Finding Loss, Losing Loss (Botgd 2)
The only thing that could be heard was the drones and shrills of the marshland insects, and the quiet sniffs of the man who sat alone among them. The fire had burned down to a warm bed of coals as the rising dawn finally broke apart the chilling night. Mud streaked and cold, Blunt's shaking hand gripped Tezz's as the man shuddered out another quiet, sigh-like sob. Tear streaks lining his face, the larger man turned to look down at Tezz's remains, the body still leaned against him from where it had fallen asleep, and never woke up.
It hadn't worked.
He tried. He swore on his life he had tried.
But the man's injuries had been too extensive. The terrain too uneven under their feet, and the night too eminent for extractions. Despite telling himself and Tezz every lie he could think of to compensate the truth poured from Blunt's mouth until finally, finally, reality couldn't be put off...and a camp was made instead.
Blunt told Tezz every story he could about Clover and his children before the man finally passed, and Blunt was left alone to survive the night. He kept talking to him long after he was left alone. Stiff and heartbroken, Blunt finally shifted back up to a kneeling position, and took Tezz's other hand in his as well. "I'm sorry Tezzeret...I..." His chin trembled as he blinked out further tears as he look up at the sky, and then scanned the wildlands around him. "I can't take you with me...and I don't know what's going to be left of you to take home by the time I can get back..." He slowly slipped his arm around the body to hold it close. "I'm so sorry. Non of it should have happened to you...you were the best of us who suffered the worst of it all..." He laid the body down gently and stood over him. "I'll give a toast and see you on the other side one day buddy..." His teeth gritted together, his body too exhausted to continue to cry out, but forcing tears out nevertheless. "And I'm going to miss you...I've always missed you..."
He looked down at the object he now held in his palm. A shard of the metal and ice from Tezz's altered form. He covered his eyes with his other hand. "And thank you...you can't hear me...you're not even here anymore...but you're still going to save lives."
In his final moments of lucidity, Tezz had been able to convey to Blunt of where and how Akkey, the Nix's and rebel soldiers he had faced while still under Kezia's control, had been teleported. With a little help, such as the material behind the teleportation magic, and in the right hands, more could be saved. The man turned away as he picked his rescue supplies back up, his gaze now distant. "Goodbye..."
-
It had taken some time getting out the terrible terror messenger to the base camp, but not as much as blindly searching. Soon, Blunt knew the Warden would find him...and his blood was chilled just as much as it had been the night before. For twenty years he had avoided her, ever since he had first tricked the demon into betraying her inner feelings. Her being in such close contact with Stonegit and Akkey had made that difficult, but he had always found a way to make himself scarce with very rare exception. Now there was no other choice. Now it would just be them. He stood in wait, hand already positioned outward with the tiny shred of Tezz he had been able to take with him.
The demon's post-war presence wasn't anywhere close to as blistering as before, but with its first mental touches, a heat could certainly be felt, like approaching the embrace of a campfire. Nothing yet was visible of her, nor was it audible, but she was unmistakably present--and more surprisingly, unmistakably hesitant, like Blunt might have an adverse reaction to her contact even though he had sent for her.
"Oooh..." Blunt closed his eyes with a shudder. He would never, ever, understand how Stonegit could take any kind of comfort with this sort of feeling. He could feel the hesitation, and it was like a bandage that was refusing to be ripped off. "It's fine..." He assured. "I'm a taken man, usually from behind, so I won't make a move on you if you just show up."
Even as the joke slipped from his lips, his eyes were vacant, and body downcast. It were as if the words were spoken just to allow him to survive.
There was a pause, but Nala graced the reply with a small chuckle, the sound more hollow than it should have been. I'm afraid that's not my typical way of greeting anyone. I'm sorry if you're disappointed.
She tasted stringent grief like an unripe fruit, and she tried to keep her aura light instead of adding another dark curtain to the weight of it all. Nio brought me to the main encampment, she added softly. They brought several more nixes with them, whatever Lila could spare from the main forces. I imagine the extraction will end smoothly with their help.
Blunt remained still. His head had run away with his imagination for so long about what would happen should he cross too many paths with the Warden. Now it was here, and his body was too tired, and mind to terrified of something else to properly worry about it.
"Tezz..." he said, and his tone said everything Nala needed to know about the long presumed dead rebel. He had called for generic, non emergent aid in his letter. He had spared the specifics. He knew naming the nomad and Cheif would raise conflicts of interest. As much as he wanted to bend to his own selfishness...he had kept protocol.
The Warden's consciousness made a very alien noise, almost as if a bovine's rumble could be struck like a drum, accompanied by the light hiss of sand and steam. The sensation resolved into the tail end of a much more human-sounding sigh. It took a moment for Blunt to realize that she had said something in a language worlds apart from his; it was head-spinning to think that someone like Liam might have been able to understand the demon just now, and even reply in turn. The soundscape was accompanied by heavy stabs of emotion--thinly-bladed pricks at his heart, tension at his sternum and throat, a sucking gravity at his gut.
I hoped, she finally said quietly, in their common tongue. I had hoped beyond hope. But even before the Tyrant's emergence, what Treepelt showed me of him was...foreboding. So incredibly ill and exhausted. He... She wasn't sure how to continue. There was a tangible strain to her presence, like she was forcibly containing herself.
"Why?" Blunt ground out. He wasn't sure why he was asking the Warden. Maybe there was a subconscious element of a human seeking the insight of a much older being. Maybe the question was just too pressing to be left unspoken. "Why him? He had the most to lose and deserved it the least. Why couldn't it have just been death the way we believed it back then?" His eyes searched for meaning in the marshy grass. "We loved him..."
We will never know why, she said quietly. Death is the great equalizer, the indiscriminate. It takes the young and innocent as easily as it takes the guiltiest and most vile of warlords. The great Loom of time rolls ever onward...there is little grasp we have over its movements. She turned over many memories in her mind: young, seventeen-year-old Tezzeret, fearlessly taunting and teasing the Warden, fighting witches with nothing but snowmelt, facing a soul-sick Stonegit more than once and living to tell the tale, and even taking his own hand in order to return and protect the Rebellion.
The most I can do is find comfort in what his wretched survival accomplished. The feat he pulled off was unimaginably impossible. I truly do not know what we would have done without him. Surely we would have tried to save the Rebellion from the final blow...but so many more would have been lost. The feeling of the Warden looming over the scene shifted instead into the sensation of her invisible presence next to him, like a friend hunched and tucked modestly into herself. Knowing him...I am certain given the choice to let his own friends mourn, or to let thousands more grieve the loss of their parents and their children...he would choose himself, every time.
"I know he would...of course he would..." Blunt said in a broken voice. "How the Hel giving was all he knew how to do when all the world had ever done to him was take is beyond me." He glanced her way, or at least, the direction of her presence. For once, he started to get the idea of how this could be a comfort, but only just. "I think a lot of us became better people because of him. Stones especially he um...hey..." He suddenly said in an odd pivot. "For what its worth...I'm not sorry about the stunt I pulled with the watermelon. But if it makes things any better I planned on staying scared of you for the rest of my life for it..."
