Chapter Text
Blood and cinnamon did not go well together.
The airy scent of bark rolling out between her palms turned sour as it curdled against the heavy stench of a day old wound. The smell burned at the back of Keyleth’s throat like raw spirits.
She had never really liked to drink.
Her hand’s were dusted orange, as was her mortar, and the corner of her mouth stained green from chewing wood sorrel—at least, it tasted like wood sorrel—into a gummy paste, spread in over lengths of Percy’s torn coat.
It was a foot shorter than it used to be, the tails amputated into long strips. Not that Percy seemed to care much. He’d was too busy marching off into the wilderness, Scanlan on his heels, in the hopes of finding something Keyleth could actually work with.
All she had on hand were spices when she needed something fresh, something alive that she could sink magic into. Something that wasn't the thin patches of downy moss that half-covered the pale dirt underfoot, or the tree shoots that freckles that little gap in the woods they'd fallen into.
So Percy was off to forage for the sake of closing up open flesh and their growling stomachs, picking around the low cliff-side that kept the trees at bay. That, and Keyleth knew enough about the pepperbox to know he never brought his hand to the trigger if he didn’t mean it.
When Grog had quietly mumbled, “It was an accident.” She'd seen him stiffen. His finger was readying to squeeze. Percy was smart to have found another task for himself.
Vex and Vax didn’t have quite the same foresight. They kept Grog backed right up against the tree-line of the clearing. Vax’s boot flattened a sapling, his hand twitching towards to the sheath of his dagger as he all but growled back, “An accident?!”
“M’sorry.”
“You’re sorry.” Vex repeated, her voice cold and tight.
He tried again. “The sword—”
“Get rid of the fucking sword, then!” Vax snarled, and now his hand had found the hilt.
“Okay,” Scanlan had interrupted, cutting short the fight that had been brewing. He pulled them back a few steps from the brush. He did not trample any of the young sprouts. “Here’s the game-plan: Perc’?”
“I know the Fey Realm.” Percy had said resolutely. “Sort of. Not first hand, of course, but—if I could get a better lay of the land, maybe—“
“Maybe there’s something a bit more helpful.” Scanlan finished. He took another step backwards, away from the looming, gnarled trees. “We’re gonna try to find something that Keyleth can use better.”
“Something anti-septic.” Percy agreed. “Or edible. Since rations are running low.”
Scanlan tried for a smile as he turned to Keyleth. “Any requests?”
“Yarrow.” She said quickly. “Thyme, primroses, garlic, and lavender. Especially lavender.”
From the edge of the glade, Grog raised his hand. “I can—“
“You can stay fucking put.” Vax snapped. Grog withered under his glower, shoulders wane and fingers loose in his lap.
Vax gestured between himself and Vex. “We’ll keep an eye on him."
Percy nodded sharply. "Right." And then they were gone.
They had yet to return.
This was her third poultice in as many hours. Keyleth didn’t have the things she needed, but cinnamon wasn’t useless. The honeysuckle twining around the stone lip of the nearby cuesta wasn't useless.
Keyleth wasn’t useless.
She didn’t have the time to marvel at the Fey Realm. The mountains that flittered overhead and water that fell upwards only registered in dim awareness. She didn't try to identify the moss that wove and wended through the cellar-sized glade and up tree-sides. She didn't care to study the blue veins of the leaves hanging off the curves branches. The long, winding cloud reaching towards the sun only mattered when it started to darken the sky.
Often, her attention wandered just slightly to the side and she was reminded that she was not simply working, but holding vigil.
Not that she could forget. The shallow, stuttering inhales that pushed and pulled through Pike’s chest were hard to ignore.
They’d laid out every cloak and fur the group had to offer, tucked around Pike as though warmth could heal a gut wound.
The cinnamon sloughed from her mortar onto Percy’s split coattails. It was best for small cuts, not burns. These were only really good for minor wounds. The slice of a pocketknife or the graze of a poorly-aimed arrow, not… not this.
But Scanlan’s voice hadn’t floated out of the woods yet, neither had Percy’s heavy steps.
Fuck. Keyleth was running out of cinnamon.
They came back after sundown. Or, what Keyleth assumed qualified as sundown here. The sun didn’t set so much as it was swallowed by some massive thing on the horizon, it’s mouth opening in slow motion as it careened through the sky.
Keyleth had been too involved in the scarf in her hands to notice. She’d run out of spices, but her fingers refused to still. So Keyleth nicked a bowl from Vex’s bag and did her best to wash out the blood from her sleeves, the dirt off her knees. And after, from Vex’s tunic; from the leather of Vax’s daggers.
Her finger’s were already pruning by the time she reached for Pike’s ruined scarf, determined to save the pale blue from becoming a rust-coloured. It was practically scabbed over, but Keyleth was few things if not stubborn.
She hadn’t noticed the clouds (?) gaping maw until Vax’s abrupt: “The fuck is that?”
It’s jaw closed with a loud crack before sinking below the tree-line, grumbling in what Keyleth swore was content.
“I hate this place.” Vex had muttered once the shock wore off. "I hate this fucking place."
With the darkness came unease. It wasn’t long before Percy stumbled through the brush, Scanlan clinging to his back.
“Did you find anything?”
“Food, yes. The herbs you asked for, however…” Percy trailed off.
Keyleth sighed.
“Once it’s light out again, we can go back out.” Scanlan raised his hand. There was a thistle caught behind his ear. “You should stay here. To, uh, you know.”
Keyleth’s stole a glimpse of Pike. She hadn’t so much as mumbled in hours and the smell of a hot wound had swelled. She didn’t have anything to stave off an infection. She didn't have anything that could fix this.
“Right.” She looked back down at the scarf. Her hands began to move again.
Vex started a small fire; the rest of the sluggishly settled in for a long night.
Keyleth sat crosslegged, patiently dousing, wringing, and scrubbing the scarf. Her hands ached and her nails were waterlogged, bending against the walls of the bowl.
“Keyleth.” Vax called gently, long after the water went from red to brown. “Give it a rest.”
“I can get it out.” She insisted. “I can.”
“Not with just water you can’t.” Scanlan appeared in front of her, his tone light, but eyes heavy.
She sighed. “Scanlan, I know it’s silly but please just—”
He held up one finger. “Ah-ah-ah! You misunderstand. I am merely offering assistance"
"But you hate getting your hands dirty."
"Precisely. Thus: M’lady,” Scanlan bowed with a small flourish, hand outstretched.
Keyleth blinked before looking down into his hand.
“Oh.”
“Soap.” He clarified, still bowing.
“Thanks.” She accepted the proffered waxy, olive-green lump. Her nose twitched. “Chamomile?”
Scanlan shrugged, rhythm of a limerick vanishing from his voice. “Hey, sensitive skin needs a sensitive soap.”
Keyleth looked between the soap in her hand—pristine, velvety, expensive—and the scarf—sticky, wine-dark, wet—in her lap. The hems were gummy, even after soaking it.
“Are you sure?“ She started, but Scanlan shook his head before she could finish.
“I can get more some other time.” He replied with a wave.
The soap had to be worth at least a half bag of silver. Normally, he wouldn’t part with something like that so easily.
She watched Scanlan hovered a hand over Pike forehead, a murmur of magic dripping off his hands. The creases in her brow eased. Some colour returned to her cheeks. It did not last.
Keyleth got most of the stains out. Even still, it would never be the same again. The scarf was a different shade of blue.
As promised, when that big serpentine thing hacked up the sun, Percy shucked the rest of his coat and Scanlan tied a waterskin to his belt. The morning was warm; they marched off with a promise to come back with more.
Vex and Vax sat at the side of the clearing, both not-so-subtly watching Grog like a mother sparrow might guard her fledglings from a bluejay.
Scanlan had been the one to get the goliath a bit cleaned up the night before, pulling him from his stupor and brushing off a cagey Vax.
“Relax. He’s not gonna do anything.” Scanlan said. Vax backed off with a huff. “C’mon big guy, let’s wash up a bit.”
“I didn’t mean to.” Grog told him quietly. "Really."
"I know."
Scanlan had kept to the outskirts of their little camp.
There was an unspoken consensus from Vex and Vax: Grog is on probation. Keep a distance.
The twins had been particularly defensive, to put it lightly. His blade had been the quickest to raise. She’d been the first to her feet; their voices the loudest when Grog tried to apologize.
Even now, from across the camp, she could seen Vax’s thumb on the hilt of his dagger.
She could see Vex’s index finger resting on her bowstring while her other hand carefully thatched dark grey feathers to the ends of her arrows. A tinderbox of goose wings sat at her feet.
Vax’s eyes drifted sideways, a weathervane to the danger. Vex tore another feather loose.
And Keyleth—she was still wrist-deep in her mortar and pestle because what else could she do? Vex’s emptied bag had yielded a half empty bottle of cheap wine. Keyleth hardly knew how to use alcohol for healing, but she’d take whatever she could get right about now.
She carefully peeled back the layers they’d bundled Pike in and held her breath as she pressed her palm to the bandages, a rush of summoned water flushing through.
Pike twitched.
It was different than when Pike did it. Keyleth wasn’t even the one being healed, and she could tell it was different. It was dense and sticky and wet in a way that Pike’s healing never—never—was.
From Pike, it was a breath of light, a warm breeze. It was steady and gentle. Whatever Keyleth was doing felt like heavy rain. It convulsed.
The stench of booze pinched gooseflesh over her neck as the cork popped off. The wine caught somewhere between a sweet drink and the harsh sting of vinegar. It smelled like a medical tent; it smelled like a temple. Fuck it smelled like a temple.
She swallowed her sickness and pretended she didn’t notice the twins watching her.
She pretended not to notice Grog’s hopeful stare, too.
There was a part of her—meaner, angrier—that wanted to scream, to bare her teeth, to snarl at him like an animal. She wanted to stand by Vax or tear feather for Vex.
But Keyleth wasn’t meaner or angrier.
She sat back on her heels, mortar lifted as light bled from her palms. She hummed, eyes closed as the magic clambered inside the bowl, nestling into the wine and mashed honeysuckles.
She exhaled in a long whistling sigh.
“Hey.” A voice croaked.
Keyleth jumped so hard her knees left the ground. She turned and—
The mortar cracked against the stone; her breath snagged.
—and one bleary eyed, bloody cheeked, dirty haired, sallow skinned, sweat-stained Pike Trickfoot stared up at her.
“Hi.” She breathed back. And gods, what a lame thing to say. A hysterical chuckle tugged up her throat. She was alive. Fuck, she was alive and awake and she was covered in grime and she was beautiful. “Welcome back.”
Keyleth faintly registered Vax’s boots hitting the ground, the sound of Vex calling out.
Pike smiled back. “Thanks.”
Vax crashed down next to Keyleth. “Pike.” He said; it came out in a crack. “Gods, Pike.”
“Yo,”
“You,” he breathed, a thick scrape of laughter curling out, “you were gone for a while there. We didn’t know if you’d come back.”
“Whoops?”
A smile wobbled on his face and Keyleth felt tears gathering against her lashes. There was a dam in her chest. A wall, a gate, something keeping all the fear and relief coiled up. But seeing Pike opened a seam.
“Whoops.” He echoed incredulously, still smiling. “You nearly bleed to death and all you can say is whoops. You… you fucker.”
“I’ll go find the others!” Vex called over. “Vax?”
“Shit, right, coming!” He paused for a moment, reaching down to close his hand around Pike’s. “We’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere, yeah? Kiki, can you—“
“I’ve got her.” She said firmly. The seam pulled wider; her voice did not break yet, though. “Go.”
He lingered for just a moment longer, giving Pike the softest smile. “See you in a minute.”
Pike tried to squeeze his hand—the spasm of her finger, the curling of her thumb. “See ya.”
The twins vanished into the hazy water-coloured underbrush of the Fey Realm. This time, they dodged the sprouts. The trees rustled only slightly in their wake.
“Keyleth?” Pike said.
She straightened up. “Yes? What is it?”
“I am,” She inhaled, coughed, and winced, “so fucking thirsty.”
“That tracks. C’mere, let’s get you upright.”
She slid her hands under Pike’s shoulder’s and, as carefully as she could, propped her up.
A twig snapped.
Under her hands, Pike went ridged. Keyleth turned, expecting Scanlan or Percy to be barrelling in, maybe even one of the twins leading the pack, relieved, smiling, ready to swoop Pike up into a crushing hug, and then apologize for squeezing too hard.
This is no what she found. Instead, a handful of paces away, stood Grog, eyes wide, shiny, hopeful.
Keyleth, too, went ridged.
“Pikey?” He asked hesitantly.
And Pike—
Keyleth was certain that if she hadn’t been so close, she wouldn’t have known. If she hadn’t been holding Pike’s shoulders so firmly; if she wasn’t wedged so tight to keep Pike from tilting over; if her grip was looser, Keyleth wouldn’t have known.
But she was close, and she was holding firmly.
—And Pike flinched.
Grog stepped forward, his hands wringing. “Are you feeling better?”
Again, as if expecting a blow, the gnome tensed. Pike swallowed and nodded; Grog breathed a whistle of relief; Keyleth felt like puking.
“Right as rain, bud.” Pike said, and Keyleth could feel the shake more than she could even hear it.
He took two sweeping steps forward.
“Grog.” Keyleth said before he could take the third. “Just wait there, okay?”
He made a whine of a sound. “But—“
“Grog,” Keyleth began as gently as she could. “I think…” She inhaled, scrounging for something, anything to tell him that wasn’t the scream of you’re fucking scaring her that burned in her mouth. “I think it would be best if you helped find Percy and Scanlan right now.”
“Vex and Vax are doing that.” His brow furrowed.
Her jaw tightened. “They might need help.”
Grog must’ve seen something she didn’t, because he paused, head swivelling back to the line of trees, then back to Pike.
Keyleth followed his gaze and saw the glint of dark metal cutting through the yellow morning glow. The sword. He still had the sword.
She felt Pike’s hand close around her sleeve and that was all she needed to calcify her voice. “Grog, you need to leave.”
He stared for a long moment, mouth pinched.
Then, he marched back to the treeline, hefting the swath of metal up on his shoulder, and vanished into the shadows. Keyleth watched him go, stiff until she felt a little exhale brush against her bare arm.
She looked back down to Pike, her hair dirty and face shining with sweat but fuck she was shining and all at once it slammed into Keyleth that she was here and awake and wonderful.
Almost without thinking, Keyleth moved, lifting Pike up into a hug so tight she would be berated by any cleric that wasn’t this cleric—their cleric.
“Fuck.” She hiccuped.
“Keyleth?”
“I’m sorry.” The dam was cracking. Her ribs were breaking open. Her throat was sticky with emotion. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Pike mumbled into her shoulder.
“No.” Because she didn’t get it. How could she? She hadn’t seen the shade of grey her face had gone; she hadn’t seen her hand, blood under her nails, slacken and drop. “Nothing was working.”
“Really, I…” Pike gulped. “I’m… fuck.” Her voice cracked off into a sob and with that, Pike sank deep into Keyleth’s hold.
And while Keyleth didn’t know if the heaving inhales were from relief or fear, she knew to tighten the embrace. She knew her friend. She knew that whatever emotions were roaring through her could be soothed if Keyleth just held her a little closer. In her chest, she felt that crack widen and widen and burst.
“I couldn’t do anything, I was so sure—I thought you were dead.” She all but wept.
“Ditto.”
“We’re in the middle of nowhere.” She was babbling now. “There’s no temples or healers and you’re the only one who can, I mean, none of us know how to—fuck, that would’ve been it. You’d be…”
“It would've.” Pike gave a watery little laugh and shit, she was crying too. “But whatever you guys did worked. M’still kicking.”
“Still kicking.” Keyleth agreed, only daring to loosen the coils of her arms so Pike could untangle herself, scrubbing at her face, but not yet brave enough to let go.
Everything would get better from here. It had to. They'd made it through the worst of things.
“Hey, uh, Keyleth?”
“Hm?” She glanced to Pike, whose gaze was swinging around the rippling, glassy outcropping, the hills that warped, and the sun as it slowly sprouted what looked like legs. “Where the fuck are we?”
They landed in the Fey Realm screaming.
The shift spell thundered through her, buzzing from the soles of her feet, up through the sinew that held her joints in place to the crown of her head. It felt like she would rattle right out of her skin, torn from her body like the meat from a bone. The magic howled through her like a river through a bottleneck.
It was hot.
For a moment, all that kept Keyleth upright was the white-knuckle grip she had on her staff; all she could see was colour and all she could taste was sugar.
Everything burned.
Then, all at once, it was gone, flushing out of her in a heavy crash that drove her to her knees.
The shapes and sounds around her blurred, slurring together, slowly sharping into watery focus. The smears of her vision began to ebb, making way for a whistling breeze, a tittering swarmed bugs, and the sound of someone (Vex, her voice so strained it was nearly shrill) fucking scream: “Pike!”
In an instant, Keyleth was scrambling to her feet, staff abandoned. She whipped around, gaze landing Pike’s bent form, tunic darkening, an arm braced under her. She head lifted for just long enough to lock eyes with Keyleth before her face went glassy.
Keyleth lunged. “Woah! Hey, careful!”
The dirt she landed on wasn’t dirt so much as it was mud; it was warm; it was sticky. Pike was leaning against her, heavy, shaking, and heaving for air. One hand was clamped against her side like she was trying to keep a tankard from spilling.
“Pike? Are you—?” Pike’s hand slipped, catching herself on Keyleth’s shoulder with a strangled gasp and the smell—the smell—cut off whatever she had been about to ask. It punched upward with such force it made her eyes water. Keyleth looked down and felt herself get dizzy at the sight.
“Shit,” Pike coughed. “I-I, shit.” She coughed again, a racking, wet sound, and this time something came spitting out. Something red.
This was bad. She knew that. The sword had pierced through her armour and out the other side. Even from afar, Keyleth had seen—Pike’s feet had been off the ground. It didn’t stop her from getting vertigo at the realization that what her tunic was soaking in wasn’t mud but hot, fresh blood leaking from a wound as long as a tulip’s stem.
Keyleth was no healer but she had seen death enough. She had seen the colour skin goes before the heart slowed to a march to a crawl to a halt. She knew the rattle, the wheeze and spatter of a chest filling with liquid.
Pike was fading.
Keyleth’s breath came quicker. She held Pike’s cheek, lifting her head away from the mess of flesh that made up her middle. “You’ll be okay.” She said. It tasted bitter; it tasted like a lie. “You’ll be fine. Just—Scanlan!”
For a moment, Pike just stared at her, bleary-eyed, before slumping against Keyleth, head heavy against her collar. Keyleth kept one arm wrapped close around her as she hacked up blood.
It should have been someone else. It should have been anyone else. Pike could heal any of they, and she’d do it like it was the easiest thing in the world, but none of them—none of them could heal her—
“Oh, oh fuck,” Scanlan, crashed down next to her. “W-what do we do?”
“She needs to heal herself.”
Scanlan nodded, his face set with a type of determination she rarely saw from him. He took Pike’s hand, pressing it to the wound. “You got this.” He told her. There was magic in his mouth as he spoke. “Easy-peasy. This is basically kid stuff.”
Pike nodded, a hiccup of dark red smeared across her jaw. “Easy.” She echoed weakly.
Her brow pinched together, teeth grit, and Pike’s hand blushed golden.
For a beat, there was light under her fingers and Keyleth felt relief flooding her because Pike could heal any of them and that included herself and—
The light wilted.
Pike curled in on herself, wheezing. Fresh blood pooled against the hand Keyleth had swathed around her friend. The light flickered. The light died.
“Fuck, fuck, okay just stay awake, okay?” Scanlan was saying, patting down his pockets frantically. A spell was pouring out of him. But Scanlan, like her, was no healer.
“Try again.” Keyleth said instantly. She shook Pike by the shoulder, failing to keep her voice level. “Pike, it didn’t work. Try again. You need to try again, okay?”
From behind them, a bang cut through the air. Percy’s pepperbox. Keyleth didn’t bother turning around to find out why.
“Keyleth,” Scanlan started nervously. “I-I don’t have any potions.”
“Shit.” She held Pike’s face in her hand, meeting her dimming gaze. “Pike, please,”
“Mm-hm.” She nodded, swallowed thickly.
Scanlan had gotten to his feet, tearing through his bag in search of something. “C’mon.” He stammered. “There’s gotta be something in here.”
Pike shook, lifting her hand. Golden light bleed through the gore for a moment before it blinked and withered away. Pike stared down at her hand with growing horror.
“I… I can’t.” She breathed, voice slurring. “I… I’m not…”
Keyleth’s throat closed up. She… she couldn’t heal herself.
“No no no, just one more,” Keyleth pleaded.
Her head listed, eyes hazed. “M’sorry.”
Pike fell sideways; Scanlan dropped the bag; Keyleth screamed.
Percy, if nothing else, liked to think of himself as observant.
And during the first two days and two nights in the Fey Realm, the primary thing he had observed was danger.
All the wonder he imagined the Fey Realm would inspire was kneecapped, stunted by the reminder that for all its beauty, it was first and foremost, hostile. They were sitting ducks, and a part of him cried to move before something large and hungry came upon them.
If it had been anyone else to go down, they would’ve been fine by now.
But they’d been reckless, and the backbone of their battle tactics had been sporting a death rattle. The fact of their vulnerability gnawed at him. They had to move.
But another thought other cried back they couldn’t move. Not now, with a dear friend injured and fragile. Not when one bump in the road, one too-hard jostle could reopen her wound and she would be lost to them.
Perhaps the most relief Percy had felt in recent memory was seeing Vex burst the the bright brush of trees with roots that spiralled instead of spread, Vax on her heels, to breathlessly say: “She’s awake.”
And awake she was. Circles ringing her eyes, face pale, a sheen of sweat on her brow and shored up against Keyleth. Nonetheless, Pike waved at the as they barrelled in like knobbed-kneed coffle of asses.
“Sup.” She croaked.
A rush of calm poured over him. She was alive. They hadn’t lost her. Despite their uselessness, despite their last line of defence being left to the mercy of a sword that nearly cleaved a dragon in two, Pike was awake.
So, naturally, Percy smiled.
Vex must’ve taken off the second she’d stirred, because she pulled Pike into a horribly soft embrace, a kiss pressed to the top of her head that lingered longer than the friendly pecks she'd pepper the party with after a job well done.
Scanlan’s usual zeal had been curbed. He simply put his hand over Pike’s. Almost timid. “What’d I tell ya? Easy-peasey.”
They crowded, swarming around her. Vax, like his sister, had thrown an arm arm around her, chin atop her head.
Percy, on the other hand, waited until the excitement petered out to slink over and quickly, silently, slip his arm around her shoulders for a split-second hug.
“I’m glad you’re doing better.” He said, low enough that the wind would carry the words only as far as Pike’s pointed ears and no further. He retracted his arm, coughing into his fist. “Anyways,”
He risked a glance and found Pike with a wry, spreading grin. He felt his face get a little warm with some childish sort of embarrassment.
A creak of laughter bubbled from her. “Sap.” She accused.
“No idea what you mean.” Percy replied.
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell.”
He readied to leave her be, but lingered, chewing his cheeks. Pike raised a brow. “Apple?” She offered a dried slice.
“Oh. Yes, thank you.”
He was a little ashamed to say that he didn’t register Grog’s absence until his return, lugging himself through the forest. The sun had grown stubby legs and was strolling towards the horizon line when Grog’s shoe cracked against a corkscrewing root.
He saw Pike jump a bit at the noise, turning to the dark stretch of trees with a sharp inhale. “It’s just Grog.” Percy told her.
“Right.”
“Nothing to be scared of.”
“Uh-huh.”
He was doubly embarrassed to admit it took him even longer to notice that Grog didn’t have the sword, a topic only Scanlan was brave enough to touch. “Hey, bud. What, uh, what happened your sword?”
“Threw it.” Grog replied.
“Threw it where?”
“That way.” He pointed.
“Oh.”
“It’s gone now.”
“Gotcha.”
Scanlan shrugged when Percy asked what that was all about. The exchange vanished from his mind before the fire had finished being lit.
That was the first night since the shift spell that any of them got a decent night's sleep.
Note the use of decent and not good. Percy woke more than once. He watched, intermittently, as one by one, like planets to a star, the group moved in closer to Pike. They condensed around her.
Even without his glasses, Percy had seen the group begin to orbit her, Keyleth dragging her sleeping roll close and practically folding around the gnome, Vax nervously pacing the perimeter until he slowed to a stop, and so on. Percy has been the last to move, making certain he wouldn’t be caught in the act.
Or so he thought, because a mere few minutes after he had moved, he heard Grog tip-toeing (as much as Grog could tip-toe) over.
Percy decided to keep to himself the low, “I’m sorry.” Grog had mumbled into the cool night air. Observant didn’t mean snitch. Percy rolled onto his back and closed his eyes.
Percy had thought, had hoped, that once Pike was back on her feet, his panicked murmurings of stay or go would be put to rest.
Apparently, he had thought wrong!
If anything, it worsened. Stay or go had become left or right, forward or back. Percy had checked his compass more than once to find it spinning in drunken circles. The sun, having been swallow, spat up, mutated, amputated and blown out by a gust of air, gave no hand in telling one cardinal direction from the other. There were too many options now, too many sets of feet that could misstep.
Percy, really, didn’t really enjoy taking the lead with things like this. He wasn’t the navigator that Vex was; he wasn’t the savant of nature Keyleth was. Hell, he wasn’t even Scanlan, who could take the lead with confidence despite flying as blind as the rest.
But unlike them, Percy spent a decade tearing through every book in his library about Fey Realm. He had peer reviewed essays on his side. He chewed his tounge as he doused the embers of last nights fire. Maybe he could prevent those missteps.
Vex packed their things as best she could and when Grog halfheartedly offered to carry the heavier packs, she begrudgingly handed them over.
Keyleth stared Pike down.
“You shouldn’t be walking.”
“I can walk just fine.”
“Pike,” she warned.
Percy privately wondered if maybe, just maybe, Keyleth was suffering the same guilt as he was. If she too was ashamed for letting the person who stood between Vox Machina and death be the one on its doorstep. If she too was rationalizing her fear into tactical formations.
“If I need help, I’ll ask.” But the ease in her tone a bit too forced. Keyleth must've heard it too, because she crossed her arms and glared until Pike folded.
Her head hung with a defeated, “Fine,” and clambered onto Keyleth’s kneeling tiger form.
The exchange lodged in his head.
She had agreed too quickly. Pike, for better of for worse, had been Percy’s first vote when Scanlan had asked, months back over a dozen empty bottles, who in the group had balls of steel. The chorus of agreement to his suggestion proved his point.
He watched the two out of the corner of his eye as he helped Vax bury the remains of their fire pit.
“You seem distracted.” Vax commented. “What is it?”
“Pike’s acting a little off, don’t you think.”
Vax fixed him with an incredulous look. “No shit, she almost died.”
“I know.” He said, maybe a bit too sharply. “I meant that she seems nervous is all.”
“She’s still hurt and we’re stranded.” Vax said, dusting his hands off as he rose. “Stranded in the Fey Realm no less.”
“The realm of chaos,” Percy agreed under his breath.
“It would be hard not to be nervous. We’re in hostile territory.”
Percy threw a glance over his shoulder to the gnome. Her head didn’t turn, but her eyes darted, shoulders tight. There was a vigilance, a hyper-vigilance, to her that there normally wasn’t.
“That… is a good point.” Percy said, more to himself than anything as he trailed after Vax to where the group had condensed. Vex rolled over to him, mouth pinched, a wrinkle in her brow.
“We need to get going.” She said with an exasperated sigh. “Problem is this place is impossible to navigate. I can’t make sense of it, and Keyleth said none of the planets are responding to her—“
“I can lead.” Percy said, loud enough to make himself cringe at the echo. “I’ve studied the Fey Realm. I can guide us.”
Vex's brow raised. “Are you sure?”
Percy squared his shoulders and answered, resolute: “I’m certain.”
They marched for hours.
It was hard not to feel venerable. Their healer was out of commission; it was as if the chest plate had been stripped away from their suit of armour.
Percy put himself front and centre to compensate. At his side, Keyleth prowled, teeth bared and whiskers twitching. Though he didn’t speak tiger, Percy could guess what the little grumble she’d given when sidling up next to him meant. I’ll keep an eye out.
And with Keyleth’s pale fur and long canines came Pike, tired but alert, eyes scanning. He saw her hands grasping tight against Keyleth’s hide.
Pike Trickfoot was scared and it didn’t suit her. Percy was determined to ease her nerves.
“Suas sruth,“ he said as they passed under a brook babbling in knots above their heads. “Just a creek. Totally harmless.”
“Hm,” Pike said absently.
“Nerd.” Vax and Scanlan coughed into their fists, almost in sync.
(They proceeded to high five. Percy proceeded to flip them both off.)
“Maiusweeds,” he said as thumb-sized bugs with wings like peony petals like fluttered past.
“Uh-huh.” Pike said with her eyes elsewhere.
At every opportunity, he announced his knowledge of the Fey Realm.
You’re not in danger, he wanted to say. We’ll keep you safe this time, he wanted to say. I’ll keep you safe this time, he wanted to say.
But he couldn’t just say that. So Percy made it known that academia was on his side.
A half day wading through the woods spat them out into a yawning field of monochrome grasses. They swallowed to group to the elbows (Scanlan to the chin.) The tips of each blade were glassy, fracturing the light that hit them like prisms to sunbeams. The grasses white stalks were freckled with split remnants of light.
“These are called claraules. From the words bright and stalk.”
Keyleth sneezed; Vex rolled her eyes; Pike didn’t react at all.
He recalled information ad nauseam, watching for a sigh of relief of loosening of the shoulders. It never came. That night, as he turned embers over in the fire pit, light searing past his glasses, Percy told himself he was right, that he had to be.
Things got worse when the goat showed up. Not materially worse, but ever since Vex snagged the little beast by the scruff, their morale had been bruising.
Garmelie is what he called himself. Vex’s nickname of pest was more apt.
“I can show you where you need to go.” He said, nearly singing it.
Vax threw a dagger at him for the eleventh time. The satyr vanished in a puff of smoke. “Missed.” He chimed. “That’s nine to zero. Tsk, tsk.”
Percy wondered if it would be worth it to take a shot himself. He’d seen the satyr sweep in and out of existence every time Vex fired an arrow and Scanlan loosed a razor sharp whistle. Their attempts merely pruned the grove of willows they’d wandered into.
“Ignore him.” Percy said.
“You’ll come around.” He floated over, hands behind his head, as if down a gentle stream, right beside Percy. “You know, I’ve never seen someone go in so many circles before. Are you stupid?”
Percy didn’t dignify the question with a response. Pike, on the other hand, didn’t have his reservations. She scowled and flicked a bolt of light towards him. Garmelie, bored, caught the bolt between his fingers, the magic sizzling as he examined it. “Strange. What happened to you?”
Her nose wrinkled. “Nothing happened to me.”
“Well that can’t be right.” He held up the glimmering remains of whatever spell she’d cast. “You’ve got rot in your magic.”
Percy jerked to a stop. He wasn’t the only one. Keylth growled; Scanlan turned sharply, voice tight. “She has what?”
Garmeile pinched the magic between his nails. “Oh, ew. Where’d you even get this?”
“Rot?” Vex questioned. “Magic can have rot?”
Pike’s hands fluttered. “No—I mean, sort of, but also no—”
"Sure it can!" Garmeile twirled up beside Pike. "But I wanna know how." And, too fast for her to pull away, pressed his finger to her forehead.
Her eyes glowed. Magic seared the air.
(And Percy knew for that split second his finger had grazed her face, she was seeing something the rest of them weren’t.)
Pike jumped back, almost falling as Keyleth wheeled out of range, teeth gnashing, backed by Vex’s drawn bow. “Lay off.” She hissed.
The smile had been wiped clean, replaced by a slant frown and folded arms. His gaze swept over them, landing on Grog’s hazy silhouette, tucked neatly at the very back of the marching line.
Seeing him made Percy startle. It wasn’t as thought he’d forgotten about Grog. It was just that he wasn’t exactly the priority right now. And with him being so uncharacteristically quiet, it was easy for his presence to slip Percy’s mind.
Garmelie gave a hum, his impish demeanour returning as if it never left. “Your friend here isn’t lookin’ so good. I’m sure she’d appreciate the assistance, right doc? You should know better than anyone the whole woods can smell a wound like that.”
Something about those words, in that order, made Percy’s jaw tighten. He put himself between Garmelie and Pike’s annoyed stare. “We don’t want your help.”
The satyr grinned. “Oo, defensive aren’t we! Aw, lemme guess, you’re just wracked with guilt over the doc here getting a sword through the—“
Percy wasted three bullets on Garmelie.
The group froze. The satyr's body thudded, a lolling heap of fur and bony limbs.
“Percy!” Vex chided, but Garmelie was already gathering himself.
“Ow,” He whined, knocking the heel of his hand against his temple. Two bullets fell from his wedged ear. He snorted a third out his nose. “Uncalled for.”
Percy seethed in return. “Leave.”
“Fine. If you don’t want the pleasure of my company, I’ll be off. But if you ever start missing me…” he winked, snapping out of existence.
“You didn’t have to do that.” Pike said.
“We should start looking for a spot to break for the night. We’ve been hiking for a while now.” Was his response.
They made camp for the night under an uprooted tree the size of a house. Percy tried and failed to remember what the trees were called.
Morning came. They packed; they pressed on.
It was only when they came upon a swath of flowers as tall as oaks did they take pause.
“The plants here are weird.” Keyleth said, sweat on her brow from maintaining her tiger form so many days in a row. “It’s like they’re speaking backwards.”
Percy straightened up. “That’s because they respond to emotion,”
Vax groaned. “You cannot be serious.”
It only took Vax a minute and a half for a plant to pick him up and try to fling him into the atmosphere. Percy could only assume he’d broken some record for fastest to piss off a plant.
Keyleth didn’t say it aloud, be he could tell she needed a breather from the shape-shifting, so Percy took up her post next to Pike. He leaned down, whispering. “They’re called drisangs.”
“Oh. Cool.”
This was something he’d read about. It made satisfaction bloom in him to have an answer when Vax, hung upside down by the ankle, cried: “Why do these things hate me?!”
“Your irritable and generally unpleasant mood.” Percy replied.
“Fuck off.”
“Besides having a vendetta against Vax, drisangs are rather docile. Watch,” Percy approached one of the vines hanging down from a massive tulip. He brushed a hand over a young shoot. The vine curled against his fingers experimentally, giving his wrist a light squeeze before retreating.
“See? Docile.” He turned to find Keyleth with a curious vine of her own, Vex cutting her brother down again, and Pike looking elsewhere entirely. Even right beside him, she seemed far off. His mouth pinched.
“Pike?”
She jumped, “Hm?”
“Are you alright?”
“Yeah. I’m good.”
It dawned on him, just then and there, that Pike wasn’t really… paying attention to him. And that she hadn’t been for quite some time. Maybe the whole time. She was searching for something between the stalks.
Everyone else was occupied, so he lowered his voice. “We’re not in danger here, you know.”
Pike turned to him quicker than expected. “What?”
“Aside from Vax.” He amended.
Pike blinked at him. “Okay…?”
“I wanted you to know, is all.”
She stared at him for a moment before snorting. “I know, Percy.”
“Oh, I just, I mean.” He swallowed awkwardly “I thought that… you might be nervous because of, you know." He gave a sweeping gesture.
Her head tilted. “Why would I be nervous about," the arc of her hands mimicked his. "That?”
“We’re marooned.” He said it like it was obvious. “We’re in a strange land. You’re injured.”
“I’m okay.”
“You are certainly not.”
Pike waved flippantly. “Whatever. Point is none of us are here alone. I know you've got my back.”
He tried not to let his voice reveal his complete puzzlement. “So you’re not worried about being here.”
“Uh, little help?” Keyleth called, voice distant and a vine curling up her arm.
Pike sifted, just a few steps, towards Keyleth and away from their conversation. “Not really? I mean, you know what you’re doing." He didn't. "I trust you.” She shouldn’t.
She trotted over to Keyleth, hand still held gingerly against her side, steps uneven.
Percy stood there, confused, stammering, and wondering what he’d missed.
“That was painful.” A strong accent filled his ears. Garmelie continued: “Just unbearable.”
He didn’t even have the wherewithal to be annoyed. “I’m lost.”
“No shit you’re lost! I’ve been sayin’ that for ages.”
Pike coaxed the plate to loosen, Keyleth’s arm sliding free, not so much as a glance in his direction. Percy floundered. “No I mean, I thought…”
“Geez, you really are stupid. I didn’t know people with spectacles could be.” Garmelie slung a prickly arm around his neck. His voice dropped to a whisper. “It’s not the wilds the doc is so afraid of, it’s the thing that put that hole in her gut.”
There was the distinct, sudden feeling of cold water was trickling down the walls of his chest. A frost seemed to spread through Percy as he turned on his heel. Like flipping a telescope around, the lenses he’d been severing everything with switched so fast it nearly gave him vertigo.
His eyes found Grog and there was a growing, chewing, gnawing pit in his stomach that Percy couldn’t ignore.
Grog, who stood as far away as he could without being fully out of sight, unable to lift his head, unable to look anyone in the eyes or breach the circle they formed at night.
Percy’s vision had tunnelled so tightly onto Pike’s wound that he’d forgotten whose hand drew the blood to begin with. The memory of pooling gore had superseded the weapon responsible; superseded the hand the weapon sat in; superseded the person the hand attached to.
He’d forgotten there was something else—someone else to be afraid of.
“There you go.” Garmeile smiled, leaning against Percy’s shoulder like they were old friends. “Just wait until you find out he’s still got the sword. That’ll be quite the sight.”
Percy went rigid. The cold feeling, the grip on his chest winding into the stranglehold of a noose as he stared at Garmeile’s all-tooth grin. Ice licked at the inside of Percy’s throat as he spoke; his voice came out frigid: “He what?”
Garmelie covered his mouth. “Oops. Probably wasn’t supposed to say that bit.”
“He still has it?” His fingers twitched. Something—anger, maybe, but most likely fear—spilled over him, voice raising dangerously. “Why does he still have it?”
“It should be happening any minute now. Just ask him then.”
The daze faded away Percy was left with was anger. “What should be any minute now?!” He demanded.
As if on cue, there came a shiver from the fleshy stalks. A flash. It cut through three flowers before whipping handle over blade into Grog’s open hand.
“That,” Garmeile said, “is what.”
Percy was frozen.
For eight impossibly long, shameful seconds, he was still.
Pike's tunic was turning dark. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, her divine, glimmering armour gone. Blood welled through her hand and wet the dirt below.
There was far too much. Of this, he was certain. Far too much for her to be losing. For anyone to be losing.
He heard Vex scream; Keyleth’s feet hitting the ground; Scanland tripping over himself in haste. But he was stone still, barely breathing.
For eight seconds, he was thrown backwards into a deep well inside his head where some version of himself was howling.
Not again, the a young voice wailed. Please, fucking please, not again.
Four seconds ticked by.
There are blips, images, spattering through his head—his older brothers, one hacking up a dark mouthful of blood, one with a blade slotted below his sternum; his younger brothers, staining the dining room table, weeping; Cassandra, the smear of red she became against the snow the night he ran away, the memory of a wet thump as an arrow broke her shoulder blade—and twice over, a much younger part of him screamed: not again.
Another four seconds, gone.
The reverie broke when, from the corner of his eye, there was a slash of movement. Grog, his arms swinging as he started to run.
Percy spun, pepperbox raising, eyes wild behind his dirty glasses. His breath released in a heave.
Vax was beside him, daggers held flush against his forearms and bfrom behind cam the whine of Vex’s bowstring pulling taut.
“Stop!” Vax barked.
Grog lurched, stride skidding as his hands half-raised, like he couldn’t decide if they were worth surrounding to or not.
Grog looked—Percy’s mouth went dry—he looked rabid. He was covered heel to brow in dark, oily blood. That was deep blood. That was gut blood. It came from arteries and organs and places that should never be breeched and Grog was soaked in the stuff. How much of it was the dragon’s?
How much of it wasn’t?
“Don’t.” Vax all but growled. “Don’t take another step.”
Grog blinked, dumbfounded. “But…“
“Grog.” He warned. “I said don’t.”
“I just wanna help.” He looked like he was about to cry.
Percy hadn’t even realized it, but his finger had found the trigger. He was ready to shoot. He was ready to shoot even after the hours of practice and thought he’d poured into trigger discipline following everything that happened at Whitestone. Never put your finger on the trigger, never, unless you are certain and—fuck—his finger was laid, and he was certain. Percy was ready to shoot.
“I didn’t mean to.” Grog tried. “It wasn’t, I… I didn’t mean to.”
Keyleth screamed for Scanlan. (He needed to help. He was terrifed to turn.)
Grog was staring past them, looking vaguely sick through all the gore on his face. “Oh shit, Pike?”
Percy heard the grind of tooth against tooth as Vax seethed: “Put that thing down.”
He shook his head. “She—she’s gonna—“
“Grog, now!” Vex shouted.
But he wasn’t listening, too transfixed by whatever was happening betwee Keyleth, Scanlan, and their dying cleric. Grog started to move, ready to break into the sprint. Percy’s arm raised, pepperbox to the sky and let it speak only once. The sound was deafening. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the twins jump, and straight ahead of him, Grog’s face broke, staring at Percy with this look of betrayal, a if he was in the wrong. As if he was the one who cut down their friend.
Grog’s arms slackened to his sides.
The sword dropped to the ground with a heavy, singular thump. Percy felt it reverberate through the ground, up through his bones to rattle his chest, and his breath rattled with it.
“I just wanna help. Please let me help?”
Percy failed to keep himself level. “I can’t.”
Grog stared at him, pleading. “It wasn’t on purpose. She’s my friend, I…” He gulped in air.
A shadow befell Vex's face. “I don’t give a damn if it was on purpose or not.”
Through the twin's rage, Percy could hear Keyleth, her panicked babbling. He had to turn. He didn’t want to, but something terrible was happening and he was just there, holding his weapon, seething—
It Scanlan’s voice that scared him the most, as he shouted, panicked, the simple word: “Help!”
He whirled, breaking into a run and only noticing he’d dropped his weapon when he heard it hitting the dirt. Keyleth’s tear-streaked face peered up at him, Scanlan’s hands tiny against the wound, and cradled between the two of them, Pike. She looked half-dead, the strike of blood that ran down from the corner of her mouth bright against her greying skin.
Percy’s mind raced, cataloguing: the blood was dark, her breaths shallow, eyes half lidded and she was looking at him. The wound was deep. Sepsis was probable. If they didn’t do something fast, sepsis was inevitable.
Percy pressed his hands atop of Scanlan’s, covering as much of the wound as he could. It was hot under his gloves, His stomach surged, acid at the back of his throat, breath held against the smell of flesh trying to seep through his spread fingers.
Pike’s teeth clenched, her watery eyes finding him through a haze.
“Hang on,” he said, and for once in his life, his plea wasn’t a whisper. For once, his heart was not tucked into some corner of his chest, but in his mouth, loud. “We’ve got you.”