The journey back to the monastery ruins was not a march of champions, but a shuffled procession of profound awkwardness. The sun, having mended the heavens, cast long, weary shadows across the barren land. Augustus moved like a mountain of void-forged iron, his gait purposeful, yet laced with an almost imperceptible stiffness, as if a new, unseen burden now weighted his immense frame. The stain on his chest plate, stark against the obsidian, seemed to mock his grim authority. Eleonoré, typically swift and light, walked with a deliberate, almost defensive posture, Aurené a small, bundled contradiction cradled against her side. The occasional, soft coo she offered the infant contrasted sharply with the hardened set of her jaw and the vigilant dart of her eyes towards Augustus. His own presence, usually a silent harbinger of doom, now felt… different. Less like an impending catastrophe, more like a colossal, void-powered inconvenience.
The monastery, once a bastion of divine meditation, now stood as a testament to the war's slow, grinding devastation. Its arched windows gaped like empty eye sockets, its stone walls scarred by impact craters and long-dead scorch marks. Dust, fine as powdered bone, coated every surface, stirred by ancient winds that whispered through shattered arches. Inside, the grand hall, where monks once chanted prayers, was a cavernous ruin. Broken stone benches lay overturned, tapestries had long since disintegrated, and the very air tasted of decay and forgotten sanctity. It offered little more than shelter from the elements, a hollow echo of a forgotten purpose.
Eleonoré found a relatively intact section near what might have once been an altar – a corner where a few crumbling pillars still met a stretch of ceiling. The stone floor here, though grimy, was mostly level. She knelt, carefully unwrapping Aurené from the starlight-and-ash cloth, whose faint shimmer now seemed dull amidst the dust. The infant, quiet for the moment, blinked up at the new surroundings, her small, round eyes reflecting the fractured light of the ruined hall.
"She's hungry," Eleonoré stated, her voice clipped, not quite a question, certainly not a request. She was addressing the ruined walls more than Augustus, who stood a dozen paces away, motionless, observing the proceedings with the detached scrutiny of a general inspecting enemy defenses.
Augustus remained silent. His eyes, blood-red, scanned the vast, empty space. Food. For an infant. His existence had been defined by consumption – of worlds, of souls, of cosmic energy. Never milk. Never… baby food. His massive gauntleted hand, accustomed to crushing stars, twitched.
Eleonoré sighed, a sound of profound exasperation that filled the dusty silence. She began to rummage through a small, magically sealed pouch at her hip, a compact dimension woven with light that surprisingly held more than it appeared. From it, she pulled out a small, dried fruit bar – rations for long campaigns, not for infants. She broke off a tiny crumb, moistened it with a drop of water from her canteen, and gingerly offered it to Aurené. The baby, after a moment of curious staring, opened her mouth and accepted it, chewing with surprising enthusiasm.
Augustus watched. He had witnessed civilizations rise and fall, seen galaxies implode. Yet, the sight of a tiny creature consuming a softened fruit crumb held an alien fascination. The void script on his chest plate, usually throbbing with dark power, seemed to pulse almost hesitantly, as if analyzing this utterly illogical act of sustenance.
"We need… milk," Eleonoré murmured, more to herself. "And something soft. Fresh water that isn't from a canteen. And... clean cloth. Hers is... unusable." She didn't look at him, but the implied accusation hung in the air. The faint, organic scent emanating from his armor was a clear testament to Aurené's earlier protest.
Augustus remained impassive. The silence stretched, thick with dust motes dancing in the weak sunlight. He lowered his gaze to his gauntlet, then slowly, deliberately, began to unbuckle the chest plate. It released with a low hiss of compressed void energy, the obsidian iron thudding softly as he set it aside. Beneath, his inner layers of void-woven fabric were thankfully unscathed, though the dark, glistening stain remained a stark, undeniable testament. Eleonoré offered him a fleeting, almost imperceptible smirk, a ghost of triumph.
"I will find… provisions," Augustus stated, his voice a low, gravelly current. It echoed slightly in the vast hall, surprisingly devoid of its usual cosmic resonance, as if even the void was subdued by the mundane. He started to turn.
"Wait!" Eleonoré called out, a note of something akin to panic in her voice. Augustus paused, a towering silhouette framed by the shattered archway. "You can't just… rampage through a civilian world. You'll cause a massacre. Or a galactic incident. We're supposed to be discreet now. Remember the new law?"
A moment of heavy silence. Augustus's head slowly turned, his blood-red eye fixing on her. The direct order, the implication of his destructive nature, the reminder of the 'new law' – it was a trio of irritations he rarely endured from a living being. His expression, though still largely obscured by his helmet, seemed to deepen with a profound, almost comical, annoyance.
"Then what, Radiant Blade?" His voice held a trace of acid. "Do you suggest I charm a dairy farm?"
Eleonoré sighed again, a long, drawn-out exhalation. She shifted Aurené to one arm. "No. We pool our resources. I can scout. My presence is less... apocalyptic. You have… other methods. For gathering." She didn't elaborate, but the unspoken implication of his void powers, perhaps to conjure or absorb, hung in the air. "And we need a better place. Somewhere less… drafty. For her."
Augustus surveyed the vast, crumbling hall. His eyes, typically focused on strategic points of collapse or weakness for demolition, now seemed to perceive it through a new, utterly baffling lens: suitability for an infant. The silence that followed was broken only by Aurené's soft gurgles.
"Fine," Augustus conceded, the word dragged out as if physically painful. "But if this 'discreet' method involves… small talk… you will handle it."
Eleonoré actually chuckled, a short, dry sound. "Wouldn't dream of it, Demon Lord. Your charming demeanor would surely make them scatter."
A subtle twitch. Had it been a smile? It was impossible to tell behind his grim helmet, but the air around him seemed to thicken for a moment, a micro-flaring of void energy, before settling.
They spent the remainder of the fading light in an awkward, unspoken division of labor. Eleonoré, with a warrior's efficiency, used a light spell to banish some of the dust from a small, relatively sheltered alcove, making it as clean as possible. She then unfolded a spare, thin blanket from her pouch, laying it down to create a makeshift crib. Augustus, meanwhile, remained a silent sentinel, his presence acting as a deterrent to any lingering spectral echoes or curious, small void-beasts that might still haunt the ruins. He also, to Eleonoré's utter bewilderment, used a faint shimmer of void energy to compress a loose pile of rubble into a surprisingly flat, if uneven, surface beside the makeshift bed – a rough table for their scant provisions. It was a brutal efficiency applied to domesticity.
As twilight bled into the deep, bruised hues of dusk, a new, fragile peace settled over the ancient monastery. Aurené was asleep, nestled safely in the makeshift bed, her breathing soft and even. Eleonoré sat beside her, still on guard, but her shoulders were slightly less tense. Augustus, having returned with a surprisingly intact, if dented, metal container that held remarkably fresh water and a few unidentifiable but edible roots from some forgotten store in the ruins, settled into a meditative stance across the hall, his back to a crumbling pillar. The faint thrum of his void script was the only sound besides the wind, a steady, ancient hum.
They were still enemies. The weight of millennia of war, of blood and divine purpose, lay between them like an invisible chasm. But in the fragile glow of the ruined hall, with an impossible child sleeping soundly, a different kind of bond, forged in mutual exasperation and reluctant responsibility, began to solidify. Their new war had truly begun, and it was fought with quiet sighs, pointed glances, and the occasional, unexpected, shared moment of bewildered parenthood. They were two gods of war, utterly lost in the quiet battle of a baby's needs.