Chapter Text
“So, uh, what now?”
It’s dark, cold, and horribly, horribly muddy. Fischl’s hair is drenched and her skirts, wet from the unmerciful downpour of rain cling to her legs, heavy with water. Beside her, Razor shivers violently while clinging to poor Benett who’s desperately trying to pry a splinter out from his palm.
…it’s rather miserable, really.
“Let’s just-” she takes in a deep, shuddering breath, hugging her knees closer. Razor is silent but still shivering, and he looks rather like a cold housepet where he sits. “Try and wait this out.”
Pitiful. That's what this whole situation is. They are beaten, lost, and cold. Hell, she’s even broken character. “A-are you sure about this?” Benetts teeth chatter as he speaks, and he lets out a sharp squeak that tells her he finally managed to remove the splinter lodged in his skin.
“What else do you suggest, then?” She does her best to keep the bite from her words, but she can’t help but snap at him. It’s not his fault- it really isn’t, but even so, Fischl is tired beyond words and covered in mud. Now simply is not the time to cross her.
“Find s-some better s-shelter-r??” he replies timidly, wrapping his arms around the still silent Razor.
“WHERE?! We’re in the middle of a forest, Bennet! Just trees and mud!” She lets out a cry of frustration, throwing her hands in the air. To her left, Oz chitters to himself quietly with a rueful look.
“I d-don’t know!” He all but shouts back, then breaks into a short fit of sneezes. Perhaps if they weren’t where they were right now, she might be concerned her dear friend could be developing a cold. “Why don’t we send him to go search, huh?” Bennet points a finger at her beloved Ozvaldo Hrafnavins, her darling King of Ravens, almost accusatory in tone.
“ Certainly not!” Oz caws indignantly. “I refuse to sully my beautiful feathers with even more of this horrid, smelly rainwater!” His wings spark faintly with electro energy as droplets bounce off his shiny black-and-indigo plumage.
“Oh, hush, you silly bird!” scoffs Bennet.
“ACH! You DARE disrespect the King of Ravens HIMSELF??” Fischl sinks ever deeper into her pit of misery and self-loathing as Oz screeches in her ear and accidently hits her with his electro-charged wings in an attempt to refute. The hydro and electro zap at her skin uncomfortably where she is being unintentionally slapped.
“Well I’m not going out there!” He huffs.
“Tch. Look at this fool, Mein Fräulein.”
Razor wimpers sadly in the following, soured silence.
The rain pours down ever more, the slap of the raindrops against the leaves pounding in all of their ears loudly where they sit, curled at the base of a tree. Distanly, thunder rumbles and roars ominously, but they are all far too out of energy to care anymore. Somewhere ahead of them, the shadows shift as a racoon, opossum, or some other nocturnal creature skitters past while the bushes rustle and whip against each other in the wind.
Fischl sighs to herself, flicking a small bug from off her knee. Today was supposed to be the day they won. Their escape, really. It was supposed to be a storybook happy ending, where the birds chirped and they drank tea under the dazzling sun, smiling and holding hands far, far, FAR away from the obscured and shadowy silhouettes of their horrible parents. They should be safe and warm somewhere right now, the three of them curled up together peacefully in some cozy inn. But it just had to go like this, didn’t it? They just had to get lost, had to get caught in one of the most downright depressing rain storms imaginable, and just had to all be shivering, wet and cold. Just their luck, huh?
For many long minutes, the cacophony of the storm is the only sound between them. Then, Razor speaks up. “Will… have to go back? To town?” His voice shakes as he slowly places the words together, eyes drooping in an exhausted manner.
“No.” She is surprised at how sharp her own voice comes out. “No, we can’t. We just made it out- I will not go back.”
“But,” he looks at her with puppy-wide eyes and she can’t help but feel a little terrible. “We lost. It's cold, rainy. Razor… want to be warm again.”
This is because of her, she bitterly realizes. She and Benny may have had horrible homes, but he didn’t. Razor doesn’t deserve to be dragged along with them on some childish chase for freedom through this stupid forest. “I…” she can’t quite bring herself to say anything. “Lets just make it through this storm, ok?”
Wordlessly, Benett spreads his arms wide, his companions on either side scooting close and nestling up beside him as they all lean back slightly, curled together. Oz hops onto Fischl’s lap, looking amusingly undignified with his puffed-out feathers. Benny hums quietly as he does his best to soothe the stressed rapidly-beating hearts of all three of them, his pryo vision glowing dimly as he uses just enough energy to warm them all.
A soft warmth makes its way through her in a way akin to the feeling of warming her hands by a candle, and both she and Razor press a little closer to their friend. It is still cold and wet, yes, but a little less. Fischl reaches an arm over Benny, partially wrapping him in an embrace while taking hold of Razor’s shaking hand. Oz settles in, tucking his head under a wing. He is a comforting, familiar weight resting against her, and the freezing bite of the twilight suddenly seems a little less scary. The storm may still loom above them all, but you’d have to give them all the Mora in the world and a castle to care.
Bennet’s humming eventually fades once more into soft breaths, puffed and cloudy by the chill. Razor looks half asleep– albeit, still shivering like a wet dog– and Fischl has calmed down enough she can think just a little clearer. The night, however, is still loud and rainy.
“I’m sorry, by the way.” She whispers to Benny, who’s gazing out into the trees, eyes following some hazy shadow through the bushes warily.
“I know,” he whispers back. “We both know. This wasn’t supposed to happen- there was nothing any of us could do. We’re all to blame for poor planning, really. And… me, for our luck I suppose.”
“Don’t say that, Bennet,” she sucks in a slow breath, blinking slowly. It’s pretty much impossible for her to see in this low light, especially with only one eye. In her vision, the world is just a muddled canvas of blacks and dark gray. “You may have had luck, but this isn’t on you either. I dragged you both along on this.”
“Maybe we’re both to blame, a little. I really did want to go, though. I believed in, you know, the idea.”
“I’m sorry.” She repeats.
“No, no! We can still leave. This is just-” he straightens up a little, a half-hearted edge in his tone. “- a minor setback. We can still do this.”
“Face it, Benny.” She hates how her words sound, so blunt, so simple. There is no trace of the Prinzessin der Verurteilung in her voice right now, she is nothing but plain old Amy. “We’re going to either freeze or get mauled by geo slimes and hoards of hillichurls out here.”
“No.” He says almost vehemently. His grip tightens slightly around both her and Razor protectively, even though they all know none of them are the best of fighters– even their beloved wolf boy can barely hold his own in a legitimate fight. “I won’t let any of that happen.”
“Look at you, all protective.” She attempts a half-smile, but it fails and she falls back into a frown. “And here I thought I was supposed to be the one taking care of us.” Razor grumbles somewhat sleepy in agreement at her response.
“We all take care of each other. Even the great Ruler of the Ashen Darkness needs someone, you know?”
She opens her mouth to respond, but it snaps shut as the world is briefly illuminated in a sheer white, a resonating crash filling their ears. She bolts upwards, ignoring the heaviness of her rain-soaked clothing. “Up. Up now. We have to go.”
The lighting roars again, flashing a little farther in the distance and Razor shoots up, dragging Bennet with him. She grabs onto his hand again, urging him forwards and the three tear through the branches and leaves, heads whipping around with squinted eyes in search of the edge of the trees. None of them want to be struck.
Everything turns from muddled darkness to a swirling canvas of black as the world rushes past her, and she knows she’s going to get hurt if she keeps going on like this, continuously letting herself be bound into what is essentially blindness. So, she tugs Razor to a stop and activates her electro vision– her Edelstein der Dunkelheit–, the bright purple of electro briefly illuminating the dark between the lightning. Her eye closes for a brief second, then opens wide with the same electro-purple. All at once her world twists and shifts, the edges of her vision fogging and splintering until she feels her new eyes blink open, looking through the gaze of her faithful companion Oz.
With his superior sight and vision in low light, she leads the charge. Well, Oz does, really, but she’s the one dragging the other two along as she looks through Ozvaldo’s eyes. They race forwards again, legs becoming scratched and scraped as branches whip past.
Her heartbeat pounds in her ears alongside the pounding of their footfalls, and Bennet makes a frantic noise of distress as a tree somewhere close to them is struck. But still, they race onwards, ignoring the deafening crash and near-blinding light.
But they’re close! She can see the trees through Oz’s eyes as they begin to taper off, the edge just in sight. She pushes through the exhaustion, grip tightening around the hands of her friends. Close, so close. Only a little more until they-
The world tips. Fischl lets out a scream as she tumbles downwards, the ground steep, uneven, and rocky beneath her worn-out shoes. She nearly throws up as things jolt at the same time she’s all but rolling down this rocky hill, and she is once more seeing through her own eyes. Somewhere to her right, Razor yelps as he collides with various shaped stones, several of them leaving long scores down his arms. Bennet flails an arm out towards them both, but he is falling with them and he lands on it painfully.
Downwards they go, rolling over sharp rocks, crashing into one another as they are battered by the sheer drop of the terrain. Even Oz is tumbling beside them, panicked screeches escaping his beak. All of a sudden, Fischl’s jaw slams against something, and she can taste blood in her mouth where she’s bit her tongue. At the same time, she hears a sharp whump noise a few seconds before her descent slows and she rolls into a jutting stone that stops her fall.
For several long seconds, she lays on the rough ground with her ears ringing, groaning faintly with pain. Oz is the first of the group to recover, and he sparks with bolts of electro as he struggles to hold his form for a moment. His figure briefly flickers from raven to a shapeless elemental mass before returning to a (vaguely obfuscated) raven form once more. “Mein Fräulein! Retinue!” he squaks, wings flaring as he hops between them, pecking at their hands and faces in an attempt to raise them.
Razor, arguably the most durable of them, pushes himself up from the ground despite his bleeding arms and reaches for the two of them, Oz flapping up to his shoulder while chittering loudly. Bennet takes in a deep breath as if to steady himself but does not yet rise, instead shifting over so he’s laying on his back with one arm flopped out to the side. Fischl still does not move, but blinks blearily at the fuzzy shape of Ozvaldo and Razor crouching over her.
“Fischl… Fischl okay?” She’s gently shaken by wide-eyes Razor, and when she nods weakly he moves on to check on Bennet. Oz quickly flaps back towards her, skittering across the ground in that weird bird-hop motion beside her. Lightning flashes somewhere close by again.
He lets out a positively dramatic wail that pierces her already aching head like a cleaver, and if she weren’t half out of it at the moment, she might have had half the mind to dismiss him in a puff of electro mist. “ Prinzessin der Verurteilung! Mein dearest Fräulein!” Be butts her with his head repeatedly, but alas, his tiny body is of no use or help. In her head, she makes a groggy remark about how he reminds her somewhat of a frantic nanny when he’s like this.
Slowly– very slowly– she shifts upwards until she is resting with her back against the jutting rock, sitting upwards. Her head still rings like crazy and she’s bleeding and bruised everywhere, but she’s just glad to be alive. Resting one palm on her aching forehead, she speaks to a dazed looking Bennet and shaken Razor. “What– what did we…?”
The wolf boy just shrugs ruefully and looks down at Bennet, pressing a hand to staunch the bleeding of a nasty cut. “Bird eyes not reliable.”
Bennet fills her in, voice cracking slightly. “To translate, we ran ourselves over what might have been a cliff if it was just a little steeper.” he rubs his ankle, rolling it tentatively.
She does her very, very best not to immediately get mad at herself. “Ok; do we know where we are?” FIschl doesn’t even bother with fancy wording.
“Uh,” Bennet squints and tilts his head sideways to stare off at their surroundings. Rain slides down his face, his hair plastered to his head. “It’s too dark to tell. There’s… a lot of bushes? I think I see a house too, over that way, but I can’t tell.”
Razor squints in the same direction and nods. “Big house”
Fischl takes in an even deeper breath. Her eyes remain closed, but even with them shut she can still see the startling white through her eyelids as lightning flashes somewhere again somewhere off to her right. “Is there anywhere we might be able to shelter under?”
“No.” Bennet’s voice is barely a croak compared to the thundering downpour.
With a scrape, he carefully rocks to his feet, and he stumbles over to where Fischl still sits, Razor trailing behind him. The wolf boy keeps a close watch on everything around him, sharp eyes scanning the shadows.
“Are you sure you’re alright, Mein Fräulein?” Oz chirps, fluttering atop her knee and leaning downwards to inspect her eye.
“Yes, thank you Oz.” Her breaths are still shuddering and slow, but she’s in ok shape. “Can you do something for me?”
“Anything, Prinzessin”
“Go to that house,” Fischl points in the general direction of the shadowy outline. “Lend me your eyes. We have no shelter, and I want to see what that place is about.”
“Of course.” He accepts the order without question, the epitome of the ever-loyal companion sworn to her side from the beginning until eternity. He gives his best attempt at a bow and flutters away.
The human trio spends the next few minutes in a tense silence, thunder rumbling.
Fischl closes her eye once more, tugging at the mental link between her and her companion, climbing the rope between their minds so he can give her his eyes. But when her eyelids slide open once more, she does not look through the eyes of the raven, instead, she is still within her own body, cold and shivering among the rocks and dirt. Fischl lets out a frustrated growl. What in the world is Oz doing?
Razor makes a discouraged noise, disappointed and confused just as much as she. Bennet frowns. “What’s going o-”
He suddenly freezes, backing up slightly with eyes blown wide. He raises a hand in front of both of them protectively. A tall, familiar figure stands before them with her beloved Oz clutched in one gloved hand. The figure scowls at them, pinching the bridge of his nose. “No, no. This won’t do.”