“Hello, Alexander.”
Sal’s eyes narrowed slightly at the greeting. “Since when did you call me by my first name?” he asked.
“Since my old friend Sal died,” Blaise said. He carried himself with an unassuming air, casual and easy, and yet he let a hint of steel edge his tone. “He gave himself over to the Darkness, and now the Lord of Night is walking around in his skin. I don’t appreciate that.”
“Trying to justify what you intend to attempt?” Sal asked, spreading his hands and smirking. “What? You can’t bear to kill your old friend, but if you pretend I’m not him anymore, it’s somehow justifiable?”
“Oh, nothing so grandiose as all that,” Blaise said, smiling back at Sal. “I just wanted to test a theory.”
“What theory?” Sal asked. He took a step closer, slightly closing the wide gap between the pair.
This was it. The one last shred of hope he had for Sal. If they could talk… if Sal could listen…
Then perhaps there was another way forward. He didn’t hold much hope for that.
But he felt it his duty to try.
“You’re conflicted, Sal,” Blaise said. “About yourself. About your role.” He held up a hand as Sal opened his mouth to respond. “Oh, you’re fully committed to the Prophecy, to the Endless Night, to challenging the natural order. I won’t deny that. But it’s the role you’ve had to take on to see that plan through that leaves you unsettled. If you’re going to play the villain, you’re not going to play the ‘Dark Lord’ archetype, not for a second. You’re too clever, too unconventional, too creative for all that. And yet the Prophecy requires that you become the Lord of Night. The Darkness chose you for that role. It saved you when you were on the edge of death. But your gratitude only goes so far.”
“Intriguing theory,” Sal said, his eyebrows furrowing, his eyes narrowing. “Is that all you came here to do, Blaise? To wax poetic about my ‘true nature’ as you see it?”
“No, Alexander,” Blaise said, and smiled a touch wider as the corner of Sal’s mouth twitched. “We could talk about anything, and I’d be satisfied. I want one last talk with one of my oldest friends before the end.”
“Which end, Blaise? Yours, or mine?”
Blaise leaned lightly on his cane. “I’d hate to spoil the surprise. That’s what you want, isn’t it? What you crave — a surprising twist in your meticulously crafted script. And we’ll have time for that.”
“A talk, is it?” Sal asked, taking another step closer. “What could we have to talk about? What is there left to say, here at the end of your beloved city?”
Blaise’s eyes narrowed. But he kept smiling, and raised an eyebrow. “Oh? My city’s going to come to an end?” he asked. “If I indulge your claim and say that’s the case, then don’t you think I’d have plenty to talk about? This use to be your beloved city, too. Anything to forestall Grimoire’s end.”
“If I recall correctly,” Sal said, tapping his chin, his gaze cast thoughtfully skyward, “it wasn’t all that long ago that you were going to end Grimoire yourself. You believed its end to be inevitable.”
“I also intended to remake the city in the ashes of its ruin,” Blaise said. “More than that, though, I was proven wrong. If I failed to destroy Grimoire, and Leon failed to destroy Grimoire, what makes you think you’ll succeed?”
Sal gestured around, looking here and there at the numerous bruised, battered Grimoire Guard, none of whom were able to rise to continue the fight. “The heroes who stopped you and the Radiant King have proven powerless against me,” he said. “What makes you think you alone can succeed where they have failed so spectacularly?”
“I suppose some of your flair for the theatrical and the dramatic rubbed off on me,” Blaise said. He lifted his cane, holding it in both hands, gazing up and down its length. “Don’t you think it’s poetic? I was Grimoire’s greatest defender, then her greatest villain. The fallen hero rises for one final bow against the new villain.” He smiled, twirled his cane once, and planted it against the ground beside him. “Or do you think I’ve taken it a bit too far?”
Sal chuckled. “That’s how you see yourself?” he asked. “Grimoire’s fallen hero, rising to one final challenge?”
“It isn’t too dissimilar from some of our very youngest play-acting, is it?” Blaise asked. He thought back, as he often had since learning of Sal’s dramatic new role, to their early years. Blaise, Anastasia, and Sal. Once an inseparable trio.
“Reminiscing?” Sal asked. “Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps it is similar to how we used to play.”
“How times have changed,” Blaise murmured with a sigh.
Centuries separated him from childhood now, and yet some of those earliest memories remained clear as crystal. The Lunar Festival had always been a fixture of their lives, as it was for all of Grimoire. And one time, an innocent time, before the clash between Blaise’s Shadows and Leon’s Radiance had shaken Grimoire to its core, the inseparable trio had put on a play in Lunar Plaza, a short outdoor show about heroes and villains. Sal had written it, staged it, basically ran the whole show, while also playing the role of the hero’s best friend, held captive by the wicked villain.
The villain in question? Blaise. The hero? Anastasia.
It had been a hilarious, entertaining affair. It had also been the first time the two Halfchants, with their striking, noteworthy eyes, had put themselves in front of an audience and not tried to hide who they were.
Blaise was drawn back to that time, that crystallized moment of the past, after their final performance of the day, when they were packing things up and getting ready to go home. Blaise was fourteen years old, while Sal and Anastasia were, physically, the same age. How long they’d actually lived, they’d never disclosed to Blaise, and he’d never asked.
They were friends. What did it matter how old they were?
“What did I tell you?” Blaise asked, smiling at his friends.
“No one seemed to care,” Sal said, his right, blue-and-silver, eye flashing as he grinned. “All this time hiding, and no one panicked when they saw our eyes.”
“I think they thought they were some kind of stage effect,” Anastasia said, donning her usual round cap, tugging it low so its brim slightly shaded her eyes. “They won’t react the same when they see our eyes are the same in our daily lives.”
“At least your parents let you roam freely,” Sal said, squeezing the lid onto a box of props and then taking a seat on top of it. He smiled, but Blaise and Anastasia saw easily through the façade.
“Your mother encourages the same for you,” Anastasia said.
“Yes, well, when a family is as complicated as mine, that isn’t a free pass, is it?” Sal asked. A slight edge was in his tone, and he seemed to notice it, as he ducked his gaze away, his smile fading.
So why do you spend more time in Grimoire than Sunset Square? Why do you endure your father and step-mother, when your heart lies with your mother?
Blaise left the question unasked. This was often how the trio communicated, what drew them together — they just seemed to understand each other. So much went unsaid, unasked, unanswered. Yet they understood. The great “if only” that plagued Sal’s life…
If only my father had married my mother.
Understanding bound this trio to Grimoire, and to each other. What did one do when their heart was divided? “Home is where the heart is,” but Sal’s heart was with his mother… and in Grimoire. He held no love for Sunset Square. But his mother wouldn’t come to Grimoire. And yet his “family” in Grimoire held no particular love for him.
But Grimoire had Blaise. Grimoire had Ana. And on nights like these, after days like this, that was enough.
“Let’s do this again,” Blaise said into the gloom that had settled among them. “We don’t just have to put on shows for the Lunar Festival. We could be our own regular troupe!”
“You had a lot of fun playing the cackling villain, didn’t you?” Ana asked, raising an eyebrow at Blaise.
Blaise grinned. “Maybe I did, just a little.”
“Grimoire’s own regular youth troupe, hmm?” Sal asked. He smiled. “That does have a certain appeal to it, doesn’t it?”
They ended up continuing as a regular youth troupe for a while after that. It was through their entertaining, amateur outdoor shows that they ended up meeting the others, all Halfchants, who would end up their closest friends: Sieglinde, then Bronn, then Doctor, and finally Stride. Three became seven, and eventually more… but Blaise’s heart grew heavy when he thought of those that hadn’t lived to today.
The past faded to the present. They really had been such terrific friends. Blaise had valued that friendship…
And then abandoned it. He’d always been the leader, the one who brought them all together. But he’d gone from leader to overlord, and he hadn’t even realized it. A slow descent, his own arrogance in believing his path to be the only right one, ignoring Ana’s misgivings and warnings, demanding obedience over cooperation… he’d lost himself. And lost so much more besides.
Now here he was, face-to-face with one of his oldest and dearest friends, who he should have been there for in his hour of need. When they all presumed Sal dead, he should have done all he could to confirm it, to find proof, not just accept it.
I let you down, Sal. I failed you.
And now, you’re my responsibility.
“Are you done?” Sal asked. Sal, the Lord of Night, standing in the midst of rubble and ruin that had once been a beautiful part of Grimoire’s border. Sal, wearing a smile on his face, smiling though he was responsible for the devastation that had laid the city he’d once loved and given his all to protect so low.
“Yes,” Blaise said, punctuated, finalized, done. There was nothing more to be said.
Only one last task that needed to be performed.
“Well then,” Sal said. He bowed, low and dramatic, then rose with a flourish. “Thank you, Blaise. This does make for a fitting final act. You’ve set the stage marvelously.”
Blaise said nothing.
Sal stepped forward, raising one hand. Darkness swirled, focusing to a point, prepared to strike. Not a wave to blast back numerous foes, but a sword to cut down the last, lone obstacle.
But Blaise had his own plans. He tapped his cane once, and twin fires, white and black, erupted to either side of him. No, not to either side — they came from him. The white fire coalesced into a blazing, frightening white dragon, and the black fire coalesced into a second dragon, as fearsome as the first. Twins, they roared, roars of challenge, of defiance…
And of freedom.
The twin tattoos that had served as Blaise’s Talismans, the ink that bound himself to the Dragons of Life and Death, of Light and Darkness, separated from Blaise’s body. The Dragons, now unbound, roared with a fury and power unmatched by any other, unseen by any before this moment except Blaise.
One final, limitless attack.
The twin Dragons charged forward, spiraling around each other, fire and light, darkness and fury, a roar that shook the foundations of the earth, a blast that split and sundered space and time. The gap between Blaise and Sal was suddenly simultaneously infinite and infinitesimal, an isolated dueling ground at once a part of Grimoire and its own separate, solitary space.
Sal’s sword of Darkness was shattered in a single instant. His eyes widened, his mouth opened in a cry of pain, and he reeled backwards as the Dragons descended upon him, struck against him, blasted straight through him. Through him, and out the other side, the twin Dragons let out one final roar, and vanished, returning to the impossible, unreachable place from whence Blaise had called them at such great price so very long ago.
Sal staggered, stumbled, and dropped to one knee. He coughed, then wretched, spitting blood onto the rubble-strewn ground of Grimoire. His hands clawed at the earth, his arms trembled with the struggle of holding his body up.
“What have you… what did you…” he murmured, coughing again, shaking his head.
“It is done,” Blaise said.
And then he fell backwards, flat on his back. The world grew hazy, indistinct, and his eyes fluttered closed.
——
“Blaise!” Anastasia cried. She pushed, struggled, unable to use her legs, barely able to use her arms to start pulling, dragging herself towards her fallen friend. “Blaise, no!”
“Done, is it?” Sal asked, his voice trembling. He coughed up blood once more, then, shuddering, stood. He swayed, reeled back and forth, his expression contorted with pain and astonishment. “You… what have you done to me? I… I can’t…” He clutched his chest, and then his eyes widened, gazing to the sky with a far-off, glazed look. “You… where did you… come from? Why have you… returned? You don’t… no…” He staggered, shaking his head, shaking all over.
All the while, Anastasia dragged herself to Blaise, gritting her teeth against the intense pain. She reached him, lay beside him, touching his face and shaking him lightly. “Blaise, please,” she murmured. “You can’t go. It isn’t over yet.”
“How right you are,” Sal said, glaring with a flash of contempt at Anastasia. Then he shuddered again, shook, and for a moment had such a childlike expression, like he was a different person — and he spoke in a voice like a child’s, like him as a child, for a brief moment, too. “I will not let this be in vain. And I will not let you carry on as you see fit.”
But Sal shook violently, clawed at his chest, and then dropped to his knees, letting loose a heart-wrenching scream. “Leave me!” he cried, and then flung his hand behind him. Space was ripped open to make way for a portal of Darkness. An escape!
“No!” Anastasia cried. But she couldn’t stand, couldn’t even try to pursue Sal. Bronn stirred, Stride as well, Jacob Crowley and Hagan Rook and a few others. But none of them could rise, none of them could give chase.
Sal looked at them all, his one dark eye narrowed and icy, his eye with the spiral of blue and silver wide and innocent. “This is far from over,” he said, pushing the words out as if every syllable was a monumental effort. Then he pushed off with his feet, fell backwards, and vanished through the portal of Darkness.
The Darkness snapped shut.
Sal was gone.
“Blaise,” Anastasia said, shaking Blaise gently. “Blaise, please. This can’t… it can’t… end here. He isn’t done. He’s escaped. We… we’ve failed.”
“Not… failed,” Blaise murmured weakly. His eyes fluttered opened, just barely, and he locked his fading gaze with Anastasia’s. “His power is broken. And something… something happened there, before he left. Something else. You stand a chance, now. You all… stand a chance.”
“His power is broken?” Anastasia asked. “What do you mean?”
“He can no longer… control your shadows, control you,” Blaise murmured. “He is weakened, weakened greatly. I had hoped to end him, but the wound I have dealt him… it will not heal. It…” He faltered, his eyes fluttering closed, then open again. He raised his hand, slowly, weakly, and took hold of Anastasia’s. His fingers were cold, and grasped so feebly. A small smile touched his lips. “It’s all right, Ana. After all I’ve done… this was… the best ending for me. I go now, after all these long years, to be with Elizabeth. I’ve kept her waiting, don’t you see? Now… it is time.”
“Blaise!” Anastasia cried.
But when Blaise closed his eyes, they did not open again.