@viladlind ✶ cont
Death is like sleep. It is a dark expanse of nothing, stretching across an endless distance. Volo has heard stories of death, has always wondered which God would wish to claim him or if he'd become another brick in the wall. Volo has a very long history with death. It threatens him, a constant, ever-looming presence. And every single time, it is his friends that have dared to entwine themselves in all the trouble it takes to get him out of the clutches of neverending sleep. Some part of himself held the belief that he would never die. It seemed like an impossibility, after everything he'd gone through ( and you wouldn't know the trouble that'd ensue if you-- ).
There are stories of death on this island. The impermanence of it. The long slumber. Volo wonders if there's any truth to it.
Volo sleeps and wonders if he will ever wake. Volo sleeps, and yet they don't dream. They can only wait. This must be the fugue plane, then. Days of waiting, to see if a god ( such as Mystra, or more likely Tymora ) will offer him passage to Elysium. Or perhaps he should be awaiting the hand of a devil. Or perhaps neither, and Volo should brace to be turned into another brick in the wall. The sun rises and the moon falls, casting shadows through the open window of his room on his empty bed. There's a bottle of spilled ink on the table, something they intended to clean up when getting home the night they died. Dry, now, the parchment underneath ruined and the desk will surely stain.
The sun shines yet again, and Volo still sleeps, still trapped in what feels like a haze. Perhaps all the stories are wrong. What comes after death is nothing. Gods fear it too, after all.
<D4 -> 3> By the third time the moonlight casts a dim shadow, when Fiyero's eyes take a long and slow blink, Volo can feel it: the gentle covers of the bed, the book they'd left at the pillow opened to a page of no significance. They feel it, the world, their body, the thump, thump, thumping of their heart. And the pain, the excruciating pain, like a fire lighting every nerve ending. Eyes blearily open, attempting to put a face on the shadow watching him. It doesn't strike him as odd to see the eyes glow with darkvision. An angel, perhaps, here to guide him away. What a strange form for one to take, and yet so beautiful. And familiar.
Reaching a hand out is painful. Volo's right arm stings of the wounds inflicted upon his shoulder, and yet the torn-open sleeve is only stained with dry blood, allowing a deep scar to peek through. His hand touches skin- the figure's face- and gently he guides it to face him. Weak. A headache. Nerves on a dull fire. "Fi..yer...o?"
Their voice is weak from days of dormancy, of floating in a void. Volo lifts their head, gathering the surroundings. The same empty mug on the nightstand. The same piles of tomes from the Annals beside his desk. The same hat, clutched in Fiyero's talons like a lifeline. This is their room, same as it was when they'd left in the night and... ah, that's right. Volo slowly sits up ( that burning pain, with every move he makes ), turning his head towards what should be the sight of blood leaking onto the sheets. No, just another deep scar among many. Perhaps that was not death after all.