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It hurt like the hells. Metal hot pain scorched up and down the right side of her head. She weakly lolled against the bedroll, trying to put out the fire that was surely consuming her scalp. The toothed edges of the broken keratin caught on the rough fabric of the pillow below her.
What happened? How could she have been so stupid? It appeared out of nowhere. She tried to jump she tried to -
Cool hands grabbed her cheeks. Tav hissed and cracked open an eye. The dim light hanging from the tent ceiling singed her retinas. A figure hovered above her, the light creating a back-lit halo around their head.
“Angel?” Tav murmured.
The angel snorted above her.
“It’s just me.” Shadowheart whispered, looking down at her patient. Tav lay in a bloody heap on the floor of Shadowheart’s tent. Shadowheart had barely understood what Halsin was saying as he stumbled into camp with their broken leader in his arms. Halsin ran off into the shadow-cursed forest after dumping Tav in Shadowheart’s makeshift infirmary, rambling on about local herbs.
Shadowheart gently maneuvered Tav’s chin to the side towards the soft lantern light. Tav groaned beneath her. The splintered remnants of Tav’s right horn stuck out of her hair like the stump of a tree fell by a storm. Dark blood-like puss slowly oozed from the core.
Shadowheart grimaced. Throughout her life she strived to gather as much medicinal knowledge as possible to better serve her cloister. She was proud of all she knew. However, this was out of her league. Shadowheart grabbed her pack from the other side of her tent and rummaged through it. She dumped an assortment of bottles next to Tav, nearly knocking over her bedside table of tinctures and balms.
A small glass bottle pressed against Tav’s cracked lips. Sweet syrup dripped past her teeth and filled Tav’s chest with a faint calming buzz. She moaned in brief respite and choked the rest of it down.
“There. That should stall the pain a bit. I’ll be right back.” Shadowheart quickly jumped to her feet and whipped the tent flaps open.
Shadowheart stormed across camp barely dodging the wisps of blight seeping from the cracks in the earth. She found Karlach wrestling Lae’zel- most likely a result of trying to hug the githyanki. Lae’zel huffed and half-heartedly pushed Karlach away, tolerating the tiefling’s celebration of her newly upgraded engine.
Unafraid of getting caught in the tangle of flailing limbs, Shadowheart grabbed Karlach’s bicep and yanked her to her feet.
“I need you. Now.” Shadowheart said, steering them back towards her tent.
“Whoa, hey Sharty, you could at least ask a girl to dinner first. Not that I’m complain-” Karlach clamped her mouth shut as Shadowheart spun towards her. Her eyes flashed with a different kind of desperation. Tears dotted the corners of her eyes.
“It’s Tav.”
Karlach’s veins ran cold. “Lead the way.”
Karlach pushed ahead of Shadowheart and burst through the tent flaps. Tav laid on the bedroll falling in and out of consciousness. An empty glass bottle lay at her side and an uncorked one lay weakly in her grasp, half of the tincture spilled on her chest. There was a empty space where Tav’s right horn was supposed to be. Karlach choked on a sob.
“I’m unsure how it happened. She was out with Halsin,” Shadowheart said, her face flushed. “From what I can tell, she has a concussion but is fine everywhere else, except... I need your help, tiefling physiology is beyond my medicinal realm.”
Karlach tentatively knelt in front of Tav. Her large hand hovered over the stumpy horn. At nineteen, Tav was young, way too young, to live the rest of her life disfigured in such a way. Karlach’s own broken horn throbbed in phantom pain. Memories of demons, broken clubs, and Zariel’s cruel laughter flooded her thoughts. In the hells, Karlach didn’t have a healer. She had to cauterize her own.
“Well, we aren’t going to do what I had to.” Karlach whispered, her gaze tracing Tav’s pain-etched face. She sucked in a breath, steeled her resolve, and turned to Shadowheart.
“Do you got any rags or anything? It’s going to hurt like hell, but we got to stuff it in the center to stop the blood.” Karlach said. Shadowheart immediately started gathering various items around her tent. Karlach looked numbly down at Tav, her words lowering to a murmur. “After, we need to shave down the edges before it hardens. Maybe then Dammon can fit her with a cap or something to protect it.”
Shadowheart knelt on the other side of Tav’s bedroll and placed several perfectly rolled gauze pads in Karlach’s hands. Shadowheart removed the small potion bottle from Tav’s grasp and grabbed the largest bottle from the jumbled assortment beside her. She grunted as she uncorked it.
“I’m sorry to ask, but I need you to place the gauze as I heal her. It's going to hurt. Don't hesitate.” Shadowheart placed a glowing hand against Tav’s cheek and the other pressed the glass bottle to Tav’s lips. “Are you ready?”
Karlach swallowed thickly and nodded.
The scalding fire alighting Tav’s nerves surged higher as something foreign wedged into the oozing crater on her head. She writhed on the bedroll, her legs kicking limply and her hands finding purchase on something warm and leathery. A muffled voice said something in infernal, but she couldn’t hear past the roaring fire.
Suddenly, the flames were snuffed to embers as a radiant calmness tingled over her entire body. She tasted another sweet sticky substance, more potent this time. Her heart rate slowed to a jog and the burning pain in her horn reduced to a dull throb. She cracked open her dry eyes.
“Karlach? Shad-” Tav coughed slightly. Her throat felt like sandpaper.
Shadowheart sighed in relief. Beside her, Karlach visibly released the tension from her muscles and relaxed. Tav tensed her back muscles as if she meant to get up. Shadowheart gently pushed her back down with a hand to her chest. She brushed aside all the various items around the bedroll and propped herself up next to Tav.
“Soldier, what happened?” Karlach soothed lowly, copying Shadowheart’s position on the other side of Tav. Shadowheart grabbed a wet cloth and busied herself by wiping the blood and spilled potion from Tav’s face and neck and fussed over the mess in the tent.
Tav’s face scrunched up as her mind cleared. She remembered going scouting after everyone set up camp for the afternoon. Ever since they arrived in the shadow-cursed lands, she was intrigued by how the curse was affecting the region's flora and fauna. Halsin agreed to go out with her after they were blessed by the freed pixie in the lamp. Tav was walking along a brambled root trying to reach a secluded plateau when the roots shifted below her. Plumes of the curse shot up from the freshly made canyon. In desperation to not fall to her death, Tav had flung herself back to solid ground, but not before hitting her head. She remembered a snapping noise, and then nothing.
“I was out with- I fell and…I tried to jump but-” Tav’s voice cracked. She shakily reached her hand up to the right side of her head. It wasn’t a dream. Her horn, her beautiful right horn, was gone. Her fingers lightly brushed the throbbing stump. The dam holding back her welled-up tears burst.
“It’s gone,” Tav sobbed, burying her face beneath her hands. "It's gone and I feel like a fucking idiot."
Tav trembled and her face burned red as embarrassment washed over her. She felt pathetic, and stupid, like a little kid. It was stupid to take such an unneeded and uncalculated risk. After weeks of blundering across the Swordcoast with her ragtag group of companions, she finally felt like she was living up to expectations. And now she needed her companions to fix her broken body after her reckless mistake. She was supposed to be their leader. How could anyone trust the judgment of someone so negligent to danger? She curled into herself, wishing she was intact, mind and horn, and in a different realm.
“Shh, Tav, it’s okay.” Shadowheart whispered, prying Tav’s hands from her face. She brushed Tav’s sweaty hair from her forehead. “It's unfortunate but accidents happen. You’re alive and you’re safe. You’re lucky you weren’t taken by the shadows.”
"I'd rather have been taken by the shadows, than have to live with my own shame!" Tav spat out, curling her fists tight enough to cut her palms. "Look at me, I'm ruined! Ugly!"
Shadowheart tensed and opened her mouth to refute but Karlach raised her hand to stop her. Karlach turned to Tav and studied her. Instead of Tav the nineteen-year-old tiefling, Karlach was met with the image of herself eight years ago. Pride, shame, embarrassment, self-hatred - all familiar to Karlach. When she lost her horn, it was the lowest she'd ever felt. She'd sunk into a very dark crevice, and digging herself out took a lot of work. Karlach knew there wasn’t much Tav could do besides take the time to heal.
Tav seemed to realize what she said and retracted into herself, her shoulders heavy with resignment. "Karlach, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you feel-"
"Tav, it's alright." Karlach said, reaching out to Tav. When she was met with no resistance, Karlach squeezed her closer, careful to avoid jostling her wound.
“I felt exactly how you are now—ugly, broken, a monster," Karlach said cautiously. "I’m not going to lie, it’s going to hurt. You’re going to have to re-learn a lot of things and it’s going to take a long time to come to terms with what’s missing. I went through the same thing but I'm still here fighting. You're going to be okay too.”
"Easy for you to say. You're Karlach, spitfire of Avernus." Tav huffed, scrubbing away tears with the back of her hand. Karlach felt something probe the edges of her consciousness- Tav. "And I'm just a stupid kid who got scooped up by a nautiloid after getting lost in the woods."
Karlach felt a bolt tighten on her mechanical heart. Tav was their leader, her creative strategies and her positive outlook were sometimes the only thing that kept the group going. She didn't give herself enough credit.
“We aren't so different. I know you have the fight in you, it's in our blood," Karlach said. She removed Tav's hand from her cheek and raised it to her head. Karlach guided Tav’s fingers over her own broken horn, the edges eroded by time and heat in the hells.
"See, solider? Just like Mama K," Karlach laughed lightly, her small grin blooming into a broad smile.
Tav, not immune to Karlach's infectious grin, rolled her eyes and turned her lips up through her tears. Her companions were always there to patch her up and she was unsure if she'd ever be able to repay them for keeping her going. Tav sunk into Karlach’s embrace and squeezed Shadowheart’s hand. Her body relaxed into the bedroll as the events of the day caught up with her.
Losing her horn was certainly not what she expected to happen on their journey. But she knew she’d get through it and come out stronger on the other side.