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umbralogia · 5 years

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et in arcadia ego.

ch. 1-- gold.

(read on ao3)

Arcadia was an escape.

The daylight birds chirped their wilderness song, in no way afraid of him or anyone else who might disturb their forest. They didn't flee unlike the critters whose fragile sounds could be heard across the forest floor, scitting into their dens.

Pan's woods looked to be untouched by man except for a footprint every so many steps down one of the natural paths. Magnus had found it unnerving at first, mortals had saturated the world, their hands, their creations, marking every landscape no matter how barren.

He continued through the forest, following the natural winding paths of green beauty along the riverside.

All of it was said to belong to Pan, the half-man, half-goat God of the Wilderness who played his pipes and chased after nymphs. He was said to have the power of inducing panic through his yell, a panic that drove men to murder and madness. The mortals that lived at the foot of the mountainside claimed that you could hear his song if you stayed still long enough, but Magnus had never dared to try.

Mortals were clueless about the affairs of gods. They had their stories, their mythos, most of them created to scare children away from wandering alone and to startle young people into avoiding possible divine encounters.

They directed their fear onto the gods--any suitor could be Zeus in disguise, and any contest, no matter how silly or small could result in a war between two great civilizations. In all of it, they forgot the nymphs, the most beautiful tricksters to exist.

They lured shepherds into the woods to lose them, convinced men to jump overboard, teased their beautiful appearances and sexual exploits. They were all well aware of their unattainability, even those in the Underworld.

Magnus thought of the nymph connected to the river Styx, of her dark long curls tracing over the skin of his chest, her sharp little teeth teasing his skin with nips and scrapes. Their encounters were never permanent, never longer than a week or so at most. Styx always found better company.

He supposed that loneliness had made them that way. The gods were far less lonely, they had each other, but nymphs, always so eternally beautiful, unmarked by time and boundaries, stuck in the mortal realm. They found no consequences, and love without consequences was like not loving at all.

The trees ahead grew thicker, their branches weaving in and out of each other like a longing embrace. Magnus slipped through the long, towering trunks into the clearing of the glade.

It was said to have belonged to the nymphs, perhaps it was an old religious site, but even they had abandoned it.

It was eerie, peacefully silent with clusters of wildflowers in tall, unmanicured grasses to keep him company. The only object anyone had possibly left behind was a large rock in the center of the glade with a smooth face, marked with small indendentations. Upon first glance, Magnus had suspected that the stone was a funerary marker, the inscription long worn away by weather, but he had sensed no death.

He had realized that in the end, it didn't matter. The mystery of the nymph glade was a mystery for man, not god.

He laid down in the grasses, smoothing them down halfway between the rock and the treeline that bordered the clearing. The soft wind brushed through the treetops and grasses around him, rustling them and petting his skin softly with cool kisses as the clouds shifted overhead.

Only mortals could be surrounded by such beauty and not appreciate it.

The mortals had written songs and poems about Arcadia, a land so disconnected from the buzz of Athens and the political turmoil of Rome that it had become unattached from reality. It was considered to be a land of barbarians, uncivilized and populated only by the shepherds and hunters of old times.

At time city folk wandered from their own creations into a world created by gods, a safehaven of anonymity and peace. They always returned, and Magnus supposed that even the gods returned to their own duties, often remiss in the beauty of it all.

They spoke of the Golden Age, a time where gods and mortals lived with one another, took each other as friend, family, and lover. There were no qualms or consequences to be had. Time was free, Death was not yet born from the womb of Mother Earth.

Mortals wrote poetry, plays, and songs about a time before him, a time before death had been introduced to the world. Their shepherd boys created competitions for the best goat song, Pan and his nymphs, too. The gods smiled.

Death was born, small and feeble from Gaia herself. Slowly, the Golden Age came to an end as shepherd boys died as did their songs.

The mortals created a verse for him, a line he had said in one of their many works. It was said by the voice of Death.

Et in Arcadia ego.

And in Arcadia I am.

Magnus had no memory of ever saying such a thing. Of course he was in Arcadia, but could they really blame him for the downfall of it all? Could they blame a child for the birth of war and famine?

He closed his eyes.

Pan had had the right idea. As God of the Wilderness, he detached himself from the rest of the immortal gods, from their labels and politics and found company with beautiful trickster nymphs and silvery melodies.

The gods had clearly lost their way. Magnus almost wanted to bring them back to it, to share the true peace of the forest and Helios’s soft golden rays. He thought of them all, living amongst one another in a different time.

Had Zeus restrained himself? Or had Hera not been jealous? What had Athena done with no humans to guide with her immortal wisdom?

His dream turned to violence.

Artemis with her eyes sharp like the tips of her arrows, crushing through thickets with her hunting dogs. Her dear brother Apollo laughing ever so lightly like a string of chimes. Their arrows knocked, arms tight pulling the bowstring back, firing into the heart of a stag.

The elegant creature, large and white, peacefully walking through the thick intertwining natural paths of the forest. It glanced at the gods before their arrows sank deep into its heart. It crumpled, unable to even scream.

Magnus blinked, the image disappeared, leaving him with a heavy sorrow in his heart.

Perhaps they didn’t deserve to know such joys.

He nearly closed his eyes to drift back off into a half-sleep when the treeline rustled from something more than wind or twin gods and their bows. Magnus opened his eyes, blinking a few times to clear his sight.

Whatever it was, it was alive.

In an instant, he thought of Pan and his multitude of nymphs. He thought of the goat god’s ability to shout mortals into a frenzy that could drive them to murder. Magnus prayed that he would never hear such a noise. His heart leapt to his throat and he remained entirely still.

It entered the grass.

He thought of the rabbits that had burst from his sight and ducked into their burrows, how terrified they had been at the presence of misery around him. It flickered inside of him, almost inspiring the thought on its own. Quickly, Mangus sprung to his feet, ready to destroy whatever had disturbed him.

The air beside him shuddered. An arrow sunk into the soft soil.

A young man stood in the shadows of the treeline, his bow lowered slightly, but an arrow still perched carefully against his fingers. He looked as though he had stepped out of a mosaic-- beautiful dark hair, golden skin, a soft, white chiton. He said something quick, almost unrecognizable as a language.

Magnus stood fully, his arms at his side, but power stirred under his skin, aching to strike if need be. He didn’t dare take his eyes off the young man as he took a careful step forward. “Do you always shoot at strangers?” he asked.

The young man was still watching him, his bow and arrow lowered to the forest floor. He said something again, a phrase that Magnus caught this time, something in Greek rather than the Empire’s language.

“Do you speak Latin?” Magnus asked. “Lingua Latina?”

He frowned and spoke slowly. “Who are you?” His words accented heavily with the harsh tones of Greek consonants.

Magnus couldn’t think of an answer to give the young man. He thought of mortal names, any mortal name, but all that came to mind were the names of heroes-- Jason, Hercules, Achilles, Odysseus.

“Outis,” he answered, providing the young man with the name Odysseus had given the cyclops Polyphemus when escaping his cave den-- nobody. He smiled softly. “And you?” He asked, watching the young man take a step back to keep the distance.

He looked aggravated. “Nemo.” He answered, giving the Latin word for nobody.

“Do you shoot everyone you meet, Nemo?”

“Only those sleeping in nymph groves.” He said, stumbling over the words only slightly. Nemo took his arrow off of the bow string and held it loosely in his fingers. “These are Pan’s woods.”

It was apparent that Nemo wasn’t truly concerned, that he wanted Magnus to leave his hunting grounds so he could continue hunting rabbits with sharpened sticks. He looked around the clearing, at how it was as untouched as it was before except for Nemo’s presence.

“What if I am Pan?”

Nemo gave him a look, the look that Magnus was used to receiving from Ragnor. “You don’t have goat legs.”

“You’re right, I'm the god of the river.” Magnus walked back to his place near the flat rock and sat down in the tall grasses. “Now, if you don’t leave, I’ll dry the whole riverbed.”

Nemo scoffed and took a few steps forward. He didn’t look at Magnus as he leaned down to take his arrow from the dirt. He straightened and scraped the dirt from it, cleaning the arrowhead before he returned it to his quiver with the other in his hand.

“What do you even hunt here? There are no animals.” Magnus stretched out, watching Nemo start back towards the way he had cme.

He turned, annoyed. “There are plenty of animals, they just have more sense than you do. They stay out of the nymph glade.”

“Scared?”

“No.”

“I dare you to stay in this nymph glade.” Magnus countered. He stretched his hand over to his side and smeared down some of the tall grass, making a space for Nemo.

Nemo huffed from out of his view. “Why would I stay?”

Magnus sat up just a little, to see the annoyance on his face. It was a shame it made him look so much older. “Competition.” He smiled a little, hoping to look convincing enough to keep the young man.

“You’re a strange man.” Nemo turned away and stepped out of the clearing, through the edge of the cospe and out of his sight.

Magnus laid back down and let his eyes watch over the drifting clouds. The wind blew the treetops, rustling them softly like fingers against a dog’s coat. He watched a cloud that looked like a ship drift off into a slowly mutating shape.

He wondered if the Golden Age had ended not because man had gone about creating their own things, but because the gods were rather bored. Magnus couldn’t imagine Zeus remaining still for more than a few minutes at a time. He couldn’t imagine Hera restraining herself from causing one disaster or another.

He thought of the boy, Nemo, with his messy dark hair and muscular legs, his hands carefully holding his bow as though he were posing instead of simply standing. Magnus almost wished that he would come back, that he would take his advice to sit in the glade and relax, enjoy the creations of mother Gaia around them.

His fingers brushed against the soil, tracing a small circle into the dirt.

The breeze came again, the grass around him brushed forward, kissing his skin with its soft blades. The hair on his skin stood on end, the air felt heavy, anxiety inducing. Magnus sat up and brushed himself off, but didn’t stand until he heard it.

The wind again, this time with a small musical trill.

#shfanficnexus #malec #shadowhunters #magnus bane #alec lightwood

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