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For a brief moment, it feels like Beau’s brain just. Stops.
Normally she’s connecting the dots before most people even know there are dots to connect, but somehow it is very nearly impossible for her to square what she is seeing in this forest clearing with her known understanding of her situation. Which in and of itself has undergone significant changes in the last few hours. There are many adjusted factors clamoring for her attention, and her Cobalt Soul training kicks in immediately, as reflexive as her muscles are. List the facts, as we know them.
Fact: the volstrucker bitch is dead. Like, dead dead. Like, Beau’s pretty sure not even a forbidden necromancy spell would bring her back enough to even speak to. Her skeleton is somehow both charred and gone milky-white from the unlikely heat of the firestorm. The tree remains unharmed.
Fact: Caleb, sad eyes and all, is a Volstrucker. Or at least, was close enough to being one to know that a punch wouldn’t be enough to have Volstrucker Bitch spilling the type of information they wanted, and to default ruthlessly to BOILING HER FUCKING SKIN. Beau can still smell THAT, unfortunately, along with the general odor of burning hair and (ugh) rancid bacon mixing with the charcoal.
Caleb is also on the ground. His face is stained with tear-tracks and soot, and Nott is muttering frantic and close, supporting his limp neck as she does her damnedest to move him. She is very small, and while Caleb might not be a particularly large man he’s also very much deadweight in her arms. His fingertips, dangling at his side, are stained black, as if he has been sticking his hands in charcoal.
Fact: not currently a threat, then. Neither is Volstrucker Bitch, obviously.
Fact: Caleb (likely, based on what she has seen tonight and who is in the clearing with her) is Volstrucker Bitch’s murderer.
Beau blinks, takes a few more deep breaths, and comes back to herself. More centered. More prepared. Meditation is still hard for her, but this is not. The dots are here, and she has connected them. What remains is to make a decision about how to move forward.
“Caleb, Caleb, you’re alright,” Nott continues to drone, nearly a lullaby, and still choked with the threat of tears. The man in her arms does not respond. He just lays there, as dead to the world as the woman he must have immolated to death, and something in Beau cringes because like. Yes, he’s dangerous. Yes, he’s lied to them. No, he doesn’t appear to be particularly sorry about it. But he also looks defenseless, right now, and so, so tired. The dark circles under his eyes nearly look like full shiners, at this point.
Eventually, Nott settles him gently to the ground and rises to take a several long pulls from her flask before whipping around to glare at Beau and raise herself to her full three foot height. She somehow produces a dagger with her free hand as she does.
“Don’t you dare touch him,” she snarls, that fierceness in her eyes that Beau has seen before, back at the carnival. “I will end you before you lay a finger on him, do you hear?” Her voice cracks a little at the end, but she holds the dagger steady.
Beau stares at her for one long minute, and then the events of this night must catch up with her because she immediately starts laughing, which makes Nott bristle. She takes a few breaths, deep and full into the bottom of her lungs, and walks right up to the posturing goblin, ignoring the unsettling teeth Nott bares.
“Calm down,” she says. “What were you going to do? Drag him back on the ground?”
Nott keeps shrilling at her but she pays no mind and moves forward and past her. The fact that Nott is shouting but that the dagger hasn’t imbedded itself in her kneecap is a good sign. She crouches down beside Caleb, and slides her arms under him until she can lift him into a fireman’s carry, tossed over her left shoulder in a way that has Nott screeching again. He’s tall, but stringy— she’s carried heavier before.
“Come on,” she says, interrupting Nott’s tirade. “Let’s get back to the house. He can take Fjord’s place, if he’s up.” If he isn’t, they can likely manage something serviceable with bedrolls and abandoned blankets. “Think he’ll sleep it off?”
Nott stares at her, silent for once, and then nods. “I think so. He has before.”
“Alright, let’s go.” And because Beau is still an asshole, in her heart, she uses her much longer legs to propel herself far ahead of Nott, who has to huff and puff to catch up with her.
“Why are you helping us?” Nott asks, finally, once her breath is mostly back.
“Did you really think I’d just leave him out there? I’m not that much of an asshole.” Okay, maybe that’s a bit of a lie. “Besides, I need to know what’s going on here. Can’t ask him questions if he’s like, eaten by wolves or killed by evil wizards or—“ and here she kinda runs out of possibilities to end on, “— let’s just get him back to the house.”
And if she’s not entirely motivated by the promise of extracting info about the Volstrucker from what seems to be an ex (???) Volstrucker, then well. It would be impossible, knowing what she knows, to not feel just the tiniest bit bad for the dude.
She keeps walking, back toward the farmhouse, with Nott in tow, and tries hard not to think of the body, back in the clearing, and how easily that could be her.