That was probably some sort of fae magic to enter into dreams and that, or new aged magic that he didn’t care to learn. Regardless her suggestion had been met with a chuckling hum and a shifting to curl into shoulder without having his next tumble off into the ground. Doing that same sort of chirruping noise that was efforts of audible appreciation to being told that he was liked –the past them sure as shit wouldn’t have agreed to any of that, but he watched her for a moment.
Listening. Waiting, ensuring that she did succumb to the means of rest because while they both needed it, he wanted to make sure she got it. And that nothing else was about to just reach into this hollow, grab her leg and rip her out to be the next menu item.
It took a while.
A long while till he followed suit. Though it was certainly more fitful and primed with the type of things he had been naturally fearful of. Thankfully devoid of screaming and wailing, but no less haunting.
It always began with sunlight. A soft hush through silver-green trees. Edelguard’s vineyards climbing the hills, the wind drifting with the scent of old thyme and citrus blossom. Somewhere, a lute played softly. Somewhere, someone was singing.
It was peaceful.
He was barefoot on the path again. The familiar crunch of gravel and packed earth greeted the soles of his feet, dust rising in faint, golden clouds around his ankles. The scent of sun-warmed pine and dry lilac clung to the air, just as it had all those years ago—clean and nostalgic, tinged with summer’s breath. He knew this place.
Every bend of the trail had been etched into him, long before spellwork and grimoires ever took root in his mind. He had walked this path as a child, short-legged and bright-eyed, chasing fireflies with a wooden sword in one hand and half a pastry in the other. Later, he had stormed it in his youth—angry, reckless, shirt slung over one shoulder, the world clutched in fists that thought they could change fate. Here, in this dappled grove beneath Edelguard’s eastern ridgeline, he’d once believed himself untouchable. Unstoppable.
He had returned to it years later, steadier. Wiser, maybe. This was where he brought Eden, giggling and fearless, her curls bouncing as she tried to outrun him. They’d knelt by the stream’s edge, cool water threading between smooth stones, and he’d taught her how to float sycamore leaves like little boats. She’d named each one after a hero—her mother, her grandfather, the cat, and once, even him. He remembered pretending to be shocked when she called the smallest leaf “Uncle Arc the Terrible,” and how she laughed until she hiccupped.
That laugh echoed faintly now, carried on the wind like a ghost.
But the stream ahead no longer glistened. It was dark. Stagnant. The leaves floating there were warped, bruised things, curling in on themselves as if trying to hide from what was coming.
He took another step, slower this time. Because even though the grove looked the same…
She couldn’t have been more than five in the dream. Dirty-blonde curls tucked behind one ear, brow furrowed as she arranged little wooden dolls in a neat row on the water-worn stones. She looked up at him and smiled. “Uncle Arc. I saved them. They’re not sick now.” Arc’s stomach turned. His mouth opened—but no sound came. The dolls she placed… They were painted in blood. Faces eaten away by rot. Their mouths stitched shut.
“I gave them all names,” Eden said, her tone bright and sweet. “Now they won’t be forgotten like the rest.” Her skin rippled. Black veins threaded beneath her eyes. The plague had found her again, even here. Even in dreams. She was coughing next—bent double with blood on her lips—and when she lifted her head again, her smile was gone. “You left me.“
He staggered back—
—and turned.
Finding only another unwanted apparition, his sister stood a few paces away, wind lifting the hem of her pale robes. Her face was calm, collected, chin tilted like she always did when she was about to call him a bastard in front of company. Except now, there was no teasing in her eyes.
Only fury. Raw. Unrelenting. She was holding Eden’s little coat. It was burned at the edges. “You opened the gate,” Lyra said softly. “You let them in. You knew what would come through. But you still did it.“
“I tried to stop it,” Arc croaked. “I didn’t know—”
“You didn’t care.”
The words hit him like a blade between the ribs—sharp, cold, too familiar. Her voice, once the balm that soothed childhood scrapes and soothed garden-grown fears, now cracked like a whip through the brittle silence. Lyra’s eyes were aflame with grief, not the soft kind, not the kind you cry out beneath the stars—but the jagged, splintering grief of betrayal. Of loss unatoned. “You thought you could handle it,” she hissed, stepping forward across the wild grass of the once-pristine orchard. “You always think you can handle everything. Until it’s someone else who ends up screaming.”
Her words echoed outward like spellfire—invocations of truth he had long buried under charm and clever words—and the dream twisted under their weight.
The garden shuddered.
Reality fractured.
The vibrant bloom of lilacs and honeysuckle evaporated into smoke. The trees withered and split, curling like parchment in an invisible flame. Colour drained from the grass, which yellowed, then blackened, until nothing was left but scorched dirt beneath his bare feet. Brambles erupted through the earth—wet, thorned things tangled with ash and shards of glass that caught what little light remained. The dream turned ruinous, claustrophobic.
The air soured. The sweet breeze was replaced by the sickly, burning reek of sulphur. All birdsong and laughter had vanished, snuffed out like candles in a storm. Even the sun above flickered like a dying lantern.
And then—through the flame.
A shape emerged from the smoke, stepping with the measured weight of judgment itself.
Atticus.
Tall, broad-shouldered, the same way he had always remembered him—no, felt him. Except now his father’s violet eyes burned not with warmth or understanding, but with condemnation. His robes hung scorched and blackened, trailing cinders. His silhouette was sharp against the inferno behind him, like a ghost carved out of justice and fire.
Still tall. Still broad-shouldered, but hunched now, burned black down one side, blue hair scorched away. His violet eyes were still his—but they held no welcome. He said nothing at first. Just stared at Arc the way a priest might look at a ruined temple. Disappointment, pure and complete. “I raised you to protect,” Atticus said. “To stand between the world and the wolves. But you let them in. You welcomed them to our door. For what? Power? Pride?”
Arc fell to his knees. He couldn’t breathe.
“We died trying to undo your mistake,” Atticus continued. “I watched Lyra and Jakson burn. I felt Eden’s hand go still. And all you could do was run.”
“I didn’t—”
“You did,” Atticus roared. Behind them, the portal crackled open again. Black and screaming, like it remembered. Tendrils reaching. Fangs yawning. And through it stepped a hundred twisted shapes—faces pulled from memory, mutilated into puppets.
They wore his family’s eyes.
His friends’ smiles.
And at the centre…
Carlisle.
The name alone brought the weight of years crashing down like a guillotine. He hadn’t heard it spoken aloud in so long—and yet, here in the twisted theatre of dreams, it rang out with perfect clarity.
The man stepped forward from the smoke, untouched by flame or ash. Carlisle looked exactly as Arc remembered: sharp, handsome, unyielding. His eyes—those grey stormcloud eyes—held that same biting cleverness, the kind that always saw through Arc, stripped him bare, left nothing but the truth rotting underneath.
“Well, look at you,” Carlisle said, voice calm, as if they were simply passing each other in a hallway. “Still dressing up like you’re someone worth loving.” The words didn’t sting. They seared to bone! Unrelenting with a glee that paralyzed his throat. Arc tried to move. Tried to laugh it off as usual. Tried to run. But the dream would not allow him that mercy.
The roots, slick and black with oil, coiled around his ankles like shackles. The brambles curled up his legs, thorns biting deep into flesh. They moved like things alive—hungry and slow. His wrists were next. Vines like iron, wrapping tighter with every heartbeat. His breath caught. Magic surged instinctively—but it fizzled. Curled away from him. Recoiled like it wanted no part of the creature it once called master.
Carlisle’s footsteps echoed louder than they should have as he closed the space between them.
“You’re not a mage,” he said, spitting the word like it offended him. “You’re not even a man. Just a beast in a pretty coat. A demon who poisons everything he touches.” His voice lowered, tone almost gentle—dangerously so. “If you truly cared about anyone,” he whispered, “you’d stay gone.”
And that did it.
The silence broke like glass.
Behind Carlisle, the portal flared open. The rift Arc had summoned—once, long ago, in desperation, in arrogance—now bled screaming light into the dream. From its edges, the voices came. Not one. Not two. An entire chorus, practically singing in a thousand familiar tones layered atop one another like the crash of a tidal wave—young, old, angry, mournful. Atticus. Lyra. Eden. Carlisle. Others unnamed, yet known.
They rose together in a single, shattering verdict: “You should’ve died with us.” And Arc—struggling, bound, gagged by vines of his own making—could do nothing but listen. And woke up without breath.
He awoke with a pained start, thankfully in his beetle form, wings twitched violently, vibrating with panic. Before sliding down to hop onto the ground as an act of just trying to feel it. To cement himself to the world so he might understand that it was still a nightmare, but it wasn’t particularly real. Managing to keep the want to curse and hiss and slam that of not quite fists into the nearest wall.
Wanting to go back and kill Fawna again and again… but that wasn’t in the cards and really, he wouldn’t want to look at her stupid face anyways. It was going to be a long while if this was going to be a reoccurring problem, that much was certain.
They’d done too much this time – not that all of it had been their own choice. Simply Calia was so exhausted of physical form and mind that this time her body had deemed enough is enough. As the white stag warned, she was too young to shake off the effects of Iron poisoning like it was nothing, at it was lucky she’d had help from the elder fae and her bond with a demon. The attempting to use her own fae magic didn’t exactly help. An early morning waking and then stressing and fretting an entire day to the point of refusing to eat? It was truly a wonder that she hadn’t passed out before they ever made it to that tree hollow!
At least through that exhaustion Calia herself wasn’t also plagued with nightmares, for she herself was so stranger to apparitions and visions that always felt just ever so slightly prophetic. A promise of a future she didn’t want.
Thus the mountain princess was lost to the world, but perhaps not so deep enough that she wasn’t in tune with a certain buggy demon. With no telling if it was because of the bond, or because she herself had been traumatized enough that even on that second night she was hyper aware of keeping him close.
She stirred just enough to reach out and place a hand over his beetle body, to pancake him flat to the grassy soil. Almost as if she was going to do as he asked and squish him! Only there was no real pressure behind it, more like a weighted blanket of her palm, with a soft taptap of her thumb to buggy noggin.
And she was gone just as fast back to that deep slumber, hinted when arm and hand had gone limp, no longer with the same pressure. Sleeping so deeply and long, that it was on into the early afternoon before her stomach had churned so violently with hunger she was forced to rouse. That kind of hunger pain that made one feel as if they were going to throw up from the nausea of it.
Uncomfortable groaning was not how Calia wanted to wake. A good lesson in that she ought to be a little more careful, though!
Had she just absolutely smashed him into the ground, there would have never been a complaint about it. Instead, he would have applauded her. Praised her to the ends of the earth because it would have felt at least soothing to have been sent back to the hells to stay till whatever came first. His madness or eternity.
Alas, the woman had simply applied a grounding pressure for a bit till it was obvious that she was in desperate need of rest. Something he would have benefitted from if it hadn’t been for the uninvited ethereal dreams of torment. It was no one’s problem save his own right now and that meant he wasn’t about to go flopping over to try again. Figuring that if he was going to try to rest later, he was going to have to use some sort of concoction to sleep dreamless. Not entirely sure if he was still in the realm of a danger like sleep deprived mages could be but that was also not something he wanted to give life too. Or a chance.
Once he was certain Lia had returned to the means of sleep, he’d crawl out of the hollow proper. Letting form return to the mortal skin and a attempting stretch of neck like it had developed a kink in the beetle body. Looking around their location with a slow assessment. Making sure as far as he could see, that nothing was decidedly hanging out waiting for the proverbial early worm! Doubtful that if there was something out there that wanted to try swooping down with the means of taking a bite out of him, that it would survive. Likely the thing would be a descending fireball before being stomped on! Well aware that his mood was less than pleasant but that wouldn’t stop him from trying to do something moderately useful.
In this case, food.
While it was typically the task that Calia tended to do and he stayed back to the campsite mother, she needed to rest as much as possible. Leaving the task to himself, though he was being preemptively cautious by throwing up a sort of protective barrier around the tree as to avoid anything trying to get her. More of a crystalline ball to surrounded her entirely from all angles, it was only after he was triple certain it was in effect before he went off in search of something that was going to be this day’s first protein heavy meal. Plus it gave him an outlet to both be angry, murdery and a predator.
The redwoods rose like ancient pillars around him, red-streaked trunks vanishing into mist and canopy high above. Morning bled slowly into the forest, cold and colourless, shadows still stretching long across the floor as if reluctant to retreat. Arc moved through them without a sound.
His coat, dark and damp at the hem from morning dew, shifted faintly with each careful stride, a shadow between roots. With eyes glinting once through a curtain of ferns before vanishing again like some familiar storybook that foretold the presence of something ominous. While he was prone to being loud, it may be shocking to know that when he didn’t want to be seen, he made an effective hunter.
The small deer he’d been tracking had gone off-path, wandering near a stream just northeast of their resting point. It hadn’t caught wind of him. The wind favoured him today, and his presence—faint, masked, almost surgically absent from the weave of the woods—was nothing short of predatory perfection. Being mindful of his mediocre training in the forests by that of Eleanor. Leaving him to act swiftly without a need to bring magic to life. Using a sharp, decisive motion and a body that didn’t make a sound hitting the ground. The deer’s eyes never had time to widen.
Arc crouched beside it, murmuring something low in old Elven—not a prayer, but a habit of his father’s. After the last while, what would it hurt anyways to lean into old aspects of a life that had been shirked.
When he finally returned to the little hollow, the sun had properly lifted into the sky. Leaving him to start pulling out tools and necessary bits from the Arcanum to be used in the efforts of making something that would at least soothe a garbling bite in one’s belly.
Calia’s morning haze was unpleasant to say the least, first struggling to use a bit of magic to make that little door of their night’s shelter disappear back to the tree from whence it came. Pausing there for a moment before climbing out, feeling that residue of magic that wasn’t her doing… arcane mastery that Calia had never even attempted before, putting the puzzle together that Archimedes had put her in a little protective bubble at some point. Taking a stab at guessing the whys when she slide out of the redwood tree to find him setting up a temporary morning camp.
Stealing her job. It made her smile even if her stomach churned so much she was afraid she’d be sick. Simply plopping down next to him to sit herself crossed-legged, instead of stumbling about on shaky knees and cracking her head open somewhere.
Even Calia had to admit she was in no shape to go hunting herself. An entire forest of animals would’ve been pointing and chuckling.
“Do you need instructions…?” she did deem to say, that hint of teasing obvious in her voice. Afterall, he’d said there was only one thing he knew how to cook, so she was quite curious to see if that was only an exaggeration or she was about to be a willing victim to his culinary experiments!
She’d probably not die, it’d be fine.
As the young woman made her way free of the tree –and he had relented the barrier to be no more than filtered magic lingering upon one’s sixth sense- Arc had thrown some of the meat to sizzle into the pan. Giving some salt as he hadn’t made an effort to scrounge around for any additional herbs. He could have, probably would have been an good idea but the means of doing so hadn’t pulled any interest.
Even now as she had sat down and pulled words that were hinting to state that she was both curious to what was about to happen and whether or not she ought to be concerned, Arc shrugged.
There was no plastering of jovial falsities, a wry word or even something timed in a sarcastic comedic reply. Leaving it as he was. A sort of shadow lingering under eye and a far too tired mouth that didn’t want to even itch into a temporary grin. “I know how to make sure its cooked enough to avoid being food poisoned. If yah want to make it fancy, yah’ll have to do it.”
Mollifying the flames with a lowering of hand so the meat could cook in a pleasant simmer rather than a broiling inferno; Arc adjusted his posture. Putting his rear on the ground instead of kneeling and folding hands into his lap. “I didn’t pull out any waterskins, so yah will have to do that too if yah need it.” A violet had scurried over to the corner to look at her, “Yah rested well enough?”
He was in every sense of the words, tired and grumpy. While Calia didn’t want him to even have to be upset by any means, this truth was far better than the fake smiles and all the energy he wasted on trying to be this perky upbeat give-no-fucks demon. A person needed to feel their feelings, even the sour ones… even when Calia herself hated every moment of her own.
Things when so poorly when one buried them, she could at least admit that now.
Thus she was not making even a single attempt at trying to forcibly brighten his mood, be a cheerful beaming bit of sunshine herself. Nor was she about to criticize this humble breakfast he was putting together – as she most certainly noticed that was a bit of meat freshly hunted. Not just something he pulled out of his own arcanum hollow. He’d put her in a protective bubble, hunted up breakfast he was making himself. A means of care that even Calia for all her denseness could recognize.
“I don’t know. I’m hoping food will make the difference, otherwise you’re going to have to grab me by the leg and drag me across the forest today.”
Now that she thought about it, he was the sort far more likely to use a bit of magic to make that less brutal, but the image was funny enough to think about!
Water would be a good idea as well, only for the time being just crawling out of the tree had used up with little energy she had gain. Choosing instead to lean enough to clonk her head against his shoulder. Needing not to ask him how he slept, because she could see that in his face and mood already, and simply to give this soft means of friendly affection.
Things were okay. For now! Calia would burn down the whole goddamned forest if someone tried to ruin their morning, though!
His brows lifted slightly, though the gesture lacked the full theatrical flourish he was known for. Perhaps he was leaning—if only briefly—into the notion Calia had suggested not so long ago: that he didn’t have to be the endlessly chattering, grinning showman every hour of the day. That he didn’t need to auction off quips and antics like charms at a market stall just to mask the bleaker truths lurking beneath.
Still, a smirk lingered in his voice. A tone of being dryly knowing.
“Or yah could rest a bit longer, and spare us the melodrama of the barbarian and the kidnapped damsel,” he drawled. “I’m not draggin’ yah by the ankle across the forest floor, Lia—not even if yah ask nicely.”
He flicked a hand toward the skillet where the morning’s catch sizzled over fresh flames, smoke curling lazily into the mist-clung trees. “A bit of protein in yer gut’ll help. Yah overextended yesterday. We both did, but yah more than me. Though—” his voice dipped into that self-satisfied lilt “—We did make excellent time.”
Another vague flourish of his fingers gave the statement shape, then melted into a shrug.
“And that wrought iron mess you’ve got stewin’ in yer system? Not exactly a mild inconvenience.” Arc shook his head. “I ain’t a healer anymore, so I can’t just wave a finger and fix it. Not unless I felt inclined to go rootin’ around the wilds for something close enough to cobble together a Ferrumbane Elixir. And even then—” he let out a soft chuckle “—we’re fresh out of Demon’s Frond, and I’m not exactly bookin’ a holiday back to the Abyss.”
When her head thumped gently against his shoulder, Arc let out a quiet, pleased hum. The kind that belonged in the realm of comfort rather than performance.
He shifted slightly, moving the hand from his lap to settle behind her—an unspoken offer of support if she decided to lean further. He didn’t say anything about it. Didn’t need to. Just made himself present, a quiet fixture in her gravity.
His cheek rested against the crown of her hair as he watched the fire crackle beneath the pan. Listened to the song of morning birds deeper in the redwoods. Every detail folded into his awareness, but none of it called for concern. Not right now.
“How’re yah feelin’, truly?” he asked, voice softer now. “I know I’m no expert in fae anatomy, but I’m willin’ to bet there’s somethin’ in this mad brain of mine that might be half useful to yah, petal.” His eyes remained on the fire, but it was clear—his focus was on her. Still the showman. Still the performer. But in this moment, the stage was empty, and he was choosing to stay seated beside her anyway.
“I could ride you like a horse,” came her suggestion, ever so perfectly innocent of tone. A little too innocent, which absolutely meant she knew damn well such a statement could be taken in all manner of ways. But there she was seeming perfectly deadpan and oblivious to it, nonetheless.
And when he shifted enough to give her the space, Calia took a lesson from lesson to lean into him, simply because she could. She’d been a physical person her entire life and yet somehow had never just allowed it to be in friendly companionship with someone. She’d been too busy trying to shield herself or keep others at bay, up until she went wilding around with her glamours in random taverns and bars.
This was so much better than generic strangers and single fleeting evenings.
“Still tired,” she did admit with a soft shrug. “Nothing concerning, though. Mostly I just want to get the hell out of this damn kingdom just as fast as I can run. Only, I’m not so keen on going back through the mountain either. Kind of wondering about the wisdom in launching myself into the sun, or tucking myself into this tree and hibernating for a hundred years. …just there’s too much to do.”
Calia tilted her head just another to peer at him, with that slight bit of a frown.
“Ever summoned a magical asshole human from clear across the world before? Would save me a lot of time.”
That delivery with that noncommittal look that seemed so perfectly innocent and not at all having the chance to be a double entendre. Starting to give her that side eye that was attempting to determine which answer he wanted to give her in reply. Settling for, “Do I look like an nokken to yah?” Moving to reply with his knowledge about faelings and one in particular that could do just that. Just less sexy and more travel based.
It would have been far too easy just to slip into a sexual reply and well, he didn’t particularly feel all that clever right now to even attempt it. Having to do with some dry wit instead.
And them just sharing a moment that was calm while the means of a meal in its most basic of forms cooked. Asking truly how she was feeling rather than playing the guessing came of what if’s and how comes. Figuring that such a game was really not something he wanted to try anyways because the guesses were so expansive that it would take so long to figure it out that way. Better to ask and be told.
In which Calia expressed clearly that she was plenty overwhelmed with just everything. Something he didn’t blame her for, she was carrying quite the unrequested burden. With too many variables in every direction. Practically trying to play catch with her but one couldn’t see where the ball was coming from in the umbra of the shadows around.
“Well,” he started, deadpan as ever, “Depends. Am I summonin’ just his magical asshole? Because, listen, even I’ve got a line—and that sounds awkward even for me.” Though he gave some actual thought to it, allowing a moment of pause to slip between. His humour dipped, tempered by something heavier. “But if yah mean the whole bastard, the asshole incarnate, then…” Arc tilted his head, eyes distant. “Yes and no. If he weren’t already in league with an elder demon, I’d say it’s doable. Complicated, but doable.”
His fingers waggled as if to summon the concept from the smoke. “But we’re not talkin’ petty spirits or minor fae anymore. That prick’s been meddlin’ with thin’s older than I am—and I’ve seen enough to know not to go pokin’ that beehive without a suit made of arcane artillery and at least three death wishes.”
He tossed a bit more dry wood onto the fire and leaned back slightly, the flickering light casting strange shadows across his features.
“Even an archmage can’t outwit an elder demon without a trick or two up their sleeve—and I left most of mine behind when I signed up for a life as morally conflicted beetle manservant.” He gave her a wry grin. “Though I am workin’ on figurin’ out few tricks.” Arc’s voice quieted again, softer as the flames danced. “We’ll find a way. Just not through ass magic.”
Okay, literally summoning that jerk’s magical asshole was enough for her to her giggle oh so softly. Completely childish, entirely stupid, but amusing enough to have shook her shoulders for a moment in the efforts of not out right bursting into a laugh. Hiding her face away just for a second until she got that back under control.
In the end, the answer was as she expected. Calia herself might’ve made an attempt of some sort of summoning, in her anger or experimentation, but Archimedes had a very good point. Not only did Derrick have her heart, there was a high chance he was working with someone or something far more powerful. He had to have a patron, an influencer, something, because even in all of his ambitious Calia just didn’t think the man had been smart enough to pull off what he had done and be so successful at it.
Or did she simply not want to admit she’d been that gullible, that stupid. Remembering how he was in the moment when he approached her, in those black robes and looking as if his soul was being eaten from the inside out. She should have known. The signs were right there in front of her face.
“Yeah. Yeah….” came her resignated sigh. “As I thought. Best to find him first then, and figure out what to do from there. Can’t promise I’m not going to immediately attempt to summon one of your meteors the likes no one has ever seen before, though. See just how big I can get it and level an entire kingdom if I have to.”
“Unfortunately,” Arc muttered, “Magic ain’t the answer for everything. Though if yah are lookin’ to conjure up a flaming pile of divine retribution in the shape of a meteor, I’d personally vote we drop it square on the royal shithole he slithered off to.”
He reached forward, casually shaking the pan with a practiced flick of his wrist. A sizzle cracked beneath the meat as he flipped it with a deft motion—no tools needed, no spell either. Just hands that had learned the difference between control and recklessness the hard way.
The flames licked upward for a moment, casting a flickering gold hue across his jaw.
“Made me think, though,” he went on, more thoughtfully now, though his voice still carried its usual drawl. “Back when I was playin’ unwilling house guest in that second-rank demon’s kitchen cupboard—romantic, I know—they kept callin’ yah the fae girl.”
He let that hang for a moment, watching the edges of the meat begin to brown just right before giving her a sidelong glance. “So, makes me wonder… did Derrick already know? Or at least suspect yah weren’t just human? That there was somethin’ more stirrin’ in yer blood?”
Arc’s gaze lingered on her face, open but unreadable. Not pressing—just… curious. Not that it was an answer, but a detail worth examining all the same. He gave a slow shake of his head, a ghost of a smile curling at one corner of his mouth. “Yah’ve basically become the golden fleece, Lia. Dark fae want yah, demons keep sniffin’ around, and now yer graced with the eternal affections of one smarmy bastard with delusions of grandeur and the curse of a tragically underwhelming cock. Quite the resume.”
He grinned, all fangs and sarcasm, but there was something in the way he turned back to the fire—just the barest flicker of protectiveness in his jawline. “Honestly, I don’t blame ’em. Yer rare. Powerful. Got a spark most folk’d kill for. I just wish they’d stop tryin’ to literally kill yah for it.”
Calia didn’t give two shits who was puppeting Derrick’s strings, so long as she got her heart back and saw the bastard dead. Yet Archimedes seemed to have thoughts of his own, bringing up his own experience of being snatched and the things said then, giving her a long moment of rolling it around in her thoughts.
It really did beg several very curious questions. At the time Calia had just been glad Arc escaped and found his way back… she’d never actually stopped long enough to consider the whys or where things connected.
There was a small grimace at the thought that she was not just being hunted by dark fae, but demons as well. She’d wonder what a demon would even want from her, but the white stag had answered that questions already.
Calia was broken and everything with ambition for power wanted to be the thing that crawled inside her chest and bent her to their will.
“The white stag suggested that the magic chooses who it manifests in, who becomes full fae. That would mean my siblings have fae blood, are fae touched, even if they aren’t fae themselves. One of my parents at the minimum must have too. I could not say if he knew that before we met, but he’d surely have puzzled it out after I revealed my magic.”
This was something she already wondered about. If she’d always been targeted or if it was just a moment of chance… something that came about because he knew a secret about her and then later took an opportunity. Or had it been something that went back further than she ever realized. For now Calia knew she was fae by blood. It changed a lot of context about the fall of her kingdom.
And something about it all just felt as if she was missing so much information.
A sigh and a shift was all she had.
“If it was just about some dick wanting to steal my magic, why unleash an entire hoard of demons after and then just… leave. That is the part that never made sense. He’d already stolen it, there was no reason to decimate and murder the entire capitol. Why leave me there and not drag me along too for the torturous ride. I understand my heart is useless if I die, but… leaving me loose feels stupid.”
“Fae-touched royalty and one full fae,” Arc echoed, more to himself than aloud, eyes narrowing slightly as he gave it some mental chewing. From what she’d told him of her father, the man didn’t exactly sound like the poster child for open-minded paternal support. If the fae blood hadn’t been known before, it stood to reason where it came from.
He didn’t voice it directly, but the implication was clear as he tilted his head. “Goin’ out on a limb here and sayin’ it came from yer mother’s side. Unless yer da was sittin’ on a family secret the size of a changelin’ and just never got round to mentionin’ it.”
With a casual flick of fingers, Arc reached forward again, testing the meat where it hissed softly in the pan. It passed his internal bar for edible. Acceptable. Not poisoned. Not raw. Cooked enough to serve without apology.
With one hand, he retracted the pan slightly from the fire; with the other, a subtle pull of magic conjured simple dishware—wooden plates, utensils, the basics. They weren’t about to eat off the forest floor like barbarians. Even if neither of them was feeling particularly civilized. “You can stew on it if yah want,” he added, voice lighter now as he split the meat. “The what’s and why’s of Derrick doin’ what he did. But if he’s tangled up in somethin’ older than the lands—and there’s ties to the Imperial Queen—then it ain’t just about power. It’s place. Territory. Locked doors and who’s got the key.”
Arc passed her a plate, his gaze catching hers for a heartbeat. “And yer land? Might be the door.”
He didn’t soften it, didn’t wrap the words in velvet. Just let them fall where they may, even as he dropped a portion on his own plate and sat down cross-legged with a grunt of satisfaction.
“Could be there’s somethin’ beneath it. Buried deep. Could be it’s not the land itself but somethin’ spiritual—or worse, somethin’ that needs blood to stir.” He shrugged. “And not just one or two. Somethin’ old and rotten enough to demand hundreds. Thousands.” His eyes flicked up again, serious now despite the easy posture. “I’d know. The bigger the sacrifice, the bigger the spell. Blood fuels things you don’t ever want wakin’ up.” A pause, and then, as if flicking the switch back to neutral, he raised both brows and took a bite of food with all the poise of a man commenting on the weather.
“Startin’ to get the sneakin’ suspicion that what we’re lookin’ at isn’t quite demon or fae. Somethin’ older. Somethin’ smarter.” He stabbed at the meat with his fork, chewing thoughtfully. “Just theories, of course.” But his tone said otherwise. Theories, yes. But ones born from far too much personal experience with death, devils, and the kinds of magic that left scars in places the eye couldn’t see.
No long line of faeish kings and mountain chiefs, that was to be certain. Her father and grandfather before him, likely most of the mountain men who made the stone their home, none of them were the types that much had a taste for magic. Respected it, of course, as all who followed the old ways did, but they didn’t like it. Magic and those who wielded it were always a bit wild and unpredictable. Not something the wandering clans of the mountains much liked.
Her mother? There is was believable, as the woman might’ve been the one to bring some structure to her father’s kingdom, that woman had a streak of something in her that the queen never wished to admit out loud. Why else would she be so adamant about allowing her children their freedom to make their own choices.
…and it had been her mother who always spoke of a white stag as a symbol of guidance. Some old bit of wood wisdom.
Calia accepted her plate and it took all of that elegant schooling as a royal daughter not to snatch up the meat with her bare hands and tear into like a wild animal. Didn’t stop her from adeptly using those utensils to shred it up into bite-sized enough pieces and quickly shove it into her mouth. Humming this immediate sound of-all-too-pleased relief to finally get some food in her and sate her churning stomach.
“You still believe this foreign queen somehow has a hand in things?” was her doubtful reply. For one, Caeldalmor wasn’t exactly prime real estate for any ambitious royal wanting to expand their empire. It was tucked away deep inside the mountains and the valley was quite small. She’d never even heard of an Imperial Queen until she came to Edelguard.
Although, she could admit if the Queen Ashera was worried about her, then she must be a formidable problem.
“…I supposed there’s so many remnants of the old world in the mountains. Things that’d been buried and forgotten.”
Unlike Calia, Arc didn’t immediately tuck into his food. He idly pushed a few pieces of meat around his plate with the edge of his knife, letting the aroma rise but not indulging just yet. His thoughts were tangled—old threads knotted with new, looping around each other in ways that made it hard to find the ends. The kind of thinking that dulled his appetite more than the char on the meat ever could.
That was, until her remark—questioning, uncertain—prodded something loose inside him.
He raised his head slowly, levelling her with a look that carried a little more sharpness than usual. “Yah recall I am a demon, love,” he said plainly, voice clipped with a thread of weariness. “I do know thin’s. Whether I want to or not.”
Setting his utensils down with deliberate care, he gestured vaguely with one hand as if to usher the air into forming images that matched his words.
“That woman—the Queen—is human. Or started that way. Been alive longer than any should be. In leagues with demons, clearly. Might even be dancin’ with an elder one. Or maybe she’s just got a fondness for makin’ deals she thinks she’ll never have to pay for. Either way, she’s a catalyst. A bad one. She’s burned lands to cinders with demonic aid paired to her own twisted magic.”
He flicked a brow upward, expression sobering. “Let her children butcher each other, far as I’ve heard. Just one left. Half fae, which is curious, isn’t it?” He tapped the side of his head lightly with a finger. “This ain’t just a hat rack.”
Finally taking a bite, he chewed in thoughtful silence. The food was serviceable, better than nothing, and grounding in a way that didn’t quite chase away the chill in his bones. Calia added her thoughts, and he gave her the space to finish before speaking again.
“Mountains,” he repeated, chewing over the word like it had more taste than the meat. “Aye, mountains are old. Risen bones of the earth with all manner of things buried in their bellies. Magic older than maps. Spirits that don’t answer to the usual rules.”
He paused again, eyes flicking to her. “People don’t orchestrate this sort of chaos for no reason. Not the dramatic ones—the folk-tale villains with flair for the theatrical. It’s always a pattern. Power, access, legacy… somethin’. Yah can’t chart it unless yah start seein’ the ones who wrote the map.”
His tone dropped slightly, soft and deliberate now. “Like how demons came to Edelguard,” he said, gesturing toward himself. “Made a deal with me. One that worked in their favour.” The fire popped gently, filling the silence that followed. “Yah don’t always get to know the why. Not till you’re face to face with the one who started it all.” His voice was quieter now. “And by then, it’s too late to unmake the choices. Only pick which ones you live with.”
Calia had heard some of these details, briefly in mention by him, but not in this debt. The queen on the other side of the mountains was long-lived as any elf, yet was supposed to mortal human? Incredibly powerful and apparently cruel enough to set her own children against each other. To know that child was a half-fae one did seem like it was a strange coincidence, didn’t it… Here was Calia the full and real deal, with her heart off snatched away across the world!
A woman that even demons whispered about was not someone to brush off. …although all this really did was give Calia’s stomach a different kind of aching twist. Didn’t she have enough to deal with? Was all of this some plan by an all powerful evil queen elsewhere in the world? Because how was that to fit in with all of the bullshit Calia was falling into already. With prophecy of more dark fae coming to claim her and kill her heart – that’s what the tree had said. How did it all fit in with Calia’s own twisted grim dreams of herself being that dark, evil queen on a throne of bones, heartless and alone in a dead world.
…and how did Archimedes fit into the picture, because what a wild twist of fate for Calia to be bound to this man.
A silence fell while she tried to place down all of these pieces in ways they could fit. Still missing far too much for any of it to come together into anything really meaningful.
All she really knew? She was this shiny little pawn everyone was trying to get their hands on. So for now, her agenda was the same. Get her heart back, kill who needs to be killed.
Still…
“…do you remember the one you made a deal with?” she asked softly, tilting her head to take a look at him. “The fae tree is so old and she was so insistent of binding us together. She gave that warning about the dark fae to you, not to me. We assumed it was for my benefit, to give me magic, but it very well could have been for yours. You were always hers to look after long before I was born.”
“I mean, I ought to remember,” Arc drawled, gesturing with a piece of venison at the end of his fork like it was some kind of accusatory wand. “He was the first one I killed and cannibalized.”
The words dropped with brutal nonchalance, but there was weight beneath them. Not just violence, but a history. A line in the sand. His voice turned saccharine-sweet as he mimicked the memory, infusing the next words with a cloying mockery. “‘Oh, but I made you a little demon. A low-rank one. Surely you’ll be all tame and docile now, right?’” The smile that followed didn’t reach his eyes. “Bad move on his part.”
He took the bite without ceremony, chewing through the memory as though that might blunt it. He paused, swallowed. If there had been pride in the story, it was buried deep. What lingered instead was annoyance. Exhaustion. A thread of something darker that refused to name itself.
“I’ve got a streak longer than ten miles that says I don’t like bein’ underestimated, and am a stubborn fuck.” he muttered, not so much for her benefit as for his own.
It would’ve been easy to stop there. To let the conversation sink back into silence or sarcasm. But she was looking at him now, loading him with more than just idle questions. Theories and ideas. And he knew her well enough by now to recognize when she was prodding not just for answers—but for the truth.
His brow quirked, more tired than smug. “How would it have been for my benefit?” he echoed, not scoffing exactly, but skating the edge of it.
He shifted slightly, plate balanced in one hand as he gave her a look that was sharp and curious all at once. “Outside of the shadows and the shade-things that make sleep a fuckin’ bloodsport and the dreams where I want to rip my own guts out for retribution? Enlighten me, Lia.” There wasn’t venom in the words, but there was something close. A challenge. Not to her—but to himself. To the idea that anything he had lived through, or done, or become, could be twisted into a benefit. He tilted his head, eyes clear and open. “I’m truly curious.”
Well shit. Calia had not expected that he already found and butchered the very demon that had tricked him into a deal. Whatever that thread of thought of potential could be was gone in a heartbeat.
A heartbeat, though. A heart.
It was no surprise to find him trying to hold back that bitterness of what was. From having himself manipulated in his darkest of moments, to the wounding of his pride to have something be so dismissive of who and what he used to be. Someone proud and wild and controllable – damn if that didn’t sound familiar.
Nor was it a surprise when he eyeballed her with such doubt and challenge in those violet eyes of his – how dare she even suggest that this bond could’ve been for him instead of herself. Ignoring the fact that Calia had worded the bond herself, deliberately choosing something that would not be one sided. Sharing herself just as much as he was giving her. …what benefit was there?
Well. That was a very good question.
“You told me you were a heart demon, didn’t you? When you take them, you take the power of the one that had it. Don’t you think it’s a little curious that against all odds, now you are bound to a woman whose heart was stolen? One that chose to pull you out of the clutches of a mad mage and accepted such an insane bond instead of letting you die. Who sure as hell isn’t afraid of you, can meet you head on even when you’re frankly terrifying. Can use your magic in ways anyone else ought to be burned out by now. I can fight your demons and shield you from the world, Archimedes. I’m yours. I chose that, no one forced it on me.”
He prodded her plate with the end of his fork—casual, insistent. Not quite nagging, but close enough to make his point. Eat. She needed it more than he did, after everything she’d endured: the iron, the abduction, the endless walking that had nearly ground them both into the dirt. His brows lifted with the motion, a silent, wordless reminder that he was watching out for her—even if it meant pestering her into keeping her strength up.
Despite the gesture, Arc remained tuned in to her train of thought, unusually quiet while she spoke. He didn’t interrupt. Didn’t make a joke, even though a few low-hanging ones lingered on his tongue. She was thinking through something with weight to it, and he knew well enough not to derail that.
But then—
That last bit. “I’m yours.”
It hit like a sucker punch with no wind-up. Whatever sardonic quip he had queued up died on his lips. His brows shot up, the fork paused mid-hover above his own meal. Bewilderment played clear across his face as he stared at her like she’d suddenly begun speaking in riddles only the moon could understand.
“What?” he said, voice pitched low and genuinely confused, like he’d just missed half a conversation—or woken up mid-dream.
He fumbled mentally for a beat, trying to thread together what she meant, where she was going. “I do think yah were coaxed, Lia,” he replied slowly, careful not to dismiss her words but still needing to parse through them, “But yah chose it. All of it. Of yer own will. That’s clear.”
A pause. He blinked at her, still trying to make sense of what she was actually trying to say—of the full implication buried under the simplicity of those words.
“But what the hell are yah sayin’ now?” His voice curled with exasperation, coloured with something that wasn’t quite panic but was definitely his version of unease. “Cause yah can’t just say ‘I’m yours’ like yah passed me a scone.”
And then, because he couldn’t help himself—because Arc never could leave a serious moment untouched without pressing a grin into it like a balm—he smirked. “I ain’t terrifyin’,” he said with mock-offence, flicking his fork in the air like a dismissive wand. “I’m cute.” The grin widened, unapologetically cheeky. “Even when I’m a maniac—I’m still fuckin’ cute.”
Calia did not know what part of that statement was so bewildering besides the fact he really didn’t want to believe this binding flowed two ways. Or apparently thinking that she’d not quite had full capacity of her senses, so she was liable to get talked and coaxed into it without understanding the gravity of what she’d done.
That was insulting at best, ready to scowl at him and to tell him off for that one until he blurted out the actual why he was so stunned.
I’m yours. …okay, maybe she could see how that sounded, now that she was hearing it. Not quite blushing, just a scoff as she set her attention back onto taking a few more bites at his subtle bidding, if only so she could think on how to explain that without making it sound like something weird.
“…cute my ass!” she ended up saying first, shooting him an up and down look of pure exasperated disgust. “You look like a unholy goddamned terror when you’re pissed off and I haven’t even yet seen what you to do the likes of people who actually deserve it.”
Calia only knew how he’d been with her in that last fight and that was Archimedes still keeping control of himself. For just as she had never used that magic to actually attack him directly or hurt him, he too had been very careful in what he did. They’re screamed at each other and made a real flashy show, but it’d never gone too far. And he’d still been scary, even to her who was an absolute terror herself.
“I’m yours – don’t make it weird – that’s simply a fact. This bond, I could break it if I really wanted to and you know if I wanted to get away it’d be one hell of a mess, I’d do it. I told you from the start that I accepted it for you, it helps me yes and I had selfish reasons too. But it’s a gift I give to you of my own free will, and that’s something these other malicious assholes are never going to get no matter how hard they try.”
“They want my heart, but you already have it,” it was a cheeky little statement and of course it still sounded strange, but she gave him that narrowed eyed stare down. To not make it weird. “Granted it’s in someone else’s hands right now, so whoops. I told you I am a problem, and… well I guess I’m your problem now.”
His eyes narrowed—narrowed like a man challenged—and with the exaggerated grace of a theatre-trained noble, Arc delicately plucked a few more pieces of venison from his plate. He straightened his back, raised his chin, and with all the poise of an upper-crust aristocrat parodying dinner theatre, he made a show of eating like a proper court-taught brat. All in the wrist. The flick. The deliberate chew. A sneering impersonation of her not cute insult, as though she’d just accused him of something egregious like lacking taste in cloaks or not knowing his wine from his vinegar.
He met her stare with the most ostentatiously offended look he could muster—the epitome of oh my. Regal, dramatic, and ever so slightly smug.
“As if that’s the worst insult yah could sling my way,” he murmured under his breath with a bored shrug, haughty as ever. “A terror, am I? Well. I’d thank yah not to compliment me durin’ lunch, Lia.”
Of course, he didn’t offer any clarification on what exactly he’d done to earn that label. There were limits to dinner conversation decorum, after all—and Arc, despite his mischief, still had a shred of grace left.
She spoke. He let her.
Let her run the thread out, tying thoughts together in that complicated way of hers. The food vanished steadily from his plate while she talked, punctuated only by the occasional flick of his wrist as he tossed the finished wooden utensils into the fire. The flames caught the wood with a hungry hiss, crackling like distant applause. His posture shifted, leaning back onto his palms with a casual sprawl that didn’t match the keen alertness of his eyes.
Those violet irises were locked on her, quiet and attentive as she spoke through her tangled thoughts. Words about being his. About hearts and burdens and responsibility. All of it sounded like a very peculiar love letter that neither of them were quite brave enough to name. A confession disguised as a bargain. A truce wrapped in thorned sentiment.
If she thought this was going to be taken lightly—if she thought this wouldn’t strike somewhere in him, she was wrong. But she’d also warned him not to make it weird, so Arc, naturally, made it as ridiculous as possible.
When she finally trailed off, his expression didn’t change right away. He just looked at her. And then, deliberately, he turned his head with a dramatic little gasp and cast his gaze off to the side, giving her his best shy boy routine. Eyes downcast, hand rising to sweep against his temple like he might swoon from the scandal of it all.
“Quit flirtin’ with me,” he drawled in the softest, most mock-scandalized tone imaginable. “Yer guna make me all goopy and gushy and then what? Yah’ll have to marry me, and we’ll be cursed forever with happiness and spontaneous breakouts of affection. What will the neighbours say?” He gave a helpless chuckle, tipping his head back with a laugh so self-deprecating and playful that it almost hid the fact that he was touched.
Calia was absolutely not going to laugh at his ridiculous pantomime of a stuffed up offended noble. Nope. Not a chance. He would not get once single shred of encouragement from her about it, for she was trying to tell him something serious.
…okay, not serious. But it was honesty in it’s simple open way. Without revealing that it might’ve ran even deeper than him having her heart. Her trust, her deepest and most sincere loyalty, that was all wrapped up in it too. The kind people liked to make oh so dramatic, write heroic sonnets and what not. All of that sentiment was embarrassing and unnecessary, when all it required was simple words.
He took care of her in a way no one else had ever done before. With a willingness to put up with all of her bullshit and still keep coming back. That meant more than blood, more than royal allegiances. Because of him she didn’t feel lost or alone, and thus Calia would make sure that he always had her. No matter what fucked up thing happened in his past or could be to come in his future.
Without or without the bond, that’s how it would be,
…at least up until he painted on that stupid fop of a shy little village boy face, causing her to wrinkle up her nose in pure annoyance and lean away. Damn him, he was making it weird!
“I’m going to take it back if you don’t cut it out! Start feeding you moose hooves and mouse tails, you menace!”
“Yah can’t take it back. I heard it, it’s mine.” Arc declared, in that performative sage tone that made him sound far older and far more certain than any reasonable man—or demon—should be. He even gave a slow, knowing nod to himself, as if the wisdom of the ancients had just passed through his lips and it would be sacrilege to question it. He let the declaration hang for a beat longer, smug silence swirling around it like incense in a temple of mischief.
Then, without warning, he leaned in to reclaim the space she’d retreated from—sliding into the gap like a shadow given shape. No grand fanfare this time. No teasing build-up or dramatic wink. Just a quiet, earnest peck to her cheek. The same thing he’d done back at the lighthouse.
He didn’t explain it. Didn’t try to deflect or joke.
Just cracked his neck with a sharp little tilt and stared up at the canopy, squinting against the flickering shafts of afternoon light filtering through the tangled green above them.
“Eat more if yah need to,” he muttered, casual again. “We’ve still got tracks to cover, and I’ve got to keep an eye out for anythin’ that might make sleepin’ easier.” A pause, then a glance. “Maybe for the both of us.” And just like that, he was already reaching for anything to keep his hands busy, face half-turned, like he hadn’t just claimed her words as if they were something sacred. Something worth keeping.
It was so unnecessary. Made all the worse by a peck on the cheek that wasn’t dripping with nonsense. Only a simple action without words or justifications, making it impossible for her to brush it away and play it off as him continuing to be a menace. Leaving her with this annoying twinge in her chest and that frustrated flush in her cheeks.
At least he was making himself busy instead of watching her, not that it stopped him from urging her to finish her plate.
She didn’t need the fussing to eat, damnit all, Calia could probably eat the whole entire deer all in one sitting.
It did take her a few minutes to actually finish what was left on her plate, for unless she wanted to act like a snake and start swallowing things how, a woman had to actually chew. Resisting licking the wooden plate, even if it felt like a nice feral ridiculous thing of her own to do – but then that’d just encourage him for more nonsense.
As Arc had done she flicked that plate and utensils in the fire as well, having a small moment of just appreciating the ease and beauty of magic when she rose to her feet. Admittedly feeling a great deal better now that she finally had some food in her stomach, and hoping that once it settled in her that aching tiredness would soon go away as well.
For once actually wishing for a feathered bed instead of sleeping out in the woods. Craving that softness that in most days she didn’t really need.
Archimedes had set to attacking everything himself in clearing up this tiny lil camp, leaving her with naught to do but rest her hands on her hips and giving a little tilt when it was time to start their walking. Here and there giving him that small examination to be sure he’d at least got enough rest for himself so he wasn’t about to go tumbling anywhere.
Once everything was either put away, returned to what it once was, or just him making certain there was nothing tailing them in secret; he gave the motion for her to be the duo’s lead once more.
Keeping himself to mortal shape for now. Deciding silently that his wings had been well used the day prior and legs today would be more than sufficient. Plus having hands would make it easier to carry things when and if he found stuff to make a draught with.
Content to lull to silence for the time being. Not honestly sure what to say when he wasn’t intentionally showboating or using dramatic behaviours to hide unpleasant thoughts. A strange feeling it all was but freeing in its own awkward way.
If one was not used to silences, it might’ve felt awkward there just walking in quiet company without constant noice or chatter. Not at all for Calia, especially now that they’d gotten past the stormiest of his feelings and finally understood he could just be without having to carry this burden of pretending to be okay. Even Calia wasn’t anywhere near okay, as apparently they were just going to keep running into dangers and learning new things… all of which were going to pile up into this mass of overwhelm on her shoulders.
Yet, it was all less daunting when he was there. A strange thing, companionship. Things weren’t okay right now, but they’d be alright.
Most of the morning Calia spent trying to get her own mind in order. An Imperial Queen across the mountains, dark fae and demons. Highblood fae… High Fae, whatever the fuck that was going to mean. Fae existed everywhere in Edelguard it seemed, enough that she could probably throw a rock into the bushes and hit one if she really wanted. None of these were High Fae, if she could take a guess by Fawna’s actions. The elder white stag had been… and what a magnificent beast he was.
Calia hadn’t even asked how he himself had been snatched by the wicked woman. Which truly made such things all the more frightening if she thought too much about it. For if an elder fae could still be trapped by a persistent dark fae, then Calia needed to take these things seriously. She wasn’t the biggest baddest bitch in the forest… at least not as she was now.
When she was done with her inner world, Calia was back to dragging Archimedes through her random questions. Didn’t all light stem from fire, as the sun itself was just a giant ball of fire so why then wasn’t all fire inherently holy? Only to be reminded there was more than just fire based light and holy things were far more complicated than she really wanted to think about.
And as things tended to go when she was calm enough to weave through topics, it strayed away from magic into other things. Today’s was music as the summer birds out in the trees were being particularly chatty. Calia never took well to playing instruments, though she could strum a lute and even sing a song if she were drunk enough, she much preferred her music in the form of dancing. Feeling it and moving with it.
She had this habit of talking with her hands, revealing in small ways she was in fact a touchy person once she had the space and freedom to do so. Sometimes touching his arm with the back of her hand to knockknock when he said something ridiculous. Squeezing his forearm here and there when it seemed like he was furrowing his brows too hard about some thought of his. They weren’t these grand displays of physicality that might come from the sorts of people who were loud and openly adoring of people. It was such a quiet subtle thing compared to how she usually carried herself. A little secret that most people never had a chance to see.
But she was still so tired and further into the day it got, the more frustrated she was growing with it. For Calia didn’t want to be tired, feel as if she were weak, or give in to this idea that she was in fact actually something that could be felled so easily. Prompting her to keep pushing forward, as if she could fight her own self with that same determination she fought everything.
Their walk began in companionable quiet, broken only by the occasional rustle of branches or the squish of damp forest floor beneath their boots. It wasn’t long before Calia’s curiosity bloomed again, their journey turning into a familiar Q&A session. Arc, while more subdued than his usual over-the-top self, still spoke with an easy cadence, answering each of her questions with enough detail to be helpful without ever slipping into lecture. Her inquiries started with magic—light, fire, the sun, and the nature of holy magic itself. He clarified with the patience of someone used to dissecting misconceptions, explaining that while fire and light were radiant, they weren’t inherently divine. It was a good line of questioning, really. One that showed she wasn’t satisfied with surface knowledge—she wanted to tug the seams until the whole thing unraveled into deeper understanding.
But when the questions veered away from magic, something else began to unfold. She asked about music, instruments, and the like. He confessed he’d never learned to play anything, but unlike her—which he cheekily pointed out—he could sing without needing to be drunk. Not that he sang often. Usually only when he was trying to charm someone into bed or out of a bad mood, depending on the night. He made light of it, but his voice softened when he admitted it. Dancing wasn’t a favourite either, but he could do it when needed—like at the birthday of a newborn prince, where he’d had to make quite the impression. He met her personal tidbits with his own, tossing them back and forth like trading cards of their stranger, more unexpected talents.
It probably wasn’t a shock that he knew a fair bit about gambling too. Not just the cheating, which he was good at—but the math behind it, the statistics that made the dice land in his favour more often than not. He could win at most games with nothing more than a shrug and a lucky smile. Sleight of hand came naturally, and bluffing? He could do that in his sleep. He talked about it with a mischievous flair, like it was just another parlour trick, but the truth of it lingered between the lines. Arc didn’t get lucky. He made his luck.
Between all that talking, he noticed the small things. Like the way her hands moved—more expressive, more willing to reach out when she didn’t think about it. She was more tactile when no one was watching, like her body knew she craved contact even when her mind refused to admit it. He didn’t comment. Didn’t tease. Just smiled to himself. It felt good to be someone she trusted enough to relax around, even if she didn’t realize she was doing it.
Eventually, Arc lifted a hand to rake through his hair with a sigh. “We ought to take a break,” he said, voice easy and low. “My dogs are barkin’ and I need a moment to plant my rear.” Whether it was his own tiredness or hers that prompted the call for rest, he left vague. His claws ran thoughtfully along the line of his throat as he glanced at her again. “Let’s find a seat, love. I ain’t guna be very much use if I’m draggin’ behind yah.”
It’s was all too easy imagining Archimedes crooning songs to some giggling girl, just as much as knowing without a shadow of doubt he’d be both good at table games and cheating at them. Enough that it did have her laughing about it, as she herself was… likely more along the lines of just cheating, charming and bluffing her way through than ever actually being good at the game itself.
It was never the games themselves she was interested in, thus why be good at them?
Once he brought up needing a moment to rest, Calia took it at face value, knowing he’d not slept well at all in th past two days and there was a high chance that him having to deal with her could be just as taxing. It may have been easier just to encourage him to pop back into his beetle form and let her carry him the rest of the day, only Calia figured he’d had enough of being a bug for the time being.
So it was an easy tilt of her head towards a big fallen log up ahead where they could sit for a little while.
“Why do you suppose all of these fae always appear in animal forms?” she asked, potentially seeming out of nowhere, but it was following the line of her own inner thoughts. “They have elven-shaped ones – not all of them, obviously – but no one ever mentions seeing them these days. All of the old books and legends have them full sized people or wee pixies with wings, those are all centuries old, though. Which really begs the question who the hell is out here romancing fae animals.”
With the relent of pacing and a chance to just sit –he wondered how he might bring up that he was probably more aware of her state than she was letting on. It couldn’t be easy still trying to chug along when you’d just been attacked with a rather dangerous substance that affected you to the point of poison. Not to mention, he did see the demon mark on her. Knowing how that was going to go and still trying to figure out how to tell her, she was going to have to find someone very holy to remove whatever was inside her arm before it spread and killed her outright.
That was a delicate topic that he really wished he could just blurt out.
Rather he plopped down on the log. Both making a bit more of a show to express he was worn out and to hopefully indicate she ought to rest as well.
What didn’t astonish him was her new question. In particular about fae and their appearance. Something Arc lingered a moment on before digging down into his history and personal knowledge. Tilting his head slightly at the question, lips quirking in a thoughtful curve. He didn’t answer right away, letting the silence stretch just enough to imply he was actually considering it—not dismissing her curiosity as nonsense. Then, with a hum that sat somewhere between amusement and musing, he replied.
“Well, firstly, I reckon the old tales don’t lie so much as they’re just outta date,” he said, gesturing vaguely with one hand as though waving away a layer of dust from the past. “Back in the day, fae were more inclined to show their more humanoid forms—elves, tall folk, winged pixies and the like—because they were still minglin’ with people. Traders, lovers, tricksters. Whatever role suited them. There was power in bein’ seen. In bein’ admired.”
He leaned forward, fingers curling slightly like claws at rest. “But times changed. Mortal folk got scared. Churches and courts made ’em out to be monsters. Dangerous thin’s that needed burnin’ or bindin’ or killin’ outright. And fae? They don’t forget. They don’t forgive easy either. So they pulled back into the wild, into the deep places that don’t remember stone walls or firebrands.”
Arc tapped a knuckle against his temple. “Their magic responds to the world around them. So when humans started seein’ them as beasts, shadows, omens—that’s what they became. Not literally, mind yah, but… the shape sticks if enough people believe it. And it’s easier, too. Lookin’ like a stag, a raven, a fox—things that belong to the wild. No questions. No pitchforks. Just awe and fear. And the fae typically like that balance.” He smirked faintly. “As for who’s out here romancin’ the beasties… well, love’s never been known for good decisions, has it? Half the time, it’s someone makin’ a bargain they don’t fully understand. Other half, it’s a fae in disguise testin’ mortals for sport—or spite. Either way, somebody’s losin’ their heart. And probably their teeth. Or soul.”
Then, with a dramatic sigh and a flick of his hand, Arc added, “But aye. They still got their elven shapes, some of ’em. Just rarely show ’em now unless it suits their purpose. The animal’s just more honest, in a way. Folk forget that the prettiest face is often the one with the sharpest teeth.”
He plopped with all of the dramatics of a man who likely needed more than just fifteen minutes off his feet, leaving Calia to ponder how she could make a proper means of rest happen. Joining him too, lowering herself to sit down on the mossy forest floor itself, so should could lean on the log by means of her elbow. Planting her chin on her knuckles while she listened to him share what knowledge he had about fae habits.
Hiding behind glamours and different forms made an annoying amount of sense, as she herself had that same instinct, didn’t she. To somehow hide her real face, her real self behind anything even if it was just a simple magic so she was forgettable. That had all been to protect herself from such a wide variety of fears, from worrying about her own family sending her away because she was a dangerous magic user, to worrying about villagers treating her as something to keep distanced because she was of royal blood.
…now? Everything had been so up and down. At first being glad to finally know what she was, tired of hiding herself and feeling a sense of relief to actually be seen and acknowledged. But now knowing she was this golden fleece as Arc had described her, Calia was feeling that urge to hide away again. To somehow not be herself anymore so she didn’t have to worry about any of this. Be a shadow through the world, not seen, not heard of. Nameless and left alone in peace.
She couldn’t have it both ways. Life didn’t work that way.
“Really sort of makes a person think twice about those stories of mountain geezers that like fuckin’ goats. Might not be goats at all,” she mused, almost making herself laugh even if it was obscenely gross to think about at all!
In the meantime, though, she oh so casually looked him over, thinking about her plans and how might need to adjust them. Calia could storm forward on her own all she liked. With a second person to think about and look after, she shouldn’t be doing all that. Archimedes might be a demon, but demons needed time to recuperate too, didn’t they.
“Do you think there’s a village near here? Or on the way to those northern passes? Wouldn’t be bad to stop for a night or two.”
That earned a double take. A long, slow one—the kind that dragged gaze from the tips of her head to the corners of her mouth, just to make sure she wasn’t pulling one of her usual fast ones. But the look he gave her was just as alarmed at the mental image of some goat-related “romance” story. His features twisted in theatrical disgust, brows lifting with emphasis that suggested please, for the love of the gods, do not elaborate. “There’s weird,” Arc muttered, flicking an imaginary speck off his sleeve, “And then there’s beyond freaky. That? That’s in a whole new postal code.” A shudder crawled over his body. “Old men and goats—by all that’s unholy, just let it die in the woods.”
Rather than letting that haunting thought nest in his skull, he all but shoved it away with a full-body shake. No, thank you. Instead, he met her gaze as she returned to the real question, the one actually worth considering: was there somewhere to stop up ahead?
He didn’t answer right away. His expression went still—sharp in its thoughtfulness, eyes narrowing slightly as he scanned some inner map only he could see. “It’s pretty secluded,” Arc admitted eventually, shoulders lifting in a mild shrug, “But I’ve been outta the loop for a good hundred years. Could be a monastery, could be a cursed crater, could be someone’s forgotten potato farm. If they slapped a settlement down recently, I ain’t heard about it.”
The pause lengthened to the point that his sights tracked to her arm.
“But,” he said, tone flattening in that way he used when he was done pretending something wasn’t serious, “I have noticed that lovely little mark of yers hasn’t gone anywhere. Probably hasn’t shrunk. Maybe even grown.” His gaze pinned her. “Don’t think I didn’t catch that. Yah’ve got something in there—something clingy. And if yah keep lettin’ it fester, yer not just gonna get a nifty scar. Yer gonna get dead.”
There was no cruelty in it. Just truth. Clear and sharp, because Arc had learned a long time ago that sugarcoating rot never did anything but make it harder to cut out. “If yah are thinkin’ about pausin’ for a night or two,” he added, softer now, “We oughta find someone holy enough to light me up like a festival tree. Let them purge it outta yah before it anchors any deeper.” He quirked a brow, some faint flicker of humour returning, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “I’ll even let yah hold my hand during the exorcism, if it makes yah feel better.”
He earned the cheekiest of wicked grins for his shock and awe about goat fuckers. Calia wished she’d been full of shit about that one. The mountains were treacherous and wild, with all sorts living in them. In some places people went a little mad when they were so isolated and alone. And damn it all if it weren’t men especially who couldn’t help but try to stick their pecker into anything that had room!
There were mad woman too, except Calia didn’t sure didn’t want to think about that either!
Instead focusing her interest on watching him run through thought and memory trying to place where they were now and what could potentially be close enough for a little sidetracking.
Not expecting in the slightest for him to suddenly point out that demon mark on her arm. Frowning just a bit when she made that subconscious movement to shift and place her hand over the spot hidden underneath her sleeve. Calia supposed he’d had to have seen it by now especially, even if she’d never bothered with mentioning it herself.
Truth be told, once that fisher woman in Tir Elas had told her what it was, Calia just… put it out of her mind. Already being in the fire, what did it really matter now if she were a beacon for demons. Everyone was already trying to kill her anyway.
The woman hadn’t mentioned anything about the mark itself killing her!
“I don’t believe it’s changed shape at all,” she said first, reluctant to even acknowledge it really, for what good was it going to do her. If he was concerned about it, though, there was no sense in her ignoring it any further or trying to deny it existed. He had eyes!
“Don’t you think there might be a few problems attempting to do any sort of holy magic on me?” she asked, at least with a mild sense of humor herself, mirroring that nonsense of holding her hand. “This binding might make that complicated. My missing heart. The fact I’m absolutely an unholy terror all by myself no demons necessary? We can go, of course, but I don’t think they’re gonna like it.”
Her hand moved instinctively, fingertips brushing over the cursed skin as though she could will the mark away with nothing but pressure. As if acknowledgment alone might unravel it—like a thread from a torn cuff. Arc didn’t interrupt. He watched. Waited. Expecting excuses, perhaps. A lighthearted brush-off, or one of Calia’s practiced smirks that tried to pass for strength. She was good at that. Preaching openness, honesty, tearing down his walls—and yet she held her own up with iron nails and warding runes. If she wanted to deflect, he wasn’t going to let her this time.
When she finally admitted it hadn’t changed, he didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Let the silence stretch out long enough to hang heavy between them like mist settling over an open grave.
“There’s probably a lot of problems that could happen,” he began quietly, voice stripped of its usual theatrics. “But yah’re fae, Lia. Not a monster. Not cursed by default. Fae have holy magic too—just a different branch of the same tree. The bindin’ between us won’t interfere. Yah heart’s still yers even if it ain’t in yer chest. That mark isn’t a brand of what yah are, just a wound someone else made. And yah might be a terror,” a faint smile flicked, “But yah ain’t unholy. No matter how yah try to paint yerself.”
He shifted his weight slightly, gaze softening without losing its weight. “It’s a slow thing. Creepin’. Starts like a bruise that never heals—dark, tender, then it spreads. Tendrils under the skin like roots in rot. Yah start feelin’ tired, all the time. Rest stops bein’ restful. Yah sleep longer, but it don’t help. Eventually, yah can’t wake easy at all. Get stuck between the world and dreams like a boat that lost its tether.”
His tone lowered, deliberate. “Blackened veins. Thoughts slippin’ out like water from cracked stone. Can’t eat. Can’t think. Can’t breathe right. The blood turns heavy. The soul starts pullin’ away from the body. That’s the part where yah stop lookin’ like yah—but yah ain’t gone. Not yet. That’s the moment the demon waits for. Yah fall into a sleep so deep it looks like death. But the body’s still warm. Still movin’. Just not with yah in it.”
Arc rubbed at his jaw, clenched as though biting back old memories. “There’s a way out. Not an easy one, but real. Sacred intervention—clerics, paladins, an archmage with the right knowledge. It burns. It purges. It’s holy magic rubbin’ raw against somethin’ that ain’t meant to be there. But it works.” He looked at her fully then, unwavering. “So I’m thinkin’ we risk unpleasant now. Because later?” He let that hang. “Later’s too close to never.”
There was no hiding that dubious frown in his reassurances that nothing about her or her binding would interfere with holy magic. He could say it all he wanted, didn’t make it any more believable, as she’d know what her body had been through and knew the kind of darkness that lived in her. So what if she was fae and not demon herself. It still felt like this curse of doom hung over her and now that he was tethered to her life, that meant every bit of doom that came her way was going to start leaching onto him too.
It’d already started, perhaps with that demon that snatched him. Perhaps with Fawna. And it would come in again and again.
They’d just gotten to a point of calm again, she really didn’t want to be dealing with this at all!
Worse yet, he described what might happen if she did ignore it altogether and without her knowing, the truth of her thoughts had briefly crossed her face. Those grim ones, revealing that secret truth where she was actually thinking about just letting it happen. In a fight, in a moment of desperation her instinct took over and she fought like hell to live. This could come take her and she’d be gone. In that tiny little flicker it was obvious how little she cared about herself.
It was gone quick, though. For while she had no care what happened to her, Calia did care of what would become of Archimedes. Be a fast death or a slow one, he’d no longer have her to look out for him. If she truly meant it that she intended to be his home and safe place, Calia had to at least try to take care of herself.
Calia let out a slow breath as she tilted her head back, clearly not keen on this idea but acquiescing all the same.
“Yeah, okay,” she agreed with a nod, returning back to this slight frown on her face and a twist of her mouth. She might be agreeing, didn’t mean she was going to be all pleasant about it! “We’ll go menace some holy place and tend to it. I am still cursed by default, though, and you can’t convince me otherwise!”
Oh he seen it. In her. That sort of indifferent resignation that was liable to start actually annoying him to get into that terrible snap that spoke nothing too politely. Did they need another show of them casting magic and yelling at each other without actually harming another.
Probably not!
“Hey, if I don’t need to be the jester of the world, yah don’t need to be so cactus prickly about someone givin’ a shit about yah.” Arc met her with his charming way. Eyeing her and likely a good thing he wasn’t able to read minds cause he’d probably reveal just how much he didn’t care for her attitude. “Cursed by default, my left nut.”
Slapping a hand to his knee so he might move to stand up once more. Offering her a hand too. “Yah really ought to care about yerself more, I know it might be hard but I ain’t sayin’ this shit cause I want yah to keel over, Lia. Yah were being gushy earlier but did it ever clue in to yah that yah just might be equally mine at this point? I don’t fight for people cause I want them to squeal.”
There it was, that born and bred by blood royal attitude, where she straightened her spine and gave him that excuse me? sort of imperious look with deep green eyes alone. Liable to set him down in his proper place if she were a different person. If she were not Calia. So as quick as it appeared, her sense flooded in just as fast, bringing in that flush to her cheeks on that quiet realization that this time it’d been her bullshit, and she’d been caught on it. Whether she’d been meaning to be that way or not.
“…bad habits are hard to break,” she told him. As if that really excused it. Calia accepted his hand though, quietly realizing too that this means of sitting and resting had been a rouse too. A clever little way to get her to be still for a few moments and be sure that she herself wasn’t getting run ragged.
It was so stupid. Ridiculous. Endearing. A little embarrassing to be on the receiving end of something, as she just would rather not acknowledge such things aim at her at all.
Tempted to crack some filthy joke just to deflect and quickly change the subject, but inevitably just letting it be. Squeezing his hand for a moment if she if she did give him one of those downright sassy little looks.
“Without me being prickly about it then, Yes. It’s smarter to deal with it now, I don’t want it to be trouble later. That means you’re in charge of leading the way now, though.”
“I know. Probably better than anyone else. I know, love.” Did he expect anything from her. No. But he did understand so deeply how hard it was to break bad habits. After all, he had told her yesterday that his act had been so perfected that it wasn’t supposed to be seen through. She had and well this was where they were now.
Even if she had started to dig into that royal pedigree of imperious stubbornness, she wouldn’t have gotten him to act any differently. They knew each other now. Better than most would have ever gotten the chance too and that gave them both leverage over another. In moments where such things needed to be leveraged.
With her hand in his and not a sassy snap back, Arc offered her no more than a bare smirk. No commentary, no snark. Not even a casual suggestion that he knew oh so well. Just accepting the squeeze of her hand before she finally gave way to the cemented face of indifference and potential reigning ire.
Though he didn’t release her hand. If anything, Arc used it to pull her closer. A quick side squeeze that relented a moment and hummed the next. Thought reflecting over his features in mental search of what, what and whom would be the direction to go. Even turning in place to get his directional bearings. Lids shutting with the depth of thought till he eventually cracked. “Last I checked there were no remaining temples in Edelguard that favoured such holy attention.” A hand flickered, “Gaia and Isyn and that sort of stuff…” The bright heliotrope eyes flickered and went way out into the west, “There was a temple around Naeve or whatever the hell it was called, but that was eons ago. That would be Imperial Lands now. Whether it’s standing or not,” he shrugged, “But I’ve been in the area. It would need a bloodstone to do the whole portal hoping though.”
Calia was ready to accept this detour, waiting patiently for him to think things over about which direction they needed to deviate.
Until he landed on these Imperial Lands.
That was where Calia’s accepting passive faced turned back to that raised eyebrow and she crossed her arms, looking very much like she was considering throwing him into the sun. For all of his fussing, needing her to take care of this demon mark now instead of later, there wasn’t even some holy place within Edelguard they could sidetrack to? Not even a place named going northwards, where they needed to go in continuing to follow after Calia’s heart and make a connection with the other mountain kingdoms.
Oh no, he wanted to take them off to the Imperial Kingdoms where he himself had told her that was an evil bitch queen who may or may not have had a hand in helping destroy her very kingdom at best, and at best was a power hungry maniac in league with demons trying to take over the whole world at worse!
“Do I even need to tell you how much I do not like that idea,” she stated first. Not refusing it, though, just stating her dislike. For the thing was, she’d named him as her advisor, hadn’t she? Knew he was intelligent and could think about things in way she couldn’t. He might be working on older information, but even with all of that, Archimedes still had an experience she severely lacked.
Her siblings had gone in that direction, though. Headed through the pass, hopefully before it collapsed. If they lived, they’d be in the Imperial Lands.
…she wasn’t sure if she was ready to learn what befell, them. If her heart could take finally knowing if they were dead or not.
“You said the queen there is a problem, if she is related to what happened to me, my going there could be trouble,” she told him the first of her concerns. He couldn’t read her mind, she needed to at least explain why she didn’t like the suggestion. “…my siblings went that way. That’s… a thing.”
Maybe not as easy to explain that one, Calia grimaced.
“Is there not somewhere else. Anywhere else, anything. I’ll go if you say it’s best, but I just…. I don’t know.”
“I’d be more concerned if yah were bouncin’ in spot at the suggestion, so no, yah don’t need to tell me how yah ain’t a fan.” Truly he was wracking his brain in a hope that something of his old knowledge would come flipping forward. “Let’s also level out that I’m not exactly sure how well a demon would be received either, but I’m willin’ to make due cause yah don’t need to be sufferin’ under this mark.”
There had been other places but a hundred years was a long time. Things changed, shifted, altered. New things rose, old things fell.
“Yah think she doesn’t already know about yah?” Arc asked not to be cruel but pointedly. “She probably already knows about yah, Calia. If she was the one who started this all with Derrick as whatever he was, she likely knew about yah and yer family.” He didn’t say it outright but Heirra wasn’t stupid. She was wise in the worst ways and knew how to plot out what she wanted. However, he could understand more so her hesitation on the means of her siblings. The ones that had went that way.
Oh he understood. He did.
“Yes, it is a thin’, and one that I do comprehend isn’t full of sugary fluffy feelin’s. But, yer not one to run from the truth, are yah? We can do everythin’ one step at a time but yah gotta remember, I’m workin’ from knowledge that’s a old. A hundred years makes a difference and I know the former temple that Lyra trained at, doesn’t exist any longer. Unless yah know of some grand cleric, I don’t know what to tell yah.” His hands flexed, “I can’t heal yah myself, that part of me is gone. But, if it’s makin’ yah this itchy then well… we have to keep walkin’. Maybe the mountain people will have some grand cleric or paladin in their midst.” By no means was he going to force her to do anything she didn’t want too.
Even this.
“Yeah, but do we needed her knowing I am in her lands,” came her rejoinder, because that would make a difference, wouldn’t it. It was probably obvious and expected that Calia would go chasing after her own heart. If she sidetracked in the wrong direction, putting herself in a position where the woman would feel a need to protect herself or strike back? Calia already had enough problems! It’s not that she was afraid to face some some wicked witch on a throne, but she wasn’t entirely stupid either.
Tilting her head back to squeeze her eyes shut so she might close out the world for a moment, she tried to think. Arc offered an alternative – if she were that twitchy – to continue as they were. Stick to the plan and hope they come across something that would be useful. They could do that, and she could admit it was tempting to brush it all aside for now and ignore it.
He wouldn’t have brought it up if it were something to ignore, though.
When it came to holy places, Calia couldn’t think of any known actual temples or churches in the mountains. Not named ones with a following. Those who worshipped gods still followed the old ways, of Mountain Stone and Molten Rock. Ice Giants if it were ar enough north. None of those places exactly considering their worship holy, either.
…to be honest, Calia had a hard time even understanding holy magic. It all seemed the same to her.
The conclusion she came too was clear, though.
“What will you need to make a bloodstone or two? If we go into the Imperial Lands, we may as well do it as quickly as we can and then return ourselves to a place closer to the Northern passes? Or even in the mountains themselves if you want to avoid running into that Cragjaw of yours.”
Arc shrugged, the motion loose and unbothered on the surface—but there was a tension beneath it, one that didn’t quite hide how grim the subject really was. He agreed, sure. Drawing too much attention from the Grand Bitch herself wasn’t exactly wise. But part of him doubted she’d intervene directly. That wasn’t her style. She liked to send others to do the dirty work, always two steps removed with a smug little smile. If she did show up in person, well… that was a whole different scale of catastrophe. One they weren’t equipped to dance through. Not yet, anyway.
Still, none of that felt like comfort. It wasn’t reassurance, not the kind Calia might’ve needed. So he left it unsaid, choosing instead to pivot—to hand her the reins in the only way he knew how. They could keep moving forward, keep chasing the sliver of hope that the mountain clans still had someone blessed enough to purge a demon mark from fae skin. It was a gamble though, one he didn’t feel entirely confident in. For once, the odds weren’t adding up the way they normally did in his head. Too many variables. Too many ‘ifs’ riding on the thin ice of guesswork.
He didn’t tell her what to do. Not because he didn’t have opinions—gods knew he did—but because this wasn’t his call. She was the contract holder. The one bound to him by fate or curse or divine joke. So he waited, watching her face shift as she walked herself through the possibilities. Watched the decision settle in her bones like the weight of a crown. When she met his eyes again, he was already holding out his arm. No hesitation, just a quiet finality.
“Blood,” he said simply, raising his forearm as the other hand flicked a claw in place, angled toward the soft part of his wrist. “Has to be mine—’cause I’m the one castin’ it, and it’s my memory that makes the damn thing work.” His tone wasn’t dark, but it held the reverence of someone who’d done this before. Who knew what it cost. “But yah’ve gotta be the knife,” he added, a glance sliding toward her. “Because yer the boss. Yer the one askin’. If I try to pull this without permission, the magic might twist. Might eat me inside out just to make a point.”
He looked toward the mountains then, to where jagged peaks tore the sky into slivers of light and shadow. “I’d take Cragjaw over the mark, if we’re weighin’ threats,” he muttered with a dry smirk. “At least I know how to make a lizard bleed.” His expression sobered as quickly as it had shifted. “But we need to be closer if you want the portal to open somewhere specific. Otherwise we risk endin’ up halfway into a cliffside. Or under one.”
Calia should’ve known that actual blood was going to be involved just by the name of the damn thing. Leaving her giving this twist of her mouth and a dubious frown. Oh, she wasn’t squeamish about blood in the slightest. Not even hesitant at the possibility he could mean she would have to be the literal knife and slice him open herself. That could be possible! And she could do it without flinching.
Maybe it just added yet another thing she wasn’t too keen about ontop of all the other reasons it set her stomach uneasy.
She placed a hand over his wrist and gently squeeze… delaying it, possibly. Even though she’d already made up her mind, she needed to be sure they had this plan down step by step. That everything they did was well thought out, that whatever happened they could get away.
“Permission is granted, absolutely. So let’s make it clear, for my sake. We go to this temple and deal with my stupid mark. Then we come back immediately. To here or to a place closer to the Northern Pass, seeing as I don’t really want to be under a cliff… “
Finally she just gave a little grimace, gesturing with a finger as she tugged gently at his arm. “Do I need to do the swishswish. The stabby slicey? Fingernails or a nice sharp blade?”
As unnerving as it was, she still couldn’t help that hint of mischief in her voice. It’s not like it’d be the first time she threatened him with a weapon. This time she didn’t actually want to hurt him!
He followed the movement of her hand when it came to rest on his arm—warm, firm, and deliberate in its squeeze. For a moment, Arc didn’t speak. Just stared at the place where her fingers curled against his sleeve, wondering what threads of thought still wound tight behind her eyes. She had already said what needed saying, but Calia wasn’t the sort to ever be entirely done thinking. Especially not when something serious was brewing. And this was serious. Demon marks and portals and holy temples weren’t exactly afternoon tea material.
“Aye, we’ll land just outside it,” Arc confirmed after a beat, voice low and calm. “Last I saw the place, it was from a distance. Beautiful in that way places soaked in power tend to be.” His gaze drifted to their surroundings, mapping the trees and shadows with a wariness that came from habit, not nerves. “No poppin’ into the inner sanctum all smiles and sunshine. Last thin’ we need is some high-spirited cleric chuckin’ a holy spear through my ribs.” A wry curl pulled at his mouth, but the seriousness in his eyes never quite faded. “So this’ll be the anchor point. When yer healed, and we’ve dealt with the bastardry plaguin’ yer veins—we’ll come back here.”
Then his attention slid down again, to where she toyed with the notion of how to start. Her tone carried that teasing edge, but he didn’t miss the thread of tension beneath it. So, instead of answering right away, Arc laid his other hand gently over hers. A steady weight. A wordless affirmation. “Blade’s enough,” he said softly, giving her fingers a brief press. “Just a clean draw. No need to go loppin’ limbs, Lia.”
With a practiced flick of his wrist, the space beside him shimmered—then rippled outward as he conjured a chalice from the void. It was unmistakably demonic in design, carved in dark metal with shifting lines that pulsed faintly like breath. “Blood goes here,” he continued, tone shifting toward instruction now, measured and focused. “Then I speak a few words over it—nothing flashy, just old rites—and yah’ll crush the bloodstone.” He held the cup up with a hand, “Once crushed, yah name where yah want it to open. The Temple of Nieve, in this case.”
Arc exhaled slowly, eyes narrowing just a touch. “The magic’ll obey you, not me. That’s the whole point. Yah call it. I open it. No possession, no rebellion. Just memory, blood, and will.” A pause. “So. When yer ready.”
Calia didn’t know if this whole chalice and forming a bloodstone was basic arcane magic or demon magic, either way there was this dubious hesitation in her at the thought of casting something she was so unfamiliar with and felt so awkwardly unnatural for her. Even for a brief moment consider if they could just use her faerie travel instead – just because he was worried he’d not be safely taken along didn’t mean that was true. Hells, she could go and summon him in a breath before she inevitably passed out!
That wasn’t her better sense talking, though. So before she could think too much and start panicking over something that didn’t need all of those dramatics, she reached to draw a small dagger from her belt.
There was no warning to it, no hesitation or even a cringe. Calia simply adjusted the way she held his wrist and it was a quick skilled swipe. Not deep enough to be a problem, only enough to draw a fair amount of blood. Didn’t stop her face from looking like she was mad about the whole thing or the way she’d carefully examined his own to be sure there wasn’t some hidden unspoken horror he wasn’t telling her.
This was a strange way of displaying trust on both their ends, wasn’t it!
It was a small thing—barely perceptible—but Arc flinched when she drew the dagger. Reflexive, involuntary. Not from the pain to come, but from memory. The kind that settled in your bones and waited for moments like this to wake again. Still, he held out his arm, jaw tight, eyes watching not the blade but her face as if that steadied him more than anything else.
The cold edge kissed his skin with a swift, practiced stroke. Crimson welled up at once, vivid and rich against his pale wrist.
He exhaled slowly through his nose, turning his arm over so the blood could fall freely into the waiting chalice beneath. The first drop struck the metal and ignited it with a pulse of red light—deep, hungry, and unmistakably abyssal. The chalice responded like a living thing, veins of infernal magic crawling up its sides in rippling bursts. It hummed low in the air, vibrating with restrained power.
Arc didn’t speak as the blood flowed. Just watched. Endured. Let it happen.
He counted not the seconds, but the rhythm of the spell taking root. When enough had been gathered—judged not by volume, but by resonance—he lifted the chalice carefully in one hand and raised his other to weave the sigils. His fingers moved with quiet precision, drawing circles and crossing lines through the air. The chalice warped beneath the motion, reshaping into liquid metal, folding in on itself with a molten hiss until only the crystallized residue of blood remained.
Two stones formed—dark red and faceted like garnets, each no larger than a fingertip. One floated into his hand. The other he offered to her.
“Store it in yer hollow,” Arc said, his voice softer now, the tension fading from his shoulders. “Won’t break unless yah want it to.”
His own hand curled around the second stone. He didn’t hide the subtle unease still lingering in the way his wrist flexed. But his gaze held steady as it found hers—violet rings, quiet and waiting. “When yer ready, Lia,” he said. “Just tell me where. And I’ll take us there.”
Had she caught that little flicker of a flinch? Hard to tell. Even if she had, Calia was so wrapped up in this means of magic it likely wouldn’t have registered the connection in her head anyway of those moments she’d deliberately thrown weapons at him with every intent to do harm. Eyes drifting down to follow the oozing crimson, watching it pool and give off that glow of brighter red when the magic ignited.
Calia used blood magic before – brief moments of instincts taking over, where all thought was out of her head except for the hyper focus on what needed to be done. To stop what Starling was doing under the Edelguard castle. Pulling from the dying fae tree in the woods. Using the stag’s blood to get past Fawna’s barrier. Only being able to guess that this felt so difficult because it was his. Which was ridiculous, because this was blood freely given. Calia wasn’t stealing this or forcing this!
As he instructed she made that first gem vanish away into her hollow where it would be safe and sound. Only seeming to relax herself when the tension in his own shoulders finally faded. Even if he looked just a little bit like he wasn’t so sure he’d like what they done either. Making her frown up at that violet gaze of his having this absolutely stupid urge to reach out and sooth him somehow.
They were alright, no need to give him any pats or pets just because she was a little off-kilter. Calia did take a step closer, however, unsure of just how this near means of travel was going to go.
“Off to the Temple of Nieve, beetlebug. Hopefully without stabby holy warriors.”
As soon as she spoke, the command settled into his skin like a trigger pulled.
Arc’s fingers closed around the bloodstone, and without flourish—just the quiet resolve of someone born for this—he crushed it in his palm. It gave with a sharp snap, not unlike breaking bone, the crystal fracturing into dust that hissed with heat. The residue seared red into his skin, glowing like an ember against his flesh.
The ground beneath them trembled faintly, as though something ancient had shifted awake beneath the roots.
He opened his fingers, and the abyss answered.
A circle of runes erupted around them in a perfect ring—searing hot and carved into the earth with no tool, only will. They writhed in language older than spoken word, demonic syllables spiralling outward like ink dropped in boiling water. From the centre of the circle, a fracture split the air vertically. A sound like splitting sinew groaned through the trees as the space pulled apart, revealing a yawning rift of red and shadow—like the world itself had been sliced open to reveal its underlayers.
Winds whipped around them, tasting of smoke, sulphur, and something coppery that clung to the tongue like memory. The portal shimmered at the edges, refusing to stay still, the threshold rippling like heat haze and oil slicks layered on top of one another.
Arc, standing just off-centre in the spell’s burning ring, let the last of the red light crawl up his arm and fade. The runes dimmed in sequence, obedient and exact, save for one—his name—that remained branded faintly in the soil behind his heels.
He tilted his head toward the portal, cocky smile twitching at the corners of his mouth, sharp and amused. “After yah, dragoness. Mind the existential dread on the way through—it tends to bite.”
Calia watched and Calia learned… not quite sure what she was filing away into her head, but so far she’d gathered that the blood became some bonding agent to the spell he was trying to cast, returning to him almost like the tattooed runes he had across his body. Most certainly demon instead of arcane, for she was very, very slowly starting to catch the different in the symbols even if she didn’t know exactly what they meant. The same way she could get a feel of what language of words she was looking at, even if she couldn’t read them.
This sort of portal was not a gentle thing. A forced rip into the fabric of the world… well no wonder it made her so uneasy! Calia was already rolling a dozen different ways this could be done better in her mind, with no real time to really give it. For it was open now and they needed to go through.
He seemed proud of himself, calling her a dragoness as he beckoned her to take the first steps. Calia meant that expression with a haughty one of her own, unafraid, completely unimpressed with this idea of biting dread.
Dread could kiss her ass.
So it was a few quick steps, not second guessing, no second look either. Ignoring that rush of sensations that made her skin tingle and the hairs of her body stand up on end. Ignored that molten coppery metal taste and acrid smell of sulfurous smoke – because it was all so brief, wasn’t it.
Almost as if she’d blinked and missed the whole thing.
Calia stopped suddenly on he otherwise where the world felt… different. No longer the magic infused redwoods of Edelguard, this place felt so eerily quiet and unreactive in comparison. Almost like her mountain home where magic was rare, and yet somehow this land felt stripped of it. With a verdant quick glance, this forested place had it’s own variety of trees and plant life in a unique scale of abundance. Shorter trees, different sorts. None of the redwoods and great oaks of Edelguard, nor the towering evergreen pines and firs of Caeldalmor.
Calia somehow felt sideways, immediately reaching out to grasp at Archimedes when he was close enough, just to steady herself.
It had been quite some time since he had been here. Long enough that the world had clearly changed. Where he made a quite change to remove that of demonic appearances to dull himself down to strictly appearing as he did as an elf. Save for the height.
Twitching nose a moment like he was feeling the change in the air. How it felt so barren, replying softly to her reach to be sure he was responding to her. With the midday sun cast down upon them, Arc let out a bit of a sigh. “Welcome to the Imperial lands, once a wholesome functional place but well, there was one big bad bitch that ensured all of this was ruined.” Arc turned a bit. Looking around them to be sure his bearings were intact.
Adjusting a step so he might point with finger and chin alike towards the image in the near distance. Straining the sharp ears for any sounds that were either hostile or friendly. The temple itself stood proud against the flatland sky—stone and ivory columns framing archways that reached upward like prayers made visible. Its vaulted roof was crowned in glinting silver, worn slightly by rain and time but still pristine in its symmetry. Banners in deep blue snapped on high poles, embroidered with the sigils of Nieve’s order—sunbursts, swords, and stars. Statues lined the approach, not just saints but monsters slain, virtues carved in mythic poses.
Arc squinted. The place reeked of divinity.
The hum in the air wasn’t magical in the way he knew it. It was cleaner. Thinner. Holy.
He swallowed that familiar tightening in his throat—the one that said you don’t belong here—and adjusted his coat without comment. “Well,” he murmured under his breath, voice dry, “at least they’re still tasteful.”
Calia wished she had a good excuse for this moment of being so unsettled, off-kilter, this foggy brain moment of being unsure of herself and what steps she was taking next. She was a decisive woman, one who always charged forward regardless of what was in front of her, this shouldn’t be any different! When she did start taking those leading steps forwards she tried to reason it all – she had been exhausted and poisoned before. The demon mark and all it’s bullshit could be worse than she assumed. Unfamiliar demon magic portals and now a foreign land she’d never stepped into before. Surely any one of those things could be at fault.
She hadn’t been this uncertain since approaching the Edelguard palace. Fantastic.
None of these thoughts needed to be shared however, Calia merely did what she did best. Taking a deep breath and keeping a keen eye on the landscape as they drew closer to the temple. A twist of her mouth at the marbled statues and the way the building was made to invoke this peaceful, regal sort of elegance. It was beautiful in it’s own way. With white stone and stained glass… although as they drew closer, some of that luster seemed to be fading. Signs of age and ill-repair within the cracks of the walls and small missing panes of glass. The place was certainly old if Archimedes had once been here, and what she was catching from it now was a severe absence of… well. People.
A place like this needed a lot upkeep, so where were the people.
“You’re not going to burst into flames if we go inside, are you?” she asked once they’d drawn close enough to the big doors. Casting him a look that might’ve betrayed those inner feelings that Calia had no intentions of going inside such a place alone. She’d even avoided the sea temple in Tir Elas! Such places were not for the likes of her anymore than they were for him!
Arc had heard the whispers—filtered through the demonic grapevine, passed like secrets and songs. The slow, inevitable decline of holy orders across the Imperial lands. Fewer chosen. Fewer blessed. Fewer willing to tend the sacred flame when the world no longer held it sacred. Once, he would’ve found it thrilling. A delicious collapse of power and order. But now? Now it felt more like a damned inconvenience.
Especially when Calia needed what little of that dwindling light still flickered in places like this.
The temple ahead wasn’t crumbling, not exactly—but it bore the subtle wounds of disuse. Weathered columns. Moss climbing up the base of its statues like nature was reclaiming what devotion had let go. No crowds. No priests in pristine robes. Just quiet, stretched long like the hush before a storm or after a funeral.
Arc’s steps slowed as they neared. Curiosity warred with something colder in his chest. Apprehension, maybe. Or disbelief. He had expected more—radiance, resistance, perhaps even a smiting or two. Instead, the place greeted them with stillness. The sort of stillness that suggested it was trying very hard to remember what it once had been.
He felt it, though. Oh, he felt it.
The closer he came, the more his skin prickled. Not just heat, but that simmering crawl beneath the flesh—like standing under a sun made of judgment. No water. No shade. Just light meant to blister things like him back to dust.
He stopped at the great doors, eyes narrowing as he stared up at them. “Well,” he muttered, voice low and dry, “We’re about to find out. Doubt it’s gonna go easy on me, but what’s life without a little mystery?” His gaze traced the ancient carvings along the muntin—worn saints with eyes of stone and hands forever lifted in warning or welcome.
And then, he nudged her forward. A soft press of encouragement and a telling that he wasn’t just ditching her here either.
The moment he stepped through the threshold, the sensation was immediate. His demon-threaded soul recoiled, clawing back against the pull of sanctified ground. It felt like stepping into shallow holy water with no way to step out again. Not enough to kill. Just enough to make every breath a reminder. This place had once been strong—strong enough that, in its prime, walking through these arches could’ve really meant spontaneous combustion.
Now? It just itched like hell.
“Dia duit?” Arc called out, accent curling the words as he offered the native greeting to the air. No answer. But his eyes narrowed. He could feel the magic lingering still—tucked away in corners, coiled in the bones of the walls. Quiet, waiting. Maybe sleeping. He glanced around once, lips curling into a smirk. “We ain’t alone,” he said, sotto voce, “But apparently, no one’s manning the front desk.”
Calia earned herself a little shiver and she sincerely doubted it was caused by herself even if her darker thoughts wanted to whisper it as true. A quick cast of her glance looked over Archimedes to be sure he hadn’t, in fact, started sparking or smoking. There was an affect though… had this place been in a top condition, there would be wards against demons that were well maintained. Now? There was just the remnants to a holy space that once was.
Booted feet echoed in the empty halls, where she perused more and more of the fall of this one great temple. Shadows where art and artifacts used to hand or sit on pedestals of furniture. Leaving nothing behind but empty spaces and heavy stone statues, giving an appearance than anything else of value had long since been sold off, stolen, or destroyed.
In walking further into the temple, she did finally get her first peep at a real living person – not what she expected, however! Small children making curious peeks, or elders so old they were bent over and one hard blow would knock them over.
A kid in some ratty old monk robes went shooting down the hall, screaming at the top of his lungs.
“KEEEEEEPER NIIIIGEEEEEEEL. THERE’S PEOPLE IN THE TEEEEEEMPLEEEEEEEEE.”
…well that was one way to be announced.
It only took a few moments for the loud beat of running steps came echoing down one of the halls before they seemed to slow out of sight to something resembling a calm measured pace. Someone could’ve told the man’s face to catch up, as when he did round the corner, he looked wind-blown and red-faced from running so fast. He couldn’t be much older than Calia by the guess of his age, and his robes weren’t exactly in that stellar pristine condition someone might imagine a paladin or priest to be wearing to show off their holy light.
“I-uh- I uhm. Welcome to the Temple of Light.” he finally got out, glancing between the two of them, brushing his hands down his robes before taking on this oh so pious, pleasant smile. Something practiced – over practiced.
“You’re a holy temple, yes? I have a demon wound that needs to be looked at proper.” she stated, straight to the point.
“D-demon… wound?” he nearly went white as a sheet before righting himself just as quick. “Yes, yes. Of course, I can heal a demon wound. That is my job.”
Calia frowned glancing around, wondering if maybe one of those old geezers scooting about might be more useful. Especially when this one seemed so surprised about even hearing the phrase demon wound… Extra especially when there was a demon standing right in front of him, and he was not even making a sound or flinching.
“…is there someone else in charge here.” she asked slowly.
The man’s white pallor then turned a bit red, seeming having struck a bit of his pride there. “I am the one in charge. …right now. I am Keeper Nigel, a monk of this temple and I am fully trained in cleansing wounds and expelling demonic forces. The most able-bodied and able-mined here. …at the moment. So I assure you, dear lady, if there is a demon you need expelling I will find it and seal it.”
The look Calia shot Arc then spoke volumes. A mix between mischievously amused you’re about to get exercised and a little bit of exasperated this was a good idea?
He knew it had been a good long while since he’d passed this way, but gods above and hells below—this place was looking more pathetic with every step. Once-grand walls now sagged like they’d been battered by wind, rain, and maybe a good tantrum or two. It had the bones of glory, but the skin was tattered, worn down to a shell of what it had likely been in its prime. Arc glanced around with something between curiosity and dismay, briefly entertaining the notion of peeling back his illusioned glamour and letting the resident holyfolk get a good look at what they’d be working with.
He didn’t do it, of course. But the temptation was there.
His ears pricked to the sound of approaching steps—fast, youthful—and then came a bellowing grasshopper. Arc blinked, head tilting like a curious hound hearing a strange bell. “Well,” he muttered under his breath, “Subtlety’s dead.” A quiet click of his tongue followed as he lifted his gaze to the ceiling. Debating, for a moment, if it would hold his weight were he to climb up and take a better vantage. Not that he needed to. This was already shaping up to be a delight.
Whatever divine force had once held this temple in reverence seemed to have long since packed its bags and left without a forwarding address. He was starting to wonder if they’d need to find a new temple altogether—one that wasn’t held together by bird droppings and desperate prayers—or just hope fate, for once, decided to cut them some slack. So far, no dice.
Eventually, a youth in what Arc could only describe as hand-me-down robes and the confidence of a freshly unmuddied boot strode up. Presumably Keeper Nigel, based on the piping voice that rang with far more pluck than experience. The kid was round-eared, mortal, and positively soaked in the faint tang of holy energy—but not enough to blister. Definitely no one that would send Arc running for the nearest shadow.
Still, he kept quiet. Let Calia do her thing.
Businesslike, direct—her words cut clean, straight to the point. But Arc, watching the boy’s face go pale, began quietly recalculating everything. If the lad went any whiter, Arc feared he’d pass out before they even got to the mark in question. Grand.
As Calia asked for someone with more authority, the kid puffed up like a spooked bird. What came next was a blend of petulance and bravado that made Arc let out an airy laugh. Fingers pressed lightly to his mouth, trying (and failing) to stifle the amusement before catching Calia’s glance.
Oh yeah. This was going swimmingly. “Very reassurin’,” he declared, tossing on his most charismatic grin like a cloak—warm and slick as honey. “Yah sure put the ‘holy’ in ‘holy shit we’re doomed.’” His tone was light, teasing—but not unkind. Mostly.
Then he gestured loosely toward his own pointed ear with a look that said I’ve been around longer than yah’ve been alive, lad. “No offense, but yah look a wee bit undercooked to be wranglin’ demon curses. Yah got a paragon lyin’ around? Maybe a paladin, priest, or—I don’t know—a magical grandma with hands that glow?”
He gave enough seconds for a breath to pass before continuing on. “I just want to be thorough, yah know? A demon mark ain’t exactly a scraped knee and a kiss to make it better. So humour me. Tell me we’ve got options that don’t end in exorcism by sugarplum amateur hour.”
Almost like he only just now noticed Arc standing there, the Keeper Nigel looked up, and up and blinked owlishly at the man with elven pointed ears. That was sight not often seen in the Imperial Lands these days. Elves. Especially tall ones.
Calia was noting in particular he still hadn’t realized there was a demon standing right in front of him. Surely, surely anyone with a sense for magic, especially holy magic would at least be able to tell there was something off about the giant elf!
“Our paladins are currently on a mission…” he revealed, still puffed up with that wounded pride. “Sir Reeves put myself in charge. I might not have the years of age and wisdom as the elder priests, but at least I can stand up straight and cast a spell without wheezing.”
“Heeeey…!” wheezed one of those exact geezers passing by in the halls, lifting up his staff to give a good shake before just the motion of that nearly had him tilting off his feet. It hit the ground with a CLONK and the two little kids next to him breathed a sigh of relief. Apparently picking up elders were part of their duties at the temple.
Keeper Nigel pretending he didn’t see all that. Prim and proper, motioning a hand for the two of them to follow.
Calia sure wasn’t going to pretend, though, now she was a little concerned!
“I’ve been told it’s a little more involved than just a little healing spell, otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered to come all this way,” she countered, keeping at his heels though with the beckoning.
“I just need to reference a few things, that’s all… and ask a few questions of course. How long have you had the wound, what gave you the wound, are you actively experiencing any symptoms like missing time, missing memory, moments of extreme rage and aggression, attempted murder of companions close to you…”
He rambled off several more things, all of which could easily describe Calia just as her normal self. Another narrowed eye stare was shot in Arc’s direction. Almost daring him to laugh again or crack a joke. It was funny, of course, but ooooh, he wasn’t the one that was about to be this young monk’s very first patient! Keeper Nigel practically screamed first timer healer!
The boy could have his pride wounded all he liked—Arc didn’t care. Until there was actual evidence that the lad knew what the hell he was doing, he wasn’t about to leave Calia alone with him. Granted, he probably wouldn’t even if the kid did know the difference between a healing incantation and a light spell. But this? This was hardly convincing. Humming absently as new information was tossed out—mention of paladins being present, just conveniently “out” at the moment—Arc arched a brow in quiet skepticism. A lie? A half-truth? Hard to tell. Either way, it wasn’t comforting.
The name the monk offered as reassurance might’ve held weight somewhere in these lands, but to Arc it meant precisely nothing. “It ain’t the lack of wheezin’ that’s got me raisin’ an eyebrow, lad,” he replied dryly, even as the poor elder being shoved into relevance took a few blank verbal swings at consciousness. Frankly, it seemed like the old man was hanging on by prayer alone, and the relief among the younger children spoke louder than any hymn. Was this supposed to be a temple—or a sanctified hospice?
Still, Arc moved in step with Calia. Ever her shadow at moments like these, especially when the air tasted like something could sour quickly. His ears twitched in tune with the monk’s ramble—because that’s what it became the second Calia clarified what she needed. The kid launched into a rapid-fire list of symptoms, side effects, moral assumptions, and divine protocol with such preloaded urgency that Arc was half-sure he had a pocket scroll with “what to say if confronted with demon marks” printed on it.
Problem was, everything he rattled off sounded like a Tuesday for Calia. The look she gave was enough confirmation. Arc almost laughed, but wisely kept that one locked behind his teeth. If he cracked wise now, he’d probably be the next one on the healing slab.
Instead, he tilted his head and offered a sharp, clipped comment, “Yah said yah could heal demon marks. Yah ought to know they ain’t the same thin’ as possession.” His voice didn’t waver, just landed heavy in the air. “And attempted murder of close companions? Blanket statement, that. Shitty people do shitty thin’s without the help of hellfire, lad.”
He flicked a glance toward Calia’s arm, jaw tensing slightly.
Was he going to have to go back to the Abyss? Tear out demon’s herb by claw and fang just to brew something himself? Maybe. Because right now, he wasn’t even sure this temple was up to the task. And that made his skin crawl more than the holy wards ever could.
Keeper Nigel led them down a long barren hall and into a great room that had all the appearances of an empty dorm. Several lines of unused beds, likely for refugee, patients, nomadic folks just needing a safe place to stay. Suspiciously or sadly all empty, as it was growing increasingly clear that none ever came to the temple anymore. It was filled with the extremely, brittle old and the smallest of spry youth. Calia had yet to see another actual adult here besides Nigel!
“Obviously she has to be checked for a possession first before we can ever heal the wound, or any demons inside her might try to kill us all,” explained Nigel, incensed, of course, but keeping his composure well. In Calia’s opinion, likely used to having elders and kids nag at him all day. The monk shifted around, searching until he found one of the rolling dressers. Pausing only long enough to give Calia an up and down look.
“…oh, where is the wound?” he asked.
“My arm,” was the answer.
He hummed a bit pulling a cream white linen out of the dresser to hand it over to the woman. When Calia unfolded it, the thing was nothing more than some simple shift. No sleeves and likely to barely reach down past her knees considering how tall she was. Her raised eyebrow was question enough by itself.
“To make sure you’re not possessed you’ll need to be dunked in the holy hot springs,” explained Nigel. “While you change I’ll fetch the crossbow.”
“Excuse me?”
“The crossbow so I can shoot you if you’re actually a demon,” he said, impatient as if that was just common knowledge for everyone. “You have to stay under long enough that if you’re possessed, the demon will present itself and try to flee. Otherwise you’re fi-“
“So you think I’m going to walk myself into a spring and drown myself to see if a demon will pop out,” she stated oh so slowly.
“Of course not, your companion will have to hold you down until it’s safe. A demon isn’t going to let itself die. And as your companion he can’t be trusted to shoot you if necessary! I’ll have to do it.”
“Archimedes,” she said, actually said instead of shouted and damn it all if that didn’t take every ounce of her self control not to be shouting. Or to snatch up this bonkers monk by his tattered robes and launch him out of one of the already cracked stained glasses windows. Everything out of his mouth sounding more and more insane, so somebody needed to either reign HIM in or reign in HER because she was not about to send a temple full of little children and crotchety elders running scared!
Oh, he was listening. Listening with every nerve on fire as the madness spilled from this monk’s mouth like polished, golden horse shit. Each passing second made Arc wonder if these places even taught anything anymore, or if the clergy were just grabbing the nearest holy book and winging it with enough conviction to pass as pious. Sure, he could feel the holy magic in the lad—but that didn’t mean he had a lick of sense behind those shiny eyes.
He watched the room quietly at first, gaze flicking to the sheet handed off to Calia. It earned an up-and-down that very clearly read: Is this a bedsheet or some enchanted nonsense gown? Either way, it wasn’t coming together for him, and he was halfway to making a snide remark when his mouth fell open instead.
A crossbow.
A crossbow, he said. As if he were going to let this bozo shoot Calia. And like that was going to do anything to a demon.
And not just that—the lad thought he was going to wade into holy water and hold Calia under. Like she was a common sinner with a dunkable conscience.
Oh, there was going to be a demon in this room, alright. But it wasn’t coming out of her.
“I knew the temples were wiltin’,” Arc started, tone incredulous, “but holy fuck, I didn’t realize yah’d all gone back to frog eyeballs and rat tail potions.” He gave a sweeping motion toward Calia—a come-here, a please-don’t-let-me-have-to-bite-someone gesture—while giving Nigel another full up-and-down like he was trying to guess what planet he’d been raised on.
“Low rank demons can’t enter temples with even in the presence of minuscule holy magic. They shrivel like garden weeds under a magnifying glass. And if yah think a crossbow’s guna stop anything high rankin’, then yah clearly skipped the whole section on planar biology.” Arc’s voice dropped an octave, all soft menace and charming venom. “Even apprentice mages know that. So.”
Crack. Fingers flexed, and a ripple of magical pressure echoed like a muscle tensing beneath the skin of the room. “We’re doin’ this properly. Not with rain-dance maracas and misplaced bravado. Yah check the wound. The actual wound, lad, where the demon mark is. She wants to sit in the holy water? That’s fine. She’s strong. But no one’s holdin’ her down. Not you. Not me. That ain’t happenin’.”
He flicked his hand—an audible click resounded, the door sealing shut with finality. And then Arc smiled. Sweet. Sincere. So utterly wrong.
“Trust me, lad. Yer guna do this our way. Because we both know—me and her—that yah wouldn’t last ten seconds with a real demon. So let’s not pretend, yeah?” He leaned in just enough for the temperature in the room to tilt toward uncomfortable. “Three options. Option one, yah follow instructions. Option two, yah get introduced to things yah’re too young to have nightmares about. And option three… well.”
A devilish chuckle bubbled from him. “Mystery box. Not recommendin’ it.” Then, with an easy clap of his hands and a radiating charisma that could coat poison in honey, he beamed, “So, Nigel. A or B? I really suggest the first one. Cuz frankly, lad…” His violet gaze slid up and down again. “Yah ain’t a very strong monk. And no one gets to hurt her and call it purifying.”
Calia almost, almost felt bad for the young monk, had he not been a complete dingus and seem to think any of the nonsense he rattled off even made a lick of sense. She might not be some holy paladin, but even she could’ve guessed some of the true facts Archimedes was oh so helpfully sharing on just what demons could and couldn’t do.
But what really hit her? This absolutely true ding-dong had never seen a demon in his life. Because Archimedes was absolutely being a charming menacing demon, every single hint and sign was there. Yet dear, innocent, stupid Nigel was not even snapping a single light of realization in his head.
He was, however, being effectively intimidated, clutching his robes in holy shock and awe, with all the horror of someone who had been seen right through for all the bullshit they were spewing.
“I-. well- Alright! Alright!” he stammered out. “I’m not- I’m not even a novice – I AM in charge – I’m just not–” he wilted. Visibly shrank into this sheepish wisp of a man. “The master and his ward usually handle these sorts of things, I’ve never actually seen them done. I just know… parts of it.”
“You could have just mentioned that instead of threatening to kill me twice in one sentence!” shot back Calia.
At least he looked properly apologetic, even if it was mixed in a little bit with that wounded pride.
“You have to understand! This is the last temple in all of the Imperial Lands. The others have all fallen to Bloody- er- her Imperial Majesty. You can’t even find mages anymore, they get snatched up or killed before even leaving their home villages, let alone ever find their way to the Lady of Light. I’d have told you to wait for the Master’s return, except you can’t leave demon wounds to fester. Most die within days if the demon that gave it doesn’t hunt you down first. I- I- wanted to do my best…”
That explained the state of the temple and sheer lack of people with any sort of skill or sense in the place. …and damn this monk! He was starting to well up with big solid tears, all round faced and pouting with this pure sort of inner innocent that really just made her want to chuck him out a window more. How could one person want to help with all their heart but still be such an absolutely moron about it!
“Well, I hope you’re choosing option A, because I don’t want to know what the mystery box is,” spat Calia.
The young Keeper Nigel nodded, eyes going wide and with a very, VERY hesitant look, slide that gaze at Archimedes. “The springs are healing waters, she does need to sit in them for a few minutes so they can soak into her spirit and aid with drawing out the cursed mark. Even strong demons can’t abide by being surrounded by that much holy energy it-“
“Where’s the springs?” interrupted Calia.
“Through those doors there-“
Calia was already pulling off her belt, along with her shirt to thrust them unceremoniously in the monk’s hands along with that nonsense of a dressing gown he’d given her. Tugging off her boots, while Keeper Nigel turned three shades of red and started sputtering on the spot. Off came her pants next, tossed at the man. Leaving her just in that thin shift and her underwear.
“This is so fucking stupid,” was the only thing she said as she marched across the room and shoved open those doors open. Immediately a humid warmth of steam hit her face when she charged right in. Only for the briefest of hesitation did the stop at the edge of what looked like an ancient cave pool, dressed up with stone around the edging to make wading in a little easier. At the back another glorious statue, this one of a woman looking kind and serene.
She scoffed and down into the water she marched until it was up to her waist and she was forced to sink down under.
That poor monk was still sputtering.
“If- iffin.. if there’s… If a demon does come shrieking out-” he tried to stammer. In the end just swallowing hard and looking to Archimedes with an expression that spoke volumes. You wanted it this way – you have to kill it! “T-Then if not, we just- just cut the wound and coax out the impurities. Make sure there is nothing still inside. …but- but you have to know she’ll always have the mark. Not even the temple can remove a mark, it leaves a scar. Always.”
Suppressing the overwhelming desire to growl like a true-born beast, Arc exhaled instead—a long-suffering sound that carried all the weight of his restraint. Two fingers pinched the bridge of his nose while the monk—clearly rattled—finally spilled something that resembled the truth. Good. He should be rattled. The mere suggestion of putting a crossbow bolt into Calia had not sat well with him in any measure, and if lying was par for the course in this once-prosperous order, then maybe it was no wonder this place looked half-buried by time and neglect.
If this boy really was in charge, then he had damn well better start acting like it.
There was no surge of confidence to be felt. No divine reassurance, no holy presence standing tall with conviction. Just a kid fumbling through dogma like a man reading prayers off the back of a cereal box. Arc couldn’t help the dry sound that escaped him when Calia pointed out the sheer idiocy of threatening her—because she was right, and no part of him disagreed.
Dropping his hands to his hips, he stood with the exasperated poise of a father listening to a child insist two plus two was actually five. And then, right on cue, the hen began clucking.
“Yes yes, we’re all well aware the bitch queen Heirra’s turned the continent into a glorified bonfire,” Arc drawled, voice flinty with sarcasm. “That don’t mean yah start runnin’ things ass-backwards. Who in their right mind thinks a crossbow bolt is the answer to anythin’ with horns?” He gave the boy a withering look, violet eyes narrow with insulted intelligence.
He sighed again. Long. Heavy. The kind of sigh reserved for clerics who’d lost their marbles and apprentices who’d mistaken fantasy for function. If the monk wanted to keep thinking he’d never met a demon, fine—Arc could let him cling to that illusion. But if he actually wanted to help Calia, then he’d better do it properly. No half-measures. No divine dunk tanks!
Fortunately, it seemed Nigel valued his own miserable life enough to acquiesce. He explained the process—haltingly—and gestured to the sacred springs. Arc didn’t need directions; he could feel the holy energy rolling through the doors in waves, like sunlight down his spine. Made his skin prickle and his jaw tense.
And then, Calia did exactly what Arc knew she would. Began scandalizing the boy by stripping down and donning the sorry excuse of a bedsheet gown. If there had been any doubt left that Keeper Nigel was inexperienced, it was erased by the full blush that painted his face like spilled wine.
“It’s better than the former option, lass,” Arc called after her as she muttered curses. His voice was dry but genuine. “Could be worse. Could be drownin’ yah in a vat of sparkly water while yellin’ ‘the power of light compels yah’.”
His attention flicked back to the monk, catching the young man mid-expression. Arc’s gaze sharpened.
Tone dipping into something between threatening and formal. “Yah’ve got bigger problems if yah can’t tell the difference between fae-blood and infernal corruption. Yah said yah’ve never seen a demon before—and trust me, we can tell.” Then, with a slight glance toward the room, he raised his voice again. “Love? Yah care about scar tissue? Seems the keeper’s suddenly worried about yer pretty skin.” Offering a short pause. “Nice of him to grow a conscience now.”
He strode a few steps forward, stopping short of the door. Even from here, the holy energy clawed at him—subtle, sharp, and rising in pressure like a kettle about to scream. Arc wrinkled his nose, resisting the hiss that wanted to rise in his throat. He wasn’t stepping through those doors. Not unless he wanted to light up like a festival candle.
But he’d stay here. Close. Watchful. Waiting.
Because if anything went wrong in that room, he’d be the first one through the fire.
Calia had a fine array of scars now, another wasn’t going to make much a difference. Not that she bothered to reply at all, focused on two distinctly different things. Entering the water didn’t cause her even a single ounce of pain, including dunking her whole self underneath. To the opposite, it was wonderfully pleasant. Steaming hot, smelling fresh and like long lived natural minerals. All of those moments she worried there might’ve been something living and lurking inside her were able to wash away – even those lingering fears of demon parasites.
Wishing she didn’t remember that in the moment.
It left her room to mull over what the young monk had sputtered about the Imperial Queen and what was becoming of the mages and magic in these lands. She’d felt it when she came out of the portal… the way magic here seemed to be thinned, hiding, harder to touch. It’s not as if Caeldalmor was brimming with magic, at least not the way Edelguard seemed to still be so woven with their fae roots that it imbued every tree. But at least in Caeldalmor it was still part of the land and nature. Still lived in people even if they didn’t want it or realized it.
Calia didn’t want to think about this either. Didn’t she have enough problems without her over active sense of justice over things she should mind her own damn business about? Hadn’t acting on those impulses gotten her into enough trouble already?
She sank down under the water again, brooding in these thoughts and at least accepting it as a moment of temporary calm. Opening her eyes beneath the waters just for curiosity’s sake to see mostly minty cloudy water and the natural stone that lined the walls. Turning in the water where the shadow of that lady’s statue stretched over the waters. The shapes there were different, though, enough to earn her curiosity. Swimming down to the base that was under the springs to find an interesting array of carvings into the stone.
None of it really resembled the style of the temple, but Calia had a feeling this spring existed long before people started building around it, anyway. Most interesting was the carving of a tree that felt almost recognizably close to some of the elven markings in Edelguard. When she brushed her fingers along the deep carved lines – something happened.
A small shift of the stone beneath that statue opened up into this dark black tunnel. The water wasn’t suddenly rushing in either direction, so it’d been connected like this for a long while.
What Calia should have done was pop up and say something about it. Ask questions. At least tell Archimedes she wasn’t drowning!
Unfortunately, as it was any fae’s nature, sometimes a thing was just so compellingly strange and interesting that curiosity won over better sense.
Calia stuck her arm through it first making sure nothing was hiding in there to bite her, but then she was swimming forward to see just what could be on the other side.
Keeper Nigel did not feel all that comfortable being left alone with the elven mage. The monk was young enough that he’d only ever met a handful of elves in his life, seeing as they rarely came this deep into the Imperial Lands. These days mages were rare too, in that case he’d only met the Master and his Ward who were actually practicing paladins, leaving a few of the crotchety elders having minimal magic or a few of the young orphans who had promise. The priests and monks of the Temple had to do their work through other means, enchanted items, natural practice.
If Nigel had known his first time being left in charge was going to bring a pair of dangerous magical strangers, he might’ve begged the job be given to somebody else!
However, it was his duty now to care for others, even if one of those others made him so uneasy he was ready to throw up. Keeper Nigel at least took the woman’s things to set aside where he would do his healing work. Prepared his table with his instruments for tending to the wound. Found the scroll that had all the instructions for mending such wounds – quickly read the paragraph about bedside manners and flushed red all over again. Perhaps that was where he’d gone terribly wrong.
With that settle he inched closer and closer to the elven mage who lingered in the doorway of the healing springs, with fair assumption that he was trying to give his lady the privacy.
Except when Nigel peering into the springs, he didn’t see one hint of that ebony haired woman.
“…did she disintegrate!” he blurted out in alarm. “She was a demon!”
Blissfully unaware of the mayhem she’d caused, Calia followed the tunnel where it opened up into a bigger wider chamber. These springs ran through the ground and cave systems it seemed. There were a few other tunnels in this open space and she had to bob herself upwards where there was the smallest amount of room between the level of the water and the top of stone. Thankfully enough to get herself a few good breaths. Anyone else that tried to swim the length of these tunnels were liable to run out of air too quick to make it far enough to explore.
Back down she went, choosing one of the directions almost on an instinct, mostly just… feeling her way through the water until her curiosity was rewarded when she broke through the surface of the waters into a new chamber.
A place also once built around the hot springs, this one had the pool in the very center of the chamber. Up along the walls were light scones, magically enchanted to be perpetually lit as Calia could not see a single door, caved in or otherwise to reach such a place. She swam over to the edge of the pool and climbed herself out.
This place was old. It sure as hell wasn’t part of the Temple. She walked along the stone, peering at the architecture… it did have those elven influences, and things she knew in her heart were distinctly fae. There were blends of other cultures too that she couldn’t recognize, but most notably were the giant statues that lined the walls. Old god. Ancient gods. It’d probably been a thousand years since anyone could remember their names, and thousands of years before that when this place was even used or active.
She could almost recognize the newer gods in their shape and faces, as if perhaps they’d changed form over time as the world itself changed. There was one that resembled the temple’s lady, though down here she had big feathered wings. Another that almost looked like the effigies of Isyn. A vague resemblance to the elven Gaia… A big giant bear that could’ve been one of the mountain dwarf’s gods. An impressive dragon spreading it’s wings high.
When she came across an alter covered in layers and layers of dust, she peered curiously at the items atop it. Candles, crystals, dried up herbs that must’ve once been used in offering. A few leather bound tomes. Everything left pristine and forgotten by time, with pure luck that no one knew it was all down here.
Safe from that Imperial Queen that seemed hellbent on destroying so much.
In that moment Calia decided she was going to leave it all here. Let it be safe and forgotten. Lost to time until someone better could find it. Someone better than her, anyway. A person who could actually do something with all this.
Except…
One book. Calia very carefully claimed one of the thickest tomes and opened up her hollow, stashing it safely away inside. While none of this was useful to her, Archimedes himself was born to be a scholar, and what kind of friend was she if didn’t bring him a little treat?
…and that was the moment Calia realized maybe she should have at least signaled she was up to something before vanishing. Fuck!
It was a damn good thing he was hardly bothered by people having feelings towards him one way or another. Granted, this was a new land that he could have easily just blended into with no one knowing his history. Humans had short lives after all and even if they’d heard about an elf that welcomed the demon hoard a hundred some years ago, they’d all be wrinkled prunes or near to it. If not dead. So while he could feel Nigel’s apprehension rolling off him in waves fit to be a incoming tide, Arc stood at the door. Looking around the room from his vantage point with a sort of dull consideration.
The statue he recognized as the old goddess of the lands. A healing soul that was demonstrated to be something saint like but beyond at the same time. Knowing well enough from his theology studies as a younger boy, she was their patron goddess. The one where the means of light and health and fortitude came from. The stronger the holy souls believed in her, the stronger their own magic was.
He couldn’t confirm or deny that, though he found it questionable. Simply from his own indepth understanding of magic, it didn’t feel logical. But was he about to crap over someone’s belief. Surprising? No, he wasn’t.
Ears lifted as he hadn’t realized he wandered off in figurative thought, tilting vision to follow that of Nigel into the room. As he had made himself useful in playing maid to the royal girl that had shed her clothing like a second skin. Dropping them wherever so the monk was cleaning it all up. Tidying and folding till Arc was arching a brow at him. To where suddenly he made a commentary that got Arc to straighten up.
Peering again inside towards the pool and unfortunately feeling his stomach drop into his feet. It didn’t help that he couldn’t feel where Calia was! It was a murky presence that was omitted and blurred by that of the holy divinity that housed itself within the room. Blanching his senses and making the tether feel fuzzy! Like trying to stare through an all too thick fog. “She’s not a demon, yah gobshite. Yah would have heard the damn thin’ screamin’,” Arc unhelpfully snapped.
Frowning and by the realms of all creation, he moved. Crossed the threshold—and the divine met him like a wall of knives. Not metaphorical. Not figurative. Real. The magic pressed in with a force so pure, so righteous, that it turned against every inch of Arc’s body like it was exorcising his very soul. He jerked back instinctively, but it was already too late to turn back! And the chamber—the sanctified chamber—recognized what he was.
The first scream wasn’t vocal. But a shrieking howl that moved within his blood. Holy magic surged through the air like lightning made of judgement, and Arc staggered forward with a guttural snarl, one hand catching the stone wall to stop himself from falling. Steam hissed from the skin at the mere touch! Proving just how truly saturated this room was with the very thing that was truly liable to kill him. His bones felt like they were being pulled in opposite directions.
The magic that cloaked him—his careful illusion of elven civility—shattered like a pane of glass struck dead-centre! Not about to let him keep the appearance when he had come barging in unwelcomed! Revealing the true demon that had come into the very temple with the woman that had been incorrectly claimed as the very thing! And the air seemed to tremble in his wake, no longer soothed by illusion.
And still he stood.
Barely.
His breath came sharp, hitched between clenched teeth. Sweat dripped into his brow, only to hiss and evaporate on contact with the radiant air. The room—brilliant with consecrated purpose—saw him now for what he truly was. And it was too kind to say that it hated him.
And yet—
It wasn’t what drew the sharp breath from his lungs.
No, that came when he looked around, staring into that pool that was supposed to be the starting point of helping her, she wasn’t there. The water in the centre of the chamber sat untouched. No ripples. No displacement. No scent. The air was too still. Wrong. Like someone had erased her—removed her from the space itself. And worst of all?
Holy magic was not kind. It was cleansing. And Arc—despite all his restraint and humour and charm—was not clean.
He gritted his fangs and forced his way closer to the pool. Shadows clung to him unnaturally, as if trying to defend him from the light. His breath laboured. His claws curled and uncurled like he was itching to claw through the very stone around him.
But he saw no trace of her. No spell circle. No shimmer of magic. Only the glaring absence that he couldn’t even fathom how that worked! How could she just simply disappear, truly trying to wrack his brain through the moment and coming up with nothing.
And the divine, still singing its hymn of contempt. “Fuck this,” he whispered, more to himself than anyone else. But the rage was mounting. It sat behind his eyes like a storm waiting to break. If something had taken her… if something holy had taken her… twirling around and making a unseen beckon that was a snare. Grabbing the feet of the monk to yank him into the room. Refusing to let this damn divinity eat at him like a chicken wing but not about to let this one start entirely shrieking from the top of his lungs either.
“Where the hell did she go?” Arc asked in a tone that was expectant of an answer, “She fuckin’ needs this damn’s place help to purify that demon mark and she just vanishes like some shitty magic trick.” The true demon snarled, something between his own agony and his flaring anger, “Where. Did. She. Go!”
Keeper Nigel was probably having he worst day of his entire life, and he’d had some pretty bad days considering the nature of the Imperial Lands and how he wound up in the temple as a monk to begin with.
He didn’t believe the elven mage in the slightest that the woman wasn’t a demon, as there was no way she could just vanish from the room without a trace. …Actually, no, he supposed seeing as they were mages, then she could’ve used magic to disappear and leave it. A demon wouldn’t be able to use infernal magic to escape the wards of the holy chamber, so he’d quickly surmised the girl wasn’t demonic even before her OH SO HELPFUL companion snarled as such.
Of course, then the elven mage went storming in looking for her and that’s where Keeper Nigel discovered his error in assumptions AND his severe lack of a proper priest’s education, for this elven mage was no mage at all! The holy chamber did what it was made to do, strip away shadow and illusion born of infernal magics. Cleansing away demon magics to reveal Truth. No illusions, no lies, only pure and simple Truth.
Naturally Nigel had turned on a heel and was about to run like hell when his leg was snared! Giving a startled yelp as he was dragged across the stone floors.
“There’s only the doors!” he squealed still scrambling on the stone trying to get out again. Certain that this was how he would perish! Failing in his duties to watch over the temple and killed by some random demon! Sir Reeves was going to be so disappointed!
The still pool of minty hot springs water finally gave a hint of rippled movement at the base of the Lady’s serene statue. Popping out of the water with a coughing fuck was the missing women herself. Immediately getting an eyeful of demon Archimedes and a scrabbling monk and clambering her way through the water without any of her usual elegance and poise. No thought in the moment, just pure simple magic cast when her feet took purchase on solid stone.
Wind, a magic hand? Calia didn’t know what the hell she cast, she was still muttering a fuck, fuck, fuck under her breath as she did it. Blowing that panicked monk across the floor, and having to do something more physical with Archimedes for he himself was like moving a mountain with the weight of his magic and his ire. She just needed him to get OUT of the holy chamber, where the hell did HIS sense go, he was supposed to be smarter than her!
“I’m-“
“Back to the hells, demon!” yelped Keeper Nigel who’d been swift enough to stumble back to his feet and grab for one of the beautifully ornate torches from the wall. Something with holy enchantment no doubt, but it seemed he intended to vanish the demon.
Again, simply acting, Calia pulled all the holy water from her own body and threw it at Keeper Nigel. Dousing his torch and with a movement of her hand, froze his feet in place on the ground. He nearly toppled over from the suddenness of it.
“…my holy flame…” he meekly peeped.
Calia stood there with one hand angled at this dingbat of a monk with the other aimed at Archimedes… just in case. Breathing a little heavy herself now from the pure nonsensical chaos.
“I’m fine. Nothing’s happened, everything is okay– what in the green fucking earth possessed you to walk into that chamber!” she ended up shouting. “There’s a thousand different things you could have done! What if you exploded Archimedes! You could have died!”
He’d been harmed before. Slashed open, broken, scorched, and drowned. But this—this—was something far more insidious.
The holy magic in this place wasn’t content to simply reject him. It recognized him—saw him for exactly what he was—and had declared war. Not the loud, explosive kind. No. This was a slow, deliberate exorcism of his entire being. An unrelenting divine storm that poured through his marrow like molten iron, tearing him apart from the inside out.
It didn’t just burn. It unmade.
His veins screamed. His organs clenched. Muscles spasmed like they were trying to flee the bones they were attached to. The air tasted like ash and copper—sharp with ozone and fury—and the only thing keeping him upright was spite and the sheer terror that Calia might be gone. Taken. Vanished. Even still, his body began to betray him. Blood dripped thick and slow from his nose. His ears rang, then bled, crimson tracking down his neck and soaking into the frayed collar of his shirt.
And yet—he didn’t lash out. Didn’t detonate the temple out of rage. He held it in.
Because despite every inch of pain clawing at his insides like barbed wire on fire, his concern wasn’t himself. It was her! Replaying all the sense of unease she had about all of this in the first place. How it had been him that expressed the importance of coming here at all to mend what was placed upon her arm.
He stared at the pool, demanding answers from the only other idiot in the room—Nigel. But the monk looked as lost as he was. Flustered and dazed, babbling something useless about there was only doors. One entry, one exit, spurring him to nearly snarl at this child that didn’t know anything. Of course he didn’t.
And just when Arc’s vision began to tunnel from pain and rising panic—Calia reappeared.
Just a bubbling sound of water but no arcane flash. Just—there. Like she’d been dropped in by something far beyond either of them. As if she had been there the entire time just below the surface when himself and Nigel were certain that had not been the case.
He stumbled in relief—actual, visible relief—even as blood smeared across his palm from where it caught his face. He moved to speak, but the taste of iron welled thick on his tongue. A cough tore through him, wet and red, speckling the consecrated floor with hissing droplets that sizzled on impact. The divine was still attacking him from every angle. And yet he managed a faint scoff as Nigel, in his infinite idiocy, tried to brandish a torch at him like it was a godsdamned sword.
Oh, this place was cursed with stupidity.
Thankfully, Calia intervened. Her magic flared ensuring that the torch was doused and Nigel was put into a frozen place to stave off that makeshift weapon from ever touching him. About to even express his appreciation for her action but of course—instead of concern, instead of even a shred of compassion—she was yelling. At him.
Again.
Yelling at him for caring. For giving a shit. For the sheer audacity of stepping into divine fire because he thought she was gone. Arc could only look at her, wide-eyed with disbelief as another violent hack of blood ripped through his throat. His shoulders shook from the force of it. Crimson hit the stones again, too dark now, too much. And still—she berated him like he was the villain here.
It shouldn’t have surprised him. But it hurt, in a way the holy magic couldn’t touch.
His mouth moved, as if he might say something—anything—but what was the point? What did words matter, if every action he made just invited her scorn? Instead, lips sealed, crimson-streaked, he forced his body to obey. Stand up. Muscles tore. Joints popped. His knees buckled halfway out of the sanctum, and he caught himself on trembling arms, claws gouging into the floor. His breathing was ragged, every inhale another blade twisting behind his ribs.
But he moved. Out of that infernal radius into the former less potent sanctum that had been the original starting point of this downward spiral.
Drips of blood followed him, a trail of silent testament to what he’d just endured. For the sake of simply her and the greater fear that something had happened to her at all!
And still he wasn’t done.
With what strength remained, Arc raised his hand and snapped his fingers—casting a heavy lock spell over the entrance they’d originally come through. No one else was getting in. Not right now. Not while he was still standing or trying to. Because even as magic hissed and sealed the door, he sagged forward—one hand on the wall, the other cradling his ribs, and for the first time in a long time… he was unsure how long he could keep this up.
“Don’t you fucking get mad at me for the wrong things, Archimedes!” she shouted first, hot on his heels as he stumbled out of the holy waters chamber. “Be mad at me for what I actually did wrong!”
How did she know? She didn’t, not exactly. Oh but she had a good feeling. Calia had been cursing in her mind all the way swimming back, being all too aware that she’d let herself follow something on a whim, not thinking about any sort of consequences – not until it was far too late, anyway! Knowing exactly how much she’d fuck up by the fact he’d come into the holy chamber with his skin practically melting and sizzling off. That look of relief on his face when she surfaced.
This was Calia’s fault, she knew that.
But he fucking didn’t have to kill himself coming after her, either! He had more sense than that!
So if her first instinct to yell at him for doing something so harmful to himself was wrong too… so be it! He could yell at her AFTER she made sure he wasn’t going to die for it.
Calia pulled him away from the wall, perhaps with a little more force than she meant to in her frantic panicking, and if he crumbled to the ground, well that honestly was just making things easier for her. The only way he’d have been in worse condition is if he’d jumped right into the waters – thank the damn ancient gods that he hadn’t, this damnable idiot – but the entire temple was imbued with holy energy. It needed to be warded off him.
There surely was no sanity in what she was doing, likely not to make any sense to someone other than herself. Pulling one of the hairpins out of her hair to slash her palm open, scrambling around him in a circle on her hands and knees to spread a circle of her own blood surrounding him in a wide enough space. Letting some of HIS too mingle in with that blooded sigil of magic she was preparing.
Then it was the most awkward means of tackling a demon and sitting on him. Again, somehow making sense in her head – or perhaps she just wanted to make sure he wasn’t going to escape. Either way, it was a hasty, messy, hot disaster of a spell she cast. Taking inspiration from those faded remnants of a protective bubble he’d placed around her in that tree hollow. Calia might not have known how he’d done it or the strength of it, but this mimic of hers had a single purpose and it was good enough.
A bubble made of fae blood and demon magic, made to ward off all of that holy energy so it couldn’t reach him. Likely to be easily cracked by any skilled paladin with the pure bullshit she’d pulled out of her ass to do it, but it was enough to protect him for right now.
“Do you have any idea how you just scared the shit out of me, which yes, of course, hypocritical considering I AM the asshole this time, and I am sorry, I am so so sorry. But for fuck’s sake just let me be pissed and scared for a second! THEN you can yell at me! AND I SWEAR TO ALL YOUR GOD’S NIGEL if you don’t sit your ass down.”
Keeper Nigel, to his credit had managed to get himself freeze from frozen ice and had the looks of someone who at least thought they had a plan. Not so much coming into this strange scene and getting yelled at by the woman who was apparently NOT the demon, casting wild untamed magic around said demon, and well… Nigel’s eyes rolled back into his and he passed clear out on the floor.
There was a chance the young monk was going to give up the priesthood after his first day of being in charge.
Arc had gone quiet—purposefully quiet.
Not out of weakness, not from the pain (though it tore through his every nerve like hot barbed wire), and certainly not because he didn’t have something to say. Gods above and hells below, he had plenty to say. He just didn’t see the damn point anymore.
He didn’t resist when Calia yanked him from the wall. Let her pull him down like he was dead weight—because right now, that’s how he felt. He crumpled not from the temple’s punishment alone, but from the exhaustion of being kicked in the ribs one too many times for giving a shit. The floor was cool against the burn of divine backlash still searing through his skin, and honestly? It was easier not to fight her.
Not physically.
He lay there, breathing rough, face turned half into the stone as she moved around him. He could hear the wet flick of blood meeting stone—hers this time—and knew what she was doing without needing to look. Smelled it too. Fae blood. His. A mingled circle that stung his senses, but not as bad as the holy fire that had raked through his soul like a blade.
Then she was on him again. Not in battle. Not in fury. Just—there. Sitting on him. Holding him down as if he’d flee, as if he could. Her magic flared to life in a crude, desperate mimicry of his own protective magic. It was messy. Likely unstable. But it worked. The pressure of the divine dulled, enough that he could breathe again.
Still, he didn’t move.
Didn’t even glance up.
Her voice broke through the haze next—raw, furious, scared. Words laced with that frantic, emotional whirl that said she’d nearly lost him and didn’t know what to do with it. But all Arc did was close his eyes.
He was tired.
Not from the holy magic. Not even from the blood loss or the aching pulse behind his skull.
Just tired of her. She was always yelling. Always finding a reason to blame him, scorn him, demand explanations for every instinct he had that screamed to protect her. It didn’t matter what he did, how much he bled, how much of himself he shoved aside just to make sure she didn’t disappear into some unspoken void. He was either too much, too little, or just wrong.
So this time—he said nothing.
No smile. No joke. No clipped, charming comeback to take the edge off her emotions. Just… silence. His jaw clenched tight, enough to make the muscle twitch under his cheek. His fangs had dropped again; the glamour was long gone, and so was his patience.
Let her yell. Let her curse and sit on him and scream to the heavens. He’d done it all already. Ripped himself open from the inside out, quite literally, for her.
And for what?
The first time he looked up, it wasn’t at her. It was at Nigel—passed out cold, bless his fragile little heart—and Arc couldn’t even be bothered to smirk. Just watched the boy’s eyes roll back, like a puppet cut from its strings. Lucky bastard. He finally glanced at Calia then—just once—and said nothing still. His gaze unreadable. Expression wiped clean. The glimmer of something fond or vulnerable was gone, sealed behind the bruised shell of a man who had reached his limit.
Let her sit there. Let her stew. But for now, Arc Silverstone was done trying to explain why caring for someone felt like being punished for it.
Calia knew this time it had been her fault. One hundred percent all on Calia. Sometimes it wasn’t her, in fact she could argue that most of the time it was entirely Archimedes making things difficult or reading into things that hadn’t happened, then punishing for it.
This time though? All her.
So when her frantic, angry words were met with nothing but a defeated silence, Calia had to accept it. There could be no getting so wound up in her own head and taking off into a frenzied run just as far away as her legs could take her. As there was no confusion or fear of where or how this silence came about – she knew, without a shadow of doubt it was because she’d been careless.
She really wasn’t made to be anyone’s friend.
Yet, she still stayed there sitting on him. Letting herself at least attempt to calm down so she might think her way through on what to do without somehow making it worse.
That dingus Nigel over there passed out on the floor. She would have to apologize to him too, wouldn’t she! Even though he threatened her with two different was of dying and didn’t know a demon from his own ass!
“I’m sorry… no excuse, just… sorry.” she stated again, whether he would accept it or not. Deflating a bit there to brace a hand while she leaned over him to at least see if putting up the hot mess of a barrier was at least letting his natural abilities heal him. Tempting to push her own towards him – but they’d had that talk, hadn’t they!
“There is a tunnel under the statue, under the water into the spring’s cave system,” she offered at least in explanation. “I should have told you I was going to snoop, I didn’t think. It was too late when I did think.”
…it was probably too late when he thought about the sheer stupidity of what he was doing too, now that she was calm enough to think about it. And boy did that realization come in with a flood of burning ember embarrassment. Enough to have her cringing as she tilt her head back. Calia had this really bad habit of coming in hot and swinging, about everything. About anything. Good and bad. Actions first, thoughts… it was a miracle if she ever got to the thought part.
That look on his face though, that spoke enough volumes that it screamed without a word even needing to be said.
Calia slid off him and put enough distance to be void of any physical contact. Not enough to pass through her ward, just enough distance there would be no more means of unwanted touch! That was the looks of a man so utter done with her, and she was hearing it loud and clear!
“You- Hrm. You do not have to stay if you’re feeling strong enough to walk out. I just- You can go.”
Arc didn’t look at her.
Not when she apologized, not when she braced herself above him, not even when she explained the reason for the chaos that had nearly obliterated him from the inside out. Her voice came through the ringing silence like it belonged to someone underwater—faint, muffled, just noise behind the ache pounding through every inch of his soul. Or whatever ragged thing passed for one, in his case.
He wasn’t angry anymore.
He’d been angry. Furious, even.
That was before the anger calcified into something colder. He didn’t speak—not because there was nothing to say, but because there was too much, and none of it mattered anymore. Every time he reacted, it was wrong. Every time he felt, it was too much. Every time he did what he was told, he got snapped at for not doing it right enough.
He’d pulled himself open—emotionally, physically, in every damn way that counted—and what did it get him? Yelled at. Again.
By the same woman who told him to stop hiding his feelings. The same one who said she wanted honesty. Vulnerability. The same one who looked at him with soft eyes and told him she was his—and then shrieked like he’d betrayed her the second he acted on it.
He wasn’t made for this. Not this game where the rules changed every time he tried to play. Where he had to guess whether she was going to kiss him or scorn him for being protective. Whether his instincts made him monstrous or made him hers. Arc let out a slow, unsteady breath. Not dramatic. Not forced. Just the sort of breath that came when you were too goddamn tired to keep bleeding for someone who didn’t seem to care whether you were drained dry.
He didn’t answer her. Didn’t glare, didn’t mock, didn’t even roll his eyes. All he did was sit up, feeling how each and every movement hurt. His bones still ached with the aftershock of holy wrath. His skin burned from where divine magic had flayed the glamour from him. His horns were bare—one full, one jagged, the reminder of what he was and what she couldn’t seem to stomach.
Rising slow but sure, and with a gesture of one hand, summoned a ripple of magic beneath his boots. A blink-step spell that would be quick, efficient and entirely silent. With the allowance given, he sure as hell didn’t want to be here. Everyone had a limit and he had successfully hit his where the idea of looking back or even trying again wasn’t in him.
Not in this temple. Not under that ceiling. Not beside her. Not right now.
Without a word, he stepped through the shimmer of demonic magic and vanished from the warded bubble of Calia’s makeshift spellwork. The only sound left behind was the faint exhale of displaced air and the memory of silence far louder than any words.
She said he could go.
So he did.
He’d vanished just like that.
It was like having her heart ripped out. Surely, had she not been unconscious when the real moment happened, this is what it felt like. That pull of someone reaching into her chest, squeezing and ripping. Tearing muscles from sinew and flesh, blooding spilling out faster than one can hold it in. A feeling of emptiness flooding in where something more substantial and important belonged.
And the worst of it? There was no one to blame but herself. If she went chasing him down, forced him to sit still, it was liable to be worse than this. He’d made it very clear how important his autonomy was to him – and damned she was going to mess up a lot of things – but that was the one thing she held true to heart.
Calia had to leave him and just hope that he came back.
Now there was a new mess around her and with a quiet sigh she dropped the ward she’d woven and picked herself up off the ground. The first thing she did was get to work erasing the evidence of Calia’s Cursed Chaos tearing through the room. A bucket of soapy water and a mop to clean up the signs of blood, demon and her own.
The wound on her hand didn’t take much tending to as it turned out those healing springs truly were healing by every means of the physical sense. Whether they sped up her own or something that was fed through the bond, the wound sealed up without much trouble. Leaving behind just a white lined reminder of another mistake. She’d gotten out of that ridiculous gown she’d been given to return to her own clothes, and for all intents and purposes the place was back to normal. As if she had Archimedes had never been there at all.
As for the Keeper Nigel, she dragged him up off the floor to tuck him into one of the beds. By the time he finally came back to the land of the living, Calia had worked out how to dissolving the locking Arc had done to the doors, and plopped herself into a chair to do what one usually does when they’re not sure what to do with themselves.
Getting the feeling if she didn’t at least stay to have that demon mark looked at, there would be a lot more of these consequences.
Keeper Nigel sat up like a bolt. “He’s a demon!”
“Yes, and he is my friend. If didn’t bonk your head can you look at this mark now.” she stated, as usual to the point. Extra especially not wanting to beat around the bush now.
He looked at her as if she’d grown three extra heads and Calia just stared back. Unmoving. Unspeaking. Letting that staring contest go on for what had to be agonizingly long before it was inevitably the young monk whose bewildered stare finally broke away.
“You’re an unpleasant woman,” he finally uttered. Probably the first true thing he’d actually said!
“I know.”
With a great deal of grumbling on the Keeper Nigel’s end, he did get himself up out of the bed, smooth out his robes and tried to place back on that air of pious usefulness. Not without often glancing around for Archimedes to come barreling in some form or another to vex him in new ways. Calia at least had the decency to explain how she’d vanished in the springs. The caves, the curious place she’d found with the ancient gods somehow still untouched and hidden safe while being connected to their temple. This bit of intrigue had been enough to erase most of Nigel’s foul mood as he tended to the former wound on her arm.
It was a simple thing, it turned out, to press into the mark and bleed out any remnants of poison that remained. Nigel was no paladin but her had artifacts blessed with holy light that could draw away the dark blood goop that still lingered within. He’d mentioned she was lucky there was no piece of the demon’s weapon still within the wound, as that was probably why she still lived at all. Those weapons were meant to cut deep, to chip and shattered, leaving behind a piece of their wielders so that death would be inevitable. One way or another.
Once it was done and cleaned away with the holy waters, he made sure she understood that the mark was forever there. She’d always be demon marked, likely to be haunted and chased by them her own life. Calia just shrugged. Didn’t really make a difference in her circumstances.
And then? He’d left her alone with orders to ‘rest’ to which Calia just snorted at. She did, however, leave the temple itself to step outside into the gardens surrounding it. Not about to leave the place, because where the fuck would she go, and not wanting to be in the building itself when…. if Archimedes did come back.
Calia needed to think and damn if she wasn’t so bad at it!
The spell cracked through space like a stone hurled through thin glass. Magic curled around Arc’s shoulders in thick black tendrils, snapping at his heels like storm-dark vines. He didn’t wait to see if Calia would follow. She wouldn’t. Not after the silence he’d left her with.
His body reformed in the edge-shadow of a familiar treeline—windswept and dry, smelling faintly of dirt, dust, and the coming storm. The outskirts of Velmira.
Arc stood motionless for a breath, the tips of his fingers twitching as though still echoing with the divine magic that had torn him open. His glamour had shattered back at the temple—stripped away by holy light like skin peeled raw. So now, before he stepped into town, he cast it again. Fingers swept through the air in practiced motion. He didn’t need a mirror to know the effect. That it wrapped around him once more till he was no more than being made golden and smooth, and his eyes dimmed just slightly into that of a violet-inked elf. Not unusual. Not threatening. Just another tired, pretty man passing through. It would do him well to have the smell of blood around him, implying all the more than he was just another sad passerby that had met rough times and needed something sharp to null the pressure such bothersome reality gave.
Velmira hadn’t changed. It was still a crooked town built on trade and bad decisions, its cobblestone streets warped from age and cart wheels, its tavern signs bleached by too many summers and too little rain. A place to disappear into. That’s why he’d come here before. That’s why he was here now.
The Turned Leaf welcomed him with the same tired groan of hinges as it had a hundred years ago. Still smelled of cherrywood smoke, cheap beer, and yesterday’s sweat. A fire burned low in the hearth. Laughs cracked like glass from the far table where a few locals played dice, boots kicked up, attention far from the man who walked in cloaked in silk and shadow.
Arc made for the bar without a word.
The barkeep—a portly man with curls like overbaked bread and a scar that split his chin—gave him the briefest of glances, just long enough to weigh if he was trouble. Apparently, Arc didn’t register high enough to bother. Perfect.
“Whiskey. Neat. Keep ’em comin’.”
The man nodded. A glass thudded onto the bar, dark amber sloshing against its sides. Arc downed the first in one smooth motion and leaned forward on his elbows, letting the burn splay across his ribs. It was a sharp, stinging kind of warmth. Like getting punched in the stomach by something that didn’t hate him. Better than nothing.
He didn’t want to think. Not about her. Not about the temple. Not about any of this if his head and his chest could help it! Not about the look on her face when he’d collapsed. Or how she’d tackled him like he was some wild thing to be pinned and preserved. Not about the desperate circle of her blood mingled with his, or the way her voice cracked when she shouted apologies that came always, always too late.
She wanted him to feel. And yet every time he did—every raw instinct, every frantic protection, every inch of pain he let show—he was scorned for it. Yelled at. Belittled. Shamed.
He was tired of trying, so tired of reaching and finding out how quickly said hand would be slapped because it was doing what had been asked but wasn’t supposed to!
Another glass. Another burn. Another slow, precise turn of his head to survey the room.
A woman’s laugh chimed from the far end of the tavern, high and sharp like silverware clinking against porcelain. It cut through the lull of tavern murmur, through the hum of dice on wood, drawing his attention like a stray flame in a sea of ash.
She was seated with a cluster of others, none of whom seemed interesting enough to command her attention. A casual hand twirled the stem of her half-drunk glass. Freckles dusted her cheeks, kissed high across her nose like sunlight had loved her too long. Lips rouged and full, parted in idle amusement. Her dark auburn hair was swept into a loose braid, with wisps that curled like secrets near her ears.
Boredom lived in her posture—shoulders relaxed, eyes half-lidded with the specific expression of someone who had grown tired of the same company, same words, same night.
But not tired enough to miss him.
Because she looked.
Once, in passing.
Twice, with curiosity.
And then a third time—slow, deliberate. Like she was daring herself to be bold.
Arc didn’t look away. He tilted his chin the barest amount, catching her stare like a hook. Held it. Didn’t smile right away. Just let his violet gaze settle over her like storm clouds gathering above still water.
He watched the way her breath hitched—slightly. The flutter of lashes. The shift in her hips. She was thinking about something, and he was fairly certain it had nothing to do with her friends’ mindless chatter.
He let the moment steep. Drew out the silence between glances like it was foreplay. Because there was no rush. No plan. Just an unspoken invitation that hung between them like smoke. Then, finally—slow and smooth—he offered a smirk. Just the curve of one corner of his mouth. Barely-there, but brimming with intention. The kind of smile that said I see you, and you’re not nearly as bored as you think you are, and I could fix that.
Let her see him—not the truth of him, gods no—but the shape of something alluring. Dangerous. Willing.
Just a flicker at the corner of his mouth, did it pull into just coy enough to be an invitation. Because gods, if he couldn’t be wanted, couldn’t be cared for, he could at least be chosen. For a night. For a kiss. For an hour of skin and noise and hands that didn’t hesitate to reach for him like he mattered. Wanting to just drown in familiarity that was both worthless, meaningless and absolutely the sort of thing that felt entirely right. Even if it meant nothing in the morning.
Especially if it meant nothing.
He turned back to his drink. Stared into the amber swirl like it might hold a spell strong enough to burn her name from his mouth, or tear her from the ache in his ribs. He knew what he had to do and would start to do it after he had a bit of time to think. It wouldn’t be the first time and he didn’t suspect it would be the last. Cursing himself mentally with a snide laugh at the whole belief that he had done something so impressively stupid anyways. Well, he learnt his lesson after how many times and boy was apparently slow to pick up that it wasn’t going to make a damn difference.
Arc wasn’t lonely. No. Not lonely.
Just… forgotten. And tonight, that was so much easier.
Calia took herself out to the back grounds of the Temple, straying just far enough until she found what was mean to be some sort of garden that hadn’t been upkept properly in quite a long time. A sad vegetable patch had been overgrown with weeds. Flower beds were growing wild and unruly. It was quiet and empty, though and that was enough for Calia.
She threw herself on the grass somewhere in the middle where she could just stare at the sky.
A few deep breaths followed, long, controlled… attempting with every fiber of her being not to give in to the hurricane of feelings that were trying to pull her in all sorts of disastrous directions. Wondering why she even kept trying at all when she knew deep down in her cold stolen heart exactly how it was all going to end.
The more she cared, the more everything hurt when she fell short. There had to be a kind of irony in that, with all these dark fae trying to twist her when Calia was perfectly capable of doing it to herself. But then, it wasn’t really Calia anyone wanted, was it? Just the power she possessed.
As for Archimedes…? The one thing he was real good at was giving her hope and then snatching it away a moment later. She’d told him that once before, when they still hated each other and it seemed that even with all the things that’d changed between them, that was the one thing that still remained. And the worst part? No matter how hard she tried to not think about him, tried to tell herself it was a bad idea to allow herself to trust him… Calia just kept reaching in his direction anyway.
That was madness, wasn’t it? Reaching again and again, knowing that the results would only be disastrous.
Yet, there she was. Waiting.
“You look a lot like her,” said a small voice. Familiar only in that she’d heard it screak earlier that day. When Calia opened up her eyes, that was confirmed in the face of the young boy in tattered monks robes leaning over her far enough to cast a shadow over her face.
“Look like who?”
“That girl Sister Marielle says the Queen wants to kill. It’s like a poem! Hair of dark ebony, eyes of evergreen, from the snowcapped mountains. She sent her Huntsman AND her Mercenary.” he explained, resting his palms on his knees.
Calia grimaced. Yeah, that sounded about right. There were thousands of girls in the world who looked just like her that this foreign Queen could have a problem with. Calia’s luck never ran that way, though. It made enough sense to accept as more added to the list of people trying to kill her.
“Whacha doin’?” came another question from the kid.
“Pretending to be a vegetable and trying not to feel my feelings,” she answered with a frown.
“Why?” came his responses, apparently not getting the hint that Calia intended to be out here alone for her brooding.
“Because bad things always happened when I feel my feelings. …What are YOU doing?”
The kid shrugged, finally shifting away from blocking out the sunlight to plop himself down on the ground next to her, leaving Calia to tilt her head and give him her very best of most unwelcoming scowls. He ignored it.
“Hiding from chores! Keeper Nigel says you came in with a demon. Is he your friend? I didn’t know you could be friends with demons. Where did he go? Does that mean you’re really powerful? Sister Marielle says only someone really powerful could steal one of the Queen’s demons.”
For a brief moment Calia considered how much it would take to turn a kid into a goat. A kid into a kid. Finding it hard to blame him for wanting to avoid chores, though wishing he hadn’t decided to come invade these overgrown gardens and bother her in the process. Made her entire operation of trying to melt herself into the dirt a little difficult.
“He’s not one of the queen’s demons. Yes he is my friend, and he’s mad at me right now because I did something careless. And I am so powerful that I should have been born a star and not a person.”
“Did you say you were sorry?” he asked in all earnest and it was not the reply Calia was expecting out of this chattery kid.
“I did. I don’t think he believes me, though.”
“You’re a lady of candor, I can tell.” This damn kid hummed and nodded, with such a serious expression like he’d been a damned priest of the Temple for forty years. It caught her so off guard she almost laughed outright, breaking into this stupid smile instead.
“I don’t know what the means,” she commented still holding in a laugh.
“Sir Reeves says people of candor have a hard time, ’cause people don’t always wanna believe it when they tell the truth. ‘Cause sometimes truths hurt even when it’s good truths.”
Calia opened her mouth the say that was a load of pure bullshit. Only managing to stop herself because this was a kid, and in his weird little way he was trying to help with the bit of knowledge he had. As she shut her mouth and grunted, she supposed there wasn’t much room to argue anyway. Truth did hurt, didn’t it. No one ever liked it when she spoke it, as she never really seemed to be able to do so in the right ways. It always came out aggressive and hurtful and wrong, even when it was meant with all care and sincerity.
“You’re annoyingly smart for a kid,” she muttered.
“That’s what Lady Padma always says,” he announced proudly.
None of this had actually helped Calia in the slightest, but at least now she was thoroughly distracted from wallowing in her own darker thoughts. She sat up and shook the grass out of her hair and offered to help the tiny priest in the making with his chores. Something he was understandably enthused about, as apparently he was meant to be scaling back this wild nest of a garden. Helping fix this mess of a green space was a task she could do gladly. Creating instead of giving in to her storm of feelings that were begging her to run off, burn bridges and potentially people.
The room was still thick with the remnants of heat and heady breath, the sort of quiet that lingered between two people when the fire had passed but the smoke still curled around them. The woman at his side was draped like silk across the tangled sheets, one long leg slung lazily over his and fingers trailing idle paths along his chest. Her voice—low, husky, warm with amusement—was like a cat purring in the dark, threading stories between kisses of her breath. Telling him all sorts of manner of rumours that had been passing through the lands.
Only because he had asked. He might be properly upset and hurt once more, but he was still someone who liked to know what was going on in the grapevine. Especially when it came to the Imperial Lands, for they were rife with all sorts of things. And he was about to find out just how much it was, after her telling him about the price of grain soaring.
“Word is, the Imperial Queen’s been looking for someone.” She shifted, lips brushing his shoulder. “A woman. Hair dark as the void. Eyes like evergreen boughs. From the snowcap range, they say. Somewhere to the north. Pretty thing. Dangerous, though. Got half the empire in a twist. The Queen sent both her Huntsman and her Mercenary.”
Arc’s body tensed before his mind caught up. A flicker, subtle but enough that the woman lifted her chin as if to catch the change in him. But he just smiled, smoothed a hand along the curve of her back, and hummed low like her story had only barely registered.
Inside, though, he felt the shift like tectonic plates pulling apart.
Hair dark as night… eyes like evergreen…
Snowcapped mountains.
Huntsman and Mercenary.
Fuck.
His heart didn’t pound—he wouldn’t give it that. No, instead it curled in on itself with a sinking weight. Cold fingers of realization pressing to the back of his neck like something unseen had just begun watching him. Maybe it wasn’t her. Maybe it was a coincidence, that description wasn’t exactly so detailed that it clearly stated who it was! An echo of a woman and not the woman herself. But he knew that description like he knew the inside of his own ribs. It had been seared into his memory the first time she turned to look at him with those damn eyes, proud and wild, like she didn’t need anyone to carry her burdens—least of all him.
Swallowing the lump that rose too easily. Forced his tongue to remain smooth as it traced across the roof of his mouth. He didn’t want to feel this. Didn’t want to give this moment over to her. Calia, who had shouted at him even as he burned for her. Who ran hot, swung harder, and always left bruises in places he never let others see.
But there it was. That same stubborn need to care. To know. “…And what does she want with her?” Arc asked, voice drowsy, coaxing—still nestled in the rhythm of lovers sharing whispers before sleep. “The Queen, I mean. Sounds like she’s sendin’ out all her favourite toys.”
The woman laughed again, soft and wry. “No one knows. The usual guesses—bloodline, betrayal, power. Something about missing heirs or ancient curses. You know how stories spin out. Granted when it comes to the Imperial Queen, there really is never a reason. Could just be that the girl looked at her wrong and now she must pay the price.”
He let out a quiet breath, touched her jaw and tilted her face toward him in the dark, as if looking at her might make him forget the storm his thoughts had become. “People like to tell stories,” he murmured. “And when they don’t have all the pieces, they’ll start makin’ them up. Sometimes they’re right. Most times they just end up with corpses they didn’t mean to make.”
Hand drifted to her waist, but his mind was miles away. Back in a temple where he bled and she vanished so nonchalantly. He leaned forward, pressed a kiss to the hollow beneath her ear—sweet, warm, a thank-you and a goodbye in the same breath.
Shit, he was going to have to tell her, wasn’t he. “Sleep, darlin’,” he whispered. “Let the Imperial queens and their huntsmen chase shadows tonight.”
Keeping Calia busy might’ve been the best thing for her, even if she hadn’t realized it. While she was a woman who enjoyed her moments of rest and peace, of just sitting and soaking in the world around her – that only was possible when she wasn’t twisted up inside of her own head, drowning in a sea of black void thoughts that were growing deeper and deeper by the day.
One day she was going to sink under and not be able to surface back out.
The little twerp of a kid – his name turned out to be Basil – had managed to get her to not only do his chores for him, but to show off her magic in reshaping the entire gardens. All it took was a little goading and she’d been suckered in. Her only solace was getting her revenge in the form of making fun of his silly name, and growing up a whole patch of fresh herbal basil so now everybody at the temple would be chewing on him.
Few things were better than watching a kid be both horrified and furious that they’d been bamboozled themselves.
The Temple of Light had a vegetable garden to be proud of by the time she was done. Enough to carry them through the summer, and the fall. Even on into winter if they managed it right. Feeling that would at least make up for her and Archimedes menacing Keeper Nigel and help feed all those young orphans they’d been pulling in from local villages.
Calia decided if Arc didn’t return and she was trapped here in the Imperial Kingdoms, she might just go kill that bloody witch of a queen and save herself some trouble. Even if she died in the process, one could bet that woman would go down with her and all of Calia’s problems would be solved either way.
Come evening, the mountain princess refused to take refuge inside the temple walls. Mostly herself, who sure as hell didn’t feel comfortable in such holy spaces. Yet there was a tiny bit of her too wanting to least make it as easy for Arc to return as she could. Choosing to make her bed for the night one of the huge oak trees surrounding the place. Climbing up as high as she could get with heavy strong branches, stretching out to rest as one who was far more natural in a tree than anywhere else.
In the morning she’d make some decisions, whether to wait or to go, or simply become a tree herself. Technically she wasn’t dead if she were a tree, so that’d be quite fine of an option!