A Death Defied

This tome I found discarded at his side as he writhed in agony. I bind to it his memories, that which he could never record.

-Keeper of the Fire

Aleorn raised his head, a spiderweb of blinding light spiraling from his jaw, spilling his radiant blood across the stones like falling stars; ash drifting freely with each shuddering breath. Like the fabled Icarus he had strayed too close to the Light. It seemed will alone bound him to this plane, will and rage. His fingers dug into the stones, melting long, ragged gashes through them, granting him no greater purchase than the air grants a dying man's plaintive hand.

Once again he crumpled, falling prostrate upon the tiles, steam rising in mournful wisps from his tattered frame. Aleorn fell still, the Light roiling inside him, blood turned hot and bright as liquid steel burning through his flesh, searing him from within. Threads of pale radiance stretched skyward, bands of light that leaked from him like water from a fractured urn.

Aleorn and Or'do stand triumphant, fists raised and eyes bright. Aleorn slammed his fist into the earth, sending a cone of splintered rock spraying around his arm, a corona of light blazing out from the point of impact.

Or'do laughing merrily, his voice ringing through the night. Slowly, shaking as if feverish, Aleorn forced one leg beneath him.

Or'do weeping as he holds Aleorn's body, clasping his fallen comrade with a terrible desperation. Melancholy has turned his bright eyes dark and cold. Aleorn roared, standing in a burst of writhing flame that turned the walls to smouldering ruin, and vaporized the ground on which he stood. Fire surged along his arms, which he held clawed at his sides, as if shackles pulled upon him from left and right. In spite of standing on nothing but void, he did not fall; held aloft in a brilliant almond that outshone even the Sun with its hateful light.

Or'do screaming in fury, smashing through foe after foe, throwing himself into the fray without thought, without sanity. Lightning flickered around Aleorn's hands as they closed into trembling fists, his eyes snapping open, revealing two pale almonds that wept tears of fire. Blind, he turned his gaze downward all the same, sensing more than seeing the Champion many leagues below.

Or'do weeping tears of rage, life streaming from a thousand wounds that neither slow nor trouble him. "He sought to protect me." Aleorn mouthed these words silently, his voice stolen. "But never did he realize: if he sacrificed himself, how would I press on? Or'do is the beacon of hope that burned away my darkness." Tendrils of flame lashed and convulsed around him, slithering across the stones like vipers clad in fire.

"You sought only to protect me." He whispered, his breath forcing a thin wisp of light between his seared lips. "You offer your life in my stead."

"But I cannot accept." Aleorn leaped into the abyss, two spires of pale bone erupting from his back, snapping out into skeletal wings that then blazed with feathers of gold and ivory. "You gave me reason to stand when I wanted nothing more than to fall." His heart lurched in his chest, fraying like an overburdened rope. A silent cough spewed magma from his jaws and filled him with indescribable agony. "You held me aloft when my legs failed." Or'do tilting back his head, screaming in anguish as Aleorn drifts into the emptiness. "You mourned me when no one else would." Tendrils of amber swirled around him as he descended, slashing rifts in space itself through which he surged, blind eyes aflame with hate.

"I will let neither Dark nor Deep nor the Gods themselves take you from me!" Aleorn gritted his teeth, steam gushing through his torn cheek with each strained breath. An angel clad in light and fury, he descended like a falling star toward the Champion below. "You've saved me a thousand times." Aleorn's voice was lost, yet the anguish in it was no less clear. "It is time I do the same."