A Lullaby For Gods Chapter 174

Cronus Ampora is on the floor of his living room.

The fireplace is dark, but his skin is heated. Warmth envelopes his whole body, and his eyelids barely lift when he tries to open his eyes. To his right, bright light streams through the windows; with the curtains pulled aside, the light bleaches the room white, rendering the comfy browns and honeyed tones of his home dead and sterile.

Fingers brush a curl of hair away from his ear, the action alerting him to the low humming that’s surrounded him since he’s woken up. He blinks, and it comes faster to him this time, his eyelids less weighted than they had been before.

He’s nearly eye-level to the floor. He’s lying on his side. Oh.

The awareness has him turning so he’s on his back instead. The Full Moon of Derse pulls her hand away and smiles down at him.

“Do you remember how dying felt, Cronus Ampora?” she asks.

“...huh?” he wheezes out. Now that he tries it, breathing in makes his chest ache. Why the hell does it hurt to breathe?

“There are many iterations of me,” the Full Moon says. “As are there for my sisters. None of us are connected, but I do know that we share the same fate.” She tilts her head, her long hair falling to the side with the movement. He can’t see her eyes. “We cannot choose. We cannot leave. We cannot die. We can only ever be used.”

She leans down, still smiling.

“You have already died once,” she says. “And you could die still. What a gift.”

Cronus stares. “...what?”

The Full Moon lays her hand on his cheek. Have her nails always been that long?

“Unfortunately, the Heir wants you to live for as long as possible. You have work to do,” she says. “But I so rarely get to inflict my curse upon someone else, so perhaps it is not so unfortunate.”

“You’re - ” Cronus chokes at the sudden spike of pain that lances through his chest as he speaks. Fuck, why does it hurt? “ - not…making any…sense - ”

He coughs. The Full Moon’s nails dig into his skin, drawing blood; his gaze snaps up at her in panicked attention.

“Wake up - ”

“ - you little piece of shit!”

Cronus Ampora’s eyes fly open as he drags in a pained, gasping breath. His chest burns, he can’t feel his legs, and his face is pressed to something wet and warm that he soon realizes is a puddle of his blood. His gaze flits across the dirty floor he’s lying on, littered with dust and debris. The shoe in the corner of his line of sight shifts.

“He’s awake. Strider, start pulling.”

Dualscar. That’s Dualscar. Hang on, start pulling what -

Something warm begins to slide out of his stomach.

“FUCK!” Cronus screams, immediately trying to stop whatever the hell is moving out of his middle, except he can’t feel his right arm and his left one similarly sends blinding agony when he tries to move it. He ends up instinctively kicking his legs, thrashing at the multitude of sensations flooding his brain: he hurts everywhere and whatever it is that’s lodged in his stomach is still slowly being pulled out.

“ - least numb the poor boy’s pain, you absolute imbecile!”

“Neither of us can afford that right now without melting our limbs off, so he can stop being a wimp and grow a backbone like the rest of us,” Dualscar bites out. Cronus blinks tears out of his eyes as the world around him blurs. It was…Nightwalker who’d spoken before. If he just focuses on people’s voices and tries to figure out who’s talking, he’ll be fine. He’ll be fine. Nevermind what’s happening to him. He’s fine. “If I heal him with rebar still skewering him, his body might just grow around it.”

Why the hell is he even skewered by a metal bar? What the fuck happened? He was back home, he was in Sicilia, the Full Moon was there and she was talking about keeping him alive or something. What the hell was going on?

The bar stuck in his gut pulls free, leaving his stomach feeling hollowed out. Almost immediately, he can feel blood gushing out of the wound, and his responsive fingers twitch at his instinctual reaction to stop the bleeding.

Somewhere to his left, metal clatters. Rigid metal palms press down on his wound, and it takes him a moment to realize that’s Strider. With his vision still obscured by tears, everyone around him is a blur.

“Get moving before he bleeds out, asshole.” Vantas the Second. That’s Kankri’s descendant.

A hand grasps his shoulder. Cronus drags in another breath, eyes widening at the sudden rush of heat that washes over him from head to toe. The pressure on the back of his head that he hadn’t even noticed lifts, his right arm makes itself known again as it protests at being uncomfortably pinned to the ground, and the hollowed out feeling in his gut fills and disappears.

He blinks. It takes a few seconds for his tears to clear from his vision. Dualscar stands from where he’s knelt by him, violet stains on the edges of his manica. Hal, sitting right beside the man, sits back, palms stained with red and violet; he must have been one of the first to wake up and tend to the others. A few steps away is Nightwalker, looking no worse for wear than the last time Cronus had seen him, and behind him is Karkat, arms crossed, glare fixed on Dualscar.

Right. They were in New York - or at least, what was left of it.

Cronus pushes himself up on his hands, sitting up. “Where - ” He coughs as he inhales dust; his throat burns, dry and scratchy. “Where’s - Eridan?”

Karkat looks away; Nightwalker and Dualscar both tense; Hal doesn’t do anything, just sits there with his cracked glasses and fractured faceplate.

Kid’s dead, then. Shit.

“The…Sylph?” he rasps out.

Nightwalker clears his throat. “She’s dead too,” he says. “We barely found anything left…”

“I found them,” Hal says, tone surprisingly level. “But their bodies were already mostly burnt by then.”

Cronus runs a hand through his hair, cringing when it comes away congealed in blood. “Shit, how long has it been?”

“Seventeen hours,” Hal says. “We took a while to dig you out of the rubble. Only reason we even knew where you were was ‘cause of - ” He points up. Cronus lifts his gaze to where he motions.

A whole, unbroken sky stares up at him. Stars twinkle in the distance, in full view with the cloudless night. With the city lights all dead and out of service, there’s more of them visible than ever before, forming starry rivers above him.

And in the midst of all that, a bright full moon shines down on them, spotlighting the exact area where Cronus sits.

He feels for one of his pants’ pockets. He doesn’t even remember if he’d put the Full Moon there, but he finds her when he searches nonetheless. As he’s supposed to.

“Thanks…” he murmurs.

Don’t thank me yet, the Full Moon says, though he can’t see her. You’re not quite out of the woods yet. You just survived the end of the world.

Right. Eridan’s killed the Sylph, but everything’s still in ruins.

Cronus clears his throat and turns back to the others. Hal’s flat expression is even more blank than usual (poor guy must be exhausted), so he brings his attention to the adults instead.

“So, what now?” he asks Dualscar.

The older man turns to Nightwalker, whose lips flatten with discomfort.

“Now, we figure out how to fix what’s left,” the Knight says. “And hope we hear back from The Heir.”

No, now you prepare for the next wave, the Full Moon whispers in Cronus ear, giggling.

Everyone around him tenses. He frowns in confusion, and her hand snakes over his shoulder, forefinger and thumb latching onto either side of his jaw and forcing him to look up.

Can’t you sense it? she asks. Someone’s coming.

#

Nightwalker and Karkat are the least injured out of all of them, having teleported away before the church crumbled. Hal had managed to tank through the destruction on account of being made of metal, and Dualscar had quickly thrown a barrier over himself to avoid being squashed to death.

Barriers. Cronus should spend time learning how to put up barriers instead of yelling Deflect at everything. He’s been buried under rubble twice now.

His foot catches on a piece just as he thinks that, sending him clumsily toppling to the ground - if not for Nightwalker grabbing onto the back of his shirt and pulling him back upright. The man is at the back of the group, keeping watch while Dualscar leads ahead. While the Sylph is dead, none of them know if there are still any heralds running around, or if the Heir of Blood has any backup plans active in case his little puppet got booted off the board.

“Thanks,” Cronus mutters, adjusting his stance to get his bearings again.

Nightwalker lets him go, nodding. Dark circles hang under the man’s eyes, and while Cronus can’t see any major injuries from him, he still distinctly smells of blood. Dualscar had said something about neither of them being able to expend magic without melting their arms off, right? Poor guy must have been at his limit with magic, probably spent too much of it trying to get him and the others out from where they’d been buried.

“Um.” Cronus looks to where Hal and Karkat are currently following Dualscar, all three of them tiredly shuffling forward and carefully stepping over broken concrete. “Where are we going again?”

“We’ll have to find someplace to rest for the night, and then we can see if we can get back to the Heir’s home,” the Knight says. “Considering the sky’s been fixed, I’m not sure if we can find suddenly-teleporting doors to bring us back there. And I’m not in the best shape to bring us over right now.”

Cronus nods. He could use some sleep too. And some food. Fuck, the city’s dark enough as it is, his vision tilting every few seconds as he goes lightheaded isn’t helping. Must be the bloodloss.

“Hey!” Dualscar barks up ahead. “You two better fucking keep up, if you get lost, we’re not looking for you!”

“Die of infection, then, asshole!” Nightwalker yells back, huffing. His shoulders slump right after, and he winces, inhaling deeply, already winded. “Though, we should probably keep up.”

Cronus nods. He sways as he turns back to follow the others, but he puts one foot in front of the other.

He has no idea how long they walk for, only that he keeps his eyes on the ground the whole time to avoid tripping again. He’s hungry enough that he feels like he could float, and several times, Nightwalker has to make sure he doesn’t crash and pass out right then and there. The only thing he can focus on is keep moving, keep moving, keep moving.

A hand grabs onto his arm, tugging him back. He blinks, turning to Nightwalker.

“In here.” The man points to what Cronus realizes three seconds too late is a house. It’s intact, compared to the others on the street. “I think we can rest for a few hours here.”

Cronus nods. Everyone else has already ducked inside, so he does the same, immediately making a beeline for the couch as soon as he spots it.

He doesn’t remember lying down. He just passes out.

#

“Hey.”

Cronus jolts awake at the spray of cold water on his face. He sits up, as quickly as he can, wiping the water off. The room around him is still dark, and even his night vision takes a few seconds to adjust to his surroundings.

Dualscar kneels beside the couch, spray bottle in hand, waiting for him to finish cataloguing everything. In his other hand, the man holds a loaf of bread, which he shoves into Cronus’ hands as soon as the boy manages to recognize he’s there.

“Huh.” Cronus blurts out, mind still foggy with sleep.

“You’ve been out for a couple of days and Nightwalker says you actually need to eat something so you don’t kick it,” the man grunts, getting to his feet.

“What?” Cronus asks. Dualscar lifts the spray bottle and fires it at his face again. “Fucking - I was saying that at how long I’ve been asleep!” The young man brings his arms up to shield himself, though the action comes far too late since he’s already been hit, and he has to lower them to wipe the water off with his shirt.

“Bastard’s already fixed you up, but you just kept sleeping for a while.” Dualscar motions to him, prompting Cronus to check himself from his torso to his feet. Someone’s taken his shoes off and set them on the floor.

God, he must have been more tired than he thought. He takes a bite out of the loaf; it’s a already a little sour, but given how famished he is, he keeps eating anyway. As long as it’s not moldy, it’s fine. “Where’s everyone else?”

“Vantas is sleeping,” Dualscar says. “Strider and Nightwalker are looking for food and a way back to Night Vale.”

“No dice on the portals, then?”

The older troll shakes his head, frowning as he turns toward one of the windows, though the curtains are still pulled shut. All of them are. “I think everything got fixed after the Sylph died.” A pause. “Save for that sinkhole a few miles back, that thing’s just…there.” He huffs. “Sky’s back, though. It rained a few nights ago, and Strider managed to get a radio working in another building. Apparently, news crews and rescue teams have already arrived in some parts of the city.”

Cronus hums. “Should probably get out of here, then. I don’t think we should be seen out and about with the humans.”

Shit, where were his glasses? Did he still have them? Fuck, his brain’s too foggy for this right now.

“We’ve been trying - Nightwalker can’t find Night Vale.” Dualscar turns back to him. “And you’re the only person who can use that Moon of yours.”

Ah. That would be why they needed him awake, then.

Cronus pops the last of the loaf of bread into his mouth, chews it up, and swallows. “You got any more food?”

Dualscar frowns, but motions toward a doorway on the other side of the room.

The room he’s been pointed to turns out to be the kitchen. There are several cans of food way in the back of one of the cupboards, but they’re all days past their expiration date. Still, Cornus chooses the relatively fresh ones and digs his canines into the corners, dragging them along the edges of the metal to carve the cans open. The plumbing in the house still works, so he washes everything down in water after, before scrubbing himself free of blood in one of the bathrooms.

His shirt’s been ruined from getting impaled by a rebar, so he loots the closet of one of the bedrooms for whatever fits him. Dualscar lets him be, staying downstairs, and he takes the time to sort the last several days out.

Right. So, the end of the world’s been averted, he nearly died (again), and he still had work to do. The Heir did give him another set of instructions and he still had those other coins in his possession, so his next step should be to put those in place. Angeles said they had another message for him too, right? A list of places for him to go to.

He takes a few moments to find his phone in his sylladex, scrolling down to the recordings Angeles had left him. His earphones are a bit harder to find in the mess of his inventory, but he manages, and finds himself a spot on the bedroom floor to lie down on as he relistens to one of them.

“Well, let’s move on,” the recording says as he finally finds the perfect point to rewind to. “This is number two and an important factor of your mission: the Moon and the lesser lights that are within your care are to help the rest of our assets who aren’t on Earth to find their way there.”

Okay, he’s supposed to gather everyone to Earth. Maybe this has something to do with preparing for the next wave, or whatever the Moon had said. Or perhaps keeping everyone separated is no longer a risk that can be afforded, what with the Heir of Blood willing to pick a person and use them and their powers.

“See, none of them know where the others are, and from their perspective, they’re the only ones who made it into this universe. So by making a fuss, we’re essentially drawing them in like moths to a flame and finally reuniting everyone without backing them into a suspicious corner. Most of them also do not remember their time on the Blueberry and don’t remember they agreed on the plan, so to mitigate lashing out from fear, we’re going to let them gather on their own,” the recording continues, “The lesser lights will not activate until it is time, and you’re the one who calls the timing. For the list of places you will have to lay the lesser lights on, I’ll send you another message so that you don’t have to sift through this one trying to find a timestamp. I know that can get annoying. As for how you’re going to activate the lights, they respond to the Full Moon – all of them merely reflect her light, you see, and none of them are sentient. They’re more like little cups that collect moonlight or something. And I’m sure you’ve been getting along with the Full Moon. And for the when…”

A heavily distorted phone starts ringing. Once. Twice.

Ring ~ ring ~ “Can I help you?”

Cronus frowns, sitting up. What the fuck.

Ring ~ ring ~ “WOOF! WOOF, WOOF!”

He hits pause on the recording and takes off his earphones. Behind him, the Full Moon suddenly bursts into laughter.

“You hear that, right?” he mutters. When he turns to her, she nods.

Once more, he hears a tinny jingle, warped and distorted…and sounding like it’s coming from underneath the bed just a few feet away from him.

“Ay - ay - ay - I’m your little butterfly! Ay - ay - ay - I’m your little butterfly! Ay - ay - ay - I’m your little butterfly!”

The phone goes silent for a brief second, before ringing again, cycling through the “Can I help you?”, the dog barks, and the song. Cronus’ expression twists, but he lowers himself to the floor so he can look underneath the bed.

A small light shines out from the darkness, bright incandescent and blinking. Thanks to it, he can see the cheap, plastic toy phone laying in a mess of other toys, forgotten in a pile under the mattress.

He crawls forward, sticking an arm out to grab the ringing phone. It takes him a few tries to get it, and once he does, he sits up and looks down at it in both curiosity and disdain.

The thing is a flip phone, with the top shell being a faded pink while the bottom one was white. The little antenna on the top corner has a bulb that blinks enthusiastically, and on the other end is a dusty lanyard attached to the phone’s side. The front of the top shell has a mostly scratched out photo of a cartoon blonde girl, with her colors printed slightly off mark. Flakes of the photo stick to his fingertips when he pulls them away from it.

And the phone doesn’t stop ringing. Karkat is supposed to be asleep on this floor, right?

Cronus sighs and flips it open. Maybe that will shut it up.

“Hello! Hello, hello!”

He blinks. Is that Angeles?

“Sorry for the delay in communication, I did tell you it was a bit of a gamble sending you to kill the Sylph, didn’t I? I lost that one, but you’re in place anyway, so no worries; in fact, you’re a bit ahead of schedule!” They laugh.

“Uh,” Cronus says, because what the fuck. “Is this…prerecorded?”

“No, silly! This thing doesn’t have a memory card, it’s just Triple-A batteries!”

Cronus flips the phone over. The battery panel is open, and there’s nothing inside it.

“But, considering the things we’ve seen, this is the one thing the Heir and I have agreed upon. As such, I am carrying out their will and instructions…” They click their tongue. “Annoying as it is to do so. Sadly, we’ve got a whole universe on the line, so I can’t be picky.”

“O..kay?” Cronus says. “I’m assuming this is about what I’m going to do with the lesser lights.”

“Yes. As the holder of the Full Moon, they’re responsive to you and to you only, so you’re the only person who can do this,” Angeles says. “You will take each light, and put them in the locations I will tell you to. Don’t worry about them being moved - like I said, they will only respond to you. So you can put them where you like as long as they’re in the right area, and they’ll stay there until their purpose is served.”

“And I’m doing this to gather everyone in one place?”

“They’ll sense the Moon’s magic and she’ll nudge them a little bit to come find her. It’ll go way faster than dropping in and telling them we know where everyone else is, not that we can even do that right now.” Angeles pauses, and then sigh. “In fact, I’m going to be cleaning up some collateral damage soon and that’s already stretching my capabilities thin. Anshu’s fixed most of the damage from the apocalypse, but universal decay still is happening. I’m still the Anathema Point taking in damage from that, and I’m doing it alone right now.”

Cronus frowns. “That doesn’t sound…pleasant.”

“Don’t worry about it, I’m safest while in my dream bubble and while dead. It’s a whole thing about how I’m at my strongest the closest I am to the idealization of my classpect,” they say. “I should be able to buy enough time for all of this to blow over. I’ve got it.”

They clear their throat.

“Anyway - ” Angeles’ voice drops all sense of playfulness. “It is important that the things I tell you next leave no material record. If any of the locations people will gather to are compromised, we could risk the Heir of Blood or the Empress or even Bec fucking Noir massacring people. This is to be kept in absolute secrecy, and I need you to remember everything. Is this clear, Cronus Ampora?”

Ah. That’s why they picked a cheap plastic phone which couldn’t hold any record of their call, metadata or otherwise.

Cronus takes a deep breath. “Yeah.”

“Great!” Angeles says, and begins to tell him the plan.

#

“Do trolls usually sleep for that long?”

Nightwalker shrugs as he steps over a wrenched-off car door. A few feet away, driven half onto a sidewalk, is the remains of a green Prius. Hal unwisely pauses as he spots it, zooming in at the view of the inside, and then immediately zooms out at the sight of mounds of…someone splattered all over the windows, dashboard, and leather seats, all covered in an undulating mass of maggots.

Nightwalker, however, swings his flashlight to the car. “What is - oh, fucking hell.”

“Poor son of a bitch either fell for what they saw or tried running.” Hal turns away and keeps walking to catch up to him.

Nightwalker’s grip on his flashlight tightens - he’d seen someone at the church too, though Hal couldn’t see his ghost - before he swings the flashlight back down the road.

This street is as ruined as all the others are. The roads around them are cracked, like something has been smashed repeatedly on them. Destroyed cars litter the sidewalks, some clearly hastily left behind, a few thrown into nearby buildings. The heralds have done a number on the place, and if Hal still had that fragment of Doom magic with him, he would have been able to tell just how much damage they did to the people.

But he doesn’t, and maybe that’s for the best. He’d peeled the artificial skin off his hands digging himself out of the rubble weeks ago, and there are fractures all over his chassis. A crack runs on the right side of his face, going from his jaw to just under his eye, and he’s had to patch it up with gauze just to keep dust out of his machinery. He has no idea if Stark Tower is still functioning; if he can’t get replacement parts, he’s fucked.

“I think our best bet in finding a way back to Night Vale truly might be the younger Ampora.” Nightwalker sighs, halting. Hal stops with him. “Let’s focus on finding food for the others for now, and then we’ll see if the boy’s awake - ”

“Hey!”

Both of them tense. Nightwalker immediately swings his flashlight to the direction of the call; the spotlight drags across rubble and abandoned cars, before it catches a figure in the distance. It’s too far away for Hal to see clearly on a quick glance, so he lets his cameras zoom as far as they can go, though even that barely helps with the dim lighting around them.

The figure doesn’t seem to be calling for them, as it’s pointing toward them. There were already people coming back in the city, right? Aid started pouring in the day after the sky came back and the coasts stopped rising, and with it, people. Must be someone who used to live here or knew someone who lived here.

“There’s people here!”

Nightwalker keeps his attention on the person, still alert and ready. His free hand goes to the sword on his baldric, though he doesn’t draw it.

A minute later, four other people join the first person - and three of them have horns.  The last one looks like a human adult, dressed inheavy armor along with what looks like…a flowing cape?

Hal doesn’t have time to focus his cameras on the man or the trolls, because the first one, the one who’d found them, suddenly blitzes forward in a flash of white-gold light, blotting out his feed for a second and forcing him to default his camera settings. He squints, and when his feed has adjusted, the guy’s landing in front of him, boots crunching broken asphalt underneath his soles.

“Oh, thank goodness,” a very familiar voice says. “We’ve been wandering for hours, we thought nobody was - ”

Jake English abruptly shuts up as the light around him dies down and he gets a good look at who’s in front of him. He takes off his goggles, setting them on top of his head, then swaps them out for his glasses from his sylladex. He still squints at Hal, looking him from head to toe, then absentmindedly brings his hand up to the top of his own head like he’s measuring something, and looks at the top of Hal’s again.

After a minute, he drops his hand.

“Anyway,” he says, and breaks into a blinding grin. “Dirk! Boy, am I so glad to see you!”

Hal stares at him. Nightwalker slowly turns, raising an eyebrow expectantly.

“Right,” Hal says, watching as Jake’s grin immediately falters and his brow dips in confusion at the different voice. “About that.”