Archive of Our Own ^beta

It's always the warrens, isn't it? Where flesh walks with no concern for proper skeleton or shape, no form that falls within the laws of nature. Bulging, twisting; squelching and squealing in the dark, just beyond the false safety of the torchlight. Audrey thought that of all the suspect and supernatural places she's found herself of late, she might come to despise this place the most. Give her the ruins, the long-dried bones covered in cobwebs and dust, where her pickaxe splits skulls as easily as rotted wood. Or give her the clammy, cold coves, where every approach echoes ahead and fishy flesh sizzles under a thousand poison points. Never this uncomfortably living maw, where the very walls seemed to heave with their unnatural breath. Where everything stinks of long-rotting meat.

It'd be bad enough if all she suffered were puddles of vomit, sewage and half-digested chunks. (Which does not come out easy. Many a coat and boot ruined here.) But it smothers the body and mind. Five minutes down in the slop and sweat stained her clothes, threatening to drown out the few dabs of perfume and herbs and fresh clean soap that clung to her collar. Ever step left her choking on filth and stale air filled with flies and flesh. No fire could purify it; no torch could burn away the heaviness, nor smoke muffle the taste on the tongue nor the bile in the back of the throat.

Pigs they find aplenty, down every dark tunnel. Stray bones and stray flesh, and carts of dismembered corpses. But none of them are the Pig, the Pig of Pigs, the King himself. And the longer it takes...it can so easily go sideways here, can't it? They never pop in and out without a scratch.

Maybe they'd never find the Swine Prince down here.

Maybe he would find them.

The thought chilled Audrey to the bone. She shuddered, and rubbed a hand over the arm that held the torch aloft. The mud and shit and blood collected heavy on Audrey's boots, and her shoulders ached with the effort of slinging knives and dealing poison and bashing swinish skulls in with the sharp end of a pickaxe. Ached, too, with the effort of holding the sputtering, smoky torch aloft room after room, hall after all. But still, she marched steadily forward, and kept her thoughts—and her doubts —to herself.

Not all of them felt a need to be so considerate of their companions, or mind the need for silence.

"We should camp soon," Alhazred said. He groaned heavily. "My feet are killing me. Dismas, say we can stop."

Audrey glanced over her shoulder, and sneered under the safety of her hat. Look at him, grouching and grumbling and stumbling forward anyway.

"Come now, darling—" she said, with a bright edge. "Surely the trials of university living have prepared you for a forced march?"

"You're one to talk, Audrey," Dismas said from ahead. "You wouldn't know a forced march from a waltz."

"I would so," she said. "The march only crushes my spirit, while the dance crushes my toes to boot."

Whistling in the dark didn't make it any less…well, dark, down here. Audrey fingered a knife, twisting it nervously through her fingers. Her wrist twinged from the work of countless throws, from wrenching them free of sticky corpses, but she could stand a few aches if it meant having cold steel at the ready. Every shadow seemed too full beyond the flickering edge of the torch. Every cart seemed to…squirm, just a tad, as the light played over the dismembered piles. Bloody, nasty business. She tired of it. But they took their cues from Dismas this time—her, the wizard, and...

"I tell you, if my strength wanes here, ruin will come to us all," Alhazred continued from behind. "And I am not the only one so afflicted here." He raised his voice just a tad, projecting as well as any carnival barker: "Is it not so, my demonic friend? Surely you have need of it, too. The weight of chains—and sins—must be exhausting, yes?"

Audrey sucked in an abrupt breath, her shoulders instantly stiff. Idiot! No better than a child, jabbing at strange things with sticks! Was she the only one here with any sense of self-preservation?

Only the distant squeals answered him. At first, at first—it seemed like he would not speak, nor rise from his slight stoop, nor turn to look at them at all. It seemed like her shoulders might unknot themselves, and they might continue to stumble forward at Dismas' command.

The chains rustled from ahead. He looked back at them over his shoulder. Audrey didn't want to look at him. She looked beyond him, at the darkness ahead of them. But even in the gloom, just at the light's edge, one couldn't help seeing the ghastly paleness of his bare chest, the dark thick latticework of scars. Somehow the light made them deeper, impossible to avoid: cuts and lashes and ragged swipes of claws…and, burned across the side of his ashen face, that horrid brand: A.

Accursed. Apostate. Abomination.

Not the company she'd have chosen for herself.

"I'm afraid it doesn't tire so easily," he said, his voice hoarse. The first time he'd spoken in hours, at least. "And while it still stirs, I will not rest."

Her skin crawled. It, it, it needed no name, his monster. His demon within. Must he remind them at every turn? As though any of them could look at his scarred face, or the unnatural bulging of his left arm, and not know on sight what ailed him?

"Will no one understand my plight?" Alhazred sighed. "This is what I get for seeking profane arts. Stumbling around in the dark with a crowd of thieves and masochists."

"Don't feign nobility, professor, you want to get paid just as bad as the rest of us." Dismas waved a hand at the chained man. "Pay him no mind. Just keep an eye out and be on your guard."

Dismas, the most hardened professional among them.

The man nodded in assent, and the faint clinks of the chains shifting took up again. Dismas glanced back at her, shrugged slow and heavy. If they'd more light, Audrey knew she could meet his eyes and read something more there—some shared camaraderie, maybe. Some half-bitter twist of irony, the two of them down there with this crew. But here, now—even that felt smothered under rot and the greasy miasma of long-dead meat.

They pressed on.

On, and on, and further still. They'd never gone this far this way before. At every crossroads and turn Dismas scratched a mark or two in the stones. Then they carried on, chasing squeals and the furtive beast that terrorized the Hamlet, raided the Old Road...and stood in the way of their employer's grand plans. Paid a pretty penny to clean out the pens, but one room full of squelching flesh and squalling pigs seemed the same as the other, with less and less treasure as they pressed forward still. How many tunnels could there possibly be down here? And yet it seemed like it would never end.

How much time passed, Audrey couldn't say. One couldn't keep track; one hour slipped through their fingers like water, and the next dragged with the weight of a thousand anchors, each minutes its own hell. But it felt too long, this time.

"We should leave," Audrey said under her breath. Her hand shifted down the torch's shaft, trying to give the flame room to claim just a bit more fuel. Whatever they could squeeze out of it. "Dismas—"

He waved her away. "I don't want to hear it. And, you—" He gestured vaguely with the gun towards the shuffling shadow ahead of them. "Could you try to keep a lid on all that rattling?"

He stopped just at the light's edge. A jangling and scraping of rusty chains as he tried to gather them closer to his chest. They hung loose over his shoulders and low on his hips. He hovered and flinched like a wild thing on the edge of its nerves, perpetually tense under the weight that dragged him down into a perpetual half-hunch. Waiting, waiting always, for the stroke of doom.

As he seemed compelled to remind them, at every opportunity.

"Sorry," he muttered vaguely. "They're for your own protection..."

"They'll be the death of us, too, if you can't keep quiet," Dismas growled. "We've got bigger problems than your bad side."

Why oh why had they brought him? But it wasn't Audrey's choice. Nor Alhazred's, nor Dismas'. Nor did they have much room to protest—not if they wanted to get paid, at any rate.

She watched from the shadows beneath her hat as he clutched his threadbare cloak, and attempted to pull it over himself and between some of the chains. As though it would help. As though it would muffle his relentless clattering and clinking echoing down the halls and tunnels, when it was more hole than whole cloth.

"Better?"

Audrey grimaced. Behind her, Alhazred sighed. She heard the soft schlop as he lifted a foot out of the muck. Dismas snorted, and shook his head. Waved them onward once again.

The shadows closed ranks around them as they hurried through dank corridors, barely stopping to catch a breath or consume a quick bite to bolster their strength. Where were all the pigs? Or the bandits, or at least some cart of corpses? The longer they pushed forward without resistance the more her skin crawled. The darkness grew thicker, heavy with unseen breath. Audrey tried to convince herself that it was just a trick of an overactive mind, the way it seemed that as they went the torches ran out quicker than usual.

And when they stumbled once more to a halt, she saw it: the scratched sigal left by a knife, where the tunnels bifurcated once more.

A chill ran down the back of her neck. Was she the only one who saw it? Alhazred muttered as he shifted on his aching feet, and the hermit lurked ahead, the chains swaying faintly in the torchlight. They said nothing, those fools; they were too tired, or too oblivious to see they'd been here before.

But Dismas, swaying tense on his feet—he knew.

"Dismas," she said through gritted teeth, low so only he could hear. "This has gone too far. I want to be done with this business. "

Ahead she saw Dismas' shoulders knot, and the revolver in his right hand raise just so.

"We can go when we've got what we came for," he whispered back. "If we go back empty-handed..."

She bit the inside of her cheek before she could lay into the old highwayman: you can't take it with you, and wouldn't she know better than most?

"The longer we stay down here…" she said softly. "The longer it takes…the more we slay..."

"I know," he muttered. "I know, but we've got nothing—"

"We could leave, and try again..."

Her voice trailed off, as they stared down the dark passageway. Could she stand to go back empty-handed? Surely...Dismas was right. Surely they must be close...

From the hall ahead came a sudden squeal. Ragged and high, rising to a sharp shriek cut abruptly short.

To a one, they froze. Eyes wide, in the dark. The echoes of that squeal rang in their ears as they stood, as the seconds dragged out…and they waited, straining for the slightest sound over the pounding of their own hearts. Audrey tightened her grip on the torch, palmed a dagger from her sleeve down into her hand. Next to her she could see Dismas finger the trigger of his pistol, and thumb back the hammer with a very soft click.

It stunk, in the warrens. And now, the smell grew stronger: the fetid rot of bodies that bled inside with every step, twisted from beyond their natural limits, and the flies gathered like a pestilence above. Blood, and vomit, and the acrid tang of ill lodged in the back of their throats with every breath.

They choked in silence, waiting there in the nearly dark, all their nerves tingling and the blood pounding hard in their ears. Perhaps, perhaps—perhaps they might get lucky—perhaps the pig was gone, perhaps they could get the drop…

Then the drums started. Audrey's head spun with it, even halls away, the crazed, stuttering off-rhythm and its echoes pounding behind her eyes. She couldn't think. How, how, they'd been through here, they'd cleared it—their scent? Some track they'd left in the muck?

They should run. They couldn't run. Not with the drums calling every pig to the scene, that wild off-beat pounding that split the skull and jangled the nerves. And—she'd never say it, nobody would—maybe the echo of a scream just behind every beat. From the…they all knew…they'd all seen it…you could hear it, you could, getting louder with the drums…

She shook her head violently, trying to clear it out of her ears. Never mind that! Though her muscles shook like water, and her bones rattled with every blow. They were coming, the halls rang with rough music and shrieks doubling back on itself wilder and wilder and they wouldn't be able to run fast enough, not just by torch, they'd have to make a stand here—

Audrey took her last deep breath, and blinked the sweat from her eyes.

And then—then, rushing forward—there, in the dark!

The ground shook under their thundering approach. The oafs, the pigs—the beasts that walked like men. Rushed forward with an unsteady clatter and canter, faster than anything that size should be. Anything that wrong. And it rattled the mind, how hooves never landed with the drums, how it clashed as the auditory undertow of their relentless squalling and squealing. Higher, louder they grew, as the scent of fresh meat hit their noses, and they turned the corner as one writhing mass—

But by now she barely even needed to aim.

"Pardon me," she huffed, and flung a knife just past Dismas' ear to catch the lead chopper square in the shoulder. It screeched, and blundered sideways into the wall, pawing at the hilt with its swollen sausage fingers.

She caught a flash of the shape of pigs behind—the drummer, man-height; the round pot helmet and the hook raised high; the stumpy thing lurching along. Their breath heaving with spoiled heat, like a bellows straight from hell.

She reached for another knife, but no time; a stream of vomit arced ahead from the still-flickering shadows, forcing her back. Still, the first blood and the Chopper's blundering left the drummer wide open for the flash of chains whipping past its swollen bulk. That monkish cringer, somehow catching the pig square between its eyes with the full weight of his sins.

Her head cleared as the beat faltered. Behind, the candle on the skull sputtered to light, and the green smoke coiled towards the ceiling. Eldritch flame burned colder than the stars; it chilled the bone, and let the sickness creep further down their throats. Alhazred stepped forward with the skull and candle held aloft, his chanting barely audible over the screeching beasts and bless whatever lurked upstairs or downstairs for that, and that the flash of something reaching ghostly through the ceiling to swipe at the pigs still veiled in darkness couldn't be seen clearly under her hat.

And ahead, Dismas got off a shot, then a curse as one swiped at him, and then the acrid spattering of more vomit at her feet. Audrey forced the torch higher as she stepped back, fumbling in the pouch one-handed for a fist full of darts. She flicked them off into the dark, and the sharp squeal of pain brought a grim smile to her face.

And him—that ragged figure at the front—he returned fire with a volley of something half-smoking half-stomach-churning as the chained abomination retched right back in their faces and sprayed the chopper in vivid green fluorescence.

Alhazred shouted another curse, shaking the skull high about his head. The ranks broke, and for a moment Audrey felt her chest swell with the sudden certainty—they'd made a solid opening performance. It seemed like it might carry them forward. The torchlight grew dimmer, but she forced it as high as she could, and maybe it wouldn't matter—maybe, they could win this even in the dark. No, of course they could, if they must—old hat by now to clear out the filth and march ever onward, squinting the whole way home again.

Then the chopper's cleaver came whistling suddenly aside, and struck hard against the chains, screeching metal on metal and sparks in the shadows. The chopper pressed down hard, and the serrated edges wrenched chains aside and sank deep into the meat of the shoulder beneath.

If he cried out, she couldn't hear it. Audrey saw him crumple to his knees as the blade wrenched free, smeared an unholy bright green, and the stain spreading fast across his shoulder as the cloak cleaved and dropped away. No help for that—she'd never reach him without coming in the slasher's reach—but she could pick up the slack.

"Damn it all—" she huffed, and grabbed another blade from her belt.

But she'd barely got it in hand. Couldn't get off a throw, not before the slasher rushed unsteadily forward, screeching—slashed at Dismas' side with its rusty hook. Not before another volley of vomit caught Alhazred directly in the face—he staggered back choking and rubbing furiously at his eyes as the flesh blistered. She knew, she knew, it burned skin and seared the mind all in one—

Suddenly, pounding in her skull— the drums, they'd forgotten to break the drum! Now it started again, wild and frantic and the pig that held it screeching in the staggered irrational off-beats, and it dragged sharp fingers down the inside of her skull as she tried to push forward. Dismas staggered, bleeding out as he tried to take aim at the damned beast pounding hard enough to crack their heads and fill their ears with screams.

She couldn't hear the shot over the drums. The shot—the shot fired wide. The drums grew louder. Dismas missed.

Audrey did not. Audrey had the knife, had her legs beneath her. She lunged past the swaying, half-crumpled figure with everything she had. And her knife found the drummer's heart, and sank in deep.

"Ha!" she wheezed, half a laugh, as the pig screamed and squealed in terror. Blood splattered her face, and for a moment she tasted satisfaction in the coppery viscera, and for a moment that surge of triumph drowned out shit and rot in all its squelching glory.

Until the knife kept sinking. And sinking, almost down to the hilt. Its flesh stuck like tar, and the blade should have found bone, and it kept going—

Her guts curdled as she wrenched at the knife. No, no no no! Audrey yanked hard, wrenching her shoulder so bad she saw stars but never mind that—but the knife wouldn't come free.

"Oh, hell—"

A hand seized the back of her coat, yanking her back before the drummer's damned death throes smashed the stick straight into her ribs.

Audrey twisted to see over her shoulder: the man draped in chains, still clutching his cloak and covered in blood. Blood and—she started, her eyes widening—bright green blight smearing down his chest and dripping down his arm as he hauled her back off the front line and half off her feet.

"Leave it, leave it—!" he shouted, poison foam on his lips and pouring over his chin. She couldn't help but lean into his arm as he dragged her back, holding her up as she struggled to get her feet under her. His breath came hot on her face, and she felt claws, against her shoulders.

Audrey shoved him away.

"Do not manhandle me—!"

The hell with that. Audrey left him bleeding and stumbling and fled back into the shadows. She'd done her part; let her catch her breath. Let him hold the front line. Let him do something besides spit and bleed and flail, for once. Him, or Alhazred, or—

She passed Dismas in her flight. Dismas, half-downed. Dismas, in bad shape, wheezed and clutched at his side as the blood spread through his coat. But he still raised his pistol to aim, his hand steadying as she flitted past him. The crack of the shot echoed in their little chamber, and a pig squealed high in pain.

Audrey turned to the wizard and his shaking skull, entreating the Eldritch powers that'd blessed him with blazing eyes and relentless chants that seemed to be doing nothing.

"Alhazred!" She fumbled at her belt for another handful of darts. "What are you doing?"

The intonations stopped. In the faint light of the torch, so far away now, she could see the sweat that beaded his brow and ran down the side of his face.

"Would you be quiet," he gasped. "It's no easy thing to keep our comrades from death's door!"

Audrey gritted her teeth and cursed under her breath as she spun on her heel. The darts wheeled past Dismas' shoulder to catch the slasher full in the bicep. But it didn't notice; it'd already begun to swing, the hook whistling as it swiped at the highwayman.

Audrey's stomach sank. Dodge, damn it, dodge—!

The point buried in the old man's forearm before he could duck. From behind her Alhazred moaned in frustration, the chanting growing louder and louder, the candle's eerie light flickered and danced over the walls. And yet Dismas still bled, and bled, and bled, faster now. She watched the spray as the hook yanked back out again, and the strain spread unnaturally fast across the dingy coat.

"It's not working—" she gasped. "Alhazred!"

Audrey could hardly spare a thought for the clangs and screeches from ahead, rusty chains battering at the pigs' makeshift armor. From the racket he seemed unable to land a blow in the right place, or else he thought he could crack the pocked and ruined metal with the strength of the curse that made them so damn indestructible, supposedly.

She fumbled in her gear again. Damn Dismas' aim, and Alhazred's arts, damn the retching, and the squeals growing louder and higher into an ear-splitted screech at the scent of so much blood. And damnation on the whole damn enterprise to boot!

"Alhazred!" she yelled again. "Help him, you blubbering dewberry!"

The hell with the monster man. If they lost Dismas, their most experienced companion— But Alhazred's chanting began to stumble, his voice growing dry and hoarse with the effort of it, and the candle began to flicker ominously as he shook with strain.

"I cannot," Alhazred gasped. "I cannot concentrate— To stare further into the abyss—"

No, no no no. She rounded on the highwayman.

"Dismas!" She shook him furiously. "Dismas! Put up a fight, damn you—remember the take—"

"It's not in the cards—" Though still he tried, squinting down the barrel as his hand jumped and shook with the effort of holding the pistol steady. "Save your breath, Audrey, save yourself—"

No help from that quarter, then.

"Oh, bloody hell—" she said through gritted teeth. Nothing for it.

She yanked the pickaxe from her belt, so abrupt she nearly ripped the belt with it. Her hands shook as she wrung the handle, trying to find a grip that'd let her swing it, once more— just one good shot, that was all she needed...

"I'll be claiming your shares of the loot for this!" she yelled.

Her thighs ached as she rushed forward again, swinging the pickaxe high over her head. It felt like her back caught fire, all the muscles and tendons screaming in protest as she smashed the thing straight into the slasher's horrid pot-helmet.

It screamed, a high horrid noise that sounded so much like a man it curdled her blood. The muddy tar that constituted its vital fluids poured down its half-human face, and it dropped slowly into a pile of misshapen limbs at her feat.

"Ha!" She heaved for breath, barely able to form word or thought. "That'll show you."

Move, Audrey, the weapon's down and she couldn't linger, but her legs wavered like water and there'd been so many—she just needed a few gasping breaths. A few exhausted heartbeats, where the pickaxe rested against the corpse, swaying on the balls of her feet. And for second, two, as the remaining pigs reeled back from their shattered companion with heavy grunts and frantic squeals—it seemed like she might get away with it.

Might. Might. For it left her there with her weapon down and her head open. Exposed, in her wheezing, horrid overreach.

And then the chopper's head raised from the dead meat on the ground, to the fresh meat that stood over it.

Her. The sweat turned cold on the back of her neck to see its little piggy red eyes gleaming in the last flickers of the torchlight. What passed for lips—too fleshy, too human—pulled back from cracked tusks that dripped with foam, and hunger.

Audrey let go of the pickaxe, let her weight roll back on her heels. She pivoted hard and lept—tried, to leap, tried to flee the front line. The step forward landed in another slippery pool of blood and nearly pitched her straight onto her knees. The drummer, she realized, damn it all, bled out like a river and she couldn't quite get her feet under it. Still, she'd stayed upright, and if she could just—try once more for her knife? No, no time,but if she could beat a retreat to where someone could lend a hand, while she figured out what tricks she'd left to play…

But Dismas, bleeding bad and gasping fit to burst… Alhazred swayed and his voice cracked on the curses he called, and the ghostly tentacles barely grasped the stumpy little shit before it could spit filth and foul ruin at the back of her head. But there's nobody covering the chopper, is there, with the monk staggering like he might pitch straight onto his face...

She looked over her shoulder as the big bruiser raised his blade, pocked and stained with so many battles, dripping with her companions' blood. Watched as its head swung towards her, still on her feet, just within reach.

Her stomach dropped, to the floor and further, to hell itself. If only she'd stayed home, if only she'd never taken up that shovel, if only she'd never married that fool at all—

Audrey felt it drag cold nails down her spine, long before her ears could recognize the screech of metal as it strained. Her hair stood on end as somewhere—beyond conscious knowing—the chains cracked and shattered, sharp clean snaps and ping ping ping as shards hit armor, hit the ceiling, hit the floor. And then something wet, cracking and squealching as bones snapped and—she could only see it in silhouette—the skull pulped and split like the rind of rotten fruit.

In the corner of her eye she saw the shadow swell, bulge as the man—the monster—the beast reared back on its heels.

It howled. The whole chamber echoed it back and forth into an unholy chorus, like a pack of ravenous wolves. One second she felt the pig's looming presence behind her. Then the scrape of claws across stone as it lunged straight for her.

Fast. Who knew something that size could be so fast? Audrey screamed and fumbled the torch, screamed and flung herself to the side, and finally the mud gave way under her feet and pitched her straight to the ground. Jarring her hips and straight up her spine as it charged, heedless of her wallowing like the swine in congealed vomit and tarred blood mixing with the fresh acid and chunks of viscera and the ooze of their unnatural bodies, melting into puddles of liquid meat and acrid bile.

She didn't have to watch. She could turn away, and get back to Dismas and Alhazred, and try to regroup...

But she couldn't help it. She looked. Why, oh why did she look?

The clown, he'd choked on his own laughter swapping rumors over drinks. Color of old blood, he said. Some god's very own joke. He could spin a tale better than anyone, and still he'd failed to do it justice. Her head spun with trying to make sense of it. It was—wolf-like? On two legs. A mane bristling like a boars between two horns that curved back so sharp along the heaving hunch of its shoulders. Hands. It had arms, and hands, and a sickly green flickering along its veins under its hide.

The pig screamed and thrashed underneath it. Caught between the beast and the wall, unable to escape the snapping jaws that struggled to rip every last leather scrap of skin and bloody muscle off the chopper's fat throat. Blood sprayed and chunks of meat splattered its shoulders as it gnawed furiously, claws raking the pig's too-human shoulders as it twisted in its death throes, desperately trying to get away from those teeth.

Resolve cracked as her ears began to bleed and all thoughts fled to some dark corner, and her body knew instead the most base of instincts. Curl into a ball, down in the mud. Put her arms over her head. Wait as the chopper slavered over her soon-to-be-corpse, and spend her final heartbeats listening to it breathe hard, grunting and snorting with excitement as it prepared to butcher her.

But she didn't. She just watched, sprawled there, unable to look away.

And then the beast found the angle, and those jaws closed on the pig's entire throat.

It yanked its head back, and the meat shredded, coming away in huge bloody raw rips. The screams ceased abruptly. Audrey watched the blood splatter across the beast's shoulders as the pig's heart still pumped for a few beats more, before the body realized it was dead. She saw the flash of yellow spine, glistening wetly in the fading torchlight.

The silence deafened her. Or, rather, the screams that still rang in her ears, as she stared at the slack, contorted face of the chopper, still pinned in the beast's grasp. She couldn't move. She could barely register that somewhere nearby something still frantically grunted and wheezed, as the one remaining stumpy pig struggled to haul its misshapen bulk off into the darkness.

The gunshot cracked loud enough to make Audrey flinch and clutch at her ears, and broke the spell. For a second, she thought Dismas had done— something truly stupid—but though the beast's head snapped wildly around, it didn't flinch or stagger. And from the corner of her eye she saw the lump of piggy flesh suddenly stumble and fall at the edge of darkness, and it laid there, in the mud. Still. Dead.

Done.

Slowly, Audrey got to her feet. Unsteady, still, and shaking. She looked back at Dismas, gone gray in the face, still gamely trying to hold his lifesblood back with his hands. Alhazred, with the skull in his lap, patting through the pockets hidden in his robe and sleeves for…a bandage? For something.

Then he looked up, and pointed past her.

"Audrey..."

She'd forgotten—no, not forgotten. Hadn't wanted to think of it. Had, for one shivering second, put it out of her mind.. The—the thing, their companion became.

The torch flickered, threatening to leave them all in darkness. But its dimness might have been a blessing for once, for the light guttered low, and she stood just far enough away to cast most of their monster in shadows. It was at best a dim, hulking shape, lurking against the wall. But the light still burned brightly enough to cast little flickering reflected flames on the blood that dripped from its snout. Wet steady plops, casting dullly glimmering ripples in the puddles of it that covered the floor. Blood, all over the drit and stone. All under its feet.

Audrey watched it chew as its victim began to slump in its grip.Then the body hit the ground, and the beast began to turn.

Its face was a mask of pig blood, already black with rot and dark magic. It opened its jaws, and the ragged meat splashed into the pool of blood at its feet. Audrey flinched. Dismas groaned, and she heard the click as he fumbled with his gun, trying to get it reloaded. Alhazred hissed low, some words she couldn't hear, and the candle's flame sprouted high again as he began to intone—

And then its growl: rumbling, just at the edge of hearing. Enough to rattle her spine all the way down to her pelvis, burrowing deep into the pit of her stomach.

"Don't!" She whispered furiously, trying to wave away their efforts with as small a gesture as possible. No sudden movements, right now. "Don't you dare. Not while I'm standing here..."

It looked at her then. It looked at her, and Audrey felt her heart lurch sideways in her chest as it took a heavy step forward towards her. The play of torchlight casting over grotesque new details: the way its claws scratched and scored the stone, when it rolled its weight forward; the one arm bulging, poison veins flickering bright through the swollen muscle.

It took another step forward.

"Now, hold, sir." Everything turned to ice in her chest. "You've had your fun, wouldn't you say? Surely that's enough, for today?"

Another step. Its long green tongue lolled between those fangs, licking the blood from its lips as it looked at her.

She should back away—she wanted to back away, only her knees quivered as she saw the glow of its eyes, bright green in the shadows, and knew if she tried to move they would give way beneath her. And if she tried to run—if she tried to run, would it chase—?

Another step. It'd never been too far from her; the room not so big as that. But now it loomed, barely an arm's length away.

"Please," she whispered. "Please, not this—"

It snorted heavy, and growled low in the back of its throat. Audrey tried to throw up a hand, tried to hold back the beast's approach. Watched her own hand shake with it, her arm trembling like water. She squeezed her eyes shut, so she could avoid seeing any more. Or see how it blocked out the light, when it took another step forward.

She felt the breath, burning hot and try on her fingers. It took a great big sniff of her, her gloves, the shit and the mud and blood, and then—pushed its nose, gently, against her palm.

Audrey took a deep breath. She stood, frozen, feeling the great big nostrils flare against her fingers. Felt like her skin might blister from it, that steady hellish bellows, in and out and in as it breathed.

She forced one of her eyes to open. Just a peek to see how it stood. Mostly, it just…stood, doing nothing. The bright poison still flickering under its rough, hairless hide, but it itself…did nothing but stand, with its nose in her hand.

Up close, and poised there, with a predator's stillness—no, there was nothing in it that resembled the man. No feature, no trace of humanity in that heavy wolf's skull. She'd thought it might be like a mask, like something stretched over the wrong bones—but the jaws, too wide, like a reptile, and it truly had a snout, the skin wrinkling back along its mouth where it drew back its lips, and licked blood from its teeth again.

She flinched, just a tad, as the tongue rasped hot across her smallest finger. And the growl that still rumbled with every breath turned to a whine on the inhale.

"Audrey," Dismas wheezed. "We gotta move—"

She couldn't see its eyes, under the heavy ridge of its brow. She did not know where to put her hand, truly, but the other itched to wrap around something. She didn't dare let her eyes dart to where her pickaxe still lay in the filth, nor the knives buried in corpses.

Very carefully, she raised her hand. The growl grew in the back of its throat, and it made as though to pull away—

And then subsided. Settled, and lowered its head, until it'd put the flat of its skull even with the palm of her hand. Butted its head gently against her fingers, the bristles of its mane scratching.

She patted it, right there on the top of its head, between those wicked horns. Awkward, without rhythm: too soft, and then maybe too hard, she couldn't decide. Not like a dog. She knew what to do, with a dog. This—was a man, still, somewhere. Perhaps? Her throat clogged at the thought, cheeks burning, and she glanced away from it.

"It's bleeding," Alhazred said faintly.

It was bleeding, she realized with a sharp shock. She could half-see it, over its strangly hunched shoulders. The bright poison green running in thin rivulets over its clavicle and down its bicep.

She swallowed down the shame, and looked back at it again. At her hand, resting gently between its ears.

"You—you did well," she said, slightly strangled. Biting her tongue to keep the words from slipping forth: good boy. Her face grew hot, thinking of facing down that dirty, monkish figure, both of them knowing, if she gave in to the impulse to say good dog. "But…there's no more for you here, you understand? Not now."

It growled, another low rumble that made her guts shiver.

But Audrey held her ground. Once, she'd been a lady. Once it'd been intolerable, to think of flinching in the face of anything, in front of anyone. Once she'd rather die than lose face.

"No more pigs for the slaughter," she said. Her voice grew louder, firmer: "So…go…back. Away." No. Not that. She took a deep breath. "Go to sleep, now, won't you? There's a good fellow."

For a second she could only be aware of its breathing, slow and unchanged, and the two men slumped still as corpses nearby, waiting for it to rip out her throat or retreat, or whichever, whatever came first. How foolish she must look, standing here, talking to a wild animal as though it could understand her. Did it even know words, like this? Did it recognize them? But it must, or it would have turned on her, not stood here imploring her for—what?

It shoulder rolled abruptly back, and she heard bone pop. Her stomach heaved. Bone—the spine—his spine popped, as the beast contorted back.

Audrey snatched her hand back and turned her face away. Her eyes squeezed shut and her palms flew to her ears, trying to stifle it all before her mind could process the sudden popping and squelching and let her imagination run wild. She couldn't hear it, she couldn't hear it. None of it. Not the bones cracking under the strain of bending back the right way. The abrupt snaps, sharp as a gunshot, when they broke. The cascading jangle of chains. She did not want to think of it. (Did they grow from him? Did they burst from beneath his skin—?)

She might have stood there forever, if he hadn't stumbled and grabbed for her arm, yanking her hand away from her face.

"I beg your pardon—!"

She nearly went over, with her stomach still in a state of perpetual nauseous churning. Nearly dragged him down into the mud with her as he leaned heavy on her arm. The animal stink still clung to him, his pale skin shining with sweat, his hair thick and wet with it. Something else, thicker, glistened on his skin.

Audrey choked back bile as she looked at him, swaying on his feet. (Not so big, in this form, no bigger than her.) His head hung so low his chin hit his chest, and she could see nothing of his face beyond his hair. The brand sat right in her face. And beyond it, the bright poison that covered his shoulder began to mingle with fresh bright blood, pouring from the great gash that laid open his back.

From the chopper's blade, she realized. The depth of it, the ragged edges. It had taken the blow meant for her, in its haste to get to its prey.

Her stomach heaved to have him this close. She could taste the acrid, bitter sizzle that leaked from under his skin. He looked like he might faint.

Audrey couldn't stand here a second longer.

"Pull yourself together, sir!" She shoved at the figure still clutching her arm. "This is no cabaret. I've no desire for closeness with you."

The chains rattled as he staggered back, nearly slipping on the sticky blood under his now-bare feet "I'm sorry," he gasped. His shoulders shook as if he meant to retch all over her boots. She felt a twinge just behind her lung, a twitch in her traitor cheek as he continued: "I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."

Audrey couldn't bear it, this…cringing. She did not wish to hear it. Not one more word of it. She turned a cold shoulder to him and staggered back through the slippery mud to retrieve her fallen weapons. Alhazred had somehow made it back onto his feet, stood bent over Dismas, trying to help the old man regain his feet. Dismas, barely able to stagger upright with one hand still plastered over his bleeding guts. Red stained the dingy fabric and fur of his coat, barely managing to sop the spread.

"Steady on, my friend," Alhazred said, his voice still raspy from all the chanting. "Today is not the day you die, eh? Unfortunately for us."

Dismas tried to chuckle. It came out little more than a weak gurgle. Audrey glanced at him as she finally yanked the knife from the drummer's cold chest. (Behind her, the wounded man coughed into his cloak, and the chains rattled. She didn't look; she wouldn't look.) The highwayman looked just as pallid as the corpse, and nearly just as dead. If he weren't still breathing...

"He needs a bandage," she said, standing up.

"He needs far more than that," said Alhazred.

"He needs you two to shut up and get a move on," Dismas wheezed.

It'd always been their unspoken preference to get back on their feet quick as could be, get the hell away from the slaughter. The mingled blood and shit of fresh corpses seemed to sprout flies in seconds, and the scent would carry, and bring more pigs to the slaughter. Better to let them cannibalize their dead friends than cannibalize her.

They stood there, for a moment. Dismas, half dead. Alhazred, soaked in sweat and blood not his own. Audrey covered in mud and filth. The man half-huddled under his bloody, filthy cloak, chains jingling as he shivered and wiped at the blood on his face. And the piles of already-rotting pigflesh scattered around them. Lumps of meat, devoid of their evil animating will, quickly reducing to so much lye and filth in the muck around them.

Light preserve them all. What a disaster.

"Well," Alhazred said finally, to the corpses, to their half-downed crew swaying unsteadily on their feet. "A trifling victory, to be sure, but a victory nonetheless?"

Death dodged, battle-worn and heavy-hearted, they made it only two chambers more. When Dismas' breath grew labored and his face grew tombstone gray—no one could object. Not even Audrey, itching to flee. No quick escape at hand for them; they must go on.

How can they go on? It did not bear thinking about. But the promise of warm firelight and brief respite won out against the creeping unease that left her blood cold and her hands clutching at her arms to still the shaking in her limbs.

The fire cracked and popped and hissed, doing its best to bring some semblance of comfort to them all…where it seemed there was little to find. They sat, shaken and miserable—the scholar, the highwayman, and herself on one side of the fire, and him on the other.

She watched him beneath her hat. All clad in those damnable chains, clinking faintly with every breath, and in the rags of what must once have been a—a cloak? A robe? Whatever it was, for once he didn't hunch beneath it. Cross legged before the flame, he seemed to stare at something beyond them. At nothing at all. But no firelight could cast him as anything other than ghoulishly pale. Off-color, the man was, even seen through a dancing curtain of flame. And still smeared in his own blood, and little bright streaks of hellish green on his arm, and the chains, and the rags that passed for his clothes.

Audrey tensed, and curled in tighter on herself.

But at least studying him provided a welcome distraction for Alhazred's relentless chanting over Dismas. Gods, but would she never get used to that, either? The way they choked and sputtered in the back of his throat. Words no man should ever know. Her skin crawled with it as she watched sidelong, cold inside her threadbare coat. And that gruesome talisman held aloft, its flame sputtering as he intoned:

"G'nath eldratchanar f'thgyll gry'ndot…"

It set her teeth on edge as the words buzzed and crackled in her ears. The shadows seemed to grow thicker around the magician. Surged and swelled, despite the fire blazing bright. She folded her arms tighter, and tried to ignore the smoke coiling blood-red above the skull and candle, and the green sparks withing the gathering darkness. But Dismas seemed to breathe easier for it. Couldn't argue with results. They'd be well and truly doomed without his keen eye.

"How do you feel, old man?" she asked. A welcome distraction for them both, she hoped, if he'd any strength left for speech. It took a mighty effort to unclench her fingers from where they must surely be raising bruises in her arm; she'd feel that, in the morning. But she managed to touch his shoulder, and feel warmth beneath her fingers where once there'd been deathly chill.

Small blessings. Which were all that could be hoped for, out here.

"Not so old." At least he rose to the bait. At least he still sounded like himself. "Not lost my edge yet. And you, whippersnapper? Still got a hankering for treasure after all that bloodshed?"

"You know well I do." She smiled thin. "But I'm not the one who looks a fright, Dismas."

"I'll manage to press on," he said. She might even believe it. That sounded less like a death-rattle than it had when they'd stopped. Still heavy, though. No bandana could hide the deep furrows across his forehead, nor the heavy-lidded eyes.

"We ought to fold, Dismas," she said gently. "Are we truly in any shape to continue?"

"We've come this far. Surely we must be close." He grunted as he shifted against the stiffness that'd settled in him, and then threw up a hand as she opened her mouth to protest: "But if it goes pear-shaped just one more time, we flee. To hell with all this; 'tis not worth our lives."

"You'll get no argument from me, my friend."

The chanting ceased. Alhazred cleared his throat, and coughed once. His polite words came hoarse:

"You should let him rest. He'll still need to gather his strength for the final push tomorrow."

"Don't talk about me like I'm not here," Dismas grumbled, hunkering down into his dirty fur collar. Audrey patted his shoulder.

"Sleep tight, dearie."

"The hell with you, Audrey," he muttered.

Alhazred gestured over Dismas' head, a gentle sweep to the shadows beyond the fallen log. Not far enough that they left the fire's protection, but far enough not to be overheard. As the highwayman turned away and stiffly stretched himself out on his bedroll, Audrey obliged him by standing and stepping away with the wizard into the shadow's edge.

He beckoned her closer, and she leaned in to hear.

"You ought to see to our other friend," he said in a low voice. "His blood riles me more than any other. I think the eldritch powers will not work well with him."

Audrey snorted, and glanced over at the chained man. A shiver ran down her spine; she stiffened, before Alhazred could possibly see, and looked away again.

"I think he does not want our company, nor our aid," Audrey said.

"I think I do not give a damn, and neither should you," Alhazred countered. "And I think you know very well that he's mightiest among us. When it comes to sheer violence, at any rate. We've magic and toxins and bullets aplenty, but he batters through their ranks as though they were kindling." He paused, for a moment. "You're as adequate to the challenge of his anatomy as I. And he likes you best of our current band."

Her skin crawled at that. Her hands itched, and her foot tapped restless on the dirt. Her bones ached but her muscles jittered, tingling and alive and itching to get up and walk off into the dark until the restlessness subsided.

"You're too kind, sweetness," Audrey said, in her best mocking tones. "I do believe that is the nicest deflection from one's own shortcomings I've ever heard."

"One cannot be master of all disciplines." He sniffed. "Especially with my paltry liberal arts funding." And then he sighed, heavy. "Please try, Audrey. That's all any man could ask."

Well. There's no argument to be mustered against that. All she needed to do would be to cross those few feet to where the man sat in darkness. The man—Bigsby? No, not that—Bigby—something that suited the gaunt figure with all his scars and his greasy hair and varicose veins not at all. Sitting over there attempting…whatever it is that he hoped to get out of his meditation. Some measure of peace? It made her guts shake and quiver, just looking at him.

Her hands, normally so steady—the shook, too, remembering the rough hide beneath them burning through her gloves. Who would have thought the Eldritch could hold such a fire? Not her, no. It blistered; it got the hairs on the back of her neck standing, just to think of it… She could almost swear she felt it still. The devil's breath stirring her hair as it sniffed at her. The bile that oozed down its shoulder as it loomed large, with a cleaver buried deep in its hide. And she trembled to think—she hunched down into her threadbare coat, before Alhazred could see it shake her spine—how close she'd come to the grave herself in that moment. If it'd not been there, if it'd not forced her aside and took the blow itself...

She felt her nails dig into the palm of her hands…and then let out a long, slow breath, and eased her hands open.

He'd positioned himself just on the edge of the fire's light, well away from the rest of them. Too wary of the thing that lurked within to mind whatever lurked beyond his self-preoccupation, he didn't once open his eyes, or glance in their direction. Such a complete lack of awareness; Audrey marveled. Surely some animal sense should alert him? Even though she'd made it a habit to step quiet as the grave. But no, she made it all the way across the camp and within arm's length of him without having to strain herself at all.

"Bigby— it is Bigby, isn't it?"

In her professional opinion, no man who risked his life on a regular basis in these dark dungeons should jump out of his skin at the sound of his own name. But the chains rattled as he jerked out of his meditation, wild-eyed and clutching the cloak about him all of a sudden. He looked up at her, some blazing, thoughtless force alive in his face. Audrey sucked in a breath as his eyes found her face, bright green flickering in the bloodshot veins.

He flinched away, instantly, before she could do the same. He didn't see her take a deep, slightly quivering breath, so she could find her voice.

"No need for that, darling." Perfect. Not a quaver to be heard.

He glanced back up at her from under his hair, expression unreadable. Audrey held up her hands, perfectly empty.

"I—I hadn't expected—" His voice came as a rasp. "You need not worry, if that's why you're here. The beast is not for you. And I think—I think for now, I have it soothed."

Audrey wished he hadn't said that. She'd never been this close to him before when he'd spoken of it, it lurking somewhere inside. She thought—she would swear she could see it, this time, when he spoke. A movement without movement, s strange ripple of muscle under the skin. Something slouching, shrugging as it rubbed its bulk against bone and sinew, pressing hard from inside the man. Lurking. Lying in wait.

The Light help them all.

"I've no doubt you've managed," she said, and hoped it'd sounded sincere. Even though the skin on the back of her neck crawled and prickled, cold. "Don't fret about that, my dear. I've merely come in the spirit of friendship."

He blinked. Leaned back, chains clinking faintly as he stared—or tried—at her half-hidden face.

"For what?" She could see his throat bob as he swallowed heavily, and tried to summon up a less rusty tone: "You'll forgive me, I hope, but I'm not much in the way of company."

"I might have guessed" she said dryly. "Nevertheless!"

Long hanks of greasy black hair slid into his face as he tilted his head, his brow furrowed. Somehow him not speaking was worse than the animal rasp of his voice. Nails on a chalkboard, this unbearable awkward silence.

"Nevertheless— what?" he said finally. "You don't care?"

Audrey took a deep breath.

"You took a nasty blow today, my friend." She conjured a faint smile, angling for disarming. A tad flirtatious, maybe. "I thought maybe you might like someone to take a look. Make sure it's not growing fangs, or some such. You do seem fret about such things. Quite vocally, I might add."

He looked away, off into the shadows.

"No," he said. "No, thank you, that's very kind, but—"

Oh, hell's bells and all that. Audrey folded an arm across her chest, sinking her nails into her bicep as she gestured with her free hand.

"But, what? The beast, it stirs? A mere bandage might awaken it? Balderdash, say I—"

“You've been lucky.” He cut her off. The firelight somehow only served to darken the brand that marred half his face. Stark, heavy scars of condemnation in sharp relief, as he turned his face away from her. "As have I. It would be better not to tempt fate further tonight."

“Nonsense, my dear fellow. Pure nonsense." Years of smiling sweetly through society poison held in good stead. She felt sure he could not hear a note of strain in her coaxing cheer.

"I'll not drop my guard," he warned. "Not even for you. Not if it strengthens it."

The shadows beneath her hat hid the swift roll of the eyes.

"And would that be such a bad thing, in our situation?"

"You don't know what you're saying!" His eyes darted back to her face. Suddenly he'd come alive again, trembling, whispering: "How can you be so ignorant?"

"And you— could you be more pigheaded?" she snapped back. "Do you not see that we need you? That you need us?"

"Such concern for my welfare." His face twisted in a sneer, just for a moment. Audrey suppressed the shudder at how his teeth seemed…too long. "So it's just a matter of saving your own skin."

Well…yes. Maybe. Some. But she'll be damned if she'll be so impugned—by a vagabond, no less—without rising to her own defense. Perhaps her coat might be patched, but she could still make her words as sharp as her knives.

"Must I sugarcoat it for you?" Audrey drew herself up to her full height, gathering what tattered remnants of her former lofty position she could still command. "Mix the medicine with sugar, as though you're a mewling child? You need not like it, but 'tis true regardless. So why be churlish? Put away your claws and let us have a look at that shoulder, sir."

As quickly as he'd snapped, he tried to turn away again, hunching down harder into himself. Somewhere behind her eyes a headache threatened to start pounding again. She could just walk off into the shadows and leave him to his stubbornness. She could wash her hands of the whole affair. Let him sit here in his bloody rags and rot, for all she cared.

Audrey sighed. No, one more try. She leaned down a bit, and gently touched the side of his face.

He didn't look back at her. He didn't flinch. He didn't move, at all. Perhaps that was a good sign?

"Listen, Bigby...there's no sense in being standoffish with me, my dear." Lord, but he felt strangely warm. And rough, where she touched his cheek; she could feel the harsh stubble even through the calluses on her fingertips. "Do you think I've less compassion than a corpse? You’ve done me a good turn, and we both know it."

He flushed dark green. Of course, she realized, he didn’t know. He wouldn't worry so much, if he did.

“Or perhaps you don’t.” Audrey continued, more gently. “But I do. I might be six feet under myself if not for you. And a lady pays her debts. I can see gallantry repaid in kindness, if you can muster a little faith in my skill.”

“I don’t think it was gallantry,” he muttered. The flush still lingered, burning strangly in his sallow face. But by slow inches, he let the cloak ease and fall from his shoulder, revealing the gash. Audrey took a slow, deep breath, tension knotting in her shoulders as she stepped around him to get a better look.

As soon as she had, she wished she hadn't. It drew the eye to the sheer…gore of it. Bright crimson mingled with an acrid green ooze. From the piggy's nasty blade, or from his curse?The raw meat that lay under skin in them all, that Audrey tried quite hard not to think too hard on. But she took care to breathe through her mouth as she knelt behind him, and leaned in for a better look.

"You should have said something." She traced under the long slash of it from shoulder to the center of his back with her fingertips, marking the breadth, the depth…oh-so-carefully, so that she never quite touched it.

"I've had worse," he said flatly. "I've never failed to survive such things before."

You're adequate to the challenge, said Alhazred. That bastard. The audacity of such flattery laid bare not three inches from her nose. Hopefully someone somewhere looked kindly on their beastly friend…on the odds that her half-remembered needlecraft would prove insufficient to the challenge.

But, ah…where to begin, exactly?

"Er, I think— I need to clean this, first…" she said. Now that she'd come mere inches from it, it had a…a smell, of sorts, that she didn't care for, even she couldn't put her finger on what it was. Not the sour sweat of sickness, though somewhat like the acrid bitterness of the poison that coated her knives and filled his veins. Something that churned the stomach and burned in her sinuses.

"With what?"

She certainly didn't care for the dubious tone of his voice.

"Well, not to gossip, but...as it happens, Barristan always carries a flask of something or other." Audrey said, reaching into her coat and pulling said flask from some carefully padded inner pocket. "Truth be told, I think 'tis cheap rotgut at best. But it should certainly do the job, even if you wouldn't wish to partake."

He stared over his shoulder at her. Audrey looked back at him, her expression perfectly blank.

Then the corner of his mouth twitched upward, just a fraction. Just beginning to curl into something that might almost be a smile.

"Did you really—"

"I'd think twice before I go throwing around accusations, my dear sir," Audrey said primly. "And beggars can't be choosers, hmm? Now turn around again."

He raised a hand to cough, and—yes, that was definitely a smile he was hiding. The nerve of him. "Yes, madam."

Audrey dumped some moonshine onto a spare cloth she'd tucked up her sleeve. Best to get on with it. She made a half-hearted effort at dabbing away some of the crusted blood and ichor that'd dripped down his shoulders. The moonshine burning did something to stifle the wound's stench, but looking at it, she'd some doubt as to its efficacy. Still, the fumes mostly suppressed her churning, trembling guts, stiffened them into something that resembled courage, or at least relieved the nausea. And then, with another hefty pour, she started to clean out the wound itself.

At the first touch he hissed and flinched away from her. The veins suddenly bulged along his back and shoulders, the muscle swelling and stretching under his skin, and Audrey recoiled instantly. Sucked in a gasp before she could stop herself, and for a second her heart forgot to beat; forgot what breathing or moving was altogether. Surely that wouldn't—not something so small as that—?

But Bigby took a deep breath of his own. The tension drained from his shoulders, and the veins settled once more.

"Sorry," he said, and sighed heavy. "Try again?"

"If you think you can manage it," Audrey said, and her voice shook just a tad.

No. None of that. She stiffened her spine once more, and sniffed her best dismissive sniff. Onwards, then: she pressed the cloth a little harder to the blade of his shoulder, and this time he only took an unsteady breath as the booze burned away who-the-hell-knows deep in the wound.

She worked as quickly as she could, not wanting to linger or test his tolerance again. And to his credit, he didn't flinch again, even though Audrey didn't stint on the alcohol. She wiped and patted, shifting her grip on the rag to find a new clean spot without touching the chains, brusque, rough swipes over the wound. Into the wound. That's what you did, yes? To clean it out?

"There," she said, faintly. "There, I think that's…done."

"That's it?"

Through the moonshine haze Audrey realized that she held, in her hand, a rag dripping with poison, wet with booze and blood and Eldritch ooze. She stared at it, for a moment. Surely she shouldn't just…throw this out, right? Covered in blood and scent, surely she couldn't grind it far enough into the mud to fool the pigs. Surely they'd sniff it out...

Quickly, without looking, Audrey fished another rag out of her bag, and a small bottle. She wrapped the sopping kerchief in the clean one and stuffed it down as far as she could, and shoved it straight back into another little hideaway. She'd…think of what to do with that later. You never knew, a little bit of extra poison could come in handy...

"Is that all?" he asked again, his voice a tad rough.

Audrey let out a small breath as she stared at his back, and the ragged red gash that showed just a tad too much…meat. She opened her mouth, and closed it again. No words came to mind. But the silence spoke for her. He took a deep breath, and his shoulders stiffened.

"You could leave it." He rolled his shoulder a little, and she heard him grunt as it pulled. But he continued: "It will heal, the next time—it breaks free, again."

Oh. Oh, yes, how she longed to leave it there. Could feel it as a tugging in her gut and an itch in her feet to get away from him as quickly as possible. Away from them all. To sit still and patch and mend like a nursemaid—or, worse, somebody's mother—grated on her very nerves. And it sat with him no better. She could see it, in his unnatural stillness.

Audrey bit her lip, rolling it back and forth between her teeth.

"You can't see what I see, sir," she said slowly. "I think—if you think you can stand it—we ought not to leave it there."

Another long silence followed that.

"I can stand it, if you can," he said finally.

"I can." It sounded firm enough, she thought. Perfectly in control of the whole situation. "So that's settled, then."

She reached in the pouch that sat at her belt and pulled out a small leather folder of…well. By and large, the sort of tools a lady would never admit to carrying. The necessary little items, one might say, such as might be needed to jiggle open some little coffer or chest. A less experienced breaker of tombs might think it foolish…but she'd learned there were more than few lords determined to take it all with him, and let it waste away six feet under. Among them sat a small pair of scissors, and some thick thread too sturdy for patching trousers, and a short curved needle sharp and thick enough to patch any nasty cut she'd picked up, say…shattering locks, or climbing over unsteady stone.

"I suppose I needn't tell you that this will hurt," she said briskly. The knot at the end tied with practiced ease, and the needle threaded on her first try. Her hands remained steady, at least, even if some other parts felt less so.

"Surely it cannot be worse than what I've already endured."

Audrey did not appreciate that dry tone of doom.

"It's not as though I'm a complete novice, my dear." She shifted, the better to see, and elbowed him lightly until he took the hint and twisted to get the bulk of the wound out of the shadows. Audrey nudged her hat up off her face, and set the point of the needle against the lowest part of the gash. "I did…a fair amount of crochet, once."

She pushed the needle through his flesh, and held her breath. So did he. Very, very still, both of them, as she pulled the thread carefully through.

Nothing happened. They both let out a soft sigh of relief, practically as one.

"That's very reassuring to know," he said, with a huffy half-chuckle that didn't quite come to fruition.

"Yes, I thought that might put your mind at ease."

The surprising resistance proved a welcome distraction from the watery sensation in her knees. Don't think about the blood on its horns. Now, the man, and obligation from someone's earlier rescue demanded she do the mending.

The first stitch was…easy enough. But the ones after, less so. Audrey supposed she ought to have anticipated the problem that arose almost instantly: the chains. Though he dropped the cloak lower yet, and leaned enough to let them slide further down his biceps and rest against his neck, still they crossed his chest and wrapped over one shoulder and around his back. Or was it a trick of the light? But it left her twisting, moving slow, struggling to get her hands just so.

Determined, brisk and businesslike, she braced them up on the back of her fingers as she tried to pull the next stitch through. Instantly her skin began to numb, and an icy prickle took light in the flesh and bone beneath. She'd snapped links and yanked them off an inconveniently well-gaurded crypt or too, but never like this. Chill failed to capture how they sapped the strength, scratched and itched like plunging her hand straight into nettles. Cold, and unreasonably rusty, and prickling with a thousand little unseen points and rough edges that she could barely feel as they scraped her knuckles raw.

"What the hell," she hissed, and yanked her hand back. She shook her icy fingers to get the blood flowing again.

"You felt it?" He twisted, and flinched as it yanked the thread tighter. "I didn't think—no one has…since they went on."

"Felt isn't quite the word."

But she couldn't stop now. Audrey gritted her teeth.

"You might have said," she muttered, and pushed them up with the back of her hand, letting the leather of her gloves shield her from their baleful, frigid weight. "Can't you do anything about it?"

"I can't," he said. "And I wouldn't, even if I could. Curses are like that, you know."

She rolled her eyes as she pulled through another stitch. "I'll take your word for it."

It left her stitching slow, with her wrist twisted to keep her hands safe. But it went, bit by careful bit. In, and out. It wasn't so hard, once she'd resolved herself to it. Perhaps he felt a bit…tougher, than she did. His skin thicker, his muscle like dried jerky. But then, she's far newer to the fugitive life. Perhaps with time she'd became as gnarled with wear as he?

Not likely. But wounds were wounds and stitches were stitches. She'd done it before, and better on another person than herself. Just imagine the whisper of strong steel through thin cloth instead of the soft squelch.

"What is it like?" he asked, quietly.

Audrey paused with the needle half through the wound.

"I beg your pardon?"

If possible, he diminished further. Shoulders hunched in on himself, legs drawn in as he leaned towards the fire.

"…the beast." He did not look around. "You've met it. But you're still here."

For a moment her gut churned, and she had to swallow hard to force her heart back out of her throat.

"Well…"

The thought trailed off as Audrey finished the stitch, and turned her attention to trying to push the wound further closed before the next. Words…words seemed small, for the way it loomed large in the mind. How it'd occupied every sense, when it'd turned itself towards her. How the torchlight provoked an eerie glow in the eyes, and called attention to the glistening teeth in its maw...

Courage, Audrey. She hummed under her breath and considered.

"How does one put it into words, precisely..."

Why did she think of it, in this moment—so vivid? The stench of dung and death around them? The low growl of the hound as it slept by her master? But she does, suddenly, picture it so clear. An old memory by firelight.

"Once," she said, carefully sliding the needle through his gash. "Once, I had a husband. A man of many vices, my lord—more than I would have guessed, before our wedding."

"Once?" he echoed. He shifted under her hand, presumably trying to study her face from behind his hair.

"He died." Shortly.

"Of natural causes?"

She clucked her tongue. "Is that a question, sir?."

He shrugged. Or tried, hissing as the motion only drove the needle deeper and opened a fresh fountain of blood.

"That's what you get, for cheek," she said. She paused, needle in one hand as she fished in her bag for another bandage to wipe his shoulder clean.

"He took ill, if you must know," she added as she dabbed at the blood. "No foul play to be had."

Not once has Audrey seen the man smile. But there's a strange lilt to his voice when he prompts: "You didn't know the true extent of his failings before his death."

"I would not have pegged you for a gossip." Her fingers pinched again, trying to get it just a tad tighter as she continued: "You could give the society hags a run for their money, with such thinly-veiled sugggestions. Anyway, my late husband—he'd many nasty habits. Among them, he liked to bet on dogs. Racing, sometimes. But more often, he'd spirit himself away to some dirty, flea-ridden pit in some dingy pub to watch them fight."

He tensed, drawing a long breath between his teeth, and she'd realized she'd jabbed the needle hard into the meat of his shoulder. But no trace of pain reached his voice.

"Did you go with him?"

A mild question. Everything this man says sounds mild, until the moment it doesn't, and in truth it grates on her. Her teeth grind for a moment. But she'd volunteered the story, hadn't she? There was no sense taking umbrage at his fishing for the gory details now.

"Only once." In, and carefully out. She'd work faster if she could, but the needle only slid so fast through scar and muscle. Yes, definitely more like a hide, even as a man. "Early on. Give me a fair fight, or even an unfair one against a dastardly foe, but I'd no stomach for watching such pointless blootshed. Disappointed him, I should think."

Her hands stayed steady. The final push, now. A few more stitches and he'd be patched, and she could dispense with the uneasy duty of seeing a beast's kindness repaid. But the talking helped, a little. Kept her mind off how she could spot a flesh of green under his pallid skin. Or from feeling his devil's heat against her fingertips...

"But I remember the dogs." She sighed. "Nasty, brutish beasts. All muscle, like a fist, and covered in scars. So eager they strained against the collar at the faintest smell of blood. I suppose they'd been trained to love it. At the time I thought, surely nothing could be so cruel by nature? And yet they'd choke themselves just for the promise of getting their teeth in their opponent's throat."

He snorted—him, this vagabond, this wan and haggard wanderer—choked back a bitter laugh at her. Audrey smothered the urge to cuff him up the backside of his greasy head.

"You didn't know much of the world back then," he said, dry.

"Oh, and I suppose you learned so much more, cloistered…wherever you came from?"

She practically stabbed him with her final stitch, and could not decide if the heat in her stomach when he flinched was one of butcher's delight or a careening nausea. The savagery of this place, as catching as any plague.

"Anyway," Audrey continued. The effort of soothing strained her voice, but her hands stayed steady as she pulled the thread through for the last time. "What I remember most is when it was over. The victor, stumbling about the pit punch-drunk and half-dead, tail wagging even as they bled out in the mud. No idea what to do with themselves when the fight had ended, and only the faintest hope of being praised."

In the snip of the scissors that followed, only the fire's crackling came to fill the silence. A lady does not falter, does not shrink in embarrasment, but a sudden curdling in her stomach and a certain coldness in her veins did begin to creep into Audrey's awareness. It had been quite a long time since he'd said anything, her strange companion. And the noise around them started to creep into her ears—or, rather, the lack. The strange stillness of it, broken only by the crackling fire and his heavy breath.

But then he cleared his throat to speak again.

"So…" he said slowly. "A blood-drunk hound..."

He reached up and over his shoulder to touch the stitches, without looking.

"That's better than what I'd thought you say."

"With the manners to boot," she added. She wiped her needle clean on a stray cloth plucked from an inner pocket. No matter how bloody her trousers, she would not smear them further with filth. "If you've any control over it at all, I might ask that you consider impressing upon it the importance of keeping its paws to itself. It's hard enough to get blood out of one's coat without worrying about..."

She hestitated. But no pondering could conjure up another word for: "…slobber."

Even in the firelight she could see his ears darken to a shade decidedly not red.

"I'll try." He reached back to touch his shoulder, gently brushing his fingers over the highest stitches. "It's not...the best listener."

Audrey gently pushed his hand away.

"Perhaps not," she said, palming a bandage from her pouch. A quick flick of the wrist and it unraveled, until the roll plopped down into the net of chains in Bigby's lap. "But you've done a half-way decent job so far, so why not it, hmm?"

He handed the roll back to her.

"Only half-way?"

She laid the end of the bandage against his bony shoulder, and reached down to grab his hand and let him pin it there while she wrapped.

"Well…" She clucked her tongue as she tried to thread cloth under chain and keep it taut across his back. "You might make a better impression by carrying your end of the conversation, sweetness."

He sighed, and reached up to rub at the rough stubble that decorated his jaw, and the skin around the brand.

"Truthfully…" he said. "'Tis the longest conversation I've had with anyone in years, I think. Talking with you, now, like this."

Audrey chuckled.

"Why, Bigby— that almost seems like it might be a complement."

He started—at his own name! And half twisted to look at her, with that strange flushed half-smile again.

"Well…I'll admit, if it is, it's a mean one." She passed him the roll under his arm, and waited to let him thread it through the chains. They jangled faintly as he shifted, and huffed out something that might almost be a laugh: "It isn't as though you've got much competition."

"Ah, yes," Audrey said, taking back the bandages. Another pass or two, they'd be done. "Old men, and demon pigs. It's a fine social outing, to be sure, and there's us tramping around in the blood and mud like a common thugs."

"Common?" He snorted. "Perish the thought."

"That's the spirit, darling." She passed the roll under again, and patted his good shoulder absently. "Our fearless band of would-be adventurers, we're something else altogether, aren't we?"

He hummed a little in the back of his throat, threading the bandage under the chains across his chest. Surely they must be so heavy, dragging them around all the time.

"You're being kind," he said, finally, passing it back over his shoulder again.

"Am I?" Audrey said. "I'm not known for my kindness."

"Nor for your bedside manner, I'm sure."

She paused with her hands still shoved up underneath the chains.

"Was that a joke, sir?"

His ears darkened again, an even deeper shade of evergreen. Something in his shoulders eased a little, and the chains slid down over his ropey biceps along with it. Audrey stifled a small laugh in her coat sleeve, and never mind the heavy whiff of animal musk and blood that crawled in her sinuses and died for it.

"I haven't so lost myself that I'd make fun of a lady," he said.

Audrey snorted.

"How gracious," she said. "More gracious than our companions, at any rate. Now hold still, so that I can finish this, and we can get on with our night."

He waited for her to finish fumbling through with the bandages, trying to tuck them just so, tight enough that the chains couldn't catch and rip them loose again. No easy task, with her fingers growing icy with every second, and the weight of them on the back of her hand. Audrey muttered under her breath, every unladylike curse that she could possibly think of—and he did her the kindness of not saying a word about it. How could it feel so cold, when it sat against his skin? When she knew him to be unreasonably warm, both as man and beast?

"There," she said, finally, and shook the chains off her hands. "There, I think that's—well, it could be…worse."

He pulled the cloak up over his shoulders again, and twisted to look back at her. With his good side, with the brand turned away.

For a moment he looked…not young, not with the lines of so many years of…of suffering, she supposed, of sheer bloody hell carved deep around his mouth, and the deep shadows under his eyes. But then he smiled, and they eased, and Audrey thought—just for a moment, she thought— he looked so positively ordinary.

"I appreciate it all the same." His voice didn't sound so rough, either, not so rusty with the long silences now that he'd made use of it.

She patted his shoulder through the cloak. "It should see you through until we're done with this bloody business, at least."

"I heal fast," he said, dryly, and they both understood quite well.

Audrey shivered all the same, and quickly rose. She fished out a clean kerchief and methodically wiped her hands, even though she'd been careful not to touch the wound, or his…blighted blood. Surely she'd have felt it, if it'd gotten on her skin?

"You'll be all right?" he said, suddenly, looking up at her face. "I don't know—if it's—are you hurt?"

Audrey waved this away, satisfied that her hands were truly as clean as they could get, and tucked the dirty thing away in another little pocket. "No harm done. Just try to get some sleep, hmm? And we'll all carry on the better for it in the morning."

"And you, as well." He cleared his throat. "I suppose you'll be turning in yourself."

"Hells no," she said. "I'll be off now. See what lurks ahead of us, see if I can't find our way through this mess. Dismas' got us good and lost by now."

Another silence, as Bigby seemed to process what she said.

"I'd had a feeling." He shook his head a little. "I should have said—"

"He'd have taken it ill if you had," Audrey said. "He's particular that way. But if I can get us back on course, we'll be done and back in time for tea."

A lie; no way in all the hells they'd faced would they manage that. But it seemed to have the desired effect. It put a bit of steel in his spine at the thought, anyway, got him to straighten up from his perpetual cowered hunch.

"I'm sure you're right."

"Ah, that's the spirit." She tugged her clothes back into place. "See, you're feeling better already. Don't wait up, I'll be back before you know it."

He nodded.

"Good luck…" he said, quietly. "Audrey."

She checked at her belt: all the knives, just where she'd left them. The little bottle of antidote that kept her on her feet, when the poison took hold. Yes. And the pickaxe, hooked back at her belt, that too. Everything just where it should be.

"I make my own luck, dear," she said. "We all do, down here."

She tipped her hat, and stepped off into the gloom, melting away into the darkness beyond the fire's light.

It wasn't in Audrey's nature to look back, or linger. But as she passed through the shadows, and to the doorway to the dark dungeons beyond, she couldn't help but take a quick look back. The three weary men, all of them huddled close to that little burning beacon. Bigby curled in on himself, huddled under his raggedy cloak, across from the sprawled Dismas, and Alhazred slumped against a reasonably clean wall between them.

Somehow she felt…not less weary, not deep in her bones. But it seemed a little easier to breathe. And the shadows didn't seem so threatening as they had before, when they'd collapsed for the night. Now, it was an old familiar friend...just her, and the darkness that hid her from prying eyes. She slid into it as though it were an old coat, leaving…

Well. Not friends. But she'd go a little further with them, for now. Just for the take.