Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Welcome to my city!” Mara’s voice is the opposite of welcoming, and his eyes glow a rusty red as the god sweeps out of his city and closes the metal gate behind him with a clang.

Kendal’s not sure what to make of it—no matter how much experience he gains dealing with the gods, each new one he meets always manages to do something to throw him off balance. “Thank you,” he tries. “We don’t need to stay for long, we just want to pass through to continue on the mountain pass and be on our way.”

“I’m afraid it’s not that simple, godling.” Mara draws a long, shimmering sword from a sheath on his belt. “I’ve heard about the passenger your little friend harbors in his mind. It would be foolish of me to endanger my citizens by disregarding the Paladins’ warning. I’m sorry I must kill your friend; I sincerely hope you won’t hold it against me.”

“I’m not going to let that happen.” Kendal draws his own sword in response, and he can tell his friends are all shifting into defensive stances.

“I’m right here, you know!” Erin’s voice is distinctly annoyed. “And for the record, I am not being controlled by the Dragon.”

Mara spares little more than a glance at Erin before turning back to Kendal. “Godling, out of respect for you and your god, I’ll give you a warning. My sword is enchanted so that any weapon it hits shatters, so unless you want to lose all that’s left of Vash, I’d recommend that you restrain yourself from interfering with this.”

Not a second later, the god is lunging at Erin, who yelps and dodges out of the way, and the rest of the group is beginning to cast and ready battle stances. For the first time, Kendal truly understands Falst's frustration with his perceived inability to help with fights. Kendal does what he can, using the battle for cover in order to land a few blows with the sword without ever clashing it against Mara's, but he can only ever do small amounts of damage before needing to dodge away again.

It's hard to tell in the chaos of the scene—at the first sounds of fighting, guards had come to the assistance of their god—but Kendal knows the fight isn't going well. He just wants to find the others and get out of here. Not being able to pass through the city will make the journey exponentially harder, sure, but he can't have anyone dying for him. He just can't.

Kendal finds Erin relatively easily, but before he can even call his friend's name, he notices Mara's looming figure standing behind Erin's back, sword raised. Erin's busy fighting off the swarms of guards, and doesn't even notice.

What Kendal does next is an act of instinct. He doesn't think it through, doesn't have time to consider the consequences. If he does nothing, Erin will die. Nobody dies. Not for me. Not ever.

Kendal launches himself across the battlefield and brings his sword (his connection to Vash, his namesake, a part of his very being) against Mara's, blocking the god's blow in the split second before the enchantment takes effect and shatters the blade (so much more than a blade, a companion, the very first thing Kendal experienced for himself).

Kendal falls to his knees, reeling. Everything feels off-kilter all of a sudden, like his world has been violently wrested from him and shoved back a few inches to the left. Distantly, he knows there's a battle still happening—he thinks he hears Alinua calling his name—but he can't quite bring his awareness to focus on anything but the shards of metal scattered around him. His sword was him, and it's gone.

~~~

Alinua has just fought her way to where she sees Mara's towering incarnation, having tied up all the guards keeping her away, when she sees Kendal crumple to the ground, his sword shattered. 

She gets to his side faster than she ever would have guessed she was capable of, and she gently leans his catatonic form to rest against her own, supporting him as she tells the god, "Don't touch him."

"I warned him. Now get out of the way so I can save you from the Void Dragon's little pet."

"I am not letting you hurt anybody else!" A surge of vines sprout from the ground and start wrapping themselves around Mara's legs. They won’t hold him long, but they’ll slow him down enough to let everyone escape. "Erin, get the others, we have to leave." Every inch of her body is screaming at her to run immediately, to get herself and Kendal to a safe spot where she can heal him as best she can, but she forces herself to slow down and gather the pieces of the sword first. The two were connected. She can at least make sure Kendal has something of the sword that meant so much to him. She places them in her bag and is about to drag Kendal to his feet when Erin arrives with the others, still aglow with magic as he fights off the guards. Tess takes one look at Kendal's slumped form and scoops him up into her arms, and Erin sends off one last blast of magic to cover their escape before they all start running. Distantly, Alinua hears Mara ordering his guards not to follow them, but none of the group slows down until they're well into the foothills of the mountains.

When they do stop running, no one really knows what to do. It's been a long time since they've had a battle end this disastrously (Alinua thinks of how their fight against Tynan went down and shudders). Erin opens his mouth like he's about to start talking, but instead he just shakes his head and runs a hand through his hair before busying himself with setting up camp. Dainix and Falst are huddled together—if Alinua had to guess, Dainix is probably trying to convince Falst to let his wounds be treated—and Tess gently lays Kendal down on a soft patch of grass before quietly asking, "Can you do anything to help him?"

Alinua shrugs. "I don't know. I'll try, but I'm not sure this is something I can fix."

~~~

Erin's an absolute idiot. He knew it was a bad idea to accept others' help back when the Dragon had first taken up its residence in his mind, and knowing that, he'd rejected Kendal's kind-hearted offers at first. Seeing Kendal glassy-eyed and unresponsive in the middle of a fight, his sword shattered, drives home just how terrible of a decision it was to let Kendal convince him that he could have help.

Part of him wants to leave, to correct his course and deal with this on his own, like he always knew he should have, but his wishful thinking has done real damage now, and he needs to help fix the mess he's made. Or, at the very least, he needs to try, but he doesn't think this is something that can actually be fixed. Even as he'd been dodging guards and gathering Tess, Dainix, and Falst so that they could all get to safety together, he'd seen just how many pieces the sword had shattered into.

Erin had experienced passing scientific curiosity, in the past, of what would happen to Kendal if the sword ever broke. It was obvious that the two were connected, so he'd figured that the sword breaking would have some effect on Kendal. He'd never wanted to actually find out what would happen. In the past, learning the answers to things he'd idly wondered about had been a comfort when things were going badly—he'd think, oh, fascinating, so this is what it's like—but that crutch isn't there for him now. He wishes he could sink into the familiarity of scientific inquiry, but instead, he's stuck with a twisting feeling in his gut and a voice in his head telling him "this is all your fault" over and over again.

When he's finished setting up camp, he sits down and presses his hands over his eyes. His brain has been his one saving grace his whole life, allowing him to think his way out of his childhood and navigate endless tricky situations, but now he just wants it to be quiet. He should probably go let Alinua know that his bedding is laid out in the tent, ready for Kendal to use, but if he goes right now, he doesn't trust that he'll be able to keep himself collected enough to be useful. 

He takes a few deep breaths, steadying himself and pushing everything further back in his mind before pushing himself off the ground and forcing himself to go see the aftermath of his mistakes.

Chapter Text

Falst shifts how he's positioned on the tree branch as he scans the horizon for any possible threats. He has to stay alert, has to be able to warn the others if anything dangerous approaches. They hadn't told him he had to keep watch, but he'd known he needed to. He should have been paying more attention during the fight—he hadn't even noticed that Kendal's sword had broken, or that Mara had been about to kill Erin, until the disastrous consequences had been crashing down on all of their heads.

He turns the healing lacrima Dainix had insisted Falst take with him over in his hand. He's not going to use it, he's more practical than that. If the group does end up getting into a fight out here, it's almost certain someone else will need it more than him. Falst is going to do everything he can to make sure they don't get into a fight in the first place, but he's known for a long time that it's best to plan for the worst, and that's only gotten more true since he started traveling with this group.

He wishes Dainix were out here with him, but doesn't let himself pay much attention to the thought. He has a job to do. With how vulnerable the state of things were in his brief glimpse of the camp, a beast wandering into camp unimpeded would be a catastrophe. He leaves the tree he'd been watching from and starts walking along the edges of the camp. This time, he's not going to let any threat go unnoticed.

~~~

Just as Alinua had suspected, this isn't a problem she can fix with Life magic. Whatever Kendal's connection to the sword was, severing it hadn't hurt him physically. She hopes it was just a shock to his system, that he'll sleep it off and be back to normal as soon as he wakes up, but she doubts it. She's done her best to heal Kendal, for all the good it's done, and since she gave up on getting him to wake up, she's just been sitting by his side, holding his hand.

She's doing her best not to slip too far back into memories of the fight against Tynan, trying to keep herself in the present (not that the present isn't also terrifying), when Tess walks in and voices a similar thought to those that have been bouncing around in Alinua's head ever since the sword broke and Kendal went down. "This whole thing reminds me of when I first joined you guys," Tess says, walking into the tent and sitting next to Alinua.

"It reminds me of that too," Alinua says quietly, not daring to say it too loud. "I don't like it."

Tess's voice had been rather nonchalant when she'd first walked in, but her affect grows a bit more somber as she says, "I know. I didn't expect you to like it." Tess takes a deep breath before hitting a hand against her knee and standing up, offering a hand to Alinua. "And that's why I want you to take a walk with me."

"I can't. I have to stay here."

"Kendal will be fine."

"We can't just leave him unprotected!" Alinua feels her grip on Kendal's hand tightening to the point that it would almost certainly be painful were he awake to feel it, and she wishes he would wake up and ask for her to ease off. He doesn't.

"You won't be leaving him unprotected." Erin walks into the tent as well, eyes on the ground. "I'll keep watch."

"Come on," Tess says, nudging Alinua with her shoulder. "It'll be fun."

"As much as I hate to admit it, Tess knows what she's talking about," Erin says, still not lifting his head. "Being stuck in one room never helps anything. We'll be fine."

Reluctantly, Alinua lets go of Kendal's hand and takes Tess's as she stands. She takes one forlorn glance back at the tent as they start walking, but although she would never admit it, moving in the open air does feel nice. She spent so much time in the woods in the years after she learned she was a chimera bomb that it's a wonder she still enjoys being in them, but regardless, she still loves the feeling of being surrounded by nature.

"What do you want to talk about?" Tess asks. "Are we doing a heart-to-heart here, do you want to hear about some of the crazy messes I've gotten myself into over the years, or do you want to tell me about some of your escapades? What do you think?"

"I don't know. You're the one who dragged me out here."

"Sitting around in that tent all day wasn't going to do any good."

"I don't care!"

"You sound like you could use a heart-to-heart."

"Just tell me about some monster you fought," Alinua grumbles. Tess is great, but Alinua doesn't particularly feel like having to carry a whole half of a conversation at the moment.

“Sure,” Tess says. “One day, I was just minding my own business, when suddenly there was a huge creature blocking my path. I tried to just scoot around it, but when it started attacking me, I didn't really have much choice but to fight back. I was jumping all over the place, and I really had to use quite a few tricks before I managed to get it to turn tail!"

Tess starts talking about exactly how she managed to beat the creature, and how she was able to do it without hurting it too badly, and Alinua just lets herself listen. It's a nice distraction from everything—Tess is a good storyteller, and she tends to drop in fascinating things she's learned from her travels every once in a while. 

By the time Tess finishes her tale, a small smile has crept onto Alinua's face. "Did you ever figure out what kind of animal it was?"

Tess shakes her head. "There's a lot of similar-looking wildlife in that area, and besides, I was more worried about the fact that it was trying to kill me than the idea of not knowing what it was." Alinua nods, and Tess continues, "Anyway, enough about me. I'm sure you have some interesting stories, too!"

Alinua shrugs. "I lived in a tree for ten years. Not much happens when you're living inside a tree."

"I don't think I'd be able to stand it."

"Trust me, I was glad to leave it behind." Alinua lets out the tiniest of laughs. "Although, you might be interested to know that when Erin first met me, I scared him by walking out of a tree."

Tess lets out a hearty guffaw. "I bet the look on his face was priceless."

~~~

The trouble with keeping watch is that it provides a really good opportunity to think, and Erin isn’t particularly enjoying his thoughts at the moment. He barely lasts five minutes before he takes an extra piece of paper from his bag and starts sketching absentmindedly. He wishes Kendal weren't so self-sacrificing, or that he'd noticed Mara's sword at his back sooner and avoided the whole situation that had necessitated Kendal's intervention. 

Erin is the Elemental Magus. He's supposed to be able to handle his problems on his own, but due to his mistake in the Storm and his selfish decision to accept Kendal and Alinua's help, he's made others pay the price for his missteps time and time again.

He sets his pencil down and crumples the paper in his hand, staring at the floor. He's mortified to realize tears are stinging at his eyes, and he quickly rubs them away, forcing himself to take a few deep, steadying breaths. Without even noticing it, he'd brought his hand to his chest, directly over the mark seared into his skin that has caused him so much pain.

It's his own fault. He knows that plenty of people—everyone except him, in fact—have managed to make it through their entire lives without being possessed by the primordial embodiment of evil. Even his sealing tattoos, the ones he rather admires, are a mark of the same characteristics that got him marked by the Dragon. The temptation to just leave the group (he never should have joined it in the first place, after all) rises up once again, but Erin does his best to push it away. He promised Kendal help in Kendal's effort to rescue Vash; Erin's not willing to let Kendal down again.

Around midday, Dainix walks into the tent where Erin's sitting and hands over a bowl of warm soup before joining Erin on the ground. "It's not your fault, you know."

"Of course it isn't." Erin's aware that the way he's sitting with his arms wrapped around his knees isn't exactly creating the picture of a calm, assured leader that he tries to create, but he's too tired to bother adjusting his position. "I never said it was."

Dainix tilts his head to one side. "I may have been feeling terrible on that boat ride, but I heard what you said."

Erin hadn't even thought of the boat. Yet another example of his mistakes costing everyone around him. "What do you want me to say?" he snaps.

"I want you to know the rest of us aren't just props that you hurt if you don't do everything perfectly. We make decisions too, and our decisions affect our situation just as much as yours do. Sometimes that means we make bad decisions, and deal with the consequences."

"Obviously you're all people, I know that! I'm not stupid!"

"I think you've forgotten that part of us being people is the fact that sometimes things will be our fault."

"I already said I know this isn't my fault." 

Dainix shakes his head and sighs. "Listen. That city god didn't need to attack us. He didn't need to try to kill you. And Kendal didn't need to block that blow with his sword to protect you. He chose to do that."

"Are you saying this is Kendal's fault?" Erin asks incredulously.

"Of course not," Dainix says raising his hands in a placating gesture. "I'm just saying it's not yours."

"I never said it was," Erin replies, but he can't deny the small hints of relief that come with Dainix's words.

"No," Dainix says. "You never said it was." The silence stretches on for a moment before Dainix continues, "I'm going to leave some food here for Kendal to have when he wakes up." He gets up and walks over to Kendal, and whispers, "You're more than a weapon, Kendal," in a quiet enough voice that Erin isn't sure he was supposed to hear it. Then, Dainix walks away, leaving Erin alone with his thoughts yet again as Erin continues watching over Kendal, but this time, Erin's thoughts are just the tiniest bit quieter.