Chapter Text
There’s a beautiful person in black armor standing in front of Mollymauk Tealeaf.
Molly blinks, puzzled and faintly certain that there shouldn’t be anything, much less a person, in this place. The person in black armor is a little taller than average, built lithe, wearing a dark shimmering cloak and it takes Molly a moment of dim admiration to register the shimmer comes from the oil in thousands of inky raven’s feathers. They’re stitched in the garment. A bleached bird-skull clasp holds the collar in place at their throat.
The beautiful person is lovely and eerie in a way Molly can’t identify. Dark hair pulled back into series of plaits and braids woven with small avian bones and primary feathers. Their gaze is a dark, penetrating infinity… and warm somehow.
They’re standing over him.
“Hey, man,” says the raven-armored person.
Their voice is faintly masculine, but only just. The world, strangely, clarifies as the raven person stares, like they’ve become a focal point of the universe and from that central point the rest of reality weaves itself until Molly becomes aware of something beyond the newcomer. The air smells sweet, like crushed grass after rain. There’s a warm breeze rolling over a hillside. Moonlight shines from a lunar plane five times the size the moon should be on the mortal horizon and Mollymauk cannot recall a more comfortable night sky than the one he lays beneath now.
“Hello,” Molly says, not getting up from where he’s sprawled, comfortable, arms folded behind his head.
“I’m really sorry about this,” says the stranger.
“That’s a shame. We just met.”
“Nah. We met before. Just the once though.” There’s something sad in their eyes as they kneel at Molly’s side, folding their arms over their knee. “It was snowing.”
Molly, dimly, feels a pang of familiarity. “Oh. Sorry, I usually remember a pretty face.” Molly rolls up onto his side, catching his chin in his palm and peering at the stranger. “Who are you and what are you sorry for?”
“I’m Vax. You won’t remember my name after I leave… but I appreciate you asking. I’m sorry because I have to ask you to do something and it’s not fair of us to ask.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“Go back.”
“Go back where?”
“It’s hard for me to explain, because you’ve already passed on so completely and… well… I’ve never had to do this before for anyone. You’re a first.”
Molly grins slowly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m pleased to be your first anything.”
The raven-armored stranger kind of blinks, then grins, then seems to catch themselves and coughs.
“Uh, look, usually when someone has to go back through the veil, they have loved ones calling them home. Or unfinished business. Something tethering them hard to the barrier between realms, but you’re very comfortably settled in. It’s not fair to ask you to go back. You’re transitioned.”
“You’re delightfully opaque. What are you asking me to do?”
“Something difficult. I need to ask you to live again.”
“I don’t understand,” says Mollymauk.
“You can’t,” Vax says patient and apologetic. “Even if I stop being cryptic as shit, you won’t be physically capable of understanding because that’s how this works. I’m not, like, talking in simile because it’s my shtick.”
“Try me.”
“You’re dead and I need to send you back to the living world to fix something fucked up because the gods have determined you, specifically, can set things in motion to right the universe.”
Molly tries to hold onto the raven knight’s words, but as fast the words come, they slide away from Molly.
“I didn’t catch a single bit of that.”
Vax rubs their neck, embarrassed. “Yeah, sorry. Death is… existentially fuzzy.”
“What?”
“Well, quick example: The Moonweaver watched over you in life. She gathers her faithful into the fabric of the universe. You’re not used to being a singular instance of a soul anymore. She pulled your thread loose just to let me speak with you. It’s kind of a downgrade from pure, divine omniscient energy and it makes things existentially fuzzy and then I have to talk in metaphor.”
Molly blinks slowly, drumming his fingers against his chin.
“Shit. Sorry.”
“Okay, let’s just focus in the business at hand: You want me to stop being comfortable where I am and go do something painful but important somewhere else. Is that about right?”
“Yes. And if it helps, this will specifically help friends of yours.”
Molly sits up. “I have friends in trouble? I left them?”
“You didn’t leave them,” Vax says gently. “Not by choice, but they could use your help.”
“Well, it’s settled then.” Molly brushes grass from his pants and levers himself up and to his feet. “If I have people back there, I’ve got to go.”
“It’ll be different this time,” Vax warns him, unfolding to a standing position. “It will be different than what you’re doing right now. You’re going to remember everything and you’ll have to live with it. It will be painful and you’re going to be very, very sad for a lot of it, but in the end… I think the world will be better.” A shrug. “Or, at least, that’s what my mistress is telling me. She’ll let me break the rules for you… but only if you want.”
Molly thinks about it. “It’s going to hurt?”
“Some of it. Yeah.”
“Does it haveto hurt?”
“If this was hurt-optional, I would be a lot less anxious, don’t you think?”
“You’re a divine acolyte. I don’t know a thing about what stresses you out.”
“Okay, well…” Vax looks abashed. “This stresses me out.”
Molly folds his arms and wrinkles his nose. “I won’t remember this conversation, will I?”
“No. Like I said, you’re existentially fuzzy.”
Molly sighs, rubs his face, then tilts his head at the strange person in front of him. “Fuzzy?”
Vax holds up a hand, pinching the air minutely. “Just a little fuzzy.”
“Okay. Bloody hell. I’ll do it. One condition.”
“What condition?”
Molly points at his own face, shrugging hopefully. “Kiss for luck?”
Vax – who Molly has just enough context to understand as a divinely appointed being, sent from on high to deliver portends and god-word – seems momentarily dumbfounded. Then they roll their eyes and say, grinning, “Well, if it’s for the good of the universe.” Then they step near and place a warm, faintly luminous palm against the side of Molly’s face, tilting his jaw up a little. They are very, very beautiful and their breath is strangely cool. “You should know,” Vax says, “I definitely don’t do this for people. So…”
Then they kiss Molly, warmly, carefully, on the cheek…
And Molly wakes up under another sky.
The stratosphere is strange with storm clouds and cleaved by lightning. The dirt between his teeth and the taste of mud in his mouth is all he knows for the agonizing initial heartbeat that slams blood like fire through his aching veins. He draws a single, burning breath… then screams as a massive, pink and gray giant bows over him and rumbles, worriedly, “Oh dear. That went a little wrong, didn’t it?”
It does not take Molly long to orient a response.
“Oh fuck! Gods! What the -?”
Molly spits mud and rolls over on his flank, coughing.
“It’s okay,” says the pale monolith looming over him. “Please be calm. I’m a friend. Are you in pain?”
Molly stares at his muddy arms, bare up to the elbows, a thin dirty tunic hanging off his shoulders. He’s sitting up to his hips in a shallow grave made soupy by the rain. His fingers are caught in a tangle of ripped greenery, bright shocks of flowers and meadow plants. It takes him a moment to understand this grave – his grave – was dug up from under a blanket of vibrant wildflowers. His hair is a mess of shredded petals and green things, his horns dangled with thin stems and blooms.
He stares into his open hand, fingers spread, watching rain rinse dirt from the creases in his palm.
“My name is Molly,” he says softly, focusing on it. He closes his hand tight, until the blunt edges of his nails dig into skin. “My name is Mollymauk Tealeaf.”
There’s a quiet for a moment.
Then, from the pale giant, “It’s good to meet you, Mollymauk. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Molly finally really looks at the speaker. He has to make an effort, because said benefactor, even bent down at the waist, is nearly seven feet tall. Their skin is a soft gray. Gaunt dramatic features – hard lines, high cheekbone, and brow softened only by a sudden divergence of color into pale pink beard along the jawline. Their hair is like-wise pale pink, shaved along the sides but grown shoulder-length down the center, hanging in a thick curtain down the left side of their skull. Eyes the color of rose quartz. A worried look.
His rescuer is a firbolg.
Molly can count on his hand how many firbolgs he’s met in person. Molly’s firbolg appears to be a somewhat smaller, leaner example of the giant-kin and definitely one of the more… wild fey variety. Their eyes are lit faintly by dimming fairy fire, their nose a gentle but bestial structure – a cross between a rabbit’s cow’s nose, tipped in soft pink rhinarium. Their ears are long, curled into furry tubes, poking up from beneath the wet mass of pink hair.
“Are you alright?” says the firbolg, all strange pastel and staring at him. Their soft bovine ears quirk worriedly. When Molly doesn’t immediately respond, they (he?) tilt their head. “My name is Caduceus Clay. We should get out of the rain. I would feel pretty bad if you caught a cold sitting in the mud.” A pause. “I wanted to wait for the storm to clear, but it’s been following me for the last three days.”
“Caduceus? Okay. Um, my head’s spinning. How long’ve I been under?”
“A very long time, Mollymauk Tealeaf.”
“You’re a cleric? You… you brought me back?”
Their expression pinches, pained at the question. “Yes. It was me. You did not rise on your own this time. I called you and I… I honestly did not think you would come. Even with the storm behind me, there is nothing that binds you to me. The ritual should have failed. I… I don’t know what brought you back. I am so sorry. I would have done things differently if I…”
“You accidentally brought me back?!” Molly demands, horrified.
“No,” Caduceus says, frowning. “I did it purposely, but I had no faith in success. The storm followed me. I thought it was… significant.”
“The storm?” Molly says, feeling like his skull’s stuffed in cotton. “What does that…? Never mind. How long have I been dead this time?”
Caduceus hesitates. Then commits. “You’ve been dead for ten years.” And when Molly just stares, petrified by this number, he adds, “I am so sorry. I’ve done a terrible thing to you. Please understand: I would never tear someone from the Wild Mother… but you are my last hope.”
There is a longer pause.
“Alright,” Molly says, picking his words like bits of glass off a floor, careful of any edges. “First of all, I’m… grateful. Obviously. I like being alive so… thank you for that, Caduceus.” He hesitates. “But… I don’t understand. Why would you bring me back?”
“Because you’re one of the Mighty Nein.”
Molly blinks. “One of… wait. This about the others?” His heart jumps. “Are they okay? Oh, hell. I didn’t even ask. Beauregard got away didn’t she? The last thing I remember she was –”
“Beauregard lived that day.”
Molly relaxes a little. “She did.” He closes his eyes. “I won then.”
Caduceus says nothing for a moment, giving him a second to process.
“Mollymauk,” he says gently. “I need you to speak with the Mighty Nein. I think you’re the only one who can help them now.”
Molly drags a hand through his hair, pulling it sopping off his forehead. Rainwater runs cool over his lips, onto his tongue. His heart races painful in his chest, every breath a drag of sweet spring air mixed with earth. There’s grit on his teeth. Grave dirt on his tongue and in his eyes. Hysteria rises again in his gullet, seizing hold of him like a lover and pulling him toward a screaming, sobbing fit of paralysis and horror… but he shrugs it away. Pulls it off him like a shroud.
He looks at Caduceus.
“Are you saying my friends are in trouble? Or that they are the trouble?”
“Both.”
“Oh hell…”
“As I said, you’re my last hope.”
“I’m just… you…” Molly struggles with it for a moment before blurting, “I only knew them for a few months! It’s been ten yearssince they saw me. What you’re saying makes no sense. They were my friends, of course they were, but I died. They must have moved on. How can I be your last hope? You seem like a lovely pink and pastel person, but that bodes extremely badly, Caduceus. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“It’s possible I do not.”
“Fabulous.”
Caduceus tilts his head. “You’re very… articulate for someone who has just risen from the grave.”
“I’ve had practice,” Molly grunts, kicking his way out of the mud. He gets to his feet and stares into his grave for a moment, then into the horizon. “I remember… I remember dying.” He rubs his hands over his face, presses his palms over his eyes. He shivers. “I remember the snow and… Lorenzo standing over me.” His eyes sting suddenly, one of his hands dropping to his chest, over his breastbone which is whole and solid beneath his fingers. “He put a blade through my heart... I was so… so irritated to die.” He laughs. “Is that strange?”
“I’m sorry, Mollymauk. What do you need?”
“I think I need to be dead. Or I needed someone else to be here when I woke. I need someone I actually know to be here, but that’s not an option.”
“it might be,” says Caduceus blandly.
Molly jerks his head around, staring at the strange firbolg. “What?”
Caduceus gestures toward the cloud-black sky and as he does a fork of lightning snaps across the horizon and burns the world bone white for a deafening instant. Then it happens again. And again. Until the air rings deafening with thunder and Molly sees – for just a wild hallucinatory heartbeat – some great figure illuminated in the thunderhead. Humanoid but terrible, composed of chain lightning and cyclone. But then his eyes clear and it’s gone.
“This storm’s been following me,” he says. “I think it’s been waiting for you.”
Molly looks toward the horizon. He becomes aware, strangely, of his clothes which appear to be precise replicas of the garments he’d worn at death. That he’s an exact replica of himself at the moment of his death. He’s aware, particularly, that resurrection doesn’t really work like this and he doesn’t know what that means. He doesn’t know anything. He doesn’t…
He clenches his fists and marches directly toward the heart of the storm. Caduceus doesn’t follow so Molly stomps through the soaking long grass, following the road toward the churning centre of it all. He scrubs dirt from his face and neck as he does, furiously, frustrated, afraid, and just… angry. So goddamn angry. He throws his arms wide, staring into the sky as he walks.
“Well?!” he shouts, the wind driving rain into his face. “What the hell do you want?!”
The storm roars up and a lightning strike rips the sky open overhead, so concussive Molly instinctively claps two hands over his ears. His eyes burn, his throat locking up but his fear reverses to anger and he turns his face to the boiling storm clouds above. He again throws his arms wide.
“Do something!” he bellows. “What the fuck is going on?!”
Thunder shakes the world, but Molly holds his ground.
“I’m two times dead and I don’t know a fucking thing! I need you to be here! What do you want from me?!” Molly can feel it even in the rain that his eyes are hot and welling over, the heat of it doused by the icy rain that batters the land around him. He closes his eyes, closes his shaking hands at his chest. “Please. Where are you? I’m scared stiff, please don’t leave –”
And that’s when someone folds him into a tight, but gentle embrace, gathering his head against their chest which smells of leathers and ion and rainwater. They squeeze him so tight his bones ache in a way that’s familiar as sunshine and he immediately grips her back, his fingers digging into muscle – much more muscle than he remembers – and lets a single ragged noise rise in his throat.
“Oh, Molly,” Yasha says, her lips against his hair, holding him fast to her chest. “Is it really you?”
“I think it is,” he rasps. “I wasn’t sure until now. But I think it’s really me.”
Yasha – acolyte of the Stormlord, fallen aasimar, and his best friend – pulls away a little so she can look at him and her eyes… her eyes are lit with lightning. There’s electricity arcing around her in fingers of gentle blue and where she touches him, that energy jumps and licks to no effect even as the grass around them blackens beneath her boots. She cups his jaw in two hands. They are scarred and twined in tattoos he doesn’t remember. Her face is ten years older than he remembers, but still beautiful, the dark to gray ombré of her hair twisting like snakes in the static around her. She’s barely here. She’s lightning held in place by will alone.
He can’t fathom what she’s become.
“How?” she whispers.
Her voice sizzles, crackling between her teeth, but her mouth twists down as she asks him and that emotion on her mouth blots out every other inhuman thing about her. It’s not the storm god’s creature he sees. Just the woman he met at a carnival. She touches his hair, like she’s afraid to do it.
“Yasha.” He’s gripping the leather at her flanks. “I was coming to find you.” He shakes his head. “I didn’t make it.” And he watches Yasha’s expression crack when he says that. “You told me I’d die in a ditch if I was left unattended and I… you were right.”
He grins at her, hard as he can, through the tears because he’s panicking and he doesn’t know what to do. Yasha is mist, rain, and thunder in his hands and she could melt away at any moment. She’s powerful beyond comprehending, but all he wants is to hold her and so…
“Your hair looks great,” he says. “Love what you’ve done with it.”
Yasha’s eyes burn with arcane light.
“Heh. You keep doing that, Yasha, but I’m just happy to see you.”
“Why now?” she whispers.
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”
“I’m the hand of the storm now, Molly.”
“Okay, but you’re also my friend and I really want you to stay with me. Can do you do that? Just for a little bit?” He blinks hard. “Please?”
“I don’t know… I don’t…” Thunder interrupts her and she looks toward the sky. Thunder again, the sky splitting. She smiles, then looks down at him with, just, the biggest grin he’s ever seen. And all at once she grabs him into a massive bear hug. The moment she does it… he feels her solidify somehow in his arms, like he’s been holding mist before and now (only now) does Yasha truly inhabit the space in his arms. “Yes!” she cries. “Yes. I can stay. Oh, Molly I missed you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I lost you. I swore to protect you. Forgive me. I’m so, so –”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” Molly hisses immediately. Her arms are locked around the back of her neck, squeezing. He buries his face in her hair. “Don’t ever think that. Never ever.”
“I’m so sorry, Molly. We tried so hard.”
“It’s okay. I was a lousy fighter really. Making it up as I went. Bound to happen.”
“No,” she whispers. “Not that. We didn’t… we tried. We saved the world you know. Once.” She’s gripping him so tight. She’s shaking. Trembling. “I don’t know what happened to us. We’ve gone so wrong, Mollymauk.”
Molly isn’t sure what to say to any part of that, so he just hugs Yasha closer.
“It’s okay, dear. Just… let’s sit for a while. You can tell me.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Why?”
“Because right now, just for now, you don’t know what I’ve done.” Her voice cracks. Actually breaks in her throat. “You’re just like I remember you and you still think I’m who I was.” Her breath shudders. “I don’t want you to hate me yet…”
Molly’s eyes sting even as his heart jumps into his throat. “I won’t ever hate you,” he whispers. “C’mon now. What’s this?” He rubs her shoulders gently. “C’mon. Let’s get out of the rain, okay? Let’s… I don’t know. Let’s just… um…”
From behind them, a voice says, “I have tea?”
Molly turns. Yasha stares.
Caduceus, standing behind them and leaning on a long, gnarled woof staff, shrugs. “If you like.”
Yasha stares, slowly unwinding herself from Molly. “Caduceus?”
“Yasha.” He inclines his great head. “It’s been some time.”
“You did this?” She put a hand on Molly’s shoulder. “You brought him back?”
He looks at the ground.
“You swore you’d never… you… Things have gotten that bad?” Her voice hardens. “What’s he done?”
“What’s who done?” Molly demands.
“He’s closed off the keep,” says Caducues softly. “I fear the worst now. The others are gone, Yasha. There’s no one to stop him now and he barred me from the city. I needed… I needed help and I cannot fight him. I can’t. I don’t think anyone can.” He glances at Molly. “So… I thought I’d try something else.”
“Can you two please stop talking around me?” Molly says. “I get that you’re all powerful and cryptic, but it’s kinda rude. I’m but a simple carnival tiefling with mud on my face. Have mercy.”
Yasha laughs. Then blinks, like she surprised with herself.
“I really missed you, Molly. You know that?”
“I gathered. Let’s have tea and you tell me a story. Okay? It’ll be alright.” He pats her arm, hoping like hell she’ll believe what he himself does not. “I promise. It’ll be fine.”
She holds his hand. “Alright.”