Lifeblinder

It's cold on the cliffs. It smells like the sea, churning blue and white and uncaring a thousand feet beneath us. The wind cuts and blows my hair back. From behind me I hear Charon's robes, rich embroidered silk now stained with blood, flapping in the wind. But even that is a distant sound.

Otherwise...it's quiet.

Now that he's dead.

Now that he's finally dead.

I look down. My boot is still where I left it, pressed to the chest of the one they call Lifeblinder. It looks gruesome, and brutal, my boot on his chest like that. Not very heroic. But I needed to stabalize when I drove my sword through his temple. It's still there-- burried six inches past his cranium and into the soil

Also gruesome.

Also non-heroic.

"Sorry Mitch," I say, and pull the blade free. "I probably don't look quite like the hero you're always telling me to be. But the deed is done."

"The deed is done," echoes a voice, but it isn't Mitch's.

It's Charon, staggering forward and holding her head where dried blood at her temple softly mimics Lifeblinder's mortal wound.

She joins me at the cliff face. She stares down at Lifeblinder.

Shakes her head.

Then after a moment, our mage speaks.

"Who's Mitch?" she asks, glancing up at me with a frown.

"Who's Mit--" I begin, turning a quarter of the way to smile at Mitch.

Except Mitch isn't there.

No one is there.

"Mitch," I ask, loudly.

"Durro, you're scaring me..." Charon says, glancing between me and the corpse. She thinks I'm in shock or something. I am confused-- I'll give her that. But not shock.

"Oh, shit, did he..."

My heart seizes.

"Did Mitch fall?" I ask. I can feel my face growing pale. I run to the cliff edge. Like that would do any good.

Charon is slow to follow.

"Durro," she says, voice steadying itself now that the battle is over, "Who is Mitch?"

"Now's not the fucking time, Charon," I mumble.

"Time for what?"

"For jokes, or...messing with me, or whatever this is."

"I don't really mess with people," The mage says slowly, "And I don't think I've ever joked in my life."

That was true enough.

I peer over the edge.

No Mitch, no corpse dashed against the rocks as far as I can see. Of course, if he fell into the ocean he'd be long gone.

Vertigo took me for a moment, spinning, wavering, and I took a step back.

"Who is Mitch?" Charon repeated. She left me to hesitate while she darted back to her pack to rifle through some scrolls and components.

"Mitch, you know, Mitchell Haundrin? You've known him for three years? Pale, medium build, black hair? Do you not remember? What is this?"

"It's something," Charon murmured, rifling through her things. "Something--"

She stopped mid sentence and glanced up, eyes wide.

I turned to follow her gaze.

There was a figure there. Cloaked. Standing in the moors.