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"Tell me, when all of this is over, what will you do?"
The Exarch's question echoed in Pyxis' mind; it was a simple question, one that they'd been asked numerous times before on their treacherous journey. Not just during their time in Norvrandt, but ever since the Warrior of Light title had been the more recognised name for their visage. The answer should have been easy as every other time they had given it: take some time to rest, recharge, and make sure that everyone else does the same the best they cane. This time was different. This time... Pyxis had someone to go back to. Someone that had shown that they cared as much for then as she had for him.
Light wasn't the only thing eating at their soul.
Guilt had been eating away at their subconscious just as much as the searing pain had, and Ardbert had been the only one to know the truth as to why. The errant shard had seen, felt, and heard all of Pyxis' inner turbulence, whether either of them had wanted him to or not. He'd told Pyxis time and time again to tell someone, anyone else, to get a different perspective, to get some of the weight off of their chest.
Ardbert hadn't meant the Exarch.
"Do you remember when I first arrived?" Pyxis started, seemingly answering his question with a question of their own. The hood of the leader tilts to one side, a reasonably confused reaction, before nodding quietly. "I needed to go back to the Source. To reassure people, to let them know what had happened to us all. But that wasn't the only reason."
A long burning secret that kept Pyxis forging ahead whenever the pain was at its worse.
"There was someone in particular that I needed to reassure the most. Someone dear to me, who has helped me through so much," they continue, even as their mouth starts to dry, their chest begins to ache, their mettle shaking as much as their tail trembled. "I promised you, Exarch, that upon my return I would not leave until our work here was complete."
"And you have kept true to this word," the Exarch fills in the lingering silence that trails after Pyxis' words, the brilliant crystal hand that glinted in the errant light that streaked through the shadows they took refuge in. His spine straightens, turning to face the shrinking figure. Determined to ask a follow up question, a shimmer in the light purple of Pyxis' eyes stops him in his tracks.
"During my time here... there has been another who has helped me all the same. Who has become just as dear to me."
The confession lingers in the air, muddied by layers of hidden and indirect meanings. Where the words she had spoken to Raubahn had been as clear as a bell tolling in the clear midnight air, these were a thick fog that rolled over fields of dewy plains.
"I once told you that there are things we can ill afford to lose," his voice breaks through the worrying silence, the cold touch of his crystalline hand resting atop the frozen fingertips of theirs.