Noir closed his eyes.
He felt heavy.
He opened them.
The world looked much brighter than he rembered before he got stabbed. Except for the dark part where the portal was supposed to be slowly lowering... No, the building was slowly rising.
Had been, Noir rembered. Since Maledict had arrived, the entire place had halted with the portal at the highest reaches of the pillars.
It wasn’t the first ti he’d felt such pain, but it was the first ti he’d felt it so deeply. Felt it enough to know that each of his heartbeats was getting weaker than the next.
There was movent...
He focused enough to see what it was.
Kir, fighting another demonkin. The latter using swift thrusts while Kir used sweeps and strikes.
Maledict, Kir’s father, stood still, rotating as he watched the battle with interest.
Noir rembered that it was Maledict’s order that saw him dying...
Why?
Why would a father do such a thing in front of his son?
It was just... cruel.
So magic the other demonkin did flashed, and a mont later, Kangetsu was knocked from Kir’s hands, skidding through the illusion of Maledict to rest in front of Noir.
Noir thought about reaching for it, but it seed his blood would get there first.
In frustration and grief, Kir shifted into his war form, slashing at Lucifer with his clawed hands, bashing at him with his tail.
His tail struck a piller, heavily, and the stone cracked, the roof above it shedding dust as the crack travelled up.
"Don’t destroy the place!" Maledict shouted. Then he followed Kir with his eyes. "Remarkable..." he admired his son’s war form.
For a long ti there were only the sounds of combat.
Second by second stretched for Noir.
He thought of Sam, and their child. He felt so sorry he was going to miss helping them.
He wondered if Caroon and Nemosa would be waiting for him on the other side. Perhaps they’d already reincarnated. Nemosa sotis said she’d love to be a bird.
Dying was no big deal, you just co back!
Noir hoped he’d co back as soone better than himself.
And Kir...
Tears welled in Noir’s eyes.
He hadn’t known how he could help, but he hadn’t expected to be so... useless...
The sounds of combat ended abruptly.
One second, the demonkin dodged Kir’s sweeping tail, but in the next, a downward slash ripped his arm from its socket as Kir’s claws caught.
The demonkin scread, then raised one hand in a desperate spell-
There was a flash of light, and Kir was alone.
As soon as he recovered from the flash, Kir looked around for his opponent, but when the demonkin failed to reappear, he rushed to Noir with huge, stomping strides.
"Noir? Stay with !" Kir said, trying to stop the bleeding by pressing two massive fingers against Noir’s chest. It was useless. "Fuck... I’m too big to... to- agh!"
Kir turned his head, and Noir saw the seal burning hot as the discs that composed it suddenly fell away, tinkling onto the floor.
By the ti Kir hit the ground, he was back to normal, but all around him, the contents of his dinsional storage were falling.
Sothing shattered. Sothing else
His wings burst from his back a mont later.
"What is... happening?" Kir coughed.
Noir wished he could get up. He wished he could just hug Kir and tell him things were going to be okay... Kir was young... He already had other people who loved him. Noir could tell the mont he t Kordia. And Stella... Well, she had a different way of communicating her love than anyone he’d ever t. Amarena... if she could stop making herself Kir’s rival, she’d definitely have room for so love in her heart...
Noir coughed.
Blood was welling in his lungs.
It ca out of him in a thick spray.
He didn’t have a lot of ti left...
Was he going to die without any last words?
A tinkling sound drew Noir’s attention.
Out of the bag where Kir kept the other seal shards, the little discs rolled and hovered their way out and into the room.
A set of three rolled along the floor toward Noir, before hovering until they touched his forehead...
"Noir," a woman’s voice said. "You will die. But there is one thing you can do to help Kir."
"Anything..." Noir whispered. Her voice was a stranger’s but it was soothing.
"Reach for the sword. Not with your body but with your mana. When I send you into your mind, open the gate within you. As wide as it will go. Do all that you were warned against, but do not be distracted. You will not have long. When the spell is wrought, you will have a choice."
Noir watched as a set of discs began taking formations on the sword, within the empty circle Kir never got the chance to enchant. The rotated, until all of the lines clicked into place, and they heated themselves, lting into the blade but leaving the lines.
"For your sake..."
The voice instructed him on what would happen... and asked one last thing of him.
One thing that sent the tears cascading down Noir’s face.
A mont later, everything was gone.
Noir stood in a place he’d never thought to see again.
His workshop back ho.
"Is this my mind...?" he rembered. "Oh but this is marvelous..." He reached for a strawberry tart that was resting on the bench where he’d eaten so many lunches and took a bite. It tasted better than the real thing... but then again mories often were better than the real thing...
Guilt slowed Noir’s chewing, until he set down the pastry.
"This must be what she ant about getting distracted," Noir sighed.
It felt like he had ti, but he knew he didn’t.
He started looking around for the gate the woman had spoken of, and as soon as he thought of it, he found himself at the well that had been dug for drinking water, just within sight of the river that had powered their looms.
Oddly, there was a trickling sound, but he couldn’t identify any leaks or sources of it. The lids to the well were close to shut, and when he put his hands to them, it was to discover that they didn’t want to open.
He tried using an underhand grip, shoving with his whole body, but they only budged a little.
"Open, damn you! I’m not leaving without saying goodbye!"
As he bore upward with his entire being, the lids continued to resist until suddenly they flew open wide, and from the unseen depths ca a burst of mana rushing outward and filling the entire space...
In the real world, Noir opened his eyes.
He chuckled.
For the first, and last ti, he felt powerful enough to do anything.
One last ti, he reached for the sword with everything he was.
He reached for the sword with his very soul.
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