Chapter Text
Scanlan had about two heartbeats worth of time to figure out how to keep Vox Machina from beating the shit out of each other. He had about two heartbeats before what was about to happened will have happened.
He saw it before any of them did. And past that, he heard it before he saw it—the spinning of something sharp through the air, a sound he knew from his early days of forcing his wobbly knees onto a stage in front of impatient, drunken crowds. They liked to throw thing. They liked to throw sharp thing. So Scanlan had learned the quick coiling of a knife through open air and the art of dodging before it gave him an unflattering piercing.
Scanlan registered the metallic whine of a pinwheeling blade and the thump of an oversized daisy head, pruned by the evil goddamn sword.
The countdown began the second he saw the glint of metal.
Ba-thump.
Tension was smothered around the group like smoke from boiling oil. Scanlan had been doing his damnedest to keep things civil, hoping that after a few days of stewing, Vax would stop sharping his knives, Keyleth would put her incisors back into her gums, and Vex would stop knotting her laces before she slept.
But the whizz of metal might as well be bucket of cold water into that boiling oil.
Ba-thump.
Maybe piss off a flower? Get eaten by one and give them something more pressing than their anger to focus on? Fuck, no, he was way too bite-sized for that. Vax’s legs had stuck out when the gardenias went after him, but Scanlan would be sliding down its gullet with one well-placed chomp.
Ba-th—
Scanlan ducked on instinct. The sword barreled into Grog’s grasp, folding him back by a few steps from the sheer momentum. Everyone whirled to find him more red-handed than anyone has ever been. Fires lit under the twins and a chime of laughter sprang from the satyr.
“That,” he smiled, “is what.”
Time’s up; Scanlan drew a blank.
Grog dropped the sword, the heavy clunk as the sharp end cleaved half a foot into the earth loosening everyone’s vocal chords before Scanlan could figure out how the hell he was gonna diffuse this
“The fuck is that doing here?” Vex demanded at the same time a protective arm from Keyleth curled around Pike.
“I don’t know!”
“Vex, hang on—“ Scanlan tried, but she shouldered past him, mouth halfway to a snarl and knuckles whitening against curve of her bow.
Garmeile nudged Percy with one muddy hoof. “Told you it would be a sight, didn’t I.”
“You said it was gone!” Vex shouted.
“It was!”
“Guys!” Scanlan tried, but Keyleth was yelling too; their voices started to overlap.
“Then why’s it in front of you?!”
“It didn’t just get up and walk!”
“I—it’s—“ Grog looked lost. “It keeps coming back!”
Percy, still as a pond, looked more shocked than immediately angry. “How long—“
Garemelie clapped, all too gleeful. “Oh, the whole time.” He appeared at Grog’s side, poking at him. “Isn’t that right?”
Vex wheeled around, face seizing. “The whole time?”
“You said you got rid of it.” Vax stalked forward and his fist was drawing back and ah fuck he was gonna do something really stupid.
Scanlan jumped between the two before Vax started swinging. “Vax, chill!”
“I did!” Grog cried. “But it—it keeps coming back!”
Scanlan’s eyes darted between the group, between Vex’s balling hands, Grog’s confused expression, the twitching of Keyleth’s upper lip. A crackling of energy wove through them. Scanlan couldn’t tell who it was coming from, but he felt the twinges of power threading around the group. If the spell finished sewing itself together, this would be unsalvageable.
Fuck it.
Scanlan took a deep breath, put two fingers in his mouth, and blew hard. His ears popped; the air cracked.
The whistle ripped through the tension; through the spell someone had been spinning into a net. He didn’t feel particularly bad when they all flinched, jumping to cover their ears. The flowers rippled; a smattering of petals wavered to the ground, heavy like tanned leather.
“What the hell Scanl—“ A purple hand smacked over Vex’s face.
“Everybody shut up!” He hollered. Magic popped at the back of his mouth like hard candy and sure enough, they shut up. “Have you all lost your minds?! Were you really about to start a fight over—what—a sword? Seriously?”
“The goat said—“ Percy started.
“Fuck what the goat said! He’s done nothing but mess with us. Perc’, he drew you with three dicks! Are you really gonna take that little weirdo at his word?”
Garemelie made a small grumble of offence. Scanlan barked a middle C and purple-hand bitchslapped the satyr into a birch-sized daisy.
His gaze slashed across the group, daring them to argue, daring them to defend themselves.
Keyleth looked almost embarrassed, as did Percy. Vex’s arms folded against her chest, brows sunken. Even Vax, his temper cut shortest as of late, slid his dagger back into its leather skin with red creeping up his ears. Good. They should be fucking embarrassed.
Grog was staring at him with this unbearably earnest look spattered over his face.
“He’s right.” Vex, fingers kneading the bridge of her nose, admitted. “We—we’re pissed and we’re tired and we can’t go trusting some Fey creature over each other.”
Scanlan threw up his arms, bitter but victorious. “Thank you! We all good now? We all fucking calm?”
He saw nods, heard murmurs, but before he could wring them out any further, a quiet, firm voice stitched through the fabric of the air. “Buddies,”
Pike stepped forward. Scanlan’s mouth reeled shut like a drawbridge to a keep.
The floor was hers.
“You said you got rid of it.” Her hands clutched against her tunic, the draped fabric pulled taut under her fingers.
It was hard, in that moment, not to notice the distance between them. They usually swamped each other, attached at the very least by a friendly nudge of an elbow and at most with Grog folding around her like an envelope to a letter.
Now they stood at arm’s length, and it was the closest they had been in days.
“I did,” Grog said, “I threw it away but it… It keeps coming back. I’ve thrown it three times. I didn’t even hear it land last time, that’s how far it went.”
She took another step, but halted just shy of reaching-range. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
There was a barrier between them. Something keeping the whole as two split halves.
Scanlan had the urge to look elsewhere, to turn his head to study a clump of skittering, jewel-coloured bugs and maybe even cover his ears. He could see it on the others faces, the feeling that this wasn’t for them to see.
Grog shrugged. “Cause you’d be pissed if I did.”
“He’s got a point.” Garemelie called. “You lot don’t seem pleased.”
“Stay out of this.” Pike snapped at him right as Grog seemed to remember the little shit had been hanging around since the start of this whole boomeranging sword ordeal.
“You!” He rounded, his anger as sudden as it was booming. “You did something!” Garemelie folded his arms as Grog came stomping over, Pike’s instance to ignore the fucking faun, Grog going unheeded.
“I did no such thing! I would never interfere in a plot as juicy as this.”
“Then why is this thing following me!”
“Oh come now, did you think a little toss would be enough to get rid of it?”
Grog paused. “Yes?”
He clicked his tongue. “It’ll take more than that to deter a weapon as hungry as that one.”
“He was always saying that he’s hungry…” Grog trailed and for a second time, the rest of Vox Machine rounded on him like coyotes to a feather-stripped eagle, ready to take retribution for a stolen pup as the same thought, Scanlan could only assume, crossed all their minds: it can talk?!
All Scanlan’s hard work to keep things from imploding, ruined by a single poorly ordered collection of words.
Garemelie laughed, tipping a non-existent hat to them. “Well! My work here is done! Have fun in the elven city. It’s a shortcut.”
Garemelie bowed, his hand flourishing. The flowers bowed with him, revealing just beyond the glade. There stood the gleaming, curved tips of stone towers.
Despite everything, relief washed over him because oh sweet heavens a city. A real city with beds and food and maybe even some booze. A city that would take their attention away from their anger and back onto the task at hand: getting the fuck out of the Fey Realm.
“Finally,” Scanlan exhaled, at the exact time Vex and Vax groaned, “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Vex’s long-suffering sigh when he asked if she’d been to Syngorn before told him all he needed to know, but the hissed admission that the twins lived there with their father was icing on the cake.
“That’s good, isn’t it?” Keyleth asked, peering through the greenery towards the city brimming with people and, moreover, brimming with guards. “If you know someone here, maybe he can help. Garemelie said it was a shortcut. Maybe he meant a shortcut back to Tal’Dorei?”
She hadn’t seemed to pick up on the way Vex had said the word father like it was a curse, or Vax’s newly acquired perma-scowl.
“He’s a bitch.” Vex told her.
“Ah.”
“We can just sneak through.” Vax replied, jaw set, but his sister just scoffed.
“You’re joking. With Syngorn’s security? Maybe one or two of us can slip past, but everyone? No way. And besides,” her eyes flickered to Pike, “the last thing we need it a fight with Syngorn’s gendarmerie.”
“So we split.” Scanlan said casually, finger in his ear. “Some of us cause a scene so you can talk to your pops, some of us,” he inclined his head towards Pike, “lay low and do some… reconnaissance.”
Reconnaissance was their way of saying do absolute jack shit. It had been long since established, and furthermore, long since respected, that if someone called recon, they are off the hook for non-urgent matters.
Pike’s nose scrunched up. “Oh come on. I don’t need recon duty.” They all looked to her sharply. Pike glanced down, finding herself braced against a tree, hands trembling. Her face flushed. “You all suck.”
“You’ll thank us later, Pickle.” Vax clasped her shoulder with a wink.
She elbowed him. There was little force behind it, though. Scanlan wasn’t entirely sure if it was because she didn’t mean it, or if the strength had yet to return to her.
He chose to believe the former, but the fact of the matter was that she was not doing well. Even with magic gradually leeching back into her hands and mumbled, healing wisps seeping from her mouth, Pike was pallid and clammy. Her steps swayed; she fell asleep early and woke late. He had caught a glimpse, two nights ago, of the long tear through her back as Keyleth rewrapped the wound. The centre had closed, but there was still a half inch deep fissure that started by her shoulder and vanished under her belted trousers. The wound was still bleeding, not much but enough to prickle through the wrappings. The edges where skin should be was washed in bruises.
Vex was right.
She was barely in shape to travel, let alone fight.
A smile pulled at Vex’s mouth. “Sorry love, but my brother is right. We rather like having you in one piece.”
Pike grumbled. “Fine. Whatever. Fucking… recon.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Scanlan saw Grog’s hand begin to raise. “Will I be doin’ recon too?”
He, almost automatically, said yes. Because those four had been at Grog’s throat for days now, and even if Scanlan wasn’t really stoked with the guy at the moment, he didn’t want to feed him to the wolves.
Vax gave Pike a sidelong look. “Is he?”
And just then, he saw it. A flicker, a whip, a flash of emotion on her that was plastered over as soon as the crack appeared. The answer was no. Scanlan saw it clear as day, even if he didn’t have the time to peel back the layers of why and when and how long, he could tell. No, resounding no, a million times no, please don’t make me say yes. That what he saw in that split second.
The answer she wanted to give was no, but Grog’s face was hopeful and she wouldn’t turn him away.
So, bullheaded, Scanlan answered before she could lie through her teeth. “Nah, he’s with you guys.”
Vex rolled her eyes. “We weren’t asking you.”
Pike turned to glare at him, mouth opening to argue or admonish but he forged on.
“C’mon Vex, do you really think we can sneak through the city with the most conspicuous guy around? Does reconnaissance mean nothing to you?”
The obvious answer of yes, of course it means nothing, it means nothing to all of us was graciously withheld, which meant that Vex was at the very least willing to hear his pitch.
Grog frowned. “I’m conspicuous?”
To his complete and utter surprise, Percy spoke up. “Yes. You are.” He eyed Vex. “I will say, he isn’t wrong. If your father is as much of a…” he paused, gesturing.
“Fuckface?” Vax offered.
“Cunt?” Vex suggested.
“Difficult person,” Percy settled on, “as you’ve said, having our muscle with us wouldn’t hurt. Not to mention we will need to cause quiet the commotion if we want to get your father’s attention.”
“I can do commotion.” Grog agreed.
Scanlan only blinked twice, surprised by the flash in a pan type moment it was to have Percy definitively in his corner. Percy’s gaze met his for a split second and Scanlan could almost feel an arc of electricity leap between them. Not words exactly, but the clear impression that they were on the same page about… something.
Vex’s lips pressed together. “Hm.”
Scanlan jumped right back into character.
“Exactly! And,” He continued, sidling up next to Pike, an arm slung around her shoulders. “Team recon can keep an eye on the stalker sword and see if it really is magically following Grog or if the little ginger werido did something.”
“Or Grog just kept the damn thing.” Vax said under his breath.
“Can all of you just—“ Pike’s hands curled up, shoulders hiked, before taking in a slow breath and fixing Grog with a look Scanlan couldn’t quite make sense of. “What do you wanna do, bud?”
Grog stared back. The sound of rusty gears turning in his head were almost audible as his brain chewed his thoughts into a decision and that decision into a sentence. A small smile cracked over his face as. “I wanna knock some heads.”
Percy pulled him aside, picking at the skin of his nails. “Scanlan,” he started with that lecturing tone that drove everyone insane.
Scanlan interrupted before he could get the ball rolling. “I know.”
Percy startled; his expression shifted in microscopic measures. “How…?”
“They don’t call me a people person for nothing.” Percy struggled to muster up a snort to the flat fallen joke, and Scanlan sighed. “Look, I’m not stupid. She’s on edge and it’s not exactly hard to figure out why.”
“Do you think Grog has noticed?”
“Not a chance.” He raked a hand through his hair. It was in need of a wash, but he’d given Keyleth his soap. “Listen, Percy, I know none of you are super trusting of him right now but don’t be a dickhead, okay? Just… keep an eye on him for me.”
Percy got this soft look to him all of a sudden. He nodded. “I’ll do my best. And Scanlan, keep an eye on her for the rest of us?”
“Yeah. Yes. For sure.”
They wrapped the sword’s blade in a blanket. Team recon headed to one side, where Vax said there was a likely sluggish shopping district, and the rest would plunge headlong into the thickest grove of guards and halberds they could find. Few thing got a noble’s attention like a bunch of assholes making their elite security force eat their own teeth!
They would meet at the cities far side at dusk.
Pike clutched the sword close and a shiver skated down his spine at the sight. It was taller than her by almost a foot. The thinnest part of the blade still outpaced the thickest part of her arm.
It had lifted her off the ground, he remembered her feet dangling. Scanlan shut his eyes and wished their splitting party good luck.
“Inn?” He asked as soon as they were out of earshot.
Pike exhaled, the sword slumping from her hands enough for the tip to scrape her boot. “I’ve never wanted a real bed more than I do right now.”
Their reconnaissance began and ended with tracking down a place to crash. Vex hadn't been kidding about the security, but hey, an illusion to make them both a few feet taller took a mere strum of an E chord.
Turns out, there were very few inns in Syngorn. Three, to be exact. One of which was some big, fancy keep that was for diplomats and queens and lords and whatever other titles royalty made up for themselves. The second was more brothel than inn because as prudish as they were, apparently elves could be freaks too.
That one had been vetoed. They wound up slipping through the front door of a little limestone-walled house with metal arches gliding up the windows, it’s rooms occupied only by those whose homes were left behind by Syngorn’s leap to the Fey Realm.
“Food?” Scanlan suggested once they’d made it up to the single room his purse and a vampish wink could allow.
Pike clutched her package a little tighter. “Not really hungry.”
“I’ll bring you back something good.”
She didn’t seem to hear him. She hesitantly settled the sword against a stone wall, the illusion swimming around her. It rippled, then broke. Her tunic became dirty again, her hair slouching down her back, circles under here eyes. The swords tip sank into the wooden floor, just enough to leave an incision. Hopefully not enough to lose Scanlan his security deposit.
“I’ll be back in a bit.”
He shilled out the remains of his silver coins for two skewers. They smelled sweet and Scanlan figured they could both do with something a little sweet right now.
Pike sat exactly where she’d been when he left, perched over the side of the oversized bed, feet dangling, one hand cradling the pendant she wore around her neck.
Through the center, he could still see the faint line made by Delilah’s dark howl of magic.
He’d been hoping she would do the smart thing and get some rest while there was a mattress available.
“Hey.” Pike jumped. Scanlan raised the skewers. “I come with gifts.”
“I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Well you were staring that thing down pretty hard.” He pushed the door shut with his heel.
“Grog said it was following him.” She mumbled back, as if that perfectly explained it.
He decided not to disclose the fact that Grog also said he could piss twenty feet and was markedly wrong.
He instead handed her a skewer and hopped onto the bed. She did not comment on the fact that an hour ago she said she didn’t want anything and chewed absently at the roasted butternut.
“So…” He drawled. “Has it, like, moved?”
She kicked him lightly. “No, it hasn’t moved.”
He held up his hands in surrender. “Just asking.”
Pike looked down at her shoes. The silence stretched just long enough for him to feel like he’d actually ticked her off and not just the good-natured back and forth that usually volleyed between them.
He opened his mouth to crack another joke, or maybe to apologize if Pike’s hands gripped her trousers any tighter.
“Why’d you volunteer for babysitting?” She asked, a hint of self-annoyance dampening the words just enough to make it a question and not a well-meant joke.
The least he could do was respond without getting too serious. “Do I look like I wanna meet Vex and Vax’s dad?”
“Fair enough.” She said, aloud. Fucking liar, she said with a glance.
He redirected as best he could, the unspoken jab spun back around to face her. “I thought you were gonna take a snooze.” Scanlan stuck another piece of butternut between his teeth.
“I was. I will.”
He gestured with a roll of his hand. “But…?”
She bit off a chunk of meat from the skewer, looking almost dejected. “Don’t laugh.”
“Okay…?”
She leaned forward, elbows on her knees. Her skewer slid forward, but didn’t fall. “I’m so fucking tired, but I… he said it was following him and if I stop watching it—“
Oh, he thought.
“Oh.” He said.
Pike scrubbed at her face with the heel of her hand. “Can you maybe, I don’t know, just—?”
“For sure. I will watch it like a hawk.”
“Thank you. And you’ll wake me up soon?”
“Yeah, yeah. Go to sleep.”
“An hour?”
“Sure, an hour.”
She didn’t bother lifting the covers, just settled herself carefully on one side and he did his very best to ignore how gingerly she laid, the grit teeth, the hiss that pulled at the corners of her mouth.
Pike took up a fraction of the bed. The space next to her was empty. Noticeably empty. It was almost as if she was curving herself around someone who wasn’t there.
He trained his gaze on the sword and spent the time it took for her to pass out remembering the colour the metal had been when he had rushed to Grog’s side, the gleam of the blade as it grew from soaking up blood.
Scanlan sat alone with the sword.
He did not wake her in an hour.
The wound was hot.
Percy’s hands eclipsed his, and Scanlan felt like an idiot for trying to hold the wound shut in the first place. He struggled to string together a melody, not daring to bring it past a hum. It wasn’t loud enough for him to hear it. He was probably flat.
He could just barely see the gleam of his shoddy attempt at a healing spell prickle against the edges of the wound. It lingered there like heat rising off a stone street.
Pike shuddered. She wasn’t out yet, but she certainly wasn’t with them anymore. Beside him, Percy swore and started to yank off his coat. With one hand still held against Pike’s ribs, Percy bit into the thick fabric of the tails and tore the stitches.
Keyleth swallowed thickly. “What are you—“
“It’s not slowing.” Percy’s coat unraveled further. “We need to pack the wound.”
Scanlan was definitely flat.
Even if he wasn’t, he was trying to stop a ship from sinking with a single bailing bucket. They needed someone who could heal. Someone who could heal and wasn’t nodding off from blood loss.
“Keyleth,” Scanlan turned to find her, “y-you can heal, right?”
She stared at him, lip trembling.
“At Whitestone.” Scanlan said, louder. “You healed Percy’s sister, right? How did you do it?”
“I-I don’t have the right things.”
He nearly shouted back: “Then fucking improvise!”
She snapped out of her panic, eyes bright with tears as they rang into focus. “Okay. Okay.” She cupped her hands in front of her as a glimmer of magic threaded between her palms, fingers a loom to the spell.
Percy shoved cloth under Scanlan’s hands. “If whatever she’d doing fails—“
“Pack the wound.” Scanlan echoed, doing just that.
Keyleth grasped at the ground, chalky dirt gathered in her hands, and Scanlan resumed his pitchy, quiet tune. He hoped it wasn’t useless. From Keyleth’s pockets came dried leaves, a shave of bark. She spat into her palm.
Percy balled up another length of his coat. His dark blue, woolen, expensive coat that he used to cling to almost as much as Scanlan clung to his lute. And there it was, ripped and stained and soiled.
Keyleth’s hands lit up, eyes shut. A flare of green, the gurgling of a spell struggling to coalesce, teetering on the brink of collapse. It smelled like lantern oil burning. It was a smell he knew well.
Keyleth rocked back and forth. The wad of dirt and crushed up weeds started to congeal.
It looked like something that was decomposing.
Pike hiccupped under him and Scanlan just sat there on his heels, watching, horrified, as her eyes finally glazed over. Her skin continued to whiten.
Keyleth’s shoulder’s bent inward. “Shit, shit, shit.” The muck in her hands turned watery, running through her fingers. “No, come on.”
Scanlan’s heart crawled into his mouth.
“You can heal too, can’t you?” Percy asked, frantic. “That time Vex broke her fingers. You fixed them up.”
Scanlan felt his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth, voice lodged in his throat. Because how could he even say it. How could he say that he’d been trying this whole time and it had done nothing.
The answer was he couldn’t. He set his jaw and looked to Keyleth. “Switch with me.”
She wilted through a nod, hands pressing where Scanlan’s had been. His lute was out of tune from the hard fall. He hoped nothing had broken because then they’d be well and truly screwed.
His hands, still wet, touched the neck of the lute and he was suddenly glad he’d opted for catgut strings when he’d bought the instrument. The sound was richer, had been his reason then. A warmer tone.
Now, he was glad because at least this way, the smearing of blood from his fingers didn’t seem as wrong. These strings were used to being covered in blood. They were used to gore. That’s where they came from in the first place.
Scanlan’s teeth clicked as some shaky recitative came tumbling out.
He held the note in place as he repeated: “The wound will close, the wound will close.”
Then, a melody.
His fingers slid over the frets, slick. The chords were hard to hold; his hands kept slipping. He plucked instead. A few bars wobbled out.
He abandoned the usuals—romanesca, bird changes, mixed meters—and went for something stable. Something chromatic, something he could harmonize.
He played carefully, the notes repeating as he sang along. Again came the whiff of lantern oil. The magic was heaving itself into place, dense under his hold. It was like trying to carve into marble when he only ever worked with clay.
Scanlan didn’t even realize it until later, but he’d chosen a very particular progression of chords.
C minor to B flat major, A flat major to G major.
I, VII♭, VI♭, V.
When he had realized, hours later, after the smell of burnt flesh faded and they’d all stopped fucking crying, he wanted to slap himself.
A lament progression. He’d played a fucking lament.
He got dizzy before he finished a dozen bars, nauseous before he could even get through an audition cut.
He threw up by the time he’d trawled through another five bars, and before he could even limp into a bridge, Scanlan fell forward. His lute clattered to the ground. The strings were bloating, just slightly. His hands ached and he felt sweat run down the back of his neck. It took a heave to lift his eyes.
The wound did not close.
Vex watched them go, trepidation boiling in her gut and a sour taste creeping into her mouth. Pike and Scanlan trudged off into the bushes, colour snapping off the leaves, rippling as though the space it passed through was water.
Days had passed. Nothing seemed to have changed. Nothing was getting better. Pike was not getting better.
Vex skipped into step with Percy, eyes low. “The fuck was that about?”
She had her suspicions. Something about Pike, something about Grog, something about not wanting to let their cleric go off for fear that something horrible would happen if they weren’t there, and so on.
But Percy didn’t so much as glance at her as he cleared his throat and responded: “What was what about?”
He was impossible. “You yapping with Scanlan.”
“Am I not allowed to talk to a friend?”
He was being dense on purpose, she could tell. There was a stiffness in his shoulders that gave it away, but she knew a mule when she saw one. If she wanted an answer, she’d have to wring it out.
She threw her braid over her shoulder, chin held high as if she didn’t give a damn. She did. “Fine, then. Would you like to take the guy on the left or on the right?”
“Left.”
“Splendid.”
Their father was a snobbish and sharp as ever. Vex kept her manners about her and tried not to feel any sort of affection when Devon declared how happy she was to see them, how happy their father surely would be as well.
He certainly didn’t seem happy. He scoffed and scowled and then Grog’s lumbering shadow fell upon him as they settled into his grand, drab study. His eyes had widened by a fraction. She caught a twinge of a smile on Vax’s face and for a moment wondered how sincere Scanlan has been when he proposed having Grog there to intimidate their father.
She wondered if it was working.
He didn’t offer help them, per se, but to both her own and Vax’s surprise, he offered something of a tip.
“Syngorn can shift between realms.” He said. Vex rolled her eyes because yeah, no shit it could. “It can also send individuals, if the powers that be deem it necessary.”
“And getting rid of us would be necessary?” She raised a brow.
“Certainly not. But getting rid of an item the Chroma Conclave is chasing after might. If you’re so desperate to escape the Fey Realm, then give them a reason to send you away.”
The group exchanged glanced, puzzled, before Keyleth jumped. “The vestige! We were so wrapped up with—“ With Grog, with Pike, with that stupid sword, “—everything else! The shift spell was to take us to the next vestige.”
“Your aim was off, then.”
Vax glared. “But it is here.”
“It is. And we have no use for a dragon slaying bow.”
“Awfully generous of you.” Vax accused.
“If the bow isn’t here, what reason would a dragon have to come? Syngorn would be safe, and you would be gone.”
When they reached the edge of the city, ready to plunge into the parameter of the Shademurk Bog, Percy fell in step next to her.
“I’m sorry.” He said quietly. “He was a cunt.”
Her foot crossed from the edge of the city into the wetlands. Her heel sank half an inch; Vex gave him a sly look. “Is this the part where I say I told you so?”
The Shademurk Bog was not kind to them. No bog had ever been kind to anyone, but this one was alive and somehow, it knew her well.
It hissed in her ear, guiding her feet. She barely recognized Keyleth’s muffled yelp, her brother, Percy, but their voices came through dulled. Their words did not reach her.
Instead, the water, the silt and bark and algae, it sang to her. Vex couldn’t hear anything else. Vines embraced her, held her. It was gentle.
Some part of her knew she was in danger. An instinct rooted deep in her being that ensured her feet that never touched the ground more than by the toe—it urged her to get away.
But the tree was glowing softly, a sweetness in her nose drowning out her hard-earned knack for sniffing out trouble. It was lulling her.
“Vex’ahlia.” The Shademurk crooned. Its decaying hand cradled her cheek. “Hasn’t this journey been long? Hasn’t it been frightening?”
She felt herself nod.
“Wouldn’t you like to rest?” It swayed, brushing away stray hairs carefully. “No more rot, no more magic, no more pain.”
A memory crackled just under the surface, just breeching the surface of her consciousness.
You’ve got rot in your magic.
This was bad. This was a trap and she was knee-deep in it—the bog, shit, it was pulling her down, it had already swallowed her up past her calves—but she couldn’t do anything.
“Oh, Vex’aliah.”
And the offer was sweet. It was tempting.
It was up to her hips now, the quagmire cool against the muggy heat.
And then, like cat throw into ice water, a roar yanked her out of it. Something spun past her face and severed the Shademurk’s outstretched hand from its wooden wrist. The hand spewed sap and blood.
The mud around her legs loosened. The fist slamming against the Shademurk’s wailing elven face pulled her out from whatever reverie it out her under. She jolted.
Grog bolted past her, scowling as he sank another heavy fist into the Shademurk’s neck, ribs, nose. It clawed at him uselessly.
Vex nearly lost a shoe to the bog as she scrambled back, bow drawn. Vax appeared at her side. “Are you okay?”
“I—“ She turned and saw Grog’s arms lift. And there it was again, the gleam of iron drinking the blood that leaked from the Shademurk’s approximation of a body.
He plunged the sword down and she could swear the blade grew.
“He didn’t have that before.” Her bow lowered. “We left it behind.”
Vax’s gaze followed hers, eyes winding just a fraction. “How—“
“He said it kept coming back.”
“Fuck.” Vax said under his breath.
“Fuck.” Vex agreed.
“I told you so.” Grog shouted.
It was well past dark when they arrived. Sundown had been their meeting time. Which, in hindsight, had been a bad decision. It wasn’t exactly easy to tell when the sun was going down around here.
“Sorry we’re behind.” Pike called. Her eyes were scanning for something.
Vex raised a brow as their chariot (Scanlan’s big stupid hand) approached. “Took you long enough.”
Scanlan slid off the hand, hands braced on his knees. “She slept in.”
Good, Vex thought. “Wow,” she drawled aloud.
“He didn’t wake me up when he was supposed to.” Pike corrected curtly, gaze landing on Grog and his sword with a half-relived sigh.
She still looked like shit. Despite Vex seeing her try time and time again to heal herself, Pike was still a shade too grey and a step too slow.
Vex did not comment on this.
“Whatever. We’re here now. Did you dad buck up or are we rougin’ it?”
“Neither.” Vex held up her prize. “We got another vestige.”
Scanlan blinked a few times. “I’m gonna be so real, I forgot about that.”
Pike leaned over, whispering out of the side of her mouth. “Were we looking for one?”
“No?”
“Well,” She interrupted, “we’ve got one, and it might be able to get us back to Tal’Dorei.”
Scanlan’s eyes went big. “You got a teleporting bow? First the broom and now this?!” She was tempted to just let him believe that for a while, but a grating voice piped up before she could feign a brag about her incredible new find. “The bow can’t teleport, stupid. Your friend is just a sellout.”
She swatted at Garemelie, but he twirled out of the way before the back of her hand could knock his horns loose. “Hey now, is that any way to greet me?” He whined. “And one with good news too!”
“What do you want.” She snapped.
“No need for an attitude, I’m just here to inform you that I have decided your little adventure was just entertaining enough for us to be friends!” He snapped and a leather cord with half a heart appeared around her neck.
Garemelie held up his own half cheerily. Vex’s eye twitched. “Is that all?”
“And since we’re friends, I figured I could do you a wee favour.” He snapped again, and this time, there was a wink of light. “Ta-da! One ticket to the material plain!”
The light coalesced into a slit through the air, glimmering like heat off a fire. Between the flickers, Vex could see the blurry afterimage of a field, mountains, and sunlight.
“You could have done that the whole time?!” Vax cried. “Why’d you wait this long!”
Garemelie crossed his hairy little arms, nose in the air. “Because you were rude. Why would I be friends with rude people?”
“Oh, and you weren’t?” Vax took the words right out of her mouth.
He put a hand to his chest, offended by the actual, factual truth. “I have been nothing but a perfect angle since we’ve met!”
Vax lunged. Garemelie flicked one finger and before the hit could land, the portal swallowed them all whole. Vex’s ears popped hard; the ground moved under her feet, vision swimming as the portal folded inward.
Garemile’s mouth stuck through the seam before it shut. “You can thank me later! And take better care of your doctor before she’s all rotted away!”
And then it zipped itself closed with a wet pop.
Vax swung at open air; Vex stumbled slightly. The rest of them landed in a disorientated heap. She winced at the loud thump of Grog’s face colliding with the grass.
“Well,” Percy dusted himself off a bit. “That was... interesting.”
“You mean that was fucking horrible?” Scanlan asked, slightly green in the cheeks.
“Yes, precisely.”
Vex shook her head. The vertigo cleared a bit, but something he said kept on circling like flies to a torch.
Before she’s all rotted away. The fuck did that mean? And why would—
“Wa-d a shec-oned.” Grog cut off her thought, still face-down in the grass. His head rose, chewing on something with this puzzled look. “This dirt tastes familiar…”
The loud, grainy crunch of what was, apparently, dirt, made Vex cringe.
“Ew.” She said flatly.
He held up a finger, chewing harder, swishing it back and forth. She heard Scanlan echo her ew sentiment while Keyleth hauled herself upright, a hand slotting under Pike to pull her to her feet.
“This is…” Pike touched the ground carefully, examining the soil on her fingers. “This is silt loam. We’re farther north.”
Grog spat out the now-mud. “I knew it was familiar! We’re near Westrunn!” Then, as if realizing a grave error: “Oh fu-u-uck we’re near Westrunn.”
Scanlan stiffened. “The gauntlets. I saw them with some big beefy guy in Westrunn.”
Pike scanned the area. Vex followed along, taking in the mountains in the distance that jettisoned into the air, white-capped, the field that would probably be prowled and seeded before the month end. “Only a day or two away, if I had to guess.”
“Round two?” Keyleth suggested. “I mean, we already got one vestige out of this whole disaster. Might as well get another.”
Grog made a whine of a sound that gave away far more than he probably thought. This wasn’t some random goose chase he was dreading, Vex could tell.
This was personal.
It only took them an hour to find the road. It was mostly dirt, but well-trodden. Relief swept over her at the raw evidence of other people. Of something familiar.
She watched the sun as it stretched through the sky, on it’s proper route and not doing whatever the fresh hell was going on in the Fey Realm. All was right with the world.
Well… almost all.
There was still the issue of Grog having been right. A shocking occurrence on a good day, but the sword was actually following him like a lost puppy. She considered for a brief moment retracting her hostility towards him, but the memory of seared blood dismissed the thought.
She wasn’t ready to be nice to him. Civil, fine, but not nice.
Then there was the issue of Pike. Vex had watched out of the corner of her eye as the gnome muttered a prayer every few hours, her hand filling with a yellow glow and eyes fluttered shut.
She had been healing herself consistently, day in and day out, but… but she wasn’t getting any better. Scanlan would pluck out a little song in the evenings, and Keyleth was diligent with keeping the wound clean, but...
Her inhales were still staggered, shallow through the night and heaving through the day.
Vex brushed it off right up until she heard Pike whispering to Keyleth.
“I… I really hate to ask, but would you be able to give me a lift? Please?”
“Yeah. Of course.”
Unease pooled in her stomach.
Pike was a good healer. Not even that, she was a great healer. Drunk, Pike had once let it slip that she was something of a prodigy as a child, even her longtime faithful grandfather taken aback by her aptitude for healing. She had a talent for it, and Vex could attest because she had been healed by more than one person and damn, Pike was a good.
And she was stubborn. She wouldn’t just ask. An offered ride from Keyleth is one thing, but she asked.
She wasn’t getting better. Why wasn’t she getting better?
Vex jolted, mid-step, and almost stumbled.
You’ve got rot in your magic.
Fuck. That’s what he’d said. And maybe he was lying or messing with them or just saying shit but he said there was rot and if that was true—
—She needed to know for certain. Now was her chance.
As slim as it was, Vex had been granted a window of privacy and she needed to know.
Vox Machina fell asleep like waves hitting the shore: one at a time, predictably, nearly in rhythm. A yawning Scanlan collapsed face-first into a patch of grass, a pillow flouring into existence before he split his cheek on a rock. He was snoring before Vex could even cobble together an admonishment. Keyleth gave an apologetic shrug as she, too coiled into her sleeping roll, blowing a lick of fire onto the smattering of logs they’d gathered before her eyes closed. Grog wasn’t quite so far away from them this time as he nodded off. The stars were bright before Percy’s chin finally touched his chest, slumped against a tree.
Vex scanned the group, finding Vax loosening the strings of his boots, and, to her shock, Pike studying the embers, absently picking the dirt from her nails.
“You’re still up.” She said, less a question and more a surprised statement.
“I’m not really tired.” Pike shrugged, her hands absently picking at the ground. The curve of her back held tension; Vex’s mouth twitch down. “It’s Scanlan’s fault. I slept all day and now I’m all out of whack. What about you?”
Vex hummed, her finger feathering down the smooth grain of Fendraths curve. It caught against the pads of her fingers. She imagined, maybe, this is what playing music might feel like.
“Adrenaline.” She decided on. “A lot happened today. While you were gone, I mean. The excitement hasn’t quite left me yet.”
“Well it’s sure as fuck leaving me.” Vax announced. He rolled away from them, cloak haphazardly balled under his head. “Don’t stay up too late, kids.”
“Don’t stay up too late.” Pike mimicked back, not bothering to duck from his poorly aimed boot.
Vax’s breathing ironed into steady, sleeping intakes before the next log went onto the fire.
For a long time, it was quiet, save for a few distant whines from a lone bobcat. Pike watched the fire, splitting blades of grass down the middle. She tossed the remains into the fire. The curled and writhed in response.
White smoke coughed out.
Vex sat there chewing her cheeks, trying to puzzle through the best approach. She was good at talking. She was good at wringing answers out of people without them even realizing they were in a snare. With Percy, she could pry and pick like he was a locked chest until her badgering oiled the hinges loose; with her brother, she could catch him in a truth while volleying insults back and forth.
Vex knew how to get information backwards, upside-down, and sideways, but Pike was straightforward.
She was a brick wall with one door. It was the obvious way through, which Vex hated. It was also the only way through.
Vex steeled herself. “Pike,”
“Hm?”
“Can….” She swallowed. “Can magic have rot in it?”
Pike stiffened up at the question. Vex held her breath, hoping she hadn’t been too straightforward. Or maybe not straightforward enough. Or maybe she had just miscalculated altogether and shouldn’t have touched the subject.
But, after a beat, Pike sighed. “I wouldn’t really call it rot.”
Score. “What would you call it then?”
“An infection? Or maybe… that it’s dirty?” She picked at the grass, pulling up the blades and fiddling with them like loose strings.
“He said that you had rot in your magic. Do you?”
Pike hesitated. Her hand ghosted over her ribs and Vex watched as her fingers struggled to light like matches being struck over and over on a windy eve. They sparked, flashed, but never caught fire. Pike exhaled. “How much do you know about magic?”
“I know it doesn’t come from nothing.” Vex offered.
“I mean, yeah. That’s true.” She pitched another piece of grass into the embers. Another puff of smoke. “Magic… it goes through you. It doesn’t just start at your hands or your voice, it passes through, like, your whole body. Even divine magic. And whatever you’re holding can change the magic.”
“You’re losing me, love.”
Pike smiled at her. The firelight wavered over her face, red. It was the most colour she’d had in nearly a week.
“Think of it like this: magic is like water. When it passes through someone, it pulls from them. That’s why wells are hard water and rain is soft water. So magic passing through a wound, a magic wound…”
A synapse fired; a star wove from one dotted line to the next; Vex’s mind constellated back to Whitestone. The Briarwoods, and the sickly magic that webbed and wrought in dark lines from Delilah’s hands. “The Briarwood witch. She was a necromancer.”
Pike did not hide her flinch well. “And that sword was theirs. It’s necrotic.” She agreed. “It’s all just water. Dirt makes muddy water; necrosis make muddy magic.”
Another flutter of grass withered away. For a moment, the smoke covered Pike; for a moment, the fire hissed, as though this time, it had been the one burned. Then, quiet above the mumbles of flames: “Healing is supposed to be clean. But right now I’m—I’m not.”
Vex had a feeling she meant something a little different, but the words she needed just weren’t there. “I see.”
“I can’t wash this out. I’ve been trying but I just can’t. Not with my own magic. Someone else could, a priest or some healer, but every time I try it’s—“ Her hands curled as she breathed out, helplessly. “It’s like trying to wash out a stain in a used basin.”
Vex’s chin slumped into her open palm, studying her friend carefully. “Why’d didn’t you tell us?”
“You’re not healers.” She replied.
Vex tried not to shrink back at that. It wasn’t to place blame, but the guilt swelled up anyways like a greedy tick on a dog. “I’m sorry we can’t do more.”
“No, it’s okay. It’s just… what sucks is that this shouldn’t even be that hard! I’ve healed things like this before no problem but because it’s on me this time I just can’t—I can’t—!” She cut herself off with a frustrated, sharp exhale. Her hands curled. “This should be easy for me, you know? It was easy on Vax and Grog. But I’m… I just—“
“You’re washing with muddy water.” Vex cut in gently.
“Muddy fucking water.”
A feather was strung beside her ear.
Vex exhaled, her arms shaking from how tightly she was griping the bow, how far back she’d drawn the arrow, how close the thatched end carved against her cheek.
There was a scream. Whose scream, she didn’t know, and frankly, didn’t care. The only thing she did care about right now was right in front of her, wet-eyed, covered in guts, and shaking.
Percy turned and ran. His pepperbox hit the ground and if Vex had been paying just a sliver more attention to him, she would have shouted at him to pick it back up.
Grog took a half step. His shoes squelched. Vex’s elbow strained in response; she saw her brother’s stance shift. They didn’t speak, not this time, but the message was crystalline fucking clear: don’t.
Grog froze. He was the only thing that matter right now. Keeping him in that exact spot was the only thing that mattered right now.
She didn’t to turn around. She didn’t even glance over her shoulder. She couldn’t risk it. Grog’s watery eyes stared past her, locked onto some horrible scene—one she didn’t have the courage or stomach to face—of his own making.
His mouth opened, a croak of a sound coming out. Vax returned it with a snarl and she was glad he had the mind to stand guard with her. Because someone had to stop him from getting any father.
Vex kept her stance wide, anchored in case he rushed, and the roar of blood in her ear did a bang up job of covering whatever desperate cries were between exchanged over Pike’s body—over Pike, she’s not dead, she not dead yet or maybe she is, but how would Vex know, she would, could, turn around—
“It wasn’t me.” Grog finally spoke. Her bowstring almost cut into the soft side of her knuckles as she drew it back further. If the wood had been a touch cheaper, she might’ve broken it.
“Who in the fuck was it then?” Her voice shook. Vex felt a raw, genuine rage digging its nails into her, scraping against her insides like a knife against a tender rack of ribs.
“It was him.” Grog insisted. “It wasn’t—“ He stopped short, gaze flung behind her, trailing after something. His shoulder’s slackened and the hairs at the back of her neck stood at attention. Vex still did not, could not turn around. Whatever he was looking at she didn’t want to see. Unlucky for her, she didn’t have to turn.
She could smell it before she could see it.
All it took was the turn of her head, no more than an inch to the side and it hit her, the smell, the blood. Her throat tightened.
She felt Vax whirl around beside her, stumbling a pace back.
A line crawled through her peripheral, dark, winding forward in a slow path like the ink of a calligrapher’s pen against parchment. Vex watched it, her aching arms lowering, arrow dipping towards the ground.
Her stomach flipped dangerously and Vex could swear she felt the hot inhale of air that pulled the—the blood forward, almost lazily, down, onto Grog’s sword. The blade still wedged into the ground soaked in blood.
She watched, wide-eyed, and it disappeared into the sword like water to a throat.
The blood steamed against the metal like water to embers, hissing, and then it fucking grew. The blade doubled in width and it shone.
It was drinking—it was drinking the—
An exhale punched out of her. Vex couldn’t draw the air back in. Her lung flattened against the walls of her chest and that rage just kept on clawing at her, wailing.
“The fuck.” Vex breathed. Then, louder: “What the fuck?!”