pegunicent

It's not the pain that sends him to his knees. Honestly the ache in his chest has been so steady, so constant, that the flare of even more just knocks away his breath. No it's not the pain. What sends him crumpling to the ground heaving for air and gagging on blood made Light is less pain and more a sudden crack through his very being; a blinding, freezing knowing of things he doesn't understand, a flood of knowledge and voices he doesn't know and can't focus on, a chilling certainty that he has been here before and every time he died.

It hurts. Sweet merciful sea it hurts but more than that it tears at him. He knew the Light would kill him, there was too much for any one soul to command, 9/10's of a world's Light aether in one mortal frame? But he had to try, and more he had to plan how to deal with it and he had, he had a plan but...

He chokes and vomits and tastes not iron or copper or even bile. It's nothing. It's nothing but aether, his own aether, insides melting under the pressure of his soul, physical organs collapsing under the weight of ephemeral mass. He knew the Light would kill him but he didn't think it would be like this.

He's only taken two of the damned Wardens down. He needs at least the third before the Exarch, before G'raha Tia shows his hand. The damned cat has some sort of suicidal plot in the works, using Urianger no less, and until Lewellen has sussed it out he's not sure how he can counter it, so he absolutely cannot die now. Even if it would be so nice to just lay down and rest. Even if it meant the thundering cascades of agony in behind his ribs would finally cease. No more wars. No more primals. No more being lied to and used and looked at as merely another tool that could walk and cast and maintain itself.

No more Hagwife and crew to be worried about him. No more idiots seeking to best him for glory and fame. No more messes to clean up. No more adventures. No more disappointed sighs from a certain Maelstrom commander. No more anything.

“I'm the one whose dead, so why do you look worse?”

Ah Ardbert. Of course the ghost couldn't let him die in peace.

With a last heaving spit he fumbled for his potion pouch and pulled out a hi-elixer. He chased the bitter tonic with an ether, dangerous that, and then a pure hi-potion for the physical damage.

“No' enough Darkness.” He gasped out as he felt his energies swirl wildly, pulling on his buried Dark aether to counter the hoarded Light. “Gotta balance, or ya pop. Big bloody sac oh aether an guts.” he managed to gesture to his focus, dropped on the floor with his collapse, and muscled his way to leaning back against a chair. Part of him wondered if the Exarch was watching him even now, talking to the air in his room after a fit of Light poisoning. Serve the bastard right for pulling him into this mess at all and then lying about it if he felt guilty and torn about his 'hero'.

“What are you going to do then? If you can't contain it? You can't, can you? If it's already doing this to you?”

“Course Ah can't. No one can. A whole world of Light in one man's belly? Ya want meh shitten rainbows an farten sunshine next?” It was ridiculous. Lewellen was one man. A pirate. He got lucky once, and paid the price for it the rest of his life because people thought being temper-proof was enough to take on the Gods and he was stubborn and clever and spiteful enough to do it and keep living through the ordeal. No matter who else died. No matter how much it cost. No matter how much he wished otherwise.

“Then what are you going to do?”

Ah poor Ardbert. Bloody big idiot with an even bigger ax. Why did Lewellen have to have a weakness for that sort? “First, ah'm gonna drink mahself stupid. Then do somat stupid, then sleep, if'n what ah do doesna set tha whole bloody tower on mah head. Then ah'll deal with that.” He pulled on a wry grin for the scowling shade and waved a hand dismissively, the one that wasn't rubbing the aching hollow over his heart. “Donna ya worry. Ah said ah'd save yer world right? Ah have a plan.”

“Does your plan involve you living to see the world saved?”

“...” Through the haze of roiling magic in his veins, Lewellen thought he saw something like worry on the dead mans face. “Do ye know... yer tha only one on this reflection what even cares? Ya shouldn't.”

“You're dying to fix what I destroyed!”

“An little'l be lost in tha end.” Slowly he eased his head back against the chair, feeling where the strain in his neck would be an incredible crick if he didn't get up soon. He couldn't care about it. Between the pain and the influx of... whatever had filled the crack in his soul the light had made... he was too tired and too weak to care about what more pain would come. His life had been pain of one flavor or another since Carteneau.

A little rest, then a lot of booze and some more potion abuse. He remembered well the incantations and binding spells of the necronomicon copies he'd hunted down for the Thaumaturges all those years ago. The wardings and summoning runes Edda had used in her perverted magics. The taste of the Void and it's boundless Dark aether were forever imprinted in his memory. Doubtless Wynjeager would call him reckless and insane after all the voidsent they'd destroyed together but if his own Dark aether wasn't enough to keep him alive then something elses would have to do. Just long enough to save two worlds.

What was the life of one pirate against that?

Why else would fate or the gods or G'raha damned Tia have called to him across the great Rift, if not because he was clever, and stubborn and so very, completely expendable?

It wasn't the pain that clawed at him. It was the tears he couldn't even find strength to shed anymore.