Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Kravitz takes all seven of the bounties, because a group appearing all at once like that always means they’re a package deal. Find one and you find them all. It is admittedly odd, though, that all of them are charged with defying death despite only two being reported as liches. Not to mention that there’s unusually little information on them in general-- not uncommon in and of itself, but for seven people appearing together to not even have a name or face between them? That’s weird.

But Kravitz isn’t about to go questioning the Raven Queen’s sources (or lack) of information. He has a job, and he enjoys what he does, including the challenges that come with it. This won’t be any different than a normal hunt-- he just has a few extra troublemakers to deal with.

With so little information, there’s not much he can do but keep his senses peeled for liches as he attends other bounties. Trying to track them down directly would be ludicrous-- what, is he going to pick through every inch of the earth for hiding necromancers? They’re probably hiding in living bodies, too. Those are the hardest to find by lich-sensing alone, with their ghostly power masked by all that flesh and bone.

About two years pass with no new information. Towards the end of it, there’s a ping on the radar-- a coworker tells Kravitz one of the liches he’s tracking has died near Wave Echo Cave. But as soon as it appears, it’s gone again. There’s no time to figure out the actual direction it came from.

Kravitz spends the next weeks combing the area near the cave and finding nothing. But just as he’s getting frustrated, he feels the appearance of another lich-- and speak of the devil, it’s got the soul signature of the other bounty he’s taken. This one doesn’t disappear, so of course he rushes right towards the source.

He finds himself travelling towards the city of Cimbar, or what’s left of it. The entire area was decimated by the Pheonix Fire Gauntlet years ago, as one of its last victims. Nobody’s sure what hid the Grand Relics well enough to end the war overnight, but it sure took a load off the death-processing departments.

He goes at a reasonable speed, not wanting to portal in and spook the lich into moving. Not being detected as a reaper would be ideal. After a few days of travel, Kravitz stares out at the expanse of black glass. It’s a perfect circle, terrible in its beauty. He wonders how such a purely destructive weapon could have such a consistent effect. It was the only Relic known for its impossibility to interrupt or change once initiated.

Then he sees it, shimmering with the heat waves that come up from the glass: a bright red figure. As he walks closer, he sees that it’s a floating robe, clearly the lich he’s looking for. Whatever the guy’s reasons are for becoming undead, the choice of wardrobe was unusual. Not only is it a bright color, but it’s short. Kravitz is used to liches with long, draping garments that drag along (or phase through) the ground as they float. This one appears to be fitted to an accurate human size, like the guy was just wearing normal goddamn robes on the day he decided to throw his life away.

The lich spins around, snapping him out of his train of thought. He steps back instinctively, but it doesn’t advance. It just says, in a gruff but very plain voice, “Ah, oh, man. Hey, are you-- are you lost? Or-- or maybe looking for something? Because, look, trust me, everything here’s glass. Unless, uh, you’re here for the glass? I mean, it’s cool if that’s your deal, but--”

“It’s not,” Kravitz cuts in. No point being tricky about it. This lich might be notorious for evading capture, but now he’s right in front of an agent of the Raven Queen. There’s nothing he can do to escape, no teleportation that can’t be tracked at this close a range. “I’m here for you.”

There is a moment of silence while the lich considers this, skeletal face unreadable. Kravitz tenses, but the emotion-driven monstrosity keeps his oddly even temperament. Finally, he says with genuine concern, “Are you sure you have, uh… the right person?”

“Absolutely.” This is where Kravitz would like to say the bounty’s name to sound ominous, but there is no name on file, so he goes right to the charges. “You’ve been charged with avoiding death via necrotic means, creation and takeover of living bodies beyond permissible minion necromancy, and no less than twenty-six deaths that were not followed by a trip to the Astral Plane.”

The lich brings a hand to his m… teeth. “Twenty-six? Oh, wow, how do you know about-- are you undead too? I only ask ‘cause most living people can’t even, uh, can’t think about that. Which, you know what, that sounds ominous, sorry.”

Kravitz is at a loss for words, mostly because the lich hasn’t given him a single sensible thing to respond to. He’s about ready to call off this conversation, because it feels like a ruse to slow him down more than anything, when the lich speaks up again.

“How about-- why don’t we start over? I’m, I’m Barry Bluejeans, and I’m trying to-- I’m helping my friends and preventing the- the- the end of the world.”

Blue-jeans? Is that supposed to be a joke? Well, who cares. The guy might as well have one last moment of fun. “I am Kravitz, a reaper under the Raven Queen’s order, and it is my job to prevent you from destroying the world with your delusions.” He summons his scythe and takes on his own skeletal form to underscore his words.

“Shit, really? Shit.” Aha. There’s the normal reaction. “This world has-- there’s death police here? That’s-- that’s gonna be inconvenient.” Okay, less normal.

The lich-- Barry, if that goof is to be believed-- starts crackling with red lightning. The two of them stand there for a moment, clothes billowing in what is not natural wind, but the force of the energy coming off both of them.

“God, I hate-- I’m really not a fan of- of messin’ with people just doing their jobs,” Barry says, seeming less concerned for his own well-being than he should be. He’s floating backwards as Kravitz approaches with his scythe. One swing will tear his soul away and end this instantly.

If Kravitz was less focused in this moment, he might actually notice that the heat rising from the glass is sharpening, that the air is thickening, that the lightning arcing from the lich is nothing but a flashy distraction. He is focused, though, so he misses all this, and he goes in for the swing.

His own movement rubs against the air like he’s trying to oppose a river’s current. Or, perhaps more aptly, like he’s scraping a match hard across wood. It comes in contact with the edge of Barry’s robe, and instead of yanking the soul out, it opens a flaming rift on the incorporeal cloth. Barry backs away, but the line of flame stays fixed in space. Kravitz stares for just a little longer than he should, and this is a mistake.

The thing about Kravitz being on fire is that it shouldn’t hurt like this. His nerves don’t get affected this heavily by anything based in the material plane, as a precaution against this very sort of situation. But this isn’t quite like a fireball being thrown in his face, or a flame wall coming at him. The fire in front of him stays in place, actually. But he can’t tear his eyes away from it, and now there is a terrible heat overtaking all of his senses and filling every function of his brain with nothing but panic and flame. And it hurts, but he can’t look away, and it’s burning, it’s awful, even his clothes are lava against his skin--

The flames in front of him vanish, and everything feels cold for a moment before it’s back to normal. Barry Bluejeans is gone, he realizes, leaving no signs of his presence behind. But god damn it, Kravitz will track him down again, and he’ll be prepared next time.

Chapter Text

Kravitz throws his scythe on the ground, and it evaporates in a very unsatisfying manner because it doesn’t exist when he’s not holding it. How dare that lich-- sorry, “Barry” “Bluejeans”-- set KRAVITZ, the Raven Queen’s best reaper, on fire? If his sentence in the Eternal Stockade wasn’t already set for a mortally inconceivable period of time, Kravitz might actually propose it be lengthened for resisting arrest.

He writes the stupid, obviously-fabricated name into the “nickname” portion of the bounty sheet for the lich. If nothing else, he has a tiny bit more information, some miniscule notion of progress. Not that this is going to be a gradual progression. He’s taking down that lich the next time they meet.

For someone who claimed to not know the “death police” existed, Barry sure does a good job of avoiding them. If he has any specific home base, he moves around enough that there’s no way to pinpoint it. He’s hard enough to pinpoint, himself-- anytime his energy gets picked up, he’s already gone.

It takes several more weeks of watching and waiting and predicting where the red lich will appear, mixed with a fair amount of luck, but Kravitz finally gets ahold of a location Barry’s still hanging around at. It’s a large, dusty library in a tiny, abandoned town-- probably had more books than people, even in its heyday.

Kravitz creeps around the corners of shelves in perfect silence, only to find the lich entirely off-guard, reading a book. He’s using two Mage Hands to do it, and at least those are blue. But the moment he has that thought, both of them fade to an inky black. The lich raises his head, surprised, and quickly finds Kravitz.

“Oh, uh,” he doesn’t seem particularly concerned, “Hi again, Kraaaaavitz, right?”

Kravitz starts walking forward, drawing his scythe as he goes. “I’m honored you bothered to remember my name when you won’t even give me yours.”

The lich puts a bookmark in the book. Then he uses one of his real hands-- the skeletal ones-- to unzip a line in the dimensional fabric, something not far from a function of Kravitz's scythe. Then he drops the book through the hole and waves it closed. As Kravitz carefully eyes his hand movements for elemental gestures (like the one for that god-forsaken fire), Barry says, “I’m, wait, sorry? I thought I did, uh, give that to you. It’s, I’m Barry Bluejeans, that’s my real name. I’m- I’m not fantasy Rumplestiltskin over here.”

With that, the gap between them is closed, and Kravitz takes a definitive swing. His scythe actually covers a wider area than its visual representation shows, and it can pull a targeted soul from any direction within its radius. So of course it comes as a surprise when Barry actually moves in the opposite direction, and in fact opts to roll backwards and phase through a bookshelf.

“Okay, uh, sorry again. I have, uh, a couple questions about the-- about your allegations, that you mentioned last time-- when we met?” His voice, low and gruff and making no effort to be spooky, doesn’t come from any one cluster of books. It’s being projected in such a way that it’s coming from all directions. Clever. “Because I think, actually, you might be wrong about, pretty much all of it.”

“You’re a lich,” Kravitz says. “You- you’re literally, I can feel it with my goddamn magic reaper senses, a defiance of the balance between life and death.”

“That’s harsh, but sure, okay. Can you say-- can you walk me through the, uh, the charges from before, though?” He pauses for a moment, but Kravitz can still feel his energy hanging like static in the air. He can almost see the red of the electricity. “I can, uh, I’ll come out of the walls, afterwards, if you want? So you can take a, another swing, at me.”

Kravitz narrows his eyes, but he perfectly recites, “Self-applied undeath, creation or takeover of living bodies beyond permissible minion-related necromancy, and twenty-six deaths that were not followed by a trip to the Astral Plane.”

The energy in the air dances lightly across the books on the shelves. Kravitz tenses, because it’s similar to the patterns when liches start breaking down, but… nothing happens. Finally, Barry says, “So, yeah, okay, gonna start with the second thing. What’s-- what do you mean by, uh, creation of bodies? I haven’t- I definitely never possessed anyone.”

“You should know,” Kravitz says. “The only way to have a death count higher than one is to return to a new living body. And the only way to do that is to possess one or grow one.”

“It’s not, but uh, thanks for the tip that you’ve got-- that there’s a really just, absolutely disgusting way of coming back to life. I’ll be sure to, I’ll, uh, look into it.” The magic crackles again, making the shelves creak this time. Kravitz waits. “And, okay, the other two things. What’s your jurisdiction?”

“I… everywhere?”

“Can you just-- can you humor me for a minute here, and uh, tell me what’s the jurisdiction for enforcing those laws, in very-- in formal terms?”

Kravitz thinks for a moment. “The Material, Ethereal, and Astral Planes.”

“Just in this planar system?”

“Yes?” Kravitz’s voice is a little off pitch, caught completely off-guard by the question. “Yes. The only planar system, Mr. Bluejeans.”

“Oh,” say the walls. The energy in the room gets a little sharper, pricking at Kravitz’s skin. He holds up his weapon, ready for Barry’s complete nonsense to dissolve into the insanity liches are known for. The magic still doesn’t feel angry, exactly, but it doesn’t need to be-- just tense. Ready to crack like an eggshell around its wielder.

But it doesn’t. The power touching Kravitz pulls back into the walls, and he feels an odd lightheadedness, as if he’s been upside-down this entire time and only just now has started standing upright. The voice sounds again, now from a specific direction: right in front of him. “I said I’d stand here for a-- for at least a second, and you did answer all my dumb, uh, my dumb shit questions, so--”

Kravitz doesn’t need any more invitation than that. He swings his scythe, hard. The red robe before him dissolves. There’s no soul because of course there isn’t.

“--too slow,” the projection says, and Kravitz can swear he sees it wink an eye socket as it vanishes. And then, before he can focus on finding the lich’s actual location, a book falls on his head. Several more are already on the floor around him, having fallen from the highest shelf on the rapidly descending bookshelf.

Mere moments later, Kravitz finds himself questioning his decision to take this job from underneath a sizeable pile of books and a massive bookshelf resting atop it.

Barry Bluejeans is gone.

Again.

Chapter Text

It takes longer than Kravitz will ever admit to free himself from that pile of books. To be fair, he managed to not damage any of them, even though that would have made the whole process easier. Those books were valuable!

He wishes he’d caught the title of the book the lich was holding before it was dropped into a pocket dimension. Then again, it was probably just an old science fiction novel, because that’s where the lich seems to think he lives.

Barry Bluejeans gets unusually elusive after their last encounter. Each place he’s detected, Kravitz follows behind. Asking bystanders yields nothing. More than once, his forehead catches the top of a misaligned portal. More than a few times, Kravitz gets a hell of a headache.

Months later, he’s pacing back and forth in his office (a place seldom used when it isn’t necessary- Kravitz likes to be out and about), recounting every location he’s tracked the lich to. The world map on the wall used to be plain and formal, but now it’s covered in pen and pins, and sometimes it makes sense when he looks at it. Now is not one of those times. Why is that line squiggly? What were blue pins for, again? Why didn’t he make a map ke--

He’s pecked on the head, hard, by a raven that’s been trying to get his attention by flapping around the room for the last minute. It gives him an annoyed caw as he takes the note from its leg, and then it flies back out the door. Kravitz waves apologetically, not awake enough to use words. (He doesn’t strictly need sleep, but four straight months of stressing himself out might’ve been helped by a nap or two.)

He unrolls the paper.

Reaper Kravitz,

You are to report to the Raven Queen. Effective upon receipt.

The last sentence is written in ink so dark that the paper around it seems to glow, burning into his eyes, harsh but not quite painful. By the time he’s blinked the residual light away, the room is different. It’s very dim, lit only just enough for him to make out shapes in the room- and he needs less light than most.

“Kravitz,” says the Raven Queen, and she isn’t quite a figure, but rather a dark corner of the room. Without the corner, that is. Her eyes are not visible, but the feeling of being watched is more tangible here than ever.

“My Queen,” Kravitz says, bowing. His own movement almost gives him vertigo.

“You are in pursuit. Of the most valuable bounties. That I have,” she says, her voice like the quiet between sounds. He straightens up instantly. “I need you. On your best. To find them.”

“Of course! I apologize, I’ll get my act together--”

Her presence is suddenly greater, not cold but overwhelming, and he has already silenced himself before she speaks. “You cannot dedicate yourself to this work. Without a self to dedicate.” He stares and waits for the words to connect. “Starting now. You are on vacation. For twenty-four hours.”

“I… I can do better, if I…” he tries.

“This is not. A punishment.” He feels like he’s being pulled down to lie with the shadows, and it’s hard to tell if that’s her power or simply relief. “Everyone. Takes. Breaks.”

Kravitz nods. She doesn’t have a face, or at least not a visible one, but her voice now carries a smile. “Have a good day, Kravitz.”

So Kravitz finds himself in a quiet little town that he's only been to once before, and only for about ten minutes. It was on a wild goose chase after a skeleton who’d recently been yanked from the Astral Plane and was more distressed than defiant.

Thankfully, he'd been a shadowy skeleton himself at the time, so nobody would recognize him as the man who flew through the town yelling at a terrified person to just “CALM DOWN, YOU'RE NOT IN TROUBLE, BUT STOP”

It's a beautiful town, now that he's able to take a longer look. Gardens meld right onto the fronts of buildings with creeping vines and branches. People acknowledge him with friendly waves. He walks for about an hour before he reaches the edge of it, and… doesn't stop.

He keeps going, briskly (his mind may tire, but his legs do not), seeing plenty of travelers: he passes a nervous group of young men who are probably preparing for their first robbery, he follows a traders’ caravan for an hour before it stops off at another town, and at a crossroads he sees a bright-eyed man with a chair strapped to his back.

Finally, as the sun descends towards evening, Kravitz stops at the next town and ducks into a tavern. The building is low and long, with a wide window facing west, towards the sunset. He takes a seat at the bar and orders a drink he's never heard the name of before.

The tavern isn't quite crowded, but there's enough rumble of conversation that Kravitz doesn't notice the footsteps approaching him until a voice follows them.

“Hey, um, sorry, I'm-- I've got amnesia-- I mean, I think I…” a short man stutters. He's wearing a backpack and terribly scratched-up glasses. And it seems he's favoring the wall over eye contact, so it takes Kravitz a moment to be sure the man is really addressing him. “Bad, uh, bad introduction. I'm S… Sildar. And I just, I think you look familiar, but I'm not sure, and… and I can leave you alone, definitely, if that's-- if you don't…”

“You look familiar too,” Kravitz says, not realizing it until the words come out of his mouth. It's not his face that Kravitz remembers, but the fidgeting of his fingers, the tripping over words. But where is it that he’s seen that before?

“Oh! Oh, good.” Sildar’s face relaxes into a smile. “Um. Do you-- I don’t suppose you happen to-- do you remember where we met?”

“Afraid not,” Kravitz says. It feels like it’s on the tip of his tongue, though...

Sildar sighs. “Eh, that’s okay.” Part of Kravitz wants to leave at this point, but the rest of him feels like there’s something he wants to ask of this stranger, but is forgetting the question. Sildar takes a bite of his sandwich.

“I didn’t see egg salad on the menu,” Kravitz says.

“That’s-- that’s because--” Sildar lowers his voice to a whisper and glances sideways towards the nearest waiter. “It isn’t.” Kravitz waits, but he doesn’t say anything else on the matter.

They both look towards the setting sun for a minute. It’s almost touching the horizon, splaying warm hues across the sky. “It’s not as bright as-- as it used to be, huh?”

“What?” Kravitz turns to see Sildar looking wide-eyed straight at the sun like some kind of idiot. “The sunset?”

“Yeah. Uh, the sun. Isn’t it kind of-- doesn’t it make you feel l-lonely?”

“...Not really.”

“Oh.”

Kravitz looks over to see Sildar putting his mug on the table. “H-hey, uh, good chat. Really sorry again to-- to bother you, I mean, you must be-- you’re probably tired.” He’s still wearing his backpack. Did he never actually sit down next to Kravitz? “I should-- I need to leave, before-- I think that waiter, he, he caught on to me. I haven’t gotten a refill in, in, in five hours. Anyway, uh, bye.”

And before Kravitz can figure out what his question might have been, Sildar is gone.

And the sunset is beautiful.

Chapter Text

Kravitz starts taking other bounties to keep himself busy until Barry reappears, and thank goodness he does, because it's almost two months before there's any sign of him. The reaper is slicing through the soul of a less skilled evildoer when he feels it: a pulse of energy. It almost startles him out of porting the current bounty into the Astral Plane, but he manages.

To be perfectly clear, it isn't just some notification ping from the Queen or a coworker telling him they've felt something-- the power is physically close enough that it hits him personally.

There's another pulse. This solidifies his conviction: it's Barry Bluejeans’ soul emitting this. And liches only send out energy this far, unhidden, for one reason: he's having a breakdown.

Normally Kravitz hates dealing with liches in the middle of emotional explosions. They're stronger and more erratic. But in this case, it might actually improve his chances. After all, Barry Bluejeans is usually so witty; being out of his mind will reduce his control over what he does.

Without any further thought, Kravitz flies straight towards the source of the energy pulses. Detecting the power of a lich isn't quite like hearing, but if it was, he'd be getting a headache from the sheer volume by the time he reaches the center.

The central point of the energy pulses is a dense magical storm, which is overtaking thirty feet of a steep cliffside. The whole thing is a projection of a lich’s soul and magic, but he can’t exactly reap an entire crackling red tempest. He needs to get to the middle of the entire thing, where Barry Bluejeans is undoubtedly barely holding himself together. Even if this storm is a little bigger than usual, he’s a professional who’s done this before, and he knows exactly what to expect.

He takes a deep breath and steps into the storm.

He didn’t expect this.

Actually: he didn’t expect anything. He isn’t anything. No, wait; he has feet, and they are taking him forwards, and he has a heart fluttering with feelings, so he must be something. Mostly, though, he’s somewhere. And somewhere is an enormous concert hall, which is called Legato. Thousands are listening while she-- while she plays violin. And he’s supposed to be contributing, because it is a duet, because he is sitting at the piano now, but Kravitz wanted to be conductor.

He doesn’t have time to think about how the name “Kravitz” doesn’t fit in here before the scene changes.

He is on a boat in space, and space is dark and cold, but it isn’t as dark or as a cold as the fate that would await them if they stopped flying. He has felt it before: black teeth that crush universes. A hunger so insatiable that it swallows up the stars. He has felt death enough times to get tired of the idea of it. He's considering becoming undead-- no, wait, Kravitz would never--

He is being lifted off the ground in what is bragged to be the most authentic sort of bear hug, because this man was trained by one. The embrace lasts longer than most people would think reasonable, but everyone else is gone this year and they’ve been friends sixty years too long to worry about social conventions.

And then: He has been awake nearly two days now and he keeps messing up the same equation on a spell he is trying to invent. She pats him on the back and takes his hand and leads him to bed. He isn’t afraid of letting go, this time, because she’ll still be there in the morning. Even if they all live for an eternity, he will never be alone.

Finally: He’s begging to be killed just so he can remember how alone he’s about to be. The flames kill him before the impact can. And he knows what death feels like, and this-- this isn’t it. Death doesn’t feel this way to Kravitz, because he doesn’t really die the way mortals (even undead ones) do.

Yes. Kravitz. Bounty hunter, agent of the Raven Queen. None of these memories are his. None of them even make sense. He’s Kravitz. He’s Kravitz, and he’s here to reap the soul of the lich Barry Bluejeans.

His surroundings twist as he clings to his thoughts. He looks down at a bell that he just-- no, that Barry had just made. It speaks-- no, everything speaks. Even Kravitz’s mouth opens and contributes his voice to the chorus: “Oh- oh, shit. D- Dav- Krav? Kravitz?” Everything starts falling apart around him. “I- I’m so sorry, I didn’t-- did you just walk into--?”

The voice stops possessing his vocal cords as his physical body becomes tangible again. Every part of it hurts like hell. He must’ve been thrown around like a ragdoll in the storm while his brain was overwhelmed with that… illusion.

Barry the lich, who currently has his phalanges gloved with Mage Hands, is propping him against the cliff face. “I don’t-- I dunno why you did that,” he’s saying, “but, uh, thanks. That was-- I died a couple minutes ago, see-- that could’ve been real bad. ‘Cause I’m-- I had a ton of thoughts all at once that I can only think when I’m, uh, dead. And you kinda brought me back, there.”

“Mr. Bluejeans,” Kravitz whispers, without enough energy to sound angry. “You… You… You.”

“Me” Barry agrees. “Um-- this is awkward, but I’m-- I actually have a doctorate, so…” he taps his fingers together. “Just-- you know what, just call me Barry, please.”

Kravitz just stares at him, trying to will up the strength to even lift his arm, summon his scythe. It’s not going to happen, though. Of course it isn’t.

“Okay. Well, I’m gonna-- I’m leaving now. Have a good-- I mean, uh, I hope your day… improves. Sorry.” And with that, he pats Kravitz on the arm, and he’s gone once again.

This is actually not the worst part of Kravitz’s day. He’ll get over this, because he’s a grown adult who can deal with failures.

The worst part of is day is this: When Kravitz is finally able to move again, he stands up and surveys the scene. The landscape is charred, and chunks of cliff face have been ripped out. Among the wreckage, he spots a single corpse. It has to be Barry’s body, he realizes as he makes his way over to it.

He sees the face.

Oh.

Chapter Text

It isn’t hard to track Barry down again, what with all the magic sparking off him after that emotional storm. It only takes a few days to pinpoint a solid location that he’s sticking around at, so he must be having trouble with the concealing spells that usually keep him off the radar. The place he’s at now, for some reason, is under the ocean.

Frankly, it’s a relief to find him so easily this time. Kravitz might be put in a good mood by the luck if he wasn’t still feeling insulted about the stunt Barry pulled in the bar, just walking right the hell up to him, eating an egg salad sandwich. But at least Kravitz is feeling optimistic about this one. The lich is likely still emotionally tired, which will make his magic weaker- not that Kravitz will make the mistake of letting his guard down.

Kravitz will, however, give Barry a show. It’s the least he can do after all he’s been put through.

He sheds his physical form at the shore, skin and then bones dissipating to leave him as a ball of light. It’s not that he can’t breathe underwater, but this form allows a lot more stealth. He floats out over the water and lets a wave overtake him, and lets himself become it.

Being water is tricky, but it’s invisible in the ocean, and his form is endlessly malleable. It’s also constantly trying to fall apart if he isn’t careful to hold himself together. He knows people who can let the water flow through them and traverse it as only energy, but he doesn’t have that sort of skill, so he hangs on to what he’s got.

He finds Barry hunched over the ocean floor, tracing a line in the sand with a phalange. He stops as Kravitz gets close, but he doesn’t do anything else in time. Kravitz fills himself with energy and flies right through Barry’s chest.

The lich doubles over in some magical approximation of coughing. “OW- shit--”

Kravitz spins and does it again, slamming through his back this time. Barry shrieks, the sound distorted through magic but sharpened underwater. This time, before Kravitz can turn again, he’s caught with an electric pulse Barry shoots after him. It surges through his entire being and hurts like hell. He’s not going to get away with a third hit, so it’s time for plan B.

Kravitz sinks to the ocean floor and lets himself seep outwards, latching onto rocks scattered across the sand. Then, with considerable effort, he pulls them together into a makeshift body. Barry floats back warily from the rising rocks, twitching and emitting sparks of energy as he tries to expel the foreign magic Kravitz hurled through him.

Barry starts making stuttery sounds, and Kravitz waits a few moments for them to become words before he realizes they are words- just not in Common. He steps back, cautious of falling victim to a chanted spell, and trying to figure out exactly what it is. Barry puts his hands up in response but keeps speaking, stuttering even more now. It’s Primordial, Kravitz realizes. He doesn’t know the language, but he can understand a few words- Barry enunciates carefully and slowly, despite tripping over some parts.

Within longer phrases he doesn’t know, Kravitz picks out: “earth and- no, water and earth,” (that’s right, elements have a formal order when listed in Primordial); “sorry;” some verb form of a word like “magic,” and what might be Barry’s own name, awkwardly pronounced with Primordial phonetics.

Barry stops talking and just stands there a moment. Kravitz realizes that the last part had an inquisitive intonation, but he has no idea what the question was. He could just attack now, but he’s curious about what’s happening here. What’s Barry doing in the ocean, and why the hell does a (former) human know Primordial, of all languages?

He disguises his voice, mixing words with the sound of scraping rocks and flowing water: “Common is fine.”

Barry perks up instantly. “Oh. Ohhh, yeah, okay, gotcha. No problem, sorry if I-- sorry to assume, uh, the language. Are you-- were you conjured up, maybe? By someone who- who speaks Common?”

Kravitz… nods. Sure, that works. It’s partially true, too. Not that he actually needs any amount of honesty here.

“Huh,” Barry says, then tenses up in an anxious way. “Uh. Are you here to- to guard the, uh, the ley line? Also, did you shoot me? Because-- look, no hard feelings if that’s-- I mean, I know it’s your job, probably, but-- I promise you, I’m not- nothing I’m doing is gonna hurt it.”

“Yes,” Kravitz decides. If he pretends he’s a guardian construct rather than a reaper, Barry might see him as an annoyance rather than a threat. Then he might let useful information slip. “Prove it.”

Barry thinks for a moment. “How about, uh, info for info? You tell me how- how you shot me with all-- with that volume of magic, and- and- and I’ll tell you how-- what I’m doing.”

“Alright,” Kravitz says. It’s really cocky, he thinks, to try bargaining with information he would owe a guard anyway, but fine. He can fulfill his own half after Barry’s locked up. “Go ahead.”

Barry sinks back down to what he was doing on the ground, now with intermittent glances up at the stone construct. “Yeah, uh, okay. So I’m sure you can tell, but I’m, I’m a lich. Which is-- I’m made of energy. And, uh, not being constantly volatile is- it’s, uh, it’s because I have strong emotional connections. Um, positive ones. To people that I am trying v-very hard to find.”

“Get to the point,” Kravitz says. He knows Barry’s biding time, but whatever he does will be fit to escape a construct and not a reaper, so it shouldn’t be too much of a problem if he slips away for a moment.

“Yeah, uh, yeah,” Barry’s voice cracks. Then he puts one hand all the way into the ground. “This part’s gonna be tricky to explain to, uh, to you. No offense.”

“You think,” Kravitz says, “That because I’m- I’m a construct, I won’t understand?”

“Understand? No, look,” Barry says, now up to his elbow in sand, “You- you came down here and shot me with the- with your essence, or whatever the hell, and- and- and you don’t think, you didn’t think I’d notice that it was the same guy who- who walked right into the storm I made, literally a few days ago, Kravitz?” He’s contorting oddly at this point, in all the wrong ways for normal water distortion. His head ripples sideways, threatening to twist backwards, while the hand that isn’t underground has begun what looks like an alphabet recital in Common sign language.

Kravitz is not dealing with another goddamn breakdown from Barry of all liches. He lunges forward immediately and is met with a translucent wall that rises up from the ground.

“No. Uh-uh,” Barry says, his non-submerged hand now standing still to keep the shield in place. “Don’t wanna rush this. Sor- sorry for that outburst, I’m- I’m still, uh--”

Kravitz punches one rocky arm into the barrier and makes a substantial crack. Barry flinches like it hurt. “H-hey, okay, just- just a--” Kravitz swings again, this time shattering it. “Fuck! Just- just a minute, okay--”

Kravitz conjures his scythe and steps forward, walking right out of the makeshift rock body with his own form. Barry almost entirely comes apart in panic, but he doesn’t move away, his arm seemingly stuck in the ground. He’s cornered, finally. “Too late,” Kravitz says, raising his weapon.

“Almost!” Barry says in a tone that’s concerningly triumphant, and then he disappears. Kravitz doesn’t have time to react before he’s struck in the back, hard. He spins around as he flies forward, only to see-- the construct? The construct that he is decidedly not possessing anymore??

“Barry,” he realizes with a hiss. The rocks respond with a strange series of sounds, which are more easily recognizable as Primordial (but less understandable) than Barry’s human-vocals butchering of the language. Is it Barry? Kravitz kicks off the ground, rushing back towards it with his scythe raised once more.

It’s not. It doesn’t even have a soul, as the scythe swing reveals by doing absolutely nothing to the construct. It was probably brought to life by a spark of ley energy as Barry did whatever the hell it was he came for. So where’s Barry?

Kravitz drops his physical form again and starts to sink into the ground, but he’s interrupted again. The construct kicks him. It kicks Kravitz’s glowing orb form, and it actually makes an impact, too. “Oh, screw off!” It makes those grumbling sounds again. The sand beneath Kravitz pulses with white light that radiates such an intensity that it nearly burns him through indirect contact with the water. And he shouldn’t be able to feel heat in this form, but he supposes Barry’s already established his ability to burn the unburnable.

“Fine! You want a fight, we’re going by my rules!” He shouts, and then he slams right into the construct. As expected, a battle of willpower is not something a soulless pseudo-consciousness can win; it has a mind full of stopping Kravitz, but that doesn’t work as well inside its own body. It manages to punch itself in the head before fizzling out entirely-- the energy was going to wear off soon anyway.

With that nuisance out of the way, Kravitz puts his arm on the ground where Barry was, using the rocks to attune to the ground’s magic. Just like Barry implied, it seems like a ley line is closer to the surface than usual in this place. If Barry used it to escape, maybe he can still be detected.

Kravitz extends his senses outwards along the line, and sure enough, there are traces of Barry’s soul signature all along it, going westwards. And as he follows those traces with his senses, he feels everything else: the hollow of underground caverns, the heat reaching up from just below and far above the vibrations of metal and stone embedded deep within solid soil.

And then, at the end of the trail, a clean cut that stops in just the way that ley lines don’t: black glass, smooth and cold. The destruction of a city broke a major connection point for this line.

And Barry must be somewhere beyond it. He could be anywhere.

Chapter Text

Barry J. Bluejeans wakes up in the slime pod.

He doesn’t know how the hell this happens, honestly: he isn’t a heavy drinker, and drinks don’t usually make you forget several entire months and get in a slime pod, and there aren’t even wine bottles anywhere here, and he hates this, he hates this. But it’s happened six times now, so this is just his life, he guesses.

He moves forwards, his eyes screwed shut and limbs stiff until he breaks the surface. The consolation prize for enduring this is that the slime favors itself over his skin, so he’s dry when he gets out. He doesn’t know how that works, but it works, so knock on wood and all that.

He coughs and rubs a familiar soreness out of his muscles. It’s the feeling of lich magic settling into a physical form having slept in a weird position (go figure). As he stretches and pulls on his signature item of clothing, the coin on the table speaks up with what he recorded an hour ago like it always does, starting with proof:

Hey, Barry, this is me-- uh, you. I think you’ve got this by now, but: you’re Barry Bluejeans, you don’t know your age and every guess feels wrong, you’re scared of the dark, and you love classical music. Your chest aches because you’re trying to find something you’re afraid you won’t even recognize when you see it. And you’ve got a terrible case of amnesia, which is why I’m recording this.

Yeah, no kidding. He doesn’t even remember where he put the paper he wrote that down on. Or writing it. Or reading it out loud. Or how the coin works, or…

I’m sure you remember, but you still can’t wear the robe. Not yet.

“I like the robe,” he says, voice faltering into the damp air. It’s sentimental really comfortable.

Barry paces around for ten more minutes listening to his own spiel. It would be shorter, but his past self had the consideration to pause for a minute every time he switched topics. (This, in turn, cost him an extra two minutes of waiting to make sure it really was over.)

--

The walk to the city takes two hours. As he goes, he thanks the gods for the luck that his priciest purchase this year was quality boots. He keeps fiddling with the coin, careful not to drop it in the grass. It’s like any gold coin, but the markings are from Hurar, the first world where he died different, and sort of faded. The light tricks his eyes whenever he tries to make out the design.

He’s been to Phandalin before, and the view is always better from the hill. He can see the train from here, being loaded with passengers and cargo. He hurries down towards it.

--

This is gonna sound kind of absurd, but you need to make a really, really long train trip. I left money for it in the second drawer. There’s an event you need to see up in…

“Glamour Springs?” The ticket seller raises an eyebrow. Barry smiles nervously. “Long trip, son.”

“So I’ve heard,” Barry nods. “This-- I’ve also heard this is a l-lovely train, though.”

“Eh, not the worst,” the man shrugs and slides the ticket across the table.

Sit near an emergency exit if you can. Shouldn’t need it, but always be ready to use it.”

The closest he can get is two seats ahead of a window exit, in a seat facing towards an elderly gnome couple.

“I- I’m sorry, madams, uh, is this seat taken? I’ve-- I’m a little worried about-- I like being near the emergency exits.”

“Oh, you’re fine, dear,” one of them says. “Besides, what with these windows being at a height for taller folk, we could use a good view.”

He laughs with them.

“Where are you headed?” asks the other woman.

“Oh, uh, I’m seeing family.” He’s not sure why he lies about it. At least it’s less embarrassing than crossing the country to catch an episode of a traveling venue because a coin told him to.

Gods, that’s really what he’s doing, huh?

--

His one-person sleeper car does not have windows that open. But it is at the end by the train car door, so it’s fine. Kravitz hasn’t found him in his living body since the first time.

Get rest, definitely, but sleep as lightly as you can.

There was halibut for dinner and Barry is passing right the hell out.

He dreams about a gorgeous sky full of stars, and there’s-- there’s her, right here, and the rest of them. Everyone. And they’re back from a trip-- a two month trip, where they found nothing, and came back-- they came back-- they finally--

Barry wakes up to a terrible loneliness the rumbling of the compartment door. He doesn’t remember the dream, but he’s still in its haze when he calls out, “Is that you?”

“Oh, yes, you got me,” says Kravitz’s voice the shadow across the room. The ice that forms in Barry’s blood snaps him to full lucidity.

Pay attention to people. Stay away from anyone who makes you worried, especially if you don’t know why.

He sees a glint of silver in the moonlight, and he lets out a strangled sound of panic. “U-uh, um, okay, hey, sir,” he whispers, hands shaking.

“Sure, we can be formal,” says the shadow, “██. Bluejeans.” What did he say? What was that??

I forgot to write-- to say, uh, that goes double-- triple-- it’s infinitely important if a guy’s after you who looks like, uh, a--

“Goth lawyer,” Barry breathes.

Don’t s-say that to his face, obviously.

“What?” The shadowy figure says.

“Uh-- shit, what’s that?” Barry shouts on impulse, pointing into the hall. The shadow turns-- good gods, he actually turns-- and Barry jumps out of the bed and shoves him to the side. Then he darts into the hall, to the door at the end of the car.

A guy like that-- he shouldn’t find you, but-- if you see him, you- you can’t let him kill you. It- it’s better, trust me ver-very literally here, it’s better to kill yourself than to l-let him kill you.”

Barry yanks open the emergency latch and steps into the freezing, open air between train cars. Then he yanks the door shut and feels a weight hit it from the other side moments later. He looks down at the tracks, and lord, he should’ve jumped before looking. The train is streaking across a bridge over a massive chasm. But he’s gonna die either way, right?

The fall into the canyon gives him plenty of time to contemplate the decision. He’s going to die. He could’ve gotten a security officer, or at least run into the next car, or even talked it out with the shadowy man. He must’ve had the wrong guy, right? Barry’s never done anything of note in his life, let alone--

The feeling of dying is almost familiar. It’s a second of weightlessness, followed by the sensation of occupying a space that’s already taken. It’s fortunate that his nerves aren’t working anymore, as the rough ground has broken both skin and bones.

The train keeps going endlessly above, and Kravitz is still up there-- Kravitz. That’s his name. And he wants to kill Barry because… because Barry’s a lich, oh, that’s right. He rises from his body laughing, and that’s when the full weight of a century collides with him.

The blackness between the stars is too vast; the train is too slow to escape it; the world is too slow to escape it; the ship is not here; the ship is-- no, they’re hiding. The stars are bright and they are not dead, just hiding. Lup is-- she’s-- she’s hiding, yes, she has to be.

Kravitz didn’t follow him down, Barry realizes. Did he think Barry was already out of reach the moment he died? Is he still on the train? He must be. He must be angry. If Barry’s learned anything about Kravitz over the past few years, it’s that he gets really damn frustrated, but he wouldn’t take it out on civilians.

...Would he? Has Barry ever actually escaped Kravitz in a crowded area? Shit.

It’s this line of thought that has Barry flying back up to the train and planting his feet on one of the last few cars (and almost falling over as the momentum grabs onto him). He casts a mutated version of Silence, making a soundproof blanket between the train’s inhabitants and its rooftop. Then, with anxiety quashing his hesitance, he casts Sending:

I-i-if you want a fight, Kravitz, I’m on the roof.

Chapter Text

Phandalin is one of Barry’s most frequented locations as a lich. So, Kravitz reasons, maybe that’s where he comes back to life. Admittedly, he’s never (knowingly) found Barry in living form, but it’s been a slow week for bounties. He’s got a minute to poke around for his most important target, especially with the possibility of finding him at his most vulnerable: alive.

“Poking around” actually ends up entailing slinking around the shadows for a good bit of the day. As fate would have it, there’s a large, cross-country train passing through the city. It’s too perfect of an escape for Barry to take, he’s sure, but Kravitz slips into the darkness beneath the train anyway. What other leads does he have, after all?

He nearly jumps up through the floor the second he feels it-- muffled by flesh, but unmistakably Barry’s soul-- but he has to control himself. Barry isn’t nearing the record for Kravitz’s longest hunt by being a fool, and Kravitz isn’t going to catch him by being one, either.

Nighttime would be best, he decides: fewer witnesses, sleeping target, and of course the advantage of darkness. And so it’s in the early hours after midnight that Kravitz phases up through the floor and creeps towards the door he can feel Barry sleeping behind.

In retrospect, confusing conversations always seem to be Kravitz’s downfall when dealing with Barry. But he always seems so genuine… And then Barry’s tricking him and shoving him and running out the car door.

Kravitz slams against the door with all his weight, but Barry holds steady on the other side. They’re just inches apart, and the energy is deafening-- until it isn’t, suddenly. He shoves the door again, and it swings open easily, letting him stumble into the cold air. He catches a glimpse of movement, below. The bastard jumped. Several seconds later, he sees a red shape rise from the body just as the train takes the chasm out of his view.

There’s no hope for it now, he thinks, shutting the door and slumping against it. Now that Barry’s dead, he’ll be gone in seconds. It would be impossible to catch him here, but at least he’s spooked Barry into dying again; he’s easier to find when the lich stench isn’t buried under blood and bone.

A distinct voice cuts through his thoughts, jolting him. His whole mind goes blank to accept a single sentence: I-i-if you want a fight, Kravitz, I’m on the roof.”

It’s a trap, of course. Barry’s trying to distract him and escape. But Kravitz has nothing better to go off right now, and anyhow, it’s not as if Barry has ever actually done long-term harm to him, even with a planned trap. And if it isn’t a trap, well, punching Barry Bluejeans in the face seems like a rewarding prospect.

He rises up between the train cars. There’s a moment when he can’t hear anything, and he almost stops there. But just above that, he can hear again, as if he’d just passed through the world’s thinnest Silence spell. The wind blows audibly here, but the train now glides soundlessly over the tracks.

He sees Barry, several cars closer to the back of the train, walking towards him. His bright red cloak billows in the wind like fire, no longer obscuring his skull or his jeans. The wind shouldn’t be affecting it, actually-- Barry must be putting effort into making it move. But the energy coming off of him feels too strong to be an illusion.

A terrible rasping voice slices through the wind. “K r a v i t z,” it whispers. It’s Barry, definitely. “Howww dare you interfere… with my plans,” he growls. Kravitz’s eyes widen, just a bit. If he has another emotional explosion right above the train…

“Barry, let’s calm down…” he glances down at the train. “Perhaps we should take this somewhere else?”

Barry follows the downward look. “You don’t--” his voice is back to normal. “Oh, uh, shoot. Um. You don’t think the Silence spell will-- um, do you think we need a shield, too? Over the train? O-or we can move, yeah--”

Kravitz squints at him. “You’re still stable.”

“Yeah.”

“And… you want to fight. Me.”

Barry nods. “Yeah, it- it’s a good way to, uh, get out anger? You seem… mad at me, a whole lot, and I can’t give you-- I mean, I’m not gonna turn myself in, but I c-can do this.”

“You’re legitimately just here for a fight,” Kravitz reiterates blankly, sending out his senses for any sort of trickery. This is Barry in his entirety, though. Just there. Perfection may be unattainable, but this night sure is getting close.

“Y-yeah, uh, I mean-- we don’t have to--”

“Challenge accepted,” Kravitz says, skin melting away as he takes his own skeletal form. Barry will never come near if he fights with his scythe right off the bat, but perhaps Kravitz can wear him down before delivering a final blow. He summons a sword for the moment: long and silver, with black feathers sprouting around a red gem in the hilt.

Barry, startled by the enthusiasm, just barely manages to jump back out of range as Kravitz swings. The sword misses, but the burning energy extending from it manages to clip his hood.

“Agh! O-okay!” Barry shouts as the cloth knits itself back together, still sparking with bits of magic. “Great!” The sparks hop down to coalesce in his skeletal hand, and he points. Kravitz tries to move, but Barry’s finger follows him, and the electric strike shoots through his chest. Ouch. At least he doesn’t have any heart to stop.

In the moment he stumbles back, the ground feels uneven beneath his feet. Then it shoves upwards as soon as he’s off balance, throwing him to the other end of the train car. Of course, when he sits up and looks at the ground, it’s perfectly flat. Barry stays where he is, skeletal face betraying nothing. Waiting for the reaper to make another move.

Kravitz obliges, furious now, hovering back to his feet. They meet eyes, socket to socket, void to void. The darkness between them thickens until Kravitz can shape it, wrapping it tight around Barry to choke out any light.

He extends his senses through the artificial blackness and finds the lich shaking. To Barry’s credit, he tries to get out of range by lifting his feet and letting the train take Kravitz away. Of course, this isn’t something Kravitz will allow. He takes hold of a thread of the darkness to yank Barry back towards the train. Barry resists far less than expected.

He crashes right into Kravitz, radiating a heat and blinding light that shines through cracks in the darkness. Kravitz stumbles backwards, off-balance and blinded, and Barry collapses at his feet. The dark aura surrounding him breaks apart and dissipates.

Kravitz’s scythe materializes, and he slams the blade down. Barry rolls out of the way, passing right through his shins. The heat Kravitz felt before burns his legs with tenfold the strength, and it boils up through him, accompanied by a horrible sensation of being ripped apart from the inside. It isn't in his soul like last time, though-- it feels far too material. It’s eating away at his physical form.

Kravitz feels something shove through his back and through where his heart should be. He looks down to see a skeletal fist coated in flame, sticking right out of his chest. It looks like a ghost passing through him, but it feels like lava in his chest.

Panicked now, Kravitz forces one hand just far enough into the ethereal plane to get a grip on Barry’s wrist, and then he pulls it forward. Barry tumbles right through him and hits the train roof-- caught not by the metal, but by the Silence barrier, being made of magic himself. He looks like a slumped pile of cloth on the ground now, starting to shake with a series of violent coughs.

Kravitz is overwhelmed by a sudden nausea. Barry passing through his core didn’t burn him like the last time, but a lich is still a lich, composed of everything Kravitz is sworn to stop. So instead of taking a swing at his weakened target, he starts coughing as well. Souls were never meant to pass so close together that way.

“Augh, damn,” Barry says between coughs. “Are y-you okay? I’m-- I didn’t mean to hurt-- to, uh, startle you that bad.”

“Oh, startle me?” Kravitz shouts. His movements are too stiff for the energy in his words. “You provoke a fight and suddenly you’re concerned for my emotional well-being?!”

“I- I- I started this be- because- because I was con-- because--”

“I don’t get it, Barry Bluejeans! I don’t understand!” He looms over the lich as he gets to his knees. “Why aren’t you ever angry? Upset?! You’re a lich, for crying out loud! I’m going to drag you to hell, Barry Bluejeans, and you’re concerned for me.”

Barry does spark and twitch through that spiel-- telltale signs of instability-- but it’s more likely just him expelling magic. He says weakly, “I’m-- y- you're the only person that’s-- that I've had a fully lucid con- conversation with in almost… no, over three years, now. Of course I'm-- of course I would--” he puts his hands on his face and looks skywards. “I mean, okay, you-- I assume you usually deal with liches who g-gave up life for power. S-so their whole temperament is kinda-- it's guided by that bond to- to, uh, ambition and destruction. But the problem with that is, um, mental energy fluctuates, so they get an emotional high and then--”

“And then they crash, and the lack of defined purpose makes them explode, yes, this is my job,” Kravitz says, exasperated. “And you're special? You've got some emotionally-immune anchor, Barry? You're composed of emotions by definition!”

“Y- yeah, uh, yes. I can't explain the circumstances, exactly,” Barry says, and Kravitz rolls his eyes, “but my anchors are to my family, to love, which d-doesn't fluctuate the same way. A-and, uh, for better or worse, I'm prone to caring… e-even about people that want to k-kill me, I guess.”

Kravitz snaps back to himself at the last sentence. Neither of them have coughed for at least a minute, now. They're just… sitting around and talking. “You’re something else, Barry.”

He summons his scythe, but Barry barely seems to notice, looking past him instead. “Duck,” says the lich urgently.

Kravitz lets out a second of a laugh. “Ha! Really, again? You think--”

“Duck!” Barry shouts, and this time it's a Command, rattling Kravitz’s brain and loosening his knees.

It’s too late-- something slams into his back before he can fall, and it keeps going, destroying his physical form and leaving his soul scrambling to keep hold of consciousness.

He can't see or hear like this, but he feels a calming force wash over him: an assurance that if he falls asleep now, he will still wake up. Then he is passing through a dimensional rift, and then he is on the ground.

The moment Kravitz is awake enough to do so, he conjures up a basic skeletal form and clambers to his feet. His surroundings are about as dark as the night was around the train, but indoors. He’s in his office, in fact. Barry isn’t here.

--

Barry casts Command moments too late, and he watches Kravitz get hit by the outer wall of a tunnel the train is passing through. His body dissipates, and a glowing orb is left in its place.

The orb is no longer tethered by the train’s movement, so Barry lets go of the train as well to keep from crashing into it. “Kravitz?” he whispers. It doesn’t respond, but it keeps flickering like-- like it’s running out of energy. Oh no.

On impulse, Barry pulls on some of Merle’s teachings, from a long time ago. A cantrip: Spare the Dying. It’s classified as necromancy, but it requires divine assistance. Barry doesn’t know if the Pan in this world will listen to him, let alone any other gods, but he invites anything to to give him the magic for this one spell.

As a necromancer, of course, Barry knows that opening yourself to any power is a dangerous thing, especially when there are gods at odds with you. But in this split section of a moment, he’s ignoring a century’s worth of learned caution.

Suddenly, he is exhaling a dark fog that carries all of his warmth, and the wind begins crystallizing into ice as it blows through him. The fog surrounds the glowing orb, and then they both disappear.

Barry is suddenly sure of two things as his incorporeal form goes back to not having the nerves to feel cold: firstly, Kravitz will be fine. Secondly, if there were not countless laws in place stopping gods from interfering more directly, Barry might have just made a terrible mistake. He feels very, very small when these thoughts are put into his head, but it is not a new feeling.

Barry sighs and watches the train disappear into the distance. It would be too predictable if he tried to get to his destination now, right after being caught on the way to it.

Well, there will always be another chance. He was getting a bad feeling about heading to Glamour Springs anyway.

Chapter Text

One distinct feature of the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet’s power is the precision of its flaming columns: A city-sized blast that can end any battle, always leaving a circle of black glass. The very edge of the explosion carves through buildings and trees alike, a flawless vertical slice through existence that looks like the work of gods themselves.

The western edge of Luskan--the third city destroyed--has a few such buildings. Half of a large warehouse stands among them, with a concrete floor that phases into black glass right where the walls turn to nothing. It also happens to smell of something undead--half-existent people are easiest to find in half-existent places.

“You’re a pain,” Kravitz says as he steps in front of the building’s open end. The sunrise behind him casts his shadow to the opposite wall.

Barry looks up from a crate he’s digging through, and a nearby Mage Hand that’s clutching a bag of mismatched screws flickers in surprise. “H-hi, Kravitz. Thanks, uh, I th-think? Why?”

“Always showing up when I’m busy,” Kravitz says, taking a swing that Barry sidesteps. The shadow darkens behind the lich, slowly concentrating magic. “I could be pursuing a far more… productive goal, stopping a dangerous target, but of course you pop up right at this moment.”

“I-I didn’t, um, uh,” Barry loses the sentence as he weaves magic into the words. “I mean, I always-always exist, I--um. Am I a-a priority?”

“Please.” Kravitz tries to move forward, but his feet refuse. The hex must be something short-term, though, to be this strong. Best to talk; keep him from fleeing. “You’re Barry Bluejeans, the longest-surviving lich, supposedly in cahoots with six! People! With a cumulative death count that’s off the damn charts, and I’m--” He stumbles forward suddenly, having thrown weight into the speech right when the spell wore off (or did Barry do that intentionally?) “--I’m trying to chase down some idiots with the most dangerous necrotic item in existence, but who gives a damn about all that when you’re here, Barry Bluejeans, my eternal technical priority?”

“Y-you seem to,” Barry says, pointing at him. Kravitz’s vision is suddenly a nauseating shade of upside-down. “Give a, a damn, I mean. Um. Whaddya mean, the most--the worst necrotic… thing? Is there a-a hierarchy of, um, of necro-- w-wait, shoot.” He’s opened up a rift below the Mage Hand, presumably to his little pocket dimension, but this line of thought distracts him.

Kravitz screws his eyes shut, trying to keep the spell at the end of his shadow intact. To his dismay, the nausea persists without his sight. Barry just keeps talking. “Th-the grand relic,” he says. “The Animus... w-what are you doing?” The end of the shadow disconnects from Kravitz’s, leaving a perfect circle under Barry. Tendrils extend from its edges to the ceiling, forming a cage.

Kravitz grins and opens his eyes, vision back to normal now that Barry’s magic is sealed. “Got you!”

Barry moves a hand between two shadowy bars, and then yelps and pulls it back as the void pulls on his soul’s essence. Kravitz walks forward with his scythe. “It’ll absorb any magic you throw at it, and you are--”

“Made of m-magic, can’t do a b-body slam, yeah,” Barry interrupts. “That’s… this is a shame. Right w-when I was gonna--when I had an offer y-you’d probably like.”

“Don’t you try any mind games with me, here,” Kravitz says. “Gods, you can’t even act defeated, even when you’re entirely helpless.”

“I was-was never a, uh, a very good actor.” With that, Barry plunges his entire arm into the little rift--he never closed it, shit--and then the cage brightens and glows and straight-up explodes, throwing Kravitz backwards.

“How,” Kravitz shouts, jumping up from the ground. “How!”

Barry closes the rift. “Um, a d-direct portal to the, uh, Plane of Magic never w-would’ve--couldn’t have worked, b-but cutting through the other--m-my pocket dimension, uh, I could open it through there… since one end of that was already open here. So the magic f-flowed through and, uh, overwhelmed the cage. I mean, most of my stuff in there’s p-probably fried, though, so you’ve got that victory.”

Kravitz crosses his arms. “Will you be leaving, then? I hardly expect to get a hit on you out in the open.”

“A-about that,” Barry taps his fingers together, “I’d still like to offer that deal.”

“Oh, so that wasn't a ruse?”

Barry nods. “I can, uh, find you th-the Animus Bell. And... by association, the l-liches using it.”

Kravitz hesitates. “And what would you ask in return?”

“Twenty-four hours t-to find it,” Barry says, “And, um, all the intel you have on us. Uh, th-that is--my cohorts and I.”

Kravitz thinks about that. He doesn't exactly have a lot of information on the rest of them, but it's still a lot to ask. Not to mention-- “I could find it for myself in as much time. That's not a very appealing offer.”

“Wh-what about--What if I gave you their names?”

Kravitz blinks. “Real names?”

Barry nods. “Th-the ones they use. The ones that, uh, matter. Yeah.”

Kravitz puts a hand to his mouth in thought. “Well... alright, but if you fail your end in those twenty-four hours, you forfeit your soul to the Raven Queen’s court. To me.”

“Okay, but i-if you fail, then, I have--I get permanent immunity. For past crimes, a-and... uh, being a lich. Since I c-can’t stop doing that.”

“Fine. But you’ll need to stay in earshot for as long as it takes me to complete my end of the deal.”

“S-same to you, then.”

They go on like this for nearly fifteen minutes, covering every possible loophole. Suspicion is really a formality at this point--Kravitz doesn't doubt Barry would keep with the spirit of the law, nor does he think Barry doubts the reverse, but this is a routine they have to follow. Just in case.

They end up with an agreement that has them basically attached at the hip for a whole day, both disallowed from attacking or even setting anything up against the other. When there’s finally a lull in the conversation, Barry asks, “O-okay, is that, uh, everything? You wanna do--make th-this deal?”

Kravitz feels that they’ve worked out a worthwhile exchange, but he needs one final, external confirmation. He closes his eyes and reaches out to the Raven Queen through the darkness under his eyelids.

She says, Kravitz, you are a capable reaper, and I trust you to make this choice.

She says, do not mess up.

It would be pretty hard to mess up giving a guy a few stray facts, so he opens his eyes and nods to Barry, who has one hand extended, poised to shake.

“I agree to our spoken terms, starting our time limit with our next handshake, if you will do the same.” He holds his own hand out, parallel to Barry’s.

“Agreed,” Barry says, and they shake hands. The skeletal hand is just solid enough, and Kravitz's hand is just ethereal enough, for them to meet halfway through corporeality. Kravitz feels the magic of the deal creep up through his arm and grip his chest, and Barry shivers as the same happens to him.

Then, Barry settles his feet on the ground and starts brushing off his cloak with his hands. Kravitz watches in fascination as the excess magic sparking from him slows to a stop, leaving a normal skeleton in a normal cloak. He sweeps his face, and suddenly he has a face. One made of skin, that is--glasses and everything. His hands come away looking just as real.

Barry grins up at Kravitz, and it's unnerving. Not only is the illusory face dipping just a bit too far into uncanny valley, but Barry’s also… strangely short? Kravitz realizes he's never just stood next to the guy before, but now he sees that Barry can't be much taller than five feet.

“Soooo,” Kravitz says, conjuring up a stack of bounty papers, “How about we get through the easy part first? The information and names?”

Barry nods. “S-sure. How about… uh, you t-tell me about each person a-and I’ll--I can give you th-the name? I-I’m gonna keep--gonna c-continue this in the meantime,” he adds, waving the bag of screws his Mage Hand still hasn’t let go of. Kravitz narrows his eyes. Barry quickly says,“I-It’s not breaking any, uh, rules.”

“...Alright,” Kravitz says, putting a finger on the top paper. “I’ll start with you.” Barry looks up from the crate he’s already gone back to shuffling through, surprise animating his face. “You don’t have to fake expressions for me, you know.”

“F-fake? This isn’t--w-well, granted, it takes effort, b-but it’s not--it, uh, connects to my emotions. Unlike like a manual illusion.”

“Fascinating.” As with many of Barry’s absurd explanations, Kravitz has no idea whether to take it as a lie, a delusion, or actual genius. After this long, though, he’s getting an inkling that it might be the latter.

He looks back down at the paper. “Well, you’re Barry Bluejeans, human, sometimes known by the alias Sildar Hallwinter. You are a lich, you’ve died forty-six times, you tend to appear near Phandalin just before each resurrection…” He pauses here to inspect Barry’s face, which is now looking forcibly neutral. “...You’re highly skilled at necromancy and mentally-influential magic. Prone to love and related emotions. Apparently fluent in Common, Elvish, Gnomish, Dwarvish, and several languages originating from other planes, such as Primordial and Draconic. Never checked in to the Astral Plane. Absolute pain in the ass.”

Barry laughs. “S-sorry. I really do wish th-that not being, uh, a pain in the ass was an option f-for me right now. Oh! And m’name’s Barry Bluejeans, but y-you’ve got that one.”

“Right, well,” Kravitz says, putting a check mark by his name, “the information on the rest of your party is limited, I hope you know. Sort of… indirect in nature.”

“I’d ask wh-what that means, but I-I assume I’m gonna--I’m about to find out.”

“I think so,” Kravitz replies, turning to the next sheet. “Next up is the other lich. Elf, thirty-five deaths. Either heavily shielded by magic or possessing something hard to detect. Regardless, she hasn’t physically moved in eight years. Never checked in to the Astral Plane.”

Barry literally deflates with relief at the last sentence, his face actually appearing to melt for a moment before righting itself. “Th-thank the gods. Um, that was Lup. M-my wife.”

“Oh, was becoming horrible undead monsters your idea of a honeymoon?” Kravitz asks, voice spiked with sardonicism.

“I-I wish it was,” Barry sighs, and his voice is muffled because he's pressing his face up against the gap between two shelves. He conjures another Mage Hand, grabs it, and pulls it over his other hand like a glove. Then he reaches into the space and pulls out a metal tool. “Hot damn, th-that’s an entire crowbar!”

“As opposed to... half a crowbar?” Kravitz asks.

Barry laughs. “N-no, but I, I need a--I needed one.”

“What for? And why all the random screws?” Kravitz demands. There has to be some sense to it.

“Uh, th-the last one broke? A-And the screws, uh, I collect ‘em. For fun,” Barry says, perfectly serious. Then he looks up, and the deadpan face breaks into a laugh when Kravitz squints at him. “That is to say, uh, I c-can’t tell you. Sorry, buddy. S-security issue.”

There's a pause where they both stare at each other, unsure of what to do. Then Barry turns back to what he's doing, and Kravitz looks back down at the intel he's practically handing over.

“Dwarf, fifty-seven deaths,” he reads. “Oh, this guy.” (Barry laughs again, which he ignores.) “He's under Pan’s protection, likely a cleric or paladin, and Pan will give no information to the Raven Queen.”

“Th-that’s kind of him,” Barry says, opening a tiny rift and sticking his arm in up to the shoulder. “The guy is, uh, Merle Highchurch. Is that all you’ve--all you know about him?”

Kravitz shakes his head. “We know he’s in a… a boundary, of sorts, between places.”

“L-Like… As in, a liminal space?”

“No, not a transitory place--this is what I meant by indirect information. We just know he’s at a boundary between places, permanent or not. It could be a… a valley between mountains, the outskirts of a city, or a beach, between land and water.”

Barry fishes what he’s looking for out of the pocket dimension--some kind of notebook--and closes the rift. “Wh… huh. So you know that, b-but not the actual, uh, geographic location? A-And I’m assuming the same for Lup...”

“Correct,” Kravitz says. “For us, it’s easier to tell what’s… actually, no, I’m under no obligation to explain this to you.” He tries not to pay attention to the scribbling Barry’s now doing in his notebook. “Next up… human, five deaths.”

“Only-only five? Gotta be Lucretia.” Barry says, pausing from writing.

“Only five,” Kravitz repeats, incredulously. “Only five literal, actual deaths, where she should have gone to the Astral Plane, but instead defied the balance of mortality. Yes. Well, she’s presently… nearly undetectable.”

“Mm… makes sense,” Barry nods. “Let’s walk-n’-talk? I was m-meaning to check out a house here, too-it’s a little ways north.” He gestures in the direction, and when Kravitz doesn’t object, he starts walking.

“She’s different from how you’re hard to detect, mind you,” Kravitz clarifies. Barry frowns. “You’re obviously hidden by spells, and sometimes having a body. But your… er, friend? Lucretia, she gives the Raven Queen an odd sense of being… out of range. Which is entirely unique--the Queen can sense anyone on this world, so I can’t imagine how this Lucretia gives off such a strong impression of distance.”

Barry squints as he’s talking, then looks down at the ground for several paces. Then he stops and looks back up at Kravitz, face a little paler. “Any-anyone-She can d-detect anyone on the planet?”

“Er, yes, but... I don’t imagine your friend is on the moon, Barry,” Kravitz says.

Barry just looks up at the sky, shaking, with jagged threads of electricity hopping over him. His face is inanimate, frozen with wide, worried eyes. Glowing cracks appear all over his skin, and his robe seems to age a century, fraying and tearing at the edges.

Kravitz remembers, with a pang of fearful regret, that their deal included nothing about Barry having an emotional explosion. If Kravitz were to reap his soul to prevent collateral damage, then he’d be breaking the deal. Barry would be released, free to rampage and free of charges. Sometimes, Kravitz wishes his job didn’t require such ceaseless honor.

“Barry,” he tries, “You’ve said they’re your friends, right? Your family? And they… inspire such loyalty from you. I can’t imagine that they would do... whatever it is you think they’ve--”

He’s interrupted by Barry launching into a violent coughing fit. It looks very strange with his face still frozen in close-mouthed fear. Kravitz stands awkwardly, unsure what to do, as the lich slowly regains composure. His face starts repairing itself, blinking a few times. “S-sor-sorry,” Barry croaks. “Thanks. I-I wasn’t gonna--I wouldn’t h-have exploded or anyth-thing, but I--you sped up th-the recovery.”

Kravitz is skeptical of that. It must show on his face, because Barry adds, “That one--that first time was an anomaly, I promise. I h-have my self-control techniques.” He starts brushing sparks off his robe like dust, getting rid of the fraying and tearing in the process.

“Like the coughing? Didn’t you do that to get a spell off of you before?”

“S-Same principle,” Barry shrugs. “Spitting out excess m-magic. Whether, uh--doesn’t matter if it’s a hex or the-the magic generated by strong feelings.”

“Hmm,” Kravitz stores that info away, then lifts his papers again. “If you’re feeling better, shall we continue?”

“Yes! Uh, about Lucretia--h-how long has she been in sp--I mean, how long has she, uh…”

“Appeared to be out of range?” Kravitz supplies. “About a year, now. Before that, she was under wards like yours. No idea where she was.” Barry nods slowly along to that, and Kravitz continues, “Next is the gnome. Eleven deaths… oh, shoot.”

“That’s D-Davenport,” Barry says worriedly. “What’s…?”

Kravitz hesitates. “He’s had the same status as Lucretia for the past decade. We believe they’re in the same place.”

Thankfully, Barry only furrows his brow. “Both of them? Th-that’s… Hmm. Okay.”

They get through the last two quickly: Magnus Burnsides is the human with nineteen deaths, who went from a steady life in one place to wandering about several years ago. Taako, the elf with eight deaths, has been a nomad for the entire decade. Barry looks worried about both of them.

“If I may ask,” Kravitz says, “Why did you sell their names? Do you know how valuable a name can be? I mean, you had to know we were low on information, since we haven’t caught them yet.”

Barry stares at him for a few moments, and there’s a moment where Kravitz is concerned he’s provoked another fit. Then Barry says, “I mean, I f-figured names on this pl--this world are important, from the fact that y-you accepted this deal. But I don’t think th-that the names of people who--I mean, I d-don’t think our names would be, uh, quite as v-valuable.” He pauses. “Also, I-I’ve survived this long, and I’m… I’m not the craftiest p-person on our team.”

Kravitz has trouble believing that. “And with your lack of… craftiness, you still think you can find the Animus Bell in twenty-four hours?”

Barry, ever failing to read the room, grins earnestly. “Oh, yes.” He holds up his notebook. “I-I know I can.”

Chapter Text

Barry keeps picking through the abandoned buildings, flipping through his notebook, and being generally weird. Kravitz watches with mild interest, trying to understand why he keeps a pair of work gloves but leaves the boots, why he clicks every pen to decide whether to take it without ever testing the writability. Maybe his notebook is actually a shopping--er, scavenging--list.

While the lich is trying hard to open a crate without going overboard with the force used, Kravitz speaks up. “It’s, er, been nearly an hour, now. Have you made any progress towards the bell?”

“Oh, shoot!” Barry waves a hand with a spell gesture Kravitz doesn’t recognize. “I-I got distracted. Didn’t mean to, uh, t-to make you wait.”

Kravitz just shrugs. “It’s only one day; I’ll survive a little boredom.” Especially if he gets Barry’s soul at the end of it. He almost regrets reminding Barry of the objective, but he isn’t one to play dirty. “What was that spell, just now?”

“Huh? O-Oh, uh, this?” Barry repeats the hand movement, and Kravitz nods. “It’s just Timer, a-a cantrip. I did the--I set it for, uh, twenty-three hours.”

The reaper tilts his head. “Odd. I don’t imagine myself to be out of touch with modern magic, but I don’t think I’ve heard of it.”

“Really? I wouldn’t--I mean, it’s not very new, but…” he thinks for a moment. “Oh, oh, shoot! Right. It’s not f-from around here. It’s… I think we made that one, actually.”

“You… make spells?” Kravitz makes a mental note to add another goddamn discipline to Barry Bluejeans’ ever-growing list of masteries.

“Oh, I mean…” Barry twiddles his thumbs. “N-Not well enough to have--to make a job of it, or a-anything. Just, uh, some little spells t-to fill niches. It’s fun to figure them out.”

“Impressive.” Kravitz means it.

Barry looks surprised. “I-I mean, it’s just a cantrip. You could even--I can teach it to you, uh, if you’d like. If you can do wizard spells…?”

“I’m afraid what magic I have that isn’t granted by the Raven Queen is done through music.”

“Oh, bardic magic?” Barry brightens up. “I used to--I’ve dabbled in that. Maybe I can figure something out for it. I-I’ll get back to you.”

“Alright, then,” Kravitz says skeptically. Barry can do plenty of things, but he wonders how much skill the lich has in music.

Barry scribbles something else in his notebook--a reminder, perhaps--and then snaps it shut. “O-Okay! So! First place I’m checking is, uh, just a bit east of Neverwinter. I found--I got wind of some, uh, questionable activities there.”

“Well, I doubt you’ll do well with my method of teleportation, and I’m not letting you port me,” Kravitz says, “So how about we just meet at the east gate?”

Barry gives him a thumbs up and vanishes in a flash of red light. Kravitz sighs, draws his scythe, and presses it into the space between planes. He dips briefly into the Astral Plane before pulling back into the Material, just in time to see a flash of red lightning at the east gate of Neverwinter, coalescing into the brightly-colored silhouette of Barry Bluejeans.

Barry’s face is halfway skeletal when he appears, but his illusory skin is already rapidly regenerating. Whatever illusion he’s using must operate similarly to a ‘concentration’ spell, or else his teleportation wouldn’t interrupt it.

“I don’t see why you don’t just use Disguise Self,” Kravitz remarks as Barry leads him away from the city. “Seems like it would be easier.”

Barry raises an eyebrow. “I--Well, it doesn’t really--I mean, d-do you use Disguise Self for your face--your body? Does that work?” He sounds skeptical, but the question is genuine enough.

“No,” Kravitz admits. “The Raven Queen grants me the power for this form, among other things. It isn’t a spell with a name. But you… Well, it just seems overly complicated for you to use some other magic when Disguise Self is such a simple spell.”

“Hm… Here, I-I’ll just show you how the--show you what Disguise Self does.” Barry snaps his fingers, and a ripple of magic crosses his face. His expression abruptly turns rigid and neutral, eyes staring emptily into space. When he speaks again, his mouth doesn’t move.

“This spell m-maps the body’s movements--links them to the illusion. Which is also why y-you can only look like creatures with the same, uh, same basic form. So, actual movements w-work fine,” he wiggles his fingers to demonstrate, “but my face is j-just a skull. There isn’t any--there’s no movement to take hold of for the spell.”

“I see,” Kravitz says, nodding. “That must be why so few liches put on faces.”

Barry laughs a little as he snaps his fingers again, restoring the proper illusion to his face. “I mean… th-the skull face also adds to the, uh, the edgy aesthetic.”

“Of course,” Kravitz rolls his eyes. “A mockery of the symbols of the Raven Queen’s domain, for nothing but a little spookiness.”

“O-Oh, come on,” Barry crosses his arms. “She may have reign over when people die, b-but the right to be--to mock the concept of death, that’s--I’d say it belongs to people who actually will die.” He hesitates. “And... in a sense, have died.”

“Oh? And how do you expect to die, Barry, with your soul modified so?”

“You, obviously.” Barry gives Kravitz a flat look. “Eventually. B-But even without that, really, a lich is just a s-spliced up version of something mortal. Y-You can’t act like any of us would last as long as a god. I-I’d fade long before the-the entire concept of death fades as a godly domain.”

Kravitz blinks. He has no response to that; he’s used to liches acting as though they’ll last for an eternity. Instead, after a bit of a pause, he says, “Hmm. You said the Bell is out here?”

“Ah, yeah,” Barry perks up again. “Phoebe lives near here. Sh-she’s… If she has it, she’d probably b-be making really good use of it. In-in a bad way.”

“Phoebe…?”

“Uh, Phoebe Tipper?” Barry says, but Kravitz stays confused. “She’s been cycling souls in and out of th-the Astral Plane f-for--for years, almost weekly.”

Kravitz squints. That does sound vaguely familiar. “Dead Ends?”

“That’s--Oh, yeah. That’s her... business name, I-I guess? Pretty d-dramatic, right?”

“You know where Dead Ends lives?”

“I, uh. I know where a lot of people live,” Barry says, picking through the increasingly-dense trees and brush, “On account of not t-trying to, uh, murder them.”

Kravitz keeps following him. If this isn’t a ruse, then this whole deal might not end up a waste after all. Dead Ends doesn’t really fit the bill for who they think was in possession of the Animus Bell, but she’ll be quite a catch even without it.

Eventually, Barry stops and peers through the trees. “There’s Phoebe’s place. C-can you see it?”

Kravitz leans near Barry to follow his apparent line of sight, but he can’t see anything besides regular forest. And he can’t sense any other necrotic energy, either. “Not with your lich magic stuffing up my senses.”

Barry laughs a little. “M-My bad. It’s p-probably boxed, too, though.”

“Boxed?”

“O-Oh, slang, sorry. It means, uh, there’s a shield k-keeping radiant energy out, like agents of gods. You. I can get rid of it, though.”

“So… you’re able to remove it? And you’re willing to remove it?”

“Yep,” Barry says, and although Kravitz leaves the space for it, he offers no further explanation. Instead, his hands start moving in a practiced pattern, with bones showing through the illusory skin every time he makes a quicker motion. Kravitz can feel the energy as he cuts through the air, and he takes a step back to give it room.

Once he’s done, the lich points through the trees again. “S-See it now?”

The area looks blurry, now. Kravitz blinks hard a few times, and it clarifies into a house, as though it had been there the entire time. It blends in well with the forest, sure, but it’s not exactly missable. “Wow.”

“Yeah, p-pretty impressive how she stretched th-that spell over the entire house.”

Kravitz nods, still staring at the building. It’s half taken over by the plants and vines around it, and he has to wonder if that was intentionally invoked by magic, or if the house really is that ancient.

“Okay, w-well, she probably does--probably checks security, uh, regularly, so… N-Now or never.” He’s twitching, just slightly, in that way he does when he’s having strong feelings.

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m--yeah.” It comes out tense.

Kravitz starts to take a step forward, but hesitates again. “Barry. This isn’t… you’re not trying to trick me, are you?” His eyes widen as he realizes. “If I leave your side, it could technically be in violation of our contract…”

Barry looks genuinely surprised. “Uh, I-I guess? I wasn’t--I didn’t mean to trick you, though. I’m telling you where I th-think the Bell is. Of course you need to--need time to check it out. I mean…” he shrugs. “If you don’t go, a-and it turns out the Bell was there, then--then you’d be breaking the terms, right?”

Kravitz frowns. “I suppose…”

“Look, th-the whole contract got way--absurdly contrived. I-I promise you I’m not trying to pull one over on ya.”

Kravitz takes a long look at his face, which is decidedly less twitchy, and nods. “As much as I hate to admit it, I trust you, to this small extent.” He looks back towards the house, ignoring a glimpse of Barry’s face brightening up.

He surveys the house carefully as he steps between the trees. Staying on the side that their shadows are pointed, he’s nearly invisible. He sheds his skin and wills his steps silent, approaching the front door.

Kravitz sinks into darkness and slips under the front door, feeling the sickening aura of necrotic energy intensifying every second. He can’t feel any wards, though, and most skilled evildoers have them aplenty; Barry must have really been thorough with dismantling them. He stands up inside the house and looks around.

It’s a nice place, if a little cluttered and a lot evil. Candles and chalk line the shelves alongside more conspicuous ritual supplies. Magical artifacts are among them, but he doesn’t feel the power of a grand relic within this home. He does, however, feel the presence of a soul that’s been on his bounty list for a few months now.

Surprisingly, following the presence takes him away from the passive necrotic magic in the basement--she must be making bodies. He heads up the stairs and down a hall, ignoring the few framed photos along the walls. They aren’t his business, and would only serve to make this difficult. Finally, slowly, Kravitz turns the doorknob that he knows his target is waiting behind. He has the advantage here.

So of course he’s startled when he’s tackled the instant he opens the door. She dodges his alarmed scythe swing and his back hits the ground. Phoebe is barely recognizable as human, but up close, Kravitz can see that she’s made of human pieces. There are too many eyes and arms in all the wrong places, but they’re all human. And so is her soul: a hellish amalgam of other humans’ lives, stolen from the Astral Plane for her own power. He’d be impressed if he wasn’t disgusted.

Kravitz kicks her off with an undignified yelp, feeling soul magic turned abrasive burning him where they made contact. Jumping up, he extends his power through the room, turning the dim atmosphere to darkness and willing it to encroach on the monstrous figure. Wisely, she backs up towards the lightest part of the room: the window.

“Phoebe Tipper,” Kravitz says, voice thick with his work accent, “You’ve been a tricky one, ‘aven’t ya?”

Phoebe shakily looks out the window, then back to Kravitz. Instead of panic, he sees a grin made of far too many teeth. “Reaper,” she rasps in several voices at once, “You’re outnumbered.” And then she kicks off from the floor and crashes through the second-story window.

Kravitz rushes forward and looks through the shattered glass. The monster is rushing down the path in front of the house, towards a hooded figure clad in bright red. He’s waving to Phoebe, beckoning her.

Kravitz curses--Barry, Phoebe, his own foolishness. Why would Barry do this? Why give him someone’s location only to save her? Did Barry suddenly realize she didn’t have the Bell, and decide to sabotage him? Is this a trap?

He leaps out the window anyway, breaking his fall on soft shadows and running towards his runaway catch, though he’s sure Barry will have her gone within seconds.

Surprise slows Kravitz down when he gets close enough to see Barry meeting his eyes, giving him a strange look. The hand he’s waving with abruptly clenches into a fist, and there’s a bolt of red lightning that shoots up from the ground and overtakes Phoebe. She collapses, stunned but not dead, and screeches profane curses of traitorousness.

Kravitz stops altogether. Barry looks at him. “H-Hey, uh, are you gonna do your job? I c--I can’t hold this for long--”

Snapping out of it, Kravitz crosses the remaining distance with a few short strides. Barry steps back as he pulls out his scythe, tearing Phoebe’s many souls out of this Plane with a clean slice. It’s the easiest that’s been in a while.

Then he stares at Barry. “I didn’t expect you to actively help.”

“Oh, c-come on,” Barry says. “She--she killed people! A-And used their--she took their souls and powered herself with innocent--used people who weren’t even willing, and even if th-they were, I’d question it--”

“So you do have morals,” Kravitz says, with half-feigned surprise.

Barry isn’t amused. “I don’t kill people, Kravitz! I just--the only soul I’ve e-ever tampered with is mine, a-and I really--I only use bodies that are already dead, wh-when I need to.”

“Shame,” Kravitz rolls his eyes. “If you had just stayed away from your soul, I wouldn’t have had to hunt you.”

“A-And we wouldn’t have met,” Barry shrugs. “You don’t--I mean, you’re a pretty okay guy when yo-you’re not trying to kill me.”

Before Kravitz can respond, Barry continues, “So is the Animus Bell in there?”

“Ah, no. Can’t feel anything on par with Grand Relic power here.”

“That’s too bad,” Barry says, in a tone that leans towards sympathy. As though he’s more bummed out for Kravitz’s sake than his own. He pulls out his notebook again and starts flipping through it.

“I wonder what gave them so much power,” Kravitz says idly.

“They’re m-made of the same thing--same stuff that made the omniverse,” Barry says without missing a beat. “The, uh, inspiration for o-our existence, in an… abstract sense. That’s why, uh, why they have--why people want to use ‘em so bad.”

“What? What makes you so sure?”

Barry doesn’t appear to have heard him, and instead says, “So, hey, w-where’s the line? I mean, on what’s… unacceptable? Liches are bad, Phoebe’s body-hopping is bad, but you--I could’ve sworn that-that you said zombies are fine, before.”

“Right,” Kravitz says. “Animated corpses--zombies, as you say--have no soul. They are, I would say, disrespectful to the dead, but not illegal. They don’t disrupt the balance of life and death. But, well, moving your soul--or others’ souls--out of your body, modifying them, or stealing them from the Astral Plane… any of those things serve to extend a life beyond its natural course. It creates an imbalance.”

“But we all--everything dies anyway, though, right? Even liches w-would decay eventually. Who cares if I’m around a little longer?”

Kravitz sighs. “The balance of the world isn’t just about death, it’s about the natural order of fate. Fate is married to Death, and altering either can mess with the process of the other. You know, the same reason time travel is generally considered to be extremely dangerous.”

“For the sake o-of conversation, and, uh, a little curiosity,” Barry says, “What d-does it--what exactly does it mess up? What does balance being out of whack a-actually do?”

“It’s…” Kravitz falters briefly. “It isn’t mortal business, Barry. Not our business. It has to do with my superior’s work, not my own.”

“She isn’t…” Barry frowns. “Well, nevermind.”

“Oh, no, I’d like to hear this.”

“It wouldn’t be good of m-me to… I mean, I don’t know a whole l-lot about her. But I-I do know that gods, i-in a, uh, strictly general sense, a-aren’t infallible,” Barry says, choosing his words delicately, without even the decency to sound arrogant. “But I shouldn’t… it’s n-not my place to say.”

There’s a hint of a wry laugh in his voice as he adds, “I-I can’t justifiably c-comment on the, uh, the balance of this world when we d-did such a big--” he freezes. “Uh, I mean, when I’m a lich! Th-the source of, er, th-that sort of imbalance.”

Kravitz starts to respond, but Barry continues before he can. “And the Raven Queen did l-let me channel her m-magic to save you, i-instead of taking the opportunity to, uh, smite me, or something? So that was pretty good. From my semi-mortal perspective, at least.”

Kravitz frowns, indignant arguments and confused questions melting from his mind in favor of startlement. “You did what?”

“You d-don’t remember…?” Barry looks surprised, too. “Uh, it was on that train, a bit o-over a year ago? When you did a--when you beefed it hitting the tunnel wall. I d-did that thing warlocks and clerics do, to ask for power…”

“Warlocks and clerics?” Kravitz stares at him. “Those are… very different magical professions.”

“N-Not really,” Barry says. “They’re pretty similar. Warlocks c-can just do weirder stunts, usually, since they’re bound to, uh, weirder… less conventional entities.”

“If you put it that way, I suppose…”

“So the Raven Queen l-let me channel her magic f-for, uh--to heal you, because I’m garbage at it, a-and you got portal-warped away.”

Kravitz finds he’s less surprised than he thought that Barry would save him. He did tell him to duck just before he was hit, after all. “You’d think, with such a skill for moving life energy around, that one would be good at healing.”

Barry laughs. “Yeah! But, well, m-most of what necromancy does is, uh, pretty temporary. And I-I also thought that sort of magic might be, er, bad for you? Being what you are? So…”

“Huh,” Kravitz says. “Well, I do appreciate you taking the precaution. You weren’t too off the mark with that thought.” He regrets voicing that last bit when Barry starts scribbling something down in his notebook again.

Barry flips a few pages. “There’s a c-coven of sorts, uh, down south…”

Down south, there is indeed a coven: a trio of witches who have been exploiting a leak between the Astral and Material planes to steal souls. Kravitz hasn’t been able to find its exact location before; some clever shielding has thrown him off at each attempt, so he’s been waiting for a better shot.

“How ‘bout I go in first this time?” Barry asks when they arrive, and Kravitz lets him. He’s getting the vague sense of being tricked, of this slow-building trust being a ruse, but he hasn’t been disappointed so far.

Within minutes, Kravitz feels the nearby enchantments thin out, and his sense of the nearby necrotic energy sharpens. Barry walks into his field of vision surrounded by three darker cloaked figures.

“Weird, right?” Barry is saying as they walk. “A-And if you apply that to, uh, Shillelagh, you can actually--it’s possible to cast it on y-your own hand. It does get st-stuck as a fist, though. Haven’t figured out how to, uh, circumvent that one.”

Kravitz starts stepping through shadows, sneaking around behind them.

One of the witches perks up. “I feel somethin’, Bluejeans. What the hell did you--”

And then there’s a flash of fire that burns away all the plants on the ground, guided by Barry’s subtle hand movements. On a whim, Kravitz takes on the flames and shapes it into a molten, humanoid construct around himself. The witches screech as Barry shapes the remaining fire into a ring enclosing them all.

“Witches of Goldmire Coven,” comes Kravitz’s voice, crackling and rasping, dripping with lava that becomes black stones on the ground before him. “I am pleased to inform you that your rift has been located, and you’ve won a free vacation to the Eternal Stockade.”

He takes them in one swing.

“You know,” Barry says as he puts out the fire and Kravitz sheds the flames, “Without m-my fire ring, they could--they would’ve escaped d-during that speech.”

“You underestimate me,” Kravitz says. With good reason, he doesn’t add. “But the risk is worth some flair, Barry.”

Barry laughs. “You’d like Lup and Taako.” Then, with a look Kravitz can’t quite discern, he adds, “H-He’d like you too.”

It’s three more bounties and nearly ten hours later when Kravitz finally asks, “You already knew the Bell wasn’t with any of these people, didn’t you?”

Barry sighs. “Y-Yeah. But it helped you out, right?”

“Immensely,” Kravitz admits. “But it doesn’t mean… Barry, you’re not hoping for a reduction on your sentence, are you? Because I can’t really--”

“N-No, no, I know,” Barry says quickly. “It’s--those people were all, uh, really awful. And I would--I think I’d have someone disappointed i-in me if I didn’t take such a good o-opportunity to, uh, get ‘em caught.” He leafs through his notebook a bit more. “That’s all.”

“So, then,” Kravitz says, “Would it be too much to hope that you don’t really know where the Grand Relic is?”

“It would,” Barry offers him a wry smile and tears a page out of his notebook. “M-Might as well go ahead w-with it now, when I can--when there’s still a good a-amount of time on the clock.”

He folds the paper over and hands it to Kravitz. “Th-those are coordinates. In the middle of the, uh, Felicity Wilds. The Animus Bell a-and both of its current holders are all--they’re within a one-hundred-foot radius of, uh, that location, so… y-you’ll definitely be able to tell if you’re in r-range.”

“The Felicity Wilds…” Kravitz looks at the coordinates, trying to recall anything he’s found there before.

“It’s called Wonderland. I-I’m not coming with you on this one, and I think--I mean, I swear I’m not being patronizing when I s-say this, but y-you shouldn’t go after it either.”

“And why’s that?”

“Th-they do this weird thing… uh, they’re liches wh-who use the Bell as a s-sort of lure, and they manage to--they utilize other people’s emotions for power i-instead of just their own. They’ve generated a-a whole building designed for, for misery, and it’s i-incredibly dangerous.”

Barry must be able to tell from Kravitz’s face that he’s not convinced, because he continues with, “B-But if you’re going there anyway, I-I… Okay. Th-they’re probably, uh, anchored to each other, being siblings. Word has it they started Wonderland when they lost someone. I-if you manage to, uh, get one of them, they other should destabilize.”

Kravitz nods. “Well, thank you for the help--”

“Oh, and their n-names are, uh… Lydia and Edward.”

Kravitz’s blood turns icier than usual, and he faces away from Barry. “Good to know.” He looks down at the coordinates. “I think I’ll take your advice for the time being, then, and regroup. I appreciate the assistance.”

“Yeah,” Barry says, awkward confusion evident in his voice. “No worries. O-Oh, and, about our deal--”

“It’s done. Both ends have been completed. You’re back on my list in…” Kravitz thinks for a moment, “eleven hours and fourteen minutes.”

Barry nods slowly, and they both stand there for a moment. “Do you want… to get lunch?”

“Neither of us eats.”

“Right, right, right,” Barry nods. “Well. Good luck with, uh, stuff. S-See you around, buddy.”

So once again, in a flash of light, Barry Bluejeans is gone. And for the first time, Kravitz doesn’t have to worry about where Barry’s gone or what the hell he’s doing.

He’ll deal with it later.

Chapter Text

Kravitz finds Barry in an old library at the edge of a small town, wearing his disguise spell as he pores over a large book. The illusion even accounts for tired bags under his eyes. An impressive detail, but he’s definitely in lich form.

“Well, I’m getting flashbacks.”

Barry looks up. “H-Hey. Haha, yeah.”

“You’ve added to your list of crimes.” Kravitz crosses his arms. “What inspired you to take up possession?”

“I-I needed to, uh, to get somewhere,” Barry stands and closes the book. Kravitz sees the title: Beyond the Known Universe. “I don’t… I-Is possession illegal?”

“Well, it runs a high risk of damaging or banishing the host’s soul, so yes, Barry,” Kravitz starts walking down the hall between shelves, “it’s illegal.”

As expected, Barry follows, knowing Kravitz is doing a courtesy to the building’s safety by letting them both leave with an unspoken truce before they begin fighting outside. “But I-I didn’t--neither of those things h-happened!” Barry whisper-exclaims.

“Doesn’t matter. The soul of Robert Julius was still put at risk,” Kravitz chides as he reaches the door and holds it open for Barry. “Also, I thought you should know… I caught on to you making contact with your friends in Goldcliff.”

Barry freezes in the doorway. Without giving himself even the chance to think, Kravitz swings his scythe, and the blade cuts directly into Barry’s back. It cleaves his soul.

“Don’t worry,” Kravitz says, because he can’t think of anything to say but a continuation of what he was saying earlier. “I don’t know where they are now. But maybe be careful, next time?”

The rift opens behind Barry. The illusion of his face dissipates, and he scrambles to cast any magic that will help him, even as his power is stripped away from him.

“Not that there will be a next time.”

“No, no, no,” Barry says desperately, his voice and hands distorting. He performs the motions for spells shakily, futilely. When nothing happens, he instead grabs onto Kravitz’s lapels. “Please, PLEASE, I-I’m so close to--She’s going to--Kravitz--” and then his grip comes loose, and he’s pulled through the rift, and he’s… gone.

Kravitz stands and stares blankly at the doorway where the rift just closed. Behind him, the person occupying the library’s front desk starts clapping. “Wazzat a ghost? Nice!”

Kravitz turns to face them slowly, unblinking. “Eleven years,” he says softly, and then he portals away. There are other bounties to catch.

--

The rift closes in front of Barry, and his desperate motions turn limp as darkness surrounds him. He sinks downwards, or in a direction he assumes to be downwards, into the cold emptiness that he knows must be the Eternal Stockade.

Souls flicker curiously around him, swirling as he descends. Barry lands on his back on the ground, clasping his hands together and staring up into the gentle sparkling of swirling souls. A few come in his direction, and he hears their voices as they get close.

“Is that a new reaper?”

“He can’t be. He’s a lich.”

“Liches don’t stay like that in here.”

“Hey, new guy, what are you?”

Barry watches them with expressionless eye sockets. “What d-do you mean?”

“Are you a jailor?”

“Or a criminal?”

“Uh,” he hesitates. “A-A criminal, I guess. I’m--I didn’t do all that much evil, though.”

“Not much, huh?”

“You messed yourself up enough to hold your lich form even here.”

More souls are gathering around, circling above in a dizzying pattern. He sits up as their whispers start overlapping, coalescing, becoming indistinct from one another yet still somehow perfectly understandable.

“How did you do it?”

“There’s no way it’ll last.”

“But a few minutes is already longer than anyone else.”

“Is that why he’s here?”

“For wrecking his soul like that?”

Barry tilts his head. “It’s not wrecked. I’m--I mean, you said it. I’m a lich. Isn’t that, uh, a c-common occurrence, here?”

“Not liches like you.”

“Wasn’t your soul reaped?”

“The scythe of a reaper can break any phylactery.”

“Nobody can project their metaphysical body like that without the phylactery intact.”

“Except you, apparently.”

Barry stares upwards into the dim nothingness, pondering. Then he stands up abruptly and claps once. “Oh! I get it. That’s a different kind of lich.”

“There is.”

“Only one.”

“Kind of lich.”

“Only one kind here!” He points towards the last soul that spoke. “See, this w-world’s manner--uh, your type of lichhood involves, um, placing a soul into a protected container and p-projecting a false body from it, to enable a pure expression of, uh, arcana. Uninhibited by mortal physicality!”

“Tell us something we don’t know,” says a group of souls in unison.

“Sorry, th-thinking out loud,” Barry says sheepishly, and then he begins pacing. “But, uh, for me--I don’t have a phylactery. This f-form isn’t a projection, it’s--it’s literally my soul, twisted into a more, um, usable shape. So it c-can’t be isolated from its means of magical output, because--ha! Because I am that means!”

He glances around and realizes he’s been continuing his pacing motions while floating upwards several feet. The souls that were above him now twirl around near his feet, not bothering to follow along with his movement.

They ask many questions that all blur together, but the gist of it is, “How?”

“Hm. I-I don’t think, uh--It probably c-can’t be done here.” Barry brings a hand to his chin. “I d-did it on another world, where the Plane of Magic had, uh, collided with the Material. W-We took advantage of the phys-arcane intersection and, uh, t-transposed a model o-of that onto ourselves.”

“Another world?”

“He sounds like that woman.”

“What?! W-Wait, who’s--what do you mean? Where is she?”

“Are you sure you want to meet?”

“She’s not stable.”

“Y-Yes! Of course! Please!”

A few of the souls circling around him trail away, inviting him to follow. They take him to some remote end of the prison where barely anyone’s around, and he sees who they’re referring to. It isn’t Lup, and that’s--it’s a good thing, that she isn’t here. It’s a positive. But his heart sinks anyway.

The soul he’s led to is not a lich at all; she’s just like the rest, but jittery, shaky, flickering erratically. The ones who guided Barry there now float away, leaving the two of them alone.

“I heard,” Barry mumbles, then gathers up his will and speaks louder, “I heard th-that you, uh, you know something about… other worlds?”

The soul flashes more brightly in response, and she comes slowly towards him. “I saw,” she says, “all of existence, all at once.”

Barry backs away. “I-I’m sorry to--to hear that. I know it’s... a lot.”

“I know you.”

“Uh… B-Because I’m part of… existence?” he tries.

“Because you fled,” she says. He feels a chill run down his spine. “You fled that existence. It would have consumed us, too.”

“All of existence…” Barry frowns. “Y-You saw--you saw all of the Hunger?”

“I saw--yes, yes, yes,” her voice comes into focus, slowly, all the odd echoes being pulled back into a singular sound. “Everything, this Hunger, through a portal of black opal. My son made it. My son, my son, he will bring me home. He should not, but he will.”

“...How?”

“Sapphire. The sapphire portal. He has the Stone. He can create it.” She is burning, now, emitting a light so intense that Barry has to look away.

“Oh, no,” he whispers, but against all better rationality, his unbeating heart wells up in his chest. If a portal opens back to the Material Plane, he’ll be able to go back. He can still do something to prevent the approaching tragedy.

In the coming months, he stays near this stray soul. He comes back to talk to her every day, or at least the closest intervals his internal clock can approximate to a day. Between bouts of all-knowing prophetics and nearly outright attacking him, she tells him her name is Maureen Miller, tells him about the Cosmoscope, about her son.

And when the portal opens and the Siphon reaches through, he is ready. All it takes is slipping through unnoticed and then waiting for everyone else to show up here, at the Philosopher’s Stone.

--

When Kravitz has his fateful first encounter with Tres Horny Boys, it’s in the middle of what is not the most absurdly fortunate situation he’s ended up reaping bounties in, but it’s pretty damn close. For goodness’ sake, they’ve practically handed themselves over on a silver platter when he wasn’t even looking for them.

On the other hand, when Barry said his friends would be ‘tricky,’ Kravitz didn’t expect that to mean them eating the crystals he’s possessing and then finagling their way out of eternal damnation with playing cards. Of course, they’re Barry’s friends. So. Of course.

At one point in Lucas’ lab, he feels a flash of necrotic energy overwhelm him, and the aftertaste of a Time Stop permeating the air. All of his current bounties are still present and stupid, though, so he doesn’t waste too much time trying to find the source.

Later, he finds out there was one escape from the Eternal Stockade that he didn’t account for.

--

The next time Kravitz sees Barry, it’s in Refuge, about a month after that whole temporal debacle was dealt with (gods, what a paperwork nightmare). He catches the lich’s aura near the center of town in the middle of the night, not hard to notice since he’s been keeping tabs on the place.

Barry’s staring up at that statue of a hooded figure, but he turns before Kravitz is even within earshot. He does nothing but watch the reaper’s approach with an expressionless skull.

It’s the first time in a while he hasn’t put effort into a facial illusion for Kravitz, and despite himself, Kravitz feels a pang of guilt. No, it was Barry who escaped--nothing would be an issue if he’d just stayed in prison, and yet...

“Is that you?” Kravitz asks, gesturing up at the red-robed sculpture. He’s admittedly been curious since seeing it in the first place.

“No,” Barry says flatly. “W-Why are you here?”

“I… well, mostly the regular reasons,” Kravitz admits, but doesn’t pull his scythe out just yet.

“Okay, well, th-then I’m just gonna--I’m going to leave, then, if y-you don’t mind. Or, uh, even if you do, I guess. I don’t--I can’t afford a repeat of l-last time. Not now.”

“Before you go,” Kravitz quickly interjects, staying back for fear of scaring him off, “I have an update on your sentence.”

“Uh, y-yeah, I know. Breaking out of the--the Astral Plane.”

“No--well, yes, but with the other changes, it’s overall a reduction. We’ve reevaluated the rules and found that the rest of your deaths, since you never checked in to the Astral Plane for those, don’t count as evasions of the law. So you’re only under charge for being a lich and, er, one death.”

“Great,” Barry says shortly. He raises a hand, starting the motion of a spell, but pauses. “W-What made the rules change?”

“Your teammates, actually. You were… more than right about them.” A smile plays on Kravitz’s lips. “Now that they’re considered, well, innocent, I’ve gotten to know them a little better.”

“Huh,” Barry says. “I guess I d-did pin you as, uh, uncannily close to Taako’s exact type.”

If Kravitz’s face could heat up, it would. “I-I suppose I--Well, I’m flattered to hear that.”

Barry gives him a long look. “He’s yours too, huh? Hope it’s going well for you guys.” His voice isn’t sarcastic, but it’s filled with exhaustion.

“Thank you,” Kravitz says, and then they both stand in silence.

When Barry finally starts making a move again, Kravitz says, “I…” but the apology dies on his tongue. There’s nothing to say; he was only doing his job.

“I-I’ll turn myself in, uh, when this is all over,” Barry looks at the sky. “It won’t be long.”

He completes the hand gesture for the spell, and in a crackle of light, he’s gone.

--

“I’d like to speak with you privately. And your assistant, if possible.”

Lucretia tenses, careful uneasiness on her face. Her knuckles are tight on her white oak staff. (There is something strange about that staff, Kravitz thinks, but investigating that kind of thing isn’t his domain.)

“It’s good news,” Kravitz adds.

The stern look doesn’t fade, but her shoulders drop slightly. “Of course. This way.” She turns and leads him to her office, a small room off the side of the throne room. She has good taste, he thinks, as he takes in the decorated chair and patterned long carpet.

“Is Davenport available as well?”

“I’ll relay the information to him,” Lucretia promises. “He doesn’t handle strangers well.” Something’s missing from that explanation. Kravitz doesn’t ask.

“Alright, then,” Kravitz straightens up more to match her posture. She’s shorter than him, but her very aura makes him genuinely feel like she’s taller.

“Lucretia, with your five deaths, and Davenport with eleven deaths: you were both formerly on my bounty target list.” He watches her carefully as he speaks, but she gives nothing away. “However, due to a recent reexamination of the rules, you were let off the hook before I found you in the first place.”

“Is there a purpose to this visit, then?”

“Well, I just wanted to make sure you weren’t worried about my presence here,” Kravitz says with a small smile. “And, I must admit, I’m a little curious as well.”

Lucretia shifts her staff and then taps it back onto the ground. “What about?”

“Well, it would seem that out of everyone I’ve found in your little group, you’re one of just two who actually recognizes the charges you had.”

Lucretia frowns. “What do you mean, my group?”

“The seven of you,” Kravitz says. “Barry gave me your names.”

That gets a reaction. She leans back just a bit. “Barry…?” In her eyes, he catches a glimpse of… something. Fear? Betrayal, even? “I see. And how, pray tell, did this come into conversation?”

“We struck a deal,” Kravitz says. “He wanted to know how much I knew about all of you, and he gave over your names for that information.” He glances above Lucretia, up at the portrait on the wall. She’s standing in such a similar position, there, but so much more relaxed. “And he led me to the Animus Bell.”

“The Bell?” Lucretia’s sharp voice calls his wandering eyes back to hers. “If you’ve secured it, I must request--”

“I haven’t,” Kravitz says. “It’s in a dangerous place, so I was waiting for a more opportune moment.” He looks at her, taking in the clear recognition she’s allowed onto her face. “Will you be sending your reclaimers there?”

“Technically, that’s confidential,” she taps her fingers atop her staff, “but I think the answer is obvious.”

He hesitates. Taako and his companions are perfectly capable, of that he’s sure, but the thought of them taking on Lydia and Edward alone still worries him.

“Well, give me a call when that happens, if Bureau business will allow for it,” Kravitz offers. “It might benefit us both for me to assist, given that liches will be present there as well.”

Lucretia looks surprised, then grateful. “I will. Thank you.”

--

Kravitz’s stone number is unavailable when she makes the call. As short on time as the world now is, the mission gets initiated without him.

Darkness surrounds him, suffocates him, sinks into lungs he doesn’t need yet still feel horribly pained by the intrusion. His body is yanked this way and that. The fear and panic of souls surrounds him, screams into his head, speeds up his heart.

The ripples reach him from deep below. They should push him upwards, but they just drag him further down. It’s dissatisfaction, gnawing at the very tether of this plane, a dreadful feeling creeping through the fear. It hurts. It hurts to try to cough it up. It hurts to swim through it. It hurts to exist.

His head pounds. Which way was up?

He keeps struggling. Direction barely matters. If he can just get out--get anywhere from here--

Light hits his eyes, startlingly bright. He’d forgotten they were open; it didn’t matter in the dark. The second he breaks the surface, he kicks and sways just to stay afloat. Just to keep above the waves a few seconds longer. Just to--

C L A N G .

The dissonant peal passes through all the souls like a shiver. For one tense, cold moment, everything is perfectly still.

And then Kravitz is swept violently to the side. He’s dragged into a dizzying, chaotic whirlpool, and suddenly it takes twice the energy and desperate motion just to stay afloat as he revolves.

It’s so hard to make anything out, but there’s a light far above--a rift? He squints up into it, paddles futilely towards it, and then--

There’s a figure up there, struggling away from the portal. He’s sure the person is familiar. But they’re moving too much, and Kravitz is spinning and thrashing and--

And then there’s a second figure, and this one is unmistakable. Taako’s face is one he knows well. They make eye contact for a moment, just one fleeting moment, and then something bright grabs ahold of Taako from behind.

And before Kravitz can say anything, can think anything, Taako is dragged out of view. The rift closes. He’s alone.

Suddenly his movements feel useless. The current is so fast, so dense, pulling him harder than he flails.

The whirlpool drags him below again.

Chapter Text

Kravitz is sinking into the darkness when it happens. The souls have long since slowed their panicked movements, now flowing in a lazy current. He doesn’t know how far down into the Sea he is, doesn’t remember how long he’s been sinking.

Nothing changes. Nothing discernible, anyway. And yet he knows, he feels the sense of wrongness that cuts through him, through everything, like an icy knife. He doesn’t understand what’s happened. None of them do. No plane has ever before been snapped from its bonds to the rest of the system.

But he knows instantly that there is something terribly wrong.

He starts pumping his arms and legs, pulling himself upwards. It’s easier, now that his surroundings are slower, quieter. Strands of the thick ‘water’ latch onto his ribs and then snap apart as he swims upwards.

It feels like a miracle when his hand breaks into open air once more, and he thrashes with another rush of newfound energy until he’s free. His scythe materializes, and he slashes away at the tendrils still clinging to him as he drags himself onto the island in the center of the sea.

Then, without hesitating long enough for proper thought, he locks himself in the Eternal Stockade.

From there, he tries to cut a portal back to the Material Plane, to no avail. His scythe won't take him anywhere. Helplessly, he asks the Raven Queen for guidance, but she doesn’t respond either.

Kravitz sinks to his knees numbly, terrified. He cannot feel any presences but the souls immediately nearby, cannot feel the magic that normally connects him to the gods or the Material Plane. It’s as though the whole universe is gone outside of here. Everything he’s known, every person--his boyfriend, his nemesis, even his god--all wiped from existence.

He picks up the feathers he’s arranged on the ground and puts them back down again and again, changing their ordering and positions, calling hopelessly into the void for his Queen. For anyone, even.

Eventually, there comes a response, though not of the sort he’d hoped.

“We feel it too.” A whispering tangle of many voices comes from behind him, around him, a conglomerate of presences speaking with unified intent. “The world is ending. How ironic, that you would spend your last moments trapped with those you imprisoned.”

He can feel the will of all the Stockade’s prisoners carried in the words of a few. They speak confidently, but he can feel their fear as clearly as he could feel it in the Sea. But Kravitz is too tired, too afraid himself to bother pretending he has the advantage anymore.

“I can’t die here,” he says. “This can’t be the end, we can’t all just be taken by this--this nothingness! They must be out there, all of them, fighting whatever this is. We have to do something.”

“We?” The souls circle around each other in a slow, curious pattern. “Locked down here, how do you expect us to do anything?”

Kravitz just stares into the flickering darkness. He knows what they’re trying to get from him, and he can’t see any way around it. “Fine,” he concedes. “Let’s make a--”

The Story hits first, making Kravitz stumble in place and sending a visible ripple through the surrounding souls. A century’s worth of events crash through their minds, the forgotten brilliance of seven birds and the Light they fought repeatedly to protect.

Never before has he been more in admiration of Taako, but now armed with the knowledge of the Hunger’s power, Kravitz knows he really has to help. They all do.

Barry is in this story, too, connected to the others with powerful bonds that Kravitz can all but tangibly feel as he hears it. Pieces of his story trigger memories for Kravitz: the time he was in Barry’s lich storm, in his mind and memories--he experienced the concert at Legato, the moments of fear and hope.

Within those odd memories that Kravitz’s mind had vehemently rejected on first contact, he’d remembered making the Animus Bell, too--holy shit, Barry made that. That’s why he knew where it--

The Song comes next, bringing the Story’s message back into focus. Unlike before, Kravitz is suddenly certain that everyone in every plane is hearing this together. They’re all going to fight for their universe. And he’s going to fight, too, dammit, to hell with anything that might try to stop him.

The voices of the souls snap Kravitz back into the present, into the cold darkness of the Stockade. “Let’s make a what, Kravitz?”

--

Kravitz flies alongside the mass of criminal souls as they come barreling out of the Stockade’s entrance, arcing upwards from the Sea’s surface and into the dim, hazy sky of the Astral Plane. They swarm across the Plane, searching for any tear in the dimensional fabric, any way to escape these confines and fight for their world.

It is far too good to be true, he’s sure, when he sees the circular portal open up--and then expand, wider and wider, stretching to the size of an entire city.

“Phandalin,” echo the whispers of the souls to one another.

Kravitz floats still in the air, with the souls swirling below him, and stares through the portal. He can clearly see the sky far above, dark and filled with the Hunger’s infinite eyes. And at the edge of the circle, just to the side, there’s Taako. He looks rather proud, and stares down into the sapphire with anticipation. Of course it was Taako.

As he’s staring, he doesn’t fully notice the way the souls are curling in on him, forming some approximation of a hand around his torso. “We’re going to see if any fellow Phandalin residents want to join the cause,” the souls say. “Let them know we’re coming.”

Kravitz feels the grip around him tighten, but he doesn’t really have time to struggle before he’s suddenly tossed up towards the portal. In the moments he crosses through, there’s a ripple of laughter at his startlement, and then he’s out in the open air.

Flying upwards with him, he can feel many souls carrying memories with them. Prior inhabitants of Phandalin, forming the spectral shapes of buildings all around him. They grow and connect to the rubble of their physical counterparts, creating a ghost of the town that once was.

Taako runs to meet Kravitz, and they kiss and briefly catch up. And then Kravitz sees Lup for the first time, and Barry’s there as well. Barry waves awkwardly. Without really thinking, Kravitz waves back.

--

Barry, Lup, Taako, and Kravitz all stay in the same place after the battle. It’s awkward and strange, but they manage to avoid undeath talk for at least a few days, since Kravitz has some time off. There are enough distractions with all their friends frequently visiting and sleeping over that there’s little need to do much active avoiding, anyhow.

It’s strange to see Barry in living form without confusion glazed over his eyes, and Lup is a new thing entirely. The pair is like the bright of day and the cold of night. Literal warmth radiates from Lup’s ghostly form, and Barry constantly looks tired like he hasn’t taken a nap since the battle.

It’s one night, lying in a bed with a sleeping Taako, that Kravitz feels a tug at his soul. He gently pries Taako off himself, and fueled by curiosity if nothing else, he lets the feeling whisk him away.

Moments later, he finds himself standing in the center of a summoning circle, one with markings and corvid feathers perfectly tuned to conjure him. Specifically him. Barry is sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of him, a finger on his lips as Kravitz’s eyes adjust.

The only lighting is a few candles around the edges of the circle, but as his eyes adjust, he realizes he’s in a closed, nearly-empty room… the basement.

Barry whispers, “Hi. S-Sorry. Hope I didn’t, uh, interrupt anything.”

“Just sleep,” Kravitz matches his volume, blinking slowly. He scuffs at the chalk-drawn edges of the circle with a shoe, but doesn’t break the line. “How did you know the right sigils to summon me?”

“This stuff’s like--uh, it’s basically math. I just f-figured it out.”

“Of course you did. And why such an archaic method of summoning, anyway? Couldn’t you have just, I don’t know, asked to meet?”

“D-Didn’t want anyone else to, um, kn-know what this is about,” Barry says. “And, uh, I w-wanted to check--to know whether I had this c-circle right.”

“And what is this about, Barry?”

Barry sighs. “I-I’m making good on th-that promise.” When Kravitz just stares, he continues. “I s-said I’d turn myself in. Easiest way on either of us is, uh, away from my family? B-Because they’d probably…” He fidgets with one of the candles, twisting it in place. “...disagree. Um, if you are t-taking my soul, then I’ll probably request visitation? If I can? T-To explain to them, but…”

“Barry…”

“Oh, uh, if I can, I-I’d also like to t-take Lup’s sentence? Or just d-delay it, at least? She… T-Taako just got her back, it’d be awful if th-this happened so soon…”

Kravitz crouches down to get closer to Barry’s level and speaks softly. “They just got you back, too, didn’t they?”

Barry looks down. “Y-Yeah, but…”

Kravitz rubs his eyes. “Barry, listen. I’m not going to take your soul.”

Barry deflates. “Oh, thank the gods.”

“Indeed you should,” Kravitz nods. “There are discussions to be had on your sentence, and I’m not at liberty to give you a definite statement. But I won’t take your soul tonight, and I’d personally be surprised if, after everything, you went to the Stockade at all.”

Barry stares at him for a long moment, then sighs a deep breath of relief. “Th-thank you.”

Kravitz glances down at the circle again. “Were you really just going to call me here and let me kill you in the middle of the night, without telling your family?”

“I-I have--I’m not--” Redness creeps onto Barry’s face. “I-I promised--and I d-don’t think straight at this hour.”

“No kidding. Gods, what would I tell Taako? ‘Sorry, honey, I killed your brother-in-law three days after you remembered his existence’? Considering his record, I wouldn’t be surprised if he and the rest of the family managed to fish you back out again anyway.”

A stifled whisper-laugh escapes Barry. “Y-Yeah, that’s fair. I did… I was hoping y-your answer would be no, anyway. I-I just… I did promise.”

Kravitz pats him on the shoulder. “All things considered, I can’t say I’m terribly surprised.”

From upstairs, Lup’s muffled voice reaches them. “Barry? Barry, where are ya, babe?”

Barry gets to his feet and whispers, “Whoops. Uh, l-let’s maybe call this off.”

“Is everything going to be alright here?”

“Y-Yeah, yeah,” Barry picks up a piece of chalk that’s rolled off to the side and starts adding extra markings to the circle Kravitz is in. “I-I’ll explain what’s up. Should maybe get you out of here, though. B-before Taako realizes you’re missing.”

“Probably,” Kravitz says.

“Ready?” Barry starts to trace a symbol in the air over a candle with one finger. At Kravitz’s nod, he repeats the motion, now mirrored with both hands. Kravitz feels the sharp chill of a welcome worn out. He accepts the feeling, and when Barry raises his hands and snaps his fingers, the room vanishes.

Kravitz stumbles with brief vertigo in the darkness, but his eyes soon readjust and he sees Taako, still asleep, covers kicked off because the room was far too warm without Kravitz on him.

--

Kravitz meets Barry and Lup in their bedroom, where they all pretend not to notice Taako’s invisible Arcane Eye listening in on them.

Barry still has bags under his eyes, but there’s a smile on his face, too, that seems impossible to faze.

Lup is a harder read, given that she’s not putting a face on (in comparison to how much Barry used to, she rarely does), but she’s squeezing Barry’s hand with a conjured Mage Hand glove.

“H-Hey, Kravitz,” Barry says, his face a strange amalgam of expressions. It’s like he’s trying to look apologetic, but he can’t wipe off that wide grin. The result actually seems… kind of apprehensive.

“What’s the news, Skeletor?” Lup asks.

“Still don’t get that reference,” Kravitz says. Being that Lucretia never erased a vast array of off-world pop culture phenomena, explanations for the nonsense Taako and the others always say didn’t come with the Story and Song. “But, well, the official word is that the Raven Queen cannot abide by liches roaming freely over the world.”

Barry and Lup glance at each other. He notes the way Lup’s non-held hand curls into a gesture that could hold magic, but Barry’s look calms her again. Their hands squeeze tighter together.

Kravitz continues quickly. “Er, but, considering your rather impressive resumés, which were broadcasted directly into her mind along with everyone’s… and how much Barry helped me out a few years ago, in tracking down a nearly record-breaking number of bounties in under a day…” Kravitz clasps his hands together. “If you are both amenable to the idea of working with me, there may yet be an arrangement the Queen is willing to consider.”

Barry’s eyes light up, and Lup’s grin could probably set something on fire, so surely that Kravitz almost looks around the room for what could be aflame. The pair untangle their hands. Then Barry summons his own Mage Hand, and the two hands high-five before dissipating into sparkles.

“Community service!” Lup laughs. “Exciting community service!”

“You’re… o-offering a job,” Barry puts a hand on his own jaw. “A-Ahaha--a job, after--I mean, thank you…” Kravitz realizes Barry is tearing up a little. Lup looks surprised as well, but she just pats him on the back.

“Barry, are you… alright?” Kravitz asks.

“Y-Yeah, I… sorry. It’s been--I mean, this is dumb, b-but it kinda just h-hit me? That this is over?” He wipes his eyes. “Th-the whole--Sure, the Hunger’s gone, a-and the century was its own d-deal, but… this? Th-this decade, our fight, i-it’s all finally…”

“Barry, I… I really should apologize for the amount of stress I must have--”

“No, no, Kravitz, i-it wasn’t your fault!” Barry speaks quickly, firmly, even though his voice still shakes. “You’re--I’m really glad that we’re--Hah! We’re working together! And not because I’m a criminal!”

“That’s,” Lup ruffles his hair, “Literally the entire reason.”

“Eh,” Barry shrugs, but his grin is returning even brighter than before.

“Anyway, what do we gotta do to seal the deal? Got some fancy contract to sign?”

“Not quite yet,” Kravitz says. “We can draw up more detailed terms soon, but for now, a handshake will do.”

Lup grabs his hand first, eager and full of burning energy. Her magic and her promise are so openly ready to be heard, and Kravitz can feel the heat coming far too close to his core. He keeps a straight face through it, but it can’t possibly be over soon enough.

Then she steps back, and Barry comes forward.

He’s Lup’s opposite in every way: corporeal and cold, sucking her overzealous energy right back out of Kravitz. They shake once, and then Kravitz releases his grip, but Barry’s hand tightens. Before he knows it, Kravitz is being pulled into an embrace.

Kravitz is frozen for a few startled moments, but then he shifts in Barry’s grip, unpinning his own arms to return the hug. “Okay, alright, yes,” he says, awkwardly patting Barry on the back.

Lup looks on with silent-but-obvious laughter at Kravitz’s unsteadiness. “It’s not confidential, right?” she asks. “I’m gonna go catch Taako up on the news.”

“Of course, feel free,” Kravitz replies as Barry releases him. She steps out of the room, leaving the two of them alone--even Taako’s spell dissipates as Lup updates him on the situation, out of earshot.

“I meant it,” Barry says quietly. “About--T-To not feel bad about, uh, chasing me. It was… I m-mean, scary, sure, but a-also a highlight of the decade, frankly. F-For me.”

“Really? Was I that nonthreatening?”

Barry rolls his eyes. “N-Not like that. You came closer than, uh--closer than I th-think you realized, um, more than once,” he admits. “I just m-meant… I could talk to you. Er, not about big stuff, ‘cause you might’ve t-taken advantage of it. But I l-liked telling you about… spells and little things.” He rubs the back of his neck. “I liked hanging out w-when I, uh, ‘helped’ you find the bell.”

Kravitz smiles despite himself, but he gets out another moment of snark regardless. “Couldn’t find anyone else who wanted in on your secrets?”

“Oh, p-plenty of necromancers would’ve l-loved ‘em, I’m sure,” Barry crosses his arms. “B-But a lot of them d-do awful stuff, and information spreads, uh, really f-fast through those circles. So I c-couldn’t talk freely w-without letting--without making dangerous people, um, more dangerous.”

“Well, I’m sure I’ve appreciated that unknowingly throughout the years,” Kravitz says. Barry laughs.

“W-Well, hey, thanks again. For doing this.”

“It’s really the least I can do.”

“I-It’s not! Y-You still could’ve thrown us in th-the brig, or…”

“Because that worked so well the first time.”

“Ha, well, I-I mean--you could’ve had us work with s-someone else, or put us up to something less interesting, I-I don’t know…”

“Trying to give me ideas?” Kravitz shakes his head. “Really, though, I want to work with you. You’ve demonstrated impeccable skills both evading and assisting me. I could learn from you.” He puts a hand on Barry’s shoulder. “And I liked our time tracking down your bell, too. We should get that lunch sometime. Now that you can eat.”

Barry opens his mouth to speak, but in the moment of hesitation, Kravitz continues. “And, let me keep talking while I have the train of thought--You’re a good person. Lup, too, but I only know her through implanted memories and the trust you and Taako have in her.

“But you--I know you. I know firsthand that you’re one of the only liches in the world who would pursue the power of immortality for the good of everyone--of the universe--not just yourself. The Story gave me context, certainly. But I always knew something was off about you, Barry Bluejeans, and I am beyond glad to know that I was right.”

Barry just stares at him, ears growing distinctly red as he processes Kravitz’s words. “D-Do--Do you…” He chokes out, looking like he’s going to cry again, “Do you h-have one of those speeches j-just ready for everyone y-you get magic m-memories about, o-or--”

“Oh, don’t ruin the moment,” Kravitz says, but he’s already pulling Barry into another hug and patting him on the back.

“I-I’m really glad we’re family now,” Barry says.

“Yeah, me too.”

--

The room is wide and dim, with the wings of ravens making half-halos under the flames of each torch on the wall. The three quasi-mortal occupants’ shadows are cast out in front of them, merging with the inscrutable darkness at the other end. Ravens fly above, circling near the high ceiling, silent but for the occasional flapping of wings.

Lup peers into the shadows, blinking and squinting as she tries to make out any definite shapes in the void. Next to her floating form, Barry stands firmly on the ground, looking towards his own shoes. Kravitz recognizes the nervous energy about them both from his own first meetings with the Raven Queen.

The darkness in the room slowly becomes more pronounced, blackening each and every shadow. Barry’s shaking hand opens at his side, and Lup casts a Mage Hand to take hold of it.

The Raven Queen, in a voice that both whispers within their minds and echoes heavily on the stone walls, speaks first to Kravitz. “Who have you brought before me?”

This is customary; she knows them both already from the Story and Song, and regardless, Kravitz has already done some negotiating on their behalf in preparation for this meeting.

“My Queen, I present to you Lup and Barry Bluejeans, undead from another dimension, saviors of our universe, who would pledge their services to you, should you accept.”

“I see,” says the cloud of corvids spiraling above. “Then, Lup and Barry Bluejeans, what would you ask in return for your service?”

“Not going to jail,” Lup speaks first. Her wording is off-script enough to make Kravitz tense, but at least her tone is respectful. “And enough vacation time to visit the family.”

Barry takes a deep breath. “I have the same requests as her, a-and I’d like t-to ask, uh, one other thing.” Every being in the room turns to stare at him. Kravitz freezes altogether; no special conditions were mentioned when they discussed this beforehand.

Barry looks carefully into the darkness. “Um, I still have… th-that machine, imbued w-with the Clone spell. I’d like t-to use it, um, just once more, t-to grow Lup a body. And th-then I’ll break it.”

Lup lifts her head in surprise. The ravens change their flight pattern to a figure-eight, and there are a few long moments of uneasy silence.

Finally, from the shadows, a figure slowly steps forward. She towers above them, adorned in feathers. Her voice is still everywhere, but it also comes clearly from her own mouth. “No need to destroy it. Your research so far has been invaluable to our preventative practices.

“I will grant you everything you both requested, in exchange for your service as bounty hunters under Kravitz’s watch. As thanks for your deeds in saving this world, you may decide for yourselves the lengths of your sentences.” Kravitz blinks. That’s a new one.

The Raven Queen continues, “But understand this: At the end of each, you will retire indefinitely to the Astral Plane, and I will personally right your souls back to their proper forms.”

Lup glances at Barry, then back up at the Queen. “So… we just keep this job ‘til we decide we’ve been around long enough?”

She nods. Barry and Lup look at each other, confirming. “I-I think I like that,” Barry says. Lup smiles and nods.

“We accept these terms,” Lup speaks loud and clear.

The Raven Queen fades back into the shadows of the room, but a smile is now evident in her voice. “Then, Lup and Barry Bluejeans, welcome.”

Once they’ve signed the necessary forms, Kravitz leads them silently out of the room. As soon as the door is shut behind them, he drags his hands down his face. “Gods, Barry, you just can’t not push the fucking limits, can you?”

Lup slaps Barry’s back. “Great job, though! I can’t believe you did that. I’m super psyched for skin.”

Barry laughs sheepishly. “S-Sorry, I… I thought y-you’d, uh, discourage th-that ask, Kravitz.”

“Of course I would! Goodness me. Thank her grace and patience for actually letting you do that.”

“Hey, to be fair, I’m way more interested in serving longer with a real body,” Lup says. “I bet she could tell.”

Kravitz sighs. “I suppose.”

“What’s,” Barry taps his fingers together nervously, “Uh, s-so, what’s next?”

“Right,” Kravitz summons a small stack of papers. “Well, you can come with me on my next assignments, and I can demonstrate the typical protocol for--”

“Is that what our bounty forms looked like?” Lup interrupts, leaning in to look at the fine print.

“Yes,” Kravitz says impatiently. “Seven of them. I’d show you, but they’ve no doubt been burned since your charges were dropped.”

Lup laughs. “And you took all seven at once?”

“Groups like that are usually easy to corner,” Kravitz lifts his chin, “And that sort of thing looks good on the monthly report. I thought it’d be easy.” He looks towards Barry.

Barry coughs. “T-To be fair, the system here is, uh, p-pretty efficient. You don’t usually g-get people who--folks who, uh, h-have been practicing necromancy for d-decades. M-Most of ‘em get caught within the year.”

Kravitz raises his eyebrows. Lup grins. “You been lookin’ up death crime statistics?”

“I-I want to be good at my job!”

“Well, good. That’s good.” Kravitz holds out the papers. “Actually, let me know if any of these names rings a bell.”

Barry thumbs through the pages. “Hm… Uh… I-I know this one… b-but he might be tricky.”

“In comparison to you, Barry, I really can’t imagine finding any bounty terribly difficult ever again.”

“...Thanks, but he’s got, uh, r-rocket launchers th-that stop time.”

“What.”

“Holy fuck,” Lup steps forward to look at the paper Barry’s holding up. “Dibs.”

“No! No, we’re working together, this is not a--” Kravitz tries to say, but Lup is already holding a hand out in the air.

“How d’you make the scythe happen? Is it like--” The weapon appears in her hand and she grins. “Ha! Catch me if you can, suckers!” She carves a rift in the air and leaps through it.

“Dammit, where did she go?” Kravitz moves to Barry’s side to read the form with him.

Barry shakes his head. “D-Don’t worry. This ‘last-sighted’ location is, uh, a b-bit off his actual base.” He taps the paper. “We c-can get there first.”

“Oh?” Kravitz brightens. “Then what say you we catch ourselves a lich?”

Chapter Text

1. Deleted Scene from Chapter 9 - Lich Eyes (originally posted 1/1/19)

Kravitz hands over the Wonderland flyer. “I have reason to believe the Bell’s location is somehow linked to this, uh… Why are you holding it like that?”

Barry briefly lowers the paper from where he had it pressed directly against his face. “I-I don’t have eyes.”

Kravitz stares. Barry laughs. “Heh, uh, I m-mean, um. Lich vision is weird. I-I can see magic everywhere, and that’s–it kind of clogs my vision up a lot.”

“You usually seem able to see me fine.”

“Yeah ‘c-cause you’re a person-shaped blob of god-magic. A-Almost mistook you for a lich first time we met.” Barry shakes his head. “I can focus wh-when it’s important, but there’s… a ‘see-what-you-want-to-see’ problem th-that comes with being emotion powered. You know, uh, for example… I know you didn’t laugh at my joke earlier, but I th-thought I saw you smile, because I thought it was funny.

“Or m-maybe you did laugh.” He shrugs.

“Hm,” is Kravitz’s only response, electing not to answer the implied query.

“I wish I could p-put on glasses to–uh, like real life. Wait,” Barry frowns, “I should m-make lich glasses! For–To see normally! Shit! Thirty years and we never thought of that?”

Kravitz blinks. “Sorry, thirty…?”

Barry buries his face in the flyer again. “So, Wonderland, right? I-I might have a few, uh, ideas on w-where that is.”

--

2. Chapter 1 - Barry's POV (originally posted 11/25/18)

“What’s the plan?”

It was Davenport’s favorite line, when they were back on the Starblaster. He said it every time he started a discussion on what to do next, and over time, it became an automatically calming phrase. A room full of panicking crew members would hear it and instantly calm down, ready to guide each other and work through the problem.

The phrase ended up being used even when Davenport wasn’t around, and it was still a rock that kept them stable. A landmark of familiarity and truth and togetherness.

Now Barry is alone, and he whispers the phrase to his own reflection in the dark glass below. “What’s the plan?”

It straightens out his thoughts just a little, at the least. But it hurts, too. The absence of his family aches in his heart.

But they’ll be back. He’s going to find them if it kills him again. He’ll find Lup, and then they’ll track down Lucretia and make her use the voidfish to give everyone’s memories back. That’s the plan.

Barry feels a presence behind him–something strange. He spins around to face it.

The figure is humanoid, at the least, and fairly regular looking. There’s something off about him. Best be friendly; if the man is anything odd, Barry could use an ally far more than an enemy.  “Ah, oh, man. Hey, are you– are you lost? Or– or maybe looking for something?” He gestures outwards. “Because, look, trust me, everything here’s glass. Unless, uh, you’re here for the glass? I mean, it’s cool if that’s your deal, but–”

“It’s not,” the man cuts in. He steps forward, closing the distance between them. He sounds like he’s trying to be dangerous, but… he doesn’t feel dangerous. Definitely something unsettling about him, though. “I’m here for you.”

That catches Barry off-guard. The guy doesn’t seem like any typical sort of undead. And if there’s anything in this world that could be traced back to him, it’s probably the creation of the Animus Bell, the knowledge of which was erased from existence. “Are you sure you have, uh… the right person?”

“Absolutely.” He speaks with cold, confident certainty. Barry resists the urge to back up again. “You’ve been charged with avoiding death via necrotic means, creation and takeover of living bodies beyond permissible minion necromancy, and no less than twenty-six deaths that were not followed by a trip to the Astral Plane.”

Barry lets confusion over the ‘deaths’ part take over any worry he might have over the ‘charged’ part. “Twenty-six? Oh, wow, how do you know about– are you undead too? I only ask ‘cause most living people can’t even, uh, can’t think about that.” He pauses. “Which, you know what, that sounds ominous, sorry.” Best not make this man even more agitated than he already is.

The man takes a very long time to respond, an oddly calculating look on his face. But like, the confused kind. The sort Davenport gets when he walks into a room on April Fools’ day knowing that a prank is coming, but nothing has happened yet, and he’s trying to figure it out.

Barry coughs awkwardly. He can still save this situation. “How about– why don’t we start over? I’m, I’m Barry Bluejeans, and I’m trying to– I’m helping my friends and preventing the- the- the end of the world.”

The man looks skeptical, then annoyed, and then his eyes darken and he raises his chin.  “I am Kravitz, a reaper under the Raven Queen’s order, and it is my job to prevent you from destroying the world with your delusions.” Then his skin melts away to reveal a skeletal form, and an enormous scythe appears in his hands.

“Shit, really? Shit.” It explains a bit, at least. He’s not a lich, but he must technically quality as undead because of his status. “This world has– there’s death police here? That’s– that’s gonna be inconvenient.” He sees Kravitz’s anger at the statement, and feels a little bad, but it’s true. He and Lup haven’t had to deal with something like this for over a decade, and back then, he at least had her help.

But now he’s alone. The tension within him manifests into red, crackling sparks dancing over his form, and he’s faintly aware that the wind picking up around them is being caused by his own magic. The plan, he chides himself, Stick to the plan. He can’t afford to panic here.

“God, I hate– I’m really not a fan of- of messin’ with people just doing their jobs,” Barry says, letting a casual, friendly tone disguise his worries. He focuses his tension into Kravitz’s area instead, carefully raising the heat as the reaper approaches. He lets the lightning on his own form arc ever higher and brighter; it makes for a convenient distraction, keeping Kravitz’s attention on Barry rather than himself.

The air gets denser and hotter until Kravitz makes his swing, and Barry jumps back just enough. He feels a rift open where the blade nicks his robe, and in that instant, he uses the heat to redirect the portal into the Plane of Fire.

From there, it’s easy. Kravitz gets mesmerized by the flames. Barry takes the opportunity to draw on the other Plane’s energy, readying a fun and horrible trick Lup liked to call “heartburn.”

It’s technically a very short-term version of what would otherwise be a dangerous, major-league curse. It links the victim’s soul to fire itself, filling their every sensation with a horrid burning that, given a longer time to work, could eat through their very existence from the inside. And Barry has access to the most prominent source of fire there is–a whole Plane full of it–right next to Kravitz’ soul.

Barry doesn’t even have to give this one a timer; the portal to the Plane of Fire will wear out within the next few seconds without him or the scythe sustaining it. Keeping himself from looking at Kravitz, who is making unconscious, pained wheezing noises, Barry readies a teleport spell and uses it to escape.

--

3. Chapter 5 - Barry's POV (originally posted 11/25/2018)

Barry carefully follows the feeling of energy, rising from the ocean floor like gentle heat waves. He’s almost pinpointed this ley line, and once he does, the power from it can help him locate Lup.

He doesn’t account for the searing magic that pierces straight through his chest, threatening to tear him apart from inside with its explosive force. He doubles over, shaking as he forces himself to cough out the foreign energy now coating his insides. “OW–shit–”

The taste of the magic is almost familiar as he spits it out. This is confirmed when that fucking magic bullet hits him again, driving into his back. He shrieks with pain and flings a hand out in front of him, hopefully catching the invisible attacker with the electric pulse that flies out of it.

There’s no mistaking it, now that he’s had a double dosage of it climbing through the veins of his pure-magic form: that energy belongs to Kravitz. Damn it. He really should have expected this even sooner, though, after creating such a massive arcane storm. The residual power coming off him must be leaving a trail that anyone could follow.

Barry waits, now, fully on guard for another attack, but it doesn’t come. Instead, he sees nearby rocks piling themselves up, and takes the opportunity to cough up more of Kravitz’s malicious magic. He realizes that it’s taking the form of an elemental body, probably possessed directly by the reaper himself.

Is that supposed to be a disguise? Does Kravitz not know how fucking obvious it is that he’s the assailant when he hurtled his literal essence straight through a lich? Or is he just being completely obtuse with his underestimations of Barry’s abilities, as always?

No, no, get it under control, Barry thinks as he warily floats backwards from the clumsy elemental body. He’s still volatile from that storm, and he can’t afford to lose his mind over someone making silly mistakes. Think positive. This can–yes, this can be used to his advantage, actually. If Kravitz doesn’t know that Barry knows that Kravitz is here, then…

The normal way to approach a totally regular elemental would be… what, speaking Primordial? Barry knows a tiny bit of primordial. In between a ton of pausing and mispronunciations, he manages to get out something like, “H-Hey, sorry if I’m in your, uh, zone, noble being of… earth and–no, water and earth. I’m just… I need to do a little magic thing here and I promise I’ll be right o-on my way.”

Kravitz takes just a little too long to answer, and Barry worries that he’s trying to pull some kind of trick. But then, in a voice mixed with the sounds of scraping rocks and flowing water, the possessed rocks say: “Common is fine.”

Barry instantly straightens up, startled out of that paranoid line of thinking, and then he has to stop himself from laughing as he responds.

Kravitz is pretending to be an elemental, and he doesn’t even know Primordial. For fuck’s sake.

--

4. Chapter 9.5 (non-canon): Fantasy Starbucks (originally posted 1/11/19)

“Give it up, Barry,” Kravitz calls down the alleyway.

Barry’s shake palm comes to rest on the wall behind him, fingertips grazing the hardened paste between bricks. He shouldn’t be feeling anything at all, but the spell Kravitz cast over the street stops him from passing through.

Kravitz advances. Barry knows he’s cornered. He could try teleporting, or any other amount of magical resistance, but anything that got through the nullification spell might create an explosive reaction with it. It’d hurt both of them.

“Don’t,” Barry says as Kravitz reaches him, his tone a warning. It transparently lacks any real leverage.

Kravitz raises his scythe, and Barry dives forward before he can swing. Kravitz’s chest feels ice cold. He’s suddenly so woozy, like his mind is being tucked under a fleece blanket and the static electricity whenever he moves is enough to make him numb–

And then he’s confused, glancing about the alleyway. Where’s Barry? Where’s… Kravitz? The plan was just for Barry to possess him briefly and then escape, nothing fancy.

“Are you possessing me?” He asks, but the only answer is his own echo. “Am I possessing you?”

“No,” he answers himself decisively. He’s alone. But that doesn’t make sense, because Barry didn’t escape, and Kravitz didn’t leave, he’s sure. So then…

He looks down at his hands. His viewpoint is too far from the ground, but he’s not floating. And his hands are… there are four of them. Okay.

“Ohh,” he says faintly, “Oh, the possession did work, I think? This doesn’t make any sense!” He begins to pace back and forth, agitated. He’s Barry, but he’s not. He’s Kravitz, but he’s not. Barry possessed Kravitz, or tried to, and then this happened. Whatever this is. Whatever he is.

“I’m both of us,” he says quietly to a dumpster, and it’s the first thing he’s said that feels right. But as soon as he voices the thought, everything feels terribly wrong.

He leaves the alley, keeping just enough presence of mind to cast Disguise Self. It hides his lower pair of arms and creates an opaque shadow in his hood, hiding his skull face. He gets some weird looks, but at least he looks like a suspicious goliath instead of a weird monster.

“The Raven Queen could fix this,” he mumbles to himself, arms crossed and back hunched as though trying to reattain a normal human height. “But then–no, I-I’d die. Or Barry would? But Barry’s a part of whatever I… we… are, right now, so that’s a big part of me that’d get killed.

“Seems bad to get so attached to my own existence w-when I shouldn’t exist,” he adds with a grim hint of a laugh. His pace speeds up, and people jump out of his way even as he does his best to maneuver around everyone he overtakes on the sidewalk.

He catches sight of a cafe across the street and decides to duck in. Good place to think, maybe.

He says, “I’d like to order a coffee,” and the barista says, “What kind,” and the next three minutes are an excruciatingly awkward standoff where he politely asks about every item on the menu before settling on a small black coffee.

“And what’s your name?” asks the barista with a pained smile, as though she expects him to struggle with this too.

Terrified of taking any longer than he already has, he lets the first sounds on his mind tumble out of his mouth. “Bar… itz.”

She puts a marker to the cup. “B-A-R-I-T…S?”

“Uh, Z.”

“Okay,” she says sweetly. “I’ll call your name when it’s ready, Baritz.”

“Thank you,” he says, extremely glad for the illusory shadow hiding his face. He squeezes himself into a seat in the corner, ignoring the many glances from other patrons in favor of staring down at the center of the square table he’s sitting at.

His lower pair of hands, still invisible, grip the edge of the table. He drums his fingers against the underside of the table and plants his upper hands on the sides of his face, elbows on the table. The wavy patterns in the wood take all his focus, as the least difficult thing to think about at the moment.

“Some upsides,” he whispers, carefully quiet enough to keep anyone else from overhearing, “This is… groundbreaking magic, absolutely unheard of. Could be revolutionary. An interplanar mashup of undead arcana–who could have guessed it would mix so perfectly into… well, me?”

He blinks and turns his gaze to the window. “Interplanar…?”

Something about the word hurts his head. Something he doesn’t want to think about, something he shouldn’t know. His hands clasp together and shake.

“Black coffee for Baritz,” says a voice that’s too nearby to still be behind the counter. He looks up the see the barista setting the cup directly down on his table. “You just seem like you’re having a… day. And it’s not too busy right now, so I figured I’d just make this easier for you.”

“Th-Thanks–Thank you,” he says unsteadily as she returns to the counter. He stares at the cup. Black coffee… he doesn’t want this. He doesn’t even like this.

He doesn’t like any of this. He shouldn’t be one person. He shouldn’t even… they shouldn’t…

“What if I succeeded?” The cup dents in his grip. “What would you do?”

As he stares at the cup, waiting for an answer he doesn’t have, the conversations of other patrons slowly filter into his hearing.

“That’s illegal, dude.”

“Seats are so easy to get, though.”

“That’s not the only–how are you even gonna get there?”

“What? There’s a train line that runs right through there. It’s a big station.”

“Yeah, and all the tickets are gonna be overpriced, with crowded trains. Tons of people go to Goldcliff, and they don’t exactly draw the most savory crowd…”

Baritz frowns. “Goldcliff…?”

Coffee leaks onto his hand from the top of the crushed cup, and the lid pops off the top. He can tell that the liquid is hot, but it doesn’t actually hurt his semi-corporeal hand.

He wipes it all up using napkins from the table’s dispenser, and then quickly stands up and walks out the door, dropping the still-mostly-full coffee cup and wad of wet napkins in the trash on his way out.

Goldcliff. He walks briskly down the street, paying slightly less attention to the people he’s nearly barrelling over. He shouldn’t go to Goldcliff. Barry had meant to go there, there’s something there, someone–no, no, no, he shouldn’t think about it, he can’t think about it.

His legs take him all the way out to the edge of town as his thoughts conflict with one another. He can’t go there; he doesn’t even know if his magic will work like normal, and trying to teleport would be dangerous. And he just–he shouldn’t. No matter how much he wants to know, how much he feels like the answers to all of his questions are just on the tip of his–

“I don’t want to fight!” he shouts into the open air. His disguise dissipates with it. He’s already walked far past the edge of town, beyond where anyone will notice him.

“Please,” he says, and knocks his head against a tree. Then he sits down against the trunk, lower arms crossed and upper hands clasped together. “Let’s just–I don’t want this any more than you.”

He shakes his head and stares at the sky. “How are we gonna get out of this one?” The clouds just drift lazily. He sighs. He has to stop being, so that Barry and Kravitz can keep going.

But what are they even going to do? The same thing as always? The same stupid, silly game. They both know it, and they both keep playing.

“It’s nothing against you personally,” he says. “I know you know that. I… I can’t apologize.” He leans back against the tree. “I have to do this, you know? It’s everything to me. I don’t think you’d understand.”

He closes his eyes. “Or maybe I do.”

Something feels nauseating, and he just shuts his eyes tighter. It feels like his heart dropping through his stomach, leaving an empty space in his chest, hollow and painful. He feels like so much less, now. Small, but not so small that the hole in his chest completely disappears.

His hands–just two– drag their fingers through the grass and dirt. He opens his eyes.

Next to him, draped in a familiar bright red, a figure sits just shy of leaning on his shoulder, hands covering his face. Kravitz blanks. “Barry…?”

Barry lowers his hands, trembling. There are tears in his eyes when he turns to face Kravitz. “W-Well, that was…”

“Yeah.”

“F-Forget about everything I–We thought a-about,” Barry says, “T-Towards the end, th-there. Just s-some nonsense anxiety. D-Don’t worry about it.”

“I don’t have any bounties recently sighted near Goldcliff,” Kravitz shrugs. “Just get out of here before it’s been too long to justify not getting out my scythe.”

“R-Right, yeah,” Barry says quickly. He stands up and reaches behind his shoulder, snapping his fingers. A portal manifests behind him and he hesitates briefly. Then he gives Kravitz a tiny smile and says, “W-Well, nice to meet us.”

He steps back through the portal, and he’s gone.