“Spirit’s damnation,” William thought. His tried to actually speak the words but it simply caused a wracking spasm to ripple through him. He coughed and spat out more dark, glistening chunks of the ruined things that he called his lungs and then looked back to Lorenor.

The explosive shot had damaged the undead thing severely, but in the end it still hadn’t been enough to bring him down. William slumped to his knees as Lorenor dropped down to join him. There was almost more searing holy light in the Lorenor’s silhouetted outline than there was solid mass, and yet his enemy persisted. Despite his predicament, William found himself grinning through the patina of blood painting his face. The two of them were very similar, each proud and unwilling to yield. It was what had made this fight so enjoyable. He wouldn’t shame their conflict by releasing himself and admitting defeat at the end of it. If Lorenor could stand, so could he.

Fighting back against the terrible pain that filled him, William stood. He grimaced and prepared to die once again at Lorenor’s hands. He was vaguely aware that the mutant was talking to him, proclaiming some judgement or other against William. All of that had faded to background noise in the aftermath of the acidic pain that was consuming him. William noticed, with an odd detachment, that his charred skin had started to slough off where the liquid had splashed on him. So much for his regenerative capabilities.

“Get it together,” he chided himself, pulling his focus back to Lorenor. For some reason the mutant hadn’t killed him yet. And it took a confused moment for William to figure out why. Years before he’d seen and barely restrained power and fury lurking behind the Lorenor’s eyes. Now he was surprised to see that though the power remained, the fury had become a deep and compelling well of compassion. He’d thought that the two of them were repeating the same vicious blow-by-blow that they’d gone through all those years ago. And for him that was true. He’d reveled in the release of reverting to his primal self, unanswerable to anything but the roar of slaughter in his ears and the desire for destruction in his chest.

Lorenor was different however. The years had changed him just as much as they had changed William. But instead of throwing that change aside as William had, Lorenor had embraced that change and had made it into a fundamental part of who he was. The thought staggered him with shock, his knees nearly giving way under the weight of the realization. What was he doing here? Was this really the person that he wanted to be? Perhaps he deserved this fate, to die at the hands of the man who’d already defeated him.

But instead of taking his just victory, Lorenor turned his power inward and, to William’s surprise, used the resulting energy to banish the poisonous toxin from William’s body, consuming the dark liquid with holy light. In the process, William saw, the undead creature consumed himself, what was left of him crumpling to ash at William’s feet. William froze, unsure just what to do or how to react to the action. It had caught him completely off-guard.

“Why, Lorenor?” he thought, looking down at the other man’s ashes. He stayed that way until the magic of the chamber faded around him, taking Lorenor’s physical remains with it. He knew that Lorenor had already been healed by the monks’ magic and was likely to be resting in the medical ward at the moment, but for some reason he couldn’t reconcile that knowledge with the sight of Lorenor giving up his own life to cure William of something that just as ultimately wouldn’t prove fatal. Congratulations, he’d won. But if so, then why did it feel like he’d lost?

The question haunted William until long after the Ai’Brone attendants returned the gear he’d lost.