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anistarrose · 4 years

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Chapter Summary: Barry gets a job offer. Kravitz sees a new side of the moon. Taako has a long-overdue chat with his umbrella.

Characters: Kravitz, Taako, Barry Bluejeans, Angus McDonald, Magnus Burnsides, Merle Highchurch, Noelle | No-3113, The Raven Queen, The Director | Lucretia, misc. BoB cameos, Julia Burnsides, Garyl

Relationships: Taakitz, Angus McDonald & Taako, Barry Bluejeans & Kravitz, Kravitz & Angus McDonald

Lately, I’ve been thinking of this fic as a story told in two acts. They’re not necessarily going to be equal in length, but this chapter is definitely the end of Act One.

***

“That’s basically the whole story, Your Majesty,” Kravitz concluded, after several minutes of talking at speeds that no being who needed to breathe could hope to match. Barry and Noelle stood on either side of him, mustering the most innocent expressions he’d ever seen on the faces of a lich or a robot, respectively. “Not that I’d blame you for having follow-up questions, because… well, holy shit.”

Holy shit, indeed, the Raven Queen agreed. A projected image of her visage was floating above a circle of five perfect raven feathers, having been carefully arranged on the cave floor by Kravitz. Istus said we were approaching unprecedented times, but…

She sighed. Well, I must admit that with the apparent exception of Istus, we gods hardly think about what lies outside our planar system. It’s… inconvenient, uncomfortable, how we hold so much power in this world yet understand so little about what’s beyond it. This threat, this Hunger, is news even to me — but didn’t you already know that, Barry, from all the Celestial Planes you’ve seen invaded before?

Barry nodded. “Yeah. I never saw stuff like that directly, of course, but Merle’s a cleric, so… he had his ways of knowing it was never a pretty picture.”

The Raven Queen let out a sigh, like wind escaping from beneath a whole flock’s wings. Then I have more important things to do than reconcile your undeath with the laws of this world, and you have more important things to do than defend yourself to me. Barry, Noelle, you are free to go at least until the apocalypse is averted — but if we get through that, and only then, I’d like you to start thinking about accepting jobs in the Astral Plane. Whatever state the world is in after the Hunger arrives, Kravitz and I will probably need your help.

Barry went dead silent, while Noelle’s whole display lit up with excitement.

“Are we talking afterlife office jobs,” she asked, “or something more along the lines of what Kravitz does?”

“We’ve got plenty of open positions, honestly,” Kravitz explained. “You could probably pick either.”

“Huh,” Barry finally muttered, so soft that Kravitz could’ve missed it. “I — I appreciate the offer, but — I gotta know one thing before I even consider it. Will I have to — to bring in any of my family? Anyone from the Starblaster?”

I’d like to speak with them all eventually, and I may ask you to facilitate that, the Raven Queen replied, but they won’t be punished.

Barry nodded. “Okay. That’s… that’s something I’m willing to consider, then.”

I hope you find out what happened to Lup. Her location is concealed from even me, but I know she’s never entered my domain, so I believe you’ll find her out there somewhere.

Barry’s eyes flickered, shedding drops of light that ran down his face for a few seconds before they coalesced back together. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

It’s the least I could do. From here, my priority shall be to warn the rest of the pantheon, but we’ll be in touch. The Raven Queen’s visage disappeared with a clap of thunder and a gust of wind that lifted the feathers into the air, carrying them back to Kravitz’s waiting hands as her voice boomed throughout the cave one last time. Good luck, my children.

“That went well, right?” Noelle asked when the echoes faded. “That felt pretty good for a conversation with the death goddess.”

“She’s a lot more reasonable than most gods, I think you’ll find,” Kravitz concurred. “But what’s the plan now? Because other than heading up to the moon, and bringing the boys back down for you to tell them what little you can, I haven’t got a lot of ideas.”

“I dunno either. I don’t like keeping them in the dark either, but it’s very little we can tell them aside from —” Barry paused. “Wait. You can go on the moonbase?”

“Yes? At least, no one’s tried to stop me. I guess I can see why you wouldn’t be allowed up there, but —”

“It’s more than a ban and a wanted poster keeping me off! It’s an anti-undeath ward —” Electricity crackled inside Barry’s silhouette, and he let out a laugh that could’ve woken the not-yet-reanimated dead. “But you, Kravitz, apparently possess enough celestial energy to balance out the undead elements of your soul — which is perfect! It changes everything!”

“Uh,” Kravitz began, reflexively taking a step back, “I think I’m missing some context here —”

“That ward’s the only thing stopping Barry from sneaking onto the moonbase and stealing the ichor he needs to inoculate his family!” Noelle explained, totally unperturbed by Barry’s mad scientist laugh. “I couldn’t steal it for him because the same ward keeps me from leaving my fuse for very long, and this robot body’s not exactly stealthy — but you can decorporealize for as long as you want on the moon, right?”

“I’m not sure I’ve actually tried,” Kravitz replied, rubbing his chin as the puzzle pieces fell into place, “but I’ve never had issues getting through anti-undead wards before, corporeally or otherwise!”

Barry rubbed his hands together, smoke and sparks pouring out from between them — but for the first time, Kravitz was sure he saw a glint of a smile flash on Barry’s face.

“Then what are we waiting for?” Barry asked. “Let’s head back to my place and plan a heist!”

***

“So what do we do now, Fantasy Columbo?” Taako asked, staring at the Umbra Staff in his hands. “I didn’t hear any jingles start playing for solving some sick higher power’s umbrella lich puzzle — how does this help us? What does it change?”

This should have been a revelation, Taako knew. This should have changed everything. But his mind was lagging behind his racing heart, struggling to fit together puzzle pieces that he knew should connect. Struggling to understand why he cared so fiercely about an evil ghost of an evil wizard being trapped in the arcane focus he’d looted her corpse for.

“I… I guess we should try to communicate with her?” Angus suggested. “She’s a Red Robe, so she must have something to do with —” He gestured wildly from his notepad, to Taako’s head, to the incinerated coffee table. “With all of this. Right?”

He removed his glasses, wiping off drops of sweat, and Taako realized that Angus, the smartest person he knew, had ran into an uncomfortable mental wall of his own — and after just a split second of looking at Angus’s pained expression, Taako made a decision.

“Hey, kid. I need your arguably expert opinion real quick — Magnus and Merle aren’t smart enough to be memory-wiping masterminds, right?”

“Oh, absolutely not, sir. We both know they’re no good at keeping their lies straight.”

“Could you check in on them for me? And try to bring ‘em back here — but, uh, only if you can do it without Lucretia or Davenport spotting you, and I need you to really focus on looking out for them. I don’t know who else I can trust with this —”

With a huge, determined smile on his face, Angus saluted. “I won’t let you down, sir!” He looked far less pained as he slunk out of the room, and Taako breathed a sigh of relief.

“Okay. Kid’s gonna be alright with his mind off of this, and now we can have some peace and quiet, Lup.” His mouth lingered on the name Lup but his mind didn’t, giving no thought to the affection he instinctively voiced. “So… let’s chat?”

***

Lucretia’s office looked just as Barry had described, and not all that different from the Reclaimer’s dorms in terms of architecture. The sole occupant was not the Director herself, but a mustached gnome man who sat at the oversized desk, focusing intently on a game of solitaire. He didn’t even look up as Kravitz’ soul drifted past, steering clear of the desk and floating right through a heavy, closed door.

Kravitz kept inside the left wall of the corridor — Barry may not have reported any traps in this stretch, but the puzzle that Barry had reported was nowhere to be seen, and Kravitz knew a suspiciously empty-looking hallway when he saw one. He phased through a second door at the end of the chamber, ignoring the computer that looked even more foreign to him than his Stone of Farspeech, and recorporealized inside a second office.

This close to the source of the ward, a spinning disk imbued with radiant energy, Kravitz could finally feel its influence — a faint burn and refreshing cold that coexisted, an antipathy towards his undead body and a resonance with the Raven Queen’s blessing. Tempted as he was to knock down the disk and short-circuit the ward, it wasn’t poised do much besides mildly distract him, and he was making this visit with a much different goal — one that he’d expose, if he ended up dramatically trashing someone else’s holy symbol.

At the far end of the office sat a murky tank, and above that tank, an alarm was ringing. A few feet to the alarm’s left, a needle punched holes in a steadily scrolling paper, recording what Kravitz inferred to be times and intensities — and there was a lot of information to infer from, because the paper output had not just reached the floor, but piled up to almost waist height.

A massive volume of alarms had clearly been accumulating, and someone — presumably Lucretia — was far too busy to check on every message. Ever since he’d died, Kravitz had been notoriously bad at keeping track of dates, but a quick comparison with the dates at the bottom of the pile and the dates of the current output revealed that the alarms had started trickling in last night, before a massive influx took shape only about an hour ago.

This was all very interesting to the part of Kravitz that loved a good mystery, but his pragmatic side won out, knowing this alarm could attract unwelcome attention at any moment. He switched his attention to the contents of the tank — which appeared just like Barry had said it would, but was still plenty fascinating. A jellyfish floated in murky ichor, illuminated from within by a dark purple nebula pattern, and recoiling away from Kravitz as he rested a hand atop the tank.

“Now, now. It’s alright,” Kravitz murmured, in the same tone he might use to calm a distressed soul. “No need to be scared…”

The baby Voidfish hummed two chords, far lower and louder than Kravitz had expected from such a tiny creature — but music, at least, was something Kravitz knew he could work with. He summoned his scythe in the form of a lute, plucking out a peaceful melody he’d been fond of for hundreds of years… and only a few bars in, the Voidfish began to echo him, humming along with increasing volume.

“I’m just here to do my friends a favor,” Kravitz promised. “It won’t take long at all.”

The Voidfish seemed to relax, so Kravitz let go of his lute, allowing it to float at his side with a faint blue aura suspending it in air. He pulled a canteen from beneath his cloak, slowly submerging it in the tank until it was full to the brim with ichor — probably a slight excess, but he’d rather have too much than not enough.

“See? All done,” he whispered, reattaching the canteen’s cap. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

The Voidfish hummed the refrain of his song once more as he reformed his scythe, and as if to say farewell, waved a tentacle in his direction as he stepped through the portal off the moonbase.

Just a moment later, the very second Kravitz’s feet hit solid subterranean ground, Barry was at his side with a barrage of questions. “How did it go? Have you got the ichor? Did anyone see you?”

“Good, yes, and no in that order,” Kravitz replied, handing Barry the canteen. “The only thing I’m worried about is… well, you’ve seen how Lucretia has an alarm system in her office, right? It’s going a little haywire right now — and has been since last night.”

Barry’s relief morphed into frustration mid-relieved sigh. “I was hoping we could avoid that, since the boys haven’t had a run-in with me in a couple days — but I guess someone’s still trying to remember something, and it won’t be long ‘til Lucretia picks up on it. We gotta get a move on.”

“I did talk to Taako about the stars disappearing last night, come to think of it,” Kravitz recalled. “I hope he’s not still hung up on that, but it sounds like he might be.”

“Shoot, that coulda done it. No fault of your own, obviously.” Barry sighed again, picking up a couple of scrolls from his desk and placing them on a much more neatly organized bookshelf. “Sorry for the mess, by the way. You and Noelle have been my only visitors so far this whole decade.”

Kravitz had seen Barry’s home before he left for his heist on the moon, and it had already been pretty respectable as secret lairs went. Aside from the stalactites and the dubiously legal cloning pod, it had looked more like a disheveled academic’s study than a necromancer’s dungeon — but in Kravitz’s absence, Barry had apparently gotten up to some spring cleaning. He’d draped a sheet over the pod, which was still glowing bright green and far from innocuous, and somehow gotten his hands on a decent-quality couch, either from a pocket dimension or a conjuration spell or gods knew what else.

“Before you got involved, my plan never involved the boys coming in here while they could remember me,” Barry admitted. “They’d still be far from seeing me at my worst, but — well, I dunno if I can make this place look welcoming, exactly, but I’d rather not make them worry about me ‘cause of it.”

“If it helps, this is easily the nicest cave I’ve ever seen a lich holed up in,” Kravitz said, which got a quiet laugh out of Barry.

“Yeah, I bet it is.” He opened the canteen, pouring a modest sample of the ichor into a glass vial. “Hard to believe this is happening so suddenly, but… I think now’s the time. Lucretia could catch on at any minute, and I — I’ll be ready by the time you get back, I think.”

“Good luck remodeling,” Kravitz told him with a nod, and tore open a portal back to the moon.

***

“So… let’s chat?” Taako suggested. He didn’t know what kind of reply he was expecting, but he had to admit it stung when the Umbra Staff didn’t move an inch.

“Okay, what you do isn’t exactly chatting. That one’s on me. Can you just give me a sign, a little poltergeisting or something, if you’re listening?”

Still nothing, which continued to hurt more than it should have.

“Are you mad at me? I thought you smacked me in the face today to get my attention! ‘Cause you wanted to talk, but…” He glanced away from the umbrella in his lap. “I guess you really hate Kravitz, don’t you? And I was helping him hunt you, even before we started dating…”

He sighed. “And you’re only here because I stole from your grave! What was I even thinking? Of course you hate me, and maybe I half-deserve it —”

The Umbra Staff twitched in his hands, subtly yet so abruptly that he jumped to his feet with a yelp and dropped it onto the floor. It spun over ninety degrees as it fell, landing to point at the shelf of seldom-used spell components that Taako and Merle shared.

“You… want me to cast something?” Taako knelt on the rug, gently wrapping a hand around the handle but not raising the umbrella from the floor. He didn’t feel even the slightest movement. “Hey, if you’re not mad at me, then… do something. Do anything.”

He thought the handle might’ve trembled slightly, but wasn’t sure — it could’ve just been wishful thinking. “Okay, flip side. Do something if you are mad at me.”

This time, he was certain there was no response. “Okay, I’ve narrowed it down to either ‘you’re not mad’ or ‘you don’t want to talk to me,’ but I don’t get why you’re being so subtle about this. I mean, I’m not asking you to cast Sunbeam on my boyfriend again, but I know you could be giving me more obvious signs than —”

He happened to glace back at the component shelf, noticing the chest of spare wands he’d stockpiled — arcane foci, just like the ones the Umbra Staff consumed — then just like that, it clicked, and there was finally one quirk of his rogue umbrella that Taako had an inkling of an explanation for.

“Unless… you can’t give me a bigger sign because I haven’t beaten a magic user in a while!” he gasped. “You’re not trying to ignore me — you’re running out of power!”

He unlatched the little chest, grabbing two cheap wooden wands and snapping them both — and sure enough, the Umbra Staff inverted with more vigor than Taako had seen from it all day, swallowing them whole.

“Better?” Taako asked, and a tiny pink flame sparked to life at the tip of the umbrella. Lup must’ve summoned it with a variant of Prestidigitation, because it smelled less like smoke and more like comforting home cooking.

“Now I know why you chose me instead of Merle at the cave! You’re an adoring fan of Sizzle it Up!” Taako teased, and the Umbra Staff bonked him on the head. “Okay, fine, maybe not. Gods know that’s not the only thing I’ve got going for me over Merle.”

He glanced around the room, rubbing his chin. “I was going to say you could turn that flame on and off real fast, send me a message in Fantasy Morse Code, but then I remembered I don’t actually know Fantasy Morse that well. Maybe you could, like, burn something into the wall —”

The flame atop the Umbra Staff intensified, excited.

“But I guess we’d run out of space real fast — never mind explaining it to Lucretia, yikes! We’d be toast… just like the walls.”

The flame died down, replaced with a disembodied, glowing red Mage Hand. With an upturned palm, it made a motion that Taako guessed was meant to convey a shrug and a then what?

“Oh, you didn’t tell me you could do Mage Hand from in there too! I can work with that!”

He made a beeline for the dorm kitchen, ripping open a fresh bag of flour and dumping it directly onto the counter. “I really don’t wanna leave written evidence, so you write stuff in this, and I’ll erase it when you’re done. Sound good?”

Lup squeezed his shoulder, then traced four words in the flour.

I’ve never hated you

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Taako muttered, pretending he couldn’t feel his whole chest seizing up. With a bare hand, he wiped the flour flat, and only sent a little flying onto the floor accidentally. “I… I wanna let you out. Because this is a really inconvenient way to talk, but — but also ‘cause I know you didn’t mean to get trapped in there, and living inside your arcane focus sounds like it’s the pits. Is there a way I can free you?”

yes but not right now

“Why not?”

no liches on the moon

“Oh, have they got wards to block you off or something? I guess we wouldn’t be able to talk at all if I freed you, and that… that wouldn’t be great.”

I’d miss you :(

“Yeah, I can imagine,” Taako replied, and he said it before he meant it. The figure of speech slipped out right away, ingrained after years of overwhelmingly insincere conversations, but his emotions caught up to him more slowly — starting with the loneliness and the longing, before they ate away at him and left an emptiness behind, a dread of never being whole again and a temptation to tear the whole world apart, because what would he have left to lose?

It ended with a throbbing skull, with static clouding the peripheries of his vision, with a mind that couldn’t fathom why missing someone would hit so close to a home that should have never existed. The last year notwithstanding, he couldn’t remember a time where he’d be caught dead missing someone’s company… but now all he could think, all he could feel, was I’m not losing you again.

“There’s gotta be a workaround — right, Lup?” he managed. “Like, is there a way I could take the wards down?”

maybe, but

Lucretia would notice

“I’m gonna go out on a limb, and assume… she wouldn’t be too thrilled to know you’re here.”

Lup took longer to reply than usual, erasing the first few letters of her response to start over several times.

it’s so complicated

don’t think I can explain

“Right. Of course. ‘Cause of the Voidfish.” Taako rubbed his cheek, expecting to wipe away stray splotches of flour — but instead, he felt his fingers grow damp with tears that he knew weren’t just from the pain of his headache.

“I — I don’t know what to do, Lup. I want to help you, but Kravitz is probably in danger because of me so I have to make sure he’s okay, and I know he won’t like me helping you — then there’s Angus and Magnus and Merle, too, I have no clue if any of them are in as much trouble as us. And I just… I can’t shake the feeling that there’s more to this. That the worst of all the bombshells still hasn’t dropped, and I’m about to lose all you while I still don’t know who I am, or who I can trust besides —”

The fingers of Lup’s Mage Hand interlocked with his, and it was a strange sensation — fuzzy and only about half-tangible, as simple magic constructs were expected to be, but warm like a living hand despite the lack of flesh and blood. Taako couldn’t say how long he was silent, just focusing on just that warmth and the inexplicable nostalgia that accompanied it, before he finally asked: “What do you think I should do?”

Lup withdrew her hand slowly, but didn’t hesitate nor erase as she traced four new words:

find Barry

trust Barry

“…I’m glad I’ve got you, Lup, ‘cause I never woulda come up with that on my own,” Taako muttered, chuckling in spite of himself. He didn’t doubt for a second that Lup’s advice was worth following, but he had to admit it was ridiculous how every time a problem came up in his life, someone insisted it could be solved by tracking down a denim-clad lich. “Do you know any of his favorite hangouts, or —”

As Lup’s Mage Hand zipped back into the Umbra Staff, Taako didn’t quite notice the scythe rending space behind him, but he whirled around at the sound of feet hitting the ground and an incredulous voice speaking up.

“Uh, Taako?”

Kravitz carried himself with considerably less poise than usual, wearing a tattered suit that had presumably once seen better days, but he appeared otherwise unscathed, and Taako’s heart jumped for joy.

“I — I — I’m sorry?” Kravitz’s words sounded less like an apology, and more like a sincere question of whether or not he should be sorry for intruding. “I should’ve just portalled to the hallway and knocked. I didn’t mean to walk in on — on whatever this is —”

Before he could stammer another adorably confused word, Taako rushed in for a hug — never mind how crazy he knew he looked, covered in flour and inexplicably teary-eyed over an umbrella.

“Holy shit, I can’t believe — I was so worried about you. I thought for sure you were in trouble and it was all my fault — it was all because —”

Kravitz slipped a cool, but unusually not cold hand under Taako’s hat, mussing up his hair to match the rest of his appearance. “I won’t lie, Taako — there were moments today where I was worried for me. But it turned out to all be a misunderstanding, which is always a pleasant surprise in my line of work — and even better, if you can believe it, one of my new friends knows what’s up with those deaths you can’t remember!”

Kravitz was beaming, but Taako’s blood ran cold like he was the dead man walking. Just when he’d been so sure, so relieved, that he hadn’t dragged Kravitz into the Voidfish conspiracy after all, it turned out that Kravitz had sleuthed his way right to its very center.

No wonder he gets along so well with Angus, Taako thought wryly. Two constantly endangered nerds of a feather.

“This friend can explain it much better than I can, so we’ll visit him by portal — but Magnus and Merle need to hear the truth, too,” Kravitz went on, still seeing no reason not to be enthusiastic. “Are they available?”

“Oh, those clowns? They’re off playing kickball with Angus or something — should be back soon.” Taako knew how Kravitz thought, and knew that Kravitz believed he was doing the right thing by digging up these secrets. He was fulfilling an oath to his goddess and helping Taako get some closure, which should have been great news as far as Kravitz knew — but now he was on the moon, speaking openly about truths a Voidfish had suppressed…

And Taako was conspiring with a lich, soon to be two liches, behind Kravitz’s back. He wasn’t expecting to like the truth behind his eight deaths, if he could even wrap his mind around it — and he had a feeling that when it came time to be judged by the Raven Queen, Kravitz would like the truth and its consequences even less, regardless of whether Taako could think clearly enough to defend himself.

So he withdrew from the hug, wiping the flour — and the incriminating mention of Barry — off the counter with a swoop of his hand. “Oh, drat! Did not mean to do that, ‘cause now I’ll have to mop the whole floor —”

“Okay, Taako. What’s wrong?” Kravitz asked firmly — and Taako didn’t know why he’d thought he’d be able to stall for time, given how Kravitz knew him pretty well, too. “You’re not in trouble with the Queen — I mean, we’ll probably have to invent and then fill out an entirely new form of paperwork about you and your pals, but I told her everything and she’s not mad, I can say that much. Same goes for Magnus, Merle, and — uh, forgive me, just Magnus and Merle. It’s been a long day.”

“Okay, that’s the second piece of good bird news you’ve dropped on me in like twenty-four hours, and I appreciate that,” Taako sighed. “But — okay, listen. We’ve got to be quiet about this, for both of our safety, but I think — I know I’m dealing with more than just memory loss here. I’ll try jumping through your portal and talking to your friend, but I really don’t think I’ll be able to understand —”

“Oh!” Kravitz gasped. “I think I know what you’re talking about — I ran into it with Angus earlier, and we should definitely have a way around it.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “My, uh, my new friend didn’t know if you could understand that there was a second Voidfish — but you heard that, right? It wasn’t garbled?”

Taako nodded frantically. “Yeah, and we’ve gotta get off the moon. If Lucretia finds out we know, I — I’ve got no idea how far she’ll go to keep this under wraps, and that’s the worst part. She’s already suspicious of me, and I —”

He felt a tug from his umbrella, and he cast Message as quickly and subtly as he could, hoping the Umbra Staff’s propensity to absorb magic like a sinkhole would somehow pull his unspoken words to Lup.

I’m not going to tell him about you. Not until I get more information.

Her reply must’ve hardly escaped from the umbrella, being little more than a distorted whisper — Be careful. Love you — but Taako’s legs almost gave out beneath him when he heard her voice, and Kravitz winced.

“We’ve really got to get you out of here, don’t we?” he murmured, taking Taako’s hand — and Kravitz’s skin was definitely warmer than usual, because of course this frankly adorable development would happen when Taako had a million other things on his mind. “You said the other boys will be back soon?”

“I hope.” Taako led the way into the living room, giving a wide berth to the remains of the coffee table. “I sent Angus to go find —”

On cue, the rattle of a doorknob and the sound of Angus’s voice rang out from the hallway. “Sir? We’re back! Could you unlock the door?”

The next sound was the telltale thump of a small child being affectionately shoved aside, followed by Magnus exclaiming: “Hey, I’ve got thieves’ tools now! Gimme a shot at picking it!”

Kravitz pursed his lips. “Don’t Magnus and Merle have their own keys?” he muttered under his breath.

“Of course they do,” Taako sighed, and the door swung open with a snap of his fingers and a Knock spell.

“Magnus, look!” Merle cheered. “You did it!”

While Magnus and Merle high-fived, Angus’s eyes lit up at the sight of Kravitz half-alive and well.

“You’re okay! I’m sorry I didn’t end up finding Noelle, but Taako said he was worried about you, so I started worrying too — did you have a nasty fight with a necromancer or something?”

“…Yes and no,” Kravitz responded after a moment of hesitation, “but I can explain that whole incident later. Right now, I need you all to come with me to —”

“A cool skeleton rave!” Taako butted in. “And… there’s also supposed to be skeleton dogs there! So you guys will definitely wanna get in on it!”

“Yes, exactly!” Kravitz corroborated without missing a beat. “It’s one of those, you know, very rare skeleton raves that receives the Raven Queen’s approval. Once in a century opportunity, so you won’t want to miss it!”

Magnus rubbed his chin. “I dunno about this. How do you pet a skeleton dog?”

“Only one way to find out!” Taako told him, then breathed a sigh of relief when it got an approving nod from Magnus.

“Fair enough! I’m sold!”

Angus narrowed his eyes, so Taako grinned and winked, hoping it came across as equal parts conspiratorial and don’t you dare blow this for me. It must’ve worked, because after a few seconds of surely intense mental calculations, Angus plastered on a convincing innocent smile and gave Taako a thumbs-up.

“Thanks for inviting me on this fun diversion, sir! I’m sure you could’ve come up with a more convincing lie if it was a trap or a prank, so I’m all in!”

Smiling awkwardly, Kravitz turned to the the lie’s final mark. “Merle, my bud, how about you?”

“Are we buds now?” Merle grinned. “You know what, sure! Anything for my bud!”

“Then away we go!” Kravitz tore open a rift and immediately stepped through, beckoning for the others to follow with the single arm that remained on their side of the portal. Magnus leapt through almost immediately, Merle hot on his heels, while Angus approached the rift more skeptically.

“Well, sir,” he announced softly once Magnus and Merle disappeared, “you and Kravitz owe me an explanation… but I trust the both of you.” He took Taako’s hand, and the two of them stepped through the portal together, emerging in a cold, dimly lit cave.

And Taako thought he’d been “moving fast” through a lot of things, lately — through worldview-shattering realizations, into a romantic relationship, into unofficially and semi-accidentally adopting a boy detective — but nothing could’ve prepared him for how fast everything moved in the next minute.

Kravitz faced Noelle and a now-familiar disembodied robe, very obviously struggling to suppress a mood-inappropriate laugh. “Can you believe I was planning to lie to Magnus about skeleton dogs, but then Taako interrupted and independently came up with the same fib?”

“That’s love, baby!” Taako exclaimed, in the moment before the absurdity of the situation dawned on him. “Wait. Why’s Barold here?”

As the rift fizzled and disappeared, Magnus drew Railsplitter, only to whirl around on himself with no idea who to aim at or threaten. “Hey, did we just get kidnapped? ‘Cause I’ve gotta say, this is the last combination of people in the world I expected to team up and kidnap us.”

“It’s not a kidnapping,” Kravitz began, “it’s just —”

“Did you kidnap a child, Kravitz?” Barry interrupted, gesturing at Angus. “When was that ever a part of the plan?! We didn’t need to involve —”

“With all due respect, Mister Bluejeans,” Angus butted in, “Kravitz didn’t technically kidnap me! I knew perfectly well that he was bullshitting, but I decided to come along with him anyway, out of my own free will!” He turned to face Kravitz, adjusting his glasses. “That said, he did deceive and therefore truly kidnap Magnus, Merle, and maybe even Taako by the sound of things — so if he could go ahead and explain his presumably very good reason for doing so, that would be just dandy!”

Barry sighed. “Real smartass kid you’ve dragged into the fate of the universe, huh, boys?”

“He was already involved enough in things that he deserves to know. We’re bringing him up to speed too,” Kravitz declared, and Barry shrugged.

“Alright, sure — but why the hell was there a child on the moon in the first place?!”

“He’s the world’s greatest detective,” Noelle spoke up, and Angus beamed. “I told you about him, remember? He’s the one who figured out that you were amnesiac when you were alive —”

“Oh, I do remember that, though I don’t remember you mentioning his age — so I guess it’s my bad, then, for assuming a secret lunar society would give a flying fuck about child labor laws!”

Kravitz ignored them both. “Merle, Magnus — I’m so sorry for the deception, and Taako, I’m sorry for not saying that Barry was my new contact. I didn’t want anyone eavesdropping on us on the moonbase, and I swear, I will explain myself as soon as I physically can —”

“Hey, hey, it’s cool!” Taako’s words were intended not just for Kravitz, but for Lup within the Umbra Staff, which had started trembling at the sound of Barry’s voice. “I would love an explanation, but I needed Barold’s help anyway, sooo… doesn’t this work out pretty great?”

“Needing Barry’s help is a new one, sir,” Angus commented, but no one in the room looked more incredulous than Kravitz and Barry themselves, who both froze in place.

“Um, that’s — that’s news to me too?” Barry stammered. “But if — if you don’t need any convincing, then…”

He floated a little taller, robe a little less ragged, voice a little more hopeful. “Let’s get you inoculated, bud.”

A glass vial appeared in Taako’s hand, and he sipped the dark liquid inside without a second thought, even though he gagged while passing the vial on to an apprehensive Magnus. No memories rushed back to him like he’d braced himself for, but he thought he felt the nature of his headache change — less like the roar of static, and more like the pressure on a dam about to burst.

“You should really sit down for this,” Barry told him, resting a cold hand on Taako’s shoulder. “Take it as slow as possible. You obviously figured out a lot, more than I thought you would, but you still won’t be ready for —”

“Relax, it hasn’t even hit me yet!” Taako interrupted. “So in the meantime, I can catch you up on this whole funny story about… my… umbrella…”

The metaphorical floodgates shattered, and the deluge of memories swept him off his feet.

Growing up bouncing between relative to relative, growing skilled as chefs and wizards on the road. The IPRE entrance exams, the best day ever, the Hanging Arcaneum, “back soon” —

His head burned as the static was expunged from his mind, displaced by visions of days and months and cycles that just kept hitting him. He was dimly aware of someone, two someones, clutching his arms and lowering him to his knees on the cool cave floor —

“Stay with us, Taako!” Kravitz pleaded, holding Taako’s left hand. “Listen to Barry —”

“I’ll walk you through everything,” Barry — the animal kingdom, learning to swim, “what if she’s just gone?” — promised from his right, clinging to the same arm with which Taako held the Umbra Staff. “Just don’t think ahead. I’ve been through this before, and I can get you through it now, as long as —”

“B-but — but Lup!” Taako cried. “How could I forget —”

“I know, bud,” Barry whispered. “I forgot too. I understand —”

“You fucking don’t understand!” Tears fell from his eyes, but his mouth twisted into a cautious, still half-disbelieving smile. “Barry, she’s right here!”

“What?!” The cave was plunged into red and black, blinding lights and impenetrable shadows, as the lich at its center seemed to fall apart and come together all at once. “WHERE?!”

Taako closed his eyes, and with a strength he didn’t know he had, snapped the Umbra Staff over his knee.

#taz #taz balance #taakitz #kravitz taz #taako taaco #barry bluejeans #lup taaco #angus mcdonald #taz balance spoilers #fic: ftrala #rosalia writes fic

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raineydaywrites · 4 years

Text

curious time gave me no compasses, gave me no signs

Summary: Febuwhump Day 2: "I can't take this anymore"

"Despite the fact that it had been twelve years since the last time, Lucretia still intimately recognized what she was feeling."

Lucretia wakes up in a very familiar place and time that she absolutely should not be in.

Despite the fact that it had been twelve years since the last time, Lucretia still intimately recognized what she was feeling.

"No!" She screamed, horror dripping from her voice, but there was nothing that she could do to stop what was happening. There never had been.

She dropped to her knees and sobbed as soon as she rematerialized on the deck of the Starblaster.

She didn't look up for a long moment, just clutching herself around her middle and crying.

It wasn't fair. They'd won. The Hunger was gone so why- and how- she had been able to see every other member of the crew when this had happened, so how could the Starblaster have even gone anywhere-

She was dragged out of her thoughts by the sound of her family members speaking around her. She couldn't make out anything distinct, not immediately, and she didn't put much effort into trying, figuring it was mostly the same kind of reaction that she was having.

The thing that broke her of that assumption and dragged her mind back into the present was the hand that jerked her head up, until she was looking into Lup's eyes.

"Lucy, what's wrong?" Lup demanded, and that was the moment that Lucretia noticed that everyone else was gathered around her, reaching out as if offering comfort, expressions twisted into concern and confusion.

There was something wrong with this situation, but Lucretia couldn't make sense of what exactly it was. Nobody else was acting like this was the big deal that it was.

"What's wrong?" Lucretia burst, almost laughing, though it sounded halfway to a sob. "I can’t do this again. I can't take this anymore. I can't."

She started shaking her head as she spoke, fresh tears springing to her eyes, and Lup pulled her into a crushing hug.

"Shh," Lup soothed, rubbing gently at Lucretia's back. "I know, babe. It's exhausting. But we can do this. We've got a plan, remember? We just gotta find an inhabited world and we can stop running finally."

What. What the hell was going on?

"No!" Lucretia sobbed louder, as no one else reacted to the comment in a way that indicated that they understood how out of place it was.

“Babe, babe, look at me,” Lup insisted, tilting Lucretia’s head up gently but firmly until they were looking into each other’s eyes. “I know you don’t like this plan. I gotta admit that I don’t love it either. But if we don’t do something, the Hunger will never stop. You know that. The needs of the many, honey. It’s going to be okay.”

“You don’t understand!” Lucretia shrieked.

This was the worst imaginable fate. She had thought there was no such thing as hell but maybe she had been wrong.

They didn’t know. These were not the versions of her family that she knew. The thought ached in her chest. She’d lost them- again. They’d said they’d all be together forever now, but they’d been wrong.

Lup thought she understood but she didn’t. None of them did. They didn’t know what had- was going to?- happened. They’d forgotten.

Her sobs turned to hysterical laughter at the thought. Another piece of evidence in the ‘hell’ column. This was karma- revenge. This was exactly what she deserved.

She felt a wash of magic over her and recognized it as Calm Emotions. Merle. She resisted it, certain that this place wouldn’t allow her any peace. If she let the spell affect her, something horrible would happen, she just knew it.

Her family was clamoring in alarm all around her, reaching for her and pleading with her and trying so hard to comfort her but she was too far gone for that.

Another spell. She tried resisting but she couldn’t. She felt her mind slipping into unconsciousness and she started to weep again as the spell took hold and then she was asleep and knew nothing.

She woke hours later in a daze. Half the crew were gathered at the end of her bed, even though their rooms on the ship were tiny and therefore they must be feeling rather cramped.

"Mornin' Luce," Taako greeted, but she could hear the strain in his voice. He was worried. And no wonder, after the display she'd pulled on the deck.

She ought to say something to them, to reassure them. A lie or the truth, it didn't matter as long as she said something. But she didn't. She just stared at all of them, too listless to do much of anything.

When Taako's words garnered no response at all, Lup came and crouched down next to Lucretia's face, brushing her hair back gently.

"How you doing, babe?" she asked, voice soft as she'd ever heard it.

Lucretia managed a shrug for that, but not much else.

The immediate horror had passed, leaving her with only a deep sense of dread and hopelessness. She knew what was coming, and she didn't know what to do about it.

She remembered how Taako's modifications to her barrier plan had worked, in the end, but so much of that success had come from horrible circumstances. John had no longer been in control of the Hunger. They’d starved it out and weakened it. They’d had help from natives to Faerun that they now didn’t know, and intervention on behalf of gods who were suddenly unfamiliar with them.

It wouldn’t work the same way if they tried to do it now, and there was no way to ensure their safety or success.

And if they failed- then what? They’d have to leave Faerun? A place that was now home to her, that she knew could be home for the rest of them?

And that was assuming she could even convince the rest of the crew to listen to her. But they were convinced that the relics plan was their best option, and they probably wouldn’t want to hear her bring up her barrier plan again, even with modifications.

So what could she do?

She couldn’t participate in the relics plan again. She wasn’t strong enough for that. It had killed her spirit the first time around, and she hadn’t thought of Faerun as home then. And she hadn’t known how deeply it would break the spirits of her family members, either, only guessed.

Now she knew.

She’d try to talk to them about her barrier plan, but they’d never liked it in the beginning (as if she had), and she certainly hadn’t bought herself any trust in her mental facilities by breaking down so severely upon her arrival.

Maybe if they weren’t on Faerun yet, she’d have a better chance. There had been whole cycles between making the plan and implementing it.

But Lucretia could feel that they were already here. The glimpses she’d seen of the world during her break down were familiar enough, as were the sights she now saw out of her bedroom window.

Magnus was talking to her now. She couldn’t hear him.

The thought of wiping their memories again was repulsive. It had hurt so badly when she had seen it as the only option, and now she knew what would happen if she did.

So she couldn’t do that either.

But that left her with nothing.

She had learned that she shouldn’t make plans without her family’s input, but right now all her family had was outdated info.

She would have to tell them. Admit that she wasn’t their version of Lucretia. That their version was- gone, maybe, and replaced by this broken one.

She would have to explain how she hurt them. How they should be glad that version of her was no longer around, because now they didn’t have to live with what she would have done to them.

It had taken so much time and pain for her family to forgive her the first time and now she had to do it again. And it might be easier, because they hadn’t felt those pains, but it still wouldn’t be easy by any means.

“Give her some space,” she heard Davenport say, and, oh. Now the entire rest of the crew had arrived in her room. “Let her breathe.”

“I’m okay,” she finally managed to say. She’d intended to sit up as she said it, but couldn’t quite motivate herself to actually manage it. This was probably good enough.

She heard a surprised snort of laughter. Barry’s, she recognized, even if she wasn’t looking at him anymore.

“Sorry, Lucretia. I’m not- that is- you’re really not,” Barry said, voice apologetic but firm.

“Yeah,” Lucretia agreed, nodding slightly, “you’re right.”

“Well, now I’m really worried,” Taako drawled. “Who are you and what have you done with our Lucy?”

Lucretia knew that he was joking, but she still felt stricken by the words.

Lup punched Taako in the shoulder.

“Shut up, dingus! You’re making her cry!”

Lucretia realized that Lup was right, as she felt a tear drop off her face and hit the blankets under her.

“Cap’n’s right. We should give her space,” Taako said, standing, quickly brushing one hand over the top of her head as he walked past in a comforting gesture. “I’m gonna make some grilled cheese if anyone wants some.”

If she wanted some, is what he meant. That was her favorite comfort food. It was for her. This version of Taako still loved her without reservation, because she hadn’t hurt him the way she was going to. He hadn’t felt her ‘necessary betrayal.’

Oh.

What had been meant by that phrasing? That she had felt it necessary? Or that it had been part of Istus’ plans?

Because that thought brought up a separate fear.

How would Istus feel about anything Lucretia did differently this time? Her gig was controlling fate and time, and she didn’t like people sneaking a glance ahead and subverting her goals.

If she had always planned around Lucretia wiping her friends’ memories, then would she ruin everything by not doing it?

But she couldn’t. She couldn’t do that to them again. Once was a deep betrayal, twice would be unforgivable. Not to mention, it would drive her insane. It had broken her heart the first time. She couldn’t handle doing it again.

Even if- even if it had turned out alright in the end. Even if she did at least know that her family would survive and that they would win that way. Even if she didn’t know any other way to keep them relatively safe.

She still- she just couldn’t.

The rest of the crew had filed out of her room after Taako now, but they had left the door open. She could hear them talking amongst themselves, smell the food cooking.

No. This couldn’t be what she was expected to do. She knew it. From everything the boys had said, Istus wasn’t that cruel as to ask this of her.

Which still left her at a loss for what she was meant to do. She didn’t even know how she’d gotten here. Maybe she was supposed to figure out how to get back to her own time.

She didn’t have the direct connection to the goddess that her boys did, but she could still pray to her- to ask her for guidance.

Please. I don’t know what you want me to do. I don’t know how much you even know about what’s happening right now. But I don’t want to hurt anyone. Please, help me.

Lucretia didn’t get any obvious response, and she wasn’t sure that she should have been expecting one anyway.

But then Taako was bringing her the food he’d made, and Lup was helping, bringing a glass of water and a fold up table to put her plate on. And Captain Davenport and Merle were stopping by to check on her. Magnus had made her a little card reading ‘get well soon,’ and then, as the day was drawing to a close, Barry stepped in, holding up a golden colored journal that Lucretia had never seen before.

“Is this yours, Lucy?” Barry asked. “I know that’s kind of a silly question, but I don’t remember seeing you with it before.”

He set the journal down by her bedside without waiting for an answer.

“I gotta go. Help Lup and Cap’n figure out what this plane is like. Talk to you soon, okay? Feel better.”

And he left before Lucretia could get herself together enough to tell him that it wasn’t her journal.

She reached down for it, beside her bed, flipping it open to the first page to see if she could figure out who it actually belonged to. She didn’t remember seeing anyone else with it either, which was strange.

But when she opened it, the first page was blank, until the words ‘Journal of Farspeech (improved)’ appeared in shimmery script.

And below that, in a variety of handwriting styles, all of which she recognized, encouragements appeared.

“We’re going to fix this.”

“You got this, Luce.”

“You’re not alone this time.”

#febuwhump #febuwhumpday2 #taz balance #lucretia adventurezone #taz lucretia

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queertazsecretsanta · 5 years

Text

A gift for @all-made-of-stardust, created by @gravitaz!

tiles are cold (so am i)

warnings: bad words, allusions to ptsd and other mental illnesses. we’re doing some good old fashioned hurt/comfort, lads

summary: taako looks terrible. he has dark circles so deep that kravitz wonders if he can feel where they indent his skin, and even in the dim light from the few candles in the corner of the room, kravitz can see that his olive skin is at least a shade or two paler than normal. he looks ill, and that sends a spark of anxiety shooting down kravitz’s spine.

There’s familiarity in hiding from love and from warmth and from light. And familiarity, Taako used to find, is comforting.

When everything else failed him and when the world treated him with almost calculated cruelty, he found it simple to take the hand of habit and treat it in the same way. The world was a game of chess, a game of strategy, and he never lost. He was never able to afford to lose. He was all alone, in this world that was dark and dangerous and cruel. He had no one to pick up the knocked over pawns. That was a lesson he learned years ago in Glamour Springs; a lesson he was reminded of in Refuge.

So when Istus changes her tune, naturally, he grows suspicious.

Merle says never to blame the Gods for suffering. But when they are so unknowable, Taako finds it difficult not to. Especially Istus; it’s all well and good being one of her emissaries, after all, but he finds it hard to believe that she can be the Goddess of Fate and yet have no control over the tapestry she weaves.

Of course, the parting of the clouds brings with it a little metaphorical sunburn. Yes, he gains back Lup, and sure, he’s reassured of Kravitz’s love. His family surrounds him, five other little birds, but it all hurts with the sixth there in the centre of it all, his little sister, a woman who stole everything from him for ten years, only to give it back when she got caught. Maybe Istus isn’t feeling so kind yet.

Neither is he, to be quite fucking frank. That kind of thing requires time that he has not yet had, and a fortitude he has had no reason to develop. The wound runs too deep.

Standing in his kitchen at only the Gods know what time shows him exactly how fresh it is, and not just the one she left him with. The light of the moon leaks in through the window, and three candles in the corner cast a strange, flickering light across the room, and Taako’s leaning over a counter trying desperately to catch his breath like he never learned how to breathe. The air in the room is thick and heavy as he tries desperately to push it into his lungs.

This is why he doesn’t fucking sleep any more. He doesn’t even need to do it, so why the hell he subjects himself to it is beyond him.

That’s the funny thing about grieving, and the odd thing about guilt. No matter whether or not a person thinks they might be over it, it never really goes away. Taako knows he isn’t responsible for what happened to those poor forty, and he knows his family is safe and alive and well. But whenever he closes his eyes, that mass grave still haunts his thoughts and all he forgot from those hundred years comes back to pester him in his dreams. He can’t seem to catch a break from it.

“Taako?”

He whips around so fast that he’s surprised the sound barrier doesn’t shatter around him, glamour up like a shield. Kravitz’s tired eyes greet him from the doorway. It makes something ache in Taako’s chest, seeing him this way. He grows more human by the day; skin warmer, breath deeper. He forgets that, while Kravitz is death’s emissary, he is a person and he is softer, gentler, now.

“Oh, Kravitz,” Taako says, as casually as if Kravitz had just come back from a trip to the Fantasy Costco. It’s a pretense he hides behind well; after all, he has had several years to practice, and several years to learn how to work through the guilt that bites at him for his dishonesty. He drops his glamour, but still throws out his best grin. “Bit early to be going to work, isn’t it, babe?”

Kravitz scowls.

Taako looks terrible. He has dark circles so deep that Kravitz wonders if he can feel where they indent his skin, and even in the dim light from the few candles in the corner of the room, Kravitz can see that his olive skin is at least a shade or two paler than normal. He looks ill, and that sends a spark of anxiety shooting down Kravitz’s spine.

“What’s the pout for, handsome?” His boyfriend’s voice catches him off guard. “M’ not allowed to grab myself some eats at three AM, is that it?”

Kravitz, of course, knows better than to go for the bait. “Not even close,” he says, pulling himself up to sit on the island in the middle of the kitchen. The granite is hard and glacial underneath him, but it takes away some of the stone-cold formality of what he wants to say, what he wants to talk about. “It’s your house too, love. You know I don’t mind. I’m just worried, that’s all.”

Taako’s jaw sets hard for just a second, almost imperceptibly. When his speaks, his voice is noticeably softer. “About what?”

“Well, you. This is, uh, extra, even as far as you go.”

“And what about it is extra, exactly?” Taako breezes past him, and in the dim light of the room, Kravitz thinks he spies that Taako’s face is just a little redder, a little puffier than usual. It’s also noticeable in the way that Taako begins to clatter around the place for something, anything to do to stop Kravitz from worrying that something is wrong. It hurts to watch. “Maybe ch’boy just wants some fucking pancakes, alright? That’s nothing to worry about, is it?”

“We’ve been over that already,” Kravitz says. “And the answer was no. But it isn’t that I’m worrying about.” He slides himself down from the countertop, deciding that this is no longer the type of conversation that he can force to be casual. Taako pauses at this motion, seeming to get what it means. The metaphorical gloves have come off. “Look, if you don’t want to talk, then that’s fine. But-”

“Fuckin’- don’t do this to me, bones,” Taako replies, voice a little thick. “Things’re fine, just- you know me. Takes more than a nightmare to take ol’ Taako down.”

Kravitz sighs. “Stop it.”

“What?”

“Fucking- that.”

“I’m not catchin’ your vibe, Krav.”

“Stop pretending you’re okay, Taako.”

Kravitz swears that all the air in the room turns to sponge when Taako puts the spatula in his hand down forcefully. He could probably hear the beat of a hummingbird’s wings, the silence left in his wake is so deafening. “I know you do it because you’re worried about me, too,” he continues, “even though you won’t admit as much. And you know that I’ll never force you to talk about anything you don’t want to talk about. But please, for the love of the gods, stop pretending that everything’s fine. That just worries me worse.”

The silence doesn’t let up, and every moment that passes is another anxious knot that forms in Kravitz’s stomach. He is sure that this will go one of two ways, and neither one is pleasant. Either Taako will put up another wall, another fifty feet for Kravitz to scale, or all of the ones he currently has built up will crumble unceremoniously at his feet. Even though both outcomes make him feel a little sick with worry, he decides in an instant that he will deal with it, if it is what it takes.

However, Taako does something that Kravitz does not account for. He sighs, and his shoulders relax.

“Why didn’t you just fuckin’- just tell me that-” He seems unsure as to how to even start his sentence. And Taako is shorter than Kravitz to begin with, but in the low Candlelight, Kravitz swears that he has never seen Taako look smaller. “You know, I hate it when you’re right. But I don’t- I don’t think I do wanna talk.”

Not yet, anyway. He doesn’t doubt that it’ll all come out on another morning just like this one. Uglier, more raw, less restrained. He’s already had some times like that, but Kravitz has not yet been privy to them all. He thinks that this will come with time. And a warm relief settles in his chest when his boyfriend nods and his hunches are confirmed.

“You got it.” Kravitz dithers for a second. And then, wordlessly, he opens his arms in Taako’s direction.

One thing that Kravitz understands about Taako, even for their comparatively short time together, is that Taako is not massive on physical affection in these situations. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule; the plate of sapphire on Phandalin, Carey and Killian’s wedding, their evening at the Chug N’ Squeeze. But under this circumstance, raw emotional vulnerability is not something Taako handles well. It’s a little bit of a surprise when Taako regards this posture, meets Kravitz’s gaze, and slots himself into the open space in Kravitz’s arms.

They stand like this for what is probably only a few minutes. Kravitz feels as though he could hold Taako forever, though. He doesn’t say this.

“Taako,” he says instead. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” Taako whispers, without hesitation, because it’s the truth. He laughs, and the sound is just a little bitter. “Should fuckin’ act like it, shouldn’t I?”

Kravitz, though, does not laugh. He simply shakes his head. “Sometimes, that just isn’t how things are wired,” he says softly, pressing a kiss to the top of Taako’s head. “And that’s alright. We can rewire it, no sweat. It’s not as if we’re on a time limit here, my love.”

“Does five or six hundred years count as a time limit?”

This time, Kravitz does laugh, and it warms Taako’s veins. “Well, yeah,” Kravitz says, “but I’m literally an emissary of death herself. I think I can pull a few strings to get us a bit longer.”

Taako grins. “Tight.” And then, after a moment’s pause, “Does that mean we have time for me to make these fucking pancakes? Because I don’t know about you, but I’m not really in the mood to go back to sleep.”

Kravitz tucks Taako’s hair behind his ear, presses a gentle kiss to his forehead, and says, “More than enough.”

#all-made-of-stardust #gravitaz #queercandlenights #taz #the adventure zone #taako #kravitz #taakitz #fic #submission

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cuz-reasons · 6 years

Audio

This is every time I could find that any of the boys said they died. Sorry if the audio isn’t the greatest, I had to compress it.

Transcript under the cut because it is very long

[Audio Description: A supercut of every time the Tres Horny Boys and the McElroys say they die, whether in a goof or for real, in The Adventure Zone

Griffin: Maybe the three of you will die, I don’t know

Travis: It kills you!

Griffin: It kills you, you die

Taako: I’m dying. [Laughter, all but Justin]

Taako: I’m literally dead.

Griffin: She kills you instantly. No.

Magnus: He’s going to kill us!

Director: He’s going to murder the three of you. [chuckling]

Director: Thank you for your service, goodbye.

Travis: Magnus’ neck breaks and he dies.

Griffin: Oh, a minus one. Then you die. [laughter] God, Travis, if only you— in trying to discern his fanciness, your nose just starts bleeding, and you fall over and—

Clint: You’re fancied to death.

Griffin: The train de-rails, and everyone on board dies. Three ghosts appear and strangle all three of you to death.

Travis: [providing sound effects, makes a “ka-chunk” noise and breathy exhale]

Griffin: [laughing] …And it depressurizes and you die, I guess?

Justin: I die. I die in fiction.

Griffin: [exhausted inhale] And, I’m dead.

Clint: Uhm… Uh, let’s see. You said 21? I’m, uh, 2 points dead.

Justin: Oh, I’m negative 5, baby. I’m dead as disco.

Griffin: Uh, the three of you walk into, uh, this room singing, uh, showtunes, uh, and everyone inside this building looks at you and kills you. No.

Justin: If you don’t use a character voice, you lose a hit point.

Travis: [laughs]

Clint: Okay.

Travis: You die.

Griffin: You run up, tear the box open and it explodes, you die.

Griffin: Okay. Yeah, this needle, first of all, passes through your suit-

Travis: And you die!

Griffin: It digests it and shits it out. And the shitty axe comes out and kills you.

Travis: Merle's dead. He bled out.

Clint: I'm dead, right?

Griffin: And— he died between episodes.

Griffin: And you are launched out of the cannon, and, yeah, it’s been a while since you’ve done this.

Travis: And he forgot to open the door.

Griffin: And you die and that’s the end of The Adventure Zone

Griffin: The clock tower snaps at its midsection as it chimes its twelfth chime, and it falls over into that large two-story manor at the end of the street with a loud crash. And the ground, as quickly as it expanded, it just falls out beneath your feet. And you’re falling. And you’re burning. And you’re being crushed by the shattered earth as it compresses down into the ground. And you hear an anguished scream come from something massive and furious, and all three of you have died.

Justin: I pull out a gun and shoot the two of them and shoot myself.

[Riotous laughter]

Clint: [Sing-song] Reboot!

Justin: Starting again.

Griffin: and then just like that, the ground compresses. And it pulls you down in with it, killing you, Magnus, and killing you, Taako, pretty quickly. Merle, you are also subject to this catastrophe, although right before it happens, those rocks— before Cassidy can do whatever she was doing to them, they get blasted out by a wave of force, like buckshot from a shotgun as the ground pulls you under. You are burned. And you are crushed. And you are dead.

Griffin: You pull on the lever to this locker and all three of you hear a horrible sound that lasts, like, a split second. And the sound is like, [explosion noise] and it was actually the sound of this room more or less exploding.

Griffin: And all three of you have died.

Travis: I’m gonna open E next.

Griffin: Boom! The room explodes.

Justin: Can we just stroll on through?

Griffin: Yeah, sure.

Justin: Okay.

Griffin: It explodes and you die. No, I’m just kidding. I’m just kidding.

Clint: I take the meat and the ice.

Justin: Thank god.

Travis: It explodes!

Griffin: Because all three of you are almost instantly devoured by something as soon as you leave the light.

Griffin: I mean canonically, Magnus did say it, so you do have a trip to heaven

Travis: I cut the black wire.

Griffin: [Singing] To heaven we’re going on a trip together

Travis: I use Railsplitter to cut all five wires at once. [Clint laughs]

Griffin: [Giggling] You’re in heaven.

Griffin: All of you hold hands as both the flame and the purple worm burst through the bubble. The forcefield ultimately giving up the ghost and the room is flooded with fire and you are destroyed by a blast of nearly supersonic force and the last thing you hear is a scream of unbridled fury and you do not live long enough to hear the twelfth chime of the clock above you.

Griffin: I think the cave just collapses on all of you and Luca, and you get crushed by rocks.

Istus: You're going to be amazing.

Griffin: And then the building comes down.

Griffin: It reaches out and taps you on the forehead, and as soon as it does, your vision kind of goes dark.

Travis: And Magnus is dead.

Griffin: And Magnus dies and that's it. Thanks for listening, everybody! And now it's on to the next— no.

Griffin: [disgusted sounds] Oh come on, I’m in hell!

Justin: I'm gonna die, I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead.

Griffin: I'm dead and in hell now.

Griffin: But you also see a tear in the fabric of space, and it looks familiar. Because you saw something similar to that during your time in Lucas’ lab. It is a rift open to the astral plane where the souls of the deceased go after their death in the material plane. And you are drifting into it, Magnus. Because you’re dying.

Clint: I’m dead. I’ve just been killed. I’m as dead as dead can be.

Justin: I just killed somebody while I’m dead, what’s up!

Justin: You did die.

Clint: Yeah can we point out—

Justin: I mean, I don’t wanna get technical about it, but you... you are dead.

Clint: Yeah, your body got destroyed, so you’re dead!

Justin: You’re dead!

Clint: I’m sorry,

Taako: But I’m gonna need Magnus’s blood. He died, and we would just really like something to remember him by.

Griffin: You’re killed by a Yeti.

Travis: Yeah, I’m gonna die.

Griffin: They just—they just tear you apart. They just fucking destroy you.

Griffin: But, eventually like, you're left behind and you only, sort of, outlast the Hunger for so long before you are killed.

Travis: Oh, I’ll die then. That's fine.

Griffin: And so, I guess from the point of view of the rest of your party, who like, take some time, like this has happened a few times now, and it’s tough every time, like you're dead.

Griffin: She literally finds another gun and, like, does it—

Lup: Count the shells! gratatatatata…

Taako: Oh! I’m dying.

Griffin: Based on the rules of the game, Dad… you die. [Travis starts laughing] You tried to put some googly-eyes on a shell and the shell broke and it cut— It cut you to ribbons. And you died.

Griffin: And he extends his hand, palm first, and you see this sort of black fire surround his hand and you feel this incredible pain as black fire spreads throughout your body from your insides out, just killing you in a second.

Griffin: And he kills you. [This is repeated three more times]

Griffin: You take a step. And freeze. And I don’t just mean like, you stop moving? You feel something seize up within you as the dust that you breathed in as you’ve been in this chamber instantly calcifies and spreads throughout your body in the blink of an eye. And you are gone. And the rest of you look over and you just see a Magnus Burnsides statue made of this same white limestone as the walls surrounding you. Just frozen in place.

Travis: Well, see you all next cycle! [hums the Mario Bro’s game over tune] [laughter]

Griffin: And all of you feel it now. Just for a moment something… something hard just emerges from within you and you are instantly frozen, your shapes frozen atop the dais just lifeless, carved in stone.

Justin: Well, I… put my hand in it, I guess.

Griffin: You’re killed instant— no.

Justin: Then that’s going to do it for the Adventure Zone, we hope you’ve enjoyed this rich tapestry we’ve woven. Sorry I- boned it there at the end.

Griffin: Um, I don’t really have the same offer for Magnus that I did for Taako and Merle, I just have a question, which is, how does Magnus die? [long pause]

Travis: [emotional] You know… I kinda envisioned him from the beginning as like, a guy who was looking for a cause worth dying for, and I’ve always kinda envisioned this like, big Blaze Of Glory moment, and then, somewhere along the lines, he became… I realized that he had found something worth living for, and the relationship between Taako and Merle and all of his friends and stuff and what he was doing, started to trump that, became more important. I wanted him to live, I wanted him to survive. And so, if you had have asked me three years ago when we started, I would’ve said he died epically in battle.

Griffin: He got eaten by a dragon that he tried to fight by himself. [crosstalk]

Travis: [crosstalk] Yeah, something like that. But now, I actually think he dies peacefully of old age. Um. [voice trembling] Calmly, and holding in his hand his wife’s wedding ring. That’s how Magnus dies.

Griffin: And other folks are there too, this is just, like- Taako and Merle are there too, that’s just how dwarf and elf age work, you got old before they did, and they’re there too, and they’re with you, and Lucretia is there with you, and she is much, much older, I think she is sitting in a chair at your side. Carey and Killian are there, and Carey is holding your hand in hers and she’s smiling, and she’s just saying,

Carey: It’s okay, bud. It’s okay.

Griffin: And Davenport is there, and he’s at the foot of your bed, just smiling warmly, and he places a hand gently on your leg. And Angus is there, and he’s all grown up! And, he is… He’s so upset, but he’s trying to force a smile for you, Magnus. Barry and Lup are both there, and they look so happy for you, they are this force of reassurance, all of your friends that you have known for over a century, who’ve been with you, and have loved you for so long are all with you. They’re all ready to say goodbye. You are surrounded by friends as things get hazier and hazier in a way you’re kind of familiar with. And then, in a flash, the world is clear, and there’s Kravitz. And he looks like Kravitz, he’s not in his reaper form, but nobody else seems to see him in this moment, and he reaches out his hand and takes yours, and he helps you to your feet, and he says,

Kravitz: My friend, I think this one’s gonna take.

Magnus: Well, let’s hope so for your sake, I don’t want you getting in trouble with the boss. /end of audio description]

#taz #taz balance #taz spoilers #taako taaco #magnus burnsides #merle highchurch #mcelorys #audio transcript #this took a lot of time and tears #i may have paper i need to write for school #but i couldnt not do this

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shadow-and-purgatory · 5 years

Note

Taako and the chalice, possibly by taking it

((This one got away from me, and is at 6912 words, full )story under the cut)

The ability to turn back time had little appeal to Taako. After all, he was famous! He was Taako from TV, known in every part of Faerun, and the Underdark. His childhood had been spent travelling in caravans, which hadn’t exactly been pleasant, but he might not have started his cooking show if he hadn’t lived that way.

Which may have been for the best anyways, said a little voice in the back of his head. He squashed the voice, shaking his head a little bit. Sizzle it Up was the best thing he’d ever done.

Magnus put a hand on Taako’s shoulder. “Taako?” He asked. He sounded like he’d tried to get Taako’s attention multiple times.

Taako blinked a few times. “Huh?”

“You spaced out a little bit there,” Magnus said.

Taako scratched his head. “Sorry about that, my dude. What did I miss?”

“June — or is it the Chalice? Where does June end and the Chalice begin?” Magnus mused. “Well, whatever, the point is they’re making us an offer.”

June stared at the three of them with mild amusement on her face, and sat down at the table. “I promise, I’m not gonna cast some thrall over you or whatever. But I truly believe that together we can fix the wrongs in the past, and we can make this world better in the process. So I’m not gonna hypnotise you or anything like that; I’m asking for the opportunity to make a sales pitch for you. I just want you to hear me out and then I’ll release the girl, and I promise to go with you without any fuss.”

Taako shrugged. “Sounds good to me.” He couldn’t really think of anything that he’d turn back time for(with the exception of maybe one thing, but that was irrelevant), so he was good in that regard. He’d watch whatever the Chalice had to show him, take the Chalice back to the Bureau, take a nice long shower, and go to sleep.

That was how he intended for things to go, but he wasn’t prepared for what June showed him.

Sazed had tried to kill him. He’d put arsenic in the food.

Part of him was relieved. It hadn’t been a careless mistake. He hadn’t murdered those 40 people!

But the other part of him knew that even though he hadn’t been the one to poison them, it was still his fault that they were dead. Sazed had been the one to put arsenic in the garnish, but it had been Taako’s unwillingness to share the spotlight that had driven him into the madness of envy. Taako’s selfish nature was the root of the problem.

After a few moments, June spoke. “This is the worst thing that ever happened, Taako, in your life. And you can fix it. If you claim me, then none of this ever happened. Glamour Springs lives, you can keep doing your cooking show, and you won’t have this horrible black mark on what is otherwise a heroic legacy.” She extended the hand that bore the Chalice. “Take me, Taako, take the cup, and you can fix it all.”

And then Taako was back in the white space with Magnus, Merle, and June. June was sitting at the table, Chalice in hand.

“I need to lay out the rules for you, ‘cause I feel like that’s only fair. If you take the Chalice, there are three rules that you have to follow. First of all, you cannot walk the path that you walked in this timeline. Specifically, there’s gonna be no joining the Bureau of Balance, ‘cause you could create a paradox. Second of all, you forfeit your place in this timeline completely. There is no comin’ back if you take the Chalice and cross over to your new one.”

She paused while they thought about it.

“What’s the last rule?” Taako prompted.

“If you take the Chalice, I’ll create a new timeline for you, but you have to keep it up and running. That means that you have to want every single thing that happens in this new version of reality. The good stuff, and the bad stuff,” June said. She set the Chalice down on the table in front of them and stared at them, silent.

Taako stared at the cup for a few seconds. “Can we all take it, or-”

June shook her head. “Only one of you can take it.”

“Maybe you should have mentioned that in the rules,” Magnus said. “Just for like, future reference, next time you do this.” The big man had a smile on his face.

June smiled in mild amusement. “What are your decisions?” she asked.

The smile slipped from Magnus’s face, and he turned to Taako and Merle. “Listen, I assume that we all had very similar yet different experiences, and this…” he trailed off for a second. “What I saw was something that I’ve wanted for a very long time, and I-” His voice cracked. “I want you both to know that no matter what you decide, I won’t fault you for it, and I won’t judge you. And this new reality, well, it’s what I want, more than anything, but…” His eyes started watering. “But it’s not what Julia would have wanted, so- so I have to pass.”

June’s face fell a bit. “All right. If that’s your decision, then I won’t stop you, but it is a bit disheartening.” She angled herself more towards Taako and Merle, and looked at the two of them expectantly.

Merle shrugged. “I’m not one to dwell on the past, so I’m going to have to pass as well,” he nonchalantly, though Taako noticed him staring at his soulwood arm.

June pursed her lips a bit. “I see,” she said. She turned to Taako. “What about you?” she asked. “What’s your choice?”

Taako stared at the Chalice. It’d be so easy to take it, and fix the biggest mistake of life. Then his eyes flitted to Merle and Magnus. Over the past year, they’d become such a good team. But once the Relic hunt was over, which was just a short ways away, he knew what would happen. They wouldn’t need to be a team, and they certainly wouldn’t need Taako.

The thought hit him like a brick. He’d be right back where he started. Alone. Scraping for money. And more than anything, he’d be alone. Just like it had always been. Just Taako against the world. The Umbra Staff felt warm under his fingers, and he gripped the handle of it tightly.

“June, thank you for the offer,” he said. He smiled, and turned to Magnus and Merle. “It’s been nice working with you,” he said softly, and those who knew him as well as Merle and Magnus did heard the sincerity in his words. “Well, I won’t be seeing you, since the rules prohibit it and stuff,” he said, grinning. “Buh-bye!” He whirled around and grabbed the Chalice.

On the Celestial Plane, Istus watched a thread in her scarf fall out, and the scarf began to unravel.

Everything changed immediately, although for Magnus and Merle, Taako just disappeared, and they had no way of knowing that everything had been irrevocably changed.

But Taako knew. Taako watched as the world seemed to rip in two. He was seeing double, and he remembered that he had to want everything that would happen. He had to want it.

He didn’t really know what happened to Magnus and Merle in the past, but he wanted to take care of them in this new timeline. So he willed them to meet Gundren Rockseeker. He willed them to win the fight against Magic Brian. He willed Merle to take the Umbra Staff, and he willed them a job at the Bureau. He willed them to survive the trial of initiation, and solve the mystery on the Rockport Limited. He willed them to win the battle wagon race, and willed them to defeat Legion. He willed Merle to teach Angus to use cleric spells, and willed Magnus to start training as a rogue with Carey.

He paused when he neared the present, and decided that he had to go back to his own past determine how he would move forward.

He went back to when June had frozen time for him, right before he poisoned Glamour Springs.

And he was there, and he was smiling. He unfroze time, and set the Chalice on the table next to him. “Sazed?” he called. “Sazed, could you come here?” There was a moment’s pause, and Sazed walked onto the stage, looking confused.

“What did you need, Taako?” he asked nervously.

“Sazed, how would you like to be the first one to sample the 30 Clove Garlic Chicken?” Taako asked. His tone was cheerful, but his eyes were on Sazed’s.

Sazed shook his head. “I’m- I’m good,” he said.

Taako raised his eyebrows. “Sazed, I thought you wanted to be on the show more often,” he said mockingly. Taako smiled at him in fake confusion.

Sazed looked uncomfortable. “No, I-I don’t like garlic,” he said, which was a lie. “You like it; you should eat it.”

Taako clicked his tongue. “Sazed, you were the one who suggested that I make the garlic chicken,” he said. “You said that you hoped that there would be leftovers, because it’s one of your favorite meals.”

“I don’t want it!” Sazed practically shouted. “You eat it!”

Taako tilted his head. “Is something wrong?” He asked, taking a step forward.

Sazed shook his head, and Taako could practically see the wheels in his brain turning frantically. “I-I-” he was backing away. He mumbled something.

“What?” Taako asked.

“I put poison in it,” Sazed said, a bit louder.

Hearing Sazed say that he put poison in the food seemed to cement it into reality.

“Get off my stage,” Taako said, voice deathly calm.

“What?” Sazed asked meekly.

“Get out of my sight, and go and rot somewhere!” Taako’s voice was growing louder with every word. “And don’t ever let me see you again, you piece of trash!”

Sazed scampered off the stage, and ran away.

Now, Taako picked up the Chalice, and he knew what to do. He would keep traveling, growing more and more famous. He was so happy, and he knew that he’d made the right choice. However, in some capacity that he could not understand, Taako wanted to see his friends. He couldn’t make contact with the Bureau, that was against the rules, but he could want the Bureau to seek him out. He willed a seeker, Angus McDonald, to check Refuge for leads on Grand Relics.

Instead, Angus found Istus.

She was knitting a scarf, but there was a certain point where the scarf looked like someone had started again with a new kind of thread, and the scarf became almost Frankensteinian in nature. She smiled at Angus.

“Hello, Angus,” she said. Her voice was warm and kind. “There is something very wrong that has happened here.”

Angus looked around. The temple of Istus was in good condition, and nothing really looked out of place. “What do you mean, Lady Istus?” He asked.

Istus held up her scarf as though it ought to explain everything.

Angus stared at the scarf. “Lady Istus?” He asked.

“It looks odd, doesn’t it?” Istus asked, pointing to the place where the pattern seemed to be stitched by someone else.

Angus nodded. “Yes, but what does that mean?”

Istus‘s smile turned grave. “Someone has changed fate, and turned back time,” she said. “The item they used is called the Temporal Chalice, and it is one of the artifacts you have come to this town to find.”

Angus’s eyes widened. “Where can I find whoever used it?”

Istus smiled again. “I am fate, and I must let the world run its course, so that is not something that I can tell you, but they have upset time, and stolen three emissaries from me,” she said.

“Tell the two who should have been my emissaries that when the time comes, they must fix the mistake of their brother that isn’t,” Istus said, adjusting her scarf. For a split second, Angus saw the faces of Magnus and Merle flickering in the scarf. Someone else too.

“I will, Lady Istus,” Angus said. He bowed to her, and as he left, he heard her chuckle as she whisper something under her breath. He might not have heard any of it, but as if by chance, the wind picked up. so as he left the temple, Angus heard the last vestiges of an ‘amazing,’ and when he turned around, she was gone.

Taako was the most famous chef in all of Faerun. He knew that, and he was happy about it. He also knew that the Bureau was looking for him. Well, looking for the Chalice. Same difference. He knew this because he’d made it happen.

Taako didn’t bother trying to hide the fact that he had the Chalice to anyone. He kept the conspicuous looking thing on his counter during all his shows, but never used it for any practical chalice purposes. He knew that no one who wasn’t from the Bureau would notice it. Their brains would tune it out, just like Hurley’s mind has tuned out the Gaia Sash. Sooner or later, someone from the Bureau would notice that it was odd that no one else seemed to remember the ornate chalice covered with clockwork and cogs and jewels, and for some reason, a single, tiny duck had been carved into the metal.

He kept an eye on the people in the crowd, and when they came up for samples, Taako would check their arms. He had to make sure that he was ready for the Bureau when they did come for him. But it was too late. He’d made his decision, and they couldn’t stop him.

One day, he noticed a small child in the crowd. He recognized the child instantly; he’d never forget Angus McDonald. He made a point to move around the Chalice as often as possible throughout the show.

Angus was the last person to walk up for a sample, and Taako made direct eye contact with him as her smiled and set the Chalice down on the counter.

“Hello sir!” Angus said brightly.

“Nice bracer, Agn- kid,” Taako said, catching himself. “Is that real silver?” He asked, reaching over the counter and tapping the button in an inconspicuous manner. “It feels like real silver,” he continued.

“It is,” Angus said.

“How’d you enjoy the show?” Taako asked.

“It was good.” Angus paused, and wrinkled up his face in confusion. “Sir, did you just try to call me ‘Agnes?’” He asked, looking up at Taako.

Taako cursed silently, but shook his head. “You must’ve misheard me, pumpkin,” he said.

Angus blinked at him slowly, looking unimpressed. “I’m the world’s greatest boy detective; I can certainly detective good enough to see through your bull crap,” he said dryly.

Taako sighed. “Right,” Taako said defeatedly. He looked at the sky, and watched as a glass orb hurtled towards the ground. “Don’t get in it, Ango. I can tell you everything, but just, uh-” He glanced at the Chalice. “Hold up.” He put the Chalice inside a drawer. “Okay,” he said, lowering his voice to a whisper.

“Mr. Taako, sir, what’s going on?” Angus asked.

Taako grabbed Angus by his lapels, and hoisted him up onto the counter. “Send a message on your Stone of Farspeech to the Bureau, and tell them to send down their Reclaimers, to retrieve a Grand Relic,” he instructed.

Angus’s jaw dropped. “Wait, how did you-”

“Doesn’t matter,” Taako said briskly. “Oh!” His eyes widened. “Don’t tell them that I told you to do this, if you please,” he said.

“But- doesn’t matter?” Angus spluttered. “What do you mean it doesn’t matter? You- you haven’t been innoculated, so how-”

“Agnes.” Taako looked at the kid. “I will tell you everything, but I need you to dial up the Director, and have her send down the Two Horny Boys,” Taako said.

Angus blinked a few times, nodded, and pulled out the Stone. He traced out the Director’s frequency, never once taking his eyes off of Taako.

The intercom in the icosagon crackled to life, and the Two Horny Boys stopped sparring with Killian as the Director’s voice filled the arena.

“Would the Reclaimers Merle Highchurch and Magnus Burnsides please come to the Director’s office immediately for a mission briefing? Merle Highchurch and Magnus Burnsides to the Director’s office immediately for a mission briefing?”

Merle sighed and picked up his X-Treme Teen Bible, which he had dropped on the ground. “Wonder where we’re getting shipped off to this time, and who the big bad is,” he said.

Magnus shrugged. “I try not to think too much about these things,” he said.

“Or at all,” Merle muttered under his breath.

Magnus glared down at the dwarf before holding up his hand for a high five as he passed Killian.

“Good match,” Killian said, smiling at the pair. “Good luck with your mission.”

The pair walked to the dome that housed the Director’s office and walked in.

If they had known her better, they would have immediately known that the Director was very distressed. As it was, they could tell that she wasn’t as composed as usual.

“‘Sup, Lucretia,” Magnus said, greeting her with the first name that he had learned from Lucas.

“Please don’t call me that,” the Director said sharply. She let out a shaky breath. “I apologize for being so short with you, but I just got a call from one of our seekers, Angus McDonald,” she said. She ran her fingers along the grooves in her staff, and looked up at the pair of them. “He has found a Grand Relic, and this one is… particularly dangerous, and by far the most tempting to use.”

“With all due respect, the pair of us have been able to handle everything that these Relics have thrown at us so far, including the Thrall,” Magnus said.

The Director shook her head. “No, this one is…” She sighed. “It’s called the Temporal Chalice, and with it’s incredible power, you could turn back time itself.”

Magnus’s eyes widened.

“Listen, you both have been able to withstand the thrall of all the previous relics, but the chance to chase the Chalice turns decent men insane.” She looked sad. “You’d be able to fix your greatest mistakes, but…but you can’t imagine the repercussions that it could have on everything else.” She turned around and stared at her portrait.

Magnus nodded, but he was staring into space, his mind elsewhere.

“Where are you sending us?” Merle asked, shaking the Director out of her reverie.

“Yeah, and who’s ass do we gotta kick?” Magnus asked absently.

The Director sighed. “We’re sending you to the town of Daggerford,” she said. “And have either of you heard of Sizzle it Up With Taako?” She held up a flyer for a show from about five years ago.

Magnus perked up. “Oh yeah! He came to Raven’s Roost this one time, and he made some pretty bitchin’ macarons.”

The Director nodded. “Angus says that he thinks that Taako is in possession of a Grand Relic, and the description he gave matches that of the Temporal Chalice perfectly.”

“Great!” Merle said. “Then let’s get going, so we can go back to sleep.” He twirled the Umbra Staff around his wrist. The umbrella responded by shocking him. “Okay, okay,” he grumbled. “Moody,” he harrumphed.

The Director made a shooing motion with her hands. “Sizzle it Up is a travelling show, so there’s no way of knowing how long he’ll stay in Daggerford. Angus is down on planetside, trying to stall Taako. Get moving.”

Once they’d left her office, Lucretia let out a soft sob. Maybe if she’d been faster to recruit them, then maybe Merle and Magnus wouldn’t be going to fight one of their dearest friends without knowing it, and maybe Taako wouldn’t have taken the Chalice, and maybe she’d have assembled the Light by now, and maybe-

“Davenport?” Perhaps sensing her distress, the gnome had stood on the step stool next to her desk and put his hand on her shoulder.

Lucretia wiped her eyes. “I’m fine,” she said. She took a few deep breaths.

The Director pulled out a stack of paperwork, and began to write.

Merle and Magnus’s sphere landed just outside of Daggerford, and it didn’t take them long to find the stagecoach. Just like the Director had said, Angus was there, sitting on the counter and talking with Taako.

Angus noticed them, and held up a finger to Taako, as if to say “hold on, I’ll be right back.” He jogged over to the pair. “Hello sirs!” Angus said cheerfully.

“Hey Angus,” Merle greeted. “So, is that elf Taako?”

Angus nodded. “And-” He stopped, and began to mouth out words to them. Mute. Your. Stones.

Magnus muted his Stone without a second thought, and grabbed Merle’s to do the same. “What’s up Angus?”

Angus looked at them with distress. “He knows about the Bureau. And the Relics. And the Director. And you guys.” Angus’s voice became more distressed by the word. “He knows what my name is. He won’t tell me how he knows, but he asked for you guys specifically to be sent in.”

Magnus began to walk towards Taako, his hand on Railsplitter threateningly. Merle waddled behind him, holding the Umbra Staff in one hand, X-Treme Teen Bible in the other.

Merle looks, Taako thought with an amused snort, like he’s gonna poke me with the Umbra Staff, and then ask me to join a congregation.

“Magnus! Merle!” He waved them over, smiling like he was greeting old friends, which struck the pair of them as odd. “Hail and well met, my dudes.”

“How?” Magnus asked, glaring at the elf.

“Hm?” Taako asked as he opened a drawer.

“How can you hear it when I say Voidfish?” Magnus demanded.

Taako put the Chalice on the counter with a thunk. “I can explain all of this, and I will, but we should go inside of the wagon,” Taako said calmly, stepping out from behind the counter.

“Yeah, sorry, but that sounds sketchy as hell,” Merle said, raising an eyebrow. “Give us one good reason why we should trust you,” Merle said, pointing the Umbra Staff at Taako. The handle of the umbrella began to heat up, and Merle huffed in annoyance. “Moody piece of trash,” he groused. The umbrella continued to heat up until it started to burn Merle’s palm. Then Merle dropped it, and it rolled to Taako’s feet.

Taako bent over to pick it up.

“Don’t touch that!” Merle said. “It’s very temperamental, and sometimes it doesn’t even let me hold it.”

“The I first time I picked it up, it bitch-slapped me across the icosagon,” Magnus put in.

“The point is,” Merle said with a sigh, “the Umbra Staff is very volatile, even around the people it knows. I don’t want to think about what it might do to a complete stranger.”

Taako raised an eyebrow, and picked up the umbrella. When his hand closed around the handle of the staff, it crackled with lighting, just like it had done for him so long ago(Taako supposed that it wasn’t long ago; it had never happened) in Wave Echo Cave, just like it hadn’t for Merle.

Taako leaned on the Umbra Staff like a cane, a smug grin on his face at Magnus and Merle’s open mouths.

Magnus reacted first. “He did something to the Umbra Staff!” He shouted, pulling out Railsplitter.

Merle was holding his arm up like he was about to slam the X-Treme Teen Bible down on Taako’s skull, assuming that he could reach that high. “You’ve got ten seconds to give us a good reason to trust you!”

“Merle is a disgusting person who fucked a plant to open a door,” Taako said casually. “Magnus is training to be a rogue with Carey Fangbattle. You met the Grim Reaper during Candlenights, and his name is Kravitz. You both have bounties on your heads for dying and not checking in to the astral plane.” Taako rattled off the facts as though they were nothing. “Need I go on, or do you trust me enough to go inside my stagecoach where we can talk in private?”

Angus walked over to Taako. “I want to know what’s going on,” he said. “I say we trust him. At the very least, we should trust him enough to hear him out, right?”

Magnus put away Railsplitter, and Taako whirled around and walked inside of the stagecoach, waving them inside.

Angus, Merle, and Magnus walked inside. Taako was sitting on a tiny bed, the Umbra Staff on his lap, Temporal Chalice in his hand. He smiled at them. “Have a seat,” the elf said, and Magnus and Angus sat down. Merle just leaned against the wall.

“Alright,” Taako said. “What I’m gonna tell you is gonna sound absolutely insane, but you’re gonna have to bear with me here.”

Angus nodded and pulled out a notebook and a pencil from his pocket.

“To summarize: I know you guys, because I was a member of the Bureau of Balance. I was a Reclaimer, and the Umbra Staff was mine. I taught Agnes a few cantrips, we went looking for the Chalice, we found it in Refuge where there was this time loop thing going on. The Chalice made us all offers to fix the greatest mistakes of our lives, you both said no, but I didn’t. I created a new timeline, and here we are now.”

Angus had been writing furiously. “So, you fell under the thrall of the Chalice, sir?”

Taako shook his head. “Nope,” he said, popping the ‘P.’ He held up the Chalice. “It was an open sales pitch. No mind control whatsoever.”

Magnus stood up abruptly. “You left us behind in that other timeline.” There was a cold anger in his voice.

“Yeah. What of it?” Taako asked.

“I certainly know what the biggest mistake of my life was, and it’s what I have wanted for over half a decade!” Magnus’s voice was angrier as he walked over to Taako, and Taako felt scared. He had never, in any of their adventures, been scared of Magnus.

Magnus grabbed Taako by his collar and lifted the elf up so that they were eye level. “Dammit, if I didn’t go back in time to save my wife, then what the hell could be so important that you left your friends behind and broke time itself?” The Umbra Staff, which had fallen to to the ground, zapped Magnus’s foot. Magnus dropped Taako.

Taako’s ears flattened against his head. “Glamour Springs,” Taako whispered, tracing the delicate cogs on the Chalice with his finger. “In the old timeline, forty people died after eating my cooking. It was my assistant, Sazed, that had poisoned it, but I’d thought it was just a result of carelessness. In any case, it was still my selfishness that-” Taako started crying. He hadn’t thought about Glamour Springs in almost a year. Some days, he could almost pretend it was a bad dream. He pulled the brim of his hat over his face to hide the tears, letting the Chalice fall to the ground. It rolled a few feet away from him.

His face was red and blotchy, and he wiped his nose. “Besides, it didn’t matter, we weren’t really friends, and-and you guys would have tossed me aside once we got all the Relics, and I don’t want to be alone, I’ve always been alone, and-and I wouldn’t have even had my cooking show, I would have been all alone again, and-” he trailed off into gibberish. “Magnus, you promised-you promised that you wouldn’t judge either of us for what we chose.”

“Taako, I’m sorry,” Taako didn’t hear Magnus say, because all Taako could think was what was I thinking, bringing them here? They couldn’t possibly understand what we went through in that timeline, couldn’t possibly understand how close we were as friends.

Then the idea hit him.

I can have a do-over. Go back in time. This time, I can hide the Chalice from Angus, I don’t have to call down the Reclaimers, and everything will be perfect, because when it comes to emotions, “Taako’s good out here,” he whispered, releasing the brim of his hat.

He didn’t really hear Magnus yelling at Merle about using the spell Calm Emotions, didn’t really hear Angus asking Taako what he had said. All Taako could hear was his own voice, repeating the mantra like a metronome who’s swinging he depended upon to live.

The Umbra Staff rolled over to his hand, and if he’d been thinking about it, he might have wondered how it had rolled on its own, but he wasn’t thinking about it. His hand closed around the handle, which began to heat up. Not enough to hurt Taako, but enough to comfort him, like a warm hand might. It was enough to pull Taako out of the haze in his mind.

Merle opened his X-Treme Teen Bible and cast Sleep on the elf. Taako resisted at first, but he was so exhausted, and his friends were by his side, the Umbra Staff in his hand, and he felt safe. So after a moment of fighting to remain conscious, Taako allowed himself to drift off to sleep.

Merle glanced at the Umbra Staff, which Taako was clinging to like it was his only comfort. “Why does he get to twirl it around and hug it when I can’t even hold it without the damn thing trying to kill me?”

“Maybe the Umbra Staff doesn’t appreciate plant fetishes?” Magnus suggested.

“Har dee har har,” Merle said dryly.

“Sirs? Should you grab the Chalice?” Angus asked.

Magnus sighed. “Yeah, probably.”

“What are we gonna do about Taako?” Merle asked.

“Fix the mistake of the brother that isn’t,” Angus murmured, realizing what Istus meant.

“Hm?” Merle hummed.

“When I was doing Seeker stuff in that desert town, Refuge, I went to the temple of Istus, and the goddess appeared in front of me,” Angus explained. “She told me that I needed to the ones who should have been her emissaries that when the time comes, they’d have to fix the mistake of their brother that isn’t. Then, I saw both of your faces in”

“What does that even mean?” Magnus asked.

“‘The brother that isn’t’ is Taako, you two should have been her emissaries, and the mistake that Taako made was using the Chalice to turn back time!” Angus said excitedly.

Merle and Magnus didn’t seem to share his enthusiasm. “But Angus, how do we fix a problem like that?” Merle asked dubiously.

Magnus and Merle silently brainstormed for a few minutes, or at the very least, that was what Angus hoped they were doing.

“What if we-”

“We aren’t using the Chalice.”

“Nevermind.”

Angus bit his lip as he tapped his pencil against his nose. “Well, what if we went to a temple of Istus and asked her for help?”

Merle patted Angus’s head. “That’s not half bad,” he said. “Let’s wake up Taako, and uh…do either of you know where the nearest temple of Istus is?”

Angus and Magnus shook their heads. “Aren’t you the cleric here?” Magnus asked, eyeing Merle.

“I’m a cleric of Pan, you walnut!”

“The only one I know about is the one in Refuge,” Angus said. “And Daggerford is about a day’s ride from Refuge.”

“Wake up Taako,” Merle said. “We can use his stagecoach.”

Magnus didn’t remember knowing Taako, but all the same, he felt compelled to help the elf. He wasn’t entirely sure why he wanted to help, but he did. He smacked Taako at 2% power so as not to hurt him.

Taako woke up, mumbling sleepily. “Lemme ‘lone,” he slurred, batting at the air.

Magnus picked up Taako, and set him back down upright. “Wake up,” he said. “We’re going to fix your screw up, and to do that, we need you to drive us to Refuge, m’kay?”

Taako nodded his head, yawning. “Okay,” he said. I’ll leave the stagecoach here at a valet, and we can take the supplies wagon. The stagecoach is heavier, so we’ll get there faster in the wagon.”

By the time the stagecoach was in a valet, Taako, Merle, and Angus were in the back of the wagon, and they were on the road it was night.

Magnus was driving, because he had vehicle proficiency. “Trust me, if we run into any trouble with the law, I’m the guy you want at the wheel,” Magnus had said, and no one really thought it was worth it to argue with the fighter.

Taako was checking all of the supplies against his list. Perhaps it was a pointless effort since he might be restarting this timeline anyways, but the mindless task took his mind off of everything else.

Angus was sound asleep under the tarp that was his makeshift blanket, using a pile of Sizzle It Up T-shirts as a pillow. He was such a quiet sleeper that it was easy for Magnus, Taako, and Merle to forget that he was there at all.

Merle was using Magnus’s axe, which glowed with divine Light, to read from his X-Treme Teen Bible. Occasionally, he’d mutter something that neither of the two that were awake could hear.

“Whatcha doing?” Taako asked the dwarf curiously.

“Studying my cantrips,” Merle responded, and Taako laughed.

“You can just say masturbating, you don’t have to use weird euphemisms!” Taako said, grinning at Merle. Merle couldn’t see the grin in the darkness, but he could hear it in Taako’s voice.

“I’m deep in thought!” Merle said angrily.

“Don’t come in mom, I’m studying my cantrips!” Magnus’s hearty laugh drifted back from the driver’s seat.

Taako laughed along with the big man. Really, it feels exactly the same as it had on the road to Phandalin, he thought. With Angus asleep, it was just the three of them, traveling together in a wagon. Just like old times.

Of course, the circumstances were very different than old times. Magnus and Merle had a bond with each other, and Taako felt as though he had a bond with them, but they didn’t have a bond with Taako. How could they?

Taako finished the inventory check long after Merle had extinguished the light and gone to sleep. He climbed into the driver’s seat next to Magnus, who looked at him in surprise.

“Hey Taako,” greeted Magnus. “How come you’re still awake?”

Taako shrugged. “Not tired,” he said. It was a lie, and a bad one considering that he yawned immediately after saying it, but it was a lie that Magnus chose to ignore.

“Cool,” Magnus said. There was a brief pause. “Tell me about the other timeline. The one you left.”

Taako looked at him in mild surprise. “What do you want to know?”

“Well, I want to know about the Bureau, and the three of us, and basically whatever you’re willing to talk about,” Magnus said. “How’d we meet?”

Taako smiled. “Well I guess it started with Craigslist,” he began. He went through the adventures of the Tres Horny Boys, bit by bit. Magnus was a good listener, laughing at all the right parts, his eyes widening in shock at some.

“And I said ‘Hey thug, what’s your name? I’m about to tentacle your dick!’ And I cast Evard’s Black Tentacles on him! The best part? He blushed!” Taako said, howling in laughter.

Magnus laughed heartily. “Man Taako, I wish you’d been in our party. Your timeline sounds way more interesting than this one!” He shielded his eyes as the first rays of sunlight hit them. “Holy shit dude, we’ve been up all night,” Magnus said.

Taako yawned. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” He stretched, the Umbra Staff in his hand.

“That umbrella suits you a lot better than it suits Merle,” Magnus commented.

“Everything suits me better than it suits Merle,” Taako said matter-of-factly.

“I heard that!” the pair heard Merle grouse as he climbed beside Taako.

“Well you can’t argue with the truth, old man!” Taako said with a laugh.

“What are you two talking about anyways?” Merle asked.

“Taako’s telling me about the other timeline!” Magnus said excitedly. “It was so much cooler than this timeline.”

Merle yawned. “Oh. Well don’t stop on my account,” he said, waving his hand in a gesture that said ‘go on.’

Taako grinned. “I’d just seduced the grim reaper with oily black tentacles,” Taako said.

Angus woke up an two and a half hours later to the laughter of the Tres Horny Boys. “Morning sirs,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “Are we almost to Refuge?”

“Yep!” Magnus said. “We’re about five minutes away.”

“That’s great!” Angus said.

Ten minutes later, they were at the temple of Istus.

Magnus glanced at Merle. “So, do you have any idea how this works?” He asked. “Summoning Istus, I mean.”

Merle rolled his eyes. “I told you, I’m a cleric of Pan. I don’t know shit about Istus, other than that she’s the goddess of fate.”

“Sirs, you may want to look up,” Angus said, pointing to the tapestry depicting happy people in the embrace of Istus. And just below the tapestry, in the flesh, was Istus.

She smiled. “Hello again, Angus. It’s nice to meet you again as well, Merle, and Magnus.” Her smile fell a little bit. “Taako.”

Taako looked down at his feet. “Hey Istus. Long time, no see, huh?”

Merle knelt on the floor. “Oh great and holy Bismuth-”

Istus chuckled. “It’s Istus, actually,” she corrected. Her gaze turned to Taako. “Taako,” she began. “When you agreed to be my emissary, one of the things we specifically talked about was not tampering with fate.”

“Well, I didn’t plan to get tempted by the Relic. It’s just-” Taako looked up. “Well, it was the biggest fuck up of my life, yeah? And- and I got the chance to fix it, so I did it, and I fucked up even more by doing that, so what I’m asking is for you to please help me fix it!” Taako blurted out the whole thing in a single breath. “Please. I-I want to make this right, so-” He held out the Chalice. “Please take this, and use it to fix everything!” He looked down at his shoes, his grip on the Umbra Staff tight.

Taako felt the Chalice leave his hand. “You did indeed, fuck up pretty badly,” he heard Istus say. “But you also want to fix your fuck up.” Taako felt a warm hand on his shoulder, and he looked up. Istus was smiling. “And I will do this for you. I do not know what consequences you will have back in the timeline where you belong, and I cannot help you out of those, but I will right this wrong.”

Taako was beaming. “Thank you,” he said. He turned around, and tossed the Umbra Staff to Merle, who caught it. It zapped him. “Take care of yourselves, homies!” He turned back to Istus. “What do I do now?”

Istus tugged a single thread loose from her scarf, and handed it to him. “Walk to the Davy Lamp, don’t look back, and don’t let go until you get there,” she instructed. She handed him the Chalice. “Don’t you need to take this back up to the moon with you?” She asked.

Taako turned around, and began walking with the thread in one hand, the Chalice in the other.

And though he doesn’t see it, can’t see it because it’s behind him, things are changing. Magnus and Merle materialize in the Davy Lamp’s white space with June; they’ve just watched Taako disappear after using the Chalice. Angus is back up on the moon base, practicing Prestidigitation and hoping that Taako will return to the moon base to see it. Taako’s stagecoach is gone, and so is the supplies wagon.

And then Taako is back in the Davy Lamp, and he sees Merle and Magnus, his best friends, and they’re frozen in time, sniffling, shock evident on their faces. He releases the thread, and Istus begins to knit reality back together. Taako is wearing the skirt he bought at the Fantasy Costco, the Umbra Staff is at his side. His bracer weaves itself onto his arm, and time unfreezes.

“Hail and well met, my dudes,” Taako said, leaning on the Umbra Staff like a cane.

Magnus and Merle looked up. “Taako!” Magnus enveloped the wizard in a great big hug. “I thought you used the Chalice!”

“I did,” Taako said, making no attempt to free himself from Magnus’s arms. “But it was pretty shitty, so I decided that fuck that, this timeline was cooler,” he lied. “So I’m back, I’m here to stay, and you can let go now, okay?”

Magnus hugged him tighter.

“Careful, my dude. You’re going to break my ribs.” But Taako didn’t try to break out of the hug. “You did hear me, right? I’m not going anywhere, Taako’s good out here.” And he knew that he was good out here.

Better yet, for the first time in eight years, he was home.

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sevenrelics · 6 years

Text

Taako’s Good Out Here - 1.5k

If you're having non-magical issues, the last person on the moon you want to talk to is Taako. Having an issue with Mage Hand? No problem, he can walk you through it (he's not likely to because he's got way more important shit to take care of, but on a good day, it's a possibility).

Emotional issues, on the other hand? You'd be better off talking to Steven, because Taako’s good out here, homie, and he’s the least well-equipped person on the entire base to deal with this shit.

He leaves the comforting and encouraging to Magnus, and the ‘wise’ observations and life lessons to Merle, he’s just out here for a laugh, and he’s great with that. Taako’s already way over his limit of people he should ideally care about thanks to Magnus and Merle.

Kravitz shifts on the bed a little, a few soft noises passing through his lips as he moves closer to the edge of the bed, like Taako’s presence alone pushes him away.

And, Christ, knowing him, maybe it does. He’s sure as hell tried, but Death’s emissary’s got stubbornness to spare, and Taako’s never quite been equipped with people enjoying his presence beyond in the bedroom and on television. And he’s a liar if he says he doesn’t like it, just a little.

But Kravitz isn’t like that. Kravitz has seen him absolutely plastered, has seen him with his hair smashed against a fishbowl helmet with oily tentacles at his feet, has seen him in at least seven compromising positions in the past month alone, yet still comes to dinner. Lets Taako hedge the date, and cancel plans because “hero stuff, pumpkin” when he’s really just in a bad mood or wants to sleep, or fucked up his nails so badly that he’s afraid Kravitz will say something. (Which he won’t, because no matter what he looks like Kravitz always calls him beautiful, and smiles that way that makes Taako’s stunted-to-all-Hell heart pulse.) He’s there when Taako wakes up with a splitting headache, and he always comes back when Taako screams at him to get out of his damn house and life, because he knows he doesn’t mean it.

Kravitz loves him.

Taako thinks he might too.

He’s not a great boyfriend. Not even a good one, even if he is hot shit and can make the best quiche in the fucking galaxy. Maybe he doesn’t deserve him. Scratch that- he definitely doesn’t, not that he can think of a single person in existence who could measure up to what Kravitz deserves. But he’s here. And for some unknown reason, Kravitz stays.

For a few minutes, it’s quiet, and Taako stares at his boyfriend’s chest rise and fall, even though it doesn’t need to. It’s a scene straight up from one of those sappy romantic films Carey and Killian own far too many of, and borderline creepy to boot. Every nerve, every thought in his head tells him to bolt and never look back, because if he’s learned anything throughout these quests it’s that he’s damn good at that. But he has lessons with Angus tomorrow, and if he leaves now he’ll have to buy a new stove before he gets to try that new tart recipe Avi gave him, and his suit is still at the cleaners, and-

Oh.

Well. It’s nice to make excuses for something that isn’t his fault, for once.

Taako sits up, the bed creaking beneath him as he shuffles a little closer to Kravitz, his heart thumping unnaturally.

“Hey,” he whispers, running his tongue over too-dry lips, his voice soft with disuse.

Kravitz doesn’t stir. He sleeps, well, like the dead, and Taako’s silently thankful for the chance to have this impromptu therapy session.

“I love you,” he says.

And just like that, the words are out of his mouth. There’s no magic. No broken spell, Kravitz doesn’t become alive through the power of true love, or any of that bullshit from stories. (He’d say children’s stories, but he’s picked up one of Angus’s books out of boredom before, and those are far more murder-y than the sappy romantic novels he’s thinking of now.) He’s just said The Words, and there they are. And they’re true.

“I love you,” he repeats, a little louder this time. The words grow lighter in his mouth, and he whispers them again, reaching out so his fingers just barely graze Kravitz’s shoulder, hovering there like he’s cast Levitate.

“I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you Iloveyou IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou, I-“ Taako pauses, his breathing ragged like he’s just run a lap around base.

Like an idiot, Taako hopes Kravitz wakes up.

Like a coward, he prays to Istus that he doesn’t.

For a moment, it looks like his prayer has been ignored as Kravitz rolls over, his dreadlocks tousled against the pillow (he only uses one, something Taako will never understand). But his eyes remain shut tightly, and the sigh of relief that escapes Taako’s chest is the only noise in the room. He flops back down and lets his hand drop, his fingers splayed lightly on Kravitz’s cool skin.

He loves him.

Maybe he needs to work on being a little less guarded, a little kinder, sweeter, less prone to anger—

But hey. In Casa del Taako, it’s an emotional breakdown free zone. So for now, it’s one step at a time.

Taako’s good out here.

“Eat up, Boy Wonder,” Taako insists, handing the kid a second plate of cherry-drizzled tarts. Angus is early, and fuck if Taako’s passing up a chance to demonstrate his baking prowess, even if it means he has to triple-check the ingredients for poison. Thanks to Istus he's aware That Time wasn't wholly his fault, but the years spent contemplating it take over, and anyway, the actions are practically second nature by now.

Angus looks a little shocked at the heaping plate, but digs in when Taako raises an eyebrow. The kid practically worships the ground he walks on, and Taako doesn't have to admit how nice it is, because the fact that Angus sticks around despite his... nature... is testament enough to his understanding of it.

Or, he's just stubborn as shit. Taako's good with either one.

Kravitz waits at the table, hands folded politely as he waits for his plate too, and Taako can't resist a self-indulgent eye roll at how utterly domestic it is. The guy doesn't even need to eat. Shit, he doesn't even need to breathe, but here the Grim Reaper is, sitting in Taako's kitchen and definitely eating and breathing.

Clicking the oven off, Taako carries two plates off the counter, setting one in front of Kravitz as he digs in.

"So," Taako starts around a mouthful of egg, "no reaping jobs this morning? No poor souls to rip from the mortal realm?"

Kravitz doesn't dignify his jab with a response, but Angus pipes up, not even hesitating at Taako's glare. "Actually, Sir-- he usually just leads them." He shoots an inquisitive glance at Kravitz, who offers him a slight smile. "That's what he told me, at least. I'm surprised you don't know more about it, having almost checked into the Astral Plane--" He pretends to count, and Taako suppresses a huff because he knows damn well the little shit has this memorized.

"Eight times, not counting all the loops in Refuge," and Taako doesn't even want to know how he's heard about that, but isn't surprised in the least.

Brat.

"Yeah, well, Ol' Taako's had a lot of almost-deaths, Agnes. They blur together. Shut up and eat your breakfast."

Angus obliges, but Taako doesn't miss the mischievous glint in his eyes.

"Anyway," Taako drawls. "How goes it, Hot Stuff? There aren't any ravens pecking through my door right now, so I can assume you're not skipping work to hang out. Not that I wouldn't be fucking flattered, but--"

"Taako," Kravitz interrupts him, and the seriousness in his voice makes Taako's eyes fly up to meet his. Despite the tone, a smile pulls at the corner of Kravitz's unfairly handsome face. "I love you, too."

He reels back, his face burning, and he's sure that even if Angus wasn't Boy Wonder, Greatest Detective on the Moon, he'd be able to see through Taako's embarrassed guise to see how glad he is to hear it.

#taz balance #taz fanfiction #taz fic #taakitz #taako #kravitz #angus mcdonald #fluff #//death mention #please leave a tag or a reply if you can!#also reblogs really help if you're able!

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taz-manic · 6 years

Text

Fuzzy and Out of Balance (4/??)

You didn't sleep. You found it almost impossible with the idea of the boys out there without you beside them--of course, you knew they wouldn't die or lose anything themselves, but they might have been able to save Sloane and Hurley. You refused to exit your room the second you left Davenport that first night--you couldn't stand it. The boys were gone for mere days but the pressure on your heart, the constant thought of them being in the same peril that you knew of before, it was /painful/ and you didn't understand it as much as you thought you would. You refused company--Lucretia, Avi, Johann. You were worried and you were probably a fucking mess. Did it really matter, your presentation? Mayhaps not. But you, you didn't want to be a gross bother. So you didn't.

One day, though, a knock came from the door. You were about to shout to fuck off, but the door was opened and Merle Highchurch, again flanked by Magnus Burnsides and Taako Tacco, slipped inside. Quite literally, as they fell. You took a second to stare at them--injured but alive. Hurt but together. You get up and immediately sock Magnus in the gut with a yell of "STUPID!". He, however, is a level something or other Fighter, and you are a level one disgrace, so you do exactly nothing. But you got your point across. You shake and /fume/ at them with a fury as of yet unknown to you. You trust and maybe adore these boys--but how dense can one trio be?

"Heeey, ow. Why'd you do that? We're fine!" Magnus complained, rubbing his stomach with a laugh. You simply shake at them, fists curled at your sides. Taako gets up with a huff, and Merle is quick to rise aswell. You stand before three of the mightiest men you think you'll ever know, but they aren't /ready/ for what's next. They don't know. They're stupid and ignorant, they make jokes at the expense of death itself. They win, but at a cost you will /never/ let pass again. Not while you're here. Your vision flicks to each of them individually, and with a last shake, you say: "Train me. Teach me how to be a warrior."

---

You note that the break between Petals to the Metal and The Crystal Kingdom is longer than you thought. Maybe its because of the constant training with at least one of the trio--occasionally Avi and Lucretia too--or maybe because you're sleeping less. You grow stronger, you learn to wield a blade and call upon your chosen god--Istus, which thankfully no one notes--and cast spells. You jump to the rank of Paladin in weeks. You feel the strength you've never had before. The strength to not be a fucking useless amnesiac and be someone worthwhile. They think they can get rid of you? Hardly. You'll make yourself as useful as possible until you are the protector beyond what any of them have seen.

You stand in the open moonbase air with Magnus, in his hand a steel axe, and in yours a steel sword. You two fight, parrying and dodging, swords clashing on occasion. You aren't as strong as him, but you have learned to wield large shields and armour to protect yourself and others from blows. You bash him, he steps back and lunges. You roll to the side. A dance and a battle all wrapped up in one--but neither of you are exactly elegant. You knew he would.be one day.

As you two came to blows for the millionth time, you heard the sound of Lucretia over the overhead. News. Bad news. You fixate your eyes on Magnus, and he nods. You slip your shield and sword away and make a dash for Lucretias room. You two are the last to enter, and inside is Merle and Taako already. You huff loudly and lean on Merle, who pats your side as you kneel. Lucretia stands up and holds up a speaking stone, and you hear the voice of Lucas Miller. You are taken aback suddenly, and you grip Merle's arm hard. Your visions had been coming more now--but most have been of the past. The Stolen Century. Nothing of the future since the Temporal Chalice. Which is a blessing, you'd like to think. Alas, though, this one is of the future. And as used and lucid these visions are getting--you haven't attempted murder again so far!--it still makes you reel.

You stand on the Starblaster alone, but soon enough you turn to find Lucretia coming to stand next to you. She gives you a soft gaze and holds your hand as you stare out into infinity. She is younger, with tighter skin and longer hair. She seems somehow less tired. You didn't know she could be less tired. You say something that you can't quite hear and she laughs, which draws the attention of Lup and Taako, who roam over. Then Magnus, Merle, Davenport, Barry. The eight of you stand on the deck, staring out at the everlasting void. Then you look back at them with a gaze full of love, before your vision fizzles out.

You slam.back into reality with a loud cough and you double over. You felt like someone just socked you in the dick you may or may not have--either way you hurt. You wheeze on the floor, and within a second Lucretia gently pulls you up. You hear Lucas questioning the cough, but you pipe up and say you tripped and that we're on our way. Lucretia looks a bit stunned--but she nods at you after seeing the intense gaze you cast.

You grab your javelin and wink at the boys, before you're off. You aren't letting Lucas live this down. There will be no Legion. Merle will remain whole. Fuck this.

You hold up your holy-infused weapon to a crystal monster you know is housing the reaper Kravitz. You strike out with deadly aim and shatter the beast, which fells it. The spirit of Kravitz floats off, but at least your friends are less fucked up. You take charge and storm on ahead, taking the same path the boys had in your memory. You, however, freeze your approach as the first bit of the Crystal Kingdom song begins. You quake and collapse at it begins and... And you see a different vision. Thousands of visions. The most prominent of Lucas's mother, but also hundreds of other stories. Stories that make the lyrics of the song so fucking clear. This happens twice more, and when they do you falter and cry out. You feel what they're conveying through what means they can and you have never felt this before.

You smile at hugbears, you fight overgrown seamonkies in zero gravity. Then you fight Kravitz again--and you freeze. As Merle reaches to grab the crystal, you barrel into the stout dwarf and send him flying into the wall, and you take the damage he was supposed to. Your shoulder... Hurts. A lot. You wince, and bleed, but you stand. Does it matter? No. You'll be fine. Merle just... Can't lose his arm. While the man is knocked out, at least he's safe. You hear Magnus yell something just as you collapse instead.

You wake up with Lucas Miller adjusting what seems to be a metal shoulder. A metal shoulder attached to your body. The body you have. You stare at him with a pointed expression and you whisper his name. He looks up and you immediately sock him in the jaw with your uninjured hand. You see Merle cry out and Magnus stand up with a start as Lucas crumples to the ground. You act on blind instinct; you tie him up with bedsheets--he had thankfully finished your metal shoulder--so he's fucking stuck there. You kick him under a bed and begin to storm off. You royally tell Kravitz--by name!--to fuck off. The boys slowly trail after you as you plow through puzzles they have never seen. You storm into the room with Lucas's mom and stop. A vision hits you hard, but you don't crumple. You stand straighter if anything, and as the words ring in the crystal room, you are guided forward. You complete the ritual. You let the ghosts free. You recite each word of the entire Crystal Kingdom song over and over as Legion materializes above you, hulking and massive, slamming its hands into the ground as it pulls itself out. Magnus suddenly shatters the massive crystal above you, releasing Robomom, and you. You snap back into reality and stumble back, getting strong phantom pains from a shoulder you can't feel. A shoulder you don't have. You bark to N03ll3 to get Lucas--she drives off. You face down Legion with hate in your eyes and a furious word on your lips. Magnus and Merle come to stand beside you, with Taako just behind. You begin fighting. You convince Ms Miller the Robot Killer to fight with you to protect her son, however, she stops as the man of the hour comes out. He stares at you, and you stare back. You met him once before, in the Voidfish chambers, on a visit to Johann to tell him stories. You told Lucas you could see the future and to forgive you if you ever punched him in the face. This is that now and he looks at his mother and says sorry, and she gets back to fighting Legion.

You do not deal the final blow, mostly because you have toppled over, rolling death saving throws as you are bloodied. Ms Miller is the final blow that blasts Legion back inside. Kraavitz shows up almost seconds after she shatters the planar mirror and gives the Philosopher's Stone to Magnus. You stand up and face him in his true form, stand in front of your friends, even if you do have to be supported by N03ll3 as you face off with him.

"You haven't died." He says pensively. He looks around, then back at you. "But other sources say you've died too many times to count. What are you?" You are speechless and voice this by not speaking. After a second, the other boys strike up a deal. But before Kravitz fades away, you grab his hand.

"Am I real? Do I have a soul?"

"I don't know. Do you?"

He disappears. You crumple to the ground and scream.

#taz balance #taz #the adventure zone balance #the adventure zone #fuzzy and out of balance #fuzzy and out of balamce 4

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taakofromtaz · 7 years

Text

taako fights a necromancy cult on candlenights

Summary:

(alternately titled "how the necromancers stealing lup made the best candlenights ever")

“Really, fellas? On Candlenights? Don’t you have anything better to do?”

Notes: (transposed from AO3)

big thanks to the taz fic writers discord for giving me the initial idea and cheering me on!!!

this isn't my best work but i just wanted to post it before the year ended,

i did a little TOO much d&d spell research bc i love accuracy, also, hopefully these spells are all ones taako can actually use,

happy candlenights and happy new year's!!!!

[hopefully accurate use of d&d spells, kravitz was supposed to be here but he’s not, there’s blupjeanss but it’s in the background, taako’s a badass okay? i dont make the rules, TAAKO DOES A HIT, this has very little to do with actual candlenights actually,]

End notes:

ending kinda sucks but eh. que sera sera fuckit

Word count: 3065

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Tonight is going to absolutely perfect. Taako has spent the day toiling away in the kitchen—with the occasional help from Lup—to make the family dinner absolutely perfect. Everyone’s favorite dishes are present and even the latest of guests are set to arrive several hours before it’s time to chow down.

Lup and Barry and Kravitz have been in and out of their office in the Astral Plane the last couple days to finish any last night work that would even slightly disrupt their family holiday. There shouldn’t be any bounties coming their way for the next few days at this rate, Istus and the Raven Queen forbid.

Candlenights is going to be beyond perfect this year.

Lup is the first one home and after checking in with Taako in the kitchen, rushes off to her room to gussy up for the evening. Once she’s done, Taako will get ready, and by that point, the boys should be done wrapping up their paperwork and be back in time to help greet the first guests.

Taako is halfway out of the kitchen when a dimensional rift opens up beside Lup and Barry steps through, looking a little exhausted. “Just in time, Barold,” he says, smiling when Lup turns to give him a kiss. “Keep my sister company while I get ready, huh?”

Barry blushes and wraps an arm around Lup’s waist. “Heh. Not a proble—” Before he can finish, Lup disappears from his grasp, and the two of them are left staring at where she was in complete shock.

“What the fuck?” Taako rushes back into the room and waves an arm where Lup was standing just a second ago.

“L-Lup? What happened?” Barry’s eyes are blown wide behind his glasses and he’s frozen in place, shoulders stiff and arm slowly drifting back to this side.

“Barold!” Taako thumps him in the chest and Barry sucks in a deep breath, coming back to himself. “Come with me. I have a silver mirror in my room.”

“R-right. Right. We—we’ll find her. It’s okay, it’s fine.” Barry’s rambling seems to be more for his own comfort than anything, so Taako snatches up his wrist and drags him down to hall and into his disaster of a room. He shoves Barry to down to take a seat on the bed and digs around on top of the dresser for the silver hand mirror he knows he has.

Taako sets the mirror on the bed beside Barry and takes Barry’s face in his hands. “Hey,” he says, ducking his head to took him in the eyes, voice low. “We’ll find her. She didn’t leave.” The this time is implied. “She wouldn’t do that.” Not again.

Barry sighs and closes his eyes. Taako leans in and plants a kiss on his forehead. “What’s the plan, Taako?”

“I’m gonna cast Scrying. See if I can find her,” Taako says, stepping away and scooping the mirror back up. He clears a spot on the floor and sits down, cross legged, and focuses on the mirror. “I need you to go find her brush and bring me a piece of her hair. That’s the easiest way to do it.”

Barry nods and leaves the room. Taako closes his eyes and focuses directly on Lup, thinks about her laugh, her smile, the way she looks, the way she talks, and wills his magic to focus on hers. His ear flicks when Barry comes back, Lup’s brush in his hands. Taako takes it silently and concentrates the spell through it with one hand and the mirror with the other.

It takes a minute for the spell to find her, but it finally catches and he can see her in his mind’s eye quite clearly. There’s no way Lup knew he was going to look for her, but he can feel her voluntarily failing her save regardless. A second later, the room around him fades and he feels as if he’s with Lup, wherever she is.

Taako looks around, seeing and hearing through the scrying spell’s invisible sensor, and says, “Barry, if you can hear me, I found her. I’m gonna tell you what this place looks like.”

Taako can’t hear if Barry makes any sort of reply, but he feels a warm hand settle on his shoulder so he figures that the words came through. (Taako’s only ever used this spell once and he was alone when he used it, holed up in his room and getting drunk by turning water into wine like fantasy Jesus while he tried to find the man that wanted to kill him so bad he almost succeeded. He has no idea what it looks like from the outside or even if anything he said would come through. He’s glad that it does; trying to remember what this place looks like would be hell.)

The cave is dark and musty and full of weird, vaguely creepy artefacts that Taako doesn’t feel like describing. Bones and skulls of all sorts litter the floors and from Taako’s position, he can see Lup standing in the middle of a summoning circle, red cloak draped over her little black dress, arms crossed and looking extremely put out.

“Really, fellas? On Candlenights? Don’t you have anything better to do?” She sounds annoyed and not worried at all and Taako can’t help but feel relieved. “Didn’t we have to come break your shit up literally a week ago?”

That might be useful. Taako doesn’t know if Lup is being helpful on purpose, but he relates the info to Barry regardless. The hand leaves his shoulder and Taako tries to moves to catch it and only ends up moving his field of vision. Attempting to pull out of the spell only leaves him with a headache and ringing ears. “Barry? Where’d you go?”

The necromancers surrounding Lup say nothing, and she just looks progressively more annoyed. “So what now? You bring me all the way here and… nothing? No reaction?”

The necromancers start murmuring amongst themselves in Abyssal and Taako tunes them out, still trying to abort the Scrying spell before its ten minutes are up. The problem is that he doesn’t know how. His first attempt hadn’t been a success.

“Barry! Get back here!” Taako calls out, trying to move again. His vision merely shifts and he huffs out a breath, trying to stay calm. Nothing good comes from panic and his usual grounding methods are useless if he can’t move his physical body. “I’m about to freak the fuck out, Barry! Where’d you go?”

Nothing. Taako closes his mind to the vision of the inside of the cave and counts his heartbeats as he waits for the spell to end.

He hears the sound of fabric tearing and he opens his mind’s eye to see Barry step out of the rift, his Reaper glamor making him look like his lich form. “Asshole!” Taako screams, vision swinging as he makes to throw his arms out.

“Hey, babe!” Lup says, a huge smile lighting up her face. Taako wants to do a hit on Barry’s stupid face. “How’d you know I’d be here?”

Barry looks around, pulls something from his robe, and taps two fingers to the sides of his glasses. He sweeps the room again and locks eyes with what Taako can only assume is the Scrying spell’s sensor. “Huh. Neat.”

Taako huffs as Lup tilts her head. “What is it?” The necromancers are chanting now, something Taako is oblivious to the meaning of, but given the circumstances, it can’t be anything good.

“Taako found you with a spell. He can see us right now actually. Hears us too.” Barry gestures in the direction the sensor. Taako just wishes the spell would end already.

“Shit yeah!” Lup turns and smiles blindly in his direction. “Hey, Koko! These necro-fucks are real close to home! You know that cave that you, me, and Bare-bare checked out a few months ago? I think this is it!” Taako smiles even though she can’t see him. Lup is the best.

Barry sighs. “This is exactly what I was trying to avoid. We got this covered.”

“Aww, but it’s Candlenights!” Lup says at the same time that Taako yells out, “Suck it, Barry!” to his empty room.

“You two are chaos inca—” Whatever Barry was going to say is cut off the spell ending, throwing Taako back into his own senses and his quiet room.

“Lulu you’re the best sister ever,” Taako says to himself as he scrambles to his feet. He runs into the kitchen first thing and turns off all the heat he can and moves the dishes to safer, less fire-hazardous spots. (That could have been a disaster.) The next thing he does is jot down a note for Kravitz— “We had a situation but we’re handling it!” —and then he rushes back to his room for his cloak and component bag and the Krebstar.

It’s time to fuck up some necromancers.

It takes Taako about ten minutes on Garyl to find the exact cave Lup and Barry are in. Taako doesn’t bother dispelling the phantom steed and as long as he stays out of the way, he should be fine. “Go in there and kick some ass, my man,” the binicorn drawls, voice low and smooth.

Taako shoots him finger guns and takes off into the cave, trying his best to be quick but quiet. The cave is suspiciously silent and Taako can’t imagine it means anything good for his family. Ahead of him, the cave opens up into an antechamber that’s lit with an assortment of candles an few enchanted lanterns.

There’s about a dozen hooded figures of varying shapes and sizes standing in a semicircle around where Taako can recognize as the last place he saw Lup. She and Barry are pressed back to back, hands clenched together, surrounded by what appears to be spectral cuffs. Lup’s mouth is moving but there’s no sound and Taako, if he’s being completely honest with himself, doesn’t care enough about the why to figure it out.

Conclusion? Lup and Barry are pretty soundly—or not, heh—trapped. No big deal.

The smart thing to do is try to pick these dudes off one by one and find a way to free Barry and Lup from the trap. The smart thing to do is to try and rescue his family and have them help him kick some ass.

What Taako ends up doing is firing off the most potent Sunbeam he can, taking special care to avoid catching Lup and Barry in its line of fire. Over half the necromancers fail their save and scream as the spell blinds them temporarily. The rest fall away from the line as quickly as they can. Not a single one of them is left unharmed.

“Just who the fuck do you think you are?” Taako steps out from his hiding spot, Krebstar raised, face drawn into a snarl. The necromancers left with their vision—about four of them, Taako guesses—look at him in what can only be stunned silence. “Really, fellas?” Taako asks, copying Lup’s line because it was just that good. “On Candlenights?”

“Run along, little wizard,” the nearest necromancer hisses at him, their voice low and grating. “You’re not who we want.”

Taako scoffs and hardens his glare. Little wizard? Sure, he must be a sight to behold with this hair in a messy bun, an apron thrown over and oversized sweaters with the sleeves rolled up, sweatpants and boots that are a size too big—not to mention his cloak of the manta ray and belt with his spell component pouch—but just because he looks like hot garbage right now doesn’t mean he’s not capable.

He’ll show these fuckers what for. They deserve it for underestimating him.

Taako gives a nasty smirk to the necromancer that spoke and aims the tip of the Krebstar at them. “Watch this,” he says, the casts Disintegrate.

The necromancer shrieks, briefly, and falls apart before the remaining hooded figures can make a move to stop him. Taako adjusts his grip. “Anyone else?”

A couple of the blinded necromancers fall over their comrades trying to move closer to him and one of the relatively unharmed figures raises an arm towards him. Taako quickly steps back into his hiding spot and casts Mislead, sending his double to go running deeper into the cave. He keeps his senses with the double until he’s sure of the path it can take then switches back to himself and sneaks, completely invisible over to Barry and Lup.

Barry’s eyes turn to him immediately and he barely stops himself from making an audible reaction. Stupid Barold and his stupid True Seeing.

Actually, this might be useful.

Thank you Istus, Taako thinks, raising his hands and signing out, ‘Trap?’

Barry blinks once or twice before grinning. The crew had all learned this sign language of sorts back in Cycle 27 when they came across a plane that left most the nonhuman members of their crew deafened—the cause being something that emitted a planetwide audio tone that only certain races and species were capable of hearing. It obliterated the auditory nerves of anything that could hear it, but the natives of the plane had already begun adapting, mostly by adopting more visual indicators for those affected by the strong noise.

‘Glyph,’ Barry signs out, doing his best to keep his movements small and subtle. Lup shifts against him and squints in Taako’s direction, so Barry shows her the name symbol they came up with for Taako. (Granted, it’s not the one Taako came up with, but the others convinced him that the gesture he wanted was a little too complex and obscure. He reluctantly agreed.)

‘Trap,’ Lup signs, confirming as well, looking off to the side. ‘Rock?’ She ends her second sign with a shrug, trying not to be too obvious about looking for the source of their magic cage.

Taako holds up a single finger, the universal ‘wait a moment,’ and switches his sense back to his double. Said double is deeper into the cave than Taako’s ever been and is physically wrecking every weird artefact it can while still keeping them mostly intact so the Reaper Squad can confiscate them. The double seems to be doing fine, making a mess of things while avoiding the occasional spell being flung his way.

Taako comes back to his actual self to see Lup pointing to a huge boulder close to the cavern wall.

‘Fake?’ she guesses, nudging Barry. He glances back at it and nods.

‘Check,’ Taako signs, sneaking over to the rock. He needs to be quick. The blindness seems to be wearing off of victims of his Sunbeam.

The rock is indeed somewhat fake. The front is illusory, a cover to hide a small, open spellbook covered in glowing arcane runes sitting on a much smaller rock. Taako grabs the book and snaps it closed. He doesn’t particularly care which type of trapping spell this is, but removing the book from the area should be enough to end the spell.

He tosses the book towards the cave entrance and watches as Lup and Barry grin and step away from the center of the summoning circle on the floor.

Taking advantage of his invisibility, Taako nudges past Barry and Lup. “Take a sip, babes,” he says, winking at Barry, and he casts Cone of Cold. Taako fades back into visibility as a vicious, icy wind whips up at his fingertips and blasts through the cave. The closest necromancers, still recovering from their blindness, fail to save—again—and several are frozen solid as their hit points drop to zero.

Lup is cheering, whooping and laughing as her brother annihilates the den of necromancers. Not all of them die from the attack, but enough of them do—Barry moves to collect the souls of the deceased as Lup heads further into the cave to get any stragglers.

Spell over and job done, he casually pretends to dust his hands off and waits for Lup and Barry to finish their reaping.

“Koko! That was fantastic!” Lup calls out as she runs up to him and grabs him in a big hug, lifting him up and spinning him around.

He laughs and hugs her back, striking a showy pose when she sets him back down. “Thank you, thank you, I know I’m amazing.”

“That was really impressive, Taako. Nice work,” Barry says, looking like himself again.

Taako turns to him and gives him a sharp smile. “You’re on thin ice, pal.” His eyes narrow and his grip on the Krebstar shifts. “You know why.”

Barry visibly gulps and Lup laughs. “Sorry I just. Left. Like that. I won’t do it again, promise.”

Rolling his eyes, Taako turns and starts to exit the cave. “Yeah, sure, whatever. I’m going home. This isn’t my job and I have to finish getting ready.” He looks back at them and points at them. “You better be home before seven or I’ll come back here and drag you back personally.”

Lup gives him a mock salute. “You got it boss! Come on Bare-bare. I’m sure there’s some gross junk in here that you’d just love to get your hands on.”

Barry waves at him as he shuffles off, following Lup to the cavern room that Taako’s double trashed.

Garyl is still waiting outside when Taako finally leaves the cave. “We done here?” the phantom steed asks as Taako climbs up.

“Yeah m’man. Take me home.”

Somehow Taako makes it home before any of the guests arrive, which is just as well because he still has a lot to do. He makes to resume cooking and or reheat the food and rushes back to his room to change as quickly as he can. He comes back to the kitchen to see Lup standing at the stove.

“Go finish getting ready, bro.” She smiles at him. “I got this. Barry when back to the Astral Plane to drop some stuff off and drag your boy toy back home.”

Taako darts forward to peck her cheek with a kiss before running back to his. “Thanks, you’re the best!”

“No problem! And chill out! Tonight’s gonna be perfect!” Lup laughs after him and he smiles.

Best Candlenights ever.

#taz #tazb #thezonecast #taz fic #kiera writes fics #taako #lup #barry #blupjeans #twins #those three #qiera

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northisnotup · 7 years

Note

☆ for the kiss meme? I'm ok with whatever pairing~

When strong hands stroke along Lup’s shoulders she leans into them with a throaty hum, not bothering to stop stirring the batter in her bowl.

When chilly, almost frigid, lips kiss down her neck, she squeaks. “’Ello, love.” a bad accent croons and nope, nah, hard no Lup has to stop this immediately.

“Wrong Taaco twin there, loverboy!” She jumps back, brandishing her wooden spoon like a weapon.

Whoa, the Grim Reaper is….extremely attractive. This is an entirely new definition for Tall, Dark and Handsome. Lup is not…jealous, per say. Because Barry is her desert island guy and given fifty years and the literal apocalypse she’s chosen him over and over and would never change that. But, damn, go Taako.

“Wrong….twin?” The accent is mysteriously gone and Grim and Gorgeous is looking at her intensely. “You don’t happen to be Lup, do you?”

She nods. He sighs.

They square off, awkwardly. Lup still, by about a hundred technicalities, a lich with a rather large death count, (who attempted to Scorching Ray this guy back to the astral plane last they met) and Bony-but-Beautiful still an actual servant of the Raven Queen.

“Lup Taaco, you know, I really hoped that it was one of those ‘same name, no relation,’ sort of situations.” He smiles a little sadly, a lot awkwardly, shrugging one shoulder in a ‘what can you do?’ kind of gesture she does appreciate.

Based on her trapped-in-a-magical-umbrella accidental eavesdropping, it’s not like he wanted to become a interplanar bounty hunter anymore than she wanted to get trapped in an endless cycle of death.

(Well, kinda, the lich thing was very intentional.)

“Yeah, we’re kinda like pringles, my man, can’t have just one.” She tries for a Magnus like friendly-nonthreatening type of tone and can hear herself miss by several miles. Ugh, she sounds like her brother.

Weirdly, it makes him flinch.

Ravishing Reaper waves a hand at the cluttered kitchen table Taako keeps around mostly to collect junk and then throw that junk in a big pile when he wants it. “You know, you hold the second highest bounty I have ever seen.” He says it conversationally, like he admires it. Lup doesn’t hesitate to roll her eyes but takes a seat anyway. “After Merle fucking Highchurch that is. Uh, I’m not really sure what the status of your bounty would be, though.”

“Oh?” Lup twirls her wooden spoon, licking at the batter every other turn to keep her hands busy. Her neck is still a mass of goosebumps she wants to rub at til it feels warm, like the rest of her skin.

“Uh,” Devastating Destroyer of Worlds looks a little lost. “As an emissary of Istus, your bounty is unenforceable, thanks to the agreement from Istus and the Raven Queen, but, you’re also a lich, Lup. And that’s bad.”

“Hm, okay, I do see your point, and to counter that point,” Lup can’t help but smirk, “you take care of the whole lichs-get-stitches thing and I don’t tell my brother you macked on me, m’kay?”

Death-Becomes-Him is so blanches so hard he loses his skin.

Literally, his handsome visage melts away into a robed skeleton with flaming eyes who looks like he wants to clutch at his non-existent pearls. “You’d, uh, tell Taako?”

“And honey, I would embellish.” Lup purrs, playing it up for all she is worth. “Unless, you could oh, pull some strings? For your scary wizard boyfriend’s only sister?”

“B-boyfriend?”

Oh, there are just layers and layers to the Story behind these reactions, and Lup wants every juicy detail. “You seem kinda nervous there, Grimly, is my brother not treating you right?” She bats her eyelashes, smiling her most inviting smile.

The Bewitching Bounty-hunter seems to stare through her for a moment, her flirtations lost on him. “When we first met, I cause Merle Highchurch to lose his arm and Taako subsequently cast Evard’s Black Tentacles on me.”

No single force in the universe could stop Lup from losing her shit at his blank, matter of fact statement. Her wooden spoon falls to the ground, splattering both of their legs in batter as she heaves for breath through her gut-wrenching giggles. Of course. Of-fucking-course, oh gods, that is so good.

The door to their living quarters slides open just as she is beginning to get a grip on herself, and she hear’s her brother’s annoyed voice “Um, what? No. Hard no. Babe, Krav, my man, we are not doing this, this is a bad goof, sorry hon, we’re not there yet.”

“He thought I was you!” She manages to force out, her lungs and abs beginning to protest her snorting, hiccuping laughter.

Taako’s mouth drops open, the picture of offended surprise. “What? But I am so much better dressed than you!” He shrieks, like the fucking gay harpy he is. Gods she loves him so much. “You wear jorts!” He howls.

#the adventure zone #the adventure zone spoilers #taako taaco #lup taaco #taakitz #my writing #my fic

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anistarrose · 4 years

Link

Summary: Taako unlocks a backstory reveal, Kravitz notices an astronomical discrepancy, and Noelle completes an errand. It’s an evening of relaxation and bonding for some, and a night of furtive preparation for others, but one thing is constant — everyone is missing a few pieces of the story.

Characters: Kravitz, Taako, Barry Bluejeans, Angus McDonald, Magnus Burnsides, Merle Highchurch, Noelle | No-3113, The Raven Queen, The Director | Lucretia, misc. BoB cameos, Julia Burnsides, Garyl

Relationships: Taakitz, Angus McDonald & Taako, Barry Bluejeans & Kravitz, Kravitz & Angus McDonald

Hey, guess what fic isn’t dead! Before we get into the action, I just want to state for the record that I, Rose, think mullets are generally a valid hairstyle (including on Barry Bluejeans). The opinions on mullets that a certain character expresses in this chapter are in no way representative of my views as the author. Anyways, enjoy the Taakitz before the storm!

(A “previously on,” since it’s been so long since the last chapter: THB all know Barry is the Red Robe, Barry knows THB are in trouble for death crimes, and he’s shared all his relevant backstory details with Noelle, who has agreed to help him save the boys from Kravitz with the endgame goal of stopping the Hunger. Kravitz has arranged a sort-of date with Taako, which he’s obviously excited for, but he doesn’t know a lich and a robot are out to get him. Meanwhile, Garyl doesn’t know why Taako stopped hanging out with liches about twelve years ago, and is really missing the spectral oats said liches always gave him. I think that’s everything everyone knows and doesn’t know!)

***

The Raven Queen had always reminded Kravitz of his mortal mother, not just because of the physical resemblance — which was indeed present, albeit slightly diminished by the beaked mask that concealed the Queen’s nose and eyes — but because of her temperament, kind but stern. She was a fair judge, and even a surprisingly forgiving one at times, but she held no reservations against telling people they could do better, if she believed it to be true.

So when the Queen approached Kravitz during his walk along the coast of the Astral Sea, in her usual form of a dark-skinned woman wearing a magnificent feathered cloak, Kravitz breathed a sigh of relief when he saw she was smiling at him. Her ethereal voice was both diminutive and thunderous at once, but thankfully free of disappointment or malice.

My child.

She unfurled not just one pair of midnight-black wings, but a hundred pairs, and suddenly she embodied an entire flock of ravens, circling Kravitz with impossible synchronicity and silence.

Come fly with me.

Kravitz leapt into the air, changing shape and sprouting wings of his own. In the form of a rook with dark blue-gray feathers and the pattern of an avian skull atop his head in light gray, he took off across the sea, and the Queen followed, casting a hundred identical shadows atop the waves.

This airborne sightseeing tour across the afterlife was not a new ritual for them — they’d done this countless times since the Raven Queen had first taught Kravitz to fly, lifetimes ago — but Kravitz had noticed, over the past century or two, that the Queen almost exclusively reserved these flights for days when Kravitz felt stressed.

They soared through a cloud of souls, which danced and shimmered like snowflakes in a gentle breeze, and as they exited it, he finally spoke. “It’s a pleasure to see you as always, my Queen, but… er, what is it that brings you here today?”

My dear Kravitz, you’re even a bundle of nerves when you’re a bird. You’re not letting those elusive lich bounties get to you, are you?

“I… I suppose I have been letting it get to me. In a way.”

Kravitz, you are competent and you are worthy. You needn’t fear me reprimanding you — I have no doubt that you will capture them eventually. After all, you have a promising new strategy, don’t you?

“My Queen, I…” Kravitz trailed off. The scenery of the Astral Plane changed with every flight, but today he’d stopped taking it in, preoccupied with wracking his brain for the right words. “I appreciate that — but it’s really that ‘new strategy’ you mention that I’ve been worrying about, not the liches themselves. I’ve been talking to Taako, and to a lesser extent Magnus and Merle, and —”

The flock’s flight slowed, and two hundred glassy raven eyes all fixated on Kravitz as he transformed back into a human, hovering in midair and clasping his hands together as he spoke.

“I didn’t believe them at first, but they really don’t remember their crimes against death, I’m sure of it. They’re not dangerous people — dangerous to themselves when they rush into danger, maybe, but not dangerous to the world. They stopped Legion, and their friend Angus has been telling me about all the people they’ve saved from the Grand Relics, and I — I would not feel justified reaping their souls, even if they fail to capture Bluejeans and Lup. There’s just so much we don’t know about how they’ve violated the laws of life and death — it may not have even been intentional on their part. My Queen, I sincerely believe we should grant them the same benefit of the doubt we grant to people roped into necromantic cults against their will — I can vouch for their character, and I know many other souls, both living and dead, who will do the same.”

Kravitz…

The flock was completely frozen in place now, and though he didn’t need to, Kravitz held his breath — a nervous habit from his life that he still hadn’t broken after centuries.

Is this why you’ve been stressed? Because you were anticipating this conversation?

“Partly, my Queen.”

I trust your judgement, Kravitz. I cannot pardon these three bounties altogether, knowing so little about their offenses — but if you deem it fitting, then I will grant them an indefinite respite as we investigate further. In the meantime, what do you propose for the escaped soul Noelle Redcheek and the necromancer Lucas Miller?

“So far, neither of them have done ill with their borrowed time. Noelle never asked to return to the world of the living, and she fought heroically against Legion, while Lucas… well, I spoke to his mother, and she seemed confident that he’d learned his lesson. I think we should allow them to stay in the world of the living until they die, provided they commit no more necromantic offenses.”

Then that shall be our policy moving forwards. Do keep an eye on Lucas, if nothing else, but I reviewed Noelle’s file personally this morning, and she sounds like a pleasant young spirit.

Still hovering in the air, Kravitz executed a bow as he let out his breath. “I appreciate the trust, my Queen.”

I will consult with Istus, to see if she can discern the pasts or destinies of the three… unique bounties. Until then, they are to be presumed innocent.

Kravitz smiled, because it was no secret that the Raven Queen relished every excuse to consult with the Lady of Fate. “I’m sure Lady Istus will be happy to hear from you.”

She will, and I don’t need to be the goddess of fate to know that. The ravens swarmed together, consolidating back into a seven-foot tall woman with dark brown skin, black roses adorning her hair, and sapphire-blue eyes glowing from behind the slits in her mask. She draped a cloaked arm over Kravitz’s shoulder as she continued:

Now, my child, you said something else was bothering you besides the status of your bounties?

“Well, it’s… I just…” Kravitz shook his head. “Let me put it this way: do you ever get nervous before talking to Istus, even though you always like spending time with her and know she feels the same? I guess you probably don’t, because you’re a goddess —”

Oh, I do.

“Oh.”

Do you have a commitment tonight? Let me guess — with Taako?

Kravitz smiled sheepishly. “We… er, I’m not even sure which one of us talked the other into it, but we might have arranged to go to a wine and pottery place on the moon together —”

Of course, the Chug ‘N Squeeze. There’s one in the Celestial Plane as well.

“You’re joking!”

Istus and I have been going there often lately. She loves all arts and crafts, after all.

Kravitz sighed. “Well, I had been wondering where all the clay ravens in my office were coming from.”

Do you like them, my child?

“Oh, they’re wonderful. The real office corvids like to perch on them, I guess to assert their dominance?”

The so-often stoic Queen laughed in a voice that could’ve belonged to a human, despite the cacophony of caws that swept across the Astral Plane in place of an echo. Kravitz, I’m sure your date will be divine. You have my blessing.

“It is helpful, not having to worry about arresting Taako in less than two months,” Kravitz admitted. “Thank you, my Queen.”

One last thing, my child — I’d like you to prioritize hunting down those problem liches, unless anything else comes up. I can’t shake the suspicion that they’re connected to your former bounties’ cases — or should I say for Taako, your potential future boyfriend’s case?

Kravitz spent a few seconds of increasingly awkward silence thinking about that second sentence, but ultimately decided that he didn’t want to challenge it. “Taako and his friends are doing important work of their own at the Bureau of Balance, and I don’t want to drag them away from that any more than I already have — but I’ll ask them to keep me updated if they find any new leads, and I’m quite sure they will. Bluejeans seems drawn to them, and to the Grand Relics, like a moth to a flame.”

So I suspected, the Raven Queen replied. It seems Istus and I have much to discuss.

***

With a dramatic flourish of his scythe, Kravitz stepped out of the rift and into Taako’s kitchen. Taako was leaning against the counter waiting for him, chin in his hands and a smug, catlike grin on his face.

“Sooo, notice anything different about me?”

“Not sure. New hat?” Kravitz replied, feigning confusion. “Just kidding! The new haircut looks great.”

“Finally, someone realizes! Lumberjack Ruffboi and the lunar youth pastor didn’t say a thing about it.” Running his fingers through the considerably shorter hair in question, Taako snorted — apparently in response to the nicknames of his own invention — and Kravitz chuckled along with him.

“Don’t get me wrong, you wear the shorter hair well, but why cut it now?” he asked Taako. “It wasn’t that long —”

“Not that long? It was turning into a mullet, Krav, and that’s fuckin’ unacceptable. Can you imagine us walking into a five-star, metropolitan establishment like the Chug ‘N Squeeze together, you absolutely killing it — pun totally intended — in your feathered cloak and designer suit, only for me to saunter in behind you, sporting an honest-to-Raven Queen mullet? Who do you take me for, Barold J. fucking Bluejeans?”

“Of course!” Kravitz sarcastically conceded, laughing. “Clearly, I was running the risk of mistaking you —” He gestured to Taako, brown-skinned and freckled with distinctly pointed ears, “for my old undead archnemesis Barry —”

He stopped talking as Taako dove to catch his Umbra Staff, which had rolled off the kitchen table seemingly all on its own.

“Hey, what gives?” Taako demanded of the umbrella. “I thought we were cool again after the other night — you got something against me trash-talking mullets, or what?”

The Umbra Staff didn’t reply, and Kravitz rubbed his neck. “Er… you talk to your umbrella often?”

Taako shrugged. “Yeah, and I talk to my wizard hat and my favorite fantasy electric mixer too, sometimes. S’no biggie.”

“Sometimes people in the Material Plane give me strange looks for talking to corvids, so I guess I can’t judge,” Kravitz admitted. “But speaking of talking to birds, I have good news!”

Taako slung his Umbra Staff over his shoulder. “Oh, bird news? That’s my favorite kinda news!”

“I spoke to the Raven Queen this morning, and… well, you’re not entirely out of trouble, but you don’t have to worry about that two month time limit anymore! The Queen decided that since no one knows exactly what your crimes were, we can’t judge you for them fairly, so you and the boys are safe at least until someone cracks that mystery — potentially safe forever, if the truth comes out and the Queen finds it sympathetic. Noelle and Lucas have also been granted amnesty, so don’t worry about them either.”

“Huh.” Taako rubbed his head, blinking slowly a few times. “So… we’re calling it quits on the lich hunts ‘til further notice?”

“More or less, but I’ve got a hunch you’ll run into Barry again whether you’re looking for him or not,” Kravitz answered. “So if or when that happens, I’d love a tip off.”

“Gotcha.” Taako nodded slowly. “Well, at least this’ll be good for Angus. Little half-pint can finally chill out instead of worrying about me all day.”

“Absolutely. See, when I went to beseech the Raven Queen, a big part of my argument was that reaping these doofuses’ souls would make an over-stressed ten-year old very sad,” Kravitz joked, deadpan. “So she really had no choice but to give you a respite — wait. What do you mean, at least?”

“Oh, you know.” Taako shrugged, averting his eyes. “It’s just the end of a short-lived bounty hunting era for ‘cha boy. It was dangerous work, but hey, my whole job is dangerous, right? Solving a lich mystery was a nice break from the routine —”

Then he sighed. “Oh, what happened to me? What happened to Taako’s good out here? I’m not into peril! I shouldn’t be missing it no matter how much…” He met Kravitz’s gaze again, smiling sheepishly this time. “No matter how much I’m gonna miss you, when you’re busy hunting ghosts and I’m busy hunting Grand Relics again.”

“Ah.” Kravitz felt his face grow warm — which should be a rare for a reaper without blood or a heartbeat, but seemed to be happening an awful lot around Taako lately. “Well, if it’s any consolation, the Raven Queen’s pretty generous with vacation days — after all, how do you think I made time for our date tonight?”

Taako’s eyes lit up. “Oh, we’re officially calling it a date? I mean, I knew the subtext was there, but why didn’t you tell me earlier?!”

Kravitz clapped a hand to his mouth, several seconds too late. “That was — oh, gods. That honestly wasn’t — that truly wasn’t intentional, but if you want it to be a date? I would love to call it one.”

“Okay, okay, I got a related idea for you —” Taako leaned in a little closer, and for the first time, Kravitz noticed the flecks of gold and burgundy in his dark brown eyes. “How about we just stop making idiots of ourselves and kiss already?”

Then Taako leaned back and facepalmed. “Damn, I shoulda said ‘stop making idiots of ourselves and make out already!’ That works so much better than —”

Kravitz kissed him on the cheek — just a quick peck, made brief not by a lack of interest in kissing Taako, but by Kravitz’s reluctance to tear his eyes away from Taako’s own for any longer than a few seconds. Taako kissed him back, running his hand down the back of Kravitz’s neck —

Then he withdrew with a jolt. “Aw, we’re about to be late to pottery, aren’t we? I even made reservations —”

“Not while you’re dating me, you’re not!” Kravitz exclaimed, drawing his scythe and slicing open a rift that led directly to the Chug ‘N Squeeze. He grabbed Taako by the hand, and the two of them laughed as they tumbled through the portal, scaring the wits out of the host but earning a cheer from Killian and Carey. Magnus — who was contentedly third-wheeling behind the couple, in his weirdly wholesome Magnus way — raised an eyebrow at first, but then gave a friendly wave and returned to the misshapen cup he was molding.

“Today,” the instructor coughed, clutching his chest, “we’ll be walking through how to make plates. Please, for the love of all the gods in the universe, do not make clay interplanar portals, because we’ve already had more than enough of that.”

“What fun!” Taako exclaimed he settled into his seat, then whispered under his breath to Kravitz: “I dunno what I’m making, but it’s not gonna be a plate. Real art is born when you start out with no plan, and go wherever the moment takes you.”

“Honestly? You do you, but I can’t really relate. Like, maybe it’s because music is the only type of art I normally pursue — but I’d rather have sheet music in front of me as a jumping off point, even if I’m planning to improvise, you know?”

“You were a bard? I shoulda known.” Taako tried to shape his clay into something that could pass for a plate or platter at a glance, yet remain legally distinct. The instructor gave him a suspicious look, but quickly moved on to reprimand Magnus for attempting to recreate his wineglass. “Love you for that, and you know you’ll have to show off your kickass music skills for me one day, but how does a bard wind up working for the death goddess?”

“Interesting story, that,” Kravitz admitted. “You want the long version, or the short version?”

“I dunno, maybe a brief novella?”

“Okay. Yeah, I can work with novella length.” Kravitz leaned back in his chair, removing a few clumps of clay from under his nails. “At the beginning of the end of my lifetime, give-or-take eight hundred and twenty years ago, my sibling and I were travelling a dangerous road, and we got in over our heads. We were passing through an abandoned cemetery, and… it’s hard to forget how we were just joking about how ominous it was…”

He got a distant look in his eyes. “But the second we started to laugh, a gang of bandits jumped out from behind the graves to ambush us. Now, I was a damn good bard and my sibling was a damn good artificer, but we were unprepared for combat — and, worse outnumbered five to two. We pruned their ranks to four, then three, when the first two ruffians tried to charge us, but the other three had both range and cover, and they rained arrows on us from both sides of the road. My sibling took a hit that left them in critical condition, so… I did the only thing a protective older brother could do, upon finding oneself and their injured loved one assailed in a cemetery. It was a split-second, desperate decision, but… I played a song to raise the dead.”

“You did a death crime,” was what Taako said out loud, but what he thought was I’d do the same thing. Which was strange, not just because he couldn’t play any instruments, but because he definitely didn’t have a sibling whose peril would prompt such an arcane outburst from him.

He would’ve liked to have someone like that, though. Someone to unconditionally watch his back on those tough journeys, someone who’d raise the dead for him, someone —

Someone to tell him to quit psychoanalyzing himself on date night, come on, Taako, you’re giving yourself a headache.

“As rash as it was, I’d do it all over again if I had to,” Kravitz confessed, apparently too focused on the story to notice what must’ve been visible confusion on Taako’s face. “Though maybe don’t tell the Raven Queen I said that, because it was… quite the crime.”

Absentmindedly, he picked up a few extra clumps of clay and began to roll them into a thin cylinder between his palms. “The graveyard the bandits had chosen was a good place to ambush travellers, but the perfect place to be ambushed by the undead. The zombies I raised were individually weak, but there must’ve been close to two dozen of them, and they surrounded the ruffians that had surrounded us. While they bought us time, I poured all the power I had left into healing my sibling from the brink of death — and it was all worth it, because they got away safe…”

“But you didn’t,” Taako murmured.

“No,” Kravitz confirmed. “But don’t look so glum. The ending of the story’s not all sad.”

He placed the clay cylinder on his plate-in-progress, flattening it slightly as he affixed it to the rest of his project, then set to work shaping another clump into something quite different. “When I died, I was almost immediately met by the Raven Queen’s reaper at the time. She was… not exactly thrilled that I’d summoned a minor undead army — an undead militia, she called it — but my zombies and the bandits had more or less mutually destroyed each other, while she saw I was a first-time offender who’d only acted in self-defense, and wasn’t putting up a fight as I was escorted away from the world of the living. She told me she would be keeping an eye on me for the first few years of my afterlife, just to make sure I hadn’t developed a taste for necromancy and decided to hatch an escape plan from the Astral Plane, and then escorted me to a a pleasant little island in the Astral Sea.”

Kravitz added the final piece of clay to his creation, and Taako realized he’d formed a raised scythe pattern at the plate’s center. “Hopefully this sticks when it goes into the kiln. Anyway, I spent about the next five years on that island, but the reaper brought me plenty of instruments to play and books to read upon my request, so it was hardly a punishment. I was surprised, though, the day she showed up and said that the Raven Queen had requested my presence.”

“Aha. Now here’s the start of your career, right?”

“Exactly. When she offered me an apprenticeship as the next reaper-in-training, I was initially… apprehensive, to say the least, but I eventually accepted the offer, and… well, you know perfectly where the story goes from here. I was a better fit for the job than I could’ve ever expected, and… there were some nice perks, too.” He smiled. “For one thing, I got to spend a few months with my sibling and parents after each of them passed away.”

“I’m glad that worked out for you,” Taako said, with a sincerity he rarely used in combination with those particular words. For the first time since Kravitz had started talking, he took a good look at his own clay, which looked like… a misshapen lump, or maybe an especially boring rock. He probably could’ve paid more attention to what he was doing, but at least he hadn’t gone and subconsciously made a plate.

“But you know,” he went on, stroking his chin, “I’m intrigued by this implication that by peacefully turning myself in for death crimes, I could get nominated for a reaper job…”

Kravitz laughed. “Oh, I wouldn’t recommend that loophole. Maybe if the Queen hadn’t approved your respite, I would suggest it as a last resort —”

“What’s wrong, afraid of me stealing your job?”

“No — I’ve been a reaper for eight centuries, but the one who trained me only retired about four hundred and fifty years ago. Two to four reapers serving concurrently isn’t uncommon. The problem is, the Queen usually chooses reapers who have some prior knowledge of necromancy — without having used it for evil or anything, of course — and unlike most of my bounties, Taako, you don’t seem to be a necromancer? I mean, I’m sure you could learn, because you’re clearly a skilled wizard, but I wouldn’t encourage it. You’re just starting to get out of trouble as is.”

“If you insist,” Taako said with an exaggerated sigh. “So the Raven Queen’s ideal recruits would be, what, a couple of lich superheroes who swore to only use their dark powers for good?”

“In an ideal world, yes — but certainly not in the universe we live in, because those kind of liches don’t exist on any plane I’ve visited. Like I said, I’ve been doing this centuries, and even the rare times I’ve seen liches start out with good intentions, they can’t hold it together once they actually become undead. I guess Barry has debatably held it together, at least compared to the baseline for liches, but gods know what his intentions are, so I don’t plan on offering him a job any time soon.”

Taako took a sip of his wine. “You could still set him up for an interview sometime, just to see,” he suggested, completely deadpan. “Maybe he’ll surprise you.”

***

The view of the night sky was gorgeous from the moonbase, perhaps even on par with the blue-tinged literal heavens of the Astral Plane — but there was also something off about the view tonight, something Kravitz couldn’t quite place.

“What an atmosphere, am I right?” Taako sat down on a bench, still cradling Kravitz’s plate gingerly in his arms. “Who needs telescopes when you can stargaze from the moon?”

“If we ever have another artistic date, we should come out here earlier and try and paint this,” Kravitz agreed aloud. Internally, he was only growing more puzzled as he ran through a laundry list of variables.

The moonbase’s artificial lights had long since dimmed for the evening. They were miles above any other sources of the light pollution that plagued the modern world. The sky was cloudless from horizon to horizon, and the real moon was barely a crescent, hardly a bright enough beacon to drown out the lights of any stars.

So why did the sky look emptier than Kravitz remembered it ever looking in his lifetime, as if an invisible black backdrop at the edge of the Material Plane had slowly inched closer, smothering the most distant stars one by one and dimming the night by a barely-perceptible degree? Was his memory all wrong, or had something subtle yet cosmically pivotal changed?

“One of our artistic dates has got to be something musical,” Taako went on, apparently either unconcerned by the state of the sky or oblivious to it. “You keep up with modern music at all?”

“Mmm, on and off. Not so much recently, but I went to a lot of concerts last century.” Kravitz noticed Taako shivering slightly as a stiff breeze blew past, and draped his raven-feather cloak over Taako’s shoulder.

“Hey, thanks. Will RQ hand these cloaks out to any old Joe, or do you have to be a reaper to wear one?”

“You have to be a reaper to receive one —” Kravitz winked. “— but I have an extra I could loan you, if you promise you won’t wear it next time you commit a death crime.”

“It’ll get me more use than the Cloak of the Manta Ray, that’s for sure,” Taako snorted.

He pecked Kravitz on the lips, and Kravitz kissed back before the two of them both looked back up to the sky again, hand in hand this time.

“This is a very weird question,” Kravitz began, “but do you know how often visible stars go out? It can’t be very often, can it?”

Taako frowned. “Depends. You mean, like, as supernovas, or in the more anticlimactic ways?”

“Either, really. I just… I kind of thought there would be more stars visible from here than you can see from the surface, but the sky looks a little emptier than I remember from stargazing when I was alive.”

“That is weird,” Taako agreed, “‘cause stars all die eventually, and get reborn from the dust left behind — but they burn for millions or billions of years first. A few centuries is just chump change to stars; there’s no way it should make that much of a difference —”

“Okay, that’s what I thought,” Kravitz said. “Maybe my memory’s just cloudy…”

“Hmm. I guess that’s one explanation.” Taako rubbed his chin, then leaned back to rest his head on Kravitz’s shoulder as he squinted at the galaxies overhead. “Hmmm.” His murmur turned to a hum, his breath pleasantly warm on Kravitz’s neck.

“I’m sure you’ve studied more astronomy than I have, so I’ll leave this mystery to you,” Kravitz told him. “I prefer my mysteries down to earth, or maybe in the Underworld —”

“Me? Astronomy? Studying?” Taako laughed, and Kravitz felt him shiver. “You’re giving me too much credit. I just…”

He paused. “Just kinda picked up the basics in my free time, I guess.”

“Your free time where, at wizard school?” Kravitz teased.

“Nope! Taako’s Amazing Self-Taught Wizard Homeschool for life, baby. I just read about astronomy… here and there, I guess. Probs a library, not that it really matters…” Frowning, Taako rubbed his head, and Kravitz saw his hand come away damp with sweat.

“Speaking of libraries, we should visit one together sometime,” Kravitz pivoted, and was relieved to see Taako smile again, sitting up a little taller. “I love catching up on science that was contentious in my lifetime, like germ theory, or what will happen when the sun goes out —”

“Oh, that’s an easy one for us nowadays. We’ve got a few billion years before it turns into a white dwarf and eventually goes nova — not supernova, mind you, but still pretty nova. You won’t wanna be around for it.”

“I’ll try and retire from immortality before then,” Kravitz chuckled. “I’m sure my work would be cut out for me reaping —”

An electric buzz infiltrated the back of his mind, and he tapped two fingers to his temple, adjusting the celestial signal. “I’m so sorry. Hang on a second.”

“Business call?” Taako asked dejectedly.

“Yeah. Necromancers wait for no stargazing date nights.” Kravitz relayed a silent message of confirmation back to the Raven Queen, and lowered his fingers, cutting off the connection. “Alright, the Rockport Fantasy Costco got caught selling necrotic artifacts — again — but it’s not that urgent. Any other couples’ activities you want to squeeze into, let’s see, the next five minutes?”

Taako shook his head. “Nah, better to save all the good stuff for next time than to rush it. But speaking of that — when should next time be?”

“I have no idea when I’ll be free, honestly —” Kravitz admitted, “— but I just remembered! You’re not a wanted man anymore, so I can give you my Stone frequency!”

“Aw, hell yeah!” Taako rummaged through pockets full of pudding and magical trinkets, eventually procuring his own Stone of Farspeech. “Here, plug in your contact info and I’ll text you back —”

“Oh, gods, I was just going to read you my number! Your way is so much more efficient —”

“Hey, Old Man Krav, don’t be too hard on yourself! Most people your age wouldn’t even know what a Stone of Farspeech is —”

Caught up in parting banter, neither Kravitz nor Taako noticed when directly overhead, another star vanished without fanfare as the encroaching void swallowed it whole…

But miles below, at a furtive meeting in the foothills of an ill-charted mountain range, two undead spirits were all too aware.

***

Barry supposed it was obvious that he was nervous. In lieu of a racing heartbeat, the scarlet threads of his robe were repeatedly unravelling, then weaving themselves back together in a slightly different pattern each time — though he supposed he should count his blessings, since at least Noelle looked a lot less horrified than she honestly had the right to be.

“I think I got everything,” she told him, completely unfazed as he snatched the sack of components from her with a shaking, blurry hand. He really hadn’t meant to snatch it, like a feral cat snatching food from a human hand it didn’t yet trust. It had just sort of happened that way.

“Thank you,” was what he meant to tell her, but the sound that came out was indistinguishable from nails on a chalkboard, and he tried again. “Thank you, Noelle.”

The second time, it was more of a rasp — a lot like the voice he’d put on to talk to Taako, Merle, and Magnus in Goldcliff, except not at all intentional this time — but at least it was recognizably his, and for that, he was willing to settle.

“Mister Bluejeans, are you… okay?” Noelle asked him — and there it was, the question he’d been waiting for. “You’re surrounded by an awful lot of crimson lightning.”

“I’ve dealt with worse. I’ll live,” he told her. “Well, no, bad word choice — I’ll survive. Liches like me just… don’t handle negative emotions well, but better I express it than repress it. Besides, I’ve gotten through worse before.”

It must’ve helped, talking to someone who reacted to his eldritch nervous tics with concern rather than horror — because the rasp in his voice started to subside, and his hands looked almost human again, albeit incorporeal, as he sorted through the bag of components Noelle had delivered:

Iron filings by the pound. A few jade crystals, imperfect yet sufficient for their purposes. An arcane core, currently deactivated, yet surrounded by a humming magical aura made from practically the same stuff as Barry’s own current form.

And last but not least, several handfuls of black opals — an unpleasant reminder of the Hunger’s approach, of the stars blinking out and the color being sapped from the world. Their shifting pattern iridescence was so familiar that Barry could easily imagine pure white eyes opening on the surface of the gems, even though he knew he was safe, that these stones were nowhere near perfect circles.

“These will work,” he reported. “Really, I can’t thank you enough.”

“Oh, come on. It’s the least I could do,” Noelle told him. “Did you finish the cannon upgrade?”

“Sure did.” Barry returned her cannon arm to her, and she reattached it gingerly, humming with satisfaction as she tested moving it around. “Had to override a couple of Lucas’s anti-modding measures, and it’s gonna be a hassle to recharge, but it’s all set up to deal radiant damage now. Just please don’t test it in here, ‘cause my poor subterranean lair may not survive.”

Noelle laughed. “Gotcha. Once I get some practice shots in, I’ll be ready to set the trap. You feeling up to it?”

“I still don’t feel ready,” Barry admitted, “but it’s not like I’ve got any other options, besides sitting here and worrying more. I just… I just have to take it one step at a time.”

He placed the opals back in the bag, along with the other components and a wand he’d made specifically for writing runes. Out of sight and out of mind, if only for a brief respite.

Tomorrow, I’m saving my family from the Grim Reaper, he resolved. Then, I can worry about saving the planar system.

***

End notes:

Taako is actually wrong about what will happen to this planet’s sun in billions of years — white dwarfs only go nova if they’re located in binary or otherwise multiple star systems, like a certain two-sunned planet had ;) There’s also a couple references to the Grand Relics in this chapter that I like to think are clever, let me know if you caught them!

(Also, describing the Taakitz kiss as “a peck on the cheek” was a certified 100 percent intentional bird pun — shoutout to this fic’s awesome beta Fex for encouraging me to take that joke and run with it completely seriously!)

#taz #taz balance #taakitz #kravitz taz #taako taaco #the raven queen #barry bluejeans #no-3113 #taz balance spoilers #fic: ftrala #rosalia writes fic

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randomfandomcat · 7 years

Text

Promise Me

Ship: Taakitz (Taako/Kravitz)

Rating: Teen

Note: this was a commission for my lovely friend @gay-medusa !!!! They asked for some found family fluff with Taako, Lup, and Kravitz, and here it is! Commission writing Commission art My art blog Read on AO3

“What’s messin’ you up, Kra-” Lup starts to ask, but is quickly cut off by Kravitz. “I wanted to ask your permission to marry Taako.” He swallows hard, making eye contact now. Well. Not what she expected. She also didn’t expect to be shaking and sweating at the idea.

As nervous as he is, Kravitz knows he has to do this.

He makes his way into the main room of the shared apartment, seeing Lup at the table absentmindedly twirling magic around her finger. Taako’s out of the house with Magnus and Merle, doing Istus knows what (quite literally, she knows).

“Ahem. Lup?” He leans on the countertop, trying to inch his way to her. “Could I speak with you a moment?”

“Sure? What’s up, man?” Lup raises a brow, a bit concerned as to what Kravitz is going to say. He’s usually a nervous bumbling dork, sure, but he looks serious now.

“I, uh…” He pauses and sits across from Lup, shifting in his seat. He’s making some motion with his hands, switching between wringing them, tapping his fingers on the table, or circling his thumbs.

“What’s messin’ you up, Kra-” Lup starts to ask, but is quickly cut off by Kravitz.

“I wanted to ask your permission to marry Taako.” He swallows hard, making eye contact now.

Well. Not what she expected.

She also didn’t expect to be shaking and sweating at the idea. She clears her throat, hiding her fear.

“Huh. Cool, uh, sweet dude.” She leans forward in her chair, chin in her hands, staring down Kravitz. “So, what’s a grim reaper make in a year?”

“Wh- pardon?” Kravitz stops playing with his hands, confused, of course.

“Will you be able to provide for Taako?” Lup asks, as if it was an obvious question.

“I- yes? I mean, he makes some decent money, but I, I have access to resources-” Kravitz shrugs, looking around the room as he thinks.

“Are you ready for this kind of commitment?”

“Lup, I’m a grim reaper, I’ve been dating Taako for a few years now, I don’t see how I wouldn’t be.” Kravitz sounds a little exasperated, but this is only the beginning.

“Yes or no?” Lup cocks her head to the side, mentally giving him a strike.

“Yes, I’m ready to marry Taako.” Kravitz sighs, leaning forward on the table.

“Where do you see yourselves in 5 years?”

“Well, married for starters. Living here still, maybe? Maybe I’ll be an independent conductor by then…” Kravitz taps his finger against his lips as he thinks about the future with Taako. Lup slams her hands on the table like she’s interrogating him, and Kravitz jumps.

“What makes you want to marry him?” Lup only seems to be getting more upset with further questions. Were his answers not good enough? Was he going to be able to marry Taako? Kravitz thumbed over the ring in his pocket, scared of what Lup was thinking.

“Well… I love him. He makes my heart flutter somehow, he’s funny and charming, and even if he’s egotistical, he’s confident at least. And he’s sweet to me, despite everything he’s been through. He makes lovely dinners, he’s dumb and romantic, that lovable doofus…” Kravitz trails off, and Lup can almost see the hearts in his eyes.

When Kravitz looks at Lup, she just looks angry.

“Lup? What do you-” Kravitz is looking back at her with sincere fear and question, and it only makes Lup angrier.

“Why do you deserve to marry him!?” She shouts, standing with her hands slammed on the table until she realizes what she’s done. She stiffens and slinks back into her chair, looking anywhere but at Kravitz, her hand on her cheek as she hides tears.

“Lup…” Kravitz’s voice is almost inaudible. Caring. “I’m not going to take your brother away from you.” He says it like it’s obvious, but in Lup’s head, that’s all that can happen.

“You don’t know that.” She starts quietly. “I’ve already had him taken away from me you don’t know that-” Her voice is trembling and words stumble out of her mouth, and she’s hitting herself for revealing this side of her.

“Because I love him, and so do you. He’s your brother. I don’t know what you two have been through, not entirely, but you two have always been there for each other. I don’t want to take that away from you at all, I just…” He reaches a hand out, not touching Lup, but just there on the table, sitting sympathetically. “I want to support him too.”

Lup sits, the room still in this moment.

She blows a raspberry.

“Nerds.” She laughs, and Kravitz grins. “Yeah, okay. Fuckin’ get married.” Kravitz gasps and shakes her hand excitedly, pulling her up from her chair.

She grabs Kravitz’s tie and pulls him closer to her face.

“If you ever hurt him, I’ll know, and suddenly, a lot of people are gonna go un-reaped, you get me?” She threatens, gripping the tie as tightly as Kravitz was shaking her hands.

“Got it.” He chokes out and Lup lets him go, crossing her arms.

“Good.” Lup smirks.

A few weeks later, she watches as Kravitz fills their shared apartment with flowers and balloons, scattering petals in a path on the floor.

”This is a shitload to clean up and you know it.” Lup grumbles from her position, sprawled across the couch.

”It’s romance, Lup. I’m making this special.” Kravitz looks back at her for a moment and continues to place flower petals.

”Grosserooni, it’s like you love each other or something.” Lup sticks her tongue out and makes a barfing motion, which morphs into a smile.

Kravitz rolls his eyes and moves to setting up the ring, and Lup gets up to help.

Taako comes home, grumbling about an adventure, or what he’d cook tonight, then stops dead in his tracks. His eyes trail from petals and balloons, to bouquets upon bouquets of flowers, to Lup at the table.

”Lulu…. What’s with all the schmaltz?” His brow raises as a glimmer catches his eye, and he follows it to their little kitchen table. He slowly proceeds towards the glimmer, sitting in front of a silver, covered platter.

He narrows his eyes at Lup, then returns to the tray. “Did Krav make dinner? You know he’s not great at-” He mumbles out of the side of his mouth, but his jaw drops as he lifts the lid. In the center, the clay pot that Taako had made on their first date- they had traded pots at the end of it, and it was a treasured gift to each of them- with a ring at the bottom.

”You were saying?” Taako whips around to see Kravitz, down on one knee.

”I- Kravitz-” Taako’s voice wavers, tears welling in his eyes.

”Taako, I never thought I’d be so in love with a man that hit on me with tentacles.” Kravitz is grinning and suppressing giddy laughter, holding back his own tears.

”But I- I am, and- despite everything you’ve been through, and I’ve been through, and we’ve been through, I want to be with you for the rest of it, until-” Kravitz chokes up a little, a smile wide across his face. “Until death do us part.” He laughs nervously before continuing. “Will you-”

Taako is already saying yes, nodding furiously and pulling Kravitz to his feet before he can finish his sentence. They’re as close as can be, celebrating this happy moment, Lup silently gagging as she did earlier.

“Lulu, you knew about this?” Taako looks over at her, arms still wrapped around Kravitz.

“He came to me to get my blessing.” Lup shrugs with a smile. “Didn’t want to take you away from me or something.” Lup looks down, toeing at the rug.

“Oh,” Taako is silent for a moment, unraveling from Kravitz’s arms to go sit next to Lup.

“Lup, I’m your brother. You can’t get rid of me if you wanted to.” Taako elbows her with a laugh, and Lup shoves him away playfully.

“Ugh, get away from me and go out with your fiancé.” Lup giggles.

“Nope! No getting rid of me now! Hey, invite Barry over, I’ll toss one of these bouquets in his face so he gets the hint.”

“YOU’RE THE WORST-” Lup sees Taako pick up his Stone of Farspeech, calling Barry, who picks up on the first few rings.

“HEY BAROLD! KRAVITZ AND I ARE ENGAGED WE COULD HAVE A DOUBLE WED-” Taako shouts into the Stone, and they can hear Barry yell in surprise.

“NO SHUT UP DON’T LISTEN TO ANYTHING HE SAYS-” Lup defends, trying to yell louder than Taako, who does the same in turn. They wrestle to keep the Stone away from the other and defend themselves, and Kravitz wonders how he got so lucky.

#taakitz #taako/kravitz #uhhhhhh fuc i don't think there's anything else i can tag this with eh #this was really fun to write i might do some art for it lmao #for one bit at least bc i have a really clear vision of it #anyways. sticks mlegy at this #peace

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sovinly · 7 years

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((Look, if Lup’s in the Umbrastaff, then I am going to give her every opportunity to engage with the narrative that I possibly can. Which means, in this case, Istus confirming that this is Lup’s narrative too, dammit.))

Lup’s grown so used to intangibility, she’s not sure what to make of the weight of a room around her.

She can’t help herself: She wiggles her fingers, shifts her weight on her feet, twitches her head to send her hair shifting. Delight is a familiar well in her chest, but the stretch of a grin across her face is less so – not the bare gape of her still skeleton, but a proper smile, less lazy than the one that often stretches across her brother’s face.

Lup is so caught up in physicality that she doesn’t realize that her umbrella, her brother, and her friends aren’t there at the moment. But given that she’s taking in the sight of a radiant woman with her hands full of needles and yarn, spilling like galaxies across her lap, Lup isn’t too panicked. If they’re in Istus’ temple, this must be Istus – Q.E.D.

It’s honestly more of a shock to be facing the goddess herself, not just peeking over the shoulders of the currently alive.

“Well,” Istus says, a smile blooming over her face, “you’re just in time.”

“First time that’s happened in a while,” Lup says dryly. The richness of the color and fabric Istus works with and is surrounded by sparks a thought, and Lup runs her hands over her thighs and glances down. Her red robes hang comfortably around her, soft and worn and familiar. She drags her attention back, so unused to anyone listening to her, talking to her, interacting with her. “Are you talking to the rest of them too?”

“What’s the point of being a goddess if I can’t talk to all of you at once?” Istus asks, still smiling. “They’re very unique – in all the parallel worlds, of all the variations of people doing so many things, they’re the only three of them doing exactly what the three of them are doing. And you’re the only you who’s doing exactly what you’re doing.”

Humming quietly, Lup considers that. “What I’m doing is mostly haunting an umbrella and setting shit on fire to remind my brother I exist.”

Istus’ eyebrows curve up, as pale and shimmering as her hair. “No, I mean! Your whole life, pretty much, you’ve been preventing things that go against the designs of fate from happening, stopping terrible powers from being misused! Like I’m telling them, that’s my whole jam! And you –”

Her look goes soft, not quite maternal but very like Lup’s aunt, all those eons ago, and Lup’s dead heart stutters in her chest.

“Lup, you’ve had so much taken from you,” she continues, even as her fingers keep twisting the yarn around her needles. “You’ve given so much to do my work, without even knowing you’ve been doing it! And you’ve lost so much because of it, but you’re still doing it. It’s amazing. And one of these days, things are going to come to a head, so I want to ask you to make it official. I want you to become my emissary in this world, too, in exchange for my blessing.”

Lup snorts. “Yeah, uh, if you haven’t noticed, I’m a lich. Pretty sure that’s not fate-approved.”

Belatedly, she claps her hands over her mouth. Muffled, she says, “Oh shit.”

Istus laughs, bright and warm, and it sinks into Lup’s bones the way that the laughter of her loved ones always has. “I mean, that’s what I’m saying! You’re not using it to change fate or, or, or hoard power. You’re using it to help your friends, your family, keep this world from going sideways. That’s all I’m asking you to keep doing – keep fighting the Hunger, keep preventing it from reshaping creation in its image instead of fate’s. You’re as important to the fate of life as your living friends.”

Hell, it’s not like Lup was ever going to do anything different.

“Yeah, okay,” Lup agrees. She draws herself up from her habitual slouch, tilts her chin up, and shoves her hands into her pockets. “I’ll do my best. Are there any, like, benefits? Not that I can really use them, I live in my umbrella.”

“Definitely benefits!” Istus enthuses, but her smile turns a little wry, a little tragic. “Unfortunately, I can’t give you the sorts of things I’m giving the boys, but there’s a little something I can do.”

She weaves a new color into her knitting, and a little pendent, the same as Istus’ holy symbol, hovers in front of Lup.

Lup tentatively reaches out and brushes her fingers over it before taking the necklace in hand. It feels real, feels like the weight of bronze in her hand, a little cool but warming quickly, the grooves of it intense against her fingers. Shakily, Lup wraps the chain around her wrist, wearing it like a bracelet. “Cool, my dude.”

“Very cool,” Istus agrees, her eyes creasing as she smiles again. Her gaze is captivating and Lup can’t look away for more than a few moments. “Depending on how things go, I should be able to make that corporeal, when you have a body again. For now…”

For now, Lup has something new, the first thing in a century. Her fingers trace over the symbol again, her restlessness settling with the motion. It’s not the friendly warmth of her Phoenix Fire Gauntlet, but it feels almost as good, to have a weight around her wrist again. “Thank you.”

Istus is studying her, eyes still soft and fond. “I can’t give you any useful items, I’m sorry, Lup. And I can’t change things, but is there anything I can do for you?”

“Yeah.” Lup’s throat goes dry and she coughs a little to clear it, which, dude, that is a weird-ass feeling after all this time. Her ribs actually shift when she sucks in a heavy breath. “I can’t remember what it feels like anymore. I’ve got my memories, totally rad, really great to be around that Voidfish problem, but it’d uh, it’d be really chill if I could remember what it was like to touch the people I love.”

Istus’ face twists with emotion, and Lup honestly kind of loves her for that. “Oh. Lup, Lup, of course.”

Another new little thread and some of Lup’s memories gain a tangibility that’s faded from them. She can recall the feel of her forehead pressed against Taako’s, the warmth of his fingers twined in hers, the scent of his favored incense. She can recall nudging her shoulder against Lucretia’s, Lucretia’s bony arm pushing back as she shoots Lup a shy smile, the warmth of sitting side by side. She can recall Barry’s arm around her waist, the feel of his hair against her fingers as she locks her hands behind his neck, the softness of his mouth as she leans up to kiss him.

The last almost soothes the pain of hearing his voice break when he saw Taako carrying her umbrella.

Lup’s fingers numbly come up to touch her cheeks. She’s crying. She barely remembers what it’s like to cry, to be able to express her emotions as anything other than a fiery blast.

“Thanks,” she tells Istus, voice raw. The memories wrap themselves like a furnace in the hollow of her ribcage. For the first time since before she died, Lup feels warm.

“You’re so very welcome, Lup,” Istus replies. “But we’re almost out of time, and I have to put you back before I let them go too. You know what’s coming for you all, and no matter what, I’m giving those boys the time to make that very difficult decision. All I need you to do is keep on being yourself.”

She blinks out for a couple of seconds, quick enough that Lup almost questions the gap at all, but then Lup sees the tears welling up in Istus’ eyes, watches her wipe them away. Her eyes are bright as the light of creation.

“You’ve always been wonderful, but you’re going to be amazing,” Istus tells her.

Lup’s whole being trembles with the force of that, thinks tears course even harder down her own face, but then she’s settled back into the usual confines of the Umbrastaff and Istus’ pendent is the echo of a thought.

She exhales, as much as the disembodied afterimage of a soul can exhale.

And then the building comes down, and the world starts over again.

#long post #(when expanded)#the adventure zone spoilers #sovin writes things #that may or may not go on ao3 #i'll think on it #anyway!#taz #still spoilery enough that i actually need a personalized stand in tag #L is going to burn down the fridge #seems appropriate #Give Her the Narrative Space She Deserves So Help Me

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noesa · 8 years

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Masterpost of Cryptic Shit from The Adventure Zone

Because damn Griffin’s given us a lot of mysteries to work with. (Excerpts from the show under the cut.)

PROPHECIES

The Grim Prophecy (The Crystal Kingdom, E39):

Taako, you hear a voice coming out of your bag. And it’s the fuse that Lucas recovered from his mother’s conduit and handed to you all...and this lantern is unlit, but you can feel some machinery inside of it faintly whirring. And you hear a voice inside of it, and the voice sounds kind of like Maureen’s voice, but totally lifeless and, for lack of a better term, inanimate. And you hear this voice deliver what sounds like, kind of a grim prophecy.

And this lantern says, “I saw all of existence all at once. I saw a dark storm, a living hunger eating it from within. But I saw a brilliant light heralded by seven birds, flying tirelessly from the storm. I saw seven birds: the Twins, the Lover, the Protector, the Lonely Journal-keeper, the Peacemaker, and the Wordless One.”

Paloma’s large prophecy (The Eleventh Hour, E45):

...you see two side-by-side visions in this black cloud that appears as [the crystal] shatters on the table. The first one just looks like an ocean made out of tar, with a black sky above it, and this tar is like bubbling, and you see some stuff moving under the surface of the tar but you can’t make out what it is, and that’s on the left picture. And the one on the right is just a grey world, covered in ash, that is just completely barren and lifeless. And Paloma looks up over this black cloud, and she looks completely- when she’s done her other prophecies it kind of looks like she’s having this out of body experience, now it just looks like she’s is just a baker possessed, and she says, in this deep voice:

“In the future, you will be offered a terrible choice, between two options that will determine the fate of reality itself. In this moment of crisis, remember: There is always a third option.”

Istus (The Eleventh Hour, E47):

“The three of you are just so special- you know that, right? Our existence is made up of countless realities where the same people are just doing the same actions at the same time in parallel worlds throughout the echoes of creation, except for you! The three of you are the only three that there are doing the things the three of you do here in this world! When I say that you’re unique, I’m not being flattering, I’m being quite literal... The three of you are anomalies, and I certainly have god-like powers and I don’t like to brag, but I’ve never known anything like the three of you and I don’t know why that is, but I’m intrigued...”

She says, “We’re seriously almost out of time- I have one last blessing for you, my emissaries. Your fate is guiding you- not today, not tomorrow, but to a moment that will challenge you in a new and horrible way. And I cannot make the difficult decision that lies at the end of your quest for you, but I can grant you the time that you need to make that decision.” And then, she just disappears for a couple of seconds, and when she reappears, she is wiping a tear from her eye. And she says, “You’re going to be amazing.”

Paloma’s final prophecy (The Eleventh Hour, E49):

“I have one last prophecy for you, Taako. Something you will need to know. In your hour of greatest need, you will find the power that you seek from the man wreathed in flames.”

THE UMBRASTAFF, LUP, AND THE RED ROBE

Acquisition (Here There Be Gerblins, E05):

You see in the corner of the room a figure that is huddled down... It is a skeleton that is sitting comfortably, that looks like it was positioned comfortably, in the corner of this room with its back up against the wall. It is draped in a bright, crimson robe, and holding what looks to be some sort of cane, with a curled end in one hand that is a bit obscured by its robe...but whoever this was, they have been dead for a very long time... He looks very chill, like he was sitting here and just kicking it, and just sort of wasted away... Any clothes that this person had on were gone, it’s just the robe and the cane that it’s holding... You look over the robe and it just seems to be a plain robe.

(Merle casts Detect Magic) Your mind starts to swirl- you get dizzy and faint because Detect Magic is a pretty basic spell that you've used quite a few times, but you've never really gotten a response from it like this, because the response you got from it was everything. It's all schools of magic. All of the magic that there is seems to be somehow embedded in this cane.

(Taako takes the Umbrastaff) You grab the cane and it's almost like the goddamn quickening happens in this room. There are bolts of lightning shooting out of Taako as he pulls this cane from the grip of the skeleton. And as you remove it from where it sort of had it enveloped in its robe, you realize it wasn't the end of a cane, but it was the handle of an umbrella. And as you pull this umbrella from the skeleton's grasp, the skeleton actually looks up at you like it's acknowledging your presence. And as you finally wrest it from its grasp, the skeleton and the bright crimson robe turn to ash.

Identification (Moonlighting, E09):

"That... let me see that." And he takes it off your hands and looks it over, and says... "This is a- there are very few of these, you should count yourself very lucky to have this. This is called an Umbrastaff, which was created by a clever order of wizards known as the Umbrawizards. They created magical items that looked like normal, everyday items that would allow them to conceal those staves and wands, and allow them to bring it into battle unseen. What makes these staves interesting is that they can consume the power of any magical item used by a wizard that you have bested in combat, and absorb their powers and become stronger. So you will want to hang on to this, it is quite a rare find."

Second confrontation (The Crystal Kingdom, E35):

(As the Red Robe is monologuing) “You three are the only- Taako, Taako where did you find that umbrella?” (Taako: “I took it off this dead person with a red robe.”) He’s starting to shudder, there’s red electricity kind of crackling through him, and he says, “Wh-what? Wait, what are you- you fouND HER?” As he shouts that, he bursts into flames and disappears.

Lup (Lunar Interlude III, E40):

You point your Umbrastaff at the box of macaroons and begin to cast Prestidigitation, but Prestidigitation does not come out of your Umbrastaff. It feels like your Umbrastaff is sort of exerting a will of its own, and Prestidigitation doesn’t come out of it, the spell Scorching Ray does... Scorching Ray comes out of your Umbrastaff again, and this time your Umbrastaff pulls your elbow so that it’s pointing in a straight line, and it’s firing the spell Scorching Ray into the wall, and you can feel the Umbrastaff making you trace a shape, and it carves out the letter L in fire on the wall, and then it does a U, and then it does a P, and then the staff shuts down and you just feel it lose any power that it was exerting over you in that moment.

Third confrontation (The Eleventh Hour, E49):

(After THB say they don’t trust the Red Robe) This red-robed figure falls to its knees, and he’s muttering to himself, like he’s trying to kind of calm himself down, and it doesn’t sound like every other time that he’s spoken to you, it sounds like a guy’s voice. And he says to himself, “Lup... they don’t trust me. I can’t do it anymore, Lup, I’m sorry.”

Kravitz (Lunar Interlude IV, E50)

[Kravitz] says, “There’s something here... I could feel it in the Millers’ lab too, it’s dead and it’s powerful and it’s extremely close. Are you harboring a dark spirit, Taako? Do you have suspicions that you might be some sort of vessel?” (Taako: “I eat old dudes with my Umbra, is that a possibility maybe?”) “I don’t, no I don’t think it’s that.”

And he starts looking around, and Kravitz turns his back to you and starts to walk towards the middle of the quad, still kind of looking around for whatever this powerful dead thing is. And Taako, you actually feel the Umbrastaff in your hand start to raise itself up- it’s not controlling you, it’s controlling itself as your arm is outstretched holding the Umbrastaff and it is pointed at Kravitz’s back. It looks like it’s charging up a spell... You sort of wrestle with the umbrella for a second and point it skyward, and you shoot a Scorching Ray into the sky, and Kravitz turns immediately back towards you and says, “W-what was that?!” (Taako: “The Umbrastaff- it acted on its own.”)

You hand it over and Kravitz looks it over. “You’re sure this isn’t a cursed item, maybe your umbrella’s cursed and maybe you should get that checked out. This is an undead being, like a lich or something big and powerful- you’re not a lich, are you Taako?” (Taako: “Not to my knowledge.”) “No, you aren’t; I would know if you were.”

THE HUNGER, THE PLANES, AND THE RED ROBES

First confrontation (Petals to the Metal, E27):

And then [Captain Captain Bane] takes Magnus’s glass, and just chugs it. And then suddenly, his skin starts to turn that sickly black color that Hurley’s was after she dove into the silverpoint vines, and he falls to the ground dead. And as he falls you see a figure standing behind him. It’s actually not standing, it’s kind of floating, and it’s human-sized and human shaped, but you can’t really make out its race definitively, because all you can see is a bright red robe. (Magnus tries attacking the figure numerous times, but it is incorporeal.) You can’t see inside this floating red robe, all you can see is just complete pitch blackness with a single, small white light that illuminates as this red robe begins to speak.

And it asks, “Are you afraid?... Are you afraid of the dark?” His whispers are actually filling the room, they’re pretty loud. “...You do not know how to be afraid.” It extends a sleeve of its robe, and projects this almost holographic representation of a series of familiar faces: “Gundren Rockseeker, Magic Brian, Jenkins, Sloane, Captain Bane.” And as it says their names, these faces sort of appear in the palm of its hand, and it says, “This is the true nature of man: the want, the hunger. It consumes everything it touches, it can’t be stopped or changed. It’s the end of everything. This is your first lesson.” And it disappears in a spout of flame.

The Candlenights gift (The Crystal Kingdom, E29)

There is one gift left underneath the Candlenights shrub. And it has a tag on it, and it says “For Taako, Merle, and Magnus”. And it’s wrapped up in a very ornate paper, a shiny, glossy, silver paper, and it doesn’t have a ‘from’ name on it, doesn’t say who it’s from; just that it’s to the three of you...

You tear it open, and inside is a small, sort of fine velvet- almost like a jewelry giftbox. And as you pop it open and the three of you are sort of looking over into this package, as you open it up, you see there are three iron-on badges inside of this box. And they’re these dark blue circle, like, iron-on emblems. And inside of each of these blue fabric circles, there are twelve more circles, all of different colors around the outside of each badge. And in the middle is a word that’s written in a language that none of you recognize. You cannot read, you cannot make out what the word is, what these badges are for, because you cannot read the word in the middle. And tucked in between these three badges is a note that says, “For Your Eyes Only.”

Second confrontation (The Crystal Kingdom, E35):

Time stops, and you hear a voice from behind you ask that question, “What’s bigger than this?” ...You see a floating figure in a bright red robe. (Magnus tries attacking it, but he is incorporeal.) “...I spoke to you, about The Hunger of all living things...” He motions to all of the planes and says, “This is the power it seeks, the power of creation itself. A billion, billion lives have been devoured by this Hunger in pursuit of its power...” He waves his hand, and there’s a crate in the back of the room by the projector, and it looks kind of like a trash bin, and as he motions towards it it tips over, and some small gemstone disks crash out of it. One of them is a very dark disk, almost black, but you can see flecks of red and green and blue color in this black disk, and this disk begins to shake, and this horrifying black cloud sort of emerges out of it, and it slowly creeps towards these disks that are floating in the room, and one by one just consumes them. And as each disk is consumed, you hear screaming voices coming from it; it is an absolutely terrifying scene, and it consumes the Prime Material Plane and you feel kind of sick watching it. And after it has consumed all of them, this red robed figure snaps his fingers, and the cloud disappears, this vision leaves you. And he says, “There’s no more running. There’s no escape. This world is life’s last chance...”

THB Death Counts (The Crystal Kingdom, E38):

“I was assigned your family’s bounty, Lucas, but when I came here- that was when I found an even bigger trophy..." [Kravitz] flips through a few pages of this book that’s floating in front of him. “Let’s see, let’s see... Taako! We’ll start with you! Taako, you’ve died eight times... You’ve died eight times and checked into the Astral Plane exactly zero times.”

He flips through the book again and goes, “Magnus, let’s do you next. Magnus... what’s your family name? (Magnus: “Burnsides.”) Oh yeah, that’s right. Magnus Burnsides, you’ve died nineteen times! (Magnus: “That doesn’t sound right!”) And you’ve made zero trips to the Astral Plane.”

“Merle Highchurch. Merle, Merle, Merllle-fucking-Highchurch. You, my dear friend- care to take a guess? Care to wager a guess? (Merle: “I’m just surprised my middle name is ‘fucking’, I had no idea!”) Merle Highchurch, the richest bounty I’ve ever hunted. You, my dear man, have died fifty-seven times. Fifty-seven times! Fifty-seven, and you’ve never come to visit! You’ve never come to visit me, Merle! That’s just rude!”

Static in the Memories (The Eleventh Hour, E48):

(As the Temporal Chalice rewinds through Magnus’ memories) ...And then you are in the years preceding this adventure, which June is watching intently and kind of taking mental notes as she goes, and then she rewinds a bit faster through the years preceding this adventure, and she hits this long period of static. You’ve seen it pop up a few times, where your memories are actually a bit blurry- they become literally blurry around you, and you can’t see them quite as well. And the things you’ve forgotten, they just disappear and become this static, and she hits this huge, huge period of static.

And while she’s rewinding quickly through it, she says: “What- what happened to you guys?! You’re all missing time- like, a lot of time.”

(Magnus: “What period is this?”) This would be about twelve years before the adventure started, or about twelve years before where we are now- somewhere in that timeframe. But she’s rewinding and there’s just a lot of static. Like, a lot of it.

She says: “I guess it’s not really important to what we’re doing here, it’s just- it’s weird, man.”

Third confrontation (The Eleventh Hour, E49):

“Did you retrieve the cup?” (THB: “Yeah.”) “What did you change?” (THB: “We didn’t do anything with it.”) “You didn’t use the cup? I’m really proud of you, I thought that maybe there was a chance that this would be the one to end your adventure.” (Magnus: “Wait- you’re the red robe, you’re one of the bad guys.”) “Who’s told you that?” (THB: “Everybody.”)

“I need to know: do you trust me?” (THB: “No.”) As you say that, that you don’t trust him, this apparition, this red-robed ghost- it’s a lich, floating in front of you- it starts to lose its composure, and I mean that literally, the spectral form starts to jerk violently... [Merle] dodges out of the way as a bolt of red energy whips off this red robe and moves past you. And this red-robed figure falls to its knees, and he’s muttering to himself, like he’s trying to kind of calm himself down, and it doesn’t sound like every other time that he’s spoken to you, it sounds like a guy’s voice. And he says to himself, “Lup... they don’t trust me. I can’t do it anymore, Lup, I’m sorry.” And he calms down, and the sort of distortion that was happening to him kind of fades, and he stands back up and says, “The next time we meet, I will need you to trust me, completely and absolutely. Otherwise, all of this, will have been for nothing. The Hunger is almost here, and when it arrives, this world will be lost.” And, he disappears.

The statue designs (The Eleventh Hour, E49):

[June] hands [Magnus] a tube, and it’s the kind of tube that scholars might store scrolls inside, and she says, “I think you should have this.” And the tube has your name scrawled on the outside of it... In your head you hear the voice of the Red Robe who you’ve seen a few times now, and he says, “Magnus. If you open that tube, Magnus, it’s going to be harder for me to protect you...”

Magnus, you are in a little corner of the dining hall, which is a big massive communal space for the Bureau. Late as it is, there’s nobody else here; that gives you the privacy that you need to look at what’s inside this tube one more time. And you pop it open and unfurl the parchment, and there’s something strange about the parchment inside of this tube, which is that you can see it, you can see what’s on it, but when you try to draw conclusions based on what you see, when it is you try to understand what it is you’re seeing, your mind turns to static. And it’s an incredibly uncomfortable sensation.

So what you see inside the tube are two sheets of paper. And the first one is a design for the statue in the middle of Refuge depicting Jack, June, and the broad-shouldered Red Robe standing between them. And it has a date etched in the corner of it. The other piece of parchment, when you look at the date you can tell this was an older draft of this statue, an older design of the same statue. And in this earlier sketch, Jack and June look exactly the same; but the Red Robe’s hood is pulled down, and you can see his face. And it’s an incredibly familiar face, Magnus, because it’s your face. This figure in this red robe is you.

The Voidfish (Lunar Interlude IV, E50):

[The Voidfish] reaches out and taps you on the forehead, and as it does, your vision goes dark. You, actually, are shown a memory, and it’s not your memory. You are seeing a memory and you know that you are seeing it from the perspective of the Voidfish. And you’re in a dark place filled with twinkling crystal that are casting these dancing lights on the wall, and it’s the wall of a cave, you’re inside a cave, but it feels- because you’re feeling what the Voidfish is feeling in this memory- it feels like home.And you know that because there’s other Voidfish here too. And they are of varying sizes, and- you know how the Voidfish has a spiraling galaxy of lights inside of it? There are other Voidfish with different patterns of lights rotating inside of their gelatinous bodies, and you feel safe in this place. But you know that the other Voidfish have been communicating stories of a coming storm that will doom this home, that will doom this safe place. And so the Voidfish worked to build up their defensives and shut the world out, and because they’re sort of isolating themselves from this coming storm, they don’t really have any interest in entertaining these visitors that arrive, who are groundwalkers. And they’re clad in these brilliant red robes- and then suddenly the vision goes to static.

It sort of pulls away from you in shock. The Voidfish seems kind of scared, it seems kind of worried. But after a moment it reaches out a tendril and touches you on the forehead again, and you’re pulled into another vision, and you are the Voidfish again, and you are with one of these red robes. And you are sprinting towards a great, silver ship- a great, silver boat that is starting to lift upwards out of the water where it’s docked, and then suddenly the vision goes to static. And the Voidfish kind of retreats again, scared that it can’t show you this vision.

(Magnus: “Why me? I feel like we are connected in some way, why?”) The Voidfish thinks about it, and then it touches you on the forehead with one of its tendrils, and tries to show you that exact same scene of it being taken towards a big, silver ship. This time in the vision- which you can only see for a few seconds before it statics out- you see the sky is just pitch black. There is nothing happening in the sky. And you also see something horrifying: it looks like there are these big, black pillars of tar sort of just falling out of the sky and smashing into the world that you’re on. And you also realize that you are sprinting towards this ship, and then the vision goes to static again, and it pulls back away from you...

(Magnus: “Is that a vision of the past?”) It flashes once for yes. (Magnus: “Is that a vision of my past?”) It doesn’t know how to answer that.

[The Voidfish] sort of spins excited, like it has an idea. And then it reaches out and touches you on the forehead, and you see what looks like a galaxy. You see this big scene, but really quickly it statics out. And it tries again, but this time it looks more rudimentary, like a 3d animation or something, but that statics out. And it keeps trying this and trying this, but every time it does the vision becomes more and more and more abstract, and finally it shows you a vision that you can see all of without any static, that has been abstracted down to the point of looking like it’s a child’s drawing. And it’s all just crayons and abstract shapes, and these shapes seem to tell a story that you can see all of without being interrupted by the static.

So, you see twelve circles of all different colors, and they are arranged in a larger circle, and they’re rotating in perfect harmony with each other. They continue this orbit for a few seconds, and then you see a bright white circle of light that sort of flies in and lands in the center of their dance. And for a moment, these twelve multicolored rotate a bit faster, with more complex rhythms, spiraling inwards and outwards in this beautiful choreography, all with that white light at the center of it. And during that frenzied movement another shape appears, and it’s a huge black circle that slowly encompasses everything you see, and it grows larger with each circle that’s consumed, and it’s just that black circle. But then that white light shoots out of its side and flies away, and that black circle moves slowly in pursuit. And then you see the same cycles of the spinning circles, and the light appearing, and then the big black circle coming to devour all of it, and it plays about four or five times before you have to swim up to get a breath of air...

You read the sheet music [for the Voidfish’s song] as you did when you were first starting out, letter-by-letter, and when you read it like that the notes read: E-G-G. B-A-B-E. (Magnus: “Baby... you had a baby? You have an egg.”) As soon as you have that realization, as soon as you say that out loud, in a room that you’re not in, and in a room you’ve never been, something reacts to you saying what you just said in the Voidfish’s chamber, and a quick, bright light flashes, and a small, quiet alarm bell rings.

Merle and the Red Robe (Lunar Interlude IV, E50):

(As a cart comes barreling towards Merle’s children) You’re too far away to do anything but run towards them and watch what happens next, and what happens next is pretty incredible. Because right when the wagon is about to fall on your kids, it changes directions suddenly and violently, and it pitches 90 degrees to the right instantly, sending the whole wagon and all of its contents crashing through the front wall of this candy shop, sending the jars of sweets crashing to the floor and just destroying the front facade of this shop... To the left of this scene of destruction, several yards away, you see, obscured by a pile of shipping crates and downed sails, you see the red-robed figure that you’ve encountered half a dozen times now, and his arm is outstretched and crackling with energy. And he lowers his arm and he turns to face you, and he nods, and he disappears.

The unknown room (Lunar Interlude IV, E50):

What [the audience] is seeing is a disheveled study, who’s preparing for something big. It’s somewhere underground- there’s a chill in the air permeating these wetstone walls, and the room is lit by several dozen candles which are all arranged around a desk which are piled high with magical tomes, and piles of maps. Behind that desk is a large wooden board that is displaying a map of the whole of Faerun, the continent that this story takes place on. And there are strings connecting images and diagrams at certain points on the map, like Fandolin and Armos and Greenhold and Rockport and Goldcliff and Neverwinter. And all these different cities are connected by this web of strings and pictures and diagrams. And it’s the board of someone who has been tracking the relics and the Bureau intently.

Other than the candles, there’s another source of light in this room, which is a six-foot-tall glowing pod that stands on the opposite end of the room from the desk. And it’s full of a swirling green liquid, and inside we can see something growing- or rather, someone growing. There’s a body being created inside of this pod, but the liquid is too opaque for us to see who it is. And the last thing we see is the desk again, and there’s a scroll that is unfurled and held in place by four candles, one at each corner. And this scroll is an incredibly detailed map, with a route drawn through it in red, and it is a map depicting, with perfect accuracy, the headquarters of the Bureau of Balance.

Pringles (The Suffering Game, E51):

(Magnus: “Why are you in [the brig]?”) “Why am I in the brig- they didn’t tell you? It was, like, treason I guess, dude, and I-I’ll be honest, The Director didn’t believe me, nobody believed me, but, like, something had me go all through the Bureau of Balance, even places I wasn’t authorized to be, and then I just kinda woke up and I was in a place I wasn’t supposed to be, and then The Director arrested me summarily, and I’ve been here ever since.”

(Magnus: “What was the place that you woke up in?”) “It was a dark room, and I was right by this big, heavy vault door, and I- I know I was in The Director’s personal space, I saw some of her stuff back there, and- yeah, that’s where they found me, man.”

(Magnus: “Can you tell me anything you remember from before your body was taken over and you moved without your control?”) “I was in our bunk... I was just in our bunk and you guys were out on a mission, and I was real lonely, and then my vision just kinda went red, and then the next thing I know I woke up. That’s it! I hadn’t had any Pringles that day, so I thought maybe I was in some sort of fugue state.”

Divination (The Suffering Game, E56)

(Merle casts Divination, which lets him ask Pan a single question.) Oh, this is perfect. You pray- what’s your question? (Merle: “What is going on with my holy powers.”) Here is the truthful response- this is Griffin, not Pan, speaking- here is the truthful response to your question: Pan’s not answering. It’s not- you know beyond a shadow of a doubt he’s just not there. He’s not there supporting you with holy power, he’s not- he’s just... gone. And this is fucking terrifying, this spell that you’re casting is essentially like a telephone call of a prayer, and Pan has always answered. But not this time. He is not there, and it’s not- you can tell it’s not like you’re getting bad reception on your prayer, you feel it going through, he’s just not picking up. (Merle: “He’s not there, or he’s not answering?”) You don’t know the answer to that. But the reason that your spells aren’t working is because they are powered by Pan, and right now Pan is not there for you.

The Astral Plane is Consumed (The Suffering Game, E56)

(As Magnus drifts through the Ethereal Plane) You see a tear in the fabric of space. And it looks familiar, because you saw something similar to that during your time in Lucas’ lab. It is a rift open to the Astral Plane, where the souls of the deceased go after their death in the Material Plane. And you are drifting into it, Magnus, because you're dying.

(As Taako goes into the Ethereal Plane after Magnus) You see Magnus being sucked into a rift to the Astral Plane, and you recognize the Astral Plane from Lucas’ lab, you recognize it as Kravitz’s home, it is the plane where dead bodies- dead souls go to the afterlife, and you see Magnus getting sucked into this portal...

Magnus, you don’t see Taako flying towards you quite yet, you just see the Astral Plane in the rift opening up and sucking you into it, and- again, you’ve seen the Astral Plane before- in the Cosmoscope, you saw it too, in the mirror- and when you saw it then it was just like, this tranquil sea filled with swirling lights and souls retired to rest in a collective consciousness. Through this rift you see the same sea, but it is choppy, and it’s violent, and there’s no lights below the surface- in fact, you kind of see what looks like an oil slick on the surface, and the sky is stormy and pitch black, and nobody’s there. Kravitz isn’t there...

Taako, you grab Magnus’ hand just as his feet are being pulled into the Astral Plane, and you can see into it also... You both see into the Astral Plane, and you can tell something is seriously wrong. And just as you pull Magnus back, Taako, you see a hand splash up from the choppy waters, you see Kravitz and he’s sort of struggling to pull himself up to the surface of the water. The oil- this black oil on the surface of the water- just twists around him, and pulls him back under, and you feel that oil calling for both of you as well and you’re both getting pulled into the rift now, but with a 20 you fight back against the pull, and both of you are flying back to the center of the room.

Magnus Remembers (The Suffering Game, E57)

Magnus, I’ve got something for you. You just got your ass kicked, and when that happens, you feel a vision sort of wash over you. And suddenly you are miles away from this fight. (Magnus: “Meditating.”) Well, no... you’re remembering? But this act of remembering is so, like, powerful that you are in another state. So you just got your ass kicked, and you remember another time you got your ass kicked, and it was a time when you saved a dog from some bullies that were kicking it around. And you remember this memory really well- it was one of the things you saw when you spoke to the Chalice in the last arc.

But there were parts of this memory that seemed a little foggy, like something was off, and you didn’t realize what was off until this moment. And in this particular vision, one thing that was kind of foggy was a big one- it was the sky. And as you look up in this memory, you’re lying on the ground- you’ve just gotten beaten up by these kids, scared ‘em off, and I think the dog comes and licks your face before it also kind of ungratefully takes off- so you’re laying on your back and looking up at the sky, and the sky is this unnatural light purple color. And as you stop to think, like - “Wow, that’s weird” - you realize that there are two suns in the sky. And they’re nearly overlapping each other right on the horizon, and you think - “Ah, that’s weird” - and then you remember that it’s not weird at all, because that’s how it is, here, in your home. This world that this memory is taking place in, this is your home- this world that you’re on now, this place you’re at and have been for a while, it is not where you’re from.

...Right as he catches it, you have another vision. It’s another memory that you are remembering so powerfully and vividly that you just aren’t here any more. And this one isn’t like the other one where it was kind of fuzzy and then cleared up; this one is just static, until it isn’t. And you are walking through some badlands. It’s this arid landscape of cracked red rock and clay as far as the eye can see, with a few shrubs poking through. And you are lost. You are so lost in this unforgiving environment, and you came here to hide something? That part is still a little bit foggy, you’ve made something and you’re terrified of it, and you came to this place to hide it but you got lost and now you’re so thirsty. You’ve removed the jacket of your uniform, which you’ve kind of sweat through- it is a bright crimson red uniform, with an insignia patch over the left breast pocket. You’ve taken that off because it’s just too hot to have a jacket on right now. And you’re just stumbling through this badlands, and you see this stranger- you actually see two strangers in the distance, a man and a small girl. And they approach you, and they offer you a drink, and they offer you kindness and hospitality. And they’re really good people. You spend some time with them and they’re just really good. And so you decide that you’re going to hide your creation with them. Because they’re the ones who are going to be able to keep this cup safe.

...All of you get a hard-earned, good night’s rest. And Magnus, you dream some wild shit. Too many things, actually, to remember all of the next morning, but there are two visions that stick out and they are just as powerful as the ones you’ve experienced so far. And the first is you’re standing on the deck of a silver ship, and there are some other red-robed figures standing around you- although you can’t quite make out their faces- and this ship is soaring into the sky. And it’s flying away from a land that is being consumed by this wave of darkness, with these ribbons of bright red and green and blue inside- it’s just being swallowed up.

And the other vision that you can recall is really simple: it’s the Voidfish. Floating up into its tank is a thick book, bound in blue leather and silver trim. (Magnus: “And I don’t recognize the book at all?”) No.

Barry Bluejeans (The Suffering Game, E57)

(After describing the scene from the epilogue of Lunar Interlude IV) There’s another thing in this room that catches your eye, and that’s a small, plain wooden chest. And draped over that chest is a red robe- like, an actual, tangible red robe, not the personification that you’ve been talking to. And sown into its breast you see a familiar symbol, you see a circular patch with a design containing twelve multicolored circles and a sort of shifting, imparsable text in the middle of it. Only Magnus, you can read that text, as plain as day. It’s an acronym, and it says I.P.R.E.

And the Red Robe speaks and says, “I acquired this invention years ago, and I’ve used it to recreate my physical form several times now in pursuit of my goal. I’ve come close, but I’ve never reached that goal- it’s because, when I’m in my body, I’m gonna forget all the truths that I know now in my lich form. And I can try to convince myself to follow my own commands-” and he shows you that coin-shaped object that you saw him speaking into earlier- “but, well, I can be pretty stubborn. And I also don’t have any of my potent magical abilities inside my body, because I’m not gonna remember the fact that I’m a lich at all.”

Magnus, he looks at you and says, “Magnus, I see your wheels spinning and I’m sorry, but it takes months for this device to grow a new body and we don’t have months, fellas, we have hours. I’m gonna go into that tank and into my body, and then the four of us are gonna head back to the Bureau of Balance and we’re gonna get the truth that we deserve. And it’s gonna be- uncomfortable, here, in a bit, 'cause you’re gonna recognize me but I’m not gonna recognize you so- I apologize in advance for my rudeness.” He drifts towards the tank and says, “If we all follow my commands, we will be successful. I have been planning this for some time and I believe whole-heartedly in my preparations.”

...And at this time, Magnus, you’re struck with one more vision and this one’s a doozy. You have your back up to a cliff’s edge, axe drawn, an army of shadows approaching. And the sky is pitch black. So black that the sky can’t contain it all, it looks like there are columns of tar illuminated with streaks of red and green and blue just falling, just dripping out of the sky and plowing into the ground. And in the distance, you see a silver ship weave between those columns and fly out of sight. And when you see it fly away you feel this sense of immense relief. And next to you, you see a human man. And he’s wearing the same crimson uniform that you’ve got on with the same patch, only instead of a jacket he’s wearing a full robe. And he looks at you as this horde is about to overrun you, and he drops the wand that he’s holding and a black spike shoots from out of the horde into his chest, and he staggers but he stays on his feet, and he turns and he looks at you, Magnus, and he smiles. And he says, “Well. We’ll get ‘em next time.”

...The membrane encasing this pod splits, and green-brownish fluid splashes out and onto the floor, and a stout, naked human man steps out of the pod. And you recognize his face instantly. It’s the face of a man who you quite reasonably assumed you would never see again, because the last time you saw this face it was being swallowed up in the righteous fire that destroyed the town of Phandalin. But here he is.

Barry’s back.

BRIGHT, WHITE EYES

The Eclipse (Lunar Interlude 2, E28):

You’re blasted by this supersonic noise... (The THB pass their saving throws.) You retain your consciousness, but everyone around you has fallen face-first on the ground... Because you stayed conscious, you can distinguish some sounds in this calamity, and it sounds almost like 20 orchestras are all playing all at the same time around you. It just sounds like this cacophonous- you’re standing in the middle of a circle and all around you are these orchestras that are just blasting you with music, and you hear these thousands if not millions of whispers, but they’re all happening at the same time and they’re all so loud that you can’t really make out any particular word that they’re saying, you just understand that there are these whispers around you... The eclipse only lasts thirty seconds or so, and as the equinox reaches its apex and the light of the sun is completely blotted out, the three of you can see in the sky for just two seconds, the sky is filled with thousands of bright white eyes, and they’re all just burning intensely. And then as the sun and moon part from one another, they fade out just as quickly as they appeared; and as the equinox passes, the music also fades, and then it’s back to normal.

Taako’s first Blink (Petals to the Metal, E18):

You blink into the Ethereal Plane and suddenly your vision goes grey - you blink out of view from Merle and Magnus - and the scene in front of you, other than the color swap change, stays relatively the same. But for a split second, for a flash after you enter this Ethereal Plane, you see three grey figures with bright white eyes standing all around the room, sort of positioned all around the room, sort of surveying the scene, and as soon as you appear in this Ethereal Plane and see them for just a second, before you can even discern what they are, they blink out of view.

The black opal mirror (The Crystal Kingdom, E35):

The mirror on the floor- the black mirror that you saw that cloud come out of, from where you’re standing from fairly far away, you see some faint white moving shapes in it. (Magnus approaches it.) Standing over it, you can actually see what look like white eyes looking back at you through this black mirror. And as they sort of make eye contact with you, these eyes quickly shut and disappear.

Lucas: “...That one’s made out of- let me see- that one’s made out of black opal, which is- I mean, it’s inert. I mean, it doesn’t resonate with any planes.”

Taako’s second Blink (The Suffering Game, E53):

In the Ethereal Plane- hey, it’s been a while since you blinked, hasn’t it? (Justin: Yeah.) It’s been a few story arcs. The last time you blinked was in the lobby of the Goldcliff Trust, the bank, and you saw some creatures, small creatures with these bright white eyes that were kind of looking at you, kind of watching you, and there were a few in that ethereal version of the lobby... You see them again in the ethereal version of this room, but Taako, they are lining the walls. There are hundreds of them, all looking at you, and as soon as you appear, as soon as you see them, they just sort of scurry back through the walls and blink out of existence... They look vaguely humanoid, they sort of have long featureless arms and legs...but their defining features are their big old white eyes, and their bodies are white too, everything in the Ethereal Plane is made of this wispy white material. So yeah, these little one-foot-tall vaguely humanoid beings were kind of spying on you. And they disappear as soon as you blink.

Magnus Visits the Ethereal Plane (The Suffering Game, E56)

(As Magnus drifts through the Ethereal Plane) You also see some other stuff, too. You see other figures in the room, you see small, white, humanoid figures that are hiding behind the mannequins and clinging to the ceiling, and as you look at them they scurry away out of sight.

EXPOSITION

Liches (The Crystal Kingdom, E35):

A lich is sort of this embodiment of a very powerful magic-user who sort of combines their essence, their life energy, with their magical energy, and sort of transcends their physical form. Technically, it’s like an undead- imagine, like, a ghost made out of magic.

But a magic-user has to kind of willfully do that... except what’s interesting is that most liches- when a magic-user does this, it’s way too ambitious a thing, and they can’t really control that energy, and most liches are just insane. They have no control over themselves, they’re just hyper-violent, hyper-evil embodiments of raw magical energy. They are not usually well-spoken beings.

#the adventure zone #taz #taz spoilers #taz theory #1k #i'm going to keep updating this so just let me know if there's something you think i've missed #because i know i haven't covered everything #but i can't recall what i'm missing right now #so yeah please get in touch with me if i should add something!

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