Chapter Text
He hears it again—a crack in the underbrush behind him. He’d covered his tracks when he left the gate-window, wearing a cloak that blended him into the landscape, but the wind was too high for him to hear his own crunching footsteps on the dry ground, much less the tiptoeing of someone stalking him. But now that he’s deep in the forest, he’s certain of it—he’s being followed.
This could be an opportunity.
His hand barely shifts in his sleeve as he thumbs through his spells. He recognizes the correct one by the texture of the ink on the page, and when he hears yet another small sound behind him, he spins to face it in one fluid movement, closing the glyph with one hand and aiming it at his pursuer with the other.
It’s a new spell of his, and not in his preferred medium. It starts with the burst of blinding light that Qifrey was prepared for, wand hand moving straight from glyph to covering his good eye and the rest of his face with his cloak. Some of the light bleeds through, but that’s fine, because he’s been working on navigating the world without any vision, and he reckons his quarry hasn’t had the need.
He is especially certain of this when his quarry shouts in dismay in the very familiar voice of Olruggio.
And it is very much too late to stop the next part of the spell that is already rumbling the earth around. It snaps up to bind him, and Olruggio shouts even louder this time.
Qifrey opens his eyes and slowly lowers his cloak, though he leaves it covering his mouth as he approaches the dust cloud he’s just kicked up with offensive magic cast on his best friend.
“Olly?” he whispers.
“What the fuck, Qifrey?”
Still alive then. Thank the stars Qifrey did not come here to kill anyone.
“Keep your voice down,” Qifrey urges. His target is hopefully still out there unawares, though now he’ll have to redo his drawing preparations.
The dark dust settles, coating the rocks and the trees in black and revealing that at least his wasted spell had worked much as he’d anticipated. Ribbons of earth have wrapped themselves over each of Olruggio’s limbs along with his neck, holding him tightly—and probably uncomfortably—but not strangling him to death.
Although… Qifrey chews on his lip as he considers. Even this might not be enough for the brimhats with their tattoos. He wonders if he can work it out to bind each of their fingers, too and stop them from wandless magic.
Olruggio struggles, still blinking the lights out of his eyes as he writhes in the bindings. They’re brittle, and with enough time, a minute or two, maybe, he’ll be able to do it. Adding water to the mix might actually make for a stronger binding over time.
“What even is this?” Olly demands, his eyes swiveling wildly back and forth. “Ribbons? Did… did Richeh come up with this spell?”
Qifrey pens out another to release him and closes the glyph with a flick of his wrist. The bindings burst into puffs of gentle dust, and Olly lands on his butt in the dirt.
“Is it wrong to take inspiration from my apprentices?”
It was Agott who gave him the idea to start it with a blinding light to disorient his prey. And Tetia who just gave Olly his soft escape and landing. Coco, for her part, is the reason he is here right now.
Olruggio rubs at his wrists. “It can be, if this is what you’re doing with it.”
A breeze riffles the leaves of the line of dead trees Qifrey has been trying to navigate around. The sound of their shuddering dead foliage sends prickles down his neck, and he scans the dark woods for signs of his original target.
Olly gets to his feet, and another cloud of dark dust rises as he pats down his clothes.
“It’s good to be prepared when going for a stroll near Thristas,” Qifrey says. “You never know what might emerge from the miasma. You really should keep your guard up.”
“Oh, come off it, Qifrey. We both know didn’t come to the Forest of Despair for a walk.”
He shrugs. “You really are a good Watchful Eye, seeing right through me.”
“Coming from you, that’s basically an insult. Now come on. Let’s go home.”
Qifrey plants his feet with a sigh. He really doesn’t enjoy arguing with Olruggio, but there’s not much for it right now.
“No.”
“You know this is a bad idea. You know I’ll have to report whatever worse idea you have in store. Let’s just… skip all that and go home and forget this ever happened.”
Qifrey has no intention of going home—not when he finally has a lead. And he’s not too keen on either of them forgetting anything today. Not yet.
He turns a bright smile on Olruggio. “Come on, Olly. You used to talk about ‘our’ adventure. Let’s finally have one again. I’d hardly call sitting around the atelier every day an adventure.”
“I didn’t mean being hunted by brimhats when I said that, and you know it.”
“Who said anything about brimhats? Maybe I’m looking for some rare herbs.”
“What, to poison yourself with?” He rubs the back of his neck and walks in a small, angry circle. “You know, I really didn’t think you’d ever want to come back to this place.”
‘Want’ is a funny word for it. Qifrey does not want to be near the place where he was once buried alive at all. That is a memory he wouldn’t have minded losing with the rest of them.
But even if a poisonous forest of dead silverwoods didn’t make for a hauntingly uncomfortable locale avoided by anyone with good sense, the infection in his body is screaming for him to get as far away from here as possible. Not a good place for silverwoods, he gathers. Maybe it’s a perfect place to kill one. But he can’t do that unless he somehow convinces Olruggio to be on his side.
“There are answers here,” he tries. “Answers I couldn’t get in the library.”
He hopes it will activate Olruggio’s sympathies that he used to have for Qifrey’s doomed quest, but it just makes him angrier instead.
“You said you were done with that. You moved on. It’s been years. And I would think you have other, more important things to worry about now.”
The children. Always back to the children.
“And I do worry about ‘those things,’” Qifrey says. “But I would worry less, if I could…”
What can he say? What can he reveal that won’t be an instant disaster?
Olruggio waits, eyebrows cocked for whatever bullshit Qifrey is about to come up with. It’s not good that he suspects him so strongly. It’s not good their trust is wearing so thin.
“The children are safe in the atelier,” Qifrey says. “Whatever I do here won’t affect them back there.”
“Not if you die,” Olruggio spits. “Not if you attract the attention of an insane cult of murderous witches who decide to follow you home. Not if the Knights find out what you were doing here.”
“That would all be a lot less likely if you would keep your voice down.”
“Why can’t you just—”
Olly balls his fists, giving up on words and releasing a hushed little grunt of anger.
He stomps away. Then stomps right back and hisses, “Can’t you focus on the future for once?”
Qifrey’s composure is fracturing. It is so unfair. Why can’t Olly see that he is grasping onto his future with both hands as tightly as he can? Except he knows why. He knows exactly why Olly is blinder than he is, and he can’t do a single thing about it.
He turns away from Olly and this entire conversation and begins walking again. “I am focusing on the future.”
“Are you? Or are you trying to get revenge? Or worse—”
“If you can’t stomach what I’m doing here, then I suggest you stop following me and don’t put yourself in a situation where you might witness it.”
“So you’re admitting it?” Olruggio demands. He lunges in front of Qifrey and holds a hand out to stop him from walking. “Forbidden magic? You want them to, what, heal you? Give you a new eye?”
Based on the brimhats he’s seen, Qifrey doubts they have that ability. Olruggio should have ascertained this as well at this point, but he’s been too clouded by his suspicions of and disappointment in Qifrey.
“No.” He knocks Olruggio’s arm away and keeps walking.
“They’ll take your mind away,” Olruggio hisses, following him. “You know that. If you come back… healed? It can’t be worth it. Just for an eye? Your whole life for an eye?”
And if it were just an eye, Olruggio would be right. If it were just both his eyes. If it were just a messed-up childhood. If it were simply that he couldn’t feel safe, not that he can but will instantly die for it and yet was browbeaten into a promise that he wouldn’t let that happen.
It never ceases to chafe that Olruggio was the one who forced that promise, and it is Olruggio who does his best to interfere with every attempt Qifrey makes to keep it.
“This thing you have—this need for revenge or answers or whatever it is—is your life worth throwing away for that? Can’t it just be enough, Qifrey? Can’t you just let it go and live?”
That he can answer honestly, at least. “No. I’m afraid I cannot.”
Olly grabs his arm this time, and Qifrey’s fingers itch to spell him away. A good blast of water, and one more time he can see that look of shock in Olly’s eyes that Qifrey would use his magic against him. And one more time he can feel the guilt and disgust in himself for doing it and at just how easy it’s all become.
“Everyone experiences loss,” Olruggio says. “Everyone. I know you’ve had more than your fair share, but you have to learn to let go.”
“That’s fucking rich coming from you.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Qifrey obviously can’t answer that honestly or in any way at all. He waves his free hand in the air in a fruitless gesture, only at the end thinking to aim it at Olly’s hand, gripping his arm.
Let me go, Olly. Let me go, or… let me go. One way or the other.
He sees understanding dawn in Olruggio’s eyes, but if anything, he just grips him harder, a childish pout on his lips.
How can he tell him that time is running out? That his future is getting shorter every day?
How is he supposed to keep Olly’s promise and still be the kind of person that Olly wants him to be? Someone worthy of the trade they made that awful day?
“Olly…” His mind races as he tries to figure out what he can tell him that is true and safe. “I… I know it doesn’t look like it to you, but I am working toward that peaceful life you wish for us. I’m not throwing it away.”
Olruggio shakes his head. “You already have it. You just need to forget this madness and go home and enjoy it.”
“No. No. No, I don’t have it. But I want it.” Olly still holds his arm, so Qifrey grabs his other arm and holds him right back. “I want it, Olly. Can you trust that at least? That our life at our atelier—that I want that more than anything?”
“I…”
He sees the doubt in his eyes. And here’s the fear that Olly gifted him, roiling in his stomach and making its way up his esophagus—that one day, all the lies will be too many, and all the trust will be gone.
Olly grunts out some noise. He coughs, clears his throat, and says, “Fine. Whatever, I trust you.”
Not exactly what he asked, but Olruggio always overdelivers, and the relief slithers under Qifrey’s skin in little wicked tendrils.
But the roots can’t get him here in this miserable forest. They can’t find any purchase in this poisoned earth. Weirdly, in this moment, he’s probably safer than he has been in months if not years.
His hand is still on Olruggio’s arm, and he thinks now is not the time to be distracted by the possibilities of a temporarily subdued parasite or by the dust still coating Olly’s neck that he would like to brush away himself.
“You make me act insane,” he mutters.
“Me?” Olly hisses. “I make you act insane? I’m out here in the middle of the fucking wilderness because of you.”
Qifrey smiles. “You love the wilderness. You also love following me around. Especially when I tell you not to.”
“Yeah, that’s the exact insanity I’m referencing. Wasn’t like that before I met you. I hated going outside. That’s why they brought me to the Assembly, remember?”
“Well. Who can say what I was like before I met you?”
He didn’t mean it as a barb, but Olly’s smile fades. He squeezes Qifrey’s arm, which he still has not let go of. They both have not let go.
“Is that” –Olly clears his throat and begins again—“Is that what you want to find out?”
“No. Whoever I was before is gone. I am thinking about the future.”
Olly nods, and he truly does seem to believe him this time, which is good, because for once, Qifrey is telling the truth. But now he doesn’t know what to do. Where have they just landed? It’s hard for him to think at all when Olly’s eyes get so big like that, and Qifrey has things to do. Things he must do. Any moment now.
Olruggio breaks the spell with a cough. He tears his hand away to cover his mouth. “Excuse me,” he says. “Just something caught in my throat.”
Qifrey digs in his bag and pulls out his vapor bubble contraption and offers the water to Olly.
“Thank you,” he grunts, but the water does not seem to soothe his throat, because his coughing gets worse.
If their half-whispered half-shouted argument didn’t give them away, this certainly will. Qifrey thinks he might have a candy or something in his bag when he hears the change.
The switch from voluntary to involuntary is abrupt, but he looks up to see it on Olly’s face, alarm breaking through the confusion, each breath in a new betrayal as his lungs spasm.
“Olly?”
When Olruggio inhales to reply, it is a hideously harmonic wheeze. Before he can say a word, he’s coughing it out again. His expression turns to panic, but his next inhale is even shorter before the coughing takes the air back out again.
Qifrey whips out the paper gate he’d prepared for a quick escape and slashes at the keystones to change the destination. “Hold on, Olly.”
He thinks these gasps are the worst sounds he’s ever heard. When the gate is finally open and activated, Olruggio doesn’t even notice, doubled over as he is, so Qifrey shoves him through it and follows after him.
Olly tumbles onto the floor of the Assembly gate room and stays there, gasping for breath as Qifrey screams for help.