Chapter Text
Amaya was used to using other people’s hearing, and with Zubeia’s massive head turning, Kazi’s ears twitching and their head turning to that same direction, she knew as well as they did.
Someone was coming.
Kazi, hide behind the enormous dragon ass! Amaya signed, grateful that Zubeia did not understand sign language.
Kazi didn’t need telling twice.
Amaya drew the Sunforge blade and hefted her shield.
She should have told Kazi to wake up Ethari before hiding behind the dragon, but it seemed Zubeia was on it, her tail thumping against the ground, and a few seconds later, Ethari was next to her, half-awake and scrambling to get an arrow nocked.
For a few more seconds, nothing happened.
Then a figure tore out of the underbrush at a run, coming to an abrupt stop, gasping for air… Corvus?
Sans beard, plus wooden horns, but definitely Corvus.
Amaya dropped her shield on the grass, the quickest way to communicate to Zubeia to not turn her best scout into sizzling Corvus-kebab, before stepping forwards to steady the young man, still bowled over and trying to catch his breath.
She felt the tremble in him, and swiftly led him to their fire.
He sat down too hard. And he was cold. Like… cold all the way through, shivering despite the dead sprint.
You’re freezing, Amaya signed.
“I left… my tent…” he gasped. “I had… to-”
Catch your breath. Get warm. Kazi? Can you help with that?
Kazi shyly stepped forward, starting to radiate heat in some intuitive way that didn’t need runes. Amaya remembered Janai doing that, a while back when she pulled a muscle in sparring, warmth spreading from her fingertips, spreading from her touch throughout her whole body.
Kazi’s slender hands gently closed around Corvus’.
“Thank you…” Corvus said, stopping at their name, since he only knew the name sign and not the sound. Kazi, he finished, signing it.
“Kazi,” Kazi said.
“Kazi.”
Are you injured? Amaya asked.
“No. Just cold. Tired. Thirsty. Hungry. I saw you land yesterday evening, but it was… a way away. I ran.” He looked up at Amaya, like confessing some misdeed. “I fled my post.” Then he straightened up though. Good man. She very much doubted he had been wrong to do so. “I will argue though, that it was the right call. I make a better messenger than I do a hostage, or worse, spell components.”
Spell components? But Corvus was not-
“I can’t really supply a dramatic reveal, my magic isn’t really flashy like that, and I don’t know any spells, but…” Corvus rummaged briefly in his pack, retrieving Callum’s cube, glowing green in his hand. “You know what this is?”
Yes.
“Oh yes!” Kazi agreed eagerly, perking up. “I dreamt of seeing that! I heard it was in Prince Callum’s possession-”
You know you could have just asked Callum, last he was in Lux Aurea? Amaya asked, amused.
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of imposing upon Prince Callum’s time-”
‘Imposing’? Oh child. You do not know my nephew. Someone asking endless questions about magic lore? Not an imposition, where he is concerned. But I digress. You have Callum’s cube, Corvus? And you are saying… you have magic?
“No, I am magic,” Corvus said, straightening up a bit. “That’s what that green glow is. My magic. I connected to the Earth arcanum, at King Ezran’s behest.”
So… you really DO never fail to accomplish any task asked of you? Amaya said, a bit amused. That had been a bit of a running joke. ‘Ask Corvus to fly over there’ when their regiments had encountered a ravine, and such.
“I did fail. I abandoned my post, as I said. I had good reason though. Someone sought me out, a mysterious figure, speaking softly but… somehow giving me no choice but to listen? Like a hard softness? He felt… well, he didn’t feel like anything, I do not think he was there at all but… he was old, I think? He said… he was the spark… the seed… the genesis-”
“He was Aaravos,” Zubeia boomed, the ground vibrating, Kazi’s hands moving to translate. Corvus snapped around to stare. “You were right to flee. And you brought us The Key of Aaravos, an artefact thought lost to the ages. Like Kazi, I heard it was in the possession of your nephew, General Amaya. I did nothing; he seemed a worthy keeper of it-”
You let my then-14-year-old nephew hang onto a potentially dangerous magical item without saying what it was?! Some Dark magic-
“Not Dark magic. Primal magic. All the primal sources in one. And primal magic does not work like that, does not mix like that… except for Aaravos. And for the cube. And for Callum.”
Rayla’s shout was swallowed by saltwater; no longer air around her but churning wetness and a familiar downwards pull.
Soft water.
Rising.
It was wet and salty and choking in her mouth.
But it was soft; hadn’t hurt her like it had before.
Yet.
Rayla got to the surface unharmed by the water and the rocks this time, and the breath of air was not desperate but purposeful, because she had to move, she knew where she was going, knew what she had to do, could do it, this time, with no crashing waves, no nauseous blur, no burning pain in her chest or… no… that last bit was definitely still there, except it was her heart not her lungs this time.
Callum had-
He had fallen too, but… not into the soft water with her, he had hit the ground, she had heard it, had heard him scream-
She couldn’t think about it.
She’d been here before, or near enough, helpless to the pull.
Now, she didn’t even have her sight to guide her or the Moon to keep her warm, there was nothing but darkness and cold and pull-
But… that wasn’t true.
Callum… he had given her a gift, with the soft water. It was him, she knew.
He only had to see a rune once, and she had felt it in the deadness.
Pearlescent life.
Extremely dense oyster-poo.
Aeration.
Love.
Rayla breathed the gift of the unhindered breath that he had given her, and let herself sink back below the surface.
She forced herself to relax in the icy wetness, and forced herself to feel the pull of the current, not outwards but along the shore.
She knew that, somehow, that she wasn’t being pulled outwards. Tarrell must have told her, he was talking a lot, back on the boat-
Every fibre of her being was screaming at her to struggle against the current, to push upwards against the pull.
But she did nothing.
The current was getting her further away from where her actual enemies would be looking for her, the water was hiding her from view. The pull and the current were not enemies.
They weren’t exactly friends, either.
Allies, maybe.
Those… reluctant companions that snarked at each other for the whole story, but got shit done anyway.
It felt like a long time, her lungs screaming, disconcerting darkness within the darkness closing in, before she pushed upwards, breaking the surface for a breath, then sinking right back under.
Wow, you could really… hold your breath for a really long time when you weren’t panicking.
She thought she managed even longer this time, and managed to come up for a breath with less fuss and splish-splashing.
There would be land to get to somewhere soon, she knew, moving south with the current as she was, the steep cliffs had small coves along the coastline, giving way to rocky beach and then eventually just beach.
After a while, there was gravelly sand under her feet, an upwards slope she could follow to the shore.
It felt almost discomforting to leave the water, rather than the relief she expected. She had thought it had been cold in the water, but the wind hitting her soaked clothes and wet skin felt colder and her body was so very heavy, now that she had to carry it herself.
She felt exposed and vulnerable.
She very much was.
Her sight would return in time, and then she would… well… she’d figure that out, first off, she had to survive till then, get away from this open stretch of coastline and into the dense woodland she knew was not far away.
The rock was cold and rough against her palms, but there were sandy parts too for her heavy feet to sink into, a kind of… an in-between of steep cliff and rocky beach, and if she had been able to see it or even feel her fingers properly, it would have been nothing to scale it, but as it was it was… something.
You did what you had to, though, and eventually she emerged onto a gentler, grassier slope.
Her body was really telling her to collapse, now that that was more of an extremely hypothetical-not-actually-option.
It could shut it though. Sometimes, you needed dumbfuck idiot determination.
She could collapse when she reached the tree line and wasn’t such a visible mark.
She couldn’t, of course, because she still had to keep moving to not freeze to death, but… you also told yourself what you had to.
“Down there!”
“E-ez-“ she stammered, her teeth clattering in the Moonless cold. “What-“
“I’ve got her!”
And then she was… got, by someone much bigger than Ez, engulfed in smelly warmth and in… at least 70:30 hug-to-practicality-ratio.
Soren.
“Claudia.”
Claudia had come to loathe that soft voice, because some… expectation… always followed.
Aaravos had given up on getting the devotion from her that he got from her father.
He was satisfied with having her cooperation.
Her fear.
He had that, alright.
One should be afraid of Aaravos.
One should be on the same side as Aaravos, she was very sure of that. And she was. The world he offered… it was the world she wanted, the world her and her father had worked towards their whole lives. They didn’t have to like their allies.
“Are you feeling better?” Aaravos asked.
She wasn’t. Her head was absolutely killing her, her limbs feeling drained of strength.
But she didn’t need to be told again that a brute force illusion had been a crappy idea. It was easy to be all judgy-face about other people’s crappy impulse decisions when you could put your conscience in a time pocket so you could consider your next move for an hour and still react within in less than a second. She didn’t have that luxury.
Yet.
“Yes,” Claudia said. Dark magic didn’t draw from your energy, so… she could do it. Whatever it was that he wanted this time.
“Fix the young prince up a bit then, would you? He will not be much use if he’s delirious. No healing though, we do not want any flights of fancy at this point.”
She didn’t have the components anyway, for the degree of healing Callum needed right now. Broken bones were tricky, even the deer hadn’t fixed Soren’s all the way.
Callum’s good arm was shackled to the wall of the cave, his other, unnaturally bent, in his lap.
“Bite down on something,” Claudia said. What she was about to do would hurt, and she didn’t relish it. Callum used to get this really sad face when he hurt himself, which was fairly frequent, he had been a clumsy child.
Soren hadn’t been clumsy so much as just reckless and lacking in sense and healthy survival instincts.
All in all, those two had ensured she was pretty good at minor healing spells.
This was just… like old times.
Except for the parts that weren’t.
Callum’s too-grown-up face, the short hair and sharp jawline.
The hatred in his eyes instead of adoration.
“Bite down on something,” she repeated. He was in enough pain without-
“Why do you care?” he snarled. “N-need my tongue…” He faltered, his consciousness wavering, but his defiance going nowhere. “-intact… for… interrogation?”
He could think what he wished. Not like it mattered, what he thought. And matter of fact, they did need his tongue intact.
She bundled up a wad of his scarf and stuffed it into his mouth, when he opened it to say something else.
Then she crushed the tiny squirrel bones in her hand, and while the energy still surrounded her hands, grabbed Callum’s right arm and pulled.
It was good he was biting that scarf.
His scarf-muffled scream was… well… no one liked screaming.
His face had gone slack, the hatred gone and… it was like she had her friend back. It wouldn’t last long, but-
Soren’s left-behind bracer made a serviceable splint. It was better he was out of it for this, really.
Callum moaned miserably, when he stirred, his eyes dazed and pained as he focused on her.
“Clau… dia-”
She reached out to brush his sweaty forehead, along the edge of the darkening bruises at his left temple and eyebrow. “It’s okay. I finished. I won’t hurt you anymore.”
“O-one,” he groaned, but… something defiant behind the pain. “I… don’t trust you… and two… you don’t know who I am and… w-when you’re hurting me. So… that doesn’t mean… shit. You’ll hurt me again. Hurt the people I love-” He choked on the last word.
“I just helped you, you do realize that?! That should tell you I don’t actually love watching you suffer!”
“You can’t just… that’s not enough, caring about other people’s pain only when someone you know personally is suffering right in front of you, and even then, only if they’re human!”
Aaravos tssk’ed, returning to the room.
“Are you two not getting along?” he asked. “I was hoping you would. Claudia has been terribly bored, just old men for company.”
“Aaravos?” Callum gasped. “You’re…”
“So I am. Pleased to meet you, Prince Callum.”
“What are you, even? I thought… but you’re not… you’re some… sparkly… sparkly… b-bugman-“
“Not how I would choose to introduce myself, but I have been called worse. And I do have to admit; I am not quite myself.” Aaravos smiled, and it pulled the buglike features into something terrible you couldn’t look away from. “Yet.”
Rayla laughed, despite everything, despite the tearing hole in her chest, despite Callum’s scream still ringing in her ears.
“Hey, are you okay… Rayla, did you hit your head? How many fingers am I holding up?” It really wasn’t appropriate to be laughing, especially not considering Soren genuinely sounded worried, but she couldn’t seem to stop.
She should answer him; it was a reasonable question considering she had been stumbling along like Callum at 2am on his 16th birthday-
Rayla groped in the darkness for the fingers Soren was presumably holding up, and got a handful of air and for some reason that was funny too.
“No idea,” she giggled. “I can’t see a damn thing. Claudia-”
“What?! Oh… oh-“ He sounded horrified, so… she should probably clarify.
“It’s not permanent.”
“Oh, that’s… good. The first part is good, the second part is… I know from experience that it’s… bad.”
Soren let go of her and… oops, there went her balance, and if not for the forest floor under her knees and palms, she wouldn’t even have known up from down.
“She’s bleeding-“ Ezran. He’d landed, with Zym, close to one side of her. His hands, too small and soft to be Soren’s, were searing heat against her numb fingers. “Wet. Cold.” Something warm and soft was tucked around her head and shoulders.
“-‘is nothing,” she managed. “How… how are you both here? Ez, you’re not supposed to-”
“I didn’t go North like you said,” Ezran said. “I did… for about 30 seconds. Then I went where you showed us on the map Viren and Claudia was. I figured… if they were both going after us… they wouldn’t be there, but… Soren might still. And me and Zym and Bait got him out. Zym made the magic that was binding him go away, didn’t you, Zym?”
Zym zipped in proud confirmation, and there was a familiar zappy kiss to her cheek, an exhale of warm dragon-breath on her ear.
“Callum… he-” she started. “I didn’t see it, just… heard. I think he’s-” She hoped he was just hurt- “T-they probably… definitely… got to him, we have to-“
Ezran sucked in a breath and she could hear… feel… that he was trying very hard not to cry and if he did then so would she-
“We have to move, for starters,” Soren said, lifting her to her feet and then off her feet, when her feet weren’t really being so reliable as… feet.
Then they moved.
Fucking hell. Ezran had… it had worked out, obviously, and… she couldn’t exactly say it had been a bad idea, just… incredibly dangerous, and it was probably good Callum wasn’t here to have a conniption-
Her sob was muffled against Soren’s smelly shirt, and Soren drew her closer, the hug-ratio going up a notch.
Her vision and wits were returning, as the world moved around her, rocking with Soren’s half-run.
The warmth of the Moonlight didn’t return. It was still cold and distant, like it wasn’t the Moon at all but some empty illusion.
There were tiny, golden-furred creatures among the trees, bounding ahead of them-
“Uh, Ez?” Soren asked. “Where are we going? And why are we chasing the cute little… longer-and-bouncier-mice?”
“The Sunstoats know a place, they’re showing us the way. I want to… go back for Callum. But we need to go somewhere warmer,” Ezran said, from Zym’s back. “She’s hurt.” ‘She’ was fine! And ‘she’ was right fucking here, and they could bloody well include her in any discussion about- “And she was hurt way worse, while you were captured. She died. It’s probably a really bad idea to go jumping in the ocean in January while you’re supposed to be taking it easy, and it’s the second time this week she’s done that-“ Really not fair, it hadn’t exactly been her first choice or a choice at all-
“Ez, I’m fine. Callum isn’t, I can see again now, and we need to-“
“We need to not die!” Ezran snapped angrily. “I know you’re super-bad at that, but it’s actually really fucking important! And Callum isn’t here and… a-and I’m not apologizing for saying a bad word and-“ Ezran folded in on himself, his fingers too tight around Zym’s mane. “I’m sorry. I… I’m just trying t-to-“
Soren put her down, but kept his arm around her because her legs were still a bit shaky, and also… the still-present hug ratio.
Ezran dismounted to join the hug ratio, upping it a bit more in the process.
“You’re trying to not cry in the courtyard,” Rayla said softly, into the floof of Ezran’s hair under her chin. “I know.”
“We’re here, anyway,” Ezran said, still sniffling as he drew away, gesturing at a half-overgrown entrance to some… well, it wasn’t a cave since it wasn’t rock but earth. Burrow? “There’s warm water from deep underground, here, and the terrabadger who lives here isn’t home right now. We can hide, rest, get warm, get Rayla warm. And talk about… what we do.”
They really couldn’t be… splashing around in a hotspring while Callum was-
But they couldn’t do anything else either, because not-dying really was fucking important.
“The boy will come around,” Aaravos said. “Or not. Depends.”
“On what?”
“You. Among others.”
“Which others?”
“Depends.”
“Fine,” Claudia snapped. “It depends.”
“You are aggravated,” Aaravos said. “You should rest, if your head still troubles you.”
Maybe she should. Her legs were all too eager to sit down, her eyes all too eager to close-
The darkness and quiet was a blessing.
But then, it was broken by a voice.
“Claudia.”
Ugh. Aaravos often preferred to talk to her like this. She didn’t.
It was harder to be properly angry without the rush of blood though the veins and the pounding of the heart, without the physical part of it.
“What do you even think I can do?” Claudia asked. “You saw. He doesn’t trust me. He’d probably trust you sooner than me.” Forgiveness… you’ll get from a few who are better people than I am. Not a lot of people were better people than Callum though, or at least… she used to have thought that.
“Ah, you have a history I do not. Behind and ahead. A future together. Not in this reality, but this is not the only one that matters. To think it is, is holding you back, limiting you. You need to understand that, if you want to understand the map.”
“I get it.”
“You do not. But you will. In one reality or the other.”
“I can do it in this one.”
He sighed.
Reality, with its damp chill against her butt and back, with its pounding headache and dad asleep like he always seemed to be and giant bugpal who didn’t really think she could do it and Soren who had left her again and Callum who hated her, came pouring back.
He was wrong. Aaravos was rarely wrong, but he was wrong that she could still influence Callum, it had been loathing in his eyes.
She steeled herself for more of it, because he was coming to, blinking at the dim surroundings, his face contorted in pain.
“So, you join us, Prince Callum,” Aaravos said.
“Fuck off with the f-fucking-“
“Ah, I like the company here, I think I will stay. We have a lot in common, as you will no doubt understand, soon. No reason we cannot be… civil to one another.”
“You’re not being civil, you’re being a sparkly asshole!” Callum snarled. “You’re just… buttering me up.” He glared at Claudia. “I’m familiar.”
“An eligible young man in your position would be.” Pah. Callum had always been completely oblivious to anyone besides her paying any of that kind of attention to him. She had liked that- “And a clever one, too. Not as smart as our Claudia, I’m sure you are also smart enough to realize that, but your mind… is more flexible. Open. Creative. Questioning.”
“You’re trying to distract me by flirting with me.” What- “I’m familiar with that too.”
Callum really wasn’t who she remembered.
Aaravos was smiling at him though.
She knew that smile but… only directed at her.
“Hey?” Claudia asked, reaching out to Callum. He flinched away from her. “How are you feeling?”
“How do you think I’m feeling?”
It shouldn’t matter that he didn’t trust her at all, that he didn’t think she cared at all-
That he just looked more on edge when she was trying to-
It didn’t matter.
“Well, you look like you’re grumpy,” she said. “And there’s blood in your hair. It’s all clumpy. Not nice at all.”
“I don’t care about my hair or your opinion of it! My-“ But he stopped, and breathed, and looked away. He was shaking.
Then crying.
Quietly, but he was.
“I told you, didn’t I?” Claudia scoffed, turning back to Aaravos, crossing her arms. Brains were complicated, even to Aaravos, and he wasn’t about to risk messing up Callum’s precious-special-human-primal-mage-brain, and Callum himself wasn’t about play along, so… here they were.
“I am sure he will be amenable.” Aaravos sat down next to her, too close. “If he is not now, he will be, once his brother or his intended joins us. It was good, after all, that you failed to kill her.”
“Intended?!” Claudia exclaimed, hating how… petty… she sounded. If Callum had truly bound himself to an elf, that was not a petty thing, that was a disastrous precedent for a prince of Katolis- Besides, they were way too young for that, and- “Rayla said ‘boyfriend’.” She was sure Rayla had said boyfriend.
Callum wasn’t saying anything, his mouth stubbornly clenched. He was upset though, his eyes wide and scared.
“Yes,” Aaravos said. “Moonshadow markings, there…” He pushed Callum’s hair aside, revealing a silvery cuff at the shell of his left ear. “Ah, but… it is recent. The skin is still healing, see? Seems congratulations are in order.”
“Congratulations, Callum!” Claudia said. The words tasted rotten in her mouth.
“Rayla said ‘boyfriend’, you say?” Aaravos asked. “Interesting that she adopted your human word. The Moonshadow used to… well.” He cocked his head at Callum, smiling. “What do the kids call it these days? I’m afraid I’ve been… out of touch, shall we say-”
Callum just glared, still saying nothing.
“Is this really worth your strength to defy, Prince Callum? What do you think I could possibly do with knowledge of current Moonshadow colloquialisms that I could not without? I cannot not tell people what to do-“ Aaravos did nothing but tell people what to do, just in a very roundabout kind of way so… they thought it was their own idea. “But… perhaps you would prefer to save your defiance for things that actually matter?”
“No thanks.” Callum didn’t used to be like this.
“Moonberry surprise,” Claudia said. She didn’t want to know, but she did. It had been in one of the letters they took from Rayla’s saddlebags. I spoke to one of the Moonshadow delegates yesterday. I didn’t know how to describe our relationship in a culturally appropriate way so I went with the too-informal ‘Moonberry Surprise’ and I just have to reiterate how poorly that term expresses the depth of my feelings-
“Moonberry crumble,” Callum corrected her, full of spite and clearly just motivated by anger at her but… he had still given them information they hadn’t had before, even if it was not very important information. Her dad had said that it was easier to get people to tell you stuff if you gave them an opening to contradict you rather than just asking outright. “I prefer the crumble.”
“Ah. ‘Something you like’ is that it? A one-way thing, even? I am less out of touch than I thought, then. Or Moonshadow vernacular have stagnated like the rest of their society, also very possible. Was Claudia your moonberry crumble, then, when you were children? No, you would not have grown up with Moonberry crumble, in Katolis? Ah, but… no need to guess, when I can just ask nicely? What was Claudia, to you?”
“Summer fruits,” Claudia said, when Callum again refused to answer. She knew that too. She knew Callum. She knew who she had been to him even if she wasn’t anymore that didn’t mean it hadn’t- “Callum was a weirdo who didn’t like sweets that much and just wanted fresh fruit, as a kid. His mom despaired of him, said he must take after his dad.”
“Prince Callum? You agree? Was that what Claudia was, to you? Your summer fruit, fresh and ripe and juicy and a temporary delight?”
“Fuck off.”
“That’s not an answer, Prince Callum. But… you do not need to give me one. We’ll just have a look at the paths in time converging on you two. There are many, and I should think, one exists where you partook of that sweet summer fruit.”
“I’m ready,” Claudia said. She had prepared for this; she was ready.
“You are,” Aaravos said. “You have all you need but the spark.”
He wasn’t looking at her though.
“We have to save him,” Rayla said. “Callum… he…” It would upset Ez, but… he was strong, and could take and deserved the full and painful truth. “He fell.” It was the truth, this time. “We both fell. But he saved me, I think? I think… that’s why I’m not hurt-“
“Oh yeah, all that blood was just from how not hurt you are-“ Ezran’s grasp on sarcasm was really coming along, and she would usually be proud but right now it was just super-annoying.
“-much,” she snapped. “I’m not hurt much!” That shallow scratch that had been a bloody drama queen to look at, was the least of their problems, even the least of her problems, she still couldn’t feel the Moon, for one, but that too, was an issue for another time. “I’m not the one in danger right now!”
“You’re the one who’s h-here-“ Ezran sniffed. “The one my brother who’s not here would always try to save and now he’s not here and-“
Oh. Ez was 11 years old and thought her safety was on him, and that was…
That was on her.
That was something she had to change, talks she still needed to have with Ez like she already had with Callum.
Behaviors she still had to change.
“I think… it was him, as we fell,” she said softly. She couldn’t change it now. “Aerating the water like Tarrell did on the island, making a soft landing for me, because-“
Because he was always a soft place for her.
But those words got stuck in her throat.
“B-but not for himself,” she managed, biting down on a useless, traitorous sob, because he needed her, if he was still alive, and he… he had to be.
He was.
“He fell,” she repeated.
“I’d know, if he was dead!” Ezran said, defiant. “And I’m not just saying that! I knew you were back here, down along the coast. I knew Soren was alive, and then I knew when I was getting close to where he was. I found him, remember? You couldn’t mark it exactly on the map and they were shielded by an illusion and I still found him. And I found you. I could feel you both. And I’d know if Callum was dead. I think it’s an… Earth arcanum thing. And a love-thing. And an… Earth… thing. I’m strong here.”
The burrow smelled like earth after rain. Like life.
“You think… they went back to their cave?” Rayla wondered. They might not have anywhere else to go, especially with Callum along as a… prisoner-
“They wouldn’t have stayed, if they had, would they?” Ezran said. “After they saw Soren was gone?”
“Sorry,” Soren winced. “I was… so glad to get out of there, but maybe I should have-”
“Hell no, you shouldn’t,” Rayla said firmly. “You were in that bloody cave long enough. No more sacrifices. Okay?”
“For all of us, right?” Ezran asked pointedly.
“Yes,” she said. She meant it. Callum was a bloody idiot, and she’d let him bloody know it, when she got him back. “No more sacrifices. No one’s expendable.”
“Okay,” Ezran nodded, satisfied, walking out to stand in the center of the burrow, breating deeply. “Lets… breathe. Figure out… not what we’ll do, because we agree we’re getting Callum, but just… how.”
She knew, she knew they ought to wait for Amaya.
It hadn’t turned out well the last time, waiting around for Amaya, but… that didn’t mean it had been the wrong thing to do.
“He’s close.” Ezran’s eyes were closed, his bare feet against the mossy ground. “Callum, I mean. He’s alive and he’s close. Not by the shore where we camped, but… that way.” He pointed, north. “I think… he is back in the same cave where I got Soren from. Maybe… 10 minutes away.”
Rayla breathed out in relief. He was alive. He was captured, for sure. It was bad news and good, in one.
And that… was so close.
Too close.
And Claudia could find them, or at least, could find Soren if she wanted to, she had before, from much further away.
They couldn’t stick around.
Soren knew it too. “Claudia can find me,” he said. “We should… split up.” Soren had been on his own for weeks, splitting up was the absolute last thing he wanted, it was all over his face. He was terrified of his dad, of this Aaravos person… of his sister even.
“No,” Rayla said firmly. No more fucking sacrifices. “They have Callum too. If they can use Claudia’s connection to you to find us, they can use Callum’s connection to any one of us. You said they used yours, to find me, on the island. So no. We stay together.”
She pulled out her new blades, wincing as she did. Her whole slish-arm was really just a useless mess at this point, her shoulder aching, her wrist swollen again from the parries, the burnt and peeling skin on her palm torn and bloody from the rock-climbing, the bandaged cut along her forearm a sharp sting with every movement.
She flicked them open, and handed Slish to Soren.
“It weighs nothing at all,” Soren wondered, testing against some imaginary foe. “How do you even get a proper strike with this?” Again, with the strange human ideas that swords should be heavy.
“Don’t you insult Slish, Second of her Name. Curved blades need less force. Sharp blades also need less force. And she’s very sharp.”
“I’m not waiting around while you two do the hero-ing,” Ezran said firmly. “Just so that’s clear. Whether we wait for Amaya or I go find her on Zym or we don’t, I’m coming with you to get Callum.” He crossed his arms. “If you mean what you say.”
She hadn’t meant Ez and Zym should come with them to very likely fight a losing battle, and Ezran bloody knew it. Of course she could bet on Amaya being better at convincing Ezran when she got here, but… she didn’t want to wait for Amaya, and also… seriously doubted she or Amaya could make a single dent in Ezran’s resolve.
She had to try, though.
“I know you’re-“ Whoah. Something was… off, when she stood up.
“We n-need to…” Ezran wavered on his feet, and Rayla pushed upwards against the ebb of a roiling, shifting universe to get to him, but her own body felt like… it wasn’t hers, her steps like they only brought her further away from Ezran. And he was on his hands and knees now, she had to-
“Whoah-“ Soren felt it too then, it was not just her.
The moss beneath her knees felt harder than it should have.
The roof of the burrow was shifting, its shaped twisting and changing, something different with every deafening thud of her own heartbeat, like waves crashing, tumbling, changing-
The air smelled like and rock and… dungeon… and death.
And she could feel… Moonlight. Dulled, like she was… underground, which she also was, but there again, for the first time since the fall. Warmth and strength and direction, but… the wrong direction, like the Moon wasn’t where it should be-
“What the fuck is going on?!” she demanded, at… no one in particular, although she felt the world at large owed her at least a bit of an answer.
“It’s… different-“ Ezran gasped, his voice scared and… far away. “It’s changing… the world… us-“
The changing world changed to dark.
Claudia woke to bird song and jellytart-smell.
To softness and warmth.
Light.
Weight shifting under her, as someone else moved on a yielding mattress, the likes of which she hadn’t slept on in so long.
A happy sigh.
A kiss, pressed between her shoulder blades.