Chapter Text
A straight matchup, they’d laughed. A bard and a wizard against a bard and a wizard. “Except I’m the most powerful transmutation wizard in multiple realities,” Taako had said, hooking his elbows with Kravitz as they whisked away to the plains north of the Evermoors, “and you’re decked out with, like, deathly powers and shit. So it’ll be the farthest fuckin’ thing from a fair fight.”
“That hardly makes me invulnerable,” Kravitz had said, and Taako had shaken his head.
“Near enough.” A step through the portal, and they’re greeted with brisk northern winds slapping along their faces. “You’re, what, a thousand-or-something years old? It’d be pretty fuckin’ hard to take you down, Krav.”
The wizard aiding the cult of Cyric specializes in Conjuration, which is inconvenient at best. Taako takes care of batting away the little Elementals that keep popping up and prancing around the fields while Kravitz reads their fantasy Miranda rights in the bored tone of voice that always makes Taako hide a laugh behind his hand. Kravitz can deal with bureaucracy - Taako’s more concerned with sending these two fools to meet their Maker. Or, this case, their un-Maker.
The fight’s easy. Almost too easy. The scorch trails behind the fire elementals never burn away too much of the snow covering the ground, and the chill in the air makes shattering the water elementals child’s play.
It bothers Taako a bit, seeing the red-haired bard cowering behind the wizard. Bards are powerful - Taako knew Johann personally, after all - but this one either has no self-preservation, or they’ve got something up his sleeve.
He keeps half an eye on them as they stand, perfectly still, in the wintry field, but Taako focuses on knocking the nuisance of a wizard down to a couple HP while Kravitz drones on from his book. Fuckin’ afterlife laws, anyway. These fools are gonna be dead soon, why not read their rights after they beef it? That’s Taako’s view, but the Queen is all about justice, yadda yadda. Her domain, her way, he guesses. Whatever.
The bard casts, a flick of their hands and their lips framing words, and Taako realizes with a spark of dread that they’ve been channeling a spell - something powerful. Probably a higher-level spell than they are.
There are no immediate effects, though, save Kravitz falling silent and closing his book, so Taako disregards them for a moment in favor of chopping the last couple HP off the wizard. “Don’t freeze now,” he snickers, and conjures a sphere of ice, holding the wizard immobilized inside a freezing ball until his eyes roll back in his head.
Smirking, Taako spins the glaive in one hand, turns toward the bard, and has only the warning of something sharp glinting in the corner of his vision to jerk out of the way as pain erupts in his shoulder.
“Fuck,” he yelps, spinning and raising the glaive toward his opponent. “You kidding me, do I really gotta kick another…” he trails off. “Kravitz?”
He blinks, but doesn’t have much time to ponder, because his husband is quick and he leaps out of the way of a second slice that would’ve taken his shoulder off entirely. A quick glance around him reveals only three figures: himself, Kravitz, and the bard, now wearing Taako’s smirk and watching quietly. No doubles - which means that this is actually Kravitz.
“Hell of a mis-swing, m’dude,” he says, huffing out a chuckle that sounds forced even to his ears. He backs away slowly, and Kravitz follows, cloak flaring behind him. “Is this about Candlenights? I promise I got you more than just the stupid little Taako brand figurine, if you hate my merch that much then you could just tell me, my dude.”
The tip of his scythe glistens wickedly in the pale winter sun as it slashes toward him. Taako dances out of the way, saving himself from a gutting by fractions of a second. Shit shit fuck, a half-second slower and he would’ve lost an arm.
“Kravitz?”
Kravitz doesn’t respond, pursuing Taako with a mindless determination. “Not about the figurine, then,” Taako pants, adrenaline pounding through his veins. What the hell is he supposed to do with this? He can’t fight back! “Was there somethin’ else on the gift list? Like, I gotta say, holiday shopping for a Reaper isn’t exactly easy, ‘cause what are you supposed to get, like, the fantasy Costco doesn’t even sell scythe-warmers - shit!” he curses, stumbling away. His escapes are getting narrower and narrower. A glance over his shoulder reveals that he’s backing up toward the forest. Maybe he can lose Kravitz in the trees.
The battlefield, devoid of elementals and the cackles of the conjuration wizard, is silent. Eerily so. Kravitz has always moved silently, and Taako used to joke with him about it, how maybe in another life he was a wolf, and they’d laugh at Kravitz’s indignation at the thought that he’d be anything but a raven.
Kravitz swings again.
Taako jumps out of the way just in time, heart pounding in his ears. The blade whistles as it passes by his ear. Close, close, way too close. His hands are shaking as he extends them in front of him placatingly. “Krav, babe, can you hear me?” he tries.
No response, except the continued crunch of snow beneath their feet and Kravitz readjusting his hands on the tip of his scythe. “Hey, Krav, this is - you’re kinda freakin’ me out, my guy. Gotta say, I don’t super love the whole fantasy Terminator look you got goin’, I know we watched that movie a coupla months ago and look, homie, I was kidding when I asked if you’d reenact it with your cloak, and I, uh, deffo didn’t mean practice on me.”
Swipe. Dodge. His wrists are saved from laceration by hair’s breadth. He’s panting, now, breaths unnaturally loud in his ears. His knees, weak since Wonderland, start to twinge, pain exacerbated by the cold winter air.
There is no banter. No final rites for Taako. This Kravitz - his cloak billowed behind him, lips set in an emotionless line, shadows gathering around his shoulders like wings, stark against the snow - doesn’t care enough to speak a word to him.
Dominate Person, he realizes suddenly.
He should be afraid, but in that moment, Taako is only relieved. Relieved that Kravitz has not left him, like so many others have. It is a comfort to know that Kravitz isn’t in his right mind, that Taako hasn’t fucked up again, that his beloved hasn’t yet found him lacking.
(He’s always been afraid he’s living off borrowed time.)
There are red and black wisps curling off of Kravitz’s scythe that hiss the power of the Raven Queen. He knows full well how fuckin’ powerful that scythe is, he can’t get hit - ever since Wonderland his HP’s been pitiful, he just can’t taking a full blow.
Dominate Person’s a wisdom save. There’s nothing Taako can cast to stop the spell, it’s either got to wear off - which could take anywhere from another thirty seconds to a full week - or Kravitz has to break it himself.
“How about you just put down the scythe for a hot sec? Guess not,” he says, and slides out of the way of a vicious vertical chop that would’ve split him in twain, and definitely not nonlethally. “How about now? No? Fuck, man, you’re making this - shit - ”
Taako doesn’t think of eyes much, but Kravitz’s has always been warm; a warm red that crinkle easily up in laughter, slotting easily into well-worn wrinkles. In most people, being able to see the soul in their eyes would be bullshit, ‘cause souls are something very firmly trapped inside the physical body - Taako would know, he’s lost his own too many times to properly count - but Kravitz’s very form is an extension of his soul.
There is nothing of Kravitz in those red eyes now. The warmth is gone, replaced by a chill coldness that speaks nothing of the caring, the adoration that Taako is so accustomed to seeing. There is no love, now. There’s only indifference.
For the first time, the voiceless bard speaks. “He won’t stop.”
Taako looks away, and that split second distraction earns him another gash across the shoulder. He winces. “Fuck you.”
“You’re going to have to kill him, wizard,” the bard says, looking utterly unfazed and immovable in the white snow.
“Did you miss when I told you to - ” dodge, “ - go fuck yourself?”
The bard hums. Taako keeps backpedalling, trees looming in his peripheries. “There aren’t many things that can hurt you, Taako Taaco. Indeed, you seemed almost unkillable - for what do you hold dear? I thought nothing. You put up quite the emotionless front.”
Swipe. Dodge. “Not a front, my man, I don’t give a shit about shit.”
“Then why don’t you attack?” A smile curls across their face, and their head cocks calmly, curiously. “You could win if you struck now. You know his weaknesses in a way that few others do.”
Taako can’t even stomach the thought. The indifference in Kravitz’s eyes tears at him, like he’s not attacking Taako, like the shared gold on their fingers means nothing, but Taako tamps down the sharp hurt that wells in him. It’ll be fine. “It’d be a waste to deprive the world of such a hot bod,” he snaps, and tears a wall of stone up from the ground.
Dextrous motherfucker avoids the sharp stony spines, but only just. Taako curses at his lapse in attention, hears a whistling in his ears, and Kravitz digs the blade into his side, and this time - this time it sticks.
“Shit,” he whispers, and is vaguely aware of his knees hitting the ground, palms slamming into the snow. “Aw, fuck.”
His head is spinning, and the red pooling around his knees is definitely not good, but he has the presence of mind to scramble backward as the scythe rams into the ground just by his foot. Not good not good, that’s very not good, fuck -
“Krav, hey,” he says, panic making his words run together, “you gotta call this off, m’dude, I can’t - y’know, the old HP, it’s been kinda shit since Wonderland - ” he rolls across the ground, his side a mess of agonizing heat and pain, glances behind himself to see a trail of blood in the snow, shit, he hurts like a motherfucker, “and you don’t wanna - fuckin’ - c’mon, Krav, you’re in there somewhere, right?” His breathing runs ragged. “Can you hear me, love?”
That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works. But he’s out of borrowed conjuration spell slots enough for a teleport. He probably couldn’t even summon Garyl without channeling hard, winning himself a slice to the chest in the process. His vision dances black around the edges, and he catches a cough on the back of his hand, lifts it up red. Whatever organ Kravitz hit, it was delicate and fleshy and probably very, very important to his continued existence as an alive elf.
“C’mon, Krav,” he whispers, uncaring that his voice is desperate, now. Kravitz towers over him, scythe drawn, and Taako can’t strike him, he can’t. He watches for the telltale tension in Kravitz’s hands and prepares himself to move. “C’mon, Krav, babe, I love you, just - put down the fuckin’ scythe, my man, you’re stronger than this, I know you are, you - ” a shuddering breath, “you said forever - ”
He’s a little bit too slow this time, and the blade catches him in the back as he rolls. He’s a too quick for it to pin him, but he’s having difficulty coordinating movement at this point - it’s ground or nothing from here on out, Taako couldn’t stand if he tried. He’s curled on his forearms, head bowed over the snow, unable to move.
It’s hard to think. Everything seems slower and hazy, which, good, because it gives him time to think, but bad because this way as he collapses onto the snow he gets to watch his beloved approach him with scythe drawn and murder in his eyes in slow fucking motion. He’s not even aware he’s still pushing himself backward, away, until his back hits the trunk of a tree and he breathes out a jagged gasp that turns midway into a sob. Fuck. Fuck. His entire body hurts.
His vision’s blurring, his chest throbbing, fingers coated wet where he’s trying to keep his chest intact with his fingers alone, and maybe it’s not so awful, if Kravitz is going to be the last thing he sees -
Oh, fuck that noise. Let his last words be this:
“I love you,” he whispers, watching as Kravitz raises the scythe over Taako’s head, every inch an executioner. If Kravitz remembers this when the spell ends, at least he will have this knowledge to hold on to. “I love you, Kravitz.”
But like hell is Taako letting the bard walk away from this fight victorious.
Taako doesn’t stand, because he doesn’t have the movement, or the strength in his legs. There’s no glorious drawing to his full, wizarding height. There’s no snarky comment. He turns from Kravitz, and faces the bard.
Taako raises his arms, knowing full well that this lapse in attention will cost him dearly, and casts Disintegrate.
See, here’s one of Taako’s favorite parts about magic: if you want it bad enough, you can fuckin’ take it. Taako takes all of his rage, his regret, all the grief that Kravitz will be feeling pretty soon here, and slams it out through his palms - no focus, just a wave of power. He channels, and grits his teeth, and fucking tears that motherfucker apart. The bard doesn’t have time to scream, or sing, or do a little jig on their stupid fucking fiddle; one moment they’re watching smugly from over Kravitz’s shoulder, satisfaction fading too slowly into horror, and the next they’re nothing but shreds on the wind.
The last thing he sees before slipping into unconsciousness is the glint of a scythe arcing toward him and Kravitz’s red eyes, chilled with indifference.