Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Martyn doesn’t know the god’s name, is the thing. 

It’s not the biggest thing, not really, but it’s what sticks him most as the haze of his capture and escape begins to clear. 

Passing out in the middle of the forest allows Martyn to get a good rest for the first time in what feels like his entire life. He sleeps away the night and the next day, only opening his eyes when late afternoon sunlight finally manages to angle its way into his eyes. When he does return to consciousness, it’s with the most peace of mind he’s had since he first heard the name Dogwarts.

Free and rested and soaking in the safety of the soft and silent sunlight, Martyn’s mind moves slowly. He can’t place where he is, but he’s too comfortable to find that immediately alarming. 

Martyn is lying in the grass. His back might bite him for it later, but right now, he doesn’t think he could buy a bed better. He’s warm, even without a blanket, entirely content under the sun. Did he take a nap? This felt too long to be a nap. Where even is he? What was he doing before…?

This is about the moment the gravity of Martyn’s new situation finally crashes down on him. 

Martyn’s eyes snap open. 

The city, the escape, the god—all of it hits Martyn at once. He’s out, thank the gods—the god?—but is he actually free? 

A paladin’s oath is no joke. Martyn… doesn’t actually know exactly what it all entails. Religious studies, usually, and some kind of ethical component, maybe? Magic? He definitely can’t do magic. Well, he did warn the god he wouldn’t be any good at this.

For one, though, he’s fairly certain these things are meant to be lifelong. Devotion is the name of the game with paladins; not only a singular, momentary promise, but an active, constant series of choices creating a life of servitude. 

To promise his life is all well and good when Martyn feels death just a few paces down the street, but now that it’s not so immediate… 

Well. Martyn’s feeling a bit like he’s gotten married, and he hadn’t been sober when he’d met the bride. 

When Martyn turns to the campfire he’d built the night before, the fire is still burning. All the kindling he’s collected is gone, but the fire doesn’t seem to be in danger of going out. Then again, this same fire burned for… how long without needing to be tended to? A decade at least, Martyn’d guesstimated, and the god is perfectly fine. 

Gods are supposed to be unkillable, or so they say. Guess Grian had been right. 

Gods don’t die, after all. Even strange ones. 

“Okay,” Martyn says, “Are you… still there?” 

The fire fluffs up, a fwoomp of hot air hitting Martyn in the face. 

“Cool. I guess I should have expected that,” Martyn says, mostly to himself. He crosses his legs, leaning his elbows on his knees, and stares into the fire. 

Martyn is not and has never been a religious man. The sort of rigidity that came with an organized faith was never for him—too many rules and regulations, even before considering the attitude of a god. 

There were far too many deities corrupted, in some form or another, by their own power. Gods who didn’t deign their followers worth listening to, gods who manipulated the lives of those who followed them, gods whose followers lived thankless lives and died meaningless deaths.

Martyn has no idea what the god he’s sworn his life to is like, nor does he know what the god would ask of Martyn. He doesn’t know if this god is strict, if the god is cruel. He seemed kind, from BigB’s brief story, but is he still the same god BigB knew? What effect does ten, twenty, thirty years of solitude have on the mind? He may very well have survived just fine, divine mind entirely intact, or...

Well. He doesn’t know, does he? Martyn has no way of knowing what kind of god he’s saddled himself with. There are fates worse than death out there, fates more tortuous than being the mouse in a cat’s game. Martyn has no plans to spend his life in the service of conceited, controlling, callous gods—he’d rather the Watchers have just killed him. 

He doesn’t even know the god’s name. 

Uncertainty like that doesn’t sit well with Martyn at all. 

“Right,” Martyn mumbles, “It doesn’t look like we were followed. BigB and Jimmy weren’t when they left, either, so we might be in the clear.”

The campfire sparks, firing lightning in every direction. 

Martyn jerks back, scrambling out of range. He’d seen what happened to every single Watcher who touched that fire, and he does not plan to be next.  

The fire abruptly cuts out, dimming down to red embers. Martyn watches the god simmer for a moment. When the god doesn’t throw out any other sparks, Martyn allows his shoulders to loosen. 

“C’mon, dude, there’s no need to vaporize me after a day,” Martyn mutters, an uncertain laugh slipping through his teeth, “Wait, should I be calling you dude? Is that blasphemy?”

The fire crackles, swelling back up to a dull and pleasant orange Martyn isn’t sure what to make of. At the least, the god doesn’t seem angry, so he takes that as a good enough sign for the moment. 

...He decides to push it, just a little. 

“Well. You’re going to be dude for now, until I find something to call you. I don’t know your name,” Martyn declares. The fire crackles, a disarmingly comfortable sound. Martyn might feel a bit more valiantly defiant in the face of a god if he didn’t feel like he was scolding his house’s fireplace. 

Drastic stand against divine tyranny taken, Martyn pushes himself to his feet and gets to poking around the clearing. Most of the leaves have fallen off the trees by now, and he kicks through a few leaf piles until he finds a branch suitable for a torch. 

He could just leave, he supposes, picking up a decent-sized stick. The god doesn’t seem to be able to move without help, so. Martyn could just walk away! This would solve at least one of his problems immediately. It’s not like he’s terribly fussed about becoming an oathbreaker, and really, the god should probably just appreciate that he got a change of scenery from that stuffy old basement. 

Martyn glances back over his shoulder at the campfire, frowning. But if he can move on his own, and Martyn leaves him… 

The branch in his hand is growing some sort of strange fungus, so he sets it back down. He’ll find a better stick and a better plan. Martyn doesn’t really fancy the idea of becoming ash today. 

True to his word, Martyn finds a stick. He takes it back to the god, waving it a bit in front of him. 

“Alright, ready to go? And not set me on fire?” Martyn asks. The campfire fluffs up again, which doesn’t exactly inspire Martyn with confidence, but whatever. 

The torch, when offered, takes immediately, snuffing out the campfire. 

“Right, you did that back in the, uh, shrine, too, didn’t you?” Martyn asks. The fire lights up, and Martyn hums. 

“We should probably figure out ‘yes’ and ‘no’ for you, at least, if we want to be able to talk at all,” Martyn notes, holding the torch out in front of his face. “If you can get bright like that on command—“ The fire brightens considerably, “…yeah, okay. Lighten up for yes, dim down for no?”

The fire beams once more. If Martyn didn’t know any better, he’d think the god were smiling.

“Good, alright." Martyn nods. "Then I guess all we’ve got to do now is go.”

The silent forest unsettles Martyn. 

The lack of life beyond the tree line had been manageable when he’d had three other voices to help him fill the dead air, but now that it all falls to him, he finds it almost unbearable. Too much like the city, like hiding in alleys and from feather-light footsteps, like listening constantly for someone on his tail.

So, Martyn makes noise. 

At first, Martyn sings, any and every song that comes to mind. He wanders aimlessly from one tune to the next, hopping to a new one every time he forgets a verse or trips on a chorus, up until he realizes he’s lost too many lyrics to his still-scattered nerves to finish any single song. When he runs out of words, he hums. This is even more mindless, no cohesion from note to note. A meaningless up and down, holding and dropping whatever chords he can at random. When the meaningless melody betrays too obviously his unease, he abandons that, too. 

Quiet reigns, for a moment, king of the empty forest. The fire crackles in his hand, just once, and Martyn turns his attention to the torch. Anything to stop himself from straining his ears into the silence, right?

“I don’t have to like, pray or something to talk to you, do I?” Martyn asks. The torch in his hands dims. Martyn tests the light again, grinning. “Oh, great. I wasn’t going to.”

The torch lights up again, raining sparks around his fingers. Martyn snaps his arm out, holding it as far from himself as he can. The fire freezes. 

“Don’t do that.” Martyn scolds without thinking. The god dims to a small red flame, barely bigger than the torch he’s sitting on, but Martyn doesn’t think he’s being refuted. If anything, the god seems sheepish, little wisps of fire curling inward on themselves.  

Interesting, though Martyn isn’t yet sure what to make of it. He draws the torch back to himself, cautious. The fire doesn't change, pathetically small, and Martyn frowns. 

“...Hey. Did I tell you how I ended up meeting you?”

The light, already low, hesitates, then nearly snuffs himself out, little more than red embers on the torch. 

“This is going to be tricky if I ask you multiple ‘no’ questions in a row,” Martyn says, “If I ask you two questions that you want to answer with ‘no’ in a row, just stay dim, maybe? You don’t have to keep getting darker and darker.”

The god then steadily brightens back up to his full orange glow. There are no sparks, no sudden movements. Clearly, he’s trying not to startle Martyn again. 

“Right, going back to baseline between questions would work, too, I guess. Just like that,” Martyn says, “What was I talking about again? Right, no, I asked if I told you how I got here, and you said I hadn’t.”

The ribbons of the god’s light curl a bit faster. It reminds Martyn a bit of a wagging tail, and he laughs. 

“Can I take that as you wanting to hear about it?” Martyn asks. The god makes a measured shift to yellow-white brightness. “Sure, I can tell you. We came here because we were told about magic beasts. BigB’s idea, he saw a poster about it and wanted to come. He used to live in Dogwarts, actually. Do you remember him?”

The fire lights up, less careful and pure white. There are no sparks, though Martyn tilts the torch away from himself to keep from going blind. It’s far too extreme a reaction for a simple yes, and for the first time, it occurs to Martyn that the god might not have known there were any survivors to his city falling. 

“I’m sure he’ll be happy to hear that,” Martyn says, “His whole family got out, if you were worried about them. BigB doesn’t talk about, uh, all that a lot, honestly, but when we find him again, I’m sure he’ll tell you all about everyone who got out safe.”

Martyn has to turn away from the god entirely to keep from being entirely blinded, but he finds he doesn’t mind. 

The lightshow dims back to a more manageable brightness, but still lighter than what Martyn’s come to think of as the god's neutral. Fire curls toward him without coming close, popping adamantly. Martyn laughs.

“What? I don’t know what that means,” Martyn says, though it’s not exactly like the god can elaborate. Martyn isn’t entirely sure how to talk to the god, but the return of the silence has him wracking his brain for… anything, really. He can already feel that bit of paranoia creeping back in, the urge to look over his shoulder, just to be sure. He scans the line of bushes and trees, hard-earned habit, and it’s then that his eye catches on something strange caught in one of the branches. 

There’s a feather. It’s far larger than any Martyn has ever seen, the size of Martyn’s entire forearm. It looks like it could maybe have belonged to something tropical, a bright red that abruptly cuts to yellow. 

“What kind of bird is that?” Martyn pulls it out from the leaves, but nearly drops it when he does. The entire lower half is covered in a mottled pale-purple patch, a shade of which looks almost sickly. For a second, Martyn thinks it’s started to mold, but a closer look reveals that’s simply the pattern on the feather. He frowns. 

“What kind of bird looks like this?” Martyn mutters. The torch in his other hand shrinks, the god inside almost hunching in on himself. “Do you think it could be one of those beasts? I was starting to wonder if they were made up.” 

A hesitant burst of light. Martyn frowns. 

“It’s weird, you know. Up until now, I haven’t seen any proof there’s so much as a sparrow up here, let alone anything to suggest beasts like this.”

The light doesn’t change. Even the fire is quiet, lacking the ambient crackling of a normal campfire. Martyn tries not to frown. 

“Not that I’m necessarily complaining about the lack of beasts,” Martyn adds, “I think I’d much rather have no beasts than many beasts. I don’t know how well I’d… Well. I don’t know how I’d do right now.” 

After too many seconds soaking in the silence, straining for a sound, Martyn fidgets, moving the torch from one hand to another.

“Were beasts an issue back when you were… what, is alive the right word?”

There’s a crackling sound, then the fire lights up. A yes, then. Martyn assumes that’s about the beasts. 

“Huh. I genuinely didn’t think they were real, if I’m honest. Some fake quest to lure out stupid adventurers who don’t read the fine print,” Martyn says, then continues, this time with a forced friendly cheer, “‘Come out here kill some beasts for coin! Also, submit to your friend getting murdered and you being hunted like a dog!’” He stops, “Uh, no offense.”

The fire dims down, but if the god is actually offended, he doesn’t do anything about it. Martyn holds the feather out to him, letting him inspect it. Fire curls toward the edges, but the god doesn’t touch it.

“Ugh,” Martyn says. He’s not really in any state to fight right now, especially not without any weapons, “Don’t suppose you’re willing to keep incinerating stuff for me?”

The feather lights up, burning up until about an inch from Martyn’s fingers. Martyn only barely manages not to drop either the feather or the god, though he can’t help but make some sort of undignified noise of shock as the flames stop just short of his fingers. 

Maybe that’s on Martyn, though—probably could have guessed the fire god would be down for more fire. 

“Great,” Martyn says, laughing despite himself. He tosses the last inch of the feather over his shoulder, though not without taking notice of the way the god kept from burning him. “Then I guess I don’t need to worry so much.”

Chapter Text

…Martyn probably could have stood to worry a bit more. There are more things to fear in the forest than beasts. 

Darkness attracts monsters. Most of those monsters are not beasts but zombies, those unlucky undead left unburied. Any person who dies alone or abandoned ends up cursed, rot reanimating them to roam until they reach others to join their reprehensible ranks. 

Zombies are one of the many reasons adventurers travel in packs—it’s easier to fight the things in groups, for one, but to travel with friends ensures your body won’t walk again when you leave it. 

Martyn doesn’t have a party, but he does have a torch. The god won’t be able to bury him, but having his light should keep Martyn from needing a grave. Daylight pauses their curses, putting most zombies into trances until darkness hits them again, leading any undead to flee at the first sign of light. Very few zombies would be willing to brave the bright bubble of the god’s glow. Martyn has no sword or shield with which to defend himself, so the god will have to be enough. 

…That is, of course, only if Martyn doesn’t walk right into the damn things. They may avoid light, but they aren’t particularly quick. If light comes to them, well. 

Hunger makes any creature desperate.

That first night, Martyn keeps walking long after the sun sinks under the horizon, beyond when his party would have set up camp for the night. The torch in his hand makes him cocky, and the silence at his heels makes him restless. 

(Besides, with all that time spent running through those ruins, it’s difficult to justify sleeping for only a little exhaustion. How could he stop when he has so much further to go until he’s truly put Dogwarts behind him?)

Martyn spends the whole walk glancing behind his back, filling the air with any chatter he can. The god only encourages him, seemingly glad for the interaction. It’s because of this he neither hears nor sees the zombie until he’s already brought it into the light. 

The thing shields its face as the torch draws close, though its arm is an imperfect barrier. A chunk of its forearm has fallen away, exposing bone and degrading muscle. Clothes and flesh alike are stained with patches of dried blood, just as likely to be from itself as they are someone else. It drops its arm when Martyn’s ramble turns into a string of swears, turning to face him. 

Its face is a shade of green offensively saturated, with rotted flesh sagging off the bone in clumps. Most of its hair is gone, as are most of its teeth. Half of its jaw is exposed, revealing a mold-speckled tongue, dry and cracked and pressing against the gaps in its gums. It jerks toward Martyn, arms coming out as it reaches toward him. Most of its nails have been ripped off, with four fingers bent wrong and another three missing. Its eyes are gone, unseeing sockets still staring, starving.

None of these details are what make Martyn’s stomach turn, though; no, what sickens him is the thought of looking at the thing’s clothes. He’s afraid he’ll see a blue jacket, a red sweater, a navy cardigan. His greatest fear is something familiar and stained with blood. 

Zombies rot beyond recognition, but their clothes are usually still familiar. He doesn’t know what they did with Grian’s body, is the thing; He doesn’t know if Jimmy and BigB got out safe.

It reaches for Martyn, and Martyn needs to take a deep inhale-exhale-inhale, just to make sure he’s not holding his breath. 

The thing lurches forward, groaning something awful. Its voice is shredded hoarse, dragged out of its throat over breathless, dry vocal chords. It doesn’t sound anything like he knows, but it hardly even sounds like a voice anymore. The height is worthless, the thing hunched on itself and stumbling on damaged legs, wrecking whatever posture it might have held alive. 

It’s spent a long time rotting here, he’s sure it has. Even supernatural rot wouldn’t set in so fast. It can’t be recent. It can’t be. 

He chances a glance. Black dress, knee-length, hem muddy.

Relief floods him, even as another zombie pulls itself free from the bushes—dark green vest, bloodied collar—following the sound of its companion. The bushes behind them whisper and rasp and shake, who-knows how many more zombies hiding in the leaves.

“Hey,” Martyn says, “When you said you’d be willing to keep burning stuff for me…?”

The god flares up, and the shape of the fire reminds Martyn almost of a shield. He laughs, “And you’ll stop before you burn me, too, right?” 

A puff of light. More fire probably shouldn’t be reassuring, but he lets himself feel content with it regardless. 

“Right. Just making sure,” Martyn says, and he holds out his arm. 

The fight isn’t particularly long. Even with such terrible odds, Martyn doesn’t think he’s ever fought an easier battle. 

Granted, he’s never had a better weapon. 

Martyn swings his torch out in an arc, thoughtlessly wide, leaning as far away from the flame as he can manage. Reaching swirls of fire catch on the zombies, orange-white fingers hooking in rotting clothes, and the fight simply isn’t. 

Black dress goes up in dark smoke. Green vest is cremated. The crowd disintegrates in a whorl of spiraling fire, destroying anything that dares reach a hand toward Martyn. 

The smell is rancid. Rot-rippled flesh roils under heavy, holy heat, and Martyn covers his nose with the back of his hand. The smell of sweat and smoke soaked into his glove hardly covers it, but it’s better than repugnant rot entirely unfiltered. 

More crawl from the bushes. Martyn checks the clothes of each one—red pants, blue scarf, yellow dress. None are familiar, and so they burn without abandon. The monsters hardly even scream, lacking the pieces to do so or the presence of mind to be aware of the need. Martyn isn’t even sure if they can feel pain enough to realize what’s happened to them—For their own sake, he’d hope not. 

(Most of the dead seem to have been civilians, after all, in the sort of casual wear of a person never once exposed to battle. They’re quite far from any town except Dogwarts, and though zombies are known to wander… The god doesn’t falter, though Martyn can’t help but wonder.)

For all the god’s fury, the forest never catches. Each zombie alights and extinguishes, a self-contained immolation, a demonstration of control far more precise than Martyn had imagined. 

It’s a relief. One that makes him feel a bit silly about this morning, sure, but a relief nonetheless. The god is powerful, but not recklessly so. Martyn is safe, at least from him. 

That said, Martyn isn’t sure what would happen if he touched the flame anyway. That’s not a gamble he has any interest in making—not every question needs to be answered.

It’s only the last straggling undead that appears wearing armor, battered and bitten, a bleak red-brown. There’s a massive break at its neck, steel plating bent away from its throat, which has been torn open so violently that Martyn can see its spine through the flesh.

The armor is too heavy for it to move, but even with the hindrance slowing it down, it hasn’t dropped its sword. 

“You know,” Martyn says, “I do need a weapon.”

The god doesn’t need to be told twice. Iron armor glows white-hot as the zombie inside of it disintegrates, silent without the throat to scream. The scorching fire cuts off at the weapon's guard, and with nothing left to hold it, the sword drops into the grass. 

Martyn pauses. He strains his ears, but the bushes are silent. He and the god are the only ones left, as far as Martyn can tell. There should be no more zombies left.

For the moment, at least, it should be safe to inspect the weapon. Martyn drops to his knees, and it’s only half to see the weapon better—without adrenaline keeping him running, Martyn’s all the more aware of how tired he is, how heavy his limbs feel. 

He jabs the torch into the dirt, standing it upright, and then turns his attention to the weapon in the grass.

It’s… not a great sword. It might’ve been one once, but it’s clearly old, the blade chipped in quite a few places. The guard curves around the hilt in a bell shape, and though it was clearly once reflective, the whole thing’s been dented and scratched from so many blows that the shine is gone.

Despite the wear, it’s Martyn's only option, so he holds his hand above the weapon to see how warm it is. Although fire had just consumed its wielder, the metal radiates no heat, even when Martyn’s hand brushes just above the hilt. 

“What do you think? Is it worth it to take?” Martyn asks. He prods the rounded guard with his knuckle, but even that is cool to the touch, “Because I feel like it might just shatter, if I’m honest.”

He nudges the weapon a bit harder, rolling the rounded guard. It moves in a short arc in the grass, and a few green fingers spill out. Martyn grimaces.

“Gods, that’s gross,” Martyn mutters. He picks it up by the blade, shaking out the guard. What might be ash pours out, along with the zombie’s soot-stained thumb. Martyn makes a face, flipping the weapon over to wipe the hilt out with part of his shirt. The god dims, clearly displeased, and Martyn scoffs. 

“Do you have a better idea?” Martyn asks. He simmers, no brighter, and Martyn wipes the ash of the hilt of the sword. “That’s what I thought.”

Once it’s as clean as it’s going to get, Martyn holds it out, inspecting the blade. It’s not sharp, exactly, having been dulled by years of use. That can probably be fixed, assuming the thing survives long enough for Martyn to have it repaired, or that it wouldn’t be cheaper just to buy a new weapon. 

“Well… A weapon is still a weapon, I guess,” Martyn says, “It’s kind of dull, but it’ll still work… I’m kind of worried it’s going to shatter, but like, it’ll still work even if it does. It’ll just be a dagger instead. Maybe I should just snap it on a rock now, just... get it…”

Martyn trails off, a change in the light catching his eye. The blade shines with a low, rippling roll of color, purples and blues and greens, as though it’s been dipped in a thin coat of oil. It’s a look Martyn is beginning to become familiar with—the god’s magic. 

“Was that... You enchanted it?” Martyn asks. The torch puffs up, as if the god is proud of his work. “What did you enchant it with?”

With no way for the god to explain, Martyn turns, slamming the side of the blade against the thickest tree he can reach. The frail blade doesn’t so much as bend.

“Something for durability, huh?” Martyn asks. The god gleams. “Can you make it sharper, too?”

The light on the weapon doesn’t change, but the fire fluffs up again, the god clearly proud of himself. Martyn slices the sword through a bush, watching as half-leaves drop cleanly across the forest floor. 

“Guess that’s a yes, huh.” 

Shining light again, a prideful golden glow. Martyn snickers, holding out the blade again, staring down the weapon. With magic woven into the metal, it’s unmistakably sturdy.

He feels significantly better about his odds with it in his hands, and that’s not even counting the god’s demonstrated willingness to protect him. 

This isn't all Martyn feels—the gentle glow of firelight and magic burn against the back of his eyes, and his arms and legs fill with lead. The god's made him feel safe, a sensation that tricks him into thinking he can rest.  

Except, well. Rest doesn’t… actually sound like too terrible an idea. 

“Hey, uh,” Martyn asks. The fire pops once, just to show he’s listening, “Would you be down to take watch again so I can sleep?”

The god lights up, lambent gold, with not even a second of hesitation. 

Martyn laughs, tugging the torch out of the ground. With an exaggerated effort, he pushes himself to his feet. “Let me just find somewhere decent to lie down. No offense to all the people we just burned, but I don’t really want to sleep in a pile of human ashes.”

The god crackles, warm and light. Martyn suspects the sound might be a laugh. 

The next few days pass without much fanfare. Martyn roams the day and sleeps away the night. The god is enthusiastic when Martyn talks, responding to everything he hears, if only with sparks and shadows. When darkness falls, Martyn trusts the god enough to sleep at the side of his campfire, though that raises its own issues—unless he’s passing out from exhaustion, it’s surprisingly difficult to sleep with a bright light directly next to him. 

Martyn’s starting to get used to it, though; besides, he has bigger things to worry about than too enthusiastic a night light. 

Frankly, Martyn is starving. 

Martyn still has some food stolen from the Watchers, but his supply is running low. He’s not all that sure when he’ll reach another town, and so he sets his eye on the forest at large.  

There… really aren’t many animals out and about. He’s getting sick of repeating it, but despite his wishes, this fact hasn’t changed simply because doing so would be convenient for a hungry adventurer. 

“Were they this quiet in, uh, in your time?” Martyn asks, “The woods, I mean.”

The torch dims down, almost to embers. It doesn’t brighten again, and Martyn has the distinct impression that maybe he shouldn’t have asked. 

He turns his attention back to his stomach, and this time that drives him to contemplate his newfound weapon. He doesn’t have his sheath anymore—handed it over to the Watchers, alongside his old weapon—so he’s had to just carry it in his hand. He’ll get a sheath as soon as he’s in town, but for now, he’s just… holding it. Makes him more prepared, maybe, in case he's jumped or something, but until then it'll be inconvenient. 

It still shines with a slight, unnatural glow, even in the daylight, and Martyn knows that for all its age and rust, it’s probably better than anything he could get in a shop. His sword isn’t going to be of much help in the hunting department, though—what’s he going to do, stab a deer? 

He does, however, have a god at his disposal.

“Don’t suppose you’re any good at hunting?” Martyn asks, “I mean, you are a dog, aren’t you?” 

The torch doesn’t acknowledge him at all. 

“Yeah, okay, fair,” Martyn mutters, “You know, I think I’ve heard of people using fire to flush animals out of hiding… You seemed to have some control over your fire before, with the zombies from the other night. If I set you down in a bush, would you burn the whole forest, or just the bush?”

This time the god flickers, seeming unsure. 

“Right, sorry, that’s not really yes or no…” Martyn mutters, “Would you be able to keep your fire to one bush?”

There’s a moment where the god doesn’t answer, and then the fire lights up. It isn’t particularly bright, but it’s noticeable. Martyn frowns.

“You don’t really seem excited about that question… Don’t like that plan?” Martyn asks. The light drops. “Really? You were pretty ready to set those zombies on fire, though. I figured you were just broadly down to burn things.”

Dark again, a vibrant red simmering in his center. Another expression Martyn isn’t entirely sure how to parse, but the god's dissatisfaction reads loud and clear. 

“Okay, so no random burning… Was it just because I was in danger?” Martyn offers, and the god lights right back up without a moment pause.

“Well, not to get technical about it, but now I’m in danger of starving, so maybe you should help me flush out some bunnies or something,” Martyn says, in lieu of feeling any particular way about the god's honesty. The god’s light dips back down immediately, souring with wisps of smoke. Martyn gets the distinct impression that the god might be pouting, and he snickers.

“Alright, okay, sorry. I won’t ask you to set fire to any innocent forest creatures,” Martyn half-heartedly raises his other hand, sword swinging loose in his fingers, trying to placate the god. He calms easily enough, blazing right back to baseline, though it leaves Martyn feeling a bit like he’s playing a game of hot and cold. 

“So, you won’t help me hunt,” Martyn says, “But you clearly also don’t want me to die, so, why not? What makes the forest so… Wait, you’re not vegetarian, are you?”

Dim—cold—but the god crackles again. It really does sound like a laugh, Martyn thinks, which Martyn decides to take as a good sign. 

“Okay, not a vegetarian…” Martyn trails off. “Did you used to spend a lot of time in the forest?” 

Bright again—Martyn’s getting warmer. 

“I probably could have guessed that,” Martyn says, “You’re the God of Dogwarts, of course you’d spend time out in the forests of— Oh.”

If he had a free hand, Martyn would smack himself. 

The God of Dogwarts cares about Dogwarts’s forests. Of course he does—Martyn knows maybe three things about him, and they all point to not wanting to damage his own home more than strictly necessary. Go figure. 

The god, to his credit, doesn’t laugh at Martyn for missing something that should have been fairly obvious, though he seems a bit subdued. This, plus his clear unhappiness with the forest’s silence… Yeah, he wouldn’t want to make the forest any worse, huh?

It’s not the end of the world, though—there are plenty of sources of food in the forest, and if the god knows this forest well… 

Well, he might actually be of help, after all. 

“Do you think you would recognize it if we passed something I could eat? Like, plants and stuff. Would you recognize if something is edible?” Martyn asks. The god pauses this time, thoughtful, ribbons of flame rippling in the air. The light ticks up, just a smidge brighter. 

“I’m not sure how I feel about the hesitation,” Martyn mutters, though he’s mostly teasing. Foraging isn’t a rare skill, but it’s not one Martyn actually has. That’s the point of having a party, of course; it's having a group of people he can trust to watch his six, to cover the gaps in his knowledge, to do what he can't.

Foraging had been more Grian or BigB’s thing. Martyn would help more with cooking their food than he did with finding it, or with keeping watch of the tree line while the other three did all the hard work. 

(Or, just as often, he’d sat uselessly at the fireside, strumming the lute that used to hang from his bag. He wonders what the Watchers plan to do with it, because they really didn’t strike him as the musical type. Waste of a perfectly good instrument, if you ask him, though.)

Martyn doesn't have a party now, but that doesn't mean he's entirely on his own. 

“Alright, so I’m… I’m just going to point at things that look edible, and you tell me if I can eat it. I guess.”

Martyn’s questions mostly start reasonable—berries that look like they could be edible, plants with decent-looking roots, particularly large mushrooms—and the god responds accordingly: fireworks for something edible, no reaction for plants that aren’t noteworthy or for which he’s unsure, and dimming near to the point of extinguishing himself for anything toxic.

Martyn has to stuff his sword into his belt after the first actual find to free his hand, and the blade bumps into the back of his leg with every step. 

With some sort of food in his stomach, Martyn’s search becomes less of a dire necessity and more of a game, spurred on by Martyn’s evergreen need to make himself laugh.   

So, Martyn directs the god’s attention to a fallen tree, thick and hollowed out by rot. He points with the torch, trying to make sure the god can see how much moss has covered it, the bugs crawling across the surface, the spider settled in the log's center. 

"What do you think of this?" Martyn asks, "Any good?"

The god physically stutters, flame freezing a moment against the wind. It strikes Martyn as remarkably like a double take, and Martyn doesn’t even try to stop himself from cackling at the god’s expense.

“What, not edible?” Martyn asks. The god extinguishes with a pop, which only makes Martyn laugh more. “What about for you? Fires eat logs, don’t they? I bet a big tree like that is basically a feast for you.”

The god’s light shrinks again, softly smokey—definitely annoyance. 

“Oh, don’t give me that look…” Martyn says, and then a thought hits him, “Hey, can you even eat? I’m not supposed to be feeding you, too, am I?”

Without waiting for the god to actually answer, Martyn holds out the torch out. He holds his other hand above it, dropping a few of the berries the god had shown him. The fire consumes each one in a blink, every one incinerated the moment it breaches its curling edges.

Martyn pauses, but the god doesn't seem to react beyond just burning them.

“Did that…. Can you taste that?” Martyn asks. The fire fades to a dull orange-red, ribbons folding in on themselves. If he didn’t know any better, Martyn might think the god were disappointed. 

“Maybe that’s for the best. Otherwise, you’d have been tasting those zombies earlier, which, gross,” Martyn says. The god brightens back up, popping softly, and Martyn adds, “Well, it doesn't have to be a waste of food, either. We’ll just count that as an offering or something. That’s a thing paladins do, isn’t it?” 

The god doesn’t respond, though Martyn doesn’t think too much on his quietness. In it, his attention catches on something else. 

The forest has been gravesite-silent since the moment Martyn first set foot in it with his party, with the exception of one particular landmark. A creek; a thin, winding thing, crawling through shallow shores and over stout, smooth stones, whispering softly all the while. 

All this time, Martyn’s been seeking out any sound he could, trying to fill the dead air with noise. Finally hearing a sound should come as a relief, but all Martyn feels is the sudden drop in his gut. 

Martyn remembers it from his original journey to Dogwarts; more specifically, Martyn remembers standing aside with BigB as Jimmy and Grian tried to shove each other into the water. Both of them ended up soaked, especially after Martyn pushed a victorious Grian into the river while his back was turned.

For a few minutes the silent forest had filled with spluttering splashing, indignant shouting, and laughter loud enough to shake the leaves. 

Martyn cuts through a few old bushes now, following the sound of burbling water. The little river cuts into the earth, the ground around it as high as Martyn's waist despite the fact the water itself would barely come up to Martyn’s knees. The water is barely deep enough to reflect his face back when he stops beside it, and perhaps it’s for the best—Martyn isn’t sure he wants to know what expression he wears now. 

Martyn has never seen this particular stretch of water before, but the place reminds him of his friends all the same. 

He scans the riverbed. It’s muddy, soft and malleable, but there are no tracks anywhere that he can see. If Jimmy and BigB passed through here, would they have left proof? If Martyn followed the river, would he find it? Footprints in the mud, breaks in the leaves, something to show they made it out alive?

He doesn’t even remember which wall his friends took off from, and once they were on the other side of it, Martyn has no way of knowing which way they went. Did they even come this way? Have they escaped the forest yet? Could they have reached a town by now? 

Martyn stares at the water, but it doesn’t answer any of his questions. It doesn't reveal any miracle trails to lead him where he wants to go. There's nothing to indicate anyone has ever passed through here at all. 

When they’d split, Martyn had told Jimmy and BigB that he would escape, too, that he would meet them again. He hadn’t let himself decide in that moment whether or not he’d been lying—honestly, he just hadn’t had the time. 

The river below him is slow, smooth, and shallow. Martyn isn't being followed, and even if he was, the god would watch his back. He could stand here and watch the water as long as he likes—Martyn has time, now, to decide, though he doesn’t need it. 

Deciding is simple enough. Martyn's made it, and he's going to keep making it. After all, if he escaped a weird cult all on his own only to die of starvation in the middle of the woods, Timmy’d never let him live it down. 

Besides, if Martyn lived, the other two must be fine. They’ve got a bit of a lead on him, and he doesn’t know exactly what direction they went, but that doesn’t matter. All Martyn needs is to make it to town, and then he can ask around the area if anyone has seen his friends. All it’ll take is one good lead, really, and Martyn will see them again before he knows it. 

One long, slow breath in, and then a deep sigh out. Martyn’s trying to calm himself, and it works, sort of—more than that, he makes himself aware of his own dry throat.  

It’s been a long time since Martyn has had something to drink. Dying of thirst would also be pretty embarrassing. 

Resolve restored, Martyn pulls the sword off his waist, setting it in the grass—he’ll need to get down to get any water, and the sword will only get in his way. He thinks about setting the god aside, but to leave him in the grass feels a bit... rude? So Martyn brings the fire with him as he returns to shuffle along the sheer shoreline.  

The riverside is all mud, and Martyn has to move carefully to avoid slipping. He takes a few steps sideways, following the river. He’s looking for somewhere with a low beach, somewhere he doesn't have to bend too far down to reach the water. Though the little shelf rises and falls, he can’t find anywhere without at least a few inches between the shore and the water’s surface. 

Dirt crumbles under his shoe more than once as he leans too far over the water. Rather than more careful, avoiding the fall only makes him quicker.

Martyn doesn’t stop following the water's edge till he hits a particularly thick wall of reeds, and then he knows he can’t go any further. He traces his steps a few paces back—Surely there’s somewhere he can actually reach the water?

Thirst burns in Martyn’s throat, and it drives him to rush. When he finds a bit of bank lower than the rest, he stops without considering why it might be shorter. He crouches down at the edge of the water, and finds the answer before he can even get all the way down—Martyn’s boot slips, mud collapsing beneath his heel. 

He pitches forward. His body responds on instinct, and he catches himself with both hands, elbow deep in the water. 

Crystal clear, shallow water allows Martyn to see plainly his mistake: he was still holding the torch. 

When he goes under, the god hisses loud enough that Martyn physically winces. He yanks the stick back out of the water, overcorrects, and flings the god onto the shore behind him. 

This only strikes Martyn as even more wildly blasphemous after he’s already done it, and by then it’s both too late to take back and not the worst thing he’s ever done to his patron deity.

The soaked stick rolls in the dirt, darkened with water and gathering mud. It’s barely settled when the wood starts to steam, and then the torch is lost in heavy white cloud. The steam doesn’t brush Martyn at all, though he swears he feels the heat even from the riverbed.

All Martyn can think is Oh, I’m fucked.

Up until now, the god has been understanding—Martyn would even go so far as to call him friendly! But up until now, Martyn has been… relatively alright at his job. As alright as he can be, considering the circumstances. He's no perfect paladin, but he's been decent enough, getting the god to freedom and all. 

If this god is like the ones Martyn has heard of, though… vengeful and petty deities, cruel and spiteful and thankless, those callous and corrupt and uncaring for even their closest clergy… Martyn has heard the horror stories. An angry god has no reason to care for the lives of any one man, especially not one he just met, especially one who's pissed him off. 

This god is made of pure fire. If Martyn crosses him and he’s not as kind as he seems, Martyn is dead. 

And, well. Martyn has definitely crossed him. 

Martyn keeps his distance as the god splutters back to life, though he has the sense to kneel, even if the words stick in his throat. The wood almost seems to cough, steam cracking out in violent bursts. 

As Martyn watches, he can see the stick return to the same faded and dull brown it’s been since he picked it up. It's drying in seconds, and he doesn't know if he should be thankful for the fact the god hasn't just razed it to ash. 

With a shriek of light and heat, the god flares back to life, a blaze almost as tall as Martyn on his knees. Martyn flinches back, even as the god returns to normal size, to baseline. The little fire sits in the grass, golden-white and Martyn waits, breathless, for the other shoe to drop, and…

And then the god starts crackling. 

Martyn knows the sound. He’s heard it a few times already, airy and warm as a home’s hearth heart.

The god’s laughing. Martyn dunked him underwater, and he’s laughing it off. 

The relief which floods through Martyn is immediate and overwhelming. His shoulders deflate, all the tension in his spine draining out like sand. He moves a bit closer to the fire, a bit uncertain, though that hesitance fades to the sound of popping. It's not the first time the god's made him feel this way—he seems to have a knack for making Martyn relax.

Even when Martyn is close enough to touch, to burn, the god just keeps laughing. 

“Sorry about that,” Martyn says, his tongue finally unstuck. His mouth twitches up, and he finds the god's laughter to be contagious. “Really, though. You should have warned me the ground here was so unstable, and we both could have avoided that.”

The god’s popping noises turn a bit more harsh, though he doesn’t seem particularly mad. He’s still the same soft orange as always, still perfectly content with Martyn’s teasing. 

He’s… fine. Martyn is fine. He dunked a god’s head in a damn river, and all he got was laughed at. No smiting, no immolation, nothing. It was basically the same reaction to when he pushed in one of his friends. Hell, the god was probably an even better sport about it. 

Maybe Martyn didn’t have anything to worry about with this god, after all.

“You stay there,” Martyn decides, still snickering to himself, “And I’m going to try that again without falling.” 

The god crackles— laughs again, and Martyn doesn’t even mind that it’s at his expense. If he were honest, Martyn would admit he’s really starting to enjoy the sound.

The god doesn’t know his name, is the thing. 

It strikes Martyn a few hours after the river, halfway through a story about some old job he and his friends took when they were just starting out as adventurers. The god knows the names of Martyn’s party, but Martyn hasn’t yet introduced himself. He forgot, back during the oath, and then it just hasn't come up again. 

All that time worrying about the god, about his intentions, about his name, and Martyn hadn’t even introduced himself. 

And, well. He knows the god a bit better now, doesn’t he? Most paladins don’t make their oath until they’ve had months of training, and Martyn did his within a few minutes. While he still may not know the god well, he thinks he knows him enough to realize that maybe his oath could use a little bit of an update.

So Martyn waits until the night. He’s gotten into the habit of building the god campfires to sleep without worrying about the torch, and when night falls, he tries to build something especially nice. A neat circle of the cleanest rocks available, the biggest logs Martyn can find… Martyn even cuts a branch off a fallen tree, making use of that axe the god enchanted for him. 

It's basically a shrine, or something. That's a thing paladins do, isn't it? 

Martyn snickers to himself. He'd love to tell himself from a month ago what he's doing—he'd never believe it. 

The god seems a bit confused by the special attention, but Martyn keeps his secret to himself.

“Maybe I’m just trying to make up for waterboarding you,” Martyn says, and the god cracks up again. 

Once the fire is set up, Martyn sets the god inside, dropping his torch in the circle. He takes his dinner by firelight—the last of his food from Dogwarts, and some of the berries he’d found with the god’s direction. Halfway through his meal, Martyn stops, considering, and then tosses a few into the god’s fire. 

“An offering,” Martyn explains, and the god burns a bit brighter the rest of the night. 

The meal winds down without much conversation, though the silence doesn’t bother Martyn so much. He’s far too busy thinking, now that he has the time to brainstorm. He wants to do the oath better, this time—the god deserves that much. 

Once he’s eaten, Martyn clears away what little is left of his meal and stands at the fireside. This would normally be where he’d go to sleep, but instead, he crouches down at the fire's edge to address the god within. 

“I’ve been thinking a bit,” Martyn says, “I only became your paladin because I was desperate, but I’m not really desperate anymore. I’m not the kind of person who would follow someone who hasn’t earned it.”

The god slows, ribbons of fire nearly freezing in the air. He seems a bit startled, though Martyn doesn’t leave him in suspense for long. 

Martyn shifts, planting one knee in the dirt. The fire in front of him is silent and as close to still as he can manage, but he lights up as Martyn moves. As Martyn raises a hand to his heart, the god burns white as starlight, brighter than anything in the sky above them.

“Don’t mistake me, I’m not promising you my whole life. I didn’t before, and I won’t now—I still don’t even know your name. If it turns out you’re not the sort of god I think you are, I will leave,” Martyn says. The fire seems almost pointed in its lack of response, though Martyn continues on, “But I've seen what you're like. You're... kind. You saved my life. You helped me escape. You've helped me as much as you've been able. You’ve kept me safe, even though, let's face it, I'm not paladin material. So I’ll put my faith in you—you’ve earned my faith, not just my desperation. Keep watching over me, and I’ll follow you as long as you do. How does that sound?”

The god— his god, now, Martyn cedes—erupts into a spray of radiant sparks. It's loud, almost explosively so, but Martyn knows it's harmless, even if he has to squint to avoid going blind. White-gold embers drop into the grass and brush the leg of Martyn’s pants, but he knows he doesn't need to pull away. His god’s not going to hurt him, this he can trust. 

“You know,” Martyn hums, as if he’s only just thought of it, “I don’t think I ever properly introduced myself.”

His god’s excitement is palpable, dazzling, fireworks too bright to look at. 

“My name is Martyn. I’m a paladin,” Martyn says, and he can't stop himself from grinning, “It’s nice to meet you, milord.”