Chapter Text
The God-child saves him.
It is an alien feeling. Time and time again, Itachi saves him. With actions, with words, with touch. The God-child saves him from his Father, saves him from his duty and saves him, in the end, from death.
At the cost of his life.
Death pants at his back, but there is work to be done. He drags himself forward, ignoring the blackened, putrid flesh that was once his body. Crawl. His friend - his saviour - Itachi will not be left here. No, his friend will rest under the Great Sun. They both will.
With enough will, there is always a way. He has learned that much in his years. Will, thankfully, is a resource Udayl is blessed with. Itachi is tiny - a child. His broken body is easy to bear, even if he has to crawl.
The light of the Great Sun shines from the archway. It is only motivation he needs.
He collapses into the first patch of sunlight he finds. The nature is a marvel, untouched and imposing. From this side, he can appreciate the sight of the mountain, spiralling into the heavens. The wind blows, bringing with it unfamiliar smells and sounds, but within his eyesight - a lake.
A supernatural lake. He knows this. Nature can produce many miracles. He knows when there are other forces in play.
There is no life he can hear. No sounds of birds, no buzz, no growl. Odd.
The Sands are a bit like this. It is a comforting thought. One has to look very close, indeed to find a speck of life, deep inside the dunes. The howl of the wind is similar. The sun - it is a pale imitation, but one he is deeply grateful for.
He spent who knows how many months in the cold and damp of the Mountain. To be in the dark - underground - it’s unimaginable. His father - damp little toad that he was - shone a light on the depth of his ignorance. To force his soldiers away from the Great Sun and into a smelly, unlit hole in the ground - it’s no wonder so many of his men jumped onto the nearest blade, just to escape. Trapping Ielúti, forcing them away from the sun, away from the light, Jibran’s milk-blood manifested.
The Sun is weaker here, the ground smells wrong, the air sounds angry. He would have liked to taste the salt and hear the wind one last time.
No matter. He is here, at the end, with a friend. The Narakshi trick works, as it always does. With enough will and time, pain can be made immaterial. When you’re beginning your final journey, you don’t need the physical dragging you down. Itachi is on his journey, and it’s time Udayl to start his.
Hands touch him, turn him, speak at him.
The cadence is - familiar. Nothing crude like Westeron. A dialect close to his heart, although not at all at the same time. Could it be Hwerïa?
It is likely his mind summoning up comforting noises. Hweri never left the sands, not for anything.
Pain, though, pain makes a re-appearance.
Robbers, potentially. Wild animals. Not ideal, but not unexpected. Thank you, Sha-alri, for taking Itachi before. His remains deserve dignity.
Pain - lights - water - no - no -
Moments of lucidity are few and far in-between. He hoards each close to his heart. People have taken him, people with hands and voices and goals.
What they want with him is a question. Nobody wastes their strength on a stranger, not really.
Pity for them. Udayl is going to be of no value to them or anyone. The only person he has any obligation to, any will to serve, has fallen.
His sun-song awaits.
Al’më, why do you speak so? I hear but I cannot understand. Slow, friend, or not at all. Your words run away from you again.
How are you here - did they get you too? Oh, but that is a waste. You should have sold your life quickly but painfully, wild one. There is no Great Sun, no scorching rays that make your blood sing and your heart race. There is nothing here but damp, cold misery.
The beings that have him are gentle, beautiful, and entirely maddening.
Their oddly familiar appearance made him uncertain the delirium has passed. But - he is not in the habit of denying reality unless there is magic involved. These beings, they were eerily like the Hweri in body. Taller, perhaps, and much paler, subdued in form and deed. Where Hweri were passionate, flighty people, capricious and emotional - these were - calm. Washed out, he would call them, like cloth left out in the sun for too long. Their voices were pitched low, they spoke a soft, musical language that was designed for sorrowful song. Their clothes were simple, elegant draperies almost uniform in design.
He could barely tell them apart. If not for the tell-tale glow of immortality and long, pointed ears peeking out of straight pale locks, he’d think them a different species altogether. But no, the similarities were there.
The not-Hweri were also infinitely kinder than their sand-cousins. They built a hospice, out of nothing, for the two of them. Still perilously close to the infernal mystical lake, unfortunately. One by one, tents rose around them, and a sea of healers attend them at all times.
Which brings forth two points of contention. Number one. Udayl was on his way to death. He had been on the path already, before being lurched back. To be slowly healed now is not his wish, never mind the bewildering kindness and patience with which the not-Hweri coax his body to repair itself
Number two, and perhaps more worrying, is the fact that they are, for some reason, working on Itachi too.
Now. Udayl is a killer. He had killed - many more people than he could hope to remember. Sometimes he feels like he has killed about a full half of the people he has ever met. Sometimes he feels like he had killed countries-worth of men and women. Sometimes it feels like he has done nothing at all but kill, from the day his mother brought him into the world.
Point is - he knows a dead body when he sees one. He was almost completely dead himself, but Itachi, he was proper dead. He had dragged that boy on his back for over a day. He knows the child with the caved-in ribcage is dead.
Why, then, are they healing him? And how? Because, no matter how you look at it, he cannot heal. He’s dead.
(He’s not decomposing though, is he, whispers the traitorous voice in his head. The pain-bringer. He had managed to strangle that particular bit of weakness in himself for a long time. Itachi had managed to revive it. He has hope now, and hope is a dangerous opponent.)
Which, yeah. A fair point. It’s been - over ten days since the not-Hweri have been begun healing him. Udayl has been careful to feign delirium so that they don’t bother with trying to talk to him. But for ten days, some sort of magical drink has been dripped down his throat, rejuvenating him and chasing the agony away. Liquid foods were administered too, and endless salves are applied, which surely have magic in them. His body is covered with burns so deep, he is sure his bones are scorched. And yet - he lives. The pain is entirely too comprehensive to try and move, but he lives.
Nothing at all makes sense. If he didn't know better, he would think his mind was spinning an elaborate tale. Unfortunately, he is aware of just how little imagination he has. What, exactly, is going on, he does not know, nor does he think he wants to. He lives until he does not. No point in worrying about it much.
Things, such as they are, come to a head. The not-Hweri start getting desperate, their calm, centred movements grow tenser by the day. He still feigns delirium or sleep most of the time. (Most of the time he need not pretend. Most of the time the miraculously healing flesh aches badly enough to twist his mind into a knot of pain and fear-mirages. Their healing salves and medicine can do little to rip him out of the horrors of his own mind.)
The source of their worry is easy to point to. Whatever fool hope they had, whatever banal reason they had to try and heal a (not decomposing) corpse, it’s slowly being shaken. Try as they might, little ribs are still hopelessly shattered, little skull is caved in and, most tellingly, the little heart is pulverized by the blow. Even if they had some unholy magic to stuff his soul into the broken little body, the boy would just die again.
If anyone had consulted him - which, okay, understandable that they did not, considering - he would have explained that taking a God-child near such an obviously magical lake was a bad idea.
Nobody ever asks Udayl about these things.
The not-Hwereth takes his friend to the lake - presumably to wash him - and the predictable thing happens. (Well, predictable to Udayl).
Udayl was - not near perhaps, but close enough that he heard the girl’s scream loud and clear. The noises were difficult to draw conclusions from, but the thing that stood out was the marked lack of bodies diving into the water.
Alright then.
Useless fucking people. Incompetence is truly the one unifying trait among all species.
With a snarl that was at least ninety per cent exasperation, he rises from his field-bed for the first time in - weeks. Pain thunders through him, alighting every nerve. Adrenaline flows on its heels, and he pants with glee. This. This is what he needs to heal.
His life very much on the line, he limps as fast as he can through the stunned camp. Nobody pays him any attention, which makes all sorts of sense considering the fucking lake is glowing and an entirely non-physical wind howls around the clearing.
Honestly, Godling, the dramatics.
His tent was close enough to the lake that even his lurching, halting steps carry him in time to be of any use. Because his friend, his saviour, floats on top of a lake that is doing its best to be as spectacular as possible. The lights thunders; the wind threatens; imaginary drum hollows.
The closer he comes to the spectacle, the stronger the supernatural thrum becomes. Breathing becomes harder, and a synthetic fear fills him. Well. Either synthetic or instinctual.
He barks out a laugh that sounds insane even to his ears. You want to scare me? Me, who was dragged from death against my will? You have nothing, nothing at all that will scare me.
Thunder crashes - immaterial. The not-there wind howls. He just closes his eyes briefly and savours the rare moment of truly being alive.
“You will not take him,” he says. His lips wrap around the beloved language, grateful. “Whoever you are. I will not relinquish his body, not to any Gods but his own. I have heard him speak of Godly patrons. They are the only ones with a claim on my friend.”
The wind intensifies, and an impression of a displeased frown appears - in the air, in the sky. The fucking mountain frowns at him. “I will fight until I cannot. Itachi only goes with those he claimed as his own.”
Still no answer.
Well then. That has always been answer enough.
He takes in a deep breath and flashes through the fastest focusing strategies. Alright, let’s do the one where you ignore the world entirely.
The process is a delight, as expected. It’s rarely useful to ignore your environment other than your target. He has never to date been in a situation with truly only one threat. Even now - especially now considering his supernatural foes - the environment is very threatening indeed. The difference is he has no intention of surviving.
Truly he muses, as his awareness shifts and folds, this is a blessing. Instead of falling on his own blade, he gets to die in battle. That is a mercy he did not hope for.
Itachi’s body floats, little limbs spread on the water, suspended by the magic. Udayl is a dock-rat at heart, never mind the high breeding. Even half-maimed and delirious, water is hardly a worthy opponent.
The closer he gets to the body, the more effort it takes to ignore the pressure trying to crush him. It’s a truly Godly amount of power. If it wanted to, it would crush him. Why it does not, is anyone’s guess.
Water is tinged pink around him - what - oh. His ears are bleeding. He grins, and more red flows into the crystal lake. Ah well, more food for the fish.
The deep, easy strokes through the water are calming, even as his body struggles with the demands. Just a little more - you’re almost halfway. His limbs grow heavy, and paradoxically he grows both blistering cold and freezing hot at the same time. Or is it the other way around? It’s hard to tell. It’s all in his mind, most likely, since his body is physically not on fire. The wind howls again, and the sound of thunder in his ear increases more and more until something just - pops. His ears grow quiet, but his vision - skews. The increasingly blurry image tints purple, then blue, then yellow. Then it starts growing grey, the light dimming steadily.
Oh, vultures take you, this is all so petty. It’s not like Udayl needs his eyes to keep direction, not when he’s five meters away, and the scream of his body is a plenty good indicator. Just swim in the direction where the pain is strongest.
His eyes dim entirely, just before something that feels like a ghostly hand envelops his entire body. Wise to the ways of magicians by now, he focuses very very hard on that not being true. Right there - Itachi is right there - you can reach out and touch him -
“You will not stop me.” He growls. “I do not fear you, or anyone. Itachi belongs to those he claimed, that claimed him back.”
Something pops in his shoulders, something worrying happens to his lungs, but his hand is free -
He -
Reaches -
Out -
W H I T E