Chapter Text
Papa would have whupped his ass for this, Nyx knew.
Honestly, that had been half the problem.
But just because it was night didn’t mean he had time for dreams. There was far too much to do just yet.
Nyx plastered on his best smile, the one that seemed to get the best reactions from the teens from the other villages and towns around them, and had even been known to get Selena to laugh (and punch him, to be fair) without him even saying anything. And even if she wasn’t laughing now, it looked like she relaxed a little. It was hard to see in the mixed light from flames and lightbulbs – everything they had with them thrown together, in the hope that it would be enough to keep the lava tube they’d found bright enough to keep the shades from popping up among them – but he was going to choose to see it as a win.
“It’ll be fine, ‘Lena. We have enough light, and someone will come looking for us sooner or later,” Libertus said, crossing his arms and trying to look older than he was. Beside him, his daemon Petra was doing something similar, spreading her front paws a bit so she looked larger. Neither made up for the fact that Libertus couldn’t get up off the ground, his leg either broken or badly sprained.
Libertus’s baby cousin Kaeso glared at him from where he was tending the fire. “We have enough light for now. But if no one shows up soon, we won’t have enough stuff to keep a fire going. And if you suggest burning clothes one more time, Selena Ulric, I’m going to see if we can shear Hymnos and burn the fur,” he ended with a glare. Nyx suppressed a smile. Family or cohort – it was hard to say which made a better target when you were stressed, but Kaeso was doing his best to try both. Nyx was just glad he didn’t fall in either group.
Kaeso was such a kid and such an Ostium. It made Nyx want to hug him close and let Selena put something nasty in Kaeso’s drink while he was distracted.
Comfort won out over teasing this once, but only because Nyx could see the way Kaeso’s daemon was flitting back and forth between forms, stocky defenders and agile little birds that fluttered around letting off energy.
“Don’t worry, squirt,” Nyx said, trying to seem as grown-up as possible. “I can grab something.” Selena started to say something, so he hurried on, talking over her. “I’ll stay close enough I can run back if I need to. Selena can stay in the gap and keep an eye out for me. After all,” he said, shrugging to show how little he was worried by this whole thing, hoping it was convincing, “if I don’t get it this time, we have enough to last us a few more hours. I can try again if something pops up.”
Well, as long as the weather held out. But best not to paint that prophecy on the wall.
On the cave wall above him, Arete picked at the feathers under her wing nonchalantly, as if there truly was nothing to worry about, backing him up fantastically as always. He couldn’t help but grin as he noticed she’d taken the form of an owl, prepared for a nighttime stealth mission, rather than one of the fast and flashy falcons she’d been trying out lately. They were 15, which was plenty old enough, and so he was pretty sure she was close to settling, actually, and that it would be some sort of bird if it wasn’t one of the falcons. Arete was beautiful when she flew, and it made Nyx’s heart soar to watch. Not to mention she made a great lookout. Besides, Papa’s—
Nyx was just excited to see which type of bird it ended up being, that was all.
The small group looked over the pile of fuel and then at Nyx, their movements almost synchronized. “Y’all train to do that?” he asked, trying to cover the tension. “It was some impressive coordination,” he tried to defend his joke, as Libertus scowled at him, drumming his fingers on his folded arm.
Petra made an aborted movement toward Nyx, then continued on as if she’d never stopped when she realized he’d seen her. “I’m coming with you,” she said, glaring at him. It could be somewhat hard to read expressions on her small face, almost more weasel-like than feline, especially since she hadn’t been settled for more than a few months and so Nyx didn’t have much experience with this face, but she’d glared at Nyx and the other members of their cohort enough out of other eyes that he was pretty confident in his read.
“I’m sticking close but not that close,” he objected. The distance between the fire and the overgrown opening to the tube was almost the limit of her connection to Libertus. “And you need to stay here to watch the kids,” he added in a lower voice before either she or Libs could offer the obvious solution to that. He and Petra both glanced over at the group. It was most of Selena and Kaeso’s cohort, not a one of them older than 11, and all of them Nyx and Libertus’s responsibility. They’d volunteered to take the kids up the mountain to lay their offerings by the shrine up there, after all, even if no one had planned on this being an overnight excursion.
Nyx really hoped someone had noticed they were missing quickly, and backup would be here soon, even if he knew it was an outside chance. Even for the sake of an entire cohort, the night could be too dangerous.
They’d been diverted coming down the mountain by a pack of coeurls that Nyx and Libs hadn’t wanted to face with a half dozen kids to watch out for, and then their alternate path had been blocked by a mudslide of some sort that must have happened during the rains this week. The storms had been heavy and come in quick succession, and everyone was worried about what that would mean for the crops, which was why the kids had wanted to make the offerings in the first place. Nyx had even checked the paths the day before to prevent this sort of problem, but they hadn’t thought to check the alternates.
Libs had tried to pick his way across, to set up some sort of rope or grab some leaves or something to throw down to add traction for the kids, but he’d slipped, and Nyx had barely been able to pull him back to their side, and so they’d had to hack their own alternate alternate route back to the main path.
By the time they did get back on track, it had been almost full night and they had still been hours from home, so they’d decided to take shelter in one of the lava caves Nyx and Libs had explored before.
Which left them here – stranded with his sister’s cohort to look after, and trying to keep everyone from panicking, including himself.
“Snake looks like they might need the space, honestly,” Petra muttered, looking back over her shoulder at where the twins were scowling at each other. It wouldn’t take much to tilt it into a full cohort squabble, which given the stress and exhaustion from today, could get messy fast. And then no one would be watching the fire or for shades.
But Nyx was tired, too, and didn’t want to try to find a way to say that without offending said stressed and exhausted kids.
“I’d rather have you two watching the group, but it’s not my problem as long as someone keeps an eye out for me,” he said, weary.
Arete apparently took that as her signal and launched herself into the air, swooping silently by and out the opening. “Lena!” Nyx called, turning to follow. “We’re headed out!”
“What?” she squawked, but Nyx kept walking.
“You can fight it out with Petra!” he called over his shoulder as he left.
There was the smell of a storm on the air, but Nyx was more worried about the darkness. Thankfully, this wasn’t the first time he’d gone foraging at night, and he and Arete had a system. It was better suited for tracking moving things, but this shouldn’t be a problem. They had this.
The key was to keep moving, and even if they did spark a shade, they should be able to keep ahead of them. They just had to move fast.
On their first loop of the area they managed to avoid both shades and wildlife. The nighttime creatures had been becoming shyer and shyer as the shades had become more common over the years, but that just meant that the ones who did emerge were either faster or more desperate. And while the fast ones ran from Nyx and Arete, and Arete and Nyx tended to run into the desperate ones. So it was all the better that they didn’t run into any.
They dropped their first load off with Selena, who had apparently won the battle to be the lookout. She had taken the branches without a word, but her eyes had glinted in the light from further down the tube system. Nyx knew he was going to get an earful later, but that was for later.
The second round, Arete saw shadows roiling, but they were able to avoid the area before they were spotted by whatever was forming there. They still took a slightly longer route before heading back to their shelter, just in case.
As they crouched just in sight of the tube’s opening before they crossed the last open area, there was a hiss from behind them. Nyx whirled, but the hissing changed into a strange chortling before he had turned around completely.
“Took you long enough,” Petra said, stepping out from the shadow beneath a tree, smirking at them. “The storm will be here soon.”
“What are you doing here?” Arete hissed.
“If Lib hurt his leg worse, I’m not carrying him,” Nyx added, hoping Arete would kick Petra so Nyx didn’t have to violate taboo by doing so. If it was through his sandal, it wasn’t really touching someone else’s daemon, right?
“Are you going to waste time complaining or come back inside?” Petra tossed over her shoulder, already slipping away back toward the tube. Nyx glared at her back as Arete clacked her beak in annoyance before taking off almost sulkily. Nyx hadn’t been aware a bird could do that.
Though if any bird could, he could hear Papa teasing them, it would probably be Arete.
“Or Hypnos,” he whispered, completing the old ritual as he followed after her. It had been a long time since any of Papa’s cohort had daemons that weren’t settled, and he’d loved to pretend that any silly things daemons did, especially unsettled ones, were unique to his children’s daemons. They had been so eager to settle just to prove him wrong.
A crack of thunder in the distance reminded Nyx of their time constraints even as he caught a glimpse of Libertus, propped against the side of the tube. He couldn’t resist poking at his idiot best friend and cousin, though, even though he knew they needed to keep moving. “Couldn’t stand the kiddos any longer?”
“Lena and I agreed to trade off. ‘Sides, this way she can deal with her cohort’s drama and we can stay out of it like we should,” Libertus said without a bit of repentance.
“Good luck carrying the firewood, then,” Nyx said, dumping it at his feet. He didn’t know what Libertus thought he could do if Nyx actually needed backup. Not that he wanted Selena or Hypnos fighting, but they could at least get back to the main group if something went wrong.
“Hey hey hey!” Libertus protested. “You’re gonna do that when you come back inside. The storm’s gonna break any second.”
“And that’s not gonna last us all night. I can take a little rain to keep the shades from ambushing us two hours before sunrise.”
Nyx didn’t even bother to finish the argument, just turned and headed back into the jungle they hadn’t searched just yet, the area upslope of the tube. If it got them out of Libertus’s sightline so he’d be less inclined to yell at them – probably – that was just a bonus.
Libertus did grumble after them, but he was a good enough hunter not to shout, even with the cover of the storm. The more telling sign, though, was that Petra didn’t slink after them to try to slow them down. That meant even if Libertus was angry or frustrated enough to keep the fight going, they knew that Nyx and Arete were right.
Thankfully this area didn’t seem to be too muddy, and they were able to find some somewhat dry pieces of wood and vegetation. Nyx wasn’t being too picky at this point; whatever he found now would be used later in the night, and so would have some time to dry out next to the fire first, and would still definitely be drier than anything they might have to try to grab once the storm started in earnest. Quantity was the name of the game, here.
By the time Nyx had found enough to make the trip worthwhile, the wind was blowing the trees around so fiercely it sounded like the deluge had already started, and he could feel the first scattered drops of rain landing on his shoulders and cheek. He turned back toward the cave, happy to be done with this fool’s errand, then nearly dropped his whole load when Arete appeared in front of him in a whirl of feathers.
“No good. A Shade’s forming that way. We have to go around!” she hissed. Nyx eyed the distance, but she was right. They were too close to the cave opening. They could outrun the Shade on a slope like this, but it just meant that they’d lead it right to everyone else before they’d gotten far enough for it to lose interest.
“This way,” he hissed back, darting to the left. He contemplated dumping the supplies, but figured he should keep them as long as possible. They’d worked hard for them; he wasn’t going to drop them at the first sign of trouble.
Trouble found them, though, as it always did, sooner rather than later. Nyx hadn’t taken more than a dozen steps before he slipped on a muddy patch just like Libertus had earlier. He skidded downslope, out of control, feeling something sharp – probably Arete’s talons – catching at his shirt as he went.
Nyx managed to catch hold of a thin tree about the width of his forearm, slowing his slide. Using it as a crutch, he gingerly regained his feet, grateful that they seemed to support his weight just fine. He was just bruised. He would be fine.
As if to contradict him, the sky chose to take that moment to open up, and the rain started in earnest, coming down in sheets.
“Up! Up!” Arete urged, shoving at him from behind. “The shade!”
Oh, frost on the harvest.
Nyx scrambled upslope on all fours, away from the shade, away from the lava tube. Just away, as fast as he could go. The mud slipped between his hands as he went, slowing him down, making him backslide. The rain was starting to trickle downslope, too, and soon he wouldn’t be able to make any progress. He tried to cut sideways, just to get some sort of distance, as Arete screeched above him.
“Flans! Hurry!”
“I’m—” Nyx stumbled again, cutting off his protest. He risked a glance over his shoulder, and there were three of them almost right behind him.
“We have to fight!” he said, still trying to get distance. If he couldn’t keep running, he could at least find solid ground to make his stand. What he couldn’t do was let them wander back to the cave. “Arete! To me!”
It was risky for a daemon to fight shades, but then again, it was risky for humans to do so as well. Whatever the miasma the shades were made out of actually was, it was able to corrupt the bonds between daemons and humans, and so most people tried to keep their daemons clear. But Nyx wasn’t going to be able to hold them off alone, and if they did get infected with the scourge, he wouldn’t turn tonight. He had a chance, if they could get him to the oracle or maybe even a haven fast enough. He’d be fine.
More importantly, Selena and her cohort and Libs would be fine.
Nyx found a firm area below a large boulder and promptly scrambled up it, just in time to avoid the diving attack of the first flan. He flipped his blade around his hand and jumped down on top of it, stabbing down as soon as he made contact. The flan wobbled, throwing Nyx off, but he was able to regain his feet quickly enough to avoid an attack from one of its friends.
Arete made a diving pass, slashing at it with an eagle’s talons, but the storm was keeping the winds unpredictable and she couldn’t keep control of her flight. She landed heavily behind them, crackling bushes as she changed into something larger or heavier.
Nyx slashed at the shade in front of him and eyed the distance to the boulder. He might be able to make another aerial attack if he—
A crash of lightning hit very close, forcing Nyx to blink the afterimages out of his eyes. He stumbled toward where he remembered the boulder being, hoping the flans would be equally disoriented. They didn’t like light, right? Maybe they would be even worse off. Sometimes he was lucky that way.
The thunder that followed seemed a little late and a little soft, a sharp growl that was followed by a thud of impact. Nyx’s questing hand reached the boulder, and he turned back to look at the shades.
There were only two there, their odd glow unmistakable even despite the afterimages that hovered like spiderwebs over his eyes. As he tried to blink them clear, there was another snarl and the shadows moved, resolving itself into the shape of a coeurl that pounced on the left-hand daemon. Was that where the lightning had come from?
Not wanting to question his luck, and not really wanting to get in the middle of a battle so outside his weight class, Nyx backed up slowly and whistled softly for Arete. If they were sneaky, they might be able to make it back after all. Nyx could feel how his heart was hammering in his chest, but he’d take being a coward if his family would survive and he could keep helping them.
The coeurl turned toward the last shade as its previous victim faded into dark mist, but Arete hadn’t come yet, so he couldn’t leave. He risked a louder call and scrambled back up the boulder. There was another crack of lightning and the third shade fell to the coeurl, and Nyx froze.
It leapt lightly up on the rock right in front of Nyx, and he stared at it, finally putting the pieces together. Whether it was the proximity or the fading shock of the battle or the miasma washing away in the rain, he could feel Arete again. It was her. She was the coeurl.
“Isn’t that a little…sacrilegious?” he whispered, reaching out a hand, which she rubbed her head against like she was a coeurlaki a fifth her current size. Coeurls were the daemons of the Children of Galahad, after all, the sign that you were one of the heirs to the founder’s legacy and to the current Prince of Galahd. It wasn’t a shift you should even pretend to have.
“Are you complaining about being alive?” Arete snorted, shaking her whiskers in apparent fun. “Because I could tell Selena—”
“No!” Nyx said, “I’m grateful! I am, I—” He ducked forward and hugged Arete tight, burying his face in her coarse ruff. “You saved us.”
“Are you sad?” she asked eventually.
“Sad?”
“That I won’t be a bird, after all? That we’ll have to go away.”
“What do you mean?” Nyx asked, pulling back and wiping his eyes. “You can still be a bird.” Even as he said it, though, he knew it was wrong. That was why he hadn’t recognized her, after all, really. He wasn’t used to her being settled.
She shook her head wordlessly, and he reached back out to her, hands finally shaking.
“We don’t deserve it,” he muttered, pressed up into her ruff again. She was bigger than him. That wasn’t fair.
“Apparently Galahad thinks so,” she said, somewhat helplessly.
“What are we gonna tell Selena?”
“That we’re alive, Nyx. We’re alive. And they’re safe. That’s all that matters.”
She was right, of course. She usually was. And if they were alive, they could face having to go to the capitol, learning how to be an heir, leaving Mame and Selena and Libertus and his whole cohort behind. They could.
“Together.”