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Chapter Text

“No, hang on, sit up a second.”
Keyleth huffed, but pushed herself back up in to a sitting position, her back to Vax’ildan. She’d had him here six months now. The Raven Queen had been silent. It was starting to feel like she might not claim her debt, though Vax was still sure she would. Vax’s fingers started to trace through Keyleth’s hair, pulling it back in to a braid.
“Now you’re doing this?”
“If you lie with your back to me with your hair down, I get a nose full of it, it’s getting long again.”
“Would you rather I cut it off?”
Vax’s fingers had reached the nape of her neck. He touched his lips there for a second. “It’s your hair. You can do what you like with it. I’ll still love you.” He went back to braiding. “I just don’t like it up my nose.”
“If we lie the other way, you don’t-”
“Doing my hair’s hard. I can’t see it. And I would if you asked me to.” She felt the motion change from braiding to tying. “All done. Now you can go to sleep.” Keyleth turned and kissed him, then lay back down. He dropped in to the space behind her.
She had no need to change her form tonight, for which she was grateful. She’d had a frustrating day trying to mediate an argument between Whitney and Alyssum about what they should plant where, now the frosts had stopped. More than anything else, she resented being asked to stop the squabbling between two people more than twice her age. Vax had come in drenched and cold from a long Skysail lesson in the pouring rain. They’d more or less got him dry, but neither of them had wanted to do anything other than sleep, so Unsettling wasn’t needed. When she’d first bedded Vax, Unsettling had just been a chore, to make sure that a child didn’t take root in her. It was more than that now. It had been the source of a lot of laughing, particularly once she’d been able to become things other than beasts. If turning in to a little cat was enough of a change to Unsettle Vax’s seed, a Beholder had to be! It had certainly unsettled Vax. He’d jumped so violently he’d fallen off the bed, then looked back at her, somewhere between frightened and laughing, and told her to warn him if she was ever going to do that again.
“Or a Kraken, while I’m at it. Or a Rakshassa.”
Keyleth smiled to herself and nestled back against Vax’s chest. He didn’t mind the gold dragon wyrmling though, or the griffon.

“Vax.”
“Mh?” He’d been more than half asleep. Keyleth had just moved for the first time in ages.
“Listen.”
“What?”
“It’s stopped raining.”
Vax lay still for a minute and listened. Just wind. For the first time in days, he couldn’t hear rain. “’bout time too.”

After that there was darkness and quiet.

There was cold. Sudden cold down his spine. Vax opened his eyes and looked round. There was nothing. Just pitch darkness. No up, no down, no light. Sick dread landed in the pit of his stomach. He knew what this was. This was a reckoning. His Queen was calling to him. He wanted to speak, to ask her directly what she wanted, whether this was it, but he couldn’t move.
Then there was a single golden thread, distant in the dark. Vax looked at it. It stretched to the limit of his vision in both directions. He reached for it, because suddenly he couldn’t not. Then it wasn’t distant, it came to his hand. He saw the thread leading from his own chest, just touching the other at one point, then disappearing in to the darkness. Movement below, if there was a below. The vast porcelain face of The Raven Queen appeared, rising up beneath him, then diminishing to his size as she approached. This was it then.
“I have a task for you, my fate touched.”
“Ask of me what you will.” He could hear how heavy his voice was. She knew how he dreaded this. “I will do it.”
“See.” She set a bone hard hand to the side of his face. Her grip wasn’t harsh, but he felt that he could have thrown all of his strength in to struggling and been as weak as a kitten in her grasp. He schooled himself not to resist.
She spoke one word. That word reverberated through him like a thunderwave and his vision went dark.
Then it was less dark. There was ground below him and sky above, a crescent moon just visible through thick clouds. He was standing, wings unfurled above him. He felt strong. He felt capable. He stood in field lined with standing stones, a graveyard, he realised a heartbeat later. He looked around. A village was at his back, silent and still, woods before him. He paced forwards. To his right, a long row of fresh graves, the earth still mounded over them. Vax stooped to examine the nearest, then heard movement behind him. He turned. A jackal was pawing at the earth of the grave at the end of the row. As Vax looked, the jackal held a long-fingered paw out over the grave and twisted its fingers as though it was casting a spell. Something white rose up in to the jackal’s hand, no, mouth. It was a corpse. The little corpse of a child.
In that moment, Vax forgot the thief boy. In that moment, he was a paladin, a holy warrior. He stood to his full height, stretching his wings wide like an angry swan, and shouted at the raider.

“Away!”
Vax jerked and felt a warm body startle awake beside him. He pushed himself half upright and stared in to the dark.
“Vax?” The warm body beside him said, turning to face him. Keyleth. It was Keyleth. He was in their bed. His heart was hammering, he was running with sweat.
He curled forwards, elbows on his knees, head in his hands, still panting for breath. That had been his Queen, he had no doubt of that, and she meant for him to… That had not been a jackal. That had certainly not been a jackal. Something far eviler than a jackal was disturbing – or was going to disturb? Maybe? – the graves of children. And he was to defend them. Against what? And where was this thing? She’d really not told him very much. But this was not The Task. Somehow Vax suspected that this was not the doom she’d alluded to while he’d been dead. This was another task. But he still did not feel he could refuse.
“Vax, what did you see? Can you tell me?”
“I have to go.” He became sure of it as he said it. He saw fear flash in Keyleth’s eyes.
“What?”
“My Queen… she… I have to go. There’s something-” He told her the vision, the second half of it anyway. It was burned in to his eyes. He saw her face turning as he did so.
“And you think the jackal is…”
“A lich or a necromancer or something. She wants me to deal with it.” He swung his legs off the bed.
“Whoa, whoa, Vax, just… think a second.” She set her hands firmly on his shoulders. “Where are you even going?”
“I don’t know. It’ll be clear once I’m moving, I think.”
“You think?”
“I need to-” He started to move.
“Vax.” She did not let him go. “Stop.” He looked back at her. “It is the middle of the night, it’s pitch black out there, you don’t even have your wings back yet, you said you used them because you fell?” He couldn’t argue with that. “How are you even going to get anywhere?” That was also a fair point. He hadn’t thought that far. “Just… Wait for daylight.”
Vax sat still for a moment, then set his hands either side of her face and pulled her forehead to his. “When did you get so sensible, Voice of The Tempest?”
“So you’ll wait for daylight?”
“I’ll wait for daylight. If she lets me.” Vax dropped back on to the bed. He had a feeling he might not sleep, or that if he did, The Jackal would haunt him.

Chapter Text

Sleep left Keyleth fully in the cold, grey light of the pre-dawn. Wind was still buffeting the walls and door. Vax was fidgeting and twitching like a fevered child, but he had, for the most part, slept.
She could not lose him. She could not let him go and do this on his own. She wanted to go with him, with a dragon under her skin if things got bad, or Plane Shift if they were really desperate. But she also couldn’t leave. Not right now. She had stuff to manage and stuff to fix in Zephra. She doubted she’d be able to delay Vax until she was done and free to follow him. She had to find a way of reconciling these, and do it quickly.
She was The Voice of The Tempest. She was supposed to be able to do this. Her Ara Mente was supposed to have prepared her. If she couldn’t leave, she was supposed to either be charismatic enough to make Vax stay (not likely) or… find some other way of protecting him. There were spells of course, Pass without Trace, Guidance… but without knowing what he was going to have to do… And he had his own spells. He had his own means. Anyone who was going to hurt him would have to see him first. But if she’d learned anything on her Ara Mente it was that one lone thief was vulnerable. He’d so nearly been killed by The Briarwoods when he’d gone off on his own, then again trying to save Cassandra. He needed support. She remembered all too vividly grabbing his limp, pulseless hand to pull him out of the Water Plane, Kash and Zara scrambling to Vex’s side in the tomb… Alone, they would have died.
Kash and Zara. As Vox Machina, they’d sent Kash and Zara in their place because they’d been spread too thin. She was The Voice of The Tempest. Even if she couldn’t go herself, she could send other Ashari with Vax. The difficult part would be selling it to him.

Keyleth made sure she got up at exactly the same time as Vax, she could dress herself faster than he could get the Deathwalker’s Ward on. As soon as he was done, she took his hand and led him outside. His face was heavy and stern.
“Come on.” He said nothing. She lit her other hand and held it aloft as she made her way to The Meeting Place. All around them, Ashari were rousing, most who were up followed them. Vax looked puzzled, but didn’t protest.
Keyleth kept a firm hold of Vax as she turned to face her assembling people. Then it struck her that she had no idea what to say.
“Ashari.” Seemed a sensible place to start. “As most of you know, Vax’ildan is beholden to The Raven Queen. She has shown him a vision of an entity raising undead from the ground. This as much an aberration to her as it is to us. She compels Vax’ildan to confront this evil, but…” She couldn’t just say she was scared he’d get himself killed. “But by my hand, he will not face this danger alone. I want two volunteers to go with him, as scouts and fellow warriors.” A few hands went up. “Lasri, thank you, and…” Lasri was one of the traders, Ashari who went often to surrounding villages to barter for supplies. The next choice was less obvious.
“Headmistress?” One hand raised a little higher.
Keyleth drew breath slowly. “Palkan. Okay. Thank you.”
Vax looked at her. He said nothing. He still looked just… sad. What she’d said seemed to have worked. She’d got people to keep Vax alive. But had Palkan been a good choice? He was barely older than she was, and had much less experience of the world, but she knew how badly he wanted to see. Was it her right or her duty to shelter him?
She’d made her choice.

Vax stood looking at the two Keyleth had chosen. Lasri he’d met, she was a generation older than him and Keyleth, she’d not been born Ashari, she’d been adopted to it, like Vax had, so she was a little world wiser than most Ashari. Palkan was between him and Keyleth in age, coloured like a Marquesian man, but elf blood showed in him as well. Vax had never spoken to Palkan, but Keyleth had pointed him out. He’d been a childhood crush of hers.
“Right young man,” Lasri said. “Where are we going?”
“That way.” Vax pointed off the mountain to the south west.” Lasri frowned at him. “I have a direction, I’ll know when I get there.”
“And how fast can you fly, Kadithsi?” The Ashari lived on nicknames. Keyleth had at least six. Kadithsi was Vax’s only one to date, a shard of Primordial which, depending on context, meant ‘he flies’ or ‘feathers’. “So I know what to turn in to to keep up with you?”
Vax put his wings out by way of an answer and looped over the village. Lasri watched him, shading her eyes.
“Eagles?” Palkan suggested.
“Can you do a giant eagle? And how long can you fly for, Vax?”
“Not over an hour.”
“Giant eagles then.” Lasri said, then her body rippled and took the Giant Eagle’s shape. Palkan copied her. Vax looked West again, in to the wind. The cliff edge was only thirty feet away. He started running. He jumped in to the air, fanning his wings wide. The updraft here was fierce. He crossed his arms in to his chest and pulled against the air. Keyleth had once told him to breathe like a bird, timed against the beating of his wings, and it did help, even if they didn’t come from his body directly.

It was cold in the shadow of the mountain, the sun was only just rising. Vax found he flew faster than the druids, though they were keeping in the lee of his wings, so he slowed himself, gliding where the wind allowed. He didn’t have far to go, he realised after a few minutes of cold air. The mountains below began to open up in to forest. The water that usually trickled down from the peaks around Zephra was coming down in torrents. All the lakes were swollen. It was beautiful here. Whatever else, it was beautiful here. The unseen thread started to pull Vax southward. He pulled his right wing up, then cut across the wind, dropping height as he went. He would be smarter than his dream self. He would not drop directly on to his target, not unless he could see exactly what he needed to stick his daggers in to.

There. A town, still shrouded in shadow. Vax called a warning to the druids, then dropped sharply, cutting as low above the trees as he dared. He’d made a few mistakes with downdrafts or strong gusts before that had left him very bruised.

He flew on until he was probably only a few hundred feet from the edge of the town, then dropped, rolling the lead edge of his wings upwards and pushing back against his momentum. He was falling. He sighted the forest floor between the trees, flared his wings out to slow himself, then pulled them in before he hit branches. He twisted in the air like a cat and landed feet then hands. He sank over an inch in to the sodden ground. He straightened, shaking his hand off. He could hear Vex in the back of his head, scolding him for leaving so obvious a trail. Lasri and Palkan landed on the ground as eagles. Their wingspan was small enough to fit between the trees. Vax pointed mutely towards the town.
“Skeug Pass?” Lasri asked. Vax looked at her. “You’re going to Skeug Pass, the town just there? That’s where the evil you have to fight is?”
“I think so.”
“I’ve been there hundreds of times. It’s one of the places I go to buy grain. And something there is raising…”
“I don’t know.” Vax said. “But I think we should be very quiet.”

Chapter Text

Vax dropped to a half crouch as he moved, going from shadow to shadow, almost without having to think about it. Whisper had found its way in to his hand. As they closed the distance, Vax started to hear weeping. Strangely, that was comforting. He’d never heard undead weep.
The two druids behind him were making far too much noise, squelching through the mud. Vax knew where to place his feet to keep the noise low, they clearly didn’t.

Vax stopped at the treeline and looked. This was it. He was sure. His Queen made him sure. But it looked… normal. He drew a breath and reached out with the sense his Queen had given him. There was nothing there. No fiends, no undead, nothing. Just the sound of a woman weeping, and a dirty smell.

He came back to himself. Lasri was striding past him. Vax moved to stop her, but too late. She was fully out of cover, Palkan just behind her. And people said Vax had no caution. He hid his wings and followed, ten paces behind, turning his dagger in to the lee of his arm to make it less obvious. There would be no obscuring his tracks in this mud.
“Ulster!” Lasri called out.
A man in the street turned to face her. “Lasri.” He took in the three of them quickly. Vax avoided his eye. The man looked haggard, but he had to be younger than Vax was. “Lasri, get gone. Quick. There’s plague here.”
“Ulster, we were warned of a great evil here. We’ve come to help. What’s happening?”
The man wiped his face with his hand, smearing dirt across it. “I don’t know about a great evil, but… It’s flux. We’ve got a horrible flux. More than half of the little ones have to be sick by now. Six have died in three days.”
“Six.”
“Meurig’s twins, Arissa’s baby, Ieuan’s youngest, Krieg’s girl, Fynndra’s eldest. Six.”
A child’s body. That was what The Jackal had taken from the ground. That was what he’d been sent here to do, keep the dead children dead.
Lasri was still speaking. “The sickest children, Ulster. You know I can heal.”
“Flux as well as wounds?”
“Yes, flux as well as wounds. I can do maybe five children today. Palkan, you do know this spell, don’t you?” Palkan nodded. “Vax’ildan, can you heal?”
“Only-”
“Only is something. Come.” Lasri grasped him by the wrist and pulled him onward, feet slipping on the sodden ground. As they went, Vax felt his eyes drawn to the left. A graveyard, just beyond the houses. It called to him. He was to go there. But he could go with Lasri first. Even if he’d been sent here to guard the dead, he could try to reduce their number.

Ulster stopped outside the door of one of the hovels. This place was poorer than Byroden, by the look of it. And surely this smell wasn’t normal. It smelled like Stillben’s docks at low tide on a hot day.
Ulster opened the door. Vax bit the inside of his lip to stop himself recoiling from the smell. He saw Palkan cover his mouth. A woman looked up at them through the half dark. She was on her hands and knees, scrubbing thick, pale liquid from the floor. That, Vax realised, was the source of the smell.
“Ulster.”
“Beth, Ashari. They say they can help.”
The woman reached up like a supplicant towards Lasri. “Please.” She sounded more tired than Ulster looked. “Please. I think it’s taking him.” She glanced right. On a rough wooden cot lay a child, maybe four or five years old, breathing far too hard for one at rest. There was a bluish tint to the child’s skin, skin which seemed to cling oddly to his bones.
“White flux.” Vax said quietly. He’d seen this before. He’d been sick with it, so had Vex, when they’d just about been old enough to remember.
Lasri stepped up to the child, then looked gravely back at Vax and Palkan. “I do not compel either of you to stay. You risk yourselves by being here.”
Vax shook his head. “I’m not leaving.”
“Nor am I.” Palkan followed.
“Have either of you done this sort of healing before?” She asked. Vax shook his head. “It’s not like battlefield healing. You almost need to approach the disease and the child separately. True Restoration Magic to cure the disease, then if the child’s very weak, you need to give them strength as well, but don’t use a wounds spell.” Lasri set her hands on the child. Vax had seen Keyleth and Pike cast spells like this before, when the Rakshassa had cursed him among others. Lasri finished the cast, rocked back slightly as though she was dizzy, then steeled herself and started again. Keyleth, Pike, and Vex murmured their incantations, Lasri was singing hers, but somehow the rhythm of it was familiar. It was Pike closing a slash wound in his side from across a room full of Duregar, it was Keyleth trying to save him from Raishan. This time, the effect on the child was clear. His breathing settled and he lifted his head.
“Lie still, little one.” Lasri said, her voice was shaking with strain. Vax felt Pike would barely have noticed the effort. “Go to sleep. The worst is over.” Lasri set her jaw and looked at Ulster. “Next.”
Ulster looked left and right. “What?”
“Give me another child to heal, Ulster. Take me to one close to death.”

Ulster spluttered for a minute, then led the three of them back on to the sodden street. The second child he took them to was like the first, a thin, semi-conscious toddler lying on a cot soaked with stinking excrement, coming too fast to keep it clean. Ulster started to explain to the rest of the house that The Ashari had come to help, Lasri started to brace herself to cast again, Vax’s hearing suddenly muted.
“You.” He heard the voice in the silence and knew at once who it was. “Not her.”
Obedient, Vax pushed Lasri aside and laid both hands on the child’s clammy skin. He drew a breath and poured strength in to her. At once, she felt different to the touch. She blinked and looked up at him, eyes focusing now.
“Not yet, little one. You’ve a life to lead and children of your own to bear. No flux will take your youth from you.” Vax blinked. He had no idea where those words had come from.
The little girl seemed unmoved. “You’re funny.”
Vax shook his head. “Not arguing with that.”

Unfortunately, Vax only managed to heal two more children before he reached his limit. Palkan had managed five, Lasri seven in total, then an hour later, she’d been able to heal two more. They were not even half way there. Lasri and Palkan were going house to house, Lasri giving advice on nursing a child with White Flux, Palkan… doing whatever Palkan was doing. Vax was sitting in the graveyard, as his Queen had told him. Two men were digging graves. They hadn’t asked him to help, and Vax felt drained by the healing, so he hadn’t offered.
As noon approached, bodies were brought, little bodies shrouded in rough wool. One very tiny, then two together. He asked, and was told that they were the twins. Two little boys, Darrin and Cole. Only their mother had been able to tell them apart every time. Vax knelt by their graves and implored his Queen to show him how to protect them from whatever was coming. It could so easily have been his and Vex’s fate.
More than anything else, Vax wanted Pike. She might still have been able to do something for these, for their poor mother who knelt opposite him, still running with tears for hours after the grave was closed, until her husband came to take her away, back to her surviving child, one Palkan had healed. She’d asked neither explanation nor consolation from Vax. He had none to give. Pike would have known what to say.

Chapter Text

“Vax.” He turned. It was sun down. Lasri was standing at the edge of the graveyard. She looked exhausted. “Come in now. I’ve found beds for all three of us.”
He shook his head. “I’m staying here.”
“Vax-”
“It’s what I came here to do.”
Lasri sighed. “Please yourself. I’ll be back at first light. If you scream, I’ll come to you. I’m only in that house there, though all I’ve got left to my hand is Beast Shape.”

Vax settled himself in a tree at the edge of the graveyard, it felt like what Vex would have done. Anyone who looked hard would see his tracks and figure out where he was, but he still ought to see them first, as long as he didn’t fall asleep.

Darkness crept over. The sounds changed from birdsong to the quiet whispers of a forest at night. Vax was not used to being out on his own like this. He’d always had at least Vex with him. He’d hidden himself as best he could. He was cold, he was uncomfortable, but he was okay. He just felt vulnerable. He could deliver a few very heavy hits, he knew that, but he could not hold up in a long fight on his own. He hadn’t used his boots, but his wings were spent, and he could not heal himself.

Hours crept on. There was very little moonlight, clouds kept drifting across. Cold was creeping in to Vax’s joints, he knew it was making him stiff and slow. He shifted a little in his tree, but the leaves were still young and scant. Few places would hide him well. He’d do better to keep still.

Sound. Sound entirely unlike the soft whisper of trees or scuffles of night animals. Something that clicked and clunked, sometimes a clink like metal. Vax shifted and looked around. The sound was coming from the North, from the opposite side of the graveyard. He froze again, Whisper in hand. He waited.

Movement on the other side of the graveyard. A single skeleton staggered in to view, creaking and clattering in piecemeal armour. He was a paladin of The Raven Queen. There was only one thing to do. He weighed Whisper in his hand and threw. Vax saw the blade scatter the thing’s neck. It dropped like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Vax recalled the blade and waited. Surely skeletons didn’t wander alone.

Minutes crept by, then Vax lost track of time. Eventually, he tried to sense for more undead, but he felt nothing. Even the presence of one undead worried him. Skeletons didn’t just animate of their own accord. Someone had sent that thing. Hours passed. It grew colder.

Then the sky began to light above the mountains. Vax dropped from his tree, cold and stiff, and began to pace the graveyard, just to force some heat in to his hands and feet. He was tired. He’d not slept this night, and slept poorly the night before. He didn’t dare sleep though. Skeletons did not wander alone.

Lasri came back before the sun. She asked him if anything had happened, he pointed mutely to the skeleton.
“Where did that come from?”
“It walked in, from that direction.”
“That’s necromancy.”
“Yes.”
“But only one?”
“So far.”
“Have you slept?”
“No.”
“So you can’t heal either?”
“No.”
“Come in and sleep. You’ll be more use to everyone rested.”
“Will you watch here for me?”
Lasri hesitated. “I’ll go and do my first round of healing, then I’ll come back.”

The sun was just starting to touch the roofs of the village when Lasri returned, face downcast.
“What?”
“Lost another one in the night.” She replied. “The first one I was going to heal this morning. Her name was Heather. But her brothers’ll live. Now go and sleep. I need you healing later.”
“Are you any good at tracking?”
“Not very.”
“Will you just… look at this skeleton with me?”
“Why?”
“I want to know which direction it came from.”
Lasri sighed. “I can try. But then you have to sleep.”

How Vax missed his twin for the next twenty minutes. The leaf litter of the forest was disturbed in places, but neither Vax nor Lasri could tell what had been done by the skeleton and what had been done by foxes. Vax had a feeling that Vex would have just… done it, not even needed to think. Vax and Lasri gave up fairly quickly. Lasri urged him inside to sleep, but the thought made Vax uncomfortable, for reasons he couldn’t quite articulate. He lay down in the morning sun, in the middle of the graveyard, ignoring Lasri’s chastising look. This was his post. He was exhausted.

A cold hand on the side of his face.
“Be watchful, my champion” His Queen’s mask was before him. “And be awake. The worst is not yet.”

Vax gasped and woke. His fingers were digging in to the soft, wet ground. He looked around. It was daylight, but the sun was arcing west. Lasri was looking at him from under a tree.
“Good afternoon.” She said. “You slept half the day, I didn’t like to wake you.”
“Well given that I slept none of the night…” Vax got up and brushed himself off.
“Fair. Come on. We’ve work to do.”

Two people, a man and a woman, were standing by the entrance to the graveyard. As soon as Vax and Lasri made towards them, they rushed up, talking over each other.
“Good people-”
“Ashari-”
“My son.”
“My wife is-”
“I don’t know how he’s going to last the night.”
“She’s heavy with child and failing fast.”
Vax looked at Lasri for a lead as the two villagers clamoured over each other, both trying to push closer to them. Lasri froze for a second.
“Vax’ildan, go with her. I’ll with him, then come back here. There are more sick than we can fix today. We need to be clever about this.”

The woman had not been lying, the child she led him to was very weak. As Vax found Lasri again, another woman came to petition them, this time for her ailing father. Lasri replied sharply that she had chosen those closest to death to heal today, all others would have to wait, and sent the woman away. She left, calling a curse on Lasri’s father as she did.
Vax put a hand on Lasri’s shoulder. “There’s nothing to that curse.”
Lasri put her hand on Vax’s. “She can curse a dead man all she likes. It’s… It’s nothing. Come on. I’ve two more for you.”

Vax did as Lasri told him, then made his way back towards the graveyard.
“Ashari!” Another woman came running up to him.
“I cannot heal.”
“But my daughter is sickening. She’s getting worse. Will you not help her?”
“I am spent.” Vax turned to face her directly. “I’m no healer, I have very, very little magic, and what I had I have used. Ask Lasri, the woman, in the morning.”
Palkan was in the graveyard already, sitting in the evening sun. Two men were digging another grave.
“Hey.” Vax made his way towards them. They looked up at him, muddy and panting. “Is this for the little girl?” One of them nodded. “Can you bury an old body too?”
“What?”
“There’s a… Don’t panic, but there’s a skeleton at the tree line over there. I’ve dealt with it, it’s no threat to anyone-” Both men were making warding signs over themselves “but it needs to be treated as is fit. It did no evil, evil was done to it.”
“A raised skeleton?” One of them repeated.
“Yes.”
“Wildmother have mercy!”
“It’s really not a big problem. One skeleton isn’t a threat to an average horse. Just… help me do something sensible with what’s left of the poor thing.”

It took a bit more coaxing, and even after persuading them to dig the hole, the two men would not even think of touching the lifeless bones, nor cover them over. Vax and Palkan did that, while the little girl was buried on the other side of the graveyard. At sundown, Lasri returned.
“What do we do now?” Palkan asked her.
“That’s the real question, isn’t it.”
“I’m not leaving.” Vax said shortly. “You can if you must, but this is my charge. Where you find one undead, you tend to find more. There’s worse to come.”
“Don’t be silly, Vax. I wasn’t even suggesting that. I meant do we send for help. I don’t know whether three of us can hold this, but if we send someone for help, there’ll only be two, and it’ll be a full day’s labour lost.”
“It didn’t take us that long to get here.”
“It’s not about that, it’s about using Beast Shape to make sure we don’t carry disease back to Zephra with us. There are rules. Any of us could have the disease already and just not be showing it yet.”
“How many children are there here?” Palkan asked. “Eventually we’ll have got round them all.”
“I think we wait.” Lasri said. “At least another day or two, we try to contain this ourselves. Obviously if we come under serious attack that’s a problem, but we should be alright for a while.”

Chapter Text

Again, Vax didn’t leave the graveyard to sleep, his Queen’s warning ringing in his ears. He paced for the first part of the night, to keep the cold at bay, wearing a perimeter track between the trees. When he got tired, a little after midnight, he climbed a tree and just listened. He had no idea how long it was before he heard movement in the trees to his right, away from the village. Whisper came to his hand. He breathed out slowly. Whatever this was, it wasn’t a skeleton. It was moving clumsily, breaking twigs on the ground with heavy footfalls.

There. Coming between the trees, a human figure, but bent forwards, stumbling, stinking. He’d seen these before, in Whitestone. And there was more than one of them. Six. Vax crept forward along his branch slightly. He felt it bow, but he didn’t think it would break. Whisper flew. It sank through one zombie’s eye. It crumpled. All five of the others turned to face him and started forwards. They’d have to climb a tree to reach him. He threw again, two daggers this time. Both hit, but the blasted thing didn’t go down. He kept throwing. He’d only brought two down by the time they got to the bottom of his tree. Even in these temperatures, the smell was nauseating, and he could hear their low groans as they reached up for him. But he was in a tree. The sight of rotting, lifeless hands reaching towards him might once have bothered him, but he was not the boy who’d run away from Syngorn. He was not afraid. He stood his ground, took his time, throwing both daggers in to each zombie in turn, then recalling the daggers and throwing again. Being zombies, they didn’t learn. They had no counter to it.

Vax waited a few minutes to be sure it was over, then jumped to land clear of the corpses, mostly to put some space between himself and the smell. He glanced up. Still hours to go before dawn. He chose another tree, on the other side of the graveyard, and climbed.

But he could not be still. It bothered him to leave six bodies lying stinking like that. After maybe an hour of stillness, Vax got down from the tree. He picked up one of the discarded spades and started to dig, pausing often to listen. He felt vulnerable; the sound of his spade would muffle anything else. What he wouldn’t have given for just one more person, to take turns watching and digging. But the digging kept back the cold, and he thought he’d have trouble getting the townsfolk to bury zombies.

Vax dug to about thigh-depth, then stopped. Any deeper, he’d be far too easy to ambush. He jumped up out of the pit and listened. Movement. He backed away from the pit and crouched in the shadow of a headstone, holding his breath. The movement was coming closer, from the East again. He drew two daggers. He could hear them coming, stumbling, staggering, moaning quietly. Zombies. Probably a group of similar size to last time. Alright. He hadn’t used wings or boots yet.

Light flashed to Vax’s right. What? Never mind. He threw. The first zombie buckled. Four more yet. The light was making it harder to see. He darted back towards the tree line. He ought to be able to make them lose him. The light followed him, right in his face, blinding him in the dark. What was this thing? He could still hear the zombies, but they didn’t seem to be coming towards him. He swatted at the light with one hand. Nothing happened. It stayed right in his face. He threw past it blind, he heard his daggers hit something, but he could barely see anything. The light in his face –

Pain shot through his eye. The light had stung him. Vax yelped, more in shock than pain, and slashed at it. Whisper hit, Whisper seemed to catch in it, harm it somehow, the Dagger of Venom didn’t. He tried again with Whisper, staggering backwards. The light went out. All he could see was its burn on his eyes. And there were still zombies. He stumbled, blind in the dark, shaking his head as though to clear it. He still had sound. But might he do better to hide until his vision cleared?

He backed away in to the trees. What if there were more behind him. He turned his head, still nearly blind. No. Nothing seemed to be moving here. He looked back at where the rest of the zombies had been. They were still there, gathered around the newest grave, digging like dogs with bare hands. That was the strategy. The light had been a diversion. They were after the children’s bodies. He threw, one dagger after the other. One zombie went down. The other four didn’t look up. Light flashed in Vax’s face again, and suddenly that was all he could see. Vax swore at the light and pulled his head away, slashing at it. Again, he felt Whisper connect and the light went out. But he was blind again. He could not let the zombies make off with the corpse. If he rushed in, they would have to stop digging to deal with him. There were only four of them. They were only zombies. But he was not made for sustained hand-to-hand combat. He could not let them take Heather’s body.

He turned his daggers in his hands.
“Jenga.” He knew nobody could hear him. He dashed forwards, stumbling over ground he couldn’t see, and stabbed at sound. He felt Whisper hit something moving. Then they stopped ignoring him. Even mostly blind, he knew they were going for him. He rolled away, off the back of the one he’d hit, felt two blows pass above him, one to his right, but something connected with the side of his hip. He tensed his jaw. It didn’t hurt that much. He stuck both daggers in to the back of the one he was behind. His sight was starting to clear. It went down. But it had been his cover. He sensed rotting legs kicking at him. One he saw in time, he felt two impacts. He’d been inside a dragon. And a Kraken. This wasn’t bad. Not really. He got up and changed targets. He could sort of see now. He drove his daggers in either side of the next zombie’s neck and levered to break it. Hard on a living target, but zombie flesh was weak. He saw the hits from the other two coming. He weaved round them and stabbed the next one. He saw the head dislocate, the zombie faltered, then the bones snapped themselves back in to place as it swung at him again. Great. He ducked and drove Whisper up through its jaw. And it was still going. He felt the other’s fist connect with his side as he stabbed it again. He felt its eyeball rupture and spew liquid across his hand. But it went down. He turned to the last.
“Your turn.” He jammed both daggers in to its chest. It did not go down. But it also didn’t get a real swing at him. He withdrew Whisper and stabbed again. It dropped.

Vax stood among the bodies, panting. Zombies didn’t come alone. Something was sending them. It knew they’d failed last night, so it had sent more. How much worse could it get? Vax felt a bit bruised, but he knew he wasn’t badly hurt. Five zombies, and whatever that light thing had been, had been more unsettling than dangerous to him. But he’d seen armies of them in one place, in Whitestone. Against that sort of force, he’d have no hope. He’d be swallowed. Pike would be able to do something, probably, if she were here.

After a while, he dragged the bodies away from the little girl’s grave, and undid the damage they’d done to it. The sky was lightening by the time he’d finished. He was tired. Suddenly, he bitterly missed Grog. Big and loud to draw fire, tough enough to take it, and strong enough that he could have dug and buried all these bodies between now and sun-up, and Vax could have watched his back while he did. Vax went back to his original seat in the tree. It was cold now. He didn’t have Grog. He didn’t have Grog or Pike or Scanlan or any of them. Or even Vex. He’d never been away from her this long before. He’d wanted this, so had she, they both had lovers, it was time for them to learn who they were when they weren’t The Twins. But there were plenty of days when her absence felt like a missing hand. Particularly when he was cold, bruised and tired.

Chapter Text

Lasri found him a couple of hours later, sitting amid a pile of corpses, too tired to dig, too afraid to sleep.
“Stench of The Hells, Vax!” He looked up at her. “What happened?”
Vax mutely at the corpses. “Twelve in all, and a… glowing thing.”
“Are you hurt?”
“Not really. Just tired. I’m too quick for them.”
“But you can deal with this.”
“I can deal with a dozen zombies, the problem is…” He sighed. “I don’t know how bad this is going to get. Skeletons? Fine. Zombies? Fine, unless there’s an army of them. Giant zombies? Ogre zombies? Beholder Zombies? That’s different. If we get in to vampires or a full grown lich, I’m gone.”
Lasri sighed. “I don’t know what half those things are but at simplest: You won, you don’t need healing, but you’ve…” She gestured at the corpses. “What do you do with those things?”
“Bury them. They’re dead bodies.”
“Okay. I’ll find you help with that while I do my first round of healings, then I’ll come back and watch while you sleep.”

Vax dragged himself to his feet and went back to digging. After a little while, two older men wandered in to the graveyard.
“Druid man?”
“I’m not a druid.”
“… What are you then?”
“Good question. Are you here to dig?”
They nodded, but both of them were looking past him at the bodies. “Where did they come from?”
“I don’t know, but they want burying.”

Sometimes Vax forgot how inured he’d become to monsters and magic and necromancy and whatever else. Neither villager took their eyes off the corpses for more than a few seconds at a stretch, however many times Vax assured them that they weren’t a threat. Vax was too tired to pay the bodies any heed at all. He felt he should have, as a paladin of The Raven Queen, but he was too far gone at this point. When it came to it, the villagers also refused point blank to touch the bodies, so Vax dragged them, one by one, in to the pit. It should really have been a foot deeper with that many bodies in it, but Vax didn’t care. It got them out of sight and deadened the smell.

Lasri came back as they started filling the hole in. Vax dropped to the ground in the sunshine, exchanging barely a word with her. He slept, he woke, he healed the three Lasri directed him to, though people came rushing up to them in the street and begged and threatened them to change their course, to attend to their children instead. Lasri seemed to have a system. Vax didn’t question her.

When he was spent, he went back to the graveyard. The new grave was filled in and the workmen were long gone. It’d be what it’d be. He’d started to make his way to a tree he could climb easily when he sensed movement behind him. He turned. A woman, probably ten years his senior. She was staring at him.
“Druid?”
“I’m no druid.”
“But you’re a healer, yes?”
“I’m spent. I can’t do any more tonight.”
There was a pause. “Come and look at my son.”
“I can’t do any more tonight.”
“Come and look at my son.”
“I can’t do anything for him. Talk to-”
“I don’t believe you.” She’d closed the distance between them down to three paces. “Even a man who says he’s exhausted can still run from a wolf. There’s always a little bit left.”
“For physical strength, yes. Magic is different. I have nothing.”
“I don’t believe you.” She stepped right up to him. “You will not let my son die.” Metal glinted in her hand.
Vax sighed. “Put your knife away. However fast you think you are, I’m faster. If you cut me, I will cut you back, and I won’t heal your son.”
She stood staring at him for a long moment. Then she lunged forward. It was an utterly predictable strike. She had no idea what she was doing with that blade. Vax grabbed her wrist and twisted, just hard enough to make her yelp and drop the knife in to his waiting hand. He held her there.
“Put. The knife. Away. I haven’t got the patience for this.” He put the knife, hilt first, back in to her hand, and pushed her back. “Go home. Do what you can for your son. Talk to Lasri in the morning. I have work to do here.” She stood still for maybe ten seconds. “Go home. The next time you try that, I’ll break bones.” She was breathing hard, tears starting in her eyes. Whatever state her son was in, Vax couldn’t heal, and you didn’t get help by demanding it with a blade.

Vax made his way up the tree. The woman left a few seconds later. Vax waited, alternating pacing a perimeter and waiting somewhere he ought to be difficult to see. There was no moon tonight. Thick cloud obscured it. Time was harder to track. It felt like hours passed with nothing but the movements of night animals in the quiet.

Then something bigger. Vax pressed himself in to the hollow of a tree and listened hard. Footfalls. Stumbling footfalls, and lots of them. Vax set his jaw and drew his daggers. They were coming from the South this time. Vax waited. He wanted to know what he was up against before he attacked.

Zombies. Five, seven, ten, thirteen, sixteen, and still they came. They were going straight for the graves, twenty-two in all. Vax threw his first pair of daggers. Two zombies dropped. The others didn’t look up. He recalled his daggers and threw again.

Sudden light flared across his eyes, blinding him. He swore and slashed, blinking at the bright red burns across his vision. There was more than one of the lights. He needed to change the rules. He clicked his heels together and unfurled his wings, pushing himself upwards against the air. All he could see was light and dark. Two little lights in his face, falling away behind him, and dull, clouded light above. Everything else was dark. He threw at the lights in sequence, as fast as he could cycle his daggers, then both disappeared at once. They’d be back. This was respite, not a victory. There were a lot of zombies moving, digging. He could make out the mass of them, but not individual outlines. He threw near-blind, he couldn’t see enough to Hunters Mark, and they knew he was there, surely. He couldn’t really tell how much damage he was doing. Just as his vision began to clear, light flared in his face again. Vax back-flapped instinctively and slashed at it twice before it vanished. He circled quickly, he doubted it could fly as fast as he could. He kept throwing at the zombies, more by sound than sight. He just had to hope he didn’t fly in to anything solid. He thought he was high enough to avoid the trees.

Slowly, his vision began to clear. He kept throwing. He was about to lose Haste, surely. He’d just about got enough sight back to cast Hunter’s Mark on one of the zombies when the light caught him again. He shouted at it in frustration and slashed at it with the Flametongue dagger, recalling Whisper as he did. He got one more hit on it before it disappeared again.

Where was the other one? He felt his Haste fade. Everything around him sped up. Suddenly, this felt a lot worse. He couldn’t even see to count the things. He wanted nothing more than to just perch on the nearest roof and snipe at the zombies, just steady himself a bit. He couldn’t rest, not even for a moment, not until nothing dead was moving. But he’d leave himself open to the lights if he stopped flying. He set his jaw and kept going.

“You want me to clear the undead out of this graveyard?” He growled, making two throws. “Fine. I’ll clear all the undead out of this graveyard.” He recalled his daggers and threw again. He felt his Hunter’s Mark break and moved it on. “Over.” He threw. “And over.” He threw. “And over.”

His sight was coming back. He flew a low pass over the cluster of zombies. Most of them were down, three still moving. He was still reluctant to land. Those lights might just be waiting for him. Between Hunter’s Mark, Whisper, and he couldn’t stop himself from smiting just a bit, he was angry, he dropped the next two zombies easily. The last one, he wanted to feel. It was still digging at Heather’s grave with bare hands. Vax landed on its back and stabbed downwards. It made an effort to save itself, but he was far too fast for it.

He stood atop a pile of stinking dead, panting. This was getting worse. There was a dull, throbbing pain at the back of his eyes, presumably from the lights, which still hadn’t reappeared. Were they spies, retreating to report somewhere? Or had he actually killed them with his flailing about?

After a minute, Vax went back to a tree, just to be further from the stinking corpses. He threw his daggers and recalled them, rather than putting them away. His head still hurt. As the adrenaline and the anger began to fade, quiet dread started to dig in. This was getting worse. He was isolated here. If he’d had to do that fight without wings or boots, and if it happened again tonight, he would do, that would have been very different. Twenty of them could have pulled him to bits at close quarters.
“I might not be enough for this.” He said, quietly. “If you want me to do this, I’ll do it or die trying, but I might not be enough to save them.”

Chapter Text

Dawn came slowly. There was dense cloud cover today, and it was colder. When Lasri came, she saw the pile of rotting bodies and just stopped, staring for a moment.
“P’thusi. Vax! Vax’ildan!”
“I’m here.”
“Are you alright?”
He dropped down from the tree. “More or less. I’m tired.”
“There must be…”
“Twenty. And two incorporeal… things.”
“But you managed.”
“I managed.”
“Well done. I’ll see if we can get these things buried while I do my first round. We’re still not on top of the sickness.”

She left. Vax dropped to the ground and put his head in his hands. He was freezing, but he was too tired to do much about it. All he could do was hang on. He wasn’t sure how long it was before he managed to kick himself to his feet and start pulling the bodies away from Heather’s grave. The smell made him heave every so often, but he had nothing in his stomach to lose.

Three men came just as Vax started un-doing the zombies’ damage to the grave. He turned to face them. They were just staring at the bodies.
“We need a bigger hole.”
“Where did they come from?”
“They walked here.” Vax said flatly. “They need burying.”
“They-”
“It’s been happening for days now. Get over it.” The three of them looked at each other with disgust, but did start digging. Vax started moving bodies.

Lasri came back after an hour or two, bringing with her mourners and another body, an adult this time. An old man. Lasri had been prioritising children.
“I’ll watch here.” She said, walking over to him. “You can sleep now.”
Vax nodded once.
“Lasri,” He said after a moment, “I… Can you call for help? For more people?”
She hesitated. “Not… Not easily.”
“Can you skywrite? I’ve seen Keyleth do that before.”
“I, well…” Lasri sighed. “The Headmistress can do a lot of things that I can’t do.”
“If you were to put The Ashari symbol-”
“Not today, Vax.” Lasri said flatly. “You know we chose our spells in meditation in the dawn. I can’t skywrite today. And we’re managing.”
“Lasri,” Vax got up, went right up to her, and lowered his voice. “Lasri, last night took… I can’t do that again, not now.” He would be able to if he slept, but that wouldn’t help his case.
Lasri nodded. “There’s nothing I can do right now, Vax. Go to sleep.”
He didn’t have the will to fight any longer. He curled up on the grass.

A scream woke him. Then a series of reverberating screams. He looked around. Lasri was gone. It was broad daylight. The screams were coming from the town, away from the graveyard. Vax staggered upright and ran, cold, stiff, stumbling. The screams weren’t fading. They were easy to follow. He went on, right through the village and out the other side.

Skeletons. Five of them, advancing with swords on two terrified looking villagers with spears, five more further back. Lasri was ahead of him, frozen.
“Wild Shape!” Vax shouted. “Lasri, Wild Shape, now! And get in there!” Vax jumped at the first and dragged it down, trying to pry its frame apart with his daggers. It went still. Something moved beside him. A wolf. But Lasri was still there. The wolf grabbed another skeleton’s leg and pulled it over, on to Vax’s waiting knives. Palkan. The wolf was Palkan.
“Lasri!” Vax repeated. The villagers were doing nothing. Palkan was doing a reasonable job grappling the skeletons so Vax could do the damage, and he seemed to have realised that that strategy worked. Five down. Five more were coming now.
The wolf was bleeding from a slash on its side, never the less it turned to face and looked up at Vax. Vax nodded and ran forwards, keeping pace with the wolf. There was no sense in stealth now, but the wolf still helped him. The wolf distracted the skeletons and made them turn their backs to Vax. Then they couldn’t get their arms between their necks and his blades. Three left. Two left. One left. Done.
Vax dropped to his knees, panting. Palkan was bleeding in wolf form, Vax could feel a few scrapes, but he wasn’t really hurt.
Then he noticed Lasri. She was just making her way to them.
“Was that..?”
Vax nodded grimly. “Two or three times a night since we got here. That or worse.” He couldn’t have been asleep more than an hour. He could feel tiredness dragging at him.

Something turned his head. Something made him get up. He shook his head. That was the call of His Queen. The graveyard! He’d abandoned the graveyard! He swore and started running. No wings, no boots. They were spent. Just running. He should have called the others to follow him. Palkan was. He didn’t glance back for Lasri.

He heard a scream before he saw them. He saw three men running from the graveyard. He ran past them.
Six zombies, digging like dogs at one of the three-day old graves. Vax swore and unloaded at them, cycling three daggers twice before he got to there, Palkan only a pace ahead of him.
But these things were harder than skeletons, the flesh gave them resilience bare bones didn’t have. Three went down before the wolf screamed and Palkan fell to the ground. Keyleth would have just changed again. Keyleth would have snarled and kept fighting. But Palkan didn’t have Keyleth’s experience; Keyleth’s fight-or-die. Palkan had almost frozen with shock. He’d probably never been beaten out of Wild Shape before.
The three that were still standing had enough sense to get on all sides of him. Without haste and without wings he was stuck. This was where Pike’s maul or Grog’s axe was much, much better than daggers. He hesitated only a second. He threw himself forward, risking the hits from behind. He took both daggers to the one before him. It only deflected one. It crumpled. At the same instant, purple pain burst across his back. He coughed and felt the movement pull at the injury. Ouch.
He was still standing. He had to keep going. As he turned, he sensed something massive behind him. A bear. A great brown bear. For one stupid moment, he thought it was Trinket. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t armoured, or quite big enough. But it was drawing the zombies. That made it easier.
When the bear had dropped the last one, Vax dropped to the ground, panting. The bear turned in to Lasri. Of course. Palkan was on his feet. For a long moment, nobody spoke.
“Are you hurt?” Lasri said.
Vax shook his head.
“Just dazed.” Palkan said. “I knocked heads with one.”
“That’s what it’s been like.” Vax said softly. “Or worse than that. Every few hours, every night. Lasri-”
“I don’t have Skywrite, Vax.” She said. “Not today. I can’t do it until dawn tomorrow. If any one of us goes back, we risk carrying the plague back with us. We just have to last.”

And it went on. The rest of that day and in to the night, they came. Never big groups, sixes and sevens, but never more than an hour or two between them. Palkan went to bed very early with the aim of getting up to help Vax as early as he could. Lasri stayed up, and fought until second beast shape was too battered to go on. Vax knew his aim was dulling, he was missing shots he ought to have made. Skirmish after skirmish faded in to a grey haze of exhaustion. He dared not sleep, but he wasn’t fully awake.

He prayed. He prayed in to a space beyond words and beyond reason; a different kind of desperate to his first prayer to her, heavy with the knowledge that he was failing. His heart was willing, but his body could not sustain this. In the dark of the night, he was alone. In his Queen’s silence, he called his sister’s name, and Keyleth’s.

Chapter Text

Palkan came back before dawn as a wolf and stood beside Vax until the next group came. It was easier with the wolf, but Vax knew he was waning. He was taking hits and feeling them now, in a way he hadn’t before. He was too tired to dodge and never felt safe enough to tend his injuries properly. He knew he needed sleep.

When dawn came, he didn’t see Lasri. He only saw her Skywrite, the symbol of the Ashari high above.
“Kiki.” He breathed, wiping gore-laden daggers on the grass. “Please.”
He heard something move in the brush and jumped. A crow. Come to bother the bodies. He couldn’t even summon the energy to count those he and Palkan had felled.

He didn’t see her until she was almost upon him. She fell like a thunderbolt out of the sky, wings half bent, head down, legs stretching forward to catch herself. When she spread her wings fully to slow herself, and he saw the train of smaller birds behind her, he knew what she was. The eagle back-flapped so close to him that he felt the wind of her wings push his hair back, then Keyleth stood before him, Spire of Conflux in her hand, mantle on her shoulders. Tiberius had called her a princess. She was a queen.

“Vax.” She set her hands on the sides of his neck and glanced about. “What happened? You look awful.” Five more druids fell out of the air behind her. Vax drew a breath to answer, but Keyleth was ahead of him. “So this is the graveyard, and the bodies…”
“Zombies.”
“Raised from here or..?”
“No. They walk in.”
“Where are Lasri and Palkan?”
“I don’t-”
“Headmistress!” Lasri’s voice behind him. “I… I did not expect you.”
“You called for help.” Keyleth said shortly. “Tell me everything.”

Lasri did. The White Flux, the torrent of illness faster than they could heal, the undead creeping in first by night, then by day. Vax zoned out. Keyleth and the others listened without interrupting, Palkan joined before Lasri had finished.
“Why didn’t-” Keyleth started, then stopped herself. “What have you got left, you three?”
Palkan shook his head. “My shapes. That is all.”
“About half of my first burst.” Lasri said.
“Vax?”
“What?” Vax roused slightly.
“What have you got left?”
“Nothing.” Keyleth looked blankly at him for a second. “No wings, no haste, no magic. Just blades.”
“He won’t leave the graveyard.” Lasri said.
Keyleth opened her mouth, shut it again, and took a deep breath through her nose. “Vax, how long has it been since you slept?”
“Properly?” It felt like a very long time. “Day and a half maybe?”
Keyleth took his hands in hers and started to murmur words. Her hands were warm, then the grey haze of exhaustion thinned. It wasn’t gone, but he felt lucid, in a way he hadn’t for what felt like a long time.
“Thank you.” He said quietly.
“Headmistress, there are still a lot of people with White flux, they’re sickening faster than we can heal them.”
“We need fighters.” Keyleth said. “As for the rest of us, we’re going to gather those that need help, once the disease itself is gone, I can deal with the effects of it in batches of six, at least three batches, four if I have to. You still need to sleep.”
“I won’t leave the graveyard.”
“Fine. We work in turn then. Iltis, stay here with him. If you have to fight, use up your wild shapes first. We preserve as much magic as we can for healing.” She stood up. So did everyone else. Something moved in the brush. Vax caught her arm and pointed.

Eight of them. Zombies shambling in to the sunlight. Vax drew a dagger in each hand and started throwing. Keyleth just raised her staff. Bright, huge hailstones burst in to existence above the zombies and crashed down upon them, caving heads and chests. Vax recalled his daggers. Nothing over there was moving now. Keyleth breathed out.
“The staff only does destructive spells. Come on.”

Vax sat down on the ground again. Iltis looked at him as though he was considering joining him, then didn’t. A few days ago, he might have thought about trying to find a shovel and dig a pit for the growing pile of bodies, but he was too far gone now. Iltis, though, didn’t seem to be. He found a spade and started lifting turf. After a while, two men came and joined him. They tried to talk to Iltis, Iltis was more vocal than usual, and seemed to be using magic to speed the digging up. When they came to dragging bodies over to the pit, Vax thought he better had help. The ones Keyleth had killed were still frozen solid in parts.

When they were only four feet short of the surface, Iltis shunted the pile of earth back over the bodies with a wave of his hands.
“It’s a cantrip.” He said quickly. “I can do this all day.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”

Keyleth came back in a little over an hour.
“Iltis, go to Lasri.” She looked… off. Out of sorts somehow; ruffled or just drained by so much casting. “Any more activity over here?”
Iltis and Vax shook their heads. Iltis started to walk away. Keyleth walked over to Vax and pulled him in to her arms.
“Are you okay?”
“More or less. Just… tired.”
She drew back. “Then you need to sleep. I’ll keep you warm.” She dropped to the ground. Vax followed her. “Minxie?”
“Sure.”
Keyleth’s form rippled and she was a tigress. She dropped on to her side and sighed deeply. Vax knew that for an invitation. He crawled in to the space between her front legs and buried his hands in her fur. He felt rather than heard a soft purr. She pulled one of her legs across his back, holding him to her. He buried his face in her fur. Here, surely, he could sleep. He had an archdruid beside him. Surely he was safe.

Vax had been asleep now for about three hours. Keyleth had had to get up once in that time, to deal with a pair of zombies, and even that hadn’t woken him. He must be exhausted. The rest of her force were checking the rest of the villagers for signs of illness, she’d healed a dozen of the sick on her own. Pike would have been able to do even more, but they would be enough between them. All she had to do now was watch the graveyard for Vax. She’d done what she could for the living. She wasn’t quite willing to give up her Shapechange to do the last few. The others could handle that.
Footsteps behind her. She looked round. Lasri.
“Headmistress.” Keyleth flipped her ears back for a second and glanced at Vax, still asleep beside her. Lasri lowered her voice before she continued. “There are none left with signs of illness now, all are healed. More may still arise. I would not wish to send any Ashari away. Would you agree?” Keyleth nodded. She wanted to add that nobody could go straight from a plague town to Zephra, and that, given how worried Vax obviously was, she doubted this was it. She had a horrible feeling there was something much nastier than zombies hanging around. But doing either would have meant dropping Minxie, and she didn’t want to do that.

Noon came and went, still Vax slept. It was late afternoon, and Keyleth was wondering when her Wild Shape was going to run out, before he rolled over and lifted his head.
“What time is it?”
She started to reply, then realised that Minxie’s throat couldn’t do it. Maybe now she could drop her form.
“Afternoon.” She propped herself up on her elbow. “Maybe evening. You slept.”
“I was tired.”
“You feel better?”
He nodded. “She still wants me to stay here.”
“Do you know why?”
“The Jackal walked on two legs.”
Strangely enough, Keyleth felt she knew what he meant.
“Is there still healing to do?”
“Not right now, I don’t think.”
“Seriously?” She nodded. “Huh. Well done.”
“It wasn’t just me.” She sat up. Vax sat up beside her.

Vax watched Keyleth be The Headmistress over the next few hours. As the healing slowed down, Ashari gathered in the graveyard. Keyleth set some to patrol in wild shape, some to find billeting for the rest of them, but she kept a presence in the graveyard. Though no more came. The shadows lengthened and dusk fell, but no more undead came.

Vax, Keyleth, Iltis, and another druid called Orua, remained. Everyone else was sleeping. The long silence was not making Vax comfortable. The longer they waited, the more restless he became. He felt he was waiting for a blow to fall. There was no moon, nor stars. Thick black cloud covered all. Keyleth had carefully chosen those with darkvision to watch the night.

Chapter Text

Hours passed before he felt it. Something was coming. Something profoundly corrupted. He felt the hair at the nape of his neck stand up.
“Look to the North.”
He turned his head and breathed a warning to Keyleth. He couldn’t hear anything, not yet. He slunk towards the treeline, breathing hard, looking for a deep shadow to hide in. Something was coming.

It was maybe a minute and a half before he heard them. The stumbling footfalls of four, no, five zombies, and something moving more intentionally. Then he saw a light, floating through the trees, maybe seventy feet away.
He raised a hand to his earring. This time, he had help.
“Kiki, five zombies, a floating light thing, and something else. I’m waiting until they’re close.”
“How close are they together?”
Vax shifted his head a little. “Hard to tell in the trees, quite close.”
“I’ll hit them with ice then. Keep out of there.”

He waited. He waited until the shambling thing furthest forward was breaking the treeline, then he threw. A heartbeat later, ice poured down from nowhere in to the group as they came. As the thudding and cracking came to a halt, there was silence. Then something moved in the cold. Vax drew breath to shout a warning as it raised a hand towards Keyleth. He saw the bolt of sickly green energy and shouted. He heard Keyleth scream but couldn’t see her. He ran forwards, he had to get to her. He heard two other shouts. Then he saw the dragon.

A gold dragon, bigger than Raishan, reared up in the graveyard, beating its wings and setting trees waving. She was okay. She was okay, she’d just Shapechanged. Now Vax could see the figure properly, hooded and cloaked, it looked humanoid. It was not looking at him. It was looking at the dragon. He threw two daggers at it. Both hit. It shouted in pain and turned to look at him. As their eyes locked, Vax knew. This was it. This was his task. This was the one his Queen had sent him to slay.

The hooded figure raised a hand to him now. He saw his mouth form a word, he saw that same beam of sickly green energy come for him. It hurt. It hurt enough that he doubled over and gasped, that his vision went white for a moment, but he knew that the Deathwalker’s Ward had taken the brunt of it. He straightened up. He saw fire flash around the hooded man, the jackal, hot and blue from Keyleth’s mouth. Vax clicked his heels together and unfurled his wings while the fire died down enough to see. The man was screaming. Vax threw a dagger at him. Keyleth’s fire died as quickly as it had come. As Vax recalled Whisper, the hooded figure was casting again. A dense fog cloud formed around him, Keyleth’s dragon form snorted and pulled her head back, then bit in to the unknown. The cloud dispersed. Vax just started throwing as soon as he had a mark. They had their rhythm now. Keyleth bit and clawed at the flailing man, grabbing parts of his tattering clothing, Vax threw knives, the other two druids threw spells. Once Keyleth had him, it took seconds.

Keyleth spat the corpse out disdainfully and shook her huge, shining head. Vax approached. So this was it. This was the cause of all their trouble. One little human, bloody, one eye burst, one arm half pulled off, clothes and skin charred and smoking in places. Yet he felt his Queen say so, this was it, or very nearly it.

Keyleth held her form for a few minutes after silence had fallen, just in case. She knew she’d taken a lot of hurt from that first hit; dropping the dragon form, which was barely grazed, would mean pain. But she’d have to do it sooner or later, and the danger seemed to be past. She relaxed, felt herself shrink and fell to the ground with a sigh, staff still in hand. Now everything hurt. Her mouth was dry, her head ached, her muscles ached and burned. Necromancers.
She had very little left she could heal herself with, most of her spells were gone. Maybe she should just sit down for a while, catch her breath and see how she felt. She closed her eyes. Not five seconds later, she felt a hand on her shoulder. She opened her eyes. Vax. She felt his hand warm, and her headache eased, the burn in her muscles stilled a little.
“Thank you.” She said quietly. He didn’t reply. He withdrew his hand and walked away, not looking at her. “Vax?” He kept walking. “Vax.” She got up and started after him, Iltis and Orua were staring. She didn’t care.

Vax was pacing a circle round the graveyard, but his gait was… wrong. It wasn’t the light step of the thief, it was… fearless, slow, almost feminine somehow.
“Vax.” She went to put a hand on his shoulder, but he turned, fast as ever, and caught her wrist.
“Do not fear.” His eyes were coal black, even the whites, like a hollow mask. “I’ll give him back, child. Just a little time.” He released her and kept walking. Keyleth stared after him, slack jawed. That had not been Vax she’d just spoken to. She had a feeling she knew who had just told her to wait.
“Headmistress?” Orua asked.
Keyleth drew a slow breath. “Leave him be. I think he has to do this.”

What she’d not expected was how long ‘this’ would take. Vax paced a perimeter as though in a trance, not walking in to anything, but not really reacting to whatever was in front of him, to being spoken to, even to a hand on his shoulder. He chanted what sounded like Celestial, traced shapes in the air with his hands, sometimes leaving trails of thin black smoke, sometimes glowing gold threads which faded as he moved away. Dawn came and went. Keyleth sent other Ashari to check for more sick, then dozed in the sunlight, as Vax had done the day before. Even if he wasn’t reacting to her, she felt she was safe in Vax’s presence. But it didn’t look or feel wholly like Vax. He was still moving… wrong. When villagers asked her what he was doing, she answered that she did not know, but she trusted him.

As sundown closed, Keyleth compelled a swallow to carry a message back to Zephra. Still Vax paced with coal black eyes. Iltis suggested casting Dispel Magic on him. Something in Keyleth thought that might be a bad idea. She was starting to feel magic from the very ground beneath her. She sent most of her druids away to sleep. She would not leave here until Vax did.

It must have been nearly midnight when Vax fell to his knees. But this wasn’t the graceful, feminine step he’d been using. His shoulders were hunched, he was breathing deeper, he was suddenly Vax. She started over to him.
He turned his head. His eyes were… normal. He was Vax.
She put a hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”
He nodded. “Tired.” He closed his eyes for a heartbeat. “Nothing will rise from here now. Not ever.”
“Do you remember..?”
“Sort of.” He paused. “It felt more like watching than doing.”
“It was her, wasn’t it?”
He nodded. “Using my body, but…” As he fell silent, he turned his head to the West. “I think I need to go to Vassalheim. Not now. Not right now, but soon. I need to… understand.”
Keyleth nodded once.
“But I need to sleep right now.”
“Of course.” She started to lead him away, cold dread settling in to her chest. The Raven Queen would collect on her debt; in that moment, Keyleth could not have been more sure. The Raven Queen would take her lover from her, she would claim what she was owed, and Vax might not even mourn it.