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The naked purple tiefling that wanders his way into the circus camp doesn't speak. The only word from his mouth is an ominous ‘Empty’ that makes Gustav shiver in apprehension. There is nothing behind the light of the tiefling’s eyes, just genuine curiosity about his surroundings. Like he’s never seen anything before. Gustav thinks that maybe he hasn’t. He is scarred, and covered in red eyes that sit heavily in his lavender skin. He has dirt-covered claws and is shivering in the midsummer night.
Lestera has taken it upon herself to show the tiefling how to care for himself, how to exist. He is slow to learn how to pull words together, the syllables uncomfortable in the man’s (man's? Boy's? Gustav isn't sure how old he is. Only that at least physically he isn't a child. Mentally, he isn't sure where the tiefling sits in that regard.) sharp mouth. The first word Gustav hears from the tiefling is when he finds him kneeling on the ground, blinking curiously at one of the circus cats. The elf stops to watch, an amused look on his face.
“That’s a cat. One of the more ornery ones too that we have runnin’ around here.”
He doesn’t expect a response from the tiefling. Everything so far has seemed to go in one ear and out the other. The tiefling leans forward on the palms of his hands to see it closer. The cat leans forward to sniff at his nose, their whiskers tickling the tiefling’s face. He reaches forward with unsure fingers and Gustav is sure that he’s going to be scratched. Purple fingers are hesitant as they reach to carefully pet at the top of the cat’s head.
“...Cat..?”
Gustav blinks in surprise as the tiefling repeats the word. He wasn’t expecting that. The tiefling sits back on his haunches and tilts his head back to look at Gustav almost expectantly. Gustav nods, and the tiefling points at the little beast that’s headbutting at his knees.
“Cat?”
“Yep, you got it. Cat.”
In return Gustav is rewarded with a large fang-filled smile as the tiefling looks at him. He takes to following the elf then, much like a baby duck, and pointing at things and waiting for the other to say a word. Between him and Lestera, the tiefling manages to speak in clipped sentences by the end of the first month of his existence. Gustav does not have any children, but he thinks this is what fatherly pride must feel like.
As his hair grows, so does the tiefling. The days go by in the carnival and they move from town to town, village to village and the tiefling learns earnestly. They aren’t sure where he came from and once the man understands enough common to be asked; he doesn’t know. All he knows is that he is drawn towards cats and that he hates the cold.
He does not know his name.
Gustav gives him one. Mollymauk Tealeaf. Apparently the name refers to some sort of bird from the south but Mollymauk has never been south; not that he knows, so he shrugs and takes it and continues to learn what the others have to teach him.
He picks up reading tarot easily even though the letters on paper make his head hurt and his eyes lose focus. Pictures are easier, and he can memorize them faster than the symbols Lestera tries to get him to remember. She is determined he is going to learn how to read and write though so the tiefling is stuck with her lessons before getting to play with her cards. He is fascinated by the colors on them and she finds him one day messing in a palette of paints, using his fingers to trace shapes onto a broken board they keep in the scrap tent. The tarot reader pulls him away, cleaning the mess from his sticky fingers and teaches him to paint. She reasons that it helps with the tiefling’s hand-eye coordination, but seeing his eyes light up as he figures out how to maneuver the small brush she’s given him is its own reward.
Mollymauk loves color. His eyes catch on everything and he’s easily distracted but he’s awfully cautious for someone with no memories. Once he's able to speak and form his thoughts into sentences he takes to watching the others practice and perform. He nervously wrings his hands as he watches the dangerous stunts with scared eyes. He is not sure how he knows what they're doing is not safe, just that he has a feeling in his gut that if they are not careful, things can go very very badly.
He gets equally excited and afraid when magic is casted near him. The first time it happened he’d been wandering around the main tent while Orna was practicing her fire dance. The tiefling shouts in alarm when she lights up the metal cyr wheel with flame seemingly out of nowhere. He doesn’t know why it scares him, just that it does.
“Be… Careful!”
Orna had not been sure of the tiefling at first; sure that the amnesiac would bring trouble to their little caravan. As the summer passes, she has to admit that the tiefling is as endearing as he is strange.
It does not take Mollymauk long to gain his own personality or rather be able to voice it. He is cheeky, teasing in a way that makes some of the carnival members think he was a younger sibling in his previous life before he came to them. He needles and wedges himself into places that he shouldn't find but demands it makes room for him anyway. The tiefling is crafty and quick to spin stories once he's able.
They call him ‘devil tongue’ but Mollymauk isn't sure if it's meant to be an insult or just an explanation for what he is.
He is very opinionated for someone with little history. He isn't sure where it comes from or why, thinks that maybe it's just from his time in the carnival that has made him that way. There are all types of folks in the carnival so he doesn't understand why there are people considered ‘better’ or ‘worse’. He finds that he dislikes the higher class and the way they treat normal folk. His folk.
He learns the hard way that not everyone likes his folk, especially his kind. Tieflings he's told. It wakes up something bitter in him that he's not fond of. A sad sort of resignation that Mollymauk decides isn't for him and can stay in the past where it belongs.
He wakes up something else that day, when bandits attack him and two carnival goers. He gets them to safety, thankfully, but he is worse for wear. He is bleeding, and his blood is forming ice up his arm. The bandits run but he is left standing, confused.
He goes to Lestera and she goes to Gustav. The elf isn't mad though Mollymauk isn't sure why that was a fear he had. They make a plan to cover his newfound magic. They give him swords and they feel light on his hands. Too light.
That night he dreams of ruins and a tabaxi girl. He is close to her, but he cannot remember her name or who she is. Only that they are family when he had none left. They train together and Mollymauk uses his blood as a weapon. He is her sword and she is his shield. They fight monsters together but he is not satisfied.
When Lestera dies, Mollymauk isn't sure what he feels. He feels sad but he isn't heartbroken. Somehow he feels like he's used to losing people. So he takes her coat, maroon and embroidered and oh so colorful in a way that makes the tiefling preen and it becomes his as do the cards that they've worked on together. He takes her place in the carnival as the soothsayer and Mollymauk feels at home even with the loss. Gustav tells him that grief is a strange thing, and that it affects everyone differently. He tells him that Lestera would be proud of him. Mollymauk doesn't know how to explain that that somehow hurts more than the loss.
Mollymauk pulls Yasha into his orbit with little more than a toothy grin and some kindness. The tiefling is immediately drawn to her the moment he sees her. He isn't sure why but she feels safe and familiar and knows that these feelings are usually tied to a past he can't remember.
The angel woman follows him and Gustav shakes his head telling him that they're sharing the tiefling's tent. Mollymauk is used to sharing. When they curl up at night together, Mollymauk breathes in against her black furred shawl and dreams of golden eyes and a purring lilt from the tabaxi woman that speaks a name he can't remember.
He wakes uneasily, and tries to ignore the distinct feeling that he's forgotten something important. He has had that feeling following him ever since he'd dug himself out of the dirt. He tries to ignore it the best he can. He dreams of his past but that is not who he is, not anymore. He always feels so angry in his dreams, in his memories. That's not the type of man Mollymauk wants to be.
He fills his waking days with love and laughter and joyous amounts of color so that the empty darkness of what came before doesn't follow him.
It does though. It always does.
Kylre is a fiend he finds out. He has the sinking feeling that he should have known that. The group that helps him and Yasha take down the devil toad is a strange one. It pains him to have to leave but Gustav insists, and Mollymauk again feels like he should be used to this. This isn’t the first time he's lost his home. He doesn't know how he knows this, but deep down he knows it's true.
He enjoys the wildly weird group of characters that he finds himself with. Especially Caleb. He's as fascinated by his magic as he is faintly unnerved by it. With a decent bath, the wizard would be right up Mollymauk's alley. Mollymauk isn't ashamed to say he has a type and his type is sad wet cat types. He wants to see the man happy. And also maybe wants to see himself unsocially pinning the other man to a wall. For reasons.
His heart stops when Caleb freezes after using his fire. He himself flinches back, the smell of burning flesh hard in his nose and the tiefling knows he's going to have bad dreams tonight. Right now though, he focuses on Caleb. He slaps himself before lightly slapping his wizard's face before pressing a kiss to his forehead. He grins cheekily at him, winking, ignoring the cold sweat dripping down the small of his back.
That night, he knows he needs to sleep as far away from the others as possible. Knows that he's going to wake up screaming if the feeling in his gut is right. He does not have Yasha with him to weather the storm that is his past. He takes the first and second watch to avoid what's coming. When it is inevitably time for him to rest, he dreams. He dreams of fire burning down his family's caravan and sock brother and a little sister that's no longer little, slamming a door in his face. She calls him Lucien and brother and tells him to never come back.
Lucien
His name is Lucien
When he wakes, he vomits and it draws a crowd. Of course it does.
“Mollymauk?”
He flinches. It's Jester that places a hand on his shoulder and he skitters back away from her on his butt. He's breathing heavily, eyes wide and unseeing. The rest of the group is waking now, circling around him in concern.
“Molly?”
His name is Mollymauk Tealeaf
“I'm okay,” he gasps out, wiping his mouth on his doublet sleeve. His hands are shaking. He tries to give the group a grin but it comes off wobbly.
“Jus’ a bit of an upset stomach is all.”
He frowns when his tongue feels heavy in his mouth. It feels difficult to speak, like he doesn't know how to form the words right around his accent. It's heavier now than it was last night, like the memories of his past have unlocked the heavy baroque surrounding his words.
They ask him why he suddenly sounds funny and he grins again, spinning a bullshit story that no one believes but they know enough about his insistence on ignoring his past to leave him be.
He is Lucien but he is also Mollymauk. And he is fine with that.
The others don't need to know. He tries his damndest to twist his split tongue back into the accent he's had all his life, his two years of life but the words are stubborn. He ends up with a mish-mash of both accents, heavier than Molly's and lighter than Lucien's. Somewhere in the middle, just like him.
He still doesn't know how he ended up in his grave. That part has not come back to him and for that he is grateful. He doesn't know what led him to his fate, the last memory he has now is of his sister, Aldreda, slamming the door in his face. He knows his name now. Or at least what it used to be. He doesn't think he wants to be Lucien any longer. He hasn't been Lucien for so long, he prefers being Mollymauk. Prefers the loud ostentatious clothing he now wears, his piercings, his tattoos. The new group he travels with. His old group, they are blurry in his memory. The tabaxi woman was one, for that he can be certain but he doesn't remember her name. He doesn't remember the last few years before his death and he is content to keep it that way.
His tail lashes agitated before he rights himself. He feels himself sliding back into Molly, into himself.
He may have been Lucien but he is Mollymauk now. And he will stay Mollymauk.
The last thing he expects when they make their way to Zadash is to run into the tabaxi woman. Even less for her to scoop him up and squeeze. He wheezes as she squeals out his name. His wrong name.
“Lucien!”
His tail flicks uneasily behind him as she holds him. His face is smashed into her fur and he feels like this has happened before. That this was a regular occurrence for them. He remembers her, but he does not know her. As she sets him down, he gives an uncomfortable grimace in her direction.
“Ah…”
Thankfully he is saved from admitting he doesn't know her name as Caleb questions it. She introduces herself as Cree and a sharp shooting stab of pain hits him in the eye. His grimace turns pained and he raises a hand to rub at a temple. Cree zeroes in on him again, paws moving to touch him. He flinches back with an apologetic look. This, too, doesn't seem to be out of their norm, as the tabaxi lowers her hands without a look of indignation. Instead she asks,
“Did it work? The ritual?”
His brows furrow as his mind draws a blank. Ritual..?
“I, uh…”
“Lucien! Ah, sorry, Nonagon.”
Lucien, no, Mollymauk flinches back at the word, head throbbing. She keeps speaking, unaware of his mounting horror. He does catch two words amidst his episode, ears flicking in interest as it triggers his rage.
Vess DeRogna
He stumbles back a few steps, Caleb catching him by the back of his coat. Cree shoots him an odd look, stopping mid sentence. He breathes heavily, trying to calm his racing heart. He doesn't know why he's so angry, only that he is and whoever that name is is the one that caused it.
Rage. Hurt. Betrayal. Pain.
All those negative emotions swirling in his stomach like a kicked bee hive. He doesn't want this. Doesn't want these emotions this woman invokes in him. He blows out a slow breath and smiles at her. His guts twist with what he's about to do, knows somewhere deep down that it's wrong, she doesn't deserve this, but he tastes the charm coat his tongue sweetly as he tells her,
“Well, Love. This has been fun and all but we really best be going. See you around!”
Cree's eyes glaze over with that telltale sign of success and Mollymauk turns tail and flees out of the Evening Nip like there's fire catching at his coattails. With his history he doesn't know yet, there just might be.
The rest of their group exclaim but Molly's not listening. When he finally stops, he leans on his knees panting in a dirty alleyway. He jumps, vicious mockery sharp on his tongue when he's spun around. The cantrip dies in his mouth when he recognizes the dirty coat and Caleb standing before him.
“Lucien.”
The wizard says sharply, eyebrow raised. The man's face isn't judging, but he's suspicious and that's enough to make the hair on the back of Molly's neck prickle uncomfortably. His shoulders hunker as he tries not to vomit.
“No. No. Not anymore. I'm Mollymauk. Only Mollymauk.”
Caleb hums, clearly not satisfied.
“But you used to be?”
Mollymauk winces,
“Yeah. At least I think I was.”
Caleb doesn't look impressed.
“You think?”
Mollymauk groans, frustrated, and drags the wizard off to where the Nein are staying. He buys a bottle of cheap whisky and takes it upstairs with them.
Bounding into his and Fjord's shared room, he slumps down onto the bed. Caleb takes a seat in the nearby chair. He takes a long drink from the bottle.
“What do you mean you think you used to be Lucien?”
His accent is thick in his mouth again as he tells him everything. Molly is numb as tears leak down his cheeks as he recounts waking up nearly two years ago in a grave in the Greying Wildlands. He tells Caleb about Lestera, about his magic blood, about becoming Mollymauk, about wanting to stay Mollymauk.
The bottle is empty by the time he tells Caleb about the memories. About how with every bad thing that happens, it brings on another round of memories that he doesn't want. He tells him about what he remembers of Lucien's, his life. His dead brother, his dead parents, his sister telling him to get lost. What he vaguely remembers of Cree and the rest.
He's sobbing by the end of it, ugly tears running down his face with snot and blood as his fangs nick his tongue. Bandaged arms wrap around him and scratchy lips press against his forehead.
Molly's breath shakes as he cries. He knows, knows that more memories will come to him tonight now that he has met Cree. He's going to learn whatever ritual Lucien had been attempting, whatever this nonagon thing was. He's terrified of it. He never wanted this. He wishes he never got his memories back. They're not worth the pain.
“I don't want this Caleb. I just want to be me.”
In return Caleb tells him about himself. About his parents, and Frumpkin. About the sanitorium. About Trent. Molly tries to stop him several times, but Caleb hushes him. Tells him it's a secret for a secret. The wizard tells him that Fjord can have his room for the night and that he'll have Nott share with the girls.
“You don’ hafta do that.”
The tiefling slurs. Caleb just pulls him closer and murmurs into his sweat soaked curls,
“You shouldn't be alone tonight.”
He's right but Mollymauk doesn't want to say that. He doesn't want to go to sleep either. He doesn't have much choice with the alcohol pulling him under and Caleb rocking him back and forth soothingly. He's fighting a losing battle and he knows it.
He's terrified of who he'll wake up to be.
____
He's dead. He died. He's six feet under from a botched ritual by an arrogant mage who hates him. Why did he think it was a good idea to go back to her? After he and his tombtakers tried to swindle her? Gods, where were his friends?
He was the Somnovem's chosen. He was supposed to bring the world to its knees and rebuild it. Make it better. Make it so that no child ever suffers like he did. Like Aldreda did. Like Elric did.
He is Lucien Tavelle.
He is the Nonagon.
He is alive.
____
Mollymauk wakes with a start and flings himself off the bed. It wakes Caleb who calls after him but Molly is already tossing open the window and emptying his stomach out it.
“Mollymauk!”
He is shivering, skin clammy and sweaty from his dreams. No, his nightmares. Molly had been right, he hadn't wanted to know. Would have been so much happier had he not known what his body had been up to before he woke up in the Savalier woods. His left hand finds the eyes marking his right arm and claws dig in, gouging at his skin to try and remove them. Blood bubbles up from the cuts, running down his arm in dark red rivulets. It drips onto the floor before freezing into tiny pools of ice. The eyes don't go anywhere and he doesn't feel any better.
“Lucien?”
Molly jerks as if burned away from the window. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. His voice is raspy like gravel when he speaks,
“No. Yes? I don't…”
He cups his forehead with a sweaty palm and Caleb slips from the bed to guide him to the chair he'd been occupying last night. He collapses into it boneless.
“She tore my soul into pieces Caleb,” he whispers. “Shredded it like paper and tossed it into the astral sea. The piece that was left became me. Mollymauk.”
He stares, wide eyed at the wood grain in the floor. He's trembling slightly as Caleb hands him a glass of water. The wizard winces,
“Who did?”
Mollymauk, no, Lucien snarls, teeth bared.
“Vess DeRogna.”
He hates that he remembers. He wants to go back to being oblivious. The hate and anger and bitterness that swirls in his chest is not his. It belongs to a man that is no longer alive, no longer wanted or needed.
Lucien can stay dead in the dirt where he belongs for all Mollymauk cares. He is not him. He will never go back to being him.
They leave Zadash and he dies again.
He does not regret it this time. He died to save his friends from his childhood horrors. He should have thought better to warn them but he hadn't. He was still relearning how to use his bloodhunting. He made so many mistakes that night. But saving his friends was not one.
When he wakes again, there is snow on the ground. There is a different group standing around him he lashes out in confusion. He is cold, shivering in just his doublet and leggings. Where did his coat go? He looks for the obscene thing and latches onto it hanging from a shoddily made cross.
Oh right. He died. Again.
He rips the coat from where it hangs and wraps it around himself. It has been magically mended, as if Caleb knew he would need it when he came back to them.
The air in his lungs disappears rapidly as he realizes they are not the ones who brought him back. Standing above where he is sitting on the ground are his tombtakers.
Lucien. Mollymauk. Lucien? Tavelle or Tealeaf?
He skitters back on his butt, hissing as one of them reaches for him, for his coat. They don't flinch from the broken sound, but the hand does retreat.
“...Lucien?”
It's Cree that speaks. She sounds so hopeful. It makes him want to fall back into the hole in the ground behind him and let it swallow him whole.
His friends are marked with red eyes that glow faintly in the blinding light against soft snow. His own reflect against his lavender skin. Almost as if they too are waking up again after a too long rest.
He does not want Cognouza anymore.
His throat is dry and he chokes when he tries to speak, coughing up grave dirt.
He stares and stares and stares as the ringing in his ears gets louder at the sight of wet earth coming from his mouth. It's under his nails, in his hair, in his throat-
He's suffocating. He's going to die. He's going to die again and again and again with rotten mud in his mouth. He can't breathe, his lungs filling with sand, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts-
A sharp crack rings through the air as his neck snaps to the side and his cheek stings. The elf is standing in front of him, her palm red from slapping him.
His eyes blink rapidly as it grounds him. His cheek smarts, the pain burning in the cold air but it reminds him he is no longer in the dirt below. His head throbs as Cree shrieks at her,
“Tyffial! You can't do that!”
Tyffial. She was his key, Lucien remembers. Mollymauk doesn't not, for he never knew her. He lifts a shaking hand to cup the cheek she hit. He hisses out a pained ‘ow’. Cree flocks to him like the overbearing cleric she is and pulls his hand away to see the damage.
There isn't any, Molly knows, because Tyffial didn't hit him hard enough to draw blood. The elf only did that when Lucien truly pissed her off. He rasps,
“I'm fine.”
He knocks her paw away with a wrist and tries to stand. He almost lands on Otis which usually he would have found funny if not for Zoran having to catch him and set him straight on his feet. He feels wobbly, unsteady. He is blood stained and there is a new crinkled scar sitting against his sternum where Lorenzo stabbed him. It aches as he brushes a hand over the raised skin. It will lighten over time, but for now it looks painful and fresh, edges dark against his deathly pallor.
He needs to get out of here. Get back to the nein. But how does he get rid of the tombtakers? Does he want to? They were his family once, they shared his dream.
Molly winces.
Not his dream. Not anymore. Well, that's not quite right. He still wants to make the world a better place for broken folks like him and his ilk. But Mollymauk knows now that the Somnovem isn't the only way to do it. There are pockets of goodness in the world, he's found them before he can do it again. But how to convince the tombtakers of that?
They leave his grave and Cree tries to take his coat from him. He hisses and snaps and clutches the maroon fabric close. She eyes him with unease and whispers,
“Lucien..?”
“It's mine,” he snaps too quickly, then softer. “It's mine.”
She nods, eyes hurt and suspicious. She does not know if this is her Lucien. It is but it isn't at the same time.
They don't call him Mollymauk. They don't acknowledge his time ‘away’ as they call it when they think he's listening. They don't believe that Mollymauk is him. His tombtakers believe that he was a fragment of himself, that whatever he became in the two years with amnesia wasn't real, or fully a person.
They don't believe Mollymauk Tealeaf exists anymore.
They're wrong.
He tells himself this daily, clutches at the note the nein left him with like a desperate lifeline. Wherever they're dragging him off to, he doesn't know. The journal is lost to him, not that he wants it back. The longer he has been away from it, the easier it is for him to recognize that it was obviously a cursed item. He'd had a knack for finding them while in the Orders and once he and his had left that hadn't changed. He just hadn't been expecting it in Aeor.
It gets colder the further North they travel and Molly is forced to cover his coat with another fur lined cloak atop it. He is grumpy with the change, not that the others care. They seem to work like a hivemind, ignoring whatever thoughts he has that doesn't fit their preconceived narrative. He knows what they want from him, what they expect. It’s not what they’re going to get but that doesn’t stop them from trying to draw it out from him like needles.
He has gotten used to being called Lucien once again. It still itches, like a shirt that no longer fits but he deals with it. He'd tried only once to get them to call him Molly. He won't make that mistake again.
He wants to believe that his friends are still in there somewhere. They'd lived their lives for two whole years without him, they had to have had something outside of this nonagon business. Outside of the uncomfortable worship that they seem to have for him. Or what they think is him. He still has a lot of the same mannerisms he did before his first death, it’s not like Molly is miraculously a completely different person from Lucien. He just has a more optimistic outlook on life and doesn’t want to bend the world to his knee anymore. Maybe the similarities are why the tombtakers are unconvinced that he isn’t only Lucien. They can ignore the differences as long as they see the small things that haven’t changed.
Cree finally lets it slip that they've found DeRogna. It brings the old Lucien close to the surface as it causes that rage and hatred to boil close to its edge inside Molly’s stomach. For once, his past and present thoughts align with one need:
Her death.
Mollymauk wants her dead now just as much as Lucien did then. He has to thank her, really, for making his new perspective possible but the right bitch has been asking for it since he'd met her. She killed him. Tore him apart in a way he never thought possible.
He doesn't like that his friends have been hired to protect her. Cree likes it even less; convinced that they'll be a problem. She's not wrong, Lucien fully intends to return to the Nein. He knows he won't fight them to get to her. So instead he lets Tyffial and Otis snoop about and find out where she's staying. She's too uppity to stay wherever they are, this he knows well and he's right. She's staying in the nearby stronghold while his friends are in the tavern on the main floor. Vess is too good to spend time with those of the lower class. All it means is that it'll be easier to get her alone.
Now he just needs to find a way to separate from the others long enough to find Caleb. He'd be able to help. At least with the book part. Molly doesn't want him anywhere near DeRogna lest her vile magic hurt him too. He's able to convince the rest of the tombtakers to let him do this alone, that it's his revenge to have. They don't argue with him, because for once he isn't talking out his ass. Molly truly does want Vess dead.
As luck would have it, he's able to get in with a well timed disguise self scroll and a bit of devil's tongue. They let him in, believing him to be the archmage herself and he quickly zeroes in on a table near the fireplace. Rowdy as they've ever been, his nein sit with a few he doesn't recognize. A large firbolg that is pink and a short halfling woman loudly yelling are with them. He catches Caleb as the wizard's copper hair shines in the firelight.
It has Mollymauk's breath catching in his throat as he looks at him. It's been too long and he's missed him terribly. He strides over to their table and stops once they quiet down. They look at him with thinly veiled looks of unease and disgust. Good. As much as it hurts to have them look at him that way, he is happy to know that they dislike Vess as much as he does.
“I will be joining you for dinner tonight in about an hour or so.”
Molly leaves no room for argument. His eyes linger on Caleb for longer than necessary before he turns and walks away. It's one of the hardest things he's had to do as either Mollymauk or Lucien.
He finds the witch's room easily enough. It's the farthest one away from the more traveled floors and that makes it even easier for Molly to do what he's come here for.
He drops his disguise and shivers in delight when he can unwrap his tail from his waist. It was beginning to cramp. He knocks on the door sharply and waits, his nerves giddy.
The look of horrified terror on Vess DeRogna's face will live in his mind forever. He delights in the fear that he gets from her as he shoves his way into her rooms.
“You should be dead.”
He grins sharp and wicked, fangs glinting in the lower light of her candles.
“Aye. I should be a lot of things, shouldn't I?”
She backs away from him slowly, never taking her eyes off him. Smart woman. She sneers,
“If you've come for the journal, you-”
Before she can finish he raises a hand to stop her,
“You can keep the bloody fucking book DeRogna. I'm not here for that.”
He licks his chapped lips as the warmth in the room gives him feeling back into his fingers and toes. She stares at him suspiciously. She doesn't believe him.
“Then what are you here for, boy?”
The performer in him is dying to keep the game going but the bloodhunter in him is screaming to end it now. It's hard to choose.
“I'm here for a lot of things, witch.”
Lucien has learned a lot of things during his time as Mollymauk at the carnival. Moving quick and lightly, delicately like in a dance was one of them. He's fast on his feet as he snaps forward, clawed hand curling around her throat. Something is telling him to make it long and painful, like she did to him.
The newer parts of him, ones that were cultivated by people who loved him tell him to end it already. She isn't worth more of his time. She's taken two years of it already.
Her dainty hands claw at his, trying to get him to release her but she's never done a hard day's work in her life and her hands reflect it. They're weak against his claws, unable to pull his fingers away from her trachea.
Lucien tilts his head as he considers her.
“I know you've read it too. I know you have the eyes. Is that why you've come back here? To bring them home?”
Her eyes widen at his accusation and she begins to struggle harder against his grip. He tsks, and slams her down onto her bed. He chokes down a gag as he's forced to straddle her to keep her from moving. A hand holds her thin wrists above her head as he glares down at her. His other hand, the one covered in eyes, and snakes and feathers, all the things he used to cover himself up before he truly knew what he was doing, moves to grab her neck tightly.
“Well?”
She hisses at him.
“I won't let you do it Lucien. The Somnovem are mad. I'll die before you find that journal.”
He can't help but cackle, head flying back as he laughs uncontrollably.
“You're going to die regardless,” his hand tightens around her airway.
“You think I don't know that they're crazy? You sent me there for two whole years before I became whole again. Until my soul pieced itself back together, one little fragment at a time.”
She struggles underneath him as she becomes hypoxic. When she's too weak to fight him anymore, he releases her hands and reaches into one of the pouches at his hip. He withdraws the little vial he requested from Tyffial. The liquid inside is a venomous green just like DeRogna's eyes.
As much as Mollymauk and Lucien would love to slaughter the mage without a second thought, he had to do this with a little more tact than that. He doesn't want it falling on the Nein's heads for her sudden death.
He keeps the pressure on her throat as he uncorks the small tube. He keeps the pressure steady until he's ready to pour the poison into her mouth.
The burning liquid lands on her tongue just as he lets go and Vess gasps in a deep painful breath. Her eyes fly wide, still bleary, and Molly slams a hand over her mouth to keep her from spitting at him. He pinches her nose shut with his other hand and he sneers down at her,
“You're not making it out of this room alive, Vess. I'd accept that now and just let the poison do its job.”
It's one of Tyffial's stronger potions. It shouldn't take more than two minutes to circulate through her system and end her. An unsatisfying end to be sure, but Mollymauk needs this to be clean as much as he wants it to be messy.
When he feels her go lax under him, he lets go. She doesn't move when he removes his hands and he checks for a pulse under her jaw. It's still against his fingers and he pulls away, happy to no longer be touching her. He's not content, not by a long shot, but he tells himself that this is enough.
He stages the room to look as if she had drank too much and choked in her sleep. Unavoidable with how strong the wine was up this far North and how secluded Vess insisted on making herself.
He digs through her things to find the wrought iron key to her room and pockets it. Next, unfortunately, Mollymauk needs to find the blasted book.
As quickly and lightly as he can, he searches her things for it. He'll give it to her, she wasn't dumb. Wherever she's hidden it, it's hard for him to find. The eyes on his skin itch for him to use them but he refuses. He won't kick that can of worms again and allow their voices back into his mind. Regaining his own memories had been traumatic enough.
He finds it in the bottom drawer of her nightstand under a false bottom. Clever witch indeed. The urge to grab it and take it is strong but he knows now that that is the effects of the cursed item itself, not some misguided want to keep what Brevyn had died for close.
Molly slams the false bottom atop it and shuts the drawer.
He steps away from it despite the strong pull at his mind and nerves that draws him to it. He reaches into his pouch again and pulls the other disguise self scroll from it. He is annoyed that he has to don this image just to see his friends.
When he leaves the room, he once again looks like Vess much to his vehement disgust. He locks the door with the key and holds it tightly. He needs to get it to Caleb.
Mollymauk wanders back down to the tavern floor and finds his friends exactly where he'd left them earlier. They don't look happy to see him return but he couldn't care less.
He sits at the head of the table, near Caleb. They eat in tense silence until Molly is too giddy and breaks it,
“I have a question for you lot.”
Fjord (when did he get so large?) is the one that answers. He clears his throat,
“And that is? Ms. DeRogna?”
Mollymauk smiles thinly, aching to drop the ruse. He can't though, not while the book still exists and the tombtakers are searching for it.
“Do you know of a tiefling named Lucien?”
Caleb at his side immediately tenses as do the others except for the firbolg. Caleb is sharp when he asks, the threat of violence thinly veiled in his tone.
“What of him?”
Mollymauk nearly purrs, “Ah, so you do. Mr. Caleb I would like a word with you later about something important. But for now, I do believe there is cause for him to be following us. I would take caution of him and his group.”
Beau stands, fists hitting the table as she hisses at him,
“That isn't funny. He's dead. Don't defile his memory like that!”
Molly hums, it's a familiar tune that Yasha had heard time and time again from him while in the carnival.
C'mon guys, he thinks, I'm giving you so many hints here.
“Maybe, maybe not. After all, that one never could stay where he belonged.”
The rest of the meal passes in angry silence, members of the group giving him pointed suspicious glances that he returns with obvious cheeky looks of his own. Beau looks like she's seconds away from leaping over the table to strangle him.
When he finishes he stands abruptly, still playing the part of the rude and ostentatious DeRogna. He waves a hand towards Caleb.
“If you would, Mr. Caleb. I have something I would like to discuss with you in private.”
The wizard moves to stand, blue eyes narrowed at him thoughtfully when Beau stands and scowls at him,
“Nuh uh, we aren't splitting up like that. I go too or he doesn't go at all.”
Mollymauk's eye twitches in real annoyance and sighs. Of course Beau would make things difficult. But maybe having two people would be better overall than just Caleb. He grits out, tone flat,
“Fine Miss Beauregard. If you must.”
He turns, Vess's heavy coats and dress twirling in the firelight. They follow him up to Vess's rooms stiffly and tense when he turns, a hand loosely curled around the knob.
“Now. You must promise me something.”
“What is it?”
Beau spits. Molly grins, a look that doesn't fit the elven face he's wearing.
“You must do as I say once we enter and Beau, you specifically, will not punch me once we're inside.”
Caleb's eyes narrow knowingly, as Beau sputters beside him. Before the monk can ask why the archmage would caution her, Molly unlocks the door and pushes inside.
Caleb looks at the archmage's body with no surprise in his eyes. Mollymauk however twirls away from Beau as her staff extends and she moves to swing.
“Ah, ah, ah! What did I say about hitting?”
“Who are you?”
Caleb looks at him sourly, and it brings a painful stone crashing down into Molly's stomach. His grin drops and he sighs. He lets the spell shimmer off him slowly and his ears pin against his head as he hears Beau gasp and curse.
“You Bastard! You've been alive this entire time! What the fuck man!”
Before he can answer, Caleb asks flatly,
“Are you Mollymauk or Lucien?”
He flinches. His tail unravels from his waist to swish anxiously at the floor behind him. He fiddles with his claws as he refuses to look at them,
“Um, both? I'm… me.”
Molly stumbles back when Beau grabs him by the collar of his coat and pushes him against the wall. She's strong, much stronger than she used to be and his boots scrape against the floorboards as she holds him up. His eyes widen as his clawed hands reach for hers, holding on tightly.
“Beau! Let me go!”
The monk shakes him,
“What's all this shit about the eyes of nine! Are you really trying to do all that shit Molly?”
He shakes as she brings up the somnovem. His friends watch as his tail falls limp and his ears pin back. His breath stutters in his chest as tears bead in his eyes. He chokes,
“No! No, I want them gone! I want them out of my head and out of my life! That’s why I’m here!”
Beau drops him in surprise as he nearly shouts at her. He drops to the floor like a sack of dead weight and curls in on himself. They hear him sob, and murmur.
“I just want to come home. That’s all I want.”
“Then why didn’t you come back when you woke up? We left you a note!”
His head lifts as he growls, claws tugging at his long hair,
“I can’t! They won’t let me! That’s why I had to do this convoluted shit just to talk to you!”
Caleb looks at him inquisitively and it hurts.
“Who, schatz?”
Molly shakes his head, “Did you tell them? About Lucien? About me?”
Caleb nods his head sadly, and his heart breaks that much more.
“After you passed, after we found you missing and about the eyes I did. We thought Vess might have had something to do with it. We were going to use her to find you and bring you back.”
Mollymauk laughs wetly, using his wrists to wipe his tears. He nods, he isn’t happy but it’s better than them thinking he was actually trying to bring about the end of the world.
“The tombtakers were following her because she had the book. I need you guys to get rid of it. I can’t, I can’t touch the thing lest I get possessed again. They won’t let me go, won’t believe that Lucien is Molly. I’ve been trying to plan how to get rid of the damned thing since Cree told me she had it. And then I heard she’d hired you guys. I couldn’t believe you were that dumb after all I told you Caleb, but it makes sense that you were trying to find me. I’d hoped you would.”
Beau looks between him and Caleb, confused,
“Can’t you just leave? You’re here now?”
Molly shakes his head, “Believe me, I want to. But Cree has my blood. She can find me. She wears it in a necklace like a weird fucking holy symbol,” He wipes his hands down his face tiredly. “I was so fucking weird before I died the first time guys. The eyes made me so fucking mental.”
Caleb hums, “So you think if we destroy the book that your friends will go back to normal?”
Molly shrugs, he’s honestly not too sure.
“Either that or they’ll try to kill me for ruining their plans. They really kinda drank the wine on this shit, Magic man.”
Mollymauk points to where the book is stashed in the bottom drawer. He warns them not to read it, hells, not even to touch it without a barrier just in case the somnovem have that much power. He stays against the wall when Caleb pulls it out with his scarf. He watches tensely as Caleb wraps it tightly and encases it in amber. When it’s out of sight, Molly breathes easier. He doesn’t have much time before he has to return to Cree lest they all come looking for him. He stands, hand braced against the wall.
“I need you to follow after me if I don't manage to weasel my way back. Just in case they do try to kill me once I tell them I don’t have the book. Here,”
He pulls out one of his horn charms from his pouch. He’d had to take them and his earrings off from the sheer cold, not wanting to get frostbite. He likes all his limbs and appendages where he has them, thank you. He hands it over to Beau who takes it in confusion.
“What-”
“To track me if I get taken too far out into this cult bullshit. Jester should be able to do it now that you’re all stronger right? With the help of her god? I have no idea where we're going besides Aeor. And Aeor is huge. So track me, please.”
Her bandaged fingers curl over the charm protectively and she tucks it into her coat. She nods, a fire in her eyes that Molly has missed. He turns towards Caleb and steps closer. His hands jitter as he contemplates whether or not he should pull the other close. Caleb makes the decision for him, closing the distance and pulling the tiefling into a burning hug. Mollymauk chirrups as he melts into the hug, arms and tail wrapping around the clean wizard like a leech.
“I missed you.”
He mumbles against the thick material of Caleb’s coat. Caleb runs a warm hand down his back as he tells him sincerely,
“I’ve missed you too Mollymauk. We will find you again, I promise.”
The wizard pulls away and Molly swallows a whimper as he immediately misses the other’s warmth. His face flushes when he feels Caleb’s scratchy facial hair against his forehead as the man presses a soft kiss to the hair between his horns. The wizard slides something into his hands. A little reed. He looks at Caleb in confusion.
“In case you need to get a hold of us quickly.”
Beau immediately ruins the soft mood when she punches him in the arm before wrapping him up in her own hug.
“Don’t go dying on us again or become a creepy cult leader while we burn this fucking thing, alright?”
He hugs her back and laughs, promising not to do anything the rest of the nein wouldn’t while he’s away. He has a sad look in his eyes when he climbs out of the window, leaving his friends and Vess DeRogna’s corpse in the room. He drops from the sill and the two look at each other.
“We’re tossing that thing in the fireplace downstairs, right?”
“Ja.”
Molly is an excellent actor and even better liar when need be. He's able to set his features into an irritated scowl as he makes his way back to the tombtakers. Half of it isn't even a lie, he'd rather not be trudging outside in the several foot deep snow when his friends are inside the stronghold, not cold and wet.
When he gets in range, Cree's ears perk up and she looks to where she hears the sound. Her eyes light up as if she's surprised he's returned to them. It's not like he has a choice right now. Before she can call out his name, she registers the furious expression on his face and he snarls,
“It's gone.”
“Lucien, what are you saying?”
He whirls on her, anger only half a performance. He lashes his tail through the snow, whipping up clouds of white.
“I said, dear, it's fucking gone! She took my journal and put it who fucking knows where because it was not with her!!”
He trudges over to where Tyffial is sitting next to the fire and plops himself down in a fit. The group looks at him warily. He might've been better now but he was still fully capable of throwing an unholy temper tantrum when need be. Before he learned what patience was, he was downright fantastic at them.
Cree stares at him, muzzle thin. Her ears were lowered as she took in his rumpled and irritated form.
“Are you sure you checked everywhere?”
Molly lifts his head to glare at her. His right eye twitches without his say so and he growls out around clenched fangs,
“I was dead, not dumb, darling. Yes I checked everywhere!”
His tone is scathing and he's only minorly regretful about it with the way Cree hunkers down as he yells at her. It serves her right for dragging him all across the Greying Wildlands and refusing to listen to him. He looks away from her to look at what the others are doing. The others are wisely ignoring his little outburst. So far it's been the most Lucien-like thing he's done.
Molly doesn’t feel any better after his little snit, in fact he feels worse. He's had his own moments of anger since becoming Mollymauk but he's never quite acted so rudely as he just had. He wants to apologize, he doesn’t like to be like that anymore but he knows he can’t. Not yet at least.
He can’t be sure that they won’t try to kill him once Caleb and Beau get rid of the book and hopefully the eyes. All he can do is hope for the best. He looks up towards the sky to look for Catha and Ruidus. His eyes lock onto them and he prays to the Moonweaver for luck.
Fuck, He wishes he still had his cards.
It's a tense rest of the night before the group decides to pack it in for the evening. Molly can't be thankful enough. He hates that he feels this way about his friends, his family, but right now they're acting the way he'd trained them too while in the height of his delusions. He can't blame them for fanatically following an idea that he'd shoved down their throats for the better part of several months. All he can do is lie down to sleep and hope by the time he wakes, the nightmare of the Somnovem will be a long dead memory.
He can tell the minute that they destroy the book. It wakes him from his sleep. His stomach turns and a drilling pain runs through his head. The eyes on his skin burn and he rolls over in their tent groaning. His skin feels burning hot and cold simultaneously and his mouth is slick with nausea. His vision is spotty and blackening around the edges. His breath catches and he spits. His commotion wakes the others and they flock to him,
“Lucien? Lucien!”
He feels like he’s dying again.
He feels the wave of blood magic wave over him as Cree tries to heal him. It doesn’t work, there’s nothing physically wrong with him. He gags on his stomach acid as his eyes roll back and his hands grab at his horns. He feels like they’re breaking off from his skull.
He chokes out between foaming spit,
“Cree…”
“Lucien! Nonagon! Tell me what's wrong!”
He groans as his claws dig bloody marks in his scalp. There are no words to explain the agony he feels from his connection with the Somnovem breaking. Cree forces his hands from his hair and his claws clench around nothing as he writhes in pain. He reaches for her, grabbing onto her cloak weakly.
You've forsaken us
It's the last thing he hears before he passes out.
When he wakes, he is wrapped tightly in Cree's arms as she slumbers around his curled form. He wiggles out from her, murmuring something about needing to piss and she lets him go, groggily nodding before sleep claims her again.
When he stands, Molly peers down at her curiously. There's nothing keeping him from leaving now that no one is watching him. His eyes land on her necklace and they narrow. Nothing but that. His blood in her pendant. Her “God's” ichor. An excellent way to track him.
His tail delicately winds around the glass orb and wiggles it free from the chain. He hushes her with a smidge of devil's tongue when she moves from his fidgeting. Cree nods again, falling back into unconsciousness.
He carries the pendant out with him as he exits the tent, shivering as the cold air hits him fully. His breath comes out as foggy puffs of air as he raises his head to look at the dark grey sky.
“Find someone else to do your dirty work you damn bastards.”
He growls out to the wind before searching his pockets for the reed Caleb had given him. The Tombtakers will no doubt follow his tracks in the snow when they wake but he can at least give the others a heads up.
The glass orb containing his blood shines morbidly in the pale moonlight. It's Lucien's fangs that glint and his tail tightens around it until the glass cracks and shatters. His blood freezes in the cold air immediately and he shakes it off himself with a flick of his spade.
Lucien is dead, Mollymauk will make sure of it.
_____
Mollymauk is a shivering near hypothermic mess by the time he reaches the outpost in Balenpost where the Nein were staying. The guards stop him at the gates. His chattering teeth almost snap his tongue bloody multiple times as he speaks,
“Ask for Herr Widogast. He will vouch for me.”
The guards mumble and groan but do as he asks. After a few minutes a bundled up Caleb comes rushing up to the gates from the fort. He looks as good as he did earlier and Molly's tail swells with the urge to start wagging.
“Molly! What are you doing? Let him in! He's of the Mighty Nein!”
Caleb chastised the guards, pushing past them to grab at Molly. He pulls the tiefling to him, wrapping his cloak around him. It's warm and smells like wood smoke and Mollymauk burrows into it, breathing heavily. Caleb leads him back inside the fort, calloused hands checking him over for imagined injuries.
“Thanks.”
Molly mumbles, still shivering. The warmth from the taverns fire him and the ice covering his shoulders and hair melts leaving him cold and wet.
“Come, come, let's get you warm, ja?”
Molly is quick to agree, miserable and achy from the cold. He was meant for warmer weather, not this.
He is led up the stairs to a plain looking door. When it opens however it is not the room Molly is expecting. It opens to a circular foyer that has no doors. He cranes his neck upwards and is astonished when it continues up much farther than he can see.
Caleb takes his hand in his and murmurs a soft “up”. Molly fumbles when his boots leave the ground and suddenly they're floating upwards. He catches Caleb's eyes sparkling with mischief and Molly spits out a loud disbelieving laugh.
“You truly are a wonder Mr. Caleb.”
Caleb hums as they reach his floor. When their feet settle, he reaches up to push a wet curl behind the tiefling's ear. His smile is soft and his eyes warm as he murmurs,
“Not as much as you, Mr. Mollymauk.”
The wizard shows him the rooms that he has made for himself, plain but inviting all the same. He strips out of cold wet clothing without shame, dumping them into a wicker hamper near the door. It's truly a testament to how far Caleb has come without him since the man doesn't flinch at his nudity.
He's shown to a rather lavish washroom and sighs in delight when he sinks into hot bath water. Caleb stays, as if afraid Molly will disappear again if he turns away for too long. The tiefling reaches for his hand, clawed fingers wrapping around his own shorter stubby ones. Molly's fingers are still freezing, the tips ice cold from being out in the snow.
Caleb takes his hand anyway, intertwining their fingers together.
“Darling,” Mollymauk starts, his voice pained. “I'm so sorry about all this. I never thought… I never imagined that my past would lead to this. That being Lucien would lead to this.”
Caleb strokes his thumb over the back of his hand. Molly shudders as he warms up, the feeling returning to his tail, his toes and fingers. His nose leaks and his eyes look dangerously wet.
“It's okay Liebling,” he murmurs softly. “You are whoever you want to be. No one can force you to be anything you don't want.”
Molly says nothing as Caleb reaches for the bottles near the tub. He lets the wizard wash his hair, running scarred fingers through the winter worn tresses gently. He scrubs at his scalp and around his horns, drawing a content sigh from purple lips.
He only exits the bath when he is scrubbed clean and the water is lukewarm. Caleb wraps him in a large fluffy towel and guides him back towards his dressing room. The tiefling dresses warmly, woolen pants and a sweater that smells remarkably like Caleb. All smoke and ink, and he inhales deeply. He laughs at the knit socks that look remarkably like cat paws.
He's led over to a larger poster bed by the wizard and Molly collapses onto it, bone tired. Caleb rounds the other side of the bed to join him.
They lay together and Molly tucks himself tightly against the wizard. Caleb brushes a hand through his tangled tresses, and Molly, no, Lucien speaks softly.
“I don't know who I am anymore. I don't think I want to be Lucien, but I'm not just Molly either.”
He hides his face against Caleb's warmth, not willing to see the look on the wizard's face. He feels Caleb sigh more than he hears it and he feels a chill of panic run down his spine.
“I know how you feel, schatz. Some days I wonder if there's still a bit of Bren inside me.”
The tiefling calms once he realizes Caleb is not disappointed in him. He peeks his face out from Caleb's sweater. The wizard is looking down at him with those blazing blue eyes that had Mollymauk smitten from the beginning.
“It does not matter if you are Lucien or Molly or both. You are you, and that is enough.”
The wizard telegraphs his movements in case he wants to move away but Mollymauk, Molly, has no desire to. Caleb leans down and gently kisses him. He returns it, tightening his hold around the man.
He doesn't know who he is just yet. He is both Lucien and Mollymauk. Sometimes he feels like neither. He knows he's tired of running.
_____
The mystery of DeRogna's death is chalked up to overindulgence just like Molly had planned. Since the Nein no longer had any reason to stay in the Greying Wildlands, they made their way home from Eiselcross.
Molly wondered how long it would take Cree and the others to realize that he was gone. He was sure that they would come for him again, either out of love or hate he wasn't sure.
“So, Molly! What are you going to do now that you have all your memories back?”
Jester asked. To be honest, he wasn't quite sure.
“Do we call you Molly still? Or do you prefer Lucien now?”
His lovely Yasha asked him, walking beside him. He shakes his head. He wraps himself around her arm like a particularly bad case of syphilis. She just smiles at him, raising an eyebrow. She reaches over with her free hand to ruffle the hair between his horns. It's too long, and needs a cut. His curls are becoming unmanageable.
“No. I'm still Mollymauk. Maybe I can keep Lucien as a middle name or something.”
Beau makes a face like she bit into a sour lemon.
“What? No. That doesn't work at all. Mollymauk Lucien Tealeaf? Are you trying to compete for the world's longest most stupid sounding name ever?”
If she weren't his love's girlfriend, Molly would totally shove her into the river they're trailing next to. No, actually he's going to do it anyway. The monk squawks when she's pushed unexpectedly into the water. She splutters once she surfaces but Mollymauk is still thinking about what she's said.
“What? Like change my name completely?”
He rubs his chin thoughtfully as she climbs out of the river, dripping wet. Beau glares at him as she rings out her clothes. Caleb takes pity on her and helps her dry out her clothes with a delicate application of magic.
“What do you all think of calling me Kingsley?”
The group around him balks before thinking about it. None other than Yasha knows about his little stint as a monarch in Nogvurot, so she's the only one to snort at the suggestion. He shakes his head decidedly.
“Nah. Mollymauk it is. But you all can still call me Molly ‘cause we're friends an’ allat.”
He used to be a man named Lucien Tavelle, then he died and became Mollymauk Tealeaf. Somewhere along the way, he'd become both of those people. He doesn't quite remember pulling himself out of the grave the first time or how he stumbled upon the circus that took him in and taught him how to be a person again but he is so grateful he did. If he hadn't been re-raised on love and laughter and bullshit then who knows how his story could have ended.
In another life, maybe he'd come back as the Lucien who was still bitter over the cards life had dealt him and was hell bent on subjugating the Somnovem to break those that tried breaking him.
Maybe he would have come back as someone entirely new, not remembering either life he'd lived before.
Maybe he wouldn't have come back at all, crossing over the shadow fell with the Matron and the Moonweaver at his sides.
His hands dig into his coat's pockets for his cards. His shoulders relax as he cuts the deck. Flicking the cards to and fro, he continues to shuffle them until one catches between his fingers. He flips it over while they walk down the beaten dirt path and he smiles when his eyes catch what card he's pulled.
The World.
He couldn't agree more.