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Gwen’s hand was warm when she slid it into Orpheus’.

“You’re late, everyone’s waiting.”

“My apologies,” Orpheus murmured, allowing himself to be led along. “Though I welcome you to descend ten stories with one bum leg and a cane.”

“It wouldn’t be a problem if you’d only—”

Gwen cut off when Orpheus squeezed her hand, their eyes meeting briefly in the cool violet light. Words already spoken over the last few weeks died in the quiet, no more arguments left to have now that he’d won them all. Not that he felt victorious. It was hard to feel anything at all when one’s heart was a carved-out void within their chest. Orpheus thought it strange that it still beat. Wondered, sometimes, whether that Iro knife may have actually nicked him, after all.

Whether he’d be better off if it had.

“You’re doing it again,” Gwen grumbled, kicking his good leg. Orpheus gave her a soft smile rather than a sneer.

All around, obsidian opened up into a cavernous dome, inky shadows speckled in violet iridescence, the path they walked marked by a well-worn trench that had been centuries in the making. Voices echoed from the far end where the light converged, the frosted Netherflame lanterns disbursing a cool glow rather than a violent flicker. Silhouettes stood dark against the abrupt drop of misty open cavern where gears sprouted from colossal columns, massive things far grander than anything he could build, forged with sigils meant for warping the very fabric of spacetime itself.

It’d almost been a joy to study them. Almost enough to distract him from the reality he now lived. Where he was alive and…and he…he was—he wasn’t—

“Okay?”

Orpheus blinked away the sting in his eyes and looked down at Gwen.

Something in her face softened. “Are you thinking about him?” she asked, voice hopeful.

Orpheus forced out a smile rather than outright lie. “It doesn’t matter. Come on, let’s not keep them waiting any longer.”

The voices grew louder with their approach, Red snapping orders to the two men lashing down crates to a wagon, Farris’ blue Empire uniform in contrast to Sanctuary’s white. The horses snuffled quietly, the hum of their Netherflame engines too quiet to hear, their joints recently oiled, their patinas restored, their lives returned, even if their brains were purely archanic.

Carefully navigating the silver paint sweeping across this part of the obsidian, Orpheus headed for the horses while Gwen peeled off to jog towards where Duluth arranged weapons atop a canvas tarp. A single mechanical eye rolled to greet him, the hoof that stomped a mimicry of life rather than a facet of it. He checked the sigils again, the silver glinting fresh, the violet light bleeding out between the seams of their facades strong, mechanics whirring softly beneath it all. Gwen had done good work, as he knew she would. As good of work as the sigil painting the ground of which they all stood upon. The last spell which he would ever cast.

“You really still wearing that thing?”

Orpheus closed his eyes and breathed deeply before turning around. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

Red sniffed, indignant, cheek crinkling under her eye-patch. “’Course you’re here, Sparks. If you weren’t I’d be dragging you down here myself. But that thing is a joke. We need you. He needs–”

“Gwen is strong,” he cut in, one hand returning to hook onto his collar, his other propped on his cane, fingertips rubbing together. “It’s safer this way.” He was careful to keep the snap quiet enough no one could hear, but he needed the reminder. The comfort. And when no Netherflame spilled from his palm, he had it, at least enough to meet Red’s eye. “Trust me.”

Red’s mouth pressed into a hard line. Something Orpheus thought was already broken fractured inside him when she spun away. “Daedra needs you for something, don’t ask me what.”

Orpheus’ eyes slid off to find where Daedra stood watching over where Gwen and Duluth knelt side-by-side across from Serval, Duluth’s dimly glowing eyes focused on his work. His task. The order he’d been given and had no choice but to obey.

He kept his eyes on Daedra when he approached.

“High Mage.” The bow Daedra dropped into was shallow but unmistakable.

Orpheus sighed. “I told you not to do that.”

Daedra ignored him. “This is for you.”

The Iro knife glinted in the low light, deadened of magic but not memory.

Someone had cleaned the blood off. Of course someone had cleaned the blood off—

“You are the only one I trust with it,” Daedra said quietly enough not even Soot’s ears twitched. “These are very rare. I am unsure we will be able to obtain another, so it must come with us if there is any hope of—”

“There isn’t,” Orpheus said before she could finish, taking the knife and tucking it into the leather belt cinched around his waist. “But I understand.”

Daedra’s bared fangs inspired something alarmingly akin to hope until Orpheus realized her snarl wasn’t directed at him. The sound of heavy footsteps echoed through the cavern, a herald to the white cloak flickering into his peripheral.