Work Text:
The searing light fades and Keyleth lands on the ground hard before the stun wears off. Breath, which was hard to come by before, becomes impossible and now she just has to wait out the oxygen.
Her eyes try to adjust but even as they do, they’re too full of tears to get a clear view of anything. She’s in a forest. That much is clear by the curl of roots at her back, the dew seeping through her dress, the smell of fallen leaves and dirt, the pattern of shade falling across her skin.
It’s humid here, almost wet, especially after the arid desert winds. Creatures here croak and chirp all around her, though she can barely hear it over the rushing in her ears. Either early morning or late evening judging by the colors of the sky. As she watches, a leaf detaches and slowly starts to sink toward her like-
Black feathers, hanging in the air.
A white mask, crooked like a beak.
Bony protrusions growing up out of his shoulder, tall enough to tangle with the braids in his hair.
Daggers, shining and sharp as the day he’d used them to tenderly trim the edges of her burnt hair.
Vax.
The memory-made-real of him makes her shudder with grief, although that could also be the adrenaline and the blood loss. It unspools something she’s kept wound up tight in her chest for nearly thirty years now, equal parts grief and rage she carries like the mantle around her shoulders and the antlers on her head.
He was there. In arms reach. Protecting her. Like always. Only to be snatched away by fate.
Like. Fucking. Always.
There’s a distant feeling of wetness over her body and she’s dimly aware that the stun has worn off now, that her body is seeping blood onto the forest floor, her lifeforce mingling with the moss and ferns that have slowly grown to cradle her broken form.
Her people had counted on her and, not for the first time in a decade, she was powerless to stop the destruction that had befallen them. What kind of a leader was she? Stunned and struck down on the battlefield in one swift series of attacks. Helpless as more of her people’s lives were cut short by the same monsters who had attacked Zephrah. The same group who had taken Vax now and-
He was right there. And I still couldn’t reach him.
Something catches in her chest that has nothing to do with the wounds crisscrossing her body, and, for the first time in unending decades, Keyleth lets her grief overtake her and she screams.
~~~
There’s no telling how much time goes by. Keyleth is pretty sure she passes out, at least for a little bit. When she returns to herself, a single shaft of sun is beaming down, a searing jab in the eyes.
Sunrise, then. She thinks, hazily.
She feels numb now, if a little cold. It’s a bad feeling and she knows it, though it’s usually only one felt through the haze of battle rather than on her back and alone. With a cursory hand motion, she conjures up energy from the dirt beneath her, sending waves of healing energy-
Nowhere.
Well, that’s not entirely accurate. There’s the familiar pull in her feet, in her gut, like every time she casts a spell. It swells through her and dissipates and nothing changes. Her body is still bleeding, her wounds still shriek through her flesh.
What?
She tries again, stronger this time, focusing on the roots, the breeze, the-
Still nothing.
Something like panic flares dully in her stomach. Every movement feels like a wound is opening again, nerves rubbing against each other in a jangle of pain. She reaches for some magic, any magic, but the wellspring of her powers is empty.
The panic flares again, hotter this time.
Okay, she thinks, watching a gentle grey cloud block out the light from above, I need to move.
It doesn’t happen the way she expects. Bunching her abs to sit up or rolling onto her side to press to vertical both prove impossible. The ‘distant bad feeling’ (as she’s coming to think of it) licks up her insides again and she takes several shaky breaths, too aware of the wet lines down her face.
There’s dirt under her fingernails mingling with blood and she tries to tap into the natural energy around her, reach for a familiar form.
It’s agony.
It’s never been this slow.
But eventually, Minxie is staggering across the forest floor, heaving for breath.
It’s an entirely bizarre sensation, shifting from open wounds on a half elf form and then to a sabertooth cat form. It’s not supposed to be like this.
In the past, no matter how badly she’s been hurt, her animal forms have been uninjured, able to sustain their own damage before she’s back to her own wounds. None of her cuts have closed though. In fact, she’s still bleeding out of the one on her chest, blood matting the fur of her chest. Minxie’s front left paw is tender to set down and Keyleth feels a renewed sense of dread sweep through her. Still, getting up to 4 legs is easier to balance on than two.
Not long into her wander, rain begins. It patters down through the leaves and catches in her coat, making her skin ripple in irritation and exacerbating the cuts in her body. It’s not particularly hard, or even cold but it’s there and present and feels too on the nose.
She’s not sure how long she staggers through the forest. Her flank ends up leaned on a tree more than once, huffing out tiger noises that at least sound a little cooler than whatever whimpers she would have been making with her own vocal chords.
Eventually though, Minxie’s legs give out and Keyleth collapses to the ground with a cry of surprise. Her arms shake with exertion and she stays there for a moment, face down in the dirt. Breathing in the smell of rocks and grass, the petrichor of damp earth. It feels so final for a moment that she thinks about how she’d feel if this were her last breath.
Something bitter on the back of her tongue. Not blood. Bile.
No.
Not this. Not now. Not without…
There are people who need her. She’s made promises and accepted duties. Quarter-elves and gnomes babies to watch over and love. This isn’t how it goes.
With another enormous effort, she rolls herself onto her back, scanning the plants around her. With a jolt, she recognizes flicksilver. A wide growing stem system with grey blue leaves and star shaped blossoms of deep purple, shot through with white. It’s about 3 feet tall and thick with growth. Her fingers are clumsy as she reaches out but the leaves and buds come away easily enough in her palm.
“Thank you,” she croaks to the plant, patchy in a few places now but still healthy. The remaining leaves all seem to be hit with raindrops at once, bobbing in unison.
That’s one down.
Wanderer’s moss however… her eyes flick again, chest heaving from even minor activity. It grows higher up on trees, usually facing the sun as it sets. She has to squint through the rain but eventually, the pale orange of moss catches her eye about 6 feet up on a tree.
The process isn’t pretty. It starts as using roots for hand holds to pull herself to sitting, then kneeling, with her forehead pressed to the bark of the tree, silently willing her muscles into action. Trembling arms reach for low hanging branches to pull herself around the trunk on buckling knees. The moss is relatively easy to remove, but getting her hand high enough is not and it takes several tries to get even a fraction of the amount she needs.
Finally though, her hands are full and she turns to gently butt her head against the tree again.
“Thank you,” she breathes, not sure if she’s talking to the tree itself or the moss still growing along its trunk. The wind stirs the leaves above, rustling them against one another and blowing a long, loose rhizoid across the back of her hand.
She sinks down among the thick, massive roots, leaning her back into the Y of where two diverge. In her lap, with trembling fingertips, she shreds both the flicksilver and the wanderer’s moss to the best of her ability. The ground is easy enough to dig with her fingers, though she cracks a nail on a rock on a second handful. It’s a distant burst of pain by comparison.
Her skirt acts as a bowl as Keyleth slowly, methodically kneads the mixture together. Rain plinks droplets down, wetting it further than the pink tinged spit she’d added to the concoction. It heats, slowly at first and then all at once warm like it had been sitting in summer sun.
“Thank you,” she whispers again, scooping dollops onto the tips of her fingers and then, before she can think about it too much, pressing it into the open wounds across her body. There’s a sharp, cold feeling where warm compress meets exposed muscle. It’s not working, not fully, but it’s enough to cool the heat of eventual infection out of the tissue. For now at least.
The sting is constant, dull against the sharp tug as she twists this way and that to apply the healing dirt to all the wounds she can reach. It takes time. The sun is disappearing from behind the trees and the forest is growing dim when she’s finally finished.
She’s stuck out here for sure tonight.
Which is fine.
It is.
A drop of magic stirs in her chest and she reaches out once again to the plants around her. The roots of the tree shift, tangling together, growing higher until she’s held aloft, off the floor of the forest in the knot of a nest. The surrounding flora unfurls around her, nearly cocooning her in their depths. It’s not a perfectly enclosed hut, but it’s out of the worst of the wind and the rain and she isn’t laying directly on the dirt anymore.
Her body trembles again, and she lets herself sink against the gnarl of roots. It feels good to lay down again, to let herself be supported by the nature around her.
Consciousness leaves her quickly, but doesn’t stay fully gone. Even with the easing of the pain brought on by the poultice she’d concocted, the nerves in her body are searing messages of panic from one place to another. She floats somewhere near sleep, though not quite there, catching foreign forest sounds between the nightmares of feathers that sweep through her overheated mind.
She wakes sobbing again, reaching for a man who’s further from her than he’s ever been and pulling wickedly at her injuries.
There’s something almost comforting in being alone here, some distant part of her muses. No one to put on a brave face for, no one to lead or protect. Not that she could right now. No one to pity her or look away when she can’t hide the pain. Here, in the middle of a forest she doesn’t know, she gives into the instinct of her body.
Sobs openly, loudly, in a way she’s never allowed herself even in the privacy of her own room. A part of her brain cringes at the desperate sound of her cries but the animal in her overtakes it. She screams and thrashes and lets the pain and fear and guilt and heartache drive.
Her body wears itself out quickly though, overtired and impossibly sundered. Her cries descend into whimpers, limbs stilling to a twitch. The light hasn’t changed as far as she can tell so not much time has passed, though it feels an age again. Still the muddy time between day and night, though whether it’s at the top of the day or the bottom is anybody’s guess. The feelings burn white hot, but fast, and she starts to slip toward sleep again quickly.
The next time she wakes, hands are on her face.
Danger, her brain screams and the nest she’s built around herself responds. Thorns erupt out of the floor, pointing outward, forcing her would-be assailant back. She reaches for the deep well of magic in her chest again, but finds it dry, still, like she hasn’t rested, like recovery hasn’t touched her yet. Even the small swell it took to conjure the thorns, however instinctual, sends a pulse of agony through her overworked nerves and she cries out again.
It’s dark; the world is blurry and full of pain. A shadow moves and Vax, is it him, is he here because -
“Keyleth, sweetheart, you have to breathe.”
She knows that voice. Went so long without it she thought she forgot but now-
“Momma?” She croaks, eyes rolling in a way she can’t quite get control of. Slowly, her mother’s thinly lined face comes into view, red hair as long as Keyleth’s had been once. For a moment it feels like seeing an alternate universe version of herself. A could-be. An incomplete Aramente, a singular life to live.
She slides past the idea, exhausted by its implications and rathering to just accept it is her mother.
“Oh baby, what happened to you?” Vilya sounds like she’s trying to keep herself in control, not descend into a parents despair. “Why haven’t you healed yourself?” With a gentle wave of her hand Vilya turns the thorns to vines and uses them to gather Keyleth aloft.
It hurts. Which isn’t a surprise, but she’s spent so long letting her emotions roam free that it’s hard to bite down on the wounded noise she makes as her mother’s vines bring her closer.
“Oh, my little flower, what did they do to you?” Keyleth can feel the way her mom’s hands tremble and she sags into the contact, the careful brushing of her mother’s hands on her cheeks.
The nickname, decades old and almost unfamiliar, sticks in her throat like a burr and her eyes burn again.
“I don’t know,” Keyleth manages, “Some… poison on the blade if I had to guess.”
“That was a rhetorical question, love,” Her mother chuckles and it looks like a tear drips from her lashes, though maybe it’s rain.
With the knowledge that she’s safe, Keyleth feels all of the strength leave her limbs, adrenal gland finally failing as exhaustion races through her. Only her mother’s panicked yell makes it through the rapidly gathering darkness. And then there’s nothing.
~~~
No one can heal her. Her mother wrings every bit of magic out of her own body, pouring spell after spell into Keyleth’s rent flesh. Three days go by where Viliya wakes, drenches Keyleth in every last ounce of magic in her body, and then goes back to bed, only to wake up a few hours later and try again. But no healing, no good berry, no restoration does a thing. Keyleth begins to send away any of the other healers, if she’s awake to catch them but her mother won’t be swayed.
Word gets back to her that none of the other Ashari injured like she was are healing either. No longer bleeding but open, aching wounds criss cross their bodies, nerves open to any stimulation.
The poultice she’d made for herself out in the woods does an astonishingly good job of keeping the wounds free of infection and soon enough parties are sent to gather or grow flicksilver and wanderer’s moss in enough supply to keep up with demand. All told there are three injured Ashari, excluding her. No one will give her a straight answer on how many they lost and she can’t stay conscious or cognizant long enough to try to get it out of them.
Leeta comes in cautiously, one morning, one wrist resting on the pommel of her sword, the other twisting a bead on cord around her neck.
“Good morning, Tempest.” She inclines her head and Keyleth tries to bob her head in response.
“Leeta, I think we’ve arrived at the point that you can just call me Keyleth.” Keyleth twitches her fingers as if to indicate her current position.
“That…” Leeta pauses and Keyleth is oddly pleased to see her chuckle. It feels a little more normal for a moment, “Yes, okay.”
“Yeah…” Keyleth blinks hard, weighing the pain of trying to readjust herself with the embarrassment of just slumping on her bed while she talked with one of her lieutenants, “Ah, how are-”
“They’re as well as they can be,” Leeta cuts in before Keyleth can finish, “That’s actually something I wanted to talk to you about?”
“What’s wrong, are they okay?”
Leeta blinks and Keyleth sees a look she’s seen from Vex flash over Leeta’s face. It’s one she categorizes as a ‘yes, dumbass, didn’t you just hear me?’ look. It’s gone in an instant and Leeta is as professional as ever.
“Yes, it’s- They’re fine. Really. We just… Well, the research isn’t getting us anywhere very quickly.” Leeta’s fingers drop from her necklace and they raise their chin to meet Keyleth’s gaze.
“I understand,” Keyleth feels a lump grow in her throat and she swallows hard past it. Later.
“Keyleth,” Leeta’s voice changes a little bit and Keyleth tenses at her next words, “No one in town has been, ya know, chosen, by a god. And Lady Pike… Well, she was chosen by the Everlight. It’s incredibly rare and she was invaluable when you were traveling together.”
Something sticks in her throat, ‘ chosen ,’ pulling at a string in her chest.
“We just. Some of us were wondering if some radiant energy might be able to drive the poison out, or at least close the wounds.” Leeta continues, oblivious to how Keyleth’s fingers had started trembling.
Asking the gods for help had rarely gone well in her experience.
“No,” her voice creaks, “No, don’t call Pike, she’s dealing with enough. There’s no telling if she’s been able to reach Sarenrae, much less have access to her abilities.”
Leeta’s brow furrows and she takes a step closer, “Please, Keyleth, if you would just-”
Keyleth cuts them off, letting the shards of glass in her throat scrape the words as they come out. “Divinity is under attack right now. Sarenrae is in very real danger. I will not not ask the Everlight’s champion,” the word sticks like ash in her mouth, champion, “to choose between her goddess and me.”
Because I know how that story ends. It’s not an entirely fair sentiment, she thinks distantly, but it's real enough to hurt.
Leeta’s face drops, jaw clenching and nostrils flaring. There’s a flash in their eyes that they once again tamp down as she turns her face away. Guilt creeps into Keyleth’s gut and she takes a deep breath.
“Leeta. It’s…”
“You don’t owe me an explanation, Tempest.” She doesn’t quite snap but Keyleth can hear the disapproval and disappointment in their tone. She turns to meet her gaze again, expression now purposefully blank and Keyleth can see the ghosts on her face; Derrig’s wide, round, grey-blue eyes, the same furrow between her eyes that Will got when things were dire.
Keyleth tries again, appealing to sense rather than sentiment, even as the nausea claws up her throat, “Sending someone to Westruun just now is… dangerous at best. I… the gods are under attack and… they can help us. There are old remedies, books we can look through for a cure rather than-”
“I have my mother, Maeve, and the other healers in town continuing their search,” Leeta cuts in, terse now, “I’m sure they’ll find something soon.”
“Leeta-” Keyleth wants to try again but the captain of her guard cuts in, eyes like flint.
“Tempest, if there’s nothing else, I need to check in on the others who were injured. Your parents are both downstairs if you have any need.”
Leeta salutes, not quite holding eye contact and then turns out the door.
“Fuck,” Keyleth mutters aloud to the empty room.
Fever takes hold later that day. It feels like some kind of punishment ( maybe it is, she thinks hazily); comes out of nowhere and saps the little energy she has. She’s trapped in unending discomfort, ratcheted tighter by the pain of her wounds. Delirium settles into her mind and she spends an incalculable amount of time in a half dreaming state. Different visions dance at the corner of her eyes, from pixies to the swish of a green dragon tail, and more than once she twitches her fingers to pluck a raven feather that isn’t there from the air.
Vilya strokes her hair and changes her bandages and spoon feeds her broth and medicinal teas to break her fever. Korin comes to hold her trembling hands and kisses her infernal cheeks. Keyleth pretends not to see the looks they give each other. Shame is the only thing that doesn’t slide off of her brain like rain off a window.
There’s a flurry of motion around her one morning (or at least she thinks it’s the morning). Vilya speaks, directs different groups. Keyleth can’t quite track what’s happening, her head swiveling slower than the conversation bounces.
Something about a flower. It’s got a name that makes her want to giggle but somewhere in her mind she knows it’s not the right time. Gotta remember this for Scanlan. One hand automatically strays up to her ear around the earring, even though she knows he’s too far away.
Baernie crouches next to her bed, clasps Keyleth’s hand gently. A wash of warmth pulses through her, followed by the customary flash of chill in her wounds. It pulls her a little more present in the room and she blinks hard and dials her hearing back in enough to catch her parting words.
“Tempest, we will bring the flowers home. The antitoxin is ancient knowledge and we’re pretty sure it still holds up. Trust us to take care of the others. To take care of you.”
“Take care of you ,” Keyleth croaks, not an echo but its own sentiment, “And if the danger becomes too great, you all come home. These flowers are not worth your life. We’ll find another way.”
Baernie winks and for a moment she morphs into Vex and then Vex morphs into- Keyleth’s lungs are empty, paralyzed. And then Baernie’s patting the back of her hand again and whisking out the door. The dread stays long after the fuzz has come back to her mind.
Sleep continues to evade her, somehow always just out of reach even as her body cries for it. And when she finally succumbs, nightmares plague her again. Between the sharp, stalking shadow and gentle evenings she’d locked away in her heart, one kind of pain or another is her constant companion. Awakening from those dreams is harder than not sleeping at all, but needs must.
The fever breaks in a haze of sweat soaked sheets and the welcome-back-to-consciousness gift of extra bright pain as the salt seeps into her wounds. Vilya finds her on the floor with clear water just barely dripping from her fingertips. It’s an exercise in futility; this tiny exertion of magic has her sweating worse than earlier.
“Little flower-” her mother starts but Keyleth flinches and cuts her eyes up sharply. Vilya closes her mouth slowly and her dad comes up to help her put Keyleth back in bed.
She settles into a new normal over the next few days. The exhaustion becomes a constant drag on her will to focus. But this is her duty, dammit, and she will not fail her people again. Her parents give up trying to get her to rest and, at her dogged insistence, go about their normal days. Or at least pretend to.
Anyone who would normally meet her in the town hall or an office somewhere comes to her chambers instead. She forces herself as upright as she can, propped up by pillows. She threads her hearing around the rivers of pain and the stretch of exhaustion and gives whoever is speaking all of her attention.
It is breathtakingly difficult.
She will not let that stop her.
On day three of whatever her life is now, a gentle tap comes at her door and when she calls for them to enter, a young, half elven Tempest Blade trainee steps through the door. Keyleth searches for their name as she smiles.
“Good afternoon.”
The kid bobs their head, braids swaying, “A messenger just came in from Whitestone. The lord and lady are asking after you.”
Keyleth’s breath stutters. Percy. Vex.
Oh gods, what can she say to them? To her?
Most of Keyleth is past her fear of Vex but that young woman, intimidated by her boyfriend’s sister, still lives in the back of her brain and sometimes her voice is loud and shrill and cruel.
How will she ever forgive you? You lost her brother again. Why should she care that you’re hurt when you did nothing to save him?
Sometimes she almost wishes Vex would respond like that.
But they’ve grown together.
Grieved together.
Keyleth knows her with more certainty now. Vex will fuss over her in that way that will feel too kind. She’ll fold Keyleth’s fingers into her hand and listen to her story and she’ll only let herself cry a little bit. Enough so that Keyleth won’t be crying on her own. Vex’s kindness simmers low like that. And then she’ll pull herself together for everyone else, like she always does.
Like Keyleth doesn’t know that she truly cries alone. Like Keyleth hasn’t walked in on her enough times to know the signs. Only now, she’ll be unable to seek her out and be a shoulder to lean on when the time comes.
It sears deep inside her. The need to protect Vex, protect the rest of Vox Machina from another one of her failures. At least until she can fix it. And she does intend to make it right.
Halan ( Halan!) speaks and Keyleth jolts back into herself.
“What would you like me to tell them?”
She blinks. Sucks in a deep breath. Or as deep as she can. She can protect Vex from this. For now at least.
“Basics. There were injuries, some of them serious. Healing is being administered where possible and further antidotes for what ails people are well underway. The attempts to thwart Ludinus failed but we’re mounting a plan in the coming weeks to gather more information and the moon tether is being monitored.”
It’s Halan’s turn to blink at her, “Oh, I… should I tell them of your injuries? Or that being that-”
“No,” she responds, sharper than she means to. The kid jumps. The fact that rumors of the being that jumped in front of a blade for her are spreading makes something itch behind her eyes.
She tries again, softer this time, “No. The De Rolos are… juggling more than enough without this added stress. I have no doubt that by the time they call here in person, I’ll be back on my feet.”
Halan’s youthful features twist with concern, dark eyes flashing, “Forgive me, Tempest, but the last few days you were-”
Embarrassment flares hotter than the fever had in her cheeks and she clenches her fists under the blanket until her knuckles ache.
“Thank you for your concern,” her voice is the exact steady calm she’d been hoping for, even as the back of her throat closes, “but I assure you that this is the kindest option.”
Keyleth likes that her people are comfortable questioning her, pushing a little bit, don’t just follow her blindly. But as Halan’s eyes scan across Keyleth’s expression, she wishes they’d question a little less, just for now.
The kid nods, salutes, does a weird sort of bow and then scrambles out of the room.
Three more days pass. Baernie and the scouting party haven’t been heard from.It feels like acid is burning a hole in the center of Keyleth’s stomach everytime she thinks about the six (Six!) people she’d allowed to leave the safety of their homes during a time of such cosmic and overarching turmoil.
It’s the afternoon of the fourth day.
Keyleth is trying very hard to look over some notes Nel had dropped by when the door bursts open without preamble. Leeta’s face is shining as she skids to a stop, not even bothering to salute.
“Tempest. It’s Orym. He and his friends have come home!”
Something like hope scoops in Keyleth’s chest. There are still options. Her people extend a little further than she remembered. And to hear that Orym in particular is safe, after not knowing what happened to him or the rest of Bell’s Hells-
Leeta meets her eye for the first time in almost a week and Keyleth cracks a smile at her Master of Defense.
“Send them up. We have a lot to discuss.”