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It does not rain in the desert. Not the way it does in the rainforest, anyway, though he supposes nowhere could compare to that. He remembers walking through Sumeru City when a storm would pass through, sudden and violent, and people would laugh and huddle under the nearest cover together until it passed.
He was always alone. He'd go home drenched, with a deep chill piercing into the very core of his being.
The chill is still there, even now as he's deep in the heart of the desert. No amount of sun, even one as overpowering as this, could possibly fix what has long been broken within him that's made him so– so–
He is not of Haravatat. Wordplay does not interest him.
~
His mother told him once that it had been raining when he was born. It had rained so much, in fact, that a flood swept away the harvest, and everyone concluded that this must have somehow been his fault. He spent the whole of his life until they finally threw him out trying to make it up to them.
He has long come to the conclusion that superstition and fate are foolish things, but– he is still, with everything he does, trying to make it up to them. He never stopped.
~
There is nothing to be done now that he's been tossed aside again, and this time exiled to the desert. His previous experiments are beyond his reach now, probably tossed aside unfinished, and he hardly has the resources to run them all again. It's not like he'd even be interested if he did– the taste of them has soured now.
But, the only thing he still has– the only thing nobody has ever been able to take from him– is his mind. Where those other failed scholars might spend their exiles going mad, he will comb through every inch of the desert if it means finding even scraps of ancient tech.
In fact, he might have had to even if he was still home. If he is to build a god, a new god that is better than any of the current, half-rate ones, he'll need to study all of the world’s wonderful machines.
~
He feels as if there is something inside of him– something he did, maybe– that rendered him doomed from the start. There is some great evil inscribed in his soul, and for a long time he hid it in fear others would see it. He spent hours when he was a child cleaning himself, trying to wash away that which was impure, but the thing that was impure was him. Lately, he's attempted to embrace it.
He still doesn't know what it is, though. All the things he's done that other people have scorned him for are not his original sin. Not the children, or the torture, or that girl he choked the life out of with his own two hands– no, those have only covered it up like lipstick on a pig.
~
His hand is scraped up rather badly, but he'd had no choice. He's not so foolish as to remain in low ground when rain finally comes in the desert. He has seen for himself how flash floods tear away whole caravans, and would rather injure himself scrambling up a cliffside than die in such an idiotic, avoidable fashion.
There's an overhang at the top of this hill so deep as to almost be a cave he's taken refuge in. Getting caught in this rain, heavy and violent as it is, would itself be a death sentence.
He settles, and starts to dig through his supplies. He's been reduced to a single half-finished roll of bandages– he'll need to start thinking about bartering with passing Eremites for more. It'd be cheaper in Aaru Village, but he cannot go back there.
The adrenaline has worn off but his hands are still shaking, which makes him realize just how cold he is. That's something of a problem, but the best he can do for now is to stay here. Choice made, he wraps up his hand with some difficulty, and curls up to watch the rain.
It's heavy, but not thick like it was in the city. The earth doesn't smell as rich either, certainly on account of the fact that sand hardly has the blessings of the Lesser Lord. Nevertheless, this storm might unearth some ancient technology. He ought to have a look around when it stops.
~
When he was eight or nine, he found a dog in the alley behind his house with some kind of tumor growing out of its back. He wondered what could cause such a thing, so he took it apart to see how it worked. He regrets that people are not as easy to understand.
~
He realizes that he'd fallen asleep only when he wakes and sees the sun is back. His clothes are dry now, and he feels fine, so hopefully there won't be any further complications as a result of this little debacle.
Brushing sand out of his hair, he rises. Already, he can spot a few glints of metal in the sand that weren't there yesterday. He'd be in a good mood, but he can't shake the feeling that someone is watching him.
~
His trek continues, interrupted occasionally by his stopping to inspect the various devices the flooding had unearthed. None of them have proven interesting so far, but he presses on. Doing so remains his best option.
He's also still being followed, he thinks. He isn't all that used to eyes like these, that hang upon him with no real value judgment. People have ignored him, allowed their gazes to roll over him like water, and have stared him down with hate and disgust, but no one has ever actually looked at him.
The people of his hometown certainly hadn't, anyways. In the earliest moments of his life, before his mother had ever so much as held him, he was deemed a sinner and named as such. It must have been on account of the void inside him, the great sin he does not remember.
Still– he had hoped that they, that anyone, would love him. The only thing he has to show for the matter is a long scar running across his face. He's fortunate enough that it narrowly missed his eye, but he no longer has access to the supplies he used to cover it up while he was in the rainforest. He hopes that whoever's watching him now doesn't see it.
~
His mother, he thinks, is dead, but he can't be sure. She'd been dying when he was thrown away– though, in hindsight, she'd been dying his whole life. She was probably dying before him, too, and only allowed him to be born so she'd have some scapegoat on which to blame the illness that ate away at her body.
He isn't sure why he's thinking about her. It doesn't actually matter if she's alive, because he wouldn't visit her at her bedside or her grave. He wouldn't be allowed, but– he wouldn't go at all. If they lifted his banishment he still wouldn't go back. He would not let his curiosity get the better of him, would not allow his idle fantasies to lead him to the house where he was raised to see how it looks in his absence.
~
There is a dead lizard on the ground in front of him scuttling around the sand. Its eyes are glassy, its brain likely dead, but the artificial heart he’d made out of robotic scrap continues to push the blood around its body. He smiles. The experiment, it would seem, is a success.
It almost distracts him from the man following him. He's still there, and– actually, he notices, isn't pretending not to follow him any more. He's making his way across the sand towards him at a leisurely pace. He's an imposing figure, dark against the golden sands, and he worries that he won't have a chance if a fight breaks out.
He straightens, looking the stranger in the eye. The lizard crawls around his feet.
“You are Zandik, correct?”
“I've been called that,” he says.
“I've heard a rumor that you performed experiments on robotic technology.”
He nearly bristles at that. Anyone who knows his name will surely know that those are the experiments that had him banished from the Akademiya.
“Who are you to ask about my experiments in blasphemy?” He retorts.
“A harbinger of the Cryo Archon,” he says. “I'm assembling a team I hope will one day be able to usurp the heavenly principles.”
Despite himself, he gets nearly giddy. To overthrow the heavenly principles themselves– he has hardly allowed himself to dream of such a thing.
“And you'd like to hire me?”
“I’d like to borrow the talents of someone who can build an enhanced human.”
“Merely an enhanced human? If your great nation can furnish me with sufficient resources and ample time, I could even manufacture that which you would call a god. What say you?"
The lord harbinger nods approvingly. He soaks in the praise like water. Perhaps, though–
“I say yes, if you become our second harbinger.”
– the words reopen a wound, because all of the sudden he is that foolish, vulnerable child again.
"Will you treat me like the Akademiya did? Will you call me a monster, a madman? Or will you treat me as my hometown did, and chase me away with pitchforks and clubs...?"
He winces at his own weakness. It's not unusual for him to bite the hand that feeds him, but this time unlike so many others he regrets it.
“I would not have come this far if I did not seek madness,” Pierro says. “I have no issue with your methods.”
He swallows. The desert is rough on his throat. He is sick of this place.
“Then I accept. I'll be one of your Harbingers.”
"Good. Then, we are now in partnership."
"As for the matter of your title — what do you say to this..."
~
He awakens in Snezhnaya to his own face, older, looking down on him.
“Good morning,” the other him says, his voice dry. “We have a lot to tell you.”
He sits up, slowly– his own body unfamiliar to him– and looks around the room. It is filled with segments of himself he does and does not recognize.
“...no,” he says. “I think I understand.”