Rajah watched as the city burned, its face breaking out in great plumes of smoke. Silence giving way to screams, beauty to destruction. It sparked a peculiar sadness in him.

Cities had been something he’d always felt a kinship to. Like him, they lived through the passing centuries. Seeing one human generation after another, never succumbing to age or decay. Like him, they changed with that time as well. More organic than the stagnation of mountains or lakes.

He knew Reginald Tamaias had shared the fondness, carried it more deeply at that. It might have been a kindness that the Immortal’s death had come before Udrebam’s.

Though Rajah had met few Immortals in all his life who’d welcome their own destruction over that of anything else at all. Perhaps he was merely ascribing humanity to the inhuman. As much for his peers as the great creation burning around him.

“I’ve lived too long.” He breathed, speaking to the winds. “Seen too much. No life should outlast its capacity to feel wonder, I think. Wouldn’t you agree?”

For a moment he feared there would be no answer, that the creature behind him was too far taken by his task. That, Rajah felt, would be a true tragedy. Greater even than what they both knew would have to happen in mere minutes.

His fears were abated as the God Hunter spoke, cutting the mists with his clear, velvet voice. Intelligence so clear and burning in the tone that it almost obfuscated the words themselves.

“One might argue that wonder is a young man’s luxury.” The Immortal countered, soft footfalls accompanying his reply. “There’s no shortage of other emotion to enjoy, even for us.”

Rajah smiled as his friend approached.

“How long has it been since we spoke last?” He asked, not caring in particular what answer he might receive.

“Fifteen years, thereabouts.” The Immortal answered. “If you count your request before the battle.”

There was no trace of regret or bitterness to be found from the admission. Rajah had expected little of it. He’d begged his friend to accept his aid, tried all he could to shift that unshiftable will even an inch. It had all been folly.

However different his friend was from the others of his blood, their arrogance was something he’d not fully escaped. All the good and bad along with it.

“That might have felt like a long time to me, once.” Rajah confessed. “A very old once. Perhaps a quarter million days have passed since.”

“Would you say you spent them well?” The God Hunter asked him, doubt flecking his voice for the first time.

“I would. On balance at least.”

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Silence stretched a moment longer

“Do you ask to try and bring yourself some measure of mitigation, my old friend? That’s unlike you.”

He spoke the truth. It was uncharacteristic as anything to hear the man at his back seeking cold comforts. Uncharacteristic as murder.

“I’ve changed.” Said the Immortal. It sounded like a confession. Rajah had never heard the man confess before either.

“Was it the boy?” He asked.

The God Hunter’s silence was answer enough.

“I’d wondered what effect he might have had on you. Eclipse knows your brother found himself changed in much the same way. I think the two of you might be more similar than you like to believe.”

“You’ve done some changing yourself.” Came his needled answer. “And I can see your successor’s influence clear as day. Is my brother cut from the same cloth as you, too?”

“Apologies, my friend. That was presumptuous of me.” Rajah replied with a smile. “I fear death might be leaving me remiss.”

A sharp exhalation from the Hunter, but nothing more than that. No fear, no panic, none of the impulsivity that might drive a mortal man to strike his killing blow then and there. His was an old intellect. Old enough to do no more than blink at mention of the macabre.

Rajah stared out into the city, taking in the sight one last time.

“I knew it was you, you know.” He mused. “Don’t ask me how, this is perhaps the only tell of instinct I’ve let myself believe as fact in half a millennium. Still, I knew the God Hunter was you.”

“Did you tell anyone?”

“I didn’t.”

A pause, followed by a question more tentative than he could remember the man ever asking before.

“Why?”

Rajah allowed himself one last smile as he stared out across the destruction, the city’s beauty outweighing its tragedy even then. Somewhere, he knew, his apprentice would be fighting the attackers. The boy would live. He’d seen to that much, and in doing so secured himself a peaceful end.

“I don’t think I’ll tell you.” He murmered. “As much as I like to believe myself past the days of youthful mortality, I must confess to the occasional bout of childishness. Confusion is what you reap for killing me, my friend. And before you ask, I’ll not tell you why I intend to allow that either.”

He gasped as the pain took him all at once, sharp and blunt, hot and cold. Final and agonisingly drawn. It was accompanied by the whisper of hot breath in his ear.

“This is a kindness. My God-Killer inflicts more pain than I care to see you suffer. I know full well this wound isn’t a fatal one, not for a Utalicist of your calibre. Please try to resist the urge of fixing it. You’ll only worsen your death.”

Rajah stared at the fist quivering just inches in front of his face; wet, slick and red with ichor. Littered with chips of broken bone where it had rent apart rib and breast alike.

So thickly coated in detritus that he could barely see where it was conjoined to the arm protruding from his chest.

He could hear the magic scream as he died, urging him to embrace its touch and knit his ruined flesh back together. Resisting the urge was the hardest thing Rajah had ever done.

Still he managed, lying back and helped gently to the ground by the careful hand of his killer. His last sight was of the sky. The clouds, the winds and streaking sun’s rays.

And of the pale, white haired man who had lowered him to the grave.