Playing Open-Handed

Epilogue: ZIT

The sunset was beautiful, Impulse had to admit. He was sitting on the outside of Zed's base, sat between Zed and Tango. Tango had his arm around Impulse's shoulders, and even though it was the bandaged arm, and therefore starting to chafe, Impulse wasn't complaining. He was thinking, if anything.

"Hey. Impy. You alright?" Tango asked. Oh. He must have noticed Impulse's distant expression. Impulse sighed.

"Yeah. Just... thinking. It's weird, to be... y'know, in control of my own actions again. The... what, Aboleth, you called it? The Aboleth had me under its control for almost a month." Impulse explained, shrugging. The shrug jostled Tango's injured arm, and he clutched it, hissing slightly under his breath. "Sorry!" Impulse gasped, scooching slightly away.

"You, sir, have nothing to be sorry for." Tango replied sternly. "It wasn't you that did this." Impulse smiled weakly at the comforting words, as Tango scooched back in and wrapped his arm around around Impulse's shoulder again.

"I mean, you are rather close to death's door." Zed joked, pointing to the point below them where the entrance to his base would be.

"Oh no! The reaper!" Tango gasped, dramatically throwing his uninjured arm across his forehead and flopping into Impulse's side. Impulse stifled a chuckle at the two's antics. Tango stayed huddled up close to Impulse's side. Eventually, he quietly asked: "...How much time do I have left?"

In response, Zed put the scarf that he was knitting into his inventory, adjusted his own scarf, and with a dash of magical effort summoned an ornate hourglass, decorated with skulls and bearing a golden plaque with Tango's name engraved on it. It had quite a significant bit of sand left. Zed frowned, did some math in his head, realised that Tango had a significantly longer lifespan than the people he'd usually be trying to work this out for, did some more math in his head, and proudly proclaimed:

"I have absolutely no idea, but I think it's a long time. Maybe."

"That's incredibly comforting." Tango replied drily. Zed chuckled, and dismissed the hourglass.

The three remained there, on the mountain, for a while, watching the sunset. Eventually, Zed drifted off, using Impulse's shoulder as a pillow. Before Tango fully realised what was happening, a half-asleep Impulse dragged him into the hug, and fell asleep himself. Tango supposed that of all the places to be trapped, in a hug pile with his two best friends was one of the better ones.

Night fell across the Hermit lands, and all the light that was left was the soft, red, inhuman glow from Tango's eyes.

-Ace of Spades, King of Spades, Jack of Spades-

A hand rapped on the glass of the tank. The preserved body of the aberration inside didn't do anything, because it was, of course, dead.

"We must be the first ones in the order to have an Aboleth in our collection." The owner of the hand mused.

"Well, yes," Another voice confirmed, "But something even greater came with it."

"Oh?" The first voice asked, their interest piqued.

"Look at this." The owner of the second voice presented a vial of something. "It was one of the by-products when I was trying to get Aboleth blood from the water around it."

"...Is that...?"

"It is."

"Well. Imagine having one of those in our collection."

"If only it was mortal."

"Oh, but we don't need to kill it." The two walked over to the other side of the room, to a wooden cabinet. The owner of the first voice thrust it open. Inside, there was shelf upon shelf of jars, containing people that had been shrunken down. They were all banging on the glass, screaming for help. "In fact, since its kind are sentient... there's already a jar with its name on it."

"Then..." the second voice chuckled. "Let's go demon hunting."