#the creel urge to dig

[givehimthemedicine]

To my surprise, our new home provided a discovery.

And a newfound sense of purpose.

[theladycarpathia]

Empty Places chapter 2- Cold Spots

Back to chapter 1 

Creel House. Since its creation, this house has attracted bad luck, violence, and murder. A site of great evil? Or just a magnet for coincidences? We’re here to discover the truth, today on Mystery Spot!

“Did that sound cheesy?” Robin complains, twisting her head back to glare at the framed portrait of the Creels, as though they’re the ones responsible for their bad dialogue. “I think that sounded cheesy!” Billy raises an eyebrow and presses pause.

“It sounded cheesy,” he says bluntly. “You sound like an infomercial.” Robin sticks out her tongue and adjusts her beret. It slipped a little during her speech and now threatens to topple off onto the fraying carpet below.

“Fine,” she mutters. “I’ll think of something else. Even Steve’s intro sounded better than that.” Steve looks up from where he's fiddling with the ring light. He’s removed himself from this particular piece of theater as he has no design to stand near that horrible portrait or stare into Billy's eyes. Damnation all round.

“Hey,” he says, mildly offended. “You weren’t around when I was recording that!” 

“It’s an educated guess, your intros are always cheesy,” Robin says and then sighs heavily. “Okay, maybe we should come back to this. You guys want to go have a look around? There’s two more floors above this, including an attic, and I think there’s a basement too.”

Steve makes a face. “I’m not going to the basement,” he says automatically, because he does not care about being seen as a jittery coward, so long as it means he doesn’t have to go to the basement. Basements are notoriously for murder rooms, and dark tunnels, and books covered in skin. No, thank you.

“I’ll take the basement,” Billy says, in a tone that implies that he knows exactly what Steve is doing. They once found a secret room in an old house that Billy had willingly gone into. He either doesn’t believe in squatters hiding in the walls or he’s very, very stupid. “You guys can head upstairs. Meet back in fifteen?” 

Robin grabs her bag from the table, digging for her recorder. “Sounds good. Walkies on?”

“Yes,” Steve says, before Billy can scoff at the idea…again. “It’s an old house, Billy. You could fall through an old piece of floorboard and we might not find you until you’ve bled out. Turn on the damn walkie.” Billy digs out his walkie, clips it to his belt and makes an obvious show of switching it on.

“Happy?” he asks and Steve tries to not let it bother him. Billy’s just like this. Reckless, wild, immortal. Safety precautions are just a joke to him. 

“Ecstatic,” Robin says, dryly. She tucks the recorder into her pocket, along with her walkie, and dumps her bag back down. “Don’t get dead. Let’s go, Harrington.” 

Steve lingers just long enough to watch Billy wander out of the room first, heading for the basement door, before he trails after Robin. He can see by her face that he’s not subtle. 

“Lech,” she hisses, tugging on his arm. The stairs are still pretty fucking incredible, a grand sweeping staircase of some rich, dark wood, carved into delicately sculpted banisters. Steve shrugs.

“He’s a dick but he’s got a great ass,” he says practically. And he would know. He’s the sucker who gets to see the curve of his best friend’s rear in boxers every time he sleeps over, after every basketball game as teenagers, that one time Billy jumped into the lake. 

“I’d agree but my problem is that he has a dick,” Robin says, bounding up the stairs. Steve follows more carefully in her wake, mindful of how the wood creaks under her weight. “You’re on your own there.”

The second floor is pretty much the same as the first. Dusty, empty and abandoned and Steve has to resist the urge to sneeze. Robin drifts into the little girl’s room, looking at the faded pink teddies, the streaks of dust over the unicorn lamp. There’s a Barbie left on the floor, her blank plastic eyes staring judgmentally at their invasion. 

“I just keep thinking that this is just all…really sad, you know?” she says, her voice echoing through to Steve in the hall. When Steve steps through the door, he finds her gently touching another family portrait with her fingertips. “You know? Like, they left everything. All their possessions and their memories. What on Earth scared them so badly that they did that?”

“I don’t know,” Steve says, but he feels it too. There’s something strange about this house, not just in the unnerving wrongness of it all, but the idea of a family just leaving and never coming back. No matter what Billy says, something had to have happened to make them leave everything in their lives behind. All they took was the kids, the dog and the car. Every family photo, every soccer trophy, every piece of artwork on the fridge. No one does that unless you’re absolutely desperate.

“If we found out why we’d be legends,” Robin continues, excitement coloring her voice. Steve tilts his head back to look at the glittery pink lampshade, faded after a decade in the sun. They probably would be - crime podcasters have helped make progress on cold cases before, and breaking the mystery of Creel House would definitely earn them some fame. Maybe enough to get him and Ro out of Family Video, which isn’t really where he thought he’d be rotting so soon after high school. Billy used to work at the local pool during the summer and recently - begrudgingly - got work at the local diner. 

“Ro, if it was bad enough that they left one night without even taking their urn of Grandma’s ashes, I doubt that we really want to know,” Steve points out, and walks back out into the hallway. Robin follows, stopping only to look at the family portrait again.

“This little girl is all grown up by now,” she says and Steve looks at the remaining doors, more rooms and lives left behind.

“I hope so,” he says, because it sounds to him that Creel House always gets its blood.

XXX

The little boy’s room has a football deflating by the door. The parents’ bedroom has dust coating over the full length hanging mirror, a dress still lying discarded on the bed. There’s more mold on the shower curtain that they care to think about so they leave quickly. 

“Didn’t you say there was an attic?” Steve asks, pivoting on his heels to see which door is left. There are two and after a shared shrug, they each step up to one.

“One?” Robin says, hand resting on the doorknob. Steve grins and does the same.

“Two,” he says, closing his hand around the metal.

“Three!” they say as one and push open their doors. Robin groans.

“Damn,” she says grumpily, dramatically leaning on the door frame. “I got the study.” 

But Steve’s door has opened to a small, narrow staircase, a spider carefully making its web in the corner of the door. He reaches out for the pull light but a few quick yanks prove that it’s long burnt out.

“I’ll go up,” he says, digging in his bag for a torch. “Follow me when you’re done?” And then he puts his foot on the bottom stairs, ducks under the spider’s intricate work, and begins to climb.

The attic is…an attic. It’s so caked in dust that Steve has to cough once he takes his first deep breath. Like everywhere else, it’s filled with relics of another time, the remnants of a normal family life. Boxes labeled BABY CLOTHES, XMAS DECS, and CONCERT T-SHIRTS. There’s even a Christmas tree, still in its box in the corner, and Steve wonders if it’s the same one the kids were sitting under in the photo downstairs. 

“Creepy,” he mutters, and that’s when the bell starts to chime.

He’s glad that no one is around to hear his squeak, as he whirls around to face the source of the noise. A large, polished grandfather clock sits at the very end of the attic, against one wall, the pendulum swinging back and forth with every chime. Swallowing his nerves, Steve inches closer. The time is all wrong, the hands set to the twelve and the two. He wonders if the clock thinks it’s early in the morning or early afternoon. 

Wait. Two o’clock. Two chimes. So why won’t it stop chiming?

Steve freezes, suddenly unnerved. It’s fine. It’s a decades old clock. It’s definitely busted. It doesn’t know the right time so there’s probably no way that it’s going to chime the right amount of times either.

No. No, wait, that’s still all wrong. It’s been well over two decades - closer to three - since the Packards left their house. Steve doesn’t know much about physics and that shit but he knows enough that stuff needs power. Electric, batteries, some kind of fuel. And like a lot of clocks, this one would need to be wound. It wouldn’t keep going for nearly thirteen years. So who wound it?

Oh shit, he’s going to regret this.

He steps forward carefully, clutching his torch like a weapon, the beam cutting across the ceiling and occasionally illuminating the pale strings of another web. The clock continues to ring, the sound taking on an unnerving tone, each one growing more distorted as the bell chimes. Up close, Steve can see the thick crack across the glass face, the smears of dust on the curves of the wood. But just as he reaches out to touch it, the dark crack split from the eight all the way up to the two begins to squirm and Steve bites back a yelp as a small black spider emerges from the clock face.

“What the fuck?” Steve mutters, retrieving his hand and carefully turning the torchlight over the clock. The spider skitters over the glass, unaware of the intruder in its midst. Steve exhales, chastising himself for being startled. It’s a broken old clock and a tiny spider has taken up residence. It’s fine. 

But then Steve sees the second spider. 

And then the third.

And then the crack froths and hundreds of the little bastards emerge from the clock face, tumbling over each other in their race to get out, turning the clear glass a squirming inky black as they spread.

Steve bolts.

He promptly smacks into Robin on the way down and only her quick reflexes stop them both careening down the small staircase.

“What the fuck, Harrington?” Robin curses, pulling herself- and him - upright by tugging firmly on the hand-rail to right them both. Steve lets go of her shirt, the fabric now seriously crumpled from his damp fingers. She continues to look annoyed, until she sees the fear on his face.

“What is it?” she asks and pushes her way past him up the remaining stairs. Steve drops down on the closet step, heart hammering in his chest. He hasn’t felt like this since they found that odd bloodstain in the living room of that empty cottage. But even peeling up the carpet to see the massive dried rust underneath doesn’t quite feel like this. 

“What?” she asks, looking baffled. She peers back down the steps towards him, her face unusually anxious. “Steve, what is it?”

Once the blood pounding in his ears fades, Steve can immediately hear what’s wrong. The chiming has stopped. 

“What?” he says, in disbelief and pushes himself up so he can climb back up the steps. Aside from Robin, and her overwhelming aura of worry, the attic is exactly as it was.

Except for one thing.

“There was a clock here,” Steve says stupidly, pointing at the now unoccupied patch of wall. He turns to look at Robin. “A big grandfather clock and it was chiming, and it had spiders coming out of it. It was right here!”

Robin stares at the wall. The now empty patch of wall. The expression on her face flickers between worry and bemusement.

“Bud, I love you,” she says, tilting her head. “But did you inhale something really old that you weren’t meant to?”

“No!” Steve howls in frustration. “There was a clock, okay? A big one and it kept chiming. Even though the clock hands were pointing to two o’ clock, it just kept chiming a lot. And who even would wind up a clock that old, okay? It’s not like the ghosts of the Creel kids are coming back to keep the old vanishing grandfather clock wound up!”

“Steve,” Robin says gently, face now turning to one of pity. “I get that you’re…having some issues. Like this house is really fucking weird and the whole Billy thing gets really obvious every time that we do a video, but can you chill?”

Steve turns and storms back downstairs.

Fucking murder house.

XXX

Steve stomps down the attic stairs, not even bothering to close the door behind him. A small petty part of him suggests that slamming the door would feel really satisfying but he pushes it down. 

He feels rattled and frustrated. Nothing about this day is going as planned and as he storms back down the main staircase he can’t help but think that maybe this is what they deserve. None of the other places they’ve explored have ever been like this, the remains of a family still waiting to be collected. It feels more like a violation than the old barns, the empty factory, the burnt out mill. Steve stops at the bottom of the staircase and drags a hand across his face.

It’s stupid. He’s letting this weird old house get to him.

Steve sighs and jams his torch back into his bag. They’ll need the lights soon, as the sun begins to set, but they’re good for now. Enough time to do a little scouting around for interesting spots, get some filming done. It’s been over a year since they started this and they have it down pat by now. Getting used to filming in the dark took some time in the beginning and they try not to do it too often for various reasons, but they decided today that filming some stuff as night fell would look really creepy.

Steve regrets that choice now. 

He heads back to the dining room, intending on waiting with the rest of their gear. Let his friends finish the walkthrough by themselves. He’s going to find Robin’s emergency chocolate and eat it in front of the Creels’ weirdo portrait.

But the dining room isn’t empty. To his surprise, Billy is standing by the wall, staring up at the picture frame. He must have finished up early, the basement taking less time than upstairs.

“I didn’t think you liked that picture,” Steve says, dumping his bag onto the table. Robin's bag is already there, as she prefers stuffing her pockets full of the tools she might need rather than carrying a large backpack around. And anything else that doesn’t fit, she makes Steve carry.

“I don’t,” Billy says shortly. “It’s a lie.”

“Okay?” Steve asks, unsure. These days he never quite knows how to handle interactions between him and Billy. He hates it because Billy’s still his best friend, having been there for nearly all of his life. He doesn’t want to not know how to talk to Billy.

But it’s become more and more inevitable as Steve’s crush grew into something unmanageable and persistent. Talking to Billy leaves him open to saying something stupid without Robin as a buffer, to Billy flirting with him, Billy making a dumb comment about the cute guy he went on a date with last week. 

“It is, though,” Billy says, gesturing up at the warm smiles of the Creels. “It’s all fake. People don’t pose for these family portraits because they’re really that happy. You have this huge fuck off painting in a room where they probably brought guests. It’s bullshit.”

“I suppose,” Steve says slowly, digging in the front pocket of Robin’s bag for a mini chocolate bar. He probably should know, as his own family have pictures just like that in their front room and they’re definitely only for show. He’s probably unable to see it in the same way that you can’t see the forest for the trees. Billy never had the kind of family that put on a front like that. No one gathered the Hargroves together for a cheesy group shot. “And they all died, in the end.”

“Hmm,” Billy murmurs and turns away from the portrait. His eyes move to the chocolate in Steve’s hand but he doesn’t comment on it.

“Did you find anything?” Billy asks curiously, the fading glow of the sunlight rippling off of his dirty blonde hair. Steve exhales, wondering in what universe it’s fair to make one man so fucking attractive.

“No,” he mutters mutinously, shoving the last of the chocolate bar into his mouth and stuffing the wrapper into his pocket. “Well, sort of. Upstairs is the same as down here. They left everything. But there was this freaky clock in the attic.”

“Okay,” Billy says, the single stud that he wears in his left ear glinting in the light as he fully turns to face Steve. “I’ll bite. Go ahead, Scooby Doo, what did you find?”

And sometimes Steve just wants to punch him in his stupidly gorgeous face. 

“I saw this weird clock,” Steve says, because it really does sound stupid now. Hey, audience, subscribe now to see Steve freak out at a clock! There’s probably a totally rational explanation but he’s going to freak the hell out about it anyway! Hell, they’d probably lose viewers. They’ve never tried a stunt like that before. Steve didn’t even have his camera rolling. 

Maybe Robin’s right. Maybe there’s like thirty year old drugs up in the attic that he breathed in.

“It was just chiming and shit,” Steve shrugs, wandering over to the freaky portrait of the Creels again. He has to admire the Packards for their bravery. If he’d just moved in and found this painting in his dining room, he’d have burned in a cleansing fire out in the backyard.

“And that’s freaky how?” Billy asks, sounding totally reasonable. 

“It vanished when Robin came up to see it,” Steve says sheepishly. “I know it sounds bullshit but I swear-”

“Hey,” Billy says and gives that brilliant smile, the one that makes moms go weak at the knees and persuades gym buffs into his bed. Steve feels his own knees go a little weak under the full power of it.

“I know you believe in all this weird, spooky shit but you’re not crazy,” Billy continues, his eyes a brilliant, impossible blue at this range. “And this house is really fucked up. Even I agree with that.”

“You do?” Steve asks, a little dumbfounded, because not once has Billy ever been creeped out by anything. They visited the old Miller barn once, where old man Miller supposedly hung each of his daughters from the rafters, and upon seeing the tattered rope hanging from the beams Billy had scoffed and said that some idiot had probably hung it up to trick gullible assholes. 

“Yeah,” Billy says simply. “I mean, you can feel it, can’t you? There’s something different about this one.”

“Yeah,” Steve says quietly. “There’s something different about this one.”

“Maybe there’s a reason for it,” Billy suggests. Steve snorts, taken aback.

“You’re kidding, right?” Steve says. “Should I get out a camera or will our ratings plummet? Billy Hargrove, born skeptic, admitting to the possibility of ghosts, ghouls and goblins?” Billy dramatically presses both hands to his chest, faking hurt.

“Ouch, Harrington,” Billy says, a teasing glitter in his eyes and something dips in Steve’s belly at that familiar challenge. High school basketball games had been hell. “That was right out of King Steve’s playbook.” Steve shrugs, turning his head away from Billy’ piercing gaze. 

“Yeah, well…” he mutters. “Just didn’t expect it.” He leans against the solid wood of the dining table, and doesn’t really think about the inevitable dust and dirt clinging to his rear until too late.

“I’m just saying,” Billy protests. “At some point the teenage investigators stumble across the genuinely haunted house.”

“No, thanks,” Steve says, because he’s seen that movie. Which is kind of every horror movie. “I do actually prefer that we stay the kids with a dog Scooby gang rather than the Sunnydale Scooby gang.” 

“Ok, but even they found actual ghosts sometimes, you know,” Billy says, and tugs up his sleeves, allowing that brief glimpse of his tanned arms, the leather cuff around one wrist. “Like, all of the movies have them find mummies and zombies and shit.”

“I may believe in this stuff,” Steve says frankly. “But I’d still prefer that we don’t stumble across the room in the basement with the chains and bathtubs full of blood. Okay?” Billy grins.

“I didn’t see much of that downstairs, I swear,” he says and then tilts his head up towards the ceiling. “Hey, where’s Robin?” Steve shrugs and looks up too. He hasn’t heard her footsteps for a while but maybe she stopped to film something. 

“Dunno,” he says, and immediately hates that apparently they can’t be alone together without needing Robin around. “What do you want to do? Wait for her?”

“We don’t have to,” Billy says, pivoting to lean against the wall across from Steve. “We could film something. It’s been a while since it was just the two of us.” 

“I guess,” Steve says vaguely, because a lot of that has been by design. He’s always been slightly worried that if he’s left alone with Billy for an unlimited amount of time he’ll do something stupid. He’s good at that, as his mother likes to remind him. He hops down from the table, intending to grab a camera. They might as well make use of the light. “I don't know why it turns out that way.”

“Well, that’s because you’re in love with me,” Billy says suddenly, like it’s obvious, and Steve stops dead.

“You…you knew?” he whispers, because oh God, Billy knew. Billy knew all of this time and he didn’t say anything. He probably just pitied poor Steve, the idiot with the crush. Everyone wants Billy. Billy could have just about anyone he wants. Steve can’t blame him for not choosing Steve. 

“Not that subtle about it, Stevie,” Billy chuckles, folding his arms across his chest. There’s something not very nice about that smile. It’s not Billy’s real smile - it’s the one he uses when he thinks the middle aged women at the pool are getting too close, too handsy. It’s the one he used to use on the courts when some asshole from the rival team used to call him a fag. It’s all teeth and venom, badly concealed disdain hidden behind Billy’s bright pearly teeth. Steve’s known Billy long enough to know when he’s faking it. 

“I didn’t want to ruin our friendship,” Steve says, crushed. He feels a little bit numb inside, a little bit stupid for expecting any other outcome. Admittedly, this is worse. He thought he’d just get the ‘hey, we can still be friends, but I just don’t feel about you that way’ speech, followed by an awkward arm pat. Not whatever this is. 

“You’ve been in love with me since, what?” Billy asks, inspecting his nails like he has nothing else to do while he breaks Steve’s heart. “Freshman year? I mean, you’re not that great of an actor, Steve.”

“I…I don’t get why you’re being like this,” Steve protests, the sharp sting of tears coming to his eyes. He’s never known Billy to be so cruel and he doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve it. “I am in love with you and maybe you don’t feel the same way, but do you have to be such a dick?”

“You know I’m a dick,” Billy says bluntly. He’s still leaning against the wall, watching Steve with sharp blue eyes, as though this is just sport to him. “And yet you fell for me anyway. That’s the really stupid move on your part, Stevie. I’m a fuck up who’d rather screw half the basketball team rather than you and yet you love me anyway. You probably always will, which is the pathetic part. Did you honestly think that we’d stay friends?”

“We certainly won’t now!” Steve spits, taking a step back. But it’s no good because Billy follows, like a shark that has sensed blood in the water. 

“Well, maybe you should have said something years ago,” Billy retorts, sticking his fingers through his belt loops. “Broken off the friendship after that night at Robin’s. Do you remember? We watched the first three Die Hard movies right after the other until Robin fell asleep. It would have been easier then. Repressing things just isn't good for you, Steve.” But Steve barely hears his last words, staring at Billy in absolute horror.

“No, but…how did you know it was that night?” he asks, something crawling up the back of his spine. He never told anyone it was that night. Not even Robin knows. Steve remembers every second of that sleepover, the one they’d had before they’d all been shipped off to different places for Christmas. It had been the night he’d looked at his best friend and thought that he wanted something more. 

So how does Billy know?

“Steve!” The walkie barks furiously and Steve jerks his head down to the walkie still attached to his waist. The spell is broken, Billy looking startled as the voice continues to call for Steve.

Because it’s not Robin’s voice. It’s Billy’s. 

Steve whips his head back up, terror killing the words in his throat before they can reach daylight. It’s not possible. Billy is on the walkie. Billy is in front of Steve. Which one is real?

Billy sighs heavily before frowning ruefully. “Shame. I was having fun.”

“You're…you’re not…” Steve stutters and in his haste to get back from whatever this…thing is, his foot catches on the edge of the rug. He loses his footing and falls backwards, the walkie skidding away as he crashes to the ground. The Billy clone looks dispassionately at him and Steve wonders how he missed it before. There’s nothing in this Billy’s eyes.

“No, I’m not Billy,” it says, sounding amused, and Steve had been correct in his assessment that it was all just a game. He just hadn’t known that it wasn’t Billy’s game. “But I had you going, didn’t I?”

“Steve!” Billy’s voice continues to shout down the walkie like a siren song but Steve can’t make himself move to answer it. All he can do is curl his fingers into the threadbare rug and stare at the entity stalking towards him. 

“You made a mistake, coming into this house feeling like that,” the thing continues, dropping down into a crouch in front of Steve. Steve stares, open-mouthed, because every freckle, every dark lash, every curl in his hair is exactly the same. There was no way he ever could have guessed that this was merely a copy, even while this Billy spat poison at him with that cruel smile. He was expecting ghosts, see-through and wailing and rattling chains. He wasn’t expecting…this. 

“I…” Steve starts but the words stop as the thing moves its hand up to stroke his hair back from his face. Its fingers dig into Steve’s scalp and Steve holds still as it turns his face up. He can feel a warm breath on his skin but it smells strange. Old, musty, metallic. Inhuman.

“Yes,” the creature murmurs, studying every inch of Steve’s face with an unsettling amount of interest. “Yes, you’ll do.”

And then the creature is gone, leaving Steve slumped against the wall like a puppet without any strings. 

“Someone answer the fucking walkie!” Billy screeches down the receiver and Steve scrabbles to answer it. It slips from his cold, shaking fingers a few times before he can grip it properly.

“Billy?” he says, voice trembling, because he half expects this to be another trick, another Billy who will pull his heart out piece by piece, just to show him the tangled bloody mess of where Steve used to keep his love. But Billy just heaves a sigh of relief down the walkie, something ragged and familiar and human.

“Thank fuck, Steve,” he snaps, because that’s how Billy usually works. “I’ve been out of my mind. Shit’s weird down here. Are you okay?”

Steve pulls himself up and rests his back along the wall, just under the portrait. His heart is skipping in his chest, because they fucked up and ended up in the only actually fucking haunted house in America. With some shitty ghost who likes copying their faces and mocking their deepest insecurities.

But Billy doesn’t know. Billy didn’t just tell Steve that he was worthless for loving Billy. Everything is exactly the same as it was before.

“Yeah,” Steve says, hollowly. “I’m okay.”

Onto Chapter 3

@dragonflylady77 @cupc8keblonde @ihni

I genuinely can’t remember if anyone else wanted to be tagged for this specific fic so lmk!

[d-criss-news]

When it was announced that The Rosie O'Donnell Show would be back for one night only with a guest list of about 15 million Broadway talents, many of us wondered, would it be a return to the glory days of her multiple Emmy-winning daytime talk show or more like her ill-fated attempt to resuscitate the primetime variety format on NBC in 2008. It turned out to borrow from both those predecessors while evolving into something completely different — a low-tech lovefest that felt like eavesdropping on a group chat among friends looking out for one another in a time of need.

It was spontaneous, messy and blighted by some of the worst audio glitches imaginable. Yet it was often affectingly intimate, and even over an endurance-testing three-and-a-half commercial-free hours, also strangely addictive. The lack of slickness seemed to carry through to the relaxed manner of the guests, and their refreshing unpretentiousness.

Conceived by actor-producer (and occasional tech-support helpmate) Erich Bergen and live-streamed on Broadway.com and the website's YouTube channel, the show was a benefit for The Actors Fund, the charitable organization founded in 1882 that supports performers and behind-the-scenes theater workers. It raised more than half-a-million dollars, O'Donnell announced at the end of the marathon, sitting in a Hamilton hoodie and offering a champagne toast in a glass emblazoned with the face of Barbra Streisand.

She conducted the entire show from behind a laptop in her New Jersey garage, its floor spattered with the paint spillage of countless craft projects. "I'm a little bit of a Broadway nerd, I admit it," said O'Donnell, establishing her dual role as host and superfan.

Part of the show's unique pleasure was seeing favorite Broadway performers chilling in their own homes, almost all of them dressed down, with little visible attention to makeup or hair, and zero concern about unflattering angles. It was a great equalizer, proving that even artists who can hold packed theaters in the palm of their hands with a song are housebound and trying to make the best of a bad situation just like the rest of us — staying close to their families, killing time, learning to cook, wondering how long this unnerving isolation will last. Or how much longer we can put off that shower.

It was kind of comforting to see Idina Menzel sitting by her microwave and confessing, "I guess I'm going a little bonkers," while lamenting a failed lasagna attempt and sharing the challenges of homeschooling her son when she's no math genius. Likewise, hearing Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker talk about watching Columbo reruns or catching up on The Crown, while SJP begged for no spoilers on the final episode of The Sopranos, which she may now get to at last. Seeing Annette Bening on her Los Angeles balcony wearing a "Make America Kind Again" baseball cap was as much a tonic as watching Neil Patrick Harris do a card trick with his adorable twins. And who doesn't want to meet Gloria and Emilio Estefan's cute rescue dogs or hear about Lin-Manuel Miranda's kids' reaction to their first exposure to Singin' in the Rain?

Then there were the musical interludes.

Where else could you catch Patti LuPone, in magnificent voice, singing the urgently upbeat 1930s standard "A Hundred Years From Today," unaccompanied while sitting by the jukebox in her basement? Or Kelli O'Hara nestled into an armchair honoring Stephen Sondheim's 90th birthday by wrapping her crystalline soprano around "Take Me to the World," a hymn to unity from Evening Primrose? Or husband and wife Audra McDonald and Will Swenson duetting on the Charlie Chaplin evergreen, "Smile," from their Westchester living room? Or Darren Criss pouring his heart into another Sondheim classic about the desire for connection, "Being Alive," from Company, accompanying himself in a lovely pop arrangement on acoustic guitar from the sofa of his Los Angeles home? And while sound problems plagued Barry Manilow's selection of hits, ending with "I Made It Through the Rain," I was tickled to see his Judy Garland Kleenex dispenser.

Many of the song choices were thoughtfully apropos of the current crisis, offering comforting reassurance of the eventual return of resilience and togetherness while people in major cities all over the country self-isolate as the infection rate of the coronavirus pandemic continues to climb. Maybe Tituss Burgess at his home keyboard singing "The Glory of Love" is exactly the kind of uplift we all need right now.

Even in the seemingly random numbers, the entire enterprise was characterized by a spirit of generosity and sharing.

Kristin Chenoweth celebrated a Starbucks romance in "Taylor the Latte Boy." Matthew Morrison goofed it up on ukulele to a mashup of "The Bare Necessities" and "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" from his Disney Dreamin' album. Alan Menken whipped through a medley of his songs from The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Little Shop of Horrors, among others, at the piano. Ben Platt, also at the keyboard, did Bob Dylan's "Make You Feel My Love." And Adrienne Warren, the sensational star of Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, growled out "Simply the Best" from her bathtub. That was on the third attempt during a particularly troublesome audio patch, by which time her bubbles were history.

Prompted by O'Donnell, more than one guest reminded viewers that The Actors Fund is not just about Broadway artists pulling star salaries but also stagehands, makeup artists, wigmakers and ushers who work in what is very much a gig economy. The organization provides emergency financial assistance, social services, affordable housing, healthcare and insurance counseling and addiction support.

"Everything's a one-off," said Tony-winning actor Brian Stokes Mitchell, who serves as chairman of The Actors Fund. "That's how we get by, and many people are living on the edge right now."

"We're all just one, two, maybe three paychecks away from bankruptcy," added Billy Porter, whose mother is in an Actors Fund nursing home. "In this community, our whole job description is insecurity," said Judith Light.

Porter, along with Lea Salonga and longtime activist Light recalled how Broadway was on the frontlines of another life-threatening struggle during the early days of the AIDS crisis. All of them urged viewers to stay strong and take the time to reflect on the value of solidarity.

While O'Donnell has never been shy about her opposition to Donald Trump and everything he stands for, the show was remarkably light on politics, with just the occasional dig slipping through. She opened with a little celebratory "Yay!" while admitting she had missed the president's daily coronavirus press update, and then explained that she and her guests were not there to talk Trump. When Harvey Fierstein, O'Donnell's 2005 stage husband in Fiddler on the Roof, reminded her of all the election work still to be done, she said, "Let's all just know, we deserve a leader who tells the truth." And the delays in making coronavirus testing more widely available prompted a comment that the government should have gotten busy on that back in January when the writing was already on the wall.

Mostly, however, the hastily revamped Rosie O'Donnell Show was about bringing people together at this time of anxiety and isolation, as the host reconnected with artists whom she has championed since her reign as the Queen of Nice. "Everyone in the community loves you," she told Chita Rivera in a particularly effusive greeting. "You are our queen mother!"

Many of the performers would have been decompressing after rehearsals or Sunday matinees if the Broadway shutdown hadn't happened — Criss in American Buffalo, Broderick and Parker in Plaza Suite, Warren in Tina, Lauren Patten and Elizabeth Stanley in Jagged Little Pill. Sunday would have been LuPone's opening night in the gender-flipped revival of Company. Gavin Creel, who abruptly ended his London run in Waitress to fly home and is in isolation in a cabin in upstate New York, revealed the fear that he might have contracted the virus, given that several others in the cast have fallen ill, with one of them testing positive.

The show bridged the gap separating us from artists whose work we normally experience on the other side of the footlights. Most of us will never again get to see Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber exchange greetings in song on the birthday the two composers happen to share. From those celebrated veterans to rising-star newbies, the common denominator here was everybody facing the crisis just like us, reaching out a hand of friendship, albeit from a mandatory safe distance.

[galleywinter]

A Prayer You Can Borrow

It’s been a minute. It’s been more than a minute. But I promised that I would never abandon this story, and I meant it. Sometimes it will just take me a dog’s year to get chapters finished and released. I can’t apologize enough for the delay, but I can thank all of you who are still reading from the bottom of my heart. As always, I owe so many thanks to @eleneripenneth and to my husband. I also owe a thank you to Noah - an officer in my guild who has become an amazing cheerleader for this process, and who was gracious enough to be willing to step up and give me a third pair of eyes on this chapter before I published it.

Thank you. All of you.

With tumblr’s new stupidity regarding links in posts, I won’t be adding the AO3 or FFN links to this post, but you can find my account on the main page of my tumblr, and this story is very very easily findable in both places. I also won’t be including the links to my own previous chapters as I had before, but if you hit the “A Prayer You Can Borrow” tag on this post, you’ll find them.

Chapter 11 ____ Camdyn shifts her weight in the saddle, standing in the stirrups long enough to stretch her legs. It's the dead of night, but the influx of fel light on the Shore illuminates the jagged line of the Broken Shore laying like a gaping maw outlined in a halo of nauseating green on the horizon's edge. Camdyn's gut roils at the sight, and she frowns. Her memories of her time on the Shore, though only two days old, are a sick whirl of blood, spilled viscera, screams, endless battle, and the stench of charring flesh. Each pit of fel-tainted water and broken rock face seemed to bleed into the next. There had been too much horror at too great a speed to recall a single point of reference. She remembers the spire of the Tomb of Sargeras jutting into the sky like a broken spindle, but discerning the exact point where Highlord Tirion fell will likely prove more challenging. Her sigh is deep enough to be heard despite the headwind pushing into her face. The Light will guide them. Once she has her boots on the ground and begins walking the battlefield, something more solid will spark. She believes it to her core. The Light never abandons its champions.

With an arch of her back that pops her spine between her shoulders and a swift roll of her neck, she settles back in the saddle and calls up just enough holy power to illuminate her hand in the pitch darkness. Her fingers warm inside her gauntlet, and the skin of her wrist thrums with her pulse. She gestures to where Lord Tyrosus should be flying on her right: a quick press of her right fist to her chest and then a firm point over her gryphon's shoulder. An indication of her intention to scout ahead to ensure where the small contingent of paladins needs to land.  A quick flare of light illuminates him in his own saddle, and it's all the response she needs to lean over her gryphon's neck, urging it faster. The gryphon she rides isn't her beloved Belenos, but it's from the paladin stables and has clearly had an excellent trainer. As soon as her weight shifts wholly forward and her heels squeeze its ribs, the gryphon folds its wings tight to its sides, angling into a sharp dive. Adrenaline surges through Camdyn's veins, and her stomach leaps at the feeling of freefall. It's a thrill she embraces as she relaxes her hold on the reins and leans back in the saddle, letting her back press against the beast's haunches. She can't tell where the night stops and the sea starts, isn't sure of anything right now except for the adrenaline rush making her heart pound and her blood trip in her veins. All she can do is have faith in her mount. The rhythmic crash of the waves begins to overtake the whistle of the wind in her ears, and just as she can practically taste salt on her tongue, the gryphon's wings unfurl. Camdyn readies herself for the slam of gravity that comes just before the arc of the gryphon's recovery from the dive and begins to move with him, arching her hips to begin sitting in the saddle. Wind and salt spray lick at her face and whip through her hair as they pull out of the dive, so low to the water that the gryphon's talons momentarily graze the tops of the cresting waves. As she takes the reins back up with one hand, Camdyn pauses to pat the gryphon's neck with the other, digging her fingers under its thick feathers and getting a good scratch against its skin. "Good boy," she croons. It bobs briefly in the air in response, creeling softly with pleasure, and she takes a moment to orient herself. She's close enough to the Broken Shore now that she can make out the tip of the Tomb's spires reaching into the night, the core of sickly-green fel light shooting from its center like a beacon. The last time she'd seen the Highlord, it had been at the Tomb's base. She refuses to acknowledge the clench of her stomach as she turns her gryphon perpendicular to the Spire and tugs sharply back on the reins. A squeeze of her knees, and the gryphon angles into the air, climbing to clear the sheer cliff between them and the Tomb. As they reach the precipice, Camdyn begins to scout in earnest. To find something so small as a sword, even one as holy and powerful as the Ashbringer, seems almost impossible. She relies less on her eyes and more on the warmth of the Light filling her chest, sure in the knowledge that she'll be steered in the right direction to find Tirion, the Ashbringer, or both. Ahead of her, the Tomb thrusts up from the landscape like the hilt of some enormous sword. Below, the cliffs have fallen away and formed a crater. At some point, it had clearly been a holy site: broken, crumbling ruins matching pieces of the structures of temples she has seen in night elf glens litter the ground both on the cliff and in the crater itself. But what was once a place of worship now has the feel of a gladiatorial pit. Fel energies suffuse the entirety of it, making even the dark rockface appear green. In the center of the crater, an area has been cleared of all debris with a giant fel rune spreading from the water on the southern edge to the cliff face on the north. Ley lines radiate a sickly green instead of a healthy blue, and she can hear the barking hyena-laugh of imps. As she surveys the fetid pit, her blood runs cold. A flash of light, nothing more than a pinprick but golden - holy golden - bursts against the green backdrop and immediately winks out. Camdyn blinks, then stares, waiting to see if it's only a hallucination. She's almost across the width of the pit when a second flare fizzles into being and then snuffs out again. She fights back the hope that it's the Highlord as she yanks her gryphon back around, digging her heels into its flanks, urging it faster. Whoever it is, their time is beyond short. As they break away from the shoreline, Camdyn's heart is still pounding in her ears. She reaches a gentle hand forward, toward the gryphon's throat, and carefully strokes a stretch of its length. On command, the gryphon screeches out a call. An answer echoes ahead and to her left. Thirty meters, from the sound of it. She counts to six and then calls upon enough light that the edges of her vision begin to glow. Immediately, she sees Lord Tyrosus's form illuminate ahead of her. They both fall back into darkness until Camdyn can hear his gryphon's wings beat. She navigates to the sound, pulling up next to his path and guiding her gryphon to a holding pattern. The beasts can see well enough in the dark to avoid collision. Camdyn takes a few heartbeats to collect herself, fighting the constriction of her lungs. "Lord Tyrosus," she manages, pitching her voice just loud enough to be heard over the wind from the gryphons' wings, "there's a paladin on the Shore. They're in trouble." "Tirion?" Lord Tyrosus's voice is uncharacteristically tight, and light seeps from between his fingers where they clutch his reins. "I don't know," she answers, somehow managing to keep her voice level despite the waning surge of adrenaline. "I didn't get close enough." "Where?" "Eighty meters, due west. Just past the cliff, in a crater. There's a safe entry point from the sea. There's a chance we could approach from there and not be seen." Tyrosus's fist glows brighter before he lifts it over his head, swinging it in a wide arc and then pointing forward. "Lead the way, Camdyn," he says as the glow fades away, leaving them once again enveloped in darkness. Once more, her vision glows, and she feels the exhilaration of the Light surging within her, answering her call. She calls on just enough to make herself visible against the blackness of the night, but there's a danger to it that thrills through her every nerve: by making herself visible, she is not only a rallying point, she's a target. It was always a risky plan, but it was the only plan to be had. As the guide for the small arm of paladins infiltrating the Shore, she has to balance making herself visible to them with ensuring she won't be spotted by a scouting band of felbats. Or worse. Breaking from the arc of the holding pattern to turn her gryphon back toward the Shore, Camdyn angles into a slow descent rather than a sharp dive, aiming for the general vicinity of the southern edge of the cliff. Time becomes measured by the beat of her gryphon's wings - Light pours through her for four wingbeats, turning her vision bright and golden and leaving her skin tingling, before she quells it. Each time the Light dissipates, she's blinded by the sudden plummet into pure darkness. It's disorienting and leaves her essentially flying blind until two wing beats later when she calls upon the Light once more. As before, all she can do is have faith. The angle of the descent sharpens gradually, until she can hear the lap of water, and then her gryphon levels out and slows to an easy glide, waiting for her direction. At first, Camdyn is lost in darkness, but it isn't as stark as before and only lasts for the briefest of moments before her eyes adjust. When she can see again, she realizes that their flight path has brought her close enough to the Shore that the fel permeates the darkness in a soft slick poisonous wash of green phosphorescence. Righteous fury rises in her core, making her blood run hot. Nerves buzz under her skin, and restlessness makes her shift her weight in the saddle. Her gryphon bobs under her, responsive and ready, and she brushes the fingers of her right hand against the release of her baldric, her eyes still affixed to the shoreline. So many lives had been lost here not two days ago. So much agony and despair had been wrought here, and by creatures who had no right to exist in the Light's grace. She refuses to lose anyone else to them, and especially not one of their own. Not again. The instant she hears another set of wings beating in counterpoint to her gryphon's own, Camdyn stands in the saddle and urges her gryphon onward. Her gryphon rockets forward. The burst of speed makes the wind sting Camdyn's face, but she doesn't care. All that matters is the open patch of shore a handful of meters ahead. She keeps so low to the water that they're practically wave-skimming, skirting the scraggling rocks that jut up like broken teeth, using them to break the line of sight with the rest of the island to the west. Her gryphon slows as they reach the shoreline, so low that its claws dig into the soft sand exposed by the receding tide as she brings it in for a landing. The beachhead is clear, but the small river cutting through it is green and foul, churning lazily into the Sea. Camdyn's stomach clenches at the sight of it. Her dismount is deliberate and careful, trying to avoid any additional noise from the plates of her armor as it shifts. As she lifts the reins over her gryphon's head and drops them in the sand, the other six paladins make an equally determinedly silent landing beside her. "We have a detour," Lord Tyrosus says as he dismounts and drops his own gryphon's reins. "Camdyn reported seeing a paladin. We'll extract them, and you'll take them back to Light's Hope, Ebba." A human woman with broad shoulders and a short red braid nods once, brusquely. "Sir." "The rest of us will stay on the Shore and find the Ashbringer. Should we not find it here, Camdyn, do you know how to reach the place where Tirion fell?" Dread and anxiety knot in Camdyn's gut, but she shoves it down. "I believe so, yes." "Good." He unsheathes his massive broadsword. "Lead the way." Camdyn's left hand drops to her hip and her right raises to the release on her baldric, but her hammer doesn't even have time to brush against her fingers before the hairs on the nape of her neck stand at attention. A sense of wrongness washes through her, making her skin prickle, and then a hideous green portal swirls into being just ahead of them at the mouth of a chasm. "Did you think you had gone unnoticed?" It's a demon's voice, deep and grinding, like rocks and lava, flowing out from the portal and echoing off the walls of the chasm. "Such arrogance must be punished." The fel portal yawns wide, dilating rapidly, and the first felguards shoulder through, already running for them. Imps pour between their feet, and Camdyn can see the silhouettes of mo'arg and doomguards taking shape behind them as they approach the event horizon. Next to her, a dwarf slams his shield into an imp, sending its limp body flying through the air. "Get on with it!" he yells as he delivers a savage blow with his hammer that crunches a felhound's spine. "We'll hold them off!" Light radiates from him, nearly blinding in its brilliance. The demons surrounding him are smoking before they even engage him. Tyrosus's weight shifts in the sand, finding firmer footing as he brings his sword to bear against an incoming mo'arg. "And let you have all the fun, Iomhar?" The grin on Tyrosus's face turns feral as the mo'arg swings its massive clawed arm at Tyrosus's head, only to be met with the bladed edge of his broadswoard. The screech of metal slicing through metal sets Camdyn's teeth tingling. Before she can hear Iomhar's response, the rest of the demons rain down on them. Camdyn digs her own feet into the sand just as a felguard nears the limits of her hammer's reach. She heaves her hammer back and then lets the weight of it create its own momentum as she slams it forward toward the thing's chest. The demon catches the haft of her hammer between the massive teeth of his mace: the jarring impact shoots up her arms and makes the muscles of her shoulders scream. The demon uses their tangled weapons to its advantage, yanking her into range. It grins horribly, each of its massive sharp teeth as large as her own head. Fear claws up through her belly and into her throat, but she refuses to give in to it. The Light does not abandon its champions, and she is a warrior of the Light. As the felguard swings its free arm toward her, sharp claws raking for her gut, Camdyn calls on the Light. It flows into her in a silent tide as she releases her hammer, dropping to the sand, and slams a kick into the demon's knee. Bone snaps. When it falls  with a shrieking scream, she drives her right fist through its eye. The felguard screams again, in rage, and then in pain as she pours every ounce of the Light she can muster out through her clenched fist and into its skull. Its hand flies up, clawing for her, clamping around her arm to try and pull her away. Camdyn's fist is stuck in its skull; there's a squeal and a crunch as her armor buckles and then a sickening snap that feels like fire under her skin as the bones of her forearm give way under the pressure. The Light still flows through her, even as the felguard continues to crush its fingers around her arm, rebreaking it even as it heals, and the ebb and flow of the warm tingle of healing followed by the searing agony of fresh injury makes her vision go white. After what feels like an eternity, the felguard's grip finally goes wholly slack and it begins to fall toward her. Smoke pours from around her fist, still buried in the demon's orbital socket. She desperately tries to free her hand before the demon falls to the sand, twisting and yanking, but her gauntlet catches on bone deep in its skull every time. This time, the sharp snap of bone sends her to her knees and drives the air from her lungs. She sits for a minute in the sand, trying to catch her breath, the felguard's massive head heavy in her lap and her own mangled arm pinned beneath it. Before she can even discern how to try to free herself, Light blooms underneath her, warm and comforting. "Let me help. We have only moments." The rich, soothing voice comes from behind her, but she knows it immediately, and despite the nausea and the pain, Camdyn can feel tension bleeding from her at the sound of it. Ilaani rushes around to the demon's head, assessing the situation. Her face turns grim, and the light of her eyes dims as she narrows her eyes and frowns down at the felguard's head in Camdyn's lap. "This isn't going to be pretty," she murmurs, "and might even be more painful. Be brave, my friend." "I trust you," Camdyn says as she steels herself and closes her eyes. Ilaani grunts, and immediately there's the crunching, splintering sound of bone. Camdyn's arm yanks and jerks, and nausea threatens again as the pain flares with each movement. "It is over," Ilaani says. Camdyn opens her eyes to see that the felguard's skull is smashed and misshapen on its left side. Ilaani crouches down into the sand and reaches for Camdyn's arm, gently extracting it from the demon's orbital socket. Between the limpness of her own broken arm and wrist and the now free-floating pieces of the felguard's skull, it's quick work. "We need to stop meeting this way," Ilaani says gently with a sly smile as her nimble fingers work loose the straps of Camdyn's crushed vambrace. Camdyn huffs a chuckle. "I like to be dependable," she says as she begins to pull off her gauntlet. "And someone needs to make sure you're keeping up on the latest healing arts." The good swift tug necessary to free the gauntlet from her hand jostles her wrist, and white creeps into the edges of her vision again. She sucks in a whine through her teeth and then blows out a harsh breath. "Might as well be me," she finally grunts. She tries to grin. She knows it comes out as a grimace of pain instead. "I'd prefer the duty to be a bit more evenly distributed among members of the Crusade," Ilaani murmurs as she unbuckles Camdyn's bracer and lets it fall to the sand, "rather than the life's work of a single mercenary." Ilaani hurriedly unties the laces at the shoulder of Camdyn's gambeson, and Camdyn instinctively turns her head away as the cloth slides down her arm. The massive bulk of the felguard's corpse makes it impossible to see any of her fellow paladins, but light blooms against the dark sky, and the cacophony of combat still rages. She doesn't even have time to ask how their brothers and sisters fare before the feeling of the cool, gentle air over her skin is immediately subsumed by the warm comfort of the Light flowing into her, through her. "Turn your wrist," Ilaani says. Light still courses under Camdyn's skin, to her core, as she begins the first rotation. Before she can complete it, a shadow falls over them. Camdyn has only enough time to process the menacing laugh of a doomguard before Ilaani screams as she's hefted into the air. Camdyn feels the Light burble away to nothingness. Her arm still aches, but it's healed enough to move. She doesn't have time to liberate her hammer from under the fallen body of the felguard, but it doesn't matter. Doomguards, Camdyn knows, are more intelligent than some of their brethren. It immediately retreats out of Camdyn's reach, hovering overhead and leaving her helpless to do anything but watch as Ilaani struggles in its iron grasp. Camdyn can hear the squeal of armor buckling as the massive fingers tighten and can see the rivulet of blue liquid begin to snake its way from Ilaani's torso down her leg. The noise Ilaani makes is so guttural and raw, it makes every hair at the nape of Camdyn's neck stand up. And then she begins to glow so brightly it makes Camdyn wince and raise a hand to shield her eyes. She can't bear to look away; horror and certainty are too heavy in her gut. The doomguard screeches in pain and hurls Ilaani toward the beach. Ilaani's body thuds into the sand mere feet from her, and for a moment, hope wells in Camdyn's chest. She scrambles to her feet, trying to reach her friend. The doomguard beats her to it. The ground shakes beneath Camdyn's feet as it lands, and before she can even call upon the Light to drive it back, it raises a massive hoof over Ilaani's head. And brings that hoof down with so much force, sand flies into Camdyn's face. Bile rises in her throat, and she's almost certain she screams. But there is no time for grief. No time to process the pain. She runs at the doomguard instead, ducking to free the knife she keeps sheathed at her boot. Before the doomguard can even lift its hoof from the carnage, Camdyn is upon it. Its left hand is missing, burned away from Ilaani's final act. Its left hoof is what still holds her remains pinned to the sand. Flipping her knife in her grip, she digs deep and slashes just below the doomguard's knee, severing the tendon. She follows the motion through, pivoting as the doomguard falls to its knee and tries to counterbalance with a hand that's no longer there. Its wings furl out just as Camdyn faces it again, trying to fly away. Rage shoots through her, fast and hot, and her fingers tremble as she clamps them around the large, thick bone at the top of the wing. The doomguard swings its arm back, trying to knock her loose, but she's already cantilevering onto its back. With one brutal, swift motion, she drives her knife through its spine at the top of its neck. It topples to the ground, shouting and cursing into the sand. She slides from its back, leaving her knife in its spine. Even her breathing shakes as she approaches the body of the felguard and bends down to shoulder it over. She manages to flip the massive corpse over, revealing the entwined weapons beneath its belly. Camdyn grips the handle of her hammer firmly, yanking it free of the mace with a firm twist, and returns to the doomguard. It laughs, even though it lays helpless in the sand, watching her approach. "I will return," it sneers. "And I will make you watch as I crush everything you love." Camdyn's lip curls of its own accord. "Try," she spits as she rears back and slams the head of her hammer into its skull. Her entire world narrows to the shattering of bone and the squelch of soft tissue, to the initial resistance of her hammer striking home and the sluggish followthrough as it sinks into its target. Then there is nothing save the sound of her own ragged breaths in her ears. Time seems to slow as she slides her hand down her hammer's haft to reclaim it. She doesn't even have time to sling the ichor from it when a dark mass slams into her left shoulder, sending her somersaulting to the sand. Her vision is a riot of greens and blacks, and the speckling of stars and the smear of wave crests, and she almost misses the black streak swooping back in for a second attack. With her right hand still wrapped tightly around the haft of her hammer, she shoots her left out toward the shape. Her fingers graze against the felbat's leg, but it's enough. As soon as she feels the resistance through her gauntlet, she holds fast and calls upon the Light. Its screech of pain feels like an ice pick being driven into her spine. It only makes her grab its leg tighter. With a heave of effort, Camdyn yanks the felbat to the beach, using the momentum to stand, torquing her torso and crushing the felbat under her hammer. A bellow of rage echoes down the canyon toward the beachhead, growing as it resounds against the crags. Camdyn's attention snaps to the narrow pathway, and she digs her boots into the sand, buying purchase, readying herself for more demons to flow from the portal. Instead, the portal winks out of existence as suddenly as it had appeared. It should be a relief. It feels like foreboding. A heavy knot tightens in Camdyn's gut as she finally surveys the beach. Demon corpses litter the sand, and their gryphons are nowhere to be seen. Before she can count heads, Lord Tyrosus is before her, laying a careful hand on her shoulder. His one good eye regards her carefully, looking her over.  His gaze lingers on her bare right arm. His own left bracer has a new dent, Camdyn notices, and ichor is splattered across his breastplate. A thin, angry scratch under his eyepatch oozes blood, but he seems otherwise unharmed. Now. She knows he didn't go through the entire battle unscathed. "Are you well?" he asks. The answer is so simple and straightforward. Yes, she's unharmed. Her arm still works, the breaks cleanly healed. She still has her hand. But at what cost? Her tongue is like lead, and her chest feels too tight. Every breath is an effort. But there isn't time to mourn Ilaani now, not with so much still at stake, so she swallows the grief and the rage. "I'm fine," she finally manages. "But Ilaani..." Her voice goes rough as bile rises in her throat, and she makes a helpless gesture to the corpse behind her. She can't bear to look. "She...didn't make it." Lord Tyrosus's gaze slides past her to the body of the doomguard. If Camdyn hadn't been standing so close, she might have missed the minuscule slump of his shoulders. The pain in his face, though, is so palpable it makes her own heart twist again. "I'm so sorry," she says. It comes out as a broken whisper. "So am I," Lord Tyrosus murmurs. "So am I." He takes a deep breath before he speaks again. "Neacel" he calls, "retrieve our sister's body and take her home." "Aye, sir," a blond dwarf responds as he climbs over the body of the felguard. He thrusts a hand into his belt pouch and pulls out a whistle that he raises to his lips. No sound emits from it that Camdyn can hear, but a gryphon screeches overhead. "The rest of you," Tyrosus says, his voice dark, "with me. We rescue our comrade, retrieve the Ashbringer, and then we end the Legion." Tension thrums beneath Camdyn's skin, and she rolls her shoulders against the weight of her hammer in her hands. As their party advances into the ravine, the hairs on the back of Camdyn's neck still prickle, but the sickeningly familiar taint of fel doesn't twist in her stomach. Every step she takes up the path toward the temple feels heavy, as if her boots are stuck to the ground. For every meter they are allowed to continue unopposed and unhindered, the knot in Camdyn's gut tightens. Everything about it feels wrong. The ravine narrows sharply, becoming a channel so tight they must press through single file. As they pass through a hairpin turn, Lord Tyrosus pauses mid-step. His head cants ever so slightly, and adrenaline zips across Camdyn's every nerve as sees his hand tighten around the hilt of his sword. She falls in behind him, and then she hears it, too: the ringing clang of steel. Grunts of effort. Combat. Lord Tyrosus gives chase to the sound, leading the way through several more tight turns. The sounds of combat grow louder with each step they take, but it only drives Camdyn's heart into her ribs. With each step they take, the distortion of echo diminishes, and it becomes clear that their brother is running out of time. The sounds of defensive blows take too long to come, and the shing of repelled attacks are too slow and dull. There are far too few grunts, and they all sound labored and winded. Camdyn prays they reach him in time. The last few turns are the hardest to take; Camdyn burns with the need to find their brother, but the ravine is too narrow to press ahead at much more than a decent jog. Finally, she can see sky ahead and open space, the ravine widening into what must have once been the heart of the temple. Camdyn spills out of the turn and slams into Lord Tyrosus's back. Ahead of them, a flash of Light splutters weakly as metal clatters against metal. Camdyn's heart leaps into her mouth. On the far side of the temple is Tirion Fordring, broken and battered but alive.