Chapter Text
One would think that by now, Indrid Cold would know better than to get distracted. Sure, keeping track of all those hundreds of mental ‘televisions’ at once was… difficult, at best, but it was important. Not paying attention to those screens, not scanning each and every one within his mind’s eye to the best of his ability, looking for dangers and disasters yet to be- that was how he always messed up. Hell, it was what had gotten him into this mess in the first place; if he hadn’t gotten distracted, he wouldn’t currently be flying away from a timeline shifting tree with a black eye and a big gash on his head.
It was a stupid mistake to make, too. He of all people knew the importance of not getting too attached to others, especially those who already lead dangerous lives, and yet he’d somehow managed to end up caring about those three wonderful, wonderful fools. It was only fitting that that affection be what nearly got him killed by a shovel-wielding goat man.
He had been… nervous. He knew that such feelings were pointless, but had still been unable to prevent the anxiety from creeping into him. He’d needed to know, and so he’d pushed his vision further into the future, looking forward hours rather than minutes- a task which would have left him with a splitting headache even without the goat man’s interference- desperately scanning through the possible outcomes of the Pine Guards’ battle for some reassurance that they’d be alright.
What he’d seen hadn’t been good. There were some in which the three humans succeeded, yes, but there were so, so many in which they failed. Horribly. He saw Aubrey’s flames backfire and consume them all. He saw Ned’s stomach split open by the shears of a raging goat man. He saw Duck crushed to a bloody pulp beneath a fallen pine tree. He saw the entire town swallowed by a hole that opened up in the earth, sending Kepler and its residents plummeting towards their deaths. Indeed, he had been so fixated on that last image that he had failed to see the goat man in his trailer breaking free from its bonds until it was far, far too late.
In Indrid’s defense, he’d put up a pretty good fight, but he had also been at a massive disadvantage. He tended to operate much better in a more open-air environment, which the cramped Winnebago most definitely was not, and also the giant goat had snuck up on him and bashed him in the back of the head with a shovel. The blow had been enough to knock him to the ground, groaning and disoriented, so he hadn’t exactly stood much of a chance. The only rewards he got for his resistance were a furry-fisted punch to the eye and a hooved kick to the gut that made black spots dance across his vision. Next thing he knew, he was wrapped in chains and being dragged through the woods.
All in all it actually hadn’t turned out that bad. Duck had come to save him, slicing through his chains in a demonstration of brute strength that absolutely did not make Indrid blush, then punched him in the face to get his glasses off and told him to fly away. He’d been unable to stop himself from grabbing hold of Duck’s shoulders with his long, spindly fingers and hurriedly warning him of the vision that still burned itself in his mind’s eye. Duck’s confession of similar prophecies was something he would definitely need to ask about later, but in the moment, the ranger’s words, his unwavering confidence, had been enough to reassure Indrid. It was only after the fact that he’d realized perhaps Duck might not have wanted to be touched by his weirdo moth hands, but if that were the case, Duck had given him no indication of it. In fact, he’d actually grabbed back, squeezing Indrid’s fuzzy forearms with big, calloused hands, staring him directly in the eye in a way that no other being ever had. Even other Sylphs had been unsettled by his compound eyes, typically preferring to look at his antennae or his mandibles or the space behind him when speaking to him, and yet Duck, a human, had stared him straight in the eyes without any hint of fear or disgust and made him a promise. There was nothing Indrid could have done but believe him. Nothing at all.
And so he’d flown away. He’d flown away until he reached a cliffside overlooking Kepler where he’d settled down and waited. It could have only been minutes that had passed, but time was a strange thing with Indrid, and so it had felt like hours that he’d sat, shivering in the snow, staring out over the quiet town and rapid-speed scanning through the potential futures that had revealed themselves thus far. There had still been far, far too many futures in which the earth swallowed Kepler whole, but Indrid had done his best not to be too disturbed. Trust Duck. He had to trust Duck. Duck had made him a promise.
And Duck had been true to his word. Though a hole had indeed opened up, sending Indrid’s stomach into a freefall, it had stopped just short of the hospital, taking with it only a few empty cars and a street sign or two, but nothing else. Not a single life was lost, and a quick scan of the new futures revealed only one or two in which a death did result, but only ever due to someone accidentally falling in. The vast majority of the futures showed the sinkhole causing no more damage than a few insurance bills. The Pine Guard had succeeded. Duck had been right.
With that catastrophe averted however, and the adrenaline beginning to wear off, Indrid had noticed that there was another, much more pressing issue for him right now. Now that he wasn’t focused on worrying about the lives of several hundred people, he could no longer ignore the piercing cold that tore at him. He wasn’t good with the cold in the best of circumstances (being a bug and all), and the fact that his departure from his Winnebago had been unplanned meant that he’d not had the chance to change at all, and was still very much wearing nothing but a grubby, loose tank top and jeans. To add insult to injury, it was beginning to snow.
Indrid swore under his breath. He had to get back home, and quickly. It was bad enough being out in the open while undisguised, but human appearance or not, he’d freeze to death in a matter of hours if he was stuck in this weather too long. With that grim thought in mind, Indrid spread his wings and made haste back towards the RV park.
It was during this flight back home that Indrid Cold made his second distraction-related mistake of the day.
Again, it had been something he was unable to help. Though he knew he should have been hyper vigilant in that moment, assessing all visible futures to check for accidents or troubles that he could encounter on his way back, Indrid had wound up not paying attention at all to the countless televisions within his mind. Instead, he was doing something he hardly ever did- focusing on the present.
The reason why was simple: Indrid hadn’t flown in decades. Hell, he hadn’t even stretched out his wings properly in years, ignoring the cramped discomfort for fear of being spotted in his true form. His flight away from the battle site had been haphazard at best, and a near death experience at worst. He was way out of practice, swerving and dipping uncontrollably like a toy helicopter operated by a distracted toddler. He’d nearly crashed headfirst into a pine tree more times than he’d care to admit, and the distance from the cliffside to his Winnebago made for a lot longer of a flight than his escape had been.
It was because of this that Indrid found himself focused entirely on his own movements, feeling his gigantic wings beat against his back and trying to keep himself in a straight line, hovering nervously above the tops of pine trees that he was too scared to risk colliding with. He didn’t even want to try and look at any potential futures in which he just ate shit on a treetop- he was sure the number was embarrassingly high.
A loud sound rang out from somewhere, and suddenly Indrid was falling. Why was he falling? He willed his wings to flap but nothing seemed to happen. What on earth was- oh.
The pain slammed into him like a freight train and Indrid screeched. Oh sweet and merciful Sylvain it hurt. It felt like the entire left side of his abdomen had been lit on fire. And then he hit the trees. If he’d thought things had been painful before…
Indrid’s massive form plummeted through the treeline, snapping twigs and scattering needles, bouncing off of sturdier branches which sliced at his skin as he went. He felt something catch on the edge of a particularly strong branch, and not a second later he felt that same something tear, giving away as he screamed so loudly it felt as though he tore his own throat in the process. He slammed to the frozen ground moments later, his right arm landing under him with a sickening crunch and burst of pain. For several seconds, he just lay there, groaning and shuddering against the carpet of pine needles.
“H-help!” He called, his voice weak and shaky, before he realized his mistake. He was in his true form right now, the absolute last thing he wanted to do was call the attention of any humans that may be nearby. They’d rip him to shreds on the spot. No, no he had to move. He had to hide.
Trembling, Indrid attempted to haul himself up to his feet. Unthinkingly, he put his weight down on his right arm, which gave way immediately, sending him crashing back down to the ground with a yelp. Mistake. He had to try again. He had to. But he was so tired, and everything hurt so much, and the simple act of just getting to his feet seemed impossible in that moment.
A quick glance back into his mind’s eye, a task that was incredibly hard for him to pull off at the moment, had him looking at several futures in which he did indeed just continue to lay there out in the open. Every single one of them had him being discovered- sometimes by a bear or coyote, often times by a human- and every single one of them ended in him dying horribly. It was with the burst of adrenaline provided to him by that sight that Indrid finally stood up, leaning heavily against the trunk of a nearby pine and panting, trying to catch his breath. His thorax burned with every inhale, and though he was unwilling to look down he could feel blood coming down in rivers across his skin, the flow far heavier than he was comfortable with.
Staggering, Indrid dragged himself over towards a massive fallen tree- more specifically, towards the small crevice in between the tree and the ground. It was far from a perfect hiding spot, to say the least, but it wasn’t as though he had any better options. Normally, he’d look to the future(s) to try and plot his best course of action in this kind of situation, but his head had grown staticy and heavy, his vision filling up with dark spots so rapidly that he just barely made it over to the tree before collapsing into a heap of limbs and fuzz. He curled into the fetal position as best he could in a futile attempt to try and make himself seem smaller, less noticeable to any passerby who may come this way.
‘At least it wasn’t all for nothing,’ Indrid thought, as the world finally faded to black.
----------------------
Duck needed some air.
This whole day had been a non-stop shitshow, and frankly, he was about over it. In no particular order: he’d fought two goat men, one reality-fucking tree, and some weirdo light being that he’d just straight up cut in half; he’d rescued the mothman; he’d saved the town from being destroyed (again); he’d damaged Beacon; he’d gotten bashed over the head with a shovel; he’d been told that his nearly life-long… friend? Mentor? had committed genocide; said friend/mentor was now apparently going to die; he may or may not be losing all of his powers soon; and also, oh yeah, his next door neighbor was apparently in on the whole thing.
Fuck this.
It was with that sentiment that Duck found himself out patrolling the woods that night, flashlight beam cutting through the darkness of the Monongahela Forest, catching the paths of snowflakes as the drifted to the ground. It was silent as he walked. Not true silence, not the kind of unnatural pall that had come when the first abomination had appeared, but silence in the sense that the scene lacked humanity. Branches rustled quietly, an owl calling somewhere in the distance as his boots crunched across a thin layer of snow and frozen pine needles. No car horns blared. No people shouted. No one or nothing demanded his attention or his understanding. It was peaceful.
At least until his radio let out a burst of static that nearly put him into cardiac arrest.
“Duck? Hey, Duck?” Came Juno’s voice. Duck exhaled slowly, composing himself before grabbing the receiver off of his belt and answering.
“Jesus Christ, Juno, you scared the shit out of me. Whaddya need?”
“Oh, sorry. I was just calling to check in. I would’ve done it a lot sooner, too, but…” she sighed. “Shit’s been pretty, uh, hectic down here at the station tonight, Duck, I gotta tell ya.”
“Oh yeah?” Duck prompted, bemused. “What kinda shit?”
“Well, Ranger Christie heard a gunshot go off while she was out patrolling, so she went over to check it out and found these two yay-hoos hangin’ ‘round the Hilderbrand with hunting rifles. Said they was out huntin’ for deer. Neither of ‘em had any sorta license, and they got real snippy with her when she tried to tell ‘em off for, ya know, huntin’ in a National Fucking Forest in the middle of winter without a license,” the exasperated, derisive tone with which she delivered those words made Duck snort. “Ended up having to call in backup to get ‘em back here. Now we’re just waitin’ on Sheriff Zeke to come on over and deal with ‘em.”
“You called in Sheriff Zeke?” Duck asked, a bit taken aback. Technically, hunting without a license was a civil offense, so it was within the police’s jurisdiction, but they usually just handled these kinds of minor misdemeanors by themselves. Calling down the Sheriff just to deal with two out of line hunters was… unusual, to say the least.
“Yeah, we did. Wasn’t any of our first choices, but frankly these two are… well, they’re more than we can deal with right now. Or at least, they’re more than we feel like dealing with right now, how’s that?”
Duck laughed. “Yeah, I getcha. I know the type.” He could hear Juno chuckle on the other end of the line.
“For real though, these guys are some straight up nutcases. Frankly, I’m startin’ to think they’re on somethin’ that’s got ‘em real whacked out ‘cause they’ve just been up here talking nonsense for almost 30 whole minutes now.”
“What, they sayin’ the deer were shit talkin’ ‘em or something?” Duck questioned, bemused. He’d once had to deal with a man who’d been trying to set fire to an entire patch of trees because ‘those damn squirrels won’t shut their stupid little mouths ‘bout my mustache’. It was the kind of experience that proved both exhausting and entertaining.
“Somethin’ like that,” Juno laughed. “They keep saying they shot, get this; the Mothman. The fuckin’ Mothman, Duck. Can you believe it?”
Duck’s blood turned to ice.
“Duck? Duck, you still there?” His hands fumbled with the receiver, shaking as he pressed down on the button.
“Uh, y-yeah, I’m still here. Where, exactly, did you say those two were picked up?”
“Right over by the Hilderbrand?” Juno replied, clearly confused. “Duck, is there something wro-”
“Listen, Juno, I’m gonna head over there right quick and uh, see if they, uh, actually did shoot anythin’, ya know?”
“What, like a Mothman?” Juno asked sarcastically. ‘Yes, exactly’, Duck thought, though he did not voice it out loud, switching his receiver off and stuffing it back into its holster as he hauled ass in the direction of the Hilderbran lock and dam.
Either he hadn’t been as far away as he’d thought, or he’d been moving a whole lot faster than he’d thought, because Duck found himself at the site not three minutes later, barely even winded. He felt along the inside of his right coat pocket, before grabbing hold of and pulling out a pair of tinted red sunglasses and staring at them for a moment. Thank fuck he’d thought to grab those earlier. The last thing they needed was for Indrid to be running around Kepler in the entirety of his moth glory. From the sound of it, that already hadn’t ended well.
With that thought hanging sourly in his mind, Duck rushed down along the path, scanning the woods on all sides with his flashlight, looking for any signs of fuzzy antennae or giant wings.
“Indrid?!” He called. “Hey, Indrid, buddy, you out here?” No response.
Duck was just beginning to convince himself that Juno’s two weirdos had been nothing more than that- weirdos- when he noticed something decidedly off. There, just a little distance into the woods, was a small pile of broken branches. He trotted over to get a closer look, and a quick assessment of the trees in the immediate vicinity revealed quite a few missing branches and scraped patches of bark. Kind of as if something huge had come crashing down into them. The second, much more worrying thing he noticed was the fact that there was… quite a bit of blood. Like, a concerning amount of blood. Duck’s stomach turned.
“Indrid?! Hey, Indrid, it’s me, Duck!” he called. Still no response. Frantically, Duck looked around the area, his eyes finally catching on an odd sort of… lump, only a few feet away. It was partially obscured by a fallen tree, so he almost missed it, but if he looked closely enough at it he could almost see what looked like- oh shit.
Duck bolted over to the snow dusted lump, dropping to his knees in front of it and brushing off the fine layer of snowflakes with shaking hands. His heart dropped. It was Indrid, yes, but he looked bad. For starters, he wasn’t moving, at all. Not even shivering. Massive red flag. Then there was the fact that he was cold as ice. Also not good. And then, of course, there was the still slowly bleeding gunshot wound in his abdomen (thorax? Or, wait, was thorax the chest part? He was pretty sure thorax was the chest part. Shit, what was the abdomen called?) that, while small, had to hurt like absolute hell. This wasn’t even counting the numerous scrapes and bruises that littered the Mothman’s eerily still body. God, he looked like he was… Duck’s fingers found their way to Indrid’s left… wrist (?), frantically feeling for a pulse. Shit, did Mothmen even have pulses in their wrists? Apparently the answer was yes, as he felt a faint, but present, pulsing against his skin. He let loose a breath he hadn’t noticed he was holding.
Indrid was still alive. He looked like shit, but he was still alive. And now it was gonna be Duck’s job to keep him that way.
First things first, though; it was gonna be a whole lot easier to tend to the guy while he wasn’t, you know, a seven foot tall moth person.
Glasses in one hand, Duck rolled Indrid onto his back as gently as he could before laying the frames on his fuzzy, frozen face. The transformation was instant, just like before, and Duck found himself kneeling over the same gaunt man who’d first opened the door for him only a few days ago, except considerably more beat up. Duck pulled a roll of gauze from his first aid kit, hastily bandaging the man’s still-bleeding chest before shucking off his coat and wrapping it around him. Indrid may have been taller than him, yes, but Duck was still considerably larger than him (at least, in his human form), so the scrawny seer was enveloped, almost comically, within the fabric. In any other circumstance, it would’ve been adorable.
With no effort at all, Duck scooped Indrid up into his arms, holding him to his chest and trying not to shiver at how friggin cold the guy still was. Taking care not to jostle the injured man unnecessarily, Duck hurried back to his truck as fast as he could.
Both the hustle back to his vehicle and the actual drive back to the lodge passed in by in a sort of haze, and Duck found himself thanking his lucky stars that nothing went wrong along the way because he absolutely would not have been able to handle it in that state. He placed Indrid in the passenger seat, buckling him up as best he could and switching on his seat warmer before cranking the old truck’s heater up to the ‘Alabama in August’ level and driving like a maniac. He would’ve preferred to keep Indrid laying down, figured that was probably the better course of action, but his backseat was covered in junk that would’ve taken way too long to move, and even if it had been clear, there was still no real way to properly seat belt somebody in that position, and he wasn’t about to run the risk of accidentally launching the poor dude and making everything worse so… passenger seat it was.
The parking lot of Amnesty Lodge was empty, save for Mama’s old truck and Agent Stern’s significantly newer-looking vehicle, which was good because Duck may or may not have ended up just parking kind of diagonally across about 2 or 3 spots. Whatever. He’d come back out and fix it once there wasn’t anybody dying in his truck.
He pulled Indrid’s still unconscious form out from the passenger side door, hip-checking it shut and making a beeline for the cellar doors, mentally cursing up a blue streak at Agent Stern as he did so. If that prick weren’t still hanging around, Duck would’ve just come bursting in through the front doors, shouting for Barclay and Mama to come help. He knew the two of them had some pretty extensive experience with patching folks up on their own, and he still did plan on calling them in for help, but he’d have to be a lot more subtle about it. Last thing he wanted was for Agent Stereotypical Sci-Fi Villain to get anywhere near Indrid.
Getting the doors to the cellar open with a body in his arms was… a process. At least with Billy he’d had Barclay (reluctantly) there to help transport the big fella, but now he was forced to resort to trying to wedge the door open with his foot, then kick it really quickly to open it all the way. It took a few tries, as well as quite a bit of foul language, but he managed it, scrambling down the stairs and letting the door slam behind him.
From the looks of things Thacker was still locked in the panic room, which was a relief. He really didn’t feel like trying to deal with that kind of Exorcist bullshit right now. Although, come to think of it, when was the last time anybody fed that guy? Aw shit, that was gonna be a whole thing, wasn’t it? Whatever. He’d deal with it later. For right now though…
Duck placed Indrid on the table as gingerly as possible, pulling away the edges of his coat so as to better survey the damage. It didn’t look any better.
Upon closer inspection, Indrid’s right arm was almost certainly broken. Nothing appeared to be poking through the skin, which was definitely a relief, but still- setting broken bones was way above his pay grade, so here was hoping that Barclay or Mama would know what to do. The gash on his head didn’t look too bad, all things considered, and neither did any of the other little cuts and abrasions that littered his skin. No, the real kicker was the fucking bullet hole in his side.
Taking as much care as possible not to aggravate anything, Duck slowly unwrapped his hasty bandaging, wincing as he ended up having to peel it off in the areas where the blood had adhered it to Indrid’s flesh like glue. Indrid still didn’t move. On the one hand, Duck supposed that could be seen as a good thing, since it meant he wasn’t awake and having to deal with this kinda pain, but on the other hand, it was a very, very bad thing.
For a guy who dealt with a whole lot of hunters, Duck knew approximately dick all about gunshot wounds. He understood the basics, like, ‘they’re really bad’ and, ‘if you get one in the head you’re probably fucked’, but as far as things like ‘how to judge the extent of damage’ or ‘how to actually treat them’ went, he knew nothing. Still, in his incredibly uninformed opinion, the injury didn’t actually look all that bad. For a bullet hole, that is. There were relatively clean entry and exit wounds- a relief, since even he knew that only seeing one of those meant you were gonna have to go in and dig the bullet out, and that was a task that he was absolutely not comfortable with doing- the bleeding wasn’t too heavy, and it didn’t look like it had hit anything important. Of course, he knew nothing whatsoever about Mothman anatomy, so he supposed he could be wrong about that, but unless the Moth-person brain was kept just above the left hip bone, then they were probably fine. Probably. Maybe. Fuck, he didn’t know!
A quick check proved that yes, Indrid was still breathing, so odds were that he’d been right in his earlier assumption that nothing immediately vital had been hit, but he was still way colder than he should have been. A lot of signs pointed towards hypothermia, and that Duck did know what to do with, but there was another problem. Specifically, the fact that they were in a cellar- not typically known for being the warmest of environments. Hell, Duck could still see his own breath down here, but what he couldn’t see was any sign of a thermostat or anything else that might help the situation.
Fuck. He needed help. He had no idea what he was doing, and even if he did he’d still need some backup to accomplish anything. He had to go get Barclay and Mama, there was no getting around it. And that meant he’d have to leave Indrid here while he went to go do so.
His gut instinct absolutely hated the idea. It was way too cold for Indrid down here, he was still bleeding, Thacker could theoretically bust out at any moment, Agent Stern could theoretically bust in at any moment, but he didn’t exactly have much of a choice. No matter what he did, he couldn’t risk letting Agent Stern see Indrid, and the odds of that happening were significantly higher if he just came busting into the lobby with him. He had to make a break for it.
“Hang in there, partner, I’ll be right back, and I’ll bring help, alright?” Duck muttered, gently patting Indrid’s disastrous hair in a gesture of comfort that the unconscious man had no way of registering, given that he was, in fact, unconscious, before hurrying up out of the cellar and into the front lobby.
Though it may have looked like the middle of the night outside, it was only around 7:00, a fact that Duck would honestly probably never stop being disoriented by no matter how many winters he lived through. As such, the front lobby still had a bit of life in it. Agent Stern was nowhere to be seen, thank god, but Dani was sitting over by the roaring fireplace, sketching something in the beat-up notepad she carried around with her most places, and that older werewolf whose name Duck hadn’t learned yet was finishing up what looked like a french dip sandwich. Distantly, Duck thought that it would probably be a good idea to try and get Indrid up by that fire some time.
He caught sight of Barclay stepping out of the kitchen, still wearing an apron tied around his broad waist and carrying a bulging trash bag in one giant hand, clearly headed towards the dumpsters out back. Duck cut him off, dashing up to him and grabbing a fistful of his flannel shirt.
“Barclay, hey, listen man, I need your help,” Duck hissed, trying to keep his voice quiet enough so as not to be overheard by any of the lobby’s other residents.
“Duck?” Barclay began. He looked happy to see him, but also obviously confused at his behavior. “I thought you’d gone home for the night. What-”
“Listen partner I’m sorry to cut you off but this is kind of a time sensitive issue,” Duck interrupted. “I’ll explain in a minute but right now I need you to get Mama and come on down with me to the cellar.”
“Mama’s in the middle of talkin’ with Aubrey right- is that blood?” Barclay asked, suddenly very concerned. Duck looked down to see that yes, he did indeed have some of Indrid’s blood on his hands. Shit.
“It ain’t mine, Barclay, that’s the problem, now could you please just-”
“Duck? What’re you doing here?” Aubrey’s voice made him turn. She, much like Barclay, looked both happy and confused to see him at the lodge. Standing just behind her, exiting from the same room, was-
“Mama, there you are!” Duck exclaimed. “Listen, I’ll explain in a minute but I need you and Barclay to follow me down to the cellar, pronto.”
“Well, Aubrey and I were already on our way over there just now,” Mama said. She looked concerned, in a way that almost always meant something terrible was happening. Duck suddenly felt a whole lot less confident about his decision to leave Indrid alone.
“Fantastic, let’s go,” Duck replied, already hurrying off towards the exit. “Aubrey, you know how to do some sorta healin’ type thing, dontcha?”
“Healing?” Aubrey asked. “I mean, sort of? I’m definitely not that good at it…”
“Yeah well I’ll take whatever you can give me,” Duck muttered. “And I really don’t mean to push it but it’d be great if we could maybe pick up the pace a little here, people.”
“Duck, you’re kinda freaking me out,” Aubrey said. “‘Cause you’re acting, like, really weird, and it also sorta looks like you’ve got maybe blood all over your hands?”
“I didn’t murder anybody, Aubrey,” Duck reassured, pushing the heavy wooden doors of the lobby open to let the night air bite at him. He’d left his coat with Indrid, and the transition of ‘warm lobby’ to ‘West Virginia winter night’ was not kind to his bare arms, but he hardly noticed it. “I’m actually tryina… un- murder somebody, if that makes any sense. Probably doesn’t. I’m a little stressed right now.”
“Duck please don’t tell me you’ve brought in another abomination that you’re trying to fix,” Barclay muttered. Even without turning around, Duck could feel Mama’s eyes narrowing at him with suspicion. He ignored it and pressed forward, the sound of their four pairs of boots squeaking against the snow ringing in his ears.
“Naw, it’s not another goat man,” Duck responded, chucking open the cellar door and descending the few stone steps to the bottom. He heard the other three follow in after him, the doors shutting behind them as he hurried over to Indrid, nervously checking him over to see if anything had somehow managed to go terribly wrong in the three or so minutes he’d been gone. Nothing appeared to be any different, for better or for worse.
“Alright, buddy, I bought ya some help. You’re gonna be fine now, ya here?” Duck muttered, squeezing Indrid’s frozen left hand. Indrid didn’t respond. Duck hadn’t been expecting him to. He heard Aubrey gasp from just behind him.
“Holy shit, Duck, is that…?” she trailed off, leaning in for a better look.
“Yup,” Duck confirmed. “No goat men; just a moth man.”