#obey me lilium

[lilirot]

Obey Me Lilium (AU): Angel! Belphie~ There are some details that aren't in the right spots because I forgot to check how the canvas was flipped but otherwise it's accurate.

[maddys-nerd-blog]

Hey guys!!!

Sorry for the lack of posts! I’ve been super busy, but the good news is I’ve got another TMNT fanfic done! This time it’s a one shot, and it’s based on a whumptober prompt!!

This one I just recently completed! It’s also a kind of introduction to my OC, Lilium!

For context, in this AU, it’s an OC x Donatello story that has a ongoing plot I’m currently working on alongside my Familia AU! It takes place during Season 4 of the 2003 series!

Enjoy! 😄

I’m Never Leaving You

A TMNT 2003 One Shot

Whumptober Prompt: Shock

“You are pathetic.”

That was the hundredth time Karai had said those words in the past couple hours. Lilium wasn’t sure if the kunoichi was trying to ingrain the saying into her head to get her to crack, but they were becoming grating.

Of course, that was small potatoes given her current situation.

The butcher shop was empty, having been closed for a few weeks due to failing a health code inspection. Aunt Katie was pretty annoyed at first because this was her favorite place to get roast beef sandwiches, but who would have imagined that such an ordinary place would become the impromptu hideout for the Foot?

Lilium sat on the scuffed tiled floor, her hands tied behind her, hair a frizzy mess that hung around her back. Locked around her throat the electric shock collar hugged the Siren symbols imprinted into her flesh, burning beneath the heavy metal devise that beeped ominously, a warning for if she dare try to shriek. Her broken nose was clogged with blood, most of it having leaked down her face and drying around her split lips to make her look like a wreck. The formerly cream colored leggings she wore were muddied and caked with stains of crimson and dust. A failed escape attempt two days ago. Her raspberry blouse was tattered and torn around her stomach and elbows from where steel toed boots struck her abdomen.

It wasn’t the words themselves that got under her skin. It was the cloying fear.

Ever since she’d gotten kidnapped, the cold claws of dread sank themselves deep into her core and started digging. Being a captive to someone as ruthless as Karai was one thing. But this time, it was personal. It had been a month since Karai had taken the mantle of being the Shredder. And in that time during the turtle’s much needed recovery process, she’d become… unhinged.

Lilium didn’t really know Karai outside of her connection with the Foot. Donnie had told her the basics of her relationship with Shredder, but otherwise? She’d only known her as the cutthroat ninja who would do anything to please her master. Even if it meant killing teenagers.

And her unpredictability was scaring her the most.

Stalking around the girl, the woman observed her with a blank glare. Lilium refused to look at her, lest she receive any kind of verbal or physical scolding. Her eyes stayed glued to the ground, where droplets of her blood had fallen in front of her knees. Don’t do something stupid Lily. Just stay calm…

“You are pathetic,” repeated Karai, her voice laced with callousness. “How is it that you were able to defeat several of the Purple Dragons? Sheer dumb luck?”

Lilium refused to respond.

Karai’s hands were suddenly grabbing her hair. Unforgiving, the woman yanked her head upwards and forced her to meet dark obsidian eyes that reminded Lilium of ravens. Her lips were curled into a furious snarl. “Answer me, child!”

Lilium grit her teeth, a pained whimper sneaking past. Even so, she refused to speak.

“If you do not speak, there shall be punishments. It would be wise to obey, lest I begin breaking your bones,” Karai’s words were hard as stone. She meant every word of her threat. Her scornful expression only spoke one thing; Don’t try my patience.

Lilium grit her teeth, eyes narrowed at the woman with disdain. “Is it y-your favorite hobby t-to kidnap kids? To beat them up…? Cuz that’s pretty sad.”

“For a girl with a sharp tongue, you should understand when it is time to curb your words.” Karai shoved Lilium’s head away, scornful. “Your mother did not teach you well.”

Her frustration ticked at the comment. Clearing her throat to better get her words across, Lilium snapped back at the nutcase. “At least my mom didn’t teach me to be a hateful bitch with daddy issues.” Lilium let that comment fly like molasses spilling from a jar; slow, biting, a low blow in every sense of the word. She’d learned from Raph, so it seemed.

If she’d struck a cord, Karai was doing a good job hiding it. Or she didn’t care. The ninja had the resolve of a cheetah, unfazed and unimpressed. Lilium watched as the armor clad monster stepped back, crimson lips curled into a sharp grin, devilish and razor-like. “You believe yourself to be clever. But you will understand that you are not as strong as you think.”

Lilium mentally prepared herself for the worst. She expected a slap to the face, a kick to the stomach, or the collar to start going off.

But Karai, instead, reached into her belt and unclipped a scalpel from a side pouch. The slim knife glinted dangerously beneath the buzzing lightbulbs over her head. Lilium’s breath caught in her throat with panic.

“Let me get one thing very clear,” Karai knelt to her level, scalpel twirling around her fingers, keeping it in view to let Lilium’s fear grow. “I am not above taking you apart, piece by piece, to see how long it takes until I can break you. I could use your vocal chords as a source of power to bring your friends to their knees. I could even use you as a battery.” She brought the knife towards her, the tip of the blade pointed directly at her temple. “You are just a means to an end. If I take your life, you shall go unnoticed.”

Lilium’s heart was in her throat. Horror encased her features, breathing quick and shallow, her instincts going berserk as the tip of the knife was pressed into the skin of her forehead.

“This can all cease if you just tell me where I can find the turtles.” Karai let a faux tone of pity tint her voice. “I will let you go home if you give me what I ask.”

Lilium grit her teeth so tight her jaw clicked in place, molars gnashing terribly hard in her mouth that she was sure they were cracking. Oh God this was bad, this was very very bad. Her body was shaking against her will. She wanted to throw up, she wanted to scream but she couldn’t. How could she possibly surrender her friends like this? How could she be given such an ultimatum? She couldn’t hand the guys over to this psycho! She’d probably torture them worse than what Lilium had been forced to go through! She could hand them over to Bishop and THAT curdled the contents of her stomach to the point of near vomiting. Donnie had already been out through that shit once, he didn’t deserve any of it. They’d all been pushed too far to the brink. They nearly DIED.

Momma had raised her to always do the right thing even when you were afraid. Donnie showed her how to be brave.

But she knew how deadly Karai was. She knew first hand how horrifying Bishop was. She was scared. She was only fifteen. She wanted to go to college, she wanted to live, she wanted to go home and believe this was all a nightmare. She wanted to be with Donnie, to hear his voice, to hug him and cry her eyes out. To hear him reassure her that it was all just a bad dream and that nothing could hurt her.

Lilium couldn’t help the sob that cracked through her teeth, the knife pressing further into her skin enough to start drawing blood that slowly trickled down her forehead and riding along the curve of her nose.

“Tell me,” Karai gripped the scalpel tight in her fist, applying more pressure on the scalpel. It punctured this time, sinking deep into her forehead. “Or this will get worse.”

Things weren’t already worse than they were now?

Lilium’s throat burned under the uncomfortable collar, magic trying to escape but unable to find an exit. She screwed her eyes tight when the knife started to drag towards the right, creating a vertical cut about two inches long, blood trailing down her face. Sucking down air in rapid succession, the girl prayed it would be over soon, she prayed she’d die faster than this, she prayed for help. She wanted to go home she wanted to go home she wanted to go home she wanted to go home—

“Karai,” entering the threshold with a deep bow, a thin lackey dawning the standard black Foot garb quickly dropped to kneel at the doorway, his head lowered. “Forgive my intrusion. I bring news.”

The jonin finally removed the scalpel from her skin— Lilium hadn’t realized she was crying until the stinging in her eyes became sharper— sending a cold glare to the henchman. “What is it?“

“I’ve received a status report,” he dutifully replied. “The package is secured. Our soldiers are en route to deliver it to you.”

Something sinister crossed Karai’s face. There was almost satisfaction behind her wicked smile as she looked back to Lilium. The bone chilling gaze in her heartless eyes was enough to make her shrink back a little in fright out of what she’d do.

“It appears my forces have not disappointed me.” Rising from the floor, Karai put the scalpel away into her belt. “I must go and oversee the package’s arrival.” Another ominous grin crawled up her lips as she observed Lilium’s shaking form. “Perhaps if you behave, I shall bring you back a treat.”

Lilium found it hard to swallow. What could that possibly mean?

Lilium was left behind in the back room as Karai made her leave with the lackey. The girl stared, scared out of her mind, mind racing with all the possibilities of what Karai was going to get. What could it be? A new shipment of guns? Mutants? New alien tech to track the turtles?

There were dozens of things. But one thought persisted in the scared haze of the Siren. I hope the guys get away in time…

********************

It was two hours that Karai had been gone, and in that time of dreary silence and a pounding migraine that rocked her skull like a battering ram, Lilium had dozed off. The need for sleep had overtaken her, despite every fiber of her being protesting not to. There were injuries she probably didn’t know about, internal ones that needed attention, but how could she assess the damage done to her when her hands were tied? When her magic was locked behind a shock collar? Without the ability to heal the worst of her wounds, she’d passed out. She’d fallen into an uncertain slumber, twitching painfully, unable to dream in the horrid environment she was trapped in. All she could do was sit there in the middle of the room and wait for whatever was to come.

In between short lapses of consciousness, Lilium thought of better things to distract herself from the ringing in her ears or the blood clogging her nostrils. She pictured herself running through Central Park on a beautiful sunny day without the fear of being chased or hunted. She imagined everyone she loved at the family dinner table, enjoying every kind of pizza they could think of. She saw glimpses of a starry sky, the taste of dark chocolate faint on the back of her tongue, earbud in one ear with the other being shared, holding onto a three fingered hand with a thrumming heartbeat that worried if she’d gotten this wrong, only for said hand to slowly squeeze back to affirm the unspoken question that hung in the air; Am I in love with my best friend?

She thought of a grand party being thrown in the wake of the Triceratons finally having found peace, the lair awash with brightly colored lights and music, of aching feet that were surely going to be blistered in the morning but not giving a damn because this was a celebration. She remembered slipping away from the too loud shouts and crowded dance floor and finding refuge somewhere in a long tunnel that led into a small passage beneath Madison Square Garden. She remembered the same three fingered hand suddenly finding hers in the dark, a lamp in hand, a bashful smile as he asked her for a dance, leading her into a slow, steady waltz with no music, no tempo, no high energy beat that bounced the walls. Just them, a lamp to light the way, and Lilium’s voice humming along to the melody of Mandy Moore’s greatest hits.

Those were better than the grim reality she was forced to endure.

Around the three hour mark the doors were violently slammed open, startling Lilium wide awake from her thoughts. All of a sudden her eyes were flooded with lights blinding her, squinting against the painful sting and the spots that spun around her sight. If she wasn’t so injured she’d have tried to move back and get as far away from the incoming entourage.

Five Foot goons marched into the room, following Karai as the woman made her way into the lonely threshold with her head held high, looking pleased with herself. There were distinct dark red stains marking the chest plate of her armor, making Lilium freeze at the unsettling sight. Oh God…

“Good news, girl,” Karai announced, stepping aside to create an opening for her men. “I bring you a present.”

The tone in her voice sent chills down her spine. Oh no. What kind of present was she talking about? Knowing her track record, Lilium doubted it was something cute and cuddly. She couldn’t imagine Karai skipping merrily into a clothes store just to find something worth tormenting her over. The woman was as ruthless as a viper, unforgiving and dangerous; it was going to be something painful, and whatever it was it was going to hurt. Badly.

Two more men came into the room, dragging someone between them. The figure appeared unconscious had it not been for the angry grunts. Their arms were behind them. Their ankles were bound, uselessly dragged under them. Lilium’s heart rate escalated faster, faster, ever faster as they came into the light and she saw who this newcomer was.

Olive green skin. A shell. Purple mask.

Purple mask. No. NO!

“NOOOO!” Any type of patience Lilium might have had snapped like a twig. Adrenaline rushed through her veins. She struggled to get to her feet, voice cracking uncomfortably from the shriek that tore out of her throat, the collar beeping in rapid warning to remind her of her punishment. “DONNIE!”

Donatello snapped his head up at the sound of her voice— Lilium’s panicking only increased. Other than the bruises scattering the skin around his arms and face, he looked unharmed. His gear was gone, his knee and elbow pads missing, his belt taken, his bō noticeably absent. The second his eyes locked onto hers and he took in the brutal state she was in, it was as if a switch was flipped in his brain.

“LILY!” He cried out, thrashing against his bonds with as much power as he could give. “Karai, you promised she wasn’t hurt! I knew I shouldn’t have trusted you!”

Karai just smirked at the ninja with disdain. “I never had to assure you of her well-being. Be grateful she still breathes.”

“DONNIE!” Lilium’s voice was shrill against the pain. Tears pricked her eyes and blurred her vision, but she didn’t stop screaming. The collar started beeping louder. “I’M SO SORRY DONNIE!”

The genius was thrown to his knees with a thud. He grit his teeth, but he didn’t let the sudden jolt of agony in his legs perturb him from calling out to the girl. “Lily! Lily, look at me! I promise you’re going to be alright!” His eyes turned hateful as he looked up towards the woman who’d done this. “What did you do to her!?”

“Only what I would have done if I had found one of you,” Karai cooly answered. “It is her fault for disobeying.”

“Disobey…?!” Donatello sounded disgusted.

“I gave her direct instructions and she broke them. I only saw it fit to punish her.” Karai strode towards Lilium once more, heels clicking loudly in the quiet of the room. “But now that I have acquired YOU, perhaps I will finally obtain answers.” Once Karai moved behind the girl, a clawed, steely hand coming to fall upon her shoulder. Lilium shuddered. “You, Donatello, are going to tell me where I can find your brothers, your master, and your human friends.”

Donatello’s face turned to stone. Without missing a beat, he snapped at the warrior. “I’m not telling you anything.”

The claws on Lilium’s shoulder sank into her skin. She bit her lip to refrain from crying. Karai was silent for a moment, waiting for something. “Are you certain?”

Donatello glared at her icily in response.

The claws sank deeper into her shoulder. Lilium’s heart quickened.

“Very well,” Karai spoke calmly.

Lilium’s eyes locked onto Donatello with worry. His gaze followed something behind her she couldn’t see, the alarm in his face prominent. “What are you—“

The collar went off.

And Lilium’s world only knew fire.

A strangled scream ripped through her throat. Electricity blinded her vision and powerful volts created a hellfire unlike any other in her throat. The metal burned from the staticky currents of electrical torture that ruined her voice. Sensitive muscle tissue became numb from the inside and started to erode. Uncontrolled spasms of agony rocked her body forward as she finally dropped to the ground, writhing blindly. She couldn’t see anything but black spots that tinted the edges of her sight into blurry messes of tears that poured down her face, her teeth gnashing hard to stop herself from biting her tongue. The smell of human flesh burning stuck in her sinuses.

In the background she could vaguely hear Donatello screaming in horror. Muffled pleas of mercy went unheard in her wailing, the electric shocks making her deaf to everything else.

Then, after an excruciating eternity of electric hell, it stopped.

Lilium curled into a ball, wheezing, spitting blood. There was an intense ringing in her ears. Her head hurt. She could feel her throat bleeding under the collar. Even taking a breath felt like a chore with crushed windpipes.

“— MONSTER! Leave her alone, your fight is with me!”

“Tell me where your brothers and Sensei are, and this ends.”

“YOU’RE CRAZY! Shredder is gone! You won’t get him back by doing this—“

The collar activated once more, and Lilium’s back arched as another hellish pain overcame her. Screaming at the top of her lungs as the volts somehow got more intense. They weren’t this harsh before. Had the power been increased?!

“STOP IT!” Donatello hollered in desperation. “STOP! PLEASE STOP!”

The volts grew higher. Her throat constricted and suddenly Lilium was choking. She couldn’t breathe. Foam gathered at the corners of her lips, blood caught in her lungs and threatened to fill them. Sensitive skin near the bottom of her jaw and windpipe felt like it was cracking from the severe intensity of the burns.

“PLEASE! SHE’S GOING INTO SHOCK! HER THROAT WILL TEAR! SHE’LL DIE! KARAI, PLEASE!”

Black dots started coloring her eyesight. Donatello sounded farther away than she thought. Why couldn’t she concentrate…?

“EASTMAN!”

The collar abruptly shut off. Even then Lilium didn’t move. Her body twitched, choked grunts pushing past bloodied lips. Her lungs were jelly, her throat was toast. She wanted to curl up and die. Despite the world being blurry, Karai’s steel armor came into view overhead as she matched Donatello’s gaze with an expecting glare. “Speak.”

“Eastman and 87th! You’ll find a parking garage with a false bottom in the floor! That’s where our hideout is!” Donatello rasped. He sounded petrified, out of breath, like he’d just had the air ripped out of his chest. “I swear! Please…! Please just stop… she’s had enough.”

Donnie, Lilium thought with broken dismay. No…

There was silence. Karai stepped over the fallen girl and disappeared from view. Donatello wasn’t talking now; he was breathing too quickly, like he had just re-emerged from under the water. Was he okay…?

“Gather our men and head to the location the freak provided. We are going to have a family reunion.”

******************

At least the new leader of the Foot kept her word to some extent, whether or not she was going to make good on the false promise of leniency. They were left alone shortly after Donatello gave her what she wanted. Karai and her men left, a few of them stayed behind to guard the two prisoners until they were needed. What could they be needed for? Lilium didn’t know. It wasn’t like they were going anywhere in their state, let alone escape.

Donatello and Lilium were left in the dimly lit room with the bloody floor and the stench of burning skin lingering. The collar was reactivated to prevent the girl from screaming any further, while Donatello had been gagged. Why? To stop him from talking, to stop him from comforting her? Maybe it was some kind of punishment for his delay in giving Karai an answer; not being able to communicate.

It had stayed like that for an hour. Lilium and Donatello both trapped in this terrible situation with nowhere to go.

Her magic couldn’t do anything now, strength and stamina depleted from the torture. The only thing that made noise was the shock collar that chirped softly. She hated it. The girl could taste bile and blood in her mouth, acidic and coppery, making her nauseous. There was a knocking deep inside her skull… it was as if everything was torn apart.

Was this what Donnie went through on the Triceraton fleet ship…? Did it hurt as badly as this…?

A featherlight tap on the back of her shoulder brought out a panicked jolt. Against the protesting migraine, Lilium snapped her head up, fight or flight kicking in… only to find Donatello there, sitting closer to where she was lying, his eyes filled with sorrow and guilt.

Her heart broke seeing him. “D-Don…” she couldn’t even form the words of his name. She sounded as if she’d decided to swallow staples for fun. It BURNED to speak. “I…”

Donatello mumbled something incoherent behind the gag, his tone laced with concern. He scooted close enough to accidentally nudge his knee into the side of her head. While gentle, it still made her wince due to the headache.

His presence offered reassurance. Lilium found herself resting her brow against his knees; it hurt to breathe, but at least the collar wasn’t as tight around her lacerated throat now. Was she simply imagining things?

Donatello mumbled something to her again. Her exhausted eyes lifted to meet his despite the pressure building in her head. Smiling weakly with red lips and a ghostly face, the girl tried to put on a brave face for him. “‘Re… you… okay?”

If he wasn’t trying to stay sturdy for her, he would have cried. But he nodded regardless, making a noise of affirmation.

She grinned. “Good…” she sniffed— blood still clogged her nose. When the collar beeped ominously Lilium froze— she missed how Donatello went rigid above her, eyes glued to the devise, staring in panic as if waiting for the inevitable to happen. It was only when the chirping continued that the two understood the warning; no talking.

Somehow, this hurt worse.

Lilium grit her teeth and laid her head against Donatello’s knees, face screwed up in turmoil. This was just sadistic. This was especially cruel. Who knew language could be so vital to the mental stability of two teenagers that desperately needed the confirmation that the other wasn’t going to die? When you couldn’t verbally communicate with someone, when you couldn’t talk, when you couldn’t use your words to ask if you were okay, if your friend was hurt, if your friend needed help, it was driving her crazy. If she talked she risked being electrocuted again, probably risked death. Donatello couldn’t speak with the cloth tied in his mouth, voice locked behind an obstacle that muted his words into gibberish. He was forbidden from making sure she was going to pull through this.

Tears finally started to trickle down her cheeks. Sobs were frail and withered, but the long rivers marking her skin were enough to show her despair. Heart breaking, finally, finally unable to withstand the pain the girl wept pitifully into Donatello’s knees. She couldn’t do this, she couldn’t be strong like Donnie, she truly was pathetic. She’d been used as bait to lure out the person she loved and now he was going to be hurt and his brothers would be captured too—

Then… music.

Music reached her ears. Quiet, hushed, just loud enough to reach her ears and hers alone. Had she gone insane?

Lilium blinked in bewilderment, hiccuping, trying to locate the sudden shift…

She found Donnie instead.

He was… not singing— he literally couldn’t with a gag in his mouth— but he was… humming.

He was humming the lyrics to a Les Mis song she loved. Lilium almost couldn’t believe it.

A Little Fall of Rain; A song she’d used to audition for school. The musical she memorized by heart. The song she’d practiced with for weeks because EVERY girl her age was singing I Dreamed a Dream or On My Own. The song he’d sing with her just because he could— for someone who focused so much on his tech or inventions, he had a beautiful voice of his own; it was gentle, inviting like summer rain. She’d listen to him for hours if she could. It meant something to her.

And hearing him humming it to her here, knowing it was special to her, knowing it brought her happiness, trying to offer comfort when his words couldn’t do so…

Lilium’s sobs picked up. She pressed her forehead into his knees, the cut that had stung horribly earlier now adding to her migraine. She wanted this to be over. She wanted this nightmare to be done with. Everything she’d gone through had been in vain; Karai was going to hurt people and her friends were in danger. Magic couldn’t save them now. She put Donnie in danger…

How could she possibly forgive herself for this?

Donatello’s eyes shifted towards the door behind him, watching it carefully. Still humming the song to keep her calm, he pulled on his bonds to test their strength, but again, no dice. Lilium could see the irritation in his face, teeth gnashing into the cloth.

Then he paused. Something clicked behind his eyes. An idea?

Taking a deep breath, Donatello shifted his legs to tuck them beneath him, effectively kneeling. Her head still rested against his knees, but Lilium frowned in quiet confusion. “D-Dee…?”

Donatello shook his head, trying to offer reassurance. He steadied himself, taking another deep breath as he stretched his arms far behind him to reach for something she couldn’t see. He grunted with the strain of his shoulders, trying to locate what he was looking for.

He seemed to grab onto whatever he was trying to find, judging by the relieved look in his face. Passing another cautionary glance towards the door he waited with baited breath, staying completely still until he was certain nobody was coming in. Lilium couldn’t help but think, is he trying to get a knife?

But, after a couple minutes of struggling, Lilium couldn’t hear the sawing of a knife cutting rope. Instead, much to her surprise, she watched as Donatello shifted a little where he sat, grunting with effort, before the ropes around his ankles came loose and fell around his feet, freeing them. Had he used just his hands to get himself out of his bonds? Holy shit, she couldn’t help but think. That’s pretty clever.

Donatello adjusted his position to sit properly, kicking the ropes away from him. Finally able to use his legs the turtle crouched beside Lilium, turning his back to her. His hands flexed against the ropes binding them, fingers reaching for something he couldn’t find this time.

“D-Don?” She managed, confusion evident in her broken voice.

Donatello tried speaking again, but unfortunately nothing he said made sense. “Mmhf mmnh,” he continued trying to look for something that wasn’t there, fingers grabbing at air. He was looking at her with an expression of imploring, as if he were asking for something. “Hrrh phhn.”

Was he trying to talk to her…? Lilium helplessly shook her head with confusion. “I don’t—“

A sharp jolt of electricity burst through her throat. It felt as if someone had stabbed her straight through the windpipe. The choked scream that came out of her caused Donatello to whirl around to look at her, his eyes suddenly brimming with panic. The nerves in her throat were shot, scorched from hours of being shocked, the pain a searing fire that melted her windpipe. A whine turned into an agonized whimper as her body shuddered from the punishment.

It hurt to breathe. It hurt to think. It hurt to do anything.

Fingers quickly found her temple. Lilium didn’t have the energy to move any longer, stamina depleted from the battered form of the girl. The three digits brushed through messy bangs as if trying to locate something hidden there, combing through them as fast as possible. All the while he made these frantic chirps, clearly distressed when she didn’t make any motion to turn away from him.

She didn’t think everything around her could be so lopsided. The colors of the room began to blend into one another and blur into a confusing hodgepodge of nonsense like Alice in Wonderland. Her stomach twisted itself into knots and the front of her head was pounding so hard it made it difficult to see straight. Why was it hard to focus? Why couldn’t she move anymore?

The fingers were raking through her hair quickly until they snagged onto something and pulled it free. They felt around with another hand to find the collar, feeling it’s unyielding hold and desperately trying to pull on it. Lilium didn’t even flinch.

Donatello twisted his wrists enough to turn the left hand towards her, pinching something tight in his fingers as he guided what Lilium vaguely recognized as a hairpin into an open slot in the shock collar. It barely registered to her foggy consciousness that he was picking the lock.

He must’ve been turning and adjusting the position of the hairpin so much that his hand had to hurt, but he wasn’t letting up. Donatello stubbornly kept moving the flimsy lock pick up and down in the lock mechanism to get the damn thing to pop open. But this was Karai they were talking about; it wasn’t just going to give so easily.

Something in the front of her head knocked against her skull with a powerful pang. Glossy eyes fluttered against the pulsing pain, a wrangled whimper caught deep in her voice box. Something began to trickle free down her nose again. Noise was starting to fade around her. She couldn’t even hear the muffled voice of Donatello almost crying out to her, the hairpin twisting and shaking in his hand, a fearful pitch to his tone. He sounded far away…

Something loud clicked against her throat. A shrill chirp from the collar went off, before a very distinct pop.

Then the collar unlocked, opening just barely enough to allow the pressure around her neck to loosen. It became easier to breathe. Even then, Lilium didn’t have the strength to move. She couldn’t even feel the relief of the collar being deactivated. Something started leaking out from under the metal.

Was… her throat oozing?

But all at once, muddled sounds came through the room. A door was kicked open. Footsteps raced towards them, hands were quick to ease Lilium into a comfortable position. Rushed, panicked voices phased into a cacophony of confusion, flashes of red, blue, orange, gray and lavender passing by. Frantic hands touched her face, pressed down on her throat, wrapped her in something warm to shield her. Yet she couldn’t see anyone clearly, nor could she speak to question what was going on or why everyone was shouting.

“Don! Don, Jesus, are you okay—“

“My son, you are injured—“

“Bro calm down—“

“She’s DYING! She’s DYING, I need to help her!”

“Dear God in Heaven, hallowed be thy name—“

“Lily please look at me, don’t go to sleep! Lily?!”

But the voices were garbled, as though she’d been sinking underwater. All noise faded in the background. Before Lilium could begin to comprehend what was going on, the girl felt herself slip into a state of complete oblivion.

And nothing after that mattered when her world turned into a quiet void.

********************

Putting the last of the gauze away in the medical kit, Donatello tiredly breathed out a long, heavy sigh. Bloodied rags, a basin full of red-tinted water long since grown cold, spools of bandages around the desk and switching thread lay abandoned. He tried not to pay too much attention to the frightening amount of switches that crawled around Lilium’s thin throat.

Hours had gone by since the rescue. He was grateful Leo was able to follow the tracking devise hidden in the back of his mask— a fatal mistake Karai had paid for with their escape. While it hadn’t been easy for his brothers to get through the mess of ninja that guarded the deli, Father had taken them out single handedly. He’d looked so worried for him when he came running into the room, claws clutching his cane in an iron grip. It was integral for this plan to have gone smoothly to avoid the likelihood of death… but look where that ended up.

Donatello had only sustained minor injuries. He’d been lucky all things considered. Small cuts on his wrists, shallow enough to heal in a week, bruising that would pass over the next few days. He couldn’t say the same for Lily.

Three broken ribs. A sprained ankle. Broken nose, a severe concussion, seizures every few hours because of the electrical shocks.

Her throat was… charred. Suffering extreme third degree burns lacerating her entire neck, her Siren symbols almost looked as if the burned skin had peeled them off, leaving deep impressions of them behind. Pale skin had turned a vivid scarlet and had ripped the flesh open as soon as the collar was pried free, causing concern the moment she started bleeding out. He and Ms. Yasaki had spent a little over two hours painstakingly sewing each ligament shut with slow, precise care to ensure her survival. Once the magic had stopped the curatorial artery from gushing blood, things were easier to maintain.

“You did a good job,” seated at her daughter’s bedside as the girl lay as still as stone on the cot set up in his workshop, her mother dabbed her brow gently with a wet cloth to prevent a fever. Thick bags under her eyes showed the strain of how much magic she’d pumped into her daughter’s injuries to save her life. While she spoke to the worn out turtle, her gaze didn’t pry away from Lily. “You got the collar off before it could go any deeper.”

“It still tore her throat open.” Donatello murmured, closing the medical kit shut with a slap. “I could have killed her if I hadn’t been rushing.”

“How could you have known?” Ms. Yasaki brushed the hair stuck to Lilium’s sweaty face away with a tender hand, looking crestfallen to see her child in such a state. “It was that monster Karai who put that thing on her, not you. You understand?”

Donatello hung his head. He tried not to look at his trembling hands, stained with Lilium’s blood that still ran warm in his palms. He felt sick. “I should have found her sooner…”

Ms. Yasaki was quiet for a moment. Her hand still brushing through long locks of black hair that remained damp from being scrubbed carefully hours earlier. “Donatello. It’s because of you she got a fighting chance to make it out of there. Because of the damage, Karai would have killed her if you didn’t get the collar off in time. You did all you could. That’s all anyone can do at that point.” With a tender brush of her hand, magenta magic hovered over the stitches holding Lilium’s throat closed. A soft hue glowed from her palm, washing over the raised wound where her Siren marks had nearly vanished. Donatello watched with muted awe as the mystic energy brought forth the unnatural symbols that marked her skin like a tattoo back to normal. While faded in color vibrancy, they remained intact once more.

“All we can do now is help take some of the pain away and pray for a successful recovery. It’s up to Lily to pull through the rest of this.” Ms. Yasaki retracted her hand from her throat. “Have faith.”

“Ms. Yasaki…” Donatello found himself saying. “What if she can’t sing again because of this…?”

Her mother was silent. She let his words mull over her. Gentle, sorrowful eyes stared down at her child with remorse over the likelihood over the possibility. “We’ll have to cross that bridge once we get there.” The answer was melancholy, as if she couldn’t bare the thought of telling Lilium her one source of happiness was going to be taken from her.

It crushed Donatello to have to hear such a thing. He couldn’t even picture her reaction to the news. He moved to the sink and started scrubbing his hands clean of the blood, lathering soap up to his elbows to try and stave off the unnerving feeling of uneasiness. The red tinted suds that flooded the porcelain as the warm water ran almost made him dizzy. How much blood had she lost already?

Ms. Yasaki finally put her hands in her lap, trying to put on a brave face in spite of the stress. “I’m going to wash up and put on some supper. You’re probably starving. Do you want anything?”

Donatello couldn’t think of eating anything. The thought of food made his skin crawl; supper was the last thing on his mind. Drying his hands off as he pulled a stool close, he eased himself down at Lilium’s bed side, his gaze falling to rest upon her sickly face. Reaching down to take Lilium’s hand into his own he numbly replied, “Coffee. Please.”

The request made Ms. Yasaki frown with sympathy, but she nodded regardless. Turning her heel with quiet dignity she made her leave, and suddenly Donatello found himself back to square one.

Just him and Lily once more. Except this time it was stifling with the quiet.

It had been close. Way too close. All that time planning and strategizing, all that effort, wasted. He hadn’t been fast enough to stop this. So many times he believed he could make it, that he could finally save someone and avoid the trauma. It had been one of the reasons why he allowed himself to get captured— Raph volunteered initially to be the bait to find Karai’s hideout, but he didn’t know Lily like he did. He didn’t know how to calm her down, he hadn’t been around her long enough to understand how Lilium reacted to stress. Donatello could have given her the attention and care she needed in that situation. But even with all of the extra prep time he hadn’t been able to prevent Lilium from getting her throat deep fried.

He lifted his head to look at her. Despite the awful scarring wrapping around her neck and the cut on her temple, she looked peaceful. He couldn’t tear his eyes off of her wound no matter how hard he tried; Blistered, raised stitches pinning it closed, dry blood caked around the Siren symbols. The colors of her mystical markings weren’t as vibrant as they should be, rubbing him the wrong way. It was insidious to have targeted her throat, a vital weakness for a Siren. This wasn’t just torture. This was personal.

Had Karai known that? All that pain just for the sake of revenge for the man who raised her to be a killer. All this misery inflicted just because she wanted to hurt someone weaker than her.

Donatello squeezed Lilium’s hand. It was warm, frail, dainty in his own. They couldn’t have been more different, but they somehow found a middle ground. Their mutual adoration of each other was the defining factor to allow them to stay as close as they were. One year, four months and seventeen days. That was how long it took for him to process how exactly he felt about the girl who took a chance on him in that decrepit record store where the only thing that mattered was the music playing around them.

He couldn’t admit the truth out loud in fear of ridicule or harm to come to either one of them or their families, worrying over what kind of reactions they would have if they knew. He loved her. He loved her and he’d nearly lost her tonight.

Donatello used his free hand to run his fingers through her hair in the same soothing motions he knew she liked. He hoped it brought her some kind of levity whilst she slept. “Hey Lily,” he murmured, deciding that the silence was too maddening to handle any longer. “I dunno if you can hear me, but I’m here.”

Lilium didn’t respond.

“I’m… sorry for not being able to save you fast enough. I’m supposed to be the smart one, I’m supposed to have all the answers, but when I saw you in there and I had to see Karai hurt you…” he stopped himself, unwilling to remember to grizzly events of the evening that would forever imprint itself into his psyche and remind him of how close he’d been to watching her die. “You didn’t deserve any of it.”

He lifted her hand close to his chest, a thumb brushing across the ridges of her knuckles softly. He hated how scratched her skin was, how chaffed and sore her wrists were under the clean, crisp bandaging. “I need you to know, no matter how long this takes, I’ll be here. I’ll always be here for you.”

Donatello couldn’t tell if she could understand him in her unconscious state. He didn’t know how long the road to recovery would be, but even if it lasted months, he wouldn’t leave her side. Not until she woke up.

She hadn’t given up on waiting for him. He couldn’t give up on her either.

So, with that in mind, he started singing her favorite song while she slept. If only to lift her spirits as she lay there, resting from the hellish ordeal she’d been forced to endure. If only to provide her with comfort as she recovered, to let her know she wasn’t alone.

“Don’t you fret, M’sieur Marius.

I don’t feel any pain.

A little fall of rain

Can hardly hurt me now…”

********************

Okay… first of all, OW.

Her entire throat felt as if she’d drank hot sauce and scorched the muscle tissue within. Something was wrapped around her neck, and the skin around it was itchy and raised. It didn’t feel like the collar…

Her entire body was rigid, too sore to move. The muscles in her legs and shoulders were hurting, but she somehow didn’t feel bothered by it. She felt… comfortable. She was no longer laying on cold, hard tiles; whatever she laid upon now was soft as silk, a cushion was supporting her head, although it marginally felt nicer than the floor. Her hair felt… lighter. Cleaner. The area around her throat felt weird, like it was being pinned shut. What was happening?

Lilium had to fight just to pry her eyes open, being met with the familiarity of a warm glow coming from a desk lamp keeping the place alight. Overhead she spotted a few of the stick-on stars that glowed in the dark. The bed she was occupying was tidy and spotless, dark purple comforter tucked around her being to provide extra warmth.

Lilium winced, coughing slightly, the catch of coppery saliva making her throat ache something fierce. “Wh-wha—“ the attempt to speak failed with her voice dying in a thin raspy hiss.

Someone nearby gasped. It was followed by something clattering to the floor. A rush of footsteps before a presence came at her bedside, a shapeless mass of green and blue blurry in her vision.

“No way…!” He sounded elated. He turned to call out, “Don! DON! Get in here!”

The figure returned. He appeared to be smiling. “Hey, you’re finally awake! You had us all worried!”

“Lee…?” Lilium coughed on the name that was lost on her tongue. Man, it was hard to talk. Eating sandpaper was probably better than the rough gravelly feeling of her throat.

“Take it easy,” Leo cautioned with the same gentle tone in his voice. “You’ve been out of it for days.”

She blinked at that, baffled. Was she hearing that right? “Days…?”

Leo reached for something she couldn’t see. He came back with a small glass of water, gaze kind but encouraging. “I know you’re probably not up for it but you should drink something. It’ll help.”

Water sounded like nirvana. She allowed the eldest brother to help lift her head up, trying not to aggravate her healing neck. Taking time to savor the clean, reviving taste of the cold drink that cleared the pain in her esophagus. Once she’d had her fill Leo helped her lay back down, the pounding in her head too terribly strong but her throat no longer stinging. “Wh-what… h-happ-end?”

Leo frowned with sympathy. “You’ve been through a lot. We got you away from Karai, don’t worry. Although you’re going to be recovering from your wounds for a while.”

“Th-that’s… nothing new,” she rasped, hating how scraggly she sounded. “Is… Is Do-nnie…?”

“He’s okay.” Leo assured her. “He’s fine. He’s been waiting for you to wake up.”

He has? She thought with worry. Now she just felt guilty. He’d already been through enough, being roughed up by Karai too. He shouldn’t have wasted all that time on me… “Do y-you know… wh-where he is n-now?”

As it turned out they wouldn’t have to wait long. Suddenly the doorway was filled with three other turtles, Lilium spotted Raph and Mikey in the forefront with…

Donnie— who was unharmed, the only signs of his rough treatment being the fading bruises on his arms— standing breathlessly amongst the trio, a screwdriver hanging limp in his hand, whatever he’d been working on forgotten.

Their eyes locked. His breath hitched in his throat. Lilium couldn’t help the blurring of her own gaze as tears prickled her vision, a shaky grin on her face. “Don-nie…”

In one moment he was at the doorway, in the next he’d moved effortlessly to her side, screwdriver clattering to the ground. His hands found hers, gripping them in both of his, holding them to his plastron with eyes that looked glassy under the light, everyone else behind them forgotten. The smile that took root on his lips was filled with warmth, full of nothing but affection and relief.

Finally, he spoke. “Hi.”

Lilium couldn’t help the tears that trickled down her face. “Hi.”

She couldn’t really explain the emotions that spread across his features; a soft chuckle escaped him. He brought a hand to her face, his thumb brushing across her cheek. Gently he rested his brow against her own, content on staying where he was, shoulders shaking slightly to contain the sobs he struggled to stifle. He was doing a better job than she was at keeping it together.

“You’re… y-you’re okay?” Lilium murmured, searching his eyes for any further pain.

“I’m fine,” he nodded. “I’m okay. I’m so glad you’re up. I was worried the damage was too severe, you were unresponsive…” his fingers brushed across her temple, moving the hair out of her eyes. “I knew you were in there, I’m sorry I wasn’t fast enough—“

“No,” Lilium shook her head pleadingly, taking his face into both her hands. “I’m s-sorry for not be-being strong enough. She g-got what she want-ed…”

“No she didn’t. Karai didn’t get us, we got out. More importantly, she didn’t have the chance to find out I gave her the phony address until we were long gone.” He gently took her hands off his face to better talk to the Siren, never once making the motion to turn away. “It was close but we got you to safety. We…” he hesitated, steadying his words to maintain his stability. “I… thought we’d lost you.”

Lilium frowned. Unconsciously her hand reached up to her throat, where it still hurt to talk. “Ho-how bad was it…?”

“Bad enough.” Donatello answered, and she could tell he didn’t want to elaborate further. “But I was here the whole time. You weren’t alone when you were out of it. Your Mom too. She’s been dropping off Tupperware full of dinners for us, as a thank you for getting you out.”

That wasn’t a surprise, but it still made Lilium giggle. “Wh-what kind of f-food?”

“Pasta, mostly. Last week it was casserole,” Donatello chuckled a little. Unconsciously his fingers reached up to play with her bangs, the habit a welcome distraction. “… I missed you so much.”

Lilium’s cheeks warmed at the soft confession. “I missed you too… I just w-wish she didn’t t-take you there. I hate see-ing you hurt…”

“Hey, look at me,” Donatello gently tipped her head up, meeting her eyes. “I knew what I was getting myself into. If I never let Karai bring me to you, we never would have found her location to get you home. Nothing mattered more to me than getting you out of there,” he offered her a smile. “If I had to make that decision again, I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

Her face flushed, turning warm under his kind gaze. “S-still…” Lilium murmured bashfully. “I’m glad yo-you’re safe, too.”

There was a softness within Donatello’s gaze, still holding her face within his hand with all the affection in the world, keeping her close as though some invisible force would tear her away from him. Nimble fingers caressed her cheek, taking in every detail of Lilium’s face with only his eyes. In the silence between them she raised her head a little, bumping her brow into his as she asked, “W-were y-you… sing-ing?”

His eyes widened, taken aback by this recollection. “You remembered…?”

“I thought… I h-heard you… in th-the deli…” she smiled a little. “A-and you did… it again… one o-other time.” Giggling under her breath, Lilium added, “Kn-knew you… you h-had a p-prett-y voice.”

If it was possible for Donatello’s cheeks to turn darker from the genuine praise, he would have outright turned forest green. “Well… I knew you liked it when I did. Master Splinter said that if you hold a strong connection with someone they can hear you, even in sleep.” He tucked her hair behind her ears, showing off a set of beaming eyes. “Glad it worked.”

Lilium grinned, cheeks tinting a shade of pink. “C-could y-you… sing again?”

Donatello couldn’t help but laugh a little. “Any requests?”

“Les Mis?” She chirped. “O-only if y-you want to…”

“I’ll take an educated guess on which song you have in mind.”

“Am I r-reall-y that predictable?”

“No. I just know what you like.”

*****************

And there ya go! If you want some trivia on Lilium I’d be happy to share! Thanks for reading!

@queen-with-the-quill @tending-the-hearth @figuringitoutasigoalong @wasted-and-ready

[tenspontaneite]

Peace Is A Journey (Chapter 18/?)

In which a particularly unpleasant mountain storm offers new and distinctly unwanted challenges. Elsewhere, a Healer and her apprentice do their jobs.

(Chapter length: 19.5k. ao3 link)

Warnings: Warning for respiratory illness and mentions of amputation, and non-consensual administration of sedative/analgesic. Later, comprehensive and graphic depictions of preparation of hunted animals. Read with caution. Also, emetophobia warning.

---

 The morning dawned bright and remorseless upon Katolis proper, the light casting dramatic shadows from the walls of the Valley of Graves. Sarli looked outside her window to the Hall of Paragons carved within the stone, and could not help but feel the weight of it. The weight of Mercy. The weight of Justice, too.

When the time came, she fetched Cairon and the bag, and set them upon their walk. “Come then,” She said, more than a little grimly, while the door closed behind them. “Let us see about this business. And pray that the Lord Protector has the sense to allow a Healer’s apprentice within his castle’s walls.”

He very nearly didn’t. It was plain to see on the very, very careful blankness of Lord Viren’s face, when he was confronted at his office with one more party than he had expected. He inhaled too-sharply through his nose, as though he were like to lose his temper without a steadying breath. Then he said “I hardly think it’s appropriate, Healer. You are bound by confidentiality. Your apprentice is not.”

“He is mine, Lord Viren.” She answered to that, flatly. “Though he lacks his holy vows, he is beholden to mine. He knows my honour rests upon his own. I would not allow him to shame me.”

Another careful, audible inhalation. There was a switch, barely-suppressed, at the Lord Protector’s brow. “You must understand, as the protector of this kingdom, I have to be exceptionally careful with how far I stretch my trust.” He said, delicately.

“Yes.” Sarli agreed, because it was true, and said nothing more. She met Lord Viren’s gaze unflinching, and waited.

“…Very well.” He conceded, in the end, with a tightness around his eyes that spoke well of his displeasure. Even so, something bothered her about how quickly he’d acquiesced. It was too easy a victory, for how displeased he was. It set a twist of unease to her gut. “But while your integrity is beyond reproach, Healer, I must take precautions for your apprentice. He will be blindfolded on his way to our destination.”

Cairon blinked once at this and didn’t object, apparently entirely unbothered. It still stuck in Sarli’s craw. “I do expect that you mean to allow him the use of his eyes for the treatment, Lord Viren.” She said, dryly, showing none of her unease at all. “He would be of considerably lesser use, otherwise.”

He smiled thinly. “If you are so convinced that he is trustworthy, I suppose I must.”

The response bothered her, too. Perhaps it was in that all signs of his frustration seemed to be slipping away, as if he had never been annoyed at all. She had not spent so many years in service to Mercy without developing a fine sense of people, and that sense was ringing alarum now. Nonetheless, she held fast, and stood by impassively while her apprentice presented himself for blindfolding, and the two of them were led down the secret passages with a two-guard escort. Sarli noted, very carefully, the faces of those guards. Soldiers, after all, were as beholden to the Accords as the Lord Protector himself, and their participation in this travesty meant that she must surely report their conduct as well. She would need to remember their faces.

She kept a hand at Cairon’s elbow to guide him all the way, but found that he didn’t especially need it. He was very sure-footed, and seemed to orient himself in the direction of the footsteps ahead of him with ease. Not even on the stairs did he stumble, but even so, she held his arm all the way down.

At last they came to that Mercy-forsaken dungeon, which at least smelled less repellent this time. The patient had been moved; the cell she was led to was a different one to the day before, and was clean and well-lit. She noted this with a bare flicker of attention as she levelled all of her focus upon the elf she was to treat. He did not look well. He hadn’t looked well before, but he was worse today. Though his eyes were open and turned her way, there was something entirely too vague and unfocused about them, and there was an unhealthy waxy pallor to his skin. Her expression tightened at the sight of him, but she allowed no further reaction upon her.

“The blindfold, Lord Protector.” She said, as Lord Viren filtered into the room with his escort, and settled himself in a chair nearby to observe. How repellent.

“You may remove it.” He allowed, and she carefully did not sneer.

Instead, she turned, and pulled the cover from her apprentice’s eyes. She watched as he blinked, pupils contracting in the firelight, and then-

The moment he saw the elf was very obvious. There was a sharp inhalation, a widening of the eyes. A brief tremble, quickly-suppressed, at his fingertips. Other than that, he did not react. “An elf, master.” He said, levelly, because according to Lord Viren’s misapprehensions, he was not supposed to know about the elf. She spared an approving thought for his acting skills.

“Yes. I assume it will not be a problem.”

He closed his eyes for a second, and she could not tell whether it was part of the act, or something more genuine. “No, master.” He answered, and his eyes opened. He fixed them seriously upon their patient, gaze analytic and tightly controlled. The patient himself opened his eyes a little further, though they grew no less hazy. There seemed a lesser luminosity to them, now.

She nodded, and strode forwards. She knelt before the elf, though it hurt her knees. She said, “I do not know your name, but you are my patient, and I am your Healer Sarli. With me is my apprentice, Cairon, whose hands are mine. Let it be known that your health is now within my care.” The elf watched her, almost lucid, but did not respond. His attention was perfectly evident, though. “Your arm must be amputated today. You will be administered a painkiller for the procedure. Will you take it of your own will?” She waited, very calmly, for long enough to make it plain that she expected an answer.

His eyes lowered, just for a moment. Then he looked up, and spoke the first words she had heard from him. They rasped. Something ill rattled in his lungs. “I will not.” He said, in that terrible voice, and Sarli rapidly reassessed the likelihood of his ultimate survival. She tilted her head sharply, and watched as the elf’s words were followed by a distinct wet cough.

“Then it will be administered to you via a needle.” She said. “Cairon. Make the preparation. And pass me the stethoscope.”

He obeyed with silent efficiency, setting to work with the lilium and the needle reservoir even as she took the long tube of the stethoscope, pressing one end to the patient’s chest and the other to her left ear. She leaned into it and listened as the elf breathed, then moved it over to the other side. She had the fortune to still be listening when he coughed again, which was very illuminating. She receded and put the stethoscope aside.

“Cairon, take note. Beginnings of respiratory infection observed. Both lungs affected, with the state of the right lung more advanced.” She waited for his murmur of assent before she rose to inspect the elf more thoroughly. Infection wasn’t surprising, given the conditions he’d been kept in, but she’d have expected blood or wound infections first. Unless…

She leaned over and inspected the broken horn, frowning at what was very plainly an open cavity, with living tissue inside. Not only bone and marrow, either, but what had evidently once been pink pneumatised space. The look of it was very familiar from her studies, though she’d never seen a sinus so large. She had never guessed that elves might have respiratory cavities within their horns. But it made the aetiology of the infection very clear, and indeed, seemed visibly inflamed to the naked eye. No wonder the elf had developed such a sickness, with that open channel into his system.

“Infected sinus in the broken horn.” She observed aloud. “It will need to be carefully irrigated and then bandaged as part of treatment today.” She would need to be careful to avoid allowing water further into the sinus cavities. But irrigation of the infected tissue – and perhaps even debridement – only seemed sensible. She stayed by the sinus for a few moments, listening, and discerned from the lack of hissing air that the internal pathways to the rest of the skull cavities had likely all closed, or otherwise been blocked. Yes, then; debridement would be warranted. It wasn’t as though this sinus would ever function properly again.

“The needle is ready, master.” Cairon reported, quietly, and she glanced sidelong at him.

“Good.” She said, and knelt by the elf again. “You will be administered a high dose of the drug known as lilium. Due to its pronounced soporific properties, you are likely to fall unconscious during the procedure. It takes effect very rapidly once introduced to the bloodstream; I expect you will feel it within the minute. You will likely experience residual euphoria and feelings of wellness as a side effect for up to eighteen hours following the dosage.” She paused, watching his eyes to be sure that he was listening, and added “When you awake, your arm will be gone. If you haven’t already, I advise you to make your peace with that now.”

For a moment, just for a moment, the elf’s eyes moved sideways to behold his doomed arm. He let out the quietest, faintest exhalation. He didn’t speak, but there was something about the minute movement of his head as he looked at her that felt like a nod.

“Cairon.” She said, and her apprentice moved up to find a vein in the healthy arm. He administered the lilium with practiced skill, and the effect was nearly instant; the awful tension in the elf’s body fled him, he went lax, he went placid. She could see the Lord Viren shifting out of the corner of her eye, for whatever reason interested by what he saw.

The elf’s eyes slipped closed within the minute. She monitored his breathing through the process, two fingers resting at his pulse, and found that it slowed to well within normal parameters. When she was relatively sure there was no bad reaction to the lilium, she sighed and leaned back.

“Come now, boy.” She said to her apprentice, finding that he was already laying out the necessary tools. “It’s time we began.”

 ---

 It was weird to sit around awake while the others fell asleep. Not as weird as it could have been, but still pretty weird.

Back home, it was relatively familiar. Callum and Ezran shared adjoining rooms, after all, and Ezran’s bedtime was earlier than his. He was perfectly used to his brother falling asleep in his own bedchamber while he did something (relatively) quiet and inconspicuous, such as reading or drawing. But…well. A pseudo-cave whose accommodations were limited to a campfire and a huddle of tent-layers was decidedly not ‘back home’, and there wasn’t the benefit of walls and doors here. Rayla and Ezran were right there, close by the fire, and all he had to do to see them was glance a little to the side.

So, it was weird. He felt self-conscious every time he poked the fire with one of Rayla’s swords, or fed another branch or disc of wood to the flames. He felt weird seeing Rayla twitch, and sigh, and shift, and know full well that she wasn’t actually asleep yet. He wondered if she usually took this long to fall asleep, or if her bruising and pain was just…aggravating everything. Ordinarily, he’d ask, but…well, she was trying to fall asleep. He couldn’t disturb her. It was just weird.

Ezran took longer than usual falling asleep himself, brows furrowing as the dragon-light flickered out from the shell in his arms. But his breathing did ease off eventually, and after that, Callum breathed a little easier. His brother could generally be relied upon to be a heavy sleeper. He could draw, and talk to himself while drawing, and move about, and clatter his art supplies all without waking him.

Rayla, of course, was another matter entirely. His self-consciousness over stoking the fire turned out to be entirely warranted, because when he watched, he could see her twitch at every sound he made – the spitting of the fire as it crackled around new wood, the small shifts and sounds of him moving the wood, everything. He couldn’t help but wonder how she ever managed to get to sleep, if she was that sensitive to the sounds around her.

He thought, guiltily, of his alleged tendency to shift about and occasionally talk in his sleep, and understood a little better her tired eyes on some of their mornings.

Callum kept as quiet as he could, and watched the fire, and listened to the wind howl, and waited. He didn’t dare do anything noisier, while she was still trying to fall asleep. He looked out past the cliff to the storm, and just…stared, silently, for what felt like hours. It wasn’t, of course. The light was still fading, so it couldn’t be that long. But it felt like it, watching the endless flurry of the blizzard. It was hypnotic, in a way. Disorientating, in another. Every now and then lightning flashed, thunder following some time after, and there was nothing he could do to control that sound. Rayla twitched at it every time.

It seemed like it had been at least an hour by the time Rayla finally managed to fall asleep, but it was honestly probably longer than that. He watched out of the corner of his eyes as the Rayla-shaped lump in the tent covers slumped into something more relaxed, as some of the tension eased from her face, and felt quietly relieved. She really did need her rest, and he wasn’t looking forward to having to wake her up again in a few hours. She’d probably be so tired.

Still. If it came down to it, they could probably all take turns napping during the day. As long as the storm was still going, it wasn’t like they had anywhere else to go.

After a while, very carefully, he dared to get out his sketchbook and start quietly on a new drawing. The storm looked different in the dark; the white of it wasn’t nearly so pronounced, and the layers of the blizzard fluttering off into the night were full of subtle gradations of pink-grey light. He did his best to render the effect in charcoal, all soft smudges and greys, and startled occasionally in the shock of a thunder-clap. Every one of those, of course, woke Rayla up. She’d jolt and grumble quietly and then, evidently, do her best to fall back asleep again. Generally, she seemed to manage it pretty fast.

Again, Callum wondered how much he tended to wake her, on a typical night. He’d never met anyone who slept so ridiculously lightly.

Though, he wasn’t certain he’d fare much better with the thunderclaps. They were loud, even muffled through the snow-clouds. Loud enough that they disturbed Ezran too, who shifted and murmured, the lights of egg and Bait shifting with him.

It was hard to judge the time passing. Weirdly enough, though, drawing helped. He was used to hours disappearing when he sat down to draw, and had developed something of a sense of roughly how much time he lost between one art-trance and the next. When a crack of snow-muffled thunder drew him out of a span of time that felt vaguely like it had been forty minutes, he considered the state of the dark. He considered how tired he felt. He decided, eventually, that it had probably been around four hours since the others went to bed. Maybe longer.

Still, he hesitated, watching Rayla’s sleeping form. It felt wrong to disturb her, after all she’d been through lately, and after how long it had taken her to get to sleep. For a moment, he very seriously considered leaving her to sleep, and taking over her watch. But…

She woke up often enough throughout the night that she’d probably eventually question why he’d not handed off watch to her. And then she would not be pleased with him.

Finally, reluctantly, he put his sketchbook away and went to nudge her quietly by the shoulder. She woke at once, eyes flying open, focusing blearily on him. She looked terribly groggy, and despite everything, it made guilt clench at his throat.

Her eyes were really, really bright in the dark. He’d noticed it before, but…

He didn’t speak. Keeping hushed and quiet for so long alone made the thought of talking seem weird, especially with Ezran still asleep. But she understood the situation easily enough, and peeled herself silently from the tent covers, rubbing grit out of her eyes. She made a few quiet murmuring noises of what sounded like pain, wincing as she rolled stiff shoulders.

Looking half as though she were sleepwalking, she reached out and tapped on his arm in a strange, purposeful rhythm for a few seconds, before she stopped short and frowned and shook her head. “Ugh.” She muttered, barely louder than a breath. Then she said something weird that sounded like ‘ick tuss’, in a barely-audible mutter, and pushed herself out of bed. Eventually, she leaned over, and murmured quite close to his ear “Thanks. I’ll take over now. Get some sleep.”  

He opened his mouth to question her about what the weird tapping had been about, then closed it, looking at Ezran. Instead, he tapped questioningly on his own arm, plastering an exaggerated confused expression over his face.

She stared back, a little sourly, and murmured the same thing she had earlier, except this time it sounded more like ‘ictus’. Her breath was warm on his ear. Then she said “’s not important. Sleep.” And dragged herself staggering over to the fireside.

He hesitated. He hesitated for long enough that she turned back to him and started making aggressive pointing motions at the tent-covers, as plain and uncompromising a ‘go to sleep’ as he’d ever seen. He relented, albeit reluctantly, and went.

The spot she’d vacated was still warm. He eased himself in, sparing a few lingering glances for Rayla arranging herself at the campfire. In the end, though, he was so tired that he didn’t even remember closing his eyes, and was asleep in seconds.

 ---

 As far as watches went, the only unremarkable thing about this one was that she was a fair bit more injured than typical for someone standing watch. And also perhaps that her ‘squadmates’ were directly beside her rather than ensconced in separate tents. And that there was a frankly intimidating storm raging close enough that she periodically had to shift her position to defend the campfire from winds. And – well, alright, maybe it was a pretty unusual watch, after all.

It wasn’t a problem, though. A three-part watch certainly made for longer shifts than a six-part watch did. But, for the most part, the whole thing was comfortingly standard. Rayla settled into silent vigil by the fire, fed it wood occasionally, and that was all. Easy.

She did, after a furtive glance at Callum’s sleeping form, take a few moments to inspect her bad hand. She’d not wanted to investigate it in front of him, given how much and how conspicuously he’d been fretting lately, but it still felt…off. She poked along her skin, and squeezed her fingers gently, and shifted uneasily at having her suspicions confirmed. The pins-and-needles hadn’t completely gone, it seemed. Or, at least, some hint of it remained. The skin on the back of her hand, particularly on the thumb side, was a little more numb than it ought to be. In places it prickled strangely when she touched it. The hand itself, of course, remained irritatingly stiff. She hoped that would go away, with frequent enough loosening of the binding.

She spared a moment to wonder exactly how long they were going to keep this up for. It would have to be until Xadia at the very least, wouldn’t it? It wasn’t as though they were likely to find some way of removing the binding outside of Xadia. It seemed she’d be dependent on Ezran and Azymondias for the continued life of her hand for a good long while.

Rayla pursed her lips at the thought, troubled, and spared a glance to the cyclical glow of the egg in Ezran’s arms.

Her watch passed uneventfully, except for the periodic fright of the thunder-claps resounding through the sky and waking everyone up. Ezran seemed to be waking unusually easily at those – almost more at the lightning-flash than the thunder. Callum was being his customary self and barely waking for a second, but Ez…

She had her suspicions. They were confirmed the instant she went to wake him for his watch, and he blinked awake and into alertness so quickly that he couldn’t have been firmly asleep. Rayla spared a glance for Callum, and drew him out of bed towards the fire to murmur to him. He took the egg with him. “Have you been awake the whole night?” She asked, very lowly, and considered the look of him. He did have the customary exhausted stare of someone who’d been up most of the night, but…

Maybe it was only her imagination. But his eyes looked a little too bright for a human’s. “…Not really.” He answered, after a moment, keeping his voice as quiet as hers. “I just…haven’t really been all-the-way asleep.” His fingers stroked absently over the shell, eyes distant. She’d have dismissed it for sleepiness, if not for how strange his countenance was. Something about the sight of him sent a shiver of unease down her spine.

She watched him for a moment. “…The storm?” She guessed, quiet. “Azymondias?”

He closed his eyes and shuddered strangely as the lightning flashed. It lit the storm-haze, and cast a brief pallor on his dark skin. “Yeah.” His voice was barely a whisper. He didn’t elaborate.

Unease twisted in her gut again, this time with a healthy accompaniment of concern. “Are you alright?” She asked, brows creasing, because – because he didn’t really seem alright. He seemed…off. Distant. Hazy, in a way he oughtn’t be.

“Mm.” He said, a little vaguely. “It’ll be better now I’m awake. When I was sleeping….I was in Zym’s head a lot. And he’s really feeling the storm.” He shook his head. “It’s fine, Rayla. You can go to sleep.”

She didn’t, not right away. She didn’t like how he was acting. But over the minutes she stayed beside him, he did seem to get more lucid, so…eventually, when he started nudging her again, she went. A little reluctantly, she took herself and her full-body exhaustion into the tent layers, wincing as she settled onto the hard ground. Her bruises were absolute murder for sleeping on the floor. She thought wistfully of actual beds, and soft pillows, and duvets, and eventually shuffled into the warm spot that still vaguely remained from Ezran.

With the breadth of her tiredness, it didn’t take all that long for her to start drowsing. And then, naturally, she was startled awake again by Calum rolling over with a murmur and pressing himself against her side. Because of course.

She sighed at him, but for once, didn’t even contemplate pushing him away. In the cold of the storm, it was…sensible. Sensible, to stick close to each other, and share body heat. That was all it was. Nothing more, nothing less.

She’d almost managed to convince herself of that by the time she fell asleep again.

  ---

  When Callum woke, it was to the steady numbing feeling of cold. His fingers and toes were so frigid they nearly ached, and a chill was seeping steadily into his skin. He murmured, still half asleep, and turned over, mindlessly searching for…something. Something warm? That seemed right, but…there wasn’t anything. He made a plaintive sound and shuffled further. He located something small that croaked at him when he touched it.

That woke him in a hurry. He opened his eyes, and found himself staring blearily at Bait. Bait stared back, unimpressed. “Morning, Bait.” Callum said to him, voice rough and croaking from sleep, and blinked a few more times to get his bearings. He was in something dark and leathery, like…a blanket fort? No, that was right – they’d not been able to put the tent up, because of the storm…

The storm. Callum sat bolt-upright and had to flail a few times to disentangle his face from the tent-layers. Light abruptly assailed him, and he winced, rubbing his eyes. For a moment the whole spectacle was just blurs of variably-coloured light – but then it resolved into a flickering campfire, a glowing egg by the fireside, the shining white of a sunlit blizzard…

Ezran was sitting by the fire, and had looked over at him. He offered a smile that looked tired and forced. “Morning, Callum.” He said, and his voice – he sounded exhausted. Callum straightened, staring at him more closely, and remembered the fire-watch, remembered that Ezran had had the last shift-

“Are you okay?” He asked at once, instantly worried. It took some tripping over himself, but he extricated himself from the tent and crawled over to the fire to inspect his brother. He looked a little paler than normal, and there were heavy bags under his eyes. Guilt churned in Callum’s gut. “We should have taken your watch.” He muttered, still not entirely awake, as he glanced around on reflex to look for Rayla. Where was she?

“It’s fine, Callum.” Ez said, shaking his head. “I wasn’t really sleeping anyway, so…”

Callum half-registered the words, but had already found something else to worry about: Rayla wasn’t here. He looked around a little more frantically, as if he’d find her hiding behind a backpack or something if he looked closely enough-

“Rayla went out to get more wood. Actually, this is the second time – she already went on another firewood run earlier.” His brother told him, and Callum’s movement stalled. He looked over at the wood pile, and indeed found it looking more well-supplied than he remembered, even from his own shift of the watch. “This time, well...” He pursed his lips. “She’s getting food, too. I pointed her towards a few different places where animals were hiding, so…I guess we’ll have a lot to eat, soon.”

“…Oh.” Callum said, mind gone blank. He searched the campsite, a little anxiously, and noted by the absence of several articles some small sources of comfort. Rayla had taken her cloak, apparently dried out by now. The rope-harness was gone, too. And Callum’s one-shoulder bag had been emptied out and taken away. “…Why didn’t you wake me?”

“We decided to let you sleep in. It’s not like we’re in a hurry to go anywhere, after all.” Ezran shrugged, and after a moment, Callum finally shuffled over to sit beside him. The heat of the fire made his hands and feet ache uncomfortably as they warmed. “Besides, the last few days have been kind of tiring. If you can sleep…well, I think you should.”

‘Kind of tiring’. “Sort of an understatement there, Ez.” He said, wryly, and tried not to squirm too conspicuously as he looked out over the ledge. The howl of the wind was vicious, even with them out of the worst of it. The scattered gusts that managed to reach him were uncomfortably chilly, even sitting directly beside the fire. Outside, in the blizzard itself…how much colder must it be? “…How long ago did she leave?”

“Not long.” He shrugged. “Maybe fifteen minutes. We were up for a while before that. Made some hot water.” He nodded to the pot, which was no longer on the fire, but still had some gently steaming liquid in it. “I don’t actually think it’s warm anymore, so if you want it, you should probably put it on the fire for a while first.”

He considered it. “I’ll just make some tea, I think.” He decided, and stood to go off and collect snow. He grimaced uncomfortably at the state of his bladder as he moved, which was decidedly unhappy with him after having gone the majority of a day unanswered. He wondered, with a frown, exactly how Ezran had been managing that, given the current situation.

On the first day of their travel, Ezran had broached the question of how exactly people were to manage certain bathroom functions without the use of the luxuries of civilisation, such as buckets of water and toilet paper. Rayla had stared at him with a particular expression of dawning weariness, as if she were only now realising the sheer helplessness of her princely companions, and had taken a moment to rub at her temples before she took them aside.

Then she'd said "You'd better listen up, because I'm only saying this once." And she’d given them a short primer on improvised wilderness cleaning options. These largely boiled down to 'leaves' and 'snow', and while she'd been very brief at the time, she’d taken particular care to point out any poisonous or irritant plants in the following days as they travelled.

He and Ezran had put this instruction to daily use, obviously, but that didn't really help much in a situation where they couldn't go off behind a tree or rock to answer the call of nature. And this was, unfortunately, one of those situations. There was absolutely nowhere in their pseudo-cave that was appropriate, and the way out was, well. A narrow and precipitous ledge covered in ice.

And so: “Don’t you need to go to the bathroom?” Callum asked his brother, when he returned with snow. “We’ve been cooped up here for probably most of a day by now.”

“I just asked Rayla to take me past the ledge for a bit, earlier.” Ez informed him, making a face as Callum dropped pine leaves into the snow in the pot. “I guess you’ll have to wait till she gets back. Unless you want to try the ledge alone.”

Callum eyed the ledge in question. It looked…precipitous. He could hardly imagine the embarrassment of having to ask Rayla to escort him over it for a potty break, but…he also did not particularly enjoy the idea of slipping and falling to his death. He grimaced. “Ugh.” He expressed, and set the pot on the fire.

In the end, he didn’t need to figure out a way to awkwardly fumble through the request. Rayla returned with a harness full of firewood not all that much later, spotted Callum sitting upright with his tea, and sighed with obvious relief. “Callum. You’re awake. Good.” She headed over, peeling herself out of the now one-shouldered harness and setting the wood down. Ezran shuffled over, murmuring greetings, and set to work stacking her haul. “I got a lot of meat, and I need your help processing it.”

He blinked, startled, and looked up at her. “Oh. Um. Okay?” He offered, giving her a quick look-over to appraise her state of health. She seemed perfectly alert and graceful, in sharp contrast to how she’d returned from the second firewood trip yesterday. She was shivering, maybe, but…she seemed fine. “Now?” He asked, a little dubiously, as he set his jar of tea down to rise to his feet and inspect her more closely. As before, she was so thoroughly wrapped up in layers that the only skin visible was the strip on level with her eyes.

She hesitated. “No, I should probably warm up a bit first.” She admitted, a little reluctantly, and carefully sat herself down. After a moment, he followed suit. “I left all the meat out past the ledge. Normally I’d be worried about scavengers finding it, but…” She shrugged. “I don’t suppose much is travelling in this storm.”

“There’s not, no.” Ezran said, almost absent-mindedly. “There’s a fox sort of that-way-ish,” He gestured with an idle flick of his hand, then went back to stacking wood. “But she’s staying put in a sort of snow-hole she dug.”

Callum eyed his brother cautiously. “…The storm weirdness is still going, huh?”

There was something wrong with the look in his brother’s eyes. Too distant. Too vague. He didn’t seem entirely present, somehow, even though he was talking to them perfectly fine. “Worse.” He said, shortly. “The sky-magic, it’s…” He shook his head. “It’s so much thicker now. Zym is really – awake. Alert?” He looked side-ways at the egg he’d positioned beside the fire, hand twitching up briefly like he wanted to reach out and pull it closer. In the end, though, he stayed where he was, and sighed. “…Something like that.”

Rayla pursed her lips, and exchanged a worried glance with Callum before she spoke. “Well, if it’s any comfort, the storm’s probably going to have started moving past us by the end of the day.” She said, looking briefly out to the blinding-white blizzard. “…It’ll get closer first, though. Actually, judging by the thunder, it’s going to be really, really close in a couple of hours. We’ll have to put all the metal over by the ledge again.”

He paused, abruptly remembering his and Ezran’s conversation from the day before. “We’re under shelter, though.” He pointed out. “Lightning can’t strike through rock, right?”

She snorted. “Yes it can.” She informed him, and seemed to take some grim amusement from how both of them did a double-take as they stared at her. “If lightning hits the ground above us, it’ll zap through this empty air space on its way further down. And if we’re in its way, we get hit. So.” She gestured expressively to the partially-complete pile of metallics in the tent-pack. “I suppose the bright side is that lightning isn’t likely to be attracted to the metal – if it’s attracted to anything, it’ll be…trees, or something, further up the mountain. But it’s not worth the risk.”

“….yeah, I’d really prefer to avoid getting hit by lightning.” Callum decided, and spared a wary glance for the pot on the fire. He handled it perhaps more gingerly than necessary as he took it away from its re-heating to get Rayla some tea, and for a while they just sat around drinking while she restored some warmth to her body.

She didn’t take all that long to warm up. Ordinarily, he’d have fretted about it, but he really needed to get over that ledge. She grabbed her spare sword from the iron pot, passed it to him, and then tied herself to him with rope for the trip out into the blizzard.

Somehow, in the time since they’d reached shelter, he’d managed to forget how awful it was out there. Or maybe it was worse, now. That seemed likely, with the storm getting closer, but-

“How have you been going out to collect firewood in this?” He demanded, practically having to shout to hear his voice over the howl of the frigid wind in his ears. He pulled his hat down and his scarf up, and while Rayla was similarly smothered in layers, he could practically see the sardonic humour in the way she looked at him.

“Mainly because it was this or freezing to death.” She informed him, and pulled him by the rope over the final stretch. Callum looked around wild-eyed. The snow definitely hadn’t been this thick yesterday. Rayla’s footsteps from her firewood trip were plainly visible in it, though the blizzard was already starting to fill them in. The visibility was so poor that he could only see a few metres of the deep footprints, disappearing out into blinding white. “It’s worse right now, though. The storm’s getting closer.” With excellent dramatic timing, lightning flashed and made the whole storm painfully bright; less than two seconds later, the snow-muffled whomp of thunder sounded.

“No kidding.” Callum said, numbly, and tried to assess how deep the snow was. It was coming most of the way up his shins, for Mercy’s sake.

She tugged on the rope. “Come on. We shouldn’t stay out in this longer than we need to.”

“Er.” He said, suddenly remembering why he’d been eager to get over the ledge in the first place, and shuffled awkwardly. “I mean, could I take a couple minutes first? Just to…” He cleared his throat, and looked away.

She rolled her eyes at him and untied the rope around his waist. “Don’t be long.” She ordered, and tucked her ungloved hands into her sleeves.

He hastily stumbled off, nearly falling over into the snow, and felt his way along a rock wall until the suddenly-convenient snow haze had obscured any hint of Rayla’s silhouette. Then, because he knew her eyes were better, he went a little further and tucked himself behind a rock. An extremely cold minute later, he was staggering back with his hands red and numb and aching from grasping snow. He understood why she’d told him to leave his gloves behind, but…

For a moment, he couldn’t find Rayla where he’d left her, and panicked. But then he realised that the fresh footprints in the snow were actually good for something, and followed them through the vicious winds to find her.

The first thing he saw was the red. It was so bright, and there was so much of it, and – and he froze solid, dread and horror hitting him so hard he swayed in place, remembering that awful dream where she’d bled and bled and bled until the tide was fit to drown them-

And then he breathed, and pulled himself shakily from that terrible moment, recognising the bodies of animals in the snow beside her. She wasn’t the source of it. She was safe. She wasn’t bleeding.

No matter his attempts to reassure himself, he was faltering and shaky when he finally stumbled over beside her. When she looked over at him she seemed perfectly fine, and entirely lucid. There was no sign of new pain, no sign of new blood…

…except on her hands. Her hands, holding a dead rabbit, its fur ruffled and wet from snow, and her sword cutting through its belly. His gut heaved, and his shakiness finally got the better of him. He fell backwards and collapsed heavily into the snow, feeling so terribly disorientated that for a bewildered second he wasn’t even sure what was happening. Was she bleeding? Was it the animals bleeding? What was even going on?

“Callum?” her voice sounded worried, even half-stolen by the shriek of the winds. She turned and peered at him, and the shock of the snow’s cold numbed some of the reflexive panic out of his system. It was enough, just enough, to let him think.

“…Sorry.” He croaked, and raised a cold hand shakily to his face. “I, er. I guess I just found you surrounded by blood and panicked a little, and-“ He looked to the rabbit in her hand, and swallowed. “And also that there’s kind of gross.”

Rayla looked taken-aback for a moment, and then glanced around her as if only now noticing the macabre spectacle she made. “…Right. Sorry.” She said, chagrined. “Should’ve warned you. I just didn’t want to waste time out here.” She eyed him, sympathetic but assessing. “Are you alright to help?”

“Yes.” He said, determinedly, though he wasn’t at all certain. It was very early in the morning for this amount of gore, and his gag reflex was already feeling rebellious.

She looked at him dubiously, which was probably fair. “Alright.” She conceded, and gestured at the bloody pile beside her. “We’ve got a small deer and three rabbits, including this one. And they all need to be skinned and gutted. And in the deer’s case, cut up into smaller pieces.” She flexed the fingers of her left hand, carefully. It looked stiff, but whether that was from cold or infirmity was decidedly unclear. “My hand’s being a little easier to deal with, so I can demonstrate the rabbits. But the deer…” She hesitated. “I can probably gut it. But I don’t know about the skinning. It’ll probably be fine, but….”

“…Can you walk me through it?” he asked, tentative, and she nodded quickly.

“Of course.” She said instantly. “And we’re not planning on keeping the hide for anything, so you can be as messy as you like.” She grimaced at her sword. “This isn’t exactly a skinning knife, anyway.”

“Alright.” He wasn’t sure what else to say. He really didn’t want to be messing around in animal guts, or skinning things. But he didn’t want to be shivering in the middle of a blizzard, either, or on the run from his own people, or worrying about his brother not having enough to eat. And…he wasn’t going to make Rayla do this alone. How selfish would it be, to depend on her for everything to do with feeding them, and not even try to help? “What should I do?”

“Just watch.” She said, and pulled the rabbit over to show him. She’d not actually been gutting it, he realised. Just…cutting a line up its belly to the truncated neck. She’d cut its feet off, too, and there were lines cut on the underside of the limbs inwards to that line down the body.

She finished the cut on the rabbit’s belly, and put her sword down. It was then that Callum discovered, much to his horror, that skinning animals apparently involved just pulling the skin off. He heaved and gagged several times, watching her, watching the pale pink flesh of the rabbit’s muscle and sinew exposed, but managed to choke down the taste of acid and keep watching.

“This is easiest when the kill’s fresh.” She explained, shooting him an apologetic glance as he gagged again. “The deer’s going to be hardest, because it was dead for at least an hour before I found it. It’s part frozen. But the rabbits should skin easily enough.”

“Great.” He managed, and held onto the contents of his stomach all through the demonstration. Soon, she’d set aside a disturbingly neat-looking rabbit pelt that had been pulled off of the flesh like a gory sock. And then, a little questioningly, she passed the second rabbit and a sword to him. He stared at it. It was…very intact. “…Do I cut the head and feet off?” He asked, and she shrugged awkwardly at him.

“If you can.” She agreed, and watched him with a vaguely conflicted expression. He wondered if she was reconsidering the wisdom of having him help her. That thought was enough to bring him some reserve of courage, and he took a long breath of the icy air. It was so cold it made his lungs burn. With some prescient inkling that his control over his stomach wouldn’t hold forever, he pulled his scarf down from his face before he began.

He braced the rabbit against the icy ground beneath the snow, and pushed down with the sword. There was a gentle crunch, and the foot came off. He swallowed, and repeated the process for the other three, getting a little better with the leverage of the blade each time. The head gave him a little more trouble – in more than one sense. It was harder to cut off, and more disturbing. He breathed past the taste of acid and quietly called to mind the knife-sharp memory of the incisions Rayla had made in the first rabbit.

She reached out and patted him awkwardly on the shoulder as he hesitated. “You’re doing fine.” She murmured to him, and he could hardly hear it over the wind in his ears. His hands were numb and aching now, and all the colder for the slippery blood on his fingers.

He closed his eyes for a moment, and then opened them. It was…too easy, to make the cuts. The sword seemed unnaturally sharp. Drawing the blade-tip through the rabbit’s skin seemed as easy as stroking charcoal over paper.

Rayla said something encouraging to him, but this time the storm was entirely too loud for him to hear it properly. He appreciated it, anyway. And then, reluctantly, he set the sword down to mimic the next thing she’d shown him.

There was some resistance, to pulling the rabbit’s pelt off. He had to adjust his grip to pull a little harder. But he pulled, and it went, and his head swam as the pelt inverted and the pink flesh of the inside of the skin peeled off where he tugged-

Nearly falling over in the process, Callum turned to the side and vomited a mouthful of acid into the snow. His fingers were slick with blood, and the too-smooth texture of skinned flesh. He wanted to wipe his face, but he also didn’t want to get the blood on himself. He hunched there, trembling, so shaky that it had to be from more than just the cold…

Rayla drew near, visible as a looming shape in his peripheral vision. She hesitated there for long enough that he almost looked up to see what she was doing, but then – her hand moved into his field of view, cupping snow. He made a small, startled noise as she wiped it over the lower part of his face, gentle and careful and sympathetic as she watched him. She discarded the handful of snow to the side while the cold was still stinging at his skin. “Can you finish?” She asked him, without any sort of judgement, as he stared at her and shook.

He swallowed. It still tasted of acid. “Y-yeah.” He stumbled over the word, hazily determined not to disappoint her. He wouldn’t make her finish his work. He wouldn’t. He turned back to his grisly work and pulled the rabbit’s skin off with shaking hands. It was at least less nauseating, now that he’d already thrown up.

“Well done.” She murmured to him, when he was done, and had set the pelt aside with the other one. When he looked up at her, she looked almost guilty. “…I’ll finish the rest of this, I think.” She said, finally, and his gut lurched with the sickening certainty that he’d disappointed her, that he’d not been good enough-

“No, I can still help.“ he insisted, hands still slick and bloody. His voice felt as wobbly as his fingers. “I won’t throw up the next time. I just – have to get used to it.”

She shook her head, firmly. Her eyes on his were gently understanding. “Callum, you did a good job. It’s okay. It…wasn’t really fair of me to ask you to do this much on your first try. You can help again next time.”

“But, your hand – your arm.” He scrambled to say, staring with a strange sense of loss as Rayla tugged the skinned rabbit from his hands. “You – shouldn’t be doing it, it’ll hurt.”

“My hand’s doing better than I expected today.” She said determinedly, which wasn’t especially convincing, given he was quite certain she’d lie about how well she was doing under circumstances like these. “I’ll be fine.” She hesitated for a moment. “If it makes you feel better, you’ll have to stay here ‘till I’m done anyway. I can show you how the gutting works.”

He paused, uncertain.

She took his silence as agreement. “Wash your hands.” She instructed. “And just watch. I’ll try to be quick, and then we can both go back to camp and warm up.”

…It was getting really cold. Sitting still in the middle of a blizzard…well. It shouldn’t be surprising. A little sluggishly, he finally nodded, and she sighed as though relieved.

“Good.” She said, and then proceeded to skin the third rabbit with clean, ruthless efficiency. Her left hand didn’t seem to be gripping very strongly, so she periodically lost her hold and had to pick it up again, but even that was quick and efficient. She set that third pelt aside with the others, and then moved onto the deer. Apparently she wanted everything skinned before she gutted anything.

Watching the deer’s head get cut off was horrible. Watching something that big get skinned was horrible. Seeing the bright red of its flesh exposed – so much darker than the rabbits – and the paler lines of tendons and sinew…he gagged a couple of times, even with nothing in his stomach to bring up. What little there’d been for dinner was long since gone, and the tea had probably gone up with the acid earlier.

She seemed to have a harder time with the deer’s skin, as she’d predicted, and needed to apply the tip of her sword to the situation a few times. He was horribly, guiltily glad that he’d not had to do that, and that made him feel even worse. He eyed her bloody fingers and wondered how much her hand was hurting. He watched miserably as she set the deer back and moved onto, presumably, the disembowelling stage of this whole ordeal.

Rayla did the deer first. She positioned the deer with its head and forelimbs back, and asked him to hold it in place. Wordlessly, he obliged, and then moved one hand over to hold one of the back legs up when she requested that too. She cut a line up its middle, deeper by far than she’d done to skin it. The outer muscle gaped open and put all of the organs into full view, the white of bone bloody-yellow compared to the white of the snow, and as Callum watched it his mind went weirdly blank. It was as though he’d gone so far past nauseated and shaken that his head had decided it was too much effort to bother with, and had just shut off the feelings entirely. He kept watching, oddly numb.

She broke the ribcage open at the sternum, with a sickening crack of snapping bone. She cut some weird connective tissue, and some sort of fleshy tube he didn’t know the name for, then grabbed said tube and pulled what seemed like all of the deer’s organs out at once. They all seemed….attached. That broke through his strange haze enough for him to gag again, watching with morbid horror as she dropped the innards into the snow.

Then, after some consideration, she reached into the mess and severed some pieces loose. “Some organs are good to eat.” She explained, awkwardly, as she set aside what he was pretty sure was a heart. “And they have…nutrients, or something. We probably need that, right now.” She cut out some sort of big pale thing too, and two smaller dark-red things of the same shape and size. “Heart, liver, and kidneys.” She explained, when she saw him staring wordlessly at the items in question, which she’d tucked back into the deer’s body cavity.

He knew, intellectually, about hearts and livers and kidneys, and what they were for, and…in as much as he’d seen medical diagrams, he knew approximately what they looked like. It was decidedly different to see them bloody and freshly-severed and steaming gently in the frigid air. “Oh.” He said, faintly, and helped her turn the deer over to – ostensibly – drain excess blood out into the snow.

After the deer, the rabbits really weren’t that shocking. He watched with distant, morbid curiosity as Rayla pulled the innards out of them one-by-one, piling them in a gory heap with the rest. She set the choicest offal out from those, too. They seemed almost comically tiny compared to the deer’s.

She didn’t take any particular care with butchering the deer. She seemed increasingly impatient as she grew increasingly cold-looking, and just outright hacked slabs of meat off of the carcass, piling them in packed snow. She eyed the legs begrudgingly, admitting eventually “We’ll need to make some sort of spit or stake for those. Getting all of the meat off would take too long, and it’s not like they’ll fit in the pot.”

“And we need to have the pot with the other metal stuff soon, anyway.” Callum said, with a weird calm. She eyed him with plain concern, and then kept shooting worried glances at him all the way through the rest of her butchery. When at last she had a stack of bloody red meat and three clean rabbit corpses, she…apparently decided to use the two halves of the deer’s ribcage and also its skin as carrying baskets, and piled it all in. It sort of overflowed. It was astonishingly macabre. She tied it all together with an extra piece of rope, in a giant parcel of meat, and then ushered him to his feet.

“Come on, you.” She said, a little gruffly. “Time to get you to the fire. You’re looking all…shocky. The warmth will do you good.”

“Uhuh.” He said, faintly, and wished there was a way to warn Ezran about the bloody spectacle of what they were bringing with them.

By some sort of mutual unspoken agreement, he and Rayla contrived to make sure the meat wasn’t visible as they finally turned the corner of the ledge back into shelter, hiding it between them until they could pile it furtively behind all the metallics, where it might not be so terribly visible. This turned out to be a wise decision, because even the couple of deer legs that Rayla brought to the fireside were enough to make Ezran gag with a single glance.

“Sorry, Ez.” Rayla said, apologetically, as she set the meat on a rag beside the fire. Her next priority seemed to be tugging Callum down until he fell clumsily on his backside beside Ezran, whereupon she inspected him for a moment and ordered “You, sit. Warm up. Think happy, non-gory thoughts.”

This apparently got his brother’s attention off of the grisly freshly-skinned and dismembered deer legs, and he turned to blink at Callum with dawning suspicion. “Are you okay?” He demanded. “You don’t feel okay.” He reached out and snatched his hand, his hand which had very recently been covered with rabbit blood, and his face scrunched up. “You’re all shocky.” He said, almost accusatively.

“That’s what I said.” Rayla contributed, from where she had started clattering about in the firewood pile. Ez shot her a frown, possibly for disrupting his lovingly-arranged stack.

“I’m fine, Ez.” Callum said, automatically, finally finding his voice. His brother ignored him entirely, and instead levelled an unimpressed look at Rayla.

“What did you do to him?” He demanded, albeit not with any true ire, fingers still gripping around Callum’s.

Rayla shrugged, looking uncomfortable. After a moment, she retreated from the firewood stack with what seemed like a highly specific selection of items, and said “Accidentally threw him in the meat-preparation deep end. Should’ve let him get used to what raw prepared meat looks like first, I suppose.”

He managed to pick himself up out of his bizarre blankness at that. “’He’ is right here.”

Ez pursed his lips, and glanced up at him. “…I guess it was worse than cut-up goose?” He ventured, and Callum thought blankly of pulling skin and fur off of flesh like a layer of sticky clothing. The disembowelling had been grisly, but somehow…he’d not been expecting skinning to work like that. It had been kind of shocking.

“Yeah.” He agreed, after a moment, and finally gathered the presence of mind to look at Rayla and ask “what are you doing?”

She looked up from where she was poking the tip of her blade into a disc of tree-trunk, right in the middle. “Trying to improvise a cooking spit.” She answered, and twirled the sword around until it had made a hold in the middle of the thick circle of wood. She repeated this process for the other disc, and then started stripping bark off of the branches she’d taken. Callum watched with quiet fascination as she cut the branches’ ends until she had two sticks of roughly similar size, clean of bark and leaves, with a sort of V-shape in wood at their ends.

It took her a fair bit of looking between her constructions and the campfire, and making faces, and grabbing longer branches, but eventually she seemed satisfied. She stuck two branches in the holes in the discs, V-end up, and put one on either side of the fire. The final, longest branch sat tidily between them.

“Won’t be too strong, so we’ll have to cook one thing at a time.” She said, with plain satisfaction. “But it’ll do. And this will taste better than boiling things, too.”

“Huh.” Ez said, having been watching just as avidly as Callum. “Does that mean we should put the pot over by the ledge now?”

Rayla considered it, and shook her head. “We should melt enough snow to fill our waterskins first.” She decided, and so they did precisely that. Callum attempted to help with the snow-gathering, but both of the others heckled him down again, evidently very determined to keep him resting and recovering by the fireside. He sulked, stayed put beside the brightly-glowing egg, and wondered if this was how Rayla felt when they cossetted her too much.

Filling the waterskins didn’t take too long, since Rayla didn’t seem interested in bringing the water to the boil. The snow melted very fast, and before long they were pausing between each delivery of it to pour water messily into the waterskins. This accomplished, the pot was relegated to the confines of the weighed-down tent-pack at the edge of the campsite, and Rayla began the process of trying to spear a deer leg on the spit. After a great deal of muttering and cursing and trying very hard not to break the spit, she managed it, and set it cautiously over the fire.

“We have to be careful with that.” She said, as she leaned back to inspect the arrangement. “It’s wood, after all, so it could catch fire if we let it too close to the flames. But for now, I’m…cautiously optimistic. In an hour or so, we’ll probably have food.”

“Roasting meat for breakfast.” Callum said, wryly. “That’s a new one.”

Her lips quirked, and she shrugged. “Well, we’re going to be living on a protein-only diet for the next however-long, so we only have so many options.” Before he could ask what protein was, she planted herself beside him and patted him hesitantly on the arm. “Thanks for helping.” She told him, and his mind went blank. He looked down at her hand.

“With what?” he wondered, stupidly.

“The meat.” She elaborated. “Didn’t realise how much of a shock it would be for you. So…thanks.”

He stared at her for a few seconds, then cleared his throat and looked away. “I guess the two of us are pretty sheltered.” He shrugged, uncertain how he felt about being thanked for half-doing a job and then leaving his heavily injured friend to do everything.

“Extremely sheltered.” She corrected dryly, seeming more amused than anything. “But that’s alright. You’re learning.” She patted his arm again, and he found himself weirdly encouraged by that small motion. His chin lifted, cautiously, and he watched her half out of the corners of his eyes as she receded and went to attend to the food.

“We really have learned a lot since we left.” Ezran remarked, observing with interest as Rayla twisted the spit, the meat rotating with it. “It’s kinda cool. I never knew how to make a campfire before. Or put up a tent.”

Or be a field-healer’s assistant, Callum thought to himself, with a touch of gallows humour. “Didn’t know how to talk to dragons with your mind, either.” He said, reaching over to ruffle his brother’s hair. “But look at you now.”

Ez giggled, and spared a glance to the egg. His expression went a little strange, and his eyes rested on the shell for a few heartbeats where he couldn’t seem to look away. “In fairness, it’s kind of harder not to talk to Zym than it is to talk to him.” He said, after a moment, and moved his eyes away with an odd sluggishness. “It’s like my mind is wide-open to him. I don’t think I could block him out if I tried.”

Callum eyed him with interest. Rayla, beside the fire, looked up from her work with an eyebrow raised. “Have you tried?” She asked, and he blinked at her.

“…Well, yeah.” He admitted. “During the night, when I couldn’t sleep, because he was being too awake in my head. Most people and animals I can shut out when I stop touching them, but…”

“But not the extra special baby dragon, huh.” Callum mused, uncertain whether or not to be worried. He should be worried, right? He was definitely worried. His brother rolled his eyes at him, apparently close enough to catch that wisp of concern.

“I’m fine, Callum.” He said, apparently exasperated, and nodded in the direction of their pile of things. “Just sit and draw for a bit or something, and stop worrying.”

“Er.” He said, because he had somehow managed to forget about the existence of his sketchbook. That was not something he had ever realised could happen, and was probably excellent evidence for how muddled all of their various problems had rendered him. His brow furrowed for a second, and then he did shuffle over to retrieve the book. As he leafed through it, even the most recent drawings…it felt weirdly like he’d drawn them months ago, instead of merely days. There was a sense of separation from them that was hard to put into words.

“Something wrong?” Rayla asked idly from over by the fire, and abruptly he realised he’d gone still with a page half-turned, eyes fixed on the drawing of Rayla’s bound hand. He jerked, turning the page away, and breaking from the strange disorientation of looking at objectively recent art.

“…I guess it just feels like I drew all of this a really long time ago.” He admitted, looking down at the sketches of Verdorn. He turned the page onto what he’d been drawing during his watch – the only thing that didn’t feel absurdly distant. The storm. He flipped back again, looking through Verdorn, Rayla’s weapons, Rayla’s hand, the primal stone… “Normally a week doesn’t feel all that long, but…” He shook his head. “Stuff that was just days ago feels like months ago.”

She appeared to consider that for a moment, perusing him from over the fire. “Well, that’s perilous life-changing quests for you.” She said eventually.

“Stress does weird things to people.” Was Ezran’s contribution, which wasn’t exactly wrong.

“Mmhm.” Callum agreed, only half paying attention, as he flipped back further, and further, until all of the drawings were from the time before any of this had started, before he and his brother had fled home with an elf assassin, before he’d ever cast a spell, just – before. He looked over the sketches of Katolis with an extremely strange feeling, half-homesickness and half-regret, twisting around in his belly. He remembered all of these drawings, of course he did, he didn’t put anything in this book that wasn’t carefully thought-out, but…

It felt like they were almost from another world, now. Or another time.

“I remember that cliff.” Rayla said offhandedly, and he blinked to realise that he had the page open at a drawing of the Katolis castle from the forest below, looming far above the treetops upon its rocky perch. He looked between the sketchbook and her, vaguely impressed that she’d managed to both see and identify the drawing from her current viewpoint. Then he processed what she’d actually said.

“What do you mean, ‘I remember that cliff’?” He asked, suspicious, and she shrugged.

“Climbed it.” She claimed, cheerfully nonchalant.

Both he and Ezran turned and stared. “What do you mean, ‘I climbed it’?” Callum demanded, a little strident, looking between her and the drawing which very clearly showed how ridiculously sheer the cliff face was, and how high up the castle was, and-

“I climbed it.” She repeated, with a very small smirk twitching at the edge of her lips. He suspected she was starting to enjoy their reactions to her admitting to particularly impressive deeds. “To break into your castle. Couldn’t exactly go in through the front gate, you know.”

They goggled at her, momentarily flabbergasted. “…Did you stop at the bottom of the castle?” Ezran asked, after a moment, reluctantly fascinated. “I mean, I’m pretty sure they built it so you can’t get around the bottom parts easily?”

“They definitely did.” Callum confirmed, who had been subjected to numerous lessons on the history and facility of Katolis castle over the years.

“Nah, I just climbed the castle, too.” Rayla asserted, and still with that smirk, slunk around the fireside to point her finger to a particular part of the drawing. “All the way up to the battlements.”

Callum stared at her fingertip, hovering over his drawing of the crenelated walls. “….How?” Was all he could ask, stunned yet again by the breadth of her strength and skill.

“With difficulty.” She shrugged again. “And also my hook-blades.”

It took him several moments to speak again. “You mean you chased me through the castle right after you climbed the castle?” A small part of his brain shrieked that’s not even human, and then the rest of him realised, that, well. Yeah, it wasn’t. It very much wasn’t. It was, however, extremely impressive.

His brother blinked. “She chased you through the castle?”

He turned and squinted. “Yeah? Of course – oh, you weren’t there for that part.” He remembered, suddenly. Yeah, that was right – Ezran had been in the secret passages at the time. “Didn’t I say anything about it?”

“Maybe? I’m not sure.”

Rayla rolled her eyes, and leaned back from the sketchbook. “Well, I did take a few minutes to collapse on the battlements breathing heavily first,” She said, dryly. “But yes. Not sure I’d have managed it if it wasn’t so close to Full Moon, honestly.”

“That’s crazy.” Callum said, admiringly. “I’d have fallen off the cliff about ten feet up.”

Her face scrunched up for a second. “Ten feet.” She said, pensive. “That’s not much, right? So I suppose if you fell you probably wouldn’t hurt yourself all that much, at least.” He was blinking at her, contemplating asking about typical elf metric systems, when she tilted her head sideways to peer at his sketchbook and said “Do you have any others of the castle?”

He paused. “Er, yeah, a few.” He said, hesitantly, and…suddenly remembered that he’d offered to show her through the sketchbook, sometime. It was still a little uncomfortably personal, but…maybe not in a bad way? And it seemed as good a time as any…so, after a moment, he cleared his throat and slowly offered “If you want, you could have a look through the whole book?”

She paused, looking momentarily startled, and lifted her eyes to blink at him. “…Well, it’s a good time for it, I suppose.” She said, with a brief glance out at the storm stranding them in place. A small, genuine smile lifted the corners of her lips. “Sounds good.”

He stared at that smile for longer than was strictly necessary, and wasn’t certain why. In the end, a little awkwardly, he cleared his throat, and carefully handed the sketchbook over. “My step-dad gave it to me.” He explained, and her hands faltered for a second as they settled around the thick-bound tome. “When I was pretty small. So the earliest drawings are kind of…not amazing. But…” he shrugged.

“They’re cute.” Ezran claimed, shuffling in closer to Rayla to watch. “I like them. Especially that one of Bait.”

“No, yeah, that one is a masterpiece.” Callum agreed, lips twitching, and watched Rayla stare at the cover of the sketchbook with an odd, pensive expression. He was about to ask her if anything was wrong when she shook her head, a minute motion, and opened the book.

The first pages, predictably, were full of childish scrawl he’d been very proud of at the time. The odd expression on Rayla’s face was almost instantly replaced with a lopsided smile, as if she found the old drawings of Ez and Bait and Mom and Harrow particularly charming. The earliest portrait of Bait was just a grumpy looking circle with eyes, and despite everything, it still perfectly captured the spirit of him. “Looks just like him.” She said, lips twitching, as she inspected it.

“I know, right?” He grinned, and shuffled a little closer so as to see better. Her eyes glanced his way for a quick moment, then returned to the book. She turned the page to an amateurish rendering of Pip.

“I have to say, this is still lots better than anything I can draw.” She commented, and turned the page on again.

Page by page, she flipped through the book, lingering each time to inspect whatever was drawn there. For all that he’d made the offer, it still made him feel somewhat exposed, watching her uncover page after page of his life. It was his personal sketchbook, after all, with years of memories and emotion immortalised within it. He didn’t draw anything in that book that he didn’t put heart and soul into, and that meant it was…well. Important. And personal. Enough so that watching her leaf through it left him feeling strangely timid, as though he were worried she wouldn’t approve.

She commented, here and there, because lots of the pictures were noteworthy and many had an explanation or story behind them that she wasn’t privy to. He quietly identified his mother for her, on the first sketch skilled enough that she was recognisable, and repeated the process for Harrow, and Aunt Amaya, and Gren, and then-

“That’s the girl that attacked us in the castle dungeons.” Rayla said, eyes sharp on a drawing of Claudia. “The dark mage.”

He coughed, abruptly uncomfortable, and as he stared at the face drawn on the page, realised that he hadn’t really thought about Claudia very much recently. “Yeah, that’s Claudia.” He explained, awkwardly, and wondered at the bizarre twist of emotion in his gut. He was guilty for attacking her, and stealing her primal stone, sure…but… “She’s one of the only friends I really had at the castle.”

It was a little strange to think of her. The days since they’d left the castle had been so hectic, and so increasingly stressful, that he’d just…not really had a chance to sit down and wonder how she was doing. Whether she’d got in trouble for losing the egg. Whether she was mad at him or not. He hoped not. He hadn’t really had much of a chance to miss her, maybe, but he did still like her, and it would be a bit of a punch in the gut to have her angry at him. Even if that liking felt vaguer and more distant than he remembered. Like almost everything from before the start of this journey…she felt almost like she belonged to another world, now.

Rayla glanced to the side to inspect his face for a moment, and while her expression didn’t change, her ears twitched down a little. “Hmm.” She offered, noncommittally, and returned to the book.

There was a lot in the book. A lot of stories, and a lot of memories. When she was around half-through, she started to send periodic glances towards the cooking meat, as though to ensure it hadn’t burned while she wasn’t looking. Ezran had helpfully taken it upon himself to twist the spit occasionally while she was looking at the book, but it had to be getting close to done, now. The smell of it was ridiculously appetising, and if it hadn’t been for the distraction of his sketchbook, Callum might have had a hard time focusing on anything else but the hideous hunger twisting in his belly.

Still, it apparently wasn’t done yet, so she returned her attention to the book.

“You’ve got a lot of variety in here.” She commented, after carefully turning the page again, this time onto a lovingly-rendered sketch of Harrow with Pip on his shoulder, offering the bird a treat. It was by far the most detailed and skilled drawing of the man she’d seen yet; one he’d been very proud of. She was far enough into the book now that most of it was at least vaguely approaching his current skill level.

Her expression went strange and a little tight at the sight of it, which…he tried not to dwell on too much. Of course it would be awkward to see a drawing of the King you’d been sent to assassinate, particularly when that King was the father of your newest friends. That was all there was to it.

She swallowed, and turned the page over onto something more innocuous: the capital city of Katolis as seen from atop one of its towers. “…How do you decide what to draw?” She asked, after a moment, eyes lingering on the sprawl of the city. He wondered how much she’d seen of it, before they’d fled the place.

He thought for a second. “I guess I just see stuff and want to draw it, mostly.” He said, honestly. “It can be anything, and I’ll just look at it, and..” He waved to his head, then made a sort of mime of a drawing motion with his hand. “…I start thinking about how I’d draw it. The lines I’d use, the parts I’d shade…that sort of thing.”

“Is that what you’re always spacing out about when you’re walking?” She questioned, dryly, giving the city-drawing one last look before turning the page. This featured a drawing of Fort Viatori, which she must surely recognise from experience. “How you want to draw random rocks and trees you see?”

Callum laughed, a little abashed. “Well. Not only.”

“Sometimes if you look at his hands when he’s daydreaming, you can see his fingers twitching.” Ezran said, helpfully, and they both glanced at him. “Like he’s imagining drawing something. It’s funny.” He put his first two fingers and thumb together as if holding a stick of charcoal, then made a deliberate twitching motion of said fingers. “Like this.”

Rayla snorted, a smile slipping onto her lips, and she glanced at him side-long as if to slot that new detail in with the rest of what she knew about him. He felt his cheeks heat, just a little, and he ducked his head. “Do I really do that?” He asked, nonplussed, and received a very matter-of-fact nod from his brother.

“All the time.” He claimed.

“I’ll keep an eye out, then.” Rayla said, lips twitching, and inspected the drawing of the Fort for a moment of consideration, before she pointed out one section of the far end. “This is where my team climbed up the walls.” Her finger shifted along a path. “We sort of…snuck along the battlements here, and in the shadow of this tower here…and then dropped down along this wall here until we got to the bridge. And then we waited for the guards to challenge someone and slipped across.”

To Callum’s memory, Viatori had been positively bristling with soldiers, easily the most well-guarded and well-defended checkpoint in the kingdom. They checked every trader, every caravan, every traveller…and given their fort occupied the only easy way through the mountains, not to mention a junction with the great Rhodane river, well. That was a lot of people. “That’s…impressive.” He said, at last, because it was. “And no one saw you?”

“Nope. Full Moon’s good for that.” She answered, with a trace of a smile, and turned the page again. She blinked at the drawing on this one; a hand holding a knife, but neither of them typical. The knife was ornamented, and oddly curved, almost a crescent-shape. The hand was elaborately tattooed, with dark intricate designs rendered in careful lines on the charcoal of the dark skin. “…Who’s this?”

He peered closer, although he remembered perfectly well. “Evenerian Priestess of Mercy.” He said, recalling the strange woman, and the fierceness of that knife held beneath the outward calm and solemnity. “I met her at Greatport, coming off the ships. I’d never seen someone with tattoos like that before, so I kind of accidentally stared a bit.”

“I remember that.” Ezran reminisced, smiling. “She asked you what you were staring at.” He paused, and added “I asked to see her knife.”

“Priests of Mercy in Katolis don’t really have the knives so much these days, so I’d never seen one outside of old paintings or history books.” Callum elaborated, looking down at the sharp curve of the blade and the marks on the hand that wielded it. That had been an interesting, and memorable, meeting. “It was interesting.”

“…You have priestesses that carry knives?” Rayla asked, a little dubiously, and in a rush of disorientation that felt oddly like vertigo, Callum realised that…that, well, Rayla probably didn’t know anything about Mercy. Or…or Justice, or Valor, or Fortitude, or any of the Paragons. That was…so weird. “What for? Fighting?” She squinted at the shape of the knife and suggested, cautiously, “Ritual bloodletting?”

He mulled over the revelation for a few seconds, nonplussed, before he answered. A little haltingly, perhaps, freshly aware that he was speaking to someone who didn’t know anything about Mercy. It was weirdly daunting, to be the voice representing the faith of most of an entire race. “Er, I mean, no? Not that I know of, unless there’s some weird Evenerian thing I’ve not heard about, but…no.” He cleared his throat, and considered how to answer. “Well…Mercy is about…uh, mercy, right? The stories say that she carried a knife like that, because…” He hesitated. “Because sometimes there’s only one mercy left to give people.”

He saw the moment she understood, her brow furrowing. “That’s kind of dark.” She said, eventually. “And, what, the priestesses carry them for the same reason?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s just ceremonial at this point. No one uses knives for Mercy-killing anymore.” He explained, awkwardly, feeling keenly that he was not representing one of the great Paragons very well.

“It’s some sort of flower now, right?” Ezran mused, a little pensively, as he stared at the page. “I mean, I never paid that much attention to the religion classes, but that’s what Mercy’s always holding in the pictures, isn’t it?”

“The lotus of Evenere?” Callum ventured, thinking. A white lotus held in Mercy’s hands, the clusters of pollen at its centre a deep, bloody red…and there was something familiar about that… “I know the symbolism is all about…peace, and falling asleep, and…” he frowned. “…painlessness.” He groaned, as finally his thoughts clicked into place. “I can’t believe I never realised that.”

“What?” Ezran asked, interested.

Rayla seemed curious too, although a little nonplussed by the topic. “Figure something out?”

“The lotus of Mercy.” He explained, a little distractedly, pulling his bag over to go rummaging through it… “The lotus of Evenere, the marsh kingdom.” He found what he was looking for, and pulled it out: a little bottle full of sanguine fluid: lilium, a drug made from the pollen of a potent and dangerous flower.... “It’s the marsh-lotus. I can’t believe I never made that connection before!”

Rayla stared. “So…what you’re saying…is that I’ve been taking a pain drug that humans use for mercy-killing.” She said, flatly, the fingers of her good hand settling over her opposite wrist.  “That’s…disturbing.”

“…Well, the Healer did say that overdose is dangerous.” Ez pointed out, and despite how lightly he said it, he looked a little disturbed too.

“Mercy from pain.” Callum said, trying not to think about it too hard, and shrugged. “That’s part of her thing. It’s not just for death. But I guess the people in Evenere remember that more than most of us.” He saw Rayla’s eyes glancing curiously at him, and he added “I’ve always heard they lead pretty hard lives there.”

“…Mm.” She said, noncommittally, looking down at the page again. “Well, I guess it was nice of her to show you the knife.” She sounded dubious, even as she tilted her head. “…I didn’t know humans put markings on their skin like that. ‘Tattoos’, you said?”

Callum looked up at her, curious at the implications. “Yeah.” He confirmed, eyes settling with interest on the markings beneath her eyes, which…he’d sort of unthinkingly assumed to be much the same thing. “So…um…” He fidgeted until she looked over at him, expectant, and finally said “Those marks on your face. They’re not tattoos? What are they?”

Rayla blinked, startled, and her fingers rose to one of them out of reflex. “They’re…pigment?” She offered, evidently confused by the question, and side-eyed him strangely.

“Like ink?” He pressed, and saw Ezran was looking interested too.

“Pretty much.” She agreed, looking down at the drawing. “So, what, these…’tattoos’…what are those supposed to be if they’re not pigment?”

“Er. Well. They’re ink too, but…” He hesitated, uncertain on how to proceed. Ezran, evidently, had no such difficulty.

“People put the ink under their skin with needles.” He said, cheerfully, and Rayla recoiled. “The priestess lady said it takes a long time and hurts a lot.”

“That was the day I learned about tattoos, and also the day I decided I didn’t want one.” Callum reflected, and looked at the obvious astonishment on Rayla’s face. “…I’m guessing that’s not how elves do it?”

“No.” She said, stridently, then paused. “Well, I don’t know about all elves. Maybe some of them do it like that. But…” She shook her head, stroking a finger down under her eye. “I got mine painted on with a brush, like a sane person.”

Callum perked up with interest. “And, what, it stays on?” He inspected her markings with a little more scrutiny than he’d dared before. They’d been travelling together for over a week now, and he didn’t think the colour had faded at all… “It doesn’t wash out, or wear off?”

Rayla eyed him, as if uncertain whether he was serious. “…They wear off eventually, but it takes a long time.” She said, finally. “A few months for the lighter colours, but you can get a good six to eight months out of dark pigments like mine. You just touch them up when you need to.”

“Huh.” Callum expressed, fascinated, and stared at her pigment until she started shifting uncomfortably and he realised he should probably maybe avert his eyes now.

“What happens if you mess up when you’re painting it on?” Ezran asked, just as interested. “Do you have to go around for months with like, a squiggle on your face where your hand slipped?”

Rayla snorted, surprised, then snickered. “No, there’s this pigment remover stuff you can use.” She said, lips twitching. “It stinks, though, so no one likes to use it.” She smiled for a few moments, quiet, with a sort of reminiscent cast to her eyes that made Callum think she was recalling something both pleasant and relevant. After a few seconds, a little haltingly, she said “One time when I was little, I snuck a bottle of pigment and a brush and snuck up on…“ She hesitated, then went on. “…on Runaan and Ethari, while they were sleeping, and painted over their faces.” Her smile went a little wider, but…sadder, too. “Ethari sleeps pretty heavily, so he was fine. Runaan, though…” She shook her head. “Woke up right away. I got caught and didn’t even care, I thought it was so funny.”

Runaan…hadn’t that been the assassin on the castle roof? The one who’d pointed the bow at them? The one who Rayla had stayed behind to fight? Callum looked at her, torn between amusement at the story and concern for the almost bittersweet cast to her lips, and wasn’t sure what to say.

Ezran looked at her a little too-thoughtfully as well, and Callum wondered what he was picking up on. In the end though, what he asked was “Did you get in trouble?”

She smiled. “Not much, actually. Runaan thought it was a good enough show of stealth to let me off most of the punishment. Not all of it, though. I was doing extra chores for a week.” Her eyes went distant and wistful, and Callum wondered if, maybe, it would be okay to ask…

In the end, he didn’t have to. She looked back at him, and a flicker of understanding passed across her face as she saw him. She exhaled, very slightly.

“…Runaan and Ethari took me in after my parents left for the Dragonguard.” She explained, after a moment, not looking at them. “They’re…sort of my second set of parents, pretty much.”

Callum shifted, cautious, aware that this was a difficult subject. “…Runaan was that elf back at the castle, wasn’t he?” He guessed, and Rayla’s expression twisted into a light grimace.

“Leader of the mission. Yeah.” She said, quietly. She hesitated, then closed the sketchbook, and held it out to him. “I’ll finish looking through it later.” Her voice was…very normal, but in a somewhat forced way. Like she was having to work at it. “For now, I think our weird breakfast is about done.”

“Oh, um.” His hands closed automatically around the edges of the book as she proffered it. “Yeah, sure. Good?” He tried to inspect her face for any signs of that quiet, sad wistfulness…but she’d replaced it with a carefully neutral expression instead.

Her fingers brushed his as they receded from the book. “Thanks for showing me.” She said, and his eyes flicked up automatically from her hands to her eyes. They were really very purple. He felt a little flustered, and didn’t know why.

“No problem?” He squeaked, and watched her as she flashed him a smile and retreated around the campfire. Ezran looked sideways at him and sighed, but Callum was still somewhat too distracted to ask him about it.

Rayla inspected the meat for a few seconds before, carefully, removing the spit from over the fire. “Might still be kind of bloody in the middle, but it’ll probably taste better that way anyway.” She commented, and for a second, Callum remembered his erroneous impressions of elves as blood-drinkers and giggled to himself. She raised an eyebrow at him, but continued with her business of un-spearing the deer leg from the spit and bracing the end of it atop one of their rags to cut. She sheared off several large chunks of meat with effortless motions of her blade, proving that it was indeed still pretty bloody inside.

Callum might have assumed that being exposed to the animal in its extremely bloody skinned-and-gutted state would have made the sight of it less appealing. It didn’t. He was so overwhelmingly hungry that in that moment it became nigh unbearable, and his eyes seemed fixed on the pile of food in a way that wouldn’t be moved. He could feel the near-instant salivation in his mouth, hear the abrupt and beseeching rumble of his stomach…

Rayla sat down beside him, moving the food over by dragging the edges of the rag, until it was sat on the ground in front of them. She was still holding the leg bone, which retained a fair amount of meat. “Will Bait be able to eat from the bone?” She asked Ezran, with a glance at it. “It’s good eating for any of us, if he can’t.”

Ezran blinked, and turned to the side, where Bait had emerged from the tent-layers at once at the sound of his name. The glow-toad had started glowing very brightly indeed, apparently fully aware that food was imminent. “Well, he’ll give it his best try.” He said, lips twitching, and Rayla obligingly laid the bone out. This, incidentally, was how Callum came by the somewhat disturbing knowledge that glow-toad tongues were a little bit barbed, and entirely capable of stripping meat from bones when applied to the task properly.

Fortunately, there was an extremely absorbing distraction at hand. He stared at the food, not wanting to fling himself at it like some sort of savage, but also entirely aware that this was probably the hungriest he’d ever been in his life.

Apparently entirely aware of his conundrum, Rayla rolled her eyes at him, grabbed a chunk of meat, and leaned back. She gestured expansively at the pile. “Dig in.” She said, and neither of them needed any more prompting whatsoever.

The next ten or so minutes disappeared in a blissful haze of more-than-slightly frenzied eating, which of course they did with their hands, for lack of any actual cutlery or plates or bowls of any kind. Callum was aware of little more than the urgency of eating, of allaying that awful hunger, of the delicious taste of roasted meat still hot enough to sizzle and spit when he bit into it – he ate, and ate, and when he was done he stared at the empty rag with a strange sense of betrayal.

It was, he reflected, probably a good thing they still had so much meat left to cook. And plenty of time to cook it in. Because he was still hungry, somehow, even after gorging himself like a ravenous beast. A little self-consciously, he leaned back and reached for a separate rag to wipe his face and hands with, because the whole affair had been distinctly messy. He eyed it after he was done, wondering if they’d have to try to do more laundry soon. If nothing else, they had a steady supply of bandages getting dirty, and probably a lot of the various rags and socks were getting pretty nasty.

His stomach rumbled, a little plaintively, as if disappointed he’d stopped eating. He made a face, caught between the conflicting sensations of satiation and hunger, feeling paradoxically as if he’d eaten too much and not nearly enough at the same time. He’d eaten too quickly, maybe? But he was definitely still hungry. “I think that was the most satisfying thing I ever ate.” He concluded, after a moment, and Ezran made fervent sounds of agreement over his last remaining mouthful.

Rayla solicited the rag from him with a wordless gesture, and wiped her own face before she spoke. “It gets like that when you’ve not found good food for a while.” She agreed, letting out a small and satisfied sigh. “We’ll want to cook some more soon, though. We should honestly be stuffing ourselves with as much food as we can manage while we’re here.”

Ez swallowed his last bit of food, and thoughtfully, asked “Why?”

She shrugged. “Got to fatten ourselves up.” She claimed, passing over the rag when Ez reached for it. We’ve been on short rations for a while, will probably be on short rations at some other point on this journey, and to top it off…being cold makes you hungrier. So.”

Callum blinked. He hadn’t known that last part, but… “Also, red meat’s supposed to be good when you’ve been injured and bleeding a lot recently.” He added, and her lips twitched.

“That, too.” She agreed, her hand moving momentarily in the direction of her mangled arm. He recalled he hadn’t had a chance to check it yet today, and twitched all-over in discomfort, suppressing the urge to immediately demand a check-up. She inspected the fire and the spit pensively for a few moments, then said “I think I’ll put another leg on. Then I should probably go on another firewood run before the storm gets too close.” Her eyes moved to the side, focused on him. “Think you can handle the cooking while I’m gone?”

“Sure.” He said, automatically, before he’d really thought about it. Fortunately, when he’d actually thought about it, his conclusions weren’t any different. Turning the spit didn’t seem like a particularly intensive task. But… “Er. If the storm’s that close, is it safe to go out?”

“For now, probably. But if I wait, no.” Rayla said succinctly, and stood. “Which is why I should go soon.”

He turned to watch her, which also gave him the right angle to see that Bait was still thoroughly assailing his breakfast. He watched for a few seconds in somewhat horrified fascination, remembering the many, many times he’d let Bait tongue-tether some treat or other from his hand, when it could apparently strip flesh from bone just like that. It was…imposing. “Did you know he could do that?” he asked Ezran, in an undertone, and received a sunny smile in return.

“’Course.” He answered, shrugging. “He prefers it when he can eat stuff that’s small enough to just swallow, since he can’t chew anything, but…” ‘But’, evidently, it was far from a necessity.

There was a sudden brightening of the storm out side the cave, all at once, in a very evident lightning-flash. What felt like barely a second or two later, the thunder rumbled its softened edges across the sky. Rayla looked at it and grimaced, then hurried for their food pile. She piked the second venison leg without ceremony, handing it to Callum to deal with, and set about pulling up her scarf and pulling down her hat with an impatience that heralded her swift departure.

“I’d best be going soon.” She said to them, picking up her rope harness and one blade. “That lightning was too close.”

Ezran made a sound of glum agreement, and glanced back at the egg still sat beside the fire. “I can almost actually tell when there’s about to be lightning, now.” He said, eyes still fixed on the glowing eggshell. “Zym gets this…anticipation, right before?”

Rayla visibly considered that for a second, while Callum tried to come to terms with yet another facet of the growing trend of his brother’s dragon-connected empathy deal. “…Well, that would probably be super handy if we were travelling through the storm.” She said, dryly. “As it is…not so much.”

“…Well, we’ve probably got plenty of weeks ahead of us to get caught in another storm.” Callum commented, sounding a fair bit more fatalistic to his own ears than he was used to. “So.”

She sighed, a light grimace passing around what little remained visible of her face. “You’re not wrong.” She admitted, hefting the rope harness into place. She glanced towards the ledge, and squared her shoulders. “Well, that’s enough lollygagging. I don’t want to spend any more time out there than I have to. I’m off.”

Callum’s gut clenched. She might have already been out several times this morning, but… “Come back soon” was all he said in the end, with an anxious glance out into the storm. The winds were awfully, viciously strong now, and the snow…

She glanced his way, and if there was anything to be read from her expression, the scarf had covered it. “That is the objective.” She said, dryly, and waved in brief farewell as she departed along the ledge again.

Ezran patted him on the arm. “Don’t worry. She’s just gonna hack up a tree and then come back. She won’t be long.”

He made a vague hum of agreement, and when he finally managed to tear his eyes from the ledge, shuffled over to the cooking spit to supervise it with single-minded intensity. Maybe, if he focused enough on that, he could avoid worrying so much.

It didn’t quite work. But it worked enough that it took him a good ten minutes to notice that Ezran had picked up Zym’s egg, only turning to see when he noticed the rhythmic ebb and flow of the blue light over the stone floor. He found his brother sat quietly with the dragon egg in his lap, eyes closed, fingers splayed over the shell. He was entirely still and silent but for the steady rise and fall of his shoulders, in time with the cyclical shine of the egg. A shiver of unease prickled at Callum’s skin at the sight of that stillness.

“You okay there, Ez?” He prompted, after a moment, and suppressed another curl of anxiety at the strangely sluggish way his brother opened his eyes.

“…Fine.” He said, after a moment, but his voice was strange. Callum sat up straighter, and looked at his brother more sharply.

He’d been fine ten minutes ago, talking with Callum and Rayla. He’d been fine for a while before that, too. But this? Did not seem ‘fine’. “Are you sure it’s a good idea to be holding the egg like that right now?” He asked, and watched Ezran’s brow furrow uncomprehendingly. “With the storm….maybe it’s a little too much dragon-empathy-magic.”

Ezran blinked, very slowly, and looked down at the egg with a strangely sluggish motion. He looked almost as if he were moving through water instead of air. “…What, you’re worried I’m gonna overdo it on my weird empathy powers?” He asked, and…while it should have sounded joking, it didn’t. There was a distance to his tone and expression that was profoundly unsettling.

“Honestly? Yeah, kinda.” Callum admitted, and abandoned the spit to shuffle closer, reaching out to turn his brother’s chin up. He inspected his face. Was it just his imagination, or did the colour of his eyes seem brighter somehow? “It’s not like you’ve been empathy-connected to a baby storm dragon in the middle of a storm before, you know. And you weren’t acting like this before you picked the egg up.”

“Acting like what?” Ezran wondered, voice still far-away and distant, his eyes staring in the direction of Callum without quite focusing on him.

He suppressed the urge to snatch the egg away. “Like you’re sleepwalking.” He said, tightly, more and more concerned by the second. Mercy, but he’d been talking and reacting completely normally just ten minutes ago, and now… “Like you’re not even really here. Ez, please – give me the egg, or put it down, or something. I don’t think you should be touching it right now.”

His brother looked slowly down at the gleaming eggshell again. “I can still feel him when I’m not touching him.” He pointed out, vaguely.

“Maybe. But you keep saying how your empathy deal always works better when you’re touching things.” He held out his hands. “Please, Ezran.”

His brother watched the egg, brow furrowed, as if he were having trouble thinking his way through what Callum had said. Then, eventually, in a hesitant and halting motion, he drew his hands back from the shell. It seemed to be an effort. “…Take it, if you like.” He said, still distant, and Callum only hesitated a second.

He’d not exactly had much contact with the egg. But his sudden urgent desire to get the thing away from his brother easily superseded any hesitance he’d have had on the matter. He closed his hands around the sides of the eggshell, skin tingling with static as he took it. He hefted it up and carefully away, watching his brother all the while.

It wasn’t a pronounced shift. But it was noticeable, even so, how a touch of lucidity returned to Ezran’s eyes. “Oh.” He said, softly, blinking a few times in a bleary sort of way, as if he were waking up. “That…does feel different. I…didn’t realise.”

Callum held the egg carefully close, tense with anxiety. “I think,” He said, slowly, “you shouldn’t hold him unless you have to, until the storm’s gone.”

Ez opened his mouth as if to object, then hesitated. He looked at the egg, brow furrowed, and his shoulders slumped. “…Yeah, maybe.” He admitted, and Callum thought it was starting to dawn on him, how unsettling it was for him to have…gone blank, like that. “I…maybe that’s why I had so much trouble sleeping. Because I was holding him? So it made the connection so strong…” He raised his hands and rubbed them slowly over his face. “I feel so weird. Like my head is full of wool.”

“Someone else can hold him tonight.” Callum said firmly, fingers feeling a little jittery on the eggshell. “And for now we can put him next to the fire, or something, so he’s still warm. And you can just…absolutely not touch him until the weird storm-magic-overflow thing isn’t a problem anymore.” He forced his breath to stay even, and closed his eyes for a second, just a second, to try to grasp at calm. This was far too much anxiety for a single morning.

Ezran hesitated for a long moment, looking at the egg. His fingers twitched towards it, and then he pulled his hands forcefully down to his sides. “…Yeah. Okay.” He said, and his voice was very quiet.

So Callum made a little nest out of rumpled clothing a short distance from the fire, and carefully set the egg there. All the while Ezran watched and shuffled and became a little more fidgety with every minute of lucidity. When they returned cautiously to just watching the cooking meat, and twisting the spit occasionally, Callum couldn’t help but notice how often Ezran’s eyes returned to the egg. It was like he couldn’t look away. Like he was drawn to it, again and again and again, even with that distance imposed between them.

He didn’t need to point it out to him. Ezran seemed perfectly aware of it, forcing his eyes away every time as though it were a physical effort. His shoulders hunched with discomfort, and he huddled beside Callum with Bait held tightly in his arms. By the time Rayla returned, it was to a spectacle of uneasy silence, with the egg exiled to the other side of the fire and both Callum and Ezran so obviously tense that she stopped short to stare at them when she stepped past the ledge.

“Okay, what’s happened now?” She demanded, with some asperity, stalking forwards and shrugging off her latest haul of wood. It made a noisome clatter on the stone floor, and both of them flinched. “I was only gone for twenty minutes.”

Callum exchanged an unhappy glance with his brother. Eventually, Ez spoke. “…Turns out Zym is kind of messing with my head more than I thought.” He admitted, unhappily. “I just…picked him up, and then Callum noticed I’d gone all weird, and I didn’t even notice how much I couldn’t think until I put him down again, and-“ He shook his head, frustrated and anxious at once. “-and it’s. I don’t know. Weird.”

Rayla looked between them, brow furrowing, and crept over to kneel beside them. “You alright, Ez?” She asked, inspecting him seriously. She reached out and lifted his chin to look at him, just like Callum had earlier, and there was something almost comical about that. In a sort of horrible way.

Ez hesitated, looking up at her with such an expression of open vulnerability that Callum instantly wanted to pull him close and smother him in hugs until he felt better. He couldn’t stand it. “Mostly.” He said, in a small voice. “But – we’re still connected, even if we’re not touching, and I just – it’s really – I don’t know.” He sounded miserable. “I keep thinking that I want to pick him up, or go over to him, and he’s still in my head, and I dunno what to think…”

She watched him, quiet, then said “It’s the storm, right? Making it like this. This wasn’t happening before.”

“I – yeah. I guess.” Ezran looked over at the shining dragon egg again and flinched. “He’s just – it – it feels like he’s absorbing it? The storm-magic. It’s all around us and he’s…taking it in, but I’m connected to him so…”

“…It’s spilling over, maybe?” Callum ventured, setting a steadying arm around his brother’s middle. Ez shivered, and then pressed closer into his side.

“Kinda.” He agreed. “And then I guess…I don’t know. I think it’s the magic that’s letting me feel so far out like this. I could never feel anything I wasn’t touching, before, but now…” he shook his head. “It’s so much. And Zym – he’s feeling the magic and the storm so much and I can’t-“ he broke off, frustrated, and fell silent.

Rayla’s hand receded, and she stared at him quietly for a few short moments. “I didn’t know if I was imagining it, before.” She said, after a pause. “But I’m pretty sure now. Your eyes are too bright, Ez. More than human-normal.”

Ez blinked, startled out of his anxiety, and his brow furrowed. “They are?” He questioned, baffled.

Callum shifted uneasily. “I noticed that too.” He said, turning to Rayla. “What does that even mean?”

She shrugged minutely, and leaned back. “No idea.” She admitted. “My eyes glow when it’s dark, but that’s just a Moonshadow elf thing. I think – I’ve heard other elves’ eyes glow when they’re in their primal magic states, or when there’s a lot of magic around, but…”

Ezran stilled, shoulders hunching inwards. “This is weird.” He said, in a very small voice. “And kind of scary.”

Callum’s arm tightened around him. He’d try to appear less worried, but considering he was currently in close contact with his empath brother, that was probably a lost cause.

Rayla reached out and laid a hand on Ezran’s shoulder, trying for a reassuring smile. “If it’s the storm making it like this, it should get better soon.” She said, voice gentle. “The storm’s almost as close as it’s going to get. In an hour or so, it’ll start heading past us.”

He shivered. “Yeah.” His voice was quiet. “I know. The middle of it is sort of…” He nodded in a specific direction. “That way. And moving that way.” He jerked his chin to the side, as if to indicate the travel path of the storm.

“We’re not going to be quite in the middle of it.” She agreed. “Probably a good thing, considering.”

“Yeah.” Ezran turned and pressed his face into Callum’s shoulder, and said nothing more.

Callum pulled him close and sat there quietly, heart aching with worry, and hurting from the force of the protectiveness he had no way to act on. He wanted to do something – to protect Ezran from this, somehow. But what was there to be done, except wait?

Ezran stayed curled into his side, Bait half-squashed in his lap, as Rayla quietly went about stacking the wood and turning the spit. Callum felt it when Ez flinched, at nothing he could identify – and then, the very next second, lightning burned the sky white. The thunder followed, accompanied by searing blue light quivering over the camp from the intensity of the egg’s glow.

“Close,” Rayla noted, looking at the sky. Her brows were furrowed. “I got back just in time, I think. That was less than a kilometre away.”

“I can tell.” Ezran muttered, the words muffled by the fur of Callum’s cloak. Rayla still seemed to hear it well enough, though, and glanced his way with a light frown.

After a moment of hesitation, she came over and knelt beside them, resting a careful hand on Ezran’s shoulder. When he lifted his face up to peer out at her, her face was…gentle. Warm, and plainly caring, and Callum throat went half-choked with gratitude and gladness to see it. He was just so thankful that she was here, that she cared about Ezran too, that she was helping… “The next batch of food’s about ready,” She told his brother, offering him a small smile. “Might do you some good, to eat a little more.”

Ezran exhaled, the slow sound of it more than close enough for Callum to hear, even despite the whistle and shriek of the winds at such close remove. “…I guess I am still pretty hungry.” He admitted, and slowly peeled himself from Callum’s side, sitting up and unfurling from the tight ball-shape he’d squashed himself into.

Their second meal of the day was a good sight less enthusiastic than the first. Rayla sliced the meat off the bone and passed it around, and they ate, but it was in a subdued silence. Even Bait wasn’t as enthusiastic as usual, sticking close by Ezran’s feet and picking half-heartedly at his portion. Callum found himself shooting worried looks at his brother what felt like every minute, and all the more once the storm and its lightning drew perilously near.

The first time lightning flashed, perfectly in time with the thunder, Ezran paled and dropped his food, eyes moving unwillingly to the near-blinding light of the egg. The second time, he started trembling, and couldn’t seem to stop, his arm shaking as he lifted his meal piece-by-piece to his mouth. The third time, he seemed to give up on the meal entirely, pushing it away and shuffling back to curl into Callum’s side. “Sorry.” He whispered, huddling into a tiny and miserable-looking shape beside him. “I don’t think I can eat any more, right now.” Bait, beside him, looked up and croaked worriedly.

Callum swallowed, then set his own food aside to turn and pull him into his chest. “That’s okay, Ez.” He murmured, arms tightening around his brother’s back. “You just…rest. Until the storm passes a little.” His heart thudded heavy and sick with worry, and he shared a helpless look with Rayla over Ezran’s head.

After a moment, Rayla abandoned her meal as well, shifting around the campfire until she was beside them. “Anything we can do to help?” She asked, quietly.

Ez shifted in Callum’s arms. “’ready doing it.” He mumbled, indistinct, but lifted his head just enough to peer out at her with half an eye. “…I can’t block him out.” He explained, haltingly, and the half-visible shine of his pale blue eye blinked. “But – it kind of helps. To have you guys in my head, too. I’m trying to…” He struggled for the right words. “…distract myself? I guess.”

Callum considered it, fingers tightening at his brother’s back. So…if he couldn’t shut off the too-intense draconian input, he could at least try to focus on whatever he got from them, instead? “…Rayla?” He asked, a moment later, looking at her with open entreaty. Thankfully, she didn’t hesitate, and moved over at once to settle herself at Ezran’s side.

She extended a hand, and slowly, Ez reached out to take it. He shivered, and his visible eye slipped closed. “…Thanks.” He mumbled, still muffled in Callum’s clothing, and tugged her by the fingers until she was flush by their sides, all of them braced together in the middle of the storm. The wind howled outside their meagre shelter, eddies of it pulling at their hair, and the only thing louder was the thunder.

It wasn’t the most intense thunderstorm Callum had ever seen, maybe. That honour went to a storm that had woken him up in the night a couple of years back, lightning shrieking through the sky almost every other second for what had seemed like an hour straight. Here, the lightning only seemed to flash once every minute or so…but it was more than bad enough, what with how Ezran shuddered in his arms each and every time it happened, and the light of the Dragon Prince flared blue enough to colour the entire cave. He didn’t know how long they sat there, how long Ezran trembled, before-

Light flared – and, even muffled by the snow-clouds, the crash of the thunder was so loud it hurt, a sound almost as potent as an explosion, right above them-

“That was close,” Rayla uttered, in the ringing, howling strangeness of the moment after the thunderclap, where nothing sounded quite right- “That was too close, I think that was-“

Ezran stiffened, abruptly, and cast a wild-eyed stare over to the egg, face pale and washed-out in the blue, and- “Guys,” he said, with a note of rising panic in his voice, “It’s gonna – I think – get back!”

There was a second of frantic scrambling, a second of confusion, a second of following the frantic movements of his brother-

Then the world went white with light and noise.

Callum didn’t quite see it directly. But the searing white of the lightning, the detonation of sound – there could be no missing it. The smell of ozone was thick and stinking in the air, his ears were ringing and hurting, and he fell over into a tangle of limbs and scrambling bodies, half-insensate with shock-

When the world finally resolved enough for him to find sense in it again, it was too bright. Lightning had speared through the mountain, through their shelter of earth and stone, and hit the egg straight-on, and the shine of it-

In the seconds following that great shock of light and noise, the silence rang with a strange droning, like all the winds of the storm had collapsed their voices into a single awful note. Callum stared ahead, stunned wordless, at the incandescent spectacle of the dragon egg, shining in a thousand blinding blues, so bright that it hurt to look at it. He couldn’t think what to say. He could barely do anything more than scramble up onto his hands from where he’d fallen, and stare.

“He’s a lightning-rod.” Rayla said, shocked, into that painful silence. “A lightning-rod. We’re in the middle of a storm and he’s a lightning-rod-“

It was then, slowly, that Callum noticed Ezran. He’d fallen back too, was pushing himself up just the same, but…

Something was wrong. Something was worse, worse than before, worse than the quiet and trembling, worse than the fear-

“Ez?” He asked, tentative, and Rayla’s words cut off. She whirled around to follow his gaze, following it to Ezran, who was staring at the egg, whose distress was alive on his too-pale face. He was shaking terribly, skin pasty and washed queerly blue in the shining light, and his breath was coming in short, awful gasps.

He didn’t answer. Instead, slowly, he curled up, knees to his chest, hands clamping up over his ears as though they could block out whatever he was feeling. His gaze ebbed into something distant and senseless, as though all the thoughts were going blank behind his eyes.

“Ezran.” he said again, more sharply, throat going tight with anxiety as he scrambled over to his brother, fixing a hand on his shoulder. He shook him, but Ez just…moved with the motion, limp, like a ragdoll. He didn’t even look at him. “Ez, what’s wrong?”

Slowly, slowly, as if he had to force it, Ezran looked away from the egg. He looked away from the egg, and towards Callum, and – Callum flinched, because- “He wants to hatch,” Ezran whispered, face too pale, eyes too bright-

It was on some strange reflex, but he instantly moved, situating himself between the egg and his brother, taking him by both shoulders this time. Bizarrely, it seemed to help, and a little coherence returned to his brother’s too-bright eyes.

“He wants to hatch,” Ezran repeated, face crumpling, half-way between pain and desperation-

He started crying before the next words even passed his lips-

“But he can’t.”

 ---

End chapter.

  Notes:

So actually I wrote the vast majority of this in the two weeks after posting ch17, after which my spoons vacated my body with a vengeance and didn’t start to return until late last week. I’ve been making quota with like, editing, and worldbuilding, for half the month. Low inspiration is so much easier to work through than low spoons, my god.

Also I made a last minute decision to move a second Cairon and Sarli scene from the end of this chapter to next chapter, for pacing and tension build reasons. It made the chapter 2k shorter, which I’m pleased about.

 Worldbuilding:

 Ictusian code

Rayla makes mention of something called ‘ictus’ this chapter. This is to be elaborated on in the next chapter or two. I wonder if any of you can guess what it is.

 Skinning animals

It is indeed possible to skin animals by basically making a few cuts and pulling the skin off. It can be done before the animal is gutted, and is often preferred when you want an intact pelt out of the animal. In the absence of proper skinning knives and tools, it’s also probably the easiest method open to the kids. The rabbit skins could have been used later – but fleshing and tanning the skin on the pelts is decidedly beyond what the kids could manage on the move. The best they could do is to make sure the pelts stayed frozen solid until they had a chance to process them, which none of them reasonably expects would happen any time soon, so alas. Wasted fur.

 Callum’s sketchbook

If future canon shows us any significant old sketches in the book that I feel warrant mention, I might edit the relevant part of this chapter to include them. Examples from the actual book ‘Callum’s Sketchbook’ not included, because while that thing is full of cute character fluff and some fun context, I can in no way imagine it being a genuine in-universe thing.

On that note: I still don’t have access to a copy of the s1 novelisation, but you can guarantee that I’ll include some new canon details and dismiss others. For instance, I’m absolutely going to rename the Great Bay the Weeping Bay at some point, but I have no intention of making my elves vegetarian.

 Glow toads

I didn’t plan the whole barbed-tongue thing, it just sort of happened, so I figure I’m just gonna roll with it. Honestly making Bait’s biology a bit weirder is probably the only way I could actually develop interest in him, so why not.

 Some notes on strength

Callum thinks of Rayla’s past demonstrations of strength as ‘inhuman’ in this chapter. I’d like to note that well-trained and well-prepared humans are fully capable of climbing a sheer cliff and sheer walls, but like. Without the right equipment, that shit is downright exceptional, and far from human norms. It’s not something Callum expects from members of his species.

 Zym as a lightningrod

Azymondias is canonically a more potent lightningrod than an actual lightningrod, and I’ve applied that property to his egg too. This was foreshadowed earlier in the story when Callum casts lightning-magic and the egg seems to attract it. Chapter 5, maybe? Something like that.

 Dragon hatching conditions

Dragons as I’ve worldbuilt them have somewhat differing hatching requirements depending on whether they’re a lesser dragon (aka wyvern) or an archdragon. Lesser dragons have a hatching condition, such as Sky dragons needing the eye of a storm to hatch. Archdragons have this hatching condition, but also a magical activation threshold that they need to reach before they can be born; basically, they need to absorb a lot of magic before they’re ready to hatch. They’re born already obscenely magically powerful, whereas their lesser relatives are born quite weak, and only become terrifying forces of primal might as they mature.

Azymondias has been exposed to a great deal of Sky magic already from his years in his parents’ care, and wasn’t all that far from his activation threshold. Being in the middle of this storm, and then getting hit by lightning a couple of times, was plenty enough to bring him to that edge. He is now technically ready to hatch…but he still needs his specific hatching condition met, i.e. a storm’s eye-structure. If he doesn’t have that, he’s shit out of luck.

[floradaisy]

Death living with Demons beginning

This is the character intro about Y/N the main character in to obey me fanfic I’m trying to write it’s detailed, and you don’t have to read everything but this is more for me to set down the characteristics.

Character Chart

Character’s full name:

Y/N Lilium

Reason or meaning of name: Well, the Y/N stands for your name, seeing it's a reader insert. But the last name (Lilium) is the scientific name for the lilly flower because it “symbolizes the innocence that has been restored to the soul of the departed” and is often associated with death. 

Character’s nickname’s: 

Reaper, Butterfly, aesthete, Ghostie, weirdo,  Mon ange, stranger, eunoia, Sabaism, lilly

Reason for nickname’s:

Reaper: all over her human friends and most of the Grims call her this as an alias for her job or to tease her

butterfly: One day Y/N is talking Beel about what animals they would be and after a short discussion the orange haired demon decides that the girl remind him of a butterfly, a creature that is beautiful and delicate, but you only see once before it disappeared again. 

Aesthete: “a person who is appreciative of and sensitive to art and beauty.” is the dictionary meaning of this word, and this is exactly how Diavolo  views her, hence the nickname. 

Ghostie: Levi love’s her music and is a part of her fanbase who call her that after her original musician name “Ghostwriter.” 

Weirdo: Mammon as the idiot he is doesn't like to show off how much he actually respects Y/N that he tries his hardest to deny that, so he calls her weirdo. 

Mon ange: Asmo call her this after finding out about who she is, seeing her as an angel even when she tells him multiple times she isn’t 

stranger

Eunoia: “well mind beautiful thinking” is what this word means in Greek. Y/N gathers small pieces of Information in journals  throughout her life, some of that knowledge not ever recorder by others. When Satan scoops true the girl's room one day and finds them, he can only mutter one word “Eunoia”.  

Sabaism

Lilly: After finding out Y/N’s last name, Luke totally freaked out and gives her lilies every Sunday and started to call her lilly. 

and many more 

Birthdate:

who knows…

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Physical appearance

Age: You don’t ask a lady about her age… How old does he/she appear: she appears around the age of 17/18 Glasses or contacts: glasses for when she’s reading Distinguishing marks:  few tattoos, a long scar running up her leg.

Usual fashion of dress: uniform, but dresses mostly comfy during the day and when she goes to work she wears suits with the occasion pretty dress because she wants to be dresses stylish when she goes to kill.

Favourite outfit: Solomon's cape with her long silk black dress and high heels with actual knifes as heels. 

Jewellery or accessories: a single ring with moon stone and amethyst that symbolizes her friendship with her human friends. 

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Personality

Good personality traits: soft, kind-hearted to the people she likes, introverted, creative Bad personality traits: absent-minded, can have moments of deep self-hate, occasionally murders someone.  Mood character is most often in: tired Sense of humor: tries her best Character’s greatest joy in life: music Character’s greatest fear: herself  Why?: because she knows that if she ever loses control, she would be able to take over the entire world, devildom and the celestial realm. What single event would most throw this character’s life into complete turmoil?: probably dying, which is impossible Character is most at ease when: in her room with her headphones on  Most ill at ease when: in big crowds, even when she doesn’t try to show it off Depressed or sad when: family visits  Priorities: Character’s soft spot: Luke, and little love songs on TikTok.  Is this soft spot obvious to others? The Luke one yes, but the other one only Simeon knows  Greatest strength: her music ability  Greatest vulnerability or weakness: self-hate Biggest regret: saying yes to living forever Biggest accomplishment: getting Barbatos flustered Character’s darkest secret: if i tell you it isn’t a secret  Does anyone else know? no  ¸¸♬·¯·♩¸¸♪·¯·♫¸¸¸♬·¯·♩¸¸♪·¯·♫¸¸

Goals

Drives and motivations:  Immediate goals: waking up in the morning and not kill the brothers Long term goals: making sure the world doesn’t collapse on itself How the character plans to accomplish these goals: by doing her job even when it means destroying herself How other characters will be affected: they are very worried about her mental health, especially about her stuffing every emotion in a coffin and dropping it into the ocean while smoking a cigarette.

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Past

Hometown: Beynac-et-Cazenac, France  Type of childhood: strange  Pets: a snake and white dove  First memory: cloud gazing with a white haired boy but she doesn’t rember his name any more. Most important childhood memory: The first time she claimed a soul Why: Because that’s the moment she became her true self the moment she became the reaper. Childhood hero: the librarian in her town  Dream job: Professional musician  Education: Almost every form there is, human, celestial and now demon Religion: she believes in herself Finances: complicated ¸¸♬·¯·♩¸¸♪·¯·♫¸¸¸♬·¯·♩¸¸♪·¯·♫¸¸

Present

Current location: R.A.D but has small apartments all around the realms  Currently living with: The demon brothers and occasionally stays with Diavolo  Pets: technically hasn't have them because Jack and Dahlia are grims disguised as animals. Religion: herself  Occupation: Death, the reaper of souls, and musician Finances: wealthy 

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Family

Mother: the universe  Relationship with her: they don’t always agree, but try Spouse: doesn’t have one because she’s terrified of love  Other important family members: she has some amazing friends she met in therapy (which Michael forced her into) and views them as family they meet every second month to drink thee and smash plates…

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Favourites

Colour: the rainbow  Least favourite colour: doesn’t have one Music: everything and loves to play instrument   Food: whatever Luke makes new :) Literature: one of her apartments is a library  Form of entertainment: playing music, reading, watching movies, murder, cooking with Luke, writing songs with Simeon and hanging out with the demon brothers, Barbatos and Diavolo. Mode of transportation: takes the bus but can make portalts to anywhere in the world. Most prized possession: her journals and glass violin she got from Barbatos  and Diavilo  ¸¸♬·¯·♩¸¸♪·¯·♫¸¸¸♬·¯·♩¸¸♪·¯·♫¸¸

Habits

Hobbies: a lot Plays a musical instrument?: yes How he/she would spend a rainy day: outside, laying in the pools and reading a book Spending habits: meh is modest one day a big spender the other Smokes: yes and vapes  Drinks: yes but with reason  Other drugs: no  What does he/she do too much of?: working   What does he/she do too little of?: taking care of her mental health  Extremely skilled at: music and with a knife Extremely unskilled at: math  Nervous tics: plays with knife or will draw small pentagrams on her upper legs   Usual body posture: normal  Peculiarities: most things

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Traits

Optimist or pessimist?: both Introvert or extrovert?: introvert in human form extrovert when on the job Daredevil or cautious?: depends on the situation  Logical or emotional?: both  Disorderly and messy or methodical and neat? messy very messy in live, but neat in work Prefers working or relaxing?: what is relaxing we don’t know her? Confident or unsure of himself/herself?: mentally unstable...so both (joking but that is how it work for me)  Animal lover? yes

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Self-perception

How he/she feels about himself/herself: has a though time sometimes because it’s not easy living forever and you have a lot of time to contemplate live and think about things One word the character would use to describe self: crazy One paragraph description of how the character would describe self: probably as a badass who tries her best to be herself but sometimes slips up and feels very responsible for everyone around her. What does the character consider his/her best personality trait? her determination What does the character consider his/her worst personality trait? occasional loss of emotions How does the character think others perceive him/her: as a goddess which they do because she is quite literally death. 

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Relationships with others

Opinion of other people in general: doesn’t always like them because she knows that one day they'll die and make her job just a little harder again. Does the character hide his/her true opinions and emotions from others? yes Best friend(s): Delphium, dahlia, jack, Luke Love interest(s): the brothers (yes all of them), diavolo, Barbatos, Solomon, Simeon Person character goes to for advice: Solomon Person character feels responsible for or takes care of: Luke Person character feels shy or awkward around: no one except in big crowds then everyone Person character openly admires: The demon lord and Michael  Person character secretly admires: Lucifer because he knows how to manage work and live better than her. Most important person in character’s life before story starts: herself After story starts: thats up to you :)

[rpgremlin]

For Mobile Users

This post is under indefinite construction because I make blogs all the time (and maybe I forgot to add a couple here that I’ll remember again eventually)

As I have so many blogs, they may appear inactive. However, I am always open to writing any of my muses upon request, even if the blog seems otherwise abandoned lmao

Each blog name links to the blog btw

OCS:

MC OC (Main) - Tsukiisms

Twin Brother Yōkai - Collared Fate

Younger Sister Yōkai (of the above) - Fate Aflame

Coven of Thirteen Magical Familiars with Angel/Demon Inspo - The Thirteen

Vampire & Werewolf Brothers With a definitelynotanotome Plot - Love Bites

Amnesiac that ‘Resets’ Every Day - Forget Me Not

‘Imaginary Friend’ Trauma Manifested Demon - Uno Reverse

Queen of Vampires (The First) - Sanguis Lilium

Dark Twist on Wonderland - Underland

World of Warcraft Dragon Aspect - Stellae Draconis

OC Based on the Album The Hazards of Love by The Decemberists -  Hazards of Love

Lustful Fallen Angel (Highly NSFW) - Soft Lust

Suicidal Angy Immortal (Triggering Content) - Miseryisms

Canon:

Nier (Granblue Fantasy) - Amare Mortem

Dead By Daylight Multi - Of the Fog

Mystic Messenger Multi - Mystic Messenger

Obey Me! Multi - Devildom’s Finest

[anyway-i-love-vanderwood]

✿ So I was kind of bummed today and wrote something strange in a coffee shop to cheer myself up. Enjoy!

V fell in love with you after you almost killed him. In your defense, it was completely and entirely an accident.

He was walking down the streets of downtown Seoul when it happened, squinting at his phone as he tried to puzzle out a text he’d just received from Jumin. Suddenly, a panicked shriek struck through the air, a desperate plea of stop! that V obeyed only out of subconscious instinct.  Moments later, strange parcels of terra-cotta ceramic dropped through the air like bombshells, and V fell to his knees, shielding his head from the barrage of pottery and dislocated plant-life.

After about thirty assorted impacts of various magnitudes, the world quieted down, and V peeked out of his shelter at the scene before him. Miraculously, he wasn’t harmed, and he stood slowly, trying to piece together what had happened.

Clumps of broken dirt were scattered among the sharp cuts of ceramic, and ruined, twisted stems lay helpless on the cement. V looked down at one of the displaced flowers – a rose, by the looks of it – and then glanced up, blinking owlishly at the blurred expanse of bright-blue sky framed by shadowed skyscrapers and glinting windows.

No answers came to him, though he did hear a distant voice calling out to him from the cloud-tipped heavens above.

“I’m so sorry! Please, stay there… I’m coming down!”

V continued to stare in gaping astonishment, and it didn’t once occur to him to get up and move.

After about two minutes, you met him properly, and when he did, it felt like he was encountering an angel in the flesh.

Part of it was how you practically flew out of the nearby door, jacket catching the air as you glided over the welcome mat placed before the ground-floor storefront. Your skirt rustled like a flock of doves as you landed, and without sparing a moment, you took both of his hands between your daintily painted fingers and said, “Are you hurt? I’m so sorry! I’ll take you to the hospital, if you need it!”

V stared down at your face, meeting your concerned, dewy eyes with his own dim, grey-blue ones, and he felt his heart beat faster. “N-no, I’m – I’m fine, but um… what happened?”

“Oh, I was – I was – the building manager said I could set up a garden on the roof if I wanted, maybe a some chairs and a table for the office workers on the top floor, and I – I am so sorry! The platform holding some of my pots tipped over, and they fell all over you!”

You examined him again, walking a full circle around him and bobbing like a pigeon as you looked for injuries. “Are you certain you’re alright? If one of those hit you…!”

“I… I’m fine,” he assured you after a swallow, and the beaming smile you shot him after he said this sent another direct blow to his heart.

Oh god, dear god – there was just something about you, but you reminded him so much of a flower in the spring.

“I’m so happy, but – oh, I still feel bad! Here, I’m sure you’re busy doing something, but if you ever have some free time, come by my store! I’ll give you a bouquet of flowers on the house. Whatever you’d like! I assure you – “ You said, placing one hand over your heart and sweeping the other to your side. “I have the best flowers in all of Korea!”

“Your… store?” he asked, still a bit dazed, and you clapped your hands together before dancing up to the door you’d come out of moments prior.

“Yes! Lilium Florals, perfect for any holiday or occasion you can think of!”

V stared at you for a long moment, this unearthly scene making him feel a bit dizzy. It was absolutely clear that this was a florist’s boutique, given the pots overflowing with fat, brightly colored blossoms and the sweet smell permeating the street. The glass was painted with the name of the shop, and somehow, the cute-lily logo seemed to encompass your being perfectly. Without even thinking about it, V raised his phone, capturing an image of you with the flowers framing your dress and your arm held out over the entryway.

With the memory preserved perfectly, he lowered the screen just in time to see the quizzical furrow of your brow.

“…Um…?”

“I was – just taking a picture so I’d remember the name,” V explained, thanking the lord of his ability to come up with excuses. There was no way he could tell you what he’d really been thinking.

“Oh! Great! Um, well, if you don’t need anything, I should clean this up before someone steps on one of these broken pots and sues me! Er, unless you’re going to sue me first? Please don’t sue me; I’ll go bankrupt!”

You gathered your hands in front of you, and V couldn’t help but laugh in sheer helplessness at the ridiculousness of the situation. “I promise I’m not going to sue you. But, um, I – I do need to get going, so – “

Honestly, he didn’t really need to, but if he spent another moment in your presence, he was going to pass out.

“That’s fine, that’s fine! Again, I’m sorry, and um – please, come back soon! I’ll make a bouquet so amazing for you that I promise it’ll change your life! Er. That’s hyperbole. I’m not making a legal guarantee.” You fidgeted, looking askance in a manner that seemed ridiculous after your earlier declaration. “…Please, don’t sue me!”

“I’m sure they’re lovely,” V said, and then he bid you a polite farewell. You waved at his retreating back, and V cursed himself after only five steps. He should have asked your name! He should have offered to help you clean up! He should have – grabbed a business card or something, anything more specific than a stupid photo!

But when he looked back, you’d already disappeared inside your store, and to him, you merely remained his strange, flower-pot angel.

[nagai-yoru-blog]

oh just drinking together after all the things--

--OH WAIT WAIT WAIT WHAT

It can’t be just me that thinking this is kinda sexy, huh.

I wonder why Grossular make this face and why he listened to Lilium

It can’t be just me that thinking this is kinda sexy [2]

It can’t be just me that want to call him S-Queen Lilium

...right?

(I’m glad I didn’t choked or anything because I watched this while eating)

Joke aside (even though I didn’t joking), I want to know what Lilium have in his hand that make Grossular obey him, tho.

[lilirot]

Devil form Asmo

[lilirot]

Back to AU designs before more Christmas art Hopefully mostly finallized design for AU devil form Mammon. His arm and right wing were (mostly) blown off during the great celestial war but when he became a demon he gained gold blood that allows him to manifest liquid gold to make up for the missing limbs

[lilirot]

I'm trying to think of human cover name for the boys when they're in the human world. Because walking up to someone and being like "hey, I'm satan/lucifer/beelzbub/etc." kinda sus. Also, I'm stealing the DeVille (or was it Deville) last name from the Gakuran event. Anyways, so far I got: Lucifer - Lucius DeVille Mammon - Leviathan - Levi DeVille Satan - Stanley DeVille Asmodeus - Ashe DeVille Beelzebub - Bennet DeVille Belphegor - Ben DeVille Side Boys: Diavolo - Dante King Barbatos - Bartholomew Steward Simeon - Simeon/Christopher Peugeot Luke - Luke Solomon - Solomon Baker (technically his full legal name for the situations he's required to have one). Undateables Trio: Thirteen - Thirteen Raphael - Raphael Mephistopheles - Maxwell ???

Edit: Updated Diavolo/Barbatos/Eggplants names - Thanks to Katboykirby for the suggestions :)

[lilirot]

devil form Lucifer

[lilirot]

Demon form Mammon

[lilirot]

I've been wondering, what's up with the obey me lilium oc au???? By the name of it, I'd guess it's just your retelling of the obey me story as a whole.

Yeah, it's basically that. Tho, mainly more design focused w/ bits of lore stuff because I am an arter not a writer. I got distracted with other stuff and I need to get back to it.