Chapter Text
Keyleth had grown in many ways in the three decades that had passed since her time with Vox Machina.
Though she barely looked a day older than the naive “princess” she had been, she felt the years weighing on her as heavy as the mantle she bore on her shoulders. Years under the weight of the devotion and expectations of so many, years of loneliness despite the outpouring of love from thousands weighed heavily indeed.
She was no longer the care-free and wide-eyed girl she had been then, with all the hope in the world and none of the wisdom. In spite of her perceived agelessness, she had finally developed a very real sense of her own mortality.
As she lay with her blood soaking the dirt beneath her staring up at the blood red sky, she didn’t doubt what was coming next.
Keyleth had spent plenty of time thinking about death.
She had come here knowing there would be a deadly fight. Those who had attacked Zephrah so mercilessly had left death in their wake; they were formidable opponents but Keyleth had come and risked herself to ensure that those deaths were not in vain.
She had seen a familiar grief reflected in young Orym’s eyes as he grieved Wil and Derrig who had served her with such loyalty in the absence of the man who had always meant to take up that post.
In the face of such grief, she could not refuse her aid, risks be damned.
She had long since come to terms with the inevitability of losing all those she loved to it in what would surely feel like the blink of an eye. Though the pain would sting again and again as much as it ever had, she never could stop loving them all so fiercely.
Her mother and father, her steady ground to fall back on who taught what it was to pass through fire and emerge stronger. Pike who seemed to overflow with light always. Scanlan who spread joy in every circumstance. Grog with his tender heart and fierce loyalty. Percy, Vex’ahlia and their children, her family who had emerged from a legacy of darkness and chosen love.
When he finally came for her she would not be afraid.
Keyleth had experienced death herself once before and didn’t remember the brief moment of pain. She did, however, remember the instant she opened her eyes to a curtain of Raven-black hair and the terrified hazel eyes of Vex’ahlia.
As Otohan Thull’s blade plunged towards her chest a final time she couldn’t move. She couldn’t scream. All she could do was close her eyes and wait for the moment when she would open them again. Open them to see Raven hair and hazel eyes in the face that she could never forget, despite the years. The face that she would always love.
I’m sorry, Keyleth thought in the darkness of her own mind. She hoped that her family could hear her some how and know that she had never meant to turn these tables. That she never wanted to leave them like this before the years had the chance to take them from her.
In that moment as she waited for the pain of that final blow, time seemed to halt. The pain never came. Her still-beating heart felt a tug that she could swear she hadn’t felt in thirty years.
Keyleth couldn’t help herself. She opened her eyes and yes , she thought. He’s come at last. It’s over .
Above her, black raven feathers were blocking the glowing red light of ruidus. Vax’ildan, Champion of the Raven Queen stood, blades drawn, death in his eyes.
The years fell away like autumn leaves. The lines of his face, twisted with anger and a righteous fury and obscured by a mask, were as familiar to her as the day she’d lost him.
“Don’t you even dare,” she heard him say in a gravelly voice that pierced her heart as deep as any blade ever had.
But, no . That couldn’t be right. He had surely come to take her away and she would go with him. He had come too soon, she thought with a hint of regret, but of course she would follow him willingly. She had never truly been able to refuse Vax anything.
She forced her eyes and her mind to wrap around what she could not believe. Vax had not come as the Raven to greet her that final time.
He had broken free. He had come back to this plane as himself to keep a promise he had made to her in the last moments they had met face to face. A promise that met more than any vow he had made to the Raven Queen. More even than the planes that had kept them apart for so many years.
You will live, and your life will touch thousands .
His words had followed her every day since. Every day as she woke up and chose to be the leader Vax always knew she could be; she lived and she touched as many lives as crossed her path.
Life and death. She and Vax had always been compliments of one another in many ways. In every life she touched she had honored his sacrifice.
And here he was. He had come to save her life, as he always had.
It was impossible, and yet there he stood.
Her frozen body was screaming at her to reach out and touch him as he stood above her, shielding her from further harm. She had to know that he was real and not a trick of her imagination in her final moments.
I love you, Vaxildan . She wanted to it to be the last thing she ever said, but still no words would come. I never stopped loving you and I never will .
Surely he could not hear her, and yet, for what couldn’t have been more than an instant, his eyes which had been full of such ferocity as he glared at her attackers finally met hers. She felt in those eyes - in that look- his love wash over her like a tidal wave. It knocked the breath from her lungs.
She could read in his eyes and in the shadow of his Raven wings (the familiar wings of a bird that had followed her all of her days) the words he couldn’t say: My love, I never left you .
Until this was all over, until she was a whisper on the wind, she would not stop watching his eyes.
She watched them until beams of light came and took him from her again, as swiftly as he had come.
Please no , Keyleth prayed to any god who might be listening. Take me instead. Use me. I can’t lose him again. Not like this .
She didn’t pray but in this moment she would. For him she would do anything.
Please .
And then the light enveloped her completely.