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Reign had lost the rough sandstone road somewhere in the shifting sands that stretched across the whole landscape hours ago. He squinted at the haze on the horizon that was slightly darker than the haze around it. A dust storm? A village? The end of the desert and a transition into the savannah like the map had promised? Or just a couple of rocks?
A rabbit squeaked nearby, and he decided that it didnt matter. He was past the point of caring. It was times like this that he hated his job, traveling hundreds of chunks to perform various tasks that villages hired him for due to his elemental powers. With the ability to manipulate the earth he touched, he'd been paid for anything from saving people from landslides to terraforming old ladies' gardens. Normally he enjoyed getting out of the house, but in this case-- and he groaned as he started to climb another sand dune-- it just wasn't worth it. The trek through the desert was just the start. He would still have to navigate a shattered savannah and climb through the mountains until he reached a remote tundra village. Also, the request from these villagers irked him. A complaint about "terrain changes"? Vague. Asking to send "one of the freaks of nature" to help? What, was Reign a circus performer to be rented out? He just wanted to get there and get the future headache over with as soon as possible. Maybe there was something he could do to traverse this biome faster…
As he crested the hill, Reign was so distracted by the logistics of making a human cannon out of sandstone that he didn't notice the figure lying in the sand in front of him until he was tripping over their body. He yelped in shock around the same time he faceplanted, earning him a mouthful of sand.
Reign took a moment to just lie there: eyes closed, tongue sandy, blazing sun on his back. Why me? he wondered morosly. Universe, what have I done recently to upset you?
Then he realized what he had tripped over and he scrambled to get up in a haste, spraying sand everywhere and spitting in an undignified manner to try and get it out of his mouth. Reign had slid down the hill in his fall and had to clamber back up the slope a little ways to reach the figure. They were lying unmoving and facedown in the sand, so Reign rolled them over to check for a pulse .
The first thing he noticed was pale skin and completely white hair that fell messily around the guy's goat horns. The second was his pulse, faint, but present. The third was the remarkable color of the other's eyes-- blue with notes of gold streaking outwards from the pupil.
Oh, fuck. He was awake.
"Oh, fuck," Reign said aloud, immediately beginning to rummage through his bag. He pulled out his bottle of water and proffered it to the mystery guy. Said mystery figure-- Goatboy for short, Reign decided-- pushed himself up on his arms weakly, then grabbed the water and started drinking enthusiastically.
"Damn," Reign said, unable to resist. "Slow down, bro. You're acting like a guy dying of thirst in the desert."
He went ignored, so he shrugged it off and looked Goatboy over with a critical eye. No obvious injuries, no supplies, not dressed for the weather…
"Running away from home?" He hazarded a guess. "Kidnapped? Having a terrible camping trip? Whatever it is, you're welcome for saving your ass. I can bring you back to wherever you came from, if y--"
One moment the water was in Reign's bottle in Goatboy's hands and he was making what he thought was a rather innocuous offer, and in the next, it was flying out of its container and freezing into wickedly sharp shards of ice, Goatboy dropping the bottle and raising his hands to command the projectiles. Reign yelped and acted on instinct, throwing his hands up so that a wall of sandstone mirrored his motion and erupted from the earth between them.
When he heard a startled gasp and noticed the lack of ice being flung at his head, he peeked around his wall hesitantly. Goatboy still had ice floating in the air in front of him, but he looked more scared than threatening, floored by the sight of Reign's manipulation of the earth. Ah , Reign thought, releasing his hold on the sandstone to let it sink back into the ground peacefully. He's never met another one .
Reign showed his hands in what he hoped was a placating manner. "It's chill!" he said. "Look, see?" At this, he ducked his head and pointed to the brown, furry bear ears that were half-hidden in the mess of his brown hair. "Chill, I promise. We're the same!"
Goatboy stared at Reign in mute shock. Reign wracked his brain for what Mime had first said to him when he had found him in a village wreaking havoc with his earth manipulation.
"Ice, huh? That's cool, man. There's a whole group of us, called HBG, who are all like you and me. Well, they're all in charge of different elements, but you get the point. If you don't want to go back home, you should come with me and see them, they'd all be super excited to meet you."
Goatboy continued to stare at him, and Reign sighed. "Please, dude?" he asked. "I really don't want to go do this job that I'm supposed to and this is a perfect excuse. Plus, this is the most exciting thing that's happened to me for a while. We haven't found any new Universe-blessed since… since I joined, probably. If you come back with me then they'll have to stop calling me the newbie. Please?"
The sun beat down on their backs. The ice fell back into the bottle under Goatboy's watchful gaze.
"Okay," he said, and that was how it all started.
---
Years later, walking through a forest on their way back home after traveling for a job, Reign eyed his silver-haired companion and reflected on how much that day had changed his life. Meeting Silverr had begun an endless mystery, and Reign never tried to pry or pressure him into unloading all of the emotional baggage he was obviously carrying, but damn if he wasn't intrigued. Silverr had been running from somewhere, completely unprepared to survive on his own if the way he found him near-death in the desert was any indication. He was violently opposed to returning and also completely mute on the topic of what exactly he was running from. Furthermore, he tried to hide it but his reactions to Reign and the rest of HBG made it painfully obvious that he had never met anyone else with elemental magic or universe-given traits. For the first few months, Reign would catch him staring, wide-eyed in awe, at the sunflower growing across Kayfour's face, the way Fruit would melt into shadows and reappear in another place, or the absentminded flicking of his own bear ears half-hidden in his hair.
So, yeah, Reign was absolutely curious as to what Silverr's backstory was. He started out befriending him just to try to coax him out of his shell, but ended up genuinely forming a deep connection and becoming best friends. He warmed up to HBG as the months passed, and the Silverr he knew now was a far cry from the near-silent runaway he had saved back in the desert.
For starters , Reign thought as he swiped irritably at the back of his neck after Silverr froze a drop of his sweat for the millionth time, he's way more fucking annoying.
" Stop it, you fucker," he complained, and Silverr just snickered.
"I'm helping," he responded. "You kept saying that it was too hot. I'm literally helping."
"It's awful and you know it," Reign bit back. "I never should have saved your sorry ass--" he cut off with a full body shudder and a muttered curse as all the sweat on his back froze at once. The sensation was incredibly disconcerting and it was the final straw for Reign. He stopped walking and whirled to face Silverr.
"Do that one more time and I'll kick your ass, Goatboy," he warned.
"Oh yeah?" asked Silverr with a familiar glint in his eye, and Reign's eyes flickered to his empty hands and back up to his face. He smiled despite himself, his pissed-off front slipping before he caught himself and pasted a dramatic frown back on his face.
"You heard me," he answered, and Silverr's next breath was suddenly visible as the temperature around him dropped sharply. That was Reign's only warning before he was yanking a wall of earth up in front of him and hearing icy projectiles shatter on the other side.
Then they were off, dodging and retreating and lunging again at each other, over and over, in a rhythm as easy as their earlier banter. Silverr was lethally accurate and Reign was endlessly creative and both were fast as they traded attacks and elements and breathless smiles. This was familiar. This was natural. This was reaching out with a hand and touching the world on a level a little deeper than the average person could, finding a note in the chord of the universe that resonated perfectly with their souls, and convincing it that it could be moved as if it were their own body. This was Reign plunging a hand into the earth as if it wasnt even there and pushing towards Silverr, the earth erupting with the movement in a jagged wave that grew larger and larger as it neared its target. This was Silverr diving out of the way and plucking ice out of thin air, water vapor condensing and freezing in his hands, before propelling it all back at Reign in a barrage. This was Reign being forced back, bracing himself behind a hastily made wall, and unable to stop grinning.
He gave his wall a sudden shove and it was propelled across the space between him and Silverr, forcing his rain of ice to stop as he dodged. Reign started kicking up disks of earth and launching them towards Silverr, keeping him on the defensive as he danced out of the way. Another few projectiles to the right would force Silverr further to the left, which would be a great place to open a pit in the ground while he was unbalanced…
Before Reign had the chance, though, he saw Silverr dodge a disk and reach out towards Reign with fingers splayed as if he was trying to reach for something. Reign tensed, watching for a coming attack, but Silverr's hand closed into a fist and no ice formed. Reign didn't understand until he felt something cold coalescing above his head, his ears flicking in the suddenly icy air, but the realization was too late. Reign couldn't get out of the way in time before a piece of ice shattered itself on top of his head. He glimpsed chunks of ice raining down as he reared back instinctively-- and slipped, Silverr much closer than he'd been a moment ago and freezing the ground underneath his feet.
Fucker , Reign had time to think before he hit the ground. Two can play that game.
Landing on his back, Reign slammed his hands into the ground and savored the sudden yelp that escaped Silverr when the ground under his feet lurched violently. He was jolted clean off his feet, onto the ice, and toppled onto Reign.
" Ow ," Reign groaned, struggling for breath with the wind completely knocked out of him. He screwed his eyes shut against the pain of Silverr's heavy horns slamming into his gut. Silverr mumbled something unkind in return and halfheartedly shoved Reign, who let that offense go unanswered in favor of relearning how to breathe. Spar over, the two settled into silence.
After enough time passed that the birds in the forest deemed it safe to start singing again, Reign poked at Silverr's head to get his attention. "You stealing my moves now?" he asked.
"It's different," Silverr immediately countered. "You don't own the whole concept of making people trip."
"Surrree," Reign drawled. A shrill ringtone interrupted their conversation, and Silverr sat up so that Reign could raise his arm and pick up the call on the communicator mounted to his wrist.
Mime's face filled the small screen, and he immediately arched a brow when he saw the torn up ground and shattered ice littering the ground behind them. Reign swiveled guiltily, trying to put an intact part of the forest behind him, but quickly gave up when he couldn't find any.
"Yo," he said.
Mime's resulting sigh was tired and long-suffering. "Hey," he answered dryly. "When will you two be home?"
Home, the HBG house, was less of a cohesive house and more of a mess of extensions and add-on rooms and poor repairs after someone fucked up and blew a hole in a wall. The only thing holding it togther when its inhabitants all had elemental powers and were unused to being inside for extended periods of time was Fulham's cheery yellow paint job.
Reign considered for a second. "Tomorrow morning," he said. "Later if Silverr and I decide to reenact all of Frozen again."
He heard Silverr huff, and lifted his eyes from his comm to give him his best enticing grin. Silverr just rolled his eyes, but there was a smile tugging on the corner of his mouth.
"I don't want to be Elsa again," he complained.
"I'll be Elsa," Reign said immediately.
Silverr considered this. "Only if we do Frozen 2 ."
"Done," agreed Reign.
" Anyway ," Mime interrupted loudly, completely ignoring their conversation. "Don't forget that we have an HBG meeting tomorrow. Updates on bounty hunter activity and we're voting on the punishment for Fruit setting Fyroah's bed on fire."
" Ugh ," Reign groaned at the same time that Silverr said "Fruit did what?".
"More hunters?" Reign complained, and Mime nodded. Silverr, who wasn't quite used to the extent of Fruit's antics yet, went ignored.
"Yeah," Mime confirmed. "Couri and Fein are in town to check it out, but it definitely seems like they're getting upset and gathering hunters again. Fuckers. Xenophobic fuckers who're stuck in the past. Those bounties are so old . Literally everyone else has moved on and just appreciates that we help the general population out, like, all the time."
"Jealous fuckers who are just mad that they don't have a universe-given blessing," Reign agreed.
"Fruit did what?" Silverr asked again.
"You'll get used to it," Mime answered. "Actually, I should probably check that he's not rigging someone's bed to explode because he's mad he got caught. See you guys tomorrow."
"Yep," Reign answered, and ended the call. "Anyway," he said, turning to Silverr. "Do you want to be Anna?"
"Olaf, and you have to cry about my death," Silverr said, and in this manner the two continued their journey home.
---
And "home" was a word that still felt foreign to Silverr, tasted strange on Silverr's tongue, and stumbled hesitantly coming out of his mouth. Sometimes the bizarreness of it all caught up to him suddenly, made him fumble in the middle of conversation, and made Reign look at him in that concerned and curious way that made Silverr feel sick. Sometimes it all hit him with the force of an angry hoglin, but Silverr couldn't run from the mental tusks attacking him without mercy. He couldn't tower out of reach of the incessant thoughts that dogged his steps, that crept up on him at night, that made him hate the sight of snow.
YOU SHOULD BE DEAD , the voices in Silverr's memory screamed. YOU SHOULD BE DEAD. MURDERER. THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT.
---
Fein groaned dramatically as he crested the hill and beheld the landscape spread before him-- chunks on end of wooded hills spotted with ravines and sinkholes filled with water. " Why did we go this way?" he asked, casting a halfhearted glare at his companion. "In what way is this easier than the normal trail?"
Couriway resettled his wings on his back and had the decency to look apologetic. "I didn't say it was easier , I said it was faster . This is the way I normally go, and it's way shorter."
"Because you just fly , motherfucker," Fein complained. "Put yourself in my shoes. Imagine you're a normal, non-bird guy who has to walk everywhere on two feet."
"Not my fault you volunteered to come along with me," Couri shot back, and turned to survey the landscape.
"...Yeah," He said after a moment. "This is gonna take you forever."
"Mother fuck --"
"But!" Couri chirped brightly. "It's all downhill until the village!"
Fein muttered a few choice words about what he thought of Couri's optimistic attitude. "It sucks that we have to live in the middle of nowhere just so the townspeople don't get freaked out," he groused. "Or, y'know what? It would be nice if you could carry people. You could be the HBGmobile. Rent you out to the townspeople like those llama-renting services. Maybe you could have a thing at the fair, like how kids can go on pony rides--"
"Now that you mention it," Couri interrupted, scanning the route in front of them with a critical eye. "I can't really fly while carrying people, but I could probably glide? It is all downhill…"
Fein shook his head immediately, preemptively backing up a step when Couri turned to face him. "No way," he said. "No fucking way. I was kidding . 'Probably' is not a reassuring way to describe that. You are not going to pick me up and then drop me to my death."
Couriway started to grin. He rustled his wings in a way that managed to be ominous, the sunlight catching on the feathers to make them shine a dazzling gold. "What's this?" he asked. "Is the infamous Feinberg, so-called King of Lightning, legendary Stormbringer, highest bounty in HBG… scared ?"
" No ," Fein protested, trying to back up more but hitting a tree. "I am not letting you fly me-- glide me, whatever-- anywhere, no way in hell--"
-
In the end, Couri had to put him down early because he was laughing too hard to fly straight and each time he swerved, Fein cursed so colorfully that it made Couri laugh harder. Fein basically shoved himself out of Couri's grasp the second they were close enough to the ground to jump to safely and turned to scowl at Couri, who crash-landed and opted to remain on the ground until he could get it together.
"I can't believe," he wheezed between peals of laughter, "that you're afraid of heights."
"I'm not ," Fein said crossly. "I just don't trust you to not drop me to my death. You fly like a drunk donkey driver. I'm afraid of dying by featherbrained idiot, if anything."
Couri kept laughing hysterically. "Your reputation!" he gasped. "They tell horror stories about you, the superstitious villagers think you're like the boogeyman . And you were so scared--"
Fein started kicking irritably at Couri. Before he could start adding little static electricity-like zaps, Fruit suddenly stepped out of the shadow of the tree right next to them with a cheery "Hey guys!" that caused both Fein and Couri to shriek exclaim in surprise.
Stepping out of the shadow was not a figure of speech, either. Fein knew that at first glance it was hard to reconcile the idea of Fruit-- an energetic guy with a blindingly bright green jacket-- with his element. After all, shadows ? Fein had doubted that… that color would ever be capable of subterfuge when he first met Fruit. However, after Fruit successfully snuck up on him, stole his things, or escaped Fein's wrath after pulling a prank countless times, Fein was forced to admit that Fruit's usage of his element was entirely in-character. Melting into shadows and popping back out of whatever patch of darkness he pleased suited his downright mischievous personality to a tee. He was quiet when he wanted to be and blindingly fast, and when Fein asked why he wore green, Fruit just said that the attention-grabbing color made life more interesting.
In any case, Fruit literally materialized from the shade like the actual boogeyman, which startled a shriek out of the already-jumpy Fein and prompted another laughing fit from Couri.
After they finally calmed down, Fein asked Fruit what he was doing there.
Fruit shrugged. "Mime caught me trying to explode his bed, so I left before he could start trying to kill me for real. You guys are going to check out the rumors in town, right?"
"Yep," Couri confirmed. "Supposedly a ton of hunters showing up, looking to cash in on bounties probably."
"Yay," Fruit deadpanned. "Well, I guess I'm tagging along."
They set out towards the town together (on foot this time), and reached it not much later. Immediately, though, something felt off. Even just wandering the main roads and browsing the market stalls, villagers were acting as if they were aliens. Vendors that were normally used to their presence turned away from them. Mothers pulled their children indoors. The people that they were familiar with, the people that Fein would even tentatively call his friends , refused to meet his eyes.
Finally, they reached the town hall and Fein strode impatiently to the notice board, scanning it for any sort of information that would explain the sudden change. Flyers for tradesmen, an ad asking for a babysitter, someone announcing a yard sale…
" Psst ," someone hissed from his left, and Fein whipped around to see a young girl who couldn't be older than ten peeking nervously out from around the corner. She immediately put a finger to her lips in a symbol to keep quiet, glanced around for witnesses, and beckoned the trio to join her as she disappeared back into the alleyway that she had emerged from.
Fein sent the other two a look that said sketchy as fuck . Couri sent one back that said what other choice do we have? Fruit saw their silent debate, shrugged, and strolled casually into the alleyway after the kid.
Couri and Fein scrambled to catch up to Fruit. Once in the alley, they found the kid twisting her hands together in stress. " You gotta get out of here! " she whispered furiously the second they got close enough. She continued without waiting for an answer, words tripping over themselves in agitation. "A buncha weird men just showed up in town, some old bounty hunters but a ton of new ones. My parents said that the new ones are some group that rounded up all the usual ones and convinced them to join forces. They-- they said they'll consider anyone who helps you guys out as one of you, and they're taking the 'Dead or Alive' part of your arrest warrants really seriously. You gotta get out of here, no joke--"
" Hey ," Fein interrupted, putting a hand on the girl's shoulder and looking her in the eye. "Calm down, kid. It's alright. Do you know where these new guys are from or what their deal is?"
The girl shook her head. "I don't remember. Somewhere up north. Some town none of us had ever heard of before, I don't know, I don't know why they're so angry, I'm so sorry--"
"Woah, woah," Couri interrupted, and put a gentle hand over her own to stop her from nervously wringing the life out of them. "It's okay. We really appreciate you giving us a warning, really. Why are you helping us, though? If it's this dangerous?"
Fein watched the girl's entire demeanor change in a moment, going from anxious to overjoyed in the blink of an eye. She grinned blindingly and bounced on the balls of her feet as she looked up at Couri. "'Cause you guys are cool!" She chirped. "You saved my cat from a tree last month! When I grow up, I'm gonna grow wings like you, mister!"
"Oh!" Couri said, blinking in surprise. "Well, thank you?"
Fruit stepped out of the dumpster's shadow and they all jumped-- Fein hadn't even noticed he had left-- and the grim look on his face had Couri turning back to the girl immediately. "Thank you for the warning," he repeated, "and now you should get out of here. We don't want you getting in trouble, okay? Sneak out and make sure nobody sees you."
The girl nodded and, without hesitation, climbed up a drainage pipe and disappeared over the roof of the town hall in the blink of an eye. Fein turned to Fruit with a questioning look, and Fruit motioned for them to walk with him as he talked.
In a low voice and while walking briskly (but not fast enough to convey fear), Fruit filled them in on what he had seen. He had walked into a shadow in the alleyway and walked out of a shadow next to the inn, where he peeked into windows and tried to get a sense for the group's numbers and motivation.
"Nearly every room was booked," he reported. "I hid behind a door, heard someone come back and tell them that we were spotted in town. A group of them started to grab their weapons and head out to chase us down, so I came back."
Fein whistled lowly. "They're obsessed, huh?"
"Yeah," Fruit said. "There was one more thing, too…"
He faltered, pausing his walk and turning to face the other two. They were at the edge of the town now, near the start of the road that twined towards the ocean and HBG's isolated house. The sun had started to set behind him, casting a rosy halo around his head, and it was bright enough that Fein didn't see the hunters coming up behind Fruit until they were upon them.
---
Silverr, back when he was still new to HBG and could count the words he had spoken to anyone besides Reign on one hand, found Mime one day to ask him about world decay.
Clearly confused but trying to be accommodating to HBG's newest member, Mime answered his questions without pushing for Silverr's reasons. No, world decay wasn't normal. Yes, it was caused by Ender Dragon magic. Dragon magic could only escape the End through the portal. The only way to fix world decay?
For someone to go kill the dragon.
Obviously, Mime rushed to clarify, that was an antiquated solution. Nowadays, strongholds were sealed when worlds were generated. It was the same for their world-- the main stronghold had been cleared and the dragon's magic contained in the End long before their world was populated. There was no way for world decay to happen… unless another stronghold had generated and the admins hadn't noticed. But the chances of that were so low that they could safely be ignored. Mime paused and looked at Silverr for a long moment. Finally, he just said that if Silverr thought he saw world decay, he was probably mistaken.
Guilt coiled in Silverr's gut, heavy and leaden and reminiscent of a familiar feeling calling him down, down, down to something beneath the ground.
---
Reign was raiding the HBG kitchen, having just returned to the house with Silverr after a morning of traveling, and so he had a clear view of the door when Fein nearly kicked it down in his haste to get in the house. Reign dropped his chicken with how hard he flinched at the sudden noise, then clean forgot about it as he saw Fein helping Couri half-carry, half-drag Fruit into the house with them.
"Oh, fuck ," he said, and ran to help.
It was a whirlwind of motion after that: Couri hollering until Silverr stumbled out of bed, still half-asleep from his nap, Mime almost falling down the stairs in his haste to bring the first-aid kit, and Raddlez appearing in the room in a literal blur of purple, seeing the situation, and speeding back out again to find Poundy. Reign wasn't anywhere near first aid-certified, so he just ended up standing near a similarly helpless Silverr and running to gather things when the others asked for them.
Rad zipped back into the house, Poundy showing up out of breath not far behind her, and from there things started to calm down. Fruit's main injury was the heavy blow from an axe that he had taken square in the middle of his back, but Poundy reported that he had gotten there fast enough to keep him from losing too much blood. He set to work coaxing Fruit's body to heal while Reign watched in a mix of awe and horror. (Reign still found his elemental ability-- a pure connection with the human form-- the most magical out of all of them. Also, the scariest.) He instructed Couri and Fein, who had escaped with minimal cuts and bruises, to start taking care of their own injuries and let him save the day as usual.
Partway through Fein's rather colorful recap of what had happened to them, Fruit suddenly regained consciousness, snapped his eyes open, and tried to launch himself off the couch.
"WOAH there, buddy," Poundy said, snagging him by the arm before he could escape. Fruit froze in an incredibly unnatural way and Reign winced as he recognized Poundy's work of simply commanding his muscles to not move (re: the scariest ability out of all of them). Poundy gave him a timeout until the look in his eyes reflected annoyance instead of disorientated panic, then released his hold.
" Fuck , man, that feels so weird," Fruit complained, shaking out all of his limbs and wincing as he jostled his injury.
"Well, either you lie back down like a good little patient and let Dr. Poundy save your life, or I do it again," Poundy warned, which effectively got Fruit back on the couch with only minimal grumbling.
"Hey, Fruit," Couri said, with a significantly more appropriate bedside manner than Poundy. "How are you feeling?"
"Good as new," Fruit replied cheerily.
Everybody looked at the bloody mess on his back.
"Damn," he said. "I look that bad?"
"Oh, Fruit," Fein piped up.
"Yo,"
"What were you going to tell us before we got jumped? The 'one more thing' shit?"
"Oh," Fruit said, and his tone had suddenly dropped off into something as dark as his shadows. Inexplicably, but undeniably, he looked at Silverr.
Next to Reign, Silverr went absolutely still.
Fruit glanced away, looked at Fein instead, and Reign couldn't explain it but suddenly he desperately wanted him to stop talking. The conversation was charged like the air around Feinberg before lightning started dancing between the spokes of his trident, Fruit's next words poised to break the peace of Reign's current existence. Silverr was as tense as a live wire next to him, and Reign could only watch him, helpless, as Fruit's words rang through the room like thunder.
"Their banner. A lot of them were flying the same banner. White wool, one design in the middle."
Fruit looked dead at Silverr.
"Severed, bloody goat horns."
It clicked into place almost immediately. Reign remembered the tiny, remote mountain village he was headed to, about a year ago. Their complaints of terrain generation, their weird comments in their request that made Reign immediately dislike them, and the silver-haired boy he had met as he was heading north. Silverr would have been coming from that direction, wouldn't he? Fein had said that the new hunters were from a no-name town in that area, hadn't he? Silverr had been running from something awful when Reign had met him.
This was that something catching up to him, wasn't it?
Reign opened his mouth to protest, to say anything , anything that would soften the blow or deny what he had just heard, but Silverr was faster. One moment he was next to Reign in the living room, and the next he was bolting, already around the first corner by the time Reign gave chase. He was fast but Silverr had left the ground icy in his agitated wake and Reign skidded around the corner uncontrollably. With that lead, Silverr made it to his room and locked the door just as Reign reached it.
Reign's gut was screaming at him that this was wrong, wrong, wrong-- he tried the handle uselessly again and again, calling through the door in a panic.
"Silverr?" He asked, again and again. "Silverr? It's okay, whatever it is, it's okay. Alright? Let us in, talk to us, we can figure it out. Silverr? We can help you, we can figure this out together. Silverr?"
And on and on, but the door remained locked and the feeling grew stronger with every beat of Reign's suddenly thunderous pulse in his ears. Something was wrong, something was wrong, something was wrong.
It was Couri who eventually pulled him back, suggesting gently that they try to give Silverr some space. To let him have some room to breathe and reemerge when he was ready. Reign reluctantly agreed.
The door was closed for the rest of the day.
For the rest of the night.
For the next morning.
And a full day later, Reign finally convinced Fruit to walk into the shadow behind the front door and roll out from the shadow under Silverr's bed, waiting anxiously outside until the handle turned and Fruit was already saying "I'm sorry" as he swung it open to reveal:
Gone.
The window was open and the room was empty and Reign staggered a step into the room, the voice in his head crescendoing now until all he could hear was that Silverr was gone and something was very wrong .
---
Silverr eased the window open in the middle of the night and slid outside into the welcoming dark. He made an effort to be quiet leaving the house, but his movements were clumsy and he knew his route past the town was louder than it should have been. He didn't care. He couldn't hear the noise he was making over the chant of voices in his head, louder than ever, drowning out all of his thoughts: YOUR FAULT. YOUR FAULT. YOUR FAULT.
My fault. My fault. My fault.
He repeated it to himself as he noted the hunters who saw him pass, watched them running back to town to rouse the rest. He repeated it to himself as he resisted the urge to turn back to the HBG house before they noticed he was gone, resisted the urge to confess everything to them. It was his fault. He remembered an incessant, bone deep urge that called him down, into a ravine where crumbling stone brick was visible in the walls, where hissing echoed from down long hallways, where he had glimpsed the portal overflowing, leaking an endless void out of the frame and dripping sickeningly down the stairs.
My fault, Silverr told himself resolutely. No more living on cheated time. I should be dead by now. I'll go back, I'll stop running. I can fix it and die like I was supposed to.
---
Silverr had left a letter and Fein stepped around Reign frozen in the doorway to pick it up off the desk. He passed it wordlessly to Couri after glancing at a few words. He didnt know how his voice would sound if he read it out loud.
"I'm sorry," Couri read in a low voice, HBG hanging onto his every word. "There's a lot I haven't told you, a lot you don't know about me. I'm not--"
He cut off to bring the paper closer to his face and squint through his glasses. "Sorry," he mumbled, "It's really messy. He scribbled out a load of stuff... oh wow. He says it's his fault the hunters are here. They want him and he's gonna leave us..."
Fein watched Couri take a slow breath in through his nose and hiss it out between his teeth. He was impressed that his voice remained steady as he continued. "He wants to leave to protect us, to set things right, and the hunters should follow him and leave us alone now. Oh, End . He says everything's his fault and he's sorry again, he wrote it a million times."
Couri threw the paper down on the desk again and the room erupted into chaos.
Fein stayed uncharacteristically quiet even as overlapping voices filled the room with a mess of we need to go after him and wait what does he mean by that and what if it's a trap and we can't beat all those hunters and can we even save him . He itched for his trident but it was in the other room, so he let his gaze linger on his hands as electricity started to jump restlessly between his fingers. The ground started to tremble minutely in the way it did when Reign grew particularly agitated. The smell of smoke curled through the room and that was what finally snapped Fein out of deep thought, because the house was very flammable if Fyroah forgot to pay attention.
" HEY ," he yelled, and it cut through the cacophony like a thunderclap, a little bit of that rumble, a little bit of that primal danger, and a lot of that volume. It shut everyone up for at least a moment which was a gift from the universe by itself, and Fein rushed to explain himself while he still had their attention.
"We gotta go after him. BUT!" He held up a hand to pause the people already gearing up to start arguing.
"Before you start yelling again, let's move to the backyard. I don't think the room will survive this discussion."
-
Fruit, insisting that he was fully recovered from his injuries, traveled to town and returned with a grim assessment of the situation: the hunters were, in fact, aware that Silverr had left and were rallying their forces to chase him down.
There were long arguments about what to do and how to do it, reasonable amounts of suspicion and shock, but in the end, there was really never a question. They loved Silverr, all of them, and it had been obvious that he was running from something since they met him. So what if his past was catching up to him? He was HBG, he was an element-user and universe-blessed person, and he was their friend. They would not leave him to face it alone.
With that decided, most of HBG ended up volunteering to come along. Only a few members were still scattered around the overworld on jobs and unable to make it back in time. Fruit insisted on coming as well, ignoring poundy's orders of bed rest. He hopped back and forth between their house and the town to check on the status of the hunters countless times, and Fein wouldve had to be blind to miss the way that Fruit would stumble out of the darkness after the usually easy trip, gritting his teeth against pain from his still-fresh injury. But Fein also wouldve been stupid to insist that Fruit sit the whole thing out-- partly because Fruit wouldnt listen anyway, and partly because when the hunters left town to chase Silverr, HBG knew within the hour.
They set out as soon as they were able to, and the following days blurred together into a daze of traveling and stress. Couri and Fruit scouted ahead and reported that they were steadily gaining on the hunters, but that the hunters were also gaining on Silverr. Fein spent his shifts on watch trying not to imagine what would happen if they didn't catch up in time. Fulham paced. Mime summoned small End crystals in the palm of his hand and dismissed them over and over in a nervously repetitive motion. Reign stared into the fire a lot at night and stayed uncharacteristically quiet.
The anticipation was hell.
Finally, they caught up-- high in the mountains, Fein saw the gory banners and the crowd of hunters at last as they booked it for a tiny village nestled in a snowy valley. Couri took to the air in a rush of feathers and came circling back a minute later, shouting urgently as he approached.
"Hurry!" He yelled, and HBG started to run. "They caught up to Silverr!"
So it was a sprint down into the valley and a mess as the hunters saw them coming. Most of them turned to meet them, but some in the back of the group seemed to be preoccupied with a figure desperately trying to fend the horde off with waves of ice. HBG didn't hesitate and a war erupted as the groups collided, elements clashing with swords. Fein's trident connected with hunter after hunter but there were so many of them, he was fighting to push forwards to where he last saw Silverr but the crowd was too thick--
The earth quaked dangerously and he whipped around to catch sight of Reign launching himself over the thick of the fray with a pillar of stone erupting from the ground. He sailed clean over most everyone-- Fein had a brief moment to worry about how he was going to land safely-- before crashing onto the head of an unsuspecting hunter. Fein saw him roll with the impact and pop up unharmed, saw him booking it for Silverr who had escaped the men around him and started to run away from the battle, and then saw an axe swinging towards his face that he had to parry and counter.
He would have to trust Reign to handle Silverr, Fein decided. There was more than enough for HBG to handle here.
The fight raged on and Fein found himself losing ground. He saw flashes of the chaos around him-- Dylan surrounded by vines that lashed out at hunters, Fyroah corralling hunters with blasts of fire towards Kayfour, who was coaxing tree roots to erupt from the ground and catch hunters in their grasp, Raddlez a blur of purple motion-- and everywhere he looked, it seemed like HBG was turning the tide against the hunters…
… but they were all still thoroughly occupied and nobody seemed to see Fein being driven away from the group, locked in a vicious 3v1. Fein cursed under his breath and swung his trident in a wide pass, trying to win himself more breathing room, but the men facing him leapt nimbly out of the way and fell upon him again instantly. These hunters were targeting him with relentless focus. He noted the steady pace they were driving him back at, despite him fighting for each step. He saw the ravine's yawning void stretching behind him hungrily out of the corner of his eye.
He swore again, with feeling.
His trident sang through the air and his electricity snapped dangerously, but to no avail. There were three of them and one of him, and each time he swung at one, they darted back out of his reach as the other two lunged forwards to attack. He was barely able to keep their blades from finding flesh and could feel himself tiring, wincing as a cut opened on his arm, then his side. Fein fought for each step like a demon, but they still drove him step by reluctant step away from the others. Towards the ravine.
Five steps away from the edge turned to four after a heavy-handed downwards attack from the man with the axe.
A well-timed attack from the two hunters with swords sent him back a quick one-two. Three steps away.
A slash towards his face that he had to duck away from. Two.
Axe man landing a kick on him that had one knee buckling, a step back to recover.
One step from the edge. Fein narrowed his eyes, set a steady stance, and gritted his teeth so hard they hurt. He was not some livestock animal to be herded, some prey animal to be cut out of the group and picked off. Electricity poured into the air around him anew and his trident was wreathed with the energy as he redoubled his efforts. He channeled all of the energy he could dredge up from the bottom of his soul and drew everything out of the air that the universe could give him. He was a storm incarnate, the King of Lightning, and an infamous elementalist that posed enough of a threat to be targeted by three hunters at once. He was not going to lose. His name was Feinberg, and he was not going to--
A hunter inside his guard.
A blade angled at his ribs, pointing straight to his heart.
His foot landing on empty air.
Feinberg--
fell.
---
It was disgustingly familiar, just how he remembered it-- the bitter cold, the snow, the bleak mountains caging the entire village in. The only thing different was the decay-- entire cliffsides now glitched and hanging ominously in the sky and chasms opened at random points in the ground. Silverr ran through it all, pushing past hunters and the faces of villagers he remembered from childhood-- the ones who had screamed, the ones who had looked at him knowingly, reproachfully, each time the world fell apart a little more, and the ones who had flat-out ignored him. He sprinted through the memories and the guilt and the regret and as he plummeted into the ravine, following the call of the End, he half-expected to see blood still staining the corridor leading towards the portal room.
He half-expected to see a younger version of him getting pulled down the hallway bodily by two of the more superstitious men of his village, the ones who talked about the folk tales of evil dragons, the ones who always pointed to Silverr when something new went wrong, the ones who decided that the most recent case of world decay was the final straw.
He half-expected to have to relive it, to have to go back to that day where he fought and kicked and screamed as the men pulled him towards the End, telling him in manic delight that he was cursed, he was killing their village, but if he defeated the dragon then they would all be saved. That Silverr would die in the End like he was supposed to, and their village would be free forever. Silverr could see it, even though he closed his eyes while barrelling down the final straightaway. He could feel the ice forming in his hands without thinking, could remember how the shards sprayed outwards in his blind panic.
He could remember every moment of his escape from the stronghold, leaving his remote village for the first time with nothing but the knowledge that he couldn't ever go back. He was a killer and a coward and he had run when he could've saved them all.
---
Reign was running, visibility absolutely shit in the dim winter light, slipping haphazardly on the thin layer of snow, but refusing to slow down even a little. Reign was running with his eyes fixed on the lithe figure darting through the fray, ducking hunters making wild grabs for his horns, and countering sword slashes with spears of ice. Reign was running, heart in his throat, after Silverr.
HBG warred with the hunters around him in a jungle of danger that Reign had to dodge through haphazardly, but he had bypassed the worst of it with his stunt from earlier. Now, Reign burst out of the tail end of the free-for-all and into open space at a dead sprint. Silverr vanished over the edge of a ravine and Reign followed without a second of hesitation, landing in a cave system where smooth stone gave way to crumbling bricks and creeping ivy. He carried no torches and didn’t know the way, but he immediately felt the touch of magic far older and more malicious than anything he had experienced before pulling him through the passageways. It felt like the time he saw a ghast slip through into the Overworld, its shriek ringing through a blue sky. It felt like accidentally locking eyes with an enderman and their vibrating, muted roar that echoed in his ears. It felt like the shock of tripping over a body in a desert all those months ago.
Reign found the portal room and saw the void spilling zealously out of the frame, greedily corrupting the room around it, and reaching tendrils of magic up to the village on the surface. The pull of the void was sickeningly strong and the awful feeling of not right was a deafening roar in his head, drowning out all thoughts other than Silverr was in there, Silverr was in there .
Reign did not stop. He scrambled up the stairs and flung himself into the depths of the magic without even taking a bracing breath. The cold stole the remaining air from his lungs in an instant , dimensional travel twisting his insides into a knot and squeezing painfully, nothing like the nauseating but mild portals to the nether. The fall was longer than it had any right to be and felt awfully like the void chewing on him thoughtfully before it decided to spit him violently out onto unforgiving obsidian. Reign tumbled onto the spawning platform roughly but wasted no time to dwell on it, hastily making his way out of the partially-enclosed chamber. The only way to go was up, so he climbed a slope of dusty endstone with growing apprehension for what he was going to find. A dragon's muted roar shook the dark skies, and he saw obsidian towers rising to impossible heights ahead of him, but he didn't see…
Oh .
The End was freezing cold, but for a second Reign swore he felt the burning sun as he crashed violently back into a memory. He stumbled into motion again, started running towards the pillars and felt shifting sands beneath his feet because it was just like then, a mockery of the life he had before all of this, a reminder of the way they had met. It felt scripted by the Universe, a horrible tragedy bookended by the same sight. Meet a boy lifeless on the ground and begin the best friendship of your life--
-- then lose it all, chase him to the ends of the earth, and find a boy lifeless on the ground.
Reign slowed as he reached him and tried to pick his way through a purple cloud of magic shrouding Silverr's body, but touching it felt like being set on fire, so he had to snatch his hand back and lift up the ground beneath Silverr's limp form. Shattered ice crunched underneath his feet as he backed up, pulling Silverr along on a slab of stone. Once out of the effect, Reign pulled him off the stone and… didn't have anywhere better to put him, so he sat down heavily with him still in his arms. The dragon roared again, circling closer, so Reign absentmindedly put up a wall. The dragon's purple fireball dissipated harmlessly on the other side of it, and Reign's ears barely flickered in recognition.
He didn't want to feel for a pulse. For the first time since Silverr had run away, Reign was at a loss. He couldn't focus on the pursuit of Silverr, the threat of the hunters, or what he would say when he caught up. He couldn't ignore any future other than the one in which they caught Silverr before anything serious happened. Here, on the dusty endstone and under the baleful eye of a dragon, Reign was forced to confront the fear of being too late.
Dead was a word that was foreign to Reign, tumbled strangely through his mind, remained stuck in his throat, and refused to fall from his mouth. In this moment, the bizarreness of death, the percieved impossibility of it made him sit there dumbly with Silverr's horns pressing into his sternum. He felt vaguely sick. Silverr was so alive in his mind, still looked so alive in his arms, that Reign was paralyzed. He couldn't check for a pulse, because what if there wasn't one there? Impossible. Silverr was alive. Reign knew that Silverr was alive as an immutable fact of the universe. So then why was he limp and quiet in front of his eyes?
And on and on went his internal debate, thoughts chasing each other in agitated, useless circles. Too little, too late , his brain howled at him. Probably missed it by less than a minute. Mere seconds. Tiny timelosses and delays led to this, it's your fault, your fault, all your fucking fault --
Without warning, Silverr's body seized suddenly and his eyes flew open, inhaling a ragged gasp and sitting up suddenly. Reign yelped in shock, completely caught off guard, which made Silverr flinch back in a disoriented panic. Unfortunately, the wall that Reign was using to block the dragon's attacks was right there, so Silverr ended up smashing the back of his head straight into it. He reeled forwards, away from the impact, but Reign had pitched forwards slightly as Silverr had reared back because he was still holding onto his shoulders, so as Silverr jerked forwards again, he headbutted Reign square in the forehead.
Reign flopped backwards onto the ground, dragging Silverr down with him to lie on his chest. Both of them took a long moment to catch up with what had just happened, groaning in pain.
"I take back everything that I was thinking before this," Reign said to the sky. "I wish you were actually dead."
He squeezed Silverr tighter as he said it to clarify that he was joking, but he still felt Silverr's entire body tense at the words. Reign watched in confusion as Silverr pushed his hands away and climbed unsteadily to his feet. He avoided Reign's eyes and was about to walk out from behind the wall before Reign's brain caught up to his eyes. He scrambled to his feet and caught Silverr by the shoulder, spinning him around to face him.
"What the hell?" Reign asked, and Silverr actually scowled at him. Reign threw his hands in the air incredulously. "What the fuck is going on?"
"Just leave it, Reign," Silverr said, and tried to walk out from behind the wall again before Reign grabbed him by the arm.
" No ," Reign protested. "Can you please tell me what the fuck is going on? I get that these ugly fuckers from your village are chasing you down or whatever, and sure, I'm even on board with the fact that we're in the End and there's a huge, fuck-off dragon here. I'm being remarkably chill about all of this, actually. Can you just tell me what the fuck your plan is?"
"Plan?" Silverr asked, and huffed out an annoyed breath. He didn't turn around to face Reign, but he could imagine Silverr's jaw clenching in frustration as clearly as if he had seen it. "There's no pl-- listen, Reign, you just wouldn't get it, okay? You just don't get it."
Reign scoffed. "What is there to get? No plan? You were just gonna walk into the End alone and, what, kill the dragon? Might as well just lie down and die!"
Silverr ripped his arm out of Reign's grip roughly and spun around to crowd into Reign's space, jabbing a finger into his chest violently. " Yes ." He ground out. "Yes, if you must know, I'm supposed to die here. I was supposed to die here years ago and I almost did, before I-- before-- ugh . Before I fucking killed them and ran away like a coward and left my village to deal with this shit on their own, and it just got worse and more of them might have died and it's all my fault so they came after me, obviously, fucking stupid of me to think that they wouldn't, and so I'll just-- I just need to fix it, alright? I was supposed to fix it years ago and I blew it, okay? So I'll kill the dragon and it would have been fine but now you're here ." At this he shoved Reign in the chest, knocking him back into his wall. Reign gaped at Silverr mutely.
"You're here now," Silverr repeated, "which was not supposed to happen. You're so stupid for following me, who in their right mind would follow me? So I'm going to go fight the dragon and you should go through the End fountain portal because it'll close once the dragon dies."
Silverr paused for breath, and Reign jumped on his chance to talk.
"What the fuck ."
Maybe that wasn't the best way to begin. He mentally revised, tried again.
"What the fuck are you fucking talking about?"
Silverr glared at him, but Reign barrelled onwards before he could retort. "Who the hell says that you're supposed to die here, supposed to fix this, supposed to save everyone else? Who says that this is your fault to begin with? A bunch of superstitious, small-town assholes?"
Silverr opened his mouth but Reign shushed him instantly. "This was years ago. You were a child , Silverr. Who tells a kid that he has to go die for everyone else? If they knew about the dragon and they weren't a bunch of slimy, lying cowards, then one of the grown-ass adults would have tried to go kill it themselves. Nobody normal throws a kid in there."
Silverr closed his mouth, belatedly, before opening it again to argue weakly: "I had these powers, though. It was obvious that I was chosen--"
Reign hit him in the chest, forcing him back a step. "Bullshit!" he exclaimed. "Chosen to die? What about the rest of HBG? What about me?"
Silverr shut up. Reign continued on his tirade, stepping forwards into his space and prodding an imperious finger into his chest. "Your connection to the Universe is because She recognizes that you're special, better than the rabble in some way. It's a gift, motherfucker. It's not a curse and anyone who told you it was? They were dead wrong. You can't throw your life away like this and tell me that this is what you want, that these lies are what you believe after you've seen HBG and the world outside this fucked village. You can't fucking-- fucking-- tell us that you want to die instead of living with us."
Silverr stared at Reign, wide-eyed and shaken, as Reign caught his breath. Reign started to worry that he hadn't said enough as the moments stretched out in silence, but something seemed to give way in Silverr's mind, prompting him to suddenly knock Reign's hand aside and faceplant onto his shoulder.
Reign cautiously brought his hands up to rest on Silverr's back, pulling him into a hug. He swallowed around the sudden lump in his throat.
"You gotta come home with us, man," he said.
"... home," Silverr croaked. He paused for a while.
"Home sounds good."
The moment the words left his mouth, the dragon roared again. It was still circling between the obsidian pillars above them and occasionally painting Reigns wall in purple fire. Silverr sighed and reluctantly pulled himself back up to his full height.
"We should probably do something about that," he mumbled, and Reign nodded. "Its fireballs have enough momentum to go straight through any ice defense I try to make."
"It's not getting through this stone," Reign volunteered. "I can't really hit it though, given that it's flying."
"I'll take care of that part," Silverr said.
And then they were off, no more strategizing needed. It was comforting to fall back into the rhythm of working together, fighting together, anticipating the other's moves flawlessly and moving to compliment them without needing to be told. They moved in perfect harmony: icy spears flying at the dragon in midair and earthen walls erupting from the ground to negate the dragon's magic. What Silverr couldn't dodge, Reign was there to block. What Reign couldn't reach with an attack, Silverr was there to launch one of his own. It felt right, felt synchronous in a perfect way, felt like what Reign had been born for. Silverr was who he wanted to fight beside for the rest of his life, he realized.
The end came faster than he expected. One more icy spear caught the dragon in its unprotected throat, and it started to fall apart in the sky with an anguished roar. Its magic lit it up from the inside, tearing the body to pieces as it left to rejoin the universe. Reign would have been happy to watch the strange lightshow until its end, but Silverr tugged at his arm urgently and he remembered: the portal.
He started running full tilt towards the portal in the bedrock center of the End, dragging Silverr along as he started to stumble from injuries and exhaustion. He could see the window into the void shrinking as the dragon died, so there was no time to waste as he hauled Silverr up to the edge of the portal--
-- and threw both of them through it, sending a wayward prayer to the void as they fell.
Bring us home .
---
You're alive, you're alive, you're alive , the Universe sang in his bones as they tumbled out of the in-between ether and landed in the familiar Overworld. You're home, you're home, you're home , sang the yellow of a familiar house, the wind rustling through the trees, and the grunt that his companion let out when they tumbled gracelessly into the grass together. You're alive , the universe said in his ear when he lifted his head to look Reign in the eyes. You're home , said Reign's answering grin. And you're here to stay.
---
Fein was falling to his death.
Fein was falling into the ravine and the ground was rushing up beneath him too fast, too fast , when a blur of movement hurtled at him out of the corner of his eye.
Gold and purple crashed into him bodily-- Feinberg gasped and Couriway grunted-- and then he was soaring in that stomach-dropping way over the ravine as Couri beat his wings furiously to try to rise out of the chasm. Fein wriggled madly in Couri's hold to turn around enough to aim his trident at the hunters, and found one aiming his crossbow right at them. The bolt flew before Fein could think of any way to intercept it and Couri shouted in pain, stuttered in his flight in a horrifying moment where they pitched towards the stone wall. He somehow managed to regain his balance and swerve back into the middle of the ravine, but it was obvious that gliding was the maximum of his abilities at the moment. Flying out of the ravine was not an option, so Fein turned to aim at the group of hunters above them. One of them sighted down his crossbow as Fein drew his arm back, but man's inventions would never beat the speed and viciousness of nature.
Fein launched his trident into the middle of the group and lightning struck it where it landed, a perfect, isolated bolt out of a clear sky. The hunters went flying, obviously, and none of them had the wings to catch themselves.
Fen let out a huge breath and waited for Couri to glide unsteadily down to the ground before jumping out of his grasp and examining the crossbow bolt in his shoulder. Couri hissed in pain when he touched it, then screeched in shock as Fein yanked the whole thing out without warning.
"Sorry, sorry, sorry," Fein rushed to say, pulling off his jacket and using it to bandage the wound tightly. He continued to ramble nervously, words running into each other with worry. "If I gave you any warning and you tensed up, it would've been worse. Are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere else? Are you okay? We can't climb out of here like this, fuck , I guess we'll wait for the others to find us and someone can bring Poundy down to you. Are you okay? I should've seen that coming, I could've stopped it--"
Couri had to wave his hands reassuringly and interrupt Fein's anxious ramble to get him to stop. "Yes, I'm fine!" He said. "It's really not that bad, Fein, relax. We did it, we're alive, alright?"
Fein let himself blow out a huge breath of relief and slump his shoulders and relive the moment where he saw the crossbow bolt fly above his head to hit Couri, the second where he felt thr impact but didn't know where it had gotten Couri. "We're alive," he repeated slowly, still struggling to believe it. "... thank fuck."
Couri laughed, a little shakily. "You're welcome for catching you, by the way," he said. "I didn't know if I would make it there in time."
Fein grimaced. "Yeah, I'm never gonna get used to that feeling," he responded. Couri smirked, glanced up at the top of the ravine as the voices of HBG calling out their names grew closer. "We can practice on the way home," he promised, and Fein made a face at the prospect of getting airborne again, but couldn't ignore the warm feeling in his heart at that word.
Home , he thought, and raised his hand to send a flare of electricity up and out of the ravine. Shouts went up from HBG as they saw it and came running, Fruit popping into existence by his side in a moment, Poundy one of the first to rush down the slope.
Home , Feinberg thought, and called Silverr on his comm.
The line rang once, twice, three times, and Fein's held his breath when it connected and started to load. Couri fell quiet next to him which alerted the rest of HBG to crowd closer and strain to hear or see the small screen.
The video finally loaded and a familiar "hello?" had Fein releasing his breath in a relieved rush.
"Silverr, holy hell," he replied. "Where are you? What happened?"
"Oh, I'm at, uhh. I'm at the, um." Silverr seemed to stutter on his words, then cut off as he looked off camera and smiled. He swung his comm around to show Reign coming through a familiar doorway, and Fein realized where they were at the same time that Silverr said it. "I'm home. Yeah."
"Is that Fein?" Reign asked, and shoved his face right up against the screen. "Fein! How is everyone over there?"
"We're okay," he answered shortly. "Hunters are down. That's not important though, I want to know how the fuck you two are already home?!"
"Theres a fucked-up stronghold underneath the village," Reign answered in a tone far too casual for what he was saying. "Real creepy shit. We killed the dragon and made it out before the portal closed completely."
HBG stared in silent disbelief. Reign laughed.
"It's true! Here, we gotta go. I have to play nurse 'cause Poundy is with you and Silverr got covered in dragon magic. You losers have to take the long way home, ha!"
Silverr laughed quietly from off camera, and the sound made all the lingering tension drain out of all the gathered HBG members simultaneously.
Fein shook his head in amazement. "You owe us one hell of an explanation," he said, and left it at that. "Silverr, we're glad you're back. We'll see you guys back home."
Home, Fein thought as he ended the call and let the chatter of HBG wash over him in a blanket of white noise. Home was a weird place full of unique people. Their world was odd and beautiful and full of challenges. Fein was not looking forward to the long journey back while sore and healing, but HBG was alive and filling the air around him with delighted, chaotic noise. Silverr was back with them and Reign had smiled with ease for the first time since he had left. Home was piecing itself back together, and that was all he could ask for.