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It’s been two weeks since the world ended.
In some ways it’s almost a dream come true - Barrett will never get his claws in you again, and nobody will ever find out you weren’t actually enrolled in that engineering program. There’s nobody alive who holds a grudge against you (well, unless Cel is still pissed about your nicking the last slice of pie) and you’re a free woman.
Mostly it’s pretty awful. You and Cel never had much in the way of family - honestly, after Brock, the closest you’d ever got to that was Cel and Professor Gusset, and both your lives have been so marked by loss it just feels like Tuesday - but the rest of the crew are taking it hard. You’re pretty sure Hamid hasn’t stopped crying since you first saw your world engulfed by ...whatever kind of extraplanar monster that was. You’re just a thief and an engineer, this is well above your paygrade.
Gods. You’re not even getting paid now, are you? Even the concept of money only lives in the memories of seven people. The sum total of knowledge about your planet only lives in the memories of seven people, every name and face and place and fact you’ve ever known is gone and exists exclusively in you, and how much else was there to know that none of you knew, and is now lost forever—?
You need to get up. Do something, anything. Preferably with your hands, preferably within sight of another living thing, a reminder you’re not here totally alone. Preferably far enough they won’t try talking to you, though, because stumbling through another awkward conversation with someone you’ve only known a month is not something you feel up for right now. Or ever, really, but it’s looking like these are the only people you’ll ever see until the day you die, so—
You roll out of bed.
You go to straighten out the duvet (habit; you can’t give anyone proof you sleep) and you stop. Because there’s patches of dried blood on the sheets that definitely weren’t there last night, and now you’re looking you’re seeing matching stains on your shirt, and they’re not large, as such, but you weren’t injured, and you don’t feel great but you’re not really hurting, and— oh shit , did it reopen—?
...No. Sort of? Like, it’s definitely been bleeding a bit, judging by the flaky mess caked on your skin, but it’s not like, open-open. You’ll just have to be careful with it.
Is this scurvy? Did you go and manage to give yourself scurvy, after everything else you’ve been through recently? Really? Okay, granted, you’re not actually sure when you last ate a citrus fruit, but after what happened to Jimmy Gums, nicking oranges from market stalls became so second-nature you’re not sure you would remember. And anyway your teeth aren’t falling out, which you’re pretty sure comes before the bleeding.
So it’s fine. Probably. Either way you’re pretty sure there’s lemons in the kitchen, so you’ll just nab one of those and hopefully be done with...whatever this is. You’ll keep an eye on it. No sense worrying anyone else about it.
Now you just need to bother Cel for some hydrogen peroxide.
You get used to waking up looking like a crime scene. It’s not every night, thank the gods, but often enough that you’re basically avoiding Cel and just stealing peroxide and minor healing potions from their lab because otherwise they’ll ask what’s wrong and then you’ll have to tell them. Really you’re just grateful that nobody save them knows you well enough to notice the change in behaviour, because wow, imagine that convers-
“Sasha?”
You startle, violently, and only milliseconds before the knife leaves your hand do you realise it’s just Zolf. You put the knife down.
“Oh sh— sorry, mate. Didn’t, ah, wasn’t expecting anyone. To be around. Sorry.”
“Well. Teach me not to sneak up on you, I guess,” he says, not entirely cheerily but you can tell that’s the tone he was aiming for because he then offers you a weak smile. Like he’s pretending you didn’t just nearly murder him. Gods. Nice going, Sasha. “Listen, I just wanted to ask— I know everyone’s having a time of it, but- are you doing alright? You’ve been—” he waves his hand, looking for a word and evidently not finding it. “—off? I guess? Lately?”
Hell.
“M’fine,” you lie, trying to look like you’re not desperately trying to leave this conversation by any means necessary. You’re not finding one.
“That’s—” Zolf sighs. “That’s great, if true. But, I want you to know, it’s fine if it’s not, and, um, we’re all here to support each other, and that includes you. Okay?”
“Okay,” you echo.
It’s another week before you say anything. You’ve all split up into groups for your own missions. Or, well, everyone else has. Azu and Captain Wilde hiked off into the wilderness three days ago, in direction of the Light, and Grizzop, Hamid, and Cel have been trying to make friends with the local animals and not having much luck. Zolf, with his peg leg, hadn’t been particularly fond of the concept of walking long distances, and with the buddy system firmly in place you’re here at base camp too - ostensibly to keep the ship ship-shape, but there’s honestly nothing to fix. Which suits you, really, since it’s much easier to hide your... whatever it is, and with Zolf’s loud leg he’s easily avoidable. (Usually.)
It feels horrifically empty. It only takes you two days to crack.
You’d got into the habit of waking early - not that you’ve ever been a late sleeper, but it’s even more important now to be up and about before anyone else so you can take care of your laundry without prying eyes. You usually snag breakfast at the same time, and head off to make your rounds - patrolling the area, mostly, though never too far. There’s a buddy system for a reason, and you’re not risking someone’s life over your inability to hold a conversation.
[sasha admits to zolf that a week or two before the mission started, she'd been killed and, essentially, got a backalley resurrection and then never told anyone for fear of being kicked off the mission. professor bi ming had spent so much time and energy getting her in, how could she waste that? "hey, don't, don't blame them, they did their best, how were they s'posed to know i'd be able to get the real thing? it were my fault anyway, stupid to let myself get jumped like that—"]
[zolf helps her explain to the rest of the crew, and though sasha's condition continues to decline, between a cleric and two paladins she makes it to the end of the year - and is reset. in subsequent cycles, she visits other healers, but all they can really say is "well it seems like it's kind of making you undead? maybe?" and for the crew medics to keep up the good work.]
[they manage pretty well, except for the part where sasha gets increasingly reckless closer to the end of a cycle, because by then she's feeling like hot garbage and, man, the rest of the crew got this, right? and anyway she's never seen a trap like this, what does it do—?]
[cycle 65 rolls around: hamid is left alone. only a few cycles later, while the close call is still very fresh, they lose all of the healers early - and sasha is presented with two options: meet them in the next cycle and leave hamid, wilde, and cel another person down, or just...see what happens if she lets this run its course.]
[she essentially becomes a lich, and honestly has a much better time of it for the next 30-odd years. like, sure, she's technically a magic ghost possessing her own still-living corpse, but like, who isn't, really. she learns spells from wilde since the divine casters are, well, divine. and hamid never actually learned shit. as a result, all her spells are bard-y and she sings the verbal components by force of habit - even learning other spells later she'll sing them because that's how she was taught, like speaking german with a french accent because your german teacher was french.]
[they reach cycle 100; everything goes wrong.]
“Grizzop drik acht Amsterdam,” says a voice, cold and clerical. “You have died 24 times, and only now do you deign enter the Astral Plane. How do you plead?”
“What,” you reply, because you’ve just regained your sense of self all at once and it’s really quite overwhelming.
“You, Grizzop drik acht Amsterdam, are dead,” says the voice, in that tone that suggests they are trying very hard to be patient but are naturally very otherwise inclined. You hear it a lot, mostly in yourself. “You have, in fact, died 24 times, and only now, on your 24th death, have you decided to pursue the natural order of things and visit the Astral Plane. How do you plead? ”
“This is wrong,” you say, frowning, and then you open your eyes because you realise that if you can frown you must therefore have a body, and, oh, yep, there we go: you’re in an unnecessarily dramatically-lit room built from black and grey marble in a style that might be uppercase-Gothic but is definitely lowercase-gothic, what with the whole raven motif, and sitting at a rather more simple and mundane desk in front of you is another goblin. They’re dressed all in black, have a cape made of black feathers, and there’s a scythe propped up next to them.
Ah, you think. That Astral Plane.
[Lucas]...stops. Just, stops. Freezes perfectly in place. Barnes and Carter and [Noelle] freeze too - unblinking, unbreathing. The disks have stilled in their orbit.
[sasha awkwardly attempts to explain the hunger/cult of hades without frying her family’s minds. then, abruptly, she stills, stops mid-sentence; her voice drops some of the staticky menace, loses the awkwardness and is just...quiet. bracing for something.] "Azu, where...where’d you get that bow?”
Azu glances briefly at the bow strapped to her back - unwilling to lose sight on the creature for too long. It’s far too small a weapon for her; probably too small for Zolf, even if he knew how to shoot it. She’s...really not sure why she keeps carrying it around. She’d kind of forgotten about it, really, just another part of her armour. She frowns. “Some time ago, in a cave near Phandalin, we…” She swallows, with belated realisation. The Greycoat isn’t going to like this. “We came across a body, in a, ah, in a grey coat.” Why did she even take it? Why did neither Zolf nor Cel even comment?
The Greycoat shudders, like a ripple in a pool of water. Their voice is faint when they speak again, almost devoid of ominousness but full of horror, and about thirty seconds from hyperventilation if Azu’s any judge. “You found him,” they breathe. “He’s dead.”
And there’s a flash of light; the lich is gone, and time resumes.
As Azu blinks away the afterimages, she thinks.
This time, she’d had the presence of mind to cast a surreptitious detect evil. And...this creature, this lich that’s been haunting them, reads as good. More or less, anyway, that dull pink that that indicates a neutral, but trying, infinitely more good than Azu would ever have believed a lich capable.
Something...something is definitely going on here. Something bigger than her. Bigger than them all.
For the first time, Azu begins to doubt whether she’s on the right side.
There’s a sound like scissors free-slicing through wrapping paper, all efficiency and oddly satisfying, as a scythe cuts a crisp line through reality just in front of them.
Two goblins step through. One dressed in black, ornately armoured with a raven motif and a mantle of black feathers, the other in a similar mantle but clothed in green, with steel grey armour sparsely decorated with the phases of the moon. Both hold scythes that positively thrum with divine energy, and are about as tall as they are.
They’re speaking as they step out - not a language that Azu understands - but the less goth goblin trails off as he catches sight of the other occupants of the room. His huge red eyes go wider.
“Azu? Cel, Zolf?! What— what are you doing here? Are you alright?” He steps forward, small form almost vibrating - hope, relief, fear, joy. “Are the others with you, are they okay—?”
The cave the Greycoat leads them to is...a cave. There’s a single bag on the floor that she immediately crosses over to and starts rummaging around in, pulling out a bundle of clothing and what looks like at least a dozen knives, and setting them down carefully next to the bag (of holding, presumably). Then she turns to the adventurers.
“Okay, so, there’s not much time left. But you need your memories back, it’s, it’s really not very fun or helpful not having them, and the only way to do that is getting up to the moon. ‘Cept, I can’t get up there like this, ‘cuz Hamid put up wards to keep me out. But I have this—” and with that she pushes aside a large rock from the wall with some ethereal appendage, revealing a small passage into another chamber. Squinting into the hole, Azu can just barely make out some sort of tank, glowing a gentle green. There’s a rather suspiciously person-shaped shadow within it.
“—which is like a cloning machine thing I picked up, it’s well handy. So I’m gonna come outta that tube, but I’m not gonna know anything, right? Won’t know what’s going on, won’t know who you are, won’t know I’m a lich. Or whatever I am. Don’t think that’s the proper term? I won’t have any magic, but I’m not very good at that anyway so it’s fine. And— Azu, ‘m sorry but this thing takes months, and we don’t have that kinda time, but, like, if we get an afterwards? S’all yours.
“Um. Anyway. Do not be here when I come out, ‘cause if I see you I’ll probably try to kill you. I can convince me to help you, so when you see me come out looking for you it should be fine, but, like, also know that I will be very scared of you and I will still have fifteen knives. So. I dunno. Just. Letting you know. Um.”
She awkwardly floats over to the hole, not exactly looking at them, but not turning her back either. “Just...this plan’s been in the works a while, okay? It’s a good one. I’ve broken into a lot more airtight places than the moon, just listen to me and we’ll be golden, yeah?”
Fifteen minutes later, a young woman appears behind them. They do not see her exit the cave mouth. The only real similarity between her and the Greycoat is the studded black leather jacket, but she still feels...vaguely familiar.
[mannequin’s flashback]
“So,” she says, aiming for casual and hitting near threatening, because she’s idly toying with a very sharp knife and has not looked away from the group once. “What’s the plan?”
“Um,” says Azu. “We were under the impression you were the one with the plan?”
“...Yeah, well, I meant how we’re getting up there, or whatever, didn’t I,” she lies, blatantly.
[they offer to put her in the pocket spa but she's just like, "absolutely the fuck not, just tell me where we're going and i'll meet you there." and then they set her loose in hamid's office and she's just, terrifyingly competent.]
[finale etc etc, it's revealed that sasha & grizzop have been tragicomedically missing each other for the last 10 years, since she has sneak 80 and still thought grizzop was alive somewhere. "why not leave a note for if she comes back?" "vesseek. we, the death police, just invaded her hideout. she is a lich. she is very aware of being a lich. she's not coming back here for the next ten years, if we're lucky."]