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She looks scared, but under the fear is grief - Orym doesn’t think he’s ever seen her so sad, not when they left the Crown Keepers, not when Dorian and Cyrus left, not even when she learned the truth about Morri. She shouldn’t - Fearne doesn’t wear sorrow well, Orym thinks, not even in a dream. Another sharp pain, an inaudible snk stabs through his sternum. He rubs at it absently, taking another step towards her. Derrig and Will - Will - shift next to him, almost like they’re positioning to catch him.
With his hand on his chest, he can feel his pulse jackrabbiting. “Fearne,” he says again.
“Orym,” the Matron’s Champion interrupts, gently. “What do you remember?"
“Imogen,” he says involuntarily. He rubs his chest again, harder, fingers digging into the bone. “The storm, that - Otohan, she was the one who attacked Zephrah, I recognized her echoes, the --”
He stops, then. Stops rubbing, stops speaking, stops thinking. Slowly, he tilts his head back to look at Will. “This isn’t a dream,” he rasps.
His smile is just as sweet as he remembers. “No, it isn’t. You’re dead, little moon.”
There was no good way to learn that your husband and father had been killed in the line of duty, Orym remembers. He discovers now that there is no good way to learn that you have been killed, either. He sways, catches himself on Derrig’s leg, buries his face there as he’s done since he was a kid. “Fuck,” he whispers, feeling Will fold himself around him, and from the way Derrig shifts he’d assume he does something similar.
“What about everyone else? Where are they?” Fearne asks in a small voice. Even through the flood of memories and regret and crushing failure Orym manages to crack open one eye and tilt his face towards the pair in the door.
The Champion tilts his head as if he’s listening, wings slowly fluttering behind him. “Close. Not yet, and maybe not now, but many of your party are close.”
“Oh shit and fuck,” she whispers. For his part, Orym agrees wholeheartedly. “Do - Orym, do you think FCG could still save us? And all of them?"
“I don’t know, Fearne. But, and I hope you don’t mind my bluntness, I hope they leave us and run.”
“Gosh, I hope they do too. They’re all gonna be so sad,” Fearne mourns, wringing her hands somehow, impossibly harder.
The Champion cocks his head harder. “Your friend, the little automaton - they’re a healer, right?” At the matching nods from Orym and Fearne, he continues, “Then if they move quickly, they could do it. Could give one or both of you a second chance at life. If that were an option, would you take it?”
“Oh, yes,” Fearne gasps, ears flicking straight up. (Orym is grateful for the chance to think on his own answer.) “All my favorite things are there, and I just met my parents, and of course I couldn’t leave my little Mister--”
She keeps talking, giving reason after reason to go back, to live, and Orym tunes her out. He drags his face out of his dad’s leg and looks up at him. A second chance. More time without both of them. A chance to get answers, justice. He missed them so much.
“Orym,” his dad smiles at him. A single tear, invisible to anyone but Orym, traces its way down his cheek. “It’s not done yet.” Will clutches tighter, wraps himself closer, but Orym can still feel him nod against his back. He squeezes his eyes shut, two tears of his own escaping, and nods once.
Fearne’s startled gasp draws their attention, and Orym looks over to see her start to glow. “Alright. Back you go, then,” the Champion says.
She meets Orym’s eyes. “I’ll see you on the other side,” she says, and with a soft wave of light she’s gone.
The raven skull mask turns to face him directly. “Will she?” he asks.
“You’re assuming Letters will have enough juice to bring us both back,” he says instead.
“Fearne is the same kind of caster as Kiki,” he shoots back, and the weight of the decision is eclipsed for a moment by the strangeness of hearing his boss’ nickname from someone speaking to him so familiarly. “And as powerful as she is, she’d be able to cast the same spell as your other friend. So. Will she see you in the Material Plane?”
Orym breathes in, slowly, a heavier ache than the ghost of his death-wound settling in his chest. “I still have a job to do. People to protect. Promises to keep. I’m sorry,” he turns to look at Derrig and Will one last time, gripping their hands tightly, “but you’re gonna have to wait for me a little bit longer.”
The sentence is barely out of his mouth before Orym sees his hands start to glow. He smiles against the ever-growing ache in his chest that threatens to choke him and spill from his eyes.
“Make us wait as long as you can,” Derrig says. “Not that we don’t miss you, but you deserve to live a long and happy life, Orym.”
Will doesn’t say anything, just spins him around in his arms and kisses him like - well, like a dying man. Orym can see the glow grow stronger through his closed eyelids, and as the light grows he starts to hear a voice - Fearne, near tears, calling him back.
“I love you,” he gets out. “I love you both so much--”
__________
He breathes dust and coughs blood, every fiber of his being screaming as he turns to the side and retches. Hands on his back, warm and thin-fingered, rub some of the air back into his lungs while he clears his airway as best he can.
“Orym, I was getting so worried I wasn’t doing the spell right because I did it, I cast it and you still weren’t breathing or moving and I was very scared you weren’t gonna wake up and then Chetney said maybe you didn’t wanna come back to us at all, but then you started waking up and now you’re here,” she babbles, still patting and rubbing at his back. Orym opens his streaming eyes and peers around, squinting through the dust storm. Right in front of him is the slightly-fuzzy form of Chetney, freshly de-wolved and crouching in his face. To the right he catches a glint of metal and a taller, lankier figure making their way through the storm - Laudna and Letters, probably. He can’t see well through the flying grit, but the area is otherwise clear as best he can tell.
“Imogen? Ashton?” he asks between coughs.
“Ashton got the fuck out of here as soon as he could,” Chetney answers. Orym nods. Good - at least they’re safe. “Imogen is gone.”
Orym jerks his head up, panic flashing through him. “What--”
“What do you mean Imogen is gone?” Laudna demands, manifesting through the storm while leaning heavily on Fresh Cut Grass. “What happened, Chetney?”
“Otohan got her. She was all, ‘Give in to your nature or you’re all gonna die!’ and Imogen was all ‘Fuck you!’ and then Otohan got me down (but she couldn’t resist letting The Alpha live), and then Imogen screamed and everything went red and Otohan went ‘Yessss good!’ and then they both disappeared.”
“Fuck, that’s not good.” Orym groans as he gets to his feet, scooping his sword and shield off the ground and setting them in their places on his back.
“What do we do now?” Letters asks shakily.
He takes a second to assess the group - FCG’s eyes are flickering slightly through the gloom, Chetney is half-dead still despite his energetic retelling, Fearne has tear tracks cutting through the grime on her face and a hole in her dress over her heart, and Laudna can barely stand on her own. “We go to Joe’s,” he says at the same time as Laudna says, “We go after Imogen.”
Orym starts counting on his fingers, cutting off Laudna’s impending outburst. “We don’t know where she is. Two of us died outright. Ashton isn’t here. Almost everyone else here almost fucking died, and, again, we don’t know where she is. But we all agreed to run, and to meet up back at Joe’s when it was safe. So we’re going to go to Joe’s, we’re going to recover and wait for Imogen, and if she doesn’t show up by tomorrow morning, then we go find her. But if we try to give chase right now, we are all going to die.”
“Laudna, I can’t heal anyone right now,” FCG pipes up. Their eyes are still flickering, and now that he’s closer Orym can see the way he sways under Laudna’s slight weight. “We threw everything we had at her, and it wasn’t enough. I’m just as worried about Imogen as you, but Orym is right - we’d all die.”
“Laudna, I know,” he says - and he does, he knows the sensation of your heart cracking in two within your chest, the memory of his husband fresh in his mind - gentler now, stepping forward and taking her cold hand. “I’m not saying to leave her. But we have to be smart about this. Okay?”
Slowly her fingers close around his and her eyes slide shut. “Let’s go to Joe’s,” she says, barely audible over the raging storm. “Let’s rest, and recover, and recuperate, so we can find Imogen and Otohan and send that bitch to the deepest pit in the Nine Hells.”
Orym nods and turns, extending his hand to Fearne to help her to her feet. The five of them wearily, silently, make their way through the deserted Bassuras streets towards Imahara Joe’s crawler shop with heavy hearts and heavier limbs, and emotions turbulent as the weather.