Chapter Text
He told you that the first time he saw you, he'd dismissed you out of hand as a jumped-up wizard with an ego to match. You told him that you forgave his lack of foresight with regard to how your lives would intertwine. And besides, he hadn't been entirely incorrect on that first impression.
The thrice-damned traitorous blade clattered to the cold obsidian of the antechamber as its wielder was banished from the plane. In the ensuing terrible silence, your shock-sparked anger faded to a dull ache of heartache, an echo of the sharper pain of wounds you suspected were fatal. Quiet gave way to the thousand little sounds of activity as a pair of reanimated undead scuttled into the room. One bent to retrieve the sword while the other stood silently at your elbow, awaiting any instructions you might have. Contempt clear in every line of your body, you took the sword from skeletal hands and turned it over in your gloved ones. Your blood still dripped lazily from its edge. An impulse to unmake it then and there overcame you but it was beyond your ability in this state. A wave of your hand folded it into a demiplane to be dealt with later. You closed your eyes.
The ashes of your victory still fresh on your tongues, riding on the nadir of adrenaline, the two of you had exchanged the quiet words that cemented themselves into a bond much deeper than general and lieutenant. You remember them perfectly, even now.
How had it come to this? A sigh whistled through your ribcage as the fragments of your phylactery fell from your grasp. First your heart, then your soul. He had been thorough in his destruction of both. His unerring eye for ruthlessness had been a quality you'd appreciated as early as the days when he had been only the nameless man you'd seen carving through the enemy's forces from afar. Another gesture dismissed your attendants. Fatal was - for one such as yourself on the cusp of apotheosis - a relative term, but your body had never forgotten its mortality and a faint tinge of panic sat on the rim of your thoughts. Unbidden, recollections of your time together rushed in like a balm, yet feeling more like ripping the stitches from a freshly healed wound.
You told him, with airy amusement in your voice, that you were putting your life in his hands. He didn't laugh. You took his hand, whispered brief assurances, and pressed a kiss to his brow. You closed your eyes and when you opened them, you felt alive.
Rebuilding would begin with your manifestation on this plane. It was simple to deal with, despite its relative complexity - you hadn't wrapped it up so deeply in the existence of another by your side. You couldn't help but scoff at how soft you had gotten. How trusting. It was a mistake you would not repeat in these reconstructions. And then, you could turn your attentions to the cause of this schism.
The blade, forged from a fragment of your own soul, sung ethereal in the presence of the man meant to wield it. As he spent more and more time listening to its song, you begun to wonder what pretty words it was speaking into his ear. Alas, you wondered far too late.
Of course, the time for regret was long past. Your last dregs of mortality shed like an old, cracked chrysalis as the first rays of the sun began to peak over the horizon. You turned your back on it and embraced the eternity ahead.