There's something that makes Taako think he's never gonna bounce back from this and it's uhhh, it might be the fact that he's slowly bleeding out against a cave wall thanks to a venom-tinted danger. And don't get him wrong, Taako's bounced back from a lot of stuff, but it's gonna be kinda hard to get back from this, what with the cycles ending and all.
Fuck. Lup was going to kill him. Again, he guessed, because he'd died a few times and that's certainly what was happening here. The color black was sneaking through his veins, which, again, probably not good, probably not normal, but he felt too weak to do anything about it now besides just laying up against this wall.
It didn't take long. When the venom reached the tips of his fingertips, his skin started to turn a sort of frostbite black and then-
Nah, joking, not nothing. It still hurt like a motherfucker but he wasn't stuck to the cave wall anymore. His soul flickered and then got up, leaving his body behind. Taako didn't know how exactly death worked in this plane, but hey, if he was getting a second chance or whatever, then hell yeah.
He checked to make sure the gauntlet was securely locked away behind the vault door- and Mr. Back-Stabby Dwarf was too- and started back the way he came.
Only, something, or rather, someone, stood in his way.
The figure was just a little shorter than Taako but held himself to be intimidating just the same. His face was- well, it was a skull. He was a skeleton, with glowing red eyes, wearing a suit and wielding a scythe. He was leaning against it, causal as could be for a skeleton who had just appeared out of nowhere, but something about the way he looked at Taako made him appear grinning.
"Well," Skele-man said. "I gotta say, Taako, for evading the natural order of life and death eight other times, your soul signature really wasn't that hard to find. Off day?"
Taako sighed, looking back at his body, and then to the scythe that was suddenly pointed at his neck.
"You have no idea, my man."