The armor of darkness had always been his, wrapped around him as cold and familiar as the winter that followed him. He knew it as well as he knew his own heartbeat, that last vestige of bitter humanity left to him in the netherrealm. The perfect sharpness of the breastplate, the fine long claws, the edged sword-- Anubis felt closer to the Yami yoroi than to anything else.

But lately the Master had found ways to make him uncertain, even of that.

Perhaps next He would take away the heartbeat, too, and then he would spend nights sprawled in mystified silence against a fellow Warlord's mute chest.

He shook his head. Naaza had been unusually silent of late, even for him, and there were few enough nights they spent in each other's company. Rajura-- he smiled, for a moment, imagining that the Gen Masho might create the illusion of a heartbeat, just to allay a useless fear.

And Sh'ten--

Well, there lay the problem. Too much of change, Anubis thought to himself, for a world created expressly for the purpose of denying it.

"Bring my Oni back to me," Arago thundered. "The man is lost to us, but I must have his armor."

Razorfine cracks slivered through Anubis' crystalline determination. ~What?~ "Surely, Master, Sh'ten Doji may yet--"

"Silence, my warrior." And there was no argument for that, not with the echoes of Arago's thunderous voice filling the throne room with shadowy threat.

And so they found themselves holding a captive Sh'ten prostrate before their Lord and Master. It was not an oddity to fight each other; thus had they been trained, honing their skills against one another, taunting each the other to prowess, with Arago's keen eye always watching. But this, this was different. Sh'ten was writhing angrily under their hands, with a hostility in the set of his back that had not been there since the beginning.

It hadn't been difficult to force Sh'ten to his knees. Anubis frowned. More fight, that's what he remembered. More resistance. What had happened to Sh'ten--

Rajura's fingers held mercilessly to Sh'ten's hair, tilting his head back to face his angry Master. Those were could not be the hands of a fellow warrior, even less the hands of a lover, not any longer. Not with that white hot anger that burned along their pulse, and the sheen of vengeance in his eye.

What had happened to all of them?

Anubis felt the bewildering rush of wrongness, time and space incongruous, mismatched. His armor-- his Yami yoroi, his self-- felt odd against his skin, disconcerting like a new ceremony kimono still stiff, unworn.

Something Naaza had said to him, once-- he narrowed wolf-blue eyes, opened his mouth in a fierce not-smile. Was this what it was to scent death? Something older than blood hung in the air, sharper than steel or winter moonlight.

And Sh'ten tense and furious beneath their outstretched hands, four armors humming a dangerous current of change.

Not since he was called through the Gates to the youjakai had Anubis felt so... He could not name it, not here. The unbeating heart of the Dynasty cradled them fiercely in its perfect satin darkness, and there were no words for discontent.

Sh'ten was to be cast into the pit, the molten hollow that Arago cherished at the base of his temple-throne room. Always Anubis had thought of the place as sheer elemental energy, liquid fire enough to burn away their impurities. But now, as Sh'ten's eyes darkened and his hands tightened to fists, Anubis thought not of the Masho honing their skill, but of a man, chained in a prison.

The traitorous word-- dungeon-- flickered through his consciousness like a shadow across the moon, a wrong sort of darkness.

"Yes, Arago-sama," his voice obeyed before his mind could betray him. The Master's eyes gleamed carnelian-hot for an instant, and then sent the two of them to the-- to the--

To the dungeon. With the eerie rush of chill air dissolving around them, Arago's magic shifted them through the youjakai. Anubis' hands held cruelly tight to Sh'ten's shoulders, not only to keep him during the transport, but to maintain his own unsteady balance.

Arago had said it, with his eyes, with the wave of his magic. ~Take him to the dungeon.~

The Oni Masho had always been too clever for his own good, and Anubis forgot to change his expression as Sh'ten wrenched out of his grasp and spun to face him. All his uncertainty must have been written on his face.

Sh'ten's lips twisted in a brief sharp smile. "Yes, Yami Masho. I am to be imprisoned here."

Anubis, too late, summoned darkness to his eyes, scowled. "You must deserve it, then, Oni."

As Anubis captured his hands again, forcing them behind his back, the ogre's face was utterly still, unblinking.

K'so. What was going on behind those keen eyes?

Something about the man, silent in front of him, made the Warlord of Darkness ache to crack that perfect façade, to make the redhead scream, or beg for mercy. Or fight back. The attack was always sweeter when the prey was hot-blooded with anger, or fear, or--

Anything but that placid serenity that sat on his features, making him look naked. Vulnerable.

How long had the Oni Masho been vulnerable?

Since the ningenkai. Something had happened. Anubis' confusion turned to swift cold anger. Something to break the will of the finest warrior among them? He grinned ferally. Only he should be able to do that.

"Do you remember," he said low into Sh'ten's ear, "the first time you lost a combat match to me?"

Sh'ten's lips tightened in the barest snarl. "No," he said shortly, "because it never happened." That much was truth. Sh'ten had always found a way to win-- treacherous or no. Anubis felt his vengeance blossoming, slow and deep.

"Aa." he let the silence stretch a moment. "Then you will remember this as the first time."

Without thinking too closely of his actions, Anubis unwound the scythe and chain from their sheath in the Oni yoroi. Sh'ten exhaled a little too quickly. "Am I also to relieve you of your armor, Oni? Have you wandered so far from the heart of the Dynasty that you must be punished?"

"You will do as your Master bids," Sh'ten said, voice expressionless, his face turned away.

It felt good to feel fierce again, with icy rage singing along his veins. "My Master? You have wandered so far indeed."

With an armored palm Anubis reached around to touch Sh'ten's chest, and whispered cold against the other man's ear when he called the armor away. The Oni yoroi screamed deliciously, with the shuddering scree of an armor call in reverse, summoned to a different hand, ripped harshly from familiar flesh. Sh'ten, shaking with the inverted onslaught, was forced to lean into the hand that bound him, lest he lose his footing and fall-- unarmored-- into the pit.

Anubis held him there, till the armor was spent and gone, and the Ogre was panting unsteadily in his arms.

The hazed hot air lifting from the molten rock beneath them began to smell of rotting cherryblossoms, dying spring.

"There," the Yami Masho said, gratified to see the darkness exuding from his hands, his breath. The orb in his hand was an angry orange, pulsing with subdued violence under the brush of his armored fingertip. His own armor was high with the absorbed power, viciously gleeful. With a rough shove, Sh'ten was on his knees, only the long gold-black vest remaining of the splendid Oni yoroi. His eyes were furious, but his face was trembling.

Anubis considered him, lifting a mocking blue-black eyebrow. "Well?"

The Ogre bit his lip, and said nothing.

Anubis stood over him, enemies turned warrior-brothers made enemies yet again. Something resonated, the feel of the man before him, the cycle turnabout of their positions. He lifted him to his feet. That auburn hair, unbound and untamed by a helmet, fell around Sh'ten's eyes, shielding his expression. Anubis lifted a hand to brush away that hair, hoping to see desperation beginning to sheen Sh'ten's wild eyes. But the touch turned into something more, almost a caress, cradling Sh'ten's face beneath that fine sweep of cold fiery hair.

Sh'ten's face did not change-- nor was there anything but hot defiance burning in his eyes-- but he shivered convulsively at the touch.

"Oh, now," Anubis savored the anger and dregs of fear that the other man was projecting as sure as any mystic armor call. "Is that any face for your champion?"

Sh'ten's expression did shift then, from anger to frank disbelief. "You think you've done this?" His voice was awful in its quietness. "As if your Master had not orchestrated all of this." His fingers twitched, perhaps seeking a forgotten summons, something to reclaim his second skin.

Anubis doubted he could call back the yoroi, but he could not risk it. With deliberate slowness he lifted the abandoned Oni weapon, the long chain skittering slick against the rockface with a sound scornful as Arago's laughter, and wound it, link by link, around Sh'ten's bare wrists. And as he bound his hands behind him, he threw the armor orb, in a glittering arc, to the molten lava below. The lake of fire claimed it with a devilish shriek; and thought the armor could not be destroyed thus, neither could Sh'ten retrieve it.

"Aa. How does that feel, Oni?" He felt the scrape of his gauntlets against the too human skin of Sh'ten's arms, felt him wince.

The Oni tried to sneer, but his mouth was unsteady. "As if you... yourself... were responsible for me," he managed to gasp.

The Yami Masho found it hopelessly delicious, the ragged breathing of his captive, the powerless rage in his green eyes. He smiled. "I think," he said, tightening his hold on the chain, "I had a hand in it, yes." He tilted his face closer to Sh'ten's, feeling the other man's glare. "Feel helpless? Like those little samurai we play with?"

That struck home. Sh'ten arched and tried to kick, but Anubis swiveled him around until he was pinned against his chest. With a desperate surge, Sh'ten freed a hand and covered his face, the armored spikes on Anubis' chest cutting into his palm. "How does it feel, on the other end of the chain?"

"You are a fool," Sh'ten said brokenly, his eyes leaving Anubis' face. "Arago will destroy you."

The Ogre believed his words, Anubis could tell. That more than the threat surprised him. "You needn't pity me, Sh'ten," he said brusquely after a moment. "I have chosen this path."

"Have you?" The words had more of a winterchill in them than the Yami Masho's own voice, an echo that bit through even the heated hum of the pit beneath them. Sh'ten, sensing Anubis' distraction, ran a slow wondering fingertip over the other man's scar. His hand bled a little, trickling crimson warmth over the cold flesh. Anubis kept himself perfectly still, and it was Sh'ten who winced, flinching back from the cross-discolored skin.

"You're going to ask me where it came from," Anubis grated through tightly clenched teeth.

Sh'ten brought his face closer to Anubis, spoke directly against the scar that the warmth of his lips might brush the skin as he spoke. "No." The faintest flowerpetal tickles of his breath sent hot shivers through the Yami Masho. "No. I was going to ask you why it is still there."

"What?" It was more an exhalation than a word, as the Oni's clever tongue was tracing the twin lines of it.

"Four hundred years, Anubis, and it's still there. Is there not enough of magic here in the youjakai to heal the wound?"

He stood at a loss for words, the lava moving with a tidal hiss beneath them.

"Or does Arago-sama wish to keep you blemished so that you are never free from your past?"

Anubis shook himself violently away. "Sh'ten!" He chose his words very carefully. "What of my past should I seek to flee? There is nothing I regret."

"Aa." Sh'ten's voice was barely audible, with an arrogant tilt to his smile. He lingeringly kissed the juncture of the two lines, the intersection of the cross. Anubis felt his face flush, a quick raising of blood to the touch at his cheekbone. He felt he was falling, the world rushing up to swallow him-- but something snagged and caught him-- The cold metal links in his hand that bound him to the other Warlord. Light-headed, he felt as though he were swinging with aborted inertia at the end of the line, widening arc out over the face of nothing. He was steel forged cold over a demon fire, how could there be fear? But what else to call that sick surge inside him?

Sh'ten was still speaking, "That is what Arago wishes you to think."

Anubis growled. He could not listen, not here, with the imprint of his Master's commands yet raw in his mind. "Silence, Oni."

He laughed, an ugly sound. "Not the Ogre any longer. If He has taken my armor, why would he not take yours?"

Anubis moved quicker than thought, on the icy tempest of his anger, pulling Oni chains tighter till they drove into both Sh'ten's wrists, tracing more faint bloodrainbows into his palms. But now he did not flinch, or struggle.

Infuriating.

The Warlord of Darkness lowered himself against the unshielded Masho, till naked human flesh was balanced dangerously between the spikes on his breastplate. He smiled hungrily. "You don't really want to make me angry, do you?"

Sh'ten flickered a glance, saw the shined edge of a chest spike grazing his skin with the stuttering movement of his uneven breath. He did not speak.

Anubis, not gratified, slid lower against the standing warlord, gauntleted hands playing almost mischeviously against frail blue-veined skin. "You have broken the magic-bond that Arago-sama tempered between us. I will hear you scream, Sh'ten, for your insolence to the Master." He felt a cruel smile on his lips. "And to your fellow Masho."

With his delicate wolf-fangs he sliced tiny kisses into Sh'ten's flesh, teasing one exposed nipple and then the other to taut points.

Unable to stop his body from responding, Sh'ten had to watch as armored deft fingers swirled along his skin, hard enough to hurt, strong enough to call tremors from some hidden heat deep inside him. A thin trail of crimson trickled from his mouth, but no matter how fiercely he bit his lip, his body was still singing in muted desperation. He could not gasp; the armorplated sharpness left little wounds like openmouthed smiles along his chest.

"And to me," Anubis said hungrily, tasting the salt tang of blood in his kisses.

With crimson-armored fingers, Anubis followed the faltering pulse of Sh'ten's veins, making a journey of the other man's body, from heartbeat to chain-bound hands to the undisguisable heat between his strongly muscled legs.

Sh'ten made the faintest sound, a growl that was neither submission nor challenge. Anubis' blood keened to the noise, though, the first unfurled petal of the many-layered chrysanthemum of Sh'ten's defenses. How long before the whole man opened, explosive uninhibited spring blooming from the raw, yoroi-peeled skin?

Nothing in the ningenkai could compare to this, surely. Anubis lived through his fingertips, touching ruthlessly, scenting the other man's sweat and thinly veiled panic.

Dancing along the knife-edge of pain and pleasure, Sh'ten struggled to speak. Anubis was startled when he managed to find his voice. "You must have felt it, too."

Anubis, not to be distracted, let his mouth follow his fingers, showing that the tongue was clearly made for better things than speech. Sh'ten moaned, an agonized, half-swallowed sound. "A-- Anu--" His breath caught, his hands tangling in the chain keep his balance. But he continued to speak.

"You must have-- felt it. You fought with the one who wears the Korin yoroi. Such armor is the-- counterpart to yours. You must have felt the draw."

Annoyed, Anubis drew back, thin wolf-fangs grazing tender flesh. "Little you know of combat, then, Oni. Any draw is the call to battle, to conquer." He was pleased to feel that the cold rush of his speech against Sh'ten's desire made him shiver convulsively, made his knees weaken.

"Ah, but conquer... how?" Sh'ten managed through tightly clenched teeth. "This is not the battle we are made for--"

Anubis' hands tightened on Sh'ten's hips, almost cruelly, armored fingertips seeking to bruise the fine-boned skin or make Sh'ten cry out-- anything to stop that flow of words. He took him in his mouth again, fiercely satisfied to hear Sh'ten's sudden silence.

But he could not prevent the images his mind volunteered, unbidden: a steady violet gaze, and young hands wielding Halo-touched destruction. Beautiful. To conquer-- to take-- He growled low in his throat, rough vibration making Sh'ten shudder and gasp. What sounds would another warrior make, thus helpless under his touch? A younger voice, a corona of blond hair tossed back in abandon--

Sh'ten cried out then, for the first time. His voice echoed roughly against the rockwalled cavern, and Anubis remembered with a hot dizzy rush where he was, and just whose thighs were shaking beneath the onslaught of his mouth, his skilled tongue.

Whose eyes were closed tight, breath hitching in his chest. Anubis watched greedily as the spasms took him, earthquake tremors that rocked him back on his heels, into the armored hands that supported him. His head thrown back, with the cascade of his hair like a waterfall of blood flooding across his shoulders, he looked more full of youki than the Dynasty itself. "Anubis--!" The name was more a skirling cry than a word, the scream that the Yami Masho had hoped for. Had earned.

Anubis held him as he came, drinking his pleasure as an elixir, eyes never leaving his face.

When Sh'ten was again a mortal being, shivering with the fading dregs of magic, Anubis nibbled away the last sheen of his release, enjoying the way Sh'ten's skin danced and quivered beneath his teeth. Enjoying still more Sh'ten's silence, his wordlessness as his final surrender.

"That was for me," he said with narrowed eyes. "If you behave, maybe next time will be for you."

Sh'ten made a sound suspiciously like a moan. "Next time," he repeated, numbly. But his Oni smile was back, something mysterious and fierce.

Anubis was obscurely relieved to see the arrogance in the set of Sh'ten's shoulders. He grinned, winding the chains more loosely around his hands, that he might be bound without discomfort. "That better than anything in the ningenkai, Oni?"

"Hn." Sh'ten looked at him for a long moment, his eyes glowing cherryleaf green. "I have seen more than we ever dreamed, in the ningenkai," he said, not answering the question. His thoughts darted just under the surface of Anubis' comprenhension, like slender elusive koi. "We cannot destroy the world."

Anubis hmphed, breath deliberately teasing the auburn hair at the base of his neck. "Ridiculous," he pronounced with disdain, "You know there is nothing we cannot do, a combined force--"

Sh'ten's voice seemed far away. "Our presence here changes nothing."

Something choked to life inside Anubis, too deep to be a sob, something drawing air for the first time, bewildered understanding. He would leave Sh'ten there, in the dungeon, because he was obedient to the Dynasty. But he could not leave him just yet. "But your presence here has changed us, Sh'ten. We are changing."

"You will learn what I mean, Anubis," Sh'ten's voice was oddly gentle, lilting across the darkness of the other Masho's ears.

Anubis drew him closer, to ward off the chill sparkling from his own skin. And there, he found himself held against that bare mortal chest, hearing a familiar rhythm beneath his labored breathing.

Sh'ten's heartbeat.

Aa. Some things still made sense.