“Shit, shit, shit!” Lilian started cursing. They opened their fan and started creating winds as if trying to gather Tassikar’s form back into shape, but the dust of him scattered and disappeared into the white. “I should not have done that!” Lilian almost screamed and when they looked at D’Argen they looked so afraid.

“Lilian?” D’Argen could only call their name in worry.

“Yes, yes, yes. It’s me. For now.” Lilian was speaking so fast that their words blurred together like how they usually did for D’Argen. “Look, we’ve not much time. I’ve to be quick.”

“What is—”

“Shut up! Just… you have to leave here. Now!”

“Where is here?” D’Argen asked, at the end of the rope.

Thar groaned and when D’Argen looked over, the man was still on the ground.

“Shit! Yes, sorry, forgot.” Lilian quickly rushed to him and flicked their fan. Thar got up off the pure white ground as if he was stuck there since he had fallen. “Look. I’ll explain everything to you. Both of you. Just, not now! You have to go!”

“Lilian, wait! Is this… this place…”

“It’s where the dead gather. But not really? I don’t know. I don’t have the time to explain it now!” Lilian suddenly groaned and dropped the fan. The metal disappeared into the ground as if it had fallen through it.

“No time! Fuck! D’Argen. Remember: do not come back here!” Lilian screamed the words at him.

D’Argen reached out. Lilian was so obviously in pain and he wanted to help them, to ease—

Lilian smacked his hand away so hard that they may have broken something. D’Argen was so startled by the action that he stared at his hurting hand for too long. When he looked at Lilian to ask them why, he was even more startled to see a pair of lilac eyes glaring at him.

“You have to leave!” Lilian screamed. The white shimmered and rippled and Lilian was holding D’Argen’s sword. The same sword Tassikar had used to attack him. “Now!” Then Lilian rushed him with the sword.

Thar was on his feet again and he moved quickly, taking D’Argen out of Lilian’s path. Lilian, however, moved as fast as D’Argen did and easily pivoted on the spot then charged again.

D’Argen did not dare reach for his mahee and his daggers were gone, so he could only roll out of the way and hope that Thar did as well. This time, Lilian charged Thar instead of D’Argen.

“How do we leave?” D’Argen shouted the question but it only drew Lilian’s attention to him.

They brought the sword down with both hands to the side of their waist and then crouched. D’Argen knew that position. Lilian pushed off an invisible mound right for him, charging so fast that he could barely keep track. He twisted as fast as he could but the sword still slid along his side and then Lilian used another another invisible mound to change direction. They were so much faster than him.

The white space right between them shimmered and rippled and Lilian slid to a stop, staring with wide brown eyes. It looked like a mirage was forming between them and a moment later there was a stone pillar blocking D’Argen’s view.

It looked like the pillars in the worship hall, but it was darker. As he watched, the pillar grew and D’Argen had to jump back out of the way. The white space where it came from disappeared and the pillar grew both up and down, as if there was no ground at all. D’Argen had to stretch his neck to try and see the top but it faded away into nothing at all. By the time he looked down again, it had grown to the same size as that horrible pillar in the snow. It even had carvings all over it.

But they were not the carvings D’Argen had tried to ignore on the black pillar. Those right in front of him told him of Tassikar’s story.

The stone lightened before his eyes and started shrinking. He could see Lilian on the other side, completely still with wide eyes and open mouth staring up at the pillar. Their hand held the sword loosely at their side. When the pillar’s colour started lightening, Lilian’s blue eyes turned lilac.

The air around it shimmered like it was giving off heat and then black stone grew out from the marble. D’Argen watched in fascination as Lilian’s eyes faded to blue once more and they dropped the sword. Lilian looked as entranced in this pillar as they had in the one in the middle of the snow. And then D’Argen realized what was happening.

He tried to remember the carvings on the black pillar. There were characters he did not know but the pictographs for at least two rows had shown figures worshipping the sun. As he thought of those carvings, they appeared in the black stone before him. He forced the pillar to turn around until those carvings were facing Lilian as he tried to remember the others.

This place, whatever it was, manifested his thoughts. Or at least, some of them.

D’Argen smiled at Thar’s quick thinking and turned to look at the man. When their eyes met, Thar’s widened and his mouth opened, but no sound ever reached D’Argen.

Instead, it was the sound of lightning striking stone and an explosion so loud that it left his ears ringing. The black pillar burst apart, chunks of rough carvings flying in all directions. Lilian charged through the flying stones right at him.

D’Argen stumbled back a few steps. Another pillar shimmered in between them and this time Lilian did not stop in time as their sword struck the stone. The new pillar shattered as well but this time it turned into millions upon millions of snowflakes. They swirled around Lilian like attacking insects. More and more formed until D’Argen could barely see Lilian’s form at all.

“Run,” Thar called out and D’Argen obeyed without thinking. He spun on the spot and started running toward Thar. He could hear Lilian behind him and knew they were so much faster than him. The shattering of stone, then ice, then the crashing of waves… whatever Thar was doing to this white space to put something between D’Argen and Lilian was not enough.

“What is going on here?!” D’Argen screamed in a panic when he was within Thar’s reach. On his next step, Thar was much farther away. The next one had nothing under D’Argen at all and he fell. He hit something invisible in the white space that turned him as he fell and he looked up to see Thar crouching on nothing at all, his hands searching the spot where D’Argen had fallen.

Lilian appeared amid the snow and jumped, sword aimed down to where Thar remained unmoving. D’Argen screamed. The sword, however, did not strike Thar. He moved out of the way, rolling on the invisible ground.

Lilian, however, did not seem to feel that same ground under them. They fell right through where the snow had started to pile and created a gap just large enough for some of it to follow them down.

As Lilian fell toward D’Argen, sword first, the snow followed at a sedate pace, dancing through the air. Thar punched and clawed at the ground, his mouth open in a shout that never reached them.

With nothing to push off from or change his direction, D’Argen could do nothing but stare as Lilian came closer.

It was worth a try though. D’Argen opened his mahee and screamed as it tore through him. He knew that pain. He recognized it now. It had been such a long time since the last time he felt it. Since the last of the Never Born died. It was a squeeze and a tear and a shove at once. It felt like his mahee was trying to readjust to a piece of it missing, without a care about how the rest of him felt.

When the sword pierced his chest, it almost felt like a relief. Then he felt Lilian’s warm breath on his cheek.

“You cannot stay here,” Lilian cried and their tears disappeared behind them, joining the falling snow. Thar was a distant smudge on the pure white above him. D’Argen’s blood flowed around the sword and stained Lilian’s hands and robes and past them.

The two continued to fall.

“What is—” D’Argen tried to ask yet again but he could not help but cough up more blood. The wind lashing at his back was as familiar as running. Lilian crying in his arms was just a distant and heartbreaking memory.

“Shh…” Lilian whispered into his neck. “This is the only way.”

“How?” D’Argen barely got the word out past a bubble of blood.

“I am so sorry,” Lilian repeated and then they twisted the sword.

D’Argen’s entire vision flashed and the blood was grey. Lilian’s beautiful blue eyes, one shade lighter than his own, faded into a grey that could be any other colour. Their pink skin and blonde hair turned almost white. Lilian continued to twist the sword even as they cried.

Dark spots appeared in the corner of his vision as D’Argen choked on the blood coming out of his throat. Every shiver and cough felt like an additional sword in his chest. Every brush of the air at his back felt like he had finally hit the ground. Every strand of his long hair, as it flew past him and into Lilian’s face, was like a whip against his bare skin.

When he finally hit the ground it would have been hard enough to make every organ in his body explode. Instead, his mahee absorbed the impact and shoved it right back down his throat and around the blade embedded in his chest. When Lilian hit him right after, their entire body scattered like snowflakes in the wind. The sword was gone and Lilian’s form was only a memory.

The first of the falling snowflakes landed on his cheek, burning him. The rest piled on the open wound on his chest. Footsteps on marble floors echoed around him and then Thar was crouched over over him, hands on his chest to try and stem the flow. D’Argen could say nothing at all as Thar’s blurred form blended into the pure white all around.

And then Thar scattered as well until D’Argen was covered in snow from head to toe. D’Argen felt his body slowly succumb to the cold and his mahee freeze over completely. The ocean waves turned to ice and then broke and scattered. Yet more snowflakes joined the rest.