Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“You’re certain he’s up there?”

“Positive. He dodged all the traps I’ve been starting to install.”

“Who gave you permission to set up traps in the castle-”

“Did it look like him?”

“Yeah. And it sounded like him too, before you ask. Right down to the bells.”

“Are you sure?”

“Look, ask the dragon in you if you’re still unconvinced. It ought to know.”

Falin bristled at that suggestion but the steadily burning fire in her gut confirmed what was being said; that the former Lord of the Dungeon had risen from his grave.

And he still had his bells attatched.

The three of them - her, Marcille and the newly appointed Halfoot Union Boss, Chilchuck - were ascending a spiral staircase, hot on the trail of the revenant. Each party member was using their unique skill to discern what exactly was waiting for them at the top of the tower. Chilchuck was checking each step for traps (presumably both ones that had yet to be deactivated following the Golden Kingdom’s ascension and ones that he’d been testing out himself). Marcille had Ambrosia aloft, monitoring the mana levels in the air by observing how the leaves sprouted from the hoop quivered. Falin, sandwiched between the pair, was picking apart the ribbon of scent that the intruder had left in their wake. Earth smells. Dirt, leaves, animal droppings. Beneath that, something more artificial. A charnel odour. Far too much of it. Its wine-dregs smell wafted down to them, reminding Falin of gnarled roots hanging in a pharmacist’s shop or worms squirming in bone-dry soil. Encircling that was a deeply familiar scent; the warm, pulsing musk of a dragon. Reptilian and mammalian, cold-blooded but with an inner heat that leached into the stones and wood and flesh of any place it made its home. Her mind was filled with the image of a scaled body curled around a shining spark, a hoard made of a single soul. Falin felt the feathers that lined her throat and led down to her breasts start to rustle. Stand on end.

“Are you OK?” Marcille whispered in her ear.

“I’m fine.” She said back. “Completely fine.”

She chose ‘completely’ knowing what it would imply. The two pieces that made up her soul had been imbalanced before, with the dragon coming out on top. The dragon that was under the Dungeon Lord’s control. Things are different now. Her and the dragon had been blended seamlessly into their new form, not one on top of the other or even overlapping but the pair of them twined into a single strong braid. Marcille had helped with that.

The charnel scent grew more pungent. He had worn that smell in life as well. There was more to it now. Flashes of metal ringing out through the decay. Blood. Not from an open wound. Just little cuts, which spoke to a violent passage. Down the corridor, up the stairs, skidding and slicing bare skin against the walls and the ground. As if he had ran through a field of -

“Shit.”

They were close to the top of the tower. The door to the highest chamber was open.

True to his profession, Chilchuck was more alarmed by an open door than a locked one. He looked conspiratorially at Marcille and waggled his gloved fingers - the universally accepted sign for freaky-deaky magic.

Marcille just rolled her eyes and slunk in front of Falin, both hands clutching the middle of her staff tight enough to blanch her knuckles.

She held it forward, muttering something indecipherable. Even to Falin, with her extensive knowledge of magic and her enhanced hearing. Not for the first time since climbing the staircase, she wondered if this was going to get ugly.

Ambrosia’s leaves began to quiver. Then they turned a deeper shade of green. The edges of them seemed to grow sharper. Falin’s roving eye saw that beneath the hoop, sharp spikes - thorns - had started to creep out of the wood. They were spreading down the staff, getting closer to Marcille’s clenched hands. She hadn’t noticed. Her eyes were still fixed on the wavering leaves.

With milliseconds to spare, Falin reached across and grabbed the staff before they could pierce Marcille’s bare skin.

The pain was sharp. The pain was sweet. The pain was familiar.

Marcille snapped out of her reverie. She looked down and saw the thorns sticking into Falin’s hand. No blood, of course. Her skin was too thick, too calloused, to be truly punctured by anything but the keenest of blades. She looked up in concern and met Falin’s gaze. No fear there. Just remembrance.

Falin’s grip loosened and she pulled Marcille closer in. Right on to the feathered space between her neck and her breasts. The space meant for another.

Marcille’s hot breath ruffled the down on her skin. She looked at her hand and saw the tiniest pinpricks, light against the rosy hue of her palms. A constellation of tiny stigmatas, fading away seconds after having been made.

Falin felt her heart beat synchronise with Marcille’s and finally felt comfortable saying the name she hadn’t uttered since entering the tower.

“Thistle.”

The boards creaked under her weight. She was glad she’d insisted on entering alone. Packing everyone into this cramped room might lead to the floor cracking beneath them - sending them all plummeting down the tower they had spent 20 minutes climbing.

This was a store room. Every portion of it was occupied by a chest of some description. Several of those chests had been flung open, revealing a trove of moth-eaten silks. The slanted roof forced Falin to duck her head, directing her eyes to the floor. Small silver bells were strewn across the floorboards like berries. Scraps of a richer purple fabric were caught on the edges of the opened trunks, reminding her of the lolling tongue of a mimic. But this wasn’t a dungeon or a cave. This was just an attic. Everything inside was inanimate and forgotten. Left to gently moulder while the castle below hummed with new life.

In the shadowed corner, something moved.

Falin had mastered her dragon instincts enough to not snap her neck up and scan the room. She let her eyes trail across to the source of the noise. Following the shredded fabrics, the discarded bells, a broken bottle of what looked and smelled like patchouli oil. Right at the back were paintings. Faded and furred from neglect, Falin could somewhat make out a face. Severe but amicable, with a neatly trimmed beard and shoulder length hair. The lower half of his body had been obscured by more than just age; gashes stretched across his blue mantle and white collar. Gashes that could have only been made by a blade of some kind.

There was no sound. Only a gentle hush. But the presence of the hidden figure was still felt. It was watching Falin. Waiting to see what she would do next.

Falin looked back down, so as not to intimidate them with her golden stare. Her eyes landed on her feet. Her feathered thighs and the clawed, scaled digits stretched over the wood. She’d long since given up trying to hide them in large boots. These talons had gripped the bare rock of the Highlands and drank the heat of the desert earth. There wasn’t an article of footwear that could contain them (Chilchuck’s daughter's had knitted socks for her, woollen ones with dragon patterns. She’d used them as waterproof protection for precious things she'd found across her travels.)

An idea came to mind. Less than an idea, really. An instinct.

With the gleaming black claw jutting from her big toe, Falin tapped the floor. Three times.

Back when she was a chimaera, those taps would have shaken a building to its foundations. Here, they scarcely managed to pierce the silence. But it was enough. The person she was calling to had very sensitive hearing.

Through the murk and dust, a pair of eyes became visible. Purple eyes. Not purple like the silk on the floor. Purple like the petals of a certain mountain flower.

Shuffling, the figure came forward. White locks that belonged to a far older person crowning the head of a child. Brown skin that flashed out from a caking of grime and blood. Pointed ears framing a face that had become gaunt from lack of nourishment.

Weaving through the boxes and still keeping his distance, Thistle emerged.

His clothes were a mess. The white ruff his head had balanced on had been completely ripped off, revealing his wobbling throat. The shoulder poufs of his tunic had been punctured, as if they were boils lanced by a needle. Only a few bells had stayed on the tassels that fell down from his waist. The remaining strips of cloth moved in shameful silence.

He hadn’t crossed over. Wasn’t ready to. Still not sure of her and her changed form. The dungeon lord’s cold judgement was nowhere to be found. Here was a child, scared of being fooled again.

Slowly as she could, Falin took her hands to her collar and pulled her shirt down, revealing white feathers.
Thistle’s purple eyes widened, taking in the sight of Falin’s even breathing, making the brood patch rise and fall. Beckoning.

With a speed that only a frightened child could muster, Thistle closed the gap and jumped into her arms. Falin felt the slight compression of the space between her breasts and neck as Thistle filled it with his shuddering head. She felt the feathers there grow wet with tears.

Not saying a word, Falin raised her arms and brought him in tighter.

She wouldn’t let go. She never let go.

Chapter Text

“All in all, I think that went very well.”

“Falin, he stabbed you.”

“Oh, that was barely a scratch. Besides, he was most likely scared.”

“He then tried to stab himself. In the heart!”

“I stopped him. And besides, he wouldn’t have managed it. His arms were so thin. He doesn’t eat enough.”

An exasperated groan wafted out the bathroom, along with a whole lot of steam. Falin laid back on their bed, waiting for her erection to subside while gently stroking the new scar she had along her midriff.

He’d stabbed the spot where her body had been joined to the dragon’s. Not her heart. Not her lungs. Not her liver. He’d tried to cut the human part of her out from the beast.

To free whom? Herself or the dragon?

Too late either way. She was neither of the things she used to be. She wondered if he was the same. He had to be. Surely.

The bathroom door opened and Marcille exited, flanked by colourless, odourless steam. Washed clean of the day’s stress, Falin could taste her lover’s ethanol scent - the remains of the ancient magic she’d used to revive her. Just like that, her member started to stiffen again. Seems that Marcille was emotional enough for a second round.

She hadn’t brought a towel and the drops on her skin sparkled in the candle light. Falin smiled, knowing what was to come. She spread herself as wide as she could, just in time for Marcille to come flop down on her like she was the world’s girthiest bean bag.

They did this from time to time. Falin was a walking furnace after all. Why not use that for a good bit of drying? Marcille’s flushed skin pressed against Falin, the dragon’s heat coming up from the latter which smoothed and warmed the former to a rosy finish. Falin brought her face to Marcille’s neck, where rested a line of droplets so fat and bright that they may well have been pearls on a necklace. She allowed a thin sliver of hot breath to pass through her lips - enough to dry Marcille’s neck more directly, while the warmth of her body filled the elf up as completely as her seed had done earlier.

“You really got to teach me this new spell, Falin.” Cooed Marcille, shifting on her lover’s heated flesh. “How is it that you can get me dry and wet at the same time?”

“There’s no trick to it.” Falin replied, smirking against her skin. “Wait ‘til you see me blow hot and cold!”

Marcille laughed, but it was an awkward laugh. Thistle was at the heart of that little joke. Dead and alive. Child and adult. Nothing to Falin and everything to her. What were they supposed to do with him?

Falin cast her eyes around Marcille’s - No, their - room. A cosy place. Spell books of intermediate grade nestled on the bookshelves. Almost suspicious in how inoffensive they were. Marcille’s skill was far above whatever could be found in those pages. Bits and bobs adorned her desk; shells, sherds, branches she’d considered grafting on to Ambrosia’s hoop. Falin had supplied her with many trinkets brought back from her travels. Just like a bird furnishes the nest of their mate, Falin had made it so that even when she was away, Marcille could see her in a dozen glittering things.

Of course, if Marcille ever wanted to be reminded of her chimaerical lover, all she needed to do was look at the map on the wall.

Her masterpiece. A map of the Dungeon. It wasn’t a still life painting, wasn’t even a map by the standards of conventional cartography. She’d drawn the runes for ‘winged’ and ‘beast’, large enough to encompass the entire skin. Inside the golden letters were whorls, spirals and miniature scenes - all from the Dungeon. Eyes would be drawn to the space where the two runes intersected. Falin had situated the water floor there. Inside a perfect circle of aquamarine, she’d drawn a triskelion, terminating in a Kelpie’s head, a mer-man’s and a human’s. Beneath that, another circle, this time with a ring of changeling mushrooms inside. A serpentine gryphon slithered upwards, adjacent to the Winged rune and its descending ladder of food-scenes, while a streamlined kraken paralleled it on the other side. Right at the bottom of it was her; in her dragon form, enjoying the meal that her friends had cooked to get her away from Thistle. Falin had originally wanted to have the bottommost image be Laois suffocating her (it seemed to her the more dramatic option) but Marcille had looked as if she would start dabbling in forbidden magic again if she had to wake up every morning and see that.

Her eyes were drawn to the margins. The shape of a flower was repeated four times, one for each line. Dead in the centre. A thistle.

He wasn’t on the map. Something had held her back. So he was there on the borders, encompassing the winged beast. Herself. The lion in the book. The people of the Golden Kingdom.

The child in the garret room held nothing inside him. Nothing but fear and confusion.

“You don’t need to worry.” Marcille said, sensing her disquiet. “He’ll be fed and taken care of. No-one bears him any ill will.”

“No-one? I heard he was pretty rude to you…”

“He outed me as a half-elf in front of the party and killed everyone with a bunch of dragons.” She said abruptly. “But he had to listen to Laios while tied up so I think he’s suffered enough.”

Marcille hastily added that there wasn’t anything wrong with how Laios talked usually and that it just could be a lot to take in at once, but Falin was stuck on the first part of her lover’s clarification. She pulled her in a bit more tightly.

“I’m sorry. He should have known better than that.”

Marcille giggled.

“You’re not his governess, Falin. Besides, It was pretty obvious why he needed to pounce on me like that. Not nice to see a reflection of yourself.” Her voice grew quieter. “Especially when a demon has its hooks in you…”

Falin blinked.

"What do you mean?"

"He's a half-elf too."

A silence stole over the room

“Was it not obvious? I’m starting to think like I was the only one who picked up on it…”

“How could you tell?!”

Marcille scoffed.

“The average High Elf looks at anyone with outside heritage as a curiosity or a pity case. Seeing curly boots go on a rant seconds after seeing me got me curious so I asked Yad. He confirmed that Thistle wasn’t a full elf, though that was all he knew about his parentage.”

A half-elf. The notion had never occurred to her. Probably because she’d been a massive, powerful monster whose main thoughts had been ‘feed’ and ‘protect’. But the passion that gripped Thistle, the brooding, the need to preserve what he had and the fear of losing it which filled him so completely … these things she had sensed in Marcille. Things she hadn’t voiced or acted on when it was just the two of them. She hadn’t wanted to ruin the relationship they’d enjoyed up to that point, a gentle school-girl bond; safe, passive, non-threatening.

Perhaps the reason why she was so utterly overwhelmed by the dragon wasn’t just because of the power it gave her, the power to run and eat and scream. Maybe she'd also relished the chance to protect something as fiercely as she had always wanted to. Only monsters were truly allowed to protect what they loved.

“That’s good.” She mumbled. “It means that there’s more to him than we know. Maybe he can be rehabilitated. If he’s willing.”

“If my mother had wheels she would be a wheelbarrow.” Marcille replied, her voice muffled by Falin’s feathered tits. Falin was about to ask what she meant by that but stopped when she realised that Marcille was already falling asleep. Truly no spell she could cast matched the power of her breasts.

Gently as she could, she set the elf mage on the pillow beside her and made to snuff out their bedside candle. It was one of ‘her’ candles - made from the dragon’s fat reserves. It had the symbol of Marcille’s pet bird Pipi stamped into the base. A little mark that helped raise it as a product. Falin had sold them while on her travels, as a way of getting some coin on the road. She wondered if any of those candles were burning now, miles away from this room.

She sucked a lungful of air in to blow out the flame. Then she stopped. She had a fuel network and ignition system woven throughout her body. If she wasn’t careful, she could let out a stream of fire and burn more than the candle.

blowing hot and cold

Instead, she licked her thumb and finger and snuffed out the flame with a pinch. The light was instantly extinguished when she brought both digits together, leaving behind only the faintest scent of smoke.

Chapter Text

“Is his condition steady?”

“His vitals are holding, nothing’s broken and he’s clearly responsive.”

“Responsive?”

“He flinched when I took a sample of his blood.”

Falin gave an involuntary growl, which shivered through the draughty air of the corridor. Mithrun looked at her through the corner of his mismatched eye and raised a silver-grey brow.

“Sorry. That was … I wasn’t…”

“Don’t be sorry. It’s comforting to know that he has someone. It will be the first step in his recovery - should he wish to take it.”

They continued on to the banquet hall, her clawed feet scraping against the stone floor, his wooden pattens clacking as they kept his black silk hoses from touching the ground.

As soon as the word of Thistle’s revival had gotten out, Mithrun had arrived. He’d come in the night, knocked on the gate and passed through the open door like a shadow. Dressed in a black doublet and a fur mantle, the chaperon wrapped around his head concealing his mangled ear, the former Dungeon lord had scanned the entrance hall. Nodded politely at Marcille, who had blown his brain out in the Dungeon, and looked at Yad quizzically, before settling on Falin. It was she he’d directed his questions towards and now he answered her questions in turn. Funny how the Dungeon kept bringing people together even after it had been unearthed.

Muffled noises came from the hall ahead. Squabbling sounds that stabbed through the solid oak door and penetrated Falin’s sensitive ears. She grimaced, wondering if the question of Thistle had already started to tear at the fabric of their fledgling kingdom. Could the court really have room for three former dungeon lords? For two former dragons?

These were the questions she asked and suppressed as they came up to the doorway. The knocker at its centre was moulded in the shape of a lion’s head, a ring hanging from its lower jaw and a faintly mischievous expression contained in its bronze eyes.

Not wanting Mithrun to have any reminders of his past, Falin seized the knocker and pulled. The doors swung inward to reveal a sight so ghastly that she immediately made to cover Mithrun’s eyes with a white-feathered hand.

“You said there wouldn’t be any biting!”

“I wasn’t trying to bite you, I was aiming for the mane! When I beat the lion I chomped down on his - ARGH!”

“More angularity. Lift your elbow higher.”

“I’m coming for you next, Blue-eyes!”

It was not the kind of scene that you wanted the head of the Canaries to see.

Her brother - King, adventurer, eater of all things horrible - was bare chested and on his knees. His arm was pulled behind him by a strange figure in the world’s worst lion costume, whose teeth were at his throat. Little triangular ears pointed through the patchwork fabric and a black tail poked out the rear, completely erect and contrasting a limp, beige tufted tail that flopped miserably on to the floor.

Standing in front of them was Kabru, arms crossed like a foreman inspecting a construction site. Seated beside him was Yad. He was applying brushes to a canvas, halfway done with a portrait that looked nothing like the altercation playing out in the room’s centre.

Kabru turned on his heels and greeted the pair of them with a bright smile, his arms still firmly crossed. The shine of his perfect teeth was almost equivalent to the light in his eyes. He had the kind of face that made you want to smile and bulge your eyes just to compete with him. Considering Falin had golden reptilian irises and fangs jutting from her mouth, she had to fight this urge, just a little. Mithrun seemed to be unaffected. His gaze was on the canvas.

“Hello there.” He said affably to the woman who had crushed him in her monster form and whom he had shanked in three vital spots. “Apologies for the mess. We’ve been working on the first royal portrait.”

“Falin!” Laios’ voice floated joyfully over to them. His co-model looked up and Falin saw golden pupils not unlike her own. Those pupils dilated and the cat-girl jumped away from Laios with a yowl, to go hide behind a pillar.

Itsuzumi.

“That was great!” Laios said reassuringly. “You know, you definitely are a lot stronger than a house cat, Itsuzumi. I think you’re more of a panther! If you want to test your bite strength we got some bones left over from the Dungeon…”

Itsuzumi gave a hiss from her hiding place and the king clammed up. He made no effort to pick himself up off the floor.

An onlooker might think that he was too spent to stand or that he was still posing for the artist. But Falin knew her brother too well.

Smiling, she walked over and loomed over him.

“Hello sister.” He said. “Having a good day?”

“Decent. I know now that you have as bad luck with cats as I do dogs.”

“That lion did a number on me.” He held out a hand. “Do you mind?”

Falin took the offered hand and pulled. Laios stood up, faster than a vampire coming out of its casket.

“Geez.” He said, stretching and cracking his neck back and forth. “Travel really made you stronger.”

Falin giggled at the suggestion.

“More sunlight, happy trails, plenty of lighted inns to stay the night. I learned more about magic by sticking your head in caves and peeking behind waterfalls than I ever did stuck at a lectern, reading textbooks.”

“Don’t let Marcille hear you say that, she’d be heartbroken!”

“She’s coming round I think. I bring something new back with each trip and she really loves the map.”

“That’s great!”

Falin waited for the stream of information and suggestions about dragon mating practices to burst forth from her brother’s mouth, waited for her chance to add her own suggestions and for their minds to join in a joyful, heedless helix of curiosity. The kind that had filled their childhood home and the shared room in their adventuring days. The kind she was sure could fill a place even as big as this banquet hill.

It didn’t come.

A strange look of restraint crossed Laios’ broad face, looking wholly incongruous there. Falin belatedly realised then that the hall wasn’t a cottage or the room of an inn. It demanded a certain dignity of the people inside it. They were - technically - royalty, now…

Or he could have just been upset that his cat friend had spurned him. Again.

Kabru clapped his hands, loud enough to ruffle Falin’s feathers.

“I think that’s enough for today.” He said, before wordlessly tossing a shirt towards Laios. The latter caught it without taking his eyes away from Falin. A holdover from being a three-headed dragon? Situational awareness hadn’t been his forte as a child. But good reflexes were a necessity for monsters and royalty alike.

“I think another session is all that’s needed. We’ll have a royal portrait to go with the coat of arms. Can’t have a court without either of those things.” Kabru continued to say, with that perfect balance of affability and efficiency that Falin had come to know him by.

“Thistle. He lives.” Mithrun added, with the bluntness that Falin had come to know him by.

“Both can be true.” Laios replied, with a focused expression that almost certainly came from remembering the stock phrases that their father had taught him in preparation for taking the role of village headman.

“Best if we talk things out over a meal. Mithrun, you’ll be hungry after having travelled here, Yad, you’ll be hungry for having had to draw me, Itsuzumi, you’ll be hungry after posing with me and Kabru, you’re likely hungry after having had to look at me for hours.”

Mithrun’s face remained impassive. Yad looked at his work with another man’s face. Itsuzumi stirred slightly in the shadows, her movements imperceptible to everyone but Falin and Kabru looked … conflicted about what Laios had just said.

Falin smiled. King or not, Laios was still her brother. Still could surprise everyone around him and still could get everyone on the same page, no matter their differences.

“As for you, sis.” Laios turned to her and the grin she’d been waiting to see finally appeared. “I’m sure I don’t have to ask if you have an appetite.”

Falin’s smile widened, enough to show off her fangs.

“No need at all.”

Senshi had clearly made the most of the Golden Kingdom’s bounty.

Laios’ unwanted ability to repel monsters had limited him to more standard ingredients, but that didn’t make their repaste any less magnificent. Salad mixed with ground pork and onions, wrapped in bread dough and baked. Then there was the Khaka Brud noodle, rich with cottage cheese and yet more onions, alongside steaming butterball soup. A pig’s skull had been rendered, boiled and turned into hog’s head cheese. Chains of sausages, porcine organs chopped with salt, pepper and garlic, stuffed into casings of glistening intestines and smoked. All this to be washed down thick, yeasty beer.

Falin had to remind herself to chew. The only one who was keeping up with her speed was Laios. Mithrun took pensive sips of his beer, while Kabru cut his meat into precise portions with a stainless knife and fork. Yad didn’t seem too hungry. Perhaps having to eat with another man’s body was still an uncanny and unpleasant experience. Falin wondered if there was anything she could do to help him, after she’d resolved the matter of Thistle.

“I can’t believe the harvest.” Laios said. “I think it has something to do with the remains of the dragon we used as fertiliser. This kind of yield is only seen in places with volcanic soil.”

“Certainly nice to have all the benefits of a volcanic loam without a smoking mountain looming over us all.” Kabru replied jokingly, with an undertone that suggested there was likely a catch they just hadn’t discovered yet.

“Might the abundance be also the reason for the former Dungeon Lord’s resurrection?” Mithrun asked.

“Thistle.” Laios corrected him. “And no. I don’t think that’s what happened.” He pushed back his chair and looked up at the ceiling, in a way that reminded Falin so much of their father.

“Resurrection isn’t the right word. When I got the news, I had some of the guards and Marcille look around his grave and there wasn’t any evidence of a ritual. No glyphs, no circle, nothing. He’d come back exactly as he had been in life. Just like the way people were revived in the Dungeon.”

“Is it possible, then, that the Dungeon is still functional, despite being above ground?”

“Not likely. I ate the demon’s desire. When the lion went, so did the dungeons.” He sighed, wistful and nostalgic. “I don’t know what brought Thistle back, but it isn’t like the way things were before, no matter how similar it might look.”

The lion . Falin went back to that place Beyond. There had been a lion there, sunning on a rock and watching her eat. He had shown her the way back but not before telling her that returning might be the harder choice…

Might this be what he had alluded to?

By pure coincidence, Itszumi chose to return to the table, having extracted herself from the lion costume, and started cutting herself food with cutlery, as she had been taught.

The eating continued without interruption. When all the dishes had been sampled, Kabru took Mithrun to one side, so he could better convey what exactly Laios had meant. He’d stepped into his role as royal advisor with singular aplomb and considering that he had known Mithrun the longest (or so Falin had been told) she figured there wasn’t any harm in letting him take things from here.

Itsuzumi departed soon after, muttering an apology to Falin and shooting another glare at Laios before leaving. Then it was just the two of them and a whole lot of dirty dishes.

“What I’d give for some Dungeon cleaners right now.” Laios said, looking across the used kitchenware, before turning to Falin. “You want to do some washing up with me?”

Falin nodded, picking up on the double-meaning; it was time for a talk. Just the two of them.

“I very much would.”

Chapter Text

Falin had always liked doing the washing up. It was therapeutic, making circles in warm water, shedding crumbs and dirt, putting the cleaned object in the rack and getting to work on another right away. Since officially moving into the castle, she’d had less opportunity to do such work, which she supposed was the best given her other obligations and opportunities opened up by the kingdom’s resurfacing. Still, it had been a way to deal with stress. Nowadays, when everything got a bit too much to bear, she just pulled out her flail mace and spun it around her head until she felt a bit calmer. Marcille had timidly suggested using one of the new spinning toys to help with these moments of restless energy but Falin had politely stressed that the weight of the flail was what made it cathartic. Much like how the weight of the kitchenware and the feeling of the water on the skin calmed her enough to have this talk with her brother.

Wait. Why would she need to be calm to talk to Laios?

“Hydrophobic.”

The sudden sound of her brother’s voice made the glass she was cleaning slip through her fingers and bob in the suds. She turned to face him, blinking.

“Sorry?”

“Your feathers. They’re hydrophobic. They repel droplets.”

She looked down at her feathered forearms. Beads of water were indeed rolling off them, leaving them dry.

What a relief. She had worried that Laios had accused her of some kind of prejudice she’d been oblivious to. She thought it curious how her hands drank up the water’s warmth but her arms were completely insulated. Dissimilar elements melded together yielded new sensations. That might explain why, despite how happy she felt to see her brother, an undercurrent of discomfort rippled through her body.

They were soon done. The sight of gleaming kitchenware, all neatly stacked, reminded her of that dingy garret room and its many chests. Some opened. Others locked.

“We found him upstairs.” She mused.

“Hmm?”

“Thistle. He ran all the way to the top of one of the castle towers.”

“Ah, that makes sense. He seemed to like looking down on people. I remember when he summoned all those dragons without even considering how the type matchup would affect things.”

He spoke with a teacher’s admonishment. Beneath it was a wistful tone. Remembering the monsters he had seen was always difficult for him.

“Still, I really should thank him. If he hadn’t, I would never have seen that many dragons in my lifetime. Not after the Lion did … did his thing.”

Falin nodded but didn’t say anything. She never really knew what to say when this topic surfaced. Falin had gained much from the Dungeon but Laios had lost something precious to it. Being able to repel monsters was the Lion’s idea of a cruel joke and it had stuck to the core of everything her brother was. She’d tried to help, bringing him fossilised remains of different monsters: thunder stones, elf shots, adder heads. He welcomed each one but they couldn’t serve as a substitute for real, breathing monsters. For a brief, uncomfortable second, Falin wondered if the strange unease she felt was because being partially a monster herself, the curse laid upon her brother was trying to drive her away.

Well, she wouldn’t let that happen. She was back in control now. She showed it by scooching up to Laios and giving a playful elbow to his ribs.

“Well, I think you left more of a mark on that lion than he did on you.”

Laios gave a rueful chuckle and shook his head.

“Would have liked to do more than take a bite out of him. But at the end of the day, it’s eat or be eaten. That’s all there is to it.”

“Really?” That sounded much too fatal to come out of her brother’s mouth.

“Well, I guess if we’re being specific, some animals cough up things that are hard to digest, bone and hair and so on. Lions do that a lot, actually. Hey, that reminds me of when Itsuzumi…”

The remainder of his story was lost to Falin. She’d latched on to the idea of something coughing up what it had eaten and was sinking into it just like her hands were soaking in the warm, soapy water. Up to now, everyone had referred to Thistle as having been ‘brought back’, as if there were someone here responsible for his return. Shed had a suspicion that the Lion had been involved but which was it? Had he been guided like she had been? Or was it the case that he’d been spat out like indigestible material?

She was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she scarcely registered Laios gently pushing a lock of hair aside to get a better look at her neck.

“How did this happen?”

Falin froze. She remembered that she hadn’t applied cosmetics there. The scar was visible.

“Oh that’s uh … that’s …”

She clammed up, feeling Laios’ assessing gaze follow the harsh white line that circled all the way around her throat. Funny, to think she’d once tried to hide the redness of her cheeks with make up. Now she’d moved further down the body, to encompass her neck. Wonder what other parts of her she’d eventually paper over … no that wasn’t going to happen. She liked this body. She wouldn’t hide it.

She belatedly realised that her train of thought had caused her to start shaking her head. Laios recoiled, clearly surprised.

“It’s nothing!” She reassured him, pulling her hands out of the water quick enough to make soapy droplets splatter all over his shirt.

“Sorry.” She muttered hurriedly, smoothing down his shirt and trusting her heated dragon-flesh to dry it quicker. “It really is just a scratch.”

“Did Thistle leave it?”

“Thistle? Oh, no, no. He barely had the strength to stab me, much less throttle me. No, it was just something I picked up while travelling.”

“I see…” Laios replied. Still uncertain. “Say … was this a cut? Or something else?”

Falin had never been a good liar. Something about the way her cheeks bulged kind of killed any lie seconds after she’d uttered it. The feathers she now had certainly didn’t help matters. They ruffled as she considered how to explain things to her increasingly concerned.

“I … ran into a little trouble. Nothing much. I shook them off. It’s just people aren’t really used to seeing a woman with feathers and dragon feet, is all.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.” Laios replied, with sudden bitterness. Becoming a king clearly hadn’t diminished his disdain for fellow humans. He drummed his fingers against the worktop, clearly holding back a question. A question he likely knew the answer to.

“Brother-”

“It’s just that last time I saw a mark like that.” He interrupted, his voice growing ever tenser. “It was around the neck of one of the cattle we had back in the village. When the bulls got too aggressive they would lasso it with a hoop of thorn wire and pull its head down. Down into the ground.”

Silence. Nothing but the dripping from the tap, hitting the water - counting down the seconds until it all came out.

Then Laios - the king and the brother - spoke.

“You went back.”

Falin looked down at the water in the sink. She couldn’t see her reflection. Only the suds on the surface and the ceramic tiles glinting at the bottom.

She had come in with the fog. That had been the problem. Their village was located near the mountains, where light and air conspired to play tricks on travellers. During her approach, she’d seen several spectres - figures, outlines, standing upright instead of clinging to the mountain’s stone face. Hands splayed open, limbs extended and a circlet of rainbow beams striking out of their heads. Her studies had helped her understand that these beings were not ghosts, but simple illusions created by a low sun shooting its rays through droplets of scattered water. But growing up, she’d been told to fear them, to know them by their names. Am Fear Liath Mòr - the big grey man - and Bodach Glas - the dark grey man. Both were figures of impending death, warnings to anyone who attempted to travel the mountains. Turn back. Don’t proceed. Stay in your village.

As a child, Falin might have heeded such warnings. But she was a grown woman-dragon-chicken person so she did not. She definitely hadn’t travelled all the way back to their home just to be scared by her own shadow.

At the top of a sheer slope, she’d seen her village. How small it looked from above. Just a collection of houses with a muddied central road stitching it together. Her time in the Academy and Dungeon both had opened her mind to how places could grow and change, about the special spaces that could be hidden in their fabric. Such experiences made the village below seem so … limited. Perhaps she’d always felt that way and only realised it upon return. Her interest in cemetery work had been born in part from the fact that coffins were swaddled in the dirt and that their ghosts still escaped to walk in the air. It seemed a world removed from the dull practicalities of village life. She’d once tried to sleep in a freshly laid grave to see what would happen, if anything.

That had not gone down well.

That memory had been on her mind when she made the choice to cry out before entering the village. Hailing them that way seemed a good decision. Who knows how they might have reacted if a feathered lady with dragon feet? Probably not very well. So, she took a deep breath of the knife-sharp mountain air and let out the loudest yodel she could manage.

Big mistake.
The sound that left her lips wasn’t human. At least, not human in any way the people below would recognise. Her dragon’s body shaped the cold air she’d inhaled and moulded it into a mighty, rapturous cry. One that flew past her fangs and encompassed the entire village, with its thatched roofs and rutted paths, and made its way beyond to travel up the stone-strewn sides of the mountains, climbing as an echo all the way to the white peaks.

The fine white mist that issued from her mouth wasn’t because of the cold. It was actual dragon’s breath. Peering through the vapour, Falin could see men scuttle out their houses, with dogs yipping at their heels. Their cries met her ears and reminded her of the time a certain Kobold had chomped down on her feathered flesh. She winced at the memory. She never had much luck with dogs.

Muttering to herself, she launched down the scree slopes to clarify that she wasn’t an attacking monster and was in fact the weird girl who had an affinity for magic, returned. Her clawed feet made light work of the uneven surface and thus she leapt from one outcrop to another in a way that no regular human could do. So caught up in thinking how her cry had achieved the opposite of what she’d intended, Falin didn’t stop to consider how her descent must seem to the people massing below.

The dog got to her before she could utter a word to them.

A mass of fur and sagging jowls collided into her and she felt a white-hot pain erupt when teeth sunk into the forearm she had hastily thrown up in defence. Though still far stronger than she had been as a girl, she wasn’t the chimaera she’d been in the dungeon. She nearly cried out but held back her scream for fear of letting out another dragon roar that would only frighten the villagers further.

With her free hand, she twisted the dog’s exposed belly. It let go of her arm to yelp and when it did, she threw it back. A little too forcefully. It bounced against the earth before sliding down and coming to a halt right in front of the next dog, which leapt over its fellow to get to her.
This time, Falin gripped the mutt’s snout with her clawed foot and forced it back. It shook itself free and promptly ran back whence it came, its nose having got a full blast of dragon-scent. No other hound came to play but Falin couldn’t pull herself up. The ground was uneven and shifted beneath her weight. Her body longed for the wings it once had. The ones that had carried her to safety before.

When the men arrived, they weren’t interested in hearing anything. One slammed her face in with the butt of a broom. Didn’t break anything, her skin was too thick for that, but it made her growl - revealing her fangs. That was when things got really ugly.

Blow after blow landing on her body. None of it strong enough to hurt though still enough to keep her from standing up. It was like having a stampede of shrill children jumping up and down on her, without taking their boots off. The annoyance was enough that she didn’t notice the hoop that was slipped around her neck until it was pulled upon and she was trawled along through the mud.

That was different. Her brother had been forced to kill her in such a fashion, constricting her air flow until she succumbed. Raw panic gripped her where before there had just been dismay. Grimacing and flexing her neck muscles, she pulled as hard as she could, until she felt the hateful little cord snap. Then she ran. Wishing she had a tail to slap away any pursuers, Falin ran. Ran up the slope, on all fours like she had in the Dungeon, and back into the domain of spectres.

Chapter Text

The last sentence fell out of her lips, sinking like a dirty plate dumped in a soapy basin. Falin’s mind immediately began to try and supply some further clarification to her story, something that would make it less alarming. But no such thing came to her. It was like dragon smoke had spilled out of her mouth and no grasping at the air was enough to pull it back in. Maybe that was another reason she yearned for her old monster form - she didn’t have words, back then. Tricksy and difficult words. She just roared and that was enough.

She was so tangled in her web of instincts that she didn’t notice the growl building in her ears until the washed glasses began to rattle.

Falin’s hand went to her throat, an apology at the ready. That was when she realized that the growling wasn’t coming from her. It seemed to come from different places at once. Her keen ears detected no less than three noises folded on top of one another - the deep, hot-breathed exhalations of a wolf, the strangely human neigh of a goat and the sharp chirping of an eagle. She cast around, looking for a source but no animal or monster could be seen. Then, with slowly mounting disbelief, she turned to appraise her brother.

His brow was set in a frown, his eyes narrowed into a glare. He had balled his hands into fists and was clenching so hard that the tanned skin over his knuckles began to blanch. Falin had seen this kind of anger in their childhood. That terrible suppressed frustration that made him hunch over and become taut just to keep it contained. But now she saw something new. In his throat something was building, and from out his tightly pressed lips slipped out a noise that belonged to something with three heads.

Her arm-feathers fluffed up in sympathy as she placed a single arm on her brother’s shoulder and waited. They’d done this many times in their youth - waiting for the emotions that were too sharp, too loud, to pass. The kind that couldn’t be held alone. Now she was waiting for a monster to lower its three heads and go back to sleep. Their monstrous aspects, responding to each other and synchronizing. Then subsiding.

Eventually, the noise faded away. Laios looked down, saw the hand laid on his arm and hurriedly pulled himself up.

“Sorry.” He muttered. “That wasn’t meant to happen.”

“It wasn’t your fault-”

“You shouldn’t have to calm me down.”

That felt … wrong. It’s not that Falin thought she had an obligation to soothe her brother or anyone for that matter. It just happened, one action flowing to the next. Laios’ clarification felt like a sudden jolt that shook a carriage, nearly dislodging the luggage and bruising the passengers. Or something like that.

“And they should have known better.”

“I roared loud enough to shake rocks off the side of the sound of the mountain, what were they meant to think -”

“They don’t think! Don’t think about anything but themselves.”

Here was more familiar territory. Laios’ entrenchment against their village had been the cornerstone of his identity for years. Falin knew how to navigate through it.

“Not everyone has your field notes. Or my education.”

“They have eyes, last time I checked. Maybe they should have used them.”

“Well, you know what Dad used to say - if a dog has a scent, then your job is to follow.”

“Follow?” Laios grunted. “Like how he followed everyone else and pushed you away? He was probably bringing up the rear of that mob, waiting until they’d spent themselves before stepping in. Like that’s supposed to be what a leader does!”

This was going faster than expected. Usually Laios would veer off from any talk of their father, so bringing him up was a good way of changing the flow of a conversation. Seemed that was no longer the case.

“He was -”

“He wasn’t there for you as a girl. He wasn’t there when they attacked you.” He looked down at the sink. “Neither was I.”

Laios’ deprecation was like an outstretched hand for her to take, a way for normalcy to resume. But something kept her from reaching out.

“You know, I don’t need help all the time.” She said, brittlely, thinking of a certain elf as she did. “I went there knowing that they didn’t have the best impression of me. I wasn’t going to let the memory of the village sit in my head like a stone. I was going to let them know about what - who I’d become since leaving. I wasn’t afraid and I’m not regretful.”

Laios looked at her, assessing her words and her silence both. His gaze was uncanny. In it she could perceive the three beasts - wolf, goat and eagle - all distinct from one another yet combined, just as his growl before had been. She wondered if monsters could feel this gaze from far away and that’s why none dared venture over the kingdom’s borders.

But she’d always been able to out-stare her brother and that wasn’t about to change today. Took only a few seconds for Laios to look away. He was blinking - perhaps from the strain or perhaps because he knew how his eyes had seemed to his sister.

“Do you know what he did after you left?”

“No…”

“Turned your room into a storage space.”

From his tone, one would think their father had thrown a bunch of carcasses on to her bed and smeared shit on the floor. What was wrong with storage rooms? Storage was good. At least when it was really storage and not secretly hiding a mimic or two.

“Well, that makes sense. You can’t let space go to waste.”

“Your room. Where you’d grown up. Where we’d grown up. He turned it into a cupboard. It was the same as acting like you were never there.”

Never there. Falin remembered the time they had shared as early adventurers, sharing a grotty room together. No plan and hardly any skills to call upon, it had seemed that they’d both made a colossal mistake in deciding to share their fortunes together. But Laios had been calm. So calm. In waking and sleeping, like some great burden had been lifted off of his chest. Now she realised that the burden had been the expectation placed on him. The expectation to forget her.

In the corner of her mind, she thought about Thistle. About how he had fled all the way up the staircase to a garret room, there to take shelter amidst moldering mementos. Her hand, involuntarily, crept up to the feathered patch where her neck and chest joined. It gave away slightly beneath her fingers, despite her exerting no force.

“Well … I’m here now.”

All she could manage to say. Ironic, in that she was just getting ready to leave. She tried to make it as seamless as possible, turning on her clawed feet and willing herself not to move too fast. She didn’t feel any gaze on her back. Not the gaze of her brother nor the gaze of a three-headed monster.

Walking through the castle, lost in thought, the crossbow bolt embedding itself in her leg was enough to make Falin yelp.

“Sorry! Thought I got that one.”

The kingdoms’ most famous divorcee appeared from around the corner, brown hair bobbing as he hurried to pull the shaft from her scaled and deactivate the self-loading crossbow hidden artfully behind a potted plant.

“Sorry, I have to make sure they’re means-tested before I send them to market.” Chilchuck clarified, checking the point of the arrow to see if it had drawn blood. “Though I suppose it came in handy. I was looking for you.”

“Looking for me?” Falin forgot about the stinging pain in an instant. “Why?”

“It’s Thistle. He’s woken up. And he’s calling for you.”

Chapter Text

“Did you really have to take it all off?”

“He had been buried in those clothes and he’d sweated through them enough that they were all but bonded to his skin. Had to use a knife to cut it away, piecemeal.”

“A knife?!”

“Worry not, I’m very good. Didn’t score a drop of blood.”

Despite what Mithrun, Thistle - laid out on the bed in a white shift, eyes fixed on the ceiling - looked as if he’d been completely exsanguinated. Falin was so used to him seeming like a little bumblebee, buzzing around looking for things to land on, all the while picking up pollen dust to spread. Now, only the rise and fall of his chest taking in the cold air of the guest room was the only indication that he was still alive.

The white shift was clean as can be, which only served to unnerve Falin more. Falin hadn’t seen him once without the purple and black of his mage’s outfit, layered with the soot and dust of the dungeon. He jingled wherever he walked and considering the amount of pacing he did, he jingled a lot. Now he was quieter than a mouse. Despite having been told that he called her name, Falin couldn’t imagine him saying anything in this state.

One single piece of apparel remained - his white ruff. Despite Mithrun’s knife seeing to the rest, it still encircled his thin neck. The faint shudder that ran through its folds whenever Thistle breathed seemed to Falin like the last ember of his restless energy, still burning in a stone-cold grate.

“You kept the ruff?”

“He kept the ruff.” Mithrun clarified. “He was quiet while I cut away everything else but the moment I reached for the ruff, his hand shot up to grasp my wrist. Faster than a sprung trap.”

A quiet mumble came from behind them. Chilchuck was working on the room’s lock and evidently wasn’t keen on hearing any trap-based analogies. Neither was Falin. The story of her journey home and her near-capture was still fresh in her mind.

“You should take heart. It is well that the child has some fight left in him. Most drained by demons are devoid of all desire and have no will to live. That he can find the strength to turn my hand bodes well. It is a good start for the process.”

Good start. Process. Mithrun sounded like one of her old teachers explaining how to do magic the proper way. It hadn’t felt right to her then and him talking about Thistle in such terms didn’t feel right now. The elf-child had hugged, stabbed and now shaken off an attempt to take away a piece of clothing. That wasn’t a start, that was confusion. Panic. Now was she supposed to wait while his vital signs dropped lower and lower, until he was deemed ‘harmless’? Only then to make a decision on what to do with him?

“It’ll start to chafe if he keeps wearing it like that.” She eventually said. “I’ll take it off.”

Mithrun raised a silvered eyebrow, accentuating the effect of his damaged eye as he regarded her.

“I would not recommend it. Have you forgotten that you were stabbed the last time you tried to fondle him?”

“I have not.” Falin said briskly, not caring for Mithrun’s tone or phrasing. “He won’t be dangerous if he isn’t armed. You took his knife away, right? He hasn’t got anything to stab with?”

“Nothing to stab with except his pointy ears. Mind you don’t prick yourself on them.” Chilchuck said, not taking his eyes off the lock he was fiddling with.

“Thanks, Chil!” Falin replied. “You know, you don’t need to pretend to fix that lock. If you want to listen in, just say so.”

Chilchuck spluttered and there was a sharp twang as his lock pick snapped. Falin turned to see if Thistle reacted to the noise. He did not.

Taking advantage of Chilchuck’s temporary distraction, Falin slipped past Mithrun and began to walk towards the bed.

She tread slowly, letting the boards creak beneath her feet. She hoped the sound of her approach, her weight, would calm him. Then she wondered if her scent would help relax him and if she had made a wrong decision in cleaning herself up. The scar his little knife had made started to itch. She took in a lungful of the cold air, thinking that maybe her breathing too loud might startle him, and then felt the hollow part of her chest - the brood patch - sink in with the inhalation, until it felt like it was touching her spine.

Closer inspection revealed that Thistle wasn’t entirely silent. His thin-lipped mouth was moving, forming words uttered so quietly that Falin could only pick them up thanks to her dragon-enhanced senses. His lips were dry from the cold and the speed of his speaking caused them to flex and crack.

Falin tried to pick out the words but his movements were too fast. Even when he was a-bed she couldn’t keep track of him. Even if she could, she doubted that she’d be able to understand what he said. Whether it was simply spoken words or an actual language, it was likely that no one among them could translate it. Learning from the others that Thistle was old - very old - and not just a young soul in a dark place had been one of the most surprising things for her to absorb.

Falin’s eyes roved down to his throat, hidden by the ruff. The lace edges concealed how tightly it was fitted around his neck. It was a child’s apparel but he had kept on wearing it even as he grew, as much as a half-elf living in a Dungeon can grow. For the first time, Falin wondered if his high-pitched reedy voice wasn’t natural but in fact a product of his vocal cords being constricted by this hoop.

Falin’s mind strayed to the thought of the collar her own townspeople had fitted around her neck. Funny, how a small thing put in the right place could control an entire person. Though she doubted it hurt half as much as the cord that had bound her had, Falin still wondered what kind of hold it had on Thistle, that he would let Mithrun’s knife cut away the rest but struggle to hold on to it?

Falin remembered another story from her home town. This one was about a bird. A kind of white stork that would appear in the autumn. They’d make their nests not far from the village. Some of the elders called them omens of death, on account of them coming late in the year before Winter set in. And also because some of them showed up with arrows sticking in their necks.

Yes, indeed, some storks had shafts piercing their reedy necks and appeared miraculously unharmed. They had acquired them from attackers in southern climes. The sight of them was enough to spook most folks, so no one really approached them, except of course for Laios. He got poked in the head by their foot-long beaks and subjected to a staccato of rattling protest cries but he deduced the secrets of the arrow storks; the arrows hadn’t quite gone through their windpipes and the reason they kept them in was to appear larger - to ward off enemies, attract mates and so forth. For that reason, they put up with whatever discomfort or inconvenience the miniature lance brought.

Laios hadn’t seen any stork remove another’s arrow but when the birds left around springtime in a great moving quilt none displayed such decoration. The siblings would scour the surrounding hills and come back with fleches. When they had enough, Falin would bundle them into a faggot that she could cuddle. She wish she had such a faggot now. She could give it to Thistle, so he’d have something to hold while she took the ruff from him.

Offhandedly, she wondered what Marcille would do if she were here. Her lover seemed to oscillate between different extremes when it came to spellwork - with Marcille it was either follow the book to the letter or throw the book out the window before committing to some kind of ancient magic that had been expressly forbidden by senior mages three times over. Thistle was not in a place of extremes right now. He was wavering in a space between life and death, past and present. Falin wanted to be in the same place with him, like they had been in the Dungeon, but that would be impossible. She had changed. The knife he had thrust in her side was proof that they were not bonded as before and any attempt of that kind might prove dangerous.

The ruff reminded Falin of a lion’s mane. That in turn reminded her of the Winged Lion. Falin had been thinking of Thistle as a chick for some time now. Fragile, shrill, in need of someone to settle over him and keep him warm. Perhaps he was closer to a cub; willful, eager to prove himself and in need of more than shelter and food.

An idea began to form in her head.

Falin let a slight growl build and slip out her lightly pressed-together lips. Thistle’s inaudible muttering stilled and he turned to face her. His purple eyes were dimmed but a pearl of recognition was nestled in the core of their pupils. Falin held that gaze while advancing, her own eyes wide open. She willed her expression to be neutral and plain, not something that could be mistaken for doting or anger. She didn’t glance aside but something told her that Mithrun was watching this and assessing what he saw.

When she felt he was relaxed enough, she opened her fanged mouth and fitted it around his ruff.

There was resistance. Shuddering and wriggling. Falin silenced her own concern, remembering that Mithrun had said defiance was a good sign. She let her breath come out through her nose in hot plumes, warming Thistle’s neck and ruffling his white hair. The lace felt absurd in her teeth, clamped down upon by her powerful jaw muscles but Falin knew that if she went about the next stage the wrong way, she might end up doing serious damage to a soul that had already been cruelly used.

Her hands were still free. She placed one on his frail chest, spreading out her fingers until she felt that all parts of it were encompassed. Then - slowly and with all the control she could muster - she pulled back. The ruff still in her teeth and her hand still on his chest.

It happened as she hoped it would. The fabric came off steadily, with the ease of a dotted line being torn. She let the elf-child’s head fall gently into the pillow and was rewarded by a quiet sound of surprise as Thistle realised how deeply he could breathe now.

She let her hand rest gently on his chest for a while longer, feeling his breathing grow even. Then she calmly rose and made her way back to the door. The ruined ruff was between her teeth. She let it fall onto the floor, hoping Thistle would notice.

Chilchuck and Mithrun were both huddled around the lock. Chil’s lock pick had actually broken off in the keyhole and Mithrun was struggling to dislodge it with his knife. Falin simply kicked it open.

“Impressive work.” Mithrun commented, no doubt referring to both her leg strength and her exchange with Thistle. “Did you exchange words with him?”

“No but he’ll talk when he’s ready.” She turned to fix the Canary with a golden dragon stare. “He never learned my name. He didn’t call it today. You made that up.”

Mithrun’s expression was neutral but he sheathed his knife with more force than expected of elderly elf.

“I did. I was betting on the depth of your bond to start the process. Seems my hunch was proven correct.”

Chapter Text

“I think we should start with soup.”

“Soup?”

“M-hmm. No need to chew soup and it's easy to digest. I can slip in some medicinal herbs as well, to help with his recovery.”

“I don’t know … I don’t want to trick him into eating anything he doesn’t want to eat.”

“It isn’t deception, it’s nutrition. Children would scarcely eat anything if they knew every little thing that went into it.”

“Hmmm…”

Evening was seeping through the castle walls and Falin and Senshi were still debating what best to feed Thistle over the course of his recovery. Porridge they both agreed on, for breakfast, along with some Undine water if there was any left to spare. The problem was what to eat for lunch and dinner. Boneless meat, steamed vegetables, things peeled and skinned … Falin was determined to not give him anything that might catch in his throat. In his current condition, she wagered even the taste of mint would be enough to kill him for real.

“Hmmm…” Senshi said in kind, stroking a beard that had mercifully been washed free of grime. “You can pulp his food as much as you like, he’ll need protein if he’s to make a full recovery. We could explore you masticating the food before regurgitating it into his mouth, I hear plenty of birds do that.”

“We needn’t do any of that!”

Marcille’s strident voice intruded into the kitchen seconds before she entered with her unbound hair whipping behind her. She shut the door - a little too fast - before turning around and giving a sunny smile to the both of them.

“Sorry, I was just walking by and just overheard you talking about what should be done for sweet little Thistle…”

Senshi mumbled something about “elf ears” before returning his attention to his recipe book. Falin watched as Marcille began a long-winded speech about the dangers of regurgitating food into the mouth of someone who had immersed in a highly charged magical environment and noticed how her eyes were flitting back to the door she had come through.

“Mithrun left a little while ago.” She clarified to her lover.

Marcille breathed a sigh of relief and doubled over.

“Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you.” She replied, ruffling Falin’s hair and kissing her forehead. “I’m not avoiding him, it’s just I have a very busy job and I can’t really make time for him and the canaries. Not when there’s so much work to be done trying to make this place run as it should…”

“They aren’t here for you, lass. They’re here for the bairn that came back from the dead.” The dwarf cook then scratched the side of his nose with a chunky finger. “Actually, you can be of help here. If we take Thistle’s resurrection to be a kind of regurgitation from a body that rejected him, would that make regurgitating food into him a good idea? Sympathetic magic or sikely? Or do positives reject one another, in such a case?”

Marcille looked at him like he had just regurgitated on her dress.

“Not how it works. Never how it works.”

“But is there not some method by which the soul is vomited -”

“Never how it works!”

Senshi held both his hands up at that, mumbling about trying to understand magic was a fool’s errand, while Marcille played with loose strands of her hair, the way she now did whenever she was nervous or flustered. She fidgeted like that more and more recently, as if her hands were trying to remember how to braid her hair like she used to be able to, before the winged lion had snapped up that skill. Knowing what to do, Falin put a hand on her shoulder and directed her into a chair. Then she gathered Marcille’s hair into two ribbons and started to braid.

“I don’t think that’s the best way to look at things.” Marcille later said, with a bit more decorum. Falin’s large hands tending to her mussed hair had that effect. Hard to get too emotional when a dragon-chimera-woman has her hands on your neck and head.

“It’s not like he was decayed and resurrected from … parts.” She continued. Falin couldn’t see her face as she said this and wasn’t sure she wanted to. “He came back fully, completely as himself. Like someone switched him on.”

“He didn’t seem switched on when I saw him.” Senshi countered. “More like drained. Scarcely had the strength to walk, needed to be lifted to his bed.”

“He had the energy to scurry all the way up the spiral staircase and hide himself in the garret room. He only lost any of that drive when he was convinced he was in a safe space. He wants a place to hide, not a place to die.”

“How is this relevant to what the lad’s supposed to eat?”

“The best place to hide is in a memory. The best way to get into a memory is food. You see where I’m going with this?”

Falin finished up the braid and let it rest against Marcille’s back. She wasn’t as good as Marcille had been back when she could do it for herself. She always thought that the elf-girl’s fussy focus on her hair was a bit weird, mainly because she herself preferred to go through life with each stray strand that could move and be touched by the wind and the trees and other parts of the world. It was nice to do her hair now but each time it was done brought up the memory of what had been taken from her. It was the same with food. Eating always reminded her of the body she had in the dungeon, what she’d lost and what she retained. It took her by surprise to hear Marcille talk so freely of vague things like memories and hiding. Seems that time spent at the former dungeon lords’ meetings had helped her better understand concepts that couldn’t be put into formulas and textbooks. That, or the experience of running and hiding from the canaries whenever they suddenly arrived had made her more sympathetic to Thistle’s plight. Either way it was an improvement.

Senshi seemed to agree, as he settled into a more pensive expression as he leaned back in his chair.

“That’s much more understandable. But what do you give to an elf from a forgotten kingdom who spent the last few centuries as a dungeon lord and then died after being alive on the surface for a wee bit?”

There was a pause. Then Marcille gave her answer.

“Nothing with garlic in it.”

Senshi began to scowl or at least his friendly features gave their best attempt at a scowl.

“Just when I was thinking we agreed on something, cooking-wise…”

“What, it’s way too sharp! Plus, garlic has traditionally been used as a ward against evil in multiple cultures. You wouldn’t want him to get the wrong impression, would you?”

Thus began another round of bickering between the elf and the dwarf. Falin sat back and settled in for the next few minutes of arguing, her gaze fixed on clumsily-tied braids of Marcille’s hair swaying with every exaggerated gesture the elf made. Wards against evil, recipes, nutrition … everything was so formalised. It was like they were trying to stop a disaster from happening before it even happened. Not a bad idea in and of itself. But you should save that kind of thinking for places and ideas not people. People couldn’t be prevented. She didn’t care if that didn’t make sense. It made sense to her.

Wait, who was she arguing to? Why was she thinking these thoughts? Was it her dual nature starting to come apart again? She had always been worried about getting too emotional and now that worry was compounded by her time spent as a dragon. She doubted garlic could help with any of that but maybe something else in the room could. She cast her dragon’s eyes for any herb that might be of service. A few jars of star anise, Valerian root, the flower heads from hops, taken from the fields of the Golden Kingdom. Falin knew those hops could be used to stuff pillows. Laios used three, for the phantom headaches from the three heads he used to have. Their mother used to have one on hand when their father came home drunk. As she used to say, the one thing that helped deal with too many hops was more hops…

An idea struck her mind like a bolt from the blue.

She got up, sudden as a dog catching a scent. Both Marcille and Senshi stopped their debate to look at her.

“Uh, Falin? You OK?”

“I am.” And she was. No lying or downplaying. If her parts were out of harmony before then they certainly weren’t now. Thistle still did that for her, one way or another. She wanted to do the same for him.

“Sorry to leave early but I need to be off. You talking has really given me some great ideas. If you have any time on your hands, can you tell Laios I’m looking for him? I think me and him should do some foraging together…”

Chapter Text

The hops in the new Golden Kingdom grew tall enough to warrant the use of stilts.

The green shoots had climbed up the cords which had been dangled down from wires and poles, 5 metres high. The artichoke-looking leaves bobbed in the wind. They always put Falin in mind of the barometz, though none of these plants had fluffy sheep at their ends. If they did, then people would need to climb up and shear them. She would have liked to do something like that, in another life.

Or maybe she just wanted to have a go on one of the stilts. They looked like so much fun, regular sized people turned into giants. Men, women, children, whole families were up there and working together. When it became obvious how fertile the lands of the Golden Kingdom were, many people had made the journey to work them. There had been a great deal of work undertaken to accommodate them all. Kabru had seen to most of it, though Marcille had helped. The former had been a mite suspicious of the latter, given her stint as a dungeon master, but they had managed to house the itinerant workers without breaking any of the laws of nature or developing a god complex. Who else in a similar situation could say the same?

Laios was there though he wasn’t in the best of moods. The rows of orderly plants didn’t appeal to his taste for wild things and the people on long legs above were likely oppressive for him. Too close to the work they had at the village where they’d grown up. Worse, his curse was in effect meaning there was no chance of monsters showing up. This was one of the reasons the people had been able to farm so effectively in the first place but that didn’t make it any easier for him. Falin had heard rumours that he’d been out at night and walked the fields but hadn’t even been able to find an insect that would approach him. No chirping bugs, no fireflies, Just a lot of grass swaying silently in the night wind, bowing to the king who eats horrible things.

He had put on a farmer’s wide-brimmed straw hat to conceal his face. His cloak trailed on the dusted floor, likely due to him hunching over and not standing at his full height. Falin thought a part of him mourned being able to walk on all fours and survey the land as a giant quadruped. She herself had her posture criticised on formal occasions. Something about her craning her upper body too far forward. So it was that the two siblings, neither moving entirely as humans should, walked in the shadows of perfectly organised crops and workers oblivious to the fact that their king was literally at their feet.

The rows and rows of greenery were getting too much for even Falin to handle. She yearned to be on wilder trails and felt relieved when they exited the fields and their path began to climb into wooded uplands. She had a vague idea of where the thing she was looking for was to be found but wasn’t especially concerned about locating it immediately. In her experience, things like this shouldn’t be rushed. They should let the forest engulf them and see where it took them. Looking for cures took time, that much she knew since she was a girl, and this was more complicated than a cure. It was about finding something to start anew with, a beginning for Thistle. She couldn’t expect it to cross her path nor would she be able to find it by poking her head in every possible location. It required a subtler approach.

It certainly required her brother to stop growling.

“You’re growling.”

“I don’t growl. That’s not one of the things I do.” Yet there was a clear and audible dirge coming up from Laios’ throat. His lips were set in a thin line. That wasn’t right. When exploring, he usually had his mouth open enough to admit any number of bugs. Falin’s healing check ups during their dungeon diving days often became impromptu exorcisms, expelling various microscopic life forms that slipped into his system unbidden as he talked the house down, commenting on every life form that came into close proximity to them, even if it attacked them. Especially if it attacked them.

“You’re struggling.”

“No.” Laios said, shaking his head in typical doggy fashion. “Just … acclimatising.”

“You never had to acclimate before…” Falin focused on the small jerks of the head her brother gave, accentuated by the floppy hat on his head.

“It's your ears. They’re giving you pain.”

“A little, maybe.” He admitted, hitting the side of his head with the base of his palm, like he was trying to dislodge some water stuck there. “I’ve been holed up in the castle for so long, it’s only natural that I don’t move like I used to…”

There was a crack in the underbrush. Both siblings snapped their heads to the side to see what was the source. Their monster instincts still lingered, working through bodies that were a sliver of what they used to be. Falin brought her head back around with relative ease but Laios was still trying to see whatever might be there. Falin could see one of the tendons on his neck bulging as he strained. With one hand, Falin cupped her brother’s cheek and, exerting only the smallest amount of her true strength, brought his face back around to hers.

“It’s the heads, isn’t it?” She said “In your monster body, you had three heads.”

He had that shameful look he’d worn many times when they were children.

“I thought I’d look cooler with them.”

Falin could very easily picture Laios scribbling away in his free time, drawing up the coolest monster he could think of. Even now, maybe because of her lingering dragon senses, Falin could see the forms of his previous heads hovering beside him, like sundogs. If his situation was truly like her own, then he must be feeling the sensory input of the two heads on top of his own like the twitching of a phantom limb.

“Didn’t always have headaches though. Used to only get them after the times I died in the Dungeon.” His expression grew more wistful. “That seems so long ago…”

You’re telling me Falin thought. It wouldn’t do for her brother to be walking through the woods with a splitting headache.

There had to be something at hand to bring a modicum of comfort to Laios and his phantom heads. Some moss could be stuffed into his ears. Maybe there was a web-spinning insect that could be caught and used to make buds for blocking out aggressive stimuli. In magic school she had learned about the doctrine of correspondences - the idea that as each thing existed in relation to other things, certain substances profoundly impacted other substances, depending on how they contrasted and complemented each other. Up to now she’d thought of her brother as wholly unique, with only herself as a possible ‘corresponding’ opposite. But being in nature made it a little harder to believe that. There was so much surrounding them that the idea of neatly ordered magic systems seemed childish. So much here, blended together. Her little ecosystem she’d tried to make back in her student days was really just an attempt to approximate this. What could help her brother? What could help Thistle?

She tried to turn off her brain and listen to what was around her. The sound of things scurrying in the undergrowth, the cry of a few birds and above it all the rushing voice of trees moving their branches in the wind. That was it. The trees. Trees reached out and encompassed everything, covering all with their shade. Just like a king should do with his subjects.

OK it was a bit of a patchy theory but it was worth putting into practice.

Bidding her brother to stay where he was, Falin went off trail in search of something to help him. She closed her eyes and let her nose carry her to the right tree. A scent came to her, a rich, sticky smell that made her think of butterflies and honey. When she felt her feet tread on a new kind of foliage, one that crunched differently from leaves, she knew she’d arrived at what she’d been looking for.

Opening her eyes, she saw a tree. A tree with a thin, crooked trunk. Its leaves were blue-ish, mischievously rustling like a whispering child. Its bark had come off in peels revealing an inner bark that was a mesmerising blend of red, orange and silvery grays. The bark lay deposited on the ground, the thing she had stepped on. The scent was like a pelt that she could bury her nose in. coming off in thick waves, It made her woozy when she got in a little closer. Seemed like the perfect thing to help with the stress of a headache.

She didn’t want to take any of the bark pieces on the ground. They were likely dirty and useful to the soil. So, she went to the trunk and with an extended claws, peeled off a couple of scraps. Doing so revealed more of the marvellous inner layer, glistening with sap. When she walked away, Falin could easily imagine the tree staring at her, with it oil globules peering at her like bunches of eyes. Belatedly, she said please and thank you under her breath. She hoped it would be enough.

Making her way back to where her brother stood, Falin rolled the bark pieces into tight little wads. Laios was looking expectantly in her direction and she couldn’t help but notice a faint flicker of disappointment pass over his face when he realised that it was his sister emerging from the wood, not some monster. Falin felt torn between rolling her eyes and smiling. There really was no one like her brother.

“Did you find something?” The hope that she’d found something new was plain in his voice.

“A tree.”

“Oh OK. Anything unusual about it?”

“Not that I could tell. It was pretty and smelled nice. Shed a lot of its bark and had a really colourful bark. Like a sunset.”

“Ah … any teeth?”

Falin smiled. “None that I could see.”

“Mmmm…” Laios nodded, making his straw hat flop sorrowfully. “I thought that my curse would at least not affect plants. I was asking Senshi questions about botany, about when a plant becomes ‘monstrous’ and stuff… guess I was hoping I’d be luckier than I am with creatures. That I could be useful for you here.”

He sighed and scratched his chin, the way he often did when he was stressed. It was like he was recalling the stubble he had once had, when he’d come by the magic school to say hello to Falin looking like a ghoul and smelling like a dungeon. Hard to reconcile that memory with the melancholic king he’d become.

Falin ruffled his hair before presenting the two wads of bark.

“You’re never useless. You’re my brother.” She tilted her head and inserted the buds, as delicately as she could, into each ear. “I thought we were done wondering if we were useful or not anyway.”

She stepped back and let her brother get a feel for his new ear guards. She gave a thumbs up to try and gauge his reaction. Her brother mirrored her so for a second they were splitting images of one another, standing opposite in the middle of the whispering wood.

Maybe there was some truth to the doctrine of correspondences after all.

Laios’ expression grew quizzical.

“You know you’ve got a little snot.”

Falin blinked and put a hand to her face. Sure enough, there was a film of wetness about her nostrils. Guess she forgot she had those reactions in human form. Or maybe the dragon’s nose was so over-developed that it was causing problems for her in her current state.

“That tree had a ticklish smell.” She said, pinching her nose. “I heard you had similar problems with a dryad, down in the Dungeon.”

“Similar problems? Yeah, you could say that.” Laios chuckled at the memory and scratched the back of his head. “I hope you didn’t come here looking for a dryad…”

“No.” She said, “I came looking for something a bit more ordinary.”

It was anticlimactic, to say the least. Just a couple minutes spent foraging and there they were, in a shadowed copse: a bunch of thistles.

Removing them was equally anticlimactic - just a neat swipe with her claw and they popped right out the earth. It was hard not to think of the elf recuperating in the castle as she did, how she’d gently prised off the silk ruff from his thin neck. Her mother had used thistles because they helped strengthen the liver, the organ which purified the body and swept out toxins. She also remembered hearing that it helped with indigestion. Though she sought to use it in a more symbolic way, such memories heartened Falin as she exited the forest with her brother who was tilting his head back and forth to get a sense for his ear guards and the protection it afforded.

Making their way past the hop fields, Falin could see the stilts had been piled up to mark the end of the day. Their straight, smooth-grained forms made her remember the tree with its vibrant bark and strange smell.

Maybe she shouldn’t try on a pair of stilts but maybe she would climb that tree and sit in its branches. If the plant she picked could help Thistle, then maybe he could join her.

Chapter Text

Her tongue moved cyclically through the elf’s bush as she pondered the nuances of resurrection.

Her clawed hands gripped the pink thighs of her lover’s legs. Dungeon crawling had toughened up the formerly dainty Marcille, enough to turn her thighs into thick haunches that could handle being grabbed and held by a dragon-strengthened Falin. She had worried at first about possibly hurting the half-elf whenever they went for a tumble but Marcille had proven that she could take what she had to offer and then some. She’d been the one to knit dragon flesh around her salvaged bones, after all. Falin wondered if she’d given any thought to the possibility of them doing this when she’d begun the resurrection ritual. She wondered if she would have considered it herself, had their places been reversed and she’d been doing the reviving.

She was able to ponder these things while tonguing her girlfriend because their relationship had come forward leaps and bounds over the last few months. The hesitance and wondering-how-to-proceed feelings that had framed their bond for so long had dissipated. Now, having travelled and grown and looked into herself, Falin had the casual confidence to come back into their room after a day of foraging, sweep Marcille into a hungry kiss and initiate a bout of lovemaking. For her part, Marcille could immediately reciprocate, wrapping both legs around Falin’s girthy midriff and sinking her nails into the thick meat of her shoulders without a hint of shyness or self-awareness. Automatic, that’s what they were. Capable of starting, ending and resuming, such that they didn’t really have individual episodes of sex anymore and instead had one unbroken thread of intimacy underwriting everything else they did and connecting them even when they were leagues apart from one another.

Falin loved their shared motion. But it made her wonder - how much of this was possible because of her own progress? How much was due to the dragon soul bound to her own? Did it matter? All this, of course, led her mind back to Thistle and the strange space he occupied in her life.

Re-surfacing, she pulled herself up Marcille’s body and laid her head on her breasts. By now, this was a shared symbol for worry or concern. Marcille herself had often deposited her head on Falin’s feathered tits and mumbled about how changes in central magical authority were worrying her or how her mother had been asking after her health. Her sweaty, elven hands now ruffled Flain’s scruffy hair like she was working some conditioner into her scalp and came to cradle her cheeks.

“What’s eating you?”

Falin smiled at that little joke. Marcille’s joke-telling abilities had improved somewhat after her dungeon adventure. Nothing like resurrecting your school sweetheart as a dragon-chimaera, briefly assuming godhood and coming close to ushering in an apocalypse to help shore up one’s sense of humour.

“It’s … it’s a few things.” Falin said, biting down the automatic ‘nothing’ that came up to her lips. “I got the thistles for Thistle.” Marcille twittered at that and Falin bonked her chin lightly with her head. “I also saw Laios struggle. Tried to help but he’s really having trouble. Having three heads really did a number on him.”

“You should have seen all the other things he turned into.” Marcille muttered, saying something about changeling mushrooms and pretending to be a dog. “A crown’s a heavy burden, Fal. He’s wearing it as best he can. Plus, I can assure you that he’s not turning into a Dungeon Lord. I know better than most.”

There was a slight wobble in her voice, the same that entered her speech any time she brought up her brief stint as a Dungeon Lord. Falin pulled herself up to kiss the space between her breasts - her way of reassuring her that was all done with and she was here now with her. Marcille thanked her by slipping two fingers onto the brood patch beneath her collar bone, pressing down just hard enough to elicit a little shudder from Falin’s body. One of the best discoveries made by the pair of them was that this little spot, held over from her chimaera form, could be so receptive to the right kind of attention and care. Falin had pecked and licked Marcille’s body so many times, secretly looking for a similar part of her that would ring out at her touch but had not found any to match her brood patch. As shown by the looseness of her hair when compared to the myriad hairstyles she’d worn before, the changes Marcille had undergone were best understood as a relinquishment of something rather than the attaining of something.

Though, of course, she’d gained a dragon girlfriend in the aftermath. So silver linings and all that.

Marcille pulled her onto one side and fixed her with those big green eyes of hers.

“You’re not feeling bad for having left to go travelling?”

“... No. It’s not that.” Falin replied, putting away the memory of being chased away by the village.

“Because you didn’t do anything wrong. Everyone was fine and things worked out best they could.” She could be so emphatic when she wanted to be, like a school teacher trying to raise her children’s spirits. Not for the first time, Falin wondered if she should recommend such a career path to her but thought better of it. Interaction with children in that capacity might re-awaken any lingering Dungeon Lord traits still floating about in her system.

Marcille gained a more sultry expression, as she pressed herself closer to Falin.

“Besides, if you hadn’t travelled so extensively, I doubt we could enjoy ourselves as much as we’re doing now.”

That elicited a deep, throaty rumble from Falin, who bridged the gap between the two of them, re-joining their bodies and initiating a fresh round of lovemaking. The simplicity of it all was electrifying, especially when she stopped to think how so much of her days were spent second guessing and assessing people’s reactions. She had never imagined this for herself.

Tongue deep, back arced, mind away. There was Dungeon crawling and there was Dungeon hunting. She was doing the latter with such ardour that she scarcely realised that they were being watched until she caught the sight of purple eyes imposing on to her fluttering eyelids.

Clarity came back in a steel rush. She scooped up Marcille and rolled over, placing her back between the elf and whoever this onlooker was. Marcille yelped and began to ask what Falin was doing, before she saw the shape beside their bed. Then she swiped her staff from its resting place and pointed it at the intruder.

Thistle. Who else? He stood at the edge of their bed in a creased night gown that lifelessly covered his small frame. Falin could see the slender throat she had liberated from the mouldering ruff, his Adam’s apple moving, shifting, climbing up to his mouth but never yielding so much as a whisper. His eyes were as purple as ever, though not focused, looking on the pair of them without seeing either of them. His long hair twisted and rippled of its own accord, as if he was suspended in water. His expression was as impassive as a river stone, bereft of any of the paranoia and emotion that had transfigured it during his time as the Lord of the Dungeon.

“... Thistle?” Falin said incredulously. He did not respond.

“Oh, I do not think so!” Marcille cried, levelling the hoop of her staff right between Thistle’s glassy eyes. “It’s way past your bedtime, buddy!”

“Wait!” Falin hastily grabbed her lover’s staff and pulled it away. She was pretty sure that Marcille would have used a sleeping spell on Thistle and not her trademark explosion - but ‘pretty sure’ wasn’t the same as ‘certain’. She turned to look back and see if Thistle had been frightened, only to find that the elf boy had disappeared altogether.

Glancing around, she saw him teleported to the desk. His hands stroked the paraphernalia that was arrayed on it, touch light as breath. Casting a little were-light Falin realised that there was weight to Thistle’s motions because there was no flesh present at all. His fingers sank through the things he interacted with. Dust motes passed unhindered through his nightgown. Even his feet did not seem fully anchored to the floor.

“Is he … a ghost?” Marcille asked, hands still on her staff and looking warily at the apparition that was fondling her research materials.

“No. This is … soul-nambulism.”

“What now?”

“Soul-nambulism. When a magic user of sufficient power sleeps, their soul can walk around untethered from the body.” Falin watched the shade’s movement’s as she said this, how it poured over the desk, clearly looking for something without finding it.

“I don’t remember learning anything like that when we were in school…”

“Are you sure? It was listed as a dangerous consequence of the forbidden magic you were really interested in learning about.”

“Did you have to phrase it like that?”

Their conversation was interrupted when Thistle flash stepped again, this time right in front of them. Right in front of Falin.

Falin subjected herself to his sleeping stare. The pupils of his eyes did not contract, giving no impression of recognising her. But his fingers travelled up to her throat. To the space right beneath her throat, the hollow space. He exerted no pressure but Falin could still feel the weight of the underfed boy coming through the spectral fingers. Like her waking body was connected to the sleeping body of Thistle, through this sliver of his sleeping mind that he had sent down throughout the castle without knowing.

Gently as she could, she mirrored the gesture, bringing two fingers to his throat. The feeling was strange, like dipping a hand into tepid water. She looked at his face for any trace of a change in his expression but there was none. At least, none that she could recognise and identify.

Then he vanished. Like a balloon being popped but without the sound, one second here the next gone. She waited for a little while but he did not return.

Marcille let out a breath she’d clearly been holding in.

“Geez. We have got to get some good help for him fast because that CANNOT happen again.”

“Yeah … sure.” Falin processed Marcille’s words but her eyes were on the table. Thistle had just been a ghost. But a sprouting branch on the desk that he had touched had moved - pointing in a different direction than what it had been before. Pointing at the two of them.

Chapter Text

“Deeper. Go Deeper.”

“How much deeper do you want me to go? One minute it's the two of us and then he’s standing right beside our bed!”

“Did he seem interested in your coupling? Perhaps aroused?”

“He better not have been!”

“Not answering the question, is it? We’ll just put “not impressed” for that part. Does that sound alright to you?”

Falin did her best to block out the litany of curses that came somersaulting out of Marcille’s mouth at Mithrun’s suggestion. She could still hear the Canary’s quill scribbling beneath the tirade, likely listing each specific curse. Offhandedly, she wondered if she should make more of an effort to record things being said so she could plan her day and approaches to people. She never had the urge to constantly record things or consult texts shared by Laios or her lover. Should she work on that?

The soup started to bubble and spill. She adjusted the temperature.

They were crammed in the kitchen again, her, Marcille and the half-elf who had seemed to make Thistle his own personal case study. Macill had insisted sh b the one to give the report on Thistle’s phantom appearance and Falin had no reason to deny her. So it was that she stood silently over the hob and listened in on her girlfriend spelling out a plethora of potential explanations for the appearance of the phantom elf. She seemed to be trying to keep the attention on herself and her own magical capabilities, completely sidestepping anything to do with Falin (besides the eating-her-out part). Probably trying to keep Falin away from anything that smelled of hidden magic. Falin didn’t know whether to be grateful or indignant. She never could just be part of a story - it was either she was in the middle of the narrative or not there at all. Sometimes both simultaneously…

She gave the pot a stir. Maybe the fumes were getting to her and leading her mind down all these trails. She watched the heart-shaped leaves of the nettles dissolve and release their nutrients into the broth. As it turned out, she and Laios hardly needed to trek into the woods to find any. Journeying back, she’d seen plenty growing on the edges of the castle moat and around the perimeter of the graveyard. Nettles always sprung up where people had been and the Dungeon being what it was meant that there was plenty of fuel for a whole crop of the little plants to spring up. Refuge, corpses, sewage … all these things helped the nettles grow. Properly considering that had made Falin wonder whether it was really a good idea to try feeding them to the resurrected elf that was seemingly materialising in her bedroom. She suppressed these thoughts, remembering how back in her village the other kids sometimes dared her and Laios to eat some nettles. The trick, laios had learned, was to roll the leaves into little pellets. Took the edge off. Falin was ninety-five percent certain that boiling the leaves in this way would have a similar effect and if it didn’t … Well, seeing as Thistle seemed to be on the verge of becoming a ghost, maybe a little shock would do him some good.

She poured the whole thing into a bowl and put a slice of soft-crusted bread on the side (no choking hazard). It looked pretty unassuming, even meagre, when properly assembled. Senshi had suggested using a mushroom or two to add some flavour but Falin had declined, remembering vaguely that Thistle had some aversion to mushrooms. Her chimaera memories were muddled and indistinct. Maybe the reason she wanted to feed him something warm wasn’t just to help him but to also clarify things for her. A good meal could do anything. Right?

Very delicately, she made her way past the pair of elves, taking utmost care not to spill a drop. She had nearly made her way past Marcille when the other girl placed a stray hand on her arm. The sudden shock was immediately quelled when Marcille warmly stroked the arm, pressing the feathers beneath her jumper against her skin. Then she lifted her hand and went back to gesticulating at Mithrun, two fingers and a thumb pinched together.

It had been a small, simple act, done without a word of clarification or encouragement. But as Falin ventured towards the room where Thistle was supposed to be, her mind went back to the night before. Thistle, half-real, wandering about their room, intangible. Was Marcille worried that the same thing might happen to Falin? Did she feel the need to pat her down because that was the only way she could be assured that her lover was still flesh and blood? Falin remembered how she had been mistaken for a spectre in the mist. Then Thistle’s revival and sleepwalking. It was like her equilibrium was being tested and a misstep might mean sliding back into … whatever she was before.

The soup was getting cold. She should stop dawdling. Always dragging her feet.

She knocked on the door because of course she did. No need for her to do that, the chances of him responding were next to zero. She still did it. He deserved it.

The door was unlocked and gave away with the first rap of her knuckles. Nothing in the room was changed but her keen dragon senses were able to detect a slight heaviness in the air. The smell of a living body that had been holed up in here for a good few days. She took it as a good sign. Meant that Thistle was definitely still flesh and blood and hadn’t become a ghost.

Her charge was propped up on three pillows. His eyes were unfocused and distant but not glassy like before. He was scratching at his bare neck. Falin could see a thin red line of abrasion beneath his throat. His mouth moved fast, muttering out something inaudible to even Falin with her dragon-enhanced hearing. She reminded herself that Lord of the Dungeon or not, Thistle was still an accomplished mage. Best to proceed with caution.

Slowly but surely, she went towards the bed-bound child. Thistle’s pointed nose wrinkled at the new scent wafting over to him but his mouth kept moving, forming unknown words. When she pulled up a chair to sit beside him, she saw purple eyes flit in her direction before darting back just as fast.

Falin had hoped for a little more acknowledgment than that but she wasn’t going to be discouraged. With wide, telegraphed movements, she spooned out a small portion of soup and blew on it.

Still no response.

Delicately as she could, Falin directed the soup-laden spoon towards the young elf’s moving mouth. It was now clear that he was intentionally ignoring her. His eyes started to widen and wobble in distress. At last, Falin started to pick apart some of the words that were spilling out of his mouth - they were spells of protection, or at least the beginnings of ones. His attempts to string the right set of syllables for activating the charm kept coming apart, so he started again with a new spell each time the previous one failed. A litany of broken spells, all provoked by a single spoon.

Re-thinking her strategy, Falin brought the spoon into her own mouth. As predicted, sharp but not unbearably so. She pulled it out slowly, turned its head so Thistle could see that there was no tarnishing, no sign of poison. Laios had found out about Thistle’s courtly backstory so Falin thought it best to play into that. At least this time the half-elf wouldn’t have to be a poison taster. Nor did Laios have to be the eater of horrible things. She could eat the bitterness and make it sweet.

She took a second to ponder if eating the soup and regurgitating it into Thistle’s mouth directly but thought better of it. That wasn’t what was needed now. That wasn’t how real people acted.

Another dip into the bowl. Another blowing to cool it down. Another attempt at feeding.

Thistle craned his neck from side to side, as if trying to dislodge some water that had got stuck in his ears. Only gradually did he turn to the offered spoon and start to open his mouth. Falin caught sight of his teeth, filed down by all the times he had ground them in frustration.

He let the spoon into his mouth. She pulled it out. He swallowed.

No response, good or bad. Then he opened his mouth again.

She obliged, trying for a bigger spoonful this time. He opened again and took it. Then another. Then another. A rhythm began to build, more mechanical than she would’ve liked but she supposed she should be grateful that he was eating anything at all.

More spoonfuls. Out of the corner of her eye, Falin saw his throat move as the soup traveled down it. No. More than that. She saw the food itself, visible through his semi-translucent skin. A piece would make its way to his stomach and then his flesh would turn its regular brown again. Then a new piece came down and the process would repeat. Alive, ghost, alive, ghost. Turning over and over each other in an endless loop. Falin increasingly felt that she was pulling a lever that turned a machine, not feeding a child. Or maybe she had an idealistic idea of eating and what it meant to be fed. The Human body was ultimately a machine. Yeah that was it. She needed to get her feelings in order.

The soup was soon finished. She took the bowl but left the bread. Hopefully he would eat it of his own accord. That would be definite progress. She fluffed his pillow a bit more before setting his head down. He felt real to her. Hopefully better eating would mean better sleeping.
She then walked out the room, sparing one last glance at Thistle. His head on the pillow, white curls blending in with the white of his pillow.His mouth was no longer moving but his throat continued to undulate. No more soup to eat but his trachea continued to move, like there was a word coming up from deep within but refusing to move past his mouth.

Falin smiled. He could talk later. Eating came first.

Chapter Text

“So he handled it well?”

“He ate. I think that counts as progress.”

“He should thank his good fortune. It’s not everyone who gets to be fed by you!”

“Yeah … Marcille?”

“Yes, dear?”

“You really don’t need to do that.”

Falin had been in bed for some time now but her lover was still up and pacing around the room with her staff in hand. Its bottom end had unravelled and turned into a tangle of roots, daubed red with some strange concoction. Marcille was using it like a mop to paint the base of the walls, while scrawling runes on cardinal points with the other end, muttering under her breath all the while. When she heard Falin’s advice, she turned on her heels and met her gaze with bulging eyes, like a truant who had been caught in the act of graffiting.

“I wasn’t … it was meant to help with the air circulation here, it’s really stuffy here, I wake up each day and I have to peel myself from the sheets…”

Falin smiled and nodded as her lover put the reddened staff down in the wash bucket she brought in with her (without clarifying to Falin what either was going to be used for) and wriggled into bed. She buried her pointed face in the feathered patch between her shoulder bones, still muttering about the design flaws in the castle and how they (?) should really get on top of that. The looser skin of the brood patch gave way beneath the weight of her head and she could feel Marcille’s muffled words travel down the length of her body. She rubbed the length of the elf’s spine, before wondering why she was even doing that and stopping.

Marcille sensed that Falin had stopped stroking and extracted her face from her lover’s breast, a single feather quivering between her teeth. She quickly blew it away and it floated for a while before slipping under the door and out the room.

“So … he ate.”

“He ate.” Falin repeated. “He ate my food.”

“Right, the thistle soup.” Marcille’s face turned pensive, the way it always got when she was contemplating unconventional magic. “Wouldn’t have been my choice for a first meal, post-revival, but to each their own.”

“What would you have done?”

“Me?” Marcille now blushed, the way she always did when someone asked her to venture an opinion on food. “Well… I mean I’m not an expert but maybe …
Herbs?”

“Herbs?!”

“Herbs … but with water … for getting the herbs down. Water and herbs. Very nutritious"

The elf risked a glance at her lover, just in time to see Falin cock a single eyebrow, which greatly enhanced the effect of her golden, owl-like stare. Not able to take it, Marcille buried her face in Falin’s feathery bosom.

“Fettucine Alfredo. The kind my Mom used to make.” Her voice came up through Falin’s body again. She could also feel Marcille shake from embarrassment. Between the sigils daubed on the walls and the quizzing on her dietary habits, it was getting increasingly obvious that this wasn’t how she wanted her evening to go.

“I see.” Falin said, imagining how much butter would be covered over that dish. “I think that would be too heavy for him.”

“Heavy. Right.” Marcille extracted herself and rolled over on to her back, looking up at the ceiling. “If he’s anything like I was, he’ll be wanting a pie.” She mumbled something about not getting hers. Probably something that happened when Falin was crystallised.

“What do you mean by pie? If you don’t mind my asking.”

Marcille wriggled a little bit. Talking about her stint as Lord of the Dungeon wasn’t something she enjoyed. Though she still insisted that she had looked fantastic throughout the whole thing.

“Weeeeellllll … after a while your imagination runs away from you and you start wanting more and more.” She turned over to whisper huskily in Falin’s ear, like she was disclosing sensitive information. “I ended up really wanting a pie. A gooey, warm pie. A cherry pie.”

“Oh, I see. That took you over, did it.”

“Yeeeesssss. In a manner of speaking.” Marcille spread her legs, ever so slightly. “I remember you liking it back in school. Maybe that’s what it was…”

“Cherry pie.” Falin said, ruminating.

“Cherry pie.” Marcille repeated.

“That’s so interesting.” She thought back to Thistle’s throat, briefly translucent, as the food went down it. Thistle soup was fine as a starter but it wasn’t a whole meal. But what was a main meal for someone like Thistle, who had spent centuries with the kind of hunger that had nearly driven Marcille insane after a few hours spent enduring it?

She suddenly turned to face Marcille again, who lit up at the sudden eagerness from her lover. Rosey legs wrapped around Falin’s scaled ones and her breathing slowed, becoming heavy with desire while her bosom started to heave like a sail bellying in a stiff wind.

“Cherry pie, right? That’s what you wanted.”

“Do you want it though? Can you taste it-”

“You had it when you were a kid right? Or at some point before you went down in the Dungeon and I got eaten by the dragon?”

“... Maybe? We’re talking about the same thing, right?”

“Prehaps what I need to do is find what he ate before becoming Lord of the Dungeon! What do you reckon, am I getting closer?”

Marcille blinked. Her mouth went open. Then shut. Then it opened again. Then shut again. Then she let out a long trail of breath like a deflated balloon, before sinking into her pillow, looking at Falin askance all the while.

“Falin…” Her voice came up muffled, with her face half-obscured. “Are you sure this is what you want to be doing?”

That smarted. Falin let her body drop until she was eye-level with her lover. Her dragon’s gaze met Marcille’s still flecked with little dark patches from her time as the Lord of the Dungeon.

“What do you mean by that?”

“It’s just that with Mithrun having arrived, doesn’t it seem like Thistle has the best help he could get in his current condition. What more is there for you to do?”

Falin thought about how Mithrun had claimed to take Thistle’s clothes off with a knife. She remembered taking his ruff off with her own teeth.

“He still needs a face he can recognise. He doesn’t know Mithrun, he does know me and I know him. I want to know more about him. That’s why I’ve been doing all … all this.”

Marcille’s gaze remained steady but something else was entering her eyes. It looked worryingly close to pity.

“Falin, when you’re in the Dungeon …”

“I know.”

“It can really mess with your head. I should know.”

“It wasn’t like that for me. It was different. I’m still changed. I know how I feel.”

“I thought I did too, then the others shook me out of it …”

“Is that what you’re saying? That you know what I think? That you need to shake me out of whatever it is that I’m feeling?”

“Not at all but there’s a lot to be considered …”

“I’m not talking about considering, I’m talking about caring!”

There was a sound. Something falling to the floor.

Falin immediately disengaged from her conversation with Marcille and jolted upright. Scanned the room with her dragonite eyes, opened all the way and searched for any trace of movement.

Nothing. Marcille’s staff had fallen. That was all.

Coming down from her alert state, Falin settled in down to resume her conversation with Marcille but the elf had turned away. All Falin saw was the wall of rippling hair, hiding her lover’s back and neck. Her spine was stiff as a board and even with her enhanced hearing, Falin couldn’t hear her breathing.

Falin considered trying to re-start their talk or to change the topic, but thought better of it on both counts. Instead she gently rolled on to her back, so as not to disturb Marcille, and looked up at the ceiling. Waiting for sleep to carry her off.

Another glyph had been drawn on the roof. Marcille must have put it up there before she got back home. For a few moments, Falin stared at it. Then her eyes began to hurt. She closed them and resumed her wait for sleep, behind shut lids.

Chapter Text

“You want to know what he ate?”

“Yes. Or rather l … I want to know what his favourite food was. Is.”

“I’m not sure Thistle had a favourite anything. He was so pre-occupied with his work that he scarcely had time to decide on any interests.”

“Everyone has something they like. Even if they don’t realise they like it.”

“Hmm … I’m not sure if Thistle ever knew what he wanted. I don’t think he ever had the time to know.”

That tracks.

Falin and Yaad were talking on the outside of the castle. Ever since things had settled down, the former head of the sunken golden country had busied himself with makeshift gardening. This was a nice change from his time spent in diplomatic meetings. His firebrand approach was not really suited to meeting the needs of people coming in to enquire about settling. Falin and Marcille also had concerns about him using his newly-acquired mortality to guilt-trip Laios into pursuing various policies and disregarding others. Her brother was struggling with a lot since taking the throne and she worried he might be susceptible to that kind of pressure. So it was that Yaad now wandered the castle grounds in Degal’s body, pruning and plucking weeds from the ground. Falin had found him snipping at a topiary and wondered what kind of shape he was trying to mould it into, before she approached him with her questions about Thistle.

“Senshi talked a bit to me about cooking and what a favourite meal should be.” She said, turning a dead leaf with her clawed fingers. “He said, a favourite meal should make you forget and remember at the same time.”

“That’s a very dwarven thing to say.” Yaad replied, with surprising curtness. Falin remembered hearing that he had apparently gotten in an argument with some visiting dwarves and elves over political matters. “It does not strike me as a thing a cook should be saying. Surely a cook should be more precise with their ingredients?”

“Some ingredients resist precision.” She remembered how even with everyone cutting her out of the dragon some traits still lingered. She smiled a little when she pulled another leaf from the bush with her claws and let it fall to earth, being only slightly lighter than air.

“Ah, I forgot you’re also a mage. You certainly talk like one.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” She said, “But I’m not doing an experiment. I want to find something that he might eat and enjoy. He ate the Thistle soup I made for him but he didn’t seem to like it or dislike it. I want to know what the next step is.”

“Thistle soup?!” Yaad sounded affronted at the idea. Just a reminder that he had been the interim leader of a bountiful, abundant nation sealed in the dungeon and existing outside the flow of time. Maybe the idea of working with weeds and roots was completely unknown to him.

“I felt that it would have been the right thing, considering the link between him and his name…”

“Not as I remember him, before he became … the Thistle you knew.” Yaad sighed and wiped the sweat from Degal’s brow. “He had a sweet tooth.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Freinag brought him in with nothing, nothing but the clothes on his back. Still, he had a habit of sneaking into the kitchen and mixing things together. That was when the king first started to suspect his magical aptitude and well … you know the rest. “ His expression grew a bit more pensive. “He used to make a type of candy. I don’t remember its name but it started with an M. Perhaps it was a dessert from wherever he came from originally. He stopped eating anything sweet after the king was poisoned.”

He cut more and more, sending a shower of leaves to the ground. Then he scratched the back of his head as he observed his work.

“If I’m being honest, I’m not sure his name was originally Thistle. I think it sounded more like it started with an F when I first heard it. Maybe? It was a long time ago. He was called Thistle by everyone and that’s what stuck.”

He gave an especially vigorous cut with his shears that loosed a clump of greenery which fell on the earth with a thump. Falin’s enhanced nose wrinkled at the rush of pollen churned up by his clipping.

“He likes sweets. That might be a good idea.” Come to think of it, thistle soup had been bland. If she really wanted to coax Thistle back into the land of the living, she would probably need to use something a little more enticing.

“Well, thank you for that. I guess I’ll go and see what else I can do -”

“Let it lie.”

Falin blinked.

“Excuse me?”

Yaad set down the shears with shaking hands. Whether they were shaking because of Delgal’s age or from emotion, Falin couldn’t say. Those hands reached for the flask of switchel at his waist. After taking a drag and wiping his mouth, he spoke again.

“I helped him pass on. He died in my arms, I felt him go.” His wrinkled face rippled as he brought a hand up to knead his forehead. “Whatever came up from the grave likely isn’t him, no matter what he looks like. I’m only telling you so you don’t get hurt.”

Are you sure this is what you want ?

Don’t get hurt.

If Falin still had a tail, it would have been thumping the ground.

Instead she went over to Yaad and placed a hand on Yaad’s shaking one. It was a light touch but she knew he could feel the dragon through her skin, feel her changed nature through the claws that curled around his fingers.

“Things change. Look at the both of us.”

With that, she turned and took off, her clawed feet clicking against the stone path.

She’d said it in haste, she knew it, but it was true. She’d changed. She wasn’t going to let something like Thistle slip away, not when she had the means to help him. It wasn’t like before, when she’d thrown herself in front of a dragon or tried to return home in a rolling bank of fog. This time she was taking things step by step, thinking through each move and leaving nothing to chance. Step by -

THUMP.

She’d been so busy pondering her actions that she hadn’t noticed the pit right in front of her.

Not fazed in the slightest, Falin simply dropped to all fours before she connected with the ground. The space was scarcely enough to admit her girth and her arms scraped against the frayed sides of the earth. The friction slowed her down, enough for her to see what was waiting at the bottom before she collided with it.

Bones. Small bones. A child’s bones. They weren’t yellow from age and despite the confines of the pit, they looked so little. Hair grew out of a skull that seemed no bigger than her hipbone, white hair that trailed out and up the wall like the roots of a mushroom. The strands of the blank locks were smeared and twined with the grime of the grave. Cold shock filled Falin’s mind as she realised who the skeleton belonged to seconds before she finally hit the ground.

Her face collided with the half-sunken skull, her nose nearly going through its eye socket and taking in a whiff of a charnel scent. She heard a chorus of cracking noise and immediately realised her weight was breaking the exposed bone pieces. Registering that she’d likely destroy them if her full body came on top of them, she pulled herself up by sticking the spurs of her dragon feet into the soft earth, elevating herself by inches over the tiny body.

Sweat dropped off her brow and onto Thistle’s skull. From out the space contained by his jaw bone grew a little purple flower.

Her panicked breath made it waver like a tiny tongue, speaking without any words.

Chapter Text

“So that’s how it is.”

“Seems that way but we know nothing for certain.”

“So, we’ve been dealing with a ghost all this time?”

“We can’t know that for sure.”

“I think this makes it pretty obvious…”

“What makes it obvious? What’s obvious about any of this?!”

“Falin, Falin … I was talking about the bones.”

“What about the bones?”

“Well, you brought them in here. That was the obvious part.”

“...Oh.”

“Oh.”

Thistle’s bones were so small that even when gathered together, they could all fit quite snugly on the castle’s kitchen table. Falin had spread out his hair, draping it across the back of a chair so that it didn’t simply fall onto the floor. Suspended over a wooden frame, the locks reminded Falin of thread being fed through a loom. When a beetle crawled out from beneath a thick lock, she nearly jumped out of her skin.

Chilchuck looked equally nauseous, if not more so, given how close the bones were in proportion to himself. Falin hadn’t meant to bring the bones to him. She’d been making for the kitchen and just when she reached the door, it opened and the halfling union boss stepped out. Chilchuck was greeted by the empty sockets of Thistle’s skull, at eye level. Falin figured that it was a small mercy that the entire castle staff hadn’t raced into this pokey room, considering how high-pitched Chil’s scream had been.

After calming him down, Falin had set about placing the bones on the table. She wasn’t like Falin or Marcille, who had between them assembled her own body so well using their knowledge of butchery and magic in tandem. Falin just laid the bones down as best she could, trusting her bond with Thistle to let her know which one went where. She worked hurriedly, still not entirely believing in what she had found, and as a result, she sometimes brushed some of the bones off the table top and on to the floor. She picked them up and every time she did, she expected a living Thistle to be waiting on the table when she stood up. But he did not revive. Instead, she put all the pieces together to be rewarded by a complete skeleton, yellowed in places and speckled with flecks of soil. Only the mass of wool-like hair gave any indication that these were the remains of the former lord of the dungeon.

Looking down on him, Falin wondered if this was how she must have seemed to her friends following her skeleton being retrieved from the dragon’s guts. The thought made her dizzy. Dizzier.

Chilchuck, to his credit, had calmed down and was in the business of making himself some tea. Either this wasn’t the first body deposited in front of him this week or he’d come to expect a certain degree of surprises to come from the Touden siblings.

Breathing out slowly, he surveyed the skeleton with a hand on his hip, like he was overseeing a construction site. After a steadying gulp of his brew, he spoke.

“You sure it’s him?”

Falin nodded, looking at the bones and imagining brown skin and a bell-lined vest superimposed on top of them. But they stayed dead.

“That seems implausible.”

His response made Falin assume that he hadn’t been informed of Thistle’s nightly visitations. Made sense. If he had, she would have probably already heard a litany of complaints from the halfling about how randomly materialising revenants went against the terms of the contract he and his workers had signed.

“You were the one to first see him, when he … came out. Did you see anything like this?”

“Nah, not at all. I remember a streak of purple and a bunch of bells jingling. I felt my heart clunch and I hid in a bush. When I emerged a little bit later, I followed a line of footprints to a newly dug hole.”

“Was there … was this inside the hole?”

“Can’t say, I didn’t really look into it. I ran far the other way to get you guys.”

He bent down and squinted at the assembled bones.

“Are we absolutely certain of it being him? I mean, there’s stuff like living armour and the like down in the dungeon. Who’s to say this isn’t any different? Like maybe a … mushroom skeleton? Perhaps the hair is actually a load of roots!”

The idea of a mushroom skeleton was so biologically absurd that Falin half-expected her brother to come in through the door purely so he could denounce it and explain how fungi really worked. She wished he was here now. He was the one who had experience with this kind of thing - looking down on a skeleton and trying to figure out if it belonged to someone you cared about.

The skull’s empty sockets looked up at her. No panicked or angry eyes housed within them. No shrill, piping voice came out of the slack jaw. The hands wouldn’t come alive and bring his fingernails to his jaw from him to nibble in stress.

Thistle was here in front of her but he wasn’t. Thistle was sequestered away in a guest room but he wasn’t. How could she connect the two together? What was there to make him whole?

Her dragon’s eyes noticed something imperceptible to other humans. Something wedged in the teeth of the skull. Scarcely bigger than a blade of grass.

Gently as she could manage, Falin reached down to the teeth. With her clawed finger, she lightly tugged on the grain hidden in the bone.

A light, wheaten coloured shard. Not an actual grain. More like a shard, a piece of something. Holding it up to the light, she saw how it was light brown, almost honey-coloured, and it was semi-transparent enough that she could almost see through it. Just like the shade of Thistle which had come into her and Marcille’s room…

“What’s that? A baby tooth?” Chilchuck quipped. “I thought his hadn’t fallen out. He looked so young despite being old as elf balls.”

Falin looked disdainfully at the divorced halfling from out of the corner of her eye. Just in time to see Marcille rush into the room.

The elf looked at the skeleton on the table. Then she looked at her lover holding a chunk of something aloft, like a prospector with a nugget of gold. Her face blanched and she gave an audible gulp.

“So … what you got there?”

“I’m not sure.” Tentatively, Falin brought the piece of whatever-it-was to her mouth and let it rest on her tongue. A slight sweetness, musky and obscured by earth tones, passed down her taste buds in an electric ripple.

“I think it’s sugar!” She remembered what Yad had said, about Thistle wanting candy in life. “What do you suppose this means?”

“Falin, I meant the skeleton.”

“Oh. Right. It’s Thistle. We think.”

Marcille’s face somehow got even paler. Then her expression stabilised, acquiring that focused, clear-eyes quality she displayed whenever there was a chance to assess and analyse some serious magic. Falin could’ve sworn she saw the half-elf’s hair bristle slightly, like it was straining to break out of the relatively simple knot that it had been tied in.

“So, necromancy. I should’ve known.”

Something in Falin bridled at hearing that word linked to Thistle that way but she bit down any protest she might have had. Wordlessly, she took the piece of sugar she had plucked from Thistle’s skull and placed it in the hollow space between her shoulder bones, feeling only the slightest touch when settled into the pouch.

“This is good…” Marcille continued, not noticing or not commenting on her love storing the nugget of sweetness into her brood patch. “With these I have something physical to work with. We can finally get to the bottom of who or what that thing which looks like Thistle is.”

That thing.

“Thistle is physical enough. I held him when he came out of the garrett room.”

“He stabbed you too!” Chil added, taking a gulp from his cup.

“Right! Thanks, Chilchuck. And I was able to take his ruff off and feed him soup.” She remembered the semi-translucent quality of his skin when he had taken the spoonfuls of thistle soup. She tried to push it out of her mind. “All those things means he has to be alive in some way.”

Marcille nodded along, though her eyes were still on the bones.

“Falin … I know you're the best when it comes to exorcism magic and stuff like that. But I spent a lot of time with … remains.” She put a slender hand down to the trails of white hair coming out of the child-sized skull and held up several strands in her palm, maybe imagining the link between it and her own changed hair. “I know dead things very well now. This - Thistle or not - is dead. A real skeleton of a real person.”

She let the hair fall, dislodging more crumbs of grave soil to fall on to the floor in silence.

Falin took a moment to digest her lover’s words. A real skeleton. A boy who could travel through walls and looked like the old lord of the Dungeon. A piece of sugar, found between the skull’s teeth.

She looked up just in time to see a shape in the doorway. A small frame with big eyes. Purple eyes.

Using her dragon-lithe muscles, Falin craned her neck to try and get a better look. Without making it too obvious to the others of course.

The boy’s shape was gone. She expected that. The bones remained.