It was the worst thing I'd ever had to witness.

It was worse even that the death of Nicholas.

To see someone you had loved die by a clean cut by a skilled man's sword was nothing compared to watching Izuna experiencing the blood sacrifice.

I realised he didn't know. He didn't know how much it hurt. I knew how much it hurt elves but apparently, it was much, much worse for humans as their intercellular spaces were smaller than ours, causing the blood cells pouring through the tissues on its way to the great stone to stretch the spaces further than what it did in elves. He'd bled so much in his life; bleeding was nothing to him. But this...

At first, when the sacrifice began, he frowned, feeling the discomfort in his blood caused by the gravity of the great stone increasing. But then, his eyes widened as he began to feel the true pain, and I could see he was beginning to panic. Then, the blood was pulled out through his vessels, muscles, fat, skin, and he screamed. Izuna screamed.

He dropped his sword, and so it left my throat, letting me know everything around him disappeared, and he screamed so much, his voice cracked and he lost it. He started coughing blood, the screaming having torn his throat apart. I stood up and ran to him, taking him into my arms from behind and I held him, trying to soothe him as the blood was pulled out onto his skin and then formed an orb in front of his heart. I removed my cape and his, ripped my shirt off and held him to me to comfort him with as much of the elven touch as I could give him so that he could perhaps suffer in peace, but it didn't help. The elven touch didn't reach him. It was unbearable. I closed my eyes.  

"I love you", I murmured. "I'm so sorry for everything. I love you."

I knew Izuna didn't hear me. He was somewhere else entirely, wrapped up in pain of such a magnitude, I would never be able to understand even half of it. If I could take him to the stars, the pain of the blood sacrifice took him to the opposite place. But I kept comforting him. Or was I really comforting myself?

"I love you and I always will."

His entire body was trembling. His eyes was rolling into the back of his head. He had froth in his mouth and even if he was unconscious, it was clear that that was no escape from the pain.

I can't bear this... I can't bear this...

"I love you so much."

And just like that, the blood sacrifice was over.

Finally, after what felt like several eternities across all parallel universes, the blood sacrifice was over.

Izuna stopped his silent scream and slumped in my embrace. I leaned over him and started crying softly. His blood floated to the great stone, who absorbed it.

And then, instead of calling forth one of the planets as it usually did, the stone started moving. Without a sound, incredibly slowly, it floated upwards, revealing underneath it a gaping black hole.

And up through it floated the body of Izuna's brother, that had been dead for nine years.

I felt Izuna tremble in my arms, and I jerked, my heart fluttering in my chest. Not yet dead... Just like the Great Planetarian had promised.

"Izu", I whispered softly. "Hey, Izu..."

When he didn't respond, I lifted him up into my embrace and walked to the body as it slowly floated to the ground, landing softly as the great stone also landed, closer to us than before so that the gaping hole beneath it was still exposed.

Izuna's brother's body was preserved exactly like it had been on the day he died, and I realised how strange it must've been for Izuna as he had grown into a man while his brother had remained the same age as when he died. I felt him snivel in my arms, too weak to make any further sounds. I knelt, Izuna still in my embrace, took his little hand in my hand and put it on his brother's chest. He started shaking in heart-wrenching sadness, sadness but also relief, relief of having been given the gift of reuniting with his brother's soul one last time. I was ashamed, so ashamed of everything I had caused this man, and would do anything to make it right. I dug my nose into his hair, breathed him in. 

I looked down on Izuna looking down on his brother, his best friend, and he snivelled a little as he caressed him over his chest, just above his unbeating heart that had been still for so long. Minute after minute passed, and Izuna lived.

Izuna lived.

I started shaking, realising Izuna would survive. Izuna would survive the blood sacrifice, and why should he not? Izuna was the most formidable person I had ever met in my entire life.

And suddenly, Izuna spoke.

And the entire world fell off my universe.

"Tell me how to prevent us both from dying!!"

"IZUNA, NO!!" I screamed, grabbing his face, connecting our foreheads as I screamed at him. He had survived. He had survived but now he'd made another blood sacrifice. "LET ME ASK!! IZUNA, LET ME ASK!!"

But it was too late. His body jerked and he was put under some sort of seizure, convulsing horribly as another sacrifice was made, and I screamed in rage as his precious blood was drawn from him. I put him on the ground and ran to the great stone, screamed and clawed at it, begged it to stop, to take the blood sacrifice back, to give Izuna back to me. I knew that the Great Planetarian could not disobey orders, even if it could try to convince you otherwise, but now, I remembered none of that; was completely losing my mind. I desperately grabbed at the orb of blood the great stone had drawn that was now floating towards it but to no avail; it escaped my grasp with ease, and the Great Planetarian drank.

I slumped on the stone, crying when a planet was drawn in for the Great Planetarian to answer Izuna's question. I could hear its looming presence behind me, and turned round.

Behind me was the amethyst planet that had showed me all those visions so long ago.

And before I had time to react, it showed me another vision.

Me and him, in the same wheat field as in the first vision, holding hands, walking and smiling in the evening sun. Nicholas stood a way away, smiling at us, tears streaming down his face. I noticed Izuna was wearing a white coat and trousers, and I was clad in black. We were dressed for a wedding. Our wedding. 

Then we were in the cave, both of us alive, Izuna standing next to me, still clad in the robe I had ripped apart last night when I'd fucked him. The amethyst planet was in front of us, slowly turning until it showed us a tiny chip on its other side. Izuna lifted his sword and took out the amethyst in it. Slowly, he walked to the planet, placed the amethyst from his sword in the chip, healing the planet.

"The amethyst is angry". Erika's voice, and Nichola's voice, and Izuna's voice. "It wants its missing piece back."

And we were back in the wheat field, me with my arms around his waist, him with his arms on my shoulders. I was lifting him up, twirling him, kissing him...

I came back with a sharp intake of my breath, as if I'd held it for an entire night's sleep. I fell to my knees, crawling back to Izuna. He had stopped convulsing and was laying as still as Nicholas, white as porcelain, tears of blood from the sacrifice still trickling down the skin of his arms and chest, bare as I had undressed him for the elven touch.

So easy... So easy for us both to live. Yet now, he was dead. I crawled all the way to his body, put my hands on him, slumped over him.

And I couldn't hold back no longer.

I threw my arms around him and cried and cried, cried for everything that was wrong in this world, or maybe against everything that was wrong in this world. The amethyst planet loomed over us, the blue lights of the cave shining through it, casting a light on our skin like gemstones. We were still both bare-chested, and I moved so I covered as much of him as possible, wanting him to experience the elven touch on his voyage to the skies where he would forever become stars.

And then, there was a scraping noise at my side.

I immediately stood up, reached for the amethyst sword as it was the closest, grabbed it and held it ready.

But it was Izuna's hand.

It was Izuna's hand that had moved and grabbed his sword, causing the scraping sound.

"Take... Take its amethyst", he wheezed.

"IZUNA!!"

I sat down again, grabbed his face, kissed it over and over. This isn't real. You're not real.

"Tobes... Please."

It took me everything, every little drop of my willpower, every chip in my skeleton to tear myself apart from him, and when I had given it my all, I had to give even more still to enable separating myself from him.

Let me save you.

I forced my hands off of him, grabbed the amethyst sword and put it to the ground. I grabbed my own sword, lifted it with both hands, forced the magic of the crystals into it on my exhale, and shoved it into Izuna's sword with such precision, the amethyst was cut out. I took it in my hand and ran to the amethyst planet. Sure enough, there was a chip in it where the amethyst of Izuna's sword would fit perfectly, so small I wouldn't have noticed if I had not been shown the vision. I was just about to put it into the chip when...

"I can't let you do that, I'm afraid."

I turned round, searching for the source of the voice, but there wasn't a source.

There wasn't a source because the voice had been in my head.

No...

The great stone... The voice of the Great Planetarian.