That calm lasted through the night and into the next day, like a gentle embrace, and continued on without a worry or a fear for two more nights and three days.
Despite the fact Calia said she didn’t much care about the fundamentals of magic, she always seemed to asked the questions anyway. For any time she tried a spell or a bit of magic twisting, if it didn’t work out the way she was expecting, she immediately needed to know the whys. Too much energy, not enough. Trying to force something to bend when it should be coaxed. What elements worked well together like sweet companions and which recoiled and took more delicate weaving. When something became frustrating, she’d leave it for awhile only to come back to it later as if a light had gone off in her head.
After that first day and night, when she’d eased into this new rhythm they’d grown into, magic and all things related to it gave way to other interests through natural flow. Her describing what happened with her fae travel lead to talking about horses and how for a very long time she was a horse girl. With all of the embarrassing nonsense that came along with it. She knew every single horse in the castle stables by name, personality, and lineage. So what a perfect place that’d been for an asshole like that wanna-be sorcerer to weasel his way into her good graces. And too there was talk of Mercy, where Calia was so confident that Mercy was out there fine that she couldn’t really explain why beyond that horse is fae-touched.
Because fuck it, if Mercy wasn’t fae-touched before being able to survive the fall of the capitol, then she most certainly was now by Calia’s own hands. She would accept no other outcome.
As usual Calia did the means of hunting and cooking, leaving it up to Archimedes to handle the aspect of comfort. Allowing where and how they rested be up to the demon and growing increasingly amused with the nonsense that he pulled. They were growing closer to the northern edges of Edelguard but there was still a great distance to travel.
It was the third night, where Calia had long since fallen asleep, that peace was no longer so still. Somewhere between midnight and the witching hour, where the moon was nothing more than the tiniest sliver of a crescent and casting deep dark shadows on the forest below.
There was a whisper far off into the distant forest.
A soft quiet laugh.
It sounded so achingly familiar to one who had no blood left alive in this world. Or… did he?
Arc!
It was—peculiar. Fundamentally so.
The rough edges that had once shaped every exchange between him and Calia were softening with each mile behind them. No blow-ups. No dramatics worth penning into song. Just… this strange, slow shift toward something that felt almost easy.
Arc hadn’t decided yet if he liked it. Privately—of course always privately—he admitted that half the time he wasn’t sure what any of it meant. Her questions, her openness, the ease with which she shared things he hadn’t asked for. It was all curious and—he’d never say it aloud—oddly comforting. He didn’t get the reason for half of it. But he knew it mattered. Knew it needed sorting through when she wasn’t asking questions full of spells and schematics and whatever else she was busy mastering with that precise control.
And maybe, just maybe, what surprised him most was how willing she was to share at all.
Because she’d said she wanted to be friends. And he—well. Arc was still figuring out what that even looked like now. A hundred years steeped in infernal heat and blood contracts had a funny way of dulling your memory of things like trust. Like kindness.
Like companionship without strings. But hells, he was trying. Genuinely. There were no sharp words aimed to make her flinch. No deliberate needling—unless it was harmless fun. And when he did feel her overstep something? He said so. Calm. Direct. Which for him, was practically holy behaviour.
By the third night, on his third utterly unnecessary attempt to make their shelter resemble a boutique forest manor, Arc was crouched near the fire, coaxing its shape with idle flicks of his fingers. The flames licked obediently upward—arching with a rhythm only someone like him could call out by name.
He kept one eye on the woods.
Unlike Calia, he had beetle-form—his favourite little loophole. And he’d used it. Especially in the past few days. Curling up under her cloak or hood, letting her chatter lull him while she walked, taking quick naps between her endless questions and musings. It was efficient. Endearing, if one squinted at it long enough.
And it let him keep watch when she rested. He didn’t say so, but he had decided that was his role.
Now, fire crackling and the stars yawning open above them, Arc was mid-contemplation. Weighing the effort it would take to trap flame in a static loop—just because he could—when he felt it. First, an ear flicked. Then, his gaze shifted. And finally, his mouth curved downward in a slow, familiar scowl.
A voice—his name—whispered through the trees. Soft, too soft. Familiar in that unnerving, wrong sort of way. Like hearing a lullaby underwater. It sent a shiver down his spine. Gooseflesh crawled like static. His eyes flicked toward Calia, asleep. Peaceful. Which made it worse.
He squinted. “Don’t yah start with me,” he muttered under his breath, not even sure if it was to her or the forest itself. She was the sort who liked to poke a hornet’s nest if it meant understanding how it stung.
Tongue pressed to the roof of his mouth, holding back the growl that wanted out. One claw tapped against the edge of his belt buckle. Then he turned toward the trees fully—gaze narrowed, expression unreadable—and peered into the dark with the kind of slow, wary precision that only someone who’d died in the dark before could master.
Because something was out there.
And it knew his name.
Calia was indeed deeply asleep. Comfortable out in the forest as if it were a royal suite, unbothered by having demon company, and as always so completely unafraid of any potential dangers. Cocky, maybe, but then in most cases when something didn’t make the usual forest sounds she would stir a little. Open a single eye for a peek. Have an awareness that something wasn’t quite right.
Yet, in that moment, she was undisturbed. What ever Arc was hearing, it surely wasn’t reaching her ears.
You better come this way, Arc.
That familiar voice, amused and teasing wafted through the dark forest and where his eyes dared to dart there was a flicker of warm honey blond hair disappearing behind one of the massive trunks.
You need to know what happened to us.
Somehow the statement was both sincere and urgent. Serious in the way it beckoned as if time was on the line.
You have to help me save her. I can’t lose her again.
Come this way.
You owe me that much.
“Pfft.” That was all the warning it got.
Apparition. Clever ruse. Maybe even a calculated attack, if it was feeling bold. None of it mattered. The moment something had the audacity to tell him to “come this way”—like he was some lost little farmhand needing direction—it tripped a wire in his spine. That old, reliable obstinate streak flared to life like a firecracker in a dry field. He didn’t care if it was a hallucination, a magical projection, or the gods themselves come down wearing borrowed faces.
He wasn’t having it. And then he saw her. Or, more precisely, the idea of her—golden hair catching the nonexistent light just right. Too pristine. Too still. Too… not Lyra. That made it worse. Almost made him laugh. Oh, this was the play?
He barked out a half-laugh and scrubbed a hand down his face. “Right. Of course. Yah picked her,” he muttered, eyeing where the illusion had been like it offended him personally. “Out of all the poor sods rattlin’ round in this haunted mess of a skull, yah chose Lyra.”
Because whoever—or whatever—this was, it had made a fatal mistake.
Lyra wouldn’t have stood still. Lyra wouldn’t have cooed some nonsense about saving Eden like she was trapped in some storybook purgatory. No, Lyra would’ve punched him in the arm and told him to stop being such a dramatic ass, then made some sly comment about how she’d already handled it, thanks very much. “To say it like that—like it’s done, like she’s gone…” Arc shook his head, eyes narrowing. “Yah don’t know her. Yer just wearin’ her face like a borrowed mask.” Arc folded his arms and leaned his weight onto one leg with theatrical boredom, lips twisting into a half-grin.
“If we’re takin’ tabs, by the way, yah—sure. I owe a bloody encyclopedia of favours and regrets. Scrawled all messy in margins, too. But yah want me to do somethin’ for you?” He pointed lazily. “Get in line. Like the rest.” There was a pause, then he raised a hand in a shooing motion, like he was waving off a particularly slow-moving pigeon. “Go on. Piss off. I ain’t got time for goblins in silk and wannabe spooks with bedtime stories. And if this is my own mind—” He grinned, sharp and bright. “—then frankly, yah done a shite job of makin’ it painful.” And with that, he turned his back, as casually as one might from a half-burned-out lantern, muttering as he went, “Next time bring a better haunting. Or at least try to get the hair right.”
Silence was the answer.
Or rather, a soft grunt? Not from the trees, however, this time it was Calia throwing an arm over her head.
“Tell the voices in your head to piss off more quietly,” she mumbled, having only caught the phrase and honestly, not likely to be anywhere near close to being awake or aware herself. Just a soft grumbling as she shifted and nestle back to dozing slumber.
Silence followed again. No more whispered beckonings of Aelyra or even obscure hints of a figure.
This time out in the distance, almost as if he wasn’t meant to be seen at all, was the now humble robes of a fallen mage stepping out into the path to walk away into the dark. Not even bothering to look back at the quiet campfire. Simply glancing down at a scroll in his hands and writing notes, with that impassive, ever thoughtful look on his face.
All another experiment at the mage’s hands? Subtle torturous vengeance?
Arc cast a glance toward Calia, catching the half-mumbled protest drifting from her as she shifted in her sleep—something about quieting down, like she was swatting away a dream that had dared to be louder than her patience allowed.
One brow crept up, unimpressed. “Mm. Helpful,” he muttered under his breath. Either she’d heard the forest stir and dismissed it, or her subconscious was just sassing him in her sleep. Frankly, either was possible. Still, the unease remained—a prickling crawl across the back of his neck, something old and familiar. The kind of wrongness that didn’t shout. It breathed. Lurked.
He watched her burrow deeper into sleep, lashes fluttering slightly as she turned her face to the curve of her cloak. No signs of waking. No tension in her shoulders.
Good.
Arc’s eyes narrowed, the glow in them sharpening to slits as he looked away.
Whatever was out there, it hadn’t gone. He could feel it loitering. Not quite bold enough to approach, but too damn stubborn to leave. The air itself felt thick—like it knew something he didn’t. He remained seated, legs folded, spine relaxed, but his fingers twitched—just a little. Like a puppeteer checking strings.
He didn’t move from the campfire. Truthfully he wasn’t about to go sniffing through the dark like some fool in a bard’s tragedy. If it wanted them, it could come earn the right. But Arc wasn’t above sending a little message.
Shifting his palm lazily, wrist rotating just so as he murmured a phrase in old Elven—one that curled at the edges of the tongue like smoke. A dim violet light bled between his fingers, coalescing into a small, swirling sphere no larger than a clementine. Not flashy. Not impressive.
Deceptive.
Arc’s lips curved faintly as he rolled the sphere between his fingers, then flicked it in the direction of the woods with the same casual air as tossing a pebble.
The magic ball sailed in a lazy arc, trailing embers behind it like it was flirting with the leaves—and then, halfway to the trees, it shifted.
A ripple passed through it like something exhaling from the inside. The soft violet sphere shattered into jagged, serrated fragments of light, bursting midair in a shower of crackling static that should have roared like a beast dragged through chains. But he didn’t actually want to wake Calia and the whole forest up. Reserving the sound for silence but a show to indicate he was aware of them. Just a message.
I see you. And I’m not afraid.
Arc sat back and dusted his hands like someone who’d just shooed a stray mutt from the porch.
“Go on,” he said flatly, to the shadows. “Creep off back to whatever den yah slithered from.” His tone was pleasant. His eyes were not. Then, with a stretch and the same self-satisfied air of someone who’d just solved a minor nuisance, he reclined again near the fire. Kept one eye on the woods.
Because even if it had been all in his head, Arc didn’t care.
The thing had been warned. And if it was stupid enough to come back? He’d throw a much bigger ball next time.
Patience was a virtue… or a means of torture for those that waited for a shift!
That ripple of staticy light, giving the forest of trees a moment of silent glow – in the briefest of instance he could see him out amongst trunks. Painfully familiar, irritatingly the same. That silvery white hair and light eyes of the damnable Starling Everflame. Almost even smug, if any emotion at all crossed his features besides blandness and disdain. Much as he had in the dungeons below the Edelguard castle, writing down reactions as if it were all just one big study of his subject.
Then he was gone along with the glow of Arc’s spell. Unaffected by it, perhaps too far out of reach.
Oh but that feeling of being watched lingered. Heavy, weighted. Patient.
Silence lasting almost too long for the next apparition to appear was Atticus Silverstone. Aged, but surely himself. That same style of clothing he always used to wear. A look of relief but laced with this deep concern.
If Arc had needed confirmation that something out there was screwing with him, it came in the shape of Starling.
The shadow wore his face too well.
It wasn’t just a passing spectre this time. It lingered. Like it knew. Like it was waiting for a crack in his posture, some twitch of emotion to latch onto like a leech. Arc’s eyes narrowed into a thin scowl, jaw tight. He didn’t move from where he sat—shoulders still rolled in the same languid position, though the flick of his clawed fingers betrayed the coil tightening in his gut.
Whatever this thing was—this forest-born mimicry—it clearly had a tactic. A lure. Parade familiar faces. Dangle ghosts in front of him like bait on a rusted hook. It was clever, at least. Picked ones he’d actually feel. Ones that made his insides twist in ways he wasn’t proud to admit. Ones he’d buried, good and deep.
But if it thought he was about to go trotting off after the echoes of his failures? It hadn’t done its homework.
The first few illusions had already tried and failed to stir him. They’d left a mark, sure—but not enough to make him abandon post. Not with Calia sleeping right there. Not with the night so full of old memories dressed in new teeth.
Still, the third one… that one had aim. And gods, did it hit.
His father. Not just a spectre—but a presence. Full. Heavy. Wearing that look of quiet resilience and buried sorrow that Arc knew better than his own reflection. The man who had given everything and been handed back ash and ruin. A warrior of impossible patience. A father who’d been dragged through hell and still looked at his son like he was something worth saving.
And Arc had failed him. Not once. Not even twice.
Repeatedly.
The sickness came on slow. A knot in the throat. A quiver in the belly. Shame, bitter and sharp, uncoiling like smoke through his chest. His claws curled. Drove into the skin of his forearm—just enough to sting. Just enough to feel now instead of then.
Don’t look at it.
Don’t give it ground.
Arc turned his head deliberately, violet eyes locking on the fire instead—like it could burn the rising thoughts away. As if the flame could absolve what time and guilt never had. His shoulders stiffened. Brows drawn tight. The mimicry could wear his father’s face all night long, but it would not make him move. It would not shake him from his place at Calia’s side.
It wanted him unbalanced? Then it should have tried guilt that didn’t already live rent-free in his damn chest.
Almost as if it knew that it had finally found the right chords, that apparition of Atticus lingered. Standing there silent and pensive until he began to pace back and forth in a familiar stride of pondering something oh so deeply.
Calia remained blissfully unaware, soundly sleeping away unaffected by this crushing heavy weight that filled the forest air. That eerie sensation of tingles across the skin because something was watching intently from a distance. Whatever it was, it focused so strongly on Archimedes that it almost felt like a physical weighted touch gripping down on his shoulders.
Aware that his eyes were trying to look away, now staring into the fire instead of the illusions provided, something churned in the air and those irritatingly tempting whispers now came at him from different directions.
Aelyra joined Atticus with such a hushed, concerning conversation in the direction of where they’d left Tir Elas behind. The woman pointing a finger in Arc’s direction as she angrily spoke a He’s not listening!, as his father merely crossed his arms and shook his head grimly.
Starling Everflame watching and waiting, pausing ever so often to write down some ominous note and glancing behind him where the Bladerift Tower.
…and a new form, that same aching familiarity, twisting of the knife. The very Crowned Prince of Edelguard. But unlike the others who seemed appropriately aged and exactly as one would expect, the Prince who had suffered the effects of the magic plague, who had removed his own heart to gift to Archimedes – he looked different. Altered. Wrong. Not an expression full of grief, or hope… his held pure unbridled malice. An aura of something demonic.
Something menacing then lingered in the air. Dangerous. Oh so patient.
At first, Arc didn’t move.
He couldn’t.
Every breath clattered like glass in his chest, sharp and thin. That weight across his shoulders—real now, far too real—pressed down like invisible hands. Hands he knew. Hands that had once pulled him from the brink. Atticus’ hands. That familiar presence digging into his bones, dragging him backward.
When his eyes finally dared to lift from the flame, he saw them. All of them.
Aelyra, staring him down with righteous fury. Atticus, silent and still, arms folded in grim disapproval. Starling, scribbling the end of Arc’s story into some ghostwritten tome. And then—
Carlisle.
The name alone hollowed out his lungs. That was not the boy who had torn his own heart free to give Arc a chance of saving so much more! This thing—this creature—wore his skin, but the soul beneath it was rotted. Twisted. Watching him not with grief, but with glee. And the malice in those eyes—pure, deliberate—whispered the one thing Arc feared more than death. An silent statement that pulled and ebbed at every part of himself.
You failed me.
A tremble seized him. A flicker. A moment of naked, gnawing pain. Then came the sound. A broken, shattered rasp that started low in his throat. “…No.” It wasn’t a plea.
It was a denial.
A refusal.
He surged to his feet. Magic jolted through the earth in a violent pulse, burning the moss beneath him to ash. The fire buckled and split, the flames lifting unnaturally in the air like torn silk caught in a storm. A high, rising hum began to bleed through the silence. Pressure. Distortion. Rage. “You don’t get to use them.”
Arc’s voice cracked as he spoke. Trembling. Then rising. Snarling. “You don’t get to use them.“
His clawed hands clenched—not from fear, but restraint. Trembling with it. Behind him, Calia slept soundly, untouched by the pressure suffocating the woods. He wouldn’t wake her. He couldn’t. Because this wasn’t her fight. Not yet. This was his.
A snarl escaped him—guttural and low. Not loud, not feral—but sick. Rotten with grief. His shoulders twitched once. Hard. Like his very skin was beginning to crack under the pressure of what he couldn’t let out.
And something did change. Not his form—not fully. The binding with Calia held tight. But cracks began to show.
His lone horn shimmered darker, jagged and cruel like obsidian. His hair burned with dim violet at the edges. His skin, once deceptively elven, now darkened at the temples, shadowed along his neck and cheekbones, revealing the fractured line where demon and man blurred. His eyes—gods, his eyes—glowed with something deeper than rage. They glowed like the forest itself should run.
“Yah picked the wrong ghosts,” he hissed through clenched teeth, voice twisted—not transformed, but tainted. “The wrong damned memories.” And the forest answered. The sigils on the ground erupted—archaic and wrong, as though they had clawed their way from some forgotten place. They weren’t part of any school of magic Arc had ever been taught. They were grief given form. Fury given script. And pain drawn in raw, arcane blood.
He didn’t raise a hand.
He threw it.
“Vhal’Torrah. Karith Nur.“
The words struck the air like a funeral bell. A spiral of violet-black flame erupted outwards, a blazing tower of anti-light that screamed. The trees recoiled. The dirt tore itself apart. Wind lashed. The sky shivered. And the spectres? They were not destroyed, not yet, but exposed. Arc bared his teeth. One horn catching the firelight like a blade. His breathing ragged. Eyes still fixed on them. “Yer not real,” he whispered. “But I am. And I am not finished.”
Then louder—more broken now, a promise sharpened by fury: “I don’t care what yah are. I will find yah. I will end yah. And when I do—” A clawed hand struck the dirt, flaring the sigils in a pulse of violent light— “—yah’ll beg to join the dead yah wore to mock me.”
And in that moment, Arc didn’t look like a broken man or a mad mage. He looked like a god fallen to wrath. One heartbeat from becoming something the forest would never forget. Arc inhaled once. Deep. Slow. Dangerous.
The earth beneath him curled inward, cracking in perfect radial lines beneath his bare feet. The sigils shivered—alive now. Hungry. The entire clearing thrummed as if reality itself had forgotten its order. He didn’t scream the words.
He didn’t even speak them. But growled inside his head—low and brutal, carved from the marrow of language older than stars. The magic didn’t explode.
It coiled—a serpent of lightless smoke, ribbons of void curling from his fingertips, thick as ink spilled across the stars. It threaded through the trees, through the ground, through the shadows behind shadows, seeking the puppeteer like a bloodhound on ancient scent.
Another pulse. Another line. It wasn’t beautiful. It wasn’t even clean. It was vengeful—made not for glory or theatre, but for cruelty refined through intellect and agony. It reached into whatever veil separated puppet from puppeteer, and pulled—not to drag them out, not yet, but to mark them.
Curse them.
And Arc—tall and shaking, eyes glowing with a godless light—didn’t blink as the flames around the campfire spiralled into a spiral of sigiled tongues, curling around his lone horn like a crown. And somewhere in the distance—between shadow and root, spirit and sky—something screamed. Something real.
Patience could be insidious.
All one need do was wait. Poke. Prod. Distract. Weave.
The demon Archimedes was powerful, intelligent. Volatile. One that you did not dare try to challenge outright unless you knew for a fact you could win.
Yet, no matter how powerful a demon might be, there was always a string you could pull. A weakness. Blindspot.
The once mage turned demon did not see where the real trick lie, and would not until it was far too late.
So focused on that crushing feeling that surrounded him, the memories given illusion and shape out in the redwood trees, he’d not noticed the magic being woven right there around him at his feet. While he snarled and postured, threatened the very darkness for daring to encroach, not wishing to leave the side of the sleeping girl nor to wake her… he did not seem to recognize that it was awfully strange she hadn’t awakened on her own. Did not realize that surely she had some sense of self-preservation to have been roused awake by the abundant use of magic and his unbridled rage?
While his focus remained outwards to the beyond, insidious faerie magic had done it’s work of stealing one away. Not him – oh no, the woods were real. The threats around him wearing the skins of his past were in fact living creatures. He’d soon find himself at the mercy of many of those little pets.
The sleeping princess, however? Replaced by a poppet. Faerie-snatched into a simple side-step away, the same camp, the same space, only a temporary fae realm.
Because time was of the essence, and that damnable demon would not be fooled for long.
Calia – the real Calia – sat up with a sudden start, unsure what had awakened her as when she wearily blinked at their humble camp, there was no sight of Archimedes, despite the fact she knew he was there. Could FEEL him there. She’d just huffed at him to stop talking to himself. …That hadn’t been a strange dream had it? Rubbing a hand against her cheek, she checked her cloak for the spots he liked to hide and take his naps when he took his beetle form only for him to turn up absent.
Something… did not feel right. There was that tug of magic… not just the normal use of it, something else entirely that was making her skin crawl with goosebumps.
Climbing up to her feet, she didn’t get but a few steps away from the fire before nearly walking into the tall, effervescent form of Fawna. Immediately taking a strong step backwards to right herself, as she regarded the woman with a cool, distrusting stare.
“What did you do,” she asked outright.
Fawna laughed, waving a hand. Seeming just as merry and sweet as she had when they first met, in her adorable cottage dress and her doe features. The woman practically exuded a mother’s joy. …with a hint of something else behind it.
“Oh, my sweetling, my darling. I was just getting everything ready for us and making sure that wicked demon can’t follow. There’s nothing for you to be afraid of.”
Calia sighed heavily, tilting her head back and already feeling the exhaustion of knowing things were about to turn ugly and she honestly wanted to avoid it altogether.
“I don’t know what you’re up to and I don’t care. Give me my ring back and I’ll be happy to forget all about whatever shit you’re trying to get away with. You can go and I’ll even make sure that demon I have a feeling you’re fucking with right now, isn’t going to come chasing you down.”
Fawna painted on the most affronted, insulted, gently pained look an auntie could muster. Placing a hand against her ample chest as if her very heart was being broken. Frowning with that deep wound, and even having the smallest quaking briskness in her voice when she shifted to pull the signet ring from out of the little pouch stashed away at her side.
“I was only holding onto it for you, sweet darling. It’s never been my intention to hurt you, only to finally bring you back home where you belong. With me, your real family. Your faerie family. To give you back your heart.”
Hesitant, she held it out for Calia to take, even for a second pulling it back before Calia snatched it out of her fingers with an irritated huff.
“I don’t need your help.” Calia stated simply, as she slid her ring back onto her finger where it belonged. Wiggling those fingers as she looked over the small shield of Caeldalmor the figure of the white stag that was engraved in the metal. Staring at something that was a relief to finally have back as it truly was the one thing in the world that was hers alone, something special and treasured.
Patience was rewarded then.
Fawna watched with her own features beaming back into a soft smile as the girl appeared to grow confused as she glanced at the ring and then around the empty abandoned camp. Her dearest, beloved Auntie Fawna soon stepping close to grasp her face between her hands and croon oh so lovingly, as the enchantment took it’s hold. Stronger now, tied to an object of importance.
“Oh sweetheart, I am so sorry to wake you like this! We need to hurry! I finally have a heart for you! You have to come this way, quickly now.”
As for Archimedes…? He needed to stay busy.
His own spellcraft, rage, and magic had struck hard and true. Revealing those illusions for the falsehoods they were… not just images and apparitions, however. Creatures molded and twisted of fae magic into something new.
Growing in numbers beyond just the forms of Aelyra, Atticus, Starlin and Carlise. The enchantment pulled at every thread of thought and emotion it could find – every face. Those creatures that were once corrupted goats and chickens and forest foxes, they’d become every face he ever knew and lost. Loved and hated. The very King and Queen of Edelguard. Their children. His teachers and mages of the Bladerift. Darling Nova. His step-brother. Children he could not save. Those he let down. The girl whom he ripped a hole out of her chest.
The woman that Eden might’ve grown into if she had lived.
A face of one who seemed oh so familiar and gave the impression of abandoning mother.
Let him fight his own past, his own people. Let him forget the one he became bound to.
Fawna knew her time was running out when the magic of a curse was hot on her heels. She could feel it creeping around the edges of her carefully constructed fae realm. That was fine. As long as it could hold long enough.
Just long enough to severe the binding between the girl and the demon. To make her whole again.
The enormous faun fae led Calia by the arm deeper into the forest space, away from the fire of the camp to where her gift waited, itself too trapped in a web of Fawna’s making.
He was beautiful, a white stag just like the one engraved on Calia’s ring. As pure ivory white as the shining moon, only he was massively big, much more than the average stag. With a pair of feathery wings that might’ve sparkled had there been enough light this deep on the forest floor.
And he was not there by any choice of his own.
In a frenzy of fear, pain, and panic he was fighting, pulling, tugging against a clanking black chain so hard that it’d skinned the fur off his neck and took half the skin with it in a massive scrape of burns. Spittle and foam dripped from his muzzle, sweat covered his hide. Hooves trampled and stamped in the dirt as he backed up and yanked, but neither iron chain nor the tree it was wrapped around would budge.
It collapsed with a loud thud to the ground from exhaustion.
“You need a heart that is fae, my darling girl. I had hoped to give you half of mine, when the tide was at it’s highest and magic was just right. But perhaps that demon had done us a favor, for this heart? This will be even better. Take it. Kill him and take his heart for your own.”
Calia stood there, staring at this beautiful creature likely to now be white as a damn ghost herself as this was… She could not remember much beyond just Auntie Fawna, and still the shock of this was…
“It’s pure iron…” was all she could stammer out in the moment.
“Enchanted pure iron. It must be enchanted to catch and hold true fae,” she murmured sweetly, gently placing a hand to Calia’s back, urging her forward to the exhausted collapsed beast, laying prone on the mossy forest floor. “Sweet darling, I know you hesitate to do something cruel. Do not kill him, then, it is alright. Simply reach your hand into his chest and take it. He’ll live and survive, just as you are now. We can set him free.”
Being pushed towards the massive white stag wasn’t quite helping the twisted sensation of dread in the pit of her stomach. Even though she could not seem to grasps the whys, the whats, the wheres, and instinct still remained so strong inside her that this entire thing? This wasn’t right. Everything in her that was screaming at her to trust Auntie Fawna – trust her family – it was railing against this demand that she take a majestic creature’s very heart for herself.
She approached, staggering on her feet and reaching her hand out… but she did not push inside the beast’s chest to grip at the beating organ inside. Calia grabbed at the chain around his neck, jerking back her hand with a sudden yelp when it burned so swiftly, so badly that it left a blister on her palm. She glanced at that blister, wide-eyed, surprised… purely horrified!
The instinct was instant. Calia grabbed again at the chain seeking where it connected to try and get it loose, ignoring the way it blistered and burned only to find the claps could not be managed by her hands at all no matter how hard she tried. A strangled cry was next when she darted to the tree itself where the chain was leashed and it would not budge to her either!
For Calia was just as fae. Just as weak to such a faerie trap.
“Silly girl! Stop fighting your auntie and just take the heart!” shouted Fawna, for the first time her gentle temperament starting to crack.
Yet Calia did not listen! Trying a second time at fighting the blasted chain until her hands were blooded, growing frustrated, furious, until it was more than just Fawna’s facade that cracked, it was her spellwork upon Calia too. Where the enchantment crumbled awake in the wake of her pain and horror and the girl stilled.
Cold. Unflinching. Turning on a heel with a snarl towards the dark faerie twat that actually thought this entire scheme was going to work…!
Calia had advanced quickly only to immediately run into some invisible wall of magic. Fawna standing just outside of her reach, the sweetness of her motherly features stretching to something uncomfortably uncanny. Gesturing with her hands towards the ground where all around that single tree, the trapped white stag, and Calia herself was a circle of sweet little poison mushrooms. A faerie circle. A faerie trap.
Layers. When one needed to capture powerful creatures, it needed to be done in layers.
“Child, did you think I would not be prepared? It is not easy to capture a highblood. Harder even still to capture one out from under quite the impressive little demon pet. I do not wish you harm, Calia, my lovely darling. Believe me when I say I wish to see you become what you were meant to be. Take the heart, become whole with your own power again. You won’t need that demon anymore and you’ll be glad for it.”
“How about you mind your own fucking business!” Calia spat back pacing the length of the stupid barrier, not just where Fawna stood, but the whole circle of it around the tree and back. Searching for something, anything she could find useful. Stopping only when she swiftly removed her overshirt shirt to kneel down by the white stag himself, folding up the fabric and tucking it under the iron chains to help keep it away from his already damaged skin. Staying there on her knees to cradle the poor things enormous head while her thoughts spun.
“You can’t use his power while you’re here~! I made sure of that~!” Fawna gave a little sing-song warning. “And oh oh oh, he does sure try to find me now as we speak. But he too cannot get inside this realm. I am trapped within, and he is trapped without. It shall not shatter until you take the heart. Because I dear girl, am far more clever than the likes of two silly little younglings.”
Oh so clever and smart, was she? Calia could’ve laughed a bitter chortle because this faerie did not know the mind of Archimedes – and she sure as hell didn’t know Calia’s.
You could not trap one like her in a cage.
“Can I use your blood?” she whispered softly to the stag she cradled in her arms, waiting until it gave a heavy wheezing snort and the barest of nods. There was no hesitation afterwards, murmuring a soft apology when she dug her nails across his already battered and raw skin to draw up enough of the vermillion red. Taking it along with the streams of blood in her own palms from fighting against his chains to slap that hand against the tree he was bound to.
“Archimedes!” she hissed in a croaking shout. Deliberate, intentional. For the dumb bragging bitch had revealed enough useful things. That Calia could not use Arc’s magic, with no mention of her own fae blood. And that this little realm of hers could be shattered.
She’d spoken the demon’s name and let that summoning command go right through the rooted tree into the ground itself. Under the barrier that kept her captive and straight through the very fabric of the realm that Fawna had created to the other side. The real side.
And as Fawna began to scream a bunch of cursing obscenities and further orders, Calia did not listen. She ignored them all, sliding her hands and even arms up under those burning chains to help keep them off and away from the faerie stag who had already suffered enough. Carrying that burden for him now for she knew the absolute hell that was coming. Taking on that pain, even when the consequences of tapping into her fae magic came barreling in at full force to send her vision blacking out and the blood dripping from her nose.
This was trust of the highest caliber.
He looked like a god fallen to wrath.
One breath away from becoming something the forest would never forget.
The earth groaned beneath him, low and guttural, like it knew what walked upon it no longer belonged to the world of men. It cried out beneath his feet, cracking open as umbra spilled like oil into its core. Magic pooled in the soil—feral, acidic, and ancient.
Arc stood at the heart of a dying ring of moss and ash, the epicenter of a wound carved into nature. His chest rose with each shuddering breath—not entirely his own, not anymore. Every inhale trembled through planes, every exhale disturbed the bones of the land. Violet-black flames from his earlier casting floated in the air, unnatural and motionless, burning without heat, without end. They curled along the treetops like ghostly tendrils, devouring nothing—yet starving for everything.
His silhouette pulsed, warping at the edges where mortal comprehension frayed. He was too tall now, too sharp. Lines of his body swelled and flickered, a marionette pulled by something older than fire. His left horn, once smooth, now split jagged and cracked with crawling runes, bled soft emberlight. The ground beneath his feet split outward in thin, yawning fractures—his shadow pushing into the roots like ink poured into veins.
He had called. And something had answered.
The forest froze. Not with fear. With remembrance. The air thickened, pressed inward, laden with smoke and memory—ancient, buried, vengeful. Light itself recoiled, the sky dimming as though the sun had turned its face. Birds silenced mid-flight. Leaves held their breath. Even the wind dared not move.
Then—from beneath loam and rot—they came.
The ground shivered, not from weight but will. Shapes emerged, not from the trees, but through them. Root-bound limbs untangled from stone, and moss-cloaked forms clawed their way free from the carcasses of long-forgotten groves. Eyes opened where no faces had ever been. Towering silhouettes shifted between the trees—antlers hung with ivy, bodies like nightmares carved from bark and bone.
They did not speak.
They remembered.
Not spirits. Not fae. Not gods.
These were the Old Sleepers—beings older than stars, older than the breath of the first name. Once bound. Once buried. Arc’s magic had not summoned them. It had awakened them. His pain, his rage, his unfiltered power uncoiled something deeper than the roots of the forest.
They did not walk. They emerged—without footfall, without sound. Titans encircled him, not as protectors, not as foes, but as witnesses. One leaned forward, its great wooden limbs creaking like groaning trees in winter. Its hollow gaze pressed into Arc—not with judgment, but curiosity. Measuring him. Recognizing him.
Arc’s breath hitched. Not from fear. From awe. The ground bled silver, leylines bursting open beneath his feet. His horn pulsed like a beacon, glowing brighter, as the forest became still no longer. The illusions shattered. The spectres—no longer passive—began to writhe. Twisted visages, wrong smiles, and dragging shadows slithered from the bark. Memories sharpened into weapons. Carlisle stepped forward again, face distorted into a grin. “You wore him like a goddamned mask!” Arc screamed—not in fear, but fury—and his clawed hands lifted in invocation.
“Thaerok’mal.“
The word burned. A spell of ruin. Of breaking. He slammed both palms into the earth. The forest bucked. The ground erupted as limbs of twisted bark and root exploded upward—monstrous, half-sinew, half-tree. Void mist surged through the cracks, lashing outward like serpents. The illusions disintegrated. Glamour peeled back like charred cloth—and revealed what hid beneath.
Dark fae.
Wrong, tall things with curling horns and eyes too wide, too deep. Their laughter curled like smoke. Mocking. Familiar. “Fawna.” Arc spat the name, poison on his tongue. He knew that cruelty. The precise use of grief like a scalpel. It was her. Again.
His breath faltered.
And then—he broke.
He didn’t scream. He whispered. Frenzied. Soft. “Mur’ra sathil. Vaen tothrek. Sael mori, sael mori, sael mori—” Spell after spell. On himself.
Strength. Speed. Ruin.
Magic tore through him, one incantation stacked on the next, ripping muscle and mind. Blood beaded down his arms. His body shook violently—skin flickering between starlight and shadow. And then—the fae scattered..
Wings tore through smoke, their forms twisting to mist, vanishing into trees. Arc convulsed—back arching—power ripping through every joint. Bones realigned. Flesh ruptured and reformed. His horn blazed like a dying star.
A laugh rang out—high, cruel. One fae lingered too close. Arc turned. No longer man. Not anymore. One couldn’t even say if he was demon!
He was smoke made solid. A monstrous silhouette too immense to be real. Violet eyes burned from a twisted face—cruel, cold, calm. Claws erupted from his fingers, searing with violet light. His mouth stretched far too wide, lined with jagged, gleaming teeth.
And then he moved. He landed in their midst in a single heartbeat. Giving rise to a scream. Arc’s hand punched through its chest—gripping something still pulsing. He tore it free. It fell like a broken doll.
Another tried to vanish. Being caught by talons, forcing it to the ground with a violent slam. With a snarl, he ripped its head from its shoulders and tossed it like refuse.
They came at him with glamour, blades of thorn, illusions thick as fog. It didn’t matter.
He was no longer casting spells.
He was the spell.
One shrieked, summoning a black wind. Arc tore through it, grabbed the creature’s skull, and shoved it backward—into the suspended flame. It writhed as the violet fire consumed it slowly—eating through bone, soul, glamour.
The forest screamed. Wings beat. Glamour shattered. The dark fae fled in a panic—but there was no escape. The Old Sleepers remained unmoving—watching, unmoved, unblinking.
He charged, crashing through the spell. His claws ripped downward through chest and wing—twisting, tearing, tossing the body aside like butcher’s waste. Black blood soaked the moss.
And when it was over— Stillness.
Arc stood in the silence, surrounded by broken bodies. Blood slick on claw and jaw. The air reeked of iron, burnt glamour, and ozone. The ground beneath him throbbed once, soft and reverent.
And then—the Old Sleepers moved.
Slowly. Not with urgency.
With inevitability.
One turned. Then another. Their gaze followed the last of the fae—those who had fled into the trees. A resonance began—deep, ancient. Not words. Not music. Memory.
The forest groaned. Branches twisted. Trees leaned. Arc didn’t command. He didn’t need to. He had spilled blood. He had torn the veil. He had awakened them. And the Sleepers gave chase—not running, but becoming. Roots broke free, reaching. Branches warped into mouths. Shadows elongated into limbs. Paths reversed. The woods turned against their prey.
And the dark fae began to vanish. One. By. One. Arc watched without emotion. His claws trembled, but not with need. The violence had ebbed. The madness… remained.
Behind him, the final violet flame shivered. Then stilled. It left a mark in the air—a sigil. Not of victory. Of invocation.
And then he felt it. The tether. Snapping taut in the marrow of his being.
Calia. A commanding declaration that would not allow for any insubordination even if he felt like it. No voice. Just will. Demanding. Certain.
Arc stilled.
His bloodlust screamed. His magic pulsed. But her call—her—cut through it all. Clean. Radiant. Lifting his head. His grin remained—too wide, too cracked. His breath was smoke and whisper. But his purpose shifted. Oh by how he followed. Ready to welcome the next part of this event that was an orchestrated funeral.
The eldritch fire bent inward as he passed, replying to the tether with nary a complaint. Trees moved. Shadows parted. A broken laugh hissed from his lips, joyous and wild. He stepped into a world soaked in silver—a glamour dreamscape. A forest not real. Not alive. Moonlight kissed every leaf. And in its centre—
Calia. Collapsed, unconscious on a bed of moss. And in her grasp—a white stag. Chained. Bleeding. Sacred. Even he knew the importance of such a beast and how they were probably rarer than one could properly guess. And reduced to what. Bait!.
Something inside Arc snapped again. Could he see red, when all he saw was shadow?
The world pulsed. And then—
He stood at his full height. Obsidian carapace gleaming like moonlit oil. Spikes along his limbs glinting like blades. Eyes—four of them—burning through the false sky. A storm in the shape of a man. He breathed ruin. He radiated vengeance.
He did not need to roar. His body was the answer.
“Fawna,” he growled, voice layered with ancient curses, low and thunderous. “I’m done playing nice.” And the hunt began.
“You stupid, arrogant girl..!” Fawna had been screaming, with futile results as Calia in her defiance had rendered her own self useless simply by reaching out to claim what was hers by right, and yet her body could not withstand without a heart within her chest. Uselessly passed out still trying to shield the great white stag from any more pain by means of the enchanted iron.
And what Fawna wished to be done, could not come to be if the girl didn’t forcibly take a heart by her own hands! This stupid willful girl!
The true error, though, was not in her underestimations of the highblood child, but the very demon bound to her.
He was no upper level demon. He had no title or power associated with the Demon Lords, the Kings of the Underworld. The ones that called themselves Sins. The bastard had been nothing more than an elven born mage, and while Fawna could admit his life as a mage had been extraordinarily strong, and even admit that their prior encounter in the woods had shown an impressive amount of skill and power that was nothing she wanted to mess with….
…she had not expected this.
The demon – if one could even call this creature that – had simply walked through the barrier between this false realm and the mortal one. Like it was nothing more than a waterfall born of magic. Tall as the stars, skin like shadow made solid, this was death given an avatar.
Fawna at her very core was a coward. There would be no win against him, she did not even want to face him at all. Brassy words and puppets would get her nowhere. What she needed was to escape again and come back to try another day. Her life was long and her patience endless.
But in her folly she’d designed this realm where not even she could leave until the correct deed had been done.
He wasn’t supposed to be able to get inside.
There would be no leaving here alive, this she knew without doubt. So be it. If Fawna could not make her cowards escape, then she would be certain her death was spiteful. Bloody. Disastrous. Because fuck that self righteous and mighty little highblood daughter! For as much as Fawna was a coward, she was also a schemer. There was more than one way to steal power.
The small pocket realm that bent and shifted by Fawn’s will light up in a miasma glow of deep emerald greens. Poisonous, toxic, spewing out of the silver laded bushes, trees, and her sweet little clusters of mushrooms. Making the air oh so thick and treacherous to breath and near impossible to see through.
Reaching upwards she grabbed at her twist of antlers with both hands and snapped them off with such a force that blood of black ichor came pouring from the spots on her skull. A flick of one hand, a flick of the other, and both twisted, gnarled antlers stretched and reshaped into grizzly spears made of faerie bone.
And within both hands she raised those spears with every intent of swiftly ending both the unconscious girl and the frothing white stag. Gleaming with spiteful glee, to bring those spears down and cleanly stab through two skulls at once with a beautifully improvised bit of magic. Steal two souls, and take their magic.
And if that meant it stole the demon’s binding as well? What an amazing power Fawna would then be.
The moment the spears lifted— He moved. There was not a sliver of haste, but with a controlled inevitability.
A violent, soundless shudder rippled outward from his body as if the air itself had cracked. The space around Calia and the stag folded, warping in on itself. A hexagonal barrier erupted from the ground in a halo of molten violet and obsidian light, sealing around them like a shell of tempered voidglass. Runes scorched themselves into the earth around the shield in spiralling patterns—ancient, infernal, unbreakable.
The twin spears would find themselves struck the shield mid-fall— and bounced harmlessly off its surface with a shriek of tortured fae-bone.
His voice followed, slow and thunderous—low and lethal. “Did you really think—” His claws flexed at his sides, the glint of ichor still fresh on them, “—that a demon bound would allow his charge to die first?” Stepping forward, every footfall grinding the realm’s glamour underfoot like splintering glass. The very air fought to hold its shape around him. The pocket realm sagged, threads of Fawna’s illusion magic fracturing in spider-web patterns across the dreamlike canopy. Her glamour wasn’t bending—it was fleeing. Being replaced by that of a interlocking web of his own selection. She had made this place but it was going to be his web!
Arc tilted his monstrous head just slightly, four burning eyes locking onto her with a stillness that screamed violence. “You tear out your antlers, conjure your little toxins, threaten her life…And you think that makes you clever?” A laugh, low and serrated, slithered from between his teeth. “That just makes you stupid.” She had to be old, thinking she was so untouchable. So infallible and yet, all that effort of conjuring his greatest ghosts, one would think she’d learn that he was an arch mage. And a demon. A combination that was both unwanted and truly deadly.
Himself and Calia could destroy things with a easy flick of the wrist. And people didn’t appreciate how they didn’t. Till now.
With a flick of his claw, a sigil burst into being at his side—spiralling dark light and screaming silence. He reached into it and pulled nothing. And yet what emerged was final.
“Naek’thuran.“
A word like a hammer to the mind. Fawna’s movement froze.
Her limbs locked mid-air, her breath caught in her throat, muscles seizing as if the bones beneath her skin had turned to steel. A black sheen bled across her silhouette, binding magic layered with interwoven glyphs that wrapped around her form like a vice. Roots of shadow spiralled upward from the moss beneath her, threading through her ankles, her spine, her wrists—holding her like a marionette without strings.
And then—it began.
The ambient aura of Arc’s true form, held barely in check till now, spilled forth.
A wave of invisible madness bloomed from his body in concentric ripples—each one pressing into the mind like cold needles behind the eyes. Reality bent at the edges. Colours thickened. Sounds layered over themselves with sickening echoes. The taste of ash and despair seeped into every breath. The illusion realm, once pristine and silver-lit, now soured, reacting violently to his presence. “You don’t understand bonds,” Arc said, stepping closer, his voice softening to a whisper, thick with loathing. “You understand chains. Control. Theft. Fear.”
He leaned in, inches from her immobilized form, and smiled with too many teeth. “But I am not chained, and she is not yours to threaten or to take.” Behind him, the barrier around Calia shimmered brighter, answering the pulse of his tether. The white stag let out a low, reverent groan. The ground beneath it no longer bled. It bloomed.
“This is where your schemes end, little fae.” A fresh ripple of madness pushed outward from his chest, fracturing what remained of the pocket realm’s structure. Trees cracked. Sky flickered. The air now wept static and fear. “You die here. But you’ll live just long enough to understand what it means to provoke a demon who remembers his name.”
And all around them, the realm began to collapse.
Not because of Fawna.
But because Arc had entered it.
She wouldn’t be allowed to move. Deprived of the right to even scream! Stuck suspended mid-strike, twisted antler-spears still frozen in her fists, her joints locked in place by the coiling black sigils that pulsed across her limbs. Her eyes pinned under the unbearable weight of his own. And Arc stepped closer.
Each footfall was a seismic threat. The realm trembled with him—glamour flickering like firelight on the edge of extinction. Trees cracked. The once-beautiful fae dreamscape now rippled with decay, the air soured by the aura spilling from his monstrous frame. Shadows stretched toward him like they longed to be consumed. “You thought to spill her blood in a hasty attempt to finish what you began,” he said, voice like stone dragged across glass, thick with quiet fury. “To bind her light into your rot. To steal what was never yours.”
His clawed hand lifted slowly—no flourish, no haste. Just purpose. “Do you know what demons do to thieves?”
Fawna trembled violently against the hold. Not out of strength. Out of fracture. Blood ran freely from her scalp where her antlers had torn loose, black and steaming down her face. Arc’s claws reached forward—and pressed gently, almost reverently—beneath her chin. “You should have stayed hidden in your rot. You should have never touched her.”
He didn’t roar.
He didn’t scream.
He simply tore.
With a sudden, vicious pull, Arc drove his claws up through the base of Fawna’s skull, splitting the jaw, cracking through the bone in one smooth, gruesome arc. Her body jerked violently in that of his grasp, still pinned in place by the immobilizing spell, unable to even collapse. Eyes widened once—glass and void—and then dimmed.
Black ichor spilled freely from the wound, thick and tar-like, sizzling as it hit the ground. Her twisted spears clattered from her hands. Her limbs went slack, dangling like meat from a broken marionette.
He held her there, suspended on his claws for a breath longer, letting the realm see what became of threats. Then, without a word, he cast her corpse aside— —and the pocket realm cracked like porcelain.
The sky above fractured. The trees screamed. The ground rippled, reacting violently to the severing of the realm’s architect.
Arc stood over the ruin, his body steaming with residual magic, blood seeping down his arm in rivulets that burned the moss to ash. Behind him, Calia remained untouched—protected, preserved, his. And a stag, brought into a mess that should have never been touched.
One could bet that a message had been sent in that moment. A shockwave riding the waves of faerie magic from that crumbling pocket realm, touching the very edges of others. Lightning zipping and jumping from place to place, realm to realm, unstopped until it spread through every manner of connected fae-touched space.
Would it be considered a warning? A herald? Only time would tell.
What was certain, as the last remnants of Fawna’s construct fell away from the sky like shattered glass, miasma dissipating back to the humid summer night, and the forest around them returned to it’s natural hue – two of the elder faerie tree’s prophecy had fallen now. Two still remained.
A long long silence followed, with a quiet that felt so peaceful it could almost be considered eerie after all the forest suffered. When nothing was left of the dark fae’s magic, simply her steaming body strewn across the blood soaked ground and those constructed spears of faerie bone… a groaning snort came from the direction of the trapped white stag.
It seemed the only thing that had remained real and true within Fawna’s realm was that faerie trap. The massive redwood tree now smeared with both the blood of Calia and the white stag, along with the enchanted pure iron chain. A chain that clinked and clanked when the stag attempted to shift out from under the girl that so protectively clung to his massive head. He got nowhere, unwilling to send those chains further harming one who had used her own body to spare him from more pain.
The white stag held no fear in this moment – though the demon was truly fearsome – he had bore witness to an event extraordinary in every sense of the word. It’s eyes capturing the demon’s own when he dare to look around, were filled with obsidian understanding, a cosmic respect. Pain and awe.
…and that little twinkle of being all too knowing the way that elders that knew far too much always did.
And in that moment the stag dared to speak – soft, light, gravelly with age and a great deal of exhaustion.
Remove the chains, Shadow of Umbra, else you will lose your charge. She is too young yet to heal iron-touched poison on her own.
Arc stood motionless in the realm. Aware of it all as the last remnants of Fawna’s illusion fell like ash through open sky, silver glass crumbling into smoke. The forest returned slowly to itself—its colours truer, its air damp with summer humidity, though still heavy with the echo of violence. Nothing remained of her but scorched earth, a pair of shattered spears, and her twisted, broken corpse steaming in the soil. And beyond where he had awoken those of the old world, they had not remained. All he could hope for was they took grand insult to ones of dark fae that had lingered and begun to purge.
If Gaia’s will was strong enough, it would be done. And still, Arc didn’t move. Feeling the pressure of so much more than he was ready to deal with. A recollection of horrors that had been met with original stubbornness only to twist and fester and linger inside his head. Faces… faces of those long gone and the weighty pressure that Fawna had successfully scored across his existence. Ready to give up here and now in a way he hadn’t recalled he ever had.
Until the stag groaned.
The white stag shifted beneath Calia’s unconscious body, chains rattling as it tried to spare her from their cruel bite. Flank shuddered, blood matting its fur where she’d thrown herself in protection. And in that stillness, the stag’s voice, deep and weary, spoke into the hush that followed death. Bidding attention. Bidding action!
Arc blinked slowly, his four-eyed gaze dimming—two vanishing completely as the monstrous form began to ebb from his frame. The fog of wrath thinned. What remained was jagged and human-shaped, barely.
He exhaled. A long, shuddering breath. Not quite grief. Not yet rage. Something caught between both. A twisted body collapsed inward, demonic form shrinking, horned crown splintering down to its lesser shape. The shadows peeled from him, dragging blood and gore like paint as they receded. When at last he straightened, he was back in his demonic elven form—but it was a mask cracked at the edges. His skin was greyed. Hands slick with blood. Shoulders slumped under exhaustion more psychic than physical. He bore the look of someone who had won a war and realized too late what the price had been.
And still, he came forward. A task still needed to be handled and he was hardly about to prance about with a merry step just to see what else could possibly happen!
Step by step.
No flourish. No apology.
He stood before the massive redwood and looked upon the chain. It pulsed with enchanted iron—pure, fae-hating, soul-cutting. A demented shackle that he really couldn’t fathom how or why Fawna would even bring something so dangerous even to herself! Unless dark fae could not be harmed by iron, but that would be news to him.
Her hands, her arms… were a state to put it lightly. Torn to what he could only guess was so close to seeping from every link where it touched Calia’s skin. The sight of it twisted his gut. Truly unable to fathom how callous, how cruel Fawna was. How far she was willing to go and this was only a telling omen of what was yet to come!
Slowly he extended one hand beside him, summoning light into shape—not bright, not golden, but a darksteel glimmer wrought from void-forged arcana. The hilt formed first. Then the blade—slender, straight, made to sever enchantments, not flesh. A spellblade. Something that Calia might have had eight thousand questions about if she were alert enough to bare witness too. But that was hardly the case after all. And it was a perfect weapon to be forged from the very silence that followed his carnage.
Slowly he worked himself down to kneel at the base of the ancient redwood. Examining the chain—a cruel length of pure iron, slick with their mingled blood. Weaving a scent of something he couldn’t even describe, nor wanted too. Merely the sight was enough to stir his jaw to a painful clench. Relying on the sheer will that came from being an archmage to demand the weapon to hiss its hold through the first link, clean as silence.
One by one, he severed the chain with surgical precision. The iron rang dully as it fell, thudding to moss that had seen too much blood. Being sure that the item was about to be as useful as a paperweight. Practically feeling the magic within it recoiled with each strike—but this was no time to falter.
When the final loop hit the ground, he reached for Calia. Being mindful of what she had suffered and taking into consideration what the stag spoke. Iron-touched. Well that would have been a surefire way to reveal she was in fae long before the fae-tree itself. If they ever wanted to go back in time and use a torturous action to discover that!
With a mindful care and a studious watch to gingerly pull her grasp from the beast that surely didn’t deserve this malice any more than Calia; he gathered her in his arms as though she were something fragile carved from light, his arms wrapping around her shoulders, her waist, cradling her close against his bloodstained chest. Knowing that there was little he could do in the way of healing her as a proper healer might. That very skill set having long since been removed from his magical arsenal to make way for the singular horn that still perched itself upon crown.
He simply knelt there, holding her, his jaw set tight enough to crack teeth. Turning to look at the stag now—truly looked. Into those deep, ancient eyes. Saw the grief mirrored back at him, tempered by something else. Respect. Recognition. And then natural concern. For Calia. For the stag! Trying to fruitlessly work his mouth in something that wasn’t finding the strength to come.
Maybe that was for a purpose, for what would he say in reality! Having to settle to just accepting the lack of anything, and moving pull open the hollow so he might make use of the lifted healing potions from the tiny black market. Granted, he wasn’t sure it was going to be very useful right now to just pry her mouth open and shove it down! But he’d think of something.
As soon as the links were broken, the enchantment in the pure iron dispelled and the chain fell away to be naught but a useless chunk of metal, the stag waited patiently just long enough until the unconscious girl’s weight was pulled away before he attempted to move. A wet snort through the nose as he gathered strength and tried to pull his own legs up underneath him so he might stand. A massive feathered wing stretching upwards to help balance his own weight.
All he could muster were a few futile kicks and in that process the shirt Calia used to help protect his skin, fell away to reveal just how viciously cruel such a faerie trap was meant to be. With as terrible as Calia’s own blisters and burned skin looked, this stag had worn the chain longer, fought against it so hard that his own skin had been stripped away to reveal the red and pink sinew of muscle underneath. It would become a scar of this moment for the rest of his long lived life.
Letting out a frustrated snort, he still his motions to refold wing at his side, accepting that for now he too was in no condition to get up and move. Instead then giving his whole body a rippling shiver of old magic, beginning that process of forcing the iron-touch poison out of his own body through the wound in faint streams of ruddy grey.
Soon bending and turning head to reach and gently bunt his muzzle against the girl’s limp hand to send that silvery ripple through her as well to help expel the iron poison. It would do nothing for healing the wounds themselves or the odd consequences of the magic she cast, but she would not succumb to a poisonous death.
The stag then sighed a heavy sigh, resting that heavy head of his and closing those galaxy filled eyes. Fawna had not been powerful at all in her own right, yet her methods had been horrifically effective even against an elder fae. There was little one could do was sit and wait for strength to return.
Though it was not without learning and purpose. For even in the quiet the white stag took notice. Those of lesser character could take full advantage in the here and now. Spill and drink the blood of an elder fae. Steal magic and power. Bindings and more. Did not matter if one was human, elf, dark fae or demon, those who took ill opportunities would. Yet, this not-quite-elf, not-quite-demon, who had come through a faerie realm like it was made of paper with a terrifying wielding of magic that felt even more ancient than the eldest of fae? He made no such moves. He did not even scoop up the girl and walk away to mind his own charge and nothing else.
You understand that a bond is not a chain, he observed, softly speaking in that tired but curious way. It flows in both directions. When she is whole again, what is hers shall also be yours. Do you have ambitions, Shadow of Umbra?
There was a emotional guilt settling well between his ribs. From past knowledge, ghostly reanimations and the stag himself. Knowing that once upon a time as a full bloodied elf, seeing an elder fae would have been both something of ominous amazement and scholarly bewilderment. Now? Well now he just felt truly awful that a creature of this magnitude had been used as some sort of prop for Fawna’s scheme. Putting both the elder fae and Calia in such a devastating predicament that it was inevitable for his thoughts to not wonder where the fuck this had all gone so wrong.
Liable to gnaw on his brain in vain attempts to look back and figure out where he had missed the clues.
Privately of course.
Right now, he was trying to slip back a bit to give the outstandingly large creature room so he might find his hooves. Even if his own gaze was openly grimacing at the wound the stag had suffered. There was no real way of telling how long the beast had been held by such chains, merely long enough that the wound looked properly terrible. He bet Calia could help the stag heal if she were conscious or even healthy herself. Leaving him to look at the woman held in grasp and shuffled her some so he could pull the cork of the healing potion out by fang. Holding it steady in teeth and begun to slowly drip some of the soothing red potion over arms in a very purposefully gradual motion. Trying not to be a gawking single audience member watching the stag struggle and ultimately give in to the reality that strength had waned so dramatically.
It was a lot more difficult not to openly watch when the stunningly white and brilliant creature had nudged the wide nose into Calia’s hand. To aid with the removal of poison that was curated for fae themselves. Such an oddity. Something he didn’t know was possible and wasn’t sure if he was grateful for that lack of knowledge or mad about it.
Regardless, there was nothing in his head that seen this as an opportunity to behead the magnificent stag so he might drink that of blood! It wasn’t even in the top one thousand ideas, just putting the means of focus into dripping potion over every portion of blistered wrought iron touched flesh while feeling the elder fae watching him.
Certainly expecting something in the means of commentary though it was probably too swift how his jaw clenched and muscles flexed at the sheer munity he had at the idea of Calia sharing anything with him! “It may not be a chain, but it isn’t a waterway either. I do not want her to share a single shred of anythin’ with me. For that will become more than just a figurative chain, that’s a noose for her to never wear.” His reply was quiet but the vehement refusal was utterly clear. It was not aimed for himself, but to Calia. “No fae should wear a collar. Figurative or physical.”
He had no idea what the hell why the stag was titling him Shadow of Umbra, though it fit in ways that were painful. A grave shadow of death, surely. Many of the dead would clearly agree with that.
They’d agree with that.
Fawna had done well after all. Reviving and giving animation to faces that had been purposefully buried deep down, only now they had crawled out. Freely casting judgment and guilt that was saturated heavily on a pride, on a heart that had spent a long time making itself stone. “Ambitions?” Arc let out a airy scoff, “What the hell does a demon need with ambitions?” He gave a forced grin, “That’s a young mortal’s game and I don’t give a shit about it.”
Lifting the potion up after he had made sure to pour it over the exposed wounds, Arc tilted a violet eye at the stag. There wasn’t terribly much left but, “I don’t know much about elder fae, but does healin’ potions help? Yah might as well take the rest of this one so yah aren’t runnin’ around with yer neck all exposed to the elements.”
What a strange feeling it must be to have such an ancient thing laying prone, dimmed and weary. Looking every bit that it could simple roll over and die if it tilted just the wrong way, and yet those deep fathomless eyes were watching Archimedes like they could read his past in his flesh and see his future through his very soul. This elder fae held no fear of the demon, no concern or worry. Somehow being in no rush to move or go back to his own business, whatever fae business might be.
He simply laid there, resting, watching. Listening to the demon refuse his fair share of a bond out of principle.
A great stag’s muzzle could not form the shape of a recognizable smile, but oh they could exude a feeling. Warmth. Amusement.
I am older than this forest. As trees heal themselves with time, so do I. A soft tilt of his massive head with a gesture of antler followed. Save it for the one who acts before she thinks.
Almost as if she’d known they were talking about her, Calia sucked in a sudden breath. Enough of the iron poison had leeched it’s way out, yet it was more likely just pure sheer stubbornness of will that brought her to waking. For the way she tensed and shifted, she very well was about to get up and start swinging fists or spells or whatever means of violence she could muster. Ready to fight her way past the very brink of death if that was necessary to go after that dark fae woman.
Yet just as quick, there was the sight of the white stag free of chains, and that solid feeling of Archimedes being right there. Calia let out a long relieved breath, melting with the motion back against the demon’s chest. Eyes falling closed with the escape of tears and a wince.
Safe.
“…guess it was my turn to get kidnapped,” she muttered hoarsely with a grimace.
There was a tired, crooked scowl drawn across Arc’s face as the stag gave its gentle refusal—not really aimed at the creature itself, but more at the moment, the weight of everything. It was the kind of expression that said too much with too little: that he was moody, upset, scared, overwhelmed—each emotion elbowing for space in a ribcage already crowded by guilt.
He wasn’t about to argue with something that claimed to be older than the forest. Instead, he let his gaze follow the creature’s gesture, landing on Calia. His brows lifted slightly, finding it hard to entirely sass back at the statement that Lia was the sort that acted without thought. But her intentions were good.
Silently agreeing.
Silently disagreeing.
Mostly just silent.
His arms tensed. Not with fear, but with instinct. The second her body stirred—even the faintest shift—he felt it. The way her breath hitched, the way her spine curved slightly forward. She wasn’t awake in full yet, but her body had already decided it was ready to throw hands with the next bastard that so much as looked at that her the wrong way. Of course she had. She was Calia. Fighter to her marrow.
And gods help him, Arc had never felt more terrified or proud.
When her gaze found him, dazed and heavy-lidded, but alive. Awake. And he waited. Said nothing. Let her find the shape of the world again in her own time, willing her to ebb her tension into him—into his arms, his lap, his guilt-wracked silence. Finding he was probably more appreciative to when she slumped into him. Not weakly. Trustingly. Letting him carry the weight. Something they both could easily appreciate in their own way.
He shifted slightly, adjusting his hold, letting her settle better into him. Bracing his knees, curling his arm around her waist. “I think we be needin’ a pact at this point,” he muttered, trying for humour, voice rough around the edges, “That any future kidnappin’ attempts be taken clean off the table, lass.” It wasn’t his best delivery. Even he could hear the hollowness in it. The flatness behind the cheek.
But he was going to ignore it. Play it off as it never being there and accepting the fact that he was just tired. Nothing else.
With a small grunt, Arc rolled from kneeling into a seated sprawl, shifting her carefully so her weight rested in his lap, her back pressed gently to his chest. He used the moment to guide the cooling bottle of potion into her hand, silently insisting she curl her fingers around the smooth glass. “Hold this a tick,” he murmured, voice lowering with the intimacy of worry disguised as casualness. “The coolness ought to soothe the burn in yer palms some.”
One hand brushed back the black wisps of her hair that had stuck to her brow. The other found her cheek, knuckles soft as he wiped away the stray tears that had streaked there during her unconscious defiance. “Yah need to throw some of that back like cheap whiskey, Lia,” he coaxed, gentler this time. “Help yah recover a wee bit faster. I’ve got the rest handled for now.” He glanced toward the stag—eyes half-lidded, tired, but sharp with quiet deference. “Yah and the Elder Fae just need to rest. Let someone else hold the line a bit.” The barest breath of reflection as his gaze drifted back to the crumpled ruin where Fawna had fallen.
His lip curled, but it lacked the usual theatricality. No grin. No spark. “The maggot-boned gutterwitch is good as dead this time.” The finality in it wasn’t triumphant. It wasn’t even angry. It was bone-deep and cold, like someone reading the last line of a book they never wanted to open. He looked back down at Calia then, his thumb brushing gently across the back of her hand.
Calia’s mind scrambled to throw off the fog of enchantments, sleep, pain, and who the fuck knew what else. All had happened so quickly, so suddenly, she didn’t have half a clue of when and where it started just yet. Sussing out the details through scattered memory and context.
Archimedes was shattered. Cracked. It didn’t take much for her to figure that out, by simply the tone of his voice and how he kept shifting her and putting his hands on her like he was terrified she was about to crumble away. Fawna had admitted she needed to keep him away in her efforts to get at Calia, to which… what an awful churn of guilt twisted in her stomach. Dark fae had this uncanny gift of knowing people’s inner most pain and then finding ways to use it to their best advantages. Arc had grief and pain in buckets, there was no telling what she’d done that had so successfully allowed her to steal Calia away.
For that alone, despite Calia’s own guilt and feeling she didn’t deserve this care when everything had been her fault – her enemy – she didn’t fuss and claim she was fine. Didn’t try to scribble or shirk away from his means of care. Recognizing he needed to be able to do this for her to ease whatever traumas Fawna had inflicted on him.
And she? Maybe for once she would set aside her feelings of guilt, allow herself the grace just this once of someone taking care of her and to place the blame where it belonged. Because fuck Fawna, she deserved her grizzly end. Not just for her foolish attempts of attempting to bend Calia to her will, but for daring to draw in others.
The white stag, magnificent, ethereal…
Calia shifted again, about to reach out for the massive head of the thing to see about a means of healing when–
Do not.
So curt, so immediate, that she froze and immediately looked affronted. Such an expression seeming to amuse the beast enough to quiver in a soft laughing huff.
I am healing. Do as he requests.
Calia did not realize such a creature could speak at all, and damn her, there was always this immediate streak of defiance where she didn’t want to listen at all. Peering down at the vial Arc had placed in her hands. Finally taking the pause of time to really look at the damages with a turn of her wrist to frown. An ache still there, though thankfully not as blisteringly painful as it was before. She inevitably did drink the last bit of potion in the bottle, giving the smallest of shudder and pull of face before delicately handing it back to Arc.
This all was… awkward. Arc said to let him handle it, let him hold the line, yet Calia couldn’t help but feel it should be her in that moment. Soothing whatever madness Fawna had inflicted on him, helping heal this elder fae so he’d not be here exposed and in danger within the forest. Having this deep inexplicable need to curl herself smaller and tuck herself away in the demon’s cloak for once, just to escape.
In the end she just sighed a heavy sigh, letting that limpness return when she squeezed her eyes shut.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured for the both of them. At least she could give them that!
Be not sorry, lost daughter of night, answered the resting stag, still with that air of amusement in his voice. Be a reckoning.
If this had been a moment with less of the smell of tainted blood in the air and the stag himself standing, he might have actually laughed at how the grand being told Calia to don’t before she even could. Practically able to play fortune teller with a prophecy that the mountain princess really didn’t take to people telling her what to do, how to do it, or what not to do in this case. No matter how ageless, how grand and impressive they were.
Just right now, he was hardly in any mental state to be notoriously cheeky or full of dry sarcasm. To point out to the stag that him telling Calia no was only an invitation for her to bull up against him.
Rather he just sort of hummed and accepted the moment. Using ears to be acutely attentive to the world around them. Practically preemptively ready to launch up and start slinging a new set of spells because his nerves had been successfully frayed right down to the open vessels. One snap of fingers and he’d be roasting accident squirrels because he was on edge in far too many ways.
After the potion had found its final resting place and she just leaned back into him to utter some nonsense of an apology, Arc breathed out a humourless laugh. Likely a good thing the stag spoke first because he wasn’t sure what to say. Merely retracting his hand so it wasn’t brushing to her own but rather supporting his weight into the ground. “What he said.” Arc offered, seeming to accept that as a well placed reply.
“So it’s two against one, is it,” at least Calia had enough in her to be that cheeky thing. That was about all she had, though. Not enough energy to think, not enough to do anything. Not even enough to ask a thousand questions, because there sure as hell were plenty to ask. What happened with Archimedes, with Fawna, about this beautiful fae elder and how he’d even managed to be trapped himself.
About her.
Eventually just laying her hand to rest on Arc’s leg, squeezing there a moment until fingers curled and dug into the loose fabric of his trousers, for that was an easier and less weird means of quiet gratitude than the crazy urge she had to simply turn around hug him. To cling and bury herself there and hideaway from this ominous knowing that Calia was just a walking beacon for dark fae agendas. That even if she did attempt to go at her life solo, that wouldn’t stop another like Fawna harming innocent others whom had nothing to do with her.
The silence was so heavy. Calia was pensive, so was Archimedes. …not the fae stag, however. The beast seemed perfectly content to rest there as if there was no longer a worry in the world. Unconcerned about them or anything else that might lurk in the forest. Somehow just trusting things were fine.
Calia began to realize why when others started to appear.
Nothing as big and beautiful as the white stag and his majestic wings, but they were fae all the same. Tiny little mice and rabbits with antlers of their own. Strangely shaped cats that weren’t really cats. An oddly intelligent looking fox with a little derby hat and a cane. A pair of young wolves with goat horns. Birds and owls and just… animal shapes, that weren’t simply the average forest critter, all oh so curious now that it was safe within the redwoods to creep out again.
When those horned wolves were bap-bapping the dead dark fae’s body with heavy paws to make sure it wasn’t going to move again, that was when Calia decided she didn’t much care what it looked like or if it were insane to shift and roll, to curl her arms around herself and bury her face into the demon’s chest. Once again, fuck that awful vicious bitch – Calia was glad Archimedes had killed her!
As for the white stag, he was content to lay there until those wee younger fae had started turning their attentions to poking at him as well. Giving a mighty snort and flick of a wing to sweep a few away. Grunting with this sense of obvious pride to finally, finally pushing himself up to haunches and then fully onto massive hooves. Giving his whole body a shake with such a delicate weaving of magic, that all signs of blood, sweat, iron poison… it all flicked away in this pretty ethereal mist. And while the wound around his neck had not yet even begun to close, he stood tall and mighty with his head high.
Rest here, you are looked after. Come sunrise, we may speak. he offered, with that soft voice.
There wasn’t much left in him to keep up with her cheek—not that he could’ve matched it right now anyway. Probably for the best, all things considered. The night had started out so damn promising. Peaceful, even. Calm in that eerie, too-perfect way that now sat in the pit of his stomach like spoiled wine. And that sort of calm wasn’t a gift—it was an omen. One that was going to stick to him. For a long, long while.
That gut-deep unease, the not-knowing if silence could be trusted. If stillness meant safety—or if it meant Calia was about to be ripped away from her own security. It wouldn’t leave. Not now. Maybe not ever. There was going to be a turbulence in him until he figured out how to bury it deep—or cut it out entirely. Neither of those things seemed particularly likely. Only adding to that private sort of loathing that he didn’t know how to handle.
The silence around them had a strange weight. Not empty. Cultivated. Purposeful, like the forest was holding its breath in sync with him. As if it knew better than to stir too loudly around someone who’d only just finished tearing a pocket realm apart.
Calia shifted, squeezing gently against his leg like she was trying to hold a moment steady. He didn’t exactly respond. Didn’t recoil, but didn’t lean in either—just acknowledged her with a low hum. Quiet. Noncommittal. Drawing no attention to it because it really didn’t need any. As any further scene making really didn’t feel like it had a place to settle. So instead his attention was already turning elsewhere.
Because now… they were being watched.
Not by the stag. Not by enemies. But by the other fae—faeling creatures, drifting out from the deeper wood like curious ghosts. They weren’t hostile by any means of the word. But Arc’s nerves were strung tight enough that he was half a thought away from snapping. Half tempted to bare his teeth in warning. Half tempted to mutter something sardonic about unspoken laws and how demons and fae really shouldn’t share the same space. Liable to be struck down by lightning because of their all to close proxy.
But even that was too much effort.
The thought rose, cracked apart, and crumbled before it ever reached his mouth.
Instead, he just watched. Witnessing the oddities stepping through moonlight like they’d been pulled by gravity—delicate, beautiful, bizarre. Wide eyes. Tall ears. Soft laughter. A few slapping paws over Fawna’s corpse for good measure, making sure she was as dead as advertised. As they should! He turned at the sound—watched them with narrowed eyes.
But nothing—nothing— could have prepared him for the way Calia turned suddenly and buried herself into him. There was no warning. No hesitation. Just pressed in, as though hiding in his chest could make the rest of it go away. A hope that was just not in the cards. But it stunned him.
Not outwardly. Not dramatically. But somewhere deeper. Somewhere he’d tried so hard to hollow out and seal shut. And there it was—something warm and awful, clutching and clawing at the inside of his chest like a trapped creature. Like his ribs had become a cage too tight for what tried to live there while having no right too!
It hurt. His throat went thick with it. Hot and burning. He closed his eyes. Breathed in, slow and shallow, not for calm—gods no—but just to move. Just to do something. Nothing to draw attention or acknowledge what shouldn’t be at all. She didn’t need to see his face right now. That was the point. Making himself shift again, this time wrapping his arm more firmly around her back in something that could only be described as a silent it’s alright. No pressure. Just presence. With no expectation or demands. Certainly not needing any of that currently.
A sliver of movement caught his attention—he opened one eye, peering through lashes to see the stag rising to full height again. Still magnificent. Even injured. Even bleeding. A relic of power that no wound could truly diminish. Arc frowned at the sight truly wanting to say something. Anything. But the words didn’t come.
He settled for a nod. Something simple. Honest.
Then he glanced back to Calia, his hand patting gently at her side as he let out a low exhale through his nose. “Let’s get yah back into yer bedroll,” he murmured. “Preferably with the whole lot of faelings gawpin’ at yah while yah sleep.” It wasn’t biting or even funny. But it was something. And right now, something was all he could offer.
Fantastic. If Calia weren’t so bone weary tired, there was no possible way she’d ever be able to get to sleep with a bunch of damn faeries all just lurking around and staring at her. It was a disgruntled sound she made to that, reluctant to move at all – but much like the white stag, she too had her own sense of pride. Too much so to throw her arms around Arc’s neck and demand her carry her off. She’d done it once in her life, and this seemed like a bad time to repeat it.
So she forced her limbs to obey, pulling away enough to use her own strength to rise to her feet. Unwilling too in using him as that bracing lift as he seemed as exhausted as she. Conversations needed to be had, yet even she could see the white stag’s wisdom in waiting until morning to deal with the mess of this night.
By her own legs she walked back to the camp, giving a soft curious frown as little critters seemed to be helping lead the way as silent escorts. Reminding her of faerie jackals that lived out in the fae wood near he Edelguard Castle. Ones whose tree had been dying with a false elder twisting their forest.
…had Fawna been attempting the same? They were days away from Tir Elas and as far as Calia could tell, no fae wood was nearby. Then again, all of Edelguard seemed to have an aura of the old world and faerie mystique even in places that were not distinctly faerie territory.
It was too much to think about right now.
Calia made no complaint about climbing back into her bedroll, though there was a sharp difference in her usual habit. A silent demand made with a hand alone to hold tight onto Arc’s to make sure he sat with her, stayed with her. She would be damned if she ever admitted there was this small terrifying fear now sparking up in that empty space in her chest that she could close her eyes and simply be stolen. It’d go away in time, surely, as for now… Even when she lay down there was always some means of touch to make sure he was still there. A hand on his arm or at his shoulder. Squeezing tight if he dared to shift or move, even when she’d long since succumbed to sleep.
Even despite their little camp having been invaded by all sorts of faerie things, roosting their own wee nests to bed now for the rest of the night. Curling up in sweet cuddly balls. Seeing how close they could inch next to the demon in this daring defiant mischief of I’m not scared? Are you scared?
And the white stag? He promised a conversation in the morning, thus he too found himself a place to settle, somehow perfectly in the one spot on the forest floor that could catch a bit of the small sliver of moonlight.