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He loved her. He looked at her, her bright green eyes, and he knew he was doomed. His own gray, battered skin, full of scars and scabs and ugly marks that the wars and the fights bore in him. She danced to the music playing in the square of this small town's harvest festival. The performers enjoyed her enthusiasm.
He had never seen that sparkle in her eyes when they fought together, when they were on the battlefield, where her eyes were dark and filled with a clear bloodlust that was so different from this pure, and childlike joy. This was their first moment of peace together, their first time when they could truly behave as if they weren't cold-blooded killers. He had his cape draped over his head, hiding his dark eyes and white hair from the looks of the bright humans. Their curious stares always gave him shudders down his spine, he couldn’t help it, and neither could they. He knew the stories they told about elves like him. Most of all he knew they were true, he knew the experiences he’d had in the Underdark when he was young. The humans could be so much kinder than his kin back at home.
Humans like Calla.
He stared at her again, his main attraction, her fiery red hair dancing with her the wind playing with the locks of hair he had just seen out of the braid for the first time. Her hair was curly, a beautiful combination of red, burgundy and some locks of blonde. She wiped the strands out of her face and their eyes met. Her piercing green stare met his and she smiled. She walked towards him and pulled him in, taking his hood off of his head. The sun had begun to set, so she knew he wouldn’t be bothered by the brightness in the sky, and she pulled him in close.
“Don’t let their stares bother you,” she whispered softly as she took both his hands and turned him around herself to the beat of the music. Her laughter was the most beautiful thing he had seen in the longest time, and to think to himself that he had wanted to kill her when they had first met. To think he had been tasked to pour her wonderful innards onto the floor. He couldn’t bare to lose her at this point in time. The butterflies in his stomach were sickening him, and he smiled again.
They danced in the circles till their feet started hurting, the music, the joy, and the laughter spreading through the night sky as the stars glowed above them.
Their night came to an end in the local tavern, where they were offered a room by the kind innkeeper for their joy and love during the festival. They spend their night talking to one another, of their dreams and their ambitions.
“I want to become a better person,” Calla had told Tiberius during a moment of silence. The comfortable silence, that one you have with a person you fully trust and care about, the ones that don’t need to be broken by jokes, or statements. “You already are a good person to me,” Tiberius told her, he smiled in the dark of the room, his eyes could see her face clear enough to push a lock of her hair out of her face and she chuckled softly.
“If you think killing people for a living is what a good person does, I do not want to know what a bad person does in your mind,” Calla whispered with a chuckle behind her words. Tiberius thought about it for a moment and then gave her a soft push.
“Slavery, public executions, you know, the usual,” he joked, and her laughter filled the room. “Your home does sound like such a cheerful place, I would love to visit there,” she smiled, her smile being very much there as she closed the distance between their lips. Tiberius pulled her in closer, but the words echoed in his brain. I want to become a better person. Did that mean they’d have to give up their way of living? Tiberius hadn’t known anything else other than killing people for a living, he’d never had a skill for anything else, he’d always used his magic and his powers for war.
He thought about it during his trance in the night as Calla softly snored beside him, her head rested on his chest and as the sun started to rise he looked at her freckled face. He did want to become a better person for her, but what would that mean?
They had a job to do, nevertheless of if they wanted to become better people they had a job to do that they took together. They needed that payment to come in if they wanted to free themselves of the burdens of their occupation. Their assignment had been a bit bigger than they usually took on, an assassination of a lord. He wasn’t even a particularly evil lord, he had started a rebellion against the Viscount of the region. The Viscount had been beyond upset at the lord and had told the duo that they would get anything they wished if they finished their quest together.
Nevertheless, they had accepted the task, they had greatly considered their plans and the festival seemed like the best way to get into the lord's castle this day. They both knew the risk, of course at such a festival a lot of the lord's supporters and his rebellion would be part of the celebrations.
They would be in an out, they’d each have a shot at the killing of the lord. He’d be in the courtyard the entire afternoon. They joined the celebrations with care and the precision they always applied. Their target was easy to spot, dressed in somewhat more expensive cloth than the surrounding commoners, but he was layered in a flower crown from his followers. The commoners smiled as they gave him more flowers.
Calla’s attempt came first, she had always been great with her stealth and sleight of hand as she poured a poison in the lord's cup. She gifted him a flower for his crown and the wine. The lord didn’t take a sip yet, and Calla looked at Tiberius with a concealed nod. It was his time for the hit. He walked towards the lord and spoke to him in kind words. The type of words that came from a supporter of his rebellion and his acts of kindness to his folk. Words that concealed a well-timed spell. A spell that could burn a soul from the inside. It wasn’t well-timed this one time. Tiberius couldn’t even turn his back to the lord before he screamed out in pain. All eyes were pointed from the lord to the drow that had just spoken to their lord. Calla pulled Tiberius away, and they ran, through the gates to the forest. They heard the angry screams of the rebels gathering themselves together. Their weapons sharp as they ran. Arrows flew around their ears as Calla and Tiberius ran. Some of the rebels came close, but Calla’s sharp knifes or Tiberius swift spells pushed them back.
They ran for what felt like miles and at some point Calla held onto Tiberius with her arm around his shoulder, and they ran even further until they were fully sure they were in safety. In safety, at last, Tiberius couldn’t hear the voices of the angry rebels anymore. His breathing was deep and labored, and he looked at Calla, who was hanging with inches from the end on his shoulder. Her hold on him was weak and she looked pale. She whispered something, but he couldn’t make out the words. He couldn’t make anything out of her slurring string of words.
“Iwa’ stabb’d,” Calla’s hurried slurred words were spoken so softly, so weakly.
“Calla, my love, calm,” he said as he put her down on the mossy ground very carefully, and she winced as she hit the floor with her body. She then took her hands off her abdomen. A broken arrow stuck from her stomach, right next to a red hole in her shirt. She had been stabbed.
“They twisted the knife,” she spoke very careful, slowly. She winced again as she put pressure on the wound. Tiberius inspected the wound, he looked so lost there with her other hand on his shoulder. Her fingers were cold, he could feel the cold of her fingers through the cloth of his blouse. She couldn’t have lost that much blood already, he’d also been stabbed in his thigh! He was fine!
“You need a healer,” he said, his determination was so certain. “Don’t lift me,” she said. “Please don’t.”
Tiberius debated not listening to her, he debated whether he should run to the next town over, but he knew that run wouldn’t help, she’d be gone. “I need you here,” she said as she tugged at the sleeve of his shirt. She looked lost, she had never looked so weak. The same amount of life he had seen in her eyes the night before, it was all lost right now. It had poured out of her as they had run away.
“I need you, I need you right here, next to me while we become good people together Calla,” the desperation in his voice was pathetic, he’d never felt this vulnerable before not even while he had just escaped the Underdark not even while he had lost everything he’d ever known. Now he was losing everything he knew all over again. Calla was his everything. “I love you,” she whispered as she closed her eyes. Tiberius wrapped his arms around her, holding her so, so close. He didn’t know how to help her, he wished to every single god that had ever wronged him to bring her back to him. To let him keep the one thing in his life that brought him so much joy. He felt her slip away, her spirit being gone from this plane, and he cried. It had been so long since he’d cried, the tears rolling down his cheeks. He felt lost.
It had been harrowing weeks for him. He’d felt empty, he hadn’t eaten a single thing, hadn’t slept and still he’d been alive. He hated it so much. Not only that, but he had prayed to every single god he’d known in so long.
He hadn’t dared to pray to Lolth, the mark in his neck already tingling at the idea of it, but he had considered it. However, he too knew that the cost of that would be too great. He’d have her back alive, but he would never be able to see her again because Lolth would keep him as her personal prized pet, the goddess was a spiteful one, and he did not want to live the consequences. He was still outweighing those pros from the con’s, but he needed to be able to live with Calla.
He knew his option. He knew the next thing he had to do. He had read the books, he knew the way to do it.
Tiberius had always thought he was way better than this. This wasn’t what a good person did, playing with the fates with the way the world works. The living and the dead were two separate entities, and if one had passed over to the other side, you shouldn’t change that. However, here he had buried her body so carefully as he could with the materials he had. He had bound her in cloth. He dug her body up again. The paleness and the cold had grown so much worse. The materials. He had collected them carefully, and then he stared. He stared from his dirty hands, fingernails black from the earthen brown that he had covered her body with, to her body.
He spoke so carefully. The words leaving his mouth as he read from the little parchment he had written the incantation on. He whispered it, as if it wouldn’t be noticed by anyone if he only whispered the spell. The surrounding forest was incredibly silent, not a bird’s call was heard around him. The twigs didn’t snap from a deer that walked around. The forest around him was dead. He finished his spell and he waited as the magic formed around him. He knew a ritual could take long until the magic was pulled away from the air. A figure stood before him. He stared at the vague form of a person with black eyes, their skin was pale, and their long white hair slowly fell over their shoulders.
“Do you really another chance?” A snickering voice whispered in his ears as a smoky hand traced over his shoulder. “You want her to find out what a terrible person you are?” The mocking tone was the worst feeling that Tiberius had gotten in a long time. He hadn’t felt this bad about someone else’s judgment since he had been a young kid back in the Underdark.
It wasn’t the judgment of this creature though that bothered him, it was the possibility of Calla knowing what he had done to her, of Calla never wanting to see him again for his acts against the laws of the living and the dead.
“I can’t do it,” Tiberius sobbed softly, the tears welling up in his eyes as a hot lump of coal sprouted in his throat. “I can’t live without her.”
“I’ll grant you your wish, but only if.” The silence pained him so much, the intention of silence from this terrible creature. “Only if you walk through one single battle without looking back at her.” Tiberius stood there, blinking slowly as he thought over his chances. This was his only chance at getting her back. The woman he loved more than life itself. “I’ll do it.”
“Very well,” the creature spoke, and there in front of Tiberius was a battlefield. Active and hot and fiery. The gray of ash and red of fire spreading far and wide in front of him. “Keep your eyes forward.”
Tiberius nodded solemnly. He walked. In the beginning of the long walk, it was okay. He knew she had to be there behind him. He heard a footstep in the sand every once in a while, but after a while of silence he felt it itching. He needed to see her lively face again.
He needed to meet her eyes, and he told himself he would do it. He would succeed at this one last task he had in front of him. The battlefield was long and so treacherous. Arrows and spells flew around them, but they kept walking. They kept going for the longest time, and he wished it was done right now, until he heard something again.
A silent huff coming from Calla, and then a wince. The muffled sound of someone falling behind him. Before he knew what he had done, he was looking her in the eyes, with his arms reached out to help her up as her appearance behind him dissipated in thin air. His mouth dropped as his eyes welled with tears. So did Calla’s eyes as she smiled through the tears.
The last words she had spoken to him back in the forest came back to him as he was launched away from the battlefield in the forest. I love you.