Lastlight's Revenant #33

Garran chuckled—a dry, broken sound more akin to a death rattle than laughter.

"More fighting?" He exhaled through gritted teeth, the words laced with exhaustion. "That’s not what I wanted to hear."

Holloway’s smile was weary but knowing, the golden light of his armor casting deep shadows across the lines of his face. "There’s not much else you can do when you’ve spent your entire life swinging a sword, boy. Uses for men like us are… limited. Even to the gods."

Garran shook his head, his gaze drifting toward the pulsating blue light of Tyrrax’s prison. A grim amusement flickered in his eyes. "Now I’m starting to think giving my corpse to a vengeful dragon was the better choice."

He trailed off, the weight of his decision pressing down on him like a tombstone.

"That said… I know the price." His voice hardened, resolve cutting through the fatigue. "I’m tired of fighting. But it’s better than being the spark that burns my kind to ashes."

Holloway nodded, approval glinting in his eyes. "Good lad." He extended his hand, the gauntlet glowing faintly with divine radiance. "Now just take my hand. We’ll both be out of here."

Garran groaned, every fiber of his ruined body screaming in protest as he forced his arm to move. Muscles tore anew. Shattered bones ground together. His fingers trembled, slick with blood, inching toward Holloway’s grasp—

—when Tyrrax’s voice boomed inside his skull, freezing him mid-reach.

"WAIT!"

Garran’s hand hung in the air, trembling. Slowly, he turned his head toward the dragon.

Tyrrax’s light thrashed against its cage, his voice no longer a roar but something strained—desperate. "I will… compromise." 

The words came like pulled teeth, each one laced with the bitterness of a pride forced to bend. "Upon my name, I swear it. I will not turn my wrath upon your people—unless they strike first. Only the Hollow King and his filth will burn."

Garran’s lips curled into a bloodstained smirk. "I already overestimated your virtue once." His voice was quiet, final. "I won’t make the same mistake again."

Tyrrax’s light seethed, pulsing like a caged star as the weight of Ardun’s presence pressed down on him. The dragon was running out of time—and patience.

"There is another way," he snarled, the words laced with the strain of a creature unaccustomed to bargaining. "We need not be adversaries. Share your vessel with me, and my power will be yours."

Garran’s fingers, still hovering an inch from Holloway’s grasp, twitched. That got his attention.

"Sounds too good to be true," he rasped, eyeing the flickering blue light with suspicion. "What’s the price?"

Tyrrax’s voice lowered, the thunder in it subsiding to something almost... measured. "For now? My freedom from this prison. Ardun’s grasp weakens with every breath you waste." 

A pause, then the barest concession: "Once the Hollow King and his filth are ash... I claim the right to soar the skies again. Unbound. Unhunted."

Garran’s gaze flicked back to Holloway’s outstretched hand. The golden light radiating from it was warm. Inviting. Final.

He hesitated.

He had meant what he said—he was tired. So tired. But if he was doomed to fight regardless, then at least with the dragon, it would be on his terms. For the people still breathing above. Not for some distant god who demanded everything and then asked for more.

Before he could speak, Holloway cut in, his voice sharp as a blade’s edge. "Think this through, boy." 

The Lord Commander’s eyes burned with an intensity that went beyond the mortal. "If you take his bargain, you won’t just be dead. You’ll be forfeit. A revenant. Exiled from even Velmara’s mercy."

Garran frowned. Velmara—the goddess of passing souls. The last comfort for the dying.

Holloway pressed on, relentless. "And more than that... the gods have already written your end. Here. Now." He leaned forward, the light around him flaring like a warning. "Choose differently, and it’s not just defiance. It’s damnation."

The words hung in the air, thick as smoke.

Garran’s jaw tightened. The words came slowly, each one dragged from the depths of his resolve like a sword pulled from a corpse.

"I once threw away my honor."  His voice was raw, stripped bare. "I accepted disgrace and the brand of the ‘Oathbreaker’ because it was my duty—as a knight."

A breath. The cavern seemed to hold it with him.

"Now?" His outstretched hand, trembling just shy of Holloway’s grasp, clenched into a fist. Lowered. "I’ll reject the mercy of gods. I’ll take damnation. Because it’s my duty—as a Repentant."

Holloway’s golden light dimmed, his face unreadable. Not anger. Not sorrow. Something heavier.

"So be it," he said, and the words were a funeral bell.

Tyrrax’s voice slithered through the silence, thick with triumph and hunger:

"Very well."

Then—

Pain.

Pale blue light erupted from the cage, lancing into Garran’s chest like a spear of ice. His back arched. His veins burned, glowing beneath his skin as if his blood had turned to liquid lightning.

The dragon’s essence flooded him—not healing, not soothing, but claiming. Muscle reknit with a sickening snap. Bones ground together, fused by unseen fire.

Garran roared.

It wasn’t a human sound. It wasn’t a dragon’s either. It was something in between—something new, something wrong, tearing itself free from his throat in a crescendo of agony.

The last thing he saw before the darkness took him was Holloway stepping back, his golden light flickering like a candle in a storm.

And then—

Silence.

...

The ruins offered little in the way of shelter—crumbling walls, a ceiling half-collapsed, the air thick with the damp musk of stone and stagnant water. But it was enough. For now.

Glowing mushrooms clung to the cracks in the masonry, their eerie bioluminescence casting shifting shadows across the survivors’ exhausted faces.

Nearby, the underground river murmured softly, its dark waters glinting with patches of luminescent algae. It was a fragile peace, but peace nonetheless.

Tomas leaned against a moss-slick pillar, his armor dented, his face smeared with dirt and dried blood. He rubbed his temple, then called out, voice rough but steady:

"David. Tell me where we stand."

The soldier in question—a wiry man with a gash across his cheek—stepped forward. His eyes were hollow with fatigue, but his tone was crisp. 

"We’ll hold. For now." He gestured toward the river. "Water’s clean enough to drink, and..." He winced, hesitating before adding, "The cave-rats will keep us fed once rations run out. According to the Varekai, anyway."

Tomas exhaled through his nose. "Then we rest. For now." A pause. His jaw worked before he forced out the next question. "Casualties?"

David’s expression soured. "Lord Edric. Ser Garran." He swallowed hard.  "Beyond that... two missing. Tobin the scribe... and Jack."

Tomas stiffened. "Jack?"

"Aye." David’s voice dropped. "My nephew. His father died on the walls. The boy got separated from his mother in the retreat."

Tomas’s hand clenched into a fist. He stared at the ground for a long moment, then straightened. "Forget rest," he said, voice hardening. "We need to scout the area anyway." 

He pointed at David. "Pick seven able bodies. Split into groups. Find the boy and the scribe. And note anything—anything—that might help or harm us down here."

David nodded sharply and turned to leave, already barking orders.

Tomas’s gaze drifted across the ruin, settling on Kaelvar. The Varekai warrior occupied a far corner, his back against the wall, eyes closed. His tattooed chest rose and fell slowly, his coiled chain weapon resting across his lap like a sleeping serpent.

Meditating? Scheming? Tomas had no idea. The man was as readable as stone.

And then there was Sylrithiel.

The elf sorceress hadn’t even paused when they reached the ruins. She’d simply turned and vanished back the way they came, her silk robes whispering against the stone. No explanation. No farewell.

Tomas shook his head in quiet dismay.

'How the hells did Ser Garran get these two to cooperate?'

Or had they ever truly been cooperating at all?

Kaelvar’s strength and experience would be invaluable down here. Sylrithiel’s magic even more so. But Tomas wasn’t Garran. He didn’t have the Oathbreaker’s grudging respect, his history, his weight.

All he had was a missing boy, a handful of exhausted soldiers, and the creeping dread that the worst was yet to come.

He just hoped the Varekai would fight with them when the time came.

...

Garran clawed his way to the surface, his fingers digging into the cracked earth as he hauled himself from the abyss that had swallowed him. The gash in the ground yawned behind him—a jagged scar where the Hollow King’s power had struck him down.

For a moment, he simply knelt there, breathing.

Then he looked up.

The sky stretched above him, vast and unbroken. The sun, pale behind rolling storm clouds, cast fractured light over the ruins of Vaeldrith.

The wind carried the stench of blood and charred flesh, but beneath it—beneath—was something else. The crispness of open air. The whisper of grass clinging to life between shattered cobblestones.

Something primal stirred in his chest.

Alive.

Tyrrax’s voice rumbled through his mind, low and thunderous.

"How I have longed for this, and yet..." The dragon’s presence coiled around his thoughts like smoke. "I wished to gaze upon the sky I once ruled. To feel the wind as it was meant to be felt—on wings, not this... grounded flesh."

A pause. Then, venomous:

"You are a poor substitute, human."

Garran exhaled through his teeth. "Maybe, but I’m all you’ve got. So unless you’d rather crawl back into your cage—"

A sound cut him off.

The scrape of chitin on stone.

Garran turned.

A Duskhound perched atop a mound of rubble, its spindly limbs twitching. The creature’s eyeless face tilted, its maw splitting open in a wet, rattling shriek.

The cry echoed through the ruins.

From the shadows, more shapes emerged.

Vermin-Touched, their bodies swollen with corruption. Fleshforged abominations, stitched together from the dead. A dozen sets of jagged teeth glinted in the half-light.

Garran’s hand went to his sword—then froze.

The blade was gone. Lost in the fall.

Tyrrax’s laughter vibrated through his bones.

"You doubt me?" The dragon’s voice was a wildfire, hungry and spreading. "Then watch, little mortal. And learn what it means to wield a storm."

Garran bared his bloodied teeth in something too fierce to be a smile.

"Better not disappoint," he growled. "Or we’ll both be demon shit before sunset."