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It happens in an instant.
Fabian’s near Gorgug, dealing with the treant and the sprite that had just evaporated due to one of Kristen’s spells. Riz had just done some absolutely crazy manoeuvre that he caught out of the corner of his eyes, essentially eliminating the centaur from the battle in one fell swoop, and Fig had disappeared along with Ayda in what appeared to be a plane shift.
Killian, glowing ruby in his chest, advances towards Riz, whose hair is buffeted by the wind and the storm around them. His hands glow, burning with fire, eyes alighting a demonic red. The treant is still in front of him and Gorgug, but Fabian isn’t blind to the rest of the battle around him. He’s a trained fighter, a half-elf at that — his keen senses were made for this. He absorbs all the information as it comes, strategies and determination filling his mind.
Fabian watches as Killian grabs Riz around the throat, hands a vice grip around his neck, flesh burning and bubbling beneath Killian’s hands. He watches as Killian lifts Riz, so seemingly small and fragile in his hands but still fighting despite how he’s visibly weakening. Killian slams his body into the ground, the stairs shaking with the pure force of the impact.
Riz’s body crumples, limbs askew and at angles that surely can’t be comfortable, burns covering his neck and gashes along his arms and torso. His chest is still, limbs empty of their constant energy and fight. Fabian doesn’t need medicinal training to know the horrifying truth that confronts him.
Riz is dead.
Part of Fabian’s mind, the rational bits hidden in the back, whispers that he’ll be okay, that Kristen is nearby and Fig can make gems with that prestidigitation spell of hers, he saw her do it to revivify Gilear, and really, it can’t be more than a minute before someone makes it to Riz and saves him. Some part of Fabian, no matter how small, knows that it is very unlikely that Riz is gone forever, and that he’s in a place where their healers can easily reach him, and that they are adventurers that are skilled enough to go break the rules of life and death.
The other part of Fabian just begins to scream.
Not out loud, of course — there’s still this treant to deal with, and Gorgug probably wouldn’t take too kindly to having him yell in his ear, but every cell of his body feels like it is screaming the sudden rush of pain and loss into the winds and the storm around him. It’s a wound that Fabian didn’t realize would open until there was already blood pouring out of him and onto the stone steps around him.
Riz is… It took some time for Fabian to warm up to Riz. To see him as more than just an eccentric goblin boy, obsessed with mysteries and clues. To look at him and think of him as The Ball, instead of just a ball. It was a lot of late-night phone calls and homework done together at Basrar’s ice cream shop and even just on this spring break alone, losing who he was on Leviathan and finding himself again in Fallinel and having Riz be by his side, steadfast and earnest throughout all of it. Images flash through Fabian’s head — Riz tattooing himself at the Golden Gardens with his clue board, the look of glee on his face when he showed off his new briefcase and personalized, calligraphed business cards, the way he cried so openly about shrimp in one of the stupidest parties they’ve ever held — and it hurts so deeply to even consider that there is a possibility, however slim, that Riz might not walk out of Sylvaire with them. Fabian is still not the most in tune with his emotions, nor is he good at dealing with and processing them, but it’s an undeniable fact that at some point in the past two years, Riz managed to become one of the people in this world that Fabian cares for the most.
Fabian tunes back in just in time to see the treant raise a mighty limb and turn towards Gorgug. He barely thinks before leaping, sliding under to kick one of its legs and knock it off balance, head whipping towards Gorgug and a breath of relief escaping him as the treant’s arm hits the rocky stairs an inch away from Gorgug.
A shocked, disbelieving grin flits onto Gorgug’s face for a moment, and Fabin returns it. “Spring break, I believe in you!” he yells, and watches as Gorgug fills with a new resolve. The treant has already dealt some mighty blows to the both of them, and any attack escaped is another attack they can afford to take in the future. It’s a step further away from the gates between life and death. “I’ve lost one friend already, that’s too many.” Something shatters a bit in his chest, voice escaping him a little more hurt and panicked than he wanted to come across as, but the treant has already turned its attention to him and Fabian can’t afford to care about whether Gorgug could get some insight onto what was truly hurting him in this moment.
It’s easy to lose himself in the battle, and so he does.
Fabian’s worries about Riz’s state of being were assuaged quickly by the return of Ayda, Fig, and an exhausted looking Gorthalax, the shattering ruby tearing apart Killian’s body and still leaving enough of the precious gem to allow Fig to revivify Riz. Fabian catches glimpses of Riz between blows, woozy and horribly injured and looking barely alive, but standing despite literally dying mere moments ago and training his tie-camera right on Kalina.
He doesn’t see what happens next, parrying a blow from the treant and hitting it with his sword right back, but when Fabian next looks up at the scene above him, Kalina kicks Riz square in the chest and his body — again, so small and fragile and weak after taking so much damage in so little time — flies off the edge of the staircase, a hundred-foot drop between him and the rock and dirt below.
Panic fills his veins — if Riz falls that far, after already being knocked unconscious again by this stupid cat, there’s no way the fall won’t kill him. And even if by some miracle it doesn’t outright steal the rest of his life from his body, there is no chance that Aelwen or Kristen or Fig can make it back to him in time to revivify.
The long and short of it is — if Fabian doesn’t catch Riz now, he’ll be gone forever, and that’s a reality that hurts him too much to think of.
He doesn’t even think before leaping away from the treant, sliding smoothly onto the Hangman’s back and commanding him to run towards Riz. The treant lunges out, smacking the Hangman in the ribs, but they keep going, onwards, upwards. They can’t afford to stop — the cost of any incompetency on his part is more than Fabian would ever be willing to pay. The Hangman stumbles, wounds catching up to him, and he yells out, “Sire! Go, save your Ball!”
Fabian leaps off the Hangman, runs up the stairs that last little bit that he can. He can’t let Riz fall. He won’t be okay if Riz falls.
He leaps over the bannister of the staircase, reaching out as far as he can with his entire body, fingertips barely touching the rail. The elven sheet whips out, the silken, silvery material wreathed in shimmering red reaching out towards Riz’s prone body, dropping towards the rock below. It unfurls, stretching, reaching, it has to be far enough it has to catch him please—
A horrible sinking feeling grows in Fabian’s stomach. The sheet is a foot too short to wrap around Riz. He’s failed him. Riz will die because Fabian couldn’t save him.
Anger and determination and sheer will flood through Fabian. He has to save Riz. For all the times that Riz has been there for him, he has to save him— he needs to save him. The sheet glows a brilliant orange, energy flowing from Fabian’s fingertips into the silken material, and the fire elemental that he had burned himself dancing with all those days ago reaches an outstretched arm and wraps it around Riz, catching him and saving him from the death that awaited below. The elemental smiles softly, pressing a small kiss against Riz’s cheek before returning to the sheet and Fabian whips the sheet back to him in one smooth motion. Riz flies into his arms, unconscious and bleeding and burned and so, so fragile, but safe, wrapped in his elven battle sheet and Fabian’s arms and on steady ground once more.
Relief shoots through him, more intoxicating than any drug he’s ever done, and Fabian, on an impulse, presses his own kiss against Riz’s cheek before unwrapping him and laying him gently down. Quickly, Fabian shoots a glance at Kristen, making sure she’ll be able to heal Riz if he leaves him here, and then races off towards the top of the staircase. The battle isn’t over yet.
But Fabian is beyond glad that Riz will continue to fight this battle, and all the rest, with him.