Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s the smell that he notices first—a horrible, sickly stench. It clings to the walls of his pyramid and spreads through the air like miasma, squeezes through the gaps in doorways and fills the empty spaces with rotten-sweet, churning fumes. As he enters the gallery, the shock hits him just as hard as the urge to vomit.

He does not have much time to think after that.

The Witch is on him instantly, sharp claws and burning skin, vast and heavy and bright. Her wings beat at the air, sweep the rotten fumes in his face. Rhulk reels and stumbles, momentarily blinded, and she has the gall to LAUGH as her talon drags a long gash across the skin of his chest before it has the chance to morph into armour.

“You should get into the habit of locking your front door, honey.”

The glaive materialises in his hand, but Savathûn twists his wrist before he can swing. Bone cracks. Rhulk roars and kicks her, and she laughs again, letting go of his carapace and allowing him to stand and face her properly.

Her form is blinding. There is no clear shape or substance to it other than this terrible power, this point of unfathomable weight blazing with the fury of a thousand Sapphire Suns. An eye-scorching light.

He does not shudder, because the Disciple of the Dark does not shudder. The Disciple of the Dark is not afraid.

“My, my, what’s this?” Savathûn tuts. “Worm got your tongue?”

“You have become the Lie.” There is no wonder in Rhulk's voice, and no fear (the Disciple of the Dark is not afraid), but he cannot help the barest tinge of surprise.

“Looks good on me, don’t you think?” The Witch shakes off her wings. “I did consider slipping in without alerting the whole house, but then I figured the occasion warranted some fanfare.”

He swings at her again, half-blindly, but Lubrae’s Ruin finds its mark and sinks through the chitin with satisfying ease. With the other hand he grabs for her throat. Savathûn dodges in a twirl, the radiance coming off of her flickering like a beam of light through shifting lenses, and snarls as the glaive slides out from her stomach. Rhulk uses this split-second to lunge at her and push her against a nearby statue, talons digging into her shoulders.

“Get out,” he growls, panting.

“Oh darling, I hate to rain on your parade, but this is my house. I mean,” she takes in the room in a sweeping gesture, “not this, thankfully, but you planted this bastard of architecture on my property and it’s not really meshing well with my plans for redecorating. Disrupts the feng shui, if you will.”

Rhulk kicks her in the already healing wound in response. Now she roars, and fiery hatred blazes in her eyes for a moment, but it quickly morphs into triumph and he doesn’t have time to dodge before a fan of knives is flung in his direction. They cut into his skin with a burning fury. It is repulsive, the sensation rippling through his flesh in their wake—not pain, but rather the inversion of it, something antithetical to the very nature of his being.

Savathûn must have noticed the flash of revulsion even under his mask, because she smiles like a hunter closing in on the prey. Rhulk isn’t even sure what he is most furious at anymore: the blasphemy, the fact that she wasn’t actually dead, or her sheer audacity to break into his house and have a fucking picnic while he slept. And trailing Light all over his floors, at that. It was such a stupid, brazen move, so uncharacteristic for her, so strange, and as he ducks another volley of knives, he can’t help but feel like there is something very amiss here. They’ve fought enough times over the millennia that he’s learned her patterns by heart, and even with all the air of confusion and cunning that’s supposed to be her domain, little Sathona has always been hopelessly predictable. There was a familiar rhythm to this song and dance. But the way she is fighting now, her open posture and imprecise strikes, seem almost… clumsy. As if she didn’t have much of an idea what she was even doing. As if…

“You don’t remember,” he realises, glaive freezing mid-swing. “You… you don’t know anything.”

“Well, that depends on how you define memory.” Savathûn thrusts a boquet of lightnings his way, but it is all too easy to dodge this time. “Can it be outsourced? Extracted and stashed away somewhere safe, like a black hole data bank of everything it has ever devoured? I have been wondering, these past few hours. How much of it must you shed until you’re truly free?”

Rhulk’s knuckles whiten around the glaive’s hilt.

Maybe she was actually dead. The thought alone feels sickening in his mind, but he chews it over, and finds its taste no less bitter even when digested. The urge to vomit sweeps over him again like a wave.

He suddenly thinks of Fundament all these years ago, of standing alone on the cliffs of the Osmium Court and staring up at the clouded sky. The Adversary was somewhere out there, her pale gaze sharp even through the layers of fog—and never before had he felt seen like that, as if pierced right through and dissected down to his most basic components. Not as a Lubraean, not as a Disciple, not even when his Witness’ hands had remade him. That was the first and only time he has ever feared her.

Until now.

The sensation renders him frozen for barely a second, but that’s all it takes. The next thing he feels is the searing not-pain in his shoulders—knives pinning him to the wall—and Savathûn’s breath on his face, her eyes white and sharp like a scalpel, bright, cutting him open down to the core.

“Sweet dreams, honey,” she murmurs, and her talons sink into his throat.