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The forest is littered with pomegranates, craters, fire, and mud. Trees stand like doused candles in the wreckage of the battle, slain but upright. It is over.
There is nothing happy about the end of this battle.
The Tree is wrapped in poison, now eternally dormant; the other legendaries lay fallen around the forest; Fire Spirit is growing colder in his arms.
He kneels against singed grass with Fire Spirit pressed against him, ash replacing his bright burn. Wind Archer has known many things to die, but it seemed intangible next to Fire Spirit, blazing ahead and charming the forces of life to bid him fortune. Wind Archer shuts his eyes and sees nothing but gray.
His own skin is tingling like burning stars and he feels lightheaded— I've failed, I've failed. He failed the Tree, the Sugar Swan, the world. He faltered in battle when it wasn't an option and now he pays the price. The gaping slash at his side still seeps plum colored blood.
Peals of laughter are ripped from Fire Spirit's throat, manic and bitter. Wind Archer aches to tell him to calm down. “So this is what gets me,” he rasps. “Not the dragon, not those terrible oceans, but some pomegranates.” The last word is spit, followed by a heaving breath. Wind Archer can feel his lungs lurch and compress in a fight for air. He is too sapped of power to even summon a breeze and help him. He pulls him closer with a racing heart and mind, begging for some warmth to be transferred and keep Fire Spirit alive. Cold, growing colder.
A red-adorned figure stalks out from the shadows that cloud the forest. Wind Archer doesn't recognize this place anymore. “It was written in prophecy that the old legendary cookies would fall. It seems that you were the last to learn,” Pomegranate sneers.
Fire Spirit shakes in anger. So cold— his life is seeping out of him. “Save your strength,” Wind Archer whispers in a hiss.
“Your friend has some sense.”
Fire Spirit opens his mouth to retort, but Wind Archer silences him. “This is not your victory,” Wind Archer says to her. “There are good cookies who will challenge you. And they will win.”
“So where are they? Who will come to the defense of the greatest cookies in Earthbread?”
The forest is still, save for Pomegranate’s footsteps drawing closer and rattled inhales coming from his friends lying limp on the grass. Sea, moon, and fire. He hears it all through the stirring breeze. Wind Archer feels a cold rage twist in his heart.
She stands before him; her composed stature is towering while he's on his knees, a body draped over his lap. She hides her face behind her scarlet sleeve. “Wind Archer Cookie, I think you particularly should be seething at this defeat. Is there no shame in forsaking your life’s purpose?” Her eyebrows peak in mock astonishment. She looks like a wolf pondering which piece of prey has richer frosting.
He meets her eyes defiantly, a sour mix of Fire Spirit’s determination and his own grief compelling him to speak. “There is shame in abandoning what you have sworn on your life to protect.”
Her eyes grow dark. In them is a burning pomegranate tree. “Very well.” In a whirl of red, she turns, fabric cloaking the stilted movement. “I will leave you here so that you may see the blessing of the darkness.”
The blessing is an acrid poison. She is a wolf that leaves her prey to rot. “There will be a bitter end to you,” he promises. The sickly burning in his flesh is a dizzying rush.
“Yet you’re the one that will be saying goodbye.” She turns her head to let blood-soaked irises point at Fire Spirit. “I would do it soon; he doesn't have long.” Neither do you, her unspoken taunt. His limbs are fading a bruised purple, and he recalls a moment just like this: Pomegranate standing tall before the crumpled deity, green bleeding into pallid purple and a poison mist clinging to the air. I think I’ll call you… Night Raven.
Wind Archer can endure entering that pit again. The wind, the sea, and the moon can survive it, but the flames are dying. His light is suffocated by despair, and soon, he will only be cinders, and there is nothing to cinders except a once-was. Pomegranate leaves.
The rage that froze him shatters as his gaze meets Fire Spirit’s. He sucks in a breath, tanged with bitter fruit. His thoughts whir with the effort to think.
“Hey, don't cry, Windy.”
“I’m not—” Fire Spirit draws a hand up to smooth his thumb under his eye, leaving a mixture of ash and salt. Wind Archer blinks. A tear runs down his cheek and slips onto Fire Spirit’s arm— it doesn't even sizzle. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. None of this is your fault.” He wheezes out a cough and tries to smile. “It's that… witches-forsaken Dark Enchantress Cookie.”
“I’ll find a way.”
“It's okay, Windy, really.” Flicks of ash stain the grass; blood rolls between green blades and clots, sticky and cold. “It's okay.”
He doesn't know what more to say. He shakes his head and feels himself wilt. “I won't remember this.” He's told Fire Spirit of when he was Night Raven, the patch of missing memories, a stain on his conscience. Another tear soaks into his scarf.
He doesn't want to forget.
Fire Spirit reaches up to grab his shoulder, falling short and gripping the front of his tunic like a steadfast. His fingers are inches away from the wound on Wind Archer's side and he sucks in a wince. “Come on. It's like you said, some other cookies will come by and clean up this whole mess, and then you'll be back to yourself again. You'll remember. You will.”
You're the one that will be saying goodbye… I would do it soon.
“Don’t promise me it,” he rambles on, “because that means you might not. Just know that you will. You will remember how I died.” He laughs. “Oh my dragons, Windy, I think I'm dying!”
“Stop talking,” he pleads.
A peek of jubilant orange returns to his eyes. “Make me.”
The challenge is familiar, and now so, so bitter. Wind Archer kisses him; the face he’s cradling is cold. He prays to the Tree to prolong this moment, even for the beat of a bird’s wings, while everything else is in cinders. The Tree may not hear one of his prayers for eons.
It is chaste, but still tastes of ash and blood and salt. Wind Archer pulls back slowly to watch his lover’s face. The curl of a smile burns fiercely; the dark under his eyes marks a bone-deep tiredness; his breaths sink into his lungs and exit heavily scathed. His red-orange color is now dusty peach.
Wind Archer brings his head closer and presses a soft kiss on his forehead. Fire Spirit stills to accept it and chuckles. “I never get this much affection from my Windy.”
He mumbles into the line of his brow, “Save your breath.” He kisses there again and the splitting pressure of poison in his head nearly knocks all the stars from the sky. His own body feels cold.
Time passes and he doesn't count it— a breeze stirs, curtained by the growing shadows and the pop of pomegranates. It weeps with him and ebbs when his own consciousness does.
Wind Archer closes his eyes. He pictures a flowering green forest, sitting below a tree with Fire Spirit in his lap. The pomegranates are sparkling acorns that creatures scurry after. Fire Spirit’s last shuddering breath is a comforted sigh.
When he knows that it's over, he embraces the nebula and dying stars. The sweet claws of misery crawl over him and steal away his dream. Welcome back, Night Raven.
(Night Raven forgets his lover and the forest. When the true Wind Archer wakes months later, bloodied and bruised, after a group of small cookies's valiant battle, he begins to sob.)