Chapter Text
Zenos groaned in agony as he desperately tried to reach her.
His Reaper Avatar had given all it could, brought to the very brink of its wretched existence to provide him with the strength he had demanded of it during his final battle with her. Eislin Anarious. Eis. The Warrior of Light. His enemy. His only friend. And the only woman he had ever truly, deeply loved. Although he knew, she hated him.
She had utterly consumed his mind and heart. His need, his desire for her was like a sickness; an obsession, a psychotic, lecherous, burning infatuation that relentlessly drove him to be by her side. It was there, and nowhere else in the world, where he was happiest, where he felt truly alive. He lived to dance within the flashing, singing tempest of loathing, lust and steel as they crossed blades in an attempt to bring each other to heel. He longed to hold her in his arms, to feel his mouth on hers, the heat of her body like a roaring, raging inferno…
It was with her that he had felt his sole majestic moment of disconnected euphoria that had nothing to do with combat. Disconnected in the most literal sense of the word because she wasn’t there to share it with him.
Not really.
He had used the power of the Revenant to take possession of her body in Garlemald, and oh, what a body it was. Hard and resilient in places, soft and delicate in others, all curves and sweeping lines, immensely powerful and intensely sensitive to his touch. Before he was forced to return it to her, he had delved into the very depths of her desires and knew her secret appetites even better than she did.
She was everything he’d ever wanted - be it in an enemy, friend or lover - and it was here, at the end of everything, he found her, and she had brought him to his knees.
His Avatar was now siphoning as much aether from him as it could to survive, finally abandoning him and returning to the void as he collapsed on the cold astral plane of Meteion’s realm.
He groaned, battered, broken, bruised and utterly beaten, barely able to breathe.
“That I should lose again…” His voice protested in his throat, barely a croak, bearing little resemblance to the smooth, gravelly ribbon of caramel it usually was. He tried to laugh, but it sounded more like a tortured cough, not the joyous melody she was so accustomed to hearing from him. “How disappointing.”
“You… unimaginable… bastard…” she wheezed between ragged breaths, clutching her flank in an attempt to support a pair of broken ribs. She took a step towards him and collapsed a short distance from where he had fallen, her body in abject agony, her heart and mind in chaos, torn to shreds by this man whom she had come to both love and hate with a passion that made a mockery of reason and logic.
Everything was unrelenting pain. Every muscle twitch sent shockwaves of suffering to her already tormented brain. Her garments were in tatters. Blood oozed from still-open lacerations all over her body, remnants of the loving embrace of his war scythe. She had to reach him. She had to be with him before he took his last breath. She clenched her teeth and forcefully dragged herself to him, ilm by ilm until she could grasp a handful of his coat lapels and haul herself to his side.
The conflagration of their final clash had scorched even the stars, as had been his wish, and they had torn each other to pieces, neither one backing down, neither one relenting, beating each other with everything they had to within an ilm of their last breath. She had bested him, but it had cost them both dearly.
Her eyes shimmered with tears. “You… had to know you… couldn’t win. Why did you… make me do it? Why? You fly across… the entire universe to… be at my side… and then… make me kill you? I don’t understand,” she sobbed, bracing herself as best she could as her cries ripped at her insides.
“I needed this from you, Eis,” he told her, closing his eyes. “One final transcendent moment before embracing the cold emptiness of oblivion. I would share it with you, and none other.”
Panic gripped her that he was about to leave her, but he began to speak again, opening his heart and mind as he felt his end approaching. He had so much he wanted to tell her, yet knowing he was probably completely incapable of giving her what she deserved.
“Never have I understood those around me. Understood their obsessions,” he said. She cupped his face with one hand and he opened his icy blue eyes for her, eyes that were once frozen and so intense with the need to fight her, now filled with warmth and love.
“I doubt they ever understood you either,” she said, her tears falling onto his lapels, darkening and soaking into the leather.
“Besieged by their banality, the world is a mire of tedium and trivialities. But in these fleeting moments, there is… a spark.” He somehow lifted his hand to brush her cheek, an uncommonly tender and intimate gesture that he never thought she would allow. “There is… you. Blinding, brilliant, beautiful… Gone… too soon…”
“I’m not going anywhere without you.” She sank her face into his chest, her body flexing against the torment wrought by her anguished cries, her sorrow.
He lifted his other arm slightly, using enough of his remaining aether and life force to summon back the teleportation device she had used to save her companions from the Endsinger. If he could not save her, he would do for her this final courtesy that she may live, even if it had to be without him.
“What of you, my mirror?” he continued. “Born into this world, bestowed name, bid to seek out strife and adventure…” What would her life be like without him? he wondered. She would never be his. He didn’t deserve her.
“Was this life a gift… or a burden?”
He was a gift - to her at least. Despite everything he’d done to her and everything he’d put her through, he was there when she truly needed him the most. He both terrified and excited her, made her heart thunder in her chest, her mind fire with bolts of levinlight, her blood sing in her ears and her body burn with passion and exhilaration. Life was only worth living if he was part of it to continue to make her feel this way - to make her feel truly alive. All else was secondary where he was concerned. That was his gift. The burden would be to continue life without him, and she dared not consider it lest it drive her over the edge of insanity.
“Did you find… fulfilment?”
Terror took her heart in a stranglehold, threatening to tear it to ribbons, leaving naught but a seething, empty void. She could sense he was fading. She summoned her magical focus to her, casting vercure after vercure, pouring the last of her mana and whatever aether she could spare into him, desperately trying to keep him alive.
“The only place I ever found fulfilment was here, at your side. You came to me when I needed you most and I need you to stay, Zenos. Please, stay with me…”
She was almost spent. Her mana was gone and now she was leeching away her lifeforce to heal him, burning the candle of her life, giving him everything that he had ever given her…
Everything.
“I…” he groaned and let out one last breath.
Her mind shrieked in torment, already brought to the brink of shattering by the pain that raked her physically, the agony of her mental anguish and the now unmitigated despair at the possibility of losing him…
Zenos? Zenos! No! Oh, come on you bastard, don’t you dare leave me now! After everything you’ve put me through…
Not again… I can’t lose you again…
I’m not leaving this place without you…
Cracks snaked their way into the corners of her vision.
Summoning the last of her aether, the last of her life force, she placed both hands on his chest and began to channel…
“Hear me, Zenos. Endure. Survive. Live.”
“For the rush of blood, for the time between the seconds - live. For you are the sole pleasure left to me left to me in this empty, ephemeral world - so live!”
“Please…”
“I love you.”
And she blacked out.
The teleportation device clattered to the ground and chimed loudly, but it was too far from the pair to be effective…