Count Cerise, Keeper of Rejuvenation, pointed his sword at The Blind Keeper, a threat and promise he didn't want to make.

"Stop this!" he demanded, drawing the sword back across his body. "I didn't agree to this!!"

"You did," the Blind Keeper said sadly, as Cerise darted in. It was a slow attack, a clumsy overhead strike that the spider could easily sidestep. He knew that was how Cerise would start, of course. It was the only way he could start. The Blind Keeper had seen it in the words.

Count Cerise's voice became pleading, as his free hand made a malicious, arcane gesture in the Blind Keeper's direction. "Okay! Okay! You've made your point, just..." He tried to fight it. The power of the Bloodleaf flowed through him, amassing in his finger. Cerise so badly wanted to point it anywhere but at the exhausted-looking spider before him.

But he couldn't. He couldn't fight it, couldn't shift his own finger by even the smallest of degrees. It wasn't that the control was too powerful; there was nothing to fight. It would be like watching a recording of yourself, and trying to will the You on the screen to do something differently this time.

His will was still there, it just didn't matter anymore. The connection between his mind and his body had been severed cleanly and completely, leaving him a passive observer trapped inside himself. "...just stop this madness!!" he cried out, utterly powerless to prevent his body from unleashing a crimson bolt.

The Blind Keeper shifted to the side, the blood-red beam only narrowly missing him. "I can't," he replied regretfully. "The threads bind us. They cannot be broken. The end is inevitable."

This battle was wrong. The Blind Keeper knew it, and he knew Cerise could feel it as well. "Death" was nothing new to either of them: they were used to "dying" a dozen times a night, howling in defeat, only to reappear in their beds a minute later, utterly unharmed. That had been normal for them. They had never questioned it.

This was different. It was different when an adventurer killed you. An adventurer was supposed to kill you, and would if you didn't kill them first. They had their role, you had yours. The idea wasn't even upsetting. The Keepers and adventurers liked each other. It was a treat for both when The Keepers would visit a town, comfortably coexisting, despite their interactions at any other time being limited to killing each other. It was nothing personal, and no reason you couldn't be friends off-the-clock. Getting killed by adventurers was just part of the game.

But another Keeper?

Count Cerise crouched down, gripping his sword tightly. "You– stop!! I'm telling you, stop!!"

"I can't, anymore than you can," The Blind Keeper repeated. His body was numb. As Count Cerise leapt forward, he only barely managed to force himself to step out of the way. The slash very nearly caught one of his legs, glancing off his chitin. "I told you I trusted you with my life. This is... what I'm choosing to do with it."

Count Cerise looked up. His sword was already pulled back, ready for the thrust. "You'll be okay, right? T-tell me you'll–"

The Blind Keeper stared at Cerise. He stumbled to the left as Count Cerise lunged forward, the blade grazing his cheek.

Cerise's voice died in his throat. The moment the first drop of blood leaked from the wound, he knew he wouldn't be okay. The fundamental law of the universe that regenerated them was absent. In its place, there was nothing but the void.

"No–" Cerise pleaded.

He slashed again. The Blind Keeper wasn't fast enough this time. This time the sword carved through the chitin on his leg, slicing off a bloody piece of him.

"No, please. Please," Cerise pleaded futilely.

Count Cerise retreated now, holding up both hands. Columns of Bloodleaf surged forward, vines like spears jutting up through the ground as they surged across the atrium floor. Count Cerise's face had frozen into a look of horror as he watched himself weave the peril into existence.

The Blind Keeper just barely sidestepped the first wave of vines as it pierced through the ground, threatening to skewer him. The columns of vines alternated, forcing him to dance back and forth between them. Left, right, left, right. Columns one and three, columns two and four, columns one and three, columns two and four.

These were new attack patterns, one that The Blind Keeper had never borne witness to. It didn't matter. He had seen them all in the words. 2n-1, 2n, 2n-1, 2n. Next: five explosions, radius 10, telegraph 3 seconds, center on highest threat. Phase change at half health. The words were meaningless nonsense, and also his entire reality. It was a sick joke.

He could feel himself slowing down. The wound on his leg wasn't helping. His body was growing numb. He continued to sidestep, left, right, left, right, each time just a little bit closer to being too late than the previous time.

A misstep in the rhythm cost him, as a sprout of razorsharp Bloodleaf penetrated his foot. He hissed as he pulled it free of the jagged protrusion.

He could have dodged it. He had seen all these patterns written out in the cold, unyielding words. There were no mysteries left to be had. There was nothing left to care about.

"Stop!!" Count Cerise cried desperately. "You can stop!! I understand!!"

The Blind Keeper wished he could be angry. Instead, feeling empty, he replied, "I can't. And no, you don't."

There was something in Cerise's hidden words he had overlooked before. He could see it now, after the slap, the punch, the hug. Something old, something buried. He hadn't realized it was still there, until now.

"But you will understand. If this is what it takes, you will."

A backup. Something older.

Something more powerful.

He seized the strands of thread in his mind.

Coldly, he declared, "I need to show you just how far this goes."

He yanked.

He could hear Cerise's pained gasp. It was taking all the roach's willpower not to scream.

The Blind Keeper watched the ripples, watched the old overwrite the new, watched the power flowing through those words surge into Count Cerise, purging the weakness from him.

He could hear the ragged breathing. He could feel the light dimming. He could smell the acrid scent of the Bloodleaf growing stronger, threatening to overwhelm him.

This wasn't Cerise. This wasn't the Count Cerise that the world knew now. This was Count Cerise, Keeper of Rejuvenation, as he was prior to The Long Votom. This was Count Cerise at his full strength.

"How–" Count Cerise asked desperately. "What– my old– my old strength–"

"Your old self," The Blind Keeper clarified. "You were never sick. You were never weak," the Blind Keeper explained. Now he could feel the anger boiling up. "Your illness was fake. All your suffering, fake. It was never The Long Votom that crippled you; the universe wanted you weak, so it made you weak. That's what the universe is. That's what the universe does. It doesn't care about you. About any of us."

Cerise stared at The Blind Keeper, his face utterly uncomprehending.

The Blind Keeper sighed. "All I've done is apply a temporary fix. Very temporary. The universe will realize what I've done soon enough, and reverse it." The feeling of mourning engulfed him, the sense of impending tragedy more oppressive than ever. "But it should be just long enough."

"Why?" Cerise croaked, as his arms drew themselves back.

"You're going to free me," The Blind Keeper said numbly. "No more farce. No more illusion. I can only hope it frees you as well."

"No–" Cerise whispered.

His arms flung themselves forward.

The shockwave surged across the floor of the Atrium. If The Blind Keeper hadn't leapt to the side in the second before it had been launched, it would have crushed him against the arena wall, pulping him instantly.

On the other side of the Atrium, Count Cerise stood, his hands raised, his face the picture of terror.

The Blind Keeper sagged. Not much time left now.

A storm of bloodleaf descended upon the arena, starting at the perimeter and spiraling inward. The air was choked with the scent of vegetation, acrid and fierce. Exhaustion gnawed at The Blind Keeper's muscles, but he pushed himself forward, stepping through the gaps in the whirling rings of bladed leaves as they presented themselves to him.

He hadn't seen these attacks in the words. He hadn't bothered to look.

"You have to stop this!! There has to be a way!!" Cerise shouted over the storm, surging forward, his blade already in his hands.

His blade cleaved the air at The Blind Keeper's throat, howling as it flashed across its deadly arc. It was only by a matter of millimeters that the spider was able to get his neck out of the way in time. Had he hesitated, the slash would have separated his head from his body without resistance.

"Please," Cerise croaked out.

Not much time left before the last attack. An undodgeable vertical slash. Literally undodgeable. An adventurer in proper protective gear could just barely survive it. Used on The Blind Keeper, it would divide him neatly in two. It felt like a fitting end.

Count Cerise pressed forward. A diagonal slash, followed by another coming from the other direction. The Blind Keeper leapt backwards, listening to the sound of the blade whistling as it carved ever closer to him.

"Don't do this," Cerise begged. "Don't let it happen."

Count Cerise stepped forward, the sword drawn back, ready to unleash a wild spin.

The Blind Keeper refused to step back to avoid it.

The blade began its arc, slicing towards where the spider stood–

But he wasn't there anymore. He had stepped forward, taking hold of Count Cerise, spinning with him, staying ahead of the blade as it whirled through the air.

Cerise stared into his face, his mouth open in confusion, trying to read The Blind Keeper's expression through his blindfolds.

Count Cerise performed a weave to the side, and the Blind Keeper weaved with him, just barely ahead of the vertical slash that accompanied it. Cerise weaved back, and the Blind Keeper followed.

And as Count Cerise floated backwards, the Blind Keeper moved in time, stepping and turning. At a gesture, circles of bloodleaf blossomed at their feet, piercing the tiled floor as it stabbed upwards. It was everywhere, now, a red fog flooding the atrium as the vines overran everything. The wind of the storm whipped at their faces, the air feeling sharp enough to cut them as surely as the bloodleaf itself. But through it all the two figures juked through the danger, moving in perfect sync.

He didn't need the words. In quieter nights, he had seen this performance hundreds of times– No, thousands of times. It didn't matter how many times. He could never grow tired of it.

Together they whirled, together they spun. The storm of bloodleaf raged, rending the air itself as it spun ever faster, ever closer. It was closing in, shrinking their world moment by moment.

The final slash was coming.

It didn't matter. Cerise spun, and The Blind Keeper spun with him.

Cerise held his hands above his head, signaling the beginning of the final pattern. Now was his chance: The Blind Keeper stepped forward. He took the roach in his arms. He held him. He twirled him.

And together, they danced.

"This is what I missed," The Blind Keeper whispered.

They danced. Whirling through erupting bloodleaf, weaving past sword strikes, they danced. Through the roar of the tempest, through the sickening hiss of sword slashes, they danced.

And just for a moment, it all felt real again.

The Blind Keeper could feel his heart pounding in his chest. He could feel Cerise in his arms, so small, so warm. He could feel the roach's hot tears on his chest, as the final moment approached.

"Why?" Count Cerise asked, face streaked with tears, his arms trembling as he lifted his sword. "Why are you doing this?"

"To keep you safe," The Blind Keeper replied calmly.

Cerise howled, the edge of his sword shimmering as he held it aloft. "I don't want to be safe! I want to be with you!!"

The Blind Keeper stared at that shimmering edge, stepping back from the dance to accept his fate. "You'll move on," he said, no uncertainty to be found in his voice.

"I don't want to move on!" The tears flowed freely from Cerise's shining eyes, forming two messy rivers across that perfect, beautiful face. The face of the roach he loved. "I don't want to move on from you!!"

"You'll forget," The Blind Keeper assured him. The air crackled with energy. This was it. He stared up at the blade held above his head, and told himself that he felt no fear. "The universe will make sure of it."

"I don't want to forget!!" Cerise yelled defiantly over the roar of the collapsing storm. "I won't forget!! I won't let it!!"

The Blind Keeper closed his eyes, lifting his chin, counting down the last seconds. "We're not real," he said. The final, terrible truth. "None of this is real."

In that moment, all the world blurred away, as insubstantial as fog. The only fixed point in the whole of reality was Cerise, the edge of his blood-stained blade sharper than sharpness itself. In his hand, Count Cerise held Fate itself, ready to sever all that would defy it.

Cerise's howl shook the foundations of the library: "I DON'T CARE!!"

Gripping the sword with an inconceivable ferocity, Cerise swung downwards–

–bringing his arms around The Blind Keeper's neck.

The Blind Keeper embraced the roach back reflexively, each holding the other.

They were dancing.

There was no blade.

There was no battle.

There was no storm. No bloodleaf. It was as if there never had been. The air was still and musty again, the only movement that which was created by the dance of the two Keepers, as they waltzed in circles around the center of the atrium, moving to a music only the two of them could hear.

All was silent, aside from the sound of their footsteps, the beating of their hearts, and the twinkling of the stars in the sky. That was music enough. They danced, and the stars played on.

The Blind Keeper would never know why the battle ended. He'd never know why he'd been allowed to live, and continue to dance. He could only speculate.

Perhaps Cerise had broken the laws of the universe; if not through love, then through sheer obstinance, his stubbornness stronger than reality itself, forcing it to conform to him.

More likely, The Blind Keeper believed, was that it was the stars watching them from above. Those stars, those points of light, those connections to other worlds. Perhaps those pinpricks of light were tiny holes in the circumference of this world, allowing the impossible to leak in.

Or, quite possibly, he had been wrong all along. Perhaps the universe did care.

They danced.

Both were exhausted beyond all measure. Both of their bodies begged for them to stop. Neither of them obeyed. They were dancing again. That was what mattered.

At some point, after a dozen revolutions around the atrium, The Blind Keeper's "fix" came undone. Cerise shuddered as the supposed effects of The Long Votom returned, robbing him of strength he had already completely spent. Unable to even hold himself upright, the roach's body grew limp, his eyes fluttering shut. And so the Blind Keeper started carrying him instead, holding the warm, precious roach against himself. Turning, stepping, weaving.

It was another two revolutions around the atrium before Cerise spoke. "Bed, please," he mumbled softly, his words half-muffled by The Blind Keeper's chest.

The Blind Keeper recognized the urgency of the request. "Please" was barely part of Cerise's vocabulary, to be used in only the most absolutely dire of circumstances. "Now" was far more common, and when it wasn't used explicitly, it was still implied. For him to resort to "please"? That meant "bed" was not something that could be delayed a moment longer.

Breaking free of the spell of the dance, he started to make his way up the spiral staircase, only now realizing his own exhaustion. His muscles screamed with ache. His mind howled with ache. His battle injuries burned with ache; he wasn't sure if the injuries were even still there, or if they had vanished along with all the other traces of battle, but they ached nonetheless. And Cerise was surprisingly heavy for a roach who could weigh nothing at all.

Perhaps that was intentional, the Blind Keeper mused. Where was the intimacy in being carried to bed if it was easy?

The Blind Keeper felt like he could really go for some "easy" right about now. Still, he managed. One stair at a time, step following step.