Part of this story was submitted to a chorus battle called Cruise X Chorus Battle (CXCB), where I was lucky to be picked up by a group to be their story writer/theme interpreter. My group was called Tithonus, and while I'm generally expecting most people reading this whether here or on AO3 know what a chorus battle is and where to watch the CXCB entries, if you don't then you can look for Cruise X Chorus Battle's YT channel and look for their playlists of promo entries and round 1 (A1) entries and look for the ones by Tithonus to see what my team came up with. Anyway, we were unfortunately eliminated after the first round. However I've decided that even if our time with the CB is over, the story itself doesn't have to be. Thus, I am continuing it myself as a casual project, incorporating some of the themes of the second and later the third round too. I had such a fun time while participating, especially as this was my first time participating in a chorus battle rather than just being a spectator.

As for which chapters came from the CB-well, the prologue here was a short story that accompanied our promotional entry, while all the chapters starting with 1 (so 1-1, 1-2 etc) were all originally one 52-page story that accompanied our R1 entry. Both were in the form of Google Docs linked in the video descriptions. There will be some minor differences between those and the versions I upload here, since I'm proofreading from the word documents I personally worked from rather than the Google doc format I used to upload/share for the CB's purposes. All the chapters after the prologue and the ones starting with 1 (so those starting with 2, 3 etc) will be new things.

Anyway, I shall leave it at that, and hope that you will enjoy this!

What is the cost of living forever?

It is a question that none of us have ever been able to answer. Perhaps, none of us could really face the answer, not when we were already pouring ourselves into the search to the key to simply attaining such longevity. A fruitless search, we thought, despite what our bosses believed. The stories of the gods and the world they lived in, the stories that we followed to map out our purpose in life-why, stories were all that those were. For all the things that set us apart from the world, made us more like things of story than reality, we believed that too.

We believed that, until Tithonus.

We thought that his story was one that we knew like the back of our weary, battle-scarred hands. We thought we had known it as well as the stories behind each of our own names. After all, had it not been drilled into us that in order to make 'forever' meaningful we should not make his lover's mistake? Had we not been told over and over that it is not mere 'immortality' we seek but 'eternal youth'? We had lost count of the number of times we had tried not to fall asleep in sermons on the topic, of the number of times the distinction had been beaten into us. When we gained the chance to live forever, we knew what we had to look for.

Yet, until now we had not believed we could find it. Such things could only really be granted by deities and if there was a possibility they existed once, they certainly did not now, not in this world that looked down on stories like ours. So we had not believed. Not until we were summoned to urgent meetings in the middle of the night, shoulders tensed at the crackle and fire in the voices of our respective bosses. Some of us expected the worst and prepared for it, packing bags so we could leave swiftly and making plans to hide our tears and new wounds from each other. We paced corridors in the moments leading up to the meeting, bit our nails right down to the quick.

Imagine it, then, how surprised we were when our bosses handed us a selection of tickets and an itinerary. Cruise X, the tickets said in big bright letters across the top, but still we did not understand. A ticket was pressed into each of our hands, the most sensible amongst us given charge of the itinerary, before the boss then reached back into their desk and pulled out a scroll, making it roll across the table as it unfurled, with such speed that dust made us sneeze. This document, battered at the edges, words carefully written on with ink and edged in gilt that shimmered in the late afternoon sun that drifted in through the office window, it was of a type we were more familiar with. The words on it, though…

…Tithonus…

…artefact…

…granting eternal youth…

…it was hard to say which surprised us more. Was it that there was more to Tithonus than we'd ever imagined? Or was it the fact that suddenly, the stories that had always governed our lives felt real for the first time? Even gathered together as the teams we were, the idea that we could actually believe in what we had been working for was too hard to handle. Each of us had their own reasons to aspire to what we had believed was a foolish thing to aspire to, but nonetheless we coveted eternal youth more than anything. This artefact of Tithonus that he had left behind while his mind was still functional and his body still healthy-there was no question of not setting out to get it. We would take all our experiences of missions and pour them all into this one, work ourselves down to the bone and further still if that what it took, because finally it meant something. Finally, finally.

"But," one of us asked, emboldened by this hope. "What exactly does a cruise have to do with this?"

For a moment, the old dread tugged at the edges of our resolve when our bosses grinned at us.

"At the very least, to get to the place that this artefact was last seen, you must follow the route this cruise will be taking. And since that is the case, it is just as likely that you will be able to acquire information from the cruise itself. There will be plenty on board who also covet such things, even if they do not display their devotion so openly as us."

A funny thing to say, most of us thought. We had always felt so shadowed, so hidden. Nobody else moved through the world as we did. They did not see what we saw or feel what we felt, they dismissed the stories that made the tapestry of our world as mere fripperies. Us, open? It was a preposterous thing to say. But no matter how fired up our new hope made us, we did not dare defy our boss.

So we prepared. Those of us who had packed bags to flee now re-packed them as if they were just ordinary holiday-makers. The rest of us followed suit, buying new clothes and suncream and books to read in our cabins. We studied the itinerary and the passenger registry closely, but we did not just look for clues, for hints that would lead us to our goal but also for things that interested us. Sections of the ship to explore, things to try, the food that we would eat. It was a luxury cruise after all, and a shiny new one at that. We would be fools not to have at least made the most of that.

And make the most of it we did, at first.

That day we boarded the cruise, we gawped at all the people. In comparison to us, they were so-called ordinary but even so we recognised that they were special. That they had a certain sparkle and glow to them that made them able to move through the world easier than others. Especially that heiress. We had our eye on her for our mission, of course, but she was quite something to look at, if only from a distance. Money had twisted her features cruel, and her heart too, and despite our strangenesses we were soon able to make acquaintances with other passengers by gossiping about the nature of her husband's demise, and other such scandals about her. Not in earshot, of course.

We did not just gossip, though. Just because we allowed ourselves the freedom of fun did not mean we were slackers. We sampled the good food, and oh what good food it was. Some of us even dared to suggest that it was on par with what our deities would have eaten, up there on Mount Olympus. We admired the beautiful views we saw every day-oh, how the ocean sang to us, how the cool salty air soothed after so much time spent tucked away in dark houses. Some of us played tennis or went swimming in the pool, others watched the band that performed every night, a couple tried their hand at games in the casino. They did not do too badly either. One of us whiled away afternoons curled up in a corner of the ship's library reading novels in multiple languages. Plenty of us visited the shop daily, gathering souvenirs and losing luggage space. Oh well, we thought when our suitcases wouldn't close, it will be worth it for the memories. And, of course, once we get the artefact.

We kept the artefact in our mind, and for all the fun we had we were on our guard. We were not the only ones with other goals in coming here. Some of us could feel it in the air, pulsating around other passengers, like that detective or that young photographer. The photographer, in particular, we took extra pains to keep away from. If he found out what we were, he'd blow not just our mission apart but our lives, let the world mock it, pick through it like carrion and then throw us away. No, we would not have that, and so we kept away. But some of us felt it, and some of us could smell it in the air, sharp under the sea salt and the perfume and the wine. We smelt it in the weariness that surrounded the heiress' assistant and in the smug smile that shopkeeper sometimes wore. So we kept to our teams closely, remembered that even if we were gossiping and making small talk with the others that they were not our friends. We investigated but made sure that nobody knew that we were, only ever discussing things in the safety of our cabins, always locking away notes and photographs and recordings. We were not reckless. We knew that there was so much we could lose in the process of this, so much it could end up costing us and we considered it all.

We just did not consider the cost of eternal youth itself.

We should have. After all should have known that there was a reason that only deities could live forever, why only they could grant this ability to others. Yet, for all that knowledge we never considered it. All other eventualities were considered, but not this one important question. It never even crossed our minds.

At least, it did not cross our minds until the day we saw the blood.