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i.
They come to town, the odd pair. A filthy human man with hair the color of flames and eyes an ocean blue and a small person in a cloak and wraps. Both are quiet, lay low (until they don't), then leave. Usually under cover of night. Often with stolen goods.
Neither of them have daemons.
No one wonders why though. They're just weird. Passing through. They don't matter in the moment, and it's not as if the Crownsguard would bother accusing random vagrants of being witches. It would be a waste of resources.
But when they do matter, when they belong and are asked about it, their story is short and sad and unexpected.
"Nott," Caleb tells Jester, eyes distant and smile forced, "is my daemon." The rest of the group make a myriad of faces, but Jester is enamored.
"I've never heard of someone having a goblin daemon!" Her eyes sparkle, as do Yura's, and Nott bares her teeth at them both.
"We don't like to advertise the fact." And that is that. Conversation over.
(No one else says a word, too uncomfortable to speak up.)
ii.
Nott is thirty feet away and Caleb doesn't look ill. Nott is forty feet away and Caleb doesn't look any more or less pale than before. Nott is sixty feet away and Caleb casts with the same precision and skill as before. The battle ends and Nott comes trotting back, covered in blood and looking smug.
"You let her get a ways out, don't you?" Fjord asks, voice low and neutral. His face is imperceptible, a stony mask. Caleb's is as unreadable.
"She comes back."
"I disarmed the traps," Nott adds, sharp and much less controlled than Caleb. "The least you can say is 'thank you Nott'!"
Fjord opens his mouth but stops. Then he shrugs and nods at Nott. "Thanks."
"You're fucking welcome. Now let's get on. Don't expect the guards to ignore the ruckus for long." And she walks off again, Caleb's hand in hers.
(Hours later, Jester throws up from the exertion of sending Yura to scout thirty feet out. Nott chides her and tells her to just delegate it to her from now on. To not pull too hard. She pats Jester on the back and it is startling to everyone save Nott and Caleb, who walk off without another word.)
iii.
There was a severed man up in the monastery. The Cobalt Soul didn't do it to him—they wouldn't be cruel like that, to destroy someone's soul like that—but his blank face is so similar to the feeling Beau gets when she looks at Caleb.
Only Caleb has Nott. Nott, who can go on forever with no pull. Nott, who taps out spells on the wire around her wrist. Nott, who is a goblin, and goblins aren't daemons. They don't even have daemons!
But she sees his face some days and thinks about the severed man and wonders.
(Nott is far too clever to be a goblin anyhow. So she has to be a daemon. That's the only logical explanation, even if Beau still feels like she's missing pieces.)
iv.
Molly doesn't ask. He and Polly make an odd pair—a brightly colored peacock and a brightly colored tiefling, both supposedly male with a distance of almost a hundred feet separation, the mark of a witch if anyone bothered to believe in superstitions—so he doesn't ask much. But he's not dumb.
Caleb and Nott are lying.
Polly likes to touch the other daemons, draping himself all over them in languid puddles. It's reassuring and reminds him that he exists in the same way that Molly indulging in his hedonistic pleasures does. So, while Jester and Fjord and Caleb and Beau and Yasha are off doing something in town, he strikes.
The feeling of static on skin and metal in packed dirt and empty empty empty flashes through Polly to him, but Polly remains in contact with Nott until she beats him off with her hands and threatens to shoot him. Then, wings raised in placation, Polly returns to Molly and they ruminate.
(He doesn't say a thing. It's not his to tell. Not that he has a leg to stand on with regards to things like this.)
v.
"Never met a daemon that could use tools," Fjord admits one night. "Pretty impressive."
"Never met a tool who had a daemon. Equally as impressive," Nott replies. She's busy cleaning her crossbow, face scrunched in contemplation. After stabbing herself in the thumb with one of the small pins, she swears and jams it in her mouth, clipping herself on her teeth. She swears louder.
"Trying to pay you a compliment." Fjord tries to ignore the hissing laughter of Ursula from around his neck. It doesn't work, as his face heats up anyway. Nott doesn't seem to notice, though, and that's a relief.
"I take gold pieces. Silver, if you're being stingy," is Nott's idle reply. She continues, still trying to clean the trigger mechanism of her weapon, "but if you want me to take a compliment, maybe make it sound more like one."
"I...it is one though?"
"Would you tell a child they were good with tools 'for a child'?" Nott fixes her bright yellow eyes on him and he feels pinned. Not by an animal, like he would expect, but by a disapproving parent. Even Ursula stops laughing.
He shakes his head, once.
She grins and points one of her tools at him to emphasize her point. "There. Just pay me a people-compliment then. Easy."
"Fair enough." He wallows in uncomfortable silence for a bit before he leans over her shoulder and nods his chin at her weapon. "Mind showing me how it works?"
She doesn't teach him, but she doesn't make him leave either. And when he accidentally taps the back of her neck with his bare hand, she says nothing.
(Caleb snores softly but doesn't wake, and an additional "how the fuck?" crosses his mind but he doesn't ask. He's pushed enough for one day.)
vi.
"Where is your daemon?" Camillia asks, her head bent low to be eye-level with Nott. Nott, who bristles. Nott, who hisses.
"I am a daemon!" She shrieks, trying to put distance between her and Caduceus's large reindeer daemon. "I'm Caleb's daemon!"
Camillia hums, low, and says nothing else.
At the table with Caleb, Caduceus inclines his head and asks, "So where is your daemon?"
"Over there," Caleb, practiced, nods at Nott.
Caduceus turns to look at her, then back to Caleb, his face placid and unreadable. "I'm sorry. That must have been painful."
(Caduceus does not elaborate. Caleb does not ask. They don't speak of it again.)
vii.
"Intercision is painful," Master Ikithon says, pressing Bren down into the chair, "but necessary. You want to be useful for the Empire?" Bren does not answer, his wide eyes locked on Frumpkin. "You want to be useful for the Empire?!" Master Ikithon snaps, grabbing Bren's face so he's looking up at him.
Bren nods, barely able to in his teacher's grasp. "Ja. Yes. I want to be useful."
"As I thought," Master Ikithon lets go and steps off to grab the guillotine and wheel it between him and Frumpkin. "Now, Astrid and Eowulf have done well and I expect great things of you too, Bren. You won't let me down?" The blade of the intercision device raises up, up, up.
"No." He isn't sure if he's responding to Master Ikithon's question or if he's protesting what is about to happen. His ears are ringing. His heartbeat is in his throat. He is terrified. In the cage he's being held in, Frumpkin screams fury.
"Good." Master Ikithon smiles. The blade comes down.
(His world goes white and red and orange. There is burning and he is gone gone gone gone. It isn't until so much later—free of the asylum and running as far from Rexxentrum as he is able—that he finally realizes he is alone. The anguish cracks his voice and the horror, his spirit.)
x.
"You're so lucky t'be able to fly!" Nott slurs. She has her mostly-empty flask in her lap and is gleefully tossing the bones from her meal to Serafim. "Must be so freeing, seeing the world from wayyyy up high!"
"Did you not fly before you settled?" He tilts his head, staring her in the face as she bursts into hysterical laughter. "What did I say?"
"No, it's not you, promise!" She manages to get out around a snorting gigglefit. "It's just that everyone's wrong!"
"How so?"
"'Bout me. N' Caleb."
"Oh?" Serafim is so like Yasha and so not. The large vulture is brightly colored while the large woman is washed out and monochrome. But their mannerisms are all-too-alike and Nott is too sauced to find that anything less than hilarious.
"That's my boy! M'not his daemon. And I would kill for him. Have before." The giggly drunkenness is replaced with a stern and solemn look. She meets Serafim's eyes and repeats, "I'd kill for him."
(They take her at face value. That's the kind of people Yasha and Serafim are. They also don't tell anyone. That, too, is the kind of people they are, but Nott has to squash an ugly panic when Yasha leaves with Obann. It's not about her. Not now. Not now.)
ix.
"Your daemon could get me a piece of wire?" Nott asks from their cell. Caleb's smile tightens at this.
"Not a daemon, but ja. You could get us out?" Transactional. Formal. Broken.
"Sure?" Nott stares at this strange human man and his not-daemon. "But what is it if not a daemon?"
"A familiar. It is old magic, from before daemons." He is simple and precise with his wording. At his command, Frumpkin slinks between the bars of their cell to steal them a makeshift lockpick. "And yourself?"
"Goblins don't have daemons," she counters, curt and angry. He hums to himself but doesn't press the issue. Time passes and the not-daemon brings back a bent wire and Nott manages to get them out and they could part ways, but this is so convenient, isn't it?
("I'll be your daemon. No one can prove I'm not. That way, if you get called out for not having one or I get called out for being a goblin, we're good! Tit-for-tat, right? Like a con!" And, thank whatever god is listening, they stick together. Caleb-and-Nott. Human and goblin-daemon. And it works.)
x.
Veth yells at Yeza to run, to flee, to get out and save Luc. And then, vial in hand and Terrell at her side, she barrels into the fray. She is going to die but they're going to escape and that's all that—
There are goblin hands holding her down under the water and she can't breathe. Just outside of her line of sight, she can see them slowly taking Terrell farther and farther away, pulling at her chest even as the air leaves and her heart skips and stammers to try and keep up. Water is everywhere, blue and green and muddy red, and she can't she can't she can't—
Green hands and where is Terrell? Where is he? Where is her soul?! But her skin is green and she is not Veth she is not a halfling she is Nott and she screams, a keening whine as she understands—
Goblins don't have daemons and this is what saves her. Their desire to make her suffer is what keeps her around. Half of her is gone, the rest marred beyond recognition, and she can't even have the joy of being killed like a halfling. She has to work like a goblin and it's worse than anything she could ever—
The cell is cold and he doesn't have a daemon either and maybe it's okay but—
They feel like home but they call her daemon and—
They're in too deep and Yeza is in danger but she can't tell them yet because—
She covers herself in magic, in Veth, and says she's here for her son, lies about Terrell, and hugs her boy. She was supposed to be—is, has, will be—dead but here she is and Luc is hurting and she can't—
They look at her and she sobs and tells the truth and it hurts because she died and she is not Veth and she is not Nott and she is—
(His name was Bren and he was severed by his teacher, by "his people", and it hurts. It hurts all the time. His daemon was a cat, was Frumpkin, like his familiar, but he's Dust now. It's not the same and it isn't enough and she understands. They are broken and can never be fixed.)
xi.
Nothing changes. Everything changes. They don't have to lie.
Well, they have to lie to strangers, but that's nothing new.
But home is where the heart is, and the Mighty Nein are home.