Chapter 6: The End is Near
Here we are, friends; so close to the end. Sometimes I wield my creative license like an 8-year-old with a lightsaber, so stick with me; I may take you to strange places at times.
But this chapter and the next are my all-in; these are my toppest-shelf syllables, and I dedicate this one to kewlstory, Legacie, Remvis, and onionsonbutter. Thank you for your praise; I hope it continues to satisfy. The next chapter will be up within the week.
act ii
Her fingers trembled like candle flames under the weight of a cruel wind as she sought for a pulse across the bloody expanse of the frost archer's neck. And her nightingale heart, a victim of that same storm, fluttered dizzyingly. The green-red aftertaste, oregano and blackberries and dusty faith, made an idol of her tongue.
Ashe's eyes were closed like shells. And her chest, slicked with a garland of red abuse in the pattern of Warwick's fingertips, rose and fell at intervals that seemed to betray all possibility of recovery. Are the signs of life and death the same here? Soraka wondered. Was there any hope?
"Can you restore her, Heavensent?" the scythe-bearer asked her.
In the light, she'd been intrigued to see his form for the first time: a scarecrow, one of man's eternal guardians. And in honor of that mythology, he stood poised like a sentinel, watching the woods for evidence of their enemies' return.
Her gaze lingered on him as she hesitated. "Perhaps. If she is still with us at all, then she can drink from my life until she's whole. Or...," she said, peeling a bit of the black fabric away from the wound, "until I am not."
The devil nodded.
It was an informal ritual.
She palmed the wounds that defined the frost archer's flesh, located the scarlet bed of her pain with hands swathed in bright green light. And in the midst of her magic, the massacre began to fade. Ashe's tattered breathing grew rapid as the starchild paved a road out of the darkness with the stardust smudges of her own life.
"Warwick..." Ashe mouthed the word like a curse, and then her eyes flickered open to regard her healer. And like all those who spend time on the shoreline of death, her guardian's image was, for a moment, transposed in her vision with the long white shadow of God.
Soraka nodded and pressed her cool palms to the fever in Ashe's cheeks. "Warwick, yes," she said, and she shuddered to recall the dread of his howl, the wildfire burning of his presence.
Another whisper of light, another sweep of the starchild's hands, and Ashe's wounds were all but closed. The gold embroidery was in shambles, but the flesh beneath it was white and bruiseless. As they regarded each other thoughtfully, the bullet in Soraka's chest began to weep again, and her face twisted with pain.
Wasting no time, Ashe scrambled to retrieve a red bottle, and with reverence, she placed it in her broken guardian's hand. "Drink it," she breathed. "He knows the scent of your blood and will find it on the wind, no matter where you hide. You have to heal yourself or he'll come for you."
Soraka accepted the bottle, smiling weakly, but she shook her head. The wound had written red into the white rope of her hair. "He has had my scent," she said, deflating at the memory. "And he has been coming for me. The beast won't stop until he has my heart in his hands."
"Your heart?"
"It is...a long story. Too long to tell in the minutes we have. But...Warwick failed once, to take my heart," she told them. "Not so long ago, I trusted him. And it was my reaction to his betrayal that granted me the punishment of mortality. Now that we've met again, I think he seeks to finish what he started in whatever small way he can."
Suddenly, their history seemed so simple. In the weary heaviness of blood loss, it made so small a tale. How many months had she summarized in a few hazy minutes? And how many hours of pain had been lost in translation?
"This is personal for him," Ashe said, comprehending. "He's making a vendetta of it."
"Yes. I'm sorry," she said. "Nothing will keep him from me. It will, at best, force him to look harder. But perhaps those minutes are all we need." And as she tipped the red bottle to her lips, a crow landed softly upon her wrist. She lowered her hand, the bottle with it, and regarded the scythe-bearer with gentle curiosity.
"Fiddlesticks?" the frost archer said, frowning.
It was her first time hearing his name.
"Let him come for her," he responded, and above them, draped like a rosary across the branches, the crows began to scream. "We will use this personal vendetta, this predictability, against him. So let him come for her, and when he does, I will end him."
Ashe divided her gaze between them, contemplating. After a moment, she said, "you're right. He'll bring others. We can take them out at once." And then, to Soraka, she said, "this is a good strategy. If you can hold out, we can make this work."
The starchild said nothing, but, in compliance, handed the red bottle back to Ashe. Promptly, she hid it away and began, without ceremony, to count her remaining arrows. And Soraka watched her, detached, from her vantage in the grass until the scythe-bearer reached for her hand and pulled her gently to her feet. He waited until she'd steadied herself, and then he bent to retrieve the bronze staff.
"Fiddlesticks?" She tested the word as he pressed the staff into her hand. And his name was the sour-sweet bursting of a pomegranate seed on her tongue.
"Yes, heavensent." It was not the same voice that fell like a plague on the ears of men; the stormcloud of death's voice soothed her like no sound ever had.
Even birdsong.
She tilted her head up to him, but the formless burning of his eyes made it difficult to read the subtleties of the expression on his face. "Who are you?" she asked, not unkindly. "And why have our fates entwined?"
He smiled. "Death," he said. "The most honorable of all guardians."
She eyed the scythe. "And what of you and I?"
Somewhere beyond them, a bird sang. "Death is..." he paused, "only concerned with the culmination of fate." He spoke softly. "I am uncertain what brought you to me, but I have always known what you were."
Her legs threatened collapse. "What am I?"
"Our world is a gallery of tears," he said. "The weak are preyed upon by the wicked, the weapons of war are sophisticated, and the strong run rampant but aimless in the chaos."
She listened.
"Mortal or immortal," he said, "you are a gatekeeper. A guardian. You were an angel before the stars, and you are an angel after them."
"A savior for the fallen." She repeated his words.
"With or without the stars," he said.
And as she looked upon him, the world that had existed only moments before began to fall away, and her entire existence was suddenly only as wide as the empty space between them. In the conspiracy of those few precious minutes, she came to believe in the narrative of her fate.
Mortality was her destiny. She knew it now more than ever.
And with it, so was he.
"Let your enemy arrive here," he said. "You and I. We will end him."
She studied him the way a rosebud would study the sun as he drew a golden hourglass from the dusky folds of his cloak.
"What is that you have?" she asked, unraveled moonlight under the green tide of his gaze.
And death smiled. "Doom," he said.