In a thundering rush like the world torn asunder, the twisting crimson storm descended from the sky, and the netherrealm and this one met. Kaos gripped the hilt of his sword so tightly that the blunt metal edge bruised his fingers. He felt the rush of evil, to melt manmade weapons and drink the souls of samurai.

He did not speak; he did not trust his voice as time spiraled around him.

The child's voice was soft as the timid valley breeze, learning the slow pink uncurl of the sakura. In perhaps a week, the village would breathe nothing but cherry blossom air, step only in bright fallen petals. "Haru ga kida, haru ga kida..."

His brother's voice, louder, laughing, finished the song. "Yama ni kida." To the mountain, spring has come, has come. He pulled an unfinished flower from the weeping low treebranch and presented it, raw green, to his twin. "But not it's not here yet, Kaos."

Kaos smiled, shook his head. "Impatient, ne?"

His brother flicked the bud away, kicked at it merrily. "Race you to the meadow." Before he'd even finished speaking, he broke into a run, his pale hair flying out behind him in wild curls. Kaos shoved his own hair out of his face from where it had wisped free of its hair-tie, and sprinted after him. "Arago--wait, wait for me!"

And there Arago stood, unnaturally tall, in yoroi so full of power that the air around him hissed and cried out; the earth moaned with the force of the unholy invasion.

The bloodcolored mask faced him. "Who dares challenge me?" The voice, deeper now, and edged with the unnatural time that had aged it, was furious, disbelieving. But the same.

Kaos' own voice was level, balanced on the unsteadiness of his heartbeat. "I will not allow you to claim this world for your own, you demon." His hands did not shake, and he felt the stirrings of power in him. "Fight me."

And then Arago recognized his voice, knew by the painted ricepaper eye-shields that it was his brother he was to fight, his brother who was afraid to show his eyes, lest something be betrayed in his glance.

The last dark liquid slipped from his paintbrush, and there was a chrysanthemum before him, in perfect bloom, lines and shadow so perfectly like the cut flower on the table at his side that he thought he should be able to breathe green living scent from the rice dry paper.

Kaos turned to his brother, numb joy aching behind his eyes, knowing at last they would meet mind to mind. "What you seek, brother," he said, almost breathless, voice falling over itself on his tongue. "Immortality-- through art!"

Arago's face moved in a surprised smile. He touched his finger to the stillwet ink, without disturbing the flower image. "Brother mine," he whispered, and his voice was raw. "Such a power you have been given."

Kaos felt a flower nurtured in his heart, felt a sunshine warmth to send his soul to growing.

On the battlefield, the violated sky began to rain.

Once, rainwater had made Arago's thick white hair shimmer like sunlit snow through the cedars. Now it flashed dully, like fishscales, and Kaos knew it was not real.

Kneedeep, they waded laughing to the shore, feeling ridiculous and angry with each other. Their sandals were full of the rivermuck they slogged through, their calves muddied.

"Could you be a bigger idiot?" Arago all but giggled, pushing a drippy hand through his white curls. His sandalstraps underwater wound around a bit of watergrass, making his footing unsteady. He flung out his arms to balance himself, looking a little like a long-legged heron with his wings tied. "'Let's fish for pearls,' he says!" Mocking, he imitated Kaos' youthful excitement to perfection.

Kaos spat back, "You look like you just had your first taste of real sake, and it was too much for you!" He shoved at his brother, grinning, to watch him wobble on his feet.

"Speak for yourself," Arago said haughtily, even as he lost his balance. "I am perfectly--" The water rushing up to his face caught him mid-speech, and he blew underwater bubbles with his laughter. He was under long enough for Kaos to start to worry, the water gone still and dark where he had fallen. Surely the water wasn't that deep? Kaos leaned over to peer in--

Arago surfaced splashingly, capturing his brother's knees and making him lose his balance. "Gotcha!"

Spluttering, floating on his back with his hair spread around his face, Kaos refused to plead to be let go. Instead he swiveled wetly in his brother's grasp and tackled him. "You had me worried, oyster-face!" Half-wrestling, they stumbled together to shore. "No fair playing on the enemy's sympathy," he said angrily, though his voice was unsteady with chuckling. He grabbed a fistful of Arago's curly hair.

"So fight like a real samurai!" They stumbled on the marshy ground, all swift movement of arms and legs flung bodily at each other. Both angry for no reason they could name, they felt the hot surge in their blood, and they fought better than they ever had.

Kaos, hair straggling in his eyes, aimed a judo kick at his brother's side that would have done any sensei proud... if he hadn't tripped in a long tangle of riverside kelp and lost his balance completely. He staggered against Arago, and they fell together on the swampy shore, landing thigh to thigh and caught in fingers of seaweed.

There was a moment of gasping stillness, two pairs of eyes afire.

False eyes like rubies gleamed hotly angry beneath the finewrought metal mask as they stood hand against hand, again. Kaos wanted to cry out, knowing that his brother would never again look at him with naked eyes, neither in gladness nor in anger. There were no eyes left to see.

They met blade to terrible blade, spinning around each other like twin cormorants gone mad, aimed at each other's throats to catch their hearts. The rain sluiced off their burning armor, screaming soundless defiance.

"This fight is destiny," Kaos said, flatly, when he found his breath. "And it will last forever."

Their feet faltered on the aching ground, moving through the slippery spill of blood like being unborn.

Arago laughed. "Makes it easier to bear, to think so, doesn't it?" With a rude expert shove of his sword he drew up close to Kaos' chest, heads close, hungrily eyeing the pulse at the pale neck, the sweep of white hair. "Small-minded lovely fool. If I but had my teeth still, I should bite you till you bleed..."

Swallowing hard, Kaos filled his mind with light and nothing. Not the thumping rush of blood, not the mingled shadow of flesh against flesh.

Arago was the first to smile, grinning hawkishly. One hand on either side of Kaos' face, he levered himself up in the rivermud, twining his legs with his brother's. Kaos, effectively pinned, squirmed a little in Arago's grasp, sliding slick arms against his chest. "You--" But his words faded in his throat when he realized that there was a slow sweet ache running in his veins instead of his blood. The protest escaped his lips as a groan, and his hands moved experimentally over his brother's shoulders-- not to fight free from him, but further into him.

Arago's breath came hard, feeling those hands uncertain against the tight muscles of his back, watching the tremulous heat radiate from his brother's eyes. Unconsciously he shifted closer, bridging the distance of damp air between them, lowered his face till their noses were almost touching. His grin faltered and he whispered "Gotcha!" against the shivering skin behind his brother's ear, wanting to see him gasp and struggle.

But Kaos was the one to startle him, tangling a swift hand in Arago's curly hair, arching his head up to find his lips and kiss him recklessly. Caught off his guard, Arago submitted to the desperate mouth under his, met it with matching hunger.

"I was the one chosen to protect this order from the chaos you spawned." Small comfort were the words on his tongue, when it longed just once more for the searching heat of a brother's hungry smiling kiss--

A short, bitter laugh. "It was given to you? Was I so given to you, then, made for you to destroy?" Armor met armor with a bone-crunching sound. When Kaos was silent, Arago knew his mind was somewhere deep within, alone, aching not to remember. Pitiful puny brother. He sought for words to make his soul bleed, mocking. "Will you seek forgiveness when you have destroyed me?"

By the time Kaos made it to the meadow, there was his brother, on his knees in the grass. With the utmost delicacy, Arago extended a careful finger and, one by one, ignited the tampopo flowers growing there. The dandelions made tiny bright fireworks beneath his touch, smoking with an ashy sweet scent. Each soft fiery exhalation earned a fascinated smirk. The magic in their fingertips came natural as breathing; neither boy was particularly surprised when they found they could move things with a word-- or touch a flower into flame.

Kaos came up next to him, out of breath, with an intrigued smile.

Arago caught his look, grinned at his twin. "They say you have to catch weeds just as they go to seed, or they'll come back."

Still, watching the flowerpuffs flash and burn, Kaos felt sorrow flare and swallow itself within him. He touched Arago's shoulder. "How quickly they flame and die."

Arago lifted and clutched the stem of a spent flower, fingers white-knuckled around its grey length. "Too quickly."

At the end he knelt before the husk of yoroi, nothing of what had been his brother, truly empty.

Kaos sought forgiveness in the sharp cold evening, after the rain had stopped. He bore Arago's armor up the mountain, afraid of the weight in his arms. The yoroi was almost warm to the touch. He ascended, moving between the sky-reaching stands of dusky old cypress trees, his sandals crunching the layer of snow silvering the slopes of the volcano. As he neared the tiny temple, black iron lanterns lined the path, and he could just begin to scent the smoke of the still-burning temple fire. When the sun set, the little lanterns came to light, casting puddles of brightness by his feet.

Kaos felt that he had always been walking thus, always been lifting a giant's undead yoroi through the dusk and the trees and the snow, up and up.

He knew he should end the armor, chant a word of power and destroy the terrible thing. But how it lay almost life-like in his arms... He chided himself for a fool, to imagine it his lover, to be swayed by a bittersweet memory. Still, it had been lovingly made, metals collected and polished and worked together to form a glory of craftsmanship.

It had never been his to annihilate a thing of beauty.

As Arago marveled over his painted chrysanthemum, Kaos thought to speak faltering words of gratitude, but Arago kissed him, mouth like sweet heavy rain. He lifted his ink-smudged hands to cradle his brother's face, to bring the pale head closer to his own.

Until his twin stepped back.

"But there is more for you than this." Arago smiled again, but it was a smile to devour, a smile hungry like the heart of the whirlpool. His own ink-dark fingertip he raised to Kaos' face, gently touching his pale eyelids and leaving a black stain, so that Kaos' closed eyes looked vacant, or blind. "Look beyond the thick mortal shadow you have embraced-- there is more for us." Arago smiled sharply, his mind racing. "So much we think we know! I want to unmap the world-- unmake it--"

Kaos did not quail before the fire in his brother's eyes. "Make it yours, you mean."

"If that is what it takes."

"No," Kaos whispered, horrified. His open eyes looked flayed, soul stripped and vulnerable before the man he thought had understood.

"No," Arago said, almost a question. His voice wavered barely, with regret to leave his brother-friend behind. But he went on: "For me, then." There was a fierce shining in his eyes that left them colorless. "Art... through immortality."

Arago lifted the chrysanthemum from the table to his lips, and it shivered, just the tiniest bit, but Kaos saw it, and saw in his mind's eye that the flower would always look just so-- the full ripe blossom, in each silken petal time betrayed.

Arago breathed, exulting, "It does not die."

And Kaos was afraid.

Unable to destroy it, Kaos divided the yoroi, in the little temple on the sleeping volcano, between the painted silk and ricepaper screens that parted with the sound of his voice. It was alarmingly simple; the armor seemed to dissolve under his touch, forming itself into nine perfectly consolidated separate yoroi. Not quite conscious of why, Kaos spoke virtues over each one, hoping to imbue them each with something more powerful than evil. Benevolence. Wisdom. Courtesy. Trust. Justice. Obedience. Piety. Serenity. Loyalty.

Hoping that if someday the yoroi were to be worn, the warriors within them would be worthy.

And it was done.

He wore the wide flat hat of a monk, so that no one would have to see the grief hollowing his eyes. With his brother he had been a samurai. Alone now, he would be a monk-- and dream of unmaking the pain.

The world moved on with the creep of time, like candles set on the river in folded paper boats, tiny flickers seeking out the sea. If they felt time, though, it was as an undercurrent, as they floated, buoyed up by some elemental force within, and discovered that they could not age.

Spring came many times to the mountain as they stood, two brothers on each separate side of a distance not yet bridged.

Arago, sheltering in the netherrealm that he had created, found four pieces of what had been his armor, summoned them back to himself. Because it was an agony to wear the fractured pieces of himself, he called four warriors to fill the four hungry empty yoroi, and searched more desperately for the remaining five, so he could again be whole.

Kaos felt it, knew the moment that Arago found the last and youngest of those four-- a man with hair like flame, laughing on the death-colored battlefield. Though he was miles away in the mountainside temple where he had found his sanctuary, Kaos could see the fierce shining on the young man's face.

And he saw again a field of dandelions, each one a brilliant flash and then an ashy nothing.

Kaos left his temple and moved again into the world. To find the remaining five before Arago could harvest them himself, to give them a steady bright heartbeat of a future instead of a burning that consumes and spins out of time. To save five souls not yet taken-- And to fight for four souls already lost.

Still angry at his youngest brashest Warlord, Arago sent wordless seeking commands across the human sky, sounding like thunder to aching mortal ears. Come home, come home to me, my cruel perfect lovely child. He could almost sense the Oni armor and its bearer, youthful and reckless still. He wanted to swallow it into himself, bury it safely within. Foolish boy. He looked forward to punishing him, to watching those fine red brows draw together and that hot cherry blossom mouth beg for mercy. You have been disobedient, but you may yet come home...

His searching thoughts found Sh'ten, and something so disconcerting that for a moment Arago was uneasy. You have been hurt! Come home to me--

But the words crunched almost physically against a resisting presence and he was met with silence.

What?! "Who DARES to interfere?" he roared, his treasure slipping from his grasp, and no power he could fight.

A soft voice somehow resonated across the city and into his hallowed Dynasty. It was gently spoken, but the fiercest challenge Arago had ever heard. "You cannot have him or his armor, demon-lord."

Kaos.

They met mind to mind briefly, and glass shattered around them and cement crumpled with the force of their confrontation. But Kaos had spent the past thousand years breathing that air and walking beneath that sunlight. Arago, in that time, had felt only the silvering light of two Dynasty moons, the kind that made his flowers flourish and paper screens glimmer with mysterious promise.

As mighty as he was, he had to retreat, his power spent-- and Sh'ten caught securely in Kaos' grasp.

Blind and burning with his rage, Arago swore vengeance.

Absently Arago smoothed the spidersilk softness of Rajura's hair, ran a surprisingly delicate finger over Anubis' eye-scar. His gauntleted hand lingered there. In the world, that finely drawn scar would dim to thin white lines with the passage of time, Naaza's snake-bright gaze would dim. But here they would be thus, forever. Perfect.

With deliberate slowness, Arago felt the flamebright sweep of Sh'ten's hair, cherishing his latest acquisition. "You are my warriors, my ideal samurai," he said to them, and watched their fierce smiles of gratitude. His jewel-red eyes devoured them, his hand absently polishing the edge of the Oni yoroi. Because Arago had no flesh, he could not bleed, but he savored the sharpness and the shine of the armor before him. Of these four, it was surely his favorite.

Kaos cradled Sh'ten in his arms, looking down at the finely-carved face, lines of cruelty smoothed over in unconsciousness. Small wonder he had been chosen to serve the Dynasty; he was as beautiful as anything Arago had ever coveted or claimed for his own.

And there was that colorless fire in his soul that was so terribly familiar, echoing the soul of the brother Kaos had known.

Only half-aware of his actions, he lay the fallen MaSho in the grass, among the maple trees. He would be safe here, for a while, from Arago's hungry-eyed search. Kaos felt as if he had fallen out of time, to touch the skin of a man who had been that youthful for hundreds of years. He thought of himself for the first time since the armors had scattered... how old was he now?

A tremulous wind sloughed gently through the stand of small gnarled maples, rustling their thinnest red curtain of razor-thin leaves, like a fine-painted screen between where Sh'ten lay and the rest of the world. The sky beyond looked whole and blue.

He suddenly wondered if it was springtime.

The five-voiced disbelieving shouts of the approaching warriors did not surprise him; they seemed to move toward him as plumflowers open in the sun-- as if his was the first face they found hope in. He lifted his head to smile at them.

Mystified, the young samurai eyed their fallen enemy. Torrent moved a hand as if to smooth back a tangle of hair, but was afraid to touch, to recognize the humanity of him. Halo was wincing at the wounds he saw, wondering if there were more he could not see.

Sh'ten stirred barely, a dim noise in the back of his throat. Kaos, who had not felt much of anything besides slow aching grief in near to a thousand years, jumped. His heart was in his mouth before he even knew it was his heart that was lurching in him.

Wildfire and Strata had already lifted their weapons against him. "Hold," Kaos commanded, more sharply than he had intended. They obeyed reflexively, exchanging confused glances. Hardrock was watching everyone, with a different kind of hunger than Kaos had known-- something eager to learn and taste the world, but willing to let it be.

Kaos let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. "Hush," he found himself saying, as Sh'ten twitched, waking in earnest. "You are safe."

A twisted parody of a smile, and the Warlord was already on his feet. "I don't know what that means."

Arago's voice spoke against their ears, his breath became their breath. "You will fight to keep what I have made for you."

"We will fight to restore your order in the world." Sh'ten, still new to their brotherhood of Warlords, spoke the ritual words with a trace of mocking.

Naaza put a restraining hand against Sh'ten's elbow, but the fire-headed man smiled sharply, unafraid yet of his master or his fellow MaSho. "I am to do your bidding," he said softly, and from his lips the words fell like a promise or a threat, or both.

Anubis grinned wolfishly. "You were wild," he said, low against Sh'ten's ear.

"Still is," Rajura chuckled, standing on his other side.

"And easily seduced by the promise of power," Naaza goaded.

Sh'ten rose to the bait. He always did. "Or by a knowing master."

Arago's eyes narrowed, watching them, pleased. "I know what you desire, what you need. Only I can give it to you."

"Teach me," Sh'ten breathed. "Teach us," his brothers-in-arms echoed.

And flesh met not-flesh in an ethereal embrace, fire dancing through their veins and eating through their hearts.

Kaos made himself stay still as Sh'ten stumbled silently, landing on one knee as his wounds protested. Fighting the five young warriors had taken more from him than he realized. The armor divided was not meant to confront itself. Kaos knew, as Sh'ten did not, that every hurt would burn twice-- the samurai and the yoroi itself both damaged. Sh'ten's face moved in brave agony as he steadied himself, upright again, as he began to realize that he was not in the Dynasty, not facing his master.

"Where am I?" he eyed the white-haired monk who stood unmoving before him, and the five familiar faces beyond.

Kaos could have wept for the tender uncertainty on that face. He thinks I shall kill him. Or let them kill him. Swallowing words of false comfort, of promises he did not know if he could keep, Kaos said, "As I told you, young man, you are safe. For a time."

Sh'ten's eyes flicked to Kaos' staff and his mouth moved dryly for a moment, without speaking. "Have you bested my master? Am I your to be your slave now?"

Kaos actually laughed. It felt like speaking a different tongue, sweet in his mouth. "Red-top child, you have been too long in the Dynasty, sheltered by the twin-mooned sky." He extended a hand in a gesture of friendship. "I tell you, you are no man's slave."

Sh'ten looked as though he did not believe it, but he took the proffered fingers, and hazarded a slight crooked smile. "And who are you to tell me so?" The words were sharp, but the question was an honest one.

Kaos released his hand. "I am the Ancient One." And because he saw it was the truth, he offered the young man his choice: cruelty that sang sword-edged on the blood, or loyalty, that burned clean and unconsuming in the heart. "Both have been given to you, Sh'ten. Your life is a journey, not a destination. And the choice is yours."

Each time he sent his Warlords out to battle, to hone their blood-skills and frighten the world into submission, Arago would whisper words to them, for them to fight by.

"Remember my Dynasty as a place of beauty, of sweet stillness."

"Of ageless decay," Sh'ten said dryly.

Arago was furious. Something had changed behind Sh'ten's eyes; there was fire there still but it was not his own.

Sh'ten pressed on, relentless. "Did you give me the Oni armor--" his eyes flashed "--or did I take it from you?"

His brother MaSho, trained to reveal nothing in battle but what worked to their advantage, actually winced, suddenly not Warlords but men afraid to turn away but terrified to see what their master would do to their youngest lover.

Arago caught Sh'ten in an embrace of fire, seeking to burn through the resistance, flame away the traitorous thoughts that had been planted. But he fought Sh'ten blindly, only knowing that he must hold to him, whatever the cost; must hold him burning as he could not hold--

Someone else, long ago.

They held onto each other like learning how to fly, the riverbank soft and warm beneath them. Arago was silently delighting in his own mouth, hungrily tasting each inch of the perfect flesh beneath him, causing such delicious helpless sounds in his throat. Kaos leaned up into the lips that were learning to speak his body, losing himself into the devouring hot mouth.

Kaos' hands traced over Arago's skin, feeling in his fingers the rhythm and the depth of the wondrous youth above him. He felt it coming, something to sweep his self away with the terrible, wonderful rush of it. He clung to his brother through the tempest, with a skirling scream like a seabird set free. Arago swallowed it all, greedy for the hot sweetness from him.

A sudden wind whistled lowly around their ears, singing eerily through the water-reeds. It was not the season for thunderstorms, but a green-grey swirl of cloud was rushing in from the horizon. There was a fumbling wave of fear lapping against Kaos' heart. "Arago-- I cannot see the sky--"

Kaos was touching the flower of his soul into flame with those artist fingers, and Arago felt he could fall into him, spend forever within. Arago kissed the back of his knee, his voice surprisingly soft. "Hush. My eyes--"

And as Arago found his center, buried in Kaos, his brother looked up into his face and did indeed see the promise of universes swirling in his eyes.

It took them both, release hot enough to etch miles of winter sky with stars.

His hand drawn to his face in a gesture of farewell, Kaos closed his eyes. The language of sacrifice was one he knew by heart.

He felt time coming like a thundering tsunami, a bitter-cool blue hurricane to crash over him and spiraling upward sweep the last shreds of himself away. For a moment his still-human heart was torn, beating a ragged cadence of a half-forgotten song. Flower petals dancing on the storm, myself becoming wind, becoming rain...

Until he realized that there was an image shining behind his closed eyes, of the nine complete, hand upon hand together. To the mountain... And among them stood the man with hair aflame, a red-topped child, burning and not consumed-- holding aloft the staff that had been his ancient only sword. Spring has come...

In the moment Arago lost concentration, Sh'ten writhed and burned his way free, panting and afraid. He fell to one knee in shaky apology, not trusting his voice. Loyalty. I swear loyalty... to you.

Something quaking inside him, Arago roughly drew him to his feet. "You are mine to command, boy." Nothing of his uncertainty showed in his voice, all four Warlords bowed before the terrible strength of his voice. "You have sworn yourself to me."

Sh'ten closed his eyes miserably. "There is cruelty in me," he repeated. "I know."

Arago left them, unable to say another word.

Somewhere beyond the dark wooden walls of their inner room, an untouched koto sounded a handful of low, sorrowful notes, and a high whistling of wind swept in toneless harmony above their heads, as the MaSho met each other's eyes, curiously yearning.

Somewhere at the timeless heart of the Dynasty, a chrysanthemum petal shivered and fell from its blossom.

Those thousand years ago, there had been a terrifying bridge forged into the world, from a secret place of dustless aging and forever-sweet chrysanthemum blossoms. Now the journey would be reversed.

But poised on the cusp of time, Kaos felt the phantom sweet caresses of his lover-nemesis, invisible lips at the nape of his neck.

The lost brother he would meet eye to eye at last.

The seed of a smile lit Kaos' still, pale face.

Perhaps he could not re-ink the past that had already dried on the paper, couldn't unspell the brushstroke words of their lives. But he felt the surge of something young in his blood and knew that he could still paint something wondrous of them both.

The end was not yet.

Still unspeaking, Kaos met Arago again with his blade, rings clacking against the hilt with the summer's-end sound of crickets. Arago should not have been surprised that his twin could fight so strongly or so well; they had always been well-matched. But there was no battle-fury in Kaos' heart; there was something deeper driving his hand and spinning his body around sharp and deadly like a dancing star. And somewhere at the dead human center of himself, Arago knew fear.

Kaos did not know it, but he fought like singing, each perfect thrust of his hand or sword a syllable in the song. This yoroi embraces only emptiness-- take it off, clothed only in your soul...

And his sword found its center, buried in Arago.

A terrible earthquake of spirit poured out of the armor, riding free as demon-Arago screamed. Red hot wind thrummed through Kaos, whipping his hair around and throwing his head back with the strength of its release. And somewhere beneath, human-Arago screamed his last as well, and it was not a sound of pain.