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There is a version of reality where you don't die in the Round Room, Ghastly Bespoke; not until you've broken some bones.
You hear it before you feel the air move or see the glint of metal - which surprises you. Maybe Ravel is anxious to get this over with. Maybe Ravel remembers how much of a threat you can be if made aware. Either way, his sleeve rustles as he reaches into his coat for the weapon, and you turn around and catch his hand as the knife comes forward for your back. It's an instinctive reflex, your body having already adjusted to subconsciously defending itself, but it still takes half a second for your mind to catch up. When it does, the hand you have gripping Ravel's wrist jerks away as if scolded, the motion so violent that Ravel's hand jerks too, his fingers loosening around the dagger and the weapon bouncing along the floor before sliding to a rest underneath the table at which Madame Mist sits.
She makes no move to interfere, nor does the Terror or the Scourge, but her bodyguards each take two steps forward. Ravel immediately moves between you and the Children of the Spider, one hand raised to subdue Portia and Syc.
"No." Ravel says, and his voice carries a different dimension to your ears now, as if someone has shunted the words across the room to you. "I do this alone."
You stare at him, not really able to will yourself into doing anything else until something nudges you on the foot, and you look down. The urge to throw up is an instant gut to teeth sensation as Anton Shudder's face stares back at you, surrounded by a pool of blood. There isn’t anything else, really; just his head, the coarse hair matted by his own blood, a cleanly severed neck the only other extension. You turn and behind you the Cleavers stand statue still at their posts, scythes returned to their backs as if nothing has happened. As if there isn't blood spotting and staining their uniforms. As if one Cleaver isn't painted completely red from the struggle. As if Shudder's body isn't shredded in between them like a bloody salad, and you suddenly realize why Ravel's words sounded so foreign to you before. You didn't hear Shudder's screams as the scythes took him apart for the same reason.
You look back at Ravel, who now stands calmly in the centre of the room.
"It was you." You say around the sick feeling. "The Warlocks, the war; it was all you?"
Ravel smiles almost sadly as he puts his fists up, but it's a half hearted gesture.
"Come on then." He says.
"Why?" You say, and he moves and you move in response. You both begin to circle each other in the room, but slowly, Ravel puts his fists down. "Erskine Ravel has developed an inferiority complex, is that it? You think we're all better than the mortals?"
"You misunderstand." Ravel insists, but it's with an intensity that you've only seen engaged with an enemy. "They are below us. That is why we must protect them, Ghastly. You understand that, don't you?"
"No, in fact. I don't understand. I thought that was what we were doing already, but you seem to have a different idea. Please explain to me, Grand Mage Ravel. Why would you kill all of those people, kill the Warlocks and Anton, only to achieve something we've been doing this whole time? The only thing posing a threat to mortals right now is you, do you realize that? Because you sent the Warlocks after Department X."
"A necessary move -"
"In what? What excuse could you possibly come up with?"
"In the revolution, Ghastly, simply disguised as a war."
"This isn't a revolution, Erskine, this is a war, whether you like it or not." You say, and the rage inside you is waking up now, having been left dormant for a very long time, because no cause was ever good enough for it to surface.
"I'm sorry, my friend, but I know how futile my arguments will be to you. I have no other choice; you simply won't listen to reason." Erskine says, and the anger bursts from you in the split second it takes Ravel to raise his hand.
You beat him to it, and the wall of air throws Ravel from his feet. But he recovers surprisingly easily and closes the distance between you two with three quick strides. As his fist pulls back you smile on the inside; this is what you were made for, this is what your mother left you, this you can win.
But everything you do is sluggish, as if the betrayal has physically shocked you to the point of incapacitation. You manage to block the first two jabs Ravel sends, and as he feigns a third you grab his fist and you twist, and his arm straightens with a subtle crack. Ravel grunts and head butts you, and for a second black and white spots replace everything in sight. A knee to the gut and a well aimed kick to the leg gets you to the floor within the next second, but you roll out from his attempted pin and kick out. He curves away from it too slow and your foot lands, catching his shoulder instead of his head. He goes sprawling, sliding away from you, and you get back on your feet. He launches himself at you using the air, and you meet him with your elbow. Your limbs are slowly waking up with each hit you land, and no longer delayed with shock, your movements are now responding in time with each of your brain's decisions. Ravel staggers, blood flowing from his nose and down his lip.
But you don't let off - you hit him again, and again, and with each blow your mind rattles off the name of an innocent who died because of Ravel. You continue hitting him in your blind rage until you hear bones crunch and break, and you don't know whose it is but you keep going. You keep going until your hands are red like the Cleavers, and Syc and Portia hiss. You're so blinded by this red hot anger pumping through you, in fact, that you mistaken Ravel's stance as he leans against the table Madame Mist sits motionless at and goes to put a hand on his knee, as if to catch his breath. You still go in, for the kill this time.
The blade slices hot quick into your chest, well aimed to bypass ribs, and the pain blossoms like an explosion. You stagger back, and pull the knife - which Ravel must have collected from under the table using the air - from your flesh, but it drags like barbed wire instead of the smooth shard that entered, and your too-hot blood chases it out, staining the fabric of your shirt. Damn, you liked this shirt.
You curse and slam the knife handle into Ravel's face.
When you finally collapse, three more stabs later, you're drowning in your own blood, because Ravel has slashed into your throat and the wound is deep enough that it opens both ways. Ravel gets to his knees and gets his legs out under you, so you're half leaning against him, your blood mixing with his own on his clothes.
"I'm sorry my friend, I'm sorry. I wish there was another way." Ravel says, and when you look up it looks like there are tears in his eyes. But it's an odd angle and straining like this only pours the blood in quicker, so you look back down again, except this gives you a view of Shudder, which makes you feel like you're drowning in betrayal instead, so you shut your eyes. It's the signal your body has been waiting for, because once you close them they don't open again.
Your last thought is that Ravel will never get the blood out of those clothes.
In this version, when what's left of the Dead Men watch this on the computer in the small abandoned school, it's Skulduggery who walks away first. He gets up and walks away from the computer the moment you see the dagger in Ravel's hand and fling it skidding across the room, and the detective stands facing a whiteboard, away from the monitor. Vex swears as you dodge a particularly nasty left hook and when you finally collapse, Rue gets up too, but keeps watching, as if all he wants is distance between himself and the recording of the irreversible deeds of Erskine Ravel.
Even Sanguine is at a loss for words, having witnessed you in combat properly for the first time in his life. It was no wonder he would always end up with his face in the dirt whenever he tried to attack you. It doesn't change anything, though; Sanguine still wishes he was the one who put the knife in your neck.
When O'Callahan pauses the video and turns around he realizes that he can see Skulduggery's reflection clearly in the whiteboard, and even though the detective doesn't have any actual eyes, O'Callahan can guess what he was looking at.
In this version of reality, you don't die in the Round Room, Ghastly Bespoke, because in the last moments of your life you become a Dead Man again.