Sleep was both a blessing and a curse. Taking her far away out of the world to escape that weight in her chest, only to churn out the sort of nightmares that felt more prophetic than simply a dream. Sometimes the scene would change, a forest covered in snow. A flat ice sheet over water. The edge of a cliffside. The setting never really mattered, just the dressing. Quiet, unnaturally quiet. Not even the wind would dare howl in this frigid place. Then there was Calia. The colors she wore would shift too. Red, black, this time a stark sparkling white. Yet there was always a Queen’s crown adoring her head, always that splattered of blood pouring out of a bleak hole where her heart should’ve been.
And she smiled. A wide, bright, hollow smile.
When Calia finally woke, it was with that expected splitting headache. Turning away from the light shining through the windows to draw the blanket up over her head. What hurt worse was that space in her chest, almost to the point she thought that maybe her asshole of a nemesis had decided he was brave enough to take another chance to squeeze at her. Only it never grew any worse. Just stayed that steady, uncomfortable pressure of something trying to force it’s way out.
Calia just sighed. Time to start the day. Might as well make dreams come true and put on the smile.
“Arc,” she queried, doing her best to make it sound bright and neutral. Something safe and inoffensive.
The night stretched out long and unbroken, heavy with the kind of silence that pressed in on the mind rather than eased it. Arc stayed where she’d left him—small, still, sunk into the pillow’s shallow dip—but sleep never came. His body could have taken it, but his head was too full, too loud, a churn of thought that refused to be coaxed into quiet.
He tried, at first, to herd the thoughts into something manageable. That trick of skimming over old memories like skipping stones: pick up one, feel its shape, toss it, move on before the water swallows you whole. It didn’t work. Each stone sank heavier than the last.
Some were warm, in that way nostalgia always softened the edges—his father’s laugh over a small spell that went wrong in a funny way, the smell of sea salt and wood tar from Tír Élas docks, the long gold spill of morning over the water. Others bit like broken glass: the contempt in certain voices, the looks that slid past him like he wasn’t there, the wet crack of failures he couldn’t undo. Fawna’s voice laced through both the good and the bad, tainting each in a way that made even the sweetest recollection feel poisoned.
And threaded through it all was the same old refrain—his insecurities humming low and constant like the drone of a hive. The knowledge of just how fragile he was if anyone ever truly pried past the mask. How easy it would be for the wrong hands to find the wrong levers. He’d spent years building his armor out of humor and irreverence, and nights like this reminded him exactly why it had to stay in place. Nobody could know.
Somewhere in the long hours between midnight and dawn, his thinking shifted. Elves, magic, the life he’d once had—what good had any of it done him lately? His heritage was a tether to a version of himself that was dead in every way that mattered. The memories—both the cherished and the ugly—kept him tied to a ghost. And those ghosts were dragging him down. He realized, in the slow and deliberate way one admits a truth they’ve known for a long time, that he’d been better off when those memories had been gone before. Cleaner. Sharper. Able to move without the constant pull of what was. He had been completely unphased about things in any means. A true demon with only the sentiment of getting what he wanted! And having not one care about doing anything ill, rather favouring it. By the time the first pale blue of morning crept into the edges of the bathhouse shutters, Arc had decided. He had to put them away again. Lock them where even he couldn’t touch them. He’d keep the skills, the instincts, but the rest—faces, names, the particular shade of the sunrise on the harbor—they needed to be silent.
Just memory spells of that depth weren’t exactly written out on any casual parchment. For obvious reasons, they weren’t very well liked spells. But he was clever enough that he could likely build it. The spell was already forming in his mind, piece by piece, like carefully stacking bricks in a wall. He didn’t rush it. This wasn’t a thing to botch.
When Calia stirred beside him, the rustle of sheets and the first warm notes of her voice pulling him out of the building work in his head, he shifted. In a slow ripple of bronze and shape, the beetle form folded outwards to help himself up onto the headboard, pulling on his composure like an old coat.
“Mornin’,” he said, voice pleasant, even. The kind of tone you used for someone you’d met once or twice before—polite, but distant. No sharp edges, no warmth either, just… neutral. A stranger’s civility. If she noticed the absence of his usual smirk, the lack of that sly spark that colored most of his words, he didn’t comment on it. He met her eyes briefly, then glanced toward the light edging the shutters. “Looks like a clear day.” And that was all. No teasing, no lazy charm. Just the measured cadence of a man keeping the boundaries exactly where he’d set them in the dark hours before dawn.
So this was how it was going to be. He’d chosen to pull back again, pretending he wasn’t hurt and placing her at a nice friendly, cordial distance. Doing exactly what she had planned on doing last night before she’d come through the door. Calia took in a deep staggering breath, raising an arm to drape over her eyes to block out more of the light. Maybe even the sight of golden wings too.
She could call him out. Again. How many times had that worked, exactly? A big fat zero! The saner thing to do would be to give up altogether and stop torturing the both of them. Tell him he could just go and do whatever he wanted and just leave her alone. Yet, she couldn’t stand the thought of being another face that haunted and abandoned him either. Knew that deep down something about them was magnetized, that the poles would shift and they’d come crashing back together again.
Only way through it was forward. The single thing Calia was good at – pushing forward, even when it was all impossible.
Seeing as she couldn’t lay here forever and will herself to stop existing, Calia did finally push herself up and out of bed. Taking the pins out of her hair to try and smooth it out to something less frazzled and messy, before glancing at them in her palms with a frown. A tap of her fingers to the air opened up her hollow and she stashed them inside, pausing a second before also pulling the chain around her neck up over her head to give her signet ring a final look, and away it went too.
It was time to become someone else. Calia didn’t know what shape that would be just yet, but she did know her precious things needed to be safe while she figured it out.
She crossed the floor to pick up her clothes and get dressed, taking the smallest of seconds to use a little magic to adjust the style and color again. Going with the exact opposite of anything she’d ever actually wear with a mustardy shade of yellow, because if she was going to become someone else, she might as well be terrible!
“A magpie visited me last night,” she murmured, skipping past all their nonsense because that’s what was expected of her. If she did anything else he’d get cagey and suspicious. “Invited us both to a faerie court at a time of their choosing. Sounded like another kidnapping to look forward to.”
It seemed that she wasn’t about to start launching at him for his choice to make this as cut and dry as possible. Honestly, they both had to be tired of trying to continually smash their heads together and he was more than avidly aware that he was ninety eight percent the issue. It made sense that if he wanted to diminish the continued issues of his strong ratio of problems and his own emotions being such a pain in the ass, that he would be the one to declare the end to this headbanging.
So when she didn’t start into it, that seemed like a very fair agreement that they were both on the same page.
They could be amicable but they couldn’t do more than that. He’d figure out the schematics of creating the spell necessary to seal away the burdensome memories that were associated to the depth of his chaotic troublesome emotions while being sure to be attentive and prepared for whatever else came. At least until he was dismissed seeing as she had that ability to shoo him away.
When she was getting dressed and he had climbed himself onto the wooden slates of blinds to look out through them, she mentioned having met a magpie that had invited her and apparently him –that was questionable for a variety of reasons- to the faerie court. “To be so blunt about it?” Arc’s antenna were twitching, “That feels… so frontal. Though I don’t know anything about magpie fae… didn’t even know they were a thing.” Putting corrective effort into working his lazy accent to clarify itself as a means to remain professional and clear. “Is it an invitation or is it something to sit in one’s mind like a poison letter. Till the curiosity is too much and you go because it’s there? Odd.”
“I was told no one refuses an invitation to a faerie court, so I think the intention is pretty clear that I’ll be showing up whether I want to or not. Nice to at least be warned first.”
Calia made sure to leave out her own concerns and patterns that she’d notice so far. That these fae only seemed to approach her when she was feeling her darkest feelings. The jackals had come to her when she was lonely, and perhaps accidentally put her in the sights of that false-fae who saw opportunity and tried to twist it. Fawna had found her in an even worse moment, terrified and desperate for any escape she could make.
This time? Maybe Calia was not at the lowest she could be, but that squeezing ache was still in her chest and even now she was certain the only reason she was bothering to keep breathing was because she still believed he needed her to.
“Regardless, we have other roads to travel right now,” she muttered, moving over to the dresser to give a soft frown at the room’s keys.
No more leaning. No more allowing him to carry the weight of her fears!
The hesitation was brief and she’d held her breath in the moment, but she snatched up both keys – copper and iron – and when no burning pain followed, she immediately took a turn for the door to lead the way out.
“We should make our way past your Cragjaw quickly. I don’t think we’re going to run into many fae inside the mountain tunnels.”
“Still sounds odd.” Arc offered as he turned his eyes at least to where she was. Mentally going through the means of how it seemed they really were at least on the same page. No more interactions besides transactional and it was clear to him that this was what it was.
Of course, it would have been wise for him to utter an apology for the night prior. Working his invisible mouth to do so before she was stating that they had other roads to travel right now. Which he hardly disagreed with. Paired with watching her snatching up both keys this time and a declaration that they were to get past Crawjaw and into the mountain. “Many other things like to still lurk in the mountain.” He offered and helped himself off the blinds to flutter over.
Almost landing on her but resisting it, but he could at least be half decent. “Before we get too deep into the means of work, I do owe you an apology for yesterday. It won’t happen again.” No excuses, no humming or hawing. Just a clear earnest apology given to her and taking his onus in the whole issues that had been exactly happening between them.
Once the door was open, he helped himself to settling on the wall, to walk across it rather than flying for now. Just in case anyone started screaking about a giant beetle in the bathhouse!
“It’s fine,” she answered, not meaning this time to repeat his own words, they just seemed to fit so perfectly. He didn’t need to apologize, it was all absolutely going to happen again, but it was fine. He was going to be fine and she’d make sure of that, one way or another. Make like a faerie tree and be his meddling, rooted guardian until he flittered off.
Down the hall she went back to the front lobby where Molly was once again sitting at the front with her nose in a book. The elven girl looked up with a smile and a curious glance around to see where Calia’s handsome companion might be only to wilt just a bit in disappointment. Calia set the keys down in front of her, painting on that bright smile.
“Thank you for the stay.” Pleasant, warm, simple. Well received too and Molly even geared up ready to give the usual small talk back and forth but Calia was already waving her goodbye and escaping just as quick as her feet could take her. Spare the girl a conversation that was going to be weird and Archimedes the whole ordeal of being talked about like he wasn’t there spying as a golden beetle.
Must be nice to have an alternative form to hide in. Would she like to be a beetle? A mouse? Smaller than that would be even better. A flea, maybe.
She could’ve hissed when she stepped out into the sun of the morning. Even through the heavy canopy of trees, it was far too bright for her splitting head. A perfect summer morning full of promise for everyone wanting to seize the day! Calia had half a mind to knock he sun out of the sky out of pure spite.
“Can we make a portal once we’re out of town, or will I need to walk the distance?” she dated to ask. Not keen on asking him for anything, but Calia figured the faster they got where they needed to be and did what must be done, the sooner he’d finally find his means of escape!
“Alright.”
Well, he had known it was going to be a little strange to decidedly go back into a mode that was cutting the boundary between them into something more manageable, just maybe he was a little surprised by it. And how succinct it all was. Suppose he ought to count his stars for it all.
Quickly he fell down to the floor as Calia went about the means of returning the keys to Molly –though the girl seemed like she had been cut off too soon and he only tilted a quick look back to her. Sympathy for her because well, she was an confused causality in all of this but she’d soon forget it all anyways. So before he got stepped on, he scurried out the door so he could take flight once again.
Feeling the air beneath and approving of its sensation. At least for a moment while Calia asked if they could make a portal or would she had to walk. “Portal if you want. Just tell me when and I’ll make it happen.”
The sound she made – a laugh a scoff? Soft and under her breath, glad that he was busy trying to keep up and couldn’t actually see the look on her face because Calia could bet she looked absolutely deranged trying to hold back the entire breadth of her actual thoughts! Almost wishing she was angry and could be pissed off about it all, as she knew what to do with anger. Could scream at him and call him a stupid asshole. Physically fight him and throw magic around to topple trees and open the earth.
Instead she held it in tight, where that ache in her chest had taken over her lungs too. Even though her heart wasn’t there in her chest, she could feel it thumping a pitiful reluctant staccato that made the whole world feel like it was moving at a snail’s pace.
Calia didn’t say a word, she walked. And in that same way it had felt like the world was molasses, she’d auto piloted her way out of the border town it what felt like a blink. Not remember what path they had taken, or if he’d said a word himself along the way. They were outside of any line of sight, though, and that was all that mattered.
Having done it once already, it required no extra thinking on her part. Calia walked a short line, threw her arm in a circle and grew a door right up from the ground made of wood and vine. There was no theatrical flourish to show it off, no pretty design to make it flashy and beautiful. Just functional simple magic to create the door so he might open the passage.
Her head hurt so goddamned much. Calia was never going to drink elven spirits again!
Thankfully he hadn’t said a word since he agreed that a portal could be made. Following along with a whizzing beat of beetle wings just a bit higher than most would look. As not to crowd but also not to look like Calia was taking her strange pet for a walk! Needing not to encourage any sort of commentary from those onlookers.
Using this silence for what it was. Mentally going over catalogues of spells and reagents ones used in spell crafting. From the perfectly mundane to the rarer sorts that required stupid things like a stone golem’s left toe nail. Specifically that one because it was apparently something better than the others, it never made a lick of sense to him. But right now, it certainly worked at keeping his thoughts at least aimed at a particularly goal.
It wasn’t till they were suitably out of the border town that he would come to the earth and allow himself to manifest back into his perfectly demonic appearance.
His upper body is dressed in a sleeveless, deep violet vest with light lavender trim along the edges. The vest is left open at the front, revealing an underlying hooded garment—black on the inside—giving his look a layered, versatile feel. Beneath that, he wears a rust-orange shirt with a lace-up V-neck, the crisscrossed cords tied loosely to leave part of his collarbone exposed. Where the choker and golden brown bracers were still in supply. Staples of his attire regardless of what attire was made, as he watched from a few steps back as Calia flipped her hand to make the doorway of a portal. Where he simply waited till it was clear he was to finalize and moved forward to attach the magic threads to do so. Where the door was shortly showing its new location through and gave Calia the motion with a tip of one horn head forward in a cordial motion.
Only to follow through after he was certain she had taken a good ten or so paces ahead so he could meander behind and just keep to this treaty of motion.
Though it was somewhat shortlived as he manifested a animated scroll of paper and forever inked quill to hover behind him. Letting his efforts start working so he wasn’t holding all the thoughts inside. He was going to have to do some trial and error stuff so it was better he had it written down and well, it was good to at least use magic for that use too.
Calia didn’t even want to look at him, but found her eyes drawn in his direction anyway. Deeply sighing to herself over little things that really didn’t matter, yet somehow were so perfectly funny. She’d chosen yellow because it’d be wildly different and give some visual representation of separating herself, and yet somehow it still ended up matching him and this rusted orange color he’d chosen today. Fingers itched to tug those strings out of his shirt.
Once he’d opened the portal, however, she crossed through without hesitation at his beckoning. Head held high and finding familiarity in this way of carrying herself. Wondering if that was a bad thing, for surely it’d be going backwards to resume that stoic stiffness. A princess of stone and mountain cold.
Speaking of mountain cold, she’d stopped a few paces out, fir green gaze examining a landscape that was both unfamiliar and not. Hills and cliffs, jutted rocksides and pebblestone paths weaving all around them. The summer greenery in full effect with long grasses growing in what patches of dirt managed to collect around stone. Moss and climbing vine hanging downwards from any surface it could cling to. All flat stretches of space weren’t more than dustpiles of rock, going up, up, up an incline to where one would have to carefully start watching their steps to head into the mountains themselves. To follow along worn footpaths made by horse and carriage around the mountain cliffs themselves – risking snow and fall. Or to find the caves openings that would lead inwards to the tunnels. Often more narrow and claustrophobic, but far safer… as long is it weren’t filled with monsters.
No sign of a scaly beast yet. They could probably find one of the caves without disturbing it at all. The only reason Calia had even entertained the idea was because Archimedes had some thought of claiming scales.
For now, she turned back to make sure her door of magic was dissipated back from whence it came. A flick of her hand and– a pause to narrow her eyes at him and this new scribbling scroll he had going on.
…why did that raise her hackles. Why did it feel like that was an omen of a trouble to come.
Calia shut her mouth before the question even came out. Let him work through it in his own way. Her ways of helping had done the opposite so far. A vacation of bonding in Tir Elas turned into a finding out that was forcing him to face memories he didn’t want to look at. Agreeing to go to the light temple so he’d have less to worry about concerning her had him literally catching himself on fire! A trip to the bordertown for relaxation was a reminder that even when she tried, she wasn’t a good friend.
She was a god damned curse.
So she turned on her heel and started walking. Resuming her own trail of thoughts into what was going to make her something else entirely. Prance and skip and dance and twitter? Sounded a lot like the sort of thing Arc would be doing to pretend he was fine. The exact opposite of what she usually did, which was go quiet and… brood.
Fuck it, Calia took off in a run and tried a cartwheel. It was absolutely fucking stupid! She landed it, though, and resumed her walking. Didn’t give her any sort of satisfaction, but it was something different. And that was a start.
Arc moved at an unhurried pace, hands loosely clasped behind his back, his stride even and deliberate. The ground beneath them was uneven—pocked earth and stone giving a faint crunch beneath his boots—but he didn’t mind. The slow rhythm kept his mind from drifting too far from the task at hand. Beside his shoulder floated the length of aged parchment, its curled edge slowly unwinding in the air, while a sleek black quill followed it like a patient shadow. Both were suspended by a thread of quiet magic, held steady no matter how the path dipped or turned. Reminding him somewhere of a time doing much the same as he followed behind that of his parent or mentor when the old current advisor felt like he needed to be taking notes during their wandering.
He spoke softly in Elvish, the words falling with deliberate weight, each syllable shaped as if he were crafting something fragile. The scroll drank in every word, the quill scratching in steady, unbroken strokes. He wasn’t dictating a recipe—there was no codified method for what he was trying to build. Memory-sealing potions existed only in theory, whispered about in circles of magical study but largely dismissed as impractical or dangerous. Which was probably the exact reason why demons had the use of them in some manner. Still, Arc pressed on. Tone clinical, but there was something under it—a faint, private insistence—when he recited each element that might warp or obscure a thought. Duskroot to cloud short-term recall. Frostvine resin for binding enchantments. Hollowthorn for compartmentalizing memories like sealed rooms. All conjecture, yes, but he catalogued it anyway, the scroll obediently recording every fragment. He had just begun weighing the theoretical effects of diluted whisper-amber—half-speaking the sentence more to himself than to the page—when motion cut through the edge of his awareness.
Calia bolted forward without warning, as if something in her had simply decided to move faster. Spurring him to throw an eye around their surroundings as if expecting something unwanted to have come and joined their strange little two man party. Yet with two steps later, she pitched into a cartwheel, boots flashing overhead before her feet hit the earth again in perfect rhythm.
Arc’s brow gave the smallest, almost imperceptible lift. Slowing his gait as not to pass her because well, why? His eyes lingered for only a heartbeat, enough to confirm she wasn’t about to injure herself, and then slid away again. No comment, no quip, not even the ghost of a smirk.
The quill hovered, poised to write. Arc resumed speaking to it in the same calm, distant cadence, as if the moment had never happened. Whatever she was doing—whatever impulse had driven it—it was hers. And right now, he had no interest in tugging at threads that only led back to the endless, weary loop of their head-butting.
Calia was listening, of course, whenever he was close enough. On those moments she slowed just enough to allow him a chance to catch up with her rushed pace. Unfortunately he spoke in elvish, kicking up her frustrations that she’d never paid enough attention during her schooling. Didn’t take any time in Edelguard to pick up a book and start absorbing a new language. Not that it would’ve been fast enough to even sink in, she always did have issues with sitting still long enough so the letters would behave.
It did confirm he was up to something, though. Walking with his hands tucked behind his back like some world weary professor. Absolutely done with her shit, without a doubt! The trick would be trying to decipher what it was. Something to break the bond? For some reason that didn’t feel correct. As angry and frustrated as he was with her, Calia didn’t feel he was at a point where he was trying to sever them just yet. He said he’d stay with her and he took himself very seriously when he made promises.
He didn’t think she noticed, but she did.
What would Calia do if she were in his position. Well? She already was in his position, wasn’t she! And she was busy marching on like a dumbass because she wasn’t the brains of this operation. All Calia had was feelings, feelings, feelings as that annoying magpie fae said.
What she wouldn’t give to make all of those feelings go away.
…he wouldn’t do that would he? Lock away his own feelings?
Her determined walking now became stalking. Climbing up stones and rocks with all the usual nonchalance, setting an odd sort of path that was always moving forward but tended to weave this way and that. Sometimes setting her waiting for him to pass her. Occasionally looking distracted with some rock, or busy doing silly fae things with plants. Nothing she hadn’t done before during their long walks, Calia never had been stationary. But she was listening to every whispered syllable, drawing a silver thread of magic in her palm as if just hearing the right word and then repeating it with her own whisper was going to help her understand it.
It took a while and it wasn’t much, but she’d at least caught on that some of these utter phrases were herbs and regents. Finding her own personal success in mumbling one of those words with her thread of magic and a touch of fingers to moss covered stone to grow a little plant of that very name.
From there her stalking stopped being subtle.
Calia slid in real close, back to where she belonged walking at his side, this time not hesitating at all to stare him down. She had every intention of letting him do as he wished, even if that meant finding a way to distance himself from her. But that didn’t mean she was going to let him do something stupid to accomplish it. He was hers to take care of, even if she had to piss him off to do it. In fact, pissing him off was likely the only way to do it.
“What’re you up to, Archimedes,” she asked oh so pointedly with that narrowing of her eyes.
Arc had noticed her long before she drifted in at his side. The scroll floated at his right, unfurling and curling with each subtle shift of the breeze, the quill following in steady, deliberate arcs as his voice threaded low in Elvish. Thankfully it wasn’t like he was chanting; this was note-taking, theory-building, each word an ingredient in a puzzle he hadn’t solved yet. Frostvine, duskroot, hollowthorn—he turned them over like coins in his mind, weighing each on the invisible scale of memory magic that existed only in theory. Then came others, dredged up from half-forgotten alchemical notes and the rambling instructions of old market crones—moonglass petals, ground fine until their shimmer dulled to dust; whisperbark shavings, gathered only from trees grown in silence; blackfeather seeds that needed to be cracked under a waning moon; dried coils of dreamer’s moss that clung to the edges of standing stones; the resin of nightbloom sap, sticky and faintly sweet, but with a sharp bite if it touched the tongue.
He thought about stormmilk, the pale liquid found in the hollow of certain cloudcatcher plants—volatile, but rumored to bind a spell more tightly to the caster’s will. And there was ash-thistle, its tiny needles painstaking to harvest, but each one carrying a faint psychic hum, as if it remembered every hand that had plucked it. Even the dangerous ones flickered through his mind—blightglass shards, distilled shade-ink—ingredients that could twist a memory beyond retrieval rather than simply lock it away.
He sifted through each in turn, mentally testing how they might anchor or dissolve a recollection, imagining combinations that could braid permanence into forgetfulness. Some were impossible to get outside certain lands. Others… well, others were banned for good reason. But theory didn’t care about laws. Theory only cared about what would work.
But he still saw her. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the irregular line of her wandering path—a deliberate kind of meandering, climbing over stones she didn’t need to, stopping to toy with plants, pausing just long enough in places where she could watch without seeming to. It wasn’t unusual for her to fidget and flit like that during travel though he was a little more custom to her disappearing deep into the neighbouring foliage rather than just poking at it. But today, her pace wasn’t the aimless, restless variety; it was calculated in its own way. Sometimes she’d let him get a few steps ahead, sometimes she’d linger far enough back that she could listen without looking like she was. Once, he was certain, she slowed down purely to repeat a sound she’d heard him say, as if tasting the syllable would give it meaning.
She thought she was being subtle. She wasn’t.
The scroll shifted as he lifted one hand slightly, the quill dipping to capture his next quiet phrase. He let the Elvish wrap smoothly around the consonants, noting the binding volatility of silverleaf steeped under moonlight, the hypothetical damping effects of powdered obsidian. The whole time, he felt her presence—sometimes behind, sometimes at an angle—and said nothing. If she wanted to shadow him, she could. It didn’t change his work.
Eventually, she fell in beside him. No more weaving or half-hidden watching—just a direct, easy match to his pace, like she belonged there. Maybe at some point she did but that was already old news.
“What’re you up to, Archimedes?” she asked, eyes narrowing as if she could bore the answer out of him by will alone.
He let the last word in Elvish slip off his tongue before answering, his tone smooth, courteous, and entirely impersonal. “Crafting,” he replied, voice pitched in that careful, neutral politeness you’d give a stranger who’d asked a question they weren’t owed the answer to. The scroll hovered patiently. The quill waited. And Arc’s expression didn’t shift an inch, as though whatever she thought she was going to get from him had never been on the table to begin with. But he would tilt his head some, “I’m sorry, am I being too loud?” Sincerity in the question was made and he looked at her curiously as if to gauge it. “I can always put a mute spell on if you’d like.”
“Ah, crafting, Of course,” she answered back, mirroring his tone and even his posture in clasping her hands behind her back.
If that had been the only statement, she could’ve kept up with the puckishness, but then he had to carry on with the dutiful servant act. Was he too loud, should he silenced himself. All the fight deflated out of her at once, and that squeezing tightness in her chest became an aching gnaw. Growing dread digging it’s teeth in.
Last time she’d panicked and ran right into the waiting arms of Fawna, so that was out of the question in the here and now. Do the opposite, Calia. Do it different.
“What are you crafting,” she asked instead. Ignoring how she couldn’t breathe and that the sunlight felt light it was shimmering dimmer. “Since I am pretty sure it’s something to help this whole-” she gestured her hand at him in a little circle motion, trying to meet his look dead on, even though she knew those heartbreaking expressions of his were right around the corner. “-thing you’re doing actually stick longer than a day.”
She could handle this. Calia could take the truth of his words and she would deal with it. This time, she wasn’t going shriek and run.
“At least tell me what new wall you’re building, so I can crash my way through it.”
So she was taking to miming after him again in body language and voice –he wasn’t sure yet if he liked that or found it insulting each time she did it. Knowing the term mimicry was a form of flattery and all that nonsense- but he just kept going. Wondering if he was somehow invading that means of silence that they had both seemingly agreed too after stepping through the portal.
Well before.
But whatever part he had spoken up next about, she quickly had abandoned the means of mirroring him to just give him a look that caused brows to slightly taper inwards. A silent what’s wrong without saying it.
Searching over his actions and being pretty sure he hadn’t done anything invasive that warranted the look at all. He hadn’t been lippy or sassy or impish in any measure of the word. He’d attempted to apologize earlier with authenticity and a lack of excuses that had been shooed away in two words, and he had made the portal after she erected the structure. There was no flirting or snarky comments, so what the hell she was giving him a look now? Well he was at a loss.
“I am currently engaged in iterative formulation and refinement of an alchemical construct—potentially manifesting as either a wholly original spell matrix or a transmutable potion articulation—while conducting parallel recall of viable botanical, mineral, and esoteric reagents whose intrinsic arcane resonances align with the desired mnemonic attenuation effect. The operative intent is to identify candidates whose etheric polarity and metaphysical binding coefficients present minimal to negligible destabilization risks, thereby reducing tertiary side-effect cascades across the mnemonic lattice. This requires factoring in the reactive volatility curve of each component under astral and sub-astral conditions, the harmonic decay rate when interfacing with the cognitive leylines of the subject, and the resultant impedance upon the astral recall conduit. Concurrent to this, I am performing live dictation to an unscript scribe—a semi-autonomous vellum-bound arcano-golem temporarily imbued with a constrained fragment of my own mental lexicon—tasked with chronologically codifying every hypothesized permutation, catalytic sequence, binding invocation, counteragent matrix, and transmutation vector for subsequent synthesis trials. Said dictation incorporates real-time annotations on reagent resonance bleed, sympathetic linkage interference, and the probability quotient of cross-etheric contamination during binding phase.”
Arc gave her a clear look as if to let her diffuse the reply that was in fact, a very forward reply but having broken it into the means of his training and actual knowledge.
“I’m not building a new wall, and even if I were, I suspect that’s precisely the problem, is it not?” Arc’s tone was even, his words measured. “We are not a compatible pair—at least not in a way that yields any long-term stability. That fault lies primarily with me, and I’m fully aware of it. The return of certain… ingrained elven qualities has been something I have failed to manage with any degree of consistency, and those traits do us no favors.”
He shifted his weight slightly, one hand making a loose, unhurried gesture as though tracing the outline of an idea in the air. “It’s why I believe we’d be better served by keeping things as professional as possible. Avoiding this same cyclical pattern we’ve been walking into—one that’s left us both with more discomfort than either of us would choose—seems the only reasonable course. I am doing what I can to rectify my part in it, and that includes removing myself from the equation where those patterns tend to repeat. To keep trying the same approach while expecting a different result would be… well, the definition of insanity.” When he smiled, it was soft and unforced, but distant—polite in the way a shopkeeper might smile at a stranger passing through, acknowledging them without invitation to linger.
Calia got her answer and nothing could’ve prepared her for it. There were a million ways he could’ve replied, but to dump an entire encyclopedia of knowledge into her ears sure as hell wasn’t it. Archimedes was now the only person in the world to get a full frontal view of her unhindered, honest expressions with each sentence that tumbled out. The surprise that he was answering at all shifting into a serious, furrowed brow as she listened with the intent to understand. All of the frustration that came with realization this was complex magics broken down into actual definition that was far beyond what she knew or could ever grasp.
That dawning that he fucking knew she wouldn’t know what even a sliver of what it meant, this professorial arcane master son of bitch knew that she had no damn idea what a mnemonic lattice was and how it related to memory magic! And with the pure fury washing over her features, she was too damn angry to realize that she’d clocked something important!
He could have left it at that. Delt her that one single blow and she would’ve survived. Yet he kept on talking. Using his perfect, elegant Royal Palace accent to slice her to pieces with the simple admittance that it was no wall he was building. Who needed a wall when it was so clearly obvious that there was no middle ground between them. Nothing compatible. Nothing in common. That none of those moments of calm between them could’ve possibly been real.
Of course he would take the blame for himself he always did.
And here it all was, somehow, her own inner thoughts spilled out by someone else. Insanity to keep trying. Madness.
Pointless.
Kill him. Just kill him. It’s what he wants.
“I don’t want to,” came her reply. Unclear if it was to that inner voice or to him. Unexplained too, as she mirrored that soft smile he gave her. Hollow and empty, until it melted away into something else altogether. Some hopeless mix of being defeated yet determined.
Do something different is what it would take, so she did. Calia turned away and kept walking. Everything that she wanted to scream at him, every impulse to swing a fist and hit him, or shatter the rocks around them with some burst of magic as a release, she stomped and squashed and smushed it until that giant lump in her chest had such a firm grip on her that she didn’t even notice the ache in her head anymore.
She could take it. As long as it was all his own choice. She’d be fine.
“Don’t fuck around with magic to distance yourself from me, Archimedes. You won’t have control over who you are anymore. I’ll keep it professional now that I know it’s what you want. I can do that for you, it’ll be fine.”
He knew that his means of explaining what he was up too was incredibly taciturn but it was the true explanation. Because that was how he was thinking currently and trying to put it all together in a way that could eventually be simplified. One had to do the complex before they could make it palatable. Which he wasn’t at that stage yet, so while she looked like she was trying to digest a whole dictionary, he didn’t cease the whole explanation.
She had asked, he respond.
He wasn’t acting like an emotionless void, he wasn’t being wild or impish. He was simply, being polite as far as he could be. Maintaining distance but not being closed off. As expressed, he knew that was part of this continued battering that had them getting so hurt by the other. Or at least, it was how he kept hurting himself with expectations that were unreasonable and didn’t belong on her head. Things he was looking to fix in the ways he knew best and what was that. Magic.
The very blood in his veins.
So when she mumbled out a I don’t want to, he could only raise a brow. “I don’t understand?”
But this was Calia after all, had the way she mimed him again –though maybe a little less proficient this time around- she turned and started walking. Momentarily running over the interaction to check for hidden barbs or things he may have missed unintentionally, Arc hummed. Mostly cause she was calling back at him about not fucking around with magic as a means to distance. About how it he’d not have control on who he was –which was part of the whole theory process. He didn’t seek to become a total bungling igit after all, the construction of it all required very specific and refined calibrations to obtain the very goal that was simply… wait…
He could hear her but something about what she said was just that… magic…
Violets flickered a moment, thought turning and well… now… maybe she was right. One didn’t use magic to fix that sort of thing but if he was looking to put those elven memories back behind the lock and gate so there was no pain, no pressure, no self deprecation and guilt looming around in him, then well… one went back to the original source.
Arcane wasn’t the answer. Abyssal was.
Another demon, preferably one that would have been pleased to make the deal to seal away the memories once more and he could dictate a contract himself that would be beneficial to him and if he could find another demon of higher rank. Which well, shouldn’t be terribly hard. “Yes,” Arc hummed stroking clawed tips along his chin, “It will be fine.” Turning to give new instructions to the enchanted vellum once more in that of elven tongue, it seemed she had helped in this regard. He’d have to make a note to thank her for her insight later.
He was sounding like Starling in those moments. That frightening lack of sense mixed in with so much intelligence and power. She almost told him so and stopped herself. A friend would tell you when you were getting scary. Alas, Calia was a bad friend. A bad friend that he didn’t want.
If she knew what he was actually thinking she would’ve turned around and hit him after all!
Instead Calia remained trapped inside her own thoughts, no new ideas coming to her just yet. Only that annoying inner drive that always kept her moving forward. Hope? Well, it had to be there somewhere even if she couldn’t see it. There was no explanation on why she still remained upright and breathing, so hope had to be in there. Perhaps waiting for her darkest hour before it’d show itself.
She did not bother with anymore conversation. No longer companions or partners, they were simply two separate beings traveling together with their own personal agendas. That ache in her chest lingered for so long that now it had grown numb, and when she felt so tightly coiled that Calia was afraid she was going to crack apart, she had to splay her hand to the side and give herself some sort outlet. Sticking with leaving a trail of bitter icy frost in her wake, for it was destructive without doing any real harm. The warm summer air would set things right again within hours, and the stone sure didn’t care.
The landscape was shifting, land getting less flat, less green and even more full of chunks of rocks. Calia kept herself to trails that looked well traveled, figuring they were the most likely ways leading upwards higher into the mountains. When she finally came to a wide canyon with high stone walls and fork that split into two directions. One was guaranteed to lead the way to higher and higher ground, taking the long and treacherous way over the mountains themselves. The other, in theory would cut through and inside the rock itself allow travel through the cave systems.
There’d been no signs of faerie magpies, dragons, or other dangers. Just hours of walking and being miserable. So they had that going for them.
Calia stopped, turning towards him to ask the question with only a tilt of her head. Which way was the correct way.
There was some deep constructive thought in those hours that were spent simply walking through the winterizing forest. Where cold began to seep closer and closer but that of a busy mind was plenty effective chewing on the means of what he could do at all.
Demon’s didn’t trust demons, for good reason. But they were always in it to make a deal. Especially if it benefited them in some way and he knew enough higher demons that would want to do such things. Although there was an obvious knot in this new spawning idea, what they may want, involved too many variables that would highly linger less around him and more around her. Which was clearly not even on the table as that was not his intention.
Fool him once, shame on them. Fool him twice and shame on him!
He’d been a demon longer than an elf and knew how they worked. How they… how he thought. So it was going to take a bit to effectively find something that of a higher rank demon was going to want that had nothing to do with Calia and his specific wording to ensure the success of his new plan. It was not something he could rush into, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t cease the means of potentially conjuring up some great idea for a memory seal on his own. One decision, multiple plans. And it all hinged on simply returning to things as they had been and removing the whole unnecessary parts that were too mortal for his liking.
It was moments like this that he’d have spent time talking to his father… to Lyra, to Liriel and even Carlisle. To those former comforts that allowed him to be both living flesh that was highly problematic but was allowed to express those conflicts and curiosities without a threat of something grievous to be lain. Granted they’d all either died or moved on, so it wasn’t exactly a fitting thought, now was it. And being alone in the middle of a crowd wasn’t doing anyone any good.
Even the thought of them was enough to make him frown and shudder with the all too sharp twist in his chest. Guilt plenty busy with ensuring he barely could breathe through it all.
His eyes flickered between vocalizing something to the penning inanimate objects. Where the stop of Daughter of the Grand Mountains simply tilted her head between the fork in the path. Leaving him a moment to glance between the two, he considered them both thoughtfully.
It wouldn’t be wise to move on the tops of the mountains honestly. So he gave a courtly motion to the one that ought to direct its motion into that of the mountain tunnels. And into the territory that was Cragjaw, if the great frosty beast still lived that is.
Once it was clear his task had been set, Arc went back to his quiet prattling. It had proven to be very effective for keeping him at least entertained.
A courtly gesture to the right direction was all she got, and Calia set her feet to motion. The silence between them stretching even longer, truly cementing that terrible weight of realization that she they might’ve been together, but Calia was still alone. Sometimes she stole a glance over her shoulder to spy him muttering to himself in elvish words she couldn’t understand. Putting together his grand scheme – a thing that surely was a bad idea in the making. Even Calia for all of her mistakes could recognize he was more likely to hurt himself than solve the problem he wanted to solve.
Magic was beautiful and powerful… but there were still things it couldn’t do.
He was right about one thing, though. They were too different. For Archimedes was trapped in a past he couldn’t let go of to move on, and Calia was so overwhelmed by the present that she couldn’t see past her current feelings. That great faerie tree had put them together with a purpose and every time Calia thought she understood, it slipped through her fingers again. Had the tree meant to spare one it once looked after from torture and suffering? Because it sure seemed like Calia was making him worse. Or had it intended all along for her to just take his heart from him to keep for herself.
Then why give a prophecy for him to hear as well!
She was so tired.
After awhile all she could do was empty her head of thoughts. Save for a brief moment when she grew so annoyed with that shade of yellow she wore, that she drained all of the color out of it to this grim cloudy grey. It was such a stupid shallow attempt at something different, that it was embarrassing. That need to use magic as her emotional outlet remained strong, however. The higher they had to climb into the mountainous terrain, the stronger she let the magic be. Almost encouraged by the dropping temperatures with the elevation, delicate layers of frost became full sheets of ice. Pulling moisture from the ground and air to make needle looking icey formations as if they were growing like grass and plants from the earth.
Arc’s reply to Calia was little more than the courtesy of a glance, the faintest inclination of his head, and a hum that neither confirmed nor denied anything. It was a politeness without depth, a gesture meant to acknowledge her presence while keeping the carefully built distance between them intact. His focus returned to the floating parchment and quill, the scribe trailing him like a pale moth tethered on invisible string, recording every low-spoken word in the flowing cadence of Elvish. The language curled from his tongue in measured syllables, dense with alchemical lattices and the abstruse mathematics of memory theory—concepts that would sound like gibberish to anyone without decades in both arcane and apothecarial study.
They ascended higher into the pass, where the air thinned and the cold gnawed not at the skin but the marrow. Arc’s form carried the strain reluctantly; demons were not made for such climates. His breath stayed even, his stride measured, but the tight set of his jaw and the creeping stiffness in his movements betrayed the toll. Eventually, without breaking the rhythm of his dictation, he made a small, deliberate motion—dismissing the spectral page and quill in a shiver of displaced air. The arcane tether snapped and they vanished, their work sealed for later.
He began pulling at his magic for heavier layers, winter-weight fabrics etched with faint runes of retained warmth. The act was quiet, methodical… until the mountain breathed differently.
At first, the change was subtle, the sort of shift you might dismiss as nothing more than the mountain exhaling. The light thinned into a pallid grey, not the usual dimming of an overcast sky but something stranger—like the sun itself had been smeared behind a film of shadow rising from below rather than descending from above. The snow underfoot darkened in uneven ripples, faint as spilled ink spreading through parchment. The wind, once a clean, brittle whistle through the crags, turned sharp-edged and dry. It carried a noise too thin to be sound—a fine, fragile crackle, like silk tearing far away in a place you could never quite reach.
Overhead, clouds gathered with unnatural precision, knotting together in crooked veins that pulsed faintly with light. It wasn’t the rolling billow of a storm front; it was the jagged bloom of lightning captured and held, as though the sky itself had been scored open but never allowed to break. Static prickled over Arc’s skin, lifting the fine hairs along his nape. His eyes narrowed, scanning every ridge and narrow gully between frozen stone, the faint pulse of danger beating louder in his chest with each breath. The sound came next. Not the frail snap of ice or the hollow thud of snow shifting on stone. This was deeper—an ancient, resonant groan that crawled through the bones, vibrating in the marrow. It was the sound of weight long buried deciding it no longer wished to remain so.
Ahead, the snowfield fractured! A single point split open, hissing plumes of vapor curling upward like steam from a fissure in the world. The cracks ran outward in frantic veins, webbing across the ground until, with a deafening detonation, the earth erupted. Shards of ice and rock blasted into the air, whirling in a deadly halo as something vast and terrible forced its way into the open. The first thing to break free was the head—massive, wedge-shaped, and crowned with jagged ridges of stone-fused ice. Its jaw gaped wide, revealing teeth like glacier spears, each rimed in frost so deep it burned to look at them. Eyes glowed in its skull with the dim, furious ember of something that had once known fire but had buried it beneath an eternity of cold. Cragjaw, the frost-and-stone drake, dragged itself into the world like a corpse clawing from the grave, its vast bulk shearing through rock and permafrost as though they were no more than breakable crust.
The impact of its emergence slammed through the pass in bone-shaking shockwaves. Snow leapt from the ground, tumbling in great clouds. Loose scream and slabs of ice broke free from the cliff walls, cascading down in deadly sheets. The very air changed, thickening, tightening, as the storm arrived—not following in its wake, but pouring from the beast itself.
Its first breath was a vortex, a spiraling exhalation of razor-edged snow and shards of frozen stone. The blizzard rose in seconds, swallowing visibility to little more than the reach of an outstretched hand. The wind screamed between the cliffs, laced with the faint shimmer of lightning that arced and danced within the whiteout, static snapping against skin and steel.
Arc moved before thought could catch up! In one swift, brutal motion, he hooked an arm around Calia’s waist, yanking her flush against him as the ground beneath them buckled and split. Cragjaw’s first strike wasn’t with claw or teeth—it was with the mountain itself. A shuddering convulsion of the earth sent a forest of jagged icicles spearing upward, each as thick as a man’s leg and sharp enough to split bone.
The shockwave flung them upward, and Arc twisted midair, placing himself squarely between her and the oncoming death. The spears found him—long, merciless shards punching through his back and bursting through his chest in hot, searing agony that steamed in the frozen air. The scent of iron bloomed around them, fleeting and sharp before the wind tore it away.
Momentum carried them into a chaotic tumble. Snow rose up to swallow them, cold and suffocating, but Arc’s body stayed locked in place over hers—an unyielding cage of flesh and bone, arms braced so her head never struck the stone beneath.
Above, the drake’s roar rolled through the pass, not as a single sound but as a force—low enough to rattle teeth, deep enough to make the blood hum in their veins. Massive claws gouged the ice, each step shaking the ground as the shadow of its colossal frame blotted out what little light remained. Even with frostfire tearing at his lungs and the hot throb of impalement beneath his ribs, Arc didn’t move from his place between her and the monster. Whatever grudge that easily worse than some old man being pissed that kids had walked on his lawn, Cragjaw was not here to show them mercy!
It was coming for death and they were both on the menu!
The mountain cold was in Calia’s veins. A mountain daughter born and bred, yet even more than that there must have been something in her faeish descent that it her element. For all that she could weave and create, that crispness of the cold was a soothing balm to all of her fury and the numbing ache that now took residence in her chest. It made the climb a little more bearable, gave a sense of quiet peace to what was otherwise an awkward, tense walk between not-quite-strangers.
How the land shifted – subtle, bizarre – it was that very magic that piqued her interest the very second she felt it. No longer leaking her own spells simply to regulate her own self, Calia’s attention was brought fully into the presence. Verdant green gaze turning to the sky where the summer blues had gone away to be replace with a washed out hue that wasn’t created by the natural weather. The wind shifted direction, feeling more like a stinging bite when it whipped through her hair and clothes. Archimedes had gone on high alert, as she could see him stopping out of the corner of her eye.
Perhaps she should have been afraid. Known the danger for it was. Yet when the sound of something ancient stuck, cracking ice and stone with an echo through the whole canyon valley, it wasn’t fear rearing it’s head. This was something old, something kindred. Pulling a cord in her that was nothing less than thrilling.
And it came bursting out of the ground, awakened from some age-old sleep with all the fury in the world. Calia didn’t balk, didn’t scream – oh she shifted a foot and held a hand to the side just in case that massive rolling avalanche of stone and ice might come crashing down their way. Massive form of scales and long lumbering body built out of the very embers itself, a dragon? A drake? He called a storm with nothing but will, churning the sky into a vortex of snow and lightening.
He was magnificent. This might’ve been the most beautiful thing Calia had ever witnessed in her life.
An entire blanket of white was barreling down like an ocean wave and in an instant she went from marveling at a masterpiece to being snatched clear off her feet. Going from that wonderful frozen cold the fiery grip of a demon and the warm stain of blood. All happening in the blink of an eye, that Calia didn’t even have a chance to take a breath until they had crashed on the ground. Snow coming down so heavy that they were both swallowed up in a mound of sparkling white thick enough to now muffle the sounds of the drake’s thunderous roar. Staring with wide eyed surprise that this damn demon was making himself the very physical shield preventing them from being crushed.
Why. Why, why, why, Archimedes.
Who was she kidding. Calia would’ve pulled the same shit. Was about to do the same goddamned thing.
There was always something different that came over her when there was real danger. Not the emotional screaking she did with Arc, for some reason that was unique to him and him alone. Real danger required something else – a stillness. A quiet confidence that she was so much more deadly than whatever her foe could be. And this one? This was her element, her kindred soul. A beautiful beast that she was eager to meet. And if anyone was going to be a meat shield against an icy drake, it needed to be her!
Untangling her arms she slipped them past Arc, pressing palms flat against the iced snow and pushed with a chime of magic until it rose and domed like some northern igloo to give enough space to remove the pressure off the demon and roll them both until it was her on top and rising to her knees. Setting fingertips to his blood that’d stained the fallen snow to send it melting away with a scorching ring. A circle of warmth forming for his sake alone in the scattered rock around them. No ice, no cold, not even a single snowflake was going to get past it.
When she stood to turn and face the massive drake, there still was no fear. Only an elegant poise in rising fingers to her lips and letting loose such a high pitched whistle that it bounced and chimed and echoed across the whole of the canyon. Over the shrieking blizzard winds and the very pissed off roar of the creature itself. Reaching outwards with her borrowed magic in a way that was finally starting to feel natural. The very storm above them slowed to an eerie crawl. The wind simpered to a gentle breeze. Snowflakes stopped midway and held their breath.
“You need to calm the fuck down,” she shouted boldly. “One so beautiful doesn’t need to be that pissed right out of the gate!”
Calia was no fool, though, she was already bracing her feet and pulling her hands back to shield or defend by any means necessary!
Arc forced air into his lungs in short, ragged draws, each breath catching on the spear-points of ice still lodged in his back. Pain radiated outward in pulses that felt molten against the cold, soaking through the layers of his clothing in slow, searing waves. His blood steamed in the frigid air, curling upward in faint ribbons before vanishing into the storm’s breath. He didn’t waste that breath on telling her what he thought—didn’t bother with the sharp retorts that usually came so easily. And he could feel it before Cragjaw spoke—the pressure rolling through the canyon, heavy and absolute, like the air itself had turned to iron. It wasn’t just cold. It was wrong. Magic shrank back into his bones, threads of his own power slipping from his grasp as though cut from the weave. The sensation was suffocating, like a fist clamping down around the base of his skull.
His hand, trembling more from the drag of blood loss than fear, lifted toward her. “Calia—” he stammered, voice breaking under the weight pressing against his chest. He knew this feeling. Recognition hit like another blow. “Stop—he’s—”
But the drake’s voice thundered through the pass, a sound that felt carved from the mountain itself. “THIS IS MY TERRITORY. NO FAE. NO DEMON. NO MORTAL. NONE BUT OF DRAGON BLOOD MAY WALK IT.” The storm roared with him, the wind cutting with shards of sleet, the snow swirling like the sea in a whirlpool. “YOU WILL NOT INTERFERE IN MY REALM.“
The nullification came fully down then, snapping shut like the last lock on a vault. Every ember of magic that wasn’t his own collapsed, smothered to nothing. The warmth she’d made for him faltered and went out. The frost came rushing back in.
Arc’s boots ground into the ice as he pushed forward, blood leaving dark smears in the snow. He caught her wrist in a grip that was far stronger than his trembling frame suggested. “D-dragons and drake’s that have nested long e…enough can build wards into the land itself,” he forced out through gritted teeth, his voice rough and raw. “Barriers that smother all other magic—fae, demon, arcane—it dies here.” His gaze cut to Cragjaw, its massive shadow blotting the canyon’s mouth. “This is his domain, and nothing you throw at him will survive the air we’re breathing.” Trying hard to indicate one could not fight with magic here!
Even as the ground shook under the drake’s approach, Arc kept his body as upright as he could and the beast, shoulders squared despite the jagged ice still buried in his flesh. He’d bleed out on this snow before letting that thing touch her truthfully. Cragjaw’s massive head lowered, frost-plated ridges along his skull glinting in the fractured light as he angled toward them. The movement was slow, deliberate—predator’s pacing, each step grinding claw and talon deep into the ice with a sound like splintering bone. His breath came in heavy gusts, plumes of crystalline frost rolling from his nostrils to haze the air between them.
He circled wide, the sheer bulk of his body forcing the storm to bend and curl around his form. The weight of his gaze fixed on Arc, eyes burning with that cold, ember-glow—a draconic recognition that went deeper than sight. A low, rolling growl poured from his throat, the kind that resonated through the ground as much as it did the air.
When he spoke again, it was less a declaration than a sentence handed down from something older than the mountains themselves. “I know you.” The words were laced with a dangerous curiosity, almost tasting Arc’s presence in the air. His gaze cut briefly to Calia, then back to him, dismissive yet watchful. “You… are no stranger to ruin. And yet—” his voice deepened, the growl returning, “—You walk in my lands as though it were yours.” His stare narrowed, “Fae are no better. Entering where they think they are permitted and behave like they own all.”
He drew closer, his bulk blotting out what little light filtered through the clouds, snow swirling harder in his wake. “You are unwelcome. You are unwanted. Both of you.” The final words were spat like shards of ice, cold enough to sting the skin, his head lowering until the edges of his glacial teeth were visible between scaled lips. The drake’s path tightened, his circle closing. Each step was a challenge, every calculated turn a reminder that they were prey standing in the hunting ground of something that feared nothing. The ground beneath them groaned again—not from his weight alone, but from the power he was holding just at the edge of release.
Generally when one was met with something so unfathomly large, so perfectly powerful, a person ought to be shaking in the boots. When the drake seemed push back against her magic to send storm resuming it’s brew and snow to fly once again like it was nothing to him? Calia could only be inspired! Impressed! He was amazing… loud… but amazing!
Then without warning, the curtain came down. All the way from the very sky where she had reached to the cloud, drifting like the snowflakes themselves, it covered the valley until she could feel it bearing down, smothering every thread, every spark. Her spellwork collapsed as the demon’s magic fled from her, back to himself. Not a break entirely, the bond held strong, just… muted dullness. Like having a cold and one couldn’t breath through their nose.
…that was concerning.
Arc grabbed her wrist, explaining to her quickly through gritted pain and if a stare could kill someone on sight, the look she gave him was positively scorching.
“Seems like an important detail one should’ve shared before we fucking got here,” she hissed through her teeth, wrenching her wrist free of his grip.
This was a fight they could have later. If they didn’t get crushed to death. Truly, Calia was pissed enough now she might just let that happen!
Calia took in a deep breath and let it out in a slow, calming release. Watching as the enormous drake shifted form to examine the pair of them, seeming to have some recognition of Archimedes – that was great, she was surprised they weren’t dead already, then! – only to realize the fact they hadn’t already been crushed was surely in their favor. If this Cragjaw truly wanted his peace and quiet, all it would take was a massive foot to smash down on top of them. To open his jaw and obliterate them with any sort of magic he pleased.
But he didn’t. Which meant he either loved to play with his food first, or he was simply bored enough to entertain guests.
Calia welcomed the idea of death, so did it really matter which?
“In my defense, I am always unwanted nor am I old as the dirt, so how am I supposed to know specifically which realms are forbidden? You didn’t put up any signs,” she answered with all the grace a petulant young woman could give. Complete with resting her hands on her hips and giving a soft roll of her shoulders. If magic couldn’t be used to get out of this, then Calia was going to have to rely on pure stupid bullshit.
“I’ve never met a drake before and you might just be the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. If this is how I’m going to die, I’m not mad about it. Give me the icy stab or freeze me into a glacier if you please.”
And as she ran her mouth Calia formed a new plan. As the drake’s nullifying spell might drape over this valley and prevent her from reaching through the bond to use Arc’s magic… her heart, her own magic? That wasn’t here, was it. She’d drop like a rock not a second later, so it was surly a last resort, but she was certain she could throw this stupid demon like a rock through fae travel and then die smug.
Arc’s laugh was a thin, ragged thing—less humor than surrender. The sound caught on a hitch of pain, ribs grinding where the icicles had punched through, and for a moment his breath stuttered in the cold. His eyes held on Calia for the barest heartbeat, the muscle in his jaw twitching once before he let it all drop.
“…Enough.” His voice was hoarse, but final. He straightened just enough to stand without leaning on her, blood dripping steady now from his back into the snow. “I’m done. Whatever happens next, it’s yours to deal with.”
He turned to Cragjaw, ignoring the ache in his limbs, and gave the drake a single, deliberate gesture—a slow, open-palmed sweep toward himself, courtly and damning all at once. “If you want me, take me.”
The air cracked from below. Not the crunch of frost, but a deep, resonant pulse that tore the magic out of the world in one silent wave. It raced up his bones and hollowed him, stripping the bond between himself and his power until only emptiness remained. Arc staggered, eyes widening at the cold vacuum left behind.
Cragjaw moved like an avalanche—massive tail lashing sideways with a force that whipped the air into a screaming gale. Arc had no time to brace before it smashed into him with the weight of a falling cliff. The impact crushed through muscle and bone, throwing him off his feet in a brutal arc through the air.
He hit the ground hard enough to hear something in his chest crack. Before he could even drag breath back into his lungs, the drake was on him—one colossal claw slamming down, the serrated curve of it pinning him through the side and into the ice below. The pressure was blinding, a red haze washing across his vision as the talon punched through flesh and locked him there like prey caught under a hunter’s heel. Driving down the body of the demon into the earth. The storm roared around them, snow and shards of frozen rock whipping past in blinding sheets. Above, Cragjaw’s voice was a jagged thunder: “Unwelcome. Unwanted. I do not like your kind. And here… you die.”
Arc clearly WANTED her to hit him, that was the only reason Calia could possibly fathom for him opening his mouth and saying something so incredibly stupid. Worse yet, he couldn’t just shut his mouth and let her handle things – he had to go and give himself up as the target, knowing damn well this massive beast was going to strike first at what he was familiar with, had a potential history with.
“Nunu-no, no!” the words slipped out of her mouth in that moment of panic, already shifting to launch herself at him to stop whatever terrible thing was to happen next. Feeling not but bitter cold wind when giant scaled tail whipped and cracked, hitting the ground hard when she missed her mark – Cragjaw didn’t miss, though. She could hear it with a cringe when Arc hit the ground, scrambling to her feet in the short second it took for claw to come slamming down with piercing talon and- fuck, she could almost feel that one herself. Nearly staggering when the ground rippled.
Still, she ran to close the distance, stooped to pick up a rock and when she’d gotten to he head of him she tossed that rock at right his nose. Gone was the calm and the control, all of her trying to think a few steps ahead. She didn’t know how many his a demon like Archimedes could take before he died, but it sure as hell couldn’t be much more than this!
“You’re a damn disappointment!” she shrieked at the drake, useless maybe but it was unfettered truth of the moment. Grabbing onto pinning claw for all the good that was going to do her while she desperately tried to reach out beyond this cursed valley to where ever her heart had been stolen too. Calia could do it, she’d done it once before – and yet when she needed it the most that tether kept slipping through her fingers.
“Some fucking legendary thing you are! A kindred spirit my ass – I thought you were amazing, but you’ve got no fucking honor to be killing like this! Don’t kill him!“
The drake’s weight was not simply a claw upon Arc’s chest—it was the press of ages, the crushing certainty of a predator that had ruled these peaks long before either fae or demon had learned to crawl. Calia’s shouts were swallowed by the wind, scattered like dry leaves in the teeth of the storm.
Cragjaw’s head dipped lower, frost steaming from his nostrils, the low rumble of his voice vibrating through the ice beneath them. “You come here in the arrogance of the small, believing yourselves bold, or clever, or fated. You trespass upon the marrow of the world and call it chance. You bleed into my snow and think you have been spared because I have not yet taken the breath from your lungs.” His words were ice and stone, a language that felt as though it had been spoken before fire ever dared to rise in the dark.
The glow in his eyes sharpened to slits, pinning Arc as the focus of that ancient fury. “Demon,” he hissed, and the wind hissed with him, a thousand shards of snow cutting sideways in the gale. “I know your scent. Your kind are the rot beneath the glaciers. Parasites on the bones of mountains. There is no covenant, no bargain, no mercy for you here.”
He shifted his claw deliberately, driving it deeper until Arc’s body arched against the ice with a sickening crack of bone. Blood darkened the snow in a slow, steaming flood. Where Cragjaw forced her back with a flick of his forelimb, to send her stumbling as if swatted by a collapsing wall.
“You both die here. But you…” His head lowered further, maw yawning wide, the fangs within slick with cold vapor. “…you die first.”
The storm seemed to draw in toward him, a vast inhale of the mountain itself. Lightning rippled deep within his throat, entwined with a frost so pure it burned blue-white. The gale roared outward, and then Cragjaw struck—slamming his jaw down upon Arc with the weight of an avalanche given flesh. The sound was not the simple end of a body, but the rending of something older, deeper. Cragjaw lifted his head slowly, Arc limp between his teeth, frost clinging to skin already paling. He let the body fall into the snow with a dull, final sound, the crimson seeping outward in a halo that froze as it spread.
“Demons,” he growled again, voice thick with finality, “Do not leave my realm alive.“
And above, the storm howled its agreement.
Calia didn’t care how big and old this damn thing was, she reached and she pulled and stretched for any piece of magic she could grasp in the world – derailed only because she might as well have been considered a flea to this ancient being. Landing hard and rolling in a bank of snow. Barely even having time to push herself up off the ground when she felt it – oh she did feel it, this awful crunching of bone. Letting off this pleading strangled shriek that came far too late to spare the demon from getting snatched up within glacier gleaming jowls. Dropped to the ground in a pool of his own blood that was quickly crystalizing in the blistering wind.
Why. Why. Why would he have them come this way. They could’ve gone any way else. Any direction, any place. Did he really hate her so much that a bloodied death was preferable to just walking through the mountains beside her. He was the only reason she even bothered to keep breathing anymore and this was how much he couldn’t stand it. Walked them into a death trap so he could have a glorious demise. Arc could have stabbed her herself and it would’ve hurt less than this!
Calia sat there in the snow for a millennia, or so it felt. That numbness in her chest had surely spread to the rest of her limbs and she’d abandoned her attempts at trying to reach her own magic. What was the point now? Just to send one spiteful last blow, then faint and die anyway? What she did truly didn’t matter anymore.
Any sane person would’ve gotten up and ran like hell. Probably would’ve been futile, yet at least they would’ve made the choice to try. Then there was Calia, who didn’t have a lick of sense, let alone sanity. Finally finding will to drag herself off the ground to make her way to the bloodied mess of a broken body. She didn’t want to see it, but he deserved the dignity of at least one person mourning over his corpse.
When she did tear her stare away to look up the old ancient thing, still fearless, still standing perfectly tall and head held high, there was nothing but contempt there. Deep disappointment and a sense of betrayal, despite the fact this beast was no true kindred of hers. It was just a big territorial monster that thought it’s aged marrow made him better than all other things.
“…lizard.” she spat. “Frostbitten dragon’s taint! Get on with it, then. Tell me why I’m a plague and squash me into the earth. Then go back to your napping or swallowing goats or whatever the fuck forgotten old things do when they’re not busy being murdering folk who just wandered down the wrong path.”
Calia threw her middle finger up for good measure. As she sure as hell wasn’t going to go out crying.
“Little fae,” he rumbled, voice so vast the ground itself seemed to tremble with it. “Your screams are as hollow as your threats. I care nothing for your grief, nor for the corpse you cling to. This is my land—my marrow carved into mountain, my breath woven into storm. No fae, no demon, no wandering scrap of flesh dares walk it without paying the price. And I do not bargain. I do not show mercy. I kill.”
His breath rolled out in a blizzard gale, sharp with the taste of stone and frost, curling snow into cruel spirals around her. He leaned lower, massive head blotting out what little sky remained, jaws yawning wide as teeth like glaciers glistened inches above her trembling frame. “Demons die here. And you—” his voice dropped into a guttural snarl, spittle freezing before it hit the earth, “—You would too, were it not for one truth carved older than your petty rage.”
The air stilled. The storm held its breath. His eye fixed upon her, unblinking, cutting through her bravado as though he’d peeled the skin back to stare at the marrow of what she was.
“You reek of Highborn blood,” he hissed. “It drips from your bones like rot I cannot scour. By the old draconic code, I cannot strike you down—not yet. Not here. The pact of ancient fire and fae forbids it. Were you of lesser breed, your blood would already paint the snow. But you—” he drew back slightly, nostrils flaring in disgust, “—You are the kind who blusters through every storm, snarling like you are untouchable, when in truth you are nothing but a brittle branch snapping under your own weight. Reckless. Unruly. Too proud to know fear, too broken to know wisdom. You think that makes you strong? It only makes you dangerous to yourself.”
The claw holding her shifted, not in kindness but in contempt, as if the mere act of not crushing her was insult enough. His jaws snapped shut with a sound like boulders splitting, and he exhaled a huff of winter that coated her in ice crystals.
“Do not mistake my restraint for favor,” Cragjaw spat. “You live only because of a law written before either of us drew breath. But this land is mine, and if you linger, it will bury you. No fae, no demon, no creature of arrogance or grief will outlast me here.”
He leaned close once more, the abyss of his throat visible in the dim glow of his maw, before snapping his head away with a final, contemptuous growl. “Leave, Highborn. Rage at me, curse me, spit your venom. It changes nothing. In my realm, you are already dead.”
Calia couldn’t even die right. Couldn’t just lay down and perish when someone wanted her dead, and apparently couldn’t get someone to kill her when she wanted it all to stop. She was going to walk this world eternal. Failing at everything she did. Destroying anything she could’ve loved.
No wonder Cragjaw had buried himself alone in these mountains and had the worst fucking attitude if someone so much as stepped a toe on his lands. Kindred spirit indeed.
She flicked layers of frost off her sleeves and when massive claw seemed to loosen and pull away, Calia took a step backwards. It was about as far as she got before her knees decided they didn’t want to work anymore and she fell back on her ass. Sitting there on the snow covered rocks as that aching numbness inside her stretched out from torso to limbs. Like the great ancient beast said, it was useless to let it all out and rage against him. So inward it went, concealed, crushed, suppressed.
Calia found herself back at the very beginning again, and whether she wanted to or not choices had to be made.
Eyes slide back over to the now large pool of red and broken thing that was meant to be Archimedes, her guts twisted and wrenched. Calia couldn’t stand to leave him here. Even if he was dead, she didn’t want to leave him alone.
“…since I can’t take him with me, I guess I’m just going to stay.” she announced. Usually such a statement would have some sass to it, but she was too tired, too done with all of this. Resignation to her current fate because she couldn’t see past this very moment to realize there might actually be other options. “I’ll leave when he’s returned to the earth. Because I am indeed all those things you said, but most of all I’m willfully spiteful. We’re going to become the best of friends in the meantime, or your realm can swallow me up. Whatever happens first.”
The drake’s shadow lingered over her a moment longer, a jagged crown of frost and hatred blotting the storm’s pale light. Then Cragjaw pulled back, a grinding rumble rising from deep in his chest. His talon withdrew from the earth and from the ruined demon with a wet crack that made the mountain groan, and his exhale came in a plume of killing-cold frost, hissing over the snow like acid.
He scoffed, low and jagged, a sound like boulders shearing apart. “Reckless. Stupid. Blind.” His voice rolled through the canyon with the weight of stonefall. “You think this is an ending? You think you have watched a demon’s death? Fool. Demons do not die. Their flesh breaks, their bones shatter—but their black souls return. That one already crawls back to the pit. The Hell that spawned him will open its maw, and it will take him home.”
He turned the dim fire of one eye down upon her, unblinking, cold as the glacier that birthed him. There was no anger in the look—just the indifference of a predator who had already chosen where to bite. He lashed his tail against the cliffs, shattering loose ice, and avalanches thundered into the pass. Whether the collapse buried her or not, he did not care.
“Cling to his corpse if you must. Wail, spit, curse—it makes no difference. The cold will strip you bare long before your grief finds its end.” His voice deepened, more growl than word. The drake shifted, massive body grinding against rock as he turned. Each step split the frozen earth as though the mountain itself strained under him. He did not look back. A final snort burst from his nostrils, spraying frost across the stones, his words scattering with it like shards of ice:
“Rot with the snow. You are nothing worth my jaws.” And with that, he moved into the white veil of his storm, the winds rising at his call, snow lashing like claws across the ridges. His silhouette dissolved into the blizzard—no mercy, no backward glance, only the contempt of an apex beast leaving its prey to die of cold.
Calia nodded along. Reckless, stupid, blind. All apt, all perfectly her.
Then she froze, the new statements slowly sinking into her awareness as if she were being stabbed by those very icicles all around her. Demons didn’t die. In all of her shock, panic, rage and fury Calia had forgotten that one piece of information. Archimedes had told her himself, hadn’t he, that demons were eternal. They just popped right back into their own realm and simply had to find some new way out if they wanted.
The wave of emotion that hit her may as well have been the very avalanche of rock and snow that Cragjaw dislodged from the cliffsides. Relief sweeping in first and foremost, that he was alive and somehow in one piece. Hot burning anger came next, because he’d allowed them to come here and he knew all along he’d be fine.
…then it was the cold, biting bitterness. He truly did hate her this much. Gave her no warning of what to expect, protected her from harm only to be sure she had to watch him get smashed to pieces. Outright abandoned her the cruelest way possible because even the realms of hell was better than Calia.
At first she did sit there, determined to rot with the snow. Hoping maybe that she could die anyway out of pure spite. Arc wanted her to live, well fuck that! She wanted to die! Yet the longer she sat there, waiting for the cold to lull her into some sort of forever sleep all it really did was nip and sting. It spoke and whispered in it’s own special way. Ice and snow – water was eternal too. It held the memories of the entire world and even it knew Calia was not going to sit there and waste away.
With the beast returning to his own rest, the strange nullifying magic he’d cast over his realm was starting to abate as well. Knowing in his darkest heart that Calia was no threat to he and his, and apparently holding tight to ancient law that she was not to die by his claws. Without Cragjaw’s overbearing presence consuming all senses, she could finally feel that tiny little spark of a tug return. Seeping like a faucet drip to prove that indeed her bond with the demon was still there and intact. Simply it was stretched far across multiple realms.
She needed to get away from here. Maybe then she could think on what to do next. For in that moment Calia wasn’t sure if she wanted to storm the hells to find Arc and punch him in the face, or if he had finally stamped out that last shred of hope she’d been clinging so desperately to. To let him go and not look back.
Before she gathered herself to her feet, Calia used what little magic she could grasp to pull all of that demon blood stained snow upwards to her hands. She condensed it and squished it, shaped and formed it until there was a musical clink and it solidified into a small shimmering gem that shifted color from red to violet depending on how the light caught it. She put it away for later, unsure yet what it’s purpose would be – to bitterly squeeze or to covet fondly – only knowing she needed a piece of him.
Only then did Calia finally pick herself up off the ground and started walking, heading straight through Cragjaw’s forbidden lands to still seek out an entrance to the mountain tunnels. Until she passed out of his realm, she wouldn’t know how much of Arc’s magic she could still pull. With magic, she’d decide if he made his point loud and clear and whether or not they were done with each other for good.