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“Are you certain this is the right direction?”
Éile rolls her eyes without turning around. “I wasn’t the one leading us down a dead-end for an hour,” she mutters under her breath. Louder, she adds, “Don’t you have traps to check for?”
Fjall snorts. “Yes, Princess.”
Éile does briefly turn around to glare at him for that. Fjall’s grin is wide and cocky in the dim light of the tunnel they are in, which means he did this on purpose. Of course he did. He is still Fjall, after all. Sometimes she thinks the only reason the monstrous side hasn’t yet torn him apart despite its best tries is that it is incapable of overpowering the animal trait he already has: being an utter ass.
“I thought you’d had enough of princesses.”
“Touché,” Fjall says and falls silent.
In another man, it might have been a concession of her point, but he has the unique talent of making her feel like he is simply humouring her without actually saying anything. It’s infuriating.
(It’s more infuriating that she loves him even despite that.)
She’s saved from having to come up with an appropriate reply by the already precarious path they’re traversing narrowing further, just before one of the sides falls away into a bottomless pit.
Fjall yanks her back just as she halts in her tracks, and she elbows him out of reflex.
“You don’t need to baby me,” she hisses.
“Sorry.” He lets go of her again, not sounding overly contrite. “Next time, I’ll just let you plummet to your death.”
She rolls her eyes. It’s not cute, him stepping in like that, it’s a liability. “Gonna make me complacent.”
“Gotta be alive to grow complacent,” Fjall counters.
Éile snorts and doesn’t deign to reply. Instead, she starts moving again, slow and careful, feeling her way forward along the wall. If she hasn’t moved Fjall the last four times they’ve had this argument since they set out, she won’t this time, either.
“Huh,” Fjall makes softly a couple of feet later, which immediately puts Éile on high alert.
“What?”
Fjall’s steps behind her have stopped, but in the quiet cavernous space, his breathing reassures her that he’s still where he is supposed to be – behind her, a few feet further away than the distance they’ve kept as a safety precaution. At the beginning, he’d been scouting ahead of her, right up until a thing that had looked like a cross between a rat and a horse (its size, unfortunately, more akin to the horse than the rat) had attacked them from behind.
Éile is a pretty good fighter in her own right, and Fjall knows that, but his monstrous side doesn’t. She is uncertain whether it doesn’t want to know or is incapable of knowing, but it doesn’t really matter; the result is that even though it chafes, it’s safer and less of a hassle to have him at her back.
Maybe she should be scared of having a barely-leashed monster prowling behind her, but she isn’t. Elders know how it happened, but she trusts Fjall – trusts him to contain the monstrous side he’s been saddled with, and beyond that, trusts him to alert her should that change.
There are many things she thought she knew about herself there are turned upside down by Fjall like they’re nothing.
“It’s a dangerous passage.” His voice is too heavy with meaning for the very obvious statement, but before she can ask about it, he adds, “I’m starting to wonder if this map is really as unique as told.”
Staying as close to the wall as she can, Éile chances another look behind her. Fjall is mirroring her position, though he is peering down into the abyss. Right. To his enhanced eyes, the pit probably isn’t as bottomless as it seems to her. Her sudden goosebumps agree that her inferior senses may just be a blessing in this instance.
“Maybe it’s unique in that it accurately warned me,” Éile suggests. It’s not easy to make out what it says in the dim mage light Zacaré had managed to procure from somewhere, but it’s well worth the squinting.
Fjall mutters something that sounds a lot like still would have been paste without me several times over, which is true, but doesn’t invalidate the sentiment.
“It’s not a slight on your prowess to admit this treasure map has helped you keep me safe.” The words taste bitter on her tongue, but Fjall doesn’t call her out on her hypocrisy. Knowing that he is no happier over his overprotective instincts than she is helps, but it doesn’t remove the feeling of powerlessness, of being weak. She spent so long denying her own violence that she arguably should rejoice laying that burden at someone else’s feet.
She doesn’t know why she doesn’t.
They make camp once they grow tired; they’re far enough below the surface that it’s impossible to tell what time it is, but listening to their bodies’ demands seems safer, anyway. So does making sure that there is enough distance between them and whatever was responsible for the bones down the pit that Fjall saw.
“You don’t think it was intrepid explorers falling to their deaths?” Fjall asks, and rips a chunk out of his jerky with his teeth like he is murdering it. His eyes gleam in the dark, and there’s something off about him.
That’s the other reason listening to their bodies is so important. He is always more other when he’s hungry or tired, and right now he is both. Pushing past his limits is a mistake they only made once, and it was sheer luck that they survived it.
Éile patiently waits for him to finish chewing and swallowing before she answers. “We didn’t see enough signs of other parties making their way down here.”
Fjall grins, his next bite of jerky clamped between his teeth. It’s just the two of them here, Scían and the others much too sensible for this sort of folly, so Éile sees no point in pretending she’s bothered by it.
“Probably correct,” he admits. “Bones also weren’t broken. It was hard to make out, but I don’t think they were entirely Elven – or Dwarven, for that matter – either.”
“Was it still around?” Fjall hadn’t seemed too concerned, but that might just mean that there was nothing that fear would have made better. That’s another thing she isn’t happy with, but it’s not something that needs to – or can, for that matter – be resolved right now. They’ll have more than enough time after this endeavour is over, assuming they’ll be successful. If they are not… well, then there’s no point in working on it either.
“Nothing but dust and darkness.”
Éile gives him a reproachful look that is entirely lost on him as he is tearing into another stick of jerky. Any more cryptic, and he could be a druid. Since he still seems unconcerned, though, she assumes he means to say that he sensed nothing out of the ordinary. His senses aren’t always the most reliable right now, but considering the size of that pit, it seems that he should have been able to notice its former occupant still being around.
It’s probably as much reassurance as they’re likely to get, so Éile drops the topic and returns to her own dinner.
Once they’re both done, they spread out the map between them and carefully position the mage light.
“Pit of darkness.” Fjall points at the dark splotch they’d thought carelessly dripped ink just this morning. He looks up at her with a wry smile that puts his unnaturally pointed fangs on display. “I assume that means we are right around here?”
“At least it’s aptly named,” Éile agrees and traces the corridor that winds its way further into the cave system. “This has to be the junction over there.” She nods towards a tunnel entrance that is nothing but a well of darkness of its own from their vantage point. “Which means…” She trails off, excitement bubbling though in her stomach.
The same kind of elation is visible in Fjall’s face. “… almost there.”
If the map is to scale – and so far it has been – they should make it easily tomorrow. Assuming there are no unexpected monsters, they might even make it back to this camping spot, the business all done. Even thinking it feels like she is jinxing their success.
“You look like you need your mind taken off of what awaits us tomorrow.” Fjall’s eyes are dark, not with something monstrous but with desire, and maybe it should be too fucked up or too weird or too strange. But it’s still just the two of them down here, and she doesn’t care about what people think besides, and so she gives into Fjall’s offer without further hesitation.
“That’s actually a little…”
“… anti-climactic?” Éile finishes Fjall’s sentence, stepping close enough that their arms brush. Almost absentmindedly, Fjall interlinks their fingers. They’re standing at the edge of a cavern that is arguably gorgeous, natural light filtering in from an opening above and illuminating a sea of pale blue flowers. Fluorescent moss and lichen draw mesmerising fractal patterns on the walls, and tiny floating bugs zip around like shooting stars. But it’s still… painfully normal. They didn’t have to fight magical guardians to gain entrance, or pay with what they hold dearest. They just got up this morning and hiked the rest of the way, barely even a full turn of the glass from where they’d camped.
“I was about to say, easier than expected, but yeah, we can go with anti-climactic, too.”
Éile gives him a dry look, and then uses the linked hands to pull him into the meadow, careful not to step on flowers if she can avoid it.
Fjall follows her easily, and doesn’t ask superfluous questions like why she’s not just collecting the needed petals. She can’t quite explain it anyway. There’s a tranquillity about this place that is a little otherworldly after all, now that she has slowed down enough to appreciate it. It might be a good omen – tranquillity is something like what they are looking for, after all.
There’s a small clearing several feet into the meadow, a patch just big enough for the two of them and the foldable cauldron Zacaré equipped them with. They’ve both had the recipe drilled into their heads enough that they don't need Zacaré’s written instructions and instead start preparing the ingredients in companionable, calm quiet.
Seven petals, freshly plucked. Eight leaves altogether, five with rounded edges and three serrated and all of them unblemished. Two stalks, ground into fine pulp. There’s a whole slew of other things that go into the concoction that Zacaré had gathered for them, pickling and drying and doing Elders knew what else before they set off, but combining them correctly is something Fjall has to do on his own.
Éile steps back and watches him mix it all together. Fjall is no alchemist, and he tends to move with a certain economy of motion, self-assured and practical. And yet, she might as well be bystander to a master potioneer, well beyond what his practice with Zacaré should afford him.
And then he drops the final petal into the cauldron, stirs twice, and ladles a full scoop into a goblet whose properties Éile cannot remember now. Without hesitation, he downs it.
Éile watches his throat work, her own filled with her choking heartbeat.
Nothing happens.
He doesn’t drop the goblet, doesn’t fall to the ground and convulse, doesn’t transform back into the elf he used to be.
Éile hadn’t consciously expected any of those things, but disappointment is undeniable and heavy in her mouth.
“Lark,” Fjall says, soft and gentle, drawing Éile back to the present. She blinks, refocusing on his now familiar form. His eyes are still warm when he beckons for her, and she follows like a puppet on strings. She doesn’t have to, of course, but why would she not want to?
“Did it work?” she asks softly, allowing him to draw her closer until they are chest to chest. His breath smells sweetly of the concoction when he leans his forehead against hers, but it’s not unpleasant. She wants to kiss him, though Zacaré was very clear that both the petals and the concoction would be terribly poisonous for a mere elf like her, and so she lets her head drop against his chest. His heart beats strong and steady underneath her ear, too slow and exactly as she has gotten used to.
“It’s too early to tell.” Fjall brushes kiss against her hair. “But it hasn’t yet killed me, so I am… hopeful.”
There’s a smile in his voice that she can’t help but echo. So maybe they don’t yet have the much-needed certainty that his monstrous side has been appeased, that it will stop trying to tear him apart. But he’s right: they have, for the first time in months, hope.
Hope for a future, together.