The Chosen One’s blade finds its way home at last, buried to the hilt in my chest.
I look up from the wound into brilliant blue eyes, where I find triumph and questioning, “Did I do it? Is it over?”
I smile in reassurance. It’s over. This whole charade is over at last.
I drop the pretense I ever wanted to kill her. The charge in the air—prepared spells I knew she could evade—starts to fizzle and fade. I slump forward, my spindly hands grasping her muscled shoulders for support, her strength easily keeping me upright these last moments.
The magic that has kept me alive for so very long is losing ground against the ensorcelled Blade of Light, but for now I can still speak.
“Do not let me die alone, please, champion,” I breathe into her ear. “You’ve won. Just hold me for a moment until my body fails.”
She does. I always knew she would. It’s part of why she is the Chosen One after all: boundless strength, boundless beauty, and boundless empathy. Everything I am not.
My knees weaken. She lowers me gently to a seating position on the floor, not pushing away my embrace.
She does not withdraw the sword, of course. I might live if she did. Its magic is the only thing capable of penetrating my defenses.
That’s exactly what it is meant to do, after all. It was enchanted for this one purpose by the only person who truly understood my own magic.
I feel what little strength I possess leaving my body, dribbling down the hilt, staining her hands.
I feel her. Strong, beautiful, and kind. She believes the sword is from her goddess, reacting to her touch because of her great destiny.
I seeded those legends ages ago.
With this body’s last gasp, in a moment of self indulgence, I whisper to my Chosen One, “I knew I chose well.”
I die.
Just in time to feel her confusion myself from within her. My will, carried by the stain of my blood on her hand, floods her superior body.
She banishes the worry a moment later and…actually takes the time to lay my corpse in a dignified pose, even shedding a tear of bafflingly genuine grief over my death.
She reassures her traveling companions that the quest is over, and they depart.
“Hello, my dear. Thank you for indulging me. That made this whole ritual much, much easier.”
She tries to respond aloud to my greeting within her mind, but I prevent the vocalization.
“Now, now, we cannot let the others know I’m in here with you, understood?
“We have a long journey home ahead of us, and we are going to have to learn to get along by the time we arrive.
“I have plans for the reward you were going to turn down, but first let us get to know each other better. There is so much we can do together.”