into being with every movement closer to the metallic monstrosity she makes.
When the hand goes stagnant, she struggles not to wobble. He’s still, taking her in for a long moment as he settles her under the frontal panel. Despite the distance still between them, Mona feels the weight of his gaze like a physical force.
“You seem to forget that I am the omniscient, ever-watchful god of arcane wisdom.” His voice drips with a deep, mocking disdain. “You can hide behind your wit and detestation all you like, but I will always know the truth.”
He pauses (for effect, she thinks), the accusation dripping over her head like tar. “You still haven't come to terms with your new life as my first sage.”
Of everything, Mona latches onto the word new. The specification betrayed a distinction, perhaps even a memory of her old life. A humbler life in Mondstadt, somewhere she was isolated and independent, free to roam and research to her heart's content.
At least, most of the time. Other times, she would come home to uninvited company.
Those such instances were succeeded with endless unpleasantries, yet in the midst of it all he’d somehow brew her a tea from an exotic blend he picked up or he’d plop a bag of her favourite takeout on the table. As if her tolerance could ever be bought with material objects, but… it was good for nights when she thought she’d go without a meal.
Sometimes, she’d feel bold enough to invite him to stargaze. Being seen with him had its risks, but her reputation was shoddy enough without him there. The company was almost worth it the first few times, but every outing had him grow bolder and bolder. Some nights, he’d take her away from the night sky entirely, whining and pawing at her like a beast in heat as they tangled in each other under Windrise and the illuminating light of the—
“Stop that.”
His voice shatters every reminiscence to pieces. Mona almost believed for a cold, lucid moment that he was reading into her consciousness, but that would be impossible. She’d have detected it, so… he’s been reading into her expression, instead. She schools it into something less vulnerable almost immediately.
“You’re levying these accusations, but I have yet to hold a real conversation with anything aside from a mumbling voice in my ear.” She scoffs quietly, crossing her arms. “Let me see you.”
Again, the silence between them is indisputably louder than anything else she wanted to yell into an empty, unfeeling machine. She expects melodrama, the clenching of large fingers around her waist as he drones on about her insolence or not knowing her place, or—
A thin rivulet of red energy illuminates the outside of the cavity. It’s the same red painted under the thing’s ’eyes,’ running down like bloody tears into nowhere as the frontal panel splits open with a hiss of steam.
Behind it is the true face of her god, and the sight of him has something strain against her heart. He floats within the maw of the vessel, looking down at her with his arms crossed and his eyes aglow in lazy scrutiny.
He looks every bit the pompous god he’s become.
“I named you as my first sage. The right hand of my reign and a mortal favoured by my divinity. Can you not recall the importance of that?”
She can recall the bloodshed, yes. How he corralled and lined up the former sages before him, executing each one who expressed any small desire for control over their man-made archon. She remembers because he had her by his side the whole time, scrying those truths for him against her will.
The last man to face judgement required no reading from her. Shouki no Kami crushed the former grand sage Azar with the heel of his palm, and named Mona as his replacement— and his own fist sage— in the same breath.
Perhaps he felt some small amount of envy towards Buer. Watching her passionately declare the Traveler to be her first sage must have sparked something in him— a desire for that same expression of loyalty unyielding. A better question might be why he’d choose someone who detested him with everything in her body.
She did her best to slot into Rhtawaheist, amidst everything. She wasn’t used to being in such an eminent leadership role, but she was nothing if not logical and attentive. To guide others was her vocation as an astrologist, so it stood to reason that she came to be well-liked amongst the different Akademiya streams. She was adaptable, above all else.
“Oh, you’ve adapted, yes,” he murmurs, and it’s only then that she feels the prickle of him at the back of her mind, “and you’ve done your duties with all the swiftness and efficiency I’d expect of my first sage. But you haven’t allowed yourself to relish it.”
Mona narrows her eyes. “Relish…?”
His smile is slow, and his voice is quieter again, almost lost amongst the hum of the god-machine. He extends a hand from his true body, but it’s another hand from the mech which rises at his command. The tip of its index finger moves along her jaw, brushing the side of her face like falling snow. It’s cold, and it’s almost enough to elicit a gasp.
“You are surrounded by my worshippers. People who look to you for guidance, for knowledge, for strength and wisdom. You are showered in praise and admiration, yet you deny yourself the satisfaction of watching your words shape the fate of the new Sumeru.” To her relief, the hand falls, but his expression remains… pensive.
“You’ve grown so used to the cold indifference of the stars, haven’t you? There was a time when you yearned for more.”
She turns her head away. The memory of her naive ambition churns silently in her gut, but she can’t deny that a tiny spark of it persisted despite being buried.
That all stars might shine in harmony with one another, that they’d never fizzle out or stray from their luminosity… such control was always meant to be beyond her. Astrologists read fate and spoke the truth plainly; seizing the stars for selfish purposes would doom her to lose their blessings.
Standing in the palm of a tyrant now, she fears that may have already come to pass.
“Don’t you realize how ridiculous you sound?” She almost snaps, “You’re upset with me because I’m not… what, abusing my position of power? How absurd.”
“And I count integrity amongst your many virtues,” he drones, crossing his legs in an infuriating display of apathy, “but one can only restrain themselves for so long before the pressure catches up. And you, little genius, are not as infallible as you think.”
He stokes the fire, and the anger in her gut rises to meet it. “You—!”
The hand shifts, suddenly, and she’s lifted face-to-face with his true body. It’s unfair how her rapidly heart beats with the proximity. Every inch of him is the same as the last she had him, but the glow of his eyes lures her into almost forgetting the history that landed her here.
His hand seems to twitch at his side, and carefully, it rises to graze against her cuffed bracelets as if to say; “Look, you’re practically shackling yourself of your own volition.” Anything to prove his own point. There's a calculated slowness to every one of his movements, his eyes fixed on her with an intensity that makes her feel a traitorous leap in her chest. He smiles, sharp and knowing.
“I want you to relish the power I give you. Relish in your eminent position and the prestige it grants you.” His voice slithers, now. “Relish me. Your archon. You are allowed to, today of all days.”
Mona has no idea what he’s talking about. He doesn’t care to elaborate, and she wasn’t about to waste time thinking about it too hard. She just wanted this to be over so that she could attend to more pressing, tangible matters.
”I suggest you spare the relish for your subjects.” They deserved it more than she did, anyway. They might never know the full truth she witnessed, but perhaps it was better that way. The continuation of routine amidst civil unrest was a sure step towards a return to normalcy. That this normalcy was forged upon the lie that Sumeru’s new god wasn’t a tyrant who… the Traveler and Buer, right in front of her—
She turns her head, eyeing the distance between her body and the ground. If she jumped, would he catch her? Or would he allow her to splatter like the bug she was for not wiggling at his feet like one?
The mechanical hand holding her aloft seems to answer that question by raising its fingers and curling in its palm. She almost mistook it for a protective gesture, were it not for the spark of irritation behind his gaze.
“You seem keen to forget that you are also a subject of mine, Mona.” His voice is hot, seething for a purpose she can’t fully discern. Something about it is so jarringly human, but she’s quick to banish the thought. That he could retain anything human felt wholly unrealistic.
”Is that right?” A subject. She doesn’t know what about it infuriates her more, the implication that she’s subject to him, or the fact that it’s true.
Perhaps it’s how impersonal it sounds to her.
“Yes. That is right.” His eternal virtue of patience seems to be thinning. “And I see the part I’ve played in your apathy. Just as you have avoided my summons, I have avoided… tending to you, as a god should his sage. That changes now.”
Before Mona can process this, everything shifts again, and her waist is being squeezed on all sides by the unrelenting grip of the hand she once stood in. She yelps and wriggles out of instinct, despite the futility of it all. She could slip into her torrent, but that would only attract more of his wrath. She may return to Rhtawaheist to find all their scrying glasses shattered by a temper-tantrum earthquake.
“Respectfully, my lord,” she says with no amount of respect at all, “this feels like a waste of our time. I still have political affairs to—”
There’s a sudden and deafening boom of thunder outside. Scaramouche’s eyes flicker, motionless, considering her with a hint of disdain. “It seems my first sage is in need of an analogy. That childlike god was quite fond of those, wasn’t she?”
Mona doesn’t say anything.
“Think of yourself as a finely crafted instrument. No matter how skillfully a master is able to wield this instrument, no matter how it’s played… It cannot produce a harmonious sound if it is out of tune.”
She bows her head further. It’s a serviceable scenario for what he’s trying to convey, if not slightly demeaning. She can’t claim to relate to the… cruder implications. “So, you want to tune me? Is this the reason I’m here?“
Scaramouche hums. “Mm. Not quite a tune, but something similar.”
He reaches his hand out towards her again, gently tracing two fingers down the line of her jaw. It’s almost tender, the way he touches her— yet patronizing all the same.
“I think a closer analogy would be… changing the strings, instead.”
Not for the first time, Mona notices the tubes extending out of his back. They’re strings in their own right, binding him to this tomb of godhood like a marionette. Seeing them pulse with the vibrant purple liquid that fuels his control over it makes something in her insight boil. It whispers to the freedom he once knew before he tangled himself up in worldly things like names and power and control— to the freedom he could have reclaimed, were the confrontation on that day to end as it should have. Not when he willingly bounds himself now.
Scaramouche seems to follow her gaze, studying it with an unsettling fixation. Then, a hand rises to curl around one of the tubes, and he yanks it out of his neck with a sickening crack. Mona feels her jaw reverberate at the sound.
“To get a fine instrument back into tune… it is sometimes necessary to take it apart. To inspect each small, working piece and find out what needs to be adjusted. Or restored.”
The revolting little thing almost seems to squirm in his fist. The sight of it makes Mona go sick and pale with dread at the implication.
“N-no. I don’t— don’t, Scara—”
Her pleas fall on deaf ears as he lets it go, extending beyond what should be possible from his chamber and squirming in the air, grasping blindly for purchase around her leg.
The palm unfolds, splaying her out within it as more of the writhing, binding strings slither out of the shadows of his maw-like cavity and twine around the original on both legs. Mona’s locked in place, but she finds it within to prop herself up on her elbows in futile defiance.
“Stop this. I don’t need to be tuned or changed or anything of the sort; just let me do my duties on my own terms!”
The tendrils are ice-cold against her bare legs, and the friction of them only feels like weight rolling and constricting against her ankles like a snake preparing to swallow her hole. Scaramouche seems less impressed with her declarations.
“Cease your whining. I refuse to allow my first sage to sink into the monotony of her duties.” He extends his arms in a similar way to when he first proclaimed his authority to this nation. “I am giving you a gift. Know your place and receive it.”
They work their way up slowly. Stretching against her skin, flicking at the edge of her robes, seemingly curious until they figure out how to push it all aside. They coil and suction against her like tentacles, clammy and unrelenting as they inch closer and closer to something trembling and anticipatory—
“Mona,” he calls, sighing at her display of panic, “I’m not going to hurt you. What faith you have in your little school of stargazers… place it in me, as well.”
His voice is uncharacteristically soft, but it does nothing to appease the pounding in her chest. Curiously, two fingers from his hands move to her shoulders, pressing her back flat against the palm. The pressure is firm but strangely gentle, almost as if he’s ensuring that she won’t hurt herself trying to escape.
The almost tender gesture is immediately forgotten once the first tube shoots into her womanhood.
Mona makes a noise that’s anywhere from a shriek to a sob. It’s cold and impersonal and it’s curling against everywhere, sending shockwaves of rippling energy to ignite her entire body in agony.
Scaramouche watches her with a certain intensity, examining every little reaction on her face and body. As if every twitch and tremor, every gasp and shudder, is significant to him in some way.
She refuses to see the Shouki no Kami as an extension of him. She has to repeat it to herself, even if the most bitter parts of her pride wouldn’t allow for her to forget it. But the pace this thing sets, the rhythm, the way it bullies against her sweet spots instinctively… it must be feeding off his memories, at least. At least she knew now that their nights together meant something, even if it culminated in something as obscene as this.
Whatever this is, it’s a disgusting, detached mockery of intimacy. The disgust becomes her when she feels herself clench down against it.
“Ah— ahhhh—” she cries out, “hurts, it— hah, it hurts, I can’t… t-take it out—!”
Something cold and warm and thick pours into her cunt. The tube quivers inside of her, plugging her up so that none of the liquid can escape. Her mind grows heavy and frenzied all the same.
“What… what is this? What’s happening to me?!”
Scaramouche watches her struggle with an expression that almost betrays fascination. The tether between her legs writhes as it fills her, and she trembles helplessly against his godhood, gasping and whining all the while.
“Shh, shhh. It’s alright.” Another tube inches closer, sliding against her trembling thigh with a teasing slowness. “The process might be slightly uncomfortable, so I understand it’s a lot to take in… but this will bring you closer to me.”
The numbness spreads outwards from her core, slackening her limbs and darkening her vision at the edges. It’s almost like falling asleep, she thinks, aside from the hollowing sensation of her consciousness being actively drained from every part of her body.
She blinks. It’s the only control she feels over herself, anymore, and even that seems to slip away from her as everything becomes insurmountably heavy. With every lethargic opening and closing of her eyes, she sees him staring back down at her— then, something behind his eyes sparks in time with hers and it shifts.
Every neuron and synapse fires to bursting. Everything is stifled and screaming and boxed in and stretched to the edges of infinity. There’s emptiness, aching and hollow— and then there’s pleasure.
When Mona opens her eyes, she’s staring down at her hands. Segmented, mechanical ball joints make up her fingers, and they’re cupped together as one might do when trying not to let water slip through. There’s no water in her hands, however, but there is a woman. Half exposed, and half covered in a writhing mass of the Prodigal’s strings.
Ah, Mona realizes. She’s looking at herself. She’s looking at herself… through his eyes. Seeing what he sees, feeling what he feels, and what she feels is an overwhelming ripple of ecstasy. There’s an extension of herself— of him down there, thrusting in and out of her sopping cunt. It’s squeezing around her so beautifully, and the sensation of it is so indescribably…
“Divine.” He speaks the word out loud, but it rings more so like a thought in her head. The extension pulses within that little body in her hands, sloughing in and out at an almost lazy pace.
“Can you see, now?” His voice seems to surround her from all sides, echoing within her own mind. “Oh, my sweet little sage... Look at yourself.”
Mona’s eyes are closed, as if she truly were sleeping. Her head lolls weightlessly with every squeeze. She feels it vividly, the shape of herself, and every shift of the soft, mortal flesh against the cold metal of the Everlasting Lord. The mess of tubes continues to coil around her body all the while. They’re form-fitting, like vines around trellises, and something about it is… alluring. Perverse. She feels them squeeze harder at her conflict, and something snaps.
The rage inspired by her pliant body, helpless under his ministrations boils over the rapturous pleasure wracking her body. Steeling herself, she tries to seize control over the fingers pinning her down, but her authority over this divine body seems limited to her own ability to feel it. Scaramouche only chuckles.
”Don’t be greedy, Mona. This joining of our consciousness is limited.” As if it were her own vitality, she feels the pumping liquid halt. The pleasure and anger is ripped away as everything goes dark, and her mind is thrown back into her body in an instant. “I can command it to cease so, so easily.”
Mona tries not to show disappointment upon being forced back into her own form. The pleasure she shared in, albeit sick and twisted, was preferable to the humiliation this position entailed.
”Please,” she gasps, skin unbearably loose and tight at the same time, “s-stop this… I can’t…”
The tendril slithers out of her with a grotesque squelch. It pushes back in, eliciting a strangled moan, and everything goes cold when she feels a second from the writhing mass prod against her rim.
”No. No, no more—”
It pushes into her insistently, pumping in ruthless synchronization with the first, and Mona can only whimper. Shouki no Kami was a relentless and cruel and narcissistic god, forcing her to seek refuge in his mind from his own sinister actions. Changing her strings… it must have been a cruel metaphor for breaking her in. Snuffing her defiance. She overstepped her authority, in his eyes; displayed too little reverence for him and advocated too fiercely for the paupers he was meant to govern. This sadistic ritual was a punishment for her, and as soon as she satisfied his vices she’d be crushed in this palm as she deserved and—
“Enough,” he booms, and the reverberation is enough to force her mind— and the appendages— to go completely still. “You think this is a punishment? That I would execute someone I chose in my boundless wisdom to attend me, on today of all days? On the day of your…”
He doesn’t let himself finish the thought. When the Prodigal looks down, his vision is like something out of a grotesque fever dream. Mona’s arms strain against his tendrils, coiling eagerly around her, her limbs and torso trembling pitifully from the effort. His eyes drift over the image, taking in every detail of her— every strained gasp, every tremor of her body, every glimmer of fear. Despite it all, she still looks beautiful in his sight. She always has.
Mona is entirely breathless to the insight. Even when she’s as debased as this, he could still see her as—
“No more of your foolishness. You’re a genius— act like it, and forgo your instinctive terror. It… reduces you.”
All at once, the swarm of strings pull free from her body, leaving her to heave against his palm. Everything feels strange, almost empty now that they’ve been removed— but Mona still feels the phantom memories of them wriggling and squirming inside of her, leaving behind an empty ache in their place.
The tendril he tore out of himself is all that remains. It twines loosely around her throat like lazy, dripping jewelry, rising against her cheek as if in apology. She has no energy left to swat it away.
“…I absolutely loathe you.”
“I know.” Scaramouche isn’t phased. He expects as much from her, but their synergy was nothing if not an intoxicating humility. “But that can always change. I have an eternity to wait for you.”
The word eternity ignites the blood in her veins. That he invokes it so flippantly where it meant something before makes her heart want to scream and rip out of itself until he finally listens and—
The pulsing, snake-like thing pushes gently past her parted lips. She gasps around it, but can’t think to follow her instincts and spit it out before it’s pouring the fluid down her soft and pliant throat.
Mona blinks back into his consciousness, and it’s a traitorous relief she feels. The pounding ache is gone, throbbing within a vacant body she’s no longer occupying, and the surge of divine strength invigorates her beyond words.
“That’s it, Mona. You work so hard… always holding yourself back. Let go, and let your archon take care of you.” His voice is a low croon, tutting as he peers down at her mindless form. The god’s hands raise her closer for his inspection.
Her eyes are blown open wide, glazed over with something hazy. Her muscles spasm in his hold, instinctively rolling over to conserve energy. Scaramouche coaxes her to return on her back, just to inspect her torn robes and skin stained purple with bruises and suctions alike.
She looks at this version of herself, detached, and feels a debilitating shame. She’s practically a corpse.
“Mona… you look so perfect, cupped in my hands like this.”
He says it like he means it, but she knows he’s also trying to change the subject. One digit extends towards her, the large finger gently brushing down the side of her face. He savors the sight of her like this, unable to react beyond simply taking it like a good little pet.
“…Hm,” he posits, the tip of it dragging slowly from her face down the side of her body, “do you… think we could find it purchase?”
There’s a whisper to his voice. Something hushed yet equally excited by the venture of this discovery. A swell of fear and damned intrigue has her cursed scholar’s heart doing the same. She can hear the swell of viscous pride and feel the grin split across his face.
“I knew it. You and I were always alike in this way.”
The finger is larger than her entire midsection. When it teases against her core, swirling lightly, her entire lower half spasms limply around it. The sight makes her blood go cold.
“S-Scara,” she whispers in his mind, “it’s not— I don’t think it’ll—”
“Hush. I’ve prepared your body for this.” The tip of it pushes into her. He groans in triumph. “There you go, pretty girl. Take it all in.”
The warmth she feels when her walls clamp against it is intoxicating and nauseating. She’s become a voyeur to her own defilement, but perhaps her dignity had always been forfeit to him. This ritual was humiliation in its most distilled form, and that is what he wants her to witness.
Status was a material thing, and as a good-natured astrologist, Mona knew not to seek after it. Humility was the mark of one who could pursue with no limits— that’s what she tried to aspire towards, in any case. It was a struggle, at times, to get people to pay any mind to the title she inherited from Barbeloth.
Why would Mondstadt hold a “Genius Astrologist” in the same regard as their knight’s “Chief Alchemist?” Would her name ever inspire the hushed (albeit fearful) reverence with which the Fatui regarded their harbingers? Not that she would want such a thing, but in her darkest moments… she thought that even fear would be better than the void of indisputable irrelevancy.
The day Shouki no Kami anointed her as his first sage was the most devastating day of her life. Not just because she watched him rip Buer’s gnosis from her chest, or because her falling body was caught by the Traveler and spirited away in a flash of stardust without sparing her a glance, or even the execution of every other sage she witnessed— it was because she held the capacity for this title with anything other than disgust.
Being named to a title synonymous with academic genius ignited a spark of joy amidst her turmoil. It instilled a trembling, feeble hope that she could be something more, or that her astrological prowess could extend to the same reach as Scaramouche’s newfound godhood. That was all the proof she needed to know that she never deserved to be a “grand sage” in the first place.
Scaramouche sighs egregiously. “You’re still thinking of that, even now. Look at what we’re doing together.”
He wiggles the finger, slightly, for emphasis. Mona’s body flops limply, and if she had any control over it now, it might be hemorrhaging. That state of nothingness in her flesh, while her mind was alive with manic horror and lightning felt… wrong. There was so much out of her control, even after ascending to this height. She might as well be as powerless as her uninhabited body.
The tube shoved down her throat seems to twitch in response to her despair. Her gaze bores into it immediately, the possibility fogging around her as thickly as the fluid pours into her.
“Could I possibly…”
She focuses on it. Focuses on her form, on the divinity crackling under the metal skin of this divine body, of everything it commands within itself, and the tendril shoots out of her like the cork off a bottle of snake wine. The other part of the Prodigal’s consciousness notices the shift too late.
“Mona, you—”
The saccharine, buzzing pleasure is gone. There’s only her, looking up into a puppet’s face twisted in horror, and the agony that comes with being split open on a god.
The stretch is worse than she could have anticipated. Filling felt unto a sublime conquest— reaping and carving a space for oneself in the world, and perhaps his mind did see her as such— but to suffer the brunt of it, to be pillaged and forfeit and an object, a mere spoil, was the furthest in hell she could fall from his divinity.
This was much better. It was familiar, and it was what she deserved.
Scaramouche’s expression is as flat as it was before, but there’s a distinct sense of something sinister brewing just beneath the surface. He’s watching her so intently, now, studying the way her mind shifts and her body relents with a crease of dissatisfaction.
“You,” he whispers it, yet it bounces between her sockets as if they were still entwined, “you are yielding in the wrong way. You were meant to succumb to pleasure, to crave your own advancement, yet you—”
He sucks in a breath. Beneath her delirium, Mona wonders whether or not breathing had become necessary after his ascension. “I gave you power, station, a place at my side… yet you continue to deny yourself.”
The rage mounts to the point where he can’t hide it. The finger severing her hamstrings crooks up into the memory of a sensitive spot. “Why isn’t it enough for you? Why can’t you allow yourself to be happy?!”
“Because I do-on’t d-deserve,” she bucks her hips, sobbing, “I don’t deserve to be happy! Not, ah— not after I f-f-failed them, a-and I failed you by letting it get this far—”
He regards her for a long moment, no longer poised, with something desperate and strangled in his expression. As if her satisfaction could somehow justify the isolation fueling his own transcendent existence.
Despite the godhood encasing him, he almost seems small from where Mona is. It’s a stark reminder that no amount of stolen divine power could change what he had spent centuries trying to run from. How selfish.
”I read the stars that day,” she warbles, tears pooling and legs tensing, “I read the stars and they foretold your downfall, your rebirth, and you— you weren’t supposed to win. You inverted your fortune and ruined it f-for everyone!”
The Prodigal stares at her silently, and his eyes— darkened with exhaustion and something dangerously tender— don't waver from hers. He sees it again: the woman who once poured over star charts by candlelight, whose pride wasn't in power, but in knowing.
He can only imagine how that pride must have shattered when the stars told his mage her first lie. She never could fully wrap her head around the concept.
“They only got one part right,” and that makes sense, for all the most distorting lies hold a small amount of truth, “my ‘rebirth.’ I ascended to something greater, something beyond the meaningless routine I lived before.”
Something tightens and unravels, tightens and unravels inside of her as something horrible mounts with each insistent prod. “Our time together— hnngh— w-was that meaningless to you, a-ahh… as well?”
Mona can practically see his chest tighten, as if the strings pumping fluid into his body were instead veins growing from a bleeding heart. He makes a guttural noise before answering. “No. It wasn’t. That is why I chose to reward you.”
Right, it was all making sense now. Sagedom was a reward, and whatever this was… this was him tending to her. What a horrible turn of fortune.
Mona rocks into the finger, willing more of herself down on it. She wants it to sever her from her nerves and gut her like an animal, blistering and searing until grief and guilt come undone (quite literally) by the delivering hand of her false, heretical god.
(The craving is not nothing. The revulsion of her chase, her desperation, is not nothing. The mounting desire, his voice, his praise, and her conflict is not nothing.)
Scaramouche says nothing when Mona comes. She heaves for air as if she’d been drowning, and the excess of everything she felt dribbles obscenely down the sides of the finger. The clear verity of her pleasure is tinged purple with his imitation of blood, and it only further serves to deepen his feelings. Every spasm, every jolt, and every whimpered cry is immortalized in his memory, as always.
“I thought about you, over the course of this body’s construction.” He confesses it without an ounce of shame. Mona is still perched upon his digit, propped up like a porcelain doll behind glass, and it only occurs to him then that she probably couldn’t push herself off of it even if she wanted to. A second hand rises to gently lift her up. The depraved squelching only serves to warm his empty chest as she’s laid to recover against his palm once more.
“I knew you’d hide behind your scryglass and deny my rightful claim to this destiny, but I also couldn’t help but envision your submission.” Hesitantly, he steps out of the maw and kneels at her side. It’s the closest he’s been to another person since ascending, and its the only time he’s lowered himself in this way for a mortal. Of course it was for Mona.
“I entertained notions of you as an apostle, a high priestess… a consort. But it never truly felt like you.” He leans in until his lips ghost her forehead, breathing the same bloody, cloying air as she does. “You are most yourself when you speak truth into the world, not empty praise for a god you hate. My only desire was that your role in my empire would be worthy of your mind and stature. That you might come to relish it, even.”
There was that word again. She might be starting to understand it better, now.
“I’m afraid,” she murmurs quietly, “that letting myself enjoy it will mean that… I’m no longer who I once was. That I’ll be forgetting everything— everyone— that came before this. I couldn’t live with myself knowing I benefited from another’s suffering.”
Scaramouche scoffs at her reaction. Mona looks like a cornered animal— hesitant, defiant yet beautiful in her refusal. She’s such a proud, mournful creature. He finds it grating to see the way the magic in her blood wars with her devotion to her old life. To loyalties that only brought her suffering, now.
”Those lowly worms escaped Joururi Workshop with a coward’s urgency.” She knows who he’s talking about. The air always seems charged with ire whenever someone as righteous as the Traveler comes into thought. A small part of Mona feels a twinge of jealousy that she can’t enrage him in that same way.
“And like cowards, they never came back to rescue their dear astrologist. They abandoned you. They betrayed you, Mona.”
There’s something more forceful, more desperate behind his words. Forsake them. Embrace me with that same loyalty. Feed me all of your despair and hatred and worship and I will lay the night sky at your feet.
Her head is raised, and the next it settles is against his lap. Scaramouche's hand slides up from her chin down to her hair, gently tangling through the tousled midnight strands. His touch is almost tender, and it's a cruel contrast to the way she’s still imprisoned in his fist.
“Abandoned…” she mumbles, incapable of focusing on anything else, “I… they did leave me behind, but… I’m glad they did. As I am now, under your constant surveillance… I’d be a liability. I only hope to see them next while they’re dethroning you.”
Mona hopes the splintering of her heart at the sheer isolation of it all doesn’t show behind her words. Scaramouche only huffs.
“Look at that. My wise and illuminating first sage, a blasphemer.” He doesn’t sound as angry as she’d imagined. She doesn’t know why that makes her feel a twinge of guilt.
Mona, with great effort, pulls herself up. Her insides are torn asunder and her skin screams with every shift, but her sheer strength of will is able to position the sage to properly straddle the false god. “Only for you, my Everlasting Lord.”
She melts into him, if only because she has no strength left to hold herself up. He practically growls, constricting his arms around her back as if letting go would shatter her to pieces. A demand claws at his throat. “Call me your lord again.”
His sage merely tuts. “Don’t be greedy.”
The tether she had previously imposed her control on rises to twine between her fingers and around her cuff-brace. She indulges it with a single, fleeting stroke before lazily shoving it back into the gaping hole on his neck. Scaramouche had nearly forgotten it was there, but the burst of pain from its return was dulled by the light brush of her fingers against his nape.
“…Hate this stupid robot,” she muffles into him, “you should come out of it already. Come down to the Akademiya with me and… and do some real work for Sumeru. My paperwork.”
Her head lulls, and Mona surrenders to unconsciousness. The puppet-god she melds against has never been more vividly aware of the strings connecting him to his divinity than he has been at this moment. He feels the tug of them as he leans a fraction too far into her, the cool metal of her braces through the sheer of his attire,
and her words seem to ring a little too true for his liking.
He pulls her back and stares into her sleeping face, unblinking. He sighs, weighing divinity in his hands as readily as he weighs Mona in the palm of this construct.
Somewhere within it, he feels his gnosis throb— it’s not a pulse, for that would be too unto a feeble, mortal heart. A god’s heart would only beat when it was commanded to. It was subject to no laws he didn’t first set, yet Mona… Mona was always an exception to this. To everything. It was a flagrant overstepping of her bounds, but perhaps this joining had made her a goddess in her own right. His “heart” throbs at the notion.
He turns her over in his arms slowly, considering lowering himself in a way he never thought he’d want to be again, if only to… exist in the same space, under the same set of false stars.
Hooking an arm under her legs and rising, Scaramouche issues another silent command to his divine body. Whether this command comes with its own set of consequences, he doesn’t care— he is above them as he is above such things as fate; and he will surely find a way, someday, to elevate his beloved first sage to that state of being as well.
. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁⋆.✮.⋆. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁
The sunset is all she can see when she opens her eyes. Orange, warm, glowing— it feels like coming home. The set of arms wrapped securely around her shoulders is a similarly comforting embrace.
“You listened to me?” She’s surprised. That’s never happened before, despite her… insistent counsel, in the past. His grip tightens, hearing her speak, but Mona can’t find it in her to be put off. There’s a warmth to his imitation of flesh that she’s long missed, in their time apart.
“My connection to the divine body is absolute. Something as menial as detachment is not enough to quell my power… not anymore, at least.”
Mona merely snorts, turning into him on instinct. “What a wonderful discovery. Can I expect the Prodigal to bother me in person, now? Preferably not while I’m working, or researching… or lecturing.”
He makes a noise that’s almost a huff. “After everything I did to you, you still have the capacity to think of such things?”
He shouldn’t sound nearly so disgruntled. She had participated, too… with her own self-destructive inclinations as an aside. She didn’t know if he had finally succeeded in robbing her of her sanity, but the intention of his ruin spoke clearly to her insight. He had witnessed the fear and dejection she buried beneath obligation when no one else had. Perhaps it was something he felt as well, in whatever capacity, and had tried to quash it for both their sakes. To reap the superiority he felt they both were owed.
His methods, as usual, were far too invasive. If he could join her as a lowly worm on the ground more often, then maybe they could both learn to relish things beyond their stations.
“Don’t bother with your work, in any case,” he continues, “You won’t find anyone around, today.”
She startles upright in an instant. “If you exiled any of my subordinates, I swear to—”
“To who? To me?” He snorts at the notion. As if she had anyone else to swear anything to. “Calm yourself. No one is to work on this day, as I’ve declared it a holy day just this morning.”
Mona gives him a derisive glare. For one with such an eminent title, he had a nasty proclivity for indulging his whims. “What, you just invented a holiday on the spot? Should I scurry down to a shrine to pray?”
The humour seems lost on him as he turns to cast her a sideways glance. He speaks slowly. “Today is the thirty-first day of August.”
It takes a moment for Mona to realize what he was saying. It clicks within seconds, shining a horrible light of clarity onto the “gift” Scaramouche had prepared for her today.
“Oh, it’s—”
“It’s your birthday.”
“Yes, I can see that.”
“Can you?”
She’s not entirely surprised she forgot. It was only natural for the days to slip by when in the midst of her research— this habit had only worsened after becoming the grand sage. The only difference now was that the was someone who took the time to remind her.
She rolls her eyes and huffs, shuffling away from him. He follows, coaxing her back into his side as always.
“Don’t be like that.” His voice lowers. “Perform a reading for me, Megistus. Read the stars of our people— tell me how they’re faring.”
Mona only scowls, but her fingers are already twitching against the scryglass she’s conjured. She’d refuse him if it was a more selfish divination. Still, there’s a hesitance that belies her actions— a fear that she’s been long forsaken by her beloved stars, by now, and thus denied her their insights. She’s almost afraid of what she might find in the reflection of the water. Besides her own anxious face, of course.
She adjusts the dials, fingers skimming over them carefully, and Sumeru’s sky is looking back at her. Reading into each person at length would take too long, but the emotions of the general populous wash over her in a wave. The emotions are almost jarring.
For the first time in a long time, the Sumeru city she overlooks experiences peace. Were she to examine it a tad closer, it might even take the shape of gratitude, and its as powerful given as it is received.
“You see that?” he whispers into the back of her shoulder, “That’s for you, Mona.”
She digests his words with the faintest understanding. “That’s… for me.”
Recognition, appreciation… simple a stirring as it was, Mona couldn’t help but hold her breath. Her efforts as a scholar and as a sage were being recognized. Scaramouche takes advantage of her stupor to pull her against his back, a low chuckle rolling off his lips.
His fingers curl around her own as something cool and weighted is settled between them. Mona looks down, the slightest intrigue sneaking into her voice.
”A circlet?”
It's made of the same bronzed gold as most of her astrology equipment, though inlaid at the centre with an alluring red sapphire. The same kind that she once wore in her ears, and as accents on her old garments. She hadn’t expected him to remember such minute details, but then again, the god of scumbags always loved to keep her guessing.
”Not just a circlet,” he murmurs, letting his fingers skim on the underside, “it’s also a portable astrolabe. I figured you would appreciate a more practical tribute.”
Mona’s eyes widened. She moves to unfold it, and surely enough, there’s a celestial sphere in her hands, engraved with runes only her mind could hope to decipher— or appreciate. She runs her hand over them (lightly, as if afraid pressing too hard into a good thing may shatter it) and carefully hands it back to him, turning expectantly.
”Well, then,” she muses, “put it on me.”
When Mona looks at him, everything goes still. The setting sun seems to engulf her, bathing her midnight hair in a ring of molten gold. The light of it makes her look practically divine.
Carefully (reverently) he settles the thing onto her head, using the ring as his guide. It sits just as perfectly as he envisioned— but she’s not merely a vision. She’s a reality, and she’s his reality. This fact alone has the empty space in his chest straining.
A crown of erudition for a mortal goddess. How fitting.
“Worship is what gives gods their power,” he murmurs, “I want you to know that feeling, too.”
He leans into her side, tongue skimming the shell of her ear as he gently nibbles on the lobe. “You have an entire nation and it’s god wrapped in your strings. Allow yourself to enjoy that, because you’ve always deserved it.”
Mona feels the circlet against her head, at that moment. Not as a weight; nor a burden, but as something… more mutual. A covenant, perhaps.
“You…” her voice is almost hesitant, “truly made my birthday a holiday?”
Scaramouche's breath hitches as she leans into him, her words brushing against his skin like a curse and a caress all at once. His fingers tremble at her waist— weak, but still firm— as Mona feels the truth of it all settle between them.
“What could be more sacred than my first sage’s birth into this wretched world?”
He says it as if it’s the most reduntant question in the world. Perhaps most questions were that way to him now, insurmountably knowledgeable as he was, but that would never stop her from seeking answers. Mona was unyielding and stubborn, so she’d continue to make godhood a challenge for him. She suspects he wouldn’t want it any other way.
When his fingers lace around her own, locking their hands together, Mona notices for the first time that her golden cuffs aren’t pressed into her wrists. Someone must have taken them off, in her slumber.
She sighs. Fate cannot be overturned, nor will the future remain as stagnantly eternal as the fledgling god now hopes. His reign would crumble, eventually— it was written as such in the stars. Whether it be by her hand or whatever sort of resistance the Traveler and Buer were planning, it didn’t matter. Such technicalities could wait until they came to pass, and by then, if he’d let her… she’d be there to catch him when he falls.
The sun sinks into the city below, and the night sky rises to meet the dusk where it ends. When the stars emerge like raindrops rippling over still water, she whispers the stories of each one, joyous and morose alike. In this moment, he is not a god and she is not his sage. She’s an astrologist, as if that’s all she’d ever been, and he’s the scumbag harbinger who took it all away from her.
Scaramouche closes his eyes and listens. The wind whistles through the surrounding foliage in a starkly similar way to how it once did at Windrise. His grip on her remains firm with each melodic musing. The first holiday of Sumeru’s new divinity continues and ends in a peaceful, tranquil silence.