#suddenly they're both white haired and hornless and no longer sure they're enemies at all?????

[davey-in-a-minivan]

just, remember me, okay?

asdfkjal this is late and long, but my gift for @keiththeweirdo for the @tdpholidayexchange!

word count: 2213 mood: angst with a happy ending?? rayllum, side serving of claudia premise: what if callum’s rescue off the storm spire had gotten... complicated? (also on ao3)

She should have died. That was Rayla’s one clear thought as consciousness returned, sticky and slow as blood seeping from a reopened wound. She had thrown herself from the Storm Spire. She should have died.

But then, Callum above her. But then, Callum with feathers pushing through his skin and a wild, desperate determination in his eyes. Callum, with human fear and human clumsiness and heavy human bones, who could barely support his own weight with his new wings. Callum, who had realized that he could not carry her to safety and so had swooped beneath her instead.

Callum, in whose motionless limbs she was still tangled.

She should have died.

It wasn’t grief that plagued her so much as fear-- icy, paralyzing fear, to open her eyes and roll off his crushed body and see him staring blankly at the sky he dearly loved. Even the pain that burned in her every bone and joint after the jolt of impact could not persuade her to untangle herself.

The sound of approaching footsteps, however, could. Her eyes opened to slits to see a dark figure in a billowing cloak stumble past, stopping beside Viren’s battered body. The caterpillar that had coiled around his shoulders wriggled and the figure kicked it aside with a guttural cry, slinging it through the air to crawl into the shadows. Then she dropped to her knees, hands fluttering from Viren's bleeding head to his chest to his pulseless throat. “It’s going to be alright, Dad. I found you. I’m going to save you, I’m going to--” Her voice cracked.

Rayla inhaled. “Claudia.”

The human shot upright, wiping her face furiously. “What are you doing here?” Then Rayla struggled to her feet and Claudia’s eyes shifted past her, to Callum. The last flush of color left her ashen face. “No.”

Rayla pointed a finger. “You said you can save him.”

“No, no, no-- what happened?” Claudia demanded, her gaze darting from face to vacant face like a caged animal looking for an escape. Rayla wanted to shout at her to stop stalling. It didn’t matter what had happened! “This is your fault!”

The words hurt like a dagger twisted in the back-- because they were true. But-- “You were the one that attacked us! You, and your evil father--”

“Don’t talk about him like that,” Claudia snarled, raising her staff. A sunfire staff, stolen from the elves, though the core had somehow been corrupted. “You need to leave, now.”

“I’m not leaving Callum,” Rayla said.

“I’ll kill you.”

“Try it.”

For a moment they just stood, panting, eyes locked. Rayla’s face burned, and the effort of holding back tears made her head pound. She would fight. She would die. But she could imagine a moment of savage triumph, of sinking her blade between the dark mage’s ribs, before they both collapsed onto the blood-stained ground. She reached for her swords.

But then Callum’s voice stopped her. Claudia is my friend. They had been at the lunar nexus. She had only seen Claudia and Soren as threats, but Callum wanted to trust them. They betrayed us at the nexus, she thought angrily. Yes, but then Soren came to help us. Led by the good heart Callum had sworn he had, Soren joined the fight for peace. Maybe… Claudia could do the same.

Hesitantly, Rayla shifted from her fighting stance, her hands drifting away from the hilts of her blades. “Claudia, you and I’ve never been friends. I know that. But Callum-- you and Callum were. And he needs help.”

“Why do you care so much?” Claudia asked suspiciously. “A month ago you would have been glad to see him dead.”

“I would have,” she said. “But I didn’t know-- Callum is good.” The word choked in her throat, and she squeezed her eyes shut for a second, holding back tears. “Since I’ve known him, everything he does is for love. It’s for peace. He makes you see how the world could be, instead of how it is. And I don’t know anyone else like that. The world is so hurt and so ugly, but if anyone can heal it-- it’s him. Don’t you see that? He needs to live.” Hot tears slipped down her cheeks, but she didn’t break eye contact. Surely Claudia knew. Surely she understood that nothing could be right if Callum were dead. Surely--

“You love him,” Claudia said softly. The last ragged thread of Rayla’s self-control snapped, and she sank to the ground, sobbing, nodding, shoulders shaking. The sunfire staff clattered as it was cast aside, and then Claudia’s arms were around her, holding her as she cried. “It’s so easy to, isn’t it?” she whispered. Rayla clung to her as she fought to steady her breath, finally pulling back to wipe her eyes.

“Is there anything you can do to save him?”

Claudia gave a watery laugh, gesturing at Callum and Viren. “What, like a double resurrection?”

Rayla’s heart skipped a beat. “Is that possible?”

"Theoretically," Claudia said, kneading her eyes. Her voice quivered-- from sorrow or exhaustion, Rayla couldn't guess. "In practice, though-- I’ve never touched necromancy before. The ingredients alone are almost impossible. You need-- you need--” She trailed off, furrowing her brow, and Rayla’s veins iced with fear. Of course the ingredients would be something horrific. Or something impossible. Nothing came for free, not with dark magic, especially not something as precious as Callum’s life. Still looking fuzzily to the distance, Claudia muttered “--and of course, the hard part isn’t even healing the body, it’s calling back the spirit--”

Rayla shook her head, refusing to acknowledge the impossibility of her task that weighed like the world on her chest. “What are the ingredients?”

Claudia grimaced. “You need some part of a magical creature that owes its life to the one who died. But there’s no way we’ll get up to the dragon prince in time for it to be of use, even if we could evade the queen and all the guards--”

The crushing pressure on Rayla’s chest lifted. “Use me, then.”

“What?”

Heat flooded Rayla’s heart, painful and brilliant. “I would have died if it weren’t for Callum. Use me.”

“But I need to use a part of you, flesh or bone.”

“Then you’ll have to cut off my horn,” Rayla said, reaching for the fallen sunfire staff. Claudia watched wordlessly as she drew a blade and slid it through the fiery core of the staff. “With a steady hand and a hot blade, it shouldn’t be hard.” The blade now shone white-hot as she offered the hilt to Claudia.

Claudia gaped at her. “You… want me to do it?”

“Well, I cannae do it myself,” she said. Gingerly, Claudia took the sword. Rayla smoothed her hair away from her horns and then turned her back to the human. She was entirely vulnerable. One slash from the superheated sword and she’d be gone. She clung to her second-hand belief in Claudia, her desperate trust. And after a moment, she felt heat waft over her scalp, and an unfamiliar pressure against her skull. The smell of singed hair reached her. Then the pressure eased and the heat faded. Rayla turned to see Claudia holding her blade in one hand and a coal-gray horn in the other, looking entirely lost.

“But what about my father?”

She sounded… helpless. She must have combed through a lifetime of memories, searching for one moment her father saved a magical creature, only to come up empty. The fear in her eyes echoed Rayla’s own. For the first time, Rayla didn’t feel a wave of disgust at the mention of Viren. Instead, grief tugged at her, for the man the girl had lost. Rayla hesitated. Then, slowly, she said, “if Soren hadn’t come ta warn us yesterday, I would probably be dead.” Viren was greedy. Manipulative. Ruthless. But she had been wrong to believe that humans were fully evil. “And if you hadn’t taught Callum his first spell… he would never have connected to the sky arcanum.” Every one of them was a mix of good and bad, drawn from two streams. “And I know I’d be dead.” Viren had made wrong choices, evil choices, that she could not forget. But he had also done good. “I owe the man who raised you two with good hearts,” she said.

Claudia’s hands were shaking. “I don’t understand.”

“Take my other horn. For him.” Rayla turned her back to the human once more. “And do it quick.”

“Thank you,” Claudia said hoarsely, pressing the blade to the base of Rayla’s remaining horn. “I don’t-- I know he--”

“You won’t let things go back to the way they were,” Rayla said, cutting her off. “This is a new chance-- for both of ye.” The choice felt inexplicably right. The kind of thing Callum would do. A weight lifted from her skull and her fingers went to her head, finding two uneven stubs tangled in her wind-swept hair like spiderwebs. “Well, that’s that.” Claudia carefully set down the sword, which had cooled to a cherry-red. “What now?”

“The blood of one who loves them,” Claudia said, passing one horn to Rayla. It felt funny in her hand. Smaller than she imagined. She copied Claudia, bloodying the tip of the horn from one of her many bleeding scrapes. Then Claudia knelt between the bodies, pressing the tip of one horn to each chest, piercing the skin. Rayla counted the passing seconds like a clock was ticking in her ears.

“It’s going to work. You can do this,” she urged Claudia.

Claudia bent her head with grim determination. “Or I’ll die trying,” she said, and began to chant. Rayla held her breath, bracing herself for the poisonous hum of dark magic in the air. Instead, all she felt was an electric buzz, making her hair stand on end. Claudia’s eyes filled with golden light, and more light blossomed from Callum and Viren’s chests. Claudia’s forehead beaded with sweat from the effort, but she seemed to draw strength from the light. Because it’s not dark magic, Rayla realized with a jolt. Dark magic was stolen magic, ripped from the creature to whom it belonged. But Rayla had given her horns freely, and the power that Claudia now summoned was something new. Callum would be fascinated. Then the thought slipped away because suddenly Claudia was gasping for breath, blinking away the light and fixing Rayla with wide eyes. “It’s up to you now. Call his spirit back.”

***

The boy supposed he must be dead. He had the vague idea that death was something that had scared him before; he had the faintest memory of fear shooting through his heart as he hurtled toward the ground, fear that was only overcome by the overpowering urge to save-- hmm. He couldn’t remember who.

It was peaceful here, in death; no ticking clock, no frantically beating heart. Just a soft expanse of hills, blanketed in fog, and in the distance a white gate. He walked towards it. Again, he felt like he was forgetting something. He wasn’t supposed to be travelling alone. But there was no one else here to travel beside him. The white gate loomed above him as he approached. He pushed the knob and it swung open without a noise, feather-light. His breath caught as he saw the vast sunlit valley beyond. It was beautiful. He stepped forward-- then stumbled back, as if pulled by unseen hands. This wasn’t right. What was missing?

A voice whispered in his ear, soft and insistent. Callum. He spun, looking over his shoulder, back over the fog-bound hills. No one. Callum, come back. The boy blinked. Callum. That was his name. Callum, please.

“Who are you?” Callum called. His voice echoed strangely in the still air.

Callum. Every repetition of the name was like the tug of a fish-hook lodged firmly in his chest. I need you to come back. I need you to wake up.

“I don’t know how,” he said, distress tightening his throat for the first time since he had died. “I don’t know where to go, except through the gate.”

Follow my voice. Come back to me. Do you hear me?

“Who are you?” he shouted desperately, his head jerking from side to side. The voice sounded like it was coming from the left-- and as he looked, a path seemed to open in the fog, revealing tiny white flowers. He took a few tentative steps, and a flash of memory shot through his mind: a meadow of flowers, and laughter in the air. He stumbled. “Hello?”

Can you hear me?

“I hear you! I’m coming!” He broke into a run.

Callum, please. Scattered memories crackled through his head, fast and disorienting. His legs pounded the earth. He knew that voice. I know you’re there. I know you can find your way. I’m not going to give up on you. The fog dissolved like ocean spray on a breaking wave. I love you, Callum.

The name he had been searching for came at last to his lips. "Rayla," he said. Then every memory came crashing back, and a searing flash of lightning split the world. 

***

"I love you, Callum," Rayla whispered. And his heart began to beat again.