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Colin spent a lot of time training with Deli, in their years together in Carn. He watched a prideful young man evolve into a dangerously self-assured warrior. Unlike many of Carn’s front line fighters, Deli renounced the idea of dying heroically in battle.
“Death doesn't just happen to a warrior,” he'd once told Colin. “If a soldier falls, he was always to fall. The strong survive. And I intend to be the strongest.”
That moment plays in Colin’s head as he sees Deli, without poise or pride, tackle several Saprophians to the ground. A perfectly honed soldier, optimized to survive in combat — still the strongest warrior Colin knows. He’s stronger than one, even two, but three is pushing it. His assault creates a hole for Colin and Amangeaux to break through, but one of the Saprophians is now wrestling Deli as he tries to get up.
Some part of Colin reacts before the rest of him, and he thinks it's indignance. Deli has been unkillable up to this point. The idea that he would not only die here but do so by sacrificing himself is preposterous.
“Keep going,” he tells Amangeaux, “I’ll catch up.”
And he doubles back. They need Deli. They’ve lost two already. Colin isn’t losing anyone else.
(He’s a finesse weapon, easy enough to aim and fire — but like a compass arrow, without any outside force acting upon him, he’s programmed to turn towards Deli. He has largely considered this to be his greatest flaw.)
“What are you doing, Colin!”
Colin kicks the scrappiest Saprophian in the head and hauls Deli to his feet.
“Who's gonna watch your right?” he says, so Deli doesn't get ensnared in the reality of this — what he would consider grandiosity, what Colin wants to call necessity. The truth is between those things. Someone like Amangeaux might say romance. Good thing Amangeaux didn’t double back to supervise.
It works, at least for the moment: Deli stumbles and surges forward. Colin grabs his hand, knowing it will slow him down more than speed Deli up, and keeps running. His legs burn. His whole body aches.
They're never going to make it.
Noxious fumes hiss at their backs. Deli keeps coughing, each time tripping a little as his body seizes. Colin grunts in frustration — at Deli? at Sanctus Putris? more one than the other, but maybe both? — and yanks Deli forward more aggressively.
Deli drops his hand. “Let me go! I'm right behind you."
Colin doesn't bother responding. If Deli says he’s following, Colin has no choice but to accept that. They book it through the underground city of Saprophus with Amangeaux up ahead, leading the way.
Colin could catch up, but who is he kidding.
He's no use dead, so he stays ahead of the poison, and that puts him ahead of Deli, though not by much. At their pace, it just might be possible to escape before they're consumed by the spores. Deli doesn't try to martyr himself again, thankfully, and they're moving too fast for the Saprophians to react before they're gone.
Just as Colin and Deli make it to Amangeaux, they burst forth into a new chamber.
The rotting pit. His father’s bones are disintegrating down there. Except for his skull, which was pulverized with Raphaniel. Just the thing Colin wants to be thinking about right now.
Amangeaux falters as they race up to the pit. “The bridges are slippery, if we run, we might fall—”
“Run!” Colin shouts, and “Run!” Deli repeats, and Amangeaux darts forth over the pretzel bridges, Colin in pursuit.
Toxins rise from the base of the pit. Whatever remained of Aaron Fontina would be obscured entirely, not that Colin bothers to look. He keeps his balance and makes it to the other side of the pit after Amangeaux. A startled yell from behind him draws his attention.
“Oh for fuck's sake,” he says. Deli is in the fucking pit. “Get up!”
“Go!” Deli bellows, writhing to free himself. “Leave me!”
Amangeaux doesn't waste a second. Colin is grateful that someone, at least, has their priorities straight here. Unfortunately, he is not one such someone.
He plants his feet and glares. “I don’t answer to you anymore.”
It’s not as if he can be much help when it comes down to it. If Deli can't muscle himself out — Colin has no idea what he'll do. Run and leave him to die? Jump in and try to pull him out?
He's saved from having to make the call. Deli roars and all that training comes in handy as he tears his battered, battle-torn body from the sticky pit and pulls himself out by brute force.
The moment he's upright, he shoulders Colin forward. “I said go, Colin!”
“Take your own advice for once!” Colin retorts.
Their feet slam the packed dirt floors of the tunnels. Colin follows Amangeaux, aware of Deli behind him. Blood pounds in his ears, the same blood dripping from his many injuries. They're so close. He recognizes these tunnels. It must be right up ahead.
Deli coughs violently. Colin glances over his shoulder to see that Deli has fallen far back, where the cloud of spores is beginning to envelope him. His knees are buckling, his body shuddering. He's moving forward on pure instinct, it seems, driven by nothing but the next shaking step, and he's too slow, and they're not going to make it.
No. Deli’s not going to make it.
“It's caved in!” Amangeaux yells. Colin looks past her and swears. He looks frantically around for any other exit route, but his attention is drawn at the same time as Amangeaux’s. “Oh—”
The little Saprophian creature, the one they left alive, is sitting there, the same place it was when they left it. It maybe hasn't moved at all. It watches them curiously, warily. Amangeaux rushes towards it.
“Colin,” Deli croaks. Colin whips around. Deli is too far back, keeled over on the ground. He's propped up by just his spear. His voice echoes down the tunnel. “Leave me here. Save yourself. It’s the only way.”
“This way!” Amangeaux shouts. “This is where the other FDA people came from! Colin, Deli, let's go let's go let's go!”
Colin turns to the tunnel Amangeaux is gesturing at just as she starts to run. He turns back to Deli. Then back to the tunnel, his only shot at survival. This was the point. It was never that they wouldn't make it; it was that Deli wouldn't. If he insists on sacrificing himself, Colin should allow him the dignity of that decision. He should do as Deli says. He should save himself.
Of course he turns back. In every version of this story, he goes back for Deli.
“Stop telling me what to do,” he bites out. “I’m not fucking leaving you.”
Deli’s answering cough wracks his entire body.
Colin takes a breath, steels himself, and darts toward Deli, into the stinking cloud of spores. It hits him immediately, a swooping nausea that turns his stomach, but he's a man on a mission.
“Colin, you have to get out of here!”
“Come on, just, shut the fuck up.” Colin makes contact with Deli, furious at his own relief. This is foolishness. This is idiocy. “Drop the spear!”
Deli drops the spear. Colin wishes he could tell if he'd done it on purpose or not.
“Let's go,” he says, and hauls Deli’s shaking body to shaking feet. He doesn't have the strength for this. By Deli's own law, Colin should not survive. Deli is hanging on by a thread, if that. Deli was a reckless martyr, but Colin is something worse: an idealist, despite it all, who can see no future where Deli makes it out alive and is still fighting with every breath to manifest such a future out of thin air. He can't fathom a world without Deli. Or maybe he simply won't.
He can feel the poison beginning to penetrate his lungs. It makes him sluggish, tingles at his extremities. The spores are all around them as he half-carries, half-shoves Deli onward, following the path Amangeaux took.
Her voice reaches them just as they're rounding the corner: “It's caved in here as well!”
“Fuck,” Colin says, and coughs. This entrance, too, is collapsed rock, more superficial than the other one, but they don't have time for this. Another thirty seconds in these spores and Deli is a dead man for sure. Colin doesn't feel too good himself; he was already in bad shape after the fight, and the poison sure as shit isn't helping. “Can we dig it out? Can we, what can we do?”
Deli wrenches free from Colin. Colin looks over in time to see a determined set to Deli’s jaw, brows drawn, eye darkly fixed on the caved-in tunnel.
“You will live,” Deli whispers. “That's an order, skald.”
“What?”
Deli runs full tilt at the blockage, and Colin's cry of “NO!” is buried by the sound of rocks crumbling and spilling out. Deli’s body disappears — underneath, or through? — as fresh air whooshes into the tunnel, buffeting back the toxic cloud. Bulblight illuminates rising dust.
Colin takes off running.
He's hardly aware of Amangeaux running alongside him. He follows the trajectory of where Deli must have gone and breaks into air and blinding Bulb light above. His vision blurs for a second, struggling to focus after so long underground.
“Deli,” he pants. “Deli, we did it, we got—”
His eyesight returns spitefully, to show him Deli, facedown on the ground, slick with blood and convulsing slightly.
“Deli?”
He doesn't tell his body to kneel, to turn Deli onto his back, to feel for a pulse at the underside of his jaw; it does all of this on instinct. Some reflex too deeply rooted to destroy, even after all this time. The heartbeat is thready, like it's on the brink of giving up.
Colin shakes Deli. “Deli!”
A cough tears through Deli’s body, probably shredding his lungs but at least lurching him to consciousness, for a moment. His eyelids flutter and wince against the light. His face is a shade of pink lighter than any Meatlander.
And yet, as he finds Colin’s eyes, his bloodstained lips curl into a hint of a smile.
“Amangeaux,” Colin says, feeling himself panic. She's at his side in an instant. “Help him. Do something. I don't, I don't know how—”
Amangeaux touches Deli’s face. She whispers something. Colin watches with bated breath, waiting for some otherworldly magic to sweep in and breathe life into Deli’s lungs, but nothing happens.
“Heal him,” Colin demands.
“I…I can't,” Amangeaux whispers. Her sadness takes up too much space, directed at the wrong person. “I’m so sorry, Deli. There’s nothing I can do.”
Deli coughs. “It is as it should be. Do not blame yourself, Lady Amangeaux.”
“Blame her?” Colin practically shouts. “If anyone is to blame, it’s you, you dick."
“You saved us,” Amangeaux says, grief-stricken. “I’m sorry I can’t return the favor.”
“No,” Deli wheezes. His face contorts in pain. “It had to…be this way.”
“You don't get to just decide that,” Colin says angrily. “If you hadn't decided to become a self-sacrificing piece of shit out of nowhere—”
“Colin.” Deli’s trembling hand presses something cold and hard into Colin’s palm. “I would do it again. I had to…save you. You had to live.”
Amangeaux whimpers and turns away. She's somewhere else, thinking of someone else. Another person she couldn’t save. Colin doesn't spare her a glance.
He knows what he's just been given. Even worse, he knows why.
“If you think I came all this way,” he gestures at the tunnel, “put myself through all of that, just to let you die…”
Deli smiles. “So stubborn. So protective. My skald.”
“I was your bodyguard first,” Colin says. “And I’m not—”
He breaks off. It's so unimportant, all of it, the titles and the politics, the mind games, everything. Smoke and mirrors so nobody sees how little any of it matters.
“You told me the strong survive,” he says instead, wiping dust from Deli’s wan face. He lets his hand rest at the angle of Deli’s jaw. “You deserve to live.”
“I got what I deserve,” Deli murmurs. Heaves another agonizing cough. His bloodied hand presses to the center of his chest, as if it will do anything to help. “Colin. I was wrong. Easily…manipulated. Strength is worthless without heart.” His other hand curls around Colin’s, around the hilt of the dagger now clasped in Colin’s fingers. His single eye is wide with urgency. “The good must survive. It had to be you.”
Colin grips the cheese rind dagger. Five years vanish. He's in the safe house in Comida, this very dagger skidding across the floor from the force of Deli’s kick. It still fits his hand, which doesn't make sense. He's changed. He's no longer the man who stood against Thane Katzon’s rage. But the dagger. It knows his touch.
He's a soldier. He knows how to make it painless.
But a painless death for the victim says nothing of pain for the one holding the knife.
There's no good option here; there’s no saving Deli. Colin is smart enough to know that Deli is on borrowed time and fading fast. Damn him for deciding that the best thing he could do for Colin was die. Colin would give anything to turn back time just to slap some sense into him.
If he does this. Something will be lost. His armored shell may survive, but the man underneath will not walk away from this. That's the choice he has to make. To spare himself the pain, or to spare Deli.
“Okay,” Colin says. He cups the back of Deli’s head, feeling blood at his fingertips. “Damn it. Okay. Screw you, Deli."
Deli tries to inhale and retches in discomfort. They both wince.
“I’m sorry,” Deli rasps.
“I am too,” Colin says.
In the distance, a horn blares victory. A hard-fought war comes to a bloody end. Nearby, Amangeaux silently mourns. The Bulb has risen on a new day. Too many did not make it past Bulbrise.
Colin leans his forehead against Deli’s. He shuts his eyes. There is no world. There is no war. The war is over. The world is this.
His lips find Deli’s, pressing gently against them, tasting blood. Deli exhales one last time.
As smooth as watersteel, the blade slips between Deli’s ribs and into his heart.
Thane Delissandro Katzon expires with a gasp, his hand still clutching Colin’s.
The puncture where the dagger went in is perfectly, skillfully hidden amidst the blood, bruises, and slashed skin. Nobody will think twice. It would be stranger not to find a dead body on a battlefield.
Colin blinks away a tear. He wipes the blood from the dagger and stows it on his person. Deli’s lips have a twist, even in death. Someone else might call it a smirk, but Colin knows how Deli smiles.
The war is over for some. Not yet for Colin. He holds Deli’s limp hand as the Bulb soars higher and higher into the sky. A part of him will be here forever, holding Deli’s hand, watching light breathe over their world.
The other part of him rises stoically, gripping the cheese rind dagger, and goes in search of a new fight.