For the second time since coming to the Black Palace, Nerinai saved Ike from death. That fact would have been sweet enough, but more than that she’d laughed again. That sound, that perfect sound was worth more to him than anything in the world.

Now carrying him, they returned to the Black Palace to find the laboratory an utter mess.

The carnage of demon corpses littered the floor in heaps and horrible portrayals of the fight they’d escaped. Brown ichor still dripped down the metal walls and puddled in the corners. All the neat little tables and organization of the first shamans was thrown into chaos.

The only living thing in the room was Isibeil. The gray scholar-assassin was sitting on top of one of the tables with her head resting in between her knees, silent but clearly grieving.

“Isibeil,” Nerinai said, a certain weightlessness to her voice that Ike had never heard before, “It’s done.”

She nodded slightly, but said nothing else.

Ike knew what she was thinking. He’d been in almost the exact same place during his early days here, when he found Nerinai bleeding, almost losing her to the Judicator’s corruption. Regardless of Marcus’s intention she had failed in keeping him alive. That pain was probably never going to go away.

Nerinai caught her guardian's eye and nodded towards the steps. “Go,” he said, shrugging off her help. As much as he wanted to spend every second as close to her as possible, he needed to talk to Isibeil alone.

The Raveness drifted away and up the stairs, then left the room with her tattered cloak still billowing with that untouched grace. Ike had a moment to worry if he’d been tricked somehow, if letting her walk away was going to leave him as destitute as Isibeil, but he brushed the worries aside and limped over to the tables. With some difficulty he pressed against the table and slid up, exhaling from the pain still lingering in his limbs.

“I’m sorry,” he said, knowing those words meant nothing. “Without Marcus I don’t know if we could have-”

“He knew. Marcus knew exactly what he was doing,” she snapped.

Ike nodded. “He did tell me something to tell you, just before. That-that you never failed him. Dying was his choice. Saving us, giving Nerinai a chance to seal the gate.”

They were silent for a moment. Ike played the scene over and over again in his head. One moment Marcus was standing in front of the doorway and the next he was just- gone. A plume of ash and a hole in the wall being the only things he left behind.

Ike looked around at the room and shrugged.

“I know it won’t make things better, but you should finish his work. Just- something to keep you occupied. Staying in the laboratory isn’t going to make it any easier to let go of him.”

“Who said anything about letting go of him?” she replied. “I failed him. I broke my oath to Drearbridge and let one of their scholars die for… It doesn’t matter why. He’s dead. I was supposed to keep him alive. Leaving isn’t going to bring him back.”

“No, nothing will. He still came here with a mission though didn’t he?”

Isibeil stared up at him with a murderous look in her eyes. Ike didn’t flinch though. After coming so close to death he was probably going to be fear-proof for a long time.

Eventually she sighed and stretched out her limbs.

“There’s so much still here,” Ike said. “Notes and books. Old world technology. Things the university would kill for, you know. Take Marcus’s findings to them. Make his death mean something, you know? Keep his spirit on through the work.”

Isibeil nodded and stared at a row of shelves. The books were mostly smushed by the body of a long legged Len, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed.

Ike got up and moved up towards the stairs. He was beginning to feel like more of a burden than a helping hand now. Isibeil needed time more than she needed his poorly spoken wisdom and advice to start doing things.

“Thank you,” she said as he left. Ike nodded back.

He made his way up, backtracking through the wreckage of the ancient building they’d left behind. Without the butler to keep things nice and tidy, the building was really beginning to show its age. Mold started creeping up the basement walls around the pool's crater. All the wood was beginning to rot and creak and the ceiling occasionally dripped with something that reminded Ike too much of ichor.

Upstairs was almost entirely the same story. All the beautiful architecture was, in essence, dying.

A noise in the sitting room kept him from moving forward. Inside he found Agustus moving the bodies of Victoria and Donnahais into sheets, wrapping them in their armor and gasping from the effort. When the Arcani knight looked up and saw him, the guardian froze. Would he try to kill him now? After losing his mentor and his sister?

Instead the weary soldier dropped down and heaved. “Care to offer me some help? Don’t worry, I’m not going to gut you for it.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Ike hesitated before stepping in and giving the man a hand. In all their armor the bodies were heavy. Ike helped finish wrapping them, occasionally looking up at the knight to see if he was readying a knife, and placed them on top of a table in the middle of the room.

Augustus sat back on one of the seats, looking deflated and staring at the corpses.

“I’m sorry, for what it’s worth,” Ike told him.

“Don’t be. They tried killing you.”

“In all fairness I remember you standing right there with them, so don’t be too upset if I feel like keeping my distance.”

He pursed his lips and shrugged again. “Doesn’t matter much now,” he said, “They’re gone and somebody has to bring the bodies back home. I tried telling Victoria the Martial was overstepping but… family, right? She tried killing your friend out there, got sloppy, fell on a Len’s bone spike. I’ll bring her home. Give her a burial.”

Ike could feel goosebumps in his skin. Something about how calm the man was evaluating everything upset him.

“So we’re good?”

Augustus nodded. “We’re good. I just need a little time.”

“Of course,” Ike said.

Then he spun around and left without turning back.

His shovel was gone and he was entirely too tired to do anything but look as the palace began deteriorating around him. All the bodies would probably just rot into the ground, he figured. Nobody was coming back here for a long time. There was nothing left, especially once Isibeil went through and took everything useful. The university would have their loot and leave a truly empty shell behind. The maps had forgotten the Black Palace long ago, and now the world could finally consume it again.

That left Ike to wonder if, without the butler’s suspicious magic keeping everything together, the blight was starting to spread. The last thing he needed was to walk outside and find himself sinking in pulpy mud again. He’d had enough blight for one life, and with his second he didn’t want to remember the filth existed ever again.

Nerinai was by the front room speaking in quiet tones with the Crows. There were two now. Just Kassidy and Syphe.

Ike felt another pang in his heart. This place was taking everything from people. Had taken much more, in the grand scheme of things, but now it was done. Now everyone could go back to licking their wounds and burying their dead, and tomorrow there’d be something new to kill or survive.

Nerinai touched his arm when he got closer. “You look tired,” she said. “You should go outside. Breathe a little, alright? I’ll take care of the Crows and meet you outside.”

Ike nodded. “Sounds good.”

He met the eyes of Kassidy once and then ducked his head to leave. Nerinai was right. He didn’t need anymore grief weighing him down and his legs were starting to wobble underneath him. After defeating death he figured he deserved a little resting time.

The door clicked open, lifting some weight in Ike’s stomach, and outside morning light was just beginning to stream through the trees around the property.

Ike sat down on the steps. Thankfully no blight was creeping up to finish the job. Everything was quiet, still, but also living. Birdsong in the trees. A mouse crossed the gravel drive in the front yard, and Ike found himself wondering what it would take for every morning to look just like this.

Hell was defeated, but what about the blight? And humanity? The Arcani weren’t going to just brush Donnahais’s death under the rug and leave everything like water under the bridge. If the demons were gone, people would go back to killing each other. A new balance would take hold of the world. But maybe, just maybe he wondered what it would look like if everyone spent a few days just building something new.

That was a pretty sweet dream.

Even sweeter was Ike’s own future, he decided.

Nerinai came out eventually and sat down next to him, surprising him when she laid her head on his shoulder.

“It’s nice out here,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“They’re going to bury Rosa with Yanell in the courtyard. Too bad your shovel got left behind.”

Ike hadn’t even thought about the damn shovel, but yeah, it was gone too. Too bad. That thing was runed and everything. Before he could start moping about losing another piece of himself, Nerinai reached up and touched him.

“You followed me. Why, Ike? Why risk yourself?”

“You’re going to make me say it?”

Her lips pulled in, then up, into a grin. A smile so sweet Ike couldn’t think of anything else, and just stared at her.

“What?” she asked, staring into his eyes.

“You’re beautiful. That’s all. I feel like I should tell you that more often.”

She scoffed. “Flattery get’s you nothing, guardian. Just keep living.”

He smiled, knowing he could do both.

“There’s something I don’t understand. When you- kissed me- and gave me your blood, you should have been dead. You were very close, in fact. I felt it. How did you keep from crossing the line?”

“"I don't know, I guess mostly it was just strange. I was already in hell. When I kissed you, and died, everything just seemed so much... Sweeter. Peaceful, because it was ok to walk away and never come back. Then I saw you and what you were doing. I thought to myself, My god, how beautiful. How perfect that I die for only her. So I guess you could say I stayed for the show, just to watch you move one last time. That was when you saved me."

Nerinai was quiet for a little while. Quiet enough that Ike worried he’d said the wrong thing or upset her in some way. Was his flattering actually upsetting her? What if after everything his feelings were wrong, and Ike was only ever her servant?

She moved, and he panicked. While he was sputtering for an apology or an excuse, she rolled over onto his lap and pulled his face up into another kiss. This one is much longer than the last one and without any blood moving between their lips.

The Raveness held his head in her hands, stroking under his cheek bone and cupping his chin as she held his lips.

“We’re going home,” she said after finally pulling away. “I need you to promise something, Ike. No matter what happens next, never leave me.”

“Never.” Then Ike kissed her again to seal his oath, and pulled back. Their eyes met, and he told her “I love you.”

“Obviously,” she answered. Then all the tension of their intimacy melted away into a fit of her giggling, the most beautiful sound in the world.

There was so much in this world that Ike feared and loved, but her, knowing her, saving her, loving her, hearing her laugh, that made everything worth enduring. Now and forever, he decided.