Work Text:
"Orym, are you there?"
The call came in the middle of the night, the stone flashing bright and blue in the darkness of his room dragged Orym from the comfort of sleep.
"Please, please, be there."
Dorian typically didn't make calls in the middle of the night, the majority of their conversations happened just before they both went to bed. However, Dorian hadn't been around when Orym had used the stone earlier that evening to inquire about the solstice and he'd never received a response to the message he'd sent until this moment.
Orym fumbled with the stone, grabbing it with clumsy, sleep-ridden fingers, and brought it to his ear to listen. It took a mild amount of strain to hear him even in the silence of the room. Dorian was whispering for some reason, making it hard to hear him, and to make matters worse, he sounded afraid.
"I-It's Opal. Something's wrong. The solstice–shit!"
Opal? The solstice?
Dorian had mentioned Opal had been acting strange lately, that things had been dark and tense as the solstice approached. Everyone had attempted to brush it off as just a coincidence but maybe it hadn't been.
When Dorian's voice filtered through the stone again, he sounded breathless, like he'd been running. In fact, he sounded like he was struggling, fighting off some kind of assailant, and for a moment, Orym feared he'd be hearing Dorian's last words.
"No! O-Orym…! I…!"
Dorian's words came to an abrupt halt and so did Orym's heart in his chest. He strained his ears in the stretching silence, holding his breath, and hoped he could hear some kind of noise indicating Dorian was alive and well.
"Dorian?" He whispered tentatively into the little stone. It still glowed bright, indicating a shared connection, but still, he heard nothing. At some point, Orym had come to sit up in his bed, focusing solely on the conversation at hand, hanging onto every single word that Dorian had said. "Dorian, are you there?"
This couldn’t be happening. Orym had to still be asleep and this had to be a nightmare.
It just didn’t seem possible that maybe Dorian had perished while Orym lay there, listening helplessly as Dorian fought for his life and warn him of the danger he was in. Orym tried not to think of how Dorian, in what may have been his final moments, had fought to talk to Orym one last time, hoping to hear his voice before he succumbed.
“D-Dorian?”
There was no answer, not even an indicator of life except that the stone held its glow. He needed to wake Fearne and the rest of the Bells Hells so they could track Dorian down and save–
And then, a sound. Soft at first, but steadily, it grew louder. A rasp of breath, a whisper of a laugh that evolved into a sound that Orym didn't think he'd ever heard Dorian make before.
Dorian's laugh was always light, airy, and full of joy.
This laugh, no, this dark chuckle, this menacing titter wasn't like Dorian at all, and it made Orym's heart sink into the pit of his stomach, heavy with dread.
"Ohh, Orym…"
A chill ran down his spine and the hair rose on his arms. The sigh shook with something akin to delight, maybe even desire, and the melded tone of Dorian's voice and something, some one, else continued to speak to him, finishing off the spell that Dorian hadn’t been able to finish.
"Come and play with us."
Frantically, Orym tried to put the pieces together in his head. Dorian had mentioned Opal and the solstice in his message before whatever it was had taken him. It hadn’t been the first time that Dorian mentioned that Opal had been a little out of sorts since news of the solstice started making its rounds but what that’d meant for any of them was a mystery. However, it made their messages shorter and clipped, as if Dorian was in a hurry or distracted. Orym had brushed it off, thinking they'd have had more time.
With everything going on from their end, Orym hadn’t asked if things were improving with the Crown Keepers and the Opal situation.
When was even the last time he'd told him he loved him?
Maybe he should have.
Maybe if he had, the Spider Queen wouldn’t be spreading her infestation to the people he loved.
"Let him go," Orym said fiercely, squeezing the stone so tightly that his hand shook. Lolth had taken Dorian, corrupted him, and turned into whatever was speaking to him from the other side of the stone. For a moment, Orym wondered if she’d gotten her fangs into the other members of the Crown Keepers as well, though he hoped they’d managed to get away. "Leave him be, let him go ."
Dorian had always been favored by Lolth ever since they’d obtained that awful circlet. She’d preyed after him longer than she had over anyone else, even when her claws had been dug tight into Dariax. When Opal had decided to wear the circlet, Orym thought that Lolth had finally lost interest now that she’d obtained her champion.
He’d been wrong.
Orym seemed to be wrong a lot these days.
“Lolth, let him go!”
There was no answer, of course there wasn't, as the spell had reached its word limit on Dorian's end but something told him that Lolth was somehow able to hear him even though she was hundreds of miles away.
He should have gone to him the moment Dorian told him Opal was acting strange, he should have put the pieces together sooner and spared Dorian his terrible fate.
He would not make that mistake again.
However, the possibility that her favoritism and Opal’s influence may be in fact keeping Dorian alive in one way or another gave him the motivation he needed to get out of bed and the determination to go to Marquet and save Dorian.
"I'm coming," he said quietly. "Do you hear me? I'm coming to find you, Lolth."
Orym holstered his sword, grabbed his bag, and tucked the stone safely inside. He needed to wake everyone, tell them what had happened and where they needed to go next. They’d wasted enough time, the solstice had occurred, and it may have cost them two friends already. They couldn’t afford to lose more.
He walked to the door, stopped just before opening it, and glanced toward the corner. In his line of vision, he saw a lone spider trailing its way down the wall before stopping in its tracks. For a long time, neither of them moved, but Orym knew he was being watched.
“I’m going to get him back,” he announced to the room, grabbing the handle and yanking open the door. "So you better be ready."
Orym walked out.
He didn’t hear the sound of faint laughter as the door closed behind him.