This works as a standalone story, but it's also a sequel to On the Knee of Yetchteke Mountain. I've tried to list them as a series but that never seems to work right for me. I have some ideas for a third story in this series I might do too, someday, if people like this style.
Content warnings for: toxic wizard yaoi, fantasy imperialism, mention of enslaved factions, mentions of a fantasy weapon of mass destruction, noncon drugging, some of hints of transguy front-hole use but honestly you can read it as magical self-lubricating wizard anal if you squint, angry sex, make-up sex, and a lot of fantasy bullshit.
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Arren Salmarin, Master Wizard and Scholar Adjutant to the Imperial Throne, strode through the palace halls with his face stone-blank. His boots echoed hard against the marble floors as he swept past elaborate columns and archways. Beyond them, the sun burned low and orange over the glittering roofs and walls of the compound below. The afternoon was coming to an end.
Suddenly, Arren rounded in a swirl of fabric and long, springy black hair, to throw open the doors to Istrann Blackthorn's personal workroom. They cracked against the walls with a force that belied any possible brittleness in Arren's tall, fine-boned frame. Istrann didn't look up from his work in the middle of the room.
The thick, golden-tan shoulders of Arren's fellow Master and joint-Adjutant were squared over an elaborate mahogany table. A spray of delicate tools and pebbles of metal and gemstone ran out from him in lines. He wore his usual black silk-- today a high-collared vest tall enough to blend into the glossy black hair that swept behind his ears-- and the stark finery of his appearance cut a sharp contrast to Arren's, whose shoulders were a rich drapery of pale blue and whorls of copper embroidery over tan breeches that fairly glowed against his dark amber skin.
"I heard about Longquei, Istrann," Arren said, anger ringing in his voice. Istrann finished the rune he was scraping into a tab of opal no wider than a fingernail, his hands and the dark fire of his gaze holding steady to their task.
"I'm working, darling." Istrann's voice was dangerously calm.
"I had to hear it from Him?"
Istrann's eyes shot up to Arren, who knew when they met his that he was now the only centre of that burning attention. Dark green fire washed out from Istrann to cover the walls and floor of the room, securing it from any listening or scrying spells. "You are about to speak traitorously," he said.
"I should hope I speak traitorously!" Arren whipped around the table. "A blast that size will kill tens of thousands of people. Ours and theirs. Civillians!"
"They will die for the glory of A Red and Flowering Empire."
"Karthak and Wryss, Istrann! I really hoped you might have some plan to get around it."
"It will end the fighting in Otarai Kei, Arren. How many more forces do you want Him to lose there? Between the revolts, and the Northern princes, He's running out of armies."
"Oh? And maybe if they weren't enslaved, they wouldn't be revolting, Istrann. And if the North weren't abandoned to famine, maybe they wouldn't be in sedition. We are bleeding resources over new territory we don't need, while the Inner Kingdoms are coming apart like paper and string--"
"You've been spending too much time with your dusty scrolls again, booknose. I've been-- He has been running this war, and this Empire, without you. You have no idea what an Empire--"
Arren gestured across the careful array on the table. "This? This is hardly an Empire. This is a war game." He scooped up precious stones and metal and held them out to Istrann, gold and obsidian skittering to the floor. "He wants you to make the bad guys go boom like a child with his toys. But we can do better than play with Him, Istrann. Look at us! We're two of the most powerful--"
"Do not speak to me of power!"
Istrann's square fingers popped against Arren's face in a slap. With his other hand he gripped Arren's wrist hard, staring up at him wildly.
How many times had Arren seen that deadly black intent in those eyes? There had been flashes of it even when they were children, in the apprentice cloisters. In little boyhood skirmishes and slips into intense concentration. And it had been that look, too, that was how they had come to be lovers. The blazing intensity there when Istrann had laid eyes on him. The times the rest of the world melted away and Arren knew Istrann saw only him.
He had thought once that it was only a kind of passion. The price for a fierce and wonderful intellect. Brief spillings of cold logic over reason's warmer bounds; its flash-floodings into a needle-pointed, all-consuming interest. But if it was a passion, he thought now, then it must be one with hard edges. One easily sharpened into avarice, into jealousy, or cruel indifference.
And always it ended, sliding back into brown-eyed wonderment. Into that beautiful curiosity, a wonderful hunger to taste the world. But when was it that those brutal, devouring eyes had started to become more the norm than the exception? That Istrann had starting crawling into bed with them at night? Carrying them home late from war rooms and secret stratagems? Casting them around his workroom for hours on end, refusing to eat or sleep or look up from his tools? When had, "isn't usually," become, "isn't always," become, "he never used to be like this"?
And yet. For all Arren was disquieted by that terrible gaze, he also loved it. He wanted to be consumed by it, sometimes. And also, sometimes, to beat it. To drive it into submission. To meet it with its own fire and burn it dry of fuel. The right side of his face tingled as he looked down at Istrann, and his lips turned from a tight line of anger to the slightest, narrowest of smiles.
"Are you just afraid you're not actually powerful enough to stop him?"
Istrann rumbled deep in his throat like a snarl, and drove Arren back by his wrists. He was the shorter of the two, but also wider and stronger, pressing until Arren was pinned against the wall. One hand crushed Arren's arms against his chest. The other braced against the stonework by his shoulder.
"I am the most powerful mage in Gyathyang."
Arren slid a little down the stone wall and kissed him.
"Now you are speaking traitorously," he said.
Istrann returned the kiss furiously, and then pulled back into another slap. This time Arren slapped back. Then he bore down on Istrann's waist until he could turn him, pressing him against a wall of shelves. They fumbled and rolled like this around the chamber, one of them pinned over a workbench, then the other against a cabinet, grasping at one another with fingers and teeth. A rack of bottles slid and spilled shattering to the floor. Papers crumpled and slipped away under flesh.
"If you're such a great mage...why don't you...act like one?" Arren continued gaspingly between kisses. "Why are you...sleeping...like a dog at...His feet?"
