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punishandenslavesuckers · 7 years ago

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Mollymauk Tealeaf wakes up in a grave by the road ten years after he died. Things have gone a bit wrong since then and he might be the only one who can set things right… since it’s the Mighty Nein themselves who’ve gone wrong. AU: Where Molly comes back to yell at his super-powered Level 20 friends. (AO3 - part1) (AO3 - part 2) (AO3 - part3) (AO3 - part4) (AO3 - part5) (AO3-part6) (AO3-part7)

Molly falls, hard. He slams into the ground and the ground smells like torn grass and earth. He’s lying face down, grimacing, fingers dug into the dirt at the roots of the grass while he rides out the echo of dying from one plane to the next. He doesn’t hurt, not physically, but the phantom pain shudders through him like hot and cold waves in succession. He lifts his head, hair sliding into his eyes, for a moment just hanging there on his hands and knees, breathing hard and shaking.

A hand settles on his shoulder.

“Mollymauk.”

Molly knows their face before he even looks at them – the raven knight, pale under the glow of the moon and they say, “Are you okay?”

“Yasha. They killed… did they…?”

“No. She’s the Deathless Storm. She’s fine, Mollymauk. Are you okay?”

“No.” Shakes his head, still bent over with the grass tearing beneath his fingers. “No, that thing is bloody waiting for me. It’s gonna kill me again. It has Fjord and it’s gonna… I don’t know what to –”

“Stop. Just take a moment. You have time here.”

“It so much worse on the other side.”

The raven knight places two hands Molly’s shoulders. One hand moves to the side of Molly’s head, thumb sliding briefly along his temple tucking longer sections of his hair out of his eyes and behind his ear and it’s such a familiar thing to do that Molly immediately has to bite back this instinctive, animal sound at the sudden comfort. So wildly different from the violence that brought him here.

“But you’re not there right now. You’re here. You’re safe. No one and nothing can reach you when you’re with me. I swear it.”

“But I don’t remember this when I’m alive.”

“The living aren’t meant to remember death. I’m already breaking rules to hold this place for you. Under the eye of the Weaver and the Queen, your soul is allowed to hold its anchor to the material. Gods are watching you Mollymauk.”

“Fabulous. They’re watching me die over and over?” Molly’s mouth pulls in what he meant to be a sardonic grin, but mostly turns a grimace. “They wanna do anything about that?”

The hands tighten in his shoulders. “If you want to stop you can –”

“Fuck you,” Molly snaps. “That’s not true. If I fuck off now, Fjord’s just fucking alone in that hole isn’t he? If I don’t try, they won’t find Jester. They won’t stop whatever Beau becomes. You know I won’t let that bullshit happen.” Molly’s fists knot in the grass, tearing green at the root and then he twists up and slams his fist into the knight’s shoulder. “You knew that when you picked me! You didn’t have to pick me!”

They don’t resist Molly’s blow.

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry,” Molly says. “Everyone’s so bloody fucking sorry. They’re sorry I died. They’re sorry I’m alive. They’re sorry to kill me and remember me wrong. They knew me for two months! This is bullshit. Fuck your sorry. You’re not the one dying over and over.”

“No, I’m not. But I have been. It’s okay not to –”

“I don’t care!” Molly is kind of mortified, but his eyes are running over and he’s too tired to stop himself. He grips two fistfuls of the knight’s cloak, dropping his forehead against his knuckles where he grips hold of them. “I don’t care if you did this eons ago. I’m doing this right now and it bloody hurts! I don’t want to do this.”

“Then stop.”

“I can’t!”

The knight wraps their arms around him, gathers his head in one hand, pulling him close. They’re a little cool to the touch and Molly can’t feel a heartbeat when the Queen’s hand pulls him into a tight embrace, almost a strait-jacket hold, like they’re trying to bind a wound with pressure but there is no part of Molly that is not wounded. They press their chin into the top of his head, gripping him for a very, very long time.

Molly lifts his head a little. His voice is raw when he asks, “Is your name Vax?”

“Yes.” They hold him tighter. “Vax’ildan. And it’s been a long time since someone remembered.”

“What happened to you?”

“I did what you’re doing. I said no to death so I could save my friends.”

“Am I going to become like you?”

Vax freezes a moment, then relaxes, their hand briefly stroking over his hair before stilling. “No. It’s not something that just happens. You would have to ask for this.”

“It’s destroying us,” Molly whispers.

“What do you mean?”

“The other version of me. They don’t remember being here.” Molly grips tighter to Vax’s cloak. “It’s just… it’s just death over and over. There’s no reprieve. This doesn’t work unless we remember all of it.”

“I can’t do that.”

“I can feel him fraying, Vax’ildan. We’re like… like two sides of the same fucking coin, but he’s taking all the hits. He’s alone on the other side.”

“I don’t have domain in the Material Plane. I can’t travel between; I only govern transition. I’m sorry.”

“That thing has hold of me,” Molly rasps. “What’s it doing to me?”

“There is… there is divine power this thing can feed from. That which bind you to the material plane… the breaking of the thread and the maintaining of it when you return… there’s a ghost power there it can consume with each breaking. It’s feeding off the magic that’s keeping your soul bound to your body against the pull of the Astral Plane.” There’s a pause, then, “Fjord fed his patron on the divinity of an Old God. It’s hunger now won’t be slaked by anything but more of the same. You have a breath of that power on you.”

“Tell me what to do.” Molly whispers. “I don’t know what to do.”

“I don’t know, Mollymauk.”

“Your gods are assholes then.”

Molly pulls away then. Getting to his feet and walking away toward the top of the hill. The moon shines silver on the grass and Molly lifts his face into the light like you turn into the sunshine in the summer. The breeze feels warm across his skin, brushing his hair from his brow. He shivers and presses his hands to his breastbone and tries to remember the feeling of metal punching through him, of the final moments beneath the snow-flurried sky on a frozen road so long and not so fucking long ago.

“Well, fuck you too,” Molly whispers. Louder, he says, “Send me back.”

“Molly, you don’t have to –”

Molly spins around. “Send me back! Send me back right n–!”

Fjord is staring down at him.

Molly feels a dull hum of magic across his skin, glowing through him and his heart pulses fast in his chest like it’s just come coughing back to life and it’s only then Molly remembers to fucking breathe. He jerks slightly, gasping like someone coming up for air after a deep dive. He coughs at the sudden cold infusion of oxygen. He’s lying in shallow water, clothes soaked, hair soaked. Molly shivers as Caduceus Clay’s final Death Ward breathes across his skin. That last tracery of familiarity dissipates… and then it’s just him and the Leviathan.

Fjord is standing over him, shaking his head slowly, horror in his eyes.

“Fjord?” Molly rasps, too afraid to move. “Fjord, don’t.”

His friend swings one boot over Molly’s body, settles so he’s standing straddling Molly’s waist. Molly raises one hand, palm up as if to ward a blow. He can’t stop the panicked shallow hyperventilation that seizes his lungs or stop the shaking in his hand or the sound of fear that catches in his throat as Fjord kneels down over him. Molly tries to speak again, but can’t get the words out. Fjord grabs his wrist. Effortlessly. Easy. He pushes it aside, forcing his wrist down, pinning it flat in the water over Molly’s head.

“Fjord, listen to me. Or your patron. Whatever.”

Fjord reaches down almost curiously, like you do exploring a new partner’s body, and lays a hand around Molly’s throat. The touch sends a blinding jolt through every dread-sensitized nerve in Molly’s frame. He tastes bile. Feels his eyes going hot, his mouth dry. He can barely get the words out because the thing controlling Fjord is pressing his thumb into pulse of Molly’s carotid artery.

“Wait! Wait, wait. You’re going too fast. If you go too fast I won’t come back. Listen. You have to give me a break. Listen!”

Fjord hesitates. Or rather, the thing staring through Fjord hesitates. His head tilts slightly, like a cat with something under its paw. Molly’s shaking so hard it physically hurts. His entire body aches fear. The possible eternity unraveling before him in a cycle of terror and dying and dark waters.

Desperately he says, “Fjord, are you still here?”

Silence. Just the staring.

“Fjord. Help me –”

Fjord draws his finger across Molly’s neck and opens his windpipe. It’s such a clean cut, so molecularly thin, Molly doesn’t feel it. Just the sudden terrifying sensation of instant pulsing light-headness and liquid warmth. He instinctively grabs his throat with his free hand, fingers sliding over the gaping yawn in his trachea, instantly soaking his hands in blood.

It doesn’t—

He tries to speak, but can’t talk. Fjord staring down at him. Molly closes his eyes and—

“Stop it!” Vax is kneeling over him. They have their hands on Molly’s shoulders, gripping him so tightly their fingers are digging into muscle. The fear in their eyes makes them young and suddenly Vax’ildan doesn’t seem so immortal or ancient or knowing as they shake Molly angrily and yell, “Don’t fucking do that! Mollymauk, listen to me, the reason I asked for this intermediary space was to give you a rest. Okay? Don’t do that.”

“It’s possessing Fjord,” Molly whispers. “He’s been alone with that thing for years. Years. He’s been alone with—”

“And time is fast there,” Vax snaps, cutting him off. “Wait one minute or ten years here and it will be the next moment for him. Don’t run away from me like that. Don’t put yourself in a loop, Mollymauk.”

“Help me remember,” Molly says.

“I can’t. I can’t help with that.”

“Then send me back.”

“No! Molly, don’t—!”

Molly spasms into consciousness, spits blood and for a horrible moment writhes and chokes on warm iron. His spine arches then jolts the other way, and he rolls onto one flank where he immediately vomits red to clear his airway. For a moment he just kneels there coughing and retching. There’s a pair of plain leather boots in front of him, crusted in barnacles and sea life. Molly doesn’t lift his head. Doesn’t move.

Eventually, fingers slide into the hair at the back of his head, slowly, almost gently at first… then closing, twisting into his hair and gripping tight.

“Molly,” Fjord’s voice is shaking. “I can’t stop. You gotta stop coming back.”

Molly shudders. “I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. You don’t want to stay here, friend. C’mon. Anyone can die.”

“No, I mean I can’t!” Molly cries. His fingers curl against the cold, soaking ground. “I can’t control this.”

There’s a low rumble then. Fjord grabs his collar and hauls him to his feet. He’s too hollow with horror to resist and Fjord gathers his jaw between his hands, fingers digging into the nape of his neck, thumbs pressing into the soft skin beneath his cheekbones. A rough handling that somehow… cherishes. Molly’s had lovers hold him like that and the comparison it like having his ribs split again. Fjord’s face is so close to his, they’re sharing the same breath and it tastes like salt.

And then a voice penetrates Molly’s head. Or rather, it emerges fully formed in the center of his brain sure as one of Nott’s bullets and it says: STAY.

“Fjord. Fight it. Please…”

ALONE HERE, says that voice, the words congealing in Molly’s head like a clot. FOREVER.

“Fjord! Gods, wake up!”

DIE FOR US.

Then Fjord yanks Molly’s head back and with his teeth he tears Molly’s throat out in a ripping red –

“FUCK!” Molly is on the ground, in the grass. “FUCK! GODS!”

Hands close on his shoulders. He smells the musk of feathers and leather and someone is kneeling beside him on their knees in the grass with him. Molly retches, but he doesn’t quite because he doesn’t have physical form here, so how could he retch? He breathes frantically. Clutches his throat and shudders.

“Stop,” Vax says softly. “Just take a moment. Okay? Don’t fucking do this to yourself. Please, listen to –”

Molly shoves him away. “Send me back.”

“Mollymauk. You’re not invulnerable. The soul is not invulnerable.”

“Fuck you, Vax’ildan. Send me back to Fjord right now.”

“Molly! I can’t protect you if you –”

Molly wakes up and he’s still in Fjord’s hands, hanging like a ragdoll held by his biceps. There’s blood still wet on Molly’s shirt, shining on the mithril chain that Nott gifted to protect him. For a moment he just… hangs there, limp, too shell-shocked to do anything but lift his chin. There’s light in Fjord’s fingers and that sick slither of healing magic, like his windpipe just finished knitting itself back together.

Fjord is looking at him and his face is a mask of terror, his mouth and teeth a horror of arterial blood. Molly lifts his arms and grabs a fistful of Fjord’s shirt, fingers sinking into the dark, soaking fabric before he slides his hand instead to Fjord’s jaw, cradling his terrified face and it takes him two tries but he manages:

“Fjord? That you?”

“Molly, m’sorry.” He’s breathing shallow, voice strained and shuddering, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I tried to protect –” The words break off as he grips his once roommate tighter. “I tried to so hard to keep all of you away from this. And now you’re here and I don’t know what to do. I can’t do anything. I can’t fucking–”

“It’s… it’s okay,” Molly manages, then laughs. “Well, no, it’s not. It’s terribly fucked up.” Molly swallows hard, heat rising in his eyes. “Are you going to kill me again?”

“Yes.” The syllables come like razors on Fjord’s tongue. His eyes are twisted closed, his expression agonized. “I can’t stop–”

“Hey. Hey, stop that. S’alright.” Molly tugs Fjord’s head down, gently, like he isn’t covered blood. Like it’s not Molly’s blood. Molly presses a kiss to his friend’s forehead and whispers through a smile that’s a reflex born of instinct, “It’ll be alright. We’re in this together now. Okay?”

Then Molly feels a jolt down his arms, a phantom pull and as he watches, staring openly, some invisible force unzips the veins in his wrists and a painless rush of blood floods down his forearm and drips from his elbows. The voice in his head says, DIE FOR US. And Molly can’t do anything but stand there in Fjord’s grasp until he goes lightheaded, then dizzy, then dark and the last thing he feels his Fjord catching hold of him as he falls.

The last thing he hears is Fjord saying, “Stop it. Just stop it. Don’t make me–”

“Molly, stop!”

Vax’ildan is holding him from behind, grappled like they’re trying to hold him back from a bar fight. One arm looped at Molly’s middle and one up around his chest like a bandolier. They’re speaking directly into Molly’ ear, gripping him so tight it aches a little. But it’s good. It’s good, because their arms around his body say that body is whole and his heart and lungs and everything are intact inside of him and he can breathe. He can breathe here even if his corpse is laying shredded somewhere else.

“Stop,” Vax is pleading. Their fingers dig into Molly’s shoulder. “Stay here. Just stay for a second, okay? Listen to me. I’ll get you through this but not this way. Work with me. Don’t do this.”

“Send me back.”

Molly opens his eyes and Fjord is kneeling on top of him, straddling his chest, both hands on either side of Molly’s head like he’s been waiting for him to wake up. He doesn’t say a word. He just takes Molly’s head in his hands, almost gently, thumbs set against his temples – “Fjord,” Molly tries to say, “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s not you.” – then he drives Molly’s skull into the ground with such monstrous fucking force it smashes his head open on the –

Vax is kneeling over him. They’re holding Molly’s head in their hands and they say, “You’re just being stubborn now. You don’t have to do it like this, you idiot. Let me fucking help you.”

Molly give them the finger and whispers, “Send me back, beautiful.”

And Vax looks gutted for a moment and –

Molly wakes up and the Leviathan is waiting for him, staring at him through Fjord’s eyes and the searing, burning starvation in the gaze is insanity-inducing. It puts Fjord’s hand on Molly’s sternum and there’s a flare of arcane light. Molly screams as a necrotic fire bursts into and spreads through the interior of his chest, searing away flesh and sinew until Molly is clawing, choking blind on the tastes of his own disintegrating internal organs before merciful unconsciousness –

Vax’ildan is staring down at him. Their face is blank and helpless, framed by dark hair. They just kneel there with their hands folded on Molly’s chest. They have Molly’s hand between their palms and they say nothing. They just wait and –

Molly wakes up surrounded by a hundred dark specters. The moment he opens his eyes, they seize hold of him. Their touch pulls the life out of him, like a mouth draws blood off a wound and he screams. He twists in their grip, but they hold him fast among them. Their touch absorbs everything. Light and sound and heat. Molly calls wildly for Fjord, for Yasha, Nott, Caduceus, for anything fucking familiar, but there’s just the dark and Molly goes colder and colder and colder until he can’t see or breathe or move and there is darkness on his tongue and then –

Molly is alone on a grassy hill beneath the moon and someone is saying, “Get out of my way, feather butt!” and before he can think that voice sounds familiar, there’s a tug like a string through his heart and –

Molly opens his eyes.

His sitting in the water. He can feel his left arm hanging slack, his fingers submerged, his knees drawn up a little like someone pulled him into that position. Someone is holding him tightly. Fjord is kneeling on the ground and he’s got one arm protectively around his waist, the other looped around Molly’s shoulders, pressing Molly in against his chest. Fjord’s curled around him as if to shield him and Mollymauk can hear his heart humming through the cold fabric of his tunic. His hands where he’s touching Molly are warm, almost hot, like he’s staving off cold or… or like he’s just finished pressing healing magic into his blood yet again.

“I’ll do it,” he’s saying but like it’s killing him. “I’ll do it, damn you. Just stop. Stop.”

Molly feels drunk on regeneration but glances sidelong… and sees shadows slithering around them, a black serpentine coil of darkness that consumes all light. Utter darkness nested on all sides of them. Molly looks away from that and up at Fjord instead. He tries a sleepy smile.

“Hey, roomie, what’s happening?”

“Hey, Molly.”

“That sucked.”

“I know. Won’t happen again.”

Molly grins but he feels the fraying panic behind the exhaustion, sliding inside him like a razor down skin. “Gonna make it easy on me?” Molly swallows and turns his face against Fjord’s collarbone, like that will stop anything, like the comfort and warmth is anything but a precursor to what comes next. “Don’t ditch me with your asshole patron again.”

“Yeah. Yeah of course. I’m here.”

Molly shivers, pulls his arms up and tucks them around his middle for a second.

“You cold?”

Molly laughs ragged. “Really?”

Fjord says nothing, but Molly feels a fresh rush of heat lathe over him, hot as summer and it feels good, but it can’t reach the ice inside him, driven there like a nail through his gut. Shivers begin in his hands, travel up his arms, until he’s shaking so hard he has to clench his teeth to stop them chattering. Fjord grips him more tightly. Wordlessly.

“You know,” Molly mumbles. “If you wanted to keep me away, kissing me in a dream was a really shitty way to do it. Honestly, play to your audience, man.”

Fjord huffs this sound that’s almost a laugh. “Sorry. I don’t remember you flirtin’ with dark specters that threaten to kill you. Must have been between Zedash and Hupperdook or somethin’.”

“Oooh, I’m very open-minded,” Molly says, clenching his eyes shut. “And I told you I thought you were pretty pretty. Didn’t I? Back then?”

“N-no. You never told me that.”

“Eh.” A shrug. “Well, now you know.” Molly shivers. “Uh, can you… can you make this quick, Fjord?”

Fjord says nothing. Molly feels him trying to think of something, anything, any comfort at all… but in the end, he just leans down, his hand sliding up Molly’s neck, to his temple. There his thumb presses, like you smooth a stamp on a letter, and the contact triggers an aneurism and he –

Jester is staring down at him.

He stares. The moon halos her head in silver. Her hair is longer and wilder than he remembers, the freckles more pronounced in her dark blue skin and the laugh lines at her mouth so much deeper. She’s got a scar across her nose and there are silver disks the size of a thumb print braided into her hair. She’s wearing a gray cloak that shimmers with all the colors in the rainbow and a few colors that Molly has no words for. She smells of carnival food, like walking past a fair in a childhood he doesn’t have.

“Hey, hey,” she whispers. Her eyes shine brighter than they should. She’s sitting with him in exactly the same way that Fjord was, his weight braced against her chest, her arms around his shoulders and middle, holding him tight. She whispers, “I traveled a long way to find you, Molly.”

“Jester?” Molly touches her hair, rubbing a small section between his fingers. “How are you here?”

“I just travel everywhere now. And your champion put out a call.”

“My champion?” Molly murmurs.

Jester glances sidelong and Molly follows her gaze… to Vax’ildan. Standing a ways off up the hill, arms folded, and looking both deeply annoyed and deeply relieved. But what catches Molly’s eye isn’t that but rather the towering figure standing behind them. Nearly two heads taller than the raven knight, a figure in a dark green cloak, the cowl pulled low over their eyes. They’re smiling just a little and Molly can’t explain the sensation of familiarity. Like he should know who they are but doesn’t.

He has to look away back to Jester. “Who is that?”

“The Traveler is with me,” Jester says. “Wherever I go, he follows.”

“Your god is just standing over there?” Molly laughs a little, voice cracking. “That’s so ridiculous!” He laughs again and hooks his arms around her shoulders, yanking her into a massive bear hug. “But I don’t even care. I’m just so bloody happy to see you.”

He can hear Jester’s throat tighten around her words.

“You too, Molly.” She hugs him so tight it aches and he just presses his cheek into her neck and inhales what feels like the first real breath he’s had in weeks. She rocks for just a second, holding him. “Oh, maaaan, this has been shitty. This has been the shittiest shit for you. I can’t believe they did this to you.”

“Gonna tell me you’re sorry?”

“Never.” She pulls back a little and this time her eyes are shining and wicked. “Because you found him for me.” She grips his shoulders, speaks urgently. “Uk’otoa is too hungry to think, so it can’t see it’s opened a road. It’s been a while since we’ve seen one another, but here’s the thing: a road is all I need now.” Her smile broadens and she whispers, “Mollymauk? Servant of the Moonweaver, the protector of secret meetings. Can you show me the path to Fjord?”

“My god is the champion of lovers and trysts.” Molly, even through his exhaustion, manages a grin. “You think she’s got your back?”

“Yes,” Jester says, beaming. “She sure the fuck does.”

And then she kisses Molly on the cheek and –

Molly opens his eyes and he’s on fire.

His skin seethes with light, like flame off an accelerant and he burns an endless heatless blue. He stands up. A sourceless wind billows around him, tearing at his clothes and hair while the cyclone of light twists in ribbons of brightness around him. The waters part at his feet and through the fire he can see something in the darkness – something massive and black, a great bristling flank moving across his entire field of vision and every 50 meters or so a great yellow eye passes, staring directly at him.

The serpent, he knows, is wrapped around him, endlessly consuming itself and everything around it.

“Fjord!” Molly shouts into the darkness. “I remember this time! I remember what I’m doing here!”

That voice rumbles through his head again, dark and chaotic but… muted now. Not maddening like before: CANNOT BE HERE.

“Fjord!” Molly steps forward, the waters moving away from his boots with each step. “Fjord, we’re not alone down down here! I’m not bloody leaving you. C’mon!”

HE BELONGS TO THE SEA.

“Fuck you! You aren’t the sea!” Molly shouts, pointing a blazing finger at the shadow. “You’re a snake with delusions of godhood and you won’t hold up to a real deity!”

YOU ARE ALONE.

“You know,” Molly says, sensing he has an audience, “I serve the Moonweaver. Goddess of misdirection. Maybe you don’t know this but in any magic trick there’s three parts.” Molly holds up one finger. “A Pledge. That’s when you show someone something ordinary. Like a carnie that died ten years.” Molly holds up a second finger. “The Turn. You make that ordinary thing interesting. Like maybe you make him unkillable, so a death-addicted demi-god takes a good look.”

YOU ARE ALONE, roars the darkness.

But Molly ignores it and holds up a third finger.

“The Prestige is the good part. Cause you’ve been looking at me…” Molly can feel warm wind at his back, can smell something sweet as kettle-corn on an autumn day, and on a breeze that blows down a road that doesn’t yet exist, he hears a laugh. So he says “You shouldn’t have taken Fjord away from her.”

And Jester Lavorre says, “Give him back to me, you ugly fucking lizard!”

And the darkness ignites.

The pocket dimension tears open and through the howling gap of light and quantum screaming, a blue-skinned woman in a cloak and frilly skirts bursts forward. She lands on two feet, her hands extended in front of her and instantly all around her a thousand motes of light shiver and burst into a thousand-thousand glittering lollipops each the size of a battle shield. They gleam razor sharp against the shadow. She burns with the same blue light that covers Molly and she says, “We’re not leaving without him!”

NO.

“Give him back to us or I’ll tear you apart!”

YOU CAN’T.

“Yes, I fucking can!” The world shudders. Jester’s eyes are blazing suns, burning white and light issues from her throat like starlight through a tunnel of mirrors. Molly feels a hand suddenly on his shoulder and there’s whisper of green fabric though the corner of his eye, a ghost of a smirk in his head, like a fading memory. But Jester is shouting and he can’t turn his head to see if her god is, indeed, standing behind her. “YOU HAVE UNTIL THE COUNT OF THREE, STUPID!”

She points at the dark before her.

“ONE!”

The swarm of lollipops beings into spin, then speed into swirling orbit, spinning around the two of them until the there is a cyclone of spiritual weaponry screaming through the air.

“TWO!”

They’ve moving so fast now that their motion and light is becoming a blur, a dome of light that eclipses the dark. The shadow beyond the cyclone is recoiling from the radiant fire that now burns away the water, the darkness, and the cold. Everything smells like sugar and feels like summer and Molly can feel it like a rush of magic through him the want to just move, to run, to tear through some unknown passageway to a different destination. The light is blinding now. Burning. Jester opens her hand.

“THR—!”

Reality pops.

Molly blinks.

He’s standing in the middle of the road. The roar is gone, the sudden silence almost deafening before the low whisper of the surf comes through and the far cry of gulls beyond the breakers. There’s sunshine against his forehead and shoulders and there’s still blood all over his armor and clothes but the dark is gone. He’s facing the water, the tide lapping at his boots where he stands at the edge of an uninterrupted ocean and he can see where the road at his feet disappears down into the water. It takes him a moment realize… it looks a lot like the road through Port Damali to the Crushing Deep.

But the Deep has vanished.

There is nothing but the ocean and the shimmering of sunlight in the waves.

“Molly?”

He blinks again, turns and looks over his shoulder.

Jester is standing in the road behind him. Beside her, wearing strange leather armor and looking… almost exactly like he did ten years ago, stands Fjord. For a moment, Molly just stands there, covered in blood and feeling the breeze against his face. Staring at his two friends who, he notices, are holding hands very tightly. Yeah,he thinks, that makes sense. Okay.

“This real?” Molly asks.

Jester has tears on her face. She can’t seem to speak so she just nods furiously.

“Okay,” Molly says. He looks at Fjord. “You good?”

“Yeah, Mollymauk. I’m okay.”

Molly realizes his hands are shaking.

“It’s over?” Molly asks.

“Yes, it’s over,” Fjord says. “He’s gone. I can feel it. I know. It’s done, Molly. I can’t...” He looks at Jester, like he’s never seen anything like her before. “I can’t believe you just did that.”

Jester holds out a hand. “You’re okay, Molly. Yasha and the others are on their way. I know it. I promise.”

“Good,” Molly says.

And that’s when Molly’s legs kind of give out.

He falls to his knees and he closes his eyes and the stones under his palms are sun-hot and for a moment there’s nothing but that heat and the sound of Jester and Fjord saying his name. And it’s real. It’s real. It’s real as Jester and Fjord grab hold of him and Jester’s magic breathes burning mint and healing fire through his veins. Fjord is gripping his head, shaking him a little saying, “Hey, hey look at me, Molly. Molly. Stay here. Stay with us.”

The sun is burning hot.

Molly is freezing cold.

He hears Yasha’s voice at a distance, yelling his name and he thinks, Now both of us are Deathless.

Then he passes out.

part 8

#critical role #mollymauk tealeaf #the mighty nein #fjord #jester lavorre #long post #cr2

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