Ilvasio Sorrand Part two

Brief and Final Reunion.

"It's been a long time." Sorrand began. Rofez pushed himself off the wall and nodded slowly before pulling back his hood and taking a seat on the edge of Ilvasio's desk.

"Quite."

"You look exactly the same as you did then... though I suppose it takes more than sixty years to age an elf." The old man squinted, studying Rofez's face and noting the new symbol beside his left eye, though he made no comment.

"You know why I'm here."

Ilvasio sighed heavily and slumped down in his chair again.

"I do. Collecting debts, as ever, Rofez. You make them, you accept them and you claim them in the end... Still you must recall there is also one you owe me after all these years."

"I haven't forgotten." The sun elf moved across to sit on the end of the nearby bed, watching the old man in his seat.

Ilvasio picked up a heavy book with mostly blank pages, and a quill, turning his chair around cautiously to face Rofez.

Rofez eyed the book and quill, and shook his head. Ilvasio frowned.

"All I have ever asked of you is your story, elf. You come here to bring about my death.. I will oblige readily, in payment of my debt. But my condition is that you grant me this in return. A dead man's wish.
Surely you have respect for an honoured request after sixty years... I know you always appreciated that sort of thing."

Not always... Or maybe always... Yes... He's right. The word is pleasing somehow.

Rofez dismissed his own thoughts, and shook his head again, reaching across to carefully take the book and the quill from the old mage. He placed them off to the side.

"These words will never be written, old man. They will never be recorded, except by memory. Listen at long last, or never know at all. I will not give you fodder for the musing of your pages."

Sorrand merely took back his book and the quill, nodding slowly in acceptance.

"... Promise me, Eliin. Your word... not until it's finished." He said quietly.

Rofez regarded him a long, long moment before nodding.

"Not until it's finished, then. You have my word." He said softly, before he began his story.

....

It was some time into the night before Ilvasio cast a spell that seemed to slow time - or speed up those caught in its web to the point where neither knew how long Rofez had been speaking.

Neither knew whether the story had continued for hours or days...

But it finally drew to a close.

Ilvasio closed his eyes, and hoped that Rofez would be as true to his steel as he had been in the past.
The story still circling heavily in his mind, he prayed to Milil as he half imagined the faintest sound of a dagger being unsheathed.

He prayed that his passing would be swift as the silence of a heart stilled at the blade tip of a skilled assassin.

His eyes never opened again.