Chapter Text
Four days removed from the Mahjarrat Ritual, an exhausted adventurer lay sleeping in the chambers of Falador Castle. It was nearly noon and she had done nothing but laze about since their return from the north, yet nobody dared disturb her. She had survived both battle with creatures that gave even demons nightmares, and the awakening of creatures that gave the gods themselves nightmares. One of the former had tried to do… something to her, something that was keeping her up at night.
From the skies above the White City, a small gold-feathered messenger dove towards the ground, soon finding a perch on the single window that brought light to this adventurer’s abode.
The peaceful afternoon murmur was spoilt by a horrendous sound, a sound that one would expect to send such an animal fleeing in terror. This would likely be the case, if the source of the sound had not been the bird in question.
The Adventurer didn’t take long to awaken. The hideous screech made for an effective alarm, and the bird finally settled only as she took the note from its back. I know this bird, she thought to herself. She belongs to Ali— no, to Wahisietel.
That was three days ago. She had spent the last three days following the simple instructions written on to the note: Return to the Ritual site with your blades.
She had taken the lodestone to the Seers’ Village, hiked her way back up the Fremenniks frozen hunting grounds, navigated the sea route to the ruins of Ghorrock fortress, and with new daylight, had found once more the ruined wall that gave passage to the site of the Ritual. She scrambled across the fallen stone, and began her trek down the white blanket of snow.
Torva's plate armor was warm, but made trudging through the snow an endurance test without equal. After only half an hour, the adventurer began to wonder if she hadn’t been played for a fool, yet something pushed her forward. Some part of her already knew why she was here.
Peering through the mist, she could just barely make out a humanoid shape to the south. The figure stood patiently as if waiting for someone; whoever they were, Wahisietel had summoned her here for them. The closer she came, the more identifiable the figure was, and it didn’t take long for her to recognize him.
A tall and burly gray-skinned figure stood amongst the snow, holding a large black blade of his own. He wore black leather legs protected by side-tassets, greaves, and sabatons; all made of a weathered dark steel.
Though he wore no top, his forearms were protected well by vambraces of the same leather, but only the left wore a couter and gauntlet. Curved demon-like horns protruded from either side of a steel armet helm, though the right-side horn was largely missing. Nothing was visible behind the helm save for a pair of glowing vermillion eyes.
It was the custom gorget that betrayed his identity. When first they met, the trim of his gorget had emphasized a hole where the heart should be. It was by her efforts that the heart - now preserved in a canopic jar - once more occupied its rightful place, causing the veins and arteries beneath his scarred and decaying skin to glow an unnatural orange.
The adventurer made her way as quickly as the armor would allow. Her rush had fortunately attracted the man’s attention, and he too began to march in her direction.
By the time they caught up with each other, the adventurer had nearly tired herself out.
“Arrav,” she gasped, taking off her helmet; speaking and breathing were easier without it.
“I am sorry for calling you out here so soon after the Ritual, Sepulchre, but I’m afraid I have little time.” The Hero of Avarrocka was getting straight to the point.
“Well I wasn’t exactly busy,” she admitted. “I was still recovering from everything that happened here.”
Her eyes scanned the area, quickly catching the Ritual marker off in the distance.
“Yes, forgive me, my undead body does not tire.” The tone he spoke in reflected the pain of this truth. “I have been… this… for so long that I have forgotten what that feels like.”
Her gaze shifted back to the Ritual stone.
“Don’t worry about it, Arrav…” Her voice had softened. “How did you reach out to Wahisietel? He left the Ritual site before I did.”
Arrav produced a peculiar piece of folded parchment from his belt and handed it over to his liberator.
Unfurling the paper, she soon understood how he had accomplished that.
In short, the message explained how the Mahjarrat had enchanted the jar Arrav’s heart rested in, similar to Zemouregal. Unlike Zemouregal’s ability to control Arrav, this enchantment allowed Wahisietel to communicate with him, but only once. The message went on to say that Wahisietel would attempt to open this link at sundown three days after the Ritual ended.
Wahisietel must’ve stuck this note to the jar, she concluded, but I know I didn’t see it there. Was it concealed from my sight? Why did he keep this from me?
“I did not know of this,” There was a hint of displeasure in her tone, “but I suppose I should be grateful he did it. If he hadn’t, you would’ve been stuck here.
“So, how can I help you, Arrav?” she asked, bringing her eyes up from the paper. “Time to pay Zemouregal back by bringing down his fort, or maybe explore the cave that Lucien kept the Stone in? Oh I know, you must want a way off this gods-forsaken plateau.”
Arrav shook his head. “No, Sepulchre,” he answered with a strange determination. “I brought you here to kill me.”
The sheet of paper was swept out of her grasp, her will to hold it suddenly absent. Her body took a step back without command, and Torva’s helmet dropped into the snow.
“Wh… what did you say…?” Her voice barely reached his ears through the lump in her throat.
“As I told you, I have little time left. It has been but a week since you freed me from Zemouregal’s shackles, and I fear my body will have given out before another has passed.” Arrav’s voice was still resolute. “My body is thousands of years old, my friend, and the decay would be slow and painful. That is not the death I desire.”
“Then we’ll find a different way to keep you alive!” she whimpered, pushing harder to be audible. “If someone like Zemouregal can do it, I’m sure there are others who can too. Maybe Hazeel can—”
“I will not be traded from one Mahjarrat to another, Sepulchre,” he interrupted, soft yet stern.
“H-Hazeel isn’t like Zemouregal,” she argued, looking down out of shame. “You saw for yourself during the Ritual. He agreed to sacrifice Lucien from the start, he just refused to attack his Zamorakian allies…”
The ancient hero once again shook his head. “I cannot bring myself to trust any of their kind fully, not even Wahisietel, despite all he has done for me.
“I failed to protect Avarrocka from Zemouregal, I was made into his slave and took many innocent lives under his control. I led his attack on Varrock and killed the descendants of the people I failed to protect,” he lamented, his gaze also falling to the snow beneath him. “An invasion ended by your hands. Varrock is safer with you than it ever was with me.”
He sighed, exhausted by the centuries. “One thousand years is long enough, Sepulchre. You have done so much for me already, but I fear I must ask you this last favor: help me to rest in peace.”
Not a sound was made for several minutes. No animals made a sound, no wind blew, and no voices spoke.
Then, a single tear fell to the snow beneath her. “It’s not fair…” she mumbled.
Her hands shot up to his chest and clenched tightly around the straps of his gorget. “It isn’t fair, Arrav!" the now clearly distraught woman cried, looking up at him with vision blurred by tears. “You’re the only reason there is a Varrock!
“You killed a whole tribe of Goblins at twelve years old, stopping an attack on the town. You accepted being shunned by everybody, robbed of a home just to protect strangers. then, when you saw that Avarrocka was burning, you went back to the people who abandoned you and saved them!” She had never remembered ‘The Legend of Arrav’ in better detail than she did in this moment.
“The only reason humans and goblins exist in peace today is because you convinced the Goblins to accept it!” A single tear trickled down her cheek.
“You were the one who was entrusted with the Shield, and you were the one who gave his life in a fight against an enemy you knew you could never beat! You gave everything for that city, the city that I called home!”
The Child of the Sun and Moon stood motionless, absolutely blown away by this sudden rise of emotions. For how long has she thought so highly of me? he wondered.
Her sad countenance turned bitter as she pressed on. “And you want me to do what, exactly? Run you through and leave you in this frozen waste to turn to dust?! Cut you down with my blade, wipe the blood in the snow and walk away?? You want to be just another notch on the belt of lives I’ve taken that were worth more than mine?? The answer is NO!” Her temper seemed to reach its peak.
“You deserve to be displayed in the center square of Varrock,” she insisted, “with the King and that damnable Archbishop leading the entire city, no, the entire Kingdom in commemoration! Your corpse belongs in the King’s Catacombs with the past monarchs and the ‘heroes’ who died being revered for doing a fraction of the things that you’ve done!”
Small tears ran down both her cheeks. “You’re their greatest hero, Arrav,” she keened, her hands violently shoving off his chest. “You’re MY hero!”
All base in her voice died, “You deserve a hero’s death...”
A deafening silence fell over the plateau.
Arrav stood in deep contemplation, taking in the words of the young hero before him, recalling the events she recounted to him. Sepulchre, meanwhile, wiped the tears from her eyes and picked up both her helmet and his paper.
“I am… truly sorry, Sepulchre. I did not realize that I meant so much to the people of Varrock, nor to you.” Arrav did not look at her. “But we do not have time to give me this ‘hero’s death’ you speak of.”
As the words left his mouth, an idea struck him - almost as if whispered to him by the gods themselves. “However, there is an equally worthy death, if you would do me the honour.”
There was a glimmer of hope in her eyes when they looked up to him. “What kind of death is that?”
Arrav hefted his massive black blade up from the snow, shifted his legs to take a wider stance, and brought his sword out in front of him. The vermillion glow beneath his helm looked more akin to flames than eyes - a fire had been lit in Arrav, a fire he’d not felt in over a thousand years. After all these centuries, I can battle of my own accord, he thought. And battle I must, for I have found the worthiest opponent.
“Give me a warrior’s death. Take up your arms, bring your blades to mine, and give me a death befitting a warrior," the Hero of Avarrocka proposed. “No fire burns forever, Sepulchre, and the only thing I wish to extinguish mine is the intensity of yours!”
The fire that ignited in his heart was immediately raging in hers. Sepulchre slipped Torva’s helm back over her head with zeal. There was no wasted motion as she reached behind it, pulling Torva’s twin black gladii, engraved with Infernal runes in the color of the Empty Lord they served, free from their scabbards.
She nodded. “I’ve forgotten what it’s like to take up arms for sport,” she commented, putting distance between them. “Though I bet that’s rich coming from a twenty-nine year-old woman.”
Twenty paces later - the proper distance for a duel - she turned back, taking up a wide combat stance of her own.
Both now stood like statues, waiting for any sign from on high to begin this clash of heroes. Without warning, a dragon within Ghorrock let out a deafening roar; champions of two ages blazed across the snowy field, their battle imminent.