And when you said forever, didn't you mean always?

Dying doesn't hurt. Dying is peaceful. The twist of a knife in his Core when he hears the irregular rhythm of Iona's tears fading out is, much as he hates to admit it, purely mental. Purely emotional. Purely abstract, imagined, a dream.

(The Core's been numb for a long time. He can't feel her hand over his heart.)

Isn't that how a Blade should die? Purely abstract, an emotional dream pulled out of the literal ether into reality by the tethering strings of a Driver's heart for just long enough to latch onto a presence? So it's not how Cole should have died. Not how Minoth should have died. He'd never return to his Core.

He'd always wondered about this. No telling how he would have considered it if he'd actually been fully human, but he'd always been afraid to take any but the definitive way out. That is, who decides when your time is up, once you've had too much?

Stupid, stupid, stupid, that he can't even wrap the last tendrils of his mind around what it is he's actually trying to think, to muse, about. Will the analogies help? Will the weaving of domains immaterial jog understanding in his, my, useless old brain? May as well try it.

What if death isn't really the end? What if you're not allowed to go, if you quit too early? The audience will laugh, maybe they'll even cry, and the price of admission will have been a farce, if they see you undressing the set before the curtain's gone down.

Unprofessional, to excuse yourself off of union time. Some union. Some boss. But is that all it is? A Blade is contracted on their Driver's clock. They don't get to choose when they're born, but neither do humans. Humans can't be born again, though. As far as anyone knows.

And why should Cole, Minoth, have cared? He was on the side of being pinned squarely to his final act, the one without any promise of either reprise or reprieve. He was done. From the moment Amalthus had laid him up on the operating table, Minoth's clock had started ticking independence. But can't you always wind a clock back up again?

So here he is, five hundred years later. If their world is some couple of thousands of years old, that's a quarter of the big man's share. What even are the fractions, at this stage? At this age? Questions, questions. So many questions.

"That wasn't too pretty, down there," Cole remarked, to no one at all. Why not be reductive, now? Why not abandon the pretentious airs, the camaraderie of brave young men and the cherishing of brave young women? He'd let go of his youth long, long ago. Too long ago, of course. Cole wasn't afraid to be old.

"You didn't like it?" came a voice from across the...where was he? "I'm sorry."

I'm sorry too, but not in the way that you're saying. I'm sorry, who are you?

"Wait, are you...?"

Cole had trained himself to pick up on, ridiculous as it sounds, the vibrations of a room in which someone was nodding, particularly when they were lurking in the shadows. So there was a nod. The room nodded. The world nodded. The universe nodded.

"I am...the man who created this world. You call me the Architect. I should hold no such distinction, however. My earthly name, when I had one, was Klaus."

"Rejecting your reputation, eh?" The classic, transparent, if trite, emote: a bowed head swiveling left to right, a single empty puff of air. "Can't say I'm a stranger to that."

"You're not a stranger to much, Minoth." Ah. So you know me. And I'll say it: I don't even know me. Even though, god and you knows, I've certainly had enough time to meet, to mete.

A Blade definitionally cannot know themselves without a Driver. A Blade without a Driver, still, finds something to lack. There was Amalthus, there was Addam, there was Vandham, each one somehow simultaneously weaker and stronger than the last. The man, or the bond? Or the Blade? Both, and neither. And me, in between.

"Aren't you going to offer me a seat, if we're so friendly?"

The stale air stiffened further. "I do not...presume myself your friend. From what I know of you, you are always exceedingly genial, even to strangers. So indeed, I would be remiss in not inviting you to be comfortable here. But no, we don't have to be friendly. It has been a long time since...since I have had a friend."

There was no floor to sit on even if there were not a chair; Cole couldn't see much of anything besides a gray-green haze, and though that recalled his cloak, it was just as likely something far less material and familiar.

For a moment, he considered unbarring all holds, but fair play would only do him well in this realization of all his deepest-held fears. Dead he was, and yet there was another scene. Cruel. So cruel.

"If I may say something bold?"

"Please." There was an uptick in Klaus's inflection; he still allowed himself hope.

"I take it you're not referring to your children." And Cole had never had children, but he had had Iona, and Nia, and Pyra, and Mythra. He had been figured in to that role. His second relation to the Architect, then: as creator, and as keeper. Each had kept the other's work. Each had created derivatives they thought better, kinder. Even if Klaus didn't know kindness, anymore.

Down, deflation. "You will be the first of them who has stopped to talk to me. I'm afraid I don't know much more about it than that."

Liar. Oh, it seemed a damned devilish lie. Not an ornamentation, not a revision, but a plain and out lie. The former phrase's implication held more weight, however. Lies rose like hot air, and all. Let them go. It wasn't his place.

But what was? Wasn't it?

"I only meant the Aegises, but I suppose you'd include humans and Blades, huh? And I'm neither of those. So I think, Klaus, that you'll have to wait a fair bit longer for some real company. Not so bad, is it? You've been waiting long enough."

Waiting long enough. There hadn't been much waiting, in between the experiment and Addam's scionous hospitality. From Indol to Torna, in spirit if not in corpse, so naturally. So right. So...no, not easy. Minoth wouldn't have wanted it to be easy. He'd shied away from anything that promised itself too easily.

And then, after Addam, there'd been work to do. Tales to tell, memoirs to keep, children to care for, a world to render hale both on the page and before it. How crucial had been Minoth, then?

To the axioms of the world, he supplied nothing; no one counted their sums by the iconography of Flesh Eaters. No one save Indol put a thought to their existence, as a whole. To each individual soul, he gave all that he could, and perhaps that was uncountable.

The Architect's work was only uncountable because he hadn't done any, as of late. Not since he'd created their world had he done anything, because Amalthus wouldn't have lied about not getting to meet his maker. Klaus had stood by and let misguided men seize away those he so clearly held most dear.

Klaus hadn't answered. Cole tried to clear his throat, but the rumble wouldn't come. Air was leaving the room. So reality was fading. Was that a comfort?

You're already dead, Cole. It doesn't matter how you think about wanting to die, now.

"Why did you let him do it?"

All the air was gone. All echo seemed simulated. The dialogue rang only off the walls of his mind. And the silence was not suffocating, only thin.

"Long ago, I extinguished the lives of more people than you could ever dream of counting, by bounding forth with my own selfish will. I do not trust myself to perform miracles, aged as I am. So the least I can do for you all is to let you determine the shapes of your own futures. It was not that I didn't care."

Apathy is the greatest, ugliest, most egregious sin. "Right, right. I suppose even you can't predict the future." And now you lie, Cole. You lie to fold inception into his untruth. There is nothing you believe of him so frail. You, an old man, and he, an old man...you are not the same.

"What did you think, of my arc?" If there were any remaining physicality in this space (And what is space without matter? Without energy? Why can I hear him, but not see him?), Cole would have smirked, to indicate his half-humorous sarcasm.

In response, he felt Klaus's smile. "Yours was one of those I was most proud of, even and especially as I did not meddle with its course. Something, someone, so quietly, significantly insignificant, influencing all he met, and making that better future for himself. Your relationship with Addam was one of the most pure, the most human, of all those between any Driver and Blade, even as you argued, and grew apart."

Projected, a frown. Confusion. "Don't you see it? What you did, and what Mythra and Malos have done...their rejection of petty fates is far more beautiful without the mar of my interference. As you would say...the director should only direct. The actors must take their own inspiration."

"I suppose I should thank you for that, then." Or not. Not or not. Not or not is false. What he spoke was only true.

"Forgive me my prescience, and perhaps a little bit of ego." Oh, so now he'll presume. "I always knew that you would."

What a peaceful death, talking with the author. It doesn't hurt. Cole floats in the wings of the universe, with Klaus, watches the children come before him and accuse him of far worse than a playwright's artful jabs. Watches them praise him for far better than simply lifting words off a page.

Salvation, huh?