Chapter Text
The first time Kravitz met Taako, he was dying.
After having been kidnapped, stripped, and tortured with symbols carved into his body, suffice to say, he already wasn’t having a good day. As his torturers dragged him, still bleeding to the summoning circle to be bled, he knew he had nothing to lose. He had no instrument, but started a low song beneath his gag the cult couldn’t properly hear.
Two of his captors dragged him naked to a dark room lit by torches. There were no windows, and he assumed he was underground, but he couldn’t tell. When they weren’t looking, he managed to get one to trip, putting him off balance long enough to knock him down and grab his weapon.
The others rushed over, a swarm of cloaks trying to overwhelm him. He was already dying, he knew, but he would not be a tool used by these monsters.
He was stabbed through the gut, his blood spilling across the stone floor, but everyone elses was too. He was a wild animal more than man, he cast silence in the room, nullifying the enemy wizard’s spells, and also his own screams. In the deafening quiet, he killed every last one of them, 5 men all together. He recognized them from a concert he had attended.
In later centuries he’d speculate about these men, about how they had gone there to scope out a target. It soured the memory of that concert, the first, and it turned out only, one he had been able to conduct. But in this moment, all he knew was the life was dripping out of his body….and right now, that was a relief.
“Oh damn,” a voice said, alerting him of a new voice in the room, and that the silence spell had ended, “You warned me it was grisly, but you really weren’t kidding. Blegh, no wonder you weren’t grossed out by that Machete movie, cause damn.”
Kravitz tilted his head up ever so slightly, his vision blurring. He could just make out a figure, an Elf if he were to guess by the giant ear-shapes at his head. He was wearing a ridiculous pointed hat, and holding a staff. It was kind of thin for a staff, though, and had a point at one end, and a bobble on the other.
“Sorry to bother you, bones,” the elf said, “Just waiting on a-oh! Here he is.”
The elf nodded to a point in the room, where a light appeared. From the light formed yet another man, this one in dark robes like the cultists. “There you are, Reaper,” he said, and it seemed like he was talking to Kravitz, “Now I will stop you before you even begin--”
“Buckets!” The elf yelled, and threw the staff like a spear at the new man. The point of it landed straight at his heart, and he unspooled like he was made of thread, falling into a heap of string on the ground.
The elf hummed something and scooped up the string. “Pretty cool, huh?” he asked Kravitz.
Kravitz spat up blood.
“Right, right,” Taako said, squatting by his head, “Look, this is….awkward, I know, but I can’t really save you,” he said, and he was close enough Kravitz could see his face. He was beautiful, “It’s complicated, and you're kind of like, dying, so I don’t even have enough time to explain, but uh,” he swallowed, and some of his calm facade melted away, “You’re going to be ok, ok? I know that’s hard to believe right now, but really. You’re pretty amazing and uh, the afterlife’s got some pretty crazy shit for you.
Kravitz felt cold. So, so cold. He couldn’t feel his feet anymore, and each breath felt like it was stabbing him again and again. He gasped, trying to ask this stranger how he knew, WHAT he knew, but his mouth couldn’t form words any longer. “Here,” Taako said, and held out his hand, “I gotta get back, but, I’ll stick with your for this, ok?”
Kravitz had just enough energy to take his hand in his own, gripping onto it, his last connection to the world. His breath couldn’t come at all anymore, and he fell limp, his vision blacking out.
“Catch ya later, babe,” was the last thing he heard, before he was suddenly on a dark island made of stone, sitting before a throne with a large woman seated inside, wearing a raven mask on her head.