Chapter Text
Boulderay was loud .
That was what Mudd had picked up on his first few days at Boulderay, and even now with Paralytle behind bars the town seemed to have gotten even louder . Even the alleyway shadows seemed to be holding something; protecting someone . All he had seen so far were orange, glinting and unblinking eyes from a tall figure. He didn't have time to figure it out however, and so it was left as a mystery to figure out after-hours. There was even an oily stench that always seemed to hang around too- even still he couldn't figure it out. He didn't have time to worry about it now however, as he and Kyborg were making their way over to Boulderay Heights to find out more about the candidates, but no words were exchanged along the way. There was an uncertain feeling that wouldn't leave his stomach either after he had seen that alleyway. He wondered if Kyborg had seen it too, being the reason, he wouldn't speak.
After walking down paths carved into grass or stone, they pass over a footbridge with a plaque nearby. Kyborg was already ahead of him, so the only words he read were 'Cared,' and 'Brinkcorperated,’ as he rushed to catch up. He put it together that Brink's new company had renovated it. They eventually round the bend to the library, pushing through large wooden doors that creaked on its hinges and on the door-handle. The smell of stale parchment and a strange hint of grass and oil again is what Mudd notices immediately. Apart from that, the creaking building has bookshelves from ceiling to the floor, some shelves missing books or are empty entirely, and to the right was a burly, black-feathered kenku with a sleeveless tunic bench-pressing a bookcase. In the corner a black, wool blanket was draped over four steel busts, as a dragonborn sat in the center, writing on a scroll with an ink-tipped feather and coffee by his side. Lastly, to the left was a desk where a second kenku with long dreads was drafting pick-it signage, and they perk up when the two enter the room.
Kyborg turns to him and grabs both of his arms, pulling him down enough to serious and stiff eye-contact with him, speaking in a low, hushed voice.
“Mudd, whatever you do, do not engage with the kenkus. Do not say anything to them- don’t give them anything to work with, got it?”
He felt the edges of his mouth turn up in a smile as he nodded, and Kyborg released his grip on him expectantly.
" Hello !" He calls out, and all he needs is Kyborg groaning next to him with his head in his hands to continue.
"'M name is Mudd!"
He opens his mouth again to reply to the dragonborn, but the sudden jarring sound of footsteps stops him. He turns his head to see a tall, dark cloaked figure, orange circles being the only other feature, gleaming from underneath. He stares for a second longer at the circles, suddenly being interrupted by an iron hand raising from underneath the cloak and pointing straight at the wood elf to his right.
“Kydelius of Evirwinter,” it says, its flat tone bouncing off the walls, “Quadron sends his greetings. Five, four,”
He can feel the sudden panic fill his chest, and it worsens as Kyborg digs an elbow into his side to shove him backward. It worsens as hes penetrated in fear while the wood elf in front of him begins to draw his longbow, and his heart falls to his stomach when the figure finishes his countdown.
“Three, two, one.”
The iron shambles suddenly explode from the figure, hitting the walls and floor loudly as he watches the figure fucking explode. A bright flash of white pierces his eyes as hes flung back and skids against the floor, seething in pain.
But it hurts . It does, and he can only rest his head against the floor as he felt his abdomen screech in pain. And for a minute, he can forget where he was as he rested his eyes. But he remembers, and it doesn’t take long to, so he shakes off the pain for a moment and pressed a shaky hand against the ground, pushing himself up.
His eyes drowsily pass over fallen and broken bookshelves, littered with shining pieces of metal. He finds the source of the pain in his abdomen, as a shard of metal from the figure was digging into it. His immediate reaction is to heal it, but as he tries mumbling arcane words, a cough bubbles up that escapes his lips, and he watches a dark red liquid splatter the ground as he does so. He wipes it from his mouth as he felt his vision slowly go fuzzy, but his eyes catch on a limp figure feet away from him, their back to him.
He felt himself freeze for a moment, but it doesn’t last long when he shoots up, almost losing his footing as he scrambles over and drops back down when he reaches him, struggling to ignore the pain.
He grabs his shoulder to turn him over, and immediately he sees his face. Kyborg’s glazed and blank eyes stare forward as his nose bleeds, along with sharp cuts along his marred face.
Panic was starting to bubble up in his chest again as he struggled to focus through the pain and the fact that the wood elf-
Hes not dead. Kyborg of all people wouldn’t go down that easily- or that quickly.
He props up the wood elf into his arms, jumping when his prosthetic suddenly falls to the ground to reveal a bleeding shoulder. Thats when he finally notices the crimson red growing in Kyborg’s chest, and he quickly goes to whisper arcane words under his breath when his coughs again, the blood dripping from his mouth.
“Kyborg,” he mumbles after he finishes casting a spell directed at him, waiting for it to take effect as he almost gasped for air. His throat was starting to go sour as he gripped Kyborg’s elven arm, pleading for the spell to work.
“Ky..” he swallows, denying the tears starting to prick in the corners of his eyes, “Kyborg, please.”
Maybe he was just being impatient- he hoped he was. Impatient or not, he mumbles yet another arcane spell while his head was loud and pounding like Boulderay.
But nothing healed. His chest didn’t move. He didn’t blink. He didn’t sit up and play it off and poke at Mudd for starting to cry.
His pulse- check his pulse you idiot- the idea pops into his mind and he nearly drops Kyborg in his panic, but he manages to move a hand to the wood elf’s neck and his heart drops to his stomach when he doesn’t feel anything.
He rests his head on Kyborg’s shoulder, moving a hand to the wood elf’s back, staring down the small puddle of red liquid on the floor. He can barely make out the distressed firbolg staring back at him in the vermillion blood.
“Kyborg please wake the fuck up right now.” He pleaded under his hitched breath, squeezing his eyes shut, “Please.”
There was no response.
Sharp pain coursed through his abdomen again, much, much worse than before as the metal was being pulled out by the halfling in front of him, and he can barely supress a scream, clenching his fists tighter.
There's a moment of bliss, where his body doesn’t ache, and his vision is blurry, but it leaves quickly when someone snaps bloodied fingers in front of his face and he snaps back to reality, the pain worse than before. The halfling pulls his hand back and shakes out the blood from them as he maintains eye contact with him.
“Mudd? ‘S’all right now, okay? I got that thing out of you-” he cuts himself off as he realizes the firbolg is still biting his lip in agony and mutters a curse and arcane words.
The pain suddenly sealed, and he felt his shoulders slump as he leaned back against the wooden bookshelf. He presses a hand to his mouth as his memory starts to flow back to him, and he felt a low whimper leave his lips.
As low as it was, the halfling heard it and shifted over, gently placing a hand on his shoulder.
“Hey- hey Mudd what’s-”
“He’s dead.” he gets out through the sudden heaving of his chest. “Ky- Kyborg’s dead and-”
“Mudd, you need to calm down,” the halfling says as soft as he can, but he can tell hes just as panicked “whatever happened here, I know that it wasn’t your fault.”
He takes in a sharp breath, “No- no, no you’re wrong, he-”
Hes cut off suddenly as the building shakes, dust falling from the ceiling as a wall is brought down by a large, robotic creature that he remembers was called an ‘automaton.’ The word clicks in his mind and stays there. The automatons tall form was boxy, with four differently colored and textured arms at his sides. He recognizes the four orange gleaming eyes again.
“I must thank you- the Infinight interns are what they call you, no?” The voice reminds him of the previous one, but this time it sounds worse and yet still humanoid.
“Yeah?” he hears himself taunt. “And what’d you have to say about that?”
He hears Bart softly curse again and mumble, “Mudd- maybe don’t start-” he quickly stomps on the halflings foot to cut him off.
He expects the automaton to respond, but instead he smiles more than he thought he could, ignoring Mudd’s question.
“Go on then!” he urges, “Say something!”
The automaton’s face twitches, and quickly his scarlet hand flips to a grapple, shooting out and grabbing something on the floor he hadn’t noticed until now- a wood elf’s body, metal claws gripping tightly around his form.
He screams his name as his stomach churns, but as he goes to step forward, a pair of small hands grab his own.
“Please listen to me- Mudd, I know you’re stressed right now- I,” the halfling takes a quick pause, scrambling, “-I am too, but now's not the time-”
“Then do something!” he bites back.
“Actually,” the automaton starts, “I think I do have to say something about you interns .”
He feels Bart tighten his grip on his hand, but he tears it away quickly and balls up his own hands.
“Thank you,” he says, “and if you don’t mind..” he lifts the wood elf a little higher, “I'll take this off your hands.”
“No.”
“No?” the automaton echoes the firbolg. “And how are you going to stop me?”
There's a small pause, a quiet click and Mudd watches with a sudden dismay as two smaller, but still taller than him mechanic automatons crawl up and join the largest one's side.
Mudd tries his best to play it off. “Put him the fuck down now so I can properly snap your fucking neck- ”
The automaton doesn’t listen, and instead turns, the smaller ones following suit. Mudd lets out a huff, and barely hears the halfling call out his name as he starts to storm after them.
“I said-”
The wind is knocked out of his chest as the automaton spins around and wraps a tight rocky hand around his figure and slams him to the ground. He cries out as he can feel bones snapping in his tight grasp, as his arms were stuck at his sides.
“I heard what you said.” the automaton snaps, and he watches in the corner of his eye as the smaller ones step out of his view. The incoherent yells of Bart, and somewhere Gum Gum, get louder.
“But he’s already dead,” he says, and his honeyed tone gets lower as he whispers, “and I hope you remember it was you who killed him.”
The despair in his chest worsens as he gasps for air. He felt numb as the automaton pulled back and switched the wood elf’s body to another hand.
“Did Kydelius ever tell you how he lost his arm?” he asked, amused at the sight of Mudd’s expression.
Mudd’s eyes flick over to the spinning blade that replaced the grapple, ignoring the question. The whirring fills his ears as the automaton loosens his grip, and as he squirms in protest, the firbolgs arm is quickly grasped by a slimy tentacle that makes him shiver. But he can’t muster up any words. He felt like he’d lost his pride ages ago.
“It’s a great story too! How Kyborg the Mighty-” the automaton lowers it in a quick motion, cutting through his arm and skin easily, unbearable pain grasping his body in another tight hold, “lost his arm to Quadron. Can you believe a child tried to defy me?”
He can’t describe it, the pain that sears through him, and he can only sit through it in Quadron’s grasp. There's a final and agonizing flash of pain as Quadron finally tears the limb off his body, his blood splattering across the floor. His energy is sapped from him suddenly, and he barely notices what Quadron’s final words are as he releases Mudd from his grasp and drops him to the floor. He can feel his own blood dripping from the side of his face, the liquid pooling out of his wounds. The last thing he sees is Quadron holding his severed limb and turning around once more, the smaller automatons rejoining his side. The picture of a small Kydelius being strangled by a monster appears into his head before he drifts off, while Boulderay was at last, quiet.