Work Text:
It is cold, and dark, and the rain is coming down in sheets, and the lighting is splitting the sky, and the thunder is shaking the ground, and a young man is running—desperate and afraid and alone—aimlessly through the night.
And then, with a gasp, the young man wakes up.
Bolt upright and panting, drenched in a cold sweat, and shaking with residual adrenaline, his eyes scan the room. Blue moonlight falls through the smoke hole in the top of the circular tent, illuminating the rest of his traveling companions, still asleep on their own cots. Distantly, he hears the cooing of owls and nighthawks, and the rushing of a river not too far away, and this calms him. His breathing slows. His mind quiets.
When he lays back down, he reaches a hand between the folds of the rolled up blanket he rests his head on, and touches the small leather pouch he keeps there. Each time he does this, he half expects it to be gone, half hopes it will be. But it remains, a reminder of the commitment he’s made, of why he’s on this journey. With his hands still on the its thin, soft strings, he falls back to sleep.
-
“Kravitz—” he wakes to the sound of his own name, grunted from the cot next to his. The rising sun blinds him as it streams through the tent’s billowing door flap. Hastily, he pulls his shirt over his head, tucks his makeshift pillow and sheet into his bag, and rolls up his cot, slinging it over his shoulder. This is rote by now, a morning routine he can do—and has done—blind, drunk, or half asleep.
The orc woman that woke him sits on the edge of her cot, braiding her greying hair. She is also barely awake, her eyes fighting to stay open and her shoulders hunched. Kravitz kneels in the grass where his cot had been sitting, and prays, quickly and under his breath, as she pulls on her boots.
“Religion,” she scoffs, and not for the first time. She has been privy to his small rituals, performed morning, noon, and night, every day for the last seven weeks. Early on, her rebuttals to his piousness had been lengthier, but these days she kept them brief. Kravitz knelt, she rolled her eyes, they went on with their lives.
He finishes his prayer, and bows low, before standing and stretching his stiff back. He can hear the horses outside stamping at the ground as they’re harnessed, and the metal spikes, that keep the tent’s sides upright and roof taught, being pulled from the ground. He and the orc woman, a fighter named Mya, rush out of the tent just as it collapses.
Within the hour they are moving again, the six of them, over the arid steppes, walking parallel to the mountains in the north and the river to the south. They journey east, towards civilization.
The day is long, and his feet are aching by the time they make camp again, but they build a fire, and hoist the tent, and eat quietly as the sun sets. The night unfolds like dozens before it: they roll out their cots, Kravitz prays, and they sleep.
-
He is running, bare feet on rocky ground, an unseen predator at his back. Around him, the trees, and the mountains above them, and the clouds above the mountains, they all press downwards. The world around him is shrinking, and the predator breathes fire against his neck, and he is running, running, running as fast as he can move, towards an unknown destination.
And he is again awake, clawing at his blankets, his clothes, his skin. The tent is too small, and he feels like the wind has been knocked out of him. Short of breath and vibrating with a need to escape, he exits the tent, and paces back and forth in front of the door. He clenches and unclenches his fists, focuses on steadying his breathing, the feeling of grass under his feet, the humming of insects, the smell of tobacco—
Mya is sitting cross-legged on the ground a few yards from the tent. Her elbows are on her knees, she is frowning at Kravitz over her shoulder, and smoking a long pipe. He freezes, and crosses his arms over his chest, remembering his shirt still under his cot, suddenly aware of the night’s chill, and her eyes on his skin.
“I came out here because your whining was keeping me up.” She sucks on the pipe and turns her back to him, looking down the hill they camped on, into a valley sparkling with lightning bugs.
“Sorry, I—”
“It’s been keeping me up. For seven Nerull-forsaken weeks.” She takes another drag. Kravitz feels a terrible guilt in the pit of his stomach, but there is no malice in her voice. Not even when she asks finally, “What the hell is wrong with you?”
There is a pause, and then she looks over her shoulder at him again, one eyebrow raised in mild curiosity. “You smoke?” she asks.
“No, sorry, um—”
“Good. Sit.” And she gestures with her pipe at the ground next to her.
He does, eventually, leaving more space between them than is strictly comfortable. They’ve been sleeping within arms reach of each other for almost two months, but he suddenly feels exposed and vulnerable in a way he hasn’t in long time. A cool breeze raises goosebumps on his bare shoulders, and he chalks up most of his discomfort to being half naked.
“Where are you headed?” The question comes out like an order, and he is taken aback by the forwardness of it. One of the guiding principles of this traveling party was anonymity, for the sake of efficiency and safety. No full names, no use of magics if you had any, no discussion of where you came from or where you were going. No questions at all, if you could help it. They were going to be with each other for a long time, long enough to conspire. It was better for everyone that they left the same strangers they were when they all came together. It was simpler.
“East,” he says defensively.
“Yeah, no shit. We’re all going east. I meant what’re you after? Why are you here? Now?” She stabs at the air with her pipe between sentences. Her hands are huge and gnarled, and he stares at them as she gesticulates. He is so distracted that he forget to answer for a moment. “ Kravitz ,” she finally growls.
“Oh, um, uh,” he swallows, and tries to think of a compelling lie. He had one prepared at the start of his journey, detailed enough to sound legitimate, but not too wild as to be obviously fabricated. He had been so proud of the story that he wove for such an occasion as this, but it is gone from his mind now. “I’m, I....you tell me first!” The words leave him in a rush, and they feel childish in his mouth.
“Ok, well,” and she points her pipe at the middle of the horizon. “I come from a small city, where it never snows....right there. And it’s at war...again. And my brother has been slain. I am going to see if his family survives, or if I am the last of my bloodline.” She puts the pipe in her mouth and inhales deeply, before blowing thick clouds of smoke out of her nose. “Your turn.”
He swallows. “There is.....a sorceress.” He takes his time, calculating what he should and should not say, choosing his words carefully. “In one of the dark cities on the coast. She is said...to be hundreds of years old, and the most powerful necromancer the world has ever known.” He tries not to notice when the hairs on his arms stand up, or when Mya’s eyes widen. “I am going to seek her guidance.”
“Alright.” Mya says, sounding genuinely unimpressed. There is silence again. Kravitz takes a deep breath and rubs his arms. He is plotting how to graciously extricate himself from this situation, planning what he should say, if he should say anything at all. All interactions with this party are brief and perfunctory; he wonders if this new level of intimacy, as surface as it may be, has ushered in with it a new level of courtesy. Kravitz has always tried his best to remain mannerly around the admittedly rough group, but he knows he’s slipped a few times, and there just isn’t any precedent for—
“Alright,” she says again. She is holding out a flask, and even from his distance he can smell the acrid liquid inside of it. “Who died?”
-
The memories come to him in flashes, because he cannot allow himself to think of it all at once. There is screaming, and burning, and dozens of eyes staring at him, all distant, blank, dead.
And then there are the memories he thinks of when he pushes beyond the horror. There are golden fields, and warm meals, and a soft hand in his. There is song, and dance, and poetry, and praise. There is thanks for what they have, acceptance of what they do not have, and hope for a future that almost surely will not include more, but has the chance of including better.
Kravitz takes the flask and drinks, and his head spins as the liquor and the memories wash over him. He is hunched over, his head between his knees, forcing the drink to stay down, the burn at the back of his throat so bad it makes his nose run.
He looks up, wiping his face and eyes with he back of his hand, and handing the flask back to Mya. She snorts at his reaction and tucks it back into her belt.
Finally, Kravitz looks at her. “Everyone,” he says, his voice hoarse, barely more than a whisper. “Everyone...but not me.”
“Lucky you,” she says, refilling her pipe. She snaps her fingers, and the bowl lights. It’s the first magic Kravitz has seen in weeks, and it startles him. “Relax,” she says, replacing the pipe in her mouth. “Tell me what happened.”
“I had never left my village….I didn’t know anything beyond those woods.” Kravitz swallows again, his throat thick. “I had never dared to speak to a traveler, or seen people that didn’t look like me.” His mouth is dry. He croaks, “I knew almost no magic, few gods...never had a need to defend myself.” He drops his head again. This is the first time he’s told this story, his story, to anyone. “My world was small, and safe, and then....” His breath leaves him, and he can see the sky at the edge of the horizon beginning to change color. “And then it was gone.”
Mya says nothing, and her eyes are closed, and for a moment Kravitz thinks that she has fallen asleep with her chin in her hands and her pipe in her mouth. And then, slowly, she speaks.
“My city has been at war...nearly constantly...for over five hundred years. In my time alone hundreds of lives have been lost. Fighters, scoundrels, barbarians, yes. But innocents, too. What makes your tragedy so much worse than theirs, that you feel you must interfere with the long arc of history?” Her eyes are trained on the horizon, watching the clouds in the distance light up blue, then violet, then creep towards pink.
“I died.” Kravitz answers. His heart skips a beat when he says it, as if reminding him of his fragility. “I died—long enough to see what comes next! —and then I was revived. And I don’t know who did it, and I don’t know why, but I intend on finding out.”
Mya nods. “Are you magic?” she asks.
“No. I’m a musician. Or I was one.”
She rolls her eyes, stands up, and walks stiffly back into the tent.
Kravitz stays on the side of the hill, and watches the sun rise.
-
Two nights later they catch the first glimpse of civilization. As darkness falls, orange pinpricks of light dot the horizon in the east. Their navigator and leader, a roguish wood elf with one eye by the name of Beiro, explains that they are the fires from the smelting furnaces in the badlands on the outskirts of the cities.
“All of the iron in east Faerûn is forged there,” Beiro says, between bites of their dinner. “We will be disbanding as soon as we are through it, and into a properly populated area.” Kravitz’s stomach sinks. He has been on edge ever since joining this group, but at least he has not been alone.
“Should be what? Three days? Four?” Mya sounds more animated than Kravitz has ever heard her. She is eager to be home.
“If the weather holds, yes.” Beiro throws the last bone from their supper, stripped clean and sucked marrowless, into the fire. “Which I expect it to. We’re well into the dry season and the mountains will keep any rain from the north from reaching us. The wind is another problem but even that has been unseasonably...”
Kravitz can’t hear them speaking anymore. He is lost in the fire, watching it crack and scorch Beiro’s bone, watching the embers floating upwards, watching the tinder turn black, then blanch, then crumble. There is nothing but the sound of its popping and his own heartbeat roaring in his ears.
There are no nightmares that night, because he does not sleep.
-
Eight weeks to the day from when they left, Kravitz hands over the last few pieces of silver he owes Beiro, and watches from the edge of a small village bustling with dwarves, as the horses and wagon disappear into the smoke of the furnaces. Mya and the others departed soon after arrival, spreading out in different directions, confident in their destinations. Finally, he turns around, and continues east, through the dwarven town, and into the city.
Though early, the streets are already awake and crowded, with merchants of every race rushing around him. He tries to keep his bearing as people push past, tries to orient himself in the winding street.
He walks for hours in as straight a line as he can, down narrowing streets and through sprawling markets. The sun creeps from in front of him, to overhead, to at his back, and he keeps walking. It is nearly night by the time he notices his growling stomach, and ducks into an invitingly lit pub nestled between a potter’s shop and an apothecary.
The patrons turn to look at him as he enters—humans, halflings, people with faces like birds and cats, all hush as he wedges his way between the full tables, and sidles up to the bar.
The barkeep, polishing glasses with her back to the room, turns as Kravitz spills his few remaining coins on the counter. When she meets his eye, his heart aches.
She is a tall, broad, human woman with dark skin, hair, and eyes like his, and she is dripping in copper and moonstone jewelry like his mother and aunts used to wear. His voice catches in his throat as he tries and fails to find the words to ask her where she is from. To scour her for a relation. To search her for answers.
Instead, she asks him, in a thick, unfamiliar accent, “What can I get you?”
“I, uh,” and he shakes his head. “Food, please. Whatever I can get with this.” He slides the coins towards her and she chuckles, picking one of them up and pocketing it. She disappears through a door behind the bar for a moment, but returns quickly with a hunk of bread the size of his face, and a bowl of steaming soup.
He returns the rest of his coins to his purse as she sets the bowl down in front of him. It smells strongly of sweet onions and bitter spices, and he drinks it quickly, gratefully, burning his tongue and dribbling it down his chin as the barkeep looks on.
“Where are you going?” she asks, picking up a rag and a pewter mug. She polishes the inside of it, turning it around her hand in slow, deliberate circles.
“The dark coast,” he says, nonchalantly, ripping off pieces of bread and shoving them into his mouth. She furrows her brow and blinks at him.
“The dark coast? That’s still at least two day’s walk from here. Do you have lodgings for the night?”
Kravitz shakes his head. The barkeep leans her elbows on the counter, and her necklaces jingle as they pool on the bar. “There’s a room upstairs. Three more coppers. Or a favor.”
Kravitz swallows hard, his mouth dry from the bread. He thinks of his rapidly dwindling resources, and the unpredictable cost of a meal. “What kind of favor?”
“Magic?” she asks, raising an eyebrow and tilting her head.
“No, sorry, I—”
“ No magic? Nothing ?” Her voice is full of disbelief, and Kravitz can feel his face flush. “What do you do then?”
“I...I make music.” He looks down at his empty bowl. The barkeep says nothing for a long moment, just stands there, inches from him, considering.
"Liar,” she says, and his heart skips a beat.
“What? I—no! I swear! I swear to you every power I have ever possessed has been through music! Please ! I have never trained in magic, I have never even considered—”
The barkeep is laughing at him.
“No, boy. Settle yourself. Lyre . Do you play the lyre?” She is smiling kindly at him, unfazed by his outburst. The rest of the pub’s patrons are less forgiving; a few have turned to see what the fuss was.
“Oh.” Kravitz clears his throat, and he can feel the eyes on the back of his head. “Yes. Not...not terribly well, but....yes.”
“Good,” the barkeep says, and she walks slowly towards the other end of the counter. “You play for an hour, and you can stay the night.” She reaches under the bar, then, and pulls out an old, well-used lyre. Its dark wood shines in the room’s low light, and, in the grooves of the carvings on its arms, there are flecks of tarnished gold.
The sight of it takes his breath away.
She hands it to him gingerly across the bar, and points at a fireplace in the corner of the room. “Go. Sit over there. One hour. Ignore requests and hecklers. Play something uplifting.”
He follows her orders, and pulls a short stool over to the hearth, sets the lyre on his knee, and thumbs over its strings once to check that it is in tune.
The sound, every note perfect, sends a shiver down his spine, and the rest of the patrons once again turn to look at him. He takes a deep breath to settle his nerves as the room quiets.
It’s almost a reflex, the way his fingers move between the strings. Despite the time, the distance, the difference in shape of the instrument, it all comes back to him.
It feels like being thrown into a lake. He finds the tune as naturally as he would find the surface of the water. He plays like he breathes, unthinking, and to survive.
It is an old tune that his mother taught him, and there are words for it, but it feels profane to speak them in a place like this, at a time like this. So he hums, and he can feel himself becoming lost in it, swaying forward and back on the stool by the fire, becoming nothing more than hands and a voice. The murmur of the pub quiets, and the candles dim into darkness, and for a moment he is not here, in this city, surrounded by strangers, but in a mossy clearing in a sun-dappled wood.
He can feel the breeze on his skin, and the grass on the back of his legs. He can hear birds, and the leaves rustling, and a far-off stream. Someone rests their head in his lap, and they hum along to his song, knotting small blue wildflowers into a chain, and wrapping them around his arms.
The sun goes down on the two of them in the clearing. The fading light turns the white trees around them golden, and rosy, and indigo, until they are nothing but blackened silhouettes against a starry sky. Kravitz keeps playing.
And then there is a firm hand on his back, striking him jovially between the shoulder blades, as a mug of something bitter and dark is thrust into his face.
The pub is clearing out. The old man handing him the drink slurs something in a language he does not know, and hobbles out into the street. The barkeep is making the rounds to all the tables, extinguishing candles and wiping up spills. She looks at him and smiles before returning to her work.
“Drink up. Our deal was one hour and you played for two. That is your additional compensation. Go upstairs, boy. sleep.”
He walks stiffly, his bag thrown over his shoulder, towards the stairs at the back of the room.
“Leave it on the bar.” The barkeep is watching him again.
The lyre is still in his hand. The wood has warmed so under his touch that he barely notices he is still holding it. Hesitantly, morosely, he lifts it, and places it gently on the top of the counter.
The room upstairs is empty save for a small wooden chair sitting opposite a narrow window. Slowly, with the day’s activity finally catching up to him, he goes through his evening routine. He rolls out his cot beneath the window; he kneels in front of it; he prays.
When he looks up from where he lays, he can see nothing but starts out the window, and he thinks that perhaps he can spot a familiar constellation in this sliver of sky.
That night he dreams not of nebulous horrors or aimless panic, but of that clearing. He dreams of the days he spent making music there, wreathed in his lover’s flower chains. He dreams of the quiet nights there, where the two of them lay for hours, bathed in gentle blue moonlight.
That night Kravitz sleeps, soundly and unbroken, for the first time in months.
-
In the morning, he reaches his hand reflexively into his pillow to feel for the pouch, tracing his fingers over its contents and reassuring himself that it has not come untied. It made it through the night like himself, undisturbed.
In the yellow light of mid-morning, Kravitz folds his things, places them in his bag, and kneels facing the window to pray. The door to the room opens just as he bows in conclusion, and the barkeep from the night before sticks her head in.
“For the road,” she says, and she places a loaf of bread wrapped in cloth on the windowsill. The sunlight hits her jewelry and scatters flecks of light around the room. She smiles at him, as he scrambles to stand and mumbles his thanks. His voice is strained and hoarse from the night before. “Now. Get out of here. You have a long way to go.”
Kravitz picks up the bread and wedges it in his bag, before ducking through the door and skirting his way past the barkeep, still standing in the stairwell.
“Thank you,” he croaks again, adjusting his bag at the bottom of the stairs. He gazes up towards her, blinking at the sun streaming through the window.
“Go on,” she says again, waving a rag at him as she follows down the stairs. “And...” she places a hand on his shoulder.
Kravitz still has to crane his neck to meet her eye. She is statuesque and shining, and so achingly familiar.
She sighs then, tilting her head. “And may Istus guide and protect you.”
His voice catches in his throat entirely as he turns and makes his way out of the empty pub. It is early, and the streets are not yet as crowded as he had seen them the day before. He keeps his gaze as straight as he can, into the rising sun, until it is overhead. Gy then, the streets have grown narrower, less crowded, but more unkempt. Groups of men, and orcs, and dwarves, all dressed for combat, gather idly at corners and talk in hushed tones. The buildings become squatter, with boarded windows and crumbling facades. The signs, where they are still legible, are in languages he has never seen before. People stare at him, and despite it being high noon on a clear day, the smoke in the air and ash on the walls make the world feel dark.
It is his stomach that makes him take pause. He sits on and upturned crate in an alley between a tanner and a butcher—neither of which appear to still be in operation—and sets his bag between his feet. Placing the loaf of bread on his knee, he closes his eyes for a moment, and asks for a blessing, to let this food sustain him until he reaches his destination.
When he opens his eyes, his bag is gone.
The bread falls to the ground as he jumps to his feet, and in the corner of his eye, he catches sight of his bag, tucked under a short, scaly arm, disappearing through a crumbling door into a building on the opposite side of the street.
He is almost hit by a mule-drawn cart as he rushes after his bag. The door, locked from the outside, collapses off of its hinges as he leans his shoulder into it. Stepping over the debris, he is plunged almost immediately into total darkness. All of the windows in the building have been bricked over, and the air hangs heavy with dust.
Somewhere to his left, a board creaks.
Kravitz gropes his way across the room, his arms out in front of him, and his feet sliding over the sinking floor. It is completely silent, and he holds his breath, listening for another sign of movement.
From the back of the building, he can hear something ignite, and a small orange light seeps through the crumbling walls. Carefully, urgently, he walks towards it.
When he turns the corner, he is met by two figures. Both are covered in scales, and the short one that stole his bag is holding a dagger in one hand and an oil lantern in the other. They are scowling at him, and poised to attack.
The other figure towers over both Kravitz and the thief, his face barely illuminated by the lamp. He holds Kravitz’s bag in one enormous fist, and he smiles wide and smugly, revealing a mouth full of glistening, pointed teeth.
“Restrain him,” the one holding his bag says, and suddenly Kravitz feels the tightening of rope around his ankles as he plummets towards the floor. Reaching his hands out to catch his fall, he feels the prick of talons on his back, and then his wrists are bound, too. A cold hand grabs his hair near his scalp, and forces him back up on to his knees. Two more lizardfolk, having emerged from the darkness, stand behind him.
“Let’s see what you’re worth,” the large one holding his bag drawls as he speaks, and his voice is so low that Kravitz can feel it in his chest. He tosses Kravitz's bag to the one with the lamp, and they empty it onto the floor.
“Nothing much,” they hiss. “A blanket, a shirt, barely enough copper to spit at.”
They hand Kravitz’s purse up to the large one’s waiting hand, and return to rifling through his things. they toss his spare shirt to the side, and paw disinterestedly at his cot.
And then they go to unroll the blanket he uses for a pillow.
“Wait, don’t —” Kravitz jerks fruitlessly towards them, before being tugged violently backwards.
He sits back on his heels then—holding his breath, not daring to move—the cold edge of a blade against his neck.
“Something valuable?” the boss growls, as the thief unrolls the blanket and Kravitz's pouch falls to the floor. They pick up up, tear it open and sniff the inside, before holding it up for their boss.
“Bones,” the thief says. “Just some splinters. Swine, possibly.” They smirk at Kravitz. “Or human. Nothing special.”
“You have nothing of interest to me, human,” the boss says, waving away the thief’s outstretched hand. “But clearly, my assistant now has something of interest to you. What will you give me for it?”
Kravitz swallows, and watches the boss nod at the figure on at his side. The blade is moved, and he exhales.
“Nothing,” Kravitz says. “I have nothing. That bag....my last possessions. No money. No magic.” He can hear it in his own voice, a wavering at the ends of his words. He is shaking, and distantly he hopes that these creatures cannot see it in the darkness.
“Surely there must be.... something you can offer?” The boss reaches towards him then, and drags a claw up Kravitz’s jaw from his ear to his chin. “Kos, what do you think? He’s a fine human specimen.”
The one holding the lantern shrugs. “If that’s what you go for, I suppose.”
“I know a few madams in the area that would give an arm and a leg to add you to their stable. A nice little human? Exotic, even?” His talon digs painfully into the bottom of Kravitz’s chin.
“They’d kill him,” Kos says, a wicked grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. “They’d break him in half.”
Kravitz inhales, tries to steady himself on his shaking knees. As soon as he moves, though, the fist in his hair at the base of his skull tightens, and he yelps. The lizardfolk laugh.
The room quiets then, and from behind him he can hear another person enter from outside. Their step is heavy, and the creaking hardwood gives away their position.
Kos looks up at the boss, who frowns, and gestures vaguely into the darkness behind Kravitz. When Kos opens his mouth to speak, the noises he makes belong to no language Kravitz has ever heard before. It is a violent series of biting consonants and drawn out hisses. He pauses for a response, and when none comes, the boss once again nods towards the door. Begrudgingly, Kos hands his lantern to his boss, slinks between Kravitz and the wall, and disappears into the darkness. the boss stares over Kravitz's head, waiting, and a stifling silence falls over them again.
And then another series of clicks and hisses echoes through the building, and the light in the lantern goes out, and then there is chaos.
He can hear the sounds of combat—metal against metal, claws against flesh—like it is inches from his face. After a few moments, the guard to his left moves to join the fight, and then the fist in his hair is released, too.
Still bound at his wrists and ankles, Kravitz bends forward until his forehead is on the floor, and does what he can to cover his head. He is blind and paralyzed, and drawn between conflicting instincts:
He must escape this place if he wants to live.
If he cannot retrieve the pouch, there is no point to his life.
frozen, he tries to listen to the fight, tries to discern who’s winning, how many people are involved. He doesn’t let himself consider the possibility that whoever dares take on a mob of thieving dragonborns and lizardfolk might not be any kinder to him then they were. Instead, he imagines them as the guards from his village, wielding long wooden staves, and acting in defense, not as an attack.
The fighting comes impossibly closer, and Kravitz does what he can to make himself small, but he is knocked in the side of his head by the back of someone’s foot. Trying to remain silent, he shifts himself slowly to one side, and rolls on his back away from the havoc. He does this again, and one more time, until his side is up against a wall. There, he sits, with the combat still raging around him, counting his breaths and trying to keep them quiet and free of panic.
He hears the sound of a heavy body hitting the floor. It clatters like coins knocked off a table; someone with scales is out of the fight. There is a gurgling scream, and then another, lighter clattering. There is the sound of two more sets of talons, scraping against the floor, retreating out of earshot. There is silence again.
And then there is a slow creaking, as whoever dispatched his captors moves steadily towards Kravitz. He holds his breath and squeezes his eyes closed, as if it would make a difference. He can feel them hovering over him, and then he can feel their breath on the back of his neck, and then the rope around his ankles is cut cleanly off.
Kravitz scrambles to his feet, but is stopped in his tracks by the overwhelming darkness and an enormous hand on his chest, pinning him to the wall and knocking the wind out of him.
“Who do you work for?” The voice rumbles through his body, and through his swimming vision, Kravitz can see two eyes, inches from his own face, glowing in the dark like a cat’s.
“No one—” Kravitz gasps, and then he is being pulled forward by the neck, his heels dragging against the floor, clawing at the huge arm in front of him.
There is a deep, rumbling crunch, and then Kravitz is blinded by sunlight as he is pulled through a newly formed hole in the side of the building. Blinking in the light, Kravitz finally gets a look at the person holding him.
They are three or four heads taller than him, draped in grey robes, and strapped with a longsword on either hip. As if he weighs nothing, they throw Kravitz out of the building and onto the dusty ground of an alley. He lands on his shoulder, and winces.
The goliath man crouches over him, sighing, a fist on each knee. “Why did they take you?”
Kravitz swallows, his voice still ragged. “I don’t know, I swear to you! They took my bags, but—”
The goliath man stands with a grunt. “Wait,” and then he disappears slowly back into the building. A moment later, he returns, Kravitz’s bag in one hand, and his pouch in the other. Kravitz scrambles to his feet and reaches for his belongings, but is stopped by the goliath’s massive hand on his shoulder once more.
“The little ones took your money. And I could take this, if I was so inclined.” Kravitz is unable to speak, so sure is he of this man’s ability to crush him with one hand. “But,” the goliath says, flatly. “I will not.”
“Thank—”
“Run.” His hand tightens enough to make Kravitz gasp. “Forget what you saw, and get out of my city. Do not stop moving until you cannot see this place behind you.” He hands Kravitz his bag. “Get out.”
As soon as the hand is off his shoulder, Kravitz sprints up the alley, his bag in his arms and the pouch clenched in his fist. He barrels through groups of men smoking, and women sweeping rugs. Disoriented and directionless, he plows through neighborhood after neighborhood, the buildings becoming more rundown, and then less, before they start to become shorter and more spaced out. he runs until he can no longer run, and then walks until he is dragging his feet.
by then, night has fallen, and he is ambling down a dirt path, the fire and smoke of the city fading behind him. When he can keep himself upright no longer, he drops the pouch into his bag, cinches the top tight, and wraps himself around it, before falling asleep against a fencepost on the side of the road.
-
He is following a warm light as he ambles, exhausted and dizzy, through a waist-deep fog. He can barely keep his eyes open, and each breath is harder than the last. The light is calling to him, softly and wordlessly, guiding him forward, and promising relief. In the fog, he can see little burst of static, like distant lightning, crackling around him, glittering and multicolored.
He looks down, skimming his hands over the top of the fog, and realizes then that he is both completely naked, and covered head to toe in burns and ash. His own stomach churns at the sight of him, a walking corpse, but he feels no pain. Just the increasingly thick air in his lungs, and the gentle but insistent pull of the light.
Kravitz can feel himself fading, can feel light telling him how close he is to his rest. He is ready to lie down, to stop trying so hard for a while, to let whatever has a hold of him finally take him away. He has no other worry in the world then to find somewhere comfortable to stop.
And then there is the feeling of a hand on his ankle, and a hand on each wrist, and a hand on the back of his neck—they knock him out of his calm resignation, and he struggles for the breath he had let slip away from him.
His skin burns under these hands, and his skin burns everywhere else, too. The light is fading, and he is screaming as he is pulled down under the fog, as the rainbow sparks fade into blackness.
And then he is in the clearing dotted with flowers, and his hands and feet and nape of his neck is scalded. He is draped in a sleeping shirt, however, and alive. Not too far off, he sees a mountain of flame, rising impossibly high, and a column of smoke billowing even above that.
He is paralyzed, and there is no noise but the fire, and then there is the wind in his ears, and is says to him, run . And he takes the first step of millions away from his village.
-
He wakes with a start as an apple bounces off his arm.
He blinks, and gasps, and notices with relief that he is still curled tightly around his bag. The light around him is still golden and hazy, and morning mist hands in the air.
Another apple pegs him in the side, and rolls back into the dusty road. Finally, he unfurls himself, his shoulder sore from where he landed on it, and his joints creaking, and turns to see where the assailing fruit came from.
Two impossibly small gnome children hide behind a water barrel on the opposite side of the road. They are peaking out from behind it, additional apples in each of their hands. He stands, then, and stretches, as another apple is hurled at him. Kravitz catches it at it flies towards his chest, and notices how bruised and mealy it is.
When he takes a step forward, he nearly falls onto his face. His legs buckle under him, and it dawns on him slowly that he has not eaten or drank anything in more than a day.
Shakily, he shuffles over to the barrel the children are guarding. Instinctively, he leans into it, drinking what he can as fast as he can, lapping water out of his hands, and then straight from the barrel when that proves inefficient. The water is brackish, and smells of animals, and has clearly been stagnant for a few days, but he has drank worse, and it soothes his parched throat.
Eventually, he hauls himself out of the barrel, and slumps back down to the ground, leaning against it. His head spins from lifting it too quickly, and from the lack of food, and again unthinkingly, he bites into the apple that had been thrown at him.
The children emerge from behind the barrel, staring at him silently and in awe. Kravitz finishes the apple, and tosses the core down the road, and prepares himself to stand.
And then one of the children extends an arm, and in his hand is a fresh, shiny apple. Kravitz nods, and devours it as quick as the first. It is sweet, and tart, and juice drips down his chin, and he has never been so glad for a piece of fruit in his life.
The children remain next to him, pressed up against each other and still on the defensive, watching as Kravitz eats.
“You a demon?” the taller of the children asks. She is wearing a tattered beige dress and is wrapped in a wool shawl.
Kravitz shakes his head. “No.”
“A ranger? A rogue—” she asks again.
“A tiefling? A feral tiefling?!” the small boy at her side interrupts.
“No, stupid, he said he wasn’t a demon. Tieflings is demons.” She looks down at him, accusingly. “Right?”
Kravitz nods, swallowing the last of his apple. “I’m not a tiefling. I’m just a human, just traveling through here.” He raises the core towards her and nods, before flinging it down the road. “Thank you, for that.”
“Where you going?” the girl asks, still watching him like a predator watches its prey. She tugs at the boy’s shirt, pulling him barely behind her.
“The dark coast. The capital city. Have you heard of it?” He realizes then how lost he must be, how much a day’s running without direction must have driven him off-course. He realizes, too, how ridiculous it is to ask this question of children. The boy disappears further behind his companion.
The girl quirks her head to one side. “O’course.”
Slowly and aching, Kravitz pulls himself to his feet. “You know what i’m talking about?”
The girl looks around her, as if scanning the area for spies. And then she grabs the boy’s hand, and starts walking up the road. “C’mon.”
Kravitz hurries behind them, and searches for the right question. “Have you....been to the dark coast before?”
“Not really.” The girl is maneuvering around the boy now, bent on keeping her between him and Kravitz.
“Alright.” Kravitz resigns himself to it. Either these children will take him further away from town, he thinks, and he’ll have an extra couple hours to make up when he rights himself, or they know something he doesn’t. Either way the walk is pleasant, as the dirt road narrows and fades into a gravely path. Grass sprouts up between the buildings then, too, replacing the muddy plots where old houses once stood. The sun is warm, and the breeze is cool, and the day is young, as light just barely creeps over the horizon.
The sun is rising in front of them; at least they are going in the right direction.
They walk for nearly three hours, before the path come to a sudden stop in front of a stone wall that cuts through lush cow pasture. The last building was a hundred yards back or more, a small farm shack barely held up by piles of stone. The children stop as abruptly as the path, and Kravitz, who had been watching a white butterfly float through the grass, almost walks into them.
“We gotta stop here,” the girl says, looking up at him. “And you gotta keep going.”
The field beyond the wall grows slowly more wild as it crests sharply into a tall hill in the distance.
Taking a deep breath, Kravitz throws one leg over the wall, and looks back at his small guides.
“I’m sorry I have nothing to give you,” he says. “Thank you again, for the apples.”
“S’alright,” the girl says, shrugging. And then unceremoniously, she grabs the boy by his wrist, and they turn their backs on him, walking assuredly back up the path.
Kravitz resolves to follow the children’s directions until high noon, before he reorients himself, and he swings his other leg over the wall. Alone again, he fixes his gaze at the top of the hill, and begins the slow, climb to the top. Within the hour, the steadily rising gradient of the hill makes his going more difficult than he was expecting.
He is panting as he trudges higher, and he notices the sun now nearly directly over his head. At least, he tells himself, if he was lead completely astray, the top of the hill is a good place to survey his surroundings. He doesn’t dare look back, focusing straight in front of him, on the rounded peak in front of him, as each step grows steeper.
The sun is just above him when he throws his arms upwards, grabbing the grass over his head, and pulls himself up onto the top of the hill. He lays there for a moment, propped up on his elbows, sweaty and out of breath, wishing he had somehow taken some of the water from that barrel. After a minute of rest, he stands, hands on his hips and still sucking wind, and finally surveys the land on the other side of the hill.
Ten feet beyond where he stands, the grass of the field drops away into a severe and rocky cliff face. Beyond that, there are hundreds of black boulders, peppering a sandy grey landscape, out of which grows a towering and ominous city. In the distance, past the dark spires and towers of the city, is a churning sea that fades into a thick mist before it reaches the horizon.
Somehow, beyond all odds, Kravitz has found his way to the coast, has landed at the feet of the city he has traveled so far to reach. Feeling the sun now hot on his neck, he drops to his knees and says a prayer of thanks. He has crossed a continent, has come close to losing his life. The scene before him is grim, but it feels like a blessing. Carefully, he winds his way along the edge of the cliff before coming across a crude staircase carved into the side of the rock wall. Slowly, he descends.
-
To his surprise, the city is teeming with life. The streets are clean, and the buildings are well maintained. People of races he’s never seen in person before—drows, kenku, hobgoblins, shifters—they mill around, going about their business peacefully and productively. The city is strange, as well in its acceptance of the arcane. Fortune-telling wizards and clerics offering to win favor with a particular god, they all operate honest businesses side by side with bakers and tailors.
Children play in the streets, and the smells of food and flowers perfume the briny air. For the first time in a while, he feels curious in the face of the new and unknown, instead of fearful.
He trades his blanket for a slab of salted fish and a boiled potato, from a vendor on the corner of a busy street who takes pity on his penniless soul. She is a portly older woman with long silver hair and beard, and when Kravitz asks her if she has heard of the sorceress he is looking for, she shakes her head amicably, and points down the road.
“Not I, no. I don’t go messin’ with such things. Spuds and kippers do me just fine, thank you. But my son Pavel’s an alchemist now, and he might be pointin’ you in the right way.”
Again to his complete shock, Kravitz finds pavel the alchemist, apprenticing in a humble, well-kept shop, and he does, miraculously, know of the woman Kravitz seeks.
“She don’t dwell long in one spot now,” he says in the same lilting accent as his mother. “But last I knew she was down fletcher’s way. Due north half a league, can’t be missed. Only street with all of three barbers. How they stay in good business, never I’ll know.”
Pavel sends Kravitz on his way with a small stone he says can be added to any drink to increase its potency. Kravitz thanks him profusely and tucks it into his bag to be traded for dinner if the need arises.
An hour or so later, with the sun just barely beginning to set, Kravitz comes to a street with three barber poles standing between its signs and lamps. Following Pavel’s direction, he finds the alley between the second and third barber, and slips his way into its shadows.
There, behind a barrel of salt, there is a door with no sign or markings. Hesitantly, he opens the door, and peers into the well-lit staircase behind it. Slowly, he enters, and begins up the stairs, closing the door behind him. He climbs three stories before reaching a landing with a door. This one too has no indication of what’s behind it, but Kravitz knocks, and waits in silence for a response.
It feels like years.
What if Pavel was right about his warning and she isn’t here anymore? What will he do then? He has been too lucky in this city of darkness. He has stumbled upon the only light. But the light has run out, and he has no other leads, and—
The door swings open, and standing in front of him is a human woman, elderly but not decrepit by any means, dressed in a white robe. She smiles up at him pleasantly, and then moves to the side, gesturing for him to enter.
The room is bare, save for a small wood stove and a sleeping mat in one corner. The air is thick with smoke from burning incense.
She sits in the middle of the floor, and motions for him to join her. Taking his bag off and placing next to him, he kneels in front of her.
“You want to bring someone back from the dead,” she says. It is not a question. Her voice is thin and reedy, and it sends a chill up Kravitz’s spine.
“No—yes, um,” and he digs around in his bag for the pouch, placing it on the floor between them. “My family, my...my people, they, um...” Kravitz can feel his throat growing thick, as the words catch in his mouth.
“Calm, dear,” the woman says. She holds out her downturned hand, and when she turns her palm up, there is a small cup of steaming liquid in it. “Drink this. Take your time.”
It is a sweet and peppery herbal tea, and Kravitz sips at it for a moment before taking a deep breath, and emptying the contents of the bag onto the floor. He scoops them all together, the handful of bone fragments, none larger than a finger, and forms a small mound in front of him.
“This is...all I have. Everyone I’d known for twenty years. And this is all that’s left.” He can feel the tears pricking the corners of his eyes, and he blinks to keep them back.
“You want to bring them back,” she says. again, it is a statement, an inarguable fact.
“I saw the astral plane. And I was saved. And I want to know why.” The smoke is making his nostrils burn.
Slowly, the sorceress bends forward and picks up the bones, placing them in one hand and holding them there as if she was weighing them. She stands, then, and walks towards her sleeping mat.
“Your people worship Istus, the goddess of fate, correct?”
Kravitz is taken back, speechless for a moment. There is no way for her to know this. “Yes.”
“Then you must believe that this was fated, no?”
“What?”
“If you are true in your faith then you must believe that it was ordained by the Lady of Fate for your family to die. Why else would she have allowed it?” The sorceress’s voice is even and flat and emotionless.
There is no point in holding back the tears, so Kravitz lets them fall, silent and unyielding, until his cheeks are dripping. Her question feels like an accusation, like an attack, and he drops his chin against his chest.
“These are of no use to me,” she says, and tosses the bones back at him. He winces when he hears them hit the floor, and his breath is coming quick and rough. If asked, he could not say why this emotion was bubbling up now, but there is something in the voicing of it, of his nightmares being presented to a stranger that feels like ripping open an almost-healed wound.
“Why am I alive, then? Why was I fated to carry this?” He sighs between sobs. “What happened to my family? Why am I not with them? Who decided I should be saved?” The questions come fast, frantic, hysterical. “I don’t need a miracle, I need answers!”
There is a beat of total, agonizing silence.
“I cannot help you,” she says, and it feels final, and unwavering, and like a blow to the chest.
He can feel the floor under his knees, sees the bones scattered around him, and knows that he is shaking. He cannot breathe, he cannot speak, his face is wet with tears, and there is nowhere else for him to turn.
“No, child, I have nothing to do for you.” Kravitz can hear her take a sharp breath. “But I think I know someone that does.” In an instant she is in front of him, looming just over his slumped shoulders, and she places her hand, open-palmed against his forehead.
-
The world is replaced by thick, black, nothingness. And then there is a voice.
“open your eyes,” it commands, and he does. He is wading, waist-deep in shimmering iridescent waters, his bare feet half submerged in sand below it. Before him, an enormous stone-wrought fortress stands stoic and dark, a grey smudge in this rainbow world. There is something beautiful, and sickeningly familiar about this place. “Who are you?” the voice asks.
The discomfort of his journey is gone, his throat is no longer ragged and his pains are gone, but he is still tired to the bone. “Kravitz,” he says, and his own voice echoes, making him feel less like he is standing on a beach, and more like he is trapped underground.
“Kravitz who? Where is your home? Who are your people?” He cannot tell where the voice is coming from. It surrounds him, as if it is coming from his own head.
“The western mountains,” he says, dragging his words. He feels drunk, heavy, slow. “My home was destroyed. My people are gone.”
“I see.” The voice sounds distant, and in his periphery, a black blur appears on beach. “Come closer.”
He begins walking towards the shore, but the water clings to him like honey, and each step is a battle.
“You were spared once, Kravitz of the western mountains,” the voice says, and this time there is a feminine timbre to it that was not there before. “You have been to this plane, and escaped it. Do you confess to this crime?”
“ What —?” If only he could reach the shore, he thinks. He could move quicker, he could address the owner of the voice, plead his case.
“You attempted to engage in necromantic rituals, aiming to defy the laws of life and death, and upset the decisions of fate. You were, however, denied the information you sought, and were sent to see me. Is this true?” The voice is closer, higher pitched, smoother.
“I just…” His thinking has slowed like his movements. “I wanted—” Kravitz falls, then, becoming stuck up to his neck in the clinging water.
“You watched your village die, and chose to remember their lives not with dignity and humility, but with vengeance.” The voice is even and calm in its accusations. “You are ungrateful. You turned away from all you were taught, from your traditions, your family, your god.”
“ No— ” Kravitz gasps, using his last shreds of energy to pull himself out of the water and on to the cool grey sand of the beach. He lies there, panting, eyes closed, tears still running down his face.
The dark blur fades into the shape of a large black bird that rubs its beak into his palm. The voice speaks.
“Indeed, you were spared once, Kravitz of the western mountains. And for it you should be thrown into the eternal stockade for the rest of existence.” The bird stands in front of him, tilting its head, inspecting him. “For the crimes of escaping the astral plane and evading my domain.”
He cannot protest; he can barely keep his eyes open, as the bird walks back and forth along the length of his body.
“Moreover,” the voice continues. “Istus should be informed of your falling”
There is no fight left in him, no more energy to resist. If damnation is an eternity of his face ground into the damp sand, he thinks he can accept it.
The bird nips at his fingers, and pauses, clacking its beak and hopping in spot on the sand.
“All of these things... should happen. But I have perceived your truth. I taste your confusion and feel your ignorance.” The voice has crystalized into that of an elegant, articulate woman, and it is coming from the bird. “You had no choice in your salvation and subsequent transgressions, then. I will offer you the chance to make that choice now.”
Kravitz feels his head lolling backwards, and the world spins for a moment before settling right side up. He is kneeling on the sand before the bird, slouched, but upright. He cannot focus his vision. The bird speaks again.
“I can fulfill your dreams, Kravitz.” The bird walks closer to him, and pecks at his arm. “I can see what you want most out of your life and deliver it to you.”
His world goes dark, and then he is bombarded with visions of concert halls and amphitheaters, of hushed crowds surrounding rows and rows of musicians dressed in black, with their eyes on him. He sees a baton in his hand, and parchment copies of music he himself has written, upright on a stand in front of him. The crowd is cheering, and he is almost knocked backwards with the power of it.
And then he is back on the beach, the black bird hopping up and down in front of him.
“I can give you this, Kravitz, if you relinquish the right to know not only why you were saved from your people’s destruction, but of their existence in the first place.” His stomach lurches as his mind is flooded with yet more visions. This time is not of a grand hypothetical future, but of the simple, concrete past. He sees his village, his home, his family. He is for a moment a child in his mother’s arms, then a young boy running through the trees, and then he is in the clearing with his first love. He is surrounded for a fleeting second in a sweet and tender warmth that is gone from him all too soon. The visions fade into wisps of smoke, and he is hit with a wave of fresh grief.
And then he is staring at the bird again, and beneath the exhaustion and the pain, he can feel his blood run cold.
“No…. please —” he gasps. He does not know how to begin protesting this idea. He cannot find the words to articulate his horror.
“Or,” the bird says, resting its head on his folded knee. “I will right the wrongs done to your people.” He nods at this, rendered wordless; the beach is sharpened into focus for a moment. “However,” it speaks again, and he can feel the world beginning to fall away again.
A lifetime passes in the bird’s pause, and Kravitz feels as though he is running out of air.
“However, in exchange for their lives, you must offer your own to me.”
“What?” he croaks. Hs is confused, certain that he is already dead, or soon to be. Distantly, he thinks of his body lying on the floor in the sorceress’s room. What could someone like her do with a corpse? And what use does this bird have for a dead man?
“I will restore your people’s souls to their living bodies. Your village will be as vital as you remember ii. I will make it so your terrible tragedy never was. And in return, you will bind your soul to me. It will be as though you never lived on the material plane, and you will do my bidding as an agent of the Raven Queen, for as long as I have dominion over this plane.”
There is a darkness in him, forged in the fire that destroyed his home, and fed over the year since that night, that stirs for a moment. That darkness tells him it is better to forget, to relinquish his suffering to the ether. For a second he thinks that maybe he has somehow earned the happiness that the Raven’s first offer would bring him. And then what is left of himself reemerges.
“I want to know who saved me,” he whispers, for his voice has long left him.
“Surrender your soul, and the answers shall be yours,” the Raven Queen answers.
He stares at his hands on his lap, knuckles in the sand, limp, and wet with his own tears. He notices his pants going threadbare at the knees, and the hem of his shirt fraying. Finally, he looks back up at the bird.
“Take it,” he says, before collapsing forward back onto the beach.
-
Again, there is darkness, and in it, there is nothing but the sound of his pulse in his ears, and a deep, paralyzing cold that creeps up his limbs. A numbness follows the cold, and he lifts his hand to his face to reassure himself that it is still there. In the dark, he can barely see more than an outline, and try as he might, no amount of clenching his fists or digging his nails into his palms can bring feeling back into his fingers. He raises his hands to his mouth, and attempts to breathe into his palms, but his breath has been chased out with the warmth. His heart races, and his mind tells him he should be choking, and he covers his eyes as panic grips his senseless body.
And then his heart stops, and it is quiet.
It is so quiet that he is sure he has been destroyed, that he simply no longer exists, that the complete lack of sensation could only be caused by his total and utter annihilation. Kravitz has died before, and he remembers the loss of feeling that came with relinquishing one’s self to the astral plane. It was almost freeing. This was not death. This was much worse than death.
But the feeling returns to him seconds later, with a startling jolt, and his skin crawls with pointed, tingling pricks. Starting in his fingers, the tingling sharpens into an agonizing burn. Terrified to look, and terrified not to, he opens his eyes again to stare down at his hands.
His flesh is disappearing, dissolving and fading away like mist, leaving only bone from the tips of his fingers to his elbows, and beyond.
Without air or intent, Kravitz screams.
The next thing he is aware of is breaking the surface of the rainbow waters surrounding the eternal stockade. He is thrown up against the shores of the island, and catches himself on his hands and knees, gasping without air and staring at his reflection in the water lapping over his wrists.
Distorted faintly by the waves, a hollow-eyed skull looks back up at him.
“Stand,” the Raven Queen commands, and Kravitz obeys, scrambling out of the water and up the beach to where she watches him.
He cannot feel the sand under his feet. He cannot feel anything.
He stumbles again at the Raven Queen’s feet, and as he drops his hands back into the sand, she speaks.
“I said stand , Kravitz, once of the western mountains, now and forever of my retinue. Stand and open your hand, and command to you the weapon with which you shall enforce my edicts.”
Kravitz pulls himself to his feet and does as he is told, opening his palm upwards and bracing himself for a new and untold horror.
What appears in his hand is a scythe, not unlike the ones he watched the farmers of his village mow grain with. The handle is a dark and polished wood, and the long blade shines like a mirror. It is as tall as he is, and balanced perfectly. It is beautiful, this thing of death.
When he grips it, he is jolted again; his hand, and indeed, the rest of his body, is returned to the way he appeared in life. He feels his face with his free hand. His skin is cold, but it is there.
Over his body, materializing as his flesh had, are clothes of fine black fabrics as he has never seen before. A satin tunic and trousers fitted like a glove, and over his shoulders a cloak of thick, dark fur. His boots shine, and there are copper rings on his fingers, and bands in his hair.
He can feel it all, and he sighs, settling back into his body. He can feel the wood in his hands and fabric against his skin, and he feels whole for the first time since before he set out on his journey. He still cannot sense his heartbeat, but the aching background hunger he had lived with for months is gone. His feet are no longer sore. The crick in his neck from sleeping tensed to pounce has worked itself out.
He stands up straight, and plants the end of the scythe in the sand, and as he does so, he feels a shock run through him. it starts in his chest and spreads out through his limbs, and when he looks down at his hands, small sparks of red light flicker under the skin of his wrists.
He feels powerful.
The bird on the beach is a bird no longer. In its place, a woman, draped in black robes and scarves that obscure most of her face and body, towers in front of him. A golden crown atop her head glitters in the light off the water. Instinctually, Kravitz drops to one knee and bows before her.
“Kravitz,” she says, and when he looks up at her, she places a single black-taloned finger against his forehead, and he sees:
He sees his family sitting for a meal, and there is no place for him.
He sees the home in which he lived and died, and his bed is not there.
He sees the clearing in the woods, and his love is there with a different boy.
He sees his family, without him—without knowing they are without him—and they are content, and they are alive.
“You were saved, Kravitz, by the combined power of your mother and her sisters’ last breaths. There is magic, deep in your family’s past that was forced out of them in their time of crisis.” The Raven Queen motions for him to stand, and gently, not unlike a mother, she wipes his tears. “There was nothing wicked about your salvation.”
“They are happy?” he asks, but the Raven Queen does not answer. Kravitz learns, in time, that she cares very little for the happiness of mortals.
“Come,” she says. “There is work to be done.” And with a flourish of her scarves, the tall, dark woman is gone, and there is a large bird standing on the beach next to him. It hops once, before spreading its wings and flying gracefully towards the eternal stockade. Tapping the scythe on the ground again, he feels himself grow light and incorporeal. Kravitz follows her then, finally willingly, into the darkness.
—And then, he is awake.
There is no urgency, no sense of danger, no nightmare to run from. The room around him is dimly lit, with the first bluish rays of morning light falling through the curtains and across his bed.
He is awake because he is cold. He is cold because the blanket has been pulled off of him and is wrapped, cocoon like, around the sleeping figure next to him. Unwilling to wake him, Kravitz rolls over, and presses his face and body into the mass of blankets.
Still chilled, he fades in and out of sleep, his dreams a wash of a half-remembered life and death. One thousand years rolls over him like fog from the shore, separating his now from his then. He remembers little, and few remember him, and for a moment his chest aches in a way it hasn’t for hundreds of years.
And then he is hit in the face with Taako’s errant elbow, and the ache is gone. He is wrapped once again in a soft blanket and the arms of his love. Then, despite the sun’s rising and the gradual lightening of the room, Kravitz lets himself fall back into sleep, deeply and unguarded.