Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There were many strange things that happened on the regular in Barovia, so Toby wasn’t necessarily shocked to find himself waking up in total darkness, even if it was a bit disorienting. The last thing he remembered was being so damn frustrated with the fact that he couldn’t remember anything, and the way it made everyone who seemingly cared about him keep their distance for fear of hurting him further.

He started to make up his own memories to fill in the blanks. It hurt, at first, but then he got used to the pain, and settled for having a constant dull ache in his head if it meant that he could substitute the emptiness in his mind with something, even if it didn’t actually happen. He would pretend like he was improving; he taught himself how to shove down impulsive reactions to pain by getting better at predicting when a headache would come along.

He learned to hide it well enough that it convinced the others to start talking to him again, like he figured they used to. None of the memories stuck, of course, because the terms of his curse made sure of that, but it didn’t matter. They weren’t tiptoeing around him anymore, weren’t treating him like he would combust if they blinked at him the wrong way, and that’s all he cared about. He pretended to remember what they had told him before, swallowed the pain in their presence, and then found some reason to go off on his own so he could attend to the ever-worsening ache in his head.

Every morning, it would seem to reset. He would take in as much information as he could manage, usually during evening talks around a small campfire, and then turn in early so he could try and sleep through the pain. It didn’t work, most of the time, as he spent what felt like hours waiting for it to subside enough so he could close his eyes without feeling like he was going to pass out, and by the time he actually did manage to sleep, it would be time to get up again.

Bailey had noticed Toby’s increasing exhaustion, but the druid reassured him that he was okay -- just a side effect of starting to remember more than he was used to. Bailey let it go the first few times, not wanting to ruin what seemed like improvement for his friend, who could use any shred of positivity he was able to find. But he found himself regarding the man with more worry than relief as of late. Toby would doze off during the day, barely be able to stay awake, stumble into things, and struggle to hold a conversation.

So Bailey had confronted him about it. He knew that his role in their group was likely the most protective -- even paternal, if he allowed himself enough grace to think he deserved that title -- and he’d had enough of being lied to if someone he was supposed to look after was truly not feeling well. He didn’t want to stress Toby out, lord knows he’s been through enough, but the man looked like he hadn’t slept properly in weeks.

At first, Toby had insisted that he was fine, and nothing was wrong, that Bailey was being too paranoid. But then Pip joined in, noting with frightening accuracy the exact symptoms he was likely feeling and how they would persistently get worse if Toby didn’t start sleeping properly. He pushed back against them, starting to lose his temper over how they wouldn’t just take his word for it. But Pip would not be swayed as easily as Bailey, and matched his rising irritation with more stern demands that he tell them what was going on.

Toby didn’t want to, because if he did, he was convinced they would pity him again, that they would start avoiding him again. They’d distance themselves, covered in a layer of guilt and caution he’d never be able to penetrate. If he told them that he’d cried nearly every night with how badly his head hurt after faking his condition, told them that every time they told him longer and longer stories about what had happened prior to his amnesia, it would trigger a feeling like lightning shooting through his skull? They would never tell him anything again, not until they made sure he was able to get his memories back.

But at this point, he wasn’t convinced he could get them back. He had deemed it a lost cause after months and months of no progress towards anything of the sort, sacrificing every opportunity to get them back in favor of saving Ireena or helping them get out of here. There was always a cost -- if he was able to remember things again, he would be haunted by the hag they couldn’t kill, which would end up in the loss of his life anyway. Or, if he got his memories back, something awful would happen to Ireena or Olive. Or Strahd would do something worse than what he’d already done, which usually meant targeting Bailey in some fucked up way -- the trade off was too damn risky, and he wasn’t selfish enough to agree to have them returned to him if it meant putting someone else in danger.

By the time Cobalt returned from . . . wherever he wandered off to, the genuine concern for Toby’s well-being had turned into a shouting match between both nature magic-adept members of the party, a heated argument that Bailey was unsuccessfully trying to calm down. Cobalt had promptly pulled the two apart, his arms on his six-foot-something body easily being long enough to keep both of his much shorter friends from getting anywhere near each other. He carefully surveyed the two of them, letting Pip flap gently to the ground and hop a small distance away when he noted that he was just fine, but keeping a firm grip on Toby’s arm. The druid was surrounded by vibrant red nerve plants and flytraps in the angriest shade of green Cobalt had ever seen. He didn’t even know green could be angry.

Toby was shaking, the combination of his misplaced frustration and exhaustion making his entire body quake with the effort of keeping himself upright. He hadn’t changed his focus from Pip, who had quickly started to calm down and was just looking worried and guarded, hopping back and forth a bit to get his nerves to settle. Cobalt couldn’t blame him. Even he hadn’t seen Toby like this before.

He turned to Bailey for an explanation. The cat was watching him, hands flexed and hovering near his axe in case it came down to a situation where he needed to use more force than he anticipated to get the druid to calm down. Olive clung to his arm, her eyes wide as they darted between the party members. Bailey explained, as carefully as he could, that he was trying to get Toby to tell them what was going on, since he hadn’t looked well lately. 

“And that resulted in . . . well, this,” Bailey said, voice low as his attention slid to Toby and the way the plants around him seemed to only be getting larger and more dense.

Cobalt looked back at Toby, whose breathing had slowed, but only marginally. His heart was slamming in his chest, and Cobalt could feel his pulse racing where he held his wrist. He crouched down slowly, getting in front of Toby’s line of sight so he would have no choice but to redirect his attention to the half-elf’s face. “What’s going on, Toby?”

Toby’s eyes indeed snapped to him almost immediately. He regarded Cobalt for a moment, his eyes frantically darting over his face as he registered that the situation had changed. It took some time for him to speak. “I . . . I keep telling them that I’m fine, but they won’t listen to me.”

Cobalt didn’t look away, ensuring that he kept Toby’s attention even as his eyes occasionally darted up to look at the other two. He moved his head a little to get the druid’s focus back on him. “You’re upset.”

“Of course I’m upset,” he snapped, his hand clenching into a fist. Cobalt felt the tension increase in his wrist, and he reflexively held on a little tighter. “They’re. Not. Listening .”

“What are you trying to tell them?” Cobalt asked, his voice a practiced level of calm that he mainly used in defusing situations like this.

“That I don’t need -- I don’t need help, I don’t need to rest, I don’t need to be babied . I’m fine, but they won’t fucking listen to me. There is nothing wrong with me.”

Cobalt noted his gritted teeth, his inability to keep his gaze from darting around frantically. He looked down for a second to check the progress of the plants, and as he thought, they had nearly consumed the man’s lower half, and were starting to creep up onto his own shoes.

He lifted his head again. “Could there be a reason why they’re worried about you?”

Toby’s exhaustion started to kick in, and the man was unsteady for a second. Cobalt’s other hand darted out to hold his other arm, which he noticed a little too late was littered with thorns. He felt a bit of blood slide down his hand, but ignored it. “They’re always worried about me. You all are. Treating me like I -- like I can’t do anything on my own.” His eyes refocused, and flicked back to Cobalt’s own. “I can handle myself just fine.”

The rogue noted two things: Toby’s breathing had slowed, and the place where he was holding his wrist didn’t have any thorns on it. They covered the rest of his arm, but stopped short of where Cobalt’s hand interrupted their growth. He also realized that the ones that had initially pricked him when he’d kept Toby from falling over had disappeared back into his body, and he was only touching his sleeve. “I can see that,” he said pointedly, nodding at the plants around the man, “but look at what’s going on right now.”

Toby blinked, slower than he should’ve, and glanced around at the mess he was in. The fittonias had reached Cobalt’s calf, and completely consumed the lower half of Toby’s body. The flytraps, growing out of random parts of his body instead of the ground, were poised to strike at anyone, and at the moment, it was those he considered his friends. There was even one snapping at Olive, who kept swiping at it with her knife.

“You’re not well, Toby,” Cobalt pressed, giving his arm a squeeze. “You need to r-”

“Don’t tell me to rest, I swear to god,” Toby interrupted, squeezing his eyes shut. “Were you not listening to me? Does no one here fucking listen to me?!”

Cobalt’s mouth pressed into a line. Normally, he’d just let someone who had completely lost it blow off steam somewhere and come back when they were okay. But this wasn’t a normal argument -- Toby had already lost his mind, and leaving him to resolve this on his own could mean that things got infinitely worse. Cobalt didn’t know if he’d come back okay, more insane than before, or if he wouldn’t come back at all.

He tried again. “You have to, Toby. You’ve been so exhausted lately.”

“I told you, it’s a side effect of-”

“That doesn’t mean you don’t need sleep,” Cobalt interjected, not letting him finish. Toby flinched a little, as if the words had a physical impact. Cobalt kept going. “Pip and Bailey are only trying to make sure you’re okay. You need to listen to them.”

Toby was silent for long enough that Cobalt thought he was finally getting through, but then he shook his head. “Not you too.”

Cobalt’s brow furrowed. “What do you m-”

Toby yanked his hand out of Cobalt’s grasp so suddenly that it caught the rogue off guard, which wasn’t a normal occurrence. His eyes blazed with anger as he glared at Cobalt with a fury that he was wholly unfamiliar with. “It’s you who needs to listen to me .”

Cobalt’s eyes widened, and he tried reaching for the druid again, but Toby moved away from him with a reflexive speed that wasn’t entirely human. “ Toby -”

But he’d lost him. Toby grabbed his head and let out an overwhelmed, frustrated groan that turned into a scream, and the last thing Cobalt saw was the open mouth of a flytrap aiming straight for his head before everything went black.

xxx

Toby sat on his knees in the total darkness, idly twisting the ring on his finger as he always did when he was anxious. He looked around, though it was pointless to do so. Pure nothingness greeted him on all sides, a darkness so all-consuming that he could barely see his hands in front of his own face.

He tried to summon a little fire. He flicked his fingers once, twice. Nothing. He tried a Starry Wisp spell, attempting to make a ball of light appear in his hands, but he got the same result. He figured maybe he’d try and walk around a bit.

He pushed himself up off of some sort of floor, and turned in a full circle, surveying the void that surrounded him. He tried again to cast a spell, but his magic simply decided not to work here. He also had no belongings: only the clothes on his back, the glasses on his face, and the ring on his finger.

Toby sighed. He figured he would start walking in a direction, but before he could do so, he heard something. It sounded like . . . footsteps, maybe? They were quiet, the kind that would’ve been silent in any other situation, but in a space that was devoid entirely of light and sound, even his breathing was much louder to his own ears than normal.

He turned in the direction he thought they were coming from, then stood incredibly still and listened intently. The footsteps got closer, got louder, and Toby ventured a small, “hello?”

The footsteps stopped. Waited.

“Yes, you,” Toby said, his fingers twisting the ring more insistently. “Who are you?”

There wasn’t a sound for a moment, then the footsteps raced towards him. Toby nearly screamed before a strangely familiar pair of arms wrapped around him and nearly knocked him over.

“What --” Toby, completely caught off guard, had his arms hovering uncertainly over the body of the person that he hoped was hugging him.

They pulled away just as quickly as they had enveloped him, and Toby barely made out a pair of red lenses. Cobalt’s body sagged with relief for a moment with a soft “oh thank god ” before he frantically scanned Toby’s body, the intense darkness making it more difficult than usual despite his darkvision. The druid was certain the blood flow to his arms had stopped with how hard Cobalt’s grip was on them. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

Toby shook his head. “No, I’m okay. Where . . . where did you come from? How are you here?”

Cobalt pointed behind him. “I woke up somewhere over there,” he said, then immediately returned his hand to Toby’s arm. “Have you seen the others?”

He shook his head again. “I don’t think they’re here.”

Cobalt’s hands loosened a bit, after confirming that Toby was in fact okay and not going to pass out on him or something. “Do you know exactly where ‘here’ is?”

This time, the druid nodded. “We’re inside my mind.”

Cobalt blinked. “Inside your --” He shook his head. This was Barovia, he shouldn’t be surprised at anything at this point. “Can you turn a light on or something?” He would feel a lot better if he could see the man in front of him more clearly, but he didn’t say that.

Toby shook his head. “I don’t think I’m in control right now.” He looked somewhere past Cobalt, into the endless dark. “I can’t dictate anything that happens here.”

Cobalt released a breath, then stood. “We’d better figure something out,” he said, shifting immediately back into the careful, hyper-attentive assassin Toby was a little familiar with. “This is your mind, yeah?”

Toby nodded.

“But you’re not in control of it.”

Toby shook his head.

Cobalt pursed his lips thoughtfully. “I suppose that makes sense,” he mused, “considering . . . everything.”

Cobalt turned, one of his hands idly flipping a knife as he no doubt formulated some sort of plan for where to start. Toby watched him, wondering what he saw, what he could possibly be thinking when he was supplied with little to no information. He stared longer than he probably should have, and his eyes darted up to Cobalt’s face when the elf looked over his shoulder. “Any idea of what direction we should start in?”

Toby blinked. “Huh? Oh, um . . .” He tore his gaze away and forced himself to concentrate. This was his mind, after all. Even if he wasn’t at the wheel, he could at least know where things were. He turned, slowly, staring intently into the darkness. Then, he stopped, facing in a certain direction without saying a word.

After a long moment of nothing, Cobalt spoke up. “. . . did you figure it out, or --”

“That way,” Toby said quietly, not turning back around. “The way out is somewhere over there, I think.”

Cobalt raised an eyebrow, only a little unnerved. Toby could be odd and unsettling sometimes. He was used to it. “You think ?”

Toby scowled, looking back at him. He was faint, the darkness obscuring a lot of him, but Toby could feel the bastard smirking at him. “Do you have anything better to go off of?”

Cobalt fully grinned then. “Nah,” he said, then looked in the direction Toby was facing. “Lead the way.”

xxx

They walked in silence, Cobalt not risking being more than a few steps behind the druid. He was tall, which made the journey a bit slow considering he was following a much shorter man, but he would rather take longer than put too much distance between the two of them and lose him somehow. A step or two further away from each other meant that he’d no longer be able to see Toby, and he was not keen on allowing that to happen.

The druid was a bit faint, walking with mostly certain steps towards what he thought was the exit. He made no conversation, and Cobalt could easily keep track of him due to his oddly loud footsteps. Cobalt was used to not even being able to hear his own, so their shoes making this much noise in the soundless space set him a little bit on edge.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Cobalt asked, if only to distract himself a bit.

Toby sighed. “That’s the third time you’ve asked me that in five minutes,” he said, not looking back. “What are you really asking?”

Cobalt frowned. “Well, before we got here, you were decidedly not.”

Toby didn’t respond for a second. Then, “yeah, I’m sure.”

Cobalt wasn’t one to pry. He really wasn’t. “You’re not lying to me, are you?”

Toby slowed to a stop, and Cobalt followed suit. He turned to look up at the half-elf. “Why would I lie right now?”

Because you don’t have control over your own thoughts or actions, Cobalt thought. He feigned nonchalance with a shrug. “Just making sure.”

Toby watched him for a moment, eyes narrowed. Cobalt stared right back, which was decidedly easier to do when he knew the man couldn’t clearly see much of anything. Sometimes the looks Toby gave him were too pointed, too intense. This time, he could hide behind more than just the lenses. “I’m . . . calmer than I was before we got here.”

Cobalt nodded slowly. “That’s good,” he started, “I haven’t seen anything try and attack me for asking, so I’d say that’s an improvement.”

Toby frowned, looking down at his hands. He’d taken them out of his pockets, and Cobalt had the sudden and unwelcome desire to hold on to one of them. Just so they didn’t lose each other. Yeah, that was it. “My powers don’t work in here, for some reason,” Toby said, brow furrowed in thought, “so I’d say that probably wouldn’t happen no matter how angry I got.”

The rogue’s gaze also went to Toby’s hands. They were capable of a violence that seemed to scare its user at times, a wild and untempered style of harm that contrasted greatly with the kind that Cobalt’s hands usually produced. He was a skilled assassin -- years of practice made him who he was, whether he wanted it to or not. Toby, though . . . a couple months of being in a strange place and he’d already been able to muster up a level of power that was completely unexplainable. He had no idea where his powers came from, only that they were there, and he couldn’t really ever tell them what to do unless they allowed him to. Cobalt redirected his gaze to the emptiness in front of them. “Probably a good thing.”

Toby was quiet for a moment, unmoving as he looked off somewhere else. “What . . . happened? After I blacked out?”

Cobalt looked back at him. “When did you black out?”

Toby wrapped his arms around himself, keeping his eyes away from the elf’s face. “You were telling me to listen, I think. That Pip and Bailey were just worried about me, trying to make sure I was okay, and I needed sleep. And then . . . nothing. I woke up here.”

Cobalt hummed, looking back towards the darkness. “Well . . . you kinda lost it. I was trying to get you to calm down, and then you got away from me. And before I could do anything . . .” Cobalt’s face shifted, the memory vivid in his mind. Toby had made a sound that was an agonizing mix of crying and screaming, and everything -- everything -- around them had gone haywire. Tree roots ripped from the ground, knocking everything off balance, their leaves shuddering with the force of his frustration. Cobalt’s thoughts had flashed back to the inn, then, when Toby had returned from being out all night, his distress causing branches and vines to thrash into the sides of the building and slice through the roof. Minutes later, their room was practically a jungle, and the poor man was buried beneath all of it. But this . . . Cobalt watched in alarm as Bailey, Pip, and Olive fought frantically against more and more plants rising from everywhere and attacking all at once. He tried to go for his knives, but found that his arms and the lower half of his legs were completely covered, rendering him immobile. When he looked back in Toby’s direction, he was met with the flytrap’s mouth. And then, he was here. 

“. . . you started attacking everyone. The entire forest was at your will, it seemed,” he continued, “and I couldn’t do anything about it. Maybe the others aren’t here because they were able to keep themselves from getting bitten.”

Toby’s hands had gone back down to his sides, and they slipped into the pocket of his hoodie again. “Christ,” he muttered, and Cobalt could sense the way he was probably berating himself for losing control again. “Maybe I shouldn’t wake up from this, then,” he said, only half-joking.

“If you don’t, that means I’m stuck here too,” Cobalt pointed out, “and I think you’re great and all, but I’m not trying to overstay my welcome.”

Toby shrugged. “Fair enough.” He must’ve determined that there was nothing more to say, since he simply continued walking in the direction they had started going in.

Cobalt walked beside him this time. The urge to reach out and take his hand was still there, but he dutifully ignored it. This wasn’t some stroll in a park, or some shitty romcom with an airheaded girl and her mediocre love interest, so there was no reason to --

“This way,” Toby said suddenly, and pivoted in a different direction. Cobalt started, shaking away his thoughts, and turned to follow, but the darkness had swallowed him whole. The rogue froze, his head darting left and right as he tried to pinpoint where Toby’s footsteps were. He had no idea how on earth he moved so quickly. A moment later, he heard them coming back his way, and barely had time to react before Toby grabbed his hand and pulled him along. “It’s too easy to get lost in here,” he said, his fingers tightening around Cobalt’s own. Cobalt blinked, briefly reminded of a very similar excursion in a certain dungeon in a certain town that he hoped they’d never have to go back to. He refused to think about it any more than was absolutely necessary, which was proving difficult considering that he was currently holding Toby’s hand.

It wasn’t a big deal, not really. Who cared if two friends -- yeah, that’s what they were -- held hands? It was normal. Nothing more to it. The same thing had happened in the dungeon, and he was fine . Totally normal about it. Hadn’t thought about it at all afterwards.

They stopped and randomly changed directions a few more times as this journey through Toby’s mind continued, the druid apparently being guided by some invisible force that was telling him where to go. Cobalt was about to bring up the fact that this didn’t seem to be getting them anywhere when Toby stopped suddenly, and Cobalt nearly bowled him over.

The druid didn’t seem to notice. He just kept his hand in Cobalt’s as he pointed towards something in the distance. “There, look.”

Cobalt did, and he saw what looked like a pillar of light. He squinted at it. “Looks suspicious.”

Toby rolled his eyes. “When have you ever cared about that? Come on.”

His hand moved up to holding Cobalt’s forearm, his pace speeding up as he excitedly led them both towards whatever the hell that light was. Cobalt’s general stride easily matched Toby’s sped-up one, and they reached the light in no time at all.

Toby slowed just before walking into it, the glow it was emitting finally illuminating him enough for Cobalt to be able to see him clearly. He looked okay, to Cobalt’s immense relief. Being inside his own mind hadn’t seemed to alter his appearance in any way -- the only difference was that his expression was one of awe instead of melancholy contemplation, as was his usual.

Cobalt looked at the light as well, eyes narrowing as the pillar just . . . sat there. It didn’t seem responsive to them, and there wasn’t anything inside of it, at least not that he could see from out here. He frowned at it, unable to immediately decipher if it was something that would harm or help them.

Toby looked over at him, then, as his focus was caught on the strangeness of this random light. He could see Cobalt’s eyes from this position, assessing the new information he was receiving with an unparalleled sharpness. It was funny how things had switched between them since the amnesia had happened -- Toby of course didn’t remember it very well, but he’d gathered that he used to be the kind of person that would stay behind or watch as everyone else dove headfirst into apparent danger. But Cobalt had adopted a sort of sentinel-like persona around the druid, who was now keen on getting himself into all kinds of shit while Cobalt tried desperately to keep the both of them alive.

Now was a prime example of one of those moments. “Welp, no time like the present,” Toby said, and made to step right into the light.

Immediately upon feeling Toby’s grip loosen on his arm, Cobalt grabbed his hoodie and yanked him backwards. “Absolutely not.”

Toby huffed. “What? Why?”

Cobalt narrowed his eyes. “Because we don’t know what that is . What if it fucks something up?”

Toby’s eyes slid from him to the light, then back to him. “By my guess, I’d say that it’s some sort of light, and things are already fucked up. We’re inside my head , remember? This is the only thing we’ve seen for several minutes that isn’t complete fucking darkness.”

Cobalt grunted. Truthfully he was less worried about the light itself, and more about the fact that Toby had no sense of self-preservation. “Maybe don’t just go launching yourself into the nearest new thing and hope for the best, hm?”

“We’ll go together, then.” Toby said, crossing his arms. “Would that make you feel better?”

To his immense annoyance, Cobalt’s face tinged a little pink. He didn’t have to say it like that . “Fine,” he grumbled, letting go of his hoodie. “But just don’t --”

“One-two-three-go!” Toby said, then launched himself forward.

Cobalt yelped, unable to react in time to catch him. “I just said -- oh for the LOVE of --” Cobalt dragged a hand down his face, grumbled a few profane things, and then darted after him.

Chapter Text

Trees. There were so many fucking trees here.

Cobalt smacked the third branch in the past minute out of his face and yelled out for Toby again. He felt like he was going in circles -- the forest he was stuck in seemed endless, and there was no evidence of any sort of disturbance so he could track where he’d already been. Every single tree he’d seen so far was in some state of decay: rot made the trunks squishy and soft, leaves curled up and fell limply off their branches, ivy choked the life out of what was left while fungus took advantage of every dying piece of wood it was able to reach. Frankly, it was a mess.

He’d tried making a mark on one of the trees, but rot had rapidly overtaken the scar until it was a gaping hole. It killed itself to hide what he tried to change. Cobalt made a face at the tree. He didn’t like that at all.

“Toby!” He called out again, getting more frustrated and worried by the minute. He stopped, tilted his head back, and let out a bone-weary sigh. He told him not to just go in without a second thought, and what had he done?

Cobalt put his hands on his hips, tapped his foot. He needed a strategy, some sort of plan that would actually get him somewhere that wasn’t just yet another mess of foliage. He could . . . leave something behind, maybe. He knew he couldn’t change what was here, but perhaps he could add to it, create a marker with some sort of item on his person that would let him know where he’d already been.

He checked his pockets. A knife, another knife, a switchblade, a lockpick, another knife . . . Cobalt sighed. Did he have anything on him that wasn’t used for murder or burglary?

Likely not, he thought. He only carried the essentials, and he tended to get everything he needed by taking it from someone else. They deserved it. Usually.

He huffed. He needed something, anything else that he could leave that wouldn’t decrease his number of useful items by one. He checked yet another pocket, and pulled out the tiger’s eye. It was warm, even here, and when he opened his hand to look at it, the stone warped in shape until it became yet another knife. He spun it on his finger, then held it up to the light filtering through the trees. It was translucent in some places, opaque in most others. Pretty , he thought, then slid it back into his pocket. It shifted back into a rock, the patron responsible for its transformation recognizing that she was not needed right now.

That wouldn’t do, but what else did he have? Other than the things in his pocket, all he had were the clothes on his back. Cobalt touched the bandana tied loosely around his neck, fingers tightening around the hem of it as he considered tying it to one of these branches. He really didn’t want to leave that behind either. He wasn’t sure if the forest was going to give it back.

His thumb brushed his ring, and he almost flinched. Absolutely not. It didn’t work here -- he’d tried locating Toby almost immediately after realizing he wasn’t anywhere near him when he’d stepped through, but the ring stayed dull and dormant. His stone was the only thing that showed even a bit of magic, but not the kind that would help in this situation. All it would do is probably make him accidentally commit arson again, and he did not want to think about the kind of damage that would cause inside of someone’s psyche.

After another minute of deliberation, Cobalt finally made a decision and untied the bandana from around his neck. He slipped it off, and ran his thumb over the embroidered name along the edge. He wondered briefly if anyone else knew what Toby’s last name was.

Just get it over with , he thought, leaning over to tie the bandana around a broken log jutting out of the ground.

He froze, his ears perking up at the sound of something nearby. It moved slowly, clumsily as it tried to make its way through the tangled mess of rotten forest foliage. Cobalt turned his head ever so slightly. It could be Toby, or it could be some warped freak of nature conjured up by whatever was controlling his body right now. He remained very still, not wanting to alert whatever it was of his presence, and waited.

A familiar-sounding “there you are” answered his unasked question after a few moments.

Cobalt let out a breath. He was glad the druid was okay, but he had also been more worried than he’d cared to admit and it had worked his nerves. The combination of feeling lost in this overgrown hellscape, not having a clear way out, and losing his impromptu tour guide had frayed the edges of his composure ever so slightly. Instead of responding right away, he focused on untying the bandana from around the tree as patiently as he could.

The man of the hour craned his head to look around at what was keeping his rogue occupied. “What are you doing?”

He didn’t respond to that either. At least, he didn’t answer the question. Cobalt slipped the bandana back around his neck, his movements deliberately slow. “Didn’t I say to not just go jumping into things?” He asked as he pulled the knot tight, glancing at Toby out of the corner of his eye.

Toby frowned, leaning back a little bit. Cobalt had a particularly lethal stare of disapproval sometimes, and Toby never liked being caught at the receiving end of it. Arguably, it was ridiculous to feel that way about someone who was (probably, he didn’t know) younger than him, but the half-elf had a way of carrying himself that was, at the very least, pretty damn terrifying. “I thought you were behind me,” he said, his voice a little quieter.

“I was,” Cobalt said coolly, then turned his head so he could look directly at the other man. “But when I stepped through, you’d already gone off somewhere.”

Toby’s brow furrowed. “No, I didn’t. As soon as I crossed, I stood there and waited for you.” He found a small mushroom to poke at a couple times while he continued. “After a bit, I thought you’d psyched yourself out or just decided you didn’t want to come with me, so I tried to go back and see where you were. But it wouldn’t let me out.”

Cobalt crossed his arms, his eyes shifting to some other subject while Toby kept talking. “I pushed against it, tried to pry it open, threw things at it . . . nothing. Once I was inside, I couldn’t get out. I decided to just wait, but after a few minutes, maybe, of sitting there and not seeing you, I decided to see what the hell I’d gotten myself into.”

Cobalt’s expression soured -- he didn’t enjoy the idea that this place might intentionally be trying to separate them. They could be wandering around in here for who knows how long if they were on their own. He’d figure something out so they didn’t risk that happening. “And?” He asked rather than voicing that concern, “do you know what the hell you’ve gotten yourself into?”

Toby’s mouth pursed in thought. “I believe we are in the only part of my mind that retains memories. This area feels oddly familiar, like I’ve been here before, but I of course have no idea why. The darkness, out there,” he replied, pointing in the direction of where the trees supposedly ended, “is where the rest of my years of memories should have been, I think.”

Cobalt nodded slowly. “And the reason you can’t get out is . . .?”

Toby shrugged. “I don’t know that yet. Could you get out?”

He admittedly hadn’t even tried. “I immediately started looking for you, so I didn’t exactly get around to it.”

“Well,” Toby said, his gaze sliding from Cobalt back in the direction of where the trees might end, “I did figure something else out. The . . . bad news, more or less.”

Cobalt raised an eyebrow. When was there ever good news?

“This circle of light is shrinking,” Toby said, the expression on his face much more serious than it was a second ago. Cobalt suppressed a twinge of fondness at his scientist side making an appearance. “When I was trying to break through to find you, I noticed that the light wasn’t stable. It was . . . frayed in some areas, like it was falling apart a little. And it was ever so slowly creeping in on the plants here, and I realized after a moment that the entire thing was slowly collapsing.” He turned his brown eyes back to the half-elf, whose skeptical expression had shifted, now mirroring Toby’s serious one. “If it’s been shrinking the entire time we’ve been wandering around here, and it was just pure nothingness on the outside of the circle . . . then that means whatever passed through that light didn’t make it to the other side. I don’t want to know what would happen to us if we didn’t find a way out of here.”

Cobalt hummed. “We might disintegrate, or be crushed to death, or simply cease to exist, or-”

“ Or we can make it out alive and not worry about any of that,” Toby interrupted.

“-get strangled by a plant monster, or become part of this fucked up forest, that would be fun, or-”

Toby huffed. “Weren’t you grouchy like a minute ago? What happened?”

Cobalt took his shades off, cleaning them with the hem of his shirt. “I can go back to being grouchy if you’d like.”

Toby grumbled something under his breath that Cobalt pretended he didn’t catch, and turned away. It made him smile a little. “I’m going this way,” Toby announced, starting to walk in another direction with a lot more ease than Cobalt had.

Said rogue, usually adept at navigating over uneven terrain, swore as yet another branch nearly slapped him in the face. He grabbed it, intending to snap it in half, but stopped himself with a sigh. “Why does this damn forest keep attacking me?”

Toby glanced over his shoulder and smirked. “Maybe because you’re not being very nice to it.”

Cobalt made a small, offended sound. “The trees hit me first!”

The druid snorted, making Cobalt frown when he realized how ridiculous that sounded. “I think they just believe you’re intruding,” Toby said as he faced forward again. “That would explain why we got separated almost immediately -- you’re not supposed to be here.”

Cobalt ducked before his forward progress could be interrupted by something else. “Could you maybe tell it that I didn’t decide to come here? That I’d actually love to leave?”

Toby’s expression changed a little. Was it really that bad? He supposed that to anyone that wasn’t him, the answer was probably yes. “I would, but I’m not in control right now.”

The half-elf had been preoccupied with pulling his foot out of an unfortunately placed hole -- he had stepped directly onto the softest part of a rotten log. It had seemed solid at first, but his foot had gone right through with the most sickening wet sound. His face twisted in disgust, and he’d started tugging against whatever sticky substance had his shoe almost glued to the ground before he heard the shift in Toby’s tone. He sounded . . . sad, almost. Cobalt’s brow furrowed, and he tilted his head. He gave his foot one last tug, and the log released him so quickly that he nearly fell over. He caught his balance, then hurried after the druid.

He opened his mouth to ask him if he’d said something wrong, but Toby continued before he could. “Look,” he said, pointing ahead of him.

Cobalt did. Ahead of them was some sort of clearing, a strange but welcome respite for the rogue in this seemingly endless dying forest. They made their way towards it, both of them visibly relaxing as they were free to walk on more even ground. Toby closed his eyes and stretched his arms & neck, rubbing the back of it as if sore. Cobalt straightened, his back hurting somewhat from ducking and crouching to avoid getting bombarded by random branches and vines.

Toby opened his eyes with a grateful sigh, then paused. “What the . . .”

Cobalt came up behind him, taking in their new surroundings. He spun in a slow circle, brow furrowed in confusion as he assessed the area warily. “. . . where did these buildings come from?”

Toby shook his head, slowly approaching one of them. “I’m not sure,” he said quietly, coming to a stop. “Why is there a church here?”

Cobalt looked at the other structures around them. A crumbling church, then something that looked like an oversized birdhouse, an inn, perhaps, and gates that usually led to a garden of some kind. Cobalt couldn’t see clearly past those gates, as there was a dense fog spooling out of the bars, dissipating into nothing before it could travel very far. “These are your remaining memories, right? So . . . maybe you were religious at some point?” It was very hard for Cobalt to picture this being a reality, though.

The druid frowned. “I doubt it,” he muttered, thinking back on the few churches he’d seen post-memory wipe. Some level of revulsion deep in his gut always stirred whenever he was near one, though he had no idea why. He turned on his heel and faced Cobalt again, hands on his hips. “We should look around. I can look in here, and you can look in another one. We’d probably get answers faster that way.”

The half-elf considered this for only a second before he remembered what Toby had mentioned offhand about this place trying to intentionally separate them. He shook his head. “Nope.”

After he didn’t elaborate, Toby lifted an eyebrow. “That’s it? Just ‘no’?”

Cobalt nodded once.

Toby sighed, though he was a little amused. “Alright.”

He waited for Cobalt to approach the building before turning back to face it. His eyes scanned the looming, decrepit steeples and cracked window panes before landing on the pair of doors, one of them forcefully broken off its hinges. “Should we . . . go inside?”

Cobalt pursed his lips, then shook his head again. “I’m gonna look around first.” He stepped around the smaller man and started to wander around the outside of the church. It really was falling apart -- bricks and stones that were supposed to be holding walls up had fallen off into piles on the ground, leaving small holes and gaps in the walls. There wasn’t a single steeple left completely intact, and all of the stained glass was dusty, broken, or a mix of both. They were way too dirty to clearly make out what the panes were trying to depict, but Cobalt decided to shelf that mystery for now.

One of the panes was more broken than the others, with gaping holes much larger than the other three of a similar shape and size. Cobalt lifted his glasses, squinting at it a little. His eyes trailed down to the grassy floor below it, noting that some of the shards were scattered and wedged in the dirt. The panes themselves were red, and if he hadn’t been paying enough attention, he might’ve missed the darker red stains around the edges of the glass. Small specks of it littering the grass and stones nearby confirmed his suspicion: there was blood on these. Whose blood, he didn’t know.

He put his shades on and turned slowly, scanning the area for any other sign of life that may have left this here. The blood had already dried, so whatever happened here occurred a while ago, but there wasn’t any sign that something had taken place out here. Either the culprit (culprits?) cleaned up really well, or . . . it happened inside. Cobalt frowned. He didn’t like the thought that there was something or someone else here, but it would make sense. He took one last look, and then continued walking.

Tucked away along one of the corners, hidden well enough that if you weren’t looking for anything you wouldn’t see it, was a small chisel and hammer. Cobalt squinted a little at it, then scanned the stones to see if there was any evidence of carving or making some sort of mark with the chisel. There wasn’t. He wondered why it was here -- this wasn’t a set of tools used for destruction, especially not on this level. He’d expected to see a sledgehammer or something of that nature, but these were the only tools around. He thought it wise to leave them be.

He hadn't seen anything else that he would semi-professionally deem suspicious, so he came back around the other side to where Toby was. Or, where he should've been.

Cobalt froze, his eyes widening as he scanned the area to try and spot the druid. He saw him sticking his little head into the gap made by the broken door, and let out a quiet, frustrated sound that was both exasperation and relief.

Toby jumped a little when Cobalt grabbed his arm, pulling him away from the door. “What are you doing?”

Toby looked down at his arm, then back up at the half-elf’s mildly irritated expression. “Nothing now,” he mumbled.

Cobalt scanned his face, trying to interpret the expression there. His thoughts flashed back to the argument that had landed them here in the first place, and he exhaled slowly, carefully choosing his next words: “I know you don’t need a chaperone. But I don’t want something to happen and I lose track of you, alright? So please, do me a favor and be a little more careful.”

Toby stared at him silently for a moment, then nodded, looking back at the broken door again. Cobalt wasn’t sure he’d completely gotten through, but he’d take that for now. “Did you find anything?”

Cobalt wasn’t sure if Toby would somehow know if he was lying, since this was all technically happening inside his own head. He risked it. “Nah, nothing worth worrying about.”

The druid nodded, and didn’t ask anything further, so either he bought the lie or figured the truth would come out eventually. He reached out and brushed a hand along the fractured wood on the broken door. “There’s some really violent gashes on these doors. Mainly this one, so whomever was trying to get in had more success with this door than the other.”

So Cobalt didn’t need to tell him that something else was here with them. Good. “Think they’re still around here?”

Toby shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”

Cobalt realized he was still holding Toby’s arm, though a lot looser than before. He let his hand drop, but before it could land by his side again, Toby caught it in his own and held on to it. Cobalt’s eyes widened a little, and even more so when the man intertwined their fingers. He looked up, but Toby’s back was still turned.

“So you don’t lose me,” he said quietly.

Cobalt blinked, then let his grip tighten around the other man’s hand. So he had gotten through. He stepped over the destroyed wood, following the druid into the dimly lit church.

xxx

Outside of his head, Toby’s body twitched. He was lying as if crumpled on the ground, his face contorting slightly in a bit of pain. Vines protruded from his body like extra appendages, their dried brown color making it unclear at first where they ended and his skin started. They warped and twisted around his body and neck, loosening and tightening as his mostly-unconscious body breathed.

Four of the aforementioned vines were much thicker than the others, and one of them snaked over the ground and led directly to a sleeping cat several feet away. The vine split into dozens of much smaller tendrils upon reaching his figure, weaving themselves around and over him and forming a green, leafy cage. Bailey’s face was a lot more peaceful than the plants’ host as he slept dreamlessly, completely unaware as tiny mushrooms sprouted from the ground and latched to his fur and skin like suction cups, slowly pulling him down into the dirt. One of his arms was lazily outstretched in the direction of his axe, which was lying discarded just out of reach. The plants ignored this, focusing all of their energy on consuming the paladin with as many of themselves as they could. He sank just a little further as poppies and lavender sprouted quietly around his figure to keep him under, the vibrant red and purple providing jarring contrast against the mostly green landscape around them. They bloomed and spread the further he went down, as if being directly fed by him. The cat’s breathing grew shallower, but still, he slept.

xxx

It was uncomfortably warm in the church, like it was trying too hard to be welcoming. Toby stopped pulling Cobalt along when he reached the first pew. The gashes he’d seen on the door were scattered along these as well, not leaving a single one unscathed. There were eight pews here, and two of them were split in half, the jagged edges of the broken wood sharply contrasting with the suggested peacefulness of the church. Toby noticed more of the gashes along the walls and on the platform, where a podium had been knocked over, the book atop it torn to shreds and its papers scattered carelessly all over the floor. An altar sat behind the podium, the once imposing structure covered in dust and several red stains that Toby didn’t want to think too much about. He let his gaze drift up to the walls around the platform, where four tall stained glass windows sat. They were all dirty, all broken in some places, but the sunlight coming through them -- from what sun, Toby wasn’t sure -- helped illuminate their subjects more clearly. One of them, a red one, was more severely broken, the figure in the center of it almost completely shattered.

Toby wanted to look at them a little closer, but he turned to Cobalt instead. The elf was looking at the other panes, his face a little paler than before. Toby’s eyes went to those, and his mouth opened just slightly as he stared.

The figures in the panes of glass were moving . It wasn’t as natural or fluid as a typical creature’s movements, but they were in fact walking or talking or something of the sort. There was no sound as the figures moved, and it was like watching a zoetrope: the motions were stiff and stilted, and they weren’t very detailed. That didn’t stop Toby from recognizing the subjects in them.

“Bailey . . .?” He asked quietly, though there was no need for an answer. Every single one of the panes had the cat in it in some fashion, and each one of them was from Toby’s point of view: Bailey spoke to him very seriously about not trusting Strahd, though there were interruptions in the playback for when Toby’s attention lapsed due to exhaustion; watching Olive yell at him before she walked off, leaving him sitting solemnly in the snow before getting up and walking out of frame; swinging his axe at Doru, an otherworldly light radiating from him as he did so; and others that were just snippets of Bailey looking at him to make sure he was okay, or extending a paw for him to use as support or stability.

Toby turned away from them and back to the platform. Why was Bailey in all of these windows? They were the only memories he had of the cat so far, but why here?

Cobalt looked down at Toby when he turned away, watching him struggle to figure out what was going on. The rogue was mostly certain that he knew what was happening, but he wasn't sure if he should interfere. He let Toby pull him in the direction of the platform, stopping short of going up the stairs. Cobalt studied the altar, the blood stains littering it. He wasn't certain what happened here, but he thought he knew whose fault it was.

Toby was looking at each of the stained glass windows, these four much taller than the others in the rest of the church. Their frames were identical: massive pointed arches with fractured, colorful images inside, each one once again depicting Bailey in some way. The only difference was that these weren't memories Toby had, at least, not ones that he recognized. He carefully stepped up onto the platform to get a closer look, trampling the book’s ripped out pages, stopping when he was standing right in front of the altar.

Cobalt trailed behind him, deftly stepping around the pages and eyeing the altar warily. He did not like how much blood was on it, but Toby seemed to be dutifully ignoring it.

“Bailey’s in all of these,” Toby was saying, and Cobalt’s attention snapped to him, then to the windows. There was a purple one, a blue one, a green one, and a red one, which was definitely the one that Cobalt had seen from the outside. He thought about the bloodstained shards he’d seen on the ground, and his eyes went to the pile of broken glass underneath the window. The others were mostly intact, but that one . . .

Toby continued speaking. “In that one, he’s a king,” he said, facing the purple window. Bailey was indeed depicted in fine robes, if he was interpreting the glass correctly. Bailey wore a crown and held a staff in front of him, the sun forming a sort of halo around his head as it bowed in humility. “And there, a . . . knight? Or a soldier?” he said, pointing to the blue window. Bailey had armor in the same gold color as the sun halo from the king’s image. Instead of a staff, he held an axe, his head held up with more pride than the previous window’s depiction. Something about that armor felt oddly familiar to Toby, but he couldn’t quite place it.

Cobalt’s ears perked up, and he turned his head slightly to listen. He didn’t say a word, letting Toby’s mumbling fade into the background as he focused his attention on the sound he thought he heard behind him. It was subtle, and gone now, but Cobalt could’ve sworn he heard a chain-like clink .

Toby was looking at the green window now. Unlike the others, this one wasn’t symmetrical -- Bailey’s head was tilted to the side, arms and legs bent awkwardly and fractured in a way that made him look more like a doll than a person. “Is . . . that a puppet?” Toby asked.

Cobalt took another moment to listen for any other sounds, then looked back at the window. “Seems like it,” he said, some deep-seated worry stirring in his gut. They weren’t moving like the other ones. There was no way Toby could remember these versions of Bailey, since he didn’t know about Bailey’s life prior to meeting him now. That was something only Cobalt and Olive knew, and even they didn’t have all of the information.

Clink.

Cobalt’s head whipped around, eyes scanning the pews and seemingly empty space behind them. Someone, or something, was here. His fingers instinctively tightened around Toby’s own, but the druid remained completely oblivious, too focused on trying to figure out what he was looking at. Cobalt tensed, his hand hovering over where his dagger rested on his hip. He would prefer to use both hands, but if letting the other man go was the reason they got separated again or worse, he’d never forgive himself.

Toby’s gaze slid over to the last, most damaged window. Angry red glass jutted out of the frame and lay in ruined pieces on the floor. “I . . . don’t know what that one is,” he said, his brain trying desperately to fit the last piece of the puzzle together with limited information. He stepped forward, placing his hand on the altar to guide himself around it as he zeroed in on the broken image on the floor. “It looks like a-”

“Watch out!” Cobalt yanked Toby out of the way just in time as another figure leapt past them, aiming straight for where Toby just was. They landed in a pile, Cobalt recovering faster and going into a defensive crouch, putting himself between the smaller man and whatever had just tried to attack them. He narrowed his eyes at the figure, even as he didn’t quite understand what he was looking at.

Toby watched from behind him as it stood. It was . . . flat , Toby’s mind suggested, and it took him a second but he eventually agreed. The figure wasn’t three-dimensional in the way that he and Cobalt and everything else was, instead seemingly made of large panes of glass in varying shades of red. Toby swallowed thickly, trying to calm his racing heart as he watched the figure straighten, turning towards them with an obscene amount of rage in its eyes.

Cobalt faltered. “ Bailey? ”

It was indeed Bailey, or at least, the stained glass version of him. Toby’s eyes darted between him and the pile of red glass, quickly finishing the puzzle he was trying so hard to put together earlier. His eyes widened, trailing back to the cat, who looked more terrifying this way than he’d ever seen him. While his entire figure was fragmented due to the nature of stained glass’s construction, parts of his panes were fractured, distorting the light he was reflecting onto the walls and floor. It bathed everything around them in a deep red, and his eyes were glowing a deeply unsettling white. Toby looked at his paws, where his claws were unsheathed and much longer than he’d remembered, and dripping blood endlessly onto the floor. Toby couldn’t spot where the blood was coming from, but there was so much of it, and it started to make little puddles around his glass feet. A realization hit him -- the gashes he saw everywhere were claw marks. “Is he -- is he a monster ?”

Cobalt narrowed his eyes and straightened, both hands holding daggers that he would use at a moment’s notice. “No,” he said, quiet but clear, “a prisoner.”

As if in response, glass-Bailey rolled his shoulders and neck, the movement as broken as his body was, making the shackles on his wrists and neck clink in that sound Cobalt could now place. His paws flexed, making his claws gleam in the light, and his eyes zeroed in on the half-elf in the way of his target.

Shit was the only thing Cobalt was able to think before Bailey lunged at him, and Cobalt barely dodged out of the way in time before Bailey landed on one of the pews, using that as another launching point to throw himself at the rogue again. Cobalt gritted his teeth and stayed out of the way as best he could, but Bailey was much faster and more agile than the one Cobalt was used to dealing with. This version of him wasn’t worn down a bit by age, and moved truly like a young, lithe cat would. He swiped and bit, catching air each time, but only by millimeters. Cobalt jumped and ducked out of the way, trying not to get caught by either one of those and also by the sharp edges of the glass jutting out of random parts of Bailey’s body.

He only caught a glimpse of Toby, who had wisely moved into the shadows, and was doing . . . something? He didn’t know, and couldn’t figure it out in time before Bailey was in his view again, teeth bared as he snarled. Cobalt glared right back, changing tactics mid-dodge to figure out what he could use to smash the glass cat into pieces. He leapt out of the way again and towards one of the walls, ducking to avoid a swipe aimed for his face, and grabbed one of the cobblestones that had broken off of the wall. He hurled it at Bailey’s head before he had time to recover, and the rock smashed right through his face.

Bailey stopped moving. Cobalt’s breath came in wild pants, but he kept his eyes trained on the cat as he slowly crept backwards. Bailey hadn’t exactly fallen over, as he expected. Bailey was just standing there, perfectly still, only half his face intact. His eyes still glowed, and they focused on Cobalt as he put distance between the two of them.

Then, to his complete horror, Bailey bent over, picking up some of the glass off the floor. He lifted it to his broken head, and after a moment, the glass fused back into place as if Cobalt hadn’t hit him at all. He was jarringly reminded, then, of the tree he’d tried to leave a cut on in the forest. He couldn’t truly change anything here. 

Bailey looked at Cobalt again -- it was his turn to freeze in place -- and then his attention pivoted to something else. Cobalt didn’t have enough time to register what he was looking at before Bailey hurled himself in Toby’s direction.

“No!” Cobalt cried out, scrambling off the floor to chase after Bailey, before he saw Toby come out of the darkness with what looked like a stone statue in his hands. The druid swung it with all his might at the paladin, who had too much forward momentum to react in any other way than his eyes widening in shock before he was a pile of much smaller, glittering shards.

Toby let the statue fall from his hands -- a figure of Pelor, Cobalt realized -- and coughed, blood shooting from his mouth and trailing down his chin. Toby touched his stomach and pulled away, staring at his stained hands with unfocused eyes, and barely heard his name come from Cobalt’s mouth before he collapsed.

Chapter Text

It wasn't like Cobalt hadn't seen someone get stabbed before. His line of work, if you could call it that, meant watching people he'd grown to care about, however marginally, die in front of him at any given moment. He'd learned to expect it, brace himself for it every time he got an assignment that wasn't solo, and though it didn't hurt any less when it happened, the frequency of it made it easier for him to move on relatively quickly.

He remembered all of them. The names of everyone who'd died or simply disappeared during all those years of working for Heron against his will were burned into his memory, as permanent as the scar on the left side of his face. His mind was a cruel thing sometimes -- he could list the names as easily as counting backwards, but he couldn't remember the name of his own mother. It was as if it was predisposed to memories that caused him pain.

So when he watched Toby fall, his eyes widening as he finally caught up to what was happening, he half expected the usual, slightly jaded feeling of loss to make itself known. When that feeling didn't come, and he truly panicked for the first time in several years, it threw everything the rogue had taught himself off course.

Cobalt's earlier relief left him immediately, and he lunged forward in an effort to catch Toby before his body hit the floor.

Don't panic don't panic don't panic-

He caught him, eyes scanning his face frantically as he tried to compose himself enough to know what the hell he was supposed to do now. Cobalt wasn't a healer -- the only one he had on hand was currently bleeding out profusely from a wound in his stomach that Cobalt hadn't even known was there.

Don't panic don't panic don't-

Cobalt pulled him away enough to look at his wound, assess how bad it was, and nearly choked. Toby had three deep slash marks across his torso, as if Bailey had managed to reach him and try to gut him in one fell swoop. But how? Bailey was occupied with Cobalt the entire time. Cobalt hadn't let the cat out of his sight long enough for him to even attempt something like that. So how did this happen?

Don't panic don't panic-

He had to stop the bleeding. Toby's breathing was so shallow, so weak , and Cobalt was running out of time. He needed to get him out of here, needed to wrap him somehow, needed to find a fucking healer-

Don't panic don't-

Cobalt took his own shirt off, because gods what else was he supposed to do, and pressed it down onto Toby's stomach. The blood soaked his shirt so quickly that it became useless. His breathing was too weak, his chest wasn't rising high enough, his eyes weren't opening what was he supposed to do -

Don't panic don't panic panic pANIC-

Cobalt lifted him up -- thank the gods druids came in size small -- and carried him out of the church as fast as he could, apologizing profusely every time his body jostled due to him clumsily traversing the wreckage and debris. He burst through the doors, which was relatively simple since they were already mostly broken, and landed roughly on the ground outside. He begged the gods or whomever was fucking listening, if anyone was, to not do this to him right now.

Cobalt released Toby enough to pull his hoodie up and reveal his scar so he could --

He faltered, his hands shakily hovering over completely intact, wound-free skin. He blinked, gingerly putting his fingers to the man's stomach, not believing what he was seeing.

He sat back on his haunches, then plopped to the ground. There was nothing there. There was nothing there .

He replaced Toby's hoodie and checked his face. His eyes were still closed, but he looked like he was asleep instead of on the brink of death, and his breathing was slow, but otherwise back to normal.

Baffled, Cobalt picked up his shirt: it was clean and dry. A little scuffed from falling on the ground, but other than that, no one would’ve ever suspected he’d just used it to stop a man from bleeding out. He put it in his lap, a sudden weariness overcoming him, and let his head bow.

Elves are not known for being an emotional race. They don't lose their tempers often, they aren't that excitable, and they certainly don't cry. But Cobalt was only half of an elf. The other half was . . . he looked up at Toby again, who was still sleeping. The other half felt things more strongly than he'd like to admit. The other half made him care about people no matter how hard he tried to distance himself. The other half hurt .

Cobalt used the last of his emotional energy to pull his shirt over his head and take his glasses off. He set them aside, the lenses being a little too red for his liking at the moment, and pulled the collar of his shirt up to his face. He pressed the palms of his hands into his eyes, and after releasing a shaky breath, went quiet.

xxx

By the time Toby woke up, Cobalt had taken the time to check around the outsides of the other buildings and the garden gates. He tried to pretend that it was more of a precaution than a distraction, but didn’t manage to fully convince himself. His mind kept providing him with glimpses of blood, torn skin, and pallid flesh rather than the reassurance he should’ve been getting by remembering that the druid was in fact not dead.

He’d hoped to find something to pique his interest, similar to the chisel and hammer by the church, but he had no such luck this time around. The birdhouse was about as plainly cozy as any oversized birdhouse might’ve been, and the inn seemed as dingy and rundown as one would expect. He’d tried looking around the gates, but dense fog curled around all sides of it, making it hard to investigate as well as he’d liked.

Now, he had his back pressed up against a tree trunk, one of the only stable ones around, and idly made his tiger's eye shift from a rock to a dagger and back again as he waited for the druid to wake up.

After a couple of minutes, Toby sat up with a gasp, grabbing at his stomach and being the same amount of confused as Cobalt when he realized there was nothing there. He looked around, believing for one alarming moment that he’d been left alone.

The rogue watched him from where he stood several feet away. “I’m right here,” he said after a moment.

Toby did his best to hide his relief. He gingerly touched his stomach again, lifting his hoodie just to be sure, and turned around. “What happened? I could've sworn I was . . .?”

Cobalt nodded, forcing calm into his voice. “Yeah, it was pretty bad. I brought you out here to see if I could do something about it, and it was just gone. You've been asleep for 15 minutes.”

Toby pursed his lips thoughtfully, and Cobalt could see the gears turning in his head. He watched him try, and fail, to figure out what happened on his own.

Cobalt stepped in, then. “How did you get hurt? Did something else attack you?”

Toby shook his head. “I noticed statues in little nooks when we were first walking around, and some were much larger than others. So while you were getting your ass kicked --”

He still had so much sass for someone whose subscription to life almost expired. “I was not -- ”

“-- I went to go pick one of the larger ones up and see if I could break him with it. I managed to drag it with me, but I didn't know I was bleeding until you bashed Bailey's face in. I looked down and saw the cuts in my stomach, felt them getting deeper, and then I looked up, and he was lunging towards me.” Toby's hand subconsciously went around his throat, holding it gingerly. “And then . . . I was choking, and cold, and . . .” He shook his head. And then he was gone.

Cobalt's shades were folded and hanging on the collar of his shirt, the tiny water stains on it from earlier having dried completely by now. He crossed his arms, the motion making the glasses shine in the largely unexplained sunlight for a second, and furrowed his brow as he looked at the ground. “So there wasn't anyone else there,” he said after a moment.

Toby shook his head. “Not that I could see. The wound just . . . appeared.”

Cobalt pushed himself off of the tree and wandered back in the direction of the church. He kept his distance, his eyes assessing it warily, but he still had so many questions. Why was there an angry version of Bailey here? Was it protecting something? How did he get hurt? Why were there depictions of Bailey here that Toby wouldn't have ever met or remembered?

He looked over at the druid, who was watching him, head tilted to the side in a silent question. Cobalt walked back over to him and decided he'd also sit. “I'm just . . . trying to figure this out. I don't know what's going on, or how to help, or even if I can.” He looked around, then decided to dig a small hole in the ground with his fingers. Almost immediately, soil filled the hole again and grass grew back, erasing any evidence that he had done anything at all.

Toby's eyes widened. He did the same: dug his fingers into the dirt, uprooting a bit of grass and the smallest, half-blown dandelion. He blew the rest of it away before placing his pile of dirt down. They waited for a moment, but nothing happened. Toby put the dirt and weed back into the hole, patting it into place. “Huh.”

“I can't really make much of a difference here,” Cobalt continued, “I guess because I'm not supposed to be here, like you said. Your consciousness doesn't want me around.” He was trying for something more lighthearted than it sounded.

Toby waved a hand dismissively. “I like having you around. The plants can just be selfish sometimes.” He put his hand back in his lap, his gaze focusing elsewhere as his voice changed octaves. “It's kinda nice having someone else here this time.”

After Cobalt didn't respond, Toby looked up at him, faltering at his raised eyebrow. “Did you say something?”

He hadn't, but he didn't address that right away. “I never actually asked how you knew where we were.”

Toby blinked. “What?”

Cobalt narrowed his eyes at him a little, and Toby realized that he wasn't used to fully seeing Cobalt's face for this length of time. He was pretty in a beaten-up-and-sad kind of way. Like an abandoned pair of shoes that you know once belonged to a young boy before he was forced to grow up too soon. Or a glass of whiskey only half finished because the person drinking it left it behind in favor of something more alluring, however fleeting. 

He shoved that thought aside for now and focused on what was coming out of the rogue's mouth. “When I first found you, you said we were in your mind. You didn't even have to think about it. How did you know that?”

Toby let out a soft “oh”. “I've um . . . been here before.” He calculated how much he should say before continuing. “When I get overwhelmed or upset, and I can't calm down, I end up here. Not here , here,” Toby said, gesturing to the buildings, “but like, out there, in the darkness. I sort of shut down, I guess, and my body goes on autopilot when the plants take over.”

Cobalt let him finish, then, “how often does that happen?”

Toby made a sound like he was going to say something that he knew he probably should've mentioned earlier but didn't, and was now getting caught in the midst of it. “A . . . couple times a week?”

Cobalt's eyes narrowed further. “ What? ”

Toby winced. “Is that . . . often?” He knew it was.

Cobalt pinched the bridge of his nose. “You've just been randomly dissociating around us? We've been overwhelming you to the point where you have to let mother nature control your body for a while?”

“It's only a minute or two!” Toby protested, “and it only happens when I'm alone! Usually after we go through something stressful or . . .” He trailed off. Or after I pretend like the memories don't hurt.

Cobalt leaned forward on his elbows. “Toby.”

“Okay, no, it's not your fault. It's not anyone's fault but my own. Things can just be a lot, alright? But it's not . . . you , or Pip, or Bailey, or anyone else. It's me.” It's always ever been him.

Cobalt studied him for a moment longer, not taking his eyes off his face even as he leaned back. “There's something you're not telling me, isn't there?”

Toby took his hat off and ran a hand through his hair. He let out a breath, then nodded. He wasn't going to tell him that the memories still hurt. He wasn't going to tell that to anyone.

“Are you going to tell me?”

Toby's mouth pressed into a thin line. The fear that Cobalt would start pushing him away again for safety reasons, or whatever he wanted to call it, stirred in his gut. He'd come so far, gotten so much closer to feeling somewhat normal again. He wasn't going to lose that. “No.”

Cobalt watched him, watched the war taking place on his face. Watched him fight with himself, wrestle with the truth versus his personal feelings, and watched the truth lose. He wanted to know. He wanted to feel like he deserved to know. But maybe he didn't. “Okay.”

Toby found another dandelion. This one was still yellow, not yet in the form to make wishes with. He wasn't even sure if they were granted here.

He stood abruptly. “We're running out of time,” he reminded the both of them. “We gotta get out before that light destroys everything in here.”

Cobalt watched him stand, studying him with an intensity that made Toby feel like squirming, but he forced himself not to. When he couldn't handle being stared at any longer, Toby walked around him and in the direction of the birdhouse. “This one next?” He asked, but he'd already decided. It was intact, and looked cozier than the church with the Murderous Glass Cat.

Cobalt watched him walk away for a second before getting up to follow. He slowed to a stop next to him, looking over the largely unassuming birdhouse in front of them.

Much like a traditional one, it hung from a rope secured to its roof, though what it hung off of was too high for either of them to see. The rope disappeared into the trees, and the house rocked just slightly with nothing at its base to secure it.

It had the appearance of being some wood carver’s labor of love, and skillful brushstrokes colored the entire house shades of yellow and orange. Painted window boxes held small blue flowers, which Toby guessed were forget-me-nots, and an inoffensive “home sweet home” was painted in an arch above the circular door. A white picket fence was attached to the outside, with blades of bright green grass painted between its posts.

It was simple, kind of cute, and quite safe looking. Cobalt immediately hated it.

“Alright, let's go,” Toby said, heading towards it.

“No, wait,” Cobalt said, making Toby halt mid-step and turn on his heel. “I want to make sure no one else is here.”

Toby nodded in the direction of the church. “You think he got out?”

Cobalt shook his head. “If he left that church, he probably would've come after us already. I don't think he'll be a problem.” Cobalt stepped around the other man and headed towards the door first. “Stay close to me, but let me take a look.”

Toby obeyed, walking within an arm's reach and letting Cobalt inspect the space more thoroughly before he stepped inside. There were no strange noises, random attackers, or stained glass windows with Toby's limited memories playing on them. After Cobalt's assent, he stepped in, shutting the door behind them.

xxx

On the surface, Bailey’s body slowly came to a stop, his body half-buried in the dirt. The mushrooms latched to his fur let go all at once with a gentle pop , and sank into the ground. Poppies and lavender surrounding his body paused as well, some freezing mid-bloom and others wilting just a little as his body stopped descending. The vine connecting his cocoon to Toby’s body dulled as the life drained out of it all at once. Bailey remained motionless, his chest rising and falling gently as he remained unconscious.

The sky continued to brighten as early morning turned into afternoon. A few feet away from where Bailey’s body lay, the smallest buds poked up through the dirt amidst glyphs and runes burned into the ground. They disregarded the scorched earth completely as their rapid growth broke the inactive divination circle, outlining yet another unconscious body lying on the ground. Mushrooms, the same ones that attached themselves to the paladin, found a new source of life to pull from as they stuck all over their new victim’s feathers and bone.

As even more poppies and lavender grew at the expense of the bird they surrounded, Pip’s body twitched, feathers ruffling just slightly as the mushrooms found it difficult to secure themselves to something much lighter than a dense, furry creature. The flowers started and stopped blooming over and over again as the mushrooms struggled to get Pip’s wings underground; vines instead taking their place and wrapping themselves vice-like around each wing, pulling them slowly under the dirt along with the rest of his scarf-covered body.

xxx

At first, the birdhouse was just that: the floor was covered in straw, twine, and bits of other things to form a makeshift nest; the walls were secured together with slightly visible lines of glue, and painted over in bright colors with random figures; nuts and birdseed were in a neat pile off to the side, as if the intended animal had yet to land and pick at it. It was so wildly unassuming that Toby wondered if the house was in the wrong psyche.

Cobalt seemed to have the same thought. He wandered back over to Toby’s side, eyeing the painted walls like the subjects would jump out and attack them if he let his gaze wander elsewhere. They stood there for a moment, very still as they listened and watched for something, anything to happen.

Nothing did. Toby huffed impatiently, and walked up to one of the walls. As he got closer, he could see a bit of the wood grain peeking out from the thin layer of paint, adding to the overall charm of the space. He took a step back, looking over the paintings on the walls again. They were childlike in nature: stick figure people, disproportionate birds with simple v’s for wings, their appearance close to oversized chicks, a sun in the corner. Clearly a different artist than whomever did the outside. Toby tilted his head to the side and blinked at it -- Cobalt’s mind offered an image of a sparrow -- and then slowly looked over his shoulder.

It alarmed him, just a tad. “What is it?”

“These feel familiar, somehow,” the druid said, and Cobalt felt a bit relieved that it wasn’t something worse than that. Toby faced the wall again, reaching out a hand to brush his fingertips over the lines of one of the awkwardly drawn birds.

It chirped. Toby yelped, yanking his hand away, and Cobalt was at his side in an instant. “What happened?”

Toby stared incredulously at the wall for a moment, then carefully reached his hand out again. He touched one of the birds again with a bit more intention this time, placing his hand flat against its side. The bird chirped again, then shook itself a little, ruffling its feathers. Toby glanced at Cobalt to check if the rogue could also see and hear what he was seeing, and Cobalt’s expression of confusion and wariness confirmed that for him without him having to say a word. The bird hopped about a bit before going over to a pile of random objects, the lines too messy to interpret anything clearly, and closed its eyes as it sat down.

“What’s it doing?” Cobalt asked.

Toby shook his head. “I don’t . . .” he watched as, after a moment, the bird jumped up again, looking around for a second before making its way over to two odd-looking shapes. Toby frowned. Whomever painted these was not very good at it.

The bird stretched one of its wings out and picked up the smaller of the two shapes, placing it atop its head. It then wrapped the second shape, which unfurled loosely into a long rectangle when picked up, around its neck.

Toby blinked. “Oh. Oh shit.”

Cobalt looked at him, then back at the bird as it moved across the wall towards a group of stick figures. “What?”

Toby looked from the stick figures, then back at the bird. “That’s Pip,” Toby said softly, feeling at least 80% sure of his deduction. Pip, in poorly-painted-2D-bird form, came to a stop in front of the other figures. Toby stood up, letting his hand slip from the wall as he followed in the direction that Pip went. The bird was mid-chirp, and stopped, the entire scene coming to an abrupt halt and the paint slightly dulling as a result.

Cobalt looked between Toby and the now-frozen paintings. The absurdly tall figure that he was certain was him had started to turn towards the other two much shorter figures, one of which had comically oversized glasses, and the other sharp ears and a crudely shaped bandana. He bit back a smirk, then moved over to the wall, placing a gloved hand on it.

The paintings remained still. He figured that would happen. “You gotta keep your hand on it,” he said to Toby, who had watched his hand make contact with the wall with an expression the rogue couldn’t quite read.

Upon its lack of response to Cobalt’s touch, Toby moved towards the wall again, a bit behind Pip, and touched his fingers to it again. The paintings brightened, springing to life as Pip chirped rapidly at the other three stick figures. Toby smiled a little, guessing that he was probably chastising them for not getting enough sleep. He kept his eyes on the paintings, dragging his fingers lightly along the walls as he trailed behind Pip, who had taken the Toby-esque stick figure with him to a building that was painted on another wall, the words “ADVENTURER’S COVE” sitting atop it. The (real) druid’s brow arched, and the edge of his mouth quirked up at the artist’s oversight. The sign painted wasn’t nearly large enough to house both words, so the last few letters of “ADVENTURER’S” were smushed together to try and squeeze them into the frame, while “COVE” was infinitely smaller than its counterpart and tucked between the space left by the larger word and the bottom of the frame.

His eyes drifted back down to the two of them. They walked into the Cove, and the painting continued across the wall, showing a very simplified rendition of the interior. Toby’s smile grew as the actual memory played in his own mind while watching the house attempt to recreate it on its walls. Toby watched the figure that probably represented Jeremy tiredly speak to Pip, who, in drastic contrast, hopped and chirped excitedly as he attempted to convince the minimum-wage waiter to give them a discount on the reservation rate. He found himself grinning when Jeremy’s demeanor started to become more animated as Pip’s impromptu inspirational speech struck a chord, and Jeremy brought the final price down. Painting Pip turned to Toby, who was leaning against one of the booths and watching the scene play out. His next chirp sounded more unsure than the previous ones, which Toby chalked up to the bird asking him for money, since Pip notoriously had none.

Cobalt’s eyes drifted away from the paintings as they moved across the walls to Toby’s expression. He hadn’t seen the druid smile that widely in a while, and although he was a little lost as to what was happening, didn’t dare interrupt the moment for fear of erasing that smile off his face. The smallest smile crept onto his own face when Toby’s grin turned into a laugh, and Cobalt felt his cheeks start to warm up a bit. He tore his gaze away from the man and looked back at the walls.

Pip was in a position that suggested the bird had his wings planted on his hips, one foot tapping impatiently on the ground as getting Toby to give him money proved a tad more difficult than he was anticipating. The stick-figure druid held his hand out after a moment, and Pip took the coins to pay for the reservation. Toby’s laugh faded into a fond smile as they walked out of the Cove, the figures bending as they moved onto the last wall.

Admittedly, and maybe a little selfishly, he enjoyed bothering the cleric from time to time. Pip had a somewhat parental feel about him -- despite being the second-youngest person in their group at the moment -- with his constant insistence that they take care of themselves and his level of responsibility that easily outranked the rest of the party. Toby wasn’t sure why he was so concerned about them when it seemed evident to everyone else they met that they were a lost cause, but he was grateful for it. Something about that struck him in his chest, as if it was suggesting that there was something crucial about Pip that would answer something he’d been wanting to know about himself. The feeling was at once sad and comforting, tugging a bit at his heart, and his smile slipped a little as his mind attempted to come up with some sort of explanation.

Cobalt’s eyes had, somewhat against his desires, moved back to the druid. He watched the laugh fade into a smile, and then the smile shift into something else as Toby’s brow furrowed. From behind the relative safety of his red lenses, he kept his attention on the man’s face as a myriad of emotions played across it. Toby had turned slightly more towards him as the paintings moved across the walls, but his focus was clearly elsewhere. A new memory perhaps? Could he recall things safely in here? Would he still get a headache while inside of his own head?

The rogue had no idea. He also didn’t really have any idea of what to do now, since there was no clear danger for him to address, no one for him to save, no bullet to step in front of. It was strange seeing the man in front of him have a private battle with himself and his mind, while inside of said mind. Cobalt, oddly, had the smallest feeling like he wanted Toby to confide in him. It puzzled him -- Toby was never that open with anyone, and he didn’t think that it’d bothered him before now. He realized that he hadn’t ever seen the man truly express his feelings in the way that he and Bailey tended to with each other. A slightly sharper pang told him that he might want him to.

Toby looked up, then, erasing whatever was going on in his head off his face as he met the rogue’s eyes. Well, mostly. Cobalt hadn’t taken his shades off, but even so, the sudden and direct stare at him made him flinch. Okay, so he may have lied -- he wasn’t as used to Toby’s unpredictable little movements as he originally thought. Toby’s eyes flicked from him to the wall, which was playing a different scene. Cobalt gratefully turned away to watch.

Sometime between Pip and Toby leaving the Cove and what was happening now, Pip had found a spot to sit with a bunch of little tools and plants, in front of a small, round figure as they watched him grind some leaves into a mortar and pestle. Even with how simple the drawings were, it was easy for Toby to pick up on what memory this was. The painting seemed to glow a little -- or maybe it was his eyes playing tricks? -- as Pip put a wing to the round figure’s forehead. Olive , he guessed. Pip chirped a little, probably asking her about how she was feeling, and she shifted uncomfortably a bit in her new winter coat. The bird then took a cup, little swirls drifting from the top to indicate steam, and poured a bit of the powdered leaves into it. He stirred it, chanting something as he did so, and the painting started glowing more visibly. Toby could’ve sworn a sort of halo appeared around Pip’s head as he watched the scene, captivated by the way Pip so easily figured out how to care for the little girl.

Olive’s tiny arms reached for the cup, lifting it to her lips, but just as she was about to tilt her head back and drink it, everything stopped. The glowing dimmed until the paintings were once again dull and unresponsive, and Toby blinked. He looked back at his hand. It was still touching the wall, but maybe he needed to . . . he pressed his hand flat against the wall, looking back at the unfinished memory. Nothing. The cup hadn’t been tilted, and she didn’t drink it. Toby pressed his other hand against the wall, his face quickly shifting into confusion and mild panic. Why wasn’t it working?

He lifted his hands from the wall, pausing for a moment to look down at them.  Nothing looked wrong or felt off. He touched his hand to the wall again, hope swelling in his chest when he heard the familiar chirp, but realized that it was coming from a different part of the wall. He turned to look at where he started, and his shoulders dropped when he saw the memories replaying from the beginning.

Cobalt kept his eyes carefully trained on Toby the minute he started moving more erratically. He wasn’t exactly sure what was happening, so he slowly stood, and tried to see if he could help. “Toby? What’s the m--”

“He was going to heal her. He was supposed to heal her,” Toby was mumbling, his hand balling into a fist as he pressed it against the wall. “I watched it happen, I remember it. He was right there, and she drank it in the caravan, and she was getting better -- why didn’t it play? Why didn’t he help her?”

Cobalt approached him, hands lifted in a placating gesture, and spoke softly. “Are you talking about the memory?”

“Yes,” Toby gritted out, his frustration rising as he struggled to dampen it, “he didn’t heal her. That’s not right, that’s not how it goes. I saw him do it right, I saw him heal her.”

Cobalt also wasn’t sure why the memories stopped so abruptly. But Toby was freaking out, and Cobalt knew he needed to tread so very carefully. “We can try again, alright? We’ll figure it out.”

Toby suddenly reached out, grabbing for Cobalt’s wrist, but the rogue jerked it out of his reach. “Give me your hand.”

Cobalt did not. “Why?”

“Just --” Toby let out a breath, trying to calm himself down. He didn’t know what was wrong with him, but all he could think was that he needed this memory to finish playing. “Please. Give me your hand.”

Cobalt hesitated for a moment longer before allowing Toby to take it. The druid looked at his hand briefly before pressing it to the wall. He waited, staring intently at the painting, but nothing happened. He dropped Cobalt’s hand, and tried his own hand again. The memories started up again, but it wasn’t the one he wanted.

“Son of a --” Toby’s hand balled into a fist again and he hit the wall with the side of it. “Why? Why won’t it play? I remember it, dammit! I remember this!”

Cobalt’s eyes widened a bit as Toby’s anger spiked, and he pulled his hand back as if he was going to punch a hole in the already thin wooden wall. “Woah, hold on,” Cobalt said, grabbing his arm and stopping it short of making contact. “If you break it, you might not get to play the memory at all.”

Toby’s breathing was so labored. Cobalt had watched the transition from calm to furious happen, but he still couldn’t accurately decipher why. He was so upset about this memory in particular, so fixated on the idea that Pip hadn’t healed Olive. Was it because of Olive? He knew the man was a bit attached to the girl, but not to this extent. Plus, he was right -- Pip had helped her. It happened in real life, so why was a slightly inaccurate painting making him lose his shit?

Cobalt didn’t have time to process it further before Toby reared his other arm back and slammed his fist into the wall, producing a small crack. Cobalt jumped, then grabbed that arm too before yanking him away from the wall. He decided that patience and pacifism could go to hell as he let his alarm and concern take over. “Get it together! What is wrong with you right now?”

Toby glared at him over his shoulder, his voice rising and becoming more frantic as his anger took over. “He didn’t help her! He didn’t help her, he didn’t heal her, she’s going to die, he couldn’t save her, I couldn’t --”

Cobalt half-carried, half-dragged the smaller man out of the birdhouse as Toby writhed and screamed in his arms. The rogue kicked the door open and nearly tossed Toby out before slamming the door shut behind them, whirling to face him and preparing to tell him to calm the fuck down -- and stopped short. Toby just stood there, patiently waiting for him to shut the door, as if he hadn’t just exploded out of nowhere just a few seconds before. Cobalt went a little limp, releasing an exhausted sigh. “What the hell, man . . .”

Toby tilted his head at him. “Cobalt? You okay?”

Cobalt nearly snapped at him, but sighed again instead. “Yeah. I’m fine.” This was the second time something unpredictable and extreme happened to the druid, and completely disappeared the minute he stepped outside of whatever building they went into. Cobalt narrowed his eyes in the direction of the rundown inn that was probably their next stop. He did not want to know what that would turn Toby into.

Toby reached out a hand and touched his arm. “You sure?”

Cobalt’s eyes shifted to him, the worry so plain on his face and the stark contrast it presented to the intense fury that was just there not even a minute before. He watched as Toby’s eyes tried to figure out what was wrong for himself, but he didn’t even seem to remember what had happened at all.

Cobalt straightened.”Yeah. We need to get out of here.” He brushed past the man, leaving Toby slightly puzzled before he hurried after him.

xxx

Pip’s sleeping body wasn’t as far down as Bailey’s was. His descent was much slower, and by the time the mushrooms stopped dragging him downwards, his body had only made a small indentation in the ground. But just like Bailey, the flowers around him stopped blooming and growing as soon as his body froze in place, wilting and curling into themselves as they were no longer being fed. Pip’s body twitched, his face scrunching slightly before it relaxed back into peaceful unconsciousness.

Chapter Text

The first thing Cobalt noticed about the inn was the noise: music and voices seeped through the doors and windows, as if the inn was bustling with activity. Light glowed faintly behind the glass, which was so thickly frosted that it was impossible to see anything inside. Occasionally, raucous laughter and people dancing would make the wooden door rattle just slightly on its hinges, and the banging of their shoes on the stone floor and mugs on the tables added to the heady mix of exuberance.

Cobalt blinked. He was certain he had caught on to what might be happening here, but the amount of carefree joy emanating from this building bewildered him completely. He had checked this building earlier, and it was just as quiet as the others. There was nothing around the outside, and certainly no lights, no laughter, no music. The entire time that he was waiting for Toby to wake up, this place had been the kind of quiet that resonated with abandonment.

He looked back at the druid, who was already watching him carefully, as if he was waiting for him to do something. Cobalt stared at him a moment, trying once again to decipher what Toby wasn’t telling him. His face was wary, cautious, like he was gravely unsure of what the half-elf would do next, and whether or not that would mean he’d need to react within a moment’s notice. Cobalt supposed he knew why -- though the walk from the birdhouse to the inn was brief, Toby’s earlier concern had disappeared so quickly when he figured out that Cobalt was in fact upset with him, though he could not figure out why. Cobalt didn’t explain it, didn’t want to. So he just kept his mouth shut.

That wasn’t his focus for right now, though -- the inn was still strangely energetic, contrasting so wildly with the other two buildings that it was almost upsetting. Cobalt walked over to one of the windows and rubbed a palm over its panes, trying to clear it a bit in order to see inside, but the glass remained stubbornly cloudy. He could just barely make out indistinguishable blobs that suggested movement in the inn, which served to unsettle him even further. The possibility of there being this many other people wandering around in Toby’s empty mind threw everything he thought might be happening completely off-course. And . . . there was no way this could be for who he thought it might be for.

The conclusion made him a little sad, but he immediately shoved it aside. He kept having these ridiculous little feelings bleed into the rest of his demeanor and it was starting to piss him off. He needed to get out of here.

He went back to the door, where Toby was waiting, hands resting in his pockets as he kept his eyes trained on the half-elf. Cobalt jerked a thumb, indicating the space behind him. “Stand over there.”

Toby looked at the area he pointed to, then back at Cobalt, and strolled over, coming to an abrupt stop once he decided that he’d gone far enough. Cobalt kept his eyes on the inn, and they narrowed as the light started to dim, and the music began to fade. He wasn’t sure if it was just a pause in the activity inside, or . . . “keep going.”

He did. Cobalt frowned as the light and music continued to decrease the further away Toby walked, eventually winking out completely once Toby reached the crumbled steps of the church. Cobalt didn’t have to tell him when to stop walking, and the druid waited a moment before he returned, watching for himself as the inn revived itself as he closed the distance.

The rogue closed his eyes and sighed, his expression softening just a little. Toby’s presence brought this place to life, which he supposed was something he could understand.

As expected, he was still being watched, and he could see the question on Toby’s face warring with the desire to give him space. Cobalt decided to intentionally decline both options. “Ready?”

Toby only allowed his silence to last a few seconds. “Are you?”

Cobalt slid his gaze back to the door, back to the noise and the cheer and the headache that was waiting for them behind it. Every single truthful answer that rolled around in his mind ultimately resulted in a ‘no’, regardless of how cleverly he tried to phrase it.

Toby must’ve noticed. “You don’t have to come with me,” he said, interrupting Cobalt’s attempt to forge an answer that was the exact opposite of how he was currently feeling.

The rogue glanced at him before looking back at the door. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because you don’t want to,” Toby said, and Cobalt failed to detect any sort of hurt -- any feeling at all -- behind it. “You shouldn’t feel like you have to if you don’t want to. I can figure this out myself and get you out of here.”

Cobalt believed him. He did. But . . . “I do want to.”

Toby snorted. It was quiet, probably only meant for himself, and Cobalt wouldn’t have caught it if he hadn’t let his gaze wander back to the druid’s face. “No, you don’t,” he said, and once again, Cobalt’s eyes narrowed at the distinct lack of anything in how he said it, “no one wants to be here. And why would you?” Toby’s attention went to the wall of light lingering at the edge of this limited part of his mind, the ever-present reminder that they in fact were on a time limit. He let his silence hang, the rest of his words dying on his tongue as he let the implications behind exactly why no one would want to be in his mind linger.

Cobalt studied him, took advantage of Toby’s focus on something other than his less-than-willing travel companion to really look the man over. If he was being honest with himself, he had no idea how he ended up in this position. Sure, he knew that he had stumbled upon his house after running for his life on a low battery and an empty stomach, and whatever merciless gods were watching decided that from then on he’d have the task of making sure this specific man didn’t suddenly keel over. He knew that after one embroidered bandana that smelled faintly of cookies -- a smell that has since then mingled with dozens of others, he needed to wash it -- and a couple of clearly adopted family members, he had stored that brief moment in Toby’s house somewhere in his heart. It was the same place he kept memories of people he thought he’d never see again.

He looked down at his boots, his arms crossed over his chest as he let his mind wander. He hadn’t realized it then, or maybe he just didn’t want to, but the damn druid had done some irreversible damage, and those same gods that put him here in the first place enjoyed watching him slowly conclude that he would willingly suffer more if it meant he could keep him around. Cobalt smiled to himself. When did he get so soft?

Toby looked over at him. “What?”

Cobalt paused, letting the thoughts corral themselves back into the small part of his heart that he usually kept them tucked away in, then shook his head. “The plants here hate me, you nearly got mauled by a cat made from a window, paintings can come to life, you lose your shit at the most random times . . .” he counted off on his fingers as he continued his list, then nodded once. “You’re right. This place does suck.”

Toby rolled his eyes, though he couldn’t exactly remember some of the things Cobalt referenced. That was annoying. “I never said that.”

The rogue ignored him. “Regardless, I want to help you. I don’t know if getting out of here means that it helps restore your memories, but either way, I’m not going to leave you to do this by yourself. And even if you don’t need me at the moment . . . I can at least be there when you do.”

Cobalt caught a flash of something on Toby’s face before it disappeared behind his usual contemplation. He could’ve sworn Toby truly recognized him for a moment. “What if we can’t get out?”

Laughter burst from the inn, then dissolved into dozens of excited conversations. Cobalt squinted at the door. He did not like this fucking building. “We will.”

Toby pursed his lips. He didn’t argue. Instead, he pushed himself up from where he was leaning and walked towards the door. His hand landed on the doorknob, but he paused before twisting it when he felt Cobalt’s hand on his shoulder.

The rogue found, in the amount of time that they’d been here, that he was oddly okay with random contact with the man. The rings didn’t seem to have any effect here, and without the dramatic and overwhelming surge of affection it forced out of him, usually met with shock by his counterpart, he was more comfortable with exploring touch just a bit. “We’ll get out,” he insisted, and he was grateful that the statement sounded convincing enough to solidify his own resolve a little more.

Toby’s pause lasted a bit longer before his other hand moved, hesitating as it hovered over Cobalt’s own for just a moment, before he brushed the tips of his fingers over the half-elf’s hand and let it fall back to his side. “Okay,” was all he offered before he twisted the knob.

xxx

The vines were dormant for a while, changing from vibrant green to a faded brown once they decided to stop attempting to consume Pip. For a moment, they were without a source of food, and stayed dull as they relied on the life force of their creator. It was quiet, save for the occasional sound of a traveler or two passing in the distance, as they waited for instructions for what to do next.

By now, the sky was switching from bright blue to a mix of orange and yellow, washing everything in a soft gold as Barovia prepared for the evening. Had anyone passed by then, they would’ve seen a few different creatures lying in odd positions on the grass, connected to a figure that could be mistaken for a half-consumed corpse by vines that were way too thick to be explained outside of magical means. They might have caught a cage of thinner vines encompassing a large bird surrounded by wilted flowers, and should they have decided to stick around, they may have seen vines of a similar constitution poke out of the ground around a much taller elf.

No one passed them, however, and so no one saw as the vines slowly intertwined to create yet another cage. No one saw hundreds of tiny mushrooms pop out of the ground around and underneath their new target, preparing to latch onto him and drag him into the dirt. And no one saw flowers start to push towards the sky, their leaves unfurling and stems lengthening as they grew taller.

xxx

Toby and Cobalt braced themselves for drunk, happy people parading and singing inside of a bright and lively tavern, a scenario that neither of them were particularly fond of, as the music swelled in response to Toby getting closer. He pulled the door open, and the light brightened so much so that neither of them could see anything for a moment. The laughing and singing grew into a deafening cacophony, and the smell of booze wafted in dangerous amounts out of the door, as if opening it unleashed years of pent-up patron energy that this inn had come to know.

Toby blinked and let his hands slide from his ears as his senses started functioning properly again. He looked up, bracing himself to not recognize a single person inside the building, but found that it wouldn’t be necessary.

He looked behind him. Cobalt shook his head, kind of like a puppy, before putting his palms to his eyes. “Fucking Christ,” he mumbled before attempting to use his eyes again.

Toby turned back around when Cobalt’s eyes widened in surprise. Toby’s mouth turned into a small frown as he stared at a completely empty inn. There wasn’t a single sign of life in the building -- it was dark, covered in dust and cobwebs, and dead silent. Toby cocked his head, and closed the door again.

The inn immediately sprung back to life. The music returned at an uncomfortably loud volume, the sounds of people conversing inside resumed, and light immediately illuminated every window.

Toby opened the door. Flashbang, deafening noise, and then . . . nothing. Cobalt once again reeled from the assault on his senses, as did the druid, but the latter resolved to try a third time before the half-elf grabbed his arm and offered a weary “ please don’t”. Toby frowned deeper, but didn’t close the door again. Instead, he stepped inside and looked around.

The furniture arranged throughout the inn suggested that it had at some point been a place bustling with regular tavern activity. There were wooden chairs arranged around several round tables, each of them adorned with a simple tablecloth and centerpiece. There was maybe a menu or two sitting around: worn yellow paper listed a few food options that were common to places like these, like beer, stew, and bread. Along the walls, booths with faded cushions faced each other across rectangular tables, with humble lanterns stationed above. There was a bar, and a glimpse of a kitchen behind, though the alcohol that might have crowded the shelves was long gone. Instead, only a few remained, their labels too worn to know what was inside of them, if anything.

The strangest thing about this place was that the emptiness of it was more of a draining feeling, similar to dread or exhaustion, than just a simple adjective. This emptiness had a color, a weight, and Toby felt as if it might swallow him whole if he wasn’t careful. Despite the setup of the inn implying that people had been here before, it was almost as if it was a ruse. Everything was coated in lifelessness: the wood on the chairs was closer to gray instead of a warm brown, and many of them were missing legs or had toppled over. The tablecloths were a shade of canvas beige that seemed like someone had planned to give them color or a pattern, and had decided against it. The lanterns, Toby noticed, had never been used -- in fact, there were no candles inside of them, nor any melted wax remains that would suggest that one had ever been lit. The menus had no prices, no quantities, no details, and looked more like shopping lists.

He stepped over a discarded chair leg -- when he looked at it again, he realized the chair had just never been fully assembled, instead of his original conclusion that it had broken off -- and walked over to the bar. Upon closer inspection of the bottles sparsely littering the shelves, he noticed that the labels weren’t worn -- they never had anything on them in the first place. Worn labels usually held a ghost of their previous wording or imagery, and even if it faded to the point of being unrecognizable, the labels were forever tainted by whatever had been printed on them before. These labels were just . . . blank.

Toby looked away from the bottles, and down at his hands, his mind trying to make sense of what he was feeling and seeing. He wasn’t too sure what was going on, but if he had to guess who these memories were supposed to depict  . . . he didn’t know if he liked his conclusion.

He turned and looked at his much taller companion. Cobalt’s eyes were fixed on something off to the side, and he stared at it, unmoving. At first, Toby thought he might have been under some spell. But then he shifted in a way that told the druid that he was just lost in thought. Toby looked him over, tried to guess how he might be feeling, but came up short. Aside from determining that he wasn’t tense, and didn’t look scared, the druid had no idea what was going on inside of Cobalt’s head. He knew better than to ask.

Toby decided to look behind the bar, maybe check out the kitchen. He crept quietly around the side of it, careful not to disturb whatever thought process the half-elf was going through, and kept his hands to himself as he looked at everything else. It was just as he thought: spaces for glasses, and there were none. Piles of dust everywhere , and though Toby never saw a spider, cobwebs long abandoned by their creators stuck to every possible crevice. A notepad for taking orders and calculations, but its pencil was nowhere to be found. The kitchen was much the same -- Toby didn’t stay long in there. It was small, dark, and it reeked of mold.

When he came back, Cobalt hadn’t moved. Toby looked over a couple times to see if he could spot what had caught the rogue’s eye, but there was nothing of particular significance in that direction. Eventually, he gave up, and managed to find a way to sit on the bar counter after brushing away most of the dust. He wiped his hands on his pants, and let his feet swing as he waited.

xxx

Quite some time passed, and still no one happened upon the completely unconscious party. And there was no one to witness the plants’ growth halting all at once as the mushrooms tried and failed to latch on to the half-elf. Every time one of them attempted to shoot forward and attach to Cobalt’s body, it would hit some sort of shield that rippled faintly with the contact, glowing a little blue before the effect disappeared completely.

Once again, the vines tried to do the work themselves and wrap around their new source of food and forcefully drag him underground, but they too were met with the same shield, and slid right off. Each attempt was futile, and whatever was keeping Cobalt from being affected by their efforts was making each subsequent attempt more and more aggressive.

Eventually, they wore themselves out, and everything -- the vines, mushrooms, and flowers -- sunk back into the dirt. For a moment, it was peaceful again, and the only thing that moved after a while were two largely unassuming plants poking out of the ground on either side of the rogue’s sleeping body. They bloomed once they reached an average flower’s height, and two deep red roses made themselves known. Their leaves kept sprouting in pairs as their stems grew in height and width, and the heads swelled to the size of dinner plates as their stems arched up and over Cobalt’s form. There were a few seconds of silence as the roses seemed to study the half-elf and assess their situation, hovering quietly and casting long shadows as the remaining light from the sky faded into a dim sunset. Golden hour disappeared, taking the serene metallic glow with it, as the roses suddenly sprouted two extra arm-like stems, each with a massive rose of their own. The roses bloomed, red as fresh blood, and with a sound like fabric being ripped apart, thorns broke through their stems as they settled on how exactly they would solve this problem.

xxx

It was at least another minute before Cobalt snapped himself out of whatever trance he was in. Toby watched a myriad of emotions play out on his face, his eyes widening occasionally when he would see an expression he wasn’t familiar with. Cobalt blinked, slowly at first, before turning his head in Toby’s direction.

The druid cocked his head, his question obvious but unspoken.

Cobalt nodded, and ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah. I’m okay.” He slid his glasses off and wiped them down on his shirt, then considered replacing them, but decided instead to fold them and let them hang on his collar. “I just . . . remembered something that I hadn’t thought about in a while.”

Toby watched him as he wandered over to the bar, bracing his elbows on the counter as he leaned against it. “Was it something good?”

Cobalt pursed his lips thoughtfully. “I’m . . . not sure, actually.”

He didn’t elaborate further. Toby didn’t expect him to. He wondered what people typically did in moments like these, when there wasn't an ever-present threat of death or harm. The only times he’d known that could even marginally compare were peaceful moments around campfires, and even those were painfully rare. There would be a few days sprinkled throughout their time together where no one was upset, or tense, or bleeding out, and it was just the five of them talking and laughing like they weren’t on a mission that would likely end up costing them everything. Of course, after those moments passed, Toby frequently went straight to bed, as his head would hurt something awful every single time, but he was not keen on the idea of ruining those moments as there weren’t many of them to have.

He could try saying something, but he didn’t know what. He figured people would recall something amusing that happened as a way to lighten the mood, or share something private that would make the other feel less alone. But he didn’t have either of those to offer. His mind was generally as empty as this inn felt -- every memory that might make him feel more human was ripped away from him instantly, making him numb and exhausted. If he allowed himself to admit it, he felt like maybe there was something he was doing that wasn’t quite right, but he wasn’t sure what it was. Every choice he’d ever made since he could last remember being able to make choices was one that he did for someone else. Sure, it would put him in harm’s way most of the time, but it meant that someone else would benefit. He was doing the right thing. He wasn’t hurting anyone.

His brow furrowed. Why did that feel like a lie?

“Were those stairs always there?”

Toby blinked, startled out of his thoughts, and looked in the direction Cobalt indicated. “Uh . . .”

Cobalt pushed himself off of the counter and strolled over to the short flight of stairs that was suddenly at the back of the inn. Toby joined him, and after a single brief look at one another, started to ascend the stairs. There was no handrail, and each step creaked at a volume that wouldn’t have been a problem if there was any other sound in the inn, but they quickly reached the top. There was a short hallway that may have intended to have multiple rooms on either side, but there weren’t any other doors besides the one that greeted them at the very top of the stairs.

Toby realized then what it was that was bothering him so much. This entire inn was abandoned, but not in the sense that there were people here once and it had been neglected for some time. It was abandoned because it was never finished -- every single thing in this inn felt like someone had come along with the intention to make something of the place, and never cared enough to complete the job. He looked over his shoulder and back down the stairs, his eyes landing on one of the chairs that was balancing precariously on three legs. The fourth leg just sat there underneath it, completely intact but not attached to its chair. He looked around at everything else -- those bottles behind the bar had never been labeled because no one had bothered to fill them. The lanterns were never lit because there weren’t any candles inside to light, and there never had been. The tablecloths, the booths, even the floors felt like whomever had built this place just didn’t fucking care.

Toby turned around, slowly, and faced the door again, his head slightly bowed as he tried to come to terms with what he was being presented with. The church, the birdhouse, this inn, even that foggy garden area they had yet to explore . . . this was all him. This was his mind. He made this. He didn’t know how, or why, but it was here.

He shook his head. That didn’t make any sense . He cared about Cobalt. It was one of the only things he was absolutely certain about, even if his mind tried to play tricks on him and his powers fucked with his sense of self. He frowned. That’s probably what it was: another game, another trick, another lie created by whatever this damn curse was doing to him. He could never think properly in the first place, so why should he trust that all of these places were accurately representing how he truly felt? Even if it was the only place with anything substantial inside of this endless void, there was no reason to believe that it was telling the truth. His mind was lying to him. That was the only thing that made sense.

It pissed him off.

Cobalt watched him come to some sort of realization, turn and come to another realization, and his eyebrow quirked when surprise melted into outright anger. He didn’t want another birdhouse situation, so he started to interrupt his train of thought. “Before we start punching things --”

“I’m going in by myself,” Toby said curtly.

The rogue made a face that implied that he thought Toby was joking. The face didn’t last long. “What? No.”

Toby sighed through his nose, his impatience clear on his face. “Cobalt --”

“No.” He crossed his arms, meeting the man’s impatient stare with a somewhat cold one of his own. “You asked me before, and my answer is the same.”

“This is an entirely different situation.”

“Not to me it’s not,” Cobalt said, tapping a gloved finger lightly on his arm, “I’m not letting you do this alone.”

Toby was silent for a moment, and Cobalt started to uncross his arms and say something else, but then Toby said, “You don’t trust me, right?”

The elf’s brow arched again. “I don’t trust you to not get yourself hurt or lost while we’re here, no.”

Toby might have smiled a little at that. It was hard to tell. He didn’t say anything for another moment, and then, “that probably won’t change.”

Cobalt gave him a puzzled look. “What do you m-”

Toby flung the door open and darted inside. Cobalt jumped and reached out to grab him, his hand catching on the sleeve of his hoodie, and pulled him backwards -- but the only thing he ended up with was the hoodie. Somehow he’d managed to slip entirely out of it, leaving Cobalt alone in the hallway, the bright blue clothing hanging uselessly from his hand. He got over his surprise in a second, chucking the hoodie aside and going for the door. He twisted the knob, but it didn’t budge, like it was stuck. There was no lock to pick on the door, and no matter how many times he tried throwing his weight against it, the deceptively flimsy-looking thing stayed firmly in place. When he thought he’d maybe made a splinter in its wood, it would fuse back with the rest of the door, undoing any damage he tried to inflict. And, of course, his fist banging on the door and repeated calls were unanswered, left to echo throughout the rest of the inn.

“Son of a --” Cobalt plopped down on the stairs, grabbed a fistful of his shirt, and brought it to his face. He let out a frustrated groan that crescendoed until he stopped abruptly, letting the sound disappear into the undisturbed gray of the inn, before he sighed, and allowed the shirt to fall. He folded his hands and braced his forehead against it, closing his eyes and letting out another forcefully patient breath. He kept attaching himself to the most frustrating people.

At this point, he had no idea what to do. He was at just as much of a loss as he was in the birdhouse, but at least that didn’t have another room that he wasn’t allowed to enter. He could keep the man in his line of sight, at least know where he was and what he was doing, just in case he needed to intervene. Here, he wasn’t in control of anything. His actions had no effect, he couldn’t prevent Toby from getting hurt, he couldn’t do a damn thing. And now, Toby was somewhere inside that room doing gods knows what, and there was no guarantee he’d come out. Hell, there wasn’t a guarantee that what was behind that door was actually a room. What if it just swallowed him whole? What if there was something waiting to attack him? What if --

Cobalt forced the thoughts away. He knew he’d drive himself crazy if he kept thinking like that, but he couldn’t help it. The last time Toby was alone, truly alone, Strahd nearly killed him. Cobalt didn’t know what he would’ve done if he had followed through with it.

He found himself wishing Bailey was here, a voice of reason and relative calm for situations like these. The cat had an incredible amount of level-headedness, despite the circumstances. Hell, he’d even take Pip at this point, though he wasn’t entirely sure what the bird’s whole “Sylvanus’s chosen ones” deal was. Thinking about them allowed him to relax a bit, and he silently hoped that they were okay.

xxx

Cobalt might have gotten his answer had he not been under the sleep spell that currently had his real body rooted to the ground, but he was still fast asleep, as were the others. Normally, the half-elf slept lightly, since his body and mind were always at least semi-alert in case he needed to address sudden dangers. Under those conditions, the giant roses above his prone form relentlessly tearing at the shield protecting him would’ve woken him up instantly.

But these were not normal conditions, and so, while aforementioned roses used their dagger-like thorns to slowly but successfully break down Cobalt’s protection, he stayed peacefully unconscious. The roses sunk their thorns into the shield, having a much easier time penetrating it than the vines or mushrooms had, and pulled. It glowed blue and rippled with the initial contact, then started to fracture, like sheets of ice splitting apart.

The vines and mushrooms took the opportunity, sprouting and growing through the holes created by the roses, and began to tug Cobalt down into the dirt.

xxx

Toby could not believe that worked. He hadn’t had a time to confirm if this would be successful, but he’d considered silently requesting that whatever magic was holding onto his mind separate the two of them, if only for a moment, just to see what would happen. He couldn’t really control anything here, but he wondered if requesting something the magic was already trying to do would make it happen more efficiently. He had thought that there would be a point where he’d need to do something by himself in order to get the answers he wanted, and here he was.

Cobalt would be pissed with him.

Toby sighed. What else was new, really? He was impulsive and a pain in the ass, and he knew he should give the rogue a break. But he needed to figure this out, and he had a feeling that he needed to do one of these on his own so he could really understand what was going on.

Cobalt would be really upset, though. Toby resolved to beg for his forgiveness later, and maybe find a new shiny stabby thing to give him. There was an overpriced one he noticed Cobalt sneaking glances at in a suspicious-looking shop they passed earlier, run by an equally untrustworthy manager. Toby considered it for a moment. That wouldn’t be too hard to steal.

Toby forced his attention to go back to the situation at hand. He pushed himself off the door and took a step into the room. It looked exactly like an inn bedroom would: a chair, small table, a lantern, a dresser, and a bed for maybe two people. But this room . . . Toby walked over to the bed, pressed a hand down into the mattress. His eyes widened. It was so soft. “Holy shit,” he breathed, pressing both hands down and marvelling at the unexpected comfort the mattress provided. He lifted his hands, and his jaw slackened when the dent he made took a minute to go back to normal. He lifted the sheet off of it -- also incredibly soft, almost like one of Cobalt’s shirts -- and pressed a hand into the bare mattress. He grinned at the way the foam remembered the shape of his hand for several seconds before it inflated and disappeared.

He sat on the bed, letting out a content sigh at how comfortable it was, and looked at the other things on it. He grabbed the pillow, gasping at how cool it felt, and how it rivaled the comfort of the mattress itself. The blanket, tossed casually across the foot of the bed, was knit with yarn that Toby was certain was made of a cotton he had never seen before. He pulled it up and around his shoulders, like a cape, and flopped down onto the bed. It smelled like a mix of honey and vanilla, and he took a second to marvel at how drastically different this was from the cold, unwelcoming feel of the inn downstairs.

His mind once again flashed to Cobalt, left outside to sit in the dreadful emptiness beyond this room with no idea if he was okay or not. He frowned. He was certain Cobalt wouldn’t have let him do this by himself, even though he felt like he needed to, but maybe he should’ve . . . he sighed. Cobalt was right. They needed to get the hell out of here.

Toby pushed himself off of the bed, immediately missing its comfort, and assessed the room again. There was a chair -- upholstered in what Toby could only guess was the softest fabric he’d ever have the chance of feeling -- and a small table. Toby squinted, and went over to the table. There was a piece of paper on top of it, and an envelope. The paper had writing on it, but there was no pencil, and it was just scribbled gibberish. Toby frowned. That was weird.

He did run his hand over the fabric of the chair, just to confirm his suspicion, before going to the dresser. He opened all of the drawers: there were folded clothes, all way too big for him, and extra blankets and sheets for the bed. His entire exploration of the room left him endlessly stunned: everything in here was so soft, so warm, so strangely welcoming that Toby momentarily forgot where he was. A room like this shouldn’t be inside of a place so inhospitable, and yet, here it was.

Toby turned, looking at the chair, and then the bed again. He blinked, walking over and picking up a teddy bear that had suddenly appeared. He was sure it hadn’t been there before. The bear was plush, but clearly well-loved. It felt like it had been re-stuffed in some places, and stitching that contrasted with its original thread confirmed that someone had carefully sewn stuffing back into the bear where it started to sag. One of its button eyes was loose, and there was a patterned patch on its stomach. The bear’s stitched nose and upturned mouth smiled quietly at him. Toby smiled back.

The bear felt familiar somehow, like he had seen it before, but he placed it down, and decided to focus on getting out of here. He should at least tell Cobalt he’s okay, even though he still wanted to sort things out on his own. He went over to the door and twisted the knob -- nothing. Toby twisted it with all his might, yanked on it, and tried breaking it off, but everything in here was way too soft to cause any damage and the door remained stubbornly shut. He put his hands on his hips with a huff. That just wouldn’t do.

He tried knocking on the door and seeing if Cobalt could hear him on the other side, but either the rogue had left, was ignoring him, or couldn’t hear a thing. He left all three as possibilities in his mind, justifying any of the options considering how much he felt like an asshole for what he did, and turned on his heel to find something else that would get him out of this room.

He walked over to the table again, trying and failing to ignore how plush the rug on the floor was, and looked it over to see if there were any drawers. There was one, and he slid it open. “Huh,” he said quietly. There were paints in here, and a small paintbrush.

He picked up the paints. There was green, white, yellow, and red. He looked around for more paper to paint on, or a canvas, but there was none. Strangely enough, they were all used, and the brush tip was stained with pigment. Toby shrugged, and put them in his pocket.

He heard a voice behind him, and his head whipped around. Three figures stood behind him, all talking to each other. Toby stumbled backwards, nearly tripping over the chair in his shock. “Co . . . balt . . .?” He stared at them for a moment, though they didn’t seem to notice him. “Bailey?” He whispered, completely bewildered. “Pip?”

They were here. They were here . He didn’t know how, or when it happened, but somehow they were here and the relief and happiness that swelled in his chest was unfamiliar but not unwelcome. He scrambled off the floor, crossing the room in seconds so he could reach out and --

He stopped, his hand hovering hesitantly in front of him. He could have sworn that it only took that many steps to get from where he was to the other side of the small bedroom, but they hovered just out of reach. And they still didn’t seem to notice he was there. He stretched his arm forward, and the figures that he was so certain were his friends seemed to back away from him. He took another step, reaching further, but the faster he moved towards them, the faster they moved away, until it seemed like he was walking down an endless hallway trying to catch up with them.

It was like they were avoiding him.

And they were talking about something, something he couldn’t quite catch. He put his hand down, and just watched, the earlier feeling of joy quickly dissolving into confusion. He stared at them, the way they stood, the way they spoke to each other, and he racked his brain for where he’d seen this exact scene before. Cobalt’s back was against the door, hands curled protectively over one another and held to his chest. Bailey was trying to get him to do something, trying to reassure him with his outstretched, clawless paws. Pip had a wing out in a similar fashion, and would occasionally pipe up with something else comforting as they both carefully urged Cobalt to come towards them.

Or . . . no, that wasn’t quite right. Toby moved towards the bed, bracing a hand against it as he watched the scene intently. His heart raced, the pounding of it loud in his own ears as the feeling of this memory took hold, even though he couldn’t quite place exactly what it was. He didn’t know what they were saying, but gods, he knew he saw this happen firsthand. He didn’t know what it was though, his mind was so clouded, so jumbled with fractured memories and pain that he never found it easy to recall anything.

And then, Cobalt reached out his hand.

Oh. Oh.

The grief hit Toby all at once, slamming into him like he ran straight into a brick wall, and he grabbed his chest, struggling to hold himself upright against the bed. His breathing came in ragged, hoarse gasps as he fought back the violent urge to sob and forced himself to look up. Tears pricked his eyes as Pip waved his little wings over Cobalt’s hand, and then carefully slid his ring off.

There it was again, that feeling like he could do nothing but watch as someone he cared about died. He had suppressed this memory, this feeling for so long that he thought he had successfully buried it deep enough that he wouldn’t have to feel it ever again. And here it was, tucked so carefully inside the recesses of his mind, just waiting for him to remember it.

He’s dead, his mind screamed at him. He’s dead he’s dead he’s dead he’s --

Toby clamped his hands over his mouth as tears flowed freely down his face. He tried to breathe, tried to calm himself down because this wasn’t real, this wasn’t real , but it was too strong, too sudden, and he had done the stupid thing of coming in here by himself so he didn’t have anyone or anything to hold on to. He was all alone, they had left him, he had left him --

When he could finally lift his head again, he saw Pip giving the ring back to Cobalt, who held it tightly in his hand for a moment before turning to look directly at Toby.

The man gasped, scrambling backwards on the floor as his heart thudded in his chest. He couldn’t clearly see Cobalt’s face before, but when he turned, his face was gone, and only a skull remained. Toby was so overcome with grief and horror that he couldn’t move, even as the now-deceased Cobalt slowly walked over to him. This one didn’t avoid him, didn’t back away from him as the others had, and crouched down in front of his shaking, panicked body.

Toby’s eyes darted to the space behind the skeleton, but Bailey and Pip were gone, leaving him alone with . . . he looked at the skeleton’s eyeless sockets again, the way its teeth were spread in a permanent, lifeless grin. It reached out a bony hand towards Toby’s face, and Toby could do nothing but watch as it gently placed its hand on his cheek. The hand didn’t feel solid, more like a cold breeze, and only now did Toby realize that the skeleton was slightly transparent. It ran a freezing thumb over the bottom of the druid’s lip and across his cheek and whispered in a voice as chilling as the rest of its body, “I will never leave you.”

Somehow that snapped him out of it. Toby gritted his teeth, and despite the tears staining his face and pricking at his eyes, he launched himself off of the wall and through the skeleton’s ghostly form. The feeling that overcame him was like he was kissed by death itself, but he only gasped and stumbled for a second before he darted for the door.

xxx

Cobalt paced back and forth for maybe half a minute before he decided that he was bored. Waiting out here would do absolutely nothing to quiet his mind, and he couldn’t get into that room no matter how hard he tried, so he needed something else.

He stopped. Was he going to rip that little man to shreds if -- when , he chastised himself -- he came out? Absolutely. Did this kind of impulsive decision make sense, based on everything he’d learned about Toby’s amnesiac version? Also yes. Did it still hurt?

He didn’t answer that, instead going down the stairs to see if he could figure anything else out. Maybe there was another door he could use, and that one was just for Toby. Maybe he didn’t do it intentionally, and this place had taken his request literally and surprised the both of them. Cobalt frowned. That wasn’t likely. Toby wasn’t stupid.

He reached the bottom of the stairs and stopped short, his eyes darting around at the new sight that greeted him. He suddenly wasn’t alone. There were dozens of . . . him? Walking around the inn.

Cobalt slowly looked around, his shoulders relaxing a bit when he quickly realized that this was just how Toby’s memories manifested. They weren’t solid: every single version of him was slightly transparent, walking through tables like they weren’t even there. One of them even walked right through him, and he shuddered.

He wandered around a bit, looking at all of the different things Toby remembered about him. He let out a low whistle. This place was crowded . He could barely differentiate which memory was which, so he found a place in a corner to sit and watch.

Even though they tended to overlap, he could recognize a few of the memories that played out. There he was, sitting backwards on a chair, fast asleep. And across the room, he was dragging Toby away from that nasty old woman who had caused this mess in the first place. Cobalt snorted, a small smile tugging at his lips at the way Toby seemed to fixate on the way he told him no. In another area was the time when Cobalt had held on to him to keep him from running away after he made the short-sighted decision to get his letter from Bly. The rogue’s teeth were a little bared as he snapped at both Bly and Bailey, a reaction that had scared him, but seemed to . . . have an opposite effect on Toby. Cobalt’s head tilted as he watched, the memory somehow feeling safer and much kinder than he remembered it.

Huh. He got up, then, wandering around the edges of the room to watch some of the other memories. A lot of them weren’t any significant things, just things that Toby had noticed. Cobalt’s eyes widened as his face reddened. Toby noticed a lot more than the half-elf gave him credit for. There were numerous moments where it was just Cobalt doing little things: brushing his hair out of his face, taking his gloves off and flexing his fingers, cleaning his glasses, smiling -- that one was rare, but even the slight smirks were stored somewhere in here -- tying his little ponytail, fidgeting with a knife. There were so many of him in here.

Despite that, though, he realized just how many memories were missing. Toby of course didn’t remember the first time they put the rings on, or when Cobalt passed out in front of his door, or the bandana he gave him, or when Cobalt hugged him -- gods, he missed the version of Toby that missed him just as much -- or the time he tried to calm the druid down after Strahd nearly ripped him apart, or when Oz stabbed him, or . . .

Cobalt sighed. He wasn’t sure if Toby even wanted to remember it. He seemed to be making an effort to remember things slowly when they were around fires, or on walks and reminiscing, but any time there was a chance for him to get them all back, he’d sacrifice it for the sake of something like saving Ireena or helping Olive or getting more information on how to kill Heron or whatever other noble and valiant effort he was attempting to make to help his friends. He supposed he should be grateful, in some sense, that someone was willing to endure that pain and give up that much in order to help other people, but Cobalt wished he’d just be fucking selfish for once.

He wandered back towards the base of the stairs, looking up at the still-closed bedroom door. Next time they got an opportunity like that, he wasn’t allowing Toby to turn it down, no matter what the circumstances were. He was going to get his damn druid back.

As if he summoned the man, Toby burst through the doors and nearly flew down the stairs, barreling into Cobalt and knocking both of them to the ground. Toby’s glasses had flown off his face, and all Cobalt could see was his tear-streaked and terrified face before the man shoved him down and stumbled towards the door.

Cobalt only glanced at the open bedroom door for a moment before immediately running after Toby. He caught him just before he got to the door, holding him in place. “What happened? Are you okay, what’s going on?”

Toby looked so, so scared, and Christ, he couldn’t seem to stop the tears from falling from his face. He kept whispering “no” over and over again, and nothing Cobalt said got him to stop. Cobalt reached towards him to try and wipe his face so he could calm him down, but Toby flinched violently away from him, and his frightened eyes darted around the room. Whatever he saw behind Cobalt seemed to make the situation infinitely worse, and he wrenched himself away from Cobalt and threw himself out the door.

Cobalt turned, looking at all of the other Cobalts. They had all stopped and turned to look at the two of them, which the rogue supposed was freaky enough, but . . . Cobalt straightened. If he guessed right, Toby would be back to normal as soon as he opened that door. He wanted to know what happened, but probably wouldn’t get that answer anytime soon. He let out a breath, then walked out of the inn.

xxx

Cobalt’s body was much further under the dirt than both Bailey and Pip’s had been. His body was more than half buried as the roses used their thorny stems to hold off the barrier that had been cast around Cobalt’s body. Mushrooms and vines worked in tandem to pull Cobalt under, his body descending quickly. Poppies and lavender crowded around his body, the area looking more like a mini garden than just a random smattering of wildflowers, as they added to the spell keeping him asleep.

And then, the barrier rippled and slammed back together, cutting off one of the rose’s heads with the force of it. The roses reeled back violently, stunned by the sudden and violent disturbance to their progress, and flung their arms down towards the shield with renewed vengeance. The mushrooms and vines inside of the shield shriveled into brown corpses, crumbling into a dust indistinguishable from the dirt they sprouted from. The roses brought their thorns down over and over, hitting the shield with everything they had, but it stayed completely intact. Ripping sounds resonated as the roses forced double the amount of thorns to explode from their stems, and scratched in a frenzy at the shield, which didn’t do so much as crack.

And then, the vine connecting Cobalt to Toby faded as life drained from it, and the roses stopped, like animatronics that ran out of power. They wilted, shriveling and dulling to a faded red and green, before flopping flat on the ground. Everything went quiet again, and the sky turned completely black.

Chapter Text

Honestly, he should’ve known better. This place was unpredictable, and had yet to reveal any sort of pattern or logic as to how things worked so they could figure out how they were going to leave. Every time he thought he knew what was happening, whatever was in control of Toby’s mind threw him a massive curveball that knocked him so far off-kilter that he had no idea what to do next. It was disorienting and disarming, which frightened him the most -- the temptation to just let things run its course, to simply let things happen without interference, was incredibly strong here. Cobalt didn’t realize it before, but there was a part of him that was actively and consciously fighting to keep his wits about him, to not succumb to the will of the entity in charge.

He had a feeling that that’s what was happening to Toby -- the man was exploring this part of his mind completely unguarded, wandering through every scenario as if he’s a passive observer in a museum. There were only glimpses of when he would remember that he was still in control of himself, but by those times he was already overreacting, unable to tamper the violent outbursts of emotions that he’s had in every building they entered.

Cobalt looked over at the birdhouse from where he stood, just inside of the inn’s front door. The other Cobalts had disappeared, fading the same way the music and laughter had when Toby rushed out of the building. The birdhouse was still the same shade of cheerful orange and yellow that it had been this entire time, but now that cheer seemed unrealistic. No one would look at a house like that and accurately picture the kind of emotion it wrenched out of the man. Cobalt frowned at it, and let his eyes slide over to the church.

This building, at least, didn’t hide a thing. The church was continuing to crumble, and Cobalt watched as a small piece of stone slid off of a badly angled part of the roof and fell to the ground. The church was a haphazard mix of reverence and ruin, with some of its more recognizable parts still mostly intact, while other parts of the building were only skeletons of what they once were. Metal bars jutted out of stone, the supports rusted over so badly that they cracked and split in ways metal never should. The stone was dirty and covered in lichen, discoloring the rock that Cobalt guessed was a light gray before, and slathering it with varying shades of green and brown. The place was, quite frankly, a mess. And yet, something about its stature remained in place -- it still took up so much space on the ground around it, looming over anyone who stood in front of it in a way that demanded attention, despite its gradual decay and eventual demise. The church forced anyone beholding it to watch as it fell apart, and at the moment, its only audience seemed to be the druid kneeling in the dirt.

Cobalt let himself look at Toby, then. It had only been a couple of months, and yet, he had been through an impossible number of things with the man. Granted, that was generally the case when you traveled on a journey to who-knows-what end with a party of four, but he’d had unimaginable scenarios with each of them. And now, by some bizarre twist of magic, he was currently stuck inside of said man’s mind.

The half-elf looked away from him. He wasn’t sure he was ready to go up to Toby and see an expression completely devoid of anything he had just felt, instead only showing a general happiness to see his friend. Cobalt shook himself out of his thoughts. He didn’t like the way his mind stumbled over that word.

He shoved his hands in his pockets, if even to physically force some level of composure to remain as he approached Toby from behind. The druid was slouched a bit as he faced the church, nothing about him moving besides his shoulders, which rose and fell just slightly as he breathed. He didn’t seem to register Cobalt coming to a stop, even though he was intentionally being loud enough to hear so he didn’t risk scaring the man.

Cobalt cocked his head. “Hey.”

He braced himself for the quick turn of Toby’s head, followed by the slightest smile and the silent “yes?” that he usually communicated with his eyes rather than words. He confirmed that he definitely wasn't prepared to not see anything left of the man's frightened, tear-stained face, as if it had never happened, but he found that he didn’t need to prepare for anything. Toby didn’t react at all.

Cobalt tried again, a little louder this time, but when that was met without even the slightest bit of acknowledgement, he crouched down, putting a hand on Toby’s shoulder and shaking him a little. He came around to position himself in front of him, ask him why the hell he was ignoring him all of the sudden, and froze.

Toby was completely unresponsive -- it looked like someone had found a switch somewhere on him and turned it off. His head was bowed, lips parted just slightly as if he didn’t have enough consciousness to close them. Cobalt’s mouth tightened, and he placed two of his fingers under Toby’s chin, pushing his head up so he could get a better look at his face.

The druid’s eyes were unfocused, as if the dismal gray from the inn had seeped into his bones and begun to pilot his body. Cobalt searched them for anything familiar: the warm brown that was always just a little sad, like the last few leaves to fall from a tree right before winter hit; or the tiny gleam that popped up whenever he was looking at something or someone he liked. He let out a slow breath. Zero for two on that one.

Something Cobalt couldn’t quite place nagged at him as he tore his gaze from the man’s face and looked around. This one was different. It was always something different , something odd or out of place when Cobalt was involved, and he never knew why. His eyes narrowed as he studied each of the buildings in turn: the church made Toby fearful, the birdhouse made him angry, and the inn made him cry. But the other two places reset him once he exited, forcing his mood to shift back to an unbothered calm that Cobalt had expected to see here.

But this . . . the rogue looked at him again. He hadn’t let go of his chin, refused to let it fall, but Toby was still somewhere he couldn’t reach. There was nothing on his face, and it was the strangest feeling, like Cobalt had seen this somewhere before. Toby’s vacant expression left a yawning pit of dread in his gut, and he knew for a fact that his heart recognized something his head had not yet come to terms with.

Toby made the smallest sound, so small that if this place hadn’t been as quiet as it was, Cobalt might’ve missed it. The rogue would’ve bet everything he had that he’d just heard the man ask for help.

It hit him then, why this was so familiar -- this was the exact same look Toby had for just a moment right after his memory was wiped for the first time. Cobalt had been the first to check if he was okay, followed seconds after by a very worried Bailey, but only he had seen the complete emptiness on the druid’s face before he blinked, and it morphed into confusion. It disappeared so quickly, but Cobalt would never, ever forget that look.

His eyes narrowed as he flexed his jaw, irritation rising as he repositioned himself so he was sitting instead of crouching. Something about the way Toby’s head drooped without support unnerved him -- too close to death, he supposed -- so Cobalt slid his fingers over to his cheek so he was cradling his face instead of just lifting his chin.

The rogue redirected his gaze towards the decaying mess of a forest surrounding them, and the light that was creeping ever closer. He didn’t even bother hiding his resentment as he scanned the trees, puzzle pieces fitting together in his mind as he figured out one thing that was happening here. Cobalt made sure he was loud enough to be heard by anything and everything that he knew was listening: “give him back.”

Silence. It was not unlike the quiet that had been around them this entire time, but Cobalt kept his eyes on the trees. He was more than certain that something about the forest stilled.

He spoke again, keeping his tone even and firm. “You took too much. Give him back .”

Cobalt waited, and watched, as the forest quieted even further. Wood stopped rotting, and leaves didn’t so much as twitch as the two of them played a game of who could hold out the longest. The forest, even inside of Toby’s mind, was a patient thing. Nature herself was patient, allowing decades or even centuries to pass as change gradually took hold.

But Cobalt had trained patience. He had the kind of patience that let him forget about everything except the target he was waiting for: there was no regard for any pain he felt from holding a single position for too long, no thought about food or water regardless of how badly he may need it, no consideration for any external distractions that would take him away from the one thing he was assigned to do. He’d waited through hours, even days, of torture by Heron, before he was allowed to see sunlight again. He’d stayed up almost an entire night waiting for this one particular man to come back to their shared room after there was no sign of him for hours, and he’d been waiting weeks at this point for a way to restore the memories he decided to give up in an effort to keep his friends from getting killed. He knew it wasn’t the same as the amount of time a bunch of centuries-old trees could wait, but if Toby’s life was on the line, and if it was just a matter of staring down a damn forest to change that, then Cobalt wouldn’t even blink .

He had no idea how much time had passed. He didn’t care. All he knew was that the forest relented, as if somewhat impressed by the half-elf’s tenacity. It started moving again all at once, like it was releasing a soft exhale, and the light resumed its gradual pace. Cobalt kept his eyes on it. He would make this forest give him what he wanted, even if he had to --

Toby’s head shifted in his hand, and the rogue’s attention snapped to him like a whip. Toby blinked once, slowly, and lifted his eyes to Cobalt’s face. Cobalt nearly sagged with relief when he noted the color had returned to them, and that spark of recognition returned, though it was much more faint than usual.

Cobalt didn’t move his hand until he was certain Toby could hold his head up on his own. And then . . . he still didn’t move it. “You okay?”

Toby just stared at him for a moment, as if he was still piecing together where he was and what was happening. “I’m . . . I’m so tired . . .”

His eyes softened -- it felt good to do so, since he’d held the vexed expression on his face for so long -- and he finally let his hand fall to his lap. “I bet.” Cobalt studied him, waiting patiently for him to regain his bearings and sit up straight again, before continuing: “do you remember where you are?”

Toby’s face scrunched in mild pain for a second before it disappeared. “Yes.”

Cobalt frowned a bit, and asked him another question. “Do you remember what happened?”

No pain this time. “I was . . . running.” He was silent for several beats, and then his eyes found Cobalt’s again. “And . . . now I’m here.”

That’s a no, then, Cobalt thought. At least that was consistent. He decided not to ask anything else, and stood up before extending a hand to help the druid up. Toby took it after a second and stood with much less grace than Cobalt had, which made him smirk.

He watched Toby’s awareness slowly return to him, and then slid his gaze down to their hands. They were holding hands. Again. Cobalt had no idea why that seemed to be a pattern with them, but he wasn’t complaining. He did, however, gradually loosen his grip on Toby’s hand as a subtle implication that the druid could let go whenever he wanted. Cobalt completely shoved down the unwarranted feeling in his chest when Toby didn’t, and tightened his grip again. They were going to get out of here somehow.

The two of them slowed to a stop upon reaching the outside of the gate. Dense fog continued to curl around the iron bars, pooling at their feet with a slight chill they could feel through their clothes. The metal was black as tar, and twisted around each other as if someone had forced the gate to exist by bending the bars with their bare hands. They were oddly asymmetrical, though it was clear the gate doors were a pair. The fence posts were straight as arrows, though, jutting up out of the ground with sharpened fleur-de-lis points on the ends. The iron here wasn’t old -- in fact, it looked like someone could’ve crafted these recently, no more than a week or so ago.

Cobalt noticed with no small amount of displeasure that the light had already eaten away at the back end of the fence. There was no sign of the light interfering with the other buildings, and he noticed that this area was further back than the others, so the light would’ve reached it first anyway.

He looked at Toby, whose attention was set firmly on the shape of the gates. He wondered what was going on in that little analytical mind of his, if anything at all considering what he’d just been through, but then Toby spoke.

“It’s a graveyard,” he said quietly, his head finally moving to look around at the fence posts and the dense fog. “I wasn’t . . . sure of it before, but . . .” he frowned as he tightened his grip on Cobalt’s hand, “I can . . . feel it, somehow.”

The half-elf reflexively gave his hand a brief squeeze. When Toby didn’t say anything more, Cobalt led him forward and pushed the gates open.

xxx

Nighttime in Barovia was indicated solely by the pitch-black sky, completely devoid of a moon or stars. The endless darkness stretched over the entire plane, only interrupted by campfires, lanterns, or magic sources of illumination. Light in Barovia during the evening served two purposes: it made it easier to keep watch and make out the surrounding area, and it reduced the chances of being attacked at random by creatures that preferred the cover of darkness to hunt.

The sleeping party had no light.

It didn’t take long for them to be found by something that saw four prone, defenseless bodies lying together, and decided that it wouldn’t have to try very hard to get dinner tonight. It stalked towards the group, its body causing nearby foliage to rustle only slightly as it carefully picked its way through the brush, and kept sharpened yellow eyes on every sleeping target that it had claimed as today’s prey.

The creature tiptoed closer, pausing momentarily to scan the trees lining this small clearing and ensure that it too was not being watched. When it found nothing of concern, the creature stepped into the open space and took its place in the center of it, looking at all of its options.

It had been alive for quite some time, and was used to the occasional oddity in a place like this, but this . . . this was new. The creature cocked its head as it stared, taking in the tangled mess of vines that enveloped each one of them. The vines looked old: they were dull and brown, and there were gaps in whatever shell it was trying to make over its captors that allowed the creature to easily see what was inside. It peered into one of the gaps, eyes narrowing slightly when it saw an Aaracokra. Like it thought, the bird was fast asleep, seemingly completely unaware of its surroundings or the present danger it was in. The creature appreciated an easy target from time to time.

It looked down at the ground surrounding these vines, raising a furry eyebrow at how many other dying plants there were. Poppies, lavender, and dozens of mushrooms were wilted and drooping around every single one of these cage-like structures. It leaned its massive head forward and took a precautionary sniff of the vines. They smelled like regular plants.

It walked over to another one, stifling a yelp when it stepped on a thorn. It lifted its paw, shaking the thorn free before poking its head inside of the vines to see what kind of creature waited for it in here. It blinked, taking in the much taller form of an elf, also completely unconscious as his chest softly rose and fell. Strange , it thought, before redirecting its attention to what exactly it had stepped on that had so easily impaled the hard-worn pads on its paw. It nudged the oversized stem of a massive dead rose, careful not to cut itself again on any of its thorns, which were easily the size of one of its own claws.

The creature stepped back with a frown. It looked around again, checking periodically to ensure that it was alone, and when satisfied, moved to the last two cages. The next one it inspected was similar to the one with the bird, except there was no bird in this one. Instead, it housed a very large -- though rather short -- cat. The creature’s eyes glinted with delight. It hadn’t had a feline meal in a long time: they were notoriously difficult to catch and put up such a fight that it wasn’t worth it most of the time. But on the few occasions it was able to enjoy one, it savored every last bite. The creature’s mouth split into a satisfied grin, one that was crooked and had one or two teeth missing, and turned to the cage next to the cat. It would definitely start with that one.

The first thing it noticed was that this last cage was much smaller than the others, and completely intact. This one, though just as brown and old as the others, wrapped around its subject more like a blanket. It didn’t take long for it to realize why: this one held on to a girl, so small that she couldn’t have been older than . . . 10? Maybe? It could only see her back from where it was standing, so it stepped over her to get a better look at her face.

It blinked. It was wrong, the girl was small, but her face depicted an experience beyond what a little girl should’ve had to go through. Her hair was unevenly cut, there were bags forming under her eyes, and her skin was a little pale. No, this girl had to be at least 15 by the appearance of her face alone. The creature straightened and studied the girl: the blanket of vines wrapping around her were definitely more protective than restrictive, compared to the way the other vines were clearly attempting to completely overwhelm those inside, and she seemed to be in the kind of sleep that the creature could only guess someone of her age desperately needed.

But the creature had no reason to care about that. It smiled widely, the milky whites of its eyes practically shining in the darkness. That would only make her easier to eat.

xxx

Unlike the other buildings, the graveyard was completely open to the rest of the space, and when they turned, the other three were still visible. The fog was heavy and cold, and they could feel the dampness of it seep through their clothes, but it barely reached past the lower half of Cobalt’s body. Though the ground was obscured, it was easy for both of them to see everything else.

The graveyard was small, and awkwardly close to the inn. Cobalt had found it strange when he first entered the space: the birdhouse, inn, and church were equally spaced apart around them. But instead of the last structure being directly across from the birdhouse, the logical conclusion, the graveyard was several feet to the right of where it should have been. It was as if it had been shoved over to make way for something else . . . but there was nothing in its place. The lot was just a completely vacant area that had a darker square of dirt implying that the graveyard probably sat there at some point.

Cobalt looked at the back end of the fence, which was slowly disappearing as the ring of light crept closer. He’d also noted that it was moved back, its entrance significantly further away from the other buildings. It almost felt like whatever was controlling this part of Toby’s mind was trying to force the graveyard out, and hadn’t been successful before they’d arrived.

He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

The man of the hour was still holding his hand, though his attention was focused on the ground. He kicked at the air occasionally, making the fog dissipate briefly before it covered the ground again. Cobalt turned when Toby pulled his hand away for a moment to remove his hoodie. Before he could ask what he was doing, Toby fanned the air a few times, and the fog around them disappeared for several moments before curling back in on itself.

It mostly revealed unkempt, weed-ridden grass and dirt, but Cobalt noticed the edge of something wooden before it disappeared again. He turned and started towards it. “What’s th-”

Toby blinked several times when Cobalt tripped over something in the fog and nearly toppled the both of them over. He held his hands up to attempt to brace the equally startled elf, who apologized profusely as he tried to right himself as quickly as he could. The entire thing was so unlike Cobalt and yet so like him at the same time, and Toby tried to bite back a grin. It was unsuccessful immediately upon realizing that the tips of Cobalt’s ears had reddened significantly, even as he tried to keep a straight face.

Cobalt’s eyes narrowed as he caught Toby’s grin as it slipped onto his face, but the mild annoyance on the rogue’s face only made Toby bite his lip as he tried not to laugh. Cobalt sighed and rolled his eyes, trying to keep up with the irritation he wanted to feel, but he felt a smirk tug at the corners of his mouth. “ Anyway ,” Cobalt said loudly, grinning helplessly when Toby couldn’t hold back his laughter anymore, “what I was trying to say was that there was something over there.”

Toby’s face was still filled with amusement, but he relented and looked in the direction Cobalt indicated. He fanned his hoodie again, revealing more of the edge of what looked to be some sort of wooden box. The druid was about to walk towards it, but paused and turned to Cobalt, holding out a hand.

He considered taking it, but only for a second before he realized Toby was smirking at him. Cobalt crossed his arms with a huff. “Fuck off,” he muttered.

They -- carefully -- made their way over to the box, Toby fanning the area occasionally to clear more and more of the fog. He stopped in front of it, frowning when the fog revealed more of the box they saw.

He was so certain this was some sort of grave, he could feel it. But what he stood in front of was, “. . . a flower bed?”

Cobalt stood next to him, eyebrow lifted as he looked down at what was once probably someone’s labor of love. There was a rectangular wooden box with posts supporting weathered slats on all four sides, and it was nearly completely filled with dirt. There was evidence of a recent attempt at a garden of some kind here, but it was quite dead now. Carcasses of all kinds of flowers littered the top of the dirt; browned and blackened leaves and petals stuck up out of the ground and hung limply off of sagging stems. He couldn’t even begin to tell what kinds of flowers were here, and from the looks of it, the druid couldn’t either.

Toby’s expression was completely puzzled, and he knelt down to get a better look at the dead foliage. He resorted to fanning the air with one hand while he poked around at the flowers, but that limited what he was able to see pretty significantly. Cobalt shook his head, and tugged the hoodie free from Toby’s grip, fanning the air himself so the man could see better.

“It’s so strange,” he was muttering, as if he didn’t realize what Cobalt was doing as he pulled one of the flowers free, “these . . . didn’t die naturally. It’s like . . . something poisoned them. And they . . . collapsed all at once.”

Cobalt didn’t respond, but the way that Toby’s senses were steadily coming back to him was not missed. He considered doing something foolish like silently thanking the forest, but reminded himself that the damn thing was the whole reason Toby was like this in the first place. He kept his sentiments to himself.

The rogue watched as Toby held one of the stems between his fingers. His attention moved to some sort of dark substance that seeped from the end of the stem where Toby had disconnected it from the ground. The stem had ripped apart from its roots, leaving a rough tear instead of a cleaner cut like a healthy stem might. 

Toby watched the substance coat his fingers, then rubbed it between them. “That’s definitely . . . a disease of some kind,” he said quietly, clearly trying to pull information from his fractured memory to figure out what could’ve happened here.

Cobalt let his arms relax. “Might be something that only happens in here,” he suggested.

Toby only hummed, then looked around for something to wipe his hands on. When he didn’t find anything, he quickly swiped his hands on his pants before placing them on his hips. “There was something over there, too,” he said, nodding in the direction that Cobalt’s theatrical display had occurred.

He fanned a couple of times. Another flower bed, though the corpses here looked different. Cobalt wondered if the “dead” Toby had sensed was simply more dead plants, ones that were clearly affected by something separate from the rotting forest on the outside. He looked up. The light had completely eaten away at the back of the fence, and was starting to enter the yard.

Toby shook his head. “I could’ve sworn . . .” he whispered, running gentle fingers over the soil as his brow furrowed. He looked to the side, where there was plenty more of the fog’s secrets to uncover, and continued walking. He paused when Cobalt’s fanning revealed a third flower bed, and then the edge of the yard. It was the same situation here with yet another kind of diseased plant, and Toby drummed his fingers on the edge of the wood as he mulled something over.

Cobalt let the fog fill the space again as he tossed Toby’s hoodie over his shoulder. “What is it?”

The druid’s eyes widened as he seemed to remember that he wasn’t alone. “It’s just . . .” he looked back down at the bed, his hand hovering over the dirt as if he was debating whether or not to touch it again, “I think . . . I’m missing something.”

Before Cobalt could say anything, Toby knelt down again, his much shorter body practically disappearing below the fog. By the time he was able to begin dispersing it, the druid had plunged his forearm into the soil, and rummaged around for . . . actually, Cobalt had no idea what he was looking for, but when Toby’s eyes widened and he yanked his arm up, Cobalt guessed that he’d found it.

There was a momentary look of horror on the man’s face before he let out a long, slow breath, and pushed dirt back into the hole he’d made. He brushed the remaining dirt off of his arm before standing up, and holding his hand out for his hoodie.

Cobalt handed it to him, and watched as Toby walked along the edge of the bed, blowing fog out of the way as he did so, and stopped once he reached the other end. Cobalt eventually followed on the other side.

When he approached, Toby fanned his hoodie again, and the fog revealed a mossy, unmarked headstone. “It was a grave after all,” he said. He made his way over to where he figured the other beds were, and confirmed that all three of them had headstones devoid of names at the opposite end of where they had initially inspected.

Cobalt waited for him to return, deducing for himself that Toby had likely made contact with whomever was buried down there. He wasn’t sure if Toby knew they’d be there or not, but he decided against asking.

Toby came to a stop in front of him, trying to tie his hoodie around his waist, but his hands were still sticky and dirty from the dead plants and soil, so his clothing refused to cooperate. “All of them -- oh my god -- have these tombstones, but -- jesus christ why won’t this damn thing --”

Cobalt watched him struggle with no small amount of entertainment before silently taking it from him again. Toby lifted his arms and continued speaking while Cobalt looped the arms of the hoodie around his waist.

“But they have these little figures on top of them,” Toby finished.

Cobalt tied the knot around his waist before straightening again.

“Thank you. See, look,” Toby directed him to the tombstone that had initially confirmed his suspicion, “there’s a bird on this one.”

Cobalt peered at it as the man fanned some of the fog out of the way. He let out a small “huh” as a tiny stone bird was revealed. In a similar fashion, he was also shown a dragon and an armored knight sitting peacefully atop their respective headstones. All three of them were missing names, though, and Cobalt couldn’t figure out who they might belong to. He thought he knew who the dragon’s headstone was for, but then the bird didn’t make sense. Bly and Pip were still alive, and he didn’t know of any knights. Unless it was Bailey, but he refused to believe the cat had passed on while he was stuck in here. He glanced back at the church and birdhouse, still visible even at this distance, and frowned. No. There was no way.

Before any amount of doubt could sneak into his thoughts, Toby was speaking again. “I guess it makes sense that I can’t really remember who they’re for,” he said, and Cobalt was relieved that he seemed to be back to normal, “but . . .”

A million alarms went off in Cobalt’s head when Toby turned hopeful eyes up to him. As if he had all the answers, could at least make this one area less of a complicated mess like the others were. But Cobalt didn’t have an answer that he was mentally prepared to be right about, should that be the case, so he shook his head. “Sorry, man,” he said, “I don’t know who these belong to either.”

Toby wiped the disappointment off his face as quickly as it had revealed itself. “It’s fine, I’m sure we’ll figure it out eventually.”

Cobalt agreed, though he was more relieved that he didn’t have to think about the dead any more than he usually did.

“I don’t think there’s any more we’ll find in here, so maybe we can . . . start at the church again? Or, I don’t know . . . go over what we already know?” Toby suggested.

Cobalt eyed the light gradually pushing its way into the graveyard. This entire place felt like an escape room, except that if they didn’t figure out how to leave, there was no one outside who could unlock the door, and no button to press for a hint. They could be stuck in here forever, or straight up cease to exist, or have some other horrible permanent end to their time in the real world. He nodded. “Let’s see if there’s anything we can start with based on what we’ve figured out so far.”

They turned towards the gate, and Cobalt put a hand on it to push it open and let Toby through, but the druid stopped. Cobalt looked at him, then up at what his attention had caught on. His eyes widened for a second before narrowing into an irritated glare.

xxx

The creature confirmed for the umpteenth time that it would not be disturbed as it prepared to enjoy a feast that would last it at least several weeks, slowly scanning the surrounding trees and using its superior senses to detect anything that might be watching. Years and years of hunts and fights to keep itself alive had sharpened its hearing, smell, and sight to a fine point, and virtually nothing escaped its careful attention. Its inspection had also revealed a fifth potential prey across from the sleeping ones in front of it, but decided against that one since it was more than certain it was already dead. It had no desire to go after something claimed by nature herself when there were fresher options right here.

It looked over said options before stalking over to the cage with the cat inside. It would thoroughly enjoy devouring this one.

The creature took a large paw and easily tore through the dried vines surrounding its meal. The vines cracked and snapped with one quick swipe, and the creature stuck its head into the gaping hole it created in the tangle of vines. It noticed that the cat was somewhat buried under the soil, but its steady breathing meant that it had not yet died.

Perfect. The creature bit the back of the cat’s shirt, dragging it more into the open with some effort. The creature was large, but the cat was solid . There was plenty of meat on this one, so different from the much slimmer felines the creature was used to encountering, and its eyes gleamed with excitement once it was finally able to pull Bailey’s unconscious body to a spot in the clearing where it could kill him and take its easily won dinner home.

Just as it positioned two sets of jagged teeth around Bailey’s throat, it froze, ears perking up as it felt something disturb its peace. There was only a split second to react, but the creature leapt aside just before something slammed into the ground where it was just crouched. The creature whirled around, braced to attack as it assessed its new and sudden threat.

The massive head of a flytrap shook the dirt off itself as it rose, its eyeless face using some other sense to detect exactly where the creature was poised. While it was not unfamiliar with strange magic and nature acting unpredictably in Barovia, the creature was not used to anything slipping under its radar. Its eyes flicked from the flytrap’s head to its stem, quickly following it to its host, who was not as dead as it had originally thought.

Its eyes narrowed as it assessed the situation. It could have sworn that the figure surrounded by all those plants was an unfortunate body left to become one with nature again, since he was so deeply intertwined with all kinds of roots and branches and showed no signs of breathing or consciousness, but it had no problems admitting that it was wrong every once in a while. The more important thing was that a giant plant had interrupted its dinner.

Its gaze flicked down to the cat. He was still fast asleep, despite the commotion, and the creature noticed him slowly being guided back to where he was originally as the flytrap prepared to strike again. It repeatedly slammed into the ground and snapped needle-like teeth in the air as it attacked, somehow avoiding causing too much damage to the other sleeping figures or their cages. The creature dodged, quickly coming up with a way to get behind the flytrap and go straight for the host. Take that dying human out, and it was certain that it would be able to have its meal in peace.

Seconds later, it was headed straight for the man, and it heard the flytrap scream -- scream? Plants don’t scream -- as it opened its mouth and extended its claws for the kill. And then, another second later, it was stumbling and disoriented, its jaw in intense pain as its vision swam.

The creature lifted its head slowly, forcing itself to focus so it could begin to understand what the hell just happened. Its eyes widened as it saw the man, who was certainly prone just moments before, standing before it with fists clenched at his sides. The creature tasted blood in its mouth a second before clocking the blood on the man’s hand, and it reflexively jumped aside to put some distance between them. Or, it tried to. It was completely tangled in vines, which made its first attempt at freedom futile, but it thrashed violently enough to rip itself free for only a second before it was overwhelmed again and forced to its knees. The creature let out a sound of alarm and rage as the man crouched down, putting his pathetic human hand near its mouth.

Idiot , the creature thought as it snapped its teeth down on the man’s hand. His hand tensed, and the creature was about to yank it off completely before it froze, eyes watering with tears as a noxious gas filled its throat. It yelped, freeing the man’s hand as it coughed and gagged desperately against the sudden poison forced into its body. The man’s wrist dripped with blood, splattering on the creature’s face and neck as it writhed against its green prison.

The man swayed a bit, and the last thing the creature saw was his body slump to the ground before its breath hitched, and everything went black.

xxx

Cobalt wished he was wrong. He wanted to be wrong so damn badly. But they were unmistakably looking at an exact replica of Toby’s childhood home.

They left the graveyard and slowed to a stop in front of it. The townhome looked a lot more lonely than usual without its neighboring houses, but Cobalt was absolutely certain that this was the house that he thought he wouldn’t see again for many more months.

He looked over at Toby after a moment, but the druid didn’t seem to recognize it. Of course he wouldn’t. Cobalt debated over whether or not to tell him, and decided to hold that information for a later time. Maybe the house would tell Toby itself, if given the chance.

“I knew something was supposed to be here,” Toby said decisively, taking a few steps closer to it, “but I thought the graveyard . . . moved or something, not that there was a completely different one that wasn’t here before.” He turned to Cobalt. “This wasn’t here before, was it?”

Cobalt frowned, and shook his head. “Nope,” he said, his voice quieter than normal as he stared up at the house, feeling uneasy. “There wasn’t anything there until we left the graveyard.”

Toby turned back to the house, approaching the front steps. “Hmm. I wonder who this one belongs to? I thought Olive would be with Bailey’s or something, but . . .”

The man’s voice faded away as Cobalt’s heartbeat grew louder and louder in his ears. This was Toby’s house. This was Toby’s house . He’d only been here once, but it didn’t matter -- this house had changed the course of his life almost immediately, and he hadn’t even spent an hour inside. He didn’t need to. It had been so long since someone felt that amount of genuine concern for his well-being that Cobalt didn’t think he would ever forget it, and from strangers no less. He remembered the cookies, the damn things were so large they took up an entire plate, and he remembered refusing one because he was so baffled by how warm everything was. The fireplace, the blanket they put on top of him, the hands of the older woman who insisted on checking his temperature, the eyes of the man who brought him inside -- it was all so overwhelmingly kind that he desperately needed to leave immediately. And then, to make matters worse, that same man had offered to help him get home and had given him a replacement bandana after he’d lost his in an attempt to run for his life.

Cobalt’s hand drifted up to the edge of the bandana, tied loosely around his neck. His thumb ran over the embroidery on its edge, tracing the letters with a familiarity of doing it dozens of times when he was anxious. He had promised to bring Toby back here someday, to get him home even if it killed Cobalt in the process. And now it was here, and it was so jarring and sudden and wrong that it made Cobalt feel wildly unsteady.

“Cobalt!”

He jumped, eyes darting to Toby’s own. The man was calling his name from the porch, face filled with concern, the same damn expression Cobalt had seen on him the very first time they’d met, and it disarmed him completely. Cobalt tried to hold it together as his fingers tightened around the edge of the bandana, but he was breathing too hard, his heart was beating too fast, the house was right there--

Toby watched in alarm as Cobalt seemed to crack, and then completely fall apart. The man looked terrified and unsteady, like he wasn’t able to keep up with how quickly he was crumbling. Toby hesitated, unsure for several seconds as to what to do, since he’d never seen Cobalt like this. A tiny, tiny part of him said that it felt familiar, but there was no way. The rogue he knew had never done anything like this before.

Cobalt made the mistake of looking up at Toby then, and the entire scene struck him as the exact same one they’d gone through all those months ago: Toby’s startled and worried expression as he held onto the railing, watching as this half-elf he barely knew was about to collapse in front of his steps, and Cobalt being caught off guard by a level of familiarity with him, even though he’d never met the man in his life.

Toby’s heart hammered in his chest as he forced his brain and body to communicate so he could fucking do something. Truthfully, he had zero idea what would help someone like Cobalt since he’d never been in this position with him before, but he gave up on thinking about it, and just moved. He practically flew down the steps, running towards Cobalt and catching him rather clumsily just as the rogue’s body gave up on standing upright.

Chapter Text

Toby’s legs hurt.

Granted, that was much less of a problem compared to the six-foot-something half-elf passed out on his lap, but still. He needed to get up before they turned numb and made the entire situation much worse than it already was.

He looked at his hands. His magic didn’t work here. He’d tried over and over again when his initial panic set in, but it ultimately resulted in him plopping down, exasperated, then panicking again because Cobalt’s head was on the ground and his hair would get dirty and that couldn’t be comfortable and . . . and it took him a minute to conclude that freaking out over the relative cleanliness of an unconscious rogue was futile, and he should probably focus on something else. He needed to think more clearly, calm himself down so he could logically figure out what to do.

He’d checked the rogue’s pulse. He knew he wasn’t dead dead, but it made him feel better to do so. He found it easier to keep Cobalt’s head on his lap and two fingers to his neck so he didn’t have to keep coming back to it. This was how he ended up in the situation where his legs were completely immobile and starting to feel like jelly, but the steady thrum of Cobalt’s heartbeat kept Toby from losing his cool, so he stayed put.

He still, however, did not know what he should do. Toby considered what Cobalt had done when he’d been completely out of it, but frowned. He had only been aware of the end of it, when he was regaining consciousness and realizing that Cobalt had somehow released him from whatever trance he was stuck in, without knowing exactly what he did for it to work. Also . . . he looked down, studying Cobalt’s face. Toby doubted the effectiveness of moving his hand, and wasn’t sure what sort of reaction Cobalt would have if he suddenly woke up to someone having their hand on his cheek. The poor man was so incredibly sensitive when it came to touch, and Toby did not want to venture too far. Trust was a fickle thing, and the druid wasn’t entirely sure how much Cobalt had in him.

He would need to do something else. Toby looked over his shoulder at the birdhouse, but it seemed so much further away than it was before, and he knew he couldn’t drag him over there on the chance that what he needed wasn’t inside. He also did not feel like risking leaving the elf alone while he went looking for an answer, for fear of what sort of bullshit this place might pull while his back was turned.

He briefly -- only briefly -- considered the inn or the church. Something told him that he would end up in a bigger mess than when he started if he went back in there now. The only other option, then, was . . . he looked up at the house, at the way its dull, lifeless structure sat somewhat ominously in front of him. He hadn’t been in there yet, but there were no other answers out here. And that damn light was still creeping towards them, so he needed to make a decision quickly.

“I’m sorry about this,” Toby said, and guided Cobalt’s head back to the ground. He stood up, and nearly fell over on legs that were not yet ready to walk, before forcing them to work the way he wanted. He looped his arms under Cobalt’s and tugged.

Good lord he was weak. After only a few heaves with all of his might, he felt himself desperately wishing that Bailey was here to do this for him. “Now would be a wonderful time for you to wake up,” Toby grumbled, and pulled one more time before both of them were back on the ground. He groaned. The stairs were right there, and yet he could not manage to get this god damned giraffe over to them.

After a moment, he tried something else. “I could use a little help,” he said to seemingly no one in particular. Nothing happened. He tried again. “Can you help me, please? I can’t move him by myself.”

He waited. Waited some more. Still, nothing. He sighed. “I know you don’t want him here, and I know you can hear me. But he helped me -- hell, that’s all he’s been doing.” Toby absently brushed his fingers over the ends of Cobalt’s hair as he pored over what to say next. He only came up with, “so . . . just this once. Please.”

There was a subtle shift in the air, like he was being watched. No, not quite -- more like he had piqued the forest’s interest. He was close, but he needed to give them something more. His fingers stilled, and he considered for a moment before taking a deep breath, and making his final request.

The grass around them started to quiver, and he felt the tremors in the ground through his legs and hands. His brow furrowed as he looked around for the source of the quaking, but it made itself known soon enough: Toby gasped as roots ripped through the ground in waves, barreling towards them at an impossible speed. He grabbed as much of Cobalt as he could and squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for impact. The roots crashed into them, sending them flying towards the house’s porch and making Toby’s back collide painfully with the door. The wind was immediately knocked out of him and he fell to the floor in a heap, gasping for air.

His vision swam as his head throbbed with pain, and he was just barely able to glance at Cobalt and make sure he was in one piece before he clutched his chest and forced himself to breathe. It came in wheezes and even more painful gasps as he felt something work its way up his throat with every breath he took. He grabbed onto the railing and coughed, hearing something clink on the ground before he collapsed onto his back and allowed himself to close his eyes for a moment. “Damn you,” he whispered in place of a thank you to a forest that did not deserve it.

xxx

Once his breathing was even again, he pushed himself up onto his elbows and immediately looked for Cobalt. He flopped back down when he realized the rogue was sitting upright, massaging and rolling his shoulder as he grunted through its soreness. At least the forest had kept up its end of the bargain.

“Toby?”

The man didn’t bother sitting up or opening his eyes. “Yeah?”

Cobalt didn’t say anything more. Toby supposed his check to make sure the both of them were still alive was complete.

Reluctantly, he sat up. He had to remember that they didn’t exactly have all the time in the world, but man he was tired. He felt the weariness in his body as he kept pushing himself forward, but it was hard to get any sense of time when there was only daylight -- no dusk, evening, or night. He desperately wanted a nap, but didn’t want that to mean they woke up to significantly less time than they started with.

His hand brushed a small, metal object. He turned tired eyes to it, and his brow furrowed as he picked up a small key. Must’ve been the thing that somehow made its way into his body.

The key was a cheap gold color, some of the paint on its grooves chipping off and revealing the true silvery steel color underneath. In other places, it was flecked with blood from scratching its way up to Toby’s mouth. He frowned at it, and gingerly put a hand to his neck. He tried swallowing, bracing himself for some sort of sharp pain, but he didn’t feel anything.

He stood up and walked over to Cobalt, who was still seated and puzzling over how the hell he ended up in so much pain. Cobalt looked up at him when he stopped. “. . . why does everything hurt?”

Toby looked out past the porch, then back to him. “Because this forest loves making my life more difficult than it needs to be.”

Cobalt squinted at him. “What did you do?”

Toby rolled his eyes. “Why do you think I did something?”

“Because I know you well enough,” Cobalt quipped. “What was it? What’d you do?”

“I saved your life, that’s what I did.” Toby turned towards the door, but Cobalt grabbed his arm.

He tugged Toby backwards, turning him around to face him again. His eyes scanned his shirt, then shot back up to Toby’s face, clearly wanting an explanation.

Toby looked down, suppressing an impatient sigh when he noticed the small spots of blood littering his shirt. “Don’t worry about it, I’m fine.”

Cobalt opened his mouth to protest, but Toby stopped him with a single pointed finger. “I am fine , Cobalt. I’m not hurt.” It was true -- he’d had some pain in his throat for a moment, but it had subsided completely while he was laying down. He stared back at him for as long as the elf needed to reassure himself that he wasn’t lying, and when he gave a resigned “if you say so”, Toby turned back towards the door. He wiped his mouth with his thumb, just in case, and then twisted the knob.

It didn’t budge. Duh. He tried the key.

The absence of any kind of shock wasn’t a surprise to him when the door slid open on creaky hinges, revealing an empty living room. Unlike the inn, though, this emptiness felt different. Instead of the heavy feeling of a space abandoned prior to completion, this one felt like it was whole once. Like there was life here, at some point, so much so that it stained every inch of the place. But that liveliness disappeared long ago, and left this vacant house in its stead.

Toby stepped through, glancing over his shoulder to ensure Cobalt was still with him. The rogue was, though he looked minorly spooked by something that Toby had yet to understand. Toby faced forward again, letting himself be satisfied with the fact that he was upright.

The living room was about as ordinary as a living room could be: there was a sofa, two chairs, a coffee table, an oil lamp, and a fireplace. All of them were arranged neatly in the space, and if it wasn’t for the abundance of dust and cobwebs, it would be easy to assume that someone was actively living here. Toby stepped onto the rug. His shoe left a print in the dust.

Cobalt walked in behind him, glancing warily at the sofa for a moment before turning his attention to the adjacent room. It was a dining room, politely set up as if its occupants would return at any moment. The table was long: it had space for at least ten people. Each chair had its own place setting, and there was a humble plaid runner going down the length of it, with a candelabra centerpiece made of severely tarnished silver. The candles in it were clearly well-loved, as copious amounts of their wax dripped down the sides and even onto the table itself. Even with the settled layers of time thickly piled on top of everything, the house still felt cozy and inviting.

Cobalt’s brow furrowed as he looked at one of the plates. He brushed some of the dust away, and his mouth quirked up just a tad at the monogrammed “F” in the center, and watched as more dust settled back into its place, covering the plate again as if he’d never touched it at all.

Toby ran a hand over the arm of one of the chairs, his fingers leaving trails in the dust as he brushed it away. The chair, while worn, was still sturdy, and he was tempted to just sit in it for a moment and not think about anything else. He considered it very strongly: the chair looked so comfortable, so inviting, and he wouldn’t need to sit for very long, just a minute to rest his legs . . .

He moved to sit in it, but just before he did so, his eye caught on something small and black draped on the seat of the sofa. He paused, straightening again. The space was arranged so neatly and in such warm tones that this random cloth seemed incongruous. He didn’t notice the arms of the chair settle back into place as he moved away from it to pick up the cloth instead.

Toby recognized it immediately when he picked it up. It looked just like Cobalt’s bandana, though he had no idea when he’d managed to drop it here, or why. He turned it over upon feeling the embroidery on the other side, and his brows lifted. He’d never seen any sort of adornment on Cobalt’s bandana: the way he wore it made it seem like a plain black square. He pursed his lips. Farner . The brand name, maybe, or its maker? He checked the tag. No, the brand was completely different. Maybe it was just one of those things Toby wasn’t privy to and shouldn’t be, or he was just reading too much into things again.

He figured he should just give it back. When he called out for him, Cobalt’s head popped out from behind a doorway into the kitchen. “I think you left your --” Toby paused. No, his bandana was still on his neck.

Cobalt’s eyes darted down to what was in the druid’s hand, and he stiffened.

Toby walked over to him, and held out a hand. “Let me see.”

Cobalt hesitated, then untied the bandana and slid it from around his neck. It felt so harshly exposed without it that Cobalt nearly snatched the bandana back when Toby reached for it.

Toby held it, but made no move to take the bandana away. He flipped the corner of it over, glancing between the one he was holding and the one Cobalt wore on a daily basis. When he looked back up at him, Cobalt was watching him with an expression he wouldn’t even attempt to name. “Why is your bandana in my house?”

The rogue didn’t say anything for a moment, and Toby watched him calculate what the appropriate amount of information to share would be. “I first met you here,” was all he decided to say.

Toby looked down at it again. “And . . . you brought this with you?”

Cobalt didn’t see him flinch in pain. He ventured forward. “You gave it to me.”

Oh. “This is mine.” He frowned a bit, and then, “So who’s ‘Farner’?”

Cobalt’s eyes didn’t leave him, even when the man wasn’t looking. “You are. That’s your last name.”

Toby looked back up at him, a mixture of mild surprise and delight on his face. Cobalt had thought that maybe the news would be upsetting somehow, that he’d feel some type of way about Cobalt wearing something of his this entire time, but he had nothing to worry about.

And then, just as quickly as it appeared, the expression fell, and the druid was confused again. “Why are there two of these?”

Cobalt’s mouth tightened, and he pulled it away. “The house is playing tricks on you,” he said, tying the bandana around his neck again. He watched Toby mumble “hm, weird,” and turned back to the kitchen.

It smelled faintly of stew, which made sense. The house seemed to try and provide comfort where it could, despite its apparent age, and smelling warm food in a kitchen was only common sense. Toby moved towards the fridge, which hummed faintly as if it had been left on. “I wonder if there’s any -- oh, that’s disgusting.”

The fridge was on, and did indeed have food inside. But the fridge also had more mold than recognizable food, and the first signs of insect life that they’d seen in any of the buildings. Toby shut the door hard to trap a few errant flies inside, and gagged a little. Cobalt was equally repulsed, and simultaneously entertained that the unwelcome surprise hadn’t happened to him.

“Good thing I’m not hungry,” Toby muttered, before coming to a stop in the middle of the kitchen. The smell of stew disappeared, replaced by the slight stench from the fridge and the dull scent of old furniture. While the other rooms still retained some level of comfort, the kitchen had run its course and given up on the illusion.

They wandered from room to room on that floor, and Toby hoped Cobalt didn’t notice the way he paused for half a second each time they entered. Once they left a room, he immediately forgot what it looked like until he walked back into it. It unsettled him, but he didn’t want to make a big deal about it.

Once they stepped back into the living room, and Toby forced himself to keep going as if he recognized the space he was in, he decided to try the stairs next. There hadn’t been anything out of the ordinary here, and nothing to directly address as far as either of them could tell, so he started his ascent.

Toby walked slowly up the stairs, dragging a hand gently along the wallpaper as he studied each of the framed photos in turn. Every single one of them was at least a little blurry; Toby knew that in order for the pictures to come out clearly, you had to sit perfectly still. Apparently, no one in these photos cared. And none of the frames matched -- it was as if whomever framed them chose whichever one they felt fit the subject of the image the best, without regard as to how they looked as a set. Perhaps that’s what made the gallery so charming: each of them had personality, and although they didn’t match, they looked right at home together on this wall.

Toby reached the top of the stairs, then frowned and went all the way back down. Cobalt leaned out of the way as Toby rushed past, an extremely puzzled look on his face.

“Did’ja realize something?” Cobalt asked, resting an elbow on the railing.

Toby took one of the pictures down, studying it intensely for a second before going up a few stairs, scanning the wall again, and taking another frame down. By the time he was done, he had several frames lined up on the landing, and plopped himself down in front of them.

Cobalt followed him up the stairs, leaning over him a bit to see what he’d discovered.

“There’s so many different people in these photos,” he was saying, “like, a bunch of friends or something. None of them look remotely alike, except for these two.” He pointed to twin girls sitting next to each other in one of the photos. They were seated on a bench, back to the camera and sandwiched in between himself and another girl with long black hair and elf ears poking out from the side of her head. It had to have been many years ago -- no one in the photo could’ve been any older than 18.

Cobalt nodded slowly, mainly looking at each of the people in turn. He’d noticed almost immediately that there wasn’t a single clear face in any of the photos. They were all either facing away from the camera or obscured by something that purposefully kept their features hidden. Hair blew in their face just as the shutter clicked, or they walked just out of frame, or their head was mid-turn, making their faces a mess of blurred sepia tones. It was as if whomever was pressing the shutter button just missed their subject every single time.

Because everyone in Toby’s family was a completely different species, it was easy to decipher who was who despite the poor quality of the photos. Cobalt could even determine which ones were Toby’s moms, and could pick out the difference between the girls and the boys. He’d admittedly looked for the druid in all of the pictures, feeling a touch satisfied when he was able to find him. He also concluded, with a slight lift of his eyebrows, that Toby was in fact a natural blonde.

“I’m in all of these, I think,” Toby said, and Cobalt confirmed with a single nod, “but I’m never alone, see?” He pointed to where he was sitting or standing or otherwise, and every time, there was someone right beside him.

Cobalt’s eyes darted over the photos again. It wasn’t just “someone”, actually, it was the same person in every photo. He remembered her -- the memory was vague and brief, but he remembered the dark haired elf girl that was also in Toby’s house the day he was dragged in and chaotically nursed back to a semblance of health. He was pretty sure that was his sister, though he hadn’t realized how close they’d apparently been in childhood. Toby never really talked about her, or any of his siblings, really. Cobalt wondered if he ever would.

Toby picked up one of the frames. In it, the elf girl was trying to show him how to fly a kite. The both of them were very young, and one of her tiny arms was pointing towards the sky, where her diamond-shaped kite floated far in the distance. Toby was seated on the grass next to her, staring up at where she pointed while his own little hands held a kite that was easily the same size as his entire body. Similar to some of the other photos, they were both facing away from the camera, but their mostly static figures made it much easier to notice the two pointed ears poking out from the sides of her head.

“It’s almost like . . .” Toby’s hands tightened around the frame as a poignant sadness tightened in his chest just then. He was mostly talking to himself, though he knew Cobalt was there. He wasn’t certain about the words he was going to say next, but he felt somewhere deep down that he was right, even though he’d never known a relationship like this in his entire life. He’d seen it, sure, but the concept of having one for himself was completely foreign, so to be so sure that this girl filled that role was comforting and depressing all at once. “. . . I thought she was a best friend, or something? At first? But I don’t know Cobalt,” he said quietly, “I . . . I think that’s my sister.”

The second the words left his mouth, he screamed.

xxx

Above ground, the sun peeked over the horizon, announcing early dawn. Or, it would’ve, if there was a sun. In either case, Barovia was waking up.

That did not include anyone in the party, though. They were all still fast asleep on the ground, surrounded by an absolute catastrophe of trampled plants, tufts of fur, and drops of blood here and there.

The blood made a trail which, if you were to follow it, would direct you to a pile of rot: browned and blackened foliage that was soft to the touch and smelled absolutely rancid. It would show you slash marks and stems ripped apart in a frenzy, and it would show you that the blood pools a bit here, then continues into the forest in the same small drops. It would allow you to see a single ivory claw caught in the tangled web of plants, and bits of dark hair everywhere. It would let you conclude that something was here and fought with everything it had to get out, and didn't intend on returning.

xxx

Toby was still screaming. He grabbed both sides of his head as his breath came in labored pants, interrupted every so often by another ear-piercing scream as pain ripped through his skull. Tears blurred his vision as he silently begged for it to stop, that he was sorry, that he would forget it all again if it would just stop hurting--

He sat up, slowly, as his breath came back to him and the pain ebbed before disappearing entirely. He blinked, and a few tears fell down his face. He wiped them away, and gave his hand a puzzled look before noticing the frames laid out in front of him. He frowned at them, and then looked up at Cobalt, shrinking a little at the completely horrified expression on the half-elf’s face. “What?”

Cobalt’s hands were outstretched and shaking, as if he was getting ready to grab the man but stopped himself. Toby heard the forced steadiness in his voice when he asked if he was okay.

Toby wiped his face again, sniffing a little. “I think so, yeah. What happened?” He turned back to the frames. “Why are these on the ground?”

Cobalt let out a breath. “They got knocked off the wall,” he lied, only answering half of the question. “We were trying to put them back in the right places.”

Toby didn’t notice that his other question was left unanswered, and immediately shifted his focus to the pictures again. “The house probably didn’t like that very much, huh?” He picked up some of them and used the faint marks left on the wallpaper to determine where each of them fit. Cobalt followed suit, deigning to answer that question as well.

“There,” Toby said, hanging the last frame and taking a cautious step back to make sure everything was in place. He looked over at Cobalt, brow furrowing at the pained expression on his face. He could’ve sworn the rogue kept glancing at him while they were hanging the frames, but he wasn’t sure. Then, Cobalt did look over at him, and the amount of genuine worry on it nearly made him stumble. Cobalt looked away, but Toby wasn’t having it. “Cobalt?”

It took him a second, but eventually he looked back.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

Cobalt’s mouth tightened, and Toby wondered what was going through his mind. He wondered if he would be told the truth. He wondered if he’d earned it.

“You’ve been . . . forgetting, again,” Cobalt said finally, and his voice was quieter and more unsteady than Toby had heard it since they’d been here. “And . . . every time, I don’t . . . I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to help.” Cobalt wasn’t looking at him, instead keeping his gaze fixed on the photo directly in front of him. “The pain you must be feeling,” he paused, then shook his head, “it’s excruciating to watch . . . but I can’t do anything about it. I can’t . . . take any of it away.”

Toby’s eyes darted down to his hands, arguably Cobalt’s most expressive part of his body, and noticed that they had tightened into fists. He felt a surge of guilt, then, but the rogue kept talking.

“You don’t remember anything after. The pain, I mean,” he said, and his hands relaxed. “And it’s like . . .” he fumbled for words, but gave up after a moment with a sigh. “I feel just as lost as the first time it happened.”

Toby had his hand braced on the railing as he kept his eyes trained on Cobalt’s face. He loosened his grip, wanting to . . . what? Reach out to him? And then what? What would -- could -- he even say?

His hand stayed where it was. “You shouldn’t be here,” he said, hardening his voice as his annoyance with this entire bullshit situation grew, “you don’t need to be a witness to all of this. Come on, I’ll get us out of here.” He turned and started back up the stairs.

Cobalt didn’t move.

Toby looked back down at him, reconsidered, then sat on the landing and braced his elbows on his knees. He waited for Cobalt to look over at him -- which he did, after a second -- before speaking. “I don’t know why you’re here,” he said, relaxing the ironclad grip he had on his tone a moment ago, “though I’m grateful you are. Believe me when I say I’m thrilled I don’t have to do this on my own.” He felt like he should apologize. That’s what Bailey would do. But he wasn’t Bailey, and he didn’t see the point. A sappy apology wouldn’t warm the forest’s heart and let them leave, and it sure as hell wouldn’t mend any wounds. “But you shouldn’t be here. You don’t deserve to go through this again. So when we find a way to wake you up, you need to do so.”

Cobalt studied him, and crossed his arms. “What about you?”

Toby shrugged. He knew it was a little infuriating. “It’s my mind. I’ll figure it out.”

Cobalt didn’t look convinced. He tore his gaze away from the man and glared down at the floor.

“Hey.”

The half-elf closed his eyes with a sigh, then reluctantly looked back over at Toby again.

“Promise me,” he said, holding out a pinkie finger. He’d seen some kids do it once. It seemed solid enough. “When we find out how to wake you up, you will wake up. Okay?”

Cobalt narrowed his eyes. He knew what that implied. “I’m not leaving you here.”

“You are, if it means you get out of here in one piece.”

“No, I’m not,” Cobalt said, turning to face him. “We’re getting out of here together .”

Toby shook his head. He’d already made sure that wouldn’t happen. “We’re both getting out, yes,” he said calmly, his finger still outstretched, “but if we figure out a way for you to get out first, you’re going. I’ll get out too, I promise.”

Cobalt quickly ascended the rest of the stairs between the two of them, crouching on the one right in front of Toby’s feet. The druid’s eyes widened as he leaned back. “Swear it.”

Toby blinked, then smiled a little. “I promise, Cobalt. I’ll find a way out after you if I can’t come with you.”

Cobalt’s eyes narrowed when Toby smiled. “I’m serious, Toby.”

The druid felt his face warm, even as his smile grew. He couldn’t help it. “I swear I will.”

Cobalt studied him, and the tiny carnations that bloomed on his face, then stretched his pinkie out. But when Toby went for it, he snatched it back, his eyes narrowing further.

Toby grinned fully, laughing quietly. “Cobalt, I can’t promise you anything if you won’t let me.” His laughter faded into a soft smile, and then he said, “you have to trust me.”

It took several beats, in which Toby could see the wariness literally melt off of Cobalt’s face, but he put his finger out again and Toby grabbed it before he could change his mind. He held it until Cobalt squeezed back, and Toby felt like he was trying to break his finger off with how hard he squeezed. “Okay.”

“You promise too, right?” Toby’s finger hurt. He ignored it.

Cobalt nodded. Despite the ache, Toby didn’t pull away until Cobalt did.

Toby stood, ignoring how awkwardly close the two of them were when he did so, and turned to go up the stairs again. “Will you come with me this time?”

Cobalt huffed, but he followed behind him.

xxx

In its wake, the creature had left a substantial amount of carnage. The cages the plants had so painstakingly woven together were ripped apart, and the surrounding mushrooms and flowers were trampled and smashed into the dirt. Though everyone was still fast asleep, the plants would have to completely start over if they were going to keep them that way.

They got to work immediately. It was much easier growing and sustaining things during the daytime, as the plants moved significantly faster than they had while the sun was setting, and in only minutes they had restored all four connections between Toby and the rest of his party. New mushrooms and flowers grew amongst the corpses of the ones that were too destroyed to be resurrected, using the decay of the old plants as food to make themselves grow larger and stronger; and vines intertwined, creating tightly woven grids that solidified as they surrounded each body one by one.

Pip had stirred in his sleep, his little bird eyes barely blinking open before a poppy larger than Bailey’s paw soothed him back into unconsciousness. As soon as his eyes closed, it straightened, and the vines continued criss-crossing each other until his cage was complete, and it quietly hissed shut as the ends of the vines sunk into the dirt, rooting the cage in place.

An unnatural stillness settled over them when the last of the cages was set in place. The sky brightened to the soft blue of an early morning, and the plants went back to waiting patiently.

xxx

The top floor was not as warm as the main level had been. The lights on this floor were dim, and all three of the doors were closed. There was one directly in front, and two on the sides; after a brief glance at one another, they went in opposite directions for the doors on either side.

Toby twisted the knob and pushed the door open, peeking cautiously inside. This was most certainly a girl’s room, if the paper “girls only” sign on the far wall had anything to say about it. Toby was not a girl. He stepped into the room.

Other than the sign, the room had a bunk bed with faded quilts. Each square looked like it came from a different piece of clothing, maybe ones the girls in here no longer wanted, as indicated by the random pockets or sewn edges on each patch. There was a desk littered with colored paper and crayons: half-finished drawings of the most random things were all over it and on the floor. Two chairs, one upright and the other overturned, were made of sturdy but cracked wood. Finally, a low dresser sat on the opposite wall from the bed, with some of the drawings pinned above it. A threadbare circular rug shifted slightly under his feet as he slowly turned in a circle to take everything in. Two girls stayed here. Could he have had more than one-

A sharp jolt shot through his head in warning. He dismissed the thought, and left the room.

Cobalt was standing outside of the room he investigated, ankles crossed as he leaned against the door. He looked up when he heard Toby’s door click shut.

“Anything in there?” Toby asked.

Cobalt shook his head. “Don’t go in there.”

Toby was about to ask why, but the look on Cobalt’s face stopped him.

The rogue’s chin jutted towards the door behind Toby. “What’d you see in there?”

Toby looked over his shoulder at it. He’d already forgotten. “Nothing of consequence.”

Cobalt nodded. “Only one door left, then.”

They approached the last door, coming to a stop when it was clear that this door would not be opened any time soon. Toby frowned at it. The door was surrounded by plants and broken completely off of its hinges: it was as if the plants had yanked it off, then regretted it, and tried wedging themselves between the gaps and the door in order to seal it shut. It worked well enough -- there was no apparent way to get in without destroying the entire thing.

Toby poked the stem of a monstera leaf. It glowed where he touched it, pulsing faintly before dulling again. He followed the stem down to its base, where it was unnaturally connected to a few other plants that were not of the same species, and tugged gently at it. He yanked his hand away.

Cobalt raised an eyebrow. “Did it burn you?”

Toby shook his head. “No. But that’s definitely not what we should do.” As soon as the plants realized where his thought process was going, he got such a vivid picture in his mind of the consequence: rip any of these off of the door, and neither of them were making it out of here.

Cobalt piped up again as he straightened. “What kinds of plants are they? Any sort of common thread between them?”

Toby frowned. “Not that I can tell. Monsteras, bromeliads, basil, peace lilies, and bleeding hearts don’t share any properties,” he mused, “. . . other than being plants.” They didn’t share growing conditions, preferred climates, colors, leaf shapes, germination times, growth speeds, anything. The only one he’d even remembered seeing before was the bleeding heart, when he’d unintentionally grown it once a while back. He didn’t want to think about that, though.

“And if we just . . . forced our way through . . .” Cobalt started, letting the unasked question hang.

Toby frowned. “We'd die.” He wasn’t in the business of intentionally harming plants, as it was.

Cobalt nodded. “Sounds about right.”

Toby put his hands on his hips. “Now that we’ve seen all of the buildings -- provided that one doesn’t randomly pop up when we leave -- we can figure out where to start.” He’d suggested the same in the graveyard, and the idea still seemed like a reasonable one.

Cobalt didn’t disagree, and they left the house. Toby felt so reluctant to leave once he stepped outside, and nearly changed his mind, but then Cobalt shut the door, and the feeling disappeared.

The druid shook it off, and descended the steps, standing in the middle of the clearing. He spun around in a slow circle. The house, a church, a birdhouse, an inn, and a graveyard. All of them, except the graveyard, perhaps, held memories of people he cared about.

He frowned. Bly isn’t here , he thought. He liked Bly, as cryptic and stern as he was. But Bly also wasn’t nearby when he lost his shit, so that explained that. But . . . Olive isn’t here, either. Well, she was. She wasn’t here by herself, though -- he’d seen her in the church and in the birdhouse. She didn’t get a building of her own. He wondered why that was.

He turned to the graveyard. Out of all of them, that one didn’t leave a gap in his memory when they left, or when he was inside. He remembered the most while he was there -- in fact, he still remembered everything that had happened. The other buildings . . . his memory of what had occurred while he was inside was fuzzy at best. And the graveyard was odd -- it was in such an awkward place, and Toby felt like the most obvious answers could be found within its gates.

Plus, the light had eaten half of the fence by now. With any more time spent deliberating, it could swallow the graves themselves, and they’d be left with nothing.

“Alrighty,” Toby said, pointing towards the graveyard. “That’s our first stop.”

Cobalt side eyed it, then did the same to him. “Any . . . particular reason?”

Toby hesitated. “Did I . . . have any lapses in memory when I left?” He didn’t think so, but maybe he shouldn’t be as sure as he just felt.

Cobalt shook his head. “None while you were in there, either. Starting there would probably be best, actually.”

Toby nodded, confidence in his impulsive decision-making renewed. “Exactly. See, I’ve got this.”

Cobalt rolled his eyes, but kept his thoughts to himself as they walked back to the graveyard.

Chapter Text

There it was again: that feeling of someone dragging needle-sharp fingernails down his spine, making his entire body shiver with an unwelcome chill and his hair stand on end.

Death . It was how Toby had known that this wasn’t just a garden, or something else rather unassuming. As he pushed through the gates again, and the fog welcomed them with damp and cold curls around their legs, he remembered that underneath each of these flowerbeds was likely the reason their flowers were all dead in the first place. It was blight. It had to be -- that was the only explanation for sudden and rapid decay of plant life without an insect or other disease afflicting them.

But the form it took was like nothing he’d ever seen. He hadn’t seen much, but even in Barovia where everything natural was somehow slightly or completely off, blight looked nothing like this. It usually browned and blackened leaves and stems, causing them to shrivel and harden and crumble to dust, but this was like tar. He frowned, thinking of the wholly unpleasant way it made his fingers stick to one another until he was able to rub most of it off in the dirt. He figured he’d have to touch it again if he was going to figure out what they needed to do here.

Toby looked up at Cobalt. He’d seemed on edge ever since they reached the top floor of the house. Cobalt refused to say anything about the room he entered, and had quickly shut down Toby’s insistent prying with a sharp look. Toby was a little annoyed that he couldn’t know about something that was in his own mind, but he decided to revisit it later.

Cobalt’s eyes were fixed firmly on the middle of the graveyard, about the spot where they’d uncovered the headstone with a dragon on top. Toby wanted to give him time to process, since his expression told the man that he was battling something fiercely personal, but the light was not kind enough to give him space to do so.

Toby put a hand on his arm -- he was mildly alarmed at how tense his bicep was -- and shook him a little. Cobalt blinked, then looked down.

“You know who it is, don’t you?” Toby asked, his tone soft so he could avoid sounding accusatory.

Cobalt hesitated for a second too long. Toby looked back over at where the grave would be, and sighed. Cobalt nodded, and said quietly, “I just don’t know what difference it would make.”

Toby squeezed his arm, much easier to do now that the elf was more relaxed, then let his hand fall as he untied his hoodie and fanned some of the fog away. There was something about the fog that nagged at him, but he couldn’t put a finger on it. “Maybe it’s as simple as acknowledging it?” He walked over to the headstone as fog filled the empty space again, running a hand over its blank face. “Perhaps that would . . . help, somehow. What if you just need to help me remember?”

Cobalt’s gaze shifted to him. “I can’t do that, though. Nothing I do affects what happens here.”

Toby shrugged. “Maybe not, but I can use what you tell me to change things, and help you leave.”

Cobalt lifted an eyebrow. “‘Us’, you mean.”

Toby looked back at him. “What?”

“You said, ‘to help you leave’. You mean ‘to help us leave.”

Toby’s eyes widened a fraction, and he nodded quickly. “Right, yes. Us.”

Cobalt’s suspicion could not have been more clearly defined on his face. “You promised, Toby,” he reminded him in a voice laced with a warning.

He nodded again, more insistently this time. “I know. I intend to keep it.” Toby ran a finger over the carving of the dragon. It was detailed, which struck him as odd -- like the headstone was trying its best to remember who was buried here, but could only remember through images without recalling the actual name. That wasn’t too far off from how his memory worked now.

Toby was too lost in thought to notice Cobalt watching him. The rogue looked as if he was trying to solve a problem before he was given the answer, as if it would prevent him from getting hurt, or let him brace for impact before the blows hit. He flexed his jaw, frustrated that nothing solid was coming together.

This man confused the hell out of him. Every time he thought maybe he’d taken a step forward, gotten a little closer to figuring him out, he’d throw him a curveball out of fucking nowhere that would send the elf reeling. Maybe that was why he found himself sticking around so much -- he wanted to be the one to know this man like the back of his own hand. Toby mostly resided within his own mind: he was a solitary, violently introverted individual, and despite the complete memory wipe, that side of him remained completely intact.

Perhaps that was the most baffling thing -- eventually, everyone in Cobalt’s life had revealed something about themselves that he could quickly pin down, categorize into an adjective or personality trait of some kind. He could easily describe Oz, Bailey, Bly, Pip, even Heron to anyone who asked. Sure, sometimes he couldn’t predict what they’d do, or where their loyalties lied. But he could tell you right off the bat that Bailey was a strong, dependable Tabaxi whose genuinely good heart led him to do everything in his power to protect people, and rectify any mistakes he’d made towards them in the past. And he could just as easily tell you that Heron was an untrustworthy bitch who got off on making children miserable killing machines just so she didn’t have to get her own hands dirty. Eventually, they all showed their true colors.

But . . . he looked back at Toby, who seemed to have come to a decision and was standing up. What did he actually know about him? He thought he knew, and easily assumed the role of a protector, offering up his own life as a sacrifice for making sure the man could get home to his plants and his family, where he was certain he belonged. He’d seen how frightened he was, how little he knew about keeping himself alive, and had simply concluded that he didn’t belong here and would need someone bigger and stronger to make sure he didn’t kick the bucket too soon.

And then, he’d helped kill that bear, and shot lightning through a grown man, ending his life instantly. Cobalt knew firsthand what people’s reactions were when they took a life of any kind for the first time. There was usually a downward spiral of questioning their own morals, shaking -- lots of shaking -- and a healthy amount of fear. The shock took some time to wear off, and then you had to do it again, and it got a little easier until it was just something you did.

Toby . . . didn’t do that. Didn’t do any of that. He’d just stared at his hands, and he looked so tired. He always looked like something had caught up with him: time, exhaustion, whatever it was, and that day was no different. Then everything else disastrous had happened, and here they were.

It wasn’t as if Toby was leading him on or intentionally lying to him. Cobalt had been through that enough times -- he shoved the thought of Maddie away -- to know what that looked like. No, it was more like no one had really ever stuck around long enough to put all the pieces together, and maybe he hadn’t done that for himself either. Maybe . . . maybe Cobalt was witnessing a man finally being given space outside of what he was always told he was supposed to be, and really understand who he wanted to be. All of this was new for Toby, so who’s to say he wasn’t making something new out of himself as well?

Or maybe that was just another assumption.

You have to trust me.

Cobalt frowned. That warred quite decisively against “you don’t trust me, right?” And being told it wouldn’t change. He put his hand on his face and groaned.

“Cobalt.”

He froze, peeking with wide eyes through his fingers. “Hm?”

The druid had an arm draped over the top of the stone, and he tapped it idly. “Who’s this?”

Cobalt’s eyes darted to the headstone, then to the dirt, and back at Toby. He dropped his hand, and his glasses fell back into place. “Badger.”

Toby tilted his head. It didn’t ring a bell. He’d secretly hoped it would. He looked back down at the headstone, and opened his mouth to say something, but his mind drew a blank. “Who’d you say it was?”

Cobalt crossed his arms. “Badger.”

Toby looked at the headstone again, tilted his head, and gave the same confused look to Cobalt. “Wh-”

“Okay, enough,” Cobalt interrupted, pulling him away from the stone. This would get them nowhere, and that stupid light was about to start eating the graves. Or . . . whatever it was that light did when something touched it. “This isn’t working. We need a more permanent way to make his name stick.”

Toby blinked, a little startled by how forcefully he was yanked aside. Cobalt’s grip on his arm was much tighter than usual. “Permanent . . . like if we could carve it?”

Cobalt paused, then nodded. “Yeah. But where are we gonna get something like that?”

Toby slowly looked up at him, wildly unsure of the answer. And then, he was being pulled again as Cobalt threw the gates open and half-dragged, half-carried the druid behind him. He made a beeline for the church, not stopping until they got to the back of the damaged building. Toby stumbled to a stop, holding on to Cobalt for dear life as he attempted to get his wits about him. “Cobalt, what in the world --”

Cobalt shushed him, pointing to a pile of rubble by the wall. “Chisel.”

Toby looked at where he was pointing, and sure enough, there was a chisel and hammer discarded amongst the broken stones and glass. “Oh, shit. Wait, how did you know --”

Cobalt grabbed the chisel and hammer before Toby could finish his question. “Come on.”

xxx

Immediately upon making back to the graveyard, Toby hopped up on one of the graves, sitting on it as he braced his hands against the stone. He ignored the fact that he was sitting on the mess that he had trouble getting off his hands in the first place -- there were more pressing matters at the moment. “Spell it.”

Cobalt gave a short, startled laugh at the baffling image of him abruptly planting himself atop this flower bed, straddling the grave as if it was nothing more than a strangely shaped chair. He cleared his throat at the annoyed look Toby gave him. “Badger. B-A-D-G-E-R.”

Toby turned back to the stone, chisel poised to carve into it. Nothing. He gave an exasperated sigh. “For fuck’s sake -- one at a time. ”

“It’s not that hard --” Cobalt stopped. Took a breath. “Fine. B.”

Toby glanced at him sideways. “. . . B.” He angled the chisel on the stone and gave it a solid thwack with the hammer, as was expected when carving into solid rock. The chisel shot down, nearly slicing through his thigh and leaving a violently angled vertical gash in the headstone. He yelped, jumping back as his heart raced at the near-miss. “Uh -- that was easier than I thought it would be. Next letter?”

The next letter faltered and died in Cobalt’s mouth. “Be more careful , dammit. A.”

“I’m trying,” Toby muttered through gritted teeth, and carved the letter with shaky hands. “What’s the next one?”

“D.” As he watched, Cobalt realized that he never knew just how bad Toby’s handwriting was. Scientists, he thought. They continued like that until Badger’s name was fully spelled out.

As soon as the tail of the “R” was finished, and Toby lifted the chisel away, the light slowed to a stop. It had cut through half of the headstone, and when Toby looked up at it, it was mere inches away from his face. He stared into it, hearing his heartbeat pounding in his ears as he realized just how close it came to him while he wasn’t paying attention.

The light made no sound, not that Toby had expected it to, but the overwhelming silence of it had just as much of a presence as the entity itself. The light was not so bright that you couldn’t look directly at it, nor was it as opaque as he had originally thought. As he stared at it, the light brightened and faded ever so slightly in waves, giving him momentary glimpses of what lay right behind it. Bright, and it was a solid wall of warm white light, and then it faded, becoming just transparent enough for Toby to be reminded that beyond here was an endless void of darkness. The light’s dimness lingered, letting the druid really see it for the first time, and allowing him to understand that there was nothing -- nothing -- outside of where they were, and should they fail to preserve what’s here, the light would simply take it all.

Toby’s body sagged as he peered at the light. The possibilities of what would happen to them disappeared one by one until he was left with only one answer. There would be no horrible, painful ending, or anything like that. If they didn't restore what they could here, or really make an effort to bring back what’s been lost, then . . . they’d simply be forgotten.

Toby knew with certainty that their only way out was in here somewhere, but he didn’t know exactly where, or how they were meant to reach it. Everything they’d seen so far, outside of this graveyard, had left them with more questions than answers. He lifted a hand to the light, and tiny wisps of it reached for him as he gently touched his fingers to its surface. It was . . . warm. He’d made contact with it before, when he was trying to get out and find Cobalt, but it was nothing like this. There was a confused, slight panic before, the purpose being to understand whether he’d been left behind by or simply separated from his rogue, but now, he just wanted to see the light as it was.

It danced around his fingers, giving a little under the weight of his touch, but ultimately holding his hand in place. Toby wondered for a moment if it would be so bad to let this light consume everything here. He wasn’t even sure if anything was worth remembering, if it was that important for him to remember anything at all. He would be alone, sure, but wasn’t that how he started? Wasn’t that how everyone started? When you’re first born, first created, first made . . . you don’t have memories. You start with nothing, and it's only when you begin to retain information that those things hold weight, and manifest some level of pain. But what if he just . . . let all of that go? Truly let it go? What if he made no attempt to get it back, let the nothingness consume him completely and allow his body to rot? Would that not make things easier, on him, on everyone? He knew instinctively that it wouldn’t hurt, not nearly as badly as trying to remember things did. It would be virtually painless, and he’d just stay here until this body no longer needed a conscience.

His hand sank further in. Why was he doing this? All of this fighting, all of this pain, all of this back and forth with his own mind, when the easiest solution was right here. Why was he even trying? What was the p-

That thought process was sharply cut short when his arm was yanked away, a print of his hand fading as the contact between it and the light was severed. Tiny sparks appeared as the light made minimal effort to try and keep the druid’s hand there, and they disappeared just as quickly as his handprint had. Toby’s eyes darted around for a minute before he remembered where he was and that there was someone else here.

Cobalt didn’t remember to speak until Toby’s eyes finally landed on him. “What are you doing?”

Toby attempted to answer, but his mind was blank. “I . . . uh . . .”

Cobalt’s mouth flattened to a thin line as he turned Toby’s hand over, inspecting it for any signs of change or injury. He didn’t find any, but he redirected his wariness to Toby’s arm. “What do these mean?”

Toby looked at his arm. Button mushrooms were scattered all over it, and while most of them only had their tiny heads just above the surface of his skin, some were continuing to grow, their stems pointing straight up like his hair was standing on end. He knew immediately. Fear.

He looked back up at Cobalt, whose stare was harshly intensified by the darkness of his shades. Toby’s mouth went dry. Even though he was crouching, Toby realized he could see him much more clearly, and that didn’t help at all. “I’m . . . nervous, I guess . . .?”

Cobalt shook his head, his grip on Toby’s hand tightening. “Nervousness grows here,” he said, pointing towards Toby’s stomach. “Not here,” he pointed to his arm.

Toby looked back down at it. The mushrooms had stopped growing, but there were still so many of them, and he felt so cold . He knew he owed the rogue honesty, but it was so hard to speak. “I . . . I’m terrified.”

Cobalt’s piercing stare was thankfully redirected, and his hold loosened a bit. He watched the mushrooms that were once sticking straight up out of his skin go limp and fall off one by one. The ones that were just heads shriveled and joined the other dying fungi as they littered Toby’s lap and the dirt around him. “They’re goosebumps,” Cobalt said.

Toby didn’t feel like trying to speak again, but that seemed accurate. Toby nodded.

They waited as the remaining mushrooms died, and Toby pulled up his sleeve to check the rest of his arm. Cobalt spoke when both of his arms were clear. “Are you okay?” When Toby didn’t verbally confirm, he asked again. “You sure?”

No. Another nod.

The rogue relented, though he didn’t seem satisfied with the answer, and let Toby’s hand go. “Well, it looks like it worked,” he said, gesturing towards the beds.

Toby looked behind him, and his mouth opened into a small “o”. Though he was sitting in front of a mess of dead leaves and disgusting black goop just seconds ago, there were now bright, colorful bursts of snapdragons and sweet peas. They bloomed in such abundance that the bed seemed much too small to hold all of them. Toby scrambled off of the bed, hyper-aware of the fact that he was probably crushing about a third of them by sitting on top of the dirt, but as soon as he lifted his weight, more exploded from the soil to join the others.

Toby marveled at them. He ran his hands through them, admiring how soft their petals were. There was an emptiness in his chest, coupled with a small amount of regret, that felt very similar to his usual reaction when meeting or talking about someone he used to know. As if his heart missed the feeling of knowing what it was like when their memories took up space. Toby’s wonder softened, but it was a feeling he’d grown used to, so he didn’t dwell on it long.

It took him a minute to realize that he had been admiring these flowers for quite some time, and yanked his hand back as if burned. They did not have time for this. He looked around for the chisel and hammer, standing abruptly as he did so. “Sorry, wasting time. Where are the --” he stopped when he realized that Cobalt had his arms crossed, watching him with a small smile on his face. “What?”

Cobalt shook his head. “Nothing. Take your time.”

Toby frowned. “We don’t have time, remember?”

Cobalt nodded towards the light, which hadn’t moved an inch since he’d finished carving Badger’s name. “Seems like your mind is willing to wait a little bit.”

Toby looked at it, then at the flowers. Under other circumstances, maybe if he didn’t have a spectator, he would indeed go right back to looking at each individual flower and studying all of the little things about them. Instead, “no, it’s fine. Let’s keep going.”

Cobalt pointed a thumb at the next flower bed, where he’d stuck the chisel and hammer upright in the dirt. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Toby nodded curtly, and Cobalt noticed the rose petals peeking out of his collar as he breezed past. Toby planted (ha) himself on top of the second bed in a similar fashion to the first, and tapped the carved knight with the handle of the chisel. “Alright, who’s this one?” When Cobalt didn’t answer, Toby turned to look at him, then immediately rolled his eyes at the knowing look on his face. “Leave me alone.”

Cobalt did not do that. “Are you embarrassed?”

Toby sighed. “No.”

Cobalt’s eyes traced the petals as they crept further up his neck. He flicked a finger at one of them before looking back at the man. “Are you sure?”

If Toby could have turned redder, he would have. Since that wasn’t an appearance his skin could take on, the plants did it for him: petals rapidly sprang out from his collar, growing faster than he could swat them away. By the time he got them down to a reasonable level and could see again, Cobalt’s expression had changed to amusement. His eyebrow lifted, and Toby pinched the bridge of his nose with a sigh. “Absolutely ridiculous.”

Cobalt was holding one of the petals between his fingers. “Mushrooms for fear, and roses for embarrassment. Noted.”

Toby grumbled several profanities under his breath, and when the petals threatened to come back, he whispered even more at them until they shrunk back into his skin. Cobalt dropped his petal on Toby’s head. He shook it off, and glared at the headstone in front of him. “Tell me the damn letters.”

Cobalt looked at the knight again, racking his brain for who that could be. He’d been certain about Badger, but the others . . .? He mentally scrolled through the list of people that Toby had witnessed the death of and whether or not it was important enough to warrant a name, but he couldn’t think of any soldiers or knights. A . . . guard? Maybe? Someone protective, at least.

Cobalt smacked his forehead. Duh . “J.”

Toby carved it.

“O.”

Toby carved that too.

Cobalt opened his mouth to say “N”, when both letters vanished. He faltered. “Wait, what? It’s not him?”

Toby looked between the stone and his friend. “Uh . . . I guess not . . .?”

Cobalt went through the list again. There was literally no one else that made sense, and the only other plausible option was definitely still alive. Cobalt refused to consider otherwise. Then he remembered: “He had some weird ass spelling to his name, but I can’t remember what it was.” Cobalt tried to think of anywhere he might have seen it before, as opposed to it just being told to him, and then he remembered the notebook. “Oh! It’s J-H-O-N-A,” he said, supplying the letters individually like before.

Toby carved that, but right before ending the “A”, he frowned. “What kind of name is that?”

Cobalt smirked, then shrugged, watching him finish carving a horizontal line. “It’s a dead guy’s name.”

Just like the other grave, the fog dispersed, and flowers sprouted out of the dirt. Toby jumped off of it, and inspected the new plants. “I saw these in Pip’s book . . . Yarrow, I think. Used in protection spells.” He poked at the tops of the flowers -- instead of being multicolored, fragrant blooms, yarrow tended to have one color at a time, and these were white. Their flowers were tiny, but grew in clusters that made them look like large, round masses.

He expected the familiar emptiness to take root, but this feeling was entirely different. He was . . . annoyed. So annoyed. He had no idea what this guy did, but he guessed that they didn’t get along for some reason.

Toby took his hand away. “Last one,” he said, picking up the chisel and hammer and repositioning himself atop the remaining flower bed. “Who’s in here?”

“I’m . . . actually not sure,” Cobalt admitted, his focus lingering on the carved bird atop the headstone before letting his gaze drift to the ground as he tried to make sense of it. “There’s only two bird-related people I can think of and I really hope it’s neither of them.”

Toby was still for a moment as he stared at the stone. Then, quietly, uncertainly, “Should we make sure?”

Cobalt frowned. He did not want this to be the way that either of them found out that one of the two died. If they did, though, they were in for a rude awakening -- whether it was inside or outside of Toby’s mind was up to them. He sighed. “Might as well.”

Toby held the chisel up, and after a moment’s hesitation, carved a very poorly done “B”. Only a few seconds passed before the letter disappeared entirely. Toby let out a breath. “That’s one.” He held the chisel up again, and carved an equally messy “P”.

He could’ve sworn the letter lingered for much longer than the “B” had. His heart started to hammer dangerously in his chest, shock and grief threatening to take hold, before that letter also disappeared.

Both he and Cobalt sagged with relief. “Neither of them, then,” Toby said, resting the chisel and hammer in his lap while he allowed his nerves to settle. He looked over his shoulder. “Anyone else?”

Cobalt crossed his arms, tapping a finger on his arm as he went back through the long list of dead people they’d encountered in only a few months. Maybe not birds, then, but someone with wings? The Abbot certainly wasn’t important enough to be remembered here, and besides, none of them knew what his actual name was. There was . . . that one unfortunate bystander in the attack they were definitely not the cause of recently, but other than that, Cobalt couldn’t think of anyone else that fit the criteria.

He froze as one possible person popped into his mind. No, that couldn’t be right.

Toby’s brow furrowed as he watched a strained look cross the half-elf’s face before he strode over and held out a hand for the tools. “Did you figure it out . . . ?”

Cobalt repeated the gesture for him to hand the chisel over. “Let me do it.”

Toby hesitated. “But you can’t-”

“Let me do it , Toby,” he said through gritted teeth.

The druid stared at him for a second, then relinquished the hammer and chisel. He slid off of the bed and watched as Cobalt assumed the same position he was just in, angling the tools over the stone. Toby winced at the ringing sound the chisel’s metal made against solid rock, which didn’t allow even the smallest dent no matter how hard Cobalt hit it. Toby had a feeling that Cobalt knew he couldn’t do this, and his eyes trailed up from the stone to the rogue’s face, which was creased with intense focus and frustration. He wondered what Cobalt was trying to protect him from this time.

At this point, the chisel had dulled somewhat, chips of its metal splintering off as it made contact again and again. Cobalt’s grunting turned into swearing as he tried threatening an inanimate object, and it wasn’t until he accidentally hit his finger that he gave up, tossing a final few choice words into the air. He grabbed both tools and threw them to the side, his trained precision making them fly directly into Jhona’s flower bed, uprooting some of the yarrow and scattering the dirt. Toby’s widened eyes darted to it, then flicked back to Cobalt, whose pale skin had reddened from the effort.

“This is fucking stupid. We don’t need to do this one anyway. Let’s go.” He got off of the bed and turned on a heel, storming towards the gates.

Toby stared after him, but didn’t move. He ran a hand gingerly over the stone, which didn’t have so much as a scratch, and said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Cobalt stopped, but didn’t turn. “And why not?” He asked, his voice clipped. “The light isn’t fucking going anywhere.”

The druid had no idea why this particular grave made him so upset, but he ventured ahead nonetheless: “Because if we don’t figure this out now, it will start moving again. And . . . if this grave is gone, I’ll forget everything about whomever is buried here.”

Cobalt turned back after a long moment and a clearly upset sigh. Dammit. Damn it. Toby was right, that would be considerably worse. Cobalt wasn’t sure he could live with being the only one with this knowledge, and certainly wasn’t prepared for the possibility of telling Toby about it, only to be met with a completely confused “. . . who?”

Toby watched him approach with a small, grateful smile. He strolled over to the discarded tools, eyeing the deep gash they made in the once tidy flower bed. He picked them up, and silently packed the dirt back together, righting the fallen flowers. After repositioning himself atop the last grave, he said, “First letter?”

The rogue’s jaw worked as he thought through every possible loophole he could exploit so Toby wouldn’t have to be the one to do this, but came up short every time. Toby was the only one who could do this, who could fix any of this. Cobalt was only here to help, and even that had its limits. But this? This was just straight up cruel. And there was nothing he could do about it.

Toby glanced back at him when he didn’t hear a response. “There’s only 26 to choose from,” he said lightly, earning an eye roll. He turned, grateful to at least get that incredibly stormy look off Cobalt’s face.

A few more seconds passed before Cobalt sighed. “O.”

xxx

It was quite some time before Toby’s stomach settled. He was hunched over, panting like a dog as he forced himself to breathe. There was nothing inside of him, not here, so he was just dry heaving over and over, unable to get himself to stop.

The nausea had hit him like a ton of bricks, and he had no time to brace himself before he felt like his body was trying to expel its own insides, given that there was nothing in his stomach. He had carved the last letter on the headstone, and at first, felt nothing. The birds-of-paradise sprouted around him, the fog dissipated, and other than a general fascination for plants he’d never seen before, there was no emotional reaction like the ones he’d had around the other graves. Cobalt was watching him carefully, body tensed and prepared to react at the slightest change in the man’s composure, but . . . nothing happened.

Toby had read the name a few times, but he didn’t remember a thing about them. He’d shrugged it off, and slid off of the bed. And then, as soon as he was about to stand up -- his chest hurt. He couldn’t talk, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think as an overwhelming sense of remorse barrelled into him, and forced him to his knees. He heard Cobalt calling him, felt hands on his arm and back, but he couldn’t answer. He cried, hand flying to his mouth as tears streamed down his face so quickly that it soaked his fingers and neck, and if there was no one else there to support him, he might’ve just crumpled to the floor.

The only thing Toby knew was what he was feeling, but not why: he felt grief, of course, as indicated by his relentless sobs, but there was an undercurrent of regret and guilt that was impossible for him to shake. Almost as if this death had been his fault. He couldn’t wrap his head around it, or rationalize how he’d figure out exactly where this feeling was coming from, but something in his gut insisted that he was involved in a way that he would never, ever forgive himself for.

That was how the heaving started -- his lungs couldn’t keep up with how much he was crying. It was choking him, and in an effort to fight against suffocation due to his own distress, his body violently pivoted to another involuntary reaction that forced him to breathe. His hands went from his mouth to his stomach and he doubled over, forehead pressed into the dirt as he squeezed his eyes shut and fought for some sort of control.

He won, eventually. The retching stopped, and his breathing slowed until he let his shoulders relax. He kept his eyes closed, breathing through his nose and mouth until he was okay enough to speak again.

“What . . . the hell, man,” he said, voice wispy and strained.

Cobalt was sitting a few feet away from him, repeatedly clenching his hands into fists and releasing them. He wanted to help. He’d been reminded many times that he couldn’t. “You alright?”

Toby nodded, but didn’t move. “Gimme a minute,” he whispered. He waited until his muscles stopped trembling, and forced himself up, taking a slow breath as he did so. He pushed some of his hair back, leaving his hand there for a moment as he checked for the umpteenth time that he was actually okay, then let it go, his curls stubbornly bouncing back into place and dancing just in front of his eyes.

He slid those tired eyes to Cobalt, and offered an equally exhausted smile at his troubled expression. “Hi.”

The rogue did not return it. Naturally. “That was a rough one.”

Toby only sighed in agreement, then wiped his face with his sleeve. He looked back at the grave with a frown. “If my memories come back, I’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”

Cobalt considered asking him to elaborate, but Toby’s expression told him that maybe he needed some time before he was ready to do so. He stood up instead, and offered a hand.

Toby took it and held on tightly until he was sure he could stand on his own, then brushed the dirt off his pants. He looked down at them, and noticed that his pants -- all of his clothes, in fact -- were completely clean. He glanced at Cobalt, noticing the same on him, and then looked up at his face. It was back to the tense wariness that he’d entered the graveyard with, which Toby decided not to comment on. They silently agreed to leave the graveyard, and wandered back in the direction of the clearing.

Now that the fog was gone, it was easier to see, and Toby paused, pointing at the ground. “Look,” he said, crouching down to brush a hand over the disturbed earth. There were deep gouges in the ground, starting at the clearing and leading all the way to the graveyard itself. He looked back at its fences: “I think something was trying to drag the graveyard out of here. That’s why it’s so far away from the others, and in such a weird spot.”

Cobalt turned and looked at it again, and nodded. He’d had a much similar thought when they’d first come across it. “Almost like it wasn’t supposed to be here, originally.”

Toby cocked his head at it. “I wonder if . . . maybe that’s what the fog was for. Every other building is easy to see, but you could barely tell that it was a graveyard in the first place. It’s like . . . I wonder if this was its attempt at remembering important people that aren’t around anymore. And it couldn’t think of any of them clearly, since they’d died, so it covered the entire thing in fog.” He looked back at the ground. “And when it wasn’t able to remember any of them like I remember all of you, it tried to get rid of it entirely.”

He stood up again, kicking some of the upturned dirt back into place. “But, now that we’ve helped determine who those people are . . .” Toby started walking backwards, keeping his eyes on the graveyard as it began to shake. Cobalt watched him do so, then stepped out of the way as it slowly slid forward.

All of the buildings, except for the house, gradually shifted to the right as they made space for the graveyard to sit amongst them. There were lots of hollow creaks and groans as vacant structures unnaturally moved on their own, and a sonorous boom as they each settled into their new spots. “. . . It can take up space like everything else,” he finished. Toby turned in a slow circle, nodding at the way they were all equidistant now, instead of each building having awkwardly large gaps on either side. He stopped turning when he was facing Cobalt again, who had wandered back over to Toby’s side while silently watching everything move.

“Poetic,” Cobalt said.

Toby snorted. “You sound less than impressed.”

Cobalt shrugged. “It could’ve done all of that with significantly less discomfort and confusion, in my opinion,” he muttered.

The druid smirked. “Remember whose mind this is,” he said, crossing his arms, “there was no way this was going to be any sort of paradise.”

“If this happens again -- I hope it doesn’t, but if it does -- I’d rather be in Pip’s mind.”

Toby raised an eyebrow. “It would probably just be a bunch of birds at church. And everything’s vegan.”

Cobalt’s nose wrinkled. “I can’t tell whether that would be better or worse.”

Toby tilted his head, considering. “Church might do you some good, now that I think about it.”

Cobalt side eyed him, which made Toby grin. “Pick another building so we can get out of here.”

“Touchy,” Toby muttered jokingly. Cobalt ignored him. “Well . . . I remember most of what happened in there,” he said, turning and pointing to the church. “We could try that one next.”

Cobalt narrowed his eyes at the building. A stone fell off and thudded quietly on the ground. “Maybe. Assuming that there isn’t something else in there that wants to kill us.”

The man pursed his lips, looking over at the birdhouse. “What about Pip’s? That one doesn’t seem that bad.”

Cobalt glanced at him, then the birdhouse, remembering after a second that Toby had no recollection of what had happened in there. Or in the inn, for that matter. He was just about to voice this when Toby spoke up.

“Actually, maybe not. You were pretty pissed at me after that.”

Toby didn’t look back at him, so Cobalt couldn’t see his face when he said that. God damn this man. “It’s up to you,” he replied, forcing his voice to fall flat.

The druid did look back at him then, no doubt trying to interpret what he might not be saying, the same way Cobalt was doing to him. Toby shook his head, not willing to open that can of worms right now, and glanced at the house. He wasn’t ready to go back there yet. Besides, they hadn’t really gotten much out of it, as far as he could remember. Which . . . arguably wasn’t much, but either way, he didn’t feel like trying again so soon.

He looked at the church. Despite it sliding around earlier, it didn’t look any worse than before. But, then again, it was in such a state of ruin that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to tell if anything had changed. He watched as a piece of one of the metal posts dangled precariously, hanging on to the rest of the structure by a single piece of badly rusted metal, and then snapped off, spearing into the ground with its jagged end sticking straight into the air.

Ominous. He suppressed an exasperated sigh, and said, “church it is.”

Chapter Text

Most of his memory was splintered, and what he could remember was strictly limited, especially here. But he figured that because there was very little clutter taking up the recesses of his mind, he was easily able to recall Cobalt's quiet insistence that he be more careful.

Toby heeded this when he stepped into the church, stopping just inside the doorway and surveying his surroundings again with a more critical eye. He found that he was naturally drawn towards wonder: where his friends typically looked at things in a guarded manner due to their years of experience in less-than-trustworthy circumstances, he simply observed what was presented to him as it was. He touched things he maybe shouldn't, stared too long at people who didn't want him to, absorbed the dull palette of the world like a sponge. He'd heard someone consider it “childlike”, once. He found that, despite the term rubbing him the wrong way, he'd probably agree with the kids on this one, oddly enough. Toby wondered how far people would've gotten without children questioning and meddling with everything.

The shards sat in a scattered pile on the floor, untouched. Toby took note of this just as Cobalt stepped through and stood beside him. The memory of seeing Bailey made of glass, blood dripping from his claws while glaring at them with white, pinhole eyes filled his mind again. Not that he'd really forgotten it the first time -- which struck him as strange, considering that he completely forgot what happened in every other building.

Cobalt's eyes flicked to Toby's arms. His hoodie was securely wrapped around his waist, same place where Cobalt had tied it for him, and the dingy t-shirt he had on underneath left his forearms visible. They were crossed, and those little mushrooms that the rogue was now quite familiar with started to sprout in place of Toby's hair standing on end. When the man brushed them away and stepped around the pile of shards, Cobalt wondered if he'd missed them before. If maybe there were other ways Toby was trying to tell them something and no one quite caught it before he pretended like it hadn’t happened.

He shook himself out of that train of thought and looked up at the windows lining the walls of the church. They were all still there: Bailey's consistently supportive paw; the failed attempt to talk to Olive; his tail swishing back and forth as he sat by himself, lost in thought; a very dad-like rundown of the ups and downs of their inconvenient portal to hell.

But this time, they were completely still. Initially, their colorful panes had stilted movements, replaying Toby's memories of Bailey as if his subconscious was also somewhat unsure if its recollection was correct. No matter how long Cobalt watched them, however, they didn't move. The memories had dulled over and frozen in place, now more reminiscent of actual old stained glass windows.

Toby nodded when Cobalt pointed it out to him. “Figured it was because we got rid of him,” the druid said, pointing a thumb towards the pile of glass. He looked back at the altar, still stained with what he could no longer tell himself was anything but blood, and frowned. “Doesn't seem to have done much of anything else, though.”

"Maybe there's nothing else to do," Cobalt suggested, though he didn't completely believe that.

Toby's frown stayed where it was. "I think we have to . . . fix something. There's something wrong here and we have to make it right. Like in the graveyard."

Cobalt crossed his arms. "I'm pretty sure the 'wrong' was corrected already," he said, indicating towards the pile.

Toby shook his head. "But nothing happened when I did it. I was still bleeding, right? And the church didn't change . . ." He turned in a slow circle, taking everything in while Cobalt watched him. "The windows aren't moving, but nothing's really changed. It still doesn't feel right."

Cobalt briefly considered asking him what "right" felt like and how he'd know, but he decided against it. He was more of a strategist: if they needed a plan of attack, a means of escape, the best way to get information -- Cobalt's your guy. But a building that's falling apart with no patterns to decipher, no exits that would truly let them leave, and an uncertain time limit? He was just a little bit out of his depth. "Then what do we do?"

"I . . ." Toby stopped turning. "I don't know. I hate that I think I should." He looked off to the side. "I can't figure out what the problem is."

Cobalt looked in the direction that caught Toby's attention. The Pelor statue that Toby used to -- “kill” left a bitter taste in his mouth, maybe “stop” was better -- stop Bailey was still on the floor, a crack in the god's face and a chunk of his scalp broken off. The crack ran through his eye and down towards the opposite side of his mouth, stopping at the collarbone. Cobalt absently touched his own scar before speaking again. "And you're sure that glass cat wasn't the problem?"

Toby nudged the broken idol with his foot. "I'm only sure that he wasn't the entire problem. There's more to this place than just breaking a fake version of Bailey." He'd be secretly disappointed if it was that easy.

His eye caught on the red sprinkled on some parts of the statue, and his brow furrowed until he noticed the puddle of blood near the statue. He was conveniently reminded of the second after he realized he'd broken the paladin, when his body finally caught up with the fact that he was somehow bleeding profusely, and immediately gave out on him.

The image of Bailey lunging at him replayed over and over in his mind: the jagged, sharpened teeth aimed straight for his skin; the glowing white eyes that promised something no less than brutal; claws sharpened to easily rip him apart . . . Toby placed a hand gingerly to his stomach when he felt a stinging pinch there. It was damp, and he didn't have to look down to realize that he'd started to sweat.

He'd seen Bailey in action before. He'd witnessed firsthand the carnage that Bailey could cause with a single swing of his axe, the incredible amount of damage he left in his wake by simply being a walking powerhouse. Bailey fought with a ferocity that both scared and impressed him, and Toby was always grateful that he wasn't ever at the other end of the paladin's rage.

But even if he was . . . Bailey would snap out of it. Sure, he'd lost his temper on occasion, which one of them hadn't? But Bailey would never attack him. He'd surely never eat him. Right?

×××

Bailey's real body was sinking.

It wasn't sinking any faster than before, but still, he was low enough that dirt had started to roll onto his torso, and the paw that was once reaching for his axe was completely buried. Said axe stayed above ground: the plants were unconcerned with something inanimate that posed them no harm when its user was completely unconscious.

Not even the dirt that rolled into his open, snoring mouth woke him up as he quietly and gradually slid deeper and deeper underground. The sun motif on his clothes, mostly hidden from view on a regular basis, was slowly being overtaken by dirt, like an eclipse in a cloudless sky.

The plants liked this one. He didn't struggle, hardly squirmed or twitched even as they tightened around his legs and arms to keep him still as he sank lower and lower. The cat was stocky and heavy, with plenty of life they could borrow to keep themselves fed.

×××

The pinching pain in his stomach had subsided soon after he put his hand to it and moved away from the broken Pelor statue. He decided instead to go back to the middle aisle and the pile of glass.

Both he and Cobalt stared at a notably empty floor. There were several beats of silence as they blinked at the spot where at least a single piece of glass should’ve been, but it was as if someone had come along with a broom and neither of them had noticed.

Toby spoke up first. "There . . . there was something there, right?"

It was Cobalt's turn to frown. His eyes narrowed as he did a full visual sweep of the church, frowning deeper when he found no other evidence of someone else being in the space with them. He didn't like that they'd have to revisit this scenario as a possibility. "Would it be at all possible for someone else to make their way in here without you realizing it?"

Toby looked back at the door. "I had no idea you were here until I heard your footsteps, so . . . yes, I imagine so."

"How the hell would anyone else have access to your subconscious?" Cobalt asked, voice quiet as he kept trained eyes on every possible hiding place in the room. "Unless you accidentally attacked someone passing by that wasn't one of us."

"A random person wouldn't be sneaking around my mind like this," the druid murmured as he looked back at the floor. "It would definitely be someone who knows me. And . . . doesn't like that." The pain in his stomach sharpened.

Cobalt let out a displeased hum. That would mean they were being watched before this all happened. He ran through a list of potential names, not a single one of them doing anything to ease the dread growing in his gut. "Someone with ulterior motives towards you is now wandering around your conscience?"

"Apparently."

"That's not good."

"Mm-mm." Toby looked up at the windows. They still hadn't moved. He looked back in the direction of the altar. "I'm gonna go check something."

At Cobalt's nod, he took one last look at the floor before walking down the middle of the pews. He brushed a few more stray mushrooms off of his arms before slowing to a stop.

The pictures in the windows by the altar were always static, but Toby noticed that there was something more . . . somber about them. Initially, Bailey had looked like a ruler steeped in humility, head bowed in reference to a fair and benevolent king. But now, the crown and robes looked heavy, like burdens placed upon him whether he wanted them or not. His posture sagged, and Toby could've sworn that the crown was tipped, as if it would slide off of his head at any moment.

He looked at the knight, and it was more of the same: the expression on his face changed from pride to distress, brow furrowed as he kept a firm grip on the hilt of his axe. Toby squinted at it. The axe was split in two, straight down the middle, and there was some sort of mound or heap it was sitting on. Toby couldn't quite tell what it was, but the shape of it unnerved him, so he moved on.

The puppet followed suit in a predictable way. It had been upsetting to look at Bailey in this state before, arms and legs strung up in such a fashion that it proved that he had no control over his actions, but now it was as if he had been tossed aside, discarded and forgotten by the entity pulling his strings. The puppet was slumped against the window frame, limbs folded limply in a way that was eerily close to death. The rest of the frame was the same sickly green as before.

And then, there was the last window. He wondered if fixing it would be the answer, but he had yet to come across anything that would allow him to do that. And besides, if he was right about Feral Bailey being its subject, well . . . he couldn't imagine how he'd even approach repairing it now.

There was a more pressing matter to attend to first, though. He hesitated, glancing behind him before giving another wary look at the altar. Cobalt was preoccupied with searching for more evidence of the person creeping around without their knowledge. Toby closed his eyes with a tired sigh. He wasn't sure why he was feeling like this -- it was as if this place took hold of any tiny amount of fear he had and magnified it to the point where he felt sick.

The druid forced it down, and made himself walk closer to the altar until he was standing right in front of it. Every instinct in his body screamed at him to avoid it, but if it was part of figuring out this place, then . . . might as well get it over with. He ignored the ache in his stomach as best he could as he crouched down to look at it better.

Cobalt, meanwhile, didn't find a thing. Whomever had taken the broken pieces of Bailey left without a trace. Cobalt considered that perhaps some part of Toby's mind had gotten rid of it after the man destroyed it, but that didn’t explain why it happened now .

The elf turned to tell Toby that he didn't find anything, but paused. The druid was staring intently at something on the side of the altar. Sunlight filtered in through the broken pieces of the church walls and windows, casting a warm, colorful glow that only illuminated the platform upon which Toby and the altar rested. It was . . . pretty, but in an incongruous way that made an unfamiliar feeling stir as he stared.

Toby didn't notice the light on or around him as he shifted into a sitting position. He'd found an inscription on its side, and his expression soured as he read:

May the w who witness your radiance

know the divine Sun and banish their darkness for eternity.

Toby begrudgingly accepted that the dried red substance on the altar was days-old blood, and it seeped into the stone, grotesquely highlighting the words and the violent slash mark across them.

There was one word smudged with dirt that Toby couldn't quite make out. He reached out to wipe it off.

Clink.

Cobalt froze for only a moment before he darted towards Toby, understanding immediately dawning on him. There wasn’t anyone else here, after all.

Bailey was still alive.

Toby wiped the dirt off of the word, and gasped as pain shot through his stomach. He grabbed at it, pressing down hard before pulling his hand away. It was stained a deep, dark red, and it trembled as he lifted his eyes to read the word he was missing.

Wretched.

Cobalt yanked him out of the way just before Bailey slammed into the side of the altar, the deceptively light tinkle of shattering glass belying the cat’s stocky build. Toby didn't give himself time to process what was happening before he was on his feet and stumbling after Cobalt, clutching desperately at his abdomen as pain tore through his body and blood soaked his shirt. Bailey caught up with him easily, grabbing the back of his hoodie around his waist and making him come to a sudden stop, sending him crashing to the floor.

Bailey grabbed Toby’s ankle. The man turned, then, with the intention of kicking Bailey's paw, but what he saw made him freeze.

Bailey was a wreck . Toby had indeed shattered him -- he'd seen the cat turn from a two-dimensional lunging threat into a pile of jagged glass right before his own lights went out. That pile had haphazardly welded itself back together, black lines of molten metal splitting Bailey's panes into hundreds of much smaller pieces. His mouth and nose were crooked and off-center, and there were more holes in his frame than before. Pieces of glass hung off of him as they were improperly fastened to the rest of his body, and he made a haunting shh sound as the broken glass dragged across the floor when he walked. Bailey's claws dug into Toby's ankle, and tore into his skin as the glass shards raked across his leg. It made Bailey's already blood-crusted paws become slick with more of the substance, but the paladin didn't seem to care.

The burning pain in his leg made him snap back to reality, and Toby kicked at Bailey's paw with all of his might, loosening bits of glass and sending them skittering across the floor. The cat's answering frustrated growl was mixed with a tinny whistle, like strong wind blowing through cracks in a window, as his hold loosened.

Toby didn't even have the strength to cry out when Bailey shook off the weakened kick and grabbed hold of both of his legs. His vision went black before he saw Cobalt swing at Bailey with a broken plank of wood, catching the side of his head and disorienting the cat long enough for the rogue to snatch Toby up and dart out of the door.

×××

The day continued to stretch on as Bailey's body came to a stop. He'd only roused once, mouth curling into a snarl and claws shooting out from once-docile paws as his sleep turned restless. The plants had no problem soothing him after a few seconds, and once he settled down, they resumed their slow, steady progress of burying him alive.

Only the tips of his ears and a corner or two of his clothes could be seen peeking above the thin layer of dirt once they were no longer able to drag him under. The plants around him halted their unnatural growth and quietly began to fade and droop.

×××

It took about the same amount of time as before for Toby to wake up. Cobalt had unceremoniously dumped the man on the ground when they made it out, immediately turning on his heel to prepare to hold Bailey off for as long as was necessary. But when he looked back, Bailey was gone.

When Cobalt had grabbed Toby, holding him with one arm as he used his other hand to help propel them forward, Bailey was on his heels. The speed and agility that the glass version of the paladin had still alarmed Cobalt to some degree, and he found himself once again grateful that the Bailey he knew was on their side. Cobalt had only looked back once, meeting glowing white eyes on a horribly distorted face, mouth open as if attempting to take the elf's entire head in one bite, and hadn't turned around again until he made it outside.

Cobalt couldn't decide whether or not it was reassuring that Bailey was no longer there. He certainly hadn't come out -- everywhere Bailey went since he'd appeared, he'd left a trail of those damned red glass shards. There wasn't a single one outside of the church, and Cobalt had checked countless times while waiting for his friend to wake up.

The rogue found his Emotional Support Tree to sit against as he waited. It had been several long minutes, and it was enough for Cobalt to conclude that Bailey did not permit himself -- or perhaps Toby's mind didn't allow him -- to go beyond the limits of the church walls.

Cobalt's own mind drifted as the seconds ticked by. A lot about this place still confused the hell out of him, but he couldn't get one recurring question to leave his mind.

Where did that Bailey come from?

In fact, where did any of them come from? As far as Cobalt knew, Bailey had never lost his shit to that degree, and if it had happened while he wasn't there, Toby would've mentioned it. Eventually. Wouldn't he?

Cobalt blew a stray lock of hair out of his face as he huffed in annoyance. The best answer he could give himself to that question was a solid "maybe".

Bailey would've told him, though. The paladin's conscience was too high strung to hide something like that from someone he trusted. He was sure of it, and he was sure Bailey trusted him, no matter what irritating, self-deprecating voice in his head told him otherwise.

Okay, so the batshit version was still somewhat of a mystery, but what about the others? Cobalt had noticed a king, knight, and a puppet. Cobalt knew about the way Strahd toyed with Bailey day in and day out, but he hadn't been around nearly enough for Toby to put those pieces together. The knight was more obvious, sure, but Bailey didn't really open up too much about his personal history in that department.

Maybe he talked to Toby more than Cobalt realized. Maybe it was another thing that he just failed to notice about those around him, despite needing to be incredibly observant to keep himself alive.

Or . . . maybe he just felt okay enough to let his guard down around them, and so he didn't need to have eyes and ears everywhere all of the time. They were allowed to have secrets too. Little inside things that only they shared with each other, things he didn't have to be privy to.

Cobalt felt a small pang in his chest at that, one he didn't quite recognize at first. He . . . wanted to know. He'd kind of liked being That Person that everyone could share things with, the one that held everyone's random stories close to the heart, where he could be relied on to keep them safe. He was grateful that they were getting along as well as they were -- he'd been in plenty of situations where the groups he was stuck in had people with completely different temperaments -- but . . .

He let his head roll back against the tree. Secretly, deep down, he wanted Toby to know more about him. The most, perhaps, even though he spoke mostly with Bailey. But it was hard to confide in someone whose memory was flaky at best, and revealing too much could send him into a pain-induced spiral.

Despite that, somehow Bailey had found a workaround. And now there were memories here and versions of Bailey that even Cobalt was unfamiliar with. He wondered, with no small amount of envy, if the reverse held true.

Not that Toby would have much to share, really, as his entire life as he knew it was the weeks he'd spent in their company, but . . . still. Why didn't Toby talk to him about things? He was here, wasn't he? Wandering around his literal subconscious, chosen by Toby's weird abilities to be the one that helps him figure all this shit out, and yet, he was the one left out?

His eyes closed. He really shouldn't care that much. This place was doing strange things to his feelings and he didn't like it.

He wondered how much longer he'd believe that.

×××

Cobalt jolted awake, realizing with a start that he'd nodded off at some point. He sat up, frantic that in his sleep, something might’ve come along and --

Toby was sitting cross-legged in front of him, blowing the heads of dandelions and watching them drift to the ground. His hair had turned into dandelion seeds, and they waved gently every time he moved his head. He looked up at Cobalt's alarm, and blew the rest of the seeds off before placing the stem on the ground.

Cobalt watched the seeds slowly turn back into blonde curls. He'd put his hoodie back on, for some reason. "How long was I asleep?"

Toby didn't seem to notice. "Like, five minutes, maybe?"

The elf grunted something and pushed himself up. He looked back at the church. "Shit."

"What?"

Cobalt sighed, starting towards the church again. "Light's moving."

Toby stood up, hurrying behind him as he started rambling about the conclusions he drew. "I'm pretty sure that the fear I feel is directly connected to -- ow -- the wound on my stomach that just seems to -- ow, Jesus -- appear out of nowhere --"

Cobalt stopped, turning. "What's wrong?"

Toby also stopped, craning his neck a little to look up at him. He pointed to his ankles. "Hurts to walk."

Cobalt looked down at them. Toby had wrapped what he could in cloth from god knows where, but it was largely insufficient and the elf could see the angry dark scars underneath. "Wait, your cuts didn't heal?"

"This one did," Toby said, pointing to his stomach. "But those didn't. I don't think they're the same kind of cut, though."

Cobalt shrugged as if to imply that it was obvious, but Toby shook his head. "No, listen. This one," he said, indicating towards the larger of them, "only comes up when I'm nervous. I'm sure of it. It just happens. I thought it was sweat at first, and then it didn't stop, and then --" he waved his hands. "Nevermind. Doesn't matter. These ones on my leg though were a direct attack from Bailey, and my skin didn't forget them, but I'm not sure why --"

Toby went on and on, and Cobalt wasn't exactly sure where the energy to talk this much suddenly came from. Maybe the universe was playing games with his silent wish. Then Toby mentioned the windows, and Cobalt stopped him, remembering his question. "How do you know those things about Bailey?"

Toby's words stumbled to a stop. "What things?"

Cobalt nodded towards the entrance of the church. "The big windows in there. The knight, the king, the puppet -- did he tell you about all of that?"

Toby's eyes widened a little as his train of thought had to suddenly pivot. "Um . . . no."

Cobalt cocked his head. "They're not memories, then?" When Toby shook his head, he frowned. "So, the Bailey in there . . . he didn't ever attack you outright, did he? Did he threaten to?"

Toby went a little quiet. ". . . No."

Cobalt stared at him. How the hell does someone have memories of things that never happened? "What aren't you saying?"

Toby's mouth shut as he considered. When he took too long to answer, Cobalt sighed. "Tobes --" he stopped, a possible answer dawning on him. "Wait a second. Are you making things up?"

The druid considered denying it, but he didn't see the point now.

Cobalt's jaw flexed as he tried to keep his emotions level. He opened his eyes after a moment. "How much of this is real?"

All of the air seemed to leave Toby's body as he realized that this line of questioning would undoubtedly continue in a direction he did not like. His own voice hardened as he felt himself growing defensive. "Why does that matter?"

"Because," Cobalt said evenly, "dealing with your memories is different from dealing with your imagination ."

Toby felt the urge to deliberately be more difficult than he needed to be, so he shrugged. "I don't see what the issue is," he replied in a tone that suggested the opposite, "the monsters will still be there regardless of whether it's real or fake."

Cobalt's eyes narrowed. "What's that supposed to mean?"

At first, Toby didn't respond. He crossed his arms, eyes leaving Cobalt's face as he considered how to phrase his response. Then he shook his head. "Forget it. It doesn't matter."

Cobalt stopped him before he could try and walk away from another mildly uncomfortable conversation. "Bailey's not a monster."

"I never said he was."

"You didn't have to," Cobalt snapped, pointing to the church doors. They were still broken off their hinges and covered in claw marks. "It's pretty obvious that you think so."

"If it's so obvious, then what are we having this conversation for?"

"Because this is Bailey we're talking about. We've fought actual monsters Toby -- Bailey isn't one of them."

The druid threw his arms up. "I don't know what you want me to do. Just un-imagine him? Wish for him to go away? Close my eyes and pretend like there's nothing hiding under the bed?"

"I want you not to think of the damn guy as a threat when he's been saving your ass for months ." Cobalt snapped his fingers in the most sarcastic way he could, pretending like a fantastic idea suddenly came to mind. "Why don't we have a little storytime, hm?"

Toby sighed, rolling his eyes. "Cobalt, we do not have time for that."

"Sure we do!" The rogue's voice spiked in volume as his composure slipped easily through hands that were half-heartedly holding on at best. Ominous moving light be damned. "Because it's going to help you remember what Bailey is actually like, and you won't think of him like that ," he said, the words burning as he just about spat them in Toby's direction.

Toby froze, recognizing a situation that was quickly getting out of hand and one that was entirely his doing. He lifted his hands placatingly, trying to interrupt before Cobalt could catch on the fire unintentionally lit beneath him. "Okay, you don't have to --"

The elf would not be stopped. “When Badger died -- remember him? You just carved his fucking headstone? -- Bailey was devastated . He held him, cried over him for hours .”

Toby had heard that one before, but of course he wasn't allowed to remember the details. A warning twinge of sharp pain cut through Toby's skull and he winced, but days of practice in shoving the feeling down surfaced and triumphed instead. "You don't have to remind me about that --"

“No? Not that one?" Cobalt jabbed a finger in his direction, though it didn't go so far as to actually reach the man. "Well what about every single time Bailey fought to keep you alive? When you lost your mind and he was the first to remind you of your own fucking name? Do you just conveniently forget about that too? Replace him with this thing instead?”

Toby knew that a finger to his sternum would hurt significantly more with the commentary supporting it, so it was somewhat of a mercy that Cobalt still restrained from touching him directly unless he found it absolutely necessary. That hurt more, somehow.

His voice lost all desire to have any sort of presence in the conversation. ". . . I am afraid of him."

"We damn well established that."

"I can't fucking help it," Toby bit out, his teeth gritted as he absurdly wished for there to be a physical blow that buffered the emotional ones. He supposed there was a level of cowardice in that, but couldn't figure out how to care. "I've seen . . . I know what he can do. And so do you."

Cobalt didn't reply, but his expression was dangerously stormy as he stared down at the man in front of him.

Toby let himself meet it, even though it was harder than usual to do so. "Sometimes I get things wrong about all of you, and my imagination fills in the blanks. Sometimes it sticks, and sometimes it doesn't. This," he said, gesturing towards the church, "is the version of Bailey that stuck."

Cobalt crossed his arms. He seemed to be done with sharing his thoughts on the matter, though his expression shifted slightly into something Toby couldn't name.

The druid pressed on, his voice quieter than Cobalt's had been, even now, and much colder: a natural response to the searing heat that was present just a second ago. "You can't guarantee that one of us won't be next."

Okay, maybe he wasn't done. "Bailey would never hurt you."

Toby didn't say anything, but his gaze flicked away from Cobalt's face until the rogue spoke up again.

"Tell me you believe that."

"So you can yell at me for lying?"

Cobalt closed his eyes with a sigh. Bailey was a good person. Well . . . as good as any of them could be, really. He was certainly the most honest, which counted for something.

"I . . . don't think that Bailey is . . . I don't think he'd ever intentionally try and hurt any of us," Toby continued carefully, "but I also can't entirely rule out the thought that it won't happen. And that I won't be able to . . ." He gestured vaguely.

"Stop him."

"Yeah."

For a second, Cobalt considered asking Toby what that meant for him. Sure, Cobalt wasn't prone to fits of primal rage, but he also wasn't the most mentally sound, and he did know a good deal more about ending a life than the average person should. He did not ask. "So, you're able to remember what happened because it's all made up, then," Cobalt said instead.

Toby gradually caught up with the change in topic. "Maybe."

"But your body doesn't remember it all."

Toby's arms uncrossed, and his hands found their way into his pockets. "Seems like it."

Cobalt shook his head. "I don't know how much longer I can do this, Tobes. You lose your shit everywhere else, and it's . . . it's some freaky shit, man. And then you just forget about it. But I can't -- I have to remember everything for both of us."

Toby stared at him, and the incredibly rare confession felt delicate, fragile. He knew he'd hold on to it too tightly, as he did with most things, and so they cut into his palms, but he would hold it regardless. The deal he'd struck with the forest was solidified ten times over in that moment. "Remind me, then."

Cobalt blinked. "That would hurt."

"It would. Remind me anyway."

"Toby --"

He held up a hand. "You're not even supposed to be here, remember? You shouldn’t have to deal with that on your own. If something happens and I forget it, tell me."

He did not give Toby a response for a long moment, and then turned on his heel. "We should figure that damn church out before the light does whatever it's gonna do."

Toby counted down the seconds -- a smirk found its way onto his face -- until Cobalt realized that he was not, in fact, being followed into the church to figure it out before the light did whatever it was going to do, and let out a very rogue-like groan.

"If it hurts, I'm going to stop talking," he called out over his shoulder.

Toby waited for him to turn back around. "I'm not fragile. I can handle it."

"I don't want you to."

Toby's answering smile felt strangely fond. "That's not up to you."

They needed to hurry, but Cobalt did not feel like being agreeable in this situation. He mulled over the possibility of going back on this particular promise -- after all, if he didn't remember anything when he exited, would he know that there was something he missed?

Probably not. He could work with that. "Gods, you're stubborn. Come on."

Toby caught up with him, and they picked their way over the crumbling rubble of the church until they reached the entrance. "Is that your way of relenting?"

Cobalt grunted. "I'll tell you whatever you want if it gets us out of here," he lied, but it was smooth as butter if Toby's answering grin was anything to go by.

Chapter Text

Neither of them went inside when they reached the church doors. It wasn’t as if there was anything else in the way of them entering, but one massive, overarching question still remained.

“So what the hell are we supposed to do once we go inside?” Toby asked.

Cobalt idly opened and closed a pocketknife in his left hand. “I’m all for fighting like hell until we win. That’s what we usually do.”

Toby pursed his lips thoughtfully. “I don’t know if that’s going to work. It didn’t last time.”

“You could always try not bleeding out.”

Toby rolled his eyes. “You’re so helpful. What would I ever do without you.”

Cobalt smirked, but kept his attention on the broken doors.

“I still think we have to fix things, somehow,” Toby continued, twisting his ring as the gears in his mind worked overtime to try and figure out the puzzle in front of him before he earned more lasting damage from the church of carnage, “but I don’t think breaking him apart again is the answer.”

Cobalt was silently itching to go inside and see if that was true, but he forced himself to be patient. “You have a theory, I’m assuming.”

“I always have theories,” Toby said absently, the fidgeting coming to a stop as he looked up at the broken steeples. “Everything here is already broken. So . . . breaking more of what’s here isn’t going to actually do much. We could destroy the entire building and it probably wouldn’t help.”

The half-elf raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t considered demolition on that scale. “Might be fun, though.”

Toby snorted, though he didn’t disagree. “I think he came from the broken window.”

Cobalt nodded. “Makes sense. They’re both red.”

Toby’s brow furrowed. “The king and the . . . what’d you call it? Prisoner, right? Are pretty much the same color, so I wasn’t sure.”

Cobalt was following up until this point. He opened his mouth to rebuke that, because they were most certainly not, but Toby rambled on and he decided to save that for later.

“I was trying to figure out something we could use to fix the window, but there’s obvious issues with that: if Bailey is a part of that window, then we’d need to put him back.”

“Which isn’t going to happen.”

“Definitely not.”

Cobalt tilted his head, kicking a piece of broken stone into the empty church. It rolled down the aisle, coming to a stop after bumping into a broken pew’s leg. “Maybe you just need to change the way you think about him.”

Toby sighed. “I told you, I can’t just not imagine --”

“No, hush. Listen.” Cobalt redirected his attention to a mildly sour-looking Toby. He knew the druid didn’t like being interrupted, but he did it often enough that the narrowed eyes hardly had an effect anymore. “Bailey is . . . scary. In some ways. He’s pretty fast for a cat built like a brick wall, and used to fight on teams way more skilled than ours. But he’s on our side. He’s got no reason to use any of that against us.”

Toby’s eyebrow lifted. “He almost ate Pip. Twice.”

Cobalt nodded in a “yes, I know, but shut up” kind of way. “He didn’t mean to. That was the . . .” Cobalt paused. What exactly would someone call what happened to Bailey? It wasn’t really a primal instinct, or else it would happen every time he saw something he could easily deem as prey. They’d be in much deeper shit if it was something so basic as that. There was way more to it, Cobalt was certain. He shook his head. “It isn’t really him when that happens.”

“Are you sure?”

Toby did not have to respond as quickly as he did. “Of course I’m sure,” Cobalt said, irritation at his own lack of information on the subject working its way into his voice. He decided to look back at the church.

The druid wasn’t convinced, which made Cobalt even more prickly, but he didn’t press the subject. “Alright.”

Cobalt expected -- wanted? He didn’t know -- him to bite back, to argue, but he watched Toby step deftly around the subject in the same way he picked his way over the rubble, and it took him several seconds to follow the man inside.

xxx

Toby prepared to be body-slammed the moment he walked in. He braced himself for a vicious attack, sharp edges of broken glass digging into his skin as he fought against his assailant -- but nothing happened. It was just as silent and uncomfortably warm as it was every other time they’d been in here.

He looked around the room, eyes catching on the altar for one painful second. He had yet another theory, but wasn’t keen on testing it right now.

Cobalt coming to stand next to him was a feeling he was fairly used to, so the rogue’s trained, silent appearance beside him didn’t so much as make him flinch. He always wondered how Cobalt managed to make absolutely no sound in utility grade boots. “Think he’s watching us from somewhere?”

A knife had once again made its way into Cobalt’s hand. Toby doubted that it ever left. “Most likely.”

“Why doesn’t he just attack us outright?”

“Element of surprise,” Cobalt said, lowering his voice. “Puts us at a disadvantage if we’re not expecting it.”

Toby felt mushrooms poking up through his skin, but the sleeves of his hoodie covered most of them, and so he didn’t bother shaking them off. He also felt the damning sensation of a pinch on his stomach, and he turned, searching for a distraction.

Cobalt noticed that he did so with a wince, his leg shaking slightly as he re-oriented himself. He looked towards Toby’s shoes. “Ankles still hurt?”

“Like a bitch,” the druid muttered.

Cobalt made Toby stop turning, and knelt down. He lifted the edge of his pant leg, curiously looking over the haphazard way cloth was tied around the scars. Whatever medical knowledge druids were supposed to inherently have made sure to keep its distance from this one. “What’d you wrap them with?”

Toby was looking down at him with equal curiosity. Cobalt wondered how the non-mind wiped version of him would’ve reacted to this. “My shirt.”

Cobalt blinked.

Toby lifted his hoodie, and his shirt was in fact very badly ripped underneath it. That explained quite a bit.

At least they weren’t bleeding anymore. Cobalt considered looking around the church for something more appropriate to use, but his shirt was already fucked up . . . “You’ll need to re-wrap them. Let me do it.”

“They’re gonna hurt anyway, what’s the point?” But he was already starting to remove his hoodie.

Cobalt held out a hand for his shirt. “It’ll hurt less if you do it right.” He looked up when the shirt was finally placed in his hand, and his train of thought ground to a halt.

Toby hadn’t put the hoodie back on yet, but it wasn’t something so trivial as a shirtless man that had Cobalt floundering for words. Not that he didn’t appreciate it from time to time, he’s just saying that it isn’t in this particular moment that it was what he focused on, because there were bigger things to worry about and -- none of that was the point.

Cobalt’s eyes moved up from Toby’s torso to his face, and the druid had a carefully guarded look that the rogue found frustratingly difficult to read. He almost wanted to apologize for staring, but found that his attention very quickly dropped back down.

Toby had so many scars.

This was not a concept that was foreign to someone of Cobalt’s caliber. The elf lost track of some of the smaller scars he had, but he knew he was practically covered in them, many of them leaving behind painful memories along with the permanent damage they did to his body. He’d expected maybe a few, less than ten, he’d say, on the man in front of him, though. So to be met with what he was seeing now -- which was decidedly not a generally unmarked plane of brown skin -- made him forget what he was doing entirely.

Cobalt wasn’t even sure if the druid would remember, but he asked anyway: “Toby . . . where did you get all of those scars from?”

Toby relaxed in a way that told Cobalt that he was expecting something more upsetting or perhaps uncomfortable to leave the elf’s mouth, and shrugged. Cobalt should’ve expected as much. “A few of them are from fighting,” he admitted, poking at one right above his heart, “but the rest were just . . . there.”

Cobalt tried to come up with some logical explanation for the others, but his mind kept drawing blanks. None of them were recent enough, or ones he remembered witnessing, to be from the small amount of time they’d spent together, but . . . he couldn’t be sure. The only person who would have a definite answer to any of these wasn’t here right now. “Do any of them still hurt?”

Toby shook his head. “Only the ones on my ankles. I didn’t even know the other ones were there until I had to shower.”

Right. Right. His ankles. Cobalt forced his eyes away and tore a knife through Toby’s shirt until it sat in ribbons at his feet. He stared at the fabric for a moment, slowly sheathing the knife in favor of holding something softer and infinitely less dangerous. He only had a small nod and a “good” to offer as he neatly tied layers of the cloth around Toby’s ankles until the offending scars were completely covered.

The owner of said scars was watching gloved hands wrap his dingy shirt around the injury, and he admitted to himself that they did in fact start to feel better, now that there weren’t any twists in the fabric digging into his ankle. He was once again hit with the fact that he knew practically nothing about the half-elf doing this for him, and the stark contrast between hands trained to kill and the ones that were currently trying to care for him with limited resources made his chest hurt a little.

Pain.

Toby nearly stumbled as his head throbbed, and he braced a hand against a nearby wall as his breathing quickened.

Cobalt was upright in a second, his hands pulling away from Toby’s legs as if he’d burned them. “Shit -- are they too tight?”

Toby shook his head, hissing as that made his pain worse for just a moment, before it ebbed and faded away. “No, no. You’re fine. I just . . . got a headache. I’m okay.”

“What happened? Did you remember something?”

Toby hesitated before remembering to speak instead of move. “No, I think I . . .” he stopped himself again, reconsidering. “. . . I don’t know what happened. But it’s gone now.”

Cobalt pressed him, though even he wasn’t sure what answers the druid could give. “Do you still remember what just happened?”

Toby risked a nod. It didn’t hurt, so he let his hand fall from the wall. “Thank you,” he said, looking down at his ankles. He lifted a leg, balance thusly restored, and shook his foot. It hurt significantly less than before.

The rogue watched him, gaze scrutinizing as he watched for any other signs of pain, before nodding stiffly. “It’ll prevent infections.”

Toby did a little jump. Landing on the ground didn’t hurt as much as he was expecting it to, so he jumped higher. That felt fine, so he intentionally stomped his feet on the floor with the third jump -- and it hurt like hell.

Cobalt shook his head wearily at Toby’s yelp of pain, followed by thoroughly entertained chuckling. “Why do I even bother?”

The man sat himself down on a large, broken stone while he waited for the sting of testing the limits of his pain tolerance to subside. He met Cobalt’s eyes -- dark, scarred, and filled to the brim with judgment -- and grinned.

That earned him a sigh that was supposed to be impatient, but the effect was immediately ruined by a mildly amused smirk. “Maybe you should sit still.”

“And let you have all the fun? Absolutely not,” Toby said, pushing himself up and ignoring the twinge that created. His eyes caught on the windows lining the walls, and he paused. There were more of them now, and they were all moving again. He dragged his hand along the wall as he watched even more memories of Bailey play out. Some of the windows were badly damaged, and so the memory stopped abruptly or parts of the playback weren’t visible. Toby found that these memories were, coincidentally, ones he couldn’t recall with much clarity anyway.

Following the memories around the church made him realize that the decrepit place was bigger than he thought. Or, it used to be: there were stairs that suggested an upper balcony level, but the damaged supports and lack of an intact floor immediately nixed exploring it. A mirroring staircase on the opposite side of the church was in even worse condition, with several of the steps missing entirely, and the remainder of a balcony railing dangled precariously from a crumbling post.

There were suns everywhere. Paintings, statues, plaques, engravings, whatever could possibly depict the oversized star had it represented in some way. Toby realized that the floor was a giant sun as well: the altar sat atop a circular platform, with dual-toned rays radiating from it all the way to the exterior walls. The man on the statue that he used to hit Bailey was all over the place too, often shown in the same paintings and carvings that the sun was on, usually haloing his head or figure in some fashion. Toby guessed that this was probably Pelor -- the first time Bailey mentioned him offhand, Toby imagined a similar bald, bearded man in a robe.

One of the paintings of Pelor had him standing on a hilltop, hands outstretched towards a crowd basking serenely -- or were they in pain? -- in the light emanating from his person. The artist clearly loved their subject, because Pelor wore robes of the cleanest shade of white Toby had ever seen, with intricate stitches and emblems on his sleeves and collar. The robes billowed around his body like an oversized blanket, and whatever wind was causing them to stir also pushed against his untrimmed beard. Despite the overall energy of the painting, and the crowd throwing themselves about in an attempt to have themselves and their dull, brown robes so much as brush his radiance, Pelor looked . . . bored. Displeased, maybe? But he certainly didn’t look happy. Toby wondered if gods ever were.

He had no memory of any sort of interaction with religion, but nothing he’d ever heard or seen about it had made any sense. He supposed it was fair enough to assume that gods existed, but if you expected him to believe that any of them were actually doing anything, especially for their devout followers, well . . . look at where all of Bailey’s efforts landed him. The druid wondered if gods ever got tired of being god, of the eternal life and constant misinterpretation and people committing various atrocities in their names; or maybe gods were like Strahd, and centuries of isolated superiority drove them to have a complete disregard for the people that lived under constant fear at just the mention of them.

Pelor certainly didn’t look like being a god was a great time, but Toby figured that his conflation of “god”, “immortal”, and “man” probably skewed the painting unfavorably in a certain direction. He moved on to the plaque, and other than a completely bogus artist name and date, the caption simply read “The Shining One blesses the wretched”.

Toby frowned. There was that word again, though it was much easier to read compared to the altar. The plaque was tilted slightly, and unlike many of the other paintings, engravings, and statues, was mostly intact and still fastened to the wall. He looked back up at the work, and either his eyes were playing tricks on him, or Pelor was watching him with some deep-seated resentment.

Unsettled, Toby stepped back from it and bumped right into Cobalt, who was looking at the other paintings. The smaller man’s frame didn’t so much as nudge the taller elf, who seemed generally uninterested in a bunch of stuffy old portraits of some god he likely didn’t have much respect for either. Cobalt didn’t even spare a glance behind him as he spoke up: “No sign of him yet.”

Toby looked around Cobalt, reading some of the other plaques that had fallen off the wall or were broken in half. He had no idea that there were so many ways to say the same thing: “banish the depraved”, “expel the darkness”, “cast out the wretched”, “drive away the beasts”. Pelor was in every single piece of art, regardless of medium, and every victory over the apparent darkness was attributed to him. Toby turned towards the altar, at the way its macabre stone was set in the center of the light coming in through the windows. “I think I know how to draw him out.”

The rogue looked over his shoulder, interest piqued.

Toby took a breath. “You’re not going to like it.”

Cobalt’s eyes narrowed. “Does it require putting you in harm’s way?”

Toby pursed his lips. “I don’t think that’s avoidable at this point.”

Cobalt didn’t say anything.

“I’ll be careful.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I’ll try to be careful,” Toby amended.

Cobalt stared at him in silence long enough for the druid to turn and face him. The elf gave a very pointed look at his ankles. “If you need to run . . .”

Toby gave his foot another shake. “I should be fine.” When Cobalt still looked disquieted, he said, “but if I'm not, I'll tell you. I won't do more than I can handle.”

After a moment of deliberation, Cobalt crossed his arms. “What’re you thinking?”

xxx

Bailey had never been buried alive before.

Well, no, that wasn’t entirely true. He’d been buried, in some ways: dog-piled in unfair, one-sided sparring matches; scrambling for his life out of a pit they were tricked into entering by a certain someone’s violet-colored childhood friend; clawing and scratching his way from under debris from fallen buildings. And, if being less literal is something you fancy, he could even consider being buried under the weight of senseless things like his own guilt.

This was a different kind of burial, though. The paladin was hardly conscious enough to even be aware that it was taking place, and if he stopped breathing, then it would be exactly like laying him to rest. Every part of him was tucked neatly under the earth: not even the tips of his whiskers showed themselves above the soil, and flowers began to sprout over top of the spot where he once lay as dirt slowly replaced his remaining oxygen.

xxx

Toby being right about something usually wasn’t a good thing.

The man didn't really speak his mind unless directly asked, and, like most other times, was a passive observer of others’ misfortune. This was one of the few occasions in which he made himself an active participant, so Cobalt was watching his every move.

Toby's guess as to what was happening and in what order required the rogue's full attention and intervention, when the need arose. Toby had specifically asked Cobalt to keep him safe, which was rare, and certainly not a request he intended to take lightly.

The theory that Toby had played back in his mind as he watched the druid make his way towards the altar.

As long as we keep our distance from it, nothing will happen.

So far, that had held true. No matter how long they spent wandering around the places that were furthest from the raised platform, nothing attacked them or made any sort of sound. The church felt hollow, like a ribcage without a heart.

He'll only start to move once you get closer.

Toby was ten steps from the altar when Cobalt's ears perked up. His attention darted to the left, where he could've sworn something moved. Bailey was here, he was somewhere close, but despite the openness that the ruins created, Cobalt didn't see him.

When he looked back at Toby, he was met with a very pointed stare. It took one more glance around and a very awkward few seconds for the elf to realize that Toby was waiting for permission to keep going.

The noises probably happen once you get really close. 

Toby was ten steps from the altar. Eight. Five.

Clink. 

Cobalt was on his feet in an instant, head whipping in the direction of the sound. He still didn't see anything, but he knew where it was -- it would only take him a second to-

“Wait!”

Cobalt's arms shot out to keep himself from falling over as he abruptly stopped mid-stride. He rewarded Toby with a slow, impatient turn of his head.

The man hardly noticed. His eyes were scanning the same area of the church that Cobalt was more than ready to start investigating with several sharp and deadly objects, but he had a hand out that kept Cobalt from acting on it.

Another step forward. Another sound, this time in a completely different part of the church. Their attention snapped to where they thought the sound came from.

Toby remained perfectly still, wringing every drop of silence out of the space for the next several seconds before allowing only two steps to remain between himself and his destination. 

Another clink, but this time, impossibly closer. Cobalt's eyes narrowed to slits as he scanned the church. He wasn't understanding how something that big and red could go so largely undetected by the both of them. It freaked him out just a tad, but he'd seen -- and fought -- worse things.

He'll only attack once I touch the altar.

Toby sounded the least confident in this assessment, muttering something about coincidences and probability that Cobalt was too on edge to fully pay attention to, but as far as the druid remembered, Bailey had only revealed himself once the altar was touched. Toby had said something about . . . “sacrilege”, maybe? Cobalt couldn't recall.

Toby circled it, and the elf watched his expression shift from assessing to wariness to unease as he studied the altar. He saw the button mushrooms poke out of the back of his hand a second before he gingerly placed it against his stomach.

That's right, Cobalt reminded himself. Fear causes physical pain here. “Toby!”

The man's curly, blonde hair jumped a little when Toby's head shot up, as if it too was surprised that he was being addressed.

Cobalt hesitated, unsure of what to say when their eyes met. He wanted to reassure him somehow, tell him that he was there and not going to let him get hurt. He wanted to say . . . something. Anything.

And then Toby smiled at him, and his hand moved away from where the wound would be. Cobalt decided that he didn’t need to say a word.

Clink.

“I’ll be prepared to run when he comes for me,” is what Toby had said to Cobalt, and the latter watched as the man braced himself for impact. His hand hovered over the altar for one gut-wrenching second before he let his fingers gently touch the edge.

xxx

Several things happened in the span of a few minutes, but Toby could only count two that were most important.

One: Cobalt wasn’t moving.

Two: He was about to die.

Helplessness wasn’t an emotion that Toby was familiar with. He’d been lost plenty of times, sure, and confused once or twice, but he eventually figured it out. There was always a logical -- or magical -- reason that clicked into place at some point and validated whatever was unfolding in front of him.

The voice of logic and reason that he’d come to rely on when he was presented with something he didn’t understand was eerily quiet, leaving only questions and panic to run rampant through his mind. The only thing he could really think about was the fact that Cobalt hadn’t gotten up.

It had all happened so fast: he touched the altar, and was prepared to jump out of the way of Bailey’s inevitable assault. Bailey’s target was always the same every time they’d entered, dutifully ignoring the elf as soon as he was sufficiently out of the way. But Bailey hadn’t gone for Toby this time.

Toby’s scream lodged itself in his throat as Bailey took shape mid-air, tiny shards of glass piecing themselves together into the general form of an enraged Tabaxi, and lunged straight for an incredibly caught-off-guard rogue. Cobalt’s arm went up in an effort to defend himself, but Bailey was a brick wall and Cobalt was bone and skin and not much else. The last pieces of glass fused into place just as he rammed his entire bodyweight into Cobalt’s side, sending the rogue flying into one of the walls that was only left half-standing. Toby heard a sickening crack that nearly made him queasy, and then he watched as Cobalt’s body slumped to the floor.

Bailey had turned to him, then, at the most unhurried pace that Toby had seen. He was still menacing, all broken parts and fractured morals, with a healthy amount of blood dripping endlessly from his claws, but he stalked towards Toby as if he had all the time in the world.

And maybe he did: aside from his knees hitting the ground as he pressed a violently shaking hand to his stomach, Toby didn’t move. His eyes stung as he shifted his gaze from the wall to the more urgent threat approaching him, but he made no effort to say or do anything else. He didn’t think he could have, anyway -- he was terrified, and the wound rapidly stretched across his stomach in response.

His body was screaming at him to do something, because it was losing blood at an alarming rate and there seemed to be no effort from anyone to stop or reverse this, but Toby didn’t really care. Broken edges of glass dug into his skin as a paw hoisted him from the floor, dumping him without a hint of care onto the altar. His back hit the stone and he coughed at the impact, his head rolling to the side as blood trickled from his mouth. His vision was failing him, and he couldn’t see his rogue that well anymore.

He was so, so cold. It took him some time after the memory wipe to come to terms with the fact that he was inhabiting a naturally frigid body, which made winter practically hell, but there had always been some warmth he could turn to when it became unbearable. Pip made soups and teas and cocoas that Toby would kill an entire castle full of vampires for; Cobalt was so warm to the point where he comfortably burned when they touched; and Bailey was a dense ball of fur with 24/7 insulation. Toby had options.

Now, though, not even the strange sunlight that pushed through the damaged stone and broken window panes offered even a hint of the warmth that had been there every time they’d walked in. His clothes felt constricting and suffocating, and he had the absurd thought that this would be a ridiculous outfit to be buried in. He would’ve snorted if he wasn’t so tired. No one would bury him.

He felt Bailey moving him again, shifting him over so he was completely atop the altar. His limbs were so heavy, and he closed his eyes just as Bailey stepped into his line of sight. Something soft was pushing against his stomach, but he couldn’t tell what it was. Toby wasn’t sure what was going to happen to him, but he had no hope -- or desire, really -- of seeing it through.

A shuffling sound and a soft groan sounded from somewhere in the church, and Toby used the last of his strength to force his eyelids to cooperate. His vision was still horribly unfocused, but there was only one black-clad person in this entire place that could’ve been pushing himself up in the corner of the church.

Toby might’ve cried with relief if that was something he was prone to doing, and if his body hadn’t expended 98% of its effort on everything else he was pleading with it to do for his final moments alive. Cobalt was sitting upright, looking significantly less broken than Toby had thought he would be, and he looked around in a daze before his eyes caught on the scene in the middle of the floor.

The druid didn’t know what he saw. He could’ve guessed, but he didn’t really have the capacity to think critically about much of anything as black started to overtake his vision, and only offered a soundless “you’re alive” before his surroundings faded away.

Chapter Text

Cobalt could count on one hand the number of times he’d broken a promise. Granted, most of those were due to extenuating circumstances that were wildly out of his control, but even so . . . he didn’t make promises he couldn’t keep, and he certainly didn’t take the ones he did make lightly.

He’d gotten up, the soreness in his spine and dizziness in his vision mostly forgotten with what he was seeing in front of him.

Toby wasn’t moving.

Toby wasn’t moving.

“No,” Cobalt whispered, the words growing more frantic as his mind truly began to process what had happened in the -- seconds? Minutes? -- that he was unconscious. “No, no no no no--”

The rogue forced himself to walk forward, to go towards him and help him somehow, even though in the back of his mind he knew there was nothing he could do. He stumbled, tripping over a stray piece of rubble as his desperation urged him forward. Maybe he was just unconscious, like Cobalt was, maybe it wasn’t as bad as it seemed and he just needed someone to wake him up; if Cobalt could just reach him he could --

Cobalt yelped and jumped back. A sharp pain shot through his leg, and he looked down at the bleeding slash marks that had appeared on them. He looked up again: Bailey was on all fours, shards of glass pointing out on the sides of him, like a malformed cactus. Their back was arched, claws digging into the broken stone beneath his paws as he hissed at the elf.

Cobalt’s eyes darted from cat to druid and back again. Bailey made no move to advance towards him, or finish what they’d started, but their rigid posture remained as long as Cobalt sat in front of them.

When Cobalt was younger, and still learning how to become the assassin he is today, he had to learn two crucial things very quickly: one, composure, and two, detachment. The second was whipped into him after he’d witnessed the first of many deaths he’d have to see up close, while he was repeatedly reminded of the first in the way he was forced to keep himself together no matter what he was faced with. You were not given time to collect yourself. Heron did not give you space to grieve. Tears were for the weak, and she toyed with that weakness until it was a shame branded into your skin.

Cobalt had a firm grip on his composure most of the time, and that did not change now. He was callous and bitter if provoked, but lashing out was not, and had never been, his style. Even the way he rose from his place on the floor, with the finality of someone who had decided on the worse option of two ultimatums, was focused and rigid. He stared Bailey down, the glass figure trembling with barely-held-back restraint, and it was clear how uneven the playing fields were on both ends.

The rogue knew that he might die here if he did this. He could attempt to find a way out, go back to the forest and make another desperate plea to save his own skin, but he didn’t see a point. The light moved ever closer, at its gradual, taunting pace, and illuminated the blood-soaked body lying eerily still on the altar.

It was a shame that Cobalt never truly got a hold of the second thing. He still remembered the name of every other kid who'd died under Heron's dreadfully well-manicured thumb, and once he got out, he had no intention of adding any more names for quite some time. Especially not Bailey's, and especially not Toby's.

He'd broken one promise by letting Toby die. A knife slid down his palm and his fingers wrapped around it like holding the hand of an old friend. He was fully intending on keeping this one.

xxx

Bailey’s body seemed to finally realize that it was starting to die. In one incredibly violent outburst, his body thrashed, claws shooting out of his paws and three out of four canines bared as he fought against fading away completely. He ruptured some of the dirt, upturned a few of the flowers that had started to take root over top of him, and a roar muffled by the dirt made the ground around him tremble.

But still, he did not wake. And despite his instinct’s best efforts, the plants were truly alive in a way he was not, and they did not want him to be. Vines constricted his arms and legs, shrouding his body in a shell of organic green, and his roars turned to growls as his heart rate slowed.

xxx

Cobalt would’ve probably had a much easier time against that version of the paladin. He did not get that choice, though, and from where he was crouched, panting hard as he attempted to catch his breath, he watched an all-too agile cat lick its blood-stained paws.

Bailey looked relatively unscathed. Other than the fracturing damage that Toby did to his body, turning what was once large panes of red glass into much tinier fragments, nothing that Cobalt had tried to do had resulted in anything other than numerous scars on his own body. And, no matter what the rogue did to try and get him to do otherwise, Bailey absolutely refused to leave his post in front of Toby’s body.

Cobalt’s eyes drifted back to the reason he was fighting this hard in the first place, for the first time in quite a while. He had no idea how long he’d been throwing kicks and punches and otherwise, but it was getting him absolutely nowhere, and for a while the rage from futility kept him going. The adrenaline that filled the blood that was now staining his clothes and face was slowly starting to seep from him.

He was tired. He was tired of being here, tired of fighting, tired of losing fights, losing people . . . he tried to stand, but once that thought weeded its way into his mind, his legs decided to conveniently give up on him, and he sank to the floor again.

Through it all, Bailey watched him, only relaxing once he saw that Cobalt would likely not be getting up to try again any time soon.

Interesting, Cobalt thought, though he would rather be killing something rather than reasoning right now. Bailey was so violent before, trying so hard to kill the both of them. It seemed that now that they’d gotten what they wanted, now that they’d won, they had no interest in pursuing anyone else.

Cobalt scowled at Bailey looking so triumphantly protective over his prey. He wanted Bailey to fight him, wanted Bailey to feel as much of the pain and loss as he was feeling right now, even though he knew that he could do no true and lasting damage to the cat. They would just infuriatingly put themselves back together, and stalk back to their place until Cobalt got too close again.

The rogue’s head thudded against the wall as his mind stopped insisting that he get up, that he fight, and finally circled back to the much more sane thought that fighting was completely and utterly useless. He closed his eyes. Even if he did manage to kill the cat, what would that do? Besides giving him some fleeting, sick satisfaction that he was able to end a version of his friend that wasn’t even real, he’d still be stuck here with no motivation to leave now that he’d be forced to do it alone.

Despite his entire being protesting, Cobalt forced his eyes open again. Bailey was no longer staring at him, watching him in a way that made his skin crawl, but instead he was doing . . . something to Toby’s body.

Bailey’s ears twitched, and they didn’t even have to turn to realize that the other person they’d dutifully disregarded was once again, annoyingly, back on his feet. The shout to get his attention, followed by an icy threat that they did not heed, was supremely unnecessary as they turned their pinhole-white gaze over their shoulder.

Cobalt was, indeed, standing again. Upon realizing that the cat completely ignored his initial statement, he straightened, and ignored every ache and sting that resonated throughout his body.

“Don’t touch him, Bailey.”

The paladin turned fully towards him, then, and the look of “really? Again?” was so startlingly different from the usual fury or cold calculation that it made Cobalt falter for a second. And then, it just pissed him off.

“I swear to the gods, if you touch him again, I’ll --”

Toby’s body twitched, and Cobalt was caught off guard for the second time in ten seconds.

Bailey didn’t seem to notice, which was a good thing, but also incredibly strange considering how attuned they were to everything in this church. Cobalt’s eyes were fully on Toby’s body now, staring at him for a full minute to see if he could catch any movement from the man again.

That minute passed, and neither Cobalt nor Bailey moved a muscle the entire time.

Cobalt resigned himself to another round of fighting until the rest of his body gave out, but then Toby twitched again, and the sound that left him nearly put him back on the ground.

Bailey, who most definitely noticed that time, hardly turned to acknowledge that anything had happened. The cat simply bristled, shifting his position so they were ready to pounce at any moment.

The missing piece of this entire puzzle finally slotted into place with excruciating slowness in Cobalt’s mind. He sighed. This could either kill him or save them both.

Cobalt approached Bailey again, stopping just before where he estimated was the invisible boundary for where he was allowed to roam freely without being attacked. He put a foot just over that boundary, and Bailey hissed like a feral kitten at him until he removed it.

The elf’s hands went up placatingly. “Okay, okay.” Slowly, painfully, he reached into every single pocket and hidden holster he had and pulled out the knives he'd stored. Bailey’s eyes tracked his hands, the little white dots darting from Cobalt’s face to the knives as they dropped, one by one, to the floor. The first clattering sound of steel hitting stone displeased the paladin greatly, but once they realized what was happening, they allowed Cobalt to continue without protest.

He dropped the last of his knives and kicked the entire pile away, which only made Bailey relax a fraction of an inch. After a moment, he stretched his hands out, palms up. A peace offering.

Bailey just stared at him. Cobalt let out a frustrated huff that made the little curl in front of his face jump. He tried a foot over the invisible line again.

If he’d been a much slower, much less experienced rogue, he might have lost that foot.

Okay. This might take some time. Cobalt’s eyes darted up to the light again, a permanent reminder that time was something they did not have. “Bailey,” he said, shoving as much patience and gentleness into his voice as he was able, “I don’t want to hurt you.” He didn’t think he could. “I just . . . I just want to see him. Please.”

Bailey did not move. Not at first, anyway. But then he sat, tail swishing around his feet like an ominous metronome, the broken glass making hollow shh sounds as it scraped against the stone floor. Cobalt thought he could approach, but the flash of red canines made him realize that Bailey had simply lowered themselves so Cobalt could see over him.

Cobalt shook his head. He befriended the most difficult people.

He tried again. “Bailey.” The cat stared. “I don’t -- I won’t hurt him.” Cobalt took a step closer, and Bailey’s eyes snapped to his foot, then to his face again, an airy, warning growl rumbling at the base of a nonexistent throat. Cobalt did not back away this time. “I won’t. I promise. I want to see if he’s okay.”

The war between keeping Cobalt away and allowing him to intrude on the gruesome sanctuary they’d created played out in broken detail on Bailey’s face. Cobalt stepped closer, inching his way towards the altar while Bailey watched, brow furrowing as they let the elf approach and even touch --

Touch? No.

Cobalt’s hands went to feel Toby’s pulse, and Bailey nearly kept a few fingers as trophies before the rogue snatched them away with an “alright, jeez”, and cautiously rested them on the altar instead. This was acceptable. Barely.

Toby’s shirt was pulled up, and an old cloth was resting atop his abdomen, soaking in the blood from his wound. Bailey rose up next to Cobalt and peeked under it, and, seeming satisfied with its contents, removed it entirely before placing it on the floor. Bailey procured another cloth -- Cobalt realized that it was pieces of the torn tapestries and pennants that used to be on display -- and placed a (relatively) cleaner one on top of him again.

Cobalt watched all of this without moving, lest he invite the ire of the cat once again. “You’re . . . trying to heal him,” he said, gaze moving to Bailey’s paws. Bailey was flexing and relaxing each of them, attempting to make soothing biscuits on Toby’s side, but the glass in his hands accidentally scratched the man’s skin, and they stopped. “It’s not working, though, is it?” Cobalt asked, and flinched at the glare Bailey tossed his way. “No, I mean . . . you keep trying. To help. And you can’t change anything, right?”

Bailey’s expression neutralized, and he looked back at Toby’s body without a word.

Cobalt sighed. “I know the feeling.” They were silent for a moment, before Cobalt asked, “is he still bleeding?”

Bailey shook his head, and lifted the cloth again. Cobalt winced at the state of the wound, the shredded skin so violently ripped open, but realized it wasn’t as deep as he’d originally thought. It was horrific-looking, sure, but perhaps Toby’s unconsciousness had finally allowed his fear to settle enough for his body to try and mend itself.

The rogue piped up again after Bailey put the tapestry back down. “His wounds healed when he went outside, maybe we should --” Bailey glared at him “-- not do that,” he amended quickly. When Bailey’s icy stare did not relent, he continued, “because . . . because it won’t do anything. Because as soon as he wakes up, and comes back in, he’ll just be afraid of you again. And it’ll hurt him.”

Bailey relaxed.

“And you don’t want that.”

Bailey didn’t say anything.

“You never wanted to hurt him at all, did you?”

Bailey’s eyes darted to Toby’s ankles, then back to his torso. They shook their head.

Cobalt lifted his hands again. “I’m going to check his pulse.” Ignoring Bailey’s uncertain growl, he placed two long fingers against the base of Toby’s neck, and the breath of relief that left him dropped his head against the unconscious man’s chest. It was weak, so very weak, but it was there.

He lifted his head after a moment, and looked at Bailey. The paladin seemed to finally accept that Cobalt was also not in the business of causing the druid any harm, and was repeatedly making biscuits, checking the wound’s healing progress, and back again.

Maybe there was a way Cobalt could help. “Do you have any water?”

Bailey paused, the tapestry hovering over the scar. He thought for a long moment, then pointed back towards the entrance. Cobalt thought he was indicating that the only water was outside, which he did not trust for cleaning a wound, but Bailey insistently indicated that direction and the rogue relented.

He stopped by the door, making a face at what might be awaiting him in the rotten forest’s water, and then realized that both he and Toby missed a small, broken basin to the right of the double doors. The pedestal it was originally on was split in half, and its copper bowl was askew, tipping most of the remaining water in it on the floor. Cobalt took a hold of the bowl and wrenched it free. He read the engraved sign in the stone above it: Holy Water.

The rogue’s eyebrow quirked. Of course.

He brought what little water remained over to Bailey. “I found this,” he said, holding the nearly-empty bowl out to the cat. Bailey nodded, dipping the end of a pennant into the water until it was soaked through, and then wiping as gently as a broken knight of the Sun could at the spaces around the gashes.

xxx

Toby was in a significant amount of pain. Not that that was unusual at this point, but still.

He felt himself clinging to the thinnest threads of life, and wanted so desperately to just let go. That would be easier: the pain would go away, his body wouldn’t ache so much, and Cobalt wouldn’t have to worry anymore.

Cobalt. Shit.

Toby wondered how he was doing. Had he gotten up? Gotten out? Toby hoped he’d had, even though it was unlikely. Then again, Cobalt’s ability to do surprising things out of sheer willpower turned “impossible” to “unlikely” in most cases anyway.

There was something on his stomach -- other than the wound, of course. He’d felt it before: soft, a little scratchy, but infinitely better than the sharp, stinging pain that he’d grown used to in the time he’d been lying here.

How long had it been? What was time to the dying?

He wanted to let go.

He tried. He could not. This place would not let him die. That would be too easy. The coward’s way out.

He was a coward, he knew. A trait carved into his bones, something that could not be erased even when every memory he’d ever had of anything important to him left in one fell swoop. He ran away, he cowered in the face of opposition, he nearly let the light consume him, make him one with the endless darkness beyond this place. Despite the brave face he put on, despite the number of times he’d fought and killed and detached himself from it, there was still the undercurrent of cowardice that stained every decision he ever made.

He should just give up. What was he doing, keeping himself here? Keeping himself alive? Wouldn’t it be better if he just left, was forgotten in the same way he’d chosen to forget everyone else?

Except that they would not forget him, would they? They would keep the memory of him around, if only for themselves, and he would never leave them. An unwilling ghost, an apparition desperate to get rid of himself completely, so the memory of him does not add unnecessary weight to already burdened minds. He should --

Pressure on his neck, like . . . fingers, maybe? They pressed, and he wanted to press against it. But he could not move, and the fingers moved away, replaced by a weight on his chest. It was . . . light. Much lighter than his stomach. There was a whisper, a sigh of relief, perhaps, and then a hand on his shoulder. It was lighter than the other weight was, like it wasn’t sure if it was allowed to be there or not.

The spiral he was on tried to resume, tried to make him believe things about himself that some small part of him insisted wasn’t true, but there were other sensations now. Something cold, and wet. On his stomach, and -- oh, wow. That felt nice. Until it touched a sensitive part of his wound, and he twitched.

A gasp, an apology, a hand on his face. He could feel and hear things more clearly now, but his eyes wouldn’t open. They weren’t ready yet. That was okay.

He thought about the rest of his body, focusing on what he could feel. His head . . . through the muddled, harsh thought processes, it felt fine. It was a little lighter than usual, and he couldn’t quite lift it, but it was intact, and he was okay with that. His fingers, toes . . . cold. He tried moving one. That earned him silence. He did not move another. His chest, his stomach, he ignored. He knew how those felt.

It was a long time before he tried his eyes again. For the first time in a little bit, he wanted to see more than he wanted to succumb, and though numbness kept the rest of his body immobile, Toby forced his bleary eyes to open.

Oh, good. Cobalt was alive. He was still here . . .? But he was alive. And . . . Toby saw Bailey. Bailey saw him too, and the cat froze, white eyes pinned on him.

Toby did not panic this time. He was too tired to do so.

xxx

Cobalt watched the water in the copper bowl quickly go from clear to red as Bailey mechanically dipped the pennant in it after dabbing at Toby’s wound. He had no idea how long they’d have to wait for Toby to wake up, but it wasn’t like he was going anywhere anytime soon.

Bailey glanced at Toby’s face, and froze.

Cobalt blanched. “What happ-” he turned, and in a matter of seconds the hands holding the bowl of bloodied water were now holding the man’s face. “Holy shit -- Toby?”

The druid only “mmh”ed in response, his eyes closing again for a frightening few seconds (in which Cobalt most certainly panicked and pressed his cheeks together, telling him to wake up) before they opened again. He “mmh”ed again, but kept his eyes open for the sake of his very soft face.

Cobalt “oh thank the gods”-ed in his most explosive sigh yet, and curled himself into a careful, awkward hug in an attempt to avoid Toby’s scar. It wasn’t reciprocated, but he’d forgive the man for it later.

“Are you okay? Can you move? Can you talk? Do you know where you are?”

Toby’s eyes shifted from the interrogator to the cat again, and Cobalt’s questions drifted into silence. Ah, right.

The paladin was still staring at Toby, regarding him with a level of caution that was wildly unfamiliar. There was a tension in the air any of them could take a bite out of, if they chose to.

It was Toby who did so. His eyes moved to his torso, Bailey’s hands mid-biscuit on his thigh, a posture he recognized from the paladin’s oddly cute healing method; and the lack of a threatening aura, and he offered the glass cat a smile. It was strange, as all of Toby generally was, due to the influence of just waking up from a near-death experience. “Thank you, Bailey.”

Bailey, to his credit, seemed surprised. They nodded, lifting the tapestry from his stomach and placing his paws -- clink, they said -- on the altar.

It took some time before Toby’s body allowed itself to move again, and he carefully pushed himself up on his elbows, bracing himself for a pain in his torso that never came. The three of them watched as Toby’s body started to knit itself back together from the inside-out.

After a few morbidly fascinating minutes of watching nature and human insides work in a macabre tandem -- and Cobalt smacking the druid’s hand out of the way whenever the overly curious man tried to poke and prod at it -- Toby’s skin sealed the wounds closed, leaving only three slightly raised scars behind.

“Huh,” Toby said after a moment of silence, “I’m really, really weird.”

Cobalt searched his face, and was only met with a silently questioning look in return. He grabbed the man’s arms, lifting them and his legs wordlessly as he subjected Toby to a sudden and haphazard search for other injuries. Toby allowed himself to be jostled with merely widened eyes and a startled “uh??” before he was freed from scrutiny and hugged instead.

This surprised and confused him as well, but Cobalt held him tighter after a second of not getting anything back, and it took Toby a second to remember how hugs worked.

Cobalt pulled back from him, hands on his shoulders. “If you ever do that to me again, Tobias Farner, I swear I will kill you myself.”

Toby blinked. He hadn’t heard his full name before, and it took him a second to realize that’s what it was. There was a momentary pain in his head, but it went away almost as soon as it arrived. “I’ll try not to.”

Cobalt sighed, letting him go. “So, you figured it out?” He turned to address Bailey. “Thank y-” he stopped. Bailey was gone, and the only thing in his place was a single bromeliad.

“He disappeared after my wound healed,” Toby said, making Cobalt turn back to him. “I guess it was as easy as just changing my mind about him.”

Cobalt looked at the flower again, and only then did he realize that a mix of monsteras and bromeliads were everywhere -- growing through the cracks in the stone, and pushing up through the floor. Most of them were around the altar where Toby still sat, clustering around the structure and stretching up towards him. They started to wind around Cobalt’s ankles and he stepped back, giving them space to grow as they pleased.

Toby lifted his legs so he sat cross-legged atop the altar, and watched them grow at an unnaturally fast pace. They slowed and stopped once they reached the top edge of the stone, faces pointing towards him instead of the odd sunlight poking through any remaining gaps in the church walls and ceiling.

Cobalt watched him poke one of the bromeliads, and it gently closed around his finger before unfurling again. The softness of the moment was incredibly welcome, given that the rogue’s heart rate had changed paces at least 18 times in the past hour.

“Oh, hey,” Toby said, looking up from the flowers to where the large stained glass windows were. “They’re all fixed.”

Cobalt followed one of the sun rays on the floor to the platform, deigning to step on it in case he accidentally trampled one of the flowers. Toby was right -- each one of them had their colors restored, and the cracks and holes that were there before were all completely repaired. Bailey’s face had returned to the same expressions he’d had when they’d entered the first time, and it made Cobalt a little sad that the puppet window hadn’t changed to show them in a better light.

Toby looked at the gap in the wall that was for the most broken window. It was still on the floor, but like the others, it was completely intact. The version of Bailey that had attacked them earlier was immortalized here, shackles around their wrists and neck just as clearly defined as everything else. It rested in its own cluster of flowers, the petals and greenery only amplifying how upsetting Bailey’s situation truly was.

“We’re going to kill Strahd,” Cobalt said quietly.

Toby nodded.

xxx

Bailey’s body had completely given up on keeping itself alive. After his final, muffled grunt of struggle, he stilled completely. The plants settled into place, content with the state of their first victim, and waited for what to do next.

In the next second, their lives immediately ended as Bailey’s body surged out of the ground, spraying soil and roots and leaves everywhere. They hacked and coughed, spitting dirt out of their dry mouth as they clawed their way out of the ground and flopped face-first onto the grassy surface.

He scrambled away from the pit that had nearly buried him alive, ready to fight off any vines that had knocked him out in the first place, but nothing else moved. The vines were a sickly greenish-brown, and the flowers and mushrooms around him had already started to wilt.

Bailey heaved for breath, clutching at his chest as he willed his senses to come back to him, to calm down and understand what the hell was happening so he could figure out what to do next. But everything he could think of was overridden by one word:

Hunger.

The paladin had no idea how long it had been, but his stomach felt like it was beginning to feast on his own insides with how hungry he was. His eyes bulged, and there was no inner voice to tell him to get himself together before he hurt someone. Their vision was slightly blurred and lined with red as their head whipped from left to right looking for something to satiate the desperate ache in his gut.

Options. He had so many options. There were three bodies -- no, four, there was one that seemed nearly dead behind him -- just lying there, and any one of them would ease his starvation and quench his thirst in one go. His conscience didn’t even allow him the luxury of making a solid choice between any of them, and simply forced him forward in a lumbering, awkward lunge towards the nearest pile of flesh and bone.

Olive’s sleeping body was completely unaware of the looming threat above her. Bailey threw himself at the vines and plants surrounding her, which were wildly unprepared for the amount of sudden and ravenous violence that descended upon them, and he tore into them with a flash of claws and teeth and drool.

He nearly ripped into the vines wrapped like a protective blanket around her, but stopped. He tasted . . . pork? The cat sat back, confused. There was no meat. At least, not yet. They lifted a fistful of the plants they’d torn apart, and without a second thought, stuffed it into his mouth.

Holy shit. That tasted amazing.

Bailey tore at the plants faster than they could regenerate, eating his way through Olive’s makeshift cage before his common sense slammed into him with such a violent force that he stumbled backwards. He looked at his hands stained with green -- so close to being covered in something infinitely worse -- and truly, truly assessed his situation.

Four bodies. Four bodies -- and each one of them was someone he knew. All of them were out cold, guarded by plants who had doubled in size and density, facing him as if prepared to attack. He looked back at the massacre he’d made of Olive’s, whose plants were trying desperately to put up another wall to defend against him.

Bailey tripped over his axe as he tried to back up. No. No. He wasn’t a monster. He wasn’t the problem here -- he would not be part of the problem. He refused to submit to baser instincts and become the exact thing Strahd had always said he was. He would not, would never let that bastard win.

They rested a paw on the hilt of his axe. They were still hungry, but the amount of plants they’d eaten had ebbed at it a bit, and there were still plenty to go around. But he’d have to be smart about it, lest the taste of the meat and his slightly muddled senses turn him into something that would drown him in an inescapable pit of regret.

Bailey lifted his axe and stared the plants down. There was Olive, thankfully, blessedly safe. Pip was here, too, and from his brief check, unharmed. Cobalt was the same, though unlike everyone else, he was not ensnared by anything. Perhaps they could try waking him first.

Bailey went over to Cobalt, and reached a hand towards the cage around him, intending to stick a paw through it and gently shake the sleeping elf. Immediately, a thorny vine shot out of the ground and swiped at his paws, nicking the soft part of his padded finger, before retracting with an eerily slimy hiss.

The paladin let out a breath. Okay, they thought, looking for Toby instead.

The cause of all of this quite possibly had it the worst out of everyone. Toby was not only surrounded by the plants, he was also intertwined with them. There were all kinds of foliage, many of which Bailey didn’t recognize, weaving in and out of his body as well as holding him in a slumped, unconscious position. His skin had a sickly, dark green undertone to it, and Bailey wasn’t sure if the man was even still breathing. He brandished his axe as he crept closer, getting just far enough that he could see Toby’s chest rise and fall.

Alive. Good.

They doubted that sheer force would get the druid out of the mess he was in, and didn’t want to risk hurting him -- or worse -- trying to cut him free. Bailey tapped the head of his axe in his palm. They had no issue with amputation, if it was necessary, but they weren’t sure that it would help in this case.

They stepped back, and into a weird mess that made them frown. A tangle of vines, leaves, and fur littered the ground here, and -- was that a tooth? A claw? -- there was an obvious trail of blood that led from this spot and out towards the thicker part of the woods.

Bailey was curious. They wanted to follow. The blood was old, and certainly did not pique his interest as much as fresh blood would’ve, but still . . . he shook his head. Not now.

Instead, he took a few minutes to regain his fuel by consuming the rest of his odd cage-like contraption, which he tried in vain to decipher as he ate it, and attempted to formulate a plan. After a few minutes, he rose.

He was not the best at plans, so he settled for: free the others somehow, and eat some pork plants along the way. That seemed good enough to start with. Bailey lifted his axe over his head, and took a swing.

xxx

Cobalt made his way back onto the platform, being extra careful not to destroy any delicate plants under his designed-to-destroy boots. He went around to the red window, pushing a leaf aside so he could look at it more closely.

Toby started to slide off of the altar, and the heads of the flowers followed him. “What are you --”

Cobalt held up a hand, and he stopped. The hand changed to a finger pointed in Toby’s direction. “Don’t move.”

Toby sat back on the altar, but otherwise obeyed. The leaves of the bromeliads curled loosely around his legs, and a monstera brushed against him. “Is something wrong?”

Cobalt lifted the red window, dragging it over to rest under the purple window. This had bothered him ever since Toby had said it earlier. He pointed to them in turn. “What color are these?”

Toby tilted his head. “They’re . . . what did we say earlier? Red?”

Cobalt also tilted his head to match the druid’s. “What color are my glasses?”

Toby looked at them, then back at the windows. “They’re . . . closer to that one,” he said, pointing to the window resting on the ground.

“The red one, then.” Cobalt said.

Toby shrugged. “Sure.”

Cobalt pursed his lips, then went over to the other windows. He pointed up to the puppet window. “What color is this one?”

Toby’s legs started to swing and he sat on his hands. “Same color as the plants, I think.”

Cobalt nodded. “Green, yes.” He pointed to the knight’s window. “And this?”

“Water. Or, the sky. They both seem pretty close.”

“Blue,” Cobalt said, his voice softening a bit. It was interesting to see what basic things the memory wipe took from him on top of the larger, more complex memories. He thought this might be one of those things, but he was starting to think that this was just something Toby might have been born with. He went back to the king and prisoner windows. “You can’t tell the difference between these two?”

Toby frowned. “They look like shades of the same color. Am I supposed to be able to tell the difference?”

Cobalt moved the window back. “What do they look like?”

Toby looked down, and the rogue gave him a curious little stare as he lifted his hand and held it in front of his face. He looked first at the red window, and then at the purple one. “Like me, kind of.”

That was all the answer he needed. He walked away from the window, taking Toby’s hand and tugging him off of the altar. “Brown. Your skin is brown.”

“Ah,” Toby said. Then, after a moment, “So . . .”

Cobalt smirked at him. “I think you’re colorblind.”

xxx

The door on the second floor of the house shifted as the monsteras and bromeliads around it paled and withered. A creak of the door's old hinges faintly echoed through the vacant building as they shriveled and turned to dust, settling on the floorboards below.

Chapter Text

After several minutes of Toby pointing out every single thing that could potentially have color in it and either asking Cobalt what color it was or attempting to guess it on his own, they climbed over the rubble and made their way out of the church. The light was no longer moving, and had given up the fraction of the church it began to consume.

Toby stepped outside and walked down the broken steps, pausing at its base. He turned, staring at it quizzically.

Cobalt looked between it and his druid a few times before just asking. “What?”

Toby’s brow furrowed as he looked over at Cobalt. “What were we doing in there?”

Cobalt blinked at him. What? “What?”

“I said --” Toby’s attention caught on his ankle. “Did you do this for me?”

The elf slowed to a stop, halfway between the church and the birdhouse. He glanced back at the old building, now looking more like a historical ruin than a derelict tomb, as he tried to figure out what to say. Why didn’t he remember?

Toby was watching him, waiting for something else other than the same one-word question to come from his mouth, but Cobalt was a bit lost at the moment. He stopped short of repeating himself, and instead offered an incredibly intelligent “. . . um.”

“I’m . . . going to assume yes,” Toby said, giving him a puzzled look, “since you’re the only other one here.”

Cobalt managed a sound of assent, and then, “you don’t remember?”

The way that Cobalt was staring at him, like something was wrong with him, was putting the man on edge. “Amnesiac, at your service,” he muttered. “Can you just tell me?”

“Ah, yeah,” the rogue said, quickly fishing for something simple and mundane to say that would sum up all of the day’s events without causing too much distress. “Well, we got rid of Bailey, and stopped the church from falling apart,” he said, making a largely unhelpful gesture towards the building. Small pieces of rubble tumbled to the ground in response.

“That’s it? We just . . . killed him?” Toby tilted his head at the fallen pieces, which bounced off of a monstera leaf that he was certain wasn’t there before. “And the church fixed itself?”

Cobalt rocked back and forth on his feet. “Yup.”

There were a few seconds of silence before Toby peered at him. “You’re a terrible liar.”

Cobalt looked affronted.

“You agreed to tell me if I forgot!”

Cobalt pursed his lips. “No I didn’t.”

“You said you’d tell me whatever I wanted.”

“If it gets us out,” Cobalt amended with a point, “and you do not need to know that information in order for us to leave.”

Toby crossed his arms. “And you know that, how?”

The rogue shrugged, putting his finger away. “I just do.”

“Cobalt.”

He sighed. It was so wildly unfair and so very Barovian for Toby to remember the one thing Cobalt didn’t want to do. “I also said,” he added, “that if it hurts, I will stop talking.”

“But I want to kn-”

“I am not going to hurt you,” Cobalt said. “So if it starts to cause you pain --” he mimed zipping his mouth shut -- “I shut up.”

The man pouted, face scrunching in the way a child’s does when they’re trying to find other loopholes to get what they want, but realize that the option presented is the best one. “I wanna know,” he mumbled.

A smile tugged on the corner of Cobalt’s mouth as he watched the man wrestle with the options he was presented. He allowed it to stay when Toby looked back up at him; Toby’s frown deepened at Cobalt’s expression, which just amused the elf that much more. His eyebrow arched in a silent question.

“I can handle a little pain just fine,” Toby said.

Cobalt thought about the unexplained scars littering his body under the Adventurer’s Cove hoodie. “I’m well aware,” he said, smile fading into something softer, “doesn’t mean you should have to.”

Toby crossed his arms, grumbling incoherently.

The rogue tilted his head. “You know, you’re the only person I’ve ever met that complains when someone doesn’t want you to get hurt.”

“I’m an enigma.”

Cobalt snorted. “You’re annoying as hell.”

Toby shrugged. “Same thing.”

“Alright, fine.” He found somewhere to sit. This might take a while. “You remember Bailey attacking us, yeah?”

Toby nodded.

“And . . . do you remember the altar? You nearly died on it?”

Toby balked. “I died?!”

Cobalt sighed, and decided to start from the beginning.

xxx

Bailey’s axe had severed dozens of plant heads, stems, and leaves, and he was somehow left with a significantly more complicated problem than when he started.

The cat realized perhaps a bit too late that the plants had adopted a hydra-like nature while being attacked, learning to double and quadruple themselves even as Bailey hacked away at their growth. The pros: Bailey had way more to eat. The cons: he could no longer see his charges.

They placed the head of their axe on the dirt, leaning against its handle as they dragged a furry arm across their brow. The heat was unhelpfully at its peak, as it was midday, and Bailey was briefly reminded of days toiling away back on Olive’s family’s farm. He couldn’t figure out if he missed how simple those times were. There was something satisfying about answering an internal call for something riskier, something more dangerous. Something that tugged at the reins keeping the more primal side of him at bay. Even though it wasn’t his choice to leave, he couldn’t say for certain that he regretted it entirely, only that it upset people they cared about.

Maybe Strahd was right about them.

They shook the thought away as soon as it came, hoisting their axe again. This was for his friends. He needed to save his friends.

But chopping away and consuming what he killed wasn’t getting him anywhere -- he wasn’t used to that! -- so he’d need to try something else.

xxx

Cobalt had reached the point of explaining how he’d offered to re-wrap Toby’s ankle when the first sign of pain appeared.

Cobalt would count himself lucky to be friends with someone whose emotions quite literally showed up on their sleeves. Or, in this case, on his head: despite Toby’s attempts to shove it down, and his habitually neutral expressions, whatever kind of magic that was controlling his body always told the truth. Cobalt’s words slowed to a stop when he saw parts of Toby’s hair shift from soft curls to spiky burrs.

Toby frowned. “You weren’t done. Keep going.”

“I told you, if --”

“I know what you said,” the druid pressed, “but it’s not that bad. I can deal with it.”

Cobalt shook his head. “I’m not going to hurt you, Toby.”

He was silent for a moment. “You know what else you said?” He didn’t let Cobalt respond. “You said you didn’t know how much longer you could do this. That you have to remember everything not just for yourself, but for me as well.”

Cobalt wished he hadn’t said that. Admitting weakness never worked in his favor. “Don’t worry about that.”

“How could I not?” Toby pressed, shifting so he was sitting cross-legged instead. “Neither of us are meant to be doing this alone, but you’re trying to force yourself to, so that I don’t get hurt. But in turn, it’s also hurting you. Isn’t it?”

The half-elf stared at the man in front of him, expression shifting minutely a few times before he chose something else to focus on. He felt Toby’s eyes on him the entire time he was trying to figure out what to say. Finally, he decided on, “the last time I let myself watch as you put yourself in potential danger, you almost died. And I couldn’t do anything about it.” His gaze returned to Toby’s face. “So forgive me if I’m a little hesitant to do it again.”

“But I didn’t die,” Toby insisted. “I’m fine, see? I’m alive -- whatever happened in there didn’t kill me.”

“But it could have,” Cobalt said, because how the hell was he missing the point of all this, “it’s not that you survived despite the odds, it’s the fact that the odds were there in the first place. I don’t care that you can do this -- believe me, I’m thrilled that you’re not a corpse right now.” Cobalt’s voice changed, matching the insistence in Toby’s voice just moments ago, “I would really just not like to constantly see my friend get hurt.”

Toby blinked at him, a realization slowly forming like mist swirling to create a cloud of fog, but a second later, it dispersed. “Skip that part, then,” he said quietly, “try something else. I’ll . . . remember as much as I can.”

Cobalt watched his mind -- and maybe his heart, also -- attempt a level of connection deeper than he was allowed, and ultimately fail. Again. He sighed, and continued.

Toby listened to the rest of the story with barely a flinch, right up until what he assumed was the end. He had no trouble retaining everything he was told, and even jumped in to add little parts he’d remembered as the events began to stitch themselves back together in his mind. There was only that one part that Cobalt had skipped, the smallest gap in the story that he wasn’t allowed to know.

He didn’t like that.

“My wounds didn’t fully heal,” Toby said slowly, “before we went back in.”

Cobalt didn’t say a word, but his eyes drifted to Toby’s hair.

“The ones on my ankles . . .” he said, brushing a hand over them, “. . . they were still there after we escaped the second time. I tried to wrap them with my shirt, but it didn’t work. So you did it for me.”

Parts of his hair darkened, and the curls unrolled themselves, turning into points. “Toby,” Cobalt warned.

The druid ignored him. “What happened next, why won’t it let me . . .” Toby squeezed his eyes shut as the memory slowly formed, the picture clear as day up until Cobalt offered to help him. Then it was like a drop of water on the surface of a still pond, distorting the image and scattering everything on it. He tried again. “It hurt when I wrapped them. You saw that it hurt, and --”

Cobalt watched in alarm as the points on his head rapidly multiplied, a mirror image of the stress on Toby’s face as he forced himself to remember. “Toby, stop.”

“I can do it,” Toby said through gritted teeth, his eyes still closed. He grabbed the sides of his head and strained against the much stronger habit to forget, forcing the memory back into his mind as soon as it left, over and over and over again. He could feel it pull itself away, and it took him several attempts to grab hold of it and force it to return. It was like dragging a knife through wood: sharpened nails on a wizened, green-tinted hand tried to scrape the ability to remember this from his mind, and just the effort of holding on brought tears to his eyes; the wetness pushed through his eyelids and slid down his face.

He was grabbed then, by his shoulders. Cobalt shook him, telling him to stop, and the jostling nearly made him lose it but he insisted that he could, insisted that he just needed to try. He pulled against the curse, planted his heels in the ground and yanked with everything he had: pulling with his hands, digging in with his nails, biting down with his teeth, anything that would grant him purchase on something he so foolishly let go of. It burned, it stung, it hurt but still he held on, straining against everything he knew which was so terribly little --

It stopped, all at once. He looked up, eyes wet with tears yet to be shed. His breathing was ragged but it had stopped, and “. . . I did it.”

Cobalt was still holding his shoulders. “What . . . what did you do?”

“I . . .” Toby held his hands over his ears, not letting them fall until he tried again to remember, just to be sure. Cobalt had offered to tie it for him, and Toby allowed it, removing his hoodie to reveal the torn shirt he’d used as a bandage. Cobalt asked about his scars, and of course he didn’t know, but that didn’t matter because he remembered it. Toby’s hands slid down from the sides of his face and dropped into his lap. “I remember what happened. All of it.”

Cobalt’s body sagged with relief as Toby’s earlier stress and pain was replaced with excitement, a wide grin spreading over the man’s face as he barely contained himself. Cobalt looked back up, opening his mouth to say something, but stopped, tilting his head. There was something growing on the druid again, which wasn’t unusual, but it was new. “Hey, what does bark represent?”

Toby stopped. “Bark?”

“Yeah,” Cobalt said, tapping his own ear. “At least, that’s what it looks like. Is that what grows when you’re happy?” It didn’t seem right, but nothing about the guy was ever quite right anyway.

Toby shook his head, reaching up to his ear. “No, usually when I’m happy it’s . . .” his words died in his mouth when he touched his ear. “That’s . . . weird.”

“When is it not?”

“Shut up. That’s not what I mean.” Toby touched his ear again, more insistently this time, and the excitement he’d had just seconds before drained from his body. “It’s . . . it’s not going away.” He put his hand down. “I don’t think this is mine.”

Cobalt looked at his ear again. It sure seemed like his. “You don’t think that’s your ear . . .?”

“No, dammit, these aren’t my powers.” Toby said, hand going back up to his face. “I know what my plants feel like, and they usually go away when I want them to. This isn’t mine. This isn’t me.” He looked at Cobalt, the fear of not knowing what to do creeping into his eyes. “I didn’t do this. Something -- or someone -- else did.”

“Let me see,” Cobalt said, making a gesture for Toby to bring himself closer. When he did, Cobalt pushed some of his hair out of the way to make his own assessment.

Toby’s ear had completely changed. It was still the same dark brown as the rest of him, but it had turned from soft skin into hardened, textured bark. The shape of his ear was still there, and if you weren’t close enough to tell, you might not have noticed that anything was wrong. Cobalt carefully tried to push on it to see what it looked like at its base, but the entire thing was completely solid. He let the blonde curls fall back into place. “What the hell . . .”

Before he could sit back, Toby spoke. “Repeat that.”

Cobalt gave him a puzzled look when he covered his other ear, but repeated himself anyway.

Toby’s hand dropped like lead into his lap. “I can’t hear anything.”

“What?!” Cobalt turned him around. “What do you mean you can’t --”

Toby repeated his motions. He closed his human ear with one hand, effectively blocking out most of the sound. “I can’t hear out of this ear,” he said, pointing to the one that no longer belonged to him.

Cobalt put his hands together like a prayer, brought them to his face, and took a deep, steadying breath. “O . . . kay.”

Toby reached up and tapped where his ear canal would be. “Sounds hollow,” he said quietly. He then -- to Cobalt’s incredible dismay -- pulled at his earlobe, breaking a small piece off. The man didn’t react, even as the area started to send rivulets of crimson down the side of his face.

The rogue gave him a look that couldn’t decide between exasperation and disbelief, even as Toby simply held the broken piece up with blood-stained fingertips, studying it. “Will you please stop doing that?” Cobalt said, momentarily wishing that Phirah had granted him powers in the healing department since this man conveniently decided that he didn’t want to use his own. Of course the one time he’d given himself an assignment, it had to be with the most difficult person to keep alive.

Toby blinked at him. “Stop doing what?”

“God, neverm-” Cobalt gaped at him. “Did you just bite it?”

Toby frowned, not answering the question directly. “I had to be sure. My plants taste like ashes,” he said, dropping the broken piece of bark on the ground. “That tasted like bone.”

Cobalt ran a hand down his face with a sigh, looking back at Toby after a moment. The druid was wiping his fingers off on his hoodie, and Cobalt noticed that there was a tiny branch growing out of the middle of his ear. As if to applaud itself for its efforts, it triumphantly grew a small green leaf.

Cobalt decided he’d look into retirement when he made it out of here.

Toby was pushing himself off the ground. “It might be a side effect of what happens when I remember something,” he mused, standing upright. “I wonder what I’d lose next if I tried to remember something else.”

“A fantastic question that will never have an answer,” Cobalt said, standing up as well.

To no one’s surprise, Toby was only half-listening as he started in the direction of the birdhouse. “If I lost one of my eyes, do you think I’d be able to see who did this to me?”

“No, and we’re not going to test it.”

“But --”

“No.”

Toby huffed. “You’re no fun.”

“That’s because your idea of ‘fun’ means turning into a damn tree,” Cobalt quipped, walking up to the front door of the birdhouse. “Come on,” he said, opening the door and ushering the man inside.

xxx

The light on Bailey’s paws faded and died with his final attempt to use magic on the plants surrounding Pip. Nothing he’d tried had any effect -- his magic was mainly for undead, fiends, and the like, and no matter how much of the full, concentrated power of the sun that they poured into each spell, the plants barely flinched.

They gave the foliage a very paternal-feeling glare of disapproval and planted their hands on their hips. In circumstances like these, he might be given to letting the problem work itself out, or just waiting until another solution comes along, but it became clear to them rather quickly that neither of those things were an option. 

Bailey paced for a few moments, axe leaning against a tree as it waited for a situation in which it might be more helpful. He knew what he would do in this situation, but if that wasn’t helping then . . . he looked around. What would they do?

The paladin’s gaze landed on the tangled semi-corpse that was Toby. Pip, they thought, would probably start with him. Bailey left their axe where it was and picked their way over masses of greenery, moving as slowly and carefully as he could so as to not alarm any of the plants. Their oversized heads and leaves swayed slightly on thick stems, heads turning in complete silence as they watched him without eyes.

Bailey had noticed, with some relief, that the plants didn’t really attack him unless provoked. He wasn’t sure if this was because Toby’s powers recognized him somehow, even with him being completely unconscious, but he was grateful for it nonetheless. The cat had no intention of attempting another attack before truly assessing the situation, which he was quickly concluding would require a more intricate solution than some supernatural weed-killer.

They crouched down next to Toby’s body. The man was breathing -- thank the gods -- but like the others, he was completely still. Four thick vines the size of tree roots protruded from various parts of his body, each one leading to a different person in their party. The one that was previously connected to whatever contraption was trying to suffocate Bailey was merely a husk compared to the other three, and seemed deflated next to the much healthier-looking vines. Bailey lifted the dead vine, and it crumbled to ash in his paws.

He could feel the plants looming over him, watching his every move as he fully studied the mess they were all in. The hair on the back of his neck and arms prickled in warning, standing upright as his nerves tried to warn him of nearby danger. They did not have their axe: it still rested, now much more unhelpful than before, out of reach and against a tree.

Bailey released a breath and lifted one of the other vines. It was brown and dormant, not responding to any sort of stimuli like the other plants were. An oversized pansy twisted around him, its purple and white head arcing around to look between himself and what he was holding. Bailey looked back at it, completely at a loss for what to do, though he felt in his 40-year-old bones that he knew for certain what not to do.

The pansy’s attention did not leave him once he put the vine back down, but he felt the intensity of being sharply watched lessen as he let it go. They stalked back over to Toby’s side, figuring that he should probably do some sort of medicine check on the man. They went through the basics: breathing? Check. Pulse? Steady. Skin?

Bailey leaned closer, brow furrowing as they looked at Toby’s face. His skin was still a warm, rich brown, free of the clammy feeling of death, but there was something . . . strange on his ear. Bailey reached out to hold his chin -- the plants crowded him, and he put up a placating paw -- and very, very gently turned the druid’s head.

The paladin ran a padded thumb over his ear, frowning at the oddly hard texture on it. It looked like bark, or something similar. And it was . . . spreading. Slowly, gradually, but it was spreading -- Bailey watched in alarm as Toby’s skin cracked as if it was sunburnt, then hardened and calloused into the skin of an oak tree. He was about to run through his backlog of spells to try and get it to stop when it did that entirely on its own. By now, the bark covered his ear and a fraction of his jaw, but it did not seem to continue past there. Bailey inspected the other exposed parts of his body, but it looked relatively normal, so he came back to Toby’s face and -- it had grown a branch. Well, a twig: the stick poking out of his ear was tiny, and so was the leaf that accompanied it.

Bailey didn’t know what was going on, and there certainly wasn’t anything with a speaking mouth that could tell him (he’d tried that, but Toby’s plants took after their creator and did not talk much), so he would need to try something else. He started to stand. Maybe if --

One of the vines connected to Toby pulsed, brightening from dull brown to vibrant green. The leaves on it unfurled and expanded, stretching out as if waking up from a long nap. Bailey’s focus was immediately redirected as the flowers surrounding Pip swelled in size, and the bird -- to Bailey’s immense horror -- began to sink underground.

“No!” Bailey completely disregarded caution as he charged towards the cleric, mind racing and reminding him of what he’d just experienced several moments prior. Was that what had been happening to him? Were they also going to bury Pip alive?

They flung themselves at the plants, all claws and teeth and fatherly concern, and the foliage responded in kind. The hydra plants that Bailey had brought to life earlier simply multiplied further with each successfully severed head, tangling Bailey in their stems and vines even as he ripped and tore at them. He was forced to watch with mounting panic as Pip continued sleeping, dirt rolling over the tips of his wings as he fell deeper and deeper.

xxx

The scene inside of the birdhouse was much calmer than whatever nonsense Bailey was dealing with.

Toby kicked some straw out of the way as he walked in, vaguely remembering the childlike paintings on the wall once the door shut behind them. It was just as charming on the inside as it was on the outside, and it had a sobering effect on the two of them -- a welcome change from the terror that came from the church.

The effect didn’t last long, though. As Toby circled the room, looking at each of the paintings in turn, he felt a faint trace of white hot anger start to prickle under his skin. It was strongest when he looked at the last painting, but he didn’t understand why he was feeling this way.

His eyes caught on a sizable split in the wood near this painting caused by an indent from what looked like a heavy blow. Did someone hit this wall? Maybe it was an accident. He couldn’t come up with a reason why someone would purposefully damage a place like this.

When he turned back to Cobalt, considering pointing it out, the rogue was already watching him carefully. Toby paused, blinking at him. “Did I do something?”

Cobalt frowned. Not yet. “No.” He crossed his arms. “What do you wanna do?”

Toby looked back at the wall. “We’ve been here before, right?” A look over his shoulder. “I’m assuming you’re not going to fill me in on what happened.”

Cobalt glanced at Toby’s ear. The bark had spread to his jaw, which made the elf’s frown deepen. He nodded towards it. “If it causes more of that, no.”

Toby reached up to touch his ear again. “I guess this is my punishment for resisting a curse I agreed to,” he said quietly, fingers moving to the twig. It had a new leaf. “But, honestly, I thought it would’ve been something more painful.” He gave the twig a gentle tug.

His skin cracked like dried mud, splits and fissures spreading like wildfire all over his body as it hardened faster than he could keep up with. His fingers and toes extended and curled, hardening into branches and roots respectively, and leaves sprouted at the ends of his fingers. He tried to run, but his legs had fused together and would not move; when he twisted, the bark curled with him and froze his waist in place, and his hands stretched up into the canopy of the tree as he reached out for someone, anyone to help him. His tears turned into sap and the wood swallowed his scream, turning his open mouth into a hollow. His eyes rolled back as they were overtaken, bulging and warping into burls before everything went still.

A hand, long, thin, and green dragged mottled fingers down his bark, tracing yellowed nails in the crevices. It ran its thumb over the burls that had once been his eyes, his nose, and his ears. The hand reached into the hollow, termites and ants skittering out of the hole and crawling up its arm, but it paid them no mind. Its nails dug into the core of him, scraping away at rotten leaves and debris until it reached his heartwood, and pulled. With a sickening snap not too far from a bone breaking, the hand wrenched off a piece of it, and freed itself from the tree’s rotting hollow.

Baba Lysaga caressed the darker wood, a rich brown that had already started to feel the effects of rot and decay, and split it open. The wood gave easily, much easier than the core of any tree should, and inside was a mass of soft and spongy tissue. It seeped red and bled onto her lap, and she scooped out some of the marrow like ice cream, and ate it.

When the vision cleared, Toby was on the floor, hands clutching at his chest as Cobalt held him up. His breathing was ragged and his heart thudded painfully in his chest. He tried desperately to get his body back under control, even though he knew it wasn’t completely his anymore.

“Toby!” Cobalt said, shaking him again.

“Wha- what --” Toby shook his head against being jostled, and he released one of his hands from his chest to shakily grab onto Cobalt’s arm. “What . . . what happened?”

“You happened,” Cobalt said, hands tightening around his shoulders, “you gasped and stumbled and then you were on the floor.”

Toby used everything in himself to give the rogue an unsteady nod. “I . . .” The temptation to reach up and touch the bark again was gone. “Is it still there?”

Cobalt eyed the wooden ear. “Yes.”

“Is it any worse?”

Cobalt shook his head. “Are you okay?”

“I . . . I think so.” Toby let his chest go, then had another thought. He pulled his hoodie over his head, and looked down at his chest.

Other than being completely covered in button mushrooms, it was intact. He pressed his fingers to it, feeling his heart, his ribs. Everything felt normal. He supposed that unless he carved himself open, he’d have to just be okay with that.

Cobalt was watching him, face full of questions.

Toby hesitated. He didn’t know if something would happen if he explained what he saw, so he settled for a summary instead. “I . . . um . . .” He started to shiver. He was always so cold.

His glasses were gently removed from his face, and his hoodie was tugged back on. He could barely lift his arms without them shaking like leaves, but a much kinder hand than the one he’d been dealt eased them into the arm holes. This time, he refused to think about it too hard.

Toby wrapped his arms around himself. “Thank you.” He tried again. “I saw her,” he said, voice quiet as he tried to stop trembling, “the woman who cursed me.”

Cobalt’s hands were back in his lap as he listened. He figured she was behind this somehow. “Did she say anything to you?”

Toby shook his head.

Hm. “Did she hurt you?”

Toby didn’t answer.

His hands clenched. After Strahd, whatever creature he needed to kill to lift this curse was next. “We’ll be more careful.”

Toby nodded, but stayed seated when Cobalt stood and offered a hand to help him up. “I’m . . . sorry.”

Cobalt’s hand hovered, then fell. “What for?”

“Being pushy,” he said, not looking up even as his own hands started to slide down his arms. “I should’ve listened to you but . . . I wanted to know, and now I’m . . .” like this, he didn’t say. Worse.

Cobalt looked at him, then slowly sat back down. There were little purple and blue star-shaped flowers growing along the back of his neck. Cobalt put a steadying, and hopefully warmer, hand on Toby’s bicep. “Hey, look at me.” He waited until the druid did so before continuing. “No one can blame you for wanting to remember things,” he said. “A crucial part of you is gone, and when you try to get any of it back, it causes you pain. That fucking sucks dude.”

Toby looked away from him again. Cobalt gently tugged on his hands instead until he was able to hold them in his own. The druid was so terribly cold. Cobalt wondered if it was a side effect of not having a soul. “You’re stubborn, and curious, and . . . now a fourth of your face is a tree,” the rogue said, tilting his head to get Toby to look at him again. “But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing we can do about it. We just have to take things one step at a time.”

Toby’s face scrunched in the way that told Cobalt that he wasn’t pleased, but would figure out how to change that. “I don’t want to make things more difficult,” he said, eyes tracing Cobalt’s scar before meeting his gaze, “I know they’re already . . . a lot. But . . . I want to know things, too. Not remembering anything is hard.”

Cobalt nodded, smiling a little. “I know. You deserve to know.” He ran his thumb over Toby’s knuckles. “You gave up your memories to save me, and Bailey, and Pip. Let us return the favor, yeah?”

The druid’s face fell. He didn’t want to be “saved”, didn’t want to be rescued, didn’t want to feel like he had to have someone help him out of this. But he didn’t really have a choice, did he? He didn’t want to be a burden, make things more complicated than they already are without a way to get himself out, but this was way, way bigger than he could handle on his own.

And if Cobalt was offering then . . . maybe, just maybe, they didn’t view him that way. Maybe he was harder on them -- on himself -- than he needed to be. Maybe he -- and the version dormant inside of him -- could use a friend or two.

Just as the thought came, it was gone, and Toby blinked the remorse away. He hoped Cobalt didn’t notice the moment it left. “Yeah,” he said, though he wasn’t fully certain of what he was agreeing to.

Cobalt nodded. He’d seen the brief flash of pain on Toby’s face, and immediately regretted potentially going too far. It didn’t seem like the bark spread in response to it, though, so he’d count that as a win. He stood up again. “Let’s get out of here first, alright?”

Toby took his hand this time, and stood up. “Okay,” he said, taking a breath. “What do I have to do?”

xxx

Bailey never had a strong opinion one way or the other about plants, but this experience might change that.

For what seemed like the past hour, the cat had struggled and thrashed against numerous vines and stems that held him mid-air, and conveniently just out of reach of his axe. If the weapon was granted use of a mouth for a minute, Bailey was sure it would spend the full 60 seconds laughing at him.

They groaned, head tilting back after a final, hardly-successful wiggle to get themselves free. They could go into a frenzy, consuming everything around them until they were free, but his bloodlust wasn’t an at-will ability. The last time he’d succumbed to it, he caught himself just before eating Olive.

Olive. He frantically looked around for her, searching the area where he saw her before, hoping, praying that she was still there --

The plants shifted apart for a moment so Bailey could see her, sleeping peacefully under a blanket of greenery. She rolled over onto the other side, and the cat saw that she was drooling a little bit.

He smirked, planning to maybe tease her about it later once all of this was said and done. For now, he was glad that she wasn’t being buried alive.

Buried alive -- shit, Pip! Bailey went straight back to panicking, even as their tired body protested. “I have to save him,” Bailey said through gritted teeth, breaking free of the vines again, only for them to be immediately replaced. Instead of holding him this time, they threw him backwards and he rolled to a stop in the dirt. When he shook himself (mostly) clean and stood up, he was greeted by three giant venus flytrap heads, hovering protectively in front of where Pip was still sleeping.

Bailey wiped his mouth. “I see.” He kept his eyes trained on the plants, and they did the same as he stalked over to his axe, pulling it from the ground and hoisting it over his shoulder. “Tryna keep me entertained, huh?”

The flytraps only grinned. At least, that’s what it looked like. Maybe he was just crazy.

He didn’t care. They summoned their strength again, and took a running leap towards the flytrap in the middle. Sunlight glinted like a star on his axe as he arced it through the air, aiming straight for its stem.

xxx

Toby made the paintings replay again and again, but he couldn’t figure out what was wrong, and it was getting under his skin. Every time he thought he’d lose it, Cobalt calmed him down, and they tried something else.

“What about here?” Cobalt said, pointing to the scene of Pip talking to Jeremy. “Maybe there’s something spelled wrong.”

Toby shook his head. “No, I told you. The only wrong thing is this,” he said, jabbing a finger in the direction of the painting of Pip healing Olive. “Every other memory is right, we’ve played them all at least seven times. This one is the one that’s wrong.”

“But you don’t know what exactly is wrong about it.”

“No, and it’s pissing me the hell off.” Toby narrowed his eyes at the way the back wall of the birdhouse started to glow faintly as the light got closer. “We don’t have time for this,” he said, storming over to the crude rendition of Olive and glaring at it instead. He lifted a hand. “Why can’t it just --”

Cobalt hurried over and stood in front of him. “Woah, hey,” he said, forcing Toby’s hand back down. “Okay, yes. This is frustrating, but we can figure this out.”

“This is pointless,” Toby said, unable to keep his irritation from rising. “This is fucking dumb, whomever painted this should’ve just painted it right so Pip could heal her, and we can leave.”

Cobalt paused. “So, okay, the problem is that she’s not getting better. Maybe . . . maybe there’s something in the painting that is making her sick?”

Toby pushed past him to look at it again. “Everything is right here. The herbs, the teapot, the water, the cloths, everything he used to help her is right here.”

“Okay, alright,” Cobalt said, wracking his brain for what to say to keep him talking so he didn’t start swinging again, “what . . . what was he helping her with? She was sick, right? Why was she sick?”

“I don’t know, nausea maybe?”

Cobalt sighed. “This is your memory, right? You still have recollection of this. This isn’t made up, is it?”

“Of course not,” Toby snapped, unable to rein in his temper. He had no idea what was driving him to this level of anger, but it coursed through him in a way he could not control.

The rogue didn’t seem to take it personally. “Okay, so remember what happened here. What was Pip trying to help her with?”

Toby groaned, and squeezed his eyes shut. “He called it . . . um, shit. I can’t -- god, I can’t remember --”

“Was it withdrawal?” Cobalt pressed.

Toby’s eyes flew open. “Yes, yes that,” he said, making the painting play its sequence again. “She was drugged. Yes, I remember. And he was making these teas to help her with it, because who the fuck would put drugs in a fifteen-year-old girl? And she was getting better, she was fine, but this painting says she’s not and I don’t know why.”

“Alright, good,” Cobalt said, moving Toby’s hand away from the wall. He ignored the glare leveled at him for it. “Your mind painted this. You painted this. Is there anything you could’ve remembered wrong versus what’s here?”

Toby rolled his eyes. “That could be a huge damn number of things at this rate,” he muttered. “So, yes.”

“Okay, start listing them, then.”

Toby shrugged. “I mean, I couldn’t even remember what she was sick with.”

“We confirmed that it was withdrawal, though. And . . .” he looked back at the painting. It was messy, and small, but the notebook sitting next to Pip listed out a recipe for tea that helps with withdrawal symptoms. “That’s correct.”

The druid’s brow furrowed as he forced himself to think. “Uh, I could’ve misremembered what they were wearing, or something.”

Cobalt looked at it. “Nope. Pip’s hat and scarf and Olive’s coat are all accounted for.”

“This is stupid.”

“Try one more time.”

“Fine.” Toby looked at the wall, eyes narrowing at every poorly painted thing on it. “I . . . the ingredients.”

Cobalt looked at the group of items sitting in front of Pip, and the recipe itself. “Let’s see,” he said, pointing between the wall and the list. It was more difficult to read than the title, but he managed. “Go over there, and I’ll call out the ingredients. Let me know if they’re there.”

Toby gave a grunt of acknowledgement when he stopped in front of the ingredients, and Cobalt read over the list.

“Water, honey, chamomile, and . . .” Cobalt practiced a few pronunciations in his mind before voicing it aloud. “. . . kratom?”

Toby nodded. “Water is here, honey is there, chamomile is right there, and kratom is there too.” He leaned back. “So much for --” he stopped, leaning in again. There were small, white dots on the kratom plant, like clusters of flowers. “Wait a second,” he said, touching the wall and accidentally making it spring to life again. He removed his hand. “Kratom doesn’t have flowers.”

Cobalt straightened, looking over at him. “Is that the wrong plant?”

Toby frowned, looking up at the painting as a whole. “Of course it is. Of course I fucked up and remembered the wrong damn plant.” He gave the wall a half-hearted kick. “Sorry excuse for a druid,” he muttered, shoving his hands in his pants pockets.

Cobalt knew this wasn’t really coming from him, but still. “Can you fix it?”

Toby’s brow furrowed, and he fished around in his pockets. He pulled out a couple of half-full tubes of paint and a used paintbrush. “I . . . guess so?”

Cobalt blinked. Why couldn’t the answer have been that easy for the church? “Where the hell did those come from?”

Toby shrugged. “They were just . . . in my pocket,” he said, unscrewing the cap for the yellow paint. He squeezed it, and a tiny amount pushed through the silver tube.

Might as well give it a shot. Toby took all of the paints out of his pocket and tossed them on the table. Red, yellow, white, and green. He figured he didn’t really need any more than the green one, so he unscrewed it, and squeezed. The paint was not nearly as fluid as the yellow one, and the tube reluctantly coughed up the rest of its contents, splattering green all over the table.

Cobalt snorted. Toby sighed.

He painted over the white flowers until they were barely visible, grateful that these were acrylic and not oil. He didn’t know what he would’ve done if he had to make himself wait for the paint to dry.

Toby tossed the brush and tube aside, wiping any remaining paint off on his jacket. He planted his hand on the wall again, right over the crack in the wood, and watched as it came to life again. Pip brewed the tea, steeped the mixture, and handed it to Olive. She brought it up to her mouth, and . . . drank all of it. She placed the empty cup down, and the two figures jumped happily before the painting dulled.

Leaves sprouted between Toby’s fingers, eventually covering his whole hand. He let his hand fall from the wall, and looked around. Basil was growing in the crack in the wood, and crowding the floor and walls of the birdhouse. The other paintings had all changed to look like everyone depicted was celebrating, despite being frozen stick figures on a wall. Toby kept his smile to himself.

Cobalt was looking around as well. “Smells good,” he said.

Toby nodded. “Basil,” he said, rubbing a leaf between his fingers and taking a sniff. It wasn’t as strong as typical basil, but the herb smelled wonderful nonetheless. “Tulsi, specifically. For healing.” He’d recognized this one from a page in Pip’s notebook.

“Despite the whole memory wipe thing,” Cobalt said, turning to face him, “you’re still really good at plant identification.”

“Truthfully, I never really forgot it,” Toby said, stepping back as more basil grew at his feet. “Plant knowledge feels inherent to me. Like it’s always been there, and I just need a refresher from time to time.”

Cobalt tilted his head. “You seem better. Less angry.”

Toby looked at his hands. “I don’t really know why I got so upset, even now.” He put them in his hoodie pocket. “I suppose that mixing up a medicinal recipe is dangerous and could be hurtful, but . . . it didn’t actually happen. I criticize myself a lot when I mess up, but not to this extent.”

The rogue picked up the discarded paintbrush, setting it and the green paint tube on the table with the others.

“It’s almost like . . . this anger isn’t mine,” Toby was saying, his voice dropping to a murmur as he spoke mostly to himself, “it . . . might be his.”

Cobalt looked up. Was there someone else? “Whose?”

Toby blinked, and shook his head. “Nothing, just thinking out loud.” He carefully stepped around the basil and made his way to the door. “Onto the next one?”

xxx

It was the fourth time in maybe twenty minutes that Bailey ended up with dirt in their mouth. They spat it on the ground before picking up their axe again, a low, rumbling growl making their entire body vibrate.

Truthfully, he’d been having quite a bit of fun trying to kill these damn things. If he wasn’t constantly reminding himself that the point was to save Pip’s life, he might have counted this as exercise.

But the cleric’s life was on the line, and he had a job to do.

He lifted his tired old bones off of the ground, and prepared to attack again. But before he could do anything, the flytrap in the center swayed as if drunk, before its mouth closed and it collapsed with a loud thud.

One by one, each of the flytraps fell to the ground, and Bailey stared incredulously at them. He could’ve sworn the things were snoring: their stems and leaves lifted and fell like they were sleeping peacefully.

Bailey looked up. Behind them, wing outstretched and eyes wide as saucers, stood Pip.

Chapter Text

It took Bailey a second to realize their name was being called. Pip scrambled over the stems of the sleeping flytraps and ran-hopped his way over to the paladin, who let out a tired sigh. “Pip?”

“Bailey!” Pip chirped, their wings flapping in distress as they quickly checked them over for any major wounds. “Are you alright?”

Bailey gave him a weary half-smile before deciding that there wasn’t a need to stand and fight anymore. “Yes, I’m fine. Just --” a groan left them as they lowered themselves rather ungracefully to the ground, and they tried a different approach. “Let’s just say that I’m no longer in my prime.”

Pip tilted his head, noting all of the unhealed scrapes and bruises that revealed themselves under Bailey’s fur. They hadn’t healed, which meant that their magic probably went elsewhere. Keeping themselves alive, no doubt. Pip stretched a wing towards them, and a warm glow enveloped Bailey for a moment. When the light disappeared, it was as if Bailey had never had any injuries at all.

Bailey thanked him, but still did not get up. There was a fatigue settled deep in their bones that even the strongest magic couldn’t quite get rid of.

“What happened here?” Pip said, going back over to the vines that were surrounding his sleeping body. “Last thing I remember was Toby’s powers going nuts, and then . . . nothing.” He turned to Bailey. “And now I’m awake. And you’re awake.”

The cat nodded. “Same here, I’m afraid,” they said, “seems like we were all hit by the same thing. I woke up a few hours before you did.”

Pip frowned. “How long were we out?”

“Couple days, I’d say.” Bailey tilted their head. “You hungry?”

Pip was about to shake his head, then faltered. “Actually, yes. I’m starving.”

Bailey nodded. “I was too, when I woke up.” They decided not to mention exactly what they had almost done when their body realized that it was completely out of fuel. “You’re vegetarian, right? I would suggest not eatin’ any of the plants, then.”

The cleric paused, running that statement over and over in his mind. “. . . Sure!” He went over to his bag instead, pulling out a significant number of rations. Bailey hoped that would last him.

Pip filled his wings with as much food as he could and carefully balanced everything as he picked his way over the dead foliage and back towards the sitting cat. He dropped all of it once he was there, plopping down next to them. “Would you like some?”

Bailey declined. “No, I ate the plants.”

Pip blinked.

“They, uh, taste good,” Bailey ventured, “like meat.”

Pip stopped asking questions.

Several minutes passed, which Bailey filled with shifting awkwardly on uncomfortably stiff muscles. They should never be allowed to sleep for days on end. “How’d you do that?” Bailey asked after Pip stopped inhaling food to make up for a multiple-day deficit.

“Do what?”

Bailey pointed at the plants. “That,” they repeated. “Put ‘em to sleep? What spell did you use? Every time I tried some soothin’ magic on ‘em, nothing worked.”

Pip brushed crumbs from his wings. “Your powers are sun-based, right?”

Bailey nodded.

“I could be over-simplifying things, but maybe they just . . . liked it. Photosynthesis, or something.”

The paladin looked back at the sleeping flytraps. They seemed smaller now. “That makes a lot of sense, actually.”

“I’ve been studying him,” Pip said offhandedly, standing and moving to the center of the clearing. He turned in a slow circle. “His powers are quite strange. I’ve never seen druidic abilities act like this before. What I did notice is that his abilities are the opposite of mine, somehow.” Pip brushed a wing over the flytraps, and they continued to shrink. “It’s difficult, and takes quite a bit of concentration, but sometimes I can cancel them out. Make them . . . docile.” Pip looked over his shoulder. “Where is he?”

Bailey stepped aside, pointing behind them. “There. He’s asleep.”

Pip hopped over to the mound of tangled plants that Bailey indicated as a living person, and frowned. “. . . Interesting.” He itched for his notebook.

Bailey moved to stand across from the bird, looking down at Toby with equal curiosity. “Notice anythin’ else?”

Pip hummed musically. “Nothing out of the ordinary. Well,” he tossed them an arched eyebrow, “ordinary for this one, that is.” Bailey snorted, and Pip asked, “He is human, right?”

The automatic “yes” appeared on Bailey’s tongue, and just as quickly, died. “I’m . . . not sure, actually.”

Pip crouched, sitting on his feet as he inspected Toby’s body. Unlike Bailey, none of the plants were quick to crowd him or protest. “Where did he come from? Do we know anything about his family?”

“Haven. Same as Cobalt.” Bailey’s lips pursed. “And, coincidentally, Cobalt is probably the only person that knows anything more than that.”

Pip had quickly noted the absence of the other three in their party. He assumed Cobalt was still asleep.

“I did notice something,” Bailey said, slowly and intentionally moving their hand towards Toby’s face. They held it there for a moment, in case the plants reacted poorly, but nothing happened. They turned the man’s face, exposing the large patch of bark on his ear and jawline to the cleric. “This appeared on him, started before I was up. It spread, and then stopped. I didn’t see it anywhere else on him, last I checked.”

Pip’s expression was grave. “When did you last check?”

“An hour or so ago.”

The bird brushed Bailey’s hand away, and inspected the rest of Toby’s skin. He sighed, but the look on his face did not change. “This isn’t good.”

“I’m not sure what to do,” Bailey admitted, feeling even more at a loss now that it was clear he probably wouldn’t be of much help, “I was worried that anything I tried would make it worse, or that they,” he gestured to the giant pansy hovering quietly behind Pip, “would not approve.”

Pip looked up at the flower, and it seemed to tilt its head to look down at him in turn. “I see. Let me take a look at this, see what I can do.” Pip touched Toby’s forehead, and grimaced at the uneven temperature. “I’m worried that his powers might be eating him alive. And if they are, we don’t have much time left to reverse it.” The bird looked up, giving Bailey a small smile. “You can help, if you want.”

Bailey visibly perked up at that. “What d’you want me to do?”

Pip pointed a wing in the direction of the mound that called itself Olive. “Watch over her, please. If anything I’m doing to him affects her, tell me.”

Well. Bailey could do that. They nodded once, and promptly stood guard over Olive’s resting body. He gave a thumbs-up, and watched as a golden-hued light enveloped both Toby and Pip’s bodies in a bubble. Bailey had seen this spell before, one that allowed Pip to be undisturbed while he cast spells or worked, and caused damage to anyone trying to break through it without his permission. They forgot what it was called, but always marveled at how well Pip multitasked with it. They redirected their attention to Olive, crouching next to her and watching hawk-like for anything even slightly off. Nothing would hurt her while they were around.

Bailey was arrested with a sudden urge to unsheath their claws. But they could. Their vigilant posturing took a healthy step back; they watched from a greater distance instead.

Pip looked up after his spell sealed the two of them inside. Bailey curled their paws under their body and stared intently at the girl, tail swishing idly as they set their entire focus on her. The cleric thought the sentinel position suited them quite well.

He exhaled, said a quick prayer under his breath, and began to work.

xxx

Inside of the house, on the second floor, a cluster of fragrant basil pointed vibrant, green leaves towards a non-existent sun. Then, as if taking their last breath, they slowly faded and curled, shriveling into brown carcasses, and then to dust.

xxx

Bailey paced between Cobalt and Olive, spending several minutes at each of their sides as Pip did gods-know-what inside of his spell bubble. Once, they thought they saw an errant leaf creep into Olive’s hair, and just about had a heart attack, but a second later realized it was one that had already been there.

Pip, on the other hand, allowed their bubble to disperse, and it fragmented into glowing oak leaves before drifting to the ground, and disappearing entirely. He stood, and put thoroughly disappointed wings on his little hips, tapping a three-toed foot on the ground as he mulled over his options.

The cat’s ears twitched, flicking up and in the direction of Pip’s approaching steps. “Any luck?” They said, eyes still firmly fixed on their charges.

Pip shook his head. “I’m afraid not,” he said, making his own cursory check over the two still sleeping. He trusted Bailey’s scrutiny. “I have a couple of ideas of what might be happening, but none of them mean anything good for Toby.”

What else was new? Bailey turned to face Pip. “Go on.”

“My original thought was that his powers were consuming him somehow, attempting to turn him into one of themselves. The bark that’s on his face looks so similar to the vines connected to his body.” Pip took out his notebook, where he’d drawn a surprisingly accurate anatomy study of Toby and the things attached to him. He pointed to his legs and torso: “They mostly wrap around here, and here, and are connected to each of the things holding us down.”

Bailey nodded, crossing furry arms across a broad chest. “I figured they were drawin’ power directly from him in order to create whatever these cage contraptions are.”

The cleric confirmed this with a nod. “Yes, exactly. But I also noticed that there’s still a disconnect between the vines and his skin. It’s almost like . . . prosthetics? I suppose? They're essential for him to function like this, and are making up some crucial part of him, but . . .” He shook his head. “It’s weird, because it definitely seems like they’re all one entity, with how intertwined he is with them, but they’re ultimately a separate living thing that isn’t actually him at all.”

Bailey’s nod was slower this time. Toby and his plants always sure as hell seemed like they were one and the same, but they didn’t question it.

Pip pointed to Toby’s face in the diagram. “But the bark on his cheek, here, isn’t like that. This bark is his skin. I know what druidic barkskin looks like, the protection spell? And it’s not this. This, for all intents and purposes, is irreversible.”

The paladin released a breath. “O . . . kay. Not good.”

Pip shook his head. “Not even a little bit. That gave me another idea, though.” He turned the page, and there was a short list he’d written next to yet another diagram. “I checked him for disease, curses, things like that, and I didn’t find anything new. He’s got residual undead running through him, but that isn’t affecting anything. There’s his human blood, which makes up most of his body, and then there’s . . . something else there. I don’t know what it is. I’d need more time with him, but time is the one thing we don’t have.” Pip tapped a small talon on the scribbled words. “I thought maybe he’d been cursed with something else -- that would be his third curse, I think -- but there was nothing other than the two he already has. There’s also his distinct lack of a soul . . .” Pip sighed. “He’s got a lot going on. But I don’t think whatever’s on his face is coming from these guys,” he said, gesturing to the plants around them. “I think someone else got to him somehow.”

Bailey looked at the numerous notes and the copious amounts of question marks next to said notes littering the page of Pip’s notebook. “You’d think I’d know more about someone I’ve spent months with, at this point.”

Pip offered a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “To be fair, he doesn’t know anything about himself.” His eyes went back to the book. “Though, I’m starting to think that that might not entirely be the curse’s fault.”

Bailey was silent for a moment. “We’re gonna need some answers.”

The bird snapped the book shut, looking over at Cobalt. “I think there’s only one person who might have them.”

xxx

The version of Cobalt that was awake was currently glaring daggers at the door of the inn.

After he’d foolishly forgotten (ironically) about Toby’s amnesia kicking in once he exited any of the buildings, the blank expression on his friend’s face had caught him off guard, again. Cobalt tried to tell himself that he was fine with it this time, that it was probably a good thing that Toby didn’t remember what he said or felt in the birdhouse -- Cobalt had dubious success with vulnerability, as someone always found a way to use it against him -- but the bandaid he was used to slapping on these kinds of wounds didn’t quite stick. He found himself sad about it, and he found that it bothered him immensely.

Toby was crouched in the grass, watching something crawl over a small piece of rotten wood. Cobalt was relieved that he hadn’t asked to be reminded of what happened in the birdhouse; the rogue resolved to keep his mouth shut.

I wonder what I’d lose next.

Cobalt refused to let either of them figure that out. He heard Toby murmur something, and turned to face him. “What'd you say?”

Toby looked up. “Hm?”

Cobalt tilted his head at him. “Were you talking to yourself again?”

Toby decided to sit. “I didn't say anything.”

“Oh. Then wh-” He stopped. Toby's mouth hadn't moved that time, but he could've sworn he heard someone speak. Cobalt turned slowly, looking at the forest. “Did . . . did you hear that?”

Toby's eyes darted from Cobalt to the ground -- the bug was gone -- and back up again. “Hear what?”

“Someone . . . someone's here. Or . . . something is playing tricks on me, but --” he stiffened, then pointed at the trees, eyes frantic behind vibrant red lenses. “There! Again!”

Toby leaned back on his hands and pursed his lips. “Usually, I'm the one that hears things that aren't there, so this is new.”

Cobalt looked between the forest and his companion, then let out a frustrated huff. “Playing tricks on me. Got it.” He shook it off, walking back towards the inn. He approached the door, gripping the knob a little harder than was necessary.

Toby eventually made his way over, coming to a stop at his side. He watched Cobalt . . . not do a damn thing. “Maybe try twisting the knob --”

The elf stormed down the steps without a word, and abruptly turned towards the trees.

“Or don't,” Toby muttered, following after him.

Cobalt stood in front of a half-rotten trunk, one with a hollow so large Toby could stick his head in it. He looked somewhere past it, and his eyes slid to the druid when the man approached him again. “Still nothing?”

Toby noticed the eerie way Cobalt's gaze shifted, but his head did not move. He was either focused or spooked, and Toby did not know enough about him to tell which one it was. He shook his head.

Cobalt looked away. “You're not lying to me, are you?”

“The only voice I hear is yours,” Toby said quietly.

Cobalt's frown deepened. He'd wanted to ignore the voice he heard, like a murmur or a whisper somewhere in the distance, but this place was giving him too many hints that there might be something or someone else here. He'd forced himself to go closer to where he thought it was, and sure enough, it became louder and clearer once he moved towards the forest.

His eyes narrowed as he studied the light at the edge of everything, its warm glow belying the emptiness that lay beyond it. Cobalt didn't know how he knew, but he was certain the voice wasn't coming from that.

Toby asked him what he was hearing. “A voice . . . a woman's, maybe. Don't recognize it, though,” he said thoughtfully, taking a tentative step forward. “I'm trying to understand . . .”

The druid watched him step carefully through the dead foliage as if guided by something ethereal, like a specter had his hand and was gently tugging him forward. Toby simply followed him curiously.

Cobalt was about halfway through the forest when the voice was finally audible enough for him to understand what the words were:

Wake up.

He stopped. Toby stopped too, keeping several steps between them.

Wake up.

Cobalt turned his head slightly to address the man behind him. “She's saying . . . she wants me to wake up.”

Toby waited a moment. “Do you want to?”

Cobalt looked at him, then forward again. “I do. But . . .” He looked back. “You don't hear her?”

Toby shook his head.

Wake up.

“Might be your chance to get out of here,” Toby said as evenly as he could.

“What about you?” He turned to the trees. “What about him?” He waited several beats, but there was no response. Cobalt shook his head. “I can't just leave him here.” There was one point, months ago, where he might have done just that. He wouldn't even consider it now. “He has to come with me.”

The voice was silent, and Cobalt only felt a gentle, but insistent, tug forward.

He pulled his arm back. “No, I . . .” He stepped back. “I can't. Not without him.”

The voice tried one more time. Wake up, Cobalt. 

Toby looked at him. “Are you sure?”

Cobalt took a few more steps back, though they were significantly less sure-footed than the ones from earlier. “Of course I am. I meant what I said.” He turned back towards the clearing. “Besides, that thing could've been lying and just, I don't know, stuck me in the void or something.”

Toby's gaze lingered on the forest a bit longer before he turned around.

Cobalt decided to follow through on his initial action and open the inn door. He braced himself for the deafening noise and blinding light, and once it subsided, stepped inside.

The inn was exactly as they'd left it. Incomplete furniture, unmarked bottles, unlit candles -- it had all the excitement of labeling an extensive dirt collection or filing taxes. Cobalt found that he was not struck with a distant memory this time around; he didn't know if he was grateful for that or not.

Toby stepped around him and approached the counter. The unused order pad curled at the edges with age, and he only vaguely remembered some of what happened here. He was upset about this place feeling so hollow. Cobalt was nothing like this, at least not to him. The rogue was deceptively warm and made for excellent company when he stopped brooding over a friendship that was precarious at best, and he was . . . comfortable. Toby found it easy to be around him in a way that felt deeply unfamiliar, like the previous version of him hadn't had that with anyone either.

Toby's eyes darted to the kitchen. He hadn't really given it much thought last time, as it smelled rancid and was too dark to see much of anything clearly. He poked his head in to see if anything had changed.

The memories of Cobalt that played in the inn were ghostly, passing easily through surfaces as they moved their mouths and bodies. This one was no different, except that Toby recognized it immediately: Cobalt was angry. The rogue was frustrated often, though that ire was rarely directed at him. This time, though, Toby rewatched the rogue berate him over Bailey's monstrous glass form, before it turned empty eyes up to the real him, and watched him vacantly.

He turned, facing the dining area, but it was filled with the ghostly apparitions that had greeted him the last time he was running for his life. Toby's eyes widened, and that exact same fear struck him as they stared back. In place of the face he'd come to recognize, every single one had an empty, lifeless skull.

Cobalt placed a hand on his shoulder and Toby nearly flew out of his skin. “Tobes? You alright?”

Toby's eyes flicked to his face. It was replaced by a skull for just a moment before his real face came back.

Do you just conveniently forget that too?

Toby nodded, forcing himself to place a shaky hand on top of Cobalt's own. “Yeah, I . . . can you do something for me?”

“Anything,” Cobalt said before he could stop himself.

Toby's fingers tightened. “Just . . . don't let go of me yet, okay?”

Cobalt blinked. An unusual request, but one he could certainly comply with. He nodded.

xxx

“Well this isn’t working,” Pip said, dispelling his latest attempt at waking Cobalt up.

Bailey did the same, closing a paw around a small sun in their palm. “He’s not even trapped by anythin’,” they said, giving Cobalt’s body one more solid shake before letting him flop to the side. “He doesn’t have any sort of cage like the rest of us did.”

“This is going to sound ridiculous, but . . .” Pip frowned, scratching his head under his hat, “. . . do you think maybe he wants to be asleep?”

Bailey looked at him. “I’m sure he needs the rest, but it’s been days.” They checked his pulse again. It was strong and steady, and his body was about as warm as it always was. “He’s not dead, thank the gods, but his dreams must be quite somethin’.”

Pip gently patted the rogue’s body until he found what he was looking for, and carefully removed the tiger’s eye from his pocket. It was dull and cold. “It’s not Phirah,” he mused, replacing the stone.

Bailey crossed their arms. “We can come back to him,” they said, leaning their axe against a tree and turning to Olive, “let’s free her first.” Bailey approached her, and went to put a paw on her face. A vivid memory of the version of themselves they constantly tried so hard to hide slammed to the front of their mind, and he took a chastised step back.

The cleric gave him a concerned look, but nodded wordlessly and hopped over to Olive. Pip repeated an earlier spell, and the cage around her crumbled to dust.

Olive rubbed two fists into her eyes and blinked up at the cat and bird standing over her. Her eyes slowly shifted from one to the other before deciding to stay on Bailey. “I’m hungry,” she said blearily, and nearly surrendered herself back to sleep.

Bailey, ignoring the relentless berating in their head, caught her before she could hit the ground. “I’m sure you are, kiddo.”

Relieved that it was nothing more complicated than that, Pip looked back over at Cobalt to maybe try -- “Oh no.”

Bailey’s ears twitched, and one turned in Cobalt’s direction before his head followed. They’d been so preoccupied with their niece that they hadn’t even heard the plants around him start to stir: two massive, three-headed roses -- ones that they were certain were completely dead and rotten before -- were stretching out of the ground. Thorns as long as Cobalt’s own knives pushed free from their stems with a sickening tearing sound, and they reared themselves back as if preparing to impale the unconscious elf into the ground.

Pip darted forward, stretching out his wing in an attempt to placate the monstrous flowers, but they swiped at him and nearly took some of his feathers as a prize. He jumped back, dodging thorns shot in his direction until he was all the way back at Bailey’s side. “Somehow I thought Rosas would be easier than Dionaea muscipulas,” Pip muttered, “but they’re deceptively hostile.”

“They ain’t friendly,” Bailey agreed, ignoring the fact that they didn't understand at least half of what was said. They let out a grunt, pushing themselves upright and grabbing their axe again. “I tried choppin’ em down, but they just grew back, hydra-like.”

When Pip tried again, one of the stems caught him in the stomach and he flew backwards, fanning out his wings before he could collide with a tree. He landed mostly unscathed on anxious feet. “I don’t usually like harming nature, but . . .”

“This ain’t natural.”

Pip nodded. “I’m starting to understand that.” He stretched a wing forward, and a glowing ring bloomed at the base of both rose stems. The flowers were poised like soldiers in front of Cobalt’s body, eyeless heads watching the cleric and paladin for any other attempts at advancement. Pip spread his wings wide, and the ring followed suit, stretching and spinning until a complex, sigil-covered divination circle formed on the ground. “Plan B, then.”

Bailey appreciatively watched the spell manifest. “What’s plan B?”

Pip whispered something to himself, and brought a wing up to his face, like half of a prayer. For a second, nothing happened. Then, the circles shone brighter, and two brilliant columns of light shot up from the ground to somewhere in the clouds that Bailey couldn’t see. When the columns disappeared: “that’s plan B.”

Bailey stared at the notably empty spot where the roses once were. “Oh.”

Pip sighed, shaking off the lingering buzz from using that much magic at once. “I can only use that spell one time, so let’s hope that worked.”

The ground, a fan of neither hope nor clerics, coughed up six roses in response.

Olive wandered over to Toby’s bag. She pulled things out one by one, dropping what she wasn’t looking for on the ground. When she found what she wanted, she plopped herself on top of one of the piles of dead flowers and watched the two of them passively as she ate his rations.

xxx

Toby and Cobalt stared at the crowd of almost-Cobalts with two drastically different expressions. Cobalt looked bored. Perhaps it was the stifling of any sort of reaction he may have had to his current and most important task, but in any case, his face was a blanket of neutrality.

The druid, in unusual fashion, looked deeply unsettled. His body couldn’t figure out whether freezing or fleeing was the priority: mushrooms and ivy repeatedly attempted to crowd at the base of his feet and along his arms. Each of the apparitions watched them with eyeless carbon sockets, and the absence of any actual form of sight made the feeling of being seen that much stronger.

Toby did not like it, and neither did his skin. It tried to crawl backwards, away from the innumerable things that were making him uncomfortable, but his feet would not obey. Skulls had never frightened him before, but he’d also never seen them resting comfortably on the shoulders of someone who was most certainly still alive. At this rate, he figured he’d develop a complex. 

That someone had absently threaded half-gloved fingers through his own, even as his gaze rested placidly on all of the “hims” before them. Cobalt’s head turned slightly left and right as he occasionally found a new one that caught his interest, but most of his energy was focused on making sure he did the one thing that was asked of him.

Poison ivy left some rashes on Toby’s skin as it withered and slunk back into whatever he was made of, and the button mushrooms did the same. The small gesture, even if unconscious, reminded Toby that Cobalt was not dead.

Yet.

Toby blinked, tearing his eyes away from the things that stared back to give himself a thoroughly confused “what the fuck?” face.

“You okay?”

The half-elf was looking at him now. His eyes were real. Toby nodded.

Cobalt accepted that as an answer -- or maybe he didn’t, Toby no longer trusted what he thought he knew -- and looked ahead again. “Oh. There’s the stairs.”

Toby did not want to go up, but by some miracle, or horrible twist of fate, he found himself at the top of them. The door was still there, and the grip that tightened around his hand was significantly less absent-minded than before. To his horror, the other hand was already twisting the knob. “Wait --”

The sliver of the room that peeked out from where Cobalt had only slightly pushed the door open stole the rest of Toby’s protest from his lungs. Cobalt shut the door. “So you do remember what was in there?”

The smaller man seemed even smaller, somehow. He shook his head. “I only remember what it felt like.”

Cobalt’s mouth tightened. Under ordinary circumstances, he might have supplied a response along the lines of a reminder of how he’d insisted that Toby not go alone. The rogue swallowed it down: Toby already looked sufficiently bruised by the cruelty of his own subconscious, another blow might render him entirely immobile. He killed two birds with one smoother stone: “we’ll go together this time.”

There was no guarantee that Toby remembered the decision he’d made when they first approached this door, but something flickered over his face, and it was like trying to get a camera to take a photo without film.

Cobalt eased the door open again, and upon hearing no protest, let it swing wide.

xxx

Pip couldn’t say that he ever regretted being a nature-focused cleric. Pip also couldn’t say that he’d ever fought for his life against four of the largest three-headed flowers he’d ever seen.

Bailey was behind him, head swiveling as he undoubtedly strategized the best plan of attack. Pip was currently holding up a shield that enveloped the both of them, preventing the cat from leaping into action without any consideration for the level of danger that was present. The roses immediately began hurling thorns at them after their resurrection, and the cleric had half of a second to summon the barrier. Pip could feel Bailey itching for a fight, knowing that they’d take any level of damage head-on, having more faith in the solidity of their skin than Pip had in his own god. “You said this hasn’t happened before, right?”

The paladin snapped out of battle-mode to toss a look over their shoulder. “Not that I can remember,” they said, attention darting back to their current opponents as the flurry of thorns intensified at the presence of something far less penetrable. “He’s lost it before, but could usually get it together before it became too much of a problem.”

Pip wondered briefly what qualified as “too much” before the roses stopped altogether. He stilled, holding his shield aloft and watching the roses carefully. “We need a plan,” he said quietly.

“Kill ‘em,” Bailey said intelligently.

Pip sighed. “We need a good plan,” he repeated. “What if you --”

One of the roses slammed its heads down on top of the shield, and Pip’s feathers shot up in alarm as he let out a thoroughly startled squawk. He nearly dropped the spell entirely but managed to hold it, even when the other three followed suit and started ramming their flowers in an attempt to break through.

“Go help Cobalt!” Bailey said, and before Pip could manage any sort of protest, the cat launched himself through the shield.

“No -- Bailey!” Pip chirped; he flew backwards, narrowly dodging another hit, and flapped furiously to assess the situation from above. He would only have seconds to come up with the best spell for the two other roses currently thrashing at the elf’s sleeping body, so he needed to --

Pip paused, flapping to keep himself hovered. He was some distance away, but he could see that the roses around Cobalt were also struggling to reach the elf beneath them. Pip flew in a small circle, brow furrowing as he tried to work out what he was seeing. Cobalt was definitely asleep, and hadn’t so much as twitched, but there was a faintly glowing blue dome around him, similar to the shield Pip erected to keep himself and Bailey safe.

The cleric hovered for a moment longer, puzzling at whether he’d ever seen Cobalt exhibit an ability even remotely like this before -- all of his powers seemed to be haphazard and fire-based, like he had a tenuous relationship (no surprise there) with whatever was granting him magic -- and a thorn sliced right through one of the feathers on his wing.

Pip let out a fowl’s version of a yelp and darted into the trees, dodging projectiles aimed at him from an insufficiently distracted flower. The bird swooped around, landing on a branch that allowed him a mostly clear sightline to Cobalt’s less-than-optimal circumstances.

Through leaves that were not quite finished unfurling, Pip watched the remaining two -- of six, the other four still completely occupied with a paladin that was having way too much fun -- try to cut through Cobalt’s shield, and make zero progress. Wherever they made contact rippled like the entire thing was made of the bluest water Pip had ever seen, while still being transparent enough to give the cleric some peace of mind about the condition of the being inside.

During their first attempt to wake him up, Pip and Bailey had pulled Cobalt from the dirt. He was buried significantly deeper than the rest of them, according to Bailey, and their attempts to rouse him proved unsuccessful. Pip realized now that none of the plants had been able to drag him back under. There was no time for relief due to this fact, though: despite the limitations, there was no end to the roses’ barrage on whatever was surrounding him.

Pip’s eyes narrowed. Did he have some sort of resistance against Toby’s powers, one that none of them knew about? His head tilted as a thought came to him. He’d have to get closer to confirm it, but he had a feeling that the answer was infinitely more obvious than it seemed.

Casting spells came naturally to Pip: his powers were intrinsic, and so there was no time at all between his ambush on the two unsuspecting plants and his quick landing next to Cobalt. While the roses reeled, thrashing about as they forced regrowth that was way too fast for a normal plant, Pip scanned Cobalt’s body until he found what he was looking for. Cobalt had his hands tucked beneath his head, but the one wearing his ring stuck out just enough that Pip could see the blue stone on it glowing faintly. He leaned in to look closer, just to be sure it wasn’t just the effect of the shield, and the thing quietly rippled when Pip’s wings brushed against it.

His head jerked up, and he jumped out of the way just as one of the roses recovered and went for him again. If he was right . . . he took to the air, beelining for Toby. He landed with a hop, and -- oh. Olive.

The girl looked up at him from where she was measuring the size of her hand against the leaf of a giant pansy. Pip tilted his head at her, and she tilted hers back. The pansy tilted its head too. She didn’t look to be in any danger.

Olive said “what?” in that permanently-impatient tone of hers.

Yep. She was perfectly fine. Pip noticed the mess around her, and Toby’s overturned bag. He answered his own question, and decided to let the druid deal with it when he woke up. He searched the tangled mess that was a confusing amalgamation of human and foliage until he found a shape that resembled a hand. Pip turned it over, and . . . he shook his head, grateful for once that hadn't convinced them to lift the curse a second time.

xxx

There was no one here. Toby's shoulders sagged with relief despite the lingering trepidation in his gut.

He trailed after Cobalt, voluntarily being dragged by his left hand, and looked warily around the room as fragments of memories came back to him.

Cobalt wandered slowly, brushing a tentative hand over the furniture. He'd long since accepted that somewhere in the recesses of his mind, Toby made this for him. He'd reasoned with the dilapidated sitting areas, made peace with the sorry state of the place.

Entering this room was an entirely different story: he'd nervous-wrecked himself into a hole, worrying furiously over what could possibly be behind this door. His mind had hounded him with the idea that he'd stupidly let Toby go alone, and the druid would never come back out. It had taken copious effort to reroute that train of thought until he was pacified enough to inspect the damage he'd done to Toby's memory.

And then Toby had barreled into him with a level of fear he'd never wanted to see on the man's face, and it had torn him open all over again. It didn't tear him in half, yet -- that was reserved for when he was pushed away with a look that told him that it was entirely possible that he was the cause of that fear.

There was something he was missing, something he wasn't quite understanding. Toby had still looked so frightened downstairs, but Cobalt hadn't done . . . anything. The ghosts of him just stood around and stared, their faces almost exact duplicates of his own, watching the druid the same way he caught himself staring at the man from time to time.

Stage fright, perhaps, was Cobalt's immediate and sobering thought as he opened a drawer. In it was nothing more than several neatly folded shirts, all the exact same shade of black, with a neckline and tag he recognized immediately.

He pulled one of them out, and held it up to his torso. Sure enough, it fit him exactly, and had the kind of softness only afforded to items worn countless times. Cobalt realized with a start that at some point, Toby had let his hand go, but when he looked up, the man was simply staring at the other end of the room.

Cobalt went to put the shirt back, but paused. He made sure Toby wasn't looking, then, carefully, brought the shirt up to his nose.

Coffee, he thought, then took another sniff. And . . . ash? A campfire? Another. Something sharp, and clean. Cobalt thought really hard about his next action, and took a sniff of his own shirt. He gagged.

The better-smelling shirt was returned to its resting place -- the elf resolved to shower when they eventually made it out -- and he continued around the room. There was a desk (“ah,” he whispered, “so this is where he got the paints from”), and an envelope. It looked opened already, so Cobalt slipped the contents out and skimmed them. He just as quickly sheathed the letter again, recognizing it immediately as the one that he hadn't allowed to leave his pocket the second Toby entrusted him with it.

Cobalt wondered if this was what had freaked him out, if he'd read it and it had fucked him up so badly that he could only throw himself as far away from it as possible.

Only one way to know. “Tobes,” he called out, holding the envelope up. “Know what this is?”

It took Toby a second to snap himself out of whatever he was doing, and he looked over his shoulder. He shook his head, but walked over to the desk anyway. Cobalt watched him, ready to react at any sign of pain, but Toby's eyes darted over the page the same way his had, minus any sort of recognition. “It's all nonsense,” he said, handing it back. “I can't understand any of it.”

Oh. Cobalt stared down at it as Toby leaned against the desk’s edge, crossing his arms.

Don't do anything that would cause you harm.

Please stay safe. Please come back to us as soon as you can.

Mama.

“Can you read it?” Toby asked.

“. . . Yeah,” Cobalt said slowly, folding it in half. “It's in elvish.”

A lie, one that Toby didn't catch. “Oh. It's for you then. That makes sense.”

Cobalt just nodded before putting the letter down. Toby was watching him now, and Cobalt felt like asking him what all of this meant. Why was there such a stark contrast between this -- his? -- bedroom and the rest of the inn, was any of this actually how he felt, and if so . . .?

Toby just stared at him, nothing on his face or in his deceptively quiet mahogany eyes other than a general interest in what his friend was doing, and Cobalt silently supplied himself with barely-sufficient answers. If he wanted to hear the man say the things he already knew aloud, he'd have to debase himself enough in order to skirt the lines of begging.

Cobalt turned towards the bed. Begging was disturbingly innate, like baring teeth, fetal positions, or waiting for instruction. He'd been labeled a mongrel in no uncertain terms by plenty of others at this point; he was not keen on altering the way Toby thought about him so that his imagination followed suit.

The bed, bringing its own set of confusing problems, had a humble bed set and a mattress that Cobalt was dismayed to find was memory foam. He carefully picked up a teddy bear that was lying on its side, grimacing at its familiarity. Somehow, he'd been able to recall the bear from Bouffonne's puppet show, even though he'd reverted to his amnesiac self as soon as he'd left.

The rogue's hand tightened around the bear as his mind tried and failed to supply any level of information about what he was holding or why. There was no possible way Toby could remember this bear. He could have made it up, just like he made up so many things about Bailey, but this bear was an exact replica of the one he was left with instead of a soul-doll, down to the odd stitching and loosened button eye.

Was he lying about something else? Toby habitually wasn't a fan of openness or blatant honesty, but the pain he'd felt and damage he'd sustained from forcing himself to remember things was definitely real. He'd thrown his sanity away months ago and the repercussions impacted all of them to this day. Besides, Cobalt knew him well enough to be able to easily tell when something was up.

Right?

So then how . . .? Cobalt looked back up at him, but Toby was no longer watching. Cobalt noticed -- and wondered if he'd once again missed a tell -- that Toby was worrying the sleeves of his hoodie, fingers tensing in a claw on his arms as if he needed something to grab on to, but his own unstable body was largely inadequate. His fingers kept clenching and releasing, over and over, as he stared at the back wall.

Cobalt's question left his mind as he followed his gaze to that same wall. Unlike the memories downstairs, the one playing here had more than just himself involved. He watched as Bailey and Pip stood in front of the ghost version of him, and recognized it immediately for what it was. He muttered a thoroughly vexed “shit.”

xxx

Not-ghost Pip, meanwhile, was trying desperately to get Bailey's attention. He flew in circles overhead, surveying the way Bailey was clearly and enthusiastically occupied.

“Bail-”

Bailey swung their axe through the air, and it landed with a deadly thwunk into the ground, narrowly missing the leaf they were aiming for by a hair.

“B-”

Bailey was knocked soundly in the stomach, and sent ass-over-head into the trunk of a nearby tree.

“Bailey!”

Their attention was diverted momentarily, but it snapped back to the task at hand and they leapt out of the way of another onslaught. They used the now-downed rose head as their new target, leaping onto its stem and holding on with one paw, digging their claws deep into its tissue. The rose bucked wildly -- Bailey had never really thought about the blur of flora and fauna that was presented to them, and for now it was the last thing on their mind -- and Bailey responded with a self-indulgent twirl of his axe before he cleanly swiped it through its stem. The massive rose head tumbled disgracefully to the ground.

Bailey saw two green mounds threaten to push through the fresh wound, and summoned a burning sun in his palm. Before the rose could sprout two more heads to replace the one, chlorophyll bleeding from it in spurts like a panicked heart, they punched the star into it and seared the stem closed.

They did not dismount even as the stem collapsed, landing soundly next to its head, which was already beginning to rot and dissolve into ash. They wiped their mouth as Pip landed next to them, staring triumphantly down at their latest victim with an only mildly tired “that's two.”

Their ear twitched, and they jumped in front of Pip, lodging their shield into the ground as thorns ricocheted off of the surface. The cleric's wing summoned a wider barrier, and he crouched beneath it, holding it fast against the plants’ barrage.

“I have good and bad news,” Pip started.

“Me too,” Bailey said, covered in plant death. “You go first.”

“Okay: one, I think Toby and Cobalt are together.”

Bailey blinked at him. “Well, yes, sort of. It's kind of confusin’, actually -- they're not together together, at least not in a traditional way? Sure, they're technically married, but --”

Pip stared at him flatly. “I mean, they're in the same place.”

The paladin stopped. “Oh. Where?”

Pip shook his head. “That I don't know. I think that's why Cobalt won't wake up -- wherever they are, they're in it together.”

Bailey flinched as a thorn flew over the top of Pip's shield, nicking the edge and spearing off in a different direction. “He wouldn't leave Toby,” the cat mused, stroking their chin as if there was more than a small patch of fur there, “but how d’you know he's not just sleepin’ really, really soundly?”

The cleric pointed to his wing in the same way someone would show off jewelry on fanned fingers. “Their rings,” Pip said, making the shield bigger, “they're both activated. That only happens when they're physically connected somehow. And since they're clearly not touching out here, I can only assume the power is working wherever they happen to be.” Pip put his wing down. “What did you dream of when you were asleep?”

Bailey stroked their mini beard. “I didn't. Honestly, it was the most peaceful sleep I've had in a while.”

Pip nodded. “I didn't dream of anything either.” He gestured towards Toby's body. “But I think they're dreaming, and they're somehow in the same dream. It sounds bizarre, and maybe it's far fetched, but --”

Bailey removed their paw from the task of pondering and placed it on Pip's shoulder. “It's the closest thing we've got to makin’ any sort of sense of this mess.” When Pip nodded, the worry over his own potentially inadequate conclusion easing from his brow, Bailey asked, “was that the good news? Or the bad news?”

“Well . . . both,” Pip said, his cap bobbing slightly as he scratched his head. “The good news is that they’re together. The bad news is that I have no idea where they are.”

Bailey grunted something sardonic, and Pip snorted, despite himself. “I’ve got good news,” Bailey said, louder. “I’ve figured out how to stop ‘em from regrowin’, so we can actually win against these things.”

“I don’t think we have to,” Pip said, but backtracked at Bailey’s pout. “I mean, you can fight them if you want to, but I don’t think they can hurt Cobalt like we thought they could.” He pointed behind him, indicating Cobalt’s prone but protected slumber.

Bailey raised their eyebrows. “Could he always do that?”

Pip shrugged. “I was hoping you’d know. I checked, and it’s most likely something the ring is doing. I only know that it’s not Phirah.”

The paladin looked back at the remaining mutant roses. Their skin prickled with the anticipation of a good old-fashioned fight just for fighting’s sake. “No harm in just bein’ sure that they can’t hurt him though,” they said, poorly attempting to mask their blatant excitement for killing something. “Why don’tcha try wakin’ him up again, and I’ll take care of the rest?”

Pip opened his mouth to agree, but the words died on his tongue. His eyes widened as the shield around Cobalt just . . . shattered. The bird frantically searched for the soft blue glow reflected on Cobalt’s face from the ring on his finger, but it was dull and lifeless. “Um. I take everything I just said back.”

Bailey looked back at him, and their ears flattened against their head when they caught sight of the source of Pip’s distress. “Uh oh.”

xxx

Cobalt watched himself allow the cleric's ghost to cast a spell on his hands -- his fingers felt heavier despite the ring being removed, as if it was replaced with the weight of something he’d been unconsciously avoiding for weeks -- and not-Cobalt’s head turned slowly to face them.

Well, no. It looked straight at Toby, and Cobalt wondered for half a second why this particular memory was playing here. This room was so warm, so soft, so comfortable that it made the ring removal feel violently out of place. Maybe Toby’s idea of this memory was better than it had seemed that night, when Cobalt brokenly watched the man curl in on himself to get as far away as possible from everyone else in the room.

He shifted his attention to the subject at hand, and -- now Cobalt was forced to wonder how many fragments his heart could be smashed into before there was nothing left. Toby stared back at the version of him that had separated them even further, just hours after he’d forgotten everything they’d ever had in the first place, and the look on his face made Cobalt impulsively check to make sure the band was still on his finger.

“Toby . . .” he tried, but his voice was as hollow as whatever was making a home in his chest just then, seeping in through the cracks and drowning what should’ve been there in something else azure and cold. He faltered over what his next steps should be, gravely unsure of what to do, as he watched the man take a tremulous step back.

Cobalt recognized this room for what it was now. Toby needed a buffer against this particular memory, something dense and malleable to ease the effect that the curse removal had on his subconscious. But now it was a prison: the pillowed enclosure that Toby had forced this memory into, where it had stayed and caused his conscious self no harm, was now the same place he’d have to relive it as many times as it took until he figured out how to leave.

The rug Toby backed up on and the wall he slid down provided no reprieve now. Cobalt couldn’t tell what he was backing away from -- he and Bailey and Pip just stared at him -- but whatever it was caused the man to start to hyperventilate.

Toby watched with widened eyes as not-Cobalt followed him, steps deceptively calm and non-threatening, even though he quivered like a leaf on the floor. He didn’t see real-Cobalt make his way over to the ghosts along the wall, reaching an apprehensive hand out to the three of them. It shivered on contact, passing through the skin of Cobalt's hand like glacial fog. His skin was clammy and pallid when he brought it back to his chest, and the shiver it brought to him was infinitely worse than whatever he’d felt on his own outside of this room.

Cobalt looked over his shoulder and winced. This wasn’t how it happened. But it didn’t matter, for fuck’s sake, because whatever Toby was witnessing was scaring the shit out of him.

The familiarity of the grief Toby was feeling had a completely nil effect on the circumstances. He still stared at the skeletal version of his friend with the same amount of terror, unsuccessfully bracing himself against the frigid bone thumb that took a minor liberty with his bottom lip. The lifeless jaw slackened, preparing to speak to him through a whistle of air between teeth, and Toby closed his eyes against its next words.

“I will never leave you,” it said.

He knew that. Toby knew that, and knew that it was his fault.

Cobalt knelt in front of him, his posture mirroring and unconsciously filling the exact space the ghost version of him took up. The druid looked through him somehow, his attention and his fear still latched on to the thing that wasn't Cobalt, but was Cobalt enough to be here. He wanted to reach for him, but felt suddenly that the real him might not be enough to do anything about this.

“I will never leave you,” it said again, because this time Toby hadn’t moved. He didn’t know if he could.

Toby stared at the memory parading as the rogue he knew with an unnamed sibling of regret. Not-Cobalt shrouded real-Cobalt entirely, and Toby could only see one of them. It took everything in him to push a response past dry lips. “. . . you’re dead.”

The frigid skeletal hand held Toby’s cheek. Cobalt’s warmer skin and bone hand hovered in mid-air.

“You died,” Toby squeezed his eyes shut for a second against the feeling of it; the hand’s freezing temperature belied the gesture, and talking felt like trying to force a dried lemon to make juice. “You're not . . . you're not here, you . . . left, you died --”

Cobalt didn’t understand. “No,” he tried, willing himself to move, to hold him, to do something, but he wasn't sure whether or not that would make things worse. “I’m -- I’m right here, Toby, I never left you.”

The thing that wasn’t quite Cobalt repeated itself, and it landed on Cobalt’s deaf ears, and tormented Toby’s unfortunately working ones.

Toby curled in on himself again, holding the sides of his head. “You keep saying that, why do you keep saying that?”

“What -- saying what?” Cobalt asked, a plea for some level of understanding to break through so he could figure out what it was he was supposed to do here. Not-Cobalt replayed his lines like a broken record.

But Toby continued talking as if he hadn’t said a word. “You’re not here, you’re not here, you’re not here, you’re not here --”

Cobalt shoved everything that made him afraid of doing what he wanted into a box that he then set on fire and finally convinced himself to just fucking do something, when Toby spoke again.

“You're not here,” Toby whispered, “you're gone and . . . and it's my fault . . . isn't it?”

Cobalt stopped. The apparition didn't answer, but kept its damned and damning hand on the man's face.

Toby's fingers found their way -- gradually, shakily -- to his own cheek, and he brushed them over the skeletal fingers. “I . . . I left first,” he continued, his voice faltering and breaking periodically as he attempted to speak marginally above a whisper. “I left you first . . . didn't I?”

Its stare was charcoal and empty.

“I . . . I don't think I . . . ever meant to hurt you,” he stumbled over the words like apologies were a foreign language, “but I did. I did, and I can’t take it back, and you pushed yourself away to make it easier but it hasn’t been, and . . .” His hands gripped the bones, but they slipped through the cracks in his fingers like smoke. Still, he squeezed, and only felt the sensation of bitten fingernails digging into his skin. “You . . . trusted me with a part of you, and I gave it up . . . oh my god, I’m so sorry Cobalt.”

Bone does not soften in the way an expression might, but the way not-Cobalt tilted its head could have made a sound argument for the contrary. The other one’s face crumpled similarly, even though his brain had only just caught up with the fact that he and Toby were seeing and hearing two different things. He didn’t know what to say.

“I’m sorry,” Toby said again. His arms wrapped around him like a vice, and he shrunk himself down like a rabbit caught in the rain, condensing his body around itself in an attempt to keep warm with the only source he had left, despite it actively and quickly diminishing. The first few tears caught him by surprise, and they dropped quietly on his clothes, sprouting into moon flowers.

Cobalt decided that trepidation could go to hell, and he found a place to put his hand.

Toby startled, and ghost Cobalt was no longer present. Even Bailey and Pip had disappeared, and the real Cobalt was watching him with an intense level of concern that Toby knew deep down he did not deserve. Tremors shook every part of him, except, of course, where Cobalt gently held his arm.

That was the straw that broke . . . well, everything. Toby, disregarding his own stubborn need for copious amounts of personal space, leaned forward and pressed his disheveled, guilt-stricken head into Cobalt’s chest.

Cobalt felt that there was some unspoken permission he’d been given, and shifted so he was seated, pulling the now-sobbing man into a hug. When Toby’s hands found their way into the back of his shirt, balling parts of it into his fists, Cobalt knew he’d guessed correctly.

The rogue was not familiar with being apologized to by anyone except Bailey. Bailey apologized to everyone at some point though, in an attempt to assuage his relentless personal sins. His own best friend (?) hadn’t even shown a sliver of remorse after nearly killing him, instead weaving a fallacious story about how the elf had deserved it. He’d never received any sort of apology from anyone who had done him any harm, because they didn't think they had anything to apologize for. They’d all done it willingly and entirely on purpose.

But this . . . Cobalt held him tighter, occasionally breaking up Toby’s hiccuping cries with soft reassurances and periodic reminders for him to breathe, lest the guilt rob him of air. The druid insisted that it wasn’t alright, that he was (so) sorry, and some other concoction of words pressed into the black fabric of Cobalt’s shirt.

It took a long time for Toby’s tears to dry, for him to go from shudders wracking his body to a mild shiver every now and then. Cobalt did not let him go, refused to until Toby pulled away first.

The man did not. He was cold, and numb, and significantly more drained than he’d ever been, and Cobalt was warm and soft and strong enough to hold him up; that was all he needed. He found the strength somewhere in his system to speak. “I’m the worst friend ever,” he said quietly.

Cobalt hummed into his hair. “I can think of a few people who have you beat,” he teased lightly, eyes slipping shut.

“None of them chose to forget you, though,” he mumbled, and Cobalt was grateful that he was good at picking up small sounds.

“Maybe,” he said, and his thumb made idle circles on Toby’s back, “but none of them chose to forget me in an attempt to save my life, either.”

Toby’s hands tightened in his shirt. “It didn’t work. We’re all still doomed.”

The rogue smiled softly. “Sure are.” He refrained from adding something nauseatingly tender about “togetherness”.

Nothing. Then, “I’m sorry, Cobalt.”

“You said that already,” he replied, pulling himself back a little to look the man in the face. “It’s okay, really. It’s not ideal, and I’m certainly never letting you do something like this again, but you were just doing what you thought was best.”

Toby didn’t look at him, but let his hands release his shirt and fall limply behind Cobalt’s back. Cobalt noticed absently that his shirt and lap had moonflowers littered on them, like little stars flecked across his night sky clothing. “I just . . . didn’t want anyone to die.”

Cobalt nodded. “I know. No one can fault you for that.”

“I can.”

“Okay, one person can fault you for it. It just won’t be me.”

“Maybe it should be.”

Cobalt leveled a look at him. “No, it shouldn’t. You do realize that you could’ve died, right? That was a contingency of the alternative option.” Toby looked sorry for himself in a way that made Cobalt’s eyebrow quirk. “Don’t start thinking something self-deprecating like ‘that might have been better’. I would’ve brought you back just to yell at you.”

Toby’s forehead bumped into Cobalt’s chest again, and he let out a huff. “You suck at picking friends, you know that?”

“I’m well aware,” Cobalt said, running a gloved hand over wheat curls, “but I don’t get to choose things for myself very often, so maybe let me have this one, yeah?”

The druid frowned, though Cobalt didn’t see it. When asked, after a moment, if he was okay to stand, he mumbled a discontent “mmph. No.”

“We’ve got one more building to figure out,” Cobalt said, though he made no attempt to move either, “gonna have to get your ancient ass up eventually.”

Toby glared up at him, and it was the first time in a little while that Cobalt saw his eyes. They promised some sort of retribution for that comment, and Cobalt’s nerves hummed. “I’m not that much older than you.”

“You’re basically midlife crisis age.”

Toby shoved him, and Cobalt grinned as the druid stood up. “You’re such a pain,” he mumbled, wiping his eyes on his sleeve and stalking towards the door.

Cobalt rolled over, pushing himself off the floor. “What about all that stuff you just said? I thought you cared about me.”

“I take it back,” Toby said as he breezed through the door.

Cobalt’s shit-eating smirk didn’t leave his face as he stepped over the garden of bleeding hearts that sprouted around them, outlining the unique shape they made when they allowed themselves to be close together, and followed Toby out the door.

xxx

Pip landed in front of Cobalt's body with a flurry of wind and golden light, stunning the plants around him for the second he needed to incinerate both. The cleric winced at the smell, apologizing profusely to every plant god he could think of. Before they could sprout new ones, Pip shielded his and Cobalt's bodies -- his magic was swiftly running out, he noticed grimly -- and frantically started his inspection.

“Okay, okay, okay,” Pip said as an impromptu steadying mechanism while he freed Cobalt's hands from nesting under his head. Unfortunately, the bird was right: Cobalt's ring was completely dormant, and its pale blue stone stared vacantly back at him. Pip wanted to check Toby's ring, just to be sure, but he was not keen on leaving Cobalt defenseless and figured that the red stone would be much of the same.

Pip flinched when he heard a sound that couldn't be any less convenient right now. He slowly turned his head, and sure enough, his shield was starting to falter. The roses were pulling it apart, and it sparked and cracked as the entire thing was forced into two. He poured every last ounce of his remaining magic into keeping it together, but it wasn't enough -- the shield caved, and burst apart in a haze of oak leaves.

“Oh dear,” Pip chirped, and thought maybe he could muster some energy to hold on to Cobalt and prevent him from sinking, but he was actively slipping underground and it was way too fast for him. The idea of getting Bailey to help was immediately dashed when he heard more than saw the older cat oof on the ground before thudding into something else.

“Oh dear,” Pip said, spreading his wings as wide as he could over Cobalt's body, which was just enough to cover his fetal posture, and braced himself to take the brunt of any damage in his guardian-angel position.

Cobalt hummed.

Pip blinked, looking up at the elf’s face. “Cobalt?”

He did not respond, but hummed again. And then, his face tinted blue.

Pip leaned back a bit to see the ring start to illuminate again, and realized the humming sound was coming from it. It glowed faintly at first, and Pip hardly had a second to brace himself before it intensified, and Cobalt's shield slammed back into place, knocking Pip to the ground. The roses recoiled, protesting yet another method of defense against their assault. Before they could retaliate, a wave of blue spread like wildfire over the camp, seeping through the grass and licking up tree trunks and stems. The roses wobbled precariously, and Pip darted out of the way before the remaining four crashed to the ground and disintegrated on impact.

Bailey halted their weed control campaign, leaping away from the glowing cerulean as it spread over the floor. It took everything with it: all of the dilapidated cages, all of the spoiling plant corpses, everything that wasn't immediately attached to Toby was reduced to a pile of gray before it drifted into nothing.

Pip and Bailey stared open-mouthed at the now vacant field, where only their long-abandoned attempt at a campfire remained. A few bleeding hearts pushed through the ground, bloomed immediately, and then died.

Pip glanced at Toby, and saw the last glimpse of his ring burning red before it faded away with the rest of the foliage. His monstrosity of vines and cages and plant behemoths were gone, but he did not stir. The tangled mass he slept in seemed to encircle him moreso now, as if trying to protect him from the people that just reverse-engineered days of hard work in a few explosive blue seconds.

Bailey hurried over to Olive, checking her all over for injuries before she pushed his nose away. “I'm fine,” she whined, huffing at the loss of the giant pansy she'd befriended.

The cleric went over to Cobalt, shaking him again to try and wake him up, but unlike the two of them, the destruction of his plant enclosure did not mean he would wake. Pip looked between the two of them, and shook his head. The answers he needed would once again have to wait.

xxx

The door on the second floor of the house creaked as it shifted awkwardly out of place. The bleeding hearts keeping it lodged in the doorframe withered and wilted, taking much of the door's remaining support with it. They faded and vanished, and the door complained greatly as it started to open, revealing only a sliver of the darkness waiting on the other side.