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“Give him back,” Keyleth says, steady, staff in one hand and a gathering of magic in the other. She has walked into the blood, has felt it on her skin and in her lungs, and now she floats in a great expanse of darkness. Her chest feels cold.
Before her, the mask of the Matron waits, impassive and unchanged.
“You must know I’m not going to leave without him,” she says. Her voice is soft, as it always is, but she pours all of her power into it: decades of leading a nation, an eternity still waiting before her, the hole in her heart where he used to sit. “So give. Him. Back.”
The mask does not move, but Her voice echoes around the space, rebounding over itself as it reaches through to the ends of the universe.
“I cannot do that, Keyleth of the Air Ashari,” She says. Her voice is cold, unfazed.
Keyleth lets her magic grow, streaks of green energy wrapping around and around and around her. She feels her hair rising up, her skin beginning to glow as the green turns darker, darker, festering like a wound. Like a poison.
She closes her eyes, and when they open once more she can see the strings. Frail, golden things, stretching across this nothing, as far as she can see and farther still. She reaches out with one finger, lets a string catch against her callouses.
“What are you doing?” the Matron of Ravens asks as the string shivers away from Keyleth’s touch. “Who do you think you are, to question fate in such a way?”
Keyleth does not answer. She concentrates on pouring her magic out, out, out, spreading the dark forest green into the golden string and across it, reaching to the next, and the next, and the next. The scent of rot fills her nose, and she looks back up at the mask.
The Matron says nothing. Keyleth closes her fist, focuses her magic, and screams as it tears itself from her. The string turns black, withering in her hand.
“Stop,” a voice says from behind her, and Keyleth freezes.
She doesn’t dare turn, fears a trick from the Matron.
“Kiki,” Vax says, softer, and Keyleth feels a sob catch in her throat.
“Vax,” she whispers, her fingers clenching on the rotted string. Her voice breaks, once, and she swallows. Steels herself.
The Matron, as always, watches.
“Keyleth,” Vax murmurs, closer now: she feels his phantom heat on her shoulder a moment before his hand wraps, gently, around her wrist. “My love. You’re hurting them.”
“I know,” she bites out, teeth bared.
Her stomach hurts, with regret and want and loneliness. There are tears in her eyes-- even if she could bring herself to turn her head, she doesn’t think she’d be able to see Vax through them.
Like he can hear her thoughts, a soft thumb brushes at the corner of her eye, gathering the tears. His lips follow, pressing a kiss so light it’s barely there at all. Throughout it all Keyleth keeps her eyes forward, watching the Matron watch them.
“Kiki, please,” Vax whispers.
“Let him go,” she says, louder. It’s not a beg, except for how it is, really. She has no backup plan, no escape. She has no other option. She holds tighter to the string in her grasp, her nails cutting into the palm of her hand.
The Matron watches, and watches, and says nothing.
Vax gasps, then, and Keyleth shudders as his hand comes to rest on her shoulder.
“What is it?”
“She says…” he pauses, his throat clicking as he swallows. “She says you may try.”
“What?”
In her shock, the string slips from her hand. Keyleth pays it no mind, turning finally from the Matron to look at Vax.
He looks the same, of course. Frozen in time, as he has been all these years. His hand goes to her neck, soft and gentle and loving. Keyleth would do anything to keep it there.
“We may not walk hand in hand,” he says, looking over her shoulder at the mask. “Or side by side. You will lead, and I will follow, and if--”
Vax sighs, something like pain shuddering on his face. Keyleth reaches up to soothe it, trails her fingers feather-light across his brow.
“You must not look back,” he tells her. “If you pass the gates without turning, I may rejoin you. Otherwise…”
Keyleth nods, once, determination taking hold of her once more. She turns back to the Matron as a path appears beneath her feet, solid stone taking the place of empty space.
“I will pass your test,” she vows. Vax squeezes her hand and places a kiss upon her knuckles.
The Matron says nothing. Impassive, unchanged.
Keyleth takes a breath and turns away, pausing only once to drink in the sight of Vax as he pulls away from her. She faces forward, the path stretching endlessly into the darkness before her. Vax takes his place behind her, far enough she cannot feel his presence.
“Wait for me,” Vax says.
“Begin,” the Matron says, echoing.
Keyleth walks.
The path becomes treacherous, with whole chunks chipped off and missing. The light dims, the golden strings fading out of sight the longer she walks. She wonders if the mask remains. If She is still watching.
In the darkness, she can hear nothing but her own breath. In the silence, she can see nothing at all.
She wonders if the mask remains. She wonders if the Matron thinks she will succeed. She wonders if the path will end, or if it truly will go on forever and ever into the darkness. She wonders what the gates will look like. She wonders if she will be able to see them.
The darkness pushes on her, like a physical weight she can feel on her shoulders and her chest and the top of her head. Her breath echoes through the void and she cannot hear anything else. Beyond her, there is only silence.
Behind her, there is no sound at all.
She wonders if Vax is really there.
He is. He must be. Of course he is. How could she doubt him?
Keyleth swallows. Her steps quicken against the hard stone. Her feet ache from walking. She has no idea how long it’s been.
She doesn’t doubt him. He’s there. He’s there. He has to be.
She tries, once, to cast a spell. A simple thing, attempting only to grow a sprig of lavender in her hands. Nothing happens.
It is dark, and quiet, and she has no magic. It is dark and quiet and she is alone.
Why would she trust the Matron? After everything? How could she possibly believe that--?
There is no sound behind her.
Keyleth stumbles and sends a rock clattering down into the abyss. She is loud, her breath and her steps and every inch of her echoing, echoing, echoing, and there is no sound behind her. There is nothing. There is no one.
Of course he is not there. Of course the Matron would not keep her word. How could Keyleth have ever thought that the Weaver of Fate would allow her this? How could she-- how could she--
Vax is not behind her. He cannot be. His goddess would never let him leave.
Keyleth sobs, clutching at her middle. Her feet still stagger on, but she does not control them. The grief hits her again, at the idea that she has lost him again, that she could have fallen for something as simple as--
She turns.
She cannot help it.
Keyleth looks back.
There, illuminated in the light of the ever-watching mask, Vax stands, so close she can nearly touch him. His face is wet with tears.
“Keyleth,” he says, and his voice is hoarse. Like he’s been screaming.
“Vax,” she whispers, and reaches for him.
Golden strings wrap around his shoulders, his waist, his feet. The mask looms closer, pulling him back, back, back, and Keyleth screams.
“Wait, wait, wait!” Vax shouts, tugging at the strings. He is strong, this Champion, and he pulls free for a moment. For an instant.
Keyleth gasps as he lunges forward, wrapping his arms around her.
“It’s not your fault,” he says. “Keyleth. It is not your fault.”
He kisses her, once, before the strings tighten around him and pull him away.
“Vax,” she cries, stumbling forward as if she can follow. As if she can undo what she has done. “Vax, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to--”
He shakes his head. He is still crying, but he is smiling, too. Softly. Loving. “Not your fault, Kiki,” he says again. “I’ll see you later, yeah?”
Darkness closes, dimming the strings that hold him captive. Keyleth reaches out as he disappears.
“Wait for me,” she says.
Vax grins, blindingly alive for a single second. “Always,” he says. “Always.”
The darkness shuts in front of him like a curtain. The mask fades, as well.
Keyleth wakes in a bath of blood. When she claws her way out, drenched and shivering and still crying, she finds a snowdrop clenched in her hand.
A raven waits for her on the front steps of the temple. She takes a shuddering breath and walks past, watching as it flies up, and up, and up into the sky.