Lang opened his eyes. The miasma of void magic still hung thick in the air all around him, but the hungry and malevolent tendrils that had tried to sink into him and bleed his aether dry had dissipated. Still, he waited for its remnants to fade completely before he dared to drop the protective shield he had drawn up around himself and Arya.
X'rhun was a short distance away, standing with his back turned to them. The body of Lambard Calowise was lying at his feet, unmoving.
"Can you stand?" Lang asked Arya. Her face was ashen, but she nodded shakily. Lang slowly let go of her, and after he was sure she wasn't going to lose her balance, he went to X'rhun.
Lang gently touched X’rhun’s shoulder. He didn't react. He was breathing heavily, and the hand that gripped his bloodied rapier trembled.
"Rhun," Lang said. X'rhun's eyes flickered to him briefly, before snapping back to the corpse like it might rise again at any moment. His normally slitted pupils were blown wide.
"He- he’s... I have to-" X'rhun said, his low and strained voice coming out as nearly a hiss.
"What do you need?" Lang asked.
"The body is void infested, it has to be..." The words faded into a growl of disgust and fury.
"I understand, I'll take care of it," Lang said. "Arya needs to be looked at by a healer. Can you take her back to Revenant's Toll?"
"Arya...? Arya, right, of course," X'rhun said, seeming to snap out of his daze. He turned and hurried towards her.
"Are you all right, lass?" Lang heard X'rhun's voice from behind him.
"Yes, I'll... I'll be fine," Arya replied.
Lang did not look behind him until he heard their footsteps grow distant. He cast a glance back to confirm the road back to Revenant's Toll was clear of dangerous creatures, then turned his attention back to the body.
Calowise’s corpse was still hungrily draining aether from the surroundings. X’rhun’s assessment was correct. If they left it, it would inevitably rend open the barrier between the natural world and the Void. Simply burying it would only make it harder for the next adventurer who comes this way to find the source of the voidsent infection. To ensure the body was fully neutralized, it would have to be cleansed, purged of the Void's corruption before being laid to rest.
It was a cruel twist of fate that Lambard would receive a proper burial, when the Crimson Duellists he murdered never did- X'rhun hadn't had time to do more than gather up their weapons. At least Lang could spare his friend the pain of having to do this himself. It was the least he could do.
Still, he spent a minute staring at the body grimly, willing himself to begin. He only vaguely remembered Lambard from the days of the Ala Mhigan revolution. The Crimson Duellists had regularly crossed paths with his own adventuring order, and they had often exchanged knowledge and research. Lang recalled that Lambard was a cocky youth who acted like he always had something to prove, but they hadn't directly exchanged more than a dozen words in total.
Unlike X'rhun, whose features had obviously been weathered by the last twenty years, Calowise appeared to have not aged a day. The experimentation he did on his own body must have halted his aging somehow. Lang made this observation distantly, clinically. Detached from the atrocities committed by this man when he was alive. This was infinitely easier for him than it would be for X'rhun, he reminded himself. It didn't happen to his dearest loved ones. He hadn't been there.
You weren't there because you left him. You didn't even learn of the betrayal until Calowise appeared, because he didn't want to tell you.
Lang pushed away the thought and the accompanying pang of guilt. X'rhun had his reasons. That it had happened half a lifetime ago was reason enough.
He made himself just start moving into action before he could spend more time dwelling on his thoughts. He'd buried his own share of compatriots before, enough times that he could begin by going through the motions mechanically. He straightened out the body on the ground, smoothed down the clothes, and cleaned off blood where he could. But then there was no putting off the part he was dreading.
He knelt down, drew up a warding bubble around him and the body, and expanded his senses into its aether. A shiver ran up his spine. It was cold, and laden with something deeply unnatural. Thick tendrils of void-corrupted memory aether twisted around the remnants of what was once a living soul, choking it like a foul web.
Purifying a soul like this was a painfully slow and demanding process. He had to remain in a particular state of concentration while he drew out the memory aether in thin strands. The bubble was there in case his focus wavered and some oozing creature or corrupted sprite clawed its way out of the corpse.
He did not look at the memory aether, only let it pass through him and dissipate. There was nothing useful to be gleaned from such corrupted aether, only the faintest impressions, shadows of shadows of memories momentarily cast on his mind. Even so, sometimes they threatened to shatter his focus. Crimson red. Levin-air stench. Each time it got to be too much he had to stop, close his eyes, and wait for his nerves to calm before resuming, redoubling his efforts to not look at the shadows.
After most of the corrupted aether was removed, he could reach inside and extract the bare soul. What was left of it pulsed gently like a heartbeat in his palm. He spoke to it an Ala Mhigan funerary prayer he learned long ago, but it remained bound to the body. He sat there, trying to summon some feeling of pity for the thing. None came. He just wanted to crush it between his fingers, sanctity of life be damned.
He took a deep breath and started again, this time reciting an Ishgardian prayer meant for unrepentant heretics. It was an inappropriate use of holy verse, but that didn’t matter at the moment. He just needed to be sincere with every word. He could do that, as long as he thought of X'rhun, prayed for him to relinquish his sorrows and let the fallen soul bear them to the Fury for judgement.
At the end of the prayer, he let the soul peacefully drift off into the aetherial sea.
Lang staggered back onto his feet, his legs stiff from kneeling for what felt like hours. The cleansing exhausted him far more than the fight itself had. After that, he was almost glad for the mindless physical task of burying the body in the most remote and inaccessible piece of marshland he could find.
By the time he made his way back to Revenant's Toll, the sun was low on the horizon. He went to the inn where X’rhun had rented a room, where he found Arya napping. He woke her up and had her sit still while he transferred her aether.
"I feel better now, really," Arya said, yawning.
"You lost a lot of aether," said Lang.
"X'rhun already healed me with white magic. Then Jessie bought us dinner and had another healer look us both over. Oh, have you had anything to eat yet?"
"Later," Lang said distractedly. "Where is X'rhun?"
"After dinner he went to the Seventh Heaven, but right now he's..." She pointed upwards. Lang followed the direction of her finger, bemused.
Lang leaned out over the balcony railing and looked up at the rooftop. He caught a glimpse of red and white against the darkening sky.
"Rhun?" he called out.
The red shape retreated out of sight.
"Stay here, I'm going to check on him," Lang said.
It took him a while to get to the rooftop level, because he was not a Miqo'te and also not a young man anymore. He had to take the scenic route and climb the interconnected staircases winding around Revenant's Toll. When he reached the balcony just below the roof, X'rhun offered him a hand and helped him up, then returned to sitting with his knees pulled up to his chest. His feathered hat was in his lap, letting his white hair fall over his face.
Lang sat down beside him. He looked out towards the direction X'rhun was staring blankly at. For a while, they watched the sun sink below the horizon over Silvertear lake.
"Did you do it?" X'rhun asked, breaking the silence.
"Aye," said Lang. "It's done."
"Better than what the bastard deserved, should have left him to rot," X'rhun spat. Then he buried his head into his arms. "Gods, I'm sorry. What I meant to say was, I'm grateful, truly.”
“It’s over now. You don’t have to think about him anymore.”
“I wish that were true.” X’rhun said ruefully. “I was hoping to feel a sense of relief, after all these years. Instead I just feel…”
“...Tired?”
“Empty,” said X’rhun. “After I fled Ala Mhigo, vengeance was the only thing on my mind. I spent years in vain pursuit, but all I accomplished was nearly destroying myself. There was a time when I thought I would never be able to use red magic again.”
Tentatively, Lang offered an open arm. X’rhun leaned into his shoulder, headless of the dust.
“After that, I vowed to never again let vengeance consume me,” he continued. “I resolved to live as I should have, upholding the tenets of my order, finding balance within myself.”
X’rhun was silent for a moment. When he spoke again, it was with a tinge of bitterness. “I tried so godsdamned hard to find a new purpose, but as soon as he showed up again, it was all too easy to toss it to the wayside. It boils my blood, knowing Lambard struck me the last blow even in his death.”
“That's not true,” said Lang. “I never saw you stray from the path you set out on. You’ve been a good mentor to Arya and Alisaie.”
“Don’t feel like one some days."
“I don’t want to see you weighed down by him forever, Rhun," said Lang.
X’rhun sighed. “You're right, this is all just wallowing in self-pity, aye? ‘Tis unbecoming of a hero."
"That’s not what I meant,” Lang said quietly, a little wrong footed.
"I apologize, my jest was in poor taste.” X’rhun looked down and idly brushed some of the dust off his lapels. “I’ve worn the Crimson Duellist's mantle for too bloody long, it seems.”
“I know that feeling,” Lang said. He flexed his hand and winced. The exhaustion and aches caught up to him all of a sudden. “The sooner this Warrior of Light business is over, the better."
He felt a his ear flicker against his chin in amusement. “Ha, when that day comes I'll buy you a drink. With any luck it'll be a better cause for celebration than this one."
Another long moment of quietness passed. X'rhun pulled himself away from Lang's shoulder. He replaced his hat, arranged the slightly crooked plume back into place with a flick of his head, a movement practiced to carelessness. “Did you know, I had never succeeded in teaching a student to master the art of the Red before Alisaie? I tried, but each time the fear in my heart would stop me. I’d teach them a few tricks at most, before I’d send them on their way.”
“What was different about her?” Lang asked.
X'rhun chuckled. “The lass' stubbornness. She never let me brush her off, would always come back the next day. She could tell if I was still withholding a lesson. And... she spoke often of you. She told me the tale of how you defeated Bahamut together. It reminded me of you and I back then, the young idealistic fools we were... and still are.”
Lang looked over at X’rhun, meeting his eyes. He found himself studying X'rhun’s features by the last of the evening's light, cataloguing every crease and mark. He had just spent far too long staring at a dead man’s ghastly ageless face, and he’d never been as glad as he was now to see the fine lines at the corners of those eyes, etched by the sorrows of time as they were.
"I'm sorry I left you behind,” he said. “I wish I'd been there, to ease your burdens when you needed it the most.”
"You're here now," X'rhun replied simply.