This Mortal Coil ((Closed))

The demon watched as a portal opened, black as cloudy midnight, in the space above the Grand General's four-poster bed. The reaper's final words echoed long after his sphere had disappeared, whipped out of sight followed by the dust of his disintegrated form. Ebon wings folded slowly back into flesh. Three pairs of eyes became one. Feathers retreated into the shrunken body of Jericho Swain.

He stood trembling, overwhelmed. Blood streamed from his left eye, from the Z-like rune carved into his chest. His robes were tattered and torn, the rotting flesh upon his face exposed. The room turned. The world spun. And Noxus' Grand General, consumed by fever, further weakened by the heavy dose of Karthus' negative energy, collapsed to the floor. Black bile oozed from his lips, from his nostrils. Breathing came in ragged bursts as he faded in and out of consciousness.

Stay awake. Death is gone from you. We do not submit to Death.[/size][/color]

Beatrice fluttered down from her master's desk, alighted beside him and gently preened at his disheveled hair. The bed was so near--yet so far. His arms would not move, his legs would not lift him. Slumped over double, his marred visage pressed into the carpet, The Master Tactician remained. This victory over Death had left him so close to its door. He issued an ailing groan, a signal to himself that he still drew breath.

Stay awake.[/size][/color]

Stay awake.

Stay awake...

"Evaine...?" came the slightest whisper, barely an exhalation of breath. He lay limp in her arms. Gradually, his right eye opened, though the left had swollen shut, pierced by the Lich's daggerlike fingers. Rot stretched from his jaw over his exposed chest and shoulders like black spiderwebs, giving way to muscle and bone in places. Blood dripped like crimson tears from his punctured eye; the carved wound, the Eihwaz, wept as well.

Was she here in the flesh? Was this another fever vision? Half-blind, his mind reeling, he could not be completely sure, but her presence--even if imagined--brought him comfort. With a tremendous effort, he lifted his calloused hand, trembling, to meet her silken one upon his cheek. He shut his eye against the warmth of her sweet caress. "My dove..." he breathed again. She was here in the flesh. She must be. Or else her form was some sadistic fevered joke, some hallucinated hope before him in the gloom.

His chest contracted. A cough sent more black bile over his lips and into her lap. His right eye sprang open again, the flame of his will blazing brightly within despite his pitiful state. His grasp closed around her hand in feeble reassurance to himself that she was still present, that if the bloody rune's foreshadowed doom was realized now... at least he would not be alone.

No.[/color][/size]

Another cough, a hack, a wheeze, an accumulating puddle of vomit over her slender legs and on the carpet beneath. He knit his brows as a final dribble of bile fell from his lips. "Water," he rasped. "Please. Water..."

An exhalation, pained. A gasp for breath. Swain lowered his chin, though barely so, attempting a nod. She bore the water to wash bile from his internal sores, to cleanse the acrid taste from his mouth, to quench this burning thirst left by the expulsion of his taint. Beatrice spread her wings and paced about, atwitter. A sharp caw escaped her; once, twice, three times she cried, perturbed by the visit of Death, by the way glass shattered and books cascaded to the floor, by the nail-scraping sound of LeBlanc's magic, by her master's violent retching.

Tentative sips at a time, the Grand General accepted his mistress' careful care. The negative energy Karthus had forced into his body brought on such weakness that he could barely lift his head. He lay enervated on the floor, the room spinning about him still, her arms his only anchor to the world. Nothing served to bind him to consciousness but her silken caress, her voice like tinkling bells: I'm here, Jericho...

"Don't leave..." he breathed, brows knit. He fought to keep his good eye open, to keep her in his sight. Her lovely face, her fair familiar features, reminders of the past--and of the foreordained future, which surely still lay in store... He swallowed the moment of doubt. "Don't leave..."

Brows knit, crinkling the creases between them. Terror flashed in his one good eye as he realized he could not bring himself to sit. "Evaine..." he whispered weakly. Her voice seemed miles away, her words barely audible over the sound of his own pounding head. "I can't..." A dry sob of panic escaped him as he strained to lift his head.

His eye widened; his brows raised. He grasped desperately for her hand. Completely helpless, trembling, he lay sprawled upon the floor, his body broken, his mind reeling. In answer to her question, he rasped, "Please... help me." Graying teeth pressed together in exertion as he willed his deteriorated form to rise, making little progress on his own.

He set his jaw as LeBlanc lifted him, eyes shut tight against the wracking pain, against the vertigo that washed over him as she set him on his feet. He recognized the spell. She would likely feel as though she had been trampled tomorrow--and be sore for a fortnight afterwards. But she was right. Who knew how Karthus' curse would behave against other runic magics? He could only issue his gratitude by swallowing his protests as they began their slow trek to the four-poster bed.

One step after the other, he willed his body to comply. Every footfall was a struggle. Without her enhanced strength, without her full support, he would have collapsed where he stood. Karthus' blast of negative energy hastened his decline, left him with barely the strength to remain conscious. Beatrice fluttered up from the floor to her brass perch by the desk, that she might watch them as they went. Her concerned trill punctuated their shuffle.

A grunt of pain and exertion escaped him as she helped him into bed. How could one lead in this state? How could plans be realized? How long would this weakness plague him? The gravity of the situation weighed heavy on his mind, but he could not even find the strength to express his distress in words. The Grand General shut his eyes as his head fell back on the pillow. He extended a trembling hand to LeBlanc. Blood still wept from the Eihwaz on his chest and from his punctured eye, out onto the white bedclothes, over his torn robes and decrepit form. The real world seemed surreal, twisted by fevered delirium and panic. He sought her touch to ground him in consciousness.

Again, his blazing eye drooped closed. His withered hand clasped around hers. The sound of labored breathing came in answer to her question, the chattering of teeth against some imagined chill. "Evaine," he rasped. "The door... seal the door, the windows." No one must see him like this. Not maids, not Raedsel. Not Renekton, Brand. Not the members of High Command for whose loyalty he had so fervently campaigned. Not a servant of the Rose. Not The Hand of Noxus. No visitors. No pairs of spying eyes.

"Karthus," the Master Tactician wheezed. Every word that fell from cracking lips sent pain coursing through his body, like crackling electricity as nerves misfired, wrecked by the Deathsinger's dose of negative energy. That blasted lich! How dare he enter here? How dare he seek to claim that which was claimed? "...it's my... time?" Swain mumbled, delirious. His eye sprang open again; his grip tightened weakly around her graceful fingers. "Said-it-was-my-time."

A sharp inhalation passed his lips, and just as swiftly as his eye had opened it shut again, clenched closed in agony. Breath expelled tremulously as he brought his free hand to his chest. His fingers spread out over the rune, quickly painted crimson in the blood that leaked from that open cursed wound. The slightest whimper escaped him.

He yearned to say more, to tell her of the fit, the fight, the orb, the invitation to the afterlife. But the condition of his bedchambers likely told much of this story already. Several puddles of black vomit, like oilslicks, spread out over the marble, soiled the rug. The stones had cracked from the force of impact where he'd charged Karthus into the wall. A pile of ashes lay by the bed: what remained of the reaper's attire.

"We fought..." Swain finished feebly.

To sleep, perchance to dream. Her voice like the gentle song of chimes echoed in his head, reverberated as though they sat together in a canyon, or in some vast and cavernous cathedral. "No..." came his fervent whisper. Beneath her palm, his forehead burned with fever.

Brows knit, he shook his head, nearly all he could manage as pain began to turn to numbness, a tingling warmth that spread down from his waist. Agony was almost preferable to this. It, at least, assured him he was still alive. He clung to consciousness, the thought that, if it left him, he might never wake flashing briefly through his mind. "Not dreams," he rasped again. From his left eye, swollen shut, a drop of blood ran out over his temple like a tear.

"The Eternal Nightmare is in my head." This final proclamation came as a murmur of terror. The Master Tactician's good eye slid in and out of focus, as though his mind was only barely present.