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"You're to depart at sunrise, then?"
G'raha Tia's words fell heavily in the silence. It was a different sort of quiet than the usual calm found here, and it would not take a scholar to deduce the why of it.
In the Crystal Exarch's private chambers, a humble repurposed storage room just off the Ocular, a single small window bored meticulously into the crystal hung open, shutter rattling in the breeze and a beam of gentle moonlight piercing the dark.
Urianger stared at his hands folded tightly in his lap as he sat perched on the edge of a bed in which he knew he would never wake again beyond the morrow.
"Indeed," he said. "So sayeth the Warrior of Light: time floweth ever forward."
A soft sigh drifted from across the room where G'raha waited beside his desk, hood pulled down and fingers running slowly through his own hair, and perhaps the most comforting part of all of this was Urianger's knowledge that soon would come the final time his companion would ever have to don such a disguise and walk beneath the shroud of secrecy.
Would that he had the same luxury, he thought. But he pushed it away. He would bear that burden gladly should it mean preserving the legacy that crystal hand had wrought.
"So it does," G'raha said. "Though this is not yet farewell. The sun will rise, and who is to say what is to come with the morning?"
Urianger shook his head and shut his eyes for a long moment. "A dubious question, thou must needs admit."
The man only chuckled. "Perhaps."
Three years he had prepared for this. Three years to steel his heart and paste a mask of iron upon his face. Three long years, still so few they paled beside a century of meticulous planning.
His own desperate heart should be silent. So he willed it; so it roiled regardless.
Too often of late he had spent his nights far from this place, be it among the shelves of his Il Mheg homestead or the cold tile walls of a borrowed room in the Pendants kept more for show than for sanctuary. But ever since the reunion of his fellows, eyes had been too heavy upon him to steal away to this place on many nights at all.
It did not matter. If this was to be the last one, he would savor it nonetheless. A return to his rooms in the early hours of the morning would surely raise eyebrows as well as questions, but all would be laid bare soon enough anyway.
"What more must thou needst do?"
G'raha sat heavily in his desk chair. "Little, I believe. What letters I intended to write have already been penned, preparations for the Tower itself completed days ago. I'm to speak wth Lyna regarding the city's protection upon my own independent departure, and…"
He shuffled a pile of papers into a neat stack.
"Beyond that, nothing."
"Thou art prepared."
"I am."
"Art thou ready?"
He watched as his companion froze, stiff and seated straight.
"I believe so," G'raha said after a long moment, his voice low and soft, but steady. "Are you?"
Urianger had devoted his life to answering unanswerable questions, to chasing down the mysteries of the universe and peeling them apart piece by piece to understand their function like one might do with the clockwork heart of a favorite old mammet. No amount of study, however, would have given him an answer worth anything here and now. So rarely was he left speechless, and yet his own question reflected back at him stole all the words from his tongue.
"You needn't say anything," G'raha said. "I am sorry." He shook his head, then his shoulders, then stood and took a few tentative steps toward the bed and placed a hand of flesh and bone on Urianger's shoulder. "Come. You've an undoubtedly taxing day ahead of you. It is best you get at least some rest."
Urianger took a slow breath. Rare were the times he voiced his own wants, not least in the years since his timely arrival to the First, but…
"Thou wouldst not have me sleep alone," he said.
"To think I would even entertain the thought. You wound me," G'raha said with a laugh. It was a hearty one, full and genuine and lovely in a way that made Urianger's heart skip and then fall soon after. Beauty, feathered and fleeting. He replayed the sound in his mind in a desperate attempt to etch it into his memory.
Their nighttime routine was quiet, practiced, and comfortable, and as he combed his hair, then dressed down to his smallclothes, he listened to G'raha's soft humming of an old Sharlayan lullaby, carried with him across worlds and centuries, and committed that to his memory, too. In silence, they settled beneath the covers and tucked themselves close to one another.
Despite everything, G'raha Tia was so warm. The crystal scar upon his cheek was a lone sliver of cool pressed just below Urianger's collarbone, while the skin around it remained soft and vital. With his arm wrapped tight around half-crystallized shoulders, Urianger could feel both their heartbeats out of rhythm—his companion's slower than any man's, as it was the pulse of the Tower's magic moreso than any living organ; his own a bit faster than usual if only for his utter failure to silence the whirling storm within his mind.
Sleep refused to come easily.
G'raha's breathing slowed to a quiet, even rhythm. Though he rarely slept, and he'd once said the mortal need for such a thing had dissipated nearly ninety years before, it seemed he was, for once, allowing himself to truly sleep. A soft smile rested upon his lips.
Urianger stared at the ceiling simply feeling, listening to the other man breathe, running his fingers over skin slightly hardened by scarring around the edges of jagged crystal growth. Every now and then a fuzzy ear flicked against his chin. He stopped counting the minutes. Perhaps it was best to keep himself awake, to savor this, for sleep had a habit of making time pass rather too quickly.
Even so, the warmth they had gathered beneath the blankets lulled him into a quiet trance and eventually his eyes slipped shut of their own accord.
He woke to the orange of sunrise filtering in through the window and a chill on his skin in the spot where a warm body had been. Fatigue weighed heavy on his eyes as he pried himself from the clutches of exhaustion. He had not the luxury of more rest today; the chance for that had passed.
On unsteady feet, he retrieved his robes from where they lay draped over an armchair and his jewelry from where he'd laid it carefully upon the bedside table so the chains would not tangle in their proximity to one another overnight. He dressed quietly, unable to ignore the finality of it all.
When he finished, he found G'raha Tia in the small washroom just off the side of his chambers, staring into the mirror.
"You're awake," he said when he realized he was being watched.
"Aye," Urianger said.
G'raha smoothed his robes and his hair and left the mirror behind in favor of joining Urianger where he stood just inside the washroom's doorframe.
"Forgive me—selfishly, I did not wish to wake you yet," G'raha said. "I understand you need to go."
"The sunrise hath but recently begun. I shalt not leave them waiting overlong, I—"
"Of course."
A tense silence fell, and crimson eyes half-narrowed around a smile locked onto his own.
"To that matter, then," G'raha said, and for a moment he returned to the mirror. He raised his hood and whispered to himself, and when he turned away from the mirror once again it was as the Exarch, eyes shrouded in a familiar way that nonetheless closed a fist tight around Urianger's heart. "I would leave nothing unsaid."
He swallowed hard. "Nor I."
For he had done it before and would not walk the path of that particular grief ever again.
The Exarch stepped up to him slowly and placed both hands on his chest, then wrapped his fingers around the narrow silken sleeves of his robes and pulled him downward.
"Please," Urianger whispered. "Not with eyes thus hidden."
A sad smile crossed the Exarch's lips, but he nodded and pushed down the hood nonetheless, dispelling the glamour that had for so long been a fixture upon his face. Crimson eyes glistened.
"Of course," he said. "An old habit, I suppose, but by now I've nothing left to hide from you. I am sorry."
Urianger shook his head. "Save thine apologies for our comrades. I've no need of them."
"But I must make them," G'raha pressed on, and though unshed tears pooled in his eyes, a smile crossed his lips. "Because you must know how deeply, terribly sorry I am that this must end. How much joy you have brought to an old man's twilight. How much comfort you give in a world so bereft of it. To all those around you, I am certain, but selfishly, to myself most of all."
"'Twas nothing but natural," Urianger whispered back, and the next words caught in his throat.
"I am sorry for the burden this will leave on your shoulders."
"But I am yet prepared to shoulder it," he said, placing a hand on the side of G'raha's face. He leaned into the touch. "Let not this burden weigh upon thine own. Thou needst not carry more; thy work hath been far, far more than enough."
It had. It truly had. Urianger had spent the majority of three entire years with his eyes upon this man, behind them a simmering mix of fear, pity, and love, and not once had he ever wished more of him.
Not once, until now. It was greedy, selfish, terrible. He'd long ago made peace with the cost—one life for two worlds. There was never any question. But what he wouldn't give for a single extra day.
"Thou hast left—" his voice caught on the words and he took a deep, shaky breath. "Thou hast left an indelible mark upon me. To see thine eyes bright and full of hope once more bringeth me nothing but relief. Full glad am I that thou art at peace. Full glad am I that thou couldst find happiness here."
That his own heart protested was of no consequence to the matter, he insisted to himself.
G'raha nodded and smiled up at him.
"I—" Urianger began to speak, but a single crystal finger pressed against his lips while a spoken hand wound around the back of his neck and pulled him forward.
It was a long kiss and a deep one, warm and all-encompassing, but it lacked the comfort such a thing usually brought. He tried to silence part of himself that wondered if this would be the very last one and failed.
It was G'raha who first broke away.
"I have asked much of you, Urianger, but I would ask you one final thing: please, do not fear for me. Do not mourn a future that will not come to be. Think on our time with joy in your heart. I wish for nothing more."
G'raha took his hands and squeezed tight for a long but far too short moment before stepping back and raising his hood once more.
"I feel no fear," he said. "All will be well. This is my dearest wish, and you have helped me see it to fruition. There is lightness in my heart, and for this I owe you more than I can ever repay."
Would that the weight within Urianger's own chest did not descend ever further.
It had only been a matter of days, but it felt like a lifetime.
Urianger sat alone at a table on the lowest level of the Cabinet of Curiosity, surrounded by stacks of books he'd collected in a desperate, feeble attempt to scour them for any shred of possible hope. Beside him strewn across the table were notebooks full of flowing penmanship scratched out with a desperate, heavy hand, an inkwell spilled and filled again twice over, and the gleaming golden planisphere with which he had utterly failed to divine even a hint of useful guidance.
He'd been at it for far more hours than he cared to count by now, eyes unfocused as he skimmed the same chapters over and over for something, though he knew not what.
Light once again obscured the stars, the Warrior of Light slumbered in a corruption-calcified stasis, and the sound of a single gunshot rang in his ears without cease. The Exarch's long-planned death was meant to be an ending, both for G'raha Tia and for Urianger himself. There, the night would return and the Scions would be released back to their home, but instead there was now only more work, and he, at its heart, could do nothing but continue.
He had long preferred to mourn in silence, tucking himself away in the darkest corner he could find, balancing on the treacherous edge of grief and determination, fated once again to be the one to bear the weight of someone else's sacrifice. And despite his insistence he leave nothing unsaid, he had. Gods, he had. But if there were a chance he could still say it…
He would read every word in this library, if he must, and still he doubted it would be enough.
He planted his elbows on the table and leaned his head into his hands. Now was not the time for tears nor distractions, but even the most stoic of men were not immune to pain. It felt like shattered glass embedded where his heart should be—suitably poetic, though he hadn't the strength to find the beauty in it now.
A moment to breathe. That was all he needed, then he would return to work, bury himself in another book, and allow the time to pass with no consideration for how long it had been since he'd last slept. Without the sun to rise and set, he could almost fool himself into believing no time had passed at all, were it not for the strain it put upon his eyes.
Mayhap Y'shtola could have saved him, been on her guard and prepared a shield through which a mundane bullet could not have passed. Or Thancred, quick and light on his feet to place himself between the Exarch and Ascian. Anyone, anything. But instead he had kept his counsel as bid, and when the time came to ensure it all came to pass… He alone had not been enough.
The musical ringing of a tiny bell and a flash of bright orange light snapped him from his stupor.
"Feo Ul," he said, sitting up straight again and rubbing at his eyes. "'Tis a strange time for a visit."
The fae king's tiny simulacrum hovered on hummingbird-fast wings above his single burning candle, their arms crossed and expression terse.
"I sought you at home in Il Mheg," they said, "yet where do I find you but buried in books somewhere else entirely? Buried in books you're not even of the mind to read, it seems." Their harsh, scolding tone softened in the last words. Was he truly so pitiable, he wondered?
"Aye, our work remaineth long and arduous," he said, pulling the closest book toward him once again and letting it fall open to a section he'd already read twice—an outdated geological record of Kholusia. "Thou shouldst know I intend fully to return to my reading."
"Yes, yes," they scolded. "But what of this?" With a flip and a flourish, they dove close to tap him in the center of his chest, then back again to hover above the light.
"That," he answered, hoping his tone was suitably scolding in return, "is none of thy concern. Nor anyone's but mine own. Excuse me." He cast his eyes to the book instead.
Feo Ul only sighed dramatically. "What a tangled terrible web you've woven, [strange one]."
"I beseech thee, look not to me. If thou must needs meddle, do it whensoever our Warrior of Darkness may wake. There is nothing further for thee here; our path forward lieth beyond mine ability to see."
"You would further pull the strings while hiding behind the curtains, then, I see," Feo Ul hummed. "Storyteller. Seed-sower. Puppetmaster, perhaps."
"Leave me," he said, but the command was halfhearted at best.
"To stew in your sorrow? I think not, [web-weaver]. You've responsibilities yet. Surely you of all men can see that."
The pixie drifted close and raised a finger. His instinct to brace himself for fae mischief set alarm bells ringing in his mind, but their pointed finger instead sent a warm floral breeze to engulf them both, and when he opened his eyes again it was to a cloud of pastel stars in front of him—the same stars he'd spent much of the past three years staring into each time he raised his weapon, be it for mending or mysteries.
The planisphere itself drifted lazily unsupported in the air, Feo Ul's finger pointed directly at it, guiding it.
"Open your eyes, and you may yet see hope. That is the gift he left you, is it not?"
He watched the planisphere hover, gleaming and meticulously polished with nary a fingerprint on its golden surface. Hope. Magic. A weapon and a tool… Mayhap the pixie had the right of it.
Urianger stood and wrested control of the spinning weapon with a rushed burst of his own aether.
"Forgive me mine urgency," he said, not waiting for a response before he deactivated the planisphere and returned it to its place upon his back, then turned and fled the library without so much as a farewell.
He heard the vague sound of a musical laugh as he went, hurrying up the stairs and through the city so quickly it felt as though a wind had caught his hair and skirts despite the stagnant air that came along with the return of endless light.
His breath was heavy and labored by the time he reached the foot of the Crystal Tower and rushed toward the guard who still stood vigil out front, though all knew the place to be empty now.
"Master Urianger," the guard said, wide-eyed. "Are you well?"
"Well enough, I thank thee," he said between gasps of air. "I must needs enter the Tower."
"I—I'm sorry sir, the captain's instructed us not to allow—"
"Now, if it pleaseth thee. 'Tis urgent." To be so firm felt terribly foreign but also terribly necessary.
The guard looked side to side, clearly antsy.
"If aught goes wrong, thou hast every right to lay the blame on me, but I beseech thee, allow me mine entry."
The guard pursed his lips and sighed, his wary glances turning furtive. "Alright, alright," he said. "If it were anyone else… But it's you." He pulled a ring of keys from his belt and fumbled through it before finding a small Allagan chip threaded through with a string. He nodded and pressed the chip to the door, which opened slowly with a familiar rumble of stone against crystal, just enough for Urianger to slip through alone.
He did so, then he hurried straight to the Tower's own heart.
The Ocular's silence was neither calm nor heavy now. It was simply there. Empty.
Stepping inside, his sense of urgency abated and he found himself standing in the center of the room, atop the nexus of fourteen worlds etched in crystal. He studied the lines beneath his feet, cosmos condensed in a single flat image, and though the Source was there on the floor before him, he felt it a cruel symbol that the one he would call his own world was not here with him.
He took a deep breath, shut his eyes for a moment to collect himself, and entered the Umbilicus. The room was kept firmly locked at all times, but two years before, the Exarch had deigned to copy the key in secret. Access to an unrivaled library of tomes, esoteric and forbidden, fit for his eyes only. It was perhaps among the most meaningful gifts Urianger had ever received.
He had no personal experience operating the console on the far side of the room, but perhaps…
He approached it cautiously, half-convinced it would remain dormant, but as he laid his hand across the control the way he'd watched the Exarch do it, the lights in the room hummed to life.
Hope. Magic. A weapon and a tool. He shut his eyes and reached out with his aether, searching around him for something, anything, to latch onto.
If the Exarch were an extension of it, if he were the Tower's weapon and tool, then perhaps there remained an open connection, and so he searched. It would be weak at best, he knew, given the distance and his time away, but…
It took many long, draining minutes of picking apart the flow of magic within it before he stumbled across an aetheric signature that felt heartarchingly familiar.
There.
He grabbed hold of it the best he knew how. It was faint, tenuous, not nearly enough to find a solid pathway or to pinpoint a location, but he could, perhaps…
"Should any gods yet listen," he whispered to no one.
He breathed what aether of his own he could into the connection—every drop he could spare, knowing it would further tax the Scions of their own in aiding Ryne with holding back the light, knowing it would only leave him more exhausted and further in need of his own recovery—praying and pleading that some of it, any of it, could reach the man on the other side.
He felt it breathe back.
Somewhere, G'raha Tia lived.
Urianger collapsed to his knees, only half from the aether expenditure, and allowed himself, finally, to weep.
"I will find thee, love. This I swear."