Chapter Text
Lup was gone. Not missing, not lost. Gone. It was one thing for her to disappear for a couple of days at a time—the caravans were cramped and tiny and their current boss, Maarvey, was an entire bag of dicks—but not like this. This was different:
Taako couldn’t feel her anymore.
They’d always been connected, ever since they were little. Taako knew when Lup was hurting, Lup could always sense when his smart mouth had landed him in trouble. Evocation and transmutation, two halves of a whole. And now she was just gone and the place behind his heart—the place where she should be, his second heartbeat—was empty.
“Back soon,” her note had read, with a little doodle of a flame in the corner, and Taako believed her. Lup always came back.
The first two days he’d barely noticed her absence, too busy cooking for the caravan while she was gone. His only thought was that she owed him huge, and what a pain in the ass it was to cook for everyone without a second set of hands.
But she didn’t come back. Two days rolled into three, into four. Taako didn’t do worry but he couldn’t help the itch that crept under his skin when Lup failed to return. He’d resolved to give her one more day when suddenly she was just…gone, and Taako was left without half of himself. It was like he’d been stripped of one of his senses, the most important one, and he didn’t know how to navigate the world without it. Without Lup.
Locate Creature did fuck all, and Taako burned nearly all of his spell slots checking and rechecking, but she was nowhere. Vanished completely, as if she’d never existed.
The Ethereal Plane was a bust too but if she wasn’t in their world she had to be somewhere.
“Shit, Lulu, where are you?” Taako asked the empty air. The Hammerheads had left him behind a few days ago and Taako didn’t blame them; if it had been anyone else, he would’ve moved on as well. He gazed at the materials he’d laid out in front of him, every single one stolen from one rich prick or another. None of them were meant to be used like this—the diamond alone would buy their safety for years. Lup would be pissed at him for using their nest egg for a spell he didn’t even know he could cast, but it had been a week and Taako was starting to get desperate.
“This is going to suck,” he muttered to himself. Magic gathered in his palms, sparking on his fingertips as he took a deep breath and cast Gate. “Lup,” he ordered, targeting the spell.
Nothing. For a minute, Taako was sure that the spell had flopped, that it was beyond his capabilities, and then something blew him backwards like a bomb had gone off. His breath vacated his lungs in a rush as the spell lifted him off of the ground and threw him against the wall of the flophouse where he’d been squatting.
“Shit on a stick,” Taako swore when his vision finally cleared. The gateway looked like it opened to nothing and even from across the room he could feel the pull as it sucked at his clothes like a miniature black hole. His hand flew to his head to keep his hat from flying into the portal without him.
Taako didn’t stop to think that the gate could literally spit him out anywhere. He didn’t think that he could end up at the bottom of the ocean, for all he knew, or in space where the oxygen would rip out of his blood before he could so much as cast a spell to save himself. He especially didn’t think that he wasn’t even sure if Lulu was alive and if she was dead than the gate would take him to be body and—
He wasn’t thinking about any of that. Why bother? Lup was fine, she’d just lost track of time somewhere and when he found he she’d yell at him for wasting their diamond on a lark.
Securing his knapsack over his shoulder and pressing his hat even more firmly against his hair, Taako took a single, steadying breath and stepped through the gate.
It was like being ripped apart, atom by atom, and then being forced back together again with way too much force than was necessary. Taako’s stomach heaved and his knees gave out the second his feet hit solid ground again, suddenly unable to hold his weight. He retched, spitting bile, but there was nothing in his stomach to throw up.
Taako swiped at his mouth and after catching his breath, forced himself back to his feet. He was still wobbly but his legs held this time.
The gate was gone by the time he managed to look around and wherever she was, Taako hoped Lup had saved spell slots because there was no way he was going to pull that kind of power out of his ass a second time. It didn’t matter, though, because all at once, he was whole again. Lup was back where she should be, the sense of her slotting into the empty place in his chest as though she’d never been gone. Lup was here. She was alive and she was close.
Taako inhaled deeply through his nose, feeling like he could breathe for the first time since Lup had disappeared. He’d barely registered his surroundings—a whole lot of fucking nothing—when voices sounded off behind him.
“Alive,” hissed someone—something—he couldn’t see. Taako’s ears twitched and they would’ve gone completely flat if he hadn’t had years of practice keeping them still. “Alive, he’s alive.” Taako couldn’t see where the voices were coming from, but the words were said in unison, as if by some creepy invisible chorus.
“Back the fuck off,” Taako warned, holding his wand ready as he spun in a tight circle, squinting into the dark. He didn’t know what type of spooky-ass advanced darkness bullshit was going on here, but his darkvision was doing exactly fuck all.
“Alive,” the voices chanted. “He’s alive, he’s alive, alive, alive.”
He still couldn’t see anything, but the voices grew louder, closer, and Taako could sense something approaching, a massive, lumbering presence that made his hair stand on end.
“Nope,” Taako muttered, turning on his heel and taking off into the inky blackness. He lit the tip of his wand and he still couldn’t see shit, but whatever was in here with him, he wasn’t going to stick around long enough to see if it looked as malevolent as it sounded. He had no idea where he was going, guided only by the internal compass inside him that guided him closer to his sister.
The fortress appeared out of nowhere, so suddenly that Taako nearly ran into it headlong. A massive door loomed over him a hundred feet high, looking like it had been hewn out of an enormous slab of obsidian.
“Open sesame!” Taako shouted, pounding his fists against the door. Behind him, the whispering voices grew louder and louder, until they were snarling about his liveliness and vitality so intensely that Taako wanted to tell them to buy him dinner first. “A little help here!” He banged even harder against the black stone door, but it didn’t budge.
“Oh, fuck it.” Taako pointed his wand at the door and casting Knock. He didn’t know what was keeping the door closed, whether it was mundane or arcane, but the spell was fueled by desperation, and his magic, as drained as it was, responded. This time when he shoved the door, it pushed open just enough for him to squeeze through.
Taako pushed his back against the door, shoving it closed and praying that it was strong enough to keep out whatever was chasing him. The voices roared in unison, slamming against the door so hard that the force sent him skittering away, crouching on the balls of his feet like a startled cat.
“Come back!” the voices wailed, throwing themselves against the door again and again. “Come back!”
“I think the fuck not.” Taako stood back up slowly, halfway expecting the door to give way but somehow it held. Instinct told him not to turn his back to whatever was pursuing him so intently, but he didn’t have much of a choice now that he’d locked himself in…here.
Wherever here was.
Inside the fortress, the darkness lessened enough for his darkvision to start filling in the outlines of the structures around him. He was in a courtyard of some kind, with massive topiaries and hedges grown out of some kind of black plant that Taako had never seen before. The gardens stretched well beyond his sight and he didn’t know how long he’d been wandering through them before he came upon a structure so huge that it could house giants with room to spare.
"Sweet Istus,” Taako mumbled. He tipped his head all the way up and squinted but he still couldn’t see the top of the building through the gloom.
Lup was in there. That much he knew for certain. It looked like the set of one of those bad movies they used to watch on fantasy pay-per-view when they were little and snuck into inns along the road just for a safe place to stay the night, the ones that Lup loved and always gave him nightmares. Taako knew that she was in there. He knew it like he knew how to cast Prestidigitation, or that he was the prettiest bitch for miles, maybe even more considering the dreariness of his current surroundings and the fact that the last time he’d seen Lup she’d been wearing jorts and was goddamn disqualified from any beauty contests until she learned how to dress herself.
Taako took another steadying breath and marched up the black steps, praying that the door at the top wasn’t locked. He didn’t think he had another Knock in him.
“Hello?” he called as the door swung open before he’d even touched it. The doors in this place really needed to make up their minds. “Hello?” His words were swallowed up by the dark, swallowed whole, without so much of an echo.
He didn’t want to go inside. There was quite literally nothing he wanted to do less than go poking around the haunted house from hell, but he wasn’t leaving without Lup. He wasn’t leaving here without his sister.
“If there’s any spooky shit about to pop out at me, I’d rather you just get it over with because after the freakshow outside I’m pretty much over this whole ish.”
No one answered and Taako was almost disappointed. Normally he had Lup to talk to but the silence made him even twitchier than usual, so he just kept up a steady stream of chatter as he picked his way through the enormous building. It seemed to stretch on forever, room after enormous empty room, and Taako still couldn’t tell if it was a castle or a prison or something in between.
“I’ve gotta say, the dedication to an aesthetic is admirable. Most people’s Goth phase is just a whole lotta black, maybe some leather, a questionable haircut, but not you guys. It’s a bold direction but you really went for it.”
He could’ve been walking for minutes or hours when suddenly, Taako wasn’t alone anymore. Something rounded the corner, lamp in hand, and Taako had to squint against the blaze of light.
“Pan’s horns!” a rough voice exclaimed and Taako blinked, his eyes adjusting to see a dwarf staring at him, his eyes comically wide. Well. Eye. He only had one. The other was obscured by an eyepatch with some kind of design painted on it. The dwarf looked as surprised as Taako to see another person wandering around.
“Who are you?” Taako asked. Of all the creatures he expected to be haunting this place, a dwarf would’ve been his last guess.
“You’re alive,” the dwarf said.
Taako frowned. “Yeah, that seems to be the general consensus around here. Quick question, kemosabe: what the fuck is this place?”
“You shouldn’t be here,” the dwarf said. His eye flicked back and forth, as if expecting something to appear out of the shadows. “You need to go, right now.”
“Fuck that, I’m not going anywhere,” Taako snapped. “My sister’s in here and—”
“Your sister?”
“Is there an echo?” Taako planted his hands on his hips. “My sister, short stack. Blonde elf, likes to play with fire, has the same fucking face as me.” He bent down so that his features were illuminated in the lamplight. “I know she’s here and I’m not leaving without her.”
“You need to go,” the dwarf said again, shaking his head. “She’s stuck, but you still have a chance. You have to get out of here. Right now.”
Taako blew out his cheeks with frustration. “Okay, good talk.” He relit the tip of his wand and turned on his heel. Clearly being stuck in the dark for so long had addled the old man’s brains and Taako had wasted enough time in this creepy place already. Time to find Lup and split.
“Wait, where are you—” The dwarf hf to jog to keep up with Taako’s long strides. “You can’t just go wandering around in here, he’ll see you!”
Taako’s ears pricked and he whirled on the dwarf so quickly that they nearly collided.
“Who?”
“What?” The dwarf realized too late what he’d revealed and tried to backpedal, hedging obviously. He was a shit liar, truly one of the worst Taako had ever seen.
“Who else is in here with us?”
“No…no-one!” the dwarf insisted.
Taako cupped his hands around his mouth. “Hey!” he shouted at the top of his voice. “Who’s out there? Give me back my sister or I’m going to shove my foot so far up your—”
“Shhh!” the dwarf hissed. Underneath his beard, he’d gone white as a sheet. “Are you fucking nuts? If he hears you—”
“Take me to my sister or I keep shouting. Maybe whoever you’re so scared of will help me find her.”
“Fine, fine,” the dwarf said finally. “Just stay quiet, will you?”
Taako shot him a brittle smile and gestured with his wand. “Lead on, my man.”
The dwarf glowered but nodded, walking confidently through the dark. It wasn’t long before they reached a set of stairs and then it was just up and up and up until Taako was starting to think that they’d never reach the top.
“I go no further,” the dwarf said when they finally reached the landing. He was huffing and puffing and even with his elven stamina Taako felt a little bit out of breath. “You wanna piss off the boss, fine, but neither you nor your sister is ever getting out of here.” He sighed, looking almost sorry. “You should’ve left when you had a chance.”
“You’re a real bundle of laughs, you know that?” Taako sniped.
The old dwarf almost laughed. “Good luck.”
Taako didn’t need luck. He was a fucking wizard. A wizard who was nearly out of spell slots, so it was a really good thing the door was unlocked.
The room inside was so bright that Taako had to shield his eyes for a few seconds until they adjusted. It was cramped but tall, with a high sloped roof like they were at the top of some tower. The only thing inside was a cage made out of thick black bars and even without casting Detect Magic, Taako could feel the arcane energy coming off of it.
Inside the cage was Lup. Lup, who was on fire. Flames gathered in her palms and she screamed her frustration, blasting the cage again and again, but the black bars just absorbed the flames without leaving so much as a scorch mark.
“Y’know, Lulu,” Taako said, positioning himself against the doorframe. He lifted a hand, carefully inspecting his fingernails. “You always say I’m the attention-seeking twin, but I’m not the one who fucked off to the Black Lagoon, now am I?”
“Taako,” Lup breathed. The fire in her hands flickered but remained lit. She didn’t look happy to see him. In fact, she looked horrified. “Shit, Taako, you’ve got to get out of here.” She grabbed the bars, the flames from her fingertips licking ineffectually against the magicked stone.
“’Hi, Taako,’” Taako sang in a singsong lilt. “’So good to see you, Taako.’ ‘Thanks for taking the time out of your very busy schedule to come rescue my sorry ass, Taako.’” He looked at her expectantly, planting his hands on his hips.
Lup didn’t so much as crack a smile, and that’s how Taako knew that they were well and truly fucked. “You need to go while you still can. He’s already got me but you still have a chance.”
“I’m going to get you out of there and then we’ll go together. You get me, Lulu?” Taako inspected the lock that kept the cage door shut. It was magical as shit, that much was certain, and Taako only had one, maybe two spells left in him. “Who’s this guy you’re all so scared of, anyway?” he asked, because the alternative was silence and Taako didn’t do silence.
“That would be me.”
“Taako!” Lup cried.
Taako spun so fast that his vision blurred—though that may have also been from all the magic he’d burned without resting and now that he thought about it, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten either. Not great.
“Stay the fuck away from him!” Lup shouted, the flames in her hands burning even brighter, for all the good it did inside the cage.
The newcomer’s face was hidden under a heavy black robe and the darkness seemed to pull in tight around him, obscuring him even further from sight. He didn’t move towards them, just stood in the doorway, effectively blocking the only exit.
“Taako, run!” Lup ordered. Her voice was even but Taako knew her well enough to know that she was scared shitless. “Just go.”
“Not without you, babe,” Taako said, never taking his eyes off of the cloaked stranger. He didn’t know what it was about this cat that had Lup so spooked, but he was radiating enough arcane energy to power all of New Elfington. All in all, Taako didn’t love their odds, but he’d bluffed his way out of tough spots before.
“So what’s your deal?” Taako asked. The hooded figure cocked his head, as if sizing Taako up. “The whole creepy house behind a creepy wall, the aggressive darkness, those fucking voices outside, it’s all very convincing but I’m still wondering why.” The figure still didn’t answer but Taako could sense him gathering power. Well, two could play at that game. “What’s it all for, my dude? Why bother with any of this?” Still nothing. “You don’t want to talk, fine. Just answer me this one question: What’s your name, thug, because I’m about tentacle your dick.”
The figure gave a start and barely managed a “What?” before Taako raised his wand and cast Evard’s Black Tentacles. Inky black tentacles erupted from Taako’s wand, launching into the darkness that kept the hooded figure from sight. He couldn’t see them land but he could feel the resistance as they latched onto something and squeezed.
“Take that, you creepy fuck!” Taako shouted. For a single, victorious second he thought that maybe this gamble might work—that he’d take out shadow dude, get Lup out, and they would both go home—but then the figure pulled something out of the air and the spell rebounded.
Taako staggered backwards, the spell severed too fast for him to recover his balance. His shoulders hit the bars of the cage and the air burst out of his chest in a huff. He didn’t have a time to suck in another breath before the figure was on him.
“That was stupid.” Taako still couldn’t see his face, but he could feel the cold air of the stranger’s breath on his face. He had an accent. Stupid thing to notice at a time like this, but whoever this dude was, they had a fantasy Cockney accent that sounded just this side of strangled. Weird.
“That ain’t nothing.” Taako swallowed hard. “Just give me time, homie.”
“Why are you here?” the figure demanded, still way too close. Personal space must be a foreign concept. “How did you even get here?”
“Well, you know, some asshole stole my sister so I thought I’d come get her.”
“To the Astral Plane?”
Was that where he was? Hachi machi, he was not in Faerun anymore. “It’s a twin thing.”
“Taako, go,” Lup hissed. Her hands, no longer on fire, reached through the bars to grab his.
“I think it’s rather late for that,” the figure said. He didn’t sound threatening or malicious, but like he was just reciting a fact. Like he was resigned to this. Like he was bored.
Yeah, fuck that. “Let her go.”
“She trespassed,” the figure said. “The rules of this world are clear. She stays. You…” He paused, considering. “I have no issue with you. You can go. Now, before I change my mind.”
“Go,” Lup insisted, squeezing his hand so tight that one of Taako’s knuckles popped. Her voice was thick but it didn’t falter. “I’ll be fine, I promise.”
“I know you will, Lulu.” He took a deep breath, squeezing her hand back. “But I won’t.”
Taako was not brave, as a rule. As an aspect of his general character, actually. Bravery was a luxury he couldn’t afford, something that would’ve gotten him and Lup a thousand times over during their childhood. When they were little, staying alive meant seeing danger and waving at it as he grabbed Lup’s hand and pulled her in the opposite direction. Lup was the brave one, not him. She was the good twin, always had been. She didn’t belong here in the dark.
“What are you—” Lup started to ask.
“Tradesies, my dude,” Taako cut her off, looking into where the figure’s face should be beneath the swirling dark.
“What?” he asked as Lup slammed her fist against the bars and screamed, “No!”
“I’m pulling a fantasy Uno reverse card,” Taako explained, quickly, because along with not brave, selfish was right there at the top of the list of his defining traits. He really, really didn’t want to be here. “Lup goes. I stay.”
“Why would you do that?” the figure asked.
Because it was Lup. “The fuck do you care? You want one of us to stay, fine. I volunteer and you get the prettier twin in the process. Win-win.”
“No,” Lup said again. Taako could see the light as she started blasting the cage but the heat was absorbed before it could scorch him.
“It’s forever,” the figure said, challenging, like he wanted Taako to falter. Like he expected him to leave his sister behind. “Forever in the dark, with only the dead for company.”
“After spending time with the Hammerheads, I’m starting to think I’d prefer the dead. They’re probably not such raging assholes.” He was Taako, he was glib and smiling to the last, but he was also fucking terrified.
The figure got even closer, like he could hear the way Taako’s heart hammered against his ribs like a goddamn drum. He probably could. Who knew what kind of powers this guy had under his—physical, metaphorical—hood? “Elf lives are long,” he warned. “But not even your kind can fathom eternity.”
“You’re starting to hurt my feelings here, dude.”
The figure tapped something on the ground and some of the darkness under the hood drained away, revealing a grinning skull beneath. Red eyes winked at Taako from deep within the eye sockets.
Taako’s rabbiting heart dropped into his extremely stylish boots at the sight of the skull. It was like ice water had been injected into his veins. Instinct screamed for him to look away, to run, but he physically could not force his body to move. Fear he knew—he knew it better than he would ever admit—but this went beyond that. This was terror, pure and simple.
This was a bad plan. Oh sweet mother of shit, Taako had made some bad plans in his life but this may have just taken the cake. Stuck forever in the dark with fucking Skeletor. Fantastic. Should be a gas.
“You need to moisturize,” Taako said at last. He swallowed hard, his mouth completely dry. “I mean, you’re a little late to the game but better late than never, and I’ll be able to give you some pointers considering that we’re going to be roomies for, er…always.”
If a skull could look confused, this one did. But he recovered quickly and the darkness returned, obscuring his face again. “Fine.” He waved a hand that was not holding his weapon—a scythe, Taako noticed too late—as if it didn’t matter to him one way or another. “She goes, you stay.”
He gestured with the scythe and the cage door swung open. Before Taako could so much as turn to Lup, the figure reached inside and dragged his sister out.
“Lup!” Taako said, suddenly panicked. This was too fast, too sudden. He’d just gotten her back—he’d just gotten her back! Taako lunged, reaching for Lup’s hand, and made it all of three steps before whatever combination of desperation and adrenaline that had kept him running this far just straight dipped.
Oh shit. The world swirled and Taako went to his knees, hard.
Huh, he thought, detached from his useless, powerless body. So that’s what happens when you burn all your spell slots.
“Taako!” Lup called and through his wonky vision, Taako saw his sister rip away from the skeleton and drop to her knees beside him. “Why did you do that?” she demanded.
“I’m Taako, baby,” he said, somewhat nonsensically. Before she could answer, the skele-dude grabbed her upper arm and dragged her upright. Lup kicked and screamed, shooting sparks, but the skeleton was too strong. He slashed at the air with the scythe in his free hand and the world split open with a loud ripping sound.
“Taako I’m coming back!” Lup promised, still struggling. “I’m not leaving you here, I’m not!”
“That would be unwise,” the skeleton said.
Taako couldn’t do anything but watch as the skeleton pushed his sister through the portal and it started to seal up behind her.
“Taako!” Lup’s hand was the last thing he saw of her, and Taako had just enough presence of mind to catch what she hurled back through the gate before it could hit him in the head.
Taako caught Lup’s umbrastaff a split-second before the portal closed and then the loss of her hit him even harder than before.
She was gone and his chest was empty. Again. Lup was gone and Taako was stuck here, in the dark. Forever.
Well, fuck.