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With the way it ended, it might as well have started with those words.
“I'm tired.”
Endorsi dropped to the ground, sighing as she looked up toward the ceiling of the cave.
“Don’t tell me,” she replied, her voice a cracking croak that she would be ashamed of later. “I haven’t felt this winded in a while.”
But that was probably because of the minor concussion and the blood loss.
She grinned.
“But that’s nothing for us!” she said. “Or are you giving up already? Asshole strategist.”
A bark of sharp laugher, breathy, answered her. But no word back yet.
The truth was, the situation was more disastrous than she would have preferred.
There they lay, stranded in a maze-like cave network, with the only entrance they had access to completely blown up. Khun's courtesy.
They searched every path they could, turned up every stone they could reach, and thanks to Khun's lighthouse they hadn’t gotten separated, but they couldn’t get much more done without literally working themselves to death.
“How long has it been since the pipe in the corner?”
“Eight hours,” answered the apathetic voice of her current companion. “Three days since we got stuck here.”
“They should notice soon,” Endorsi surmised. “If they don’t they're not my team.”
An airy chuckle.
“When I told you the plan, you told me it would never work. Changing your mind fast, are you.”
“It’s not fast, it’s eight hours,” she retorted without bite, sitting up using her palm to lean on. “Besides, if anyone can keep up with your weirdass brain, it’s Shibisu.”
“Don’t put us at the same level please.”
“Right, sorry. Shibisu’s so much better than you,” she rectified her statement.
Then, she sighed forlornly, the sound echoing dramatically against the wall.
“If only my prince charming was there to sweep me off my feet! And you too. We wouldn’t want you to stay here forever.”
“Nice to know I'm just an afterthought. He's supposed to be your mortal enemy, you know?”
She huffed.
“Who cares! We're gonna topple the system anyways, and everyone is already trying to kill us. I don’t see why I should hold back. Oh! Or are you worried I'm going to steal your baby?”
A grunt.
“I'll give you the shovel talk.”
“That sounds awful. But I guess it’ll happen. Even though I'd rather not have you as an in law. Please don’t actually swear brotherhood with him, I want plausible deniability when I say that I don’t know you later.”
A wheezy breath.
“Endorsi…”
“What?”
Then, Khun let out a raspy laugh.
“You're a riot.”
It made her laugh too, the sound surprising her as it blurted out of her undignifiedly. She felt herself fade into it, laughing and laughing, a bit hysterically.
It wasn’t often Khun made her laugh. Or called her a riot.
But then again, the circumstances were special.
“How's the firefish?” was what she asked more soberly when she calmed down.
“Barely replenished. Not enough shinsu.”
“Tch. You're so useless.”
“I saved your life.”
“Good, now we're both going to die asphyxiated in this stupid place.”
Of course they wouldn’t. She trusted Shibisu and the others to find them before that.
Khun did not answer. There was a sort of contemplative silence, before Endorsi heard the rustle of clothes announcing Khun was straightening up from the ground.
“I need to write something,” he said tiredly.
“Now?” Endorsi complained. “You workaholic, doesn’t a near death experience count as more important than work?”
“A near death experience is work,” he said, and Endorsi was forced to admit he was kind of right. “I'll take over watch duty in ten minutes. You should reduce your detection area by 65%. We need to preserve the little shinsu we have.”
Originally, they'd tried to separate to explore and find an exit while staying in communication with Khun's lighthouses, but they had quickly noticed that continuing doing that would exhaust their meager reserves.
They weren’t very productive right now, but they were both rather seriously injured during the attack, and saving energy was their best shot at getting out of this place. At least their enemies were not going to find them here. They must have left the area by now, especially after the explosion.
Endorsi groaned at the thought.
“Anaak is going to hold it over me for the next decade. I'm always telling her to be more careful when she jumps into the frame…”
“Must be in the blood.”
“You asshole. Line?”
“Still none.”
“You're using your lighthouse aren’t you?”
“No… offline pocket.”
That was unlike Khun to write on an unprofessional device, but again, their circumstances were less than optimal. Endorsi sighed, looking up the crack in the ceiling, in the corner. She sent another trickle of shinsu through the makeshift pipe, feeling the vibrations it caused through the numerous cavernous layers above their heads before spreading the wave in the air of the surface. The next one in two hours.
“This is so boring! At least play with me, Khun. How about chess? I'll even let you begin.”
“...I told you, Endorsi. I'm tired.”
How utterly dull.
Five hours passed like this. Endorsi thought she must have fallen asleep after two. Khun's quiet typing put her to sleep naturally, an almost comforting sound in the silence of this situation, something familiar on late nights in the team's lobbies, when everyone was either drunk or falling to sleepiness. The sound of Khun quietly working away the night, as she listened, as they all turned in for the night at one point or another.
Strangely, it was on those nights that the thought manifested in her mind most often. The little moments then, with just that sound as Anaak's lullaby, as everyone's snark was biteless and without conviction, thrown only once in a while with no fight, because everyone was too tired to actually bicker. Those moments when they were just comfortable, in a place together, awake or asleep.
These silences made Endorsi think. About how she liked it. And how all of it could disappear so easily.
So she gotta treasure it. She knew well how fast things could take a turn for the better or the worse. She thought about it then, in the comfort and warmth of their home, and she thought about now as she woke up to relieve Khun off watch duty.
“Don’t exert yourself,” were the words exchanged in the little instants like that. “You still have that fish to replenish.”
“Right.”
Never really more.
They were both a bit tired, perhaps.
But Endorsi never did stay tired. She slept and then she talked again. She didn’t like the silence. She didn’t like being prey to the unexplored and the palpable void. She would much rather dominate it, even if just with her voice.
That was why she noticed immediately, when Khun finally stopped typing. The lack of sound cut in, echoing in their part of the cave.
“You're finished?”
A long sigh.
“Yeah. I am.”
“Good. Because my pocket's saying we might have a bit of luck. I'll try calling Shibisu again.”
Khun hummed back. Endorsi called.
They waited for five minutes before it ceased, with no result.
“Damn. Almost, this time!” Endorsi cursed under her breath. “I thought for a second we’d connected to something.”
She considered the device silently for a moment, doubt gaining ground.
“Maybe… maybe they've already given up, you know. It’s been a while.”
But Khun huffed at her almost timid words. She could hear him flop back to the ground, on his back, as he did.
“No way. Bam wouldn’t let them. Not only that, but you're more appreciated than you think among them, Endorsi.”
Right. Endorsi could not help but smile at the thought.
“And Rak would never abandon you,” she added after a thought. “Of course.”
“They're stubborn like that.”
Endorsi stood up, mindful of her injured leg, and stretched.
“Still,” she murmured, “do you ever think about it? That maybe, one day you won’t be strong enough, that you might die or get left behind.”
For a while, there was silence. And Endorsi, despite only asking this out of her own most recent musings, realized she had hit where she probably shouldn’t have.
“All the time,” was all Khun said, when he finally answered.
Endorsi thought she couldn’t understand. There was something about that statement which implied something , and she disliked it. Disliked what it meant. She could not put a name to it, but there was this deep melancholy, an admittance too, and a sense of that that Endorsi had trouble deciphering. Like a long thought-over musing. And maybe a bit like a conclusion.
She hesitated on pursuing her train of thoughts, walking up to one of the exploded walls that had collapsed and were keeping them stuck in there. She had destroyed quite a few of those, at the beginning, but there were too many, and she had no strength to get through the entire cave network like this without collapsing in turn.
“Really,” she mused. “I wouldn’t have expected you to. You're just always so confident.”
But now that she thought about it, that was calculated too. And mild.
Not what it was, a long time ago.
She placed her palm against the fallen rocks. If only she could blow it all up. But then they might die with the cave network as it fell and buried them alive.
“Everyone changes, Endorsi,” Khun answered, seemingly wanting this conversation to be over already.
But Endorsi didn’t know what else to talk about.
“I mean,” she said, “I get it. All of us are just so ordinary compared to Bam. It’s been obvious for a long time that he'll go further than we'll ever hope.”
But they were still trying to keep up. Because they too, had dreams. And they loved him. It was sometimes, just as simple as that. They felt the need to stay with him, to get back to his side, not just to witness all his accomplishments.
“But we have our own destinies,” she added, smirking despite the faint-headedness and blood loss. “We were meant for greater things too. We might just as well stay by his side as long as possible, don’t you think?”
“...Right.”
She nodded to herself.
“Yeah! Which is why, we're going to replenish that fucking shinsu and get out of here. That or we wait and trust. Do you trust Bam, Khun?”
“I do… He's too easy to trust. Sometimes I feel like this is all a big mistake I'm making.”
“That's a lie.”
“Maybe,” Khun admitted after a short pause. “It’s hard to tell. Sometimes it feels like I shouldn’t. And sometimes, Bam just breaks all my rules and I know I can’t win against the way he inspires trust.”
“We become so blinded with it,” Endorsi followed that train of thought, lightly hitting on the collapsed barrier, but only dust rose. “But he's worthy of it. And I told you. You and I, we're not made to die uselessly in here.”
Strangely, there was something of a warmth settling behind her. Her injury might be getting to her. But she kept on, because Endorsi wasn’t a despondent person, nor was she kind or faint-of-heart.
“So what if we're not strong enough?” she grinned, in a malicious way.
She was used to climb her way up through the darkest means. In that, Khun and her were quite alike, she thought.
“We're not gonna give up, are we? This isn’t going to stop us. So stop doubting already.”
Maybe she was talking to herself. Maybe she was talking to Khun. She didn’t even know.
All she knew was that they were going to survive, and continue on through their journey, no matter how hard, no matter how many times they fell and how many times they lost themselves on the way, like now.
The cave shook, but Endorsi did nothing. Her grin only stretched wider.
“See?” They're coming.
They were going to get out of there. And Endorsi would keep going, with Bam, with everyone. She knew that this determination, she shared it with Khun, and the rest of them.
There was no rest for the wicked, after all.
Khun had been listening to her, silently. He seemed to be mulling over something, or perhaps just considering her words. She didn’t know. All she focused about was the slight quaking of the ground, fresh air trickling in slowly, and that light of hope.
But then, Khun breathed out, and his voice was so rough and ragged and weak that she could not help but pay attention.
“How many times to I have to tell you…” he said, and he sounded resigned this time.
More than ever before.
Or maybe, Endorsi had just failed to notice before. But now she thought she could catch it, the sense behind his earlier words.
The sense of giving up.
Khun let the words out like a long-held burden.
“I'm tired.”
Endorsi flinched with the words.
Because, suddenly, she understood .
She understood what Khun had been saying, all along, ever since they'd started watching out in this stupid cave, like stranded travelers in the void and the silence, because she heard.
She heard him, this time.
Alarmed, she finally turned around, fast and alerted, to look at him, but before she had the chance to, a scathing power invaded her, blinded her momentarily. When the sensation subsided, she realized that she felt no pain in her leg anymore, and her head was clearer. Her fist stronger, even though she still felt weak. That was…
The shock only made her more urgent, and she ran the few steps back to her companion.
“Khun!”
She hadn’t looked at him all this time. Not since she had decided she was mad at him for getting them caught in here, even though by doing so he had saved her life, twice over. But now she did look, and what she saw couldn’t be more alarming.
Khun had bled through his bandage. Heavily. His side was soaked and his eyes… were foggy.
Dazed, in a way they should not be.
He had one hand pressing against the grievous wound, one Endorsi thought he would be able to heal with the firefish soon enough. Instead, here they were, stranded in a nearly shinsu-less cave network, with no one to ask for help and they waited.
Instead, Khun decided to heal Endorsi.
“I'm tired,” she could hear again, echoing in her mind, like an omen of doom.
And she wanted to scream as she dropped to her knees by his side, because she hadn’t known.
She hadn’t thought either of them would die here.
“Khun!” she shouted, and she shook him as only a wheezy breath answered her. “Khun, don’t say shit like that, you- why didn’t you say anything?!”
He’d gotten so much worse.
“Why did you do that! ”
She wasn’t actually going to die, not in another few days, and the bleeding of her leg had almost stopped by the time Khun used the fish on her.
Khun let his head fall toward her, his dulled eyes finding hers so, so tiredly, like every movement was an enormous effort- and it probably was, because Khun was…
“I… I'm not delusional,” he spoke slowly, not to waste his air,, with a rough voice and she had trouble hearing the timbre of his deep, silky voice. “The firefish would not have replenished enough to heal myself… and you're the only one who had a chance to get out on your own since the beginning. It was the best… course of action,” he let out, sounding in pain.
He was breathing mouth open. Endorsi knew it wasn’t a good sign.
“Don’t,” she cut him furiously, sharply as she pressed her hands on the wound in hope that it would make a difference. “Don’t give up, asshole, we're both going to get out of here. You're right, it’s good,” she felt her palms become wet with red with a panic, “if you didn’t have enough to heal yourself, it’s good you healed me, trust me Khun, I'm gonna get you out of here and back to the team. Okay?”
This wasn’t working.
“I'm tired,” Khun only repeated weakly, and Endorsi swore under her breath.
“Just hold on, Khun! I'm just- I gotta get the bandage, we'll rewrap it.” She got to work hurriedly, searching through Khun's lighthouse. “You can’t die on me, Khun,” she ordered him as she came back to his side, unwrapping the sullied bandage. “We said you'd give me a shovel talk, remember? We'll reach the top of the Tower and being down Jahad's stupid system, and then I'm going to propose to Bam and you'll give me your shovel talk, okay?”
She thought the next exhale was a croaked out laugh, a sort of wet chortle, but she wasn’t certain.
“There'll still be Ha Jinsung,” he told her, amused.
But she wasn’t. She wasn’t amused. This was the least amusing thing she had to live through in a long, long while.
“Well then, I'll get two shovel talks, simple as that,” she raised his torso from the ground with one arm, her heart looping in her chest when she heard a splatter underneath, but she continued to apply the salve and the band-aids. “Come on, you're not made to die so pathetically, Khun. Where's that arrogant, confident guy I met on the Second Floor?”
An exhale, one that sounded and looked like a quivering sigh. Khun closed his eyes then.
“His time came a long time ago,” he said, like a conclusion, like nothing could change it, and Endorsi hated him for that.
“Stop spouting bullshit- and open your eyes!” she yelled at him in a voice too shrill to her own ears, when she noticed he kept them closed. “Don’t you dare fall asleep, Khun! Fuck it, why didn’t you tell me-!?”
Her fingers fumbled a bit with the final knot, and she could tell that already the low layers of the new work she'd done was already wet with new blood, but at least the pressure and the covering would help them stall for time.
But she was starting to realize that the time they needed had gone on in the past few days, the dozens of past hours spent searching, scheming and then waiting for help.
There was no more time.
“Hey! Hey, Khun! ”
She slapped his cheek without strength, and it seemed like he roused, his eyelids pressing down before he opened them slightly, a sliver of his blue eyes set in her direction, yet not on her.
“Endorsi…?”
She hated seeing him like that. This wasn’t how Khun was supposed to look. Khun wasn’t supposed to be so… so vulnerable and… and lost. Especially not with her.
“Khun,” she repeated urgently, “if you give up on me, I'll tell Bam. What about him, mh? Khun, if you die in this fucked up place, then what about Bam? ”
The name of Bam made him stir slightly, and Endorsi was about to push on, but then something happened.
It was the sound of her pocket. A ring. Two rings. Three.
Her pocket.
She stayed stunned for about two seconds before she finally realized what that meant and took it hurriedly.
She answered the call, Shibisu's name appearing in the black void-like surface of her pocket before the word ‘Call’ spread itself white on black.
“Shibisu!” she screamed into the device. “Do you know how long we've been waiting for you?”
The sound of Shibisu's voice was distorted by the lack of connection as he replied, almost screaming to make himself heard above whatever noise must have been on the other side.
“Endorsi! You alright?”
She was, she was fucking alright, because the imbecile lying in front of her had decided to make it so instead of economizing energy to stagnate better. But she wasn’t.
“I'm not hurt, not anymore, but you need to come asap!” She ordered him sharply.
There was no other way. She cursed the miracle that seemed to arrive far too late. But maybe, maybe there was still hope.
“Okay, okay,” Shibisu said, and he sounded like Endorsi wasn’t the only one he was trying to calm. “Is Khun with you?”
“For now,” she said quickly, because she didn’t have time to say more, and she could hear a sharp inhale on the other side. “But we won’t hold out for much longer,” Khun won’t hold out much longer, she thought with a tinge of hysterical despair.
“Where are you now? We've detected sign of activity in the area you occupied, but we can’t see either of you.”
“We’re underground,” she explained to him. “Deep under. We took shelter when the army overwhelmed us. The entrance's shut, because of the explosions. You have to locate us and get us out!”
“We'd like to,” Hatz’s voice sounded out, an edge to it that Endorsi couldn’t focus on, “but we're stuck. You could be anywhere underneath this mess, the observer doesn’t see anything. We need at least a vague layout around your position.”
Endorsi tsked, even as she noticed Khun's weary gaze on her.
“It’s gonna be difficult,” she admitted. I can tell you about the caves around us, but not those above us.”
“Then we might crush you when we try to extract you!” she got Shibisu's panicked voice back to her.
They were stuck, and Khun was dying.
Endorsi had no idea what to do.
Khun was still vaguely looking towards her, dazed and simply breathing.
“I don’t have any shinsu left to send up,” she said with desperation. “I can’t send you our location, so…”
“The lighthouse.”
She stopped talking, turning her attention to Khun.
“What- what about the lighthouse?” she asked him, but a connection was already forming in her mind.
“Give them… the coordinates from the first entrance. Send them the map we created from there. They have to go… slow,” Khun let out, closing his eyes again in exhaustion.
But Endorsi wouldn’t let him.
“Wait, stay awake- what do you mean by that? You mean they should-”
“Trace back our path from scratch.”
“But it’ll be too slow! And what about us? The network is going to collapse at least partly if they do that.”
“That’s… what the lighthouse is for. We don’t have enough shinsu for a shield, but if you position them above us, they should… the protection will be good enough for now, and they should bear it. There's no other way.”
Oh. She blinked, making the calculations in her head. The lighthouses would be in an almost off mode, to spare shinsu, but they needed them to at least bear the weight of falling bits of the ceiling. It wouldn’t work if the entire place collapsed, but as long as it was slow, they'd be able to sparse it out-
She would.
But how long would it take?
“That would take hours!” Shibisu exclaimed when she told him of the plan.
“We don’t have a choice,” Endorsi was forced to admit. “Back when we first got ourselves inside, the Rankers tried to kill us in. They collapsed a lot of random places. We're locked in, and the whole thing is too fragile. I'll send you the map. If it doesn’t pass on the line…” she gritted her teeth, “you'll have to go in blind.”
There was a moment of silence, full of thoughts and brainstorming. Endorsi wondered how many of them were aware of the time limit. She never tore her gaze away from her ally, who was focusing on his breathing.
She told herself he wouldn’t even be trying if he really thought he would die for certain here.
She knew she was fooling herself.
“How long do we have?”
Anaak.
“I don’t know,” Endorsi gritted out.
“One hour,” a painfully familiar voice spoke up for the first time from the other side.
Bam, Endorsi thought, trembling.
“What? We can’t possibly-”
“We can,” Bam cut Shibisu off. “We can, if one of you go find and bring Rak back. He shouldn’t be too far. With him, my power and Anaak, we should be able to make it one hour. Send the coordinates.”
Endorsi smiled.
That determination of steel… it was so much like him.
She could feel the others were dubious, but Endorsi did not have a mere second to spare to hesitation. She rattled off the coordinates, wasting no more time.
“Please,” she added, and she cut herself.
What would she say? That Khun might not even hold one more hour? That they'd be waiting? Or just a stupid plea to save them both, like some kind of damsel in distress?
It was as she spoke those words that she truly realized the extent of the catastrophe.
They were both helpless.
She was helpless, and she was watching someone she could now call a friend, slip away in front of her very eyes. There was nothing she could do but wait.
Would it be too cruel?
Khun would never beg, she told herself. This was also for him.
“Please,” she said, voice nearly even. “We're counting on you.”
A pause.
“Yeah,” Shibisu replied, solemn. “When we’re close enough, help us from your side, okay?”
“Okay,” she agreed easily.
“Map received.”
Thank the Tower, it had worked.
“Okay,” she hated that she sounded like she might cry. “One hour.”
“One hour.”
The line cut off. Leaving Endorsi alone with Khun.
She squeezed his hand with both of her own.
“Did you hear that, Khun? Just one measly hour. You can do that, right?”
You have to.
For all of her three hundred years of life up there, Endorsi had never had anyone like what this team was for her. And Khun, in a way… he was just like her. Only much, much younger.
If Khun was already winding himself down, then what about her?
When she first met Khun, she knew he'd be one of the few to survive the Tower.
It might have been wishful thinking, but when she first met Khun, there was also Bam, and both their worlds had been recalibrated to turn around him. She'd found it ironic, back then. Her, a princess of Jahad who could not take but didn’t hesitate to serve herself. Him, an abandoned Khun son freshly freed from the world’s influence but couldn’t for the life of him allow himself anything. Both of them too aware of the chains, the weight of the rules upon their shoulders. But one had had them impressed under his skin through knives and suicide ropes, and the other had felt like she could brave anything, nothing to stop her.
When she first arrived on the Floor of Test, it had felt like recess. A children's court, where she had been the adult. But all she had had were adult shoes.
She had quickly been proven wrong. First, by Anaak, her dear niece, a bundle of rage and grief that she hadn’t known how to appease. Then, Bam, the adorable sweetheart, meeting his end prematurely in the depths of a stupid Wine Glass.
And in between those, there had been Khun's sharp gaze, carefully avoided hers as they spoke. Khun's eyes, with something scarred in them, lighting up with something close to recognition when he looked at her, at her eyes. At her scarred eyes.
They were scarred differently, of course. But did it matter?
Yet Endorsi- she'd forged herself her own path. With Shibisu and Hatz, Laure. And Anaak. And Bam. They were all an important part of her world. Pieces that had appeared at the beginning of the rest of her life. And Khun, well, she'd ended up considering him similarly. Except him, there'd never been any doubt that he would survive.
Soon, even with all the bumps on the road, it became a given.
Endorsi had always known. She would survive. And Khun would, too. They were of the same kind, in a way.
Yet, now that she thought about it, Khun surprised her. It was also surprising in the way he had managed to remain overlooked, even in her eyes.
Khun had remained a lightbearer. Despite the customs of regulars, which consisted in always expanding their abilities to become all rounders the more they climbed the Tower, Khun had rejected that. He had never touched the fisherman's arms, he had rejected the spearbarer’s weapon, he had never mastered enough shinsu to be a true and tried wave controller, and they had been far too many scouts around him for him to let himself fall into the position, despite his consequent use of any reconnaissance material. His gaze remained fixed on someone else's development. Either forgetting his own or daring to make a point.
It couldn’t be to his family, not something so wide and vague. It had to be something else. The fact that no one had ever questioned Khun's unchanging position as a lightbearer by Bam's side spoke lengths, Endorsi realized.
There was something Khun wanted to accomplish.
For Bam.
It also dawned on her then, how this dedication and support of him to Bam had become so inherently part of their lives. Her life.
Khun was someone who did not give up. Someone who had been broken once, and who knew that if it ever happened again, they would be destroyed, unable to pick up the pieces.
Only his own death could stop him.
But not now, Endorsi prayed. Not now.
Khun was not done yet. He had not achieved what he needed to achieve. She could see it in his eyes.
That, she thought, must have been the sole reason why Khun was still struggling to survive now.
Because she could tell. This was not Khun being pragmatic. Khun had known, Khun had fought, but Khun was dying. There was nothing he could do to stop that. Nothing but what he was doing now.
Fighting to remain awake. One more minute. One more hour.
Endorsi too, could feel it.
Khun wasn’t meant to leave.
Not yet.
“I'm tired.”
Not before we get to see the end!
His determination echoed in her, in the way shallow breaths and cavernous silence did.
“One hour,” she repeated. “Hold on.”
But despite it all, they both knew he would not make that hour.
Not when he was going to die in the next ten minutes.
Khun had likely been processing this for the past four days. With his silences and his careful breaths and his numb, dazed eyes. Knowing.
But not accepting.
“Give me access to your lighthouse,” she asked him, a lump in her throat.
He waved her off, weakly.
“I'll do it.”
“What?! Are you mad!?”
“I'm not… you… you have to be the one to use shinsu, right now. I'll… take care of the lighthouses. You do the rest.”
The lighthouses turned a bit paler, just a bit brighter, but they remained dull, dark blue. They were just able enough to raise a block for them to be protected.
Maybe it wasn’t a bad idea, Endorsi pondered. This way, she would know as soon as Khun lost consciousness.
“Okay,” she breathed out, “okay. Let me sit you up. It’s gonna hurt.”
She levered him into a sitting position, dragging him as gently as she could to the wall and settling him against it, putting his hand on his wound as she instructed him to press. This way, the blood wouldn’t keep to his head. If it did, Khun would not be able to tell… when the moment came. If it did.
They had to keep their hopes up, no matter how fragile.
Sure, doctors would prefer him lying down but… Khun would prefer to know.
He would prefer to be upright, too.
She transferred her shinsu to him. As much as she could, trickling in slowly, hoping to stabilize him for a while longer.
The ground started to shake. Something fell on the lighthouse, ricocheting to the ground. She stood up, taking care of the collapsing pieces to keep the way clear.
Khun watched her.
It felt strange. They were two, and here she was, the only able-bodied person in the area. Taking care of Khun of all people.
If it weren’t for her, he wouldn’t be here right now. If it weren’t for here, she might be dead right now.
Good warriors knew it was never right to think back on what had already happened. Neither Endorsi nor Khun regretted how they fought then.
Defeat was part of the game. Pawns fell, for the king to live, for the queen to strike. Death was part of war.
Khun sounded like he'd been expecting death to knock on his door for a long time now.
“I wish…”
She turned to look at him, but he wasn’t looking back.
“...I just had… a bit more time.”
He was watching her hands, as they worked on bits of ceiling. His own remained unmoving. Incapable of movements, surely.
Endorsi felt like she could tell what was happening in his mind.
It was so strange. She'd always been so certain that she couldn’t get that guy at all. And here she was, watching him look at her hands, and she could guess.
He wasn’t talking about this one measly hour.
He was talking about Bam.
“I wish there was something… more useful…”
Not for now. Never for now, not for Khun.
By Khun.
Endorsi swallowed painfully.
“Stay awake, idiot,” was all she found to say, going back to her task. “Don’t waste your breath. They're coming, soon.”
What kind of reassurance was that? It was laughable. They both knew that was a lie.
The Khun Aguero Agnis… in a cave.
Just like that.
It was laughable.
It was terrifying.
It was wrong.
He was supposed to be greater. To do greater. But she knew, there was something more important than that in his heart, his soul.
It was his life's work.
“I'm tired,” he said, lifelessly.
She could see it, the dark haze of fear, just there, veiled in his eyes, but it was there. She could see him, afraid of not being able to finish it. Afraid to leave nothing behind.
All that he had worked for, all his life. Gone away in a sigh. No one to take up the mantle.
It was something only he could do, Endorsi thought. No one else was capable of his feats.
He wasn’t allowed to die now.
It was perhaps, Endorsi felt, a historical moment. In decades to come, they would speak of him, speak of Khun Aguero Agnis, the lightbearer of The Irregular, and they would speak of his death, they would tell all about what he was not allowed to accomplish.
She could hear them talk and talk, about the legacy that disappeared with him. Here and now, in this lonely cave.
And, she wasn’t sure who was more important, as she knelt in front of him, taking his hand in hers and begging fate silently, one trickle of shinsu after another. She wasn’t sure who she was looking at more.
Khun Aguero Agnis, the mastermind, the strategist. The Man.
Or her old friend. Whose last moments only she could witness and remember.
Her old friend that only she could understand, here and now.
They were one and the same, but also, so verily, two different entities. And one shone from the shadows, a shade to be remembered brightly, while the other flickered weakly, never seen. But they were one, and to Endorsi, they collapsed together oh so brightly .
Burning.
There had to be something she could do for both.
But all they had was a few baangs of shinsu, a cave network failing, all around them, and a promise of time that wouldn’t come.
But there had to be something.
Khun took a sharp inhale, and suddenly, despite his nigh immobility, he seemed frantic.
“Letters,” he said in an exhale, with so little voice and so much urgency, his eyes unmoving from somewhere through her. “I left… for each name. You have to keep…”
His pocket appeared, like a reminder, falling on his lap, and she knew, she felt the tears gather and she knew, she knew .
Typed letters, on documents.
Khun always preferred manuscript, for letters.
But there had been no time. And he had known. And now, now she knew too.
She knew they had run out a long time ago.
Why didn't you say something...?
“No, no Khun, please!”
And still she begged.
“We said we were going to keep going!” Her throat hurt, and Khun looked like he was hurting too. “We said, we said we wouldn’t give up? We'd agreed you'd teach Bam about love, you said you'd pay me back all those favors with shopping trips. Khun, remember? Khun!”
He was struggling more, to breathe, and he was still unable to look at her, merely in her direction, and her desperation was shining back at her, behind the dull daze, the veil of pain and blood loss and numbness, there was something.
“Your promised!” she appealed to him again, no sound in her voice anymore, and she knew she had touched it.
The line. The reason why.
You promised to Bam.
The reason why he was still struggling, even now, to the gates of death.
The reason why he was so afraid.
Because Khun could not leave like that-
It couldn’t be the last time. Bam- no, not Bam, Endorsi, Khun, they were too much to end like that! So it couldn't be the last time. She wouldn’t believe it.
But it was.
There has to be something.
Then, they both felt it. Just like their pipe, thirteen hours before. That wave of familiar shinsu, emitting from one direction, meant to be a reassurance, a call, a call they should answer.
From the way Khun's eyes cleared and widened, Endorsi knew it was Bam's shinsu.
Only Endorsi knew.
Only she knew of the way his unmoving limbs found strength again, incredible and unexpected, like a miracle. Only she knew how they moved, urgent, and how his hands reversed her grip to clasp her hand instead.
Only she knew how tightly it was, his last spark of life, his grasp on her turning her joints white and bruising her with impossible strength.
Only she knew the way he looked at her, finally, again, an undying spark in his eyes, desperate, so very frantic, and afraid .
Only she would know how he begged her.
“Endorsi!”
It was his only word, and it was strong, suddenly so strong, and only she knew the way he held on, in that moment, so very close to the end.
His eyes, they screamed, again and again.
“I'm tired,” they seemed to scream, and Endorsi could hear it loud and clear now, after years and years of being unable to notice, Khun himself couldn’t ignore it anymore, and he screamed for help, just like that. Khun was tired, tired of struggling. Yet here he was.
Unwilling to cross the line.
He could say nothing else, but she could see it in his eyes, in the lines of his face and his sharp features, in how coiled his entire body was, how his hands trembled feverishly in hers and how he attempted to hunch towards her, bleeding through his bandage.
No one else would know how close the Khun Aguero Agnis had been, in that moment, to shedding tears. But he didn’t.
And, looking at him like this so close, the rest of their home only minutes away from them, too long, too far, yet so close, she knew that it was only her.
She knew what it was. That something that only her, both princess of Jahad, companion of The Irregular, and Endorsi , could do for him. Him, Khun Aguero Agnis, and her unique, fragile friend.
Only one thing, to let him rest, at least in peace.
Only her.
She clasped back her hands on him, she looked at him in the eyes.
And she sobbed, silent but overwhelmingly.
Yet she made her voice strong. This was the strongest she’ll ever need to be. All for tha moment.
Her voice was strong.
And she spoke. She promised.
“ You did good. ”
She cried the words. But, he heard them. And she carried on.
“You don’t need to worry, Khun,” she told him, fierce like a sister he'd never had, “You did well. I'll take it up for you now.”
Your legacy, he heard her loud and clear.
“I'll finish it for you. You… you can rest now.”
This was something only she could do for him.
He watched her, face to face, their hands entwined in between their hearts, his eyes wide and blue and shining painfully, almost in disbelief, except, except…
Except it was it.
And it was Endorsi. And she promised.
With a watery, yet steady smile, she told him.
“All of it, I'll carry it with me. You can rely on me now. I won’t let it become in vain.”
All you have to offer, everything you sacrificed, all that you created, all that you worked for. I'll take it up the Tower for you. I'll carry your burden, I won’t let your efforts go to waste.
I'll be your hands, this time. Let me be your voice.
“None of it was in vain!”
And he was still looking at her.
You can let go, she screamed.
“I promise.”
And…
That was it.
This was the end.
This was all he needed.
All the tension unwound from his body, leaving it to fall towards her, as he sighed, relief dulling his eyes at last and closing them halfway, the exhaustion taking over him. Like he'd heard.
From Endorsi to Khun.
His last breath left him in the same moment.
His eyes, Endorsi noticed as her tears flowed down, hadn’t even properly closed.
But his pocket did not fall. His lighthouses did not fall.
Because Endorsi carried them still.
And she would never let go of them. Until the very end.
She laid him to the ground, gently, her hand delicately brushing against his eyelashes as she directed them down. His pocket in her hands, she did not open it. For a moment she simply watched him. But she knew what she had promised.
She stood, blue and orange light rising with her. She did not look at it, not yet acknowledging the way each of them turned warm, while only one, the core, remained cold as blue. There was no need to.
She walked, in the direction of the call. But she did not call back.
Standing strong, as fearless as possible, carrying her grief head high, she raised her leg.
Khun was behind her, when she struck.
What happened next could be likened to an explosion. The collapsed wall blew up to her strength, and the whole structure quaked all around her. All four layers of stone ceiling fell and fell around her, aided by her allies far on the other side.
The free sky shone upon her, bright with light. Shinsu reached her, replenishing her strength and slowly recovering her reserves. The light could do nothing to lighten her, or alleviate her resolve.
She destroyed her way back to what was left of home, as they flew to her and she flew to them.
Hatz was the first to reach her, taking her in his arms as she returned his brief embrace, inspecting her for any wound, sighing in relief before his gaze sharpened again. Anaak stopped short, a mere feet away, taking her in with frantic urgency, the trauma waiting to burst at the seams, out of her, a show of how close they had gotten to the fire.
Except none of them knew yet, that the fire had come and gone.
Except perhaps Shibisu, who smiled brightly with tears of relief when he saw her, yet immediately hacked his guard up as he took in the disaster.
Endorsi would not have blown up the cave unless she was on her own, he knew. She knew he knew.
And Rak, whose sense of smell told him more than Endorsi could ever imagine. He looked at her as they arrived, and nothing appeased in him.
Endorsi wondered if he could tell already.
Bam… Bam took her in his arms, collapsing against her with all the speed the wings in his back had provided him, murmuring only a couple thank the Tower, before he straightened, urgency still clear in his eyes, his features drawn and frantic and helpless. Panicked.
“Where's Khun?” he spoke, and Endorsi said nothing.
She only looked at him, looked to the boy who changed her life forever, and she tried to imagine.
How Khun had seen him.
She watched his face fall as he took in the destruction behind her. And he flew, past her, straight to the remains of the collapsed network of caves, or what they could see, ready to dig deep and run to his closest friend.
Endorsi caught his arm before he could, unfaltering.
“Let me go, Endorsi! Khun! Where's Khun! ”
“No, Bam.”
Shibisu watched her, his features decomposed, and she wondered for a moment if he could see the proof of death under her eyes, red like blood and tears.
“Khun! Endorsi, why!? ”
And now Bam was looking at her like there was still hope, like Endorsi was the one taking it from him, like she was betraying him.
She really hoped she wasn’t. She did not waver. She thought she could see it, maybe.
But more than that, she knew him.
“He wouldn’t want you to see him like this.”
It was all she said. And it was true.
Only she knew.
Bam looked at her, something disbelieving etched on his features, like he didn’t actually hear her words.
Except he did, and she saw him tearing at the seams. Excruciatingly.
“ No, ” he said, shaking his head. “ No, no, no! NO! ”
And Rak was watching her too, with how s and why s tattooed in his eyes, in his grip on his spear.
She could see the how long in Shibisu's.
“It was no one fault,” she told him.
No particular enemy to take the blame, but no ally's recklessness either. Nothing but circumstances, and a fateful Tower.
Only she would know what it took.
“All the time,” his voice echoed in her mind, and she knew now that it had been a long time coming. At least, for him. “I'm tired.”
Maybe it was always supposed to be like that.
“Take me to him! Please! ” Bam clutched her clothes, begged her, like he would die if she couldn’t accomplish his wish.
“I'm sorry.” I really am.
Apart from Bam, all of them kept a silence of death. She could only acknowledge how it hurt them, how much time they had spent with him.
How much he counted for them.
But only she would know.
“There's nothing left for us there,” she told him, all of them.
She did not lie.
For she took everything with her.