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The first time he meets Vex, Percy recoils from her out of instinct. Second instinct, anyway, because his first instinct is to snap his chains somehow and knock her unconscious, then race out of the jail. But the chains will hold, because at the moment whatever strength Ripley’s little experiments with residuum gave him isn’t quite up to snapping heavy-duty manacles.
It’s a good thing they hold, because after his initial flinch, Vex holds her hands up and says, “No, hey, listen—I’m not going to hurt you. My brother and I, and our mustached friend over there, we’re here to free you.” She points to herself. “My name’s Vex’ahlia,” she says, kindly, “but you can call me Vex, for short.”
Percy opens his mouth to respond, but coughs, bending over with the force of it. The woman quickly goes to his side, her hands glowing, and as the magical energy courses through his veins he feels his various wounds and hurts knitting back together. He pulls away from her the second the magic runs its course, and says, his voice rough and rusty, “Percy. My name’s Percy.” He prays she doesn’t ask him his last name, because he can’t—he can’t quite remember it, just yet.
Honestly, it took him a while to even get Percy back.
“Percy,” Vex says, and something about the way she says his name—it sparks something inside of him, something that he’s not going to look at right now, or else it might burn him. And he has, quite literally, gotten burned a bit too often lately. She nods to the two fellows standing guard outside Percy’s cell door, a tall half-elf with the same fine-boned features as Vex and a purple-clad gnome with a fake mustache affixed to his face. “The fellow with my cheekbones is Vax’ildan, my brother,” she says. “The gnome is—”
“Burt Reynolds, Esquire,” says, uh, Burt, apparently. Percy squints at him, but he’s too far and the cell too dark, unless Percy dares to tap into the magic that Ripley shoved into his veins.
He’s not going to. God only knows how these people will react if they realize what they have on their hands.
“Just call me Vax,” says Vax’ildan. “Want me to come in and get your new stray out, sister?”
“He’s not a stray, asshole,” says Vex with a huff, stepping out as Vax steps inside, lockpicks slipping into his hand. “He’s a person who looks like he’s been through some shit.”
“You wouldn’t be wrong,” says Percy, as Vax kneels down and starts working his pick into the keyhole. “Can you—They took a few things off me when they arrested me: a blue coat and a weapon that I’ve been working on. I’d like them back once I’m out.”
“Ooh, a tinkerer,” says Burt, approvingly. “Yeah, sure, I’ll go get them.” He saunters off, whistling a merry tune, and Vex leans against the doorway.
“What kind of weapon is this?” she asks. “A crossbow?”
“Something new,” says Percy. “Like a crossbow but not quite. You’ll see when I get it back.” The lock clicks, and the manacles on his wrists fall away with a heavy clang.
Vax frowns, both at the sound of the metal hitting the ground and the now-healed marks around Percy’s wrists, the edges of his scars peeking out from under his sleeves. “These are—a lot heavier and a great deal more complicated than they’d use for thieves,” he says, working on the shackle around Percy’s right ankle now. “What, exactly, are you in for, Percy?”
Trying to kill Ripley. “The captain of the guard here is corrupt,” says Percy. “I was snooping around, breaking into places I shouldn’t be. In one of those places, I spotted him donning the robes of the local apocalypse cult. Didn’t quite manage to sneak away as easily as I snuck in, so, here I am.” It’s only half the truth. He’d managed to follow the man from his cult meeting to Ripley’s borrowed apartment, he couldn’t give half a shit about whatever the cult or the captain is actually up to.
“This apocalypse cult,” says Vex, “do you have any idea what they’re planning to do?”
“They were going to try to summon a Nightmare,” says Percy.
“That’s exactly what we need!” says Vex, her words punctuated by the shackle falling away from Percy’s ankle, clanking on the floor. “The heart of a Nightmare!”
“Can you tell us where they are?” Vax asks.
“I can do better than that,” says Percy. “I can lead you there.”
Vax frowns, and says, “I don’t know about that—”
“I like that deal,” says Vex. “I’d rather have another fighter on our side, if we’re to fight an entire cult alongside a Nightmare.”
“I sort of doubt he’s that good at fighting or at stealth considering where we are right now,” Vax points out. His eyes flick to Percy’s wrists, and Percy swallows, realizing that Vax has caught sight of the edges of the scars under his sleeves, the lines of magic thrumming underneath his skin. He pulls the sleeves over his wrists.
“If you give me my weapons back,” he says, standing up, “I’ll show you how good I am.”
Burt comes back then, carrying a blue coat and, thank the gods, his gun and his tools. Percy bolts forward, pushing past Vax, to pick the weapon up. “Good news, I found your shit,” says Burt, “bad news, the—uh, the crossbow-thingy? Whatever that is? Guy said it was broken.”
“No matter,” says Percy. “It’s a quick repair job, I’ll do it on the way.” He hefts it up, aiming toward the ceiling, and smiles at the power that hums now in his bloodstream, the weight of his weapon in his hand. “And it’s a gun,” he adds.
“How’s it work?” Vex asks, squinting at it.
“You’ll see,” says Percy.
--
After the dust has settled, and as Vex is harvesting a Nightmare’s heart from its inert form, Percy slumps against a rock and hisses in pain as his elbow bumps the hard surface. Gods damn it, it always gets like this after a fight, especially after using the magic shoved into his veins. His shoulder throbs dully, both with real pain and remembered pain, and he rotates it with a wince.
“You all right there, Whitey?” Vax asks, coming to stand next to him, brow furrowing with concern. Burt Reynolds, apparently actually named Scanlan, has ambled over to Vex to sing her a little ditty, something that starts with carved out the heart, you brought your A-game, you give hunting a great name.
“I’m all right,” says Percy. “It’ll pass. Just—give me a moment.”
“Wanna tell me how you did that?” Vax asks, nodding to the two or three cultists that Percy managed to put down with one bullet and some magically-enhanced sight.
“Well, you see,” Percy begins, holding up his gun with his finger off the trigger, “when I take down this little lever with my thumb, that disengages the safety measures in place so I don’t accidentally shoot my own fingers off—”
“Not that,” Vax says. “The other thing. I saw your eyes glow, Percy. I’d find it normal and all, I usually travel with a druid, but I saw your fingers glowing too. Eyes and fingers glowing at the same time is not something I’ve come across as often.”
“I’m fully aware you want to know about the other thing,” says Percy. “I, however, don’t really feel like I should tell you that.”
“You’re hurt,” says Vax. “Whatever you did hurt you.”
“I can take a little hurt,” says Percy. He smiles, a little ghoulish. “In fact, I daresay I’m built for it.” Or at least he’s been trained to take it without complaining too much. “I’m all right,” he says, quietly, tugging his sleeves down over his wrists. “I’ve dealt with this before, I’ve found ways to manage it.”
“If you say so,” says Vax. He leans against the rock, and says, “My sister likes you, sort of.”
“Really,” says Percy.
“She’s pretty fond of strays, if you noticed,” says Vax.
“Do you know, I think I have,” says Percy. The smile drops, and he rubs an arm over his shoulder, looks again at Vex with something wrenching in his heart. “Do you two bicker often?” he asks.
Vax blinks at him. “Uh, yes,” he says. “I think it’s something of an occupational requirement when you’re a sibling.”
Percy sighs. “Don’t fight with her too much,” he says. “She’s—She’s really something else. And you never know, one day she might just be gone.”
Vax bristles. “You act as though you know either of us,” he says. “If you truly did, you’d know I’d never.”
Percy says nothing, just glances sideways at Vax. Something broken inside him stirs at Vax’s concern, the way his brow furrows. He holsters the gun again, then pushes himself off the rock and walks over to Vex. Vax watches him leave, clearly unsettled and worried now over this stray they’ve picked up.
Percy can’t blame him. He’d heard himself. He’d sounded...well, like he’d had experience in that department, even though he honestly can’t quite remember his own siblings. He’d had some. He’d had quite a few. Now they’re gone and all he knows is that someone took them from him, and the fury that thought stokes in his heart scares him.
Who are you, Percy? he wonders.
--
It’s Keyleth who first sees it.
They’ve had to split from the rest of the party in this castle dungeon, clearing out ghosts for some new family to move in. Vex and Vax obviously went together, with Pike tagging along with them. Grog and Scanlan, last Keyleth checked, have trooped down another path, in search of a rumored crypt of some famed bard belonging to the family who used to own this castle, now long since died out. That just leaves Percy, so Keyleth comes with him.
And a good thing she did, because now he is very badly hurt, eyes glowing dimly in the darkness. She knows humans shouldn’t be able to do that, shouldn’t have eyes that can see in the dark, but Percy is—strange, for a human. She sometimes wonders what happened to him, before Vex found him in that prison cell, because whatever it was, it did something to his body and to his mind.
Broke, she thinks, the word you’re looking for is broke.
She hauls him into a room that’s out of the way of any marauding ghosts, then takes his coat off. “Oh, jeez,” she says, staring at the ugly gash in his stomach. “Okay, hold on, let me just take your shirt off—”
Percy’s hand shoots up to grab her wrist, and she hisses in shock and pain. “Don’t,” he says, quietly begging, but his eyes have glazed over and she thinks he’s going into shock. “Please, don’t, I don’t—please, just stop, please—”
“Hey,” says Keyleth, as gently as she can, trying to ignore the panic bubbling up inside her chest, gently prying his fingers off her wrist. Oh, god. She is not at all equipped for this. Oh, oof, that’s gonna leave a bruise. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m going to heal you, I’m not going to hurt you, okay? It’s, it’s me, it’s Keyleth. You know, with the, with the antlers.”
Percy blinks up at her, and says, with no small amount of disbelief, “Keyleth?”
“I promise I won’t hurt you,” she says. “But you’ve been hurt really bad and I’ve got a Cure Wounds ready. Just—hold still for me, okay?”
“I—I can do that,” Percy says, after a moment. “Yes.”
Keyleth touches her fingertips to the edge of the wound, careful to keep the touch as light and as painless as possible. She watches as the curative magic stitches the muscles and skin back together, and as Percy winces a little at the sensation. “Sorry,” says Keyleth, quietly, frowning at the wound and at the glimpses of something glittering buried in Percy’s flesh. “I know it feels weird. Hey, uh, if it’s not prying, can I ask you something weird?”
“Certainly, but I can’t say I’ll answer,” says Percy.
“Who hurt you?” Keyleth asks. “Before Vex found you. Before you ended up in the cell. There’s...nobody’s said anything about it, but when we cast on you, you feel weird.”
“Oh,” says Percy.
“Like, I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” says Keyleth, nervously, “but sometimes when I heal you I feel, I don’t know, like I’m, uh, don’t take this the wrong way, but healing you sort of feels like I’m plunging my bare hands directly into snow? It’s cold as hell and it’s a shock every time, and sometimes I think maybe it’s not working as well as it should, but then other times it works just fine—”
“Keyleth,” Percy cuts in, before Keyleth can keep going with her ramble, and thank god, because she doesn’t know how far down she can follow this train of logic out loud. “Is this really the time?”
“No,” Keyleth sheepishly admits.
Percy sighs. “If we get out of this alive,” he says, “I’ll tell you. I—may need to tell everyone anyway, in case something happens involving this—thing that I can’t quite talk about, just yet.” He looks down at his gloved hands, flexes his fingers, and winces. “But first—”
“Get out alive,” says Keyleth, trying to put the image of glittering crystals underneath Percy’s skin, buried in his flesh, catching the light before his skin closed over them. “Yeah. Yeah, I think we can do that.”
--
Vex is a damn good archer. Her aim is not too shabby, if she says so herself—she gets her target more often than not, and sometimes she’s even the one who brings it down. She’s always the one the team fields when they need someone who can shoot with near-surgical precision from three hundred yards off, because she’s the one with the best chance of even winging the target.
She’s not going to lie, though, she’s pretty sure Percy’s much better than she is. She doesn’t have a problem with that, he brings a lot of long-distance firepower and in a fight they always need more firepower in general, but—in the first fight she’d ever seen him in, his eyes…glowed, with this sickly green glow, his pupils narrowing into pinpoints.
Also there’s the part where sometimes when he’s pissed off enough he can push things very very hard, that’s something too. His eyes glow then, too, and she’s noted that what little she can see of the scars under his sleeves also glow then. So whatever this power of his is, he didn’t come by it in a very pleasant manner.
She doesn’t bring it up. She doesn’t know how she’s supposed to bring it up, when he’s clearly so recalcitrant to talk about his past. But she keeps an eye on him, and keeps another eye out for anyone who might be more than a little interested in their resident gunslinger.
The penny drops, as they say, somewhere out in the Bramblewood, after they’ve just killed the evil force those three weird druids are saying have animated and corrupted the trees into attacking. They’re not the only ones who’ve taken on this job, but in the town’s pub Vex overheard a small party of mercenaries, led by a redheaded rogue who sneered at Keyleth (of all people to sneer at!) when she asked for directions, discussing how to take down the three druids. “Who else could it be, anyway?” the redhead had said, with a snort of laughter. “A corrupting force, hah. That’s just an excuse they’ve made up. Rest up, boys—tomorrow we kill some tree-corrupting, small-minded motherfuckers in the woods.”
When the redhead turned to look in their direction, Percy had quickly turned away, pulling his hood up over his head, troubled. When she looked away, he had said, “If we’re taking this job—”
“Oh, yeah, we definitely are,” Vax had said, “they’re fucking assholes.”
“If we’re taking this job,” Percy had said, “we need to do this now.” He had nodded to the mercenary gang, rowdy and rude in a way that—yeah, okay, fine, was similar to Vox Machina, but not quite, was like looking in a funhouse mirror and seeing all the things that could’ve gone wrong in their group, that still could go wrong. Vex had liked them even less, then. “She heard us planning. She’ll want to undermine us and get there first before we do, and I—really don’t like the idea of her getting there first.”
“Me neither,” Scanlan had said.
“I bet she wouldn’t even leave anything for the rest of us,” Grog had muttered.
“She absolutely would not,” Percy had said. Vex refrained, then, from asking him.
She doesn’t refrain now as they’re trudging through the forest, the ground muddy after the rain. “How do you know her?” she asks.
“It’s—” Percy starts, then sighs. “I, uh. She was…employed where I used to be, let’s say. One of the—one of the guards. Nasty piece of work.”
Vex frowns. “So that prison I found you in, that wasn’t your first prison?” she asks.
“It was and it wasn’t,” says Percy. “It was the first jail cell I’ve been held in that—uh, that was not part of a castle, I suppose.”
“Why were you being held in a castle?” Vex asks.
Percy shrugs. “I—can’t say,” he says. “Let’s just go. The sooner we get there the more chance we have of beating her and her lot there.”
“She can’t have made it there already,” Keyleth says. “I mean, those druids are pretty hard to find. I’m a druid and I couldn’t find them.”
“Let’s hope,” says Percy, in a tone that suggests he honestly doubts it. Vex touches her bow and slings it off her back, and sees her brother slip his daggers into his hands.
Sure enough, when they get there, the redhead has her knife to the throat of the youngest-looking druid, an earth genasi who’d been so friendly to Pike and crafted her some flowers for luck. Now the girl looks terrified beyond belief, scrabbling at the redhead’s arm and crying. “Give yourselves up to us,” she’s barking at the other two, “or the girl gets it. We know you did it. We know you cursed this forest.”
“We did not,” says the second-oldest druid, a tiefling woman with geometric tattoos and twisting antelope horns. She draws herself up to her fullest height, a feat considering the arrows buried in her already. “Our family has protected this forest for generations. What would we gain from destroying it?”
“Your family?” the redhead scoffs. “A firbolg, a tiefling, and some girl made of mud don’t make a family. Don’t make me fuckin’ laugh.”
“They are family,” the firbolg, the eldest druid, says, mildly. “Blood doesn’t make a family, love does. Now put the knife down, ma’am, or we will have to do something we will regret.”
“I’ll put the knife down if you’ll give yourselves up for judging,” says the redhead, her companions coming out of the bushes. “My boys won’t hurt you. Much.”
Six against three isn’t very fair odds.
But seven and three against six is even more unfair, as Vex lets the first arrow fly, watching it thunk right into the redhead’s shoulder as the spells start flying. Vax, who she hadn’t even seen leave her side, melts out of the shadows beside them and tries to pull the woman’s hand away from the girl, snarling, “Get your hands off her!”
“You,” the redhead hisses, as her men quickly pivot to deal with the screaming goliath barbarian swinging a battleaxe around with terrifying amounts of glee. “You were from the tavern! I should’ve known you’d try to beat me to the bounty!”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Vax asks, baffled. “We’re not here for the bounty!”
“Time to fuck shit up, I suppose,” Percy says, loading his gun and taking aim. His eyes glow, his pupils narrowing into pinpricks, and he fires, scoring a hit on one of the men trying to slap manacles on the firbolg druid. “Ginnis! Let the girl go.”
Ginnis’ hand loosens, her eyes going wide as they snap onto Percy. “Well, well,” she says. “Ripley’s little test subject. She’d love to pay me for a treasure like you.” She snaps her fingers, and says to her men, “Get the manacles on the white-haired fellow and one of the druids! One out of three surely will do just fine!”
Percy stiffens up, and Vex can see a glow underneath his clothes now. He swings the gun over to the woman and fires once more, eyes glowing with illusory fire.
The bullet slams into her shoulder, and she screams in shock, dropping the knife as Vax pulls the druid girl away. “You shit!” Ginnis snarls. “I’m gonna bring you back to Ripley with your legs broken! Let’s see her fix that—”
She screams again, as Vex’s arrow hits the ground in front of her and shatters into a thousand thorns from the impact, shrapnel embedding itself inside Ginnis’ body.
“You’ll do no such thing,” Vex says. “Not to him, not to the druids.”
Somewhere in Vex’s peripheral vision, Scanlan thrusts his pelvis at some asshole. A lightning bolt bursts from his pants and strikes through three mercenaries and Grog, who just startles a bit before finishing one of the mercenaries off with a jubilant cry.
Percy’s eyes cut to Vex, and she sees the surprise there, as though he hadn’t quite realized that they’d keep him safe, that she’d say something like that. What has been done to him, that he’s so scared of other people?
Vax pulls the girl to safety, putting himself between her and the fight. He flicks a dagger up into his hand and flings it at a mercenary, downing them with a dagger to the throat. “Give it up!” he calls to Ginnis. “Leave us alone and we’ll let you get away, but keep this up and we will not let you leave alive!”
“Big fucking words from—” Ginnis starts. She screams as her arm is nearly torn off with a shot from Percy’s pistol.
Pike slams glowing hands onto a staggering druid, then whips out a Sacred Flame towards a man with a mace. Vex downs that fellow afterward, then whips back to Ginnis and fires another arrow, watching it skid off her armor.
Percy shoots again. And again, and again, advancing slowly, fury in his blue eyes. Vex can see the smoke coming off them now, black smoke a sharp contrast to the white light seeping through his clothes. “I remember you a lot more clearly now,” he says, coldly. “You were never on my list, you know. But now that you’re here, I find I do have some hatred left over to spare for you—after all, you laughed when I begged her for mercy.”
He points the gun at her head and pulls the trigger.
--
The druids are thankful, afterward, and give them all useful things. For Percy himself, the oldest druid presses a clockwork amulet into his hand, and says, “You’ve seen much, haven’t you? I am so sorry. I don’t know if this will be enough, but it may ease your burdens for a time.”
He stares down at it now in the inn, turns it over as the drinks are poured. For a long moment, he doesn’t speak.
Then Vex says, “That woman—Ginnis. What happened?”
“Yeah, when she started talking you went all, I remember you, I’m gonna kill you, you hurt me real bad,” Grog says, which is surprisingly astute of him, even if his impressions are a bit lacking.
“It sounded like you knew her,” says Vax. “But—you didn’t quite remember her clearly.”
“Also you were glowing kind of a lot,” says Keyleth. “You’re not glowing now, but—uh, well, lot of glowing back there.”
“More than usual,” Pike adds.
Percy lets out a breath, then puts the amulet around his neck, feels the cold metal rest against his breastbone. “There’s not a lot I remember,” he admits. “I know I had a family, and they’re gone. I had siblings, many of them, but they’re all gone. Mostly what I remember is this woman strapping me to a table and—” He stops, his hand drifting over the scars. “I was a good shot before,” he says. “What she did to me—she put residuum inside me. It’s meant to amplify magical effects, but it turns out if you treat it in a certain way before you apply it to a person, you can amplify certain abilities they have.”
“Ginnis did that?” Grog asks, frowning.
“Not her,” says Percy. “But she helped strap me down.”
“Oh,” says Grog. “Shit.”
Scanlan leans over, taps a barmaid on the hand, and says, “Hi, can we get more ale? Like. A shitton of ale. And if you have anything harder than that my friend would love it, thanks.”
“This residuum,” says Vax, “is it hurting you? Is there any way we can get it out of you?”
Percy shakes his head, and says, “It doesn’t hurt as much as it used to. I may just be used to it now, and in that case it’d be unwise to take it out of me, especially if I can be more useful like this.” He looks up to meet their eyes, lingers on Vex, who looks...saddened. The sight of it tugs at something in his heart.
“We don’t care about useful, Percy,” Vex says. “We just want you to be okay.”
Percy huffs out a mirthless laugh, shakes his head. “I don’t know if that’s possible,” he says.
“Even if you’re not okay,” says Vax, “who gives a shit about useful? You’re our friend, Percy. And if there’s anything we can do to help—”
Percy chews on his lower lip, and says, “I...suppose there is one thing.” He props his chin up on the heel of his palm, and says, “I don’t like not knowing important things about myself. It doesn’t feel good, it doesn’t feel right. I want to know these things, I just don’t know where to start.”
“I mean we could ask, maybe,” says Scanlan. “Although how are we going to ask that? Hi, this is our friend Percy, he has special weapons and sometimes he glows, does he look familiar to you?”
“Nothing wrong with that,” says Grog, sincerely. He leans over, as if about to shout that very thing, only for Keyleth to quickly haul him back onto his seat. “Hey!”
“Well, do you have a lead?” Keyleth asks. “If you have a lead we might be able to track down information about you, and then maybe that might help you remember?”
“I don’t have the materials yet for it,” Pike says, “but once I do, I can cast Greater Restoration, would that help?”
Percy drums his fingers on the tabletop, and says, “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I’m not certain this is a magical effect, honestly—I’ve read about this. I think it might just be me.” There’s something broken inside him that he doesn’t know how to fix, and that rankles. He’s good at fixing things. He should be good at fixing this. “I want to fix it,” he says. “I want it all back. And then I want to shoot Ripley in the face.”
“We will help you,” says Vex. “With both those things. But Percy, darling,” and she reaches for him once more, her hand warm against his, her pulse quick under his thumb, “this residuum inside you...if it hurts you, let us know. I don’t care if it’s useful, the moment it hurts you worse than before, you let us know and we will find a way to get it out of you.”
Percy squeezes her hand, and knows this for sure: she means every word. They all do. They’re a bunch of assholes, this group he’s decided to go with, but they’re willing to help him, because he’s one of them. He’s one of them.
“I will,” he says, hoping they won’t mind the lie.