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The kitchen smelled beautifully of fresh rolls and scramble when Jerry wandered in. This wasn’t ideal, because Jerry’d woken up at the ass-crack of dawn ever since he became a paladin, down deep in the underdark. Which meant someone else had gotten up even earlier to cook all this.
“Good morning, Jerry. There’s marmalade on the countertop if you want it.”
There. Tucked in the corner, staring down at a little bowl of mercury, was Lovegood- Mage Lovegood. She was particular with most people about remembering to call her by her title, considering how hard she’d worked for her Magehood.
It was hard to tell if the blue rings under her eyes were any better or worse than yesterday.
“Lovie, please tell me you sleep.”
“Sure.” Mage Lovegood said easily without a single once of conviction behind it.
“Lovie-”
The pleading in his voice was cut off by Lovegood’s huff as she made some sort of arcane motion over the bowl she’d been fidgeting with, and the haze of scrying came over it.
“I both laid down and closed my eyes, Jerry. I think that’s a rather good attempt. Now don’t let all this good food go to waste.”
The food was good, although the open bowl of poison metal sitting in front of Lovegood as she scryied provoked a small purifying ritual out of him. Just in case.
The food was good, regardless.
“You don’t have your rituals to keep you up and going-”
“My apprentice’s lifeblood, you mean.”
Jerry winced at the sharpness in her voice. Her apprentice had been hospitalized for some weeks now, and it was still dubious if they would ever recover. It was a touchy subject.
“You need sleep.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
Lovegood drew herself up straight, gaze finally breaking from the bowl in front of her, which ripped as the spell dispelled. Her fingers were tapping, one-two-three-four-five-six, one-two-three-four-five-six, one-two-three-
“I lived my life in six second increments for weeks, Jerry. Do you know how many times I cast time-stop? How many times I drank their lifeblood and pushed back sleep and recast again because it had dropped? Two hundred thousand, I would know that, I can’t stop counting them. Sure, I got to be comfy in that fucking seat at that fucking desk while the entire Sunshine Regiment tried to slow down a world eater and died in the process, and all I could do was buy time. Hold back time with my bare fucking hands but I couldn’t even stop it. You think my apprentice is the only one that gave up their casting so I could burn them alive to feed to the last fucking hope? No! I had acolytes lined up around the block, bleeding themselves dry and pretending I wouldn’t notice that they’re killing themselves, while I watched our troops kill themselves. Paladins by the dozens. By the hundreds. I thought you were dead, until you showed up here.”
Jerry came towards her them, face open but motions so fucking cautious, like she was a delicate bit of glass instead of the most powerful accredited Mage of their generation.
“I couldn’t sleep. I can’t sleep. If I slept, the spell drops, the protections drop, time goes six times faster. I sleep, and it doesn’t just kill the regiment, it kills the world.”
“Lovie-”
“I didn’t get to let time go slow for me. I was there for every single fucking six seconds that passed for one inside, because if I didn’t- if I- I didn’t even have the hard part. All I had to do was cast one spell. One fucking spell, do you know how many times I fumbled that spell? Too many fucking times. They wouldn’t be dead if I hadn’t slipped up so many times.”
Lovegood was drawn up, trembling, and her hand slipped, scattering the mercury across the floor. It splashed and skittered and beaded up, perfect mirror-lensed drops that beaded on the floor like so many stars in the skies of hell.
“Rainier would have known what to do.”
Her voice was hushed as she invoked the name of their bard that had sacrificed himself to a prince of hell, to let them pass. Several ends of the world ago. A never ending battle for sunlight and strength and survival.
“Rainier came back for a bit.”
Jerry mumbled, looking down at a drop of poison mercury slowly sinking into his uniform, which he hadn’t quite figured out how to take off. It hissed away when it finally made contact with his skin.
“It was. Uh. Part of a contract, I think? He said something about the darkest hour? He was all over. Must not have gotten a chance to say goodbye. Otherwise he would have sung you to sleep.”
“I don’t need to-”
Mage Lovegood cut herself off, rubbing her fingers over the bridge of her nose, shoulders tense then slumping then tense again. She looked young, in a familiar way. Like a teenager going through their first big tests, so exhausted they could pass out where they stood, but too anxious to sit still for even a moment.
“Thus always to tyrants were terrible last words. I understand he liked the song, and was always a bit too fond of nihilism, but it’s such a terrible final sentence to have echoing in my head. That everything we do is always going to come back to tyranny? I hate it. I hate it.”
“Yeah.”
Jerry echoed softly, and poked another bead of mercury, watching it hiss away into nothingness.
They sat. The food was going cold. Lovegood was still tapping at the table. Jerry was sweeping his hand over the poison and watching it vanish.
Finally, Jerry squared up his shoulders a bit, dragging back up his resolve. He’d made it a bit of a rule to not argue with academics, and especially not to try to get the most willful person he knows to do something she didn’t want to, but he had to try for both their sanity.
“Listen. When was the last time you slept properly?”
Mage Lovegood’s lips twisted up in displeasure, and she flicked her fingers at the remaining mercury, summoning it back to her bowl. She’s bowed her head back over it, staring intently into the scenes as if they were licked of flame. She sighed, but the irritation was paper-thin.
“I was in and out right after I dropped the time stop. Don’t know for how long. Woke up after that, haven’t been able to sleep since.”
“Lovie, that was days ago!”
“I’m fine. I was awake much longer before.”
“You just said you passed out after that!”
“And? What do you want, Jerry.”
Lovegood’s voice was flat, dull. It was worse than when she had been yelling. At least them she had fire in her.
“I want you to sleep. Or at least try to sleep. Lay down for a good long while.”
“Fine. Tonight.”
Jerry sighed, rising, “Want me to read to you?”
Lovegood didn’t respond with her voice, her eyes fixed against the scrying bowl. Her fingers tapping. All the habits that had kept her going through the terror and repetitive, monotonous miracles that wore and wore at her willpower until she had barely anything left.
The tiny nod of her chin was answer enough.
Jerry walked over, squinting and tilting his head until the image in the bowl cleared. It was usually harder to see into someone else’s magic. She must be clearing it for him.
The bowl’s surface flickered, backing and fourth between scenes almost faster than he could keep track of. Hospital bed to hospital bed. The graveyard the creature had left behind, the corpse of the creature. To hell and back, Rainier- that damn bard- curled up far too cozily in a hell-creature’s lap. Her apprentice, barely breathing. Then a row of other people, with mage robes and focuses scattered on their bedside tables, also looking half-dead, on and on and on, with ritual cuts on their palms and not a hint of color in their cheek.
Over to more and more and more, jails and countrysides and burning houses, pits where forests had been and lakes where valleys had been. The cut of how the waves lay differently across the stones, after being slowed strangely for weeks. The continent proper- across the waves, where their geopolitical system had been pulled apart and smashed together ungracefully in service of getting them to finally send aid. Frantic meetings as they tried to put back together trade and governance and industry. There were hardly any meetings here, not today. Everyone was too busy licking their wounds.
“The world won’t stop if you look away.”
“It will.”
Lovegood’s voice cracked, hands tightening on the bowl.
“It won’t. You can’t help everyone, Lovie. You did your part. You’re allowed to rest now.”
“I’m resting. I cooked.”
“Lovegood.”
Jerry braved the spell to pluck her hands up in his, squeezing them carefully.
“You did good. You gave more than your fair share. You made miracles for us. You are allowed. To. Rest.”
“I can’t!”
She burst out, hands squeezing his until her nails cut in, but she hadn’t cursed him yet, so it was worth pushing his luck.
“You can. You will. You’re allowed.”
He tugged her to him, his sister-in-arms who damn near killed herself for the rest of them, wishing she could cry. He’d cried earlier, in bed, staring at the ceiling, but he knew that she wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Couldn’t cry, couldn’t sleep.
“You’re going to be okay, Lovie. Lay down on the couch. Have a cup of tea. I’ll keep watch.”
She glanced over at her scrying bowl, hands reaching for it before she was pulled away. She could smite him in an instant- so many sacrifices to her, so much lifeblood running along with her own, she could have fought a god with a proper night’s rest. But she didn’t. She let the rank-and-file paladin push her onto the couch, settle into the chair next to the fire, and pick up a book. History of weaving. Dreadfully dull if you weren’t interested in that sort of thing. She wasn’t.
“I need to monitor-”
“You don’t, I promise.”
“But what if-”
“Someone will come get us if something happens. I’ll wake you if something happens. Close your eyes, Mage Lovie. I’ve got you.”
The combination of title and nickname drew a tired laugh, but she complied, closing her eyes as the drone of ancient history that only Jerry cared about washed over her. Her fingers twitched, itching to keep count. Itching to check up on the others.
A wave of tiredness. A jolt of panicked alertness. No danger. Jerry still reading, his tone dry enough that it was clear this wasn’t his favorite chapter. He’d say something if the world ended again.
A wave of tiredness. Her pulse races. Her fingers twitch. Her muscles feel paralyzed. She shifts. They’re not. Her breath slows. She matches it to the thump of her heart- six seconds, in, out.
She was so fucking tired.
Jerry was still reading.
The world hadn’t ended yet.
Her fingers twitch. Still. Six seconds, In, Out.
She dreams of the wind, frozen in place, over endless fields of unmoving grass.
Her heart beats to the tune of six seconds.
In.
Out.