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Lucien dies.
The magical bolt hits him true, and his already weakened body—strengthened, then weakened, then strengthened and weakened once more—collapses under the strain.
Lucien dies, then opens his eyes—only two of them now—to see the tiefling lookalike that has plagued his entire existence ever since Cree resurrected him now standing over him. Molly has a heeled boot on Lucien’s throat, and his hands are covered in a dark liquid that drips down next to Lucien’s face. A quick glance down reveals that Lucien’s chest has been ripped in half, though instead of the usual red (tainted) blood, there is only a pit of darkness in the hole where his ribs and lungs and heart should be.
Oh, right. The sliver had taken control during that final moment of life after the blue one’s fatal blow had hit, and he had literally torn them both apart in his efforts to protect his friends. An unnecessary move, considering Lucien had already gone past his limits of living, but entirely in character with the nuisance of a sliver.
Molly digs the heel of his boot a little further into Lucien’s neck with a cheery (and eerie) grin. “I win,” he declares, as if the two of them had merely been wrestling like young brothers, then steps off and back.
“Fucking shite.” Lucien finds that he can summon none of his usual calm politeness, that the temper so often simmering just underneath his lavender skin is already at its boiling point. His lack of control over his emotions should be alarming, but he finds that he just doesn’t fucking care at this point. He’s fucking dead. He deserves to be a little peeved.
When he goes to lunge at the sliver’s throat in retaliation, however, he discovers that he has no control over his limbs. “What the actual fuck? What did you do to me, sliver?”
Molly’s grin turns into a pout. “Aw, you don’t have to have such a bad attitude about these things. At least we’re not in the hells or the Abyss, and at least your soul is kinda in one piece this time.”
“Why can’t I move?”
Molly shrugs. “I dunno. The weight of your sins or something?”
“Oh, fuck off.”
The grin returns. “Okay.” And then, he fucking disappears into thin air.
Lucien blinks, stunned for only a moment, before he starts struggling against whatever is holding him to the dark, featureless ground again. He has no luck this time either.
Molly pops back into view. “Wow, you really did make quite a mess of things back there. With those creepy mages dead, that flesh city is sorta just dead matter floating in the Astral Sea now.”
“How did you do that?”
“What?” Molly looks down at himself. “Oh. Well, I’ve been here a lot longer than you. I’ve picked up a few new tricks.”
Lucien groans, glaring as his temper boils over entirely. “Do you have to be so fucking smug about everything? We get it. You won, and I got shite in the end. Your friends will probably bring you back any second now, and I’ll be stuck here to wallow in my failure alone.”
Molly tilts his head as if listening to something otherwise imperceptible. “No. No, I don’t think that’s what’s going to happen.”
“What? What the fuck does that mean?”
Sometimes, Lucien forgets that his sliver is just as good at ignoring direct questions as he himself is.
Molly kneels down next to Lucien’s prone form. “Do you wanna see what I see? What you left behind?” He extends his hand.
Lucien thinks about rejecting the offer; every single petty and stubborn and angry part of him insists that he refuse. But he’s nothing if not curious, and logically, he knows it’s the best option he has. And when he tells his arm to lift his hand to accept Molly’s, it actually moves under his control.
As soon as Molly lifts Lucien to his feet, they’re both floating in the Astral Sea. The giant husk of Cognouza looms before their somewhat translucent forms.
“This is some weird shite,” Lucien comments as he looks around at the endless space stretching out around them.
“It gets weirder,” Molly says with a wink. He tugs Lucien forward by their still connected hands, and suddenly, they’re in the Aether Crux standing over the dead body of an all-too-familiar tiefling.
It’s Lucien. It’s Mollymauk. It’s both and neither and something new entirely. It’s just another fucking dead body on a city of dead flesh.
And Lucien had caught the briefest glimpse of the rest of Cognouza as they zoomed into the Crux. Where there had once been a living place, a breathing and bleeding and thinking hive of minds and bodies, there is only a mass of rotting matter shaped like buildings and furniture and streets. Looking around inside the Crux, Lucien can see fungi and lichen growing on the decomposing walls. Cognouza is in absolute ruin, and somehow, the Mighty Nein have managed to create something disturbingly beautiful out of the remnants.
Lucien fucking hates it.
He turns his attention away and back to where a ritual is being set up around the body of the lavender tiefling. He only gets a small amount of grim satisfaction in thinking about how much time and effort must have gone into freeing the body from the city’s grip.
“Why the fuck are we here?” he asks Molly. “What, did you want to bring me to your resurrection just to gloat?”
Molly shakes his head, his horn jewelry jingling faintly even in the strange liminal space both tieflings are stuck in. “Just because you lost doesn’t make me the victor either in the end. That’s just the nature of the game: we can’t all win, and sometimes, the winner is someone entirely unexpected.”
“Would you stop speaking in shite riddles?”
Molly levels a piercing stare at Lucien, which makes the other squirm with its uncharacteristic intensity, before he smiles with genuine sympathy. “It means that, through some weird cosmic shite, we’re a part of one another. Which also means that we’re stuck with each other, whether we like it or not. Wherever you go, I go. You’re not going to die alone.”
Lucien can’t suppress his flinch. There had been a reason why he had dragged all of the remaining members of the Tombtakers back into his shite and across the tundras of Eiselcross. There had been a reason why he had tied Cree’s soul to Cognouza instead of letting her die by the Nein’s hands or helping her keep her original mortal form. There had been a reason why he had refused to let Mollymauk out of his grasp while the Nein pleaded with their former friend. Having already died once, Lucien hadn’t been afraid of dying again necessarily, but there has always been a part of him—a small part of him that he would never admit to aloud—afraid of dying alone.
He covers up his fear with his usual attitude. “So, what, neither of us come back here? Can you really just leave your friends with fuck all after everything they went through to get you back?”
“Not ‘nothing,’” Molly corrects. “Empty, sure, but empty isn’t nothing.”
“I liked you better when you weren’t a cryptic arse.”
“Aww, so you admit you do like me.” Molly’s playful smile fades a bit as he tilts his head as if listening to something again. “I think she wants to talk to us.”
“Who?”
“You’ll like her. She’s all about deception and secrecy and soothing pain with love.”
Lucien scoffs. “And you think that’ll make me like her?”
“Well, yeah. Deep down inside, you love the world. Why else would you have tried to take all of its pain away, in your own weird way?”
When Lucien flinches this time, Molly squeezes his hand. Below them, the Nein are performing a resurrection ritual around a dead tiefling’s body.
“We don’t need to watch this,” Molly says, starting to pull them away.
Lucien starts to protest, but then, he sees Molly’s expression. Where there had been the usual carefree, mischievous grin is now an uncharacteristic somberness. There is still that spark of happiness and love in Molly’s red eyes, but it is a fragile joy.
A rare mercy falls over Lucien, and he does not resist as Molly pulls him away from Cognouza and the Astral Sea through a glowing Gate.