The trek climbing up the mountain trails didn’t come with a lot of talking, at least not on Calia’s end. She might have done a little too much talking with all the thoughts swirling around in her head now, not that it was a bad thing. Somewhere in all the drama inside his tower, she’d settled into a few strange truths, a little bit of peace that made her silence more a comfortable relief rather than a strained awkwardness.
Ever so often she’d get caught glancing his way, mouth turning into some wicked gleam of a smile with an inner thought one could just tell was likely something witty, or filthy, or frustratingly ridiculous. Yet she didn’t utter one word about them, truthfully only because even she had to deal with the biting cold entering her lungs and the exertion of climbing up the mountain side.
Hours had ticked by, when finally a big cliff side opened up to reveal the large mouth of a cave. With no coincidence that the stone around it had been carved to look very much like the craggy drake that lived on this side of the mountain range, jaw open wide and ready to swallow. Likewise, there was no surprise in seeing just how neglected this pass had become. No one had taken this mountain pass in decades, perhaps even longer. The few items that hinted that people once came through here had long since broken down and weathered.
Calia stooped to break off some old wood and gather a discarded piece of metal, using magic to fashion up a functioning lantern to hold a little orb of magical flame. Granted, she likely could’ve made some light spell float all around them, so it was simply a telling sign that she just liked making things.
At least this one wasn’t alive!
“It’ll get warmer under the rock without all this wind,” she told him with that amused smile.
By the time they had or rather she had found a nice literal hole in the wall, he hardly had much to complain about. Either his mouth had been frozen shut or he was worried that one word might create enough frost to crystallize into ice to create that very problem! Blaming his resistance entirely on the fact that his last hundred years had been spent in a very hot, broiling environment nine times out of ten! Granted, it likely worked in their favour that he hadn’t been a rattling one sided conversation machine as per usual. Having only met her eyes with those amused grins that were just ruminated all sorts of nonsense.
Whatever it was, such things had kept her comfy and he had no need to go prying like some desperate hound for a bone.
Because honestly, if it were important, she’d have said it. Accepting the comfortable peace against the uncomfortable cold, the moment she made her little lantern, Arc buried his face further into the fur of his cowl.
“I damn well hope so, yer about to have a livin’ demonsicle to deal with.” Muttering about it in his best unhappy tone, “I’d complain to Gaia herself about this shitty weather but I doubt the earth mother is prone to takin’ advice from plebeians.”
Calia took the lead of stepping into the wide open mouth of the cave, keeping a wary eye out for bears or actual yeti. With the pass not being used by people, it was highly likely to be a home for big animals seeking refuge from particularly windy days. The roar of the wind died off quickly the further they stepped in, the glow of her newly made lantern revealing the structure and carvings of those who once used this pass.
Dragonkin and dwarves, so it seemed. Neither of which seemed very common to see, though she knew they still existed somewhere in the world. Caeldalmor had it’s excuses for being isolated and cut off from trade. Edelguard too had seemed to grow isolated itself, even despite having access to coastlines. It was curious how so many countries, kingdoms and people had separated from each other, scattering and hiding away. Cutting off trade that used to sprawl wide enough to even have created these intricate mountain passes to begin with. Enough to make her wonder what happened all those decades ago, or if it hadn’t been one singular event, but instead a series of them that tore the world apart.
“You could have just shrank yourself down to the little beetle and napped in my pocket, you know,” she told him. Honestly surprised he hadn’t, as it wouldn’t have been any extra weight on her to carry. He’d be toasty warm and Calia would have him close by, a win-win in her opinion.
As she walked further into the tunnel, she had to step over old bones, drawing up a frown before glancing backwards from where they came. Unfortunate victims hiding from an ancient drake? Ones found dead in the snow and dragged in? They were old and bleached by time, so at least whatever fate felled them, it wasn’t anything recent.
“I didn’t want to risk freezin’ in mid air attemptin’ to do so! Then yah would’ve had to roast me over a open flame to get me to thaw.” Eyes flowed upwards long the cut of the walls. Considering it in a very mundane way that wasn’t remotely considering what sort of other things would have called this place temporary home. Or how it came to be. Or what could have been. “Plus, well, call me a new man. I don’t think I be needin’ to treat yah like my pack mule. How can yah see my visible misery if I’m all shiny and hidden away in yer pocket. This face,” Gloved hands motioned to the sherpa hidden features, “Is an animated wonder to project every little thin’.”
He could have remarked that he was pretty sure she liked looking at it too but reserved that to silence. Not about to challenge her into deciding to see how fast he could run in the cold!
Of course as they were walking and apparently finding bleached bones, “Ah the old home owners,” Arc offered in his demented glee, “Yah think they’ll give us a tour?”
“Aye, animated wonder and oh so pretty to look at,” she shot back with that curve of a grin, unknowingly speaking the words he’d been thinking. Taking only the slightest step sideways to gently nudge into his arm with her shoulder in a move that was very reminiscent of an affectionate cat. He was deeming himself to be a new man, well, Calia had decided it was time to become more of her natural self. Not just the repressed princess, or the wild tavern crawler. Not just the beastly rage-filled thing, or the magical woodland huntress. It was high time she merged all those things and tried to be one cohesive person.
Besides, it wasn’t as if it was the first time she’d thrown such comments his way or deliberate double entendre. Calia had done so since they first met, now it just had… a new layer to it. Something new and complicated she didn’t know how to name.
“They’ve been there a century at least, I don’t think they’re talking any time soon,” other than a few scrapes of leather and scattered pieces that’d could’ve been parts of a belt, there wasn’t any fabric of clothing left behind. It’d long decayed or been scavenged as nesting material for critters.
She continued forward with her light, keeping her attention to the walls and the occasional archways that helped support the tunnels from collapse. Like the one she’d gone through to leave Caeldalmor, these were old and made by people who were talented with their stonework. Made to last for centuries and to keep on holding for centuries more still. That old elven started to shine through here and there in some of the motifs, but for the most part it was obvious that these parts of the mountains weren’t meant for the usual sort of trade travel. Between Cragjaw and the ominous opening, this might’ve just been a blackroads route for smuggling and thieves.
Perfect for a pair like them.
He would have cupped his cheeks in that moment to really add to the dramatic flare but wasn’t about to pry himself free of his little mobile fur suit. Settling for, “That’s part of the charm. Pretty to look at, dazzles just enough that people forget that I have a shit streak and am for all intents and purposes, a devil in more ways than one.” Suggesting he really did baffle people with bullshit and used his apparent looks to distract them so when he was rattling off nonstop, they weren’t too focused on it.
Still there was no pause in the way he smirked at her for how she was meeting that chaotic mettle without some pretense that would make both of their skins itch.
Plenty enough of that when it came to the tunnel of a cave. Looking around and barely having the wits to tell one rock from the other. Besides the bony remains of whatever poor stiff had been unfortunate to have their last resting place be here.
Yet, “Oh love, yah be temptin’ me with such words. I ain’t been one to mess with necromancy before but for a giggle, I might be intrigued to raise them and make them be our chatty tour guides.” Which would be a feat since he had proper claim on chatterbox. Of course, it was between that thought, “Is this a way into the mountain or just a very deep bear’s nest we just ain’t discovered yet. All this shit looks the same to me.”
Calia actually tossed him a look of surprise then – not about raising the skeletons, one of them was bound to make that joke and naturally he got there first – it was his completely lack of knowing what any of the stonework meant. Granted, he’d spent most of the time in the hells, but still…
“I would have thought the genius mage and future advisor to the crown would’ve been a little more in the know,” she commented, stopping near one of the carvings in the wall where she could see the context plain as day. Realizing in that moment, where Calia might’ve struggled studying words and language, just reading in general… maybe she had still picked up a lot more knowledge than she’d realized from the inked out imagery in all of those books. In all of those ways culture and history had been taught through oral lesson or physical hands on encounters.
“This is wearing a people’s pride in their work,” came a quick explanation. “A dwarven kingdom deep within the mountains and the dragonkin that lived amongst them. It’s uum… something about forging from fire’s breath and molten stone.”
Calia tapped a spot where a dwarf figure forged an axe with the dragon’s breath, then the grouping of a few mountain peaks, one billowing smoke from the top.
“That’s where they live… or lived. While walking the path out of Caeldalmor, the elders were always keeping an eye out for symbols like these carved into the arches, because they’d tell you what tunnels you needed to take for your destinations.” Holding the light out, she scanned in the cave looking for just the right thing – making a satisfied sound when she spotted it. Walking over to the opposite cave wall to show him the shape of elves and a massive winding tree motif that’d become a very familiar symbol.
“Edelguard. To let you know where you’ve arrived.”
Violets leveled on her a moment. Then gestured to all of himself, “This genius mage and future advisor was too busy being a pest to everyone and anyone to have spent any manner of time reading stone walls. And even if there was a chance too, there was plenty of distractions in the form of pretty ladies.” Brows lifted as if that were enough to act like a period to the end of his sentence.
Even if he was looking up at the markings once more and just seeing pictures. A lot of pictures that honestly, he couldn’t even generate a false care about.
Still, he was listening as she went about the whole means of being the teacher this time. Tapping a spot with some squat looking thing with a beard and a crude axe was. Feeling an overwhelming desire to manifest an pen to draw on the wall himself but resisted that immensely. But he would agree that the dwarf needed more of a pronounced mustache to really sell it.
“Y’know, most people get into trouble drawing on the walls.” He followed her visually to where she moved too and was pointing at the newest symbol with a statement of it meant Edelguard. “Tree, ha. I get it. Rich.” Shoulders shrugged, “Guess I ain’t that invested in such things cause back then besides being a man whore, I wasn’t too interested in what sort of nasties or friendlies existed in the cave walls.” Maybe he should have been but honestly, even now he lagged interest in the whole thing. But, “Keep going, might as well see if yah can educate this blockhead.” It was kinda nice that she was teaching him for once.
Calia sincerely doubted that he didn’t care at all, for the man tended to be annoying smart on the worst of days. He was far more likely acting the part of a pain in the ass and filing away these tidbits into the caverns of his mind. She liked to imagine it was just shelves and shelves of books he plucked out when it needed something to zing somebody with in the moment.
“It’s art and history, not just doodles,” she remarked dryly to his disinterest, though not without amusement in the nonsense. Calia hadn’t failed to notice that his own tower had been built for function and nostalgia’s sake. While it had spoken volumes about who he was as a man, the lack of flourish in the details of his private space said a few things in of itself. That he only seemed to add flare and flourish and personality when it was to be performed for other people. He didn’t seem to hold onto any for himself.
However, he did tell her to keep talking, and she found it was kind of nice reversing their positions. Where it wasn’t her hammering away at him with a thousand questions, but instead getting to share a simple kind of knowledge and skill she’d never realized was a skill.
So Calia led them forward and told the story of the cave walls.
Of the dwarven god that could take the shape of a massive bear, who led bear riding dwarves in a raging war against creatures that took on such an odd shape Calia couldn’t even hazard a guess of what they were. There was depiction of a kinship between other mountain valleys, one of the dragonkin who could take on human shape. Another that was all drow – that took a little longer to figure out that it was drow and not just elves. The clues were in the dagger it held with a spider in the hilt.
Even Cragjaw was immortalized in the stone carvings, as a story of a mountain coming alive and eating travelers who wandered too far into his lands. Depicting the barrier as a crackle that made beard hairs stand on end to know when you’d traversed too far in the wrong direction.
When they came across their first crossroads in the tunnels Calia showed him which symbols meant which direction – choosing the one that would take them more to the northwest direction. And when they passed off shoots and strange twists that could take them deep within the labyrinth of the mountain, she pointed out the warnings of sharp drop, lair, and her personal favorite i don’t know what the fuck was in there DONT GO THERE.
The way she point it all out, it was easy. Conversational. Not some grand professorial lesson, though here and there that’d pop into her mind of how he himself tended to sound when he was teaching her something and she’d smile and not explain herself. When given the floor to speak, she very much did like to share.
Whether or not his interest was true or performative, he’d never say. Merely pleased that she didn’t seem terribly enthused to throw him back into the professor detail. And providing himself as a wonderfully focused student even as they were walking through these tunnels as if this was the only way to travel. Idly missing Mercy in a very random moment but kept his focus present.
Every little detail she offered, he took.
The nodes of doodles –she’d never convince him otherwise- taking in curiously.
And the details that were the signage that warned of things in splits or potentially and was very dangerous breaks that made him appreciate their warnings. Mentally already at war that if some dryder bitch came crawling out of any holes, he wasn’t just going to stomp on them. He was going to enjoy toasting them like little spider marshmallows till they popped!
Kept as a tidbit to himself while he followed. Asked maybe one or two questions originally to be annoying but eventually swayed into honest wonderment. At some point he got bored of her little lantern. Making a spell to hover over their heads to offer concentrated light at their preference so they could see and he could be ready to turn the ball into a nuclear concentrated beam of burning light while mentally practicing his maniacal laugh!
“So,” He dared, “How does one tell when we’ve stumbled into mountain clan territory or is them walls guna have burly bear shaped men to say we be headin’ into their lair?”
“I don’t actually know,” she answered with a bright laugh. “Even if it takes half as long as the trek to Edelguard we may not see the sun for awhile.”
That was nothing to laugh or smile about, as Calia hadn’t exactly enjoyed those long days walking those tunnels in the dark, even if she had been surrounded by people. She’d been too awkward in her own skin, felt too disconnected with the people around her. With no magic, no idea of what she was doing besides knowing she needed to keep moving forward. No real hope at all. Devastated in every sense of the word.
It didn’t even compare to how she felt now. Fearless and unconcerned. Perhaps not with her own magic, but she’d settled into Arc’s like it’d been made for her. He was no longer something she railed and flailed against, feeling as if she were screaming into a storm begging to be heard. He was not her enemy, he was a friend… or something a little more complex than that for he was now something vital and precious in a way that made her fearlessness not so fearless.
And it was exactly that reason the next few moments in the tunnel did not come with Calia’s usual calm in the face of danger.
A shadow rose up in a widen cavern before them and it let out a mighty SCRAAAW that echoed off the walls of the stone chamber to make it sound a great deal louder than it actually was. Sending Calia, who had her head full of of those damn nightmare inducing soul collectors, into an immediate launching of her lantern across the chamber to land with a CRASH and a FWOOM of the fire inside.
It plumed out and so did that shadow, hopping upwards with a maniacal sort of cackle and for the briefest of moments it appeared to be a large winged beast.
Until the fireglow dimmed, leaving only Arc’s floating beam giving a clear view.
That fae magpie landed on the stone floor with it’s feathers wide spread in a surrenderors motion.
“What in the absolutely fuck,” hissed out Calia.
What what! I am peaceful! Tell her to hold her fury, demon! I am fae friend!
If she didn’t throw the lantern, he was going too. For the whole fact they had been content in their own little conversation and such only to be so rudely interrupted by that of something third wheeling all the sudden.
Shifting body closer to that of Calia in case he needed to pick her up when he was casting a meteor shower indoors; serpentine eyes followed the whole scene with a detail of cold concern. Readily for whatever the shadow thing was to be turned into mulch by stone or barbeque by fire. Whatever came first, didn’t really matter!
There was really no way he could have expected that damn magpie to have manifested itself within the cavern and lucky that it actually didn’t become fae fried chicken, while Calia hissed out her obvious displeasure. “Yeah, yer askin’ help from the wrong source yah flyin’ rat. I’m about to encourage her to open a floodgate of toxic water to wash yah the fuck away. The fuck yah want now?”
I have come to join the fae girl’s court, announced the magpie, even giving it’s most courtly of bows. It’s most humblest of greetings. It’s most pure and truest intentions.
Calia was tempted to boot it down the cavern. There was no telling why she didn’t, perhaps she was just glad it was the magpie and not one of those damn soul collectors. Her heart was already beating thunderous enough as it was, tilting her head back with a heavy sigh.
“Yeah? And what about your Great King Alewillan and his Court of Vines, then?”
The magpie spat, or at least made the motion of spitting. Cawing out an unhappy sound with a dismissive flap of it’s wings.
The Court of Vines is dead! it announced. Alewillan has fallen in disgrace like a suit of meat. Those loyal to him are no longer and have left to find better courts. Those under his spell were set free when she who breaks curses stole his very bones!
Calia had not been aware there even had been a curse there in the court of vines, though in hindsight it had been a very cursed place indeed. Where everyone had been forced to wear their masks, had only ever spoke of shallow things, and danced and drank and ate over and over and over again in an endless joyous ball. It was exhausting just thinking about it and honestly a little embarrassing that she’d nearly been pulled in at all. Perhaps having accidentally been saved by that damnable Argentina, as it made him grow desperate and pushy to urge her along.
“Good for them,” she muttered, deciding easily that she’d heard enough. Taking the steps to lead them forward again, including stepping over the magpie hop-hopping on the stone ground. Tapping it’s little clawed feet to follow after them.
What is the name of your court, Cursebreaker? I will sing it to the skies! I will spread it to the corners of the world!
Cursebreaker? Oh the irony of such a stupid title, when Calia herself was the curse to everyone she met!
“I don’t have a court, so you can fuck off before I make good on that toxic waters idea.”
Like gods are made by belief, a court is also made. I give myself of of my own free will. Yours loyally! Your number one. Your guardian. Your protector. I will not make you cry in a tree like this demon does just because he has feelings, feelings, feelings.
Brows lifted nearly right off his face at the suggestion that this feathered little flying fuck had come to find Calia to join her court. Her court. Which resulted in him looking at her with the loudest unspoken you have a court? Because as far as he knew, that certainly hadn’t happened. Though he didn’t always know what she was up too either.
Yet the whole means of this court of vines that apparently no longer existed and blah blah, the fae really were fickle things, weren’t they. Moving to keep in stride with Calia because honestly, it felt pretty damn fishy that this magpie was here at all. Who was to honestly say the court fell and this wasn’t some sort of scheme to dupe or try to bait Calia into some wordy agreement that sounded like one thing and meant an entirely other.
Well not on his fucking watch.
“Go on,” Arc hissed, lips curling into a razor-thin smile. “Keep yappin’, yah mangy little parasite. I’ll strin’ you up by your spine and leave you danglin’ as bait—let the dryders peel yah apart, piece by tremblin’ piece.” Growling no sooner at the thing for even having the nerve to try and insult him, while trying not to even imagine how the fuck it would protect Calia at all. “I ain’t got a good feelin’ about any of this, love. What the fuck is it doin’ this deep in the cavern? Maybe killin’ it would be a good fuckin’ thin’.”
“I don’t have a court,” she told him in direct response to that look of his. Shooting a glare behind them at the magpie that’d decided to waddle after them. “I don’t WANT a court.”
Arc’s deadly smile and hissing threats were enough to at least make it caw out a warning, flap it’s feathers and put itself a few further steps behind them for it’s own safety. Not enough to make it quit talking, however.
Ones like I, we don’t survive without a court! it piped up, offering some new tidbits. A court is community, it is safety. Alewillan was powerful, but a liar and manipulator. His court was a prison, not a home.
Calia attempted to walk a little faster, taking larger strides since the blasted thing didn’t have much room here in the caverns to take off into flight. Yet it was persistent, chasing after them all the same.
Fae talk! They speak of she who gives chances to lost souls. Spared a great tree from the taint of blood spilt in malice. Gave second chance to a demon instead of slaughtered. Renewed another great tree from the ashes of a dark one’s cursed. Saved an elder from a fate most foul. Now she has toppled a court of lies and set free many.
It was both strange and embarrassing to hear all of these things being spoken out loud, for Calia hadn’t really thought she’d done much at all. She’d been in the wrong places at the right times, and it all simply turned out that way.
“…Archimedes saved the elder fae, that was not me.”
Was it not? Was it not, though?
“Yer not guna survive here either if yah keep toddlin’ and prattlin’.” It’d been a bit since he flexed any real demonic behaviours and even if Calia was expressing she didn’t want a court, well… did that mean he had the allowance to turn this feathered annoyance into stuffing for a pillow. A look once more to the princess was enough of a quiet assessment to determine how fast he could get away with making it into a blood spot on the floor.
A warning to someone else. Or, his contribution to the walls but having missed and only got it on the ground!
By the way she was starting to walk a little faster, he was already slowing. Letting thoughts play together of just what he could do. Quick and easy seemed like the best route considering it would just silence the fae. But there was something enjoyable about making it writhe with agony that tickled all the twisted notes in his body. Spurring a tingle up back, even as it was nattering about all the things Calia had done.
None he could refute either, “Actually, I just broke down the barrier and such. I actually didn’t save the elder fae, that was in fact yah. Puttin’ yerself in harms way and all that with the iron.” He pointed out not that he wanted to agree with the bird but it was correct.
Arc stopped fully now. Knuckles popping with the tension of clawed fingers being flexed. Changing attire to be more suitable for the cave tunnels now that it was less frigid and he could freely move. “Well now,” he drawled, already stepping forward as his shadow stretched like a hungry thing behind him, “What colour does a magpie fae bleed, I wonder…” His smile widened, bright and terrible. “Only one way to find out.” And then he lunged—no warning, no restraint—his entire body a streak of lethal intent aimed straight at the shrieking little fae, hands ready to snap its wings clean off.
“And if you hadn’t broken through the barrier there’d be a dead me and a dead elder fae, so I think that makes the difference on who was saving who,” she argued, if only because it was too hard to swallow her being the savior of anything. Calia frankly didn’t want to hear praises of heroics when everything she did was generally out of her own survival or just… her self righteous inclinations to stop other people from doing something shitty. That wasn’t noble, it was just what it was.
Archimedes had stopped walking though, apparently ready to stalk and hunt the chattery fae. Maybe even swallow it hole – that was fun to imagine! If he wanted it cooked, though, he could do it his damned self!
However, the magpie fae proved very quickly that while it was small and chatty, it indeed was still fae. The second Arc lunged, it bolted like a swirl of shadow itself past the man, disappearing altogether until it landed up under Calia’s hair for protection. Clinging to her shoulders and ruffling itself up like a puffed up angry chicken, as she flinched and stumbled a few paces forward. Screaming and squawking at first until it simmered down and roosted until it was naught but a pair of eyes peeking out.
I won’t take her from you, wretched demon! She is yours as I am hers! True to my new court, I will prove my worth and loyalty.
Calia took in a long deep breath and let it out slow.
“You took me to Alewillan, so I’m pretty keen on letting Arc pluck all your feathers off.”
You are kind to dark things. A cursebreaker. Taking you to Alewillan was very very smart. Now a weak king as fallen and I have found a better court. Do not let him pluck me! I will do useful things for you. I will obey HIM if I must. If he will not pluck me.
Now Arc was getting a front row seat to Calia’s difficulties with faerie creatures. That element that always pulled her to listen, to consider. Perhaps always being quick to tell them to fuck off at first, only to find herself a little too intrigued, a little too curious. In this case, the magpie fae wasn’t actually here to charm her, lead her away, to talk her into a deal. Pledging itself to her wasn’t any better, in fact that was fucking wild but it was harmless.
If it actually wanted to cause them trouble in the moment, it already would’ve done so.
So that twist of her mouth and the expression of a wrinkled up nose spoke volumes when she cast a green-eyed look towards Arc and shrugged her shoulders just a touch.
A weakness for dark things indeed.
“I suppose regretting a bad choice in kings is no reason to get a bird eaten by a demon…” she mumbled soft.
The way it fled did only sing to his blood. A drive, a want and a calling that simply was asking to be set free because he’d been oh so behaved recently. That demons were meant for blood, destruction, rending and renting. And this damnable thing was a perfect choice for it. Just a little torture and it would be all fine and dandy once more.
Save the problem of it slipping up into Calia’s hair for safety! Earning a gruff layered growling that had him turning to huff and roll his eyes. “For fuck sakes, I ain’t a possession and neither is she. Don’t go natterin’ on about takin’ her from me. The girl has her own fuckin’ agency.” Never mind how mentally he was itching at this idea of a new court. Realizing all too quickly that his association to Calia –if it existed- meant things he didn’t want to be around.
And well, demon. That was still a very glaring reality that he was never going to shirk and plus a court of any standing wouldn’t accept such things in their midst. So while the magpie had become a hair monster, Arc was stopping himself from crossing his arms like a irritated child.
Watching this damn show happening and the all too real measure that was Calia being so swayed because this was a fae thing. Fae nature or whatever the hell it was. Frowning at her as she rolled over so fast that it was a surprise her soft underbelly wasn’t being scratched by the damn bird for how she just accepted it after barely ten minutes.
“How the hell yah even manage to stand with a rubber spine, is a surprise to me.” Arc huffed, turning his stare mostly sideways at the floor like it was the most interesting thing in the world. “I ain’t fuckin’ feedin’, cleanin’ up after it or doin’ anythin’ with it. Yer pet, yer problem.”
Feelings, feelings, feelings. Demons with feelings are a dangerous thing. chirped the magpie, keeping it’s beady little eyes on Archimedes incase it needed to make another disappearing act.
“I’m not keeping it–“
Yes! We have agency! We are free and loyal minions!
“You’re not minions, either, for fucks sake!”
The magpie scoffed and finally settled down – Calia could feel it winding her hair around her claws as if it were afraid one of them was going to snatch it and it intended to hold tight. Finally the girl just let out an exasperated sigh and started walking again. Muttering under her breath a grave my problem, my responsibility, as if she now bore some new curse upon her.
“Arc has free range to kill you in whatever manner he finds most amusing, if you try anything duplicitous. And if you really piss me off I’m going to feed you to couch cushions.”
I am Jaffa, it offered cheerfully.
Oh if looks could kill, that bird would have been dead five times over for suggesting that him having feelings was the dangerous thing! Highly disliking the mere insinuation that being allowed them was exactly the problem in general, which was still a sore enough topic as is! Cracking knuckles slowly while watching how it was curling itself all the more safely within the tresses of dark near black.
Feeling a sensation of disgusting cold run his spine at the mere idea of being called a minion, as if it were just one shudder away from absolutely stoking him into a frenzy of utter refusal.
It was evident that this thing was with them. For now and he didn’t for one second actually believe she’d actually let him kill the bird anyways. Talking a big game but if the thing did try anything, well, he suspected she’d have all sort of sorrowful excuses in the moment!
Shooting daggers at it even as it claimed its name. “Yah don’t think it’s a little fuckin’ suspicious that it was waitin’ down here at all? It’s a magpie that brought yah to the court at all under a guise of being stuck there.” Arc pointed out, “How can yah even trust this court actually fell and this isn’t some elaborate ruse that the bone bag king isn’t tryin’.” His skin was crawling at this moment, “It ain’t like the jackals, Calia. This don’t feel right.”
What what? Who waits in caves to pounce. Ludacracy. I shadow warped.
“It is suspicious,” agreed Calia without issue, even if she did cast him a flickering gaze that looked just a little bit too guilty for comfort. She knew this was stupid, that the chances of the damn thing weaving tales to be a pain in the ass was a far more likely outcome. He said it wasn’t like the jackals, yet she couldn’t shake her own feeling that it was similar enough. Someone nasty in charge and those within their purview not realizing that things weren’t meant to be that way. That they didn’t have to be living the way they did.
She would not say that out loud, however. At least aware enough to avoid giving the magpie fae an easy excuse to latch onto.
I am not tricksy like a demon. I say truths! Alewillan’s court was strong and welcomed ones like me. So I obeyed. Now he is disgraced and I am homeless.
“And what are ones ‘like you’?” she dared to asked, if only because Arc was looking for reasons to fry the bird, and she needed to find a reason why he shouldn’t.
I am shadow, I am darkness. Mischief and might. Yet, I wish no malice, so the dark ones will not have me. I am homeless! Unwanted! A naughty naughty bird!
Immediately his hands shot out to gesture at the bird that declared it hadn’t been waiting in the dark, but that didn’t mean a whole lot. Because that just meant it was waiting for Calia, stalking around in whatever way it did. Which meant it had been watching either for a while or someone put it up to it. There was no way in the nine realms of hell this was just as casual as the bird wanting to latch itself onto Calia simply because it couldn’t find anyone else. Like what the hell did that say too, that Calia was just the first idea because there was nothing else or was she the best idea.
Which only lead his thoughts into a troublesome spiral of was this another plot for one of the dark fae?
“Are yah fuckin’ kiddin? Fae are the epitome of tricksy. There’s literal heaps of tales and stories spun of all sorts that use mischievous wiles to lure the unsuspectin’ sorts into their claws.” Polish violets glared upon the bird for even the audacity of suggesting it wasn’t anything akin to the very sewn name into fae behaviour.
Parting lips once more but found that Calia was asking a question that he felt was simply fodder. Earning a narrowing of eyes all the more at her because what did it matter what one’s were like it. Didn’t she just say she didn’t want a court, this was exactly how that happened!
Once more he gesture at the bird that literally had said it wasn’t tricksy and then was claiming it was mischief. “Un-fuckin’-wanted is right.” Another deep gnarling was offered to express the pure displeasure of this whole interaction. “The whole means of it not being wanted by the dark one’s, ain’t boostin’ any sort of confidence here. Rather the opposite, yah think?” Looking to Calia a bit more plaintively, surely she could see the holes in all this. Couldn’t she?
Ugh! Could they not have one single day where they didn’t fight about something stupid! It’s not as if she were opening her arms and welcoming this damn bird to her family!
Not tricksy like a demon! I am tricksy like a fae!
That clarification absolutely did not help matters in the slightest. Calia tilted her head back with a heavy sigh, nearly dislodging the bird from the perch it was hiding in to the point it was now swinging in her hair.
Angry, jealous demon. I can be just as useful.
“He’s not jealous, he’s understandably suspicious because everything and it’s goddamned minion familiar has been trying to lure me into their court! I can’t trust any fae I meet at this point, so what makes you a risk worth taking?”
That appeared to shut the bird up for a moment, making a quiet contemplative skrawk before it climbed up the length of dark tendrils to take residence on her shoulder – opposite to the demon of course. Giving the man a beady narrowed eyed gleamed as it tilted it’s head and thought of it’s best answer.
Have I not pledged myself to your court and as your protector? Did I not come to warn you of Alewillan’s vengeance to come?
“NO, you didn’t say anything about a vengeance to come!”
Silly fae girl, do you not know the law of faerie courts? Alewillan was felled by your actions. A dethroned king. He will never have a court again, lest he destroys the one who humiliated him! He’ll have no crown unless by his own hands you die! I like you, I will not let you die.
“That don’t mean shit!” Arc hissed at the very not helpful statement between being like a demon or a fae for said tricks. They both could be very devastating if they wanted to be and that was exactly the point! There was no way this was about to be something to trust, though the damn bird was using Calia as a shield while bobbing around in her hair, was in fact, pissing him off.
“I am angry.” The demon agreed but he was absolutely not jealous! What did he have to be jealous of, the damn thing itself was a pest and he already claimed that title years ago! He knew what he was, who he was and what he wasn’t. Right now, there was no single enjoyment at the idea of this court nonsense and there was no way he was trusting this magpie that already had caused Calia trouble!
There might have been a softness when she at least agreed that this was horribly suspicious and he wasn’t trying to be a jackhole but there was no way this could be simply trusted at face value.
Which would apparently be worth thinking about as the thing adjusted and roosted itself on the woman’s shoulder as if they were trying to costume as the world’s worst pirate. Meeting that beady stare with one of his own that ought to be reading, just one second it looked away, he was going to grab it and wring its scrawny neck.
“It’s like talkin’ to a wall.” Arc lamented only after it revealed apparently some sort of vengeance to come and finding it almost amusing to suggest that Calia ought to know the law of faerie courts. “How in the hells would she have known any of the fuckin’ laws when she hasn’t been in the courts, yah fuckin’ feather duster?” he was going to have a headache from all this, surely. Doubly so because apparently whether this wannabe pigeon was part of some ploy or not, Calia was about to have a dishonoured fae on her hands. “Yah think he wouldn’t even bother consider she yarded his bones outta him. Clearly, the stacks of ability and talent are grossly out of this Alewiener league.” Which at this point, he really shouldn’t be surprised.
The dark fae had greatly underestimated Calia. Why not this other fae whom was sounding like he was allergic to thinking. “I say we use the bird as bait still. Bind it, leave it behind to be someone’s dinner and a distraction.”
Alewillan did not harm her before, because she is more precious alive. Now he does not care. Desperation makes for grand violence and mortal flesh is easily broken.
Explained Jaffa the magpie, before promptly raising up feathered wings and spitting a cross-eyed, tongue waggling threat in response to Arc’s own threads.
Calia swiftly clasped it’s little beak with her fingers, casting a deeply concerned frown.
“Don’t,” the warning was curt, firm. If the damn thing didn’t mind it’s manners, Arc was sure to loose what little patience he had. And Calia wasn’t so sure she cared enough to stop him from mangling the feathered thing! Honestly, she didn’t know why she was bothering with this nonsense at all and, instead of just tossing it into the dark. Except for this grim little tiny voice in the back of her mind grumbling that it was just a small little stupid bird. A little weirdo faerie that was getting into things it probably was better off avoiding before it got itself killed.
She didn’t like this feeling. It was something softer than her rage, quieter than her anger. Another new feeling she didn’t know what to do with.
“I do not have a court,” she reiterated. “But you want to be useful? Go tell lies. Say I am everywhere, I am nowhere. Just never where I actually am. I want them all to leave me alone. Is that doable, or are you full of bullshit?”
The second she released it’s beak, it flexed it’s jaw a few times. Giving her a long up and down with it’s single beady eye, decided what it was meant to take from this strange order. Finally it puffed up and flapped off to land a few feet in front of them.
Jaffa will do as commanded! Tall tales and miscommunications! No one will find the Court of Lost Souls!
With a spiral of dark mist the magpie fae took off towards the ceiling and disappeared into it’s own shadows.
Calia blinked and scowled all the more.
“That’s a stupid fucking name for a court. …and so is Aleweiner.”
Loudly, oh so loudly did he roll his eyes at the whole suggestion that this Alewillan had decided that all facts and reasons no longer applied on this idea that he was going to apparently retaliate against Calia. If she pulled out his bones once before, it was pretty sufficient to guess that a second time she wouldn’t be so kind! Yet, it was probably too much for the bird’s tiny little brain to comprehend and it was shortly attempting to taunt him into something.
Of course it was working. Had he been a dog, his hackles would have been bristling! Sharp and pointed enough to be mistaken for porcupine quills. About to be thrown at the bird for its behaviour that was shortly stopped only because Calia had stepped in. Not exactly clear if it was for the birds safety because he was already cultivating a spell to manifest into the belly of the beast and pop it open like it ate too much uncooked rice! Saved only because the fae princess was involved and deciding that she was about to use the thing for something at least.
Distraction. To spread word of where she wasn’t. Everywhere, anywhere, nowhere. All of the above while challenging to see whether Jaffa was useful or not. He was still leaning on the side of not and wasn’t too sure sending the feathered beast off was a good idea either. If it was in cahoots with other dark fae that wanted her for their prize, it would just be a straight arrow to point where they were now.
Yet, he didn’t raise a fuss about it. Only mentally charting a need to be doubly aware of their surroundings for anything that might be lying in wait, even as the stupid thing slunk away into its own shadows. As it proclaimed a Court of Lost Souls.
His mouth had opened only to pause because he caught the taste of how well… insecure he was about the whole court thing. Stilling and brushing nonexistent dust off his shoulders. There was no use getting all fussed up about something she was claiming she didn’t have and that he wouldn’t remotely fit into. “All I know is if he shows up, I’ll be addressing his fallen bitchiness as that. Or All wiener, I haven’t decided yet.” Arc glanced at her slowly, “I don’t like this Calia. It doesn’t feel right.”
It was a little easier to breathe once the magpie vanished, not that she was worried about it being a problem. If Archimedes had any fur he’d likely be puffed out like an angry cat. Amusing to think about, she just didn’t want to be the one he swiped at!
“I know. It doesn’t feel right. …but it is is a bit like the jackals,” she told him tentatively, resuming her walking but at least now meeting his slow glance towards her with her own earnest stare. “Not exactly the same- …I don’t know how to explain it.”
A simple admittance that came with a sigh. At least now the tension she’d been unknowingly holding her body melted away to her more natural movement. Rolling her shoulders and then raising up her hands to brush her fingers through her hair to straight up the mess that bird made of it.
“Jaffa is not the problem… that bird has two brain cells on top of being young fae. Anything that watched me yank the bones out of someone then showing up to trample their claws all over me without fearing a swift death, that’s… a stupid amount of trust.”
Then she grimaced, pressing her thumb into her palm, drawing up the memories of Alewillan’s court and how it felt like she’d been there for decades where surely it couldn’t have been more than a few short days.
“What I did with Alewillan was… a fluke? Lucky? He was distracted with Argentina, his guard was down and I wasn’t thinking. The power he held over his court was incredibly strong so if he’s out there raging fucking mad at me, that’s something to genuinely be concerned about. Fawna had to use something of mine to make her spells hold, but Alewillan had an entire realm and court of his own being dangled on strings like it was nothing to him.”
Of course there was a quick look when she suggested it was a bit like the jackals. The expression merely expressing that he didn’t see it. Likely due to the fact he wasn’t fae and didn’t get the same sort of unseen threads that she did. To him, on the outside, it looked like trouble. And trouble in the form of a misguided thing appearing seemingly out of nowhere while likely having been waiting for Calia’s reappearance to tail after her. As if that wasn’t already something to think about in a problematic way.
Claiming a court, then sprouting secondhand information as to the threat that was potentially looming unseen.
She was the one that expressed he was apparently supposed to have some sort of responsibility about the whole, courtly advisor crap. The means of using his expertise –as former as it was- to point out what he seen, what he knew and in turn what was highly wrong. This was one of those moments but the way she was looking at him and seemingly favouring more onto the side that was the bird, he did get mentally defensive. Wondering what the hell she was putting him into a position he didn’t even want but wasn’t listening either.
Thankfully, it was kept inside to be a festering pluck. “I think yer undermindin’ the bird’s intelligence. It had been lurkin’ around long enough without either of us noticin’.” Arc pointed out because if her attempt to say the bird was dumb was to alleviate his unease, it failed. Young fae or not, it wasn’t nearly as stupid as she wanted to make it sound. And if it was simply really wanting to associate itself with Calia merely because of strength or whatnot, then it was helpless. And he did not like thinking about that.
“He was in his realm. Yah were just in mine and yah know how it felt. Surrounding by my own magic, fae realm are at least similar enough. I ain’t sayin’ the potential twat won’t be a problem, but if he lost so much that he is that blisterin’ mad, it means he ain’t as strong either. Let’s not forget yah have dark fae after yah because of the potential yah have even without yer heart.” He was making sure she remembered that, “Fluke, luck or actual skill ain’t the thin’ here. Whatever it was, yah did it and the bastard seemingly lost his court. It don’t matter the hows, it matters the now. Yer not helpless by any means and by all standards I’d say yer the one he ought to be fearful of even blinded by whatever bullshit he wants to believe.” The demon shrugged, “He ain’t got no court, no subjects and is a one man pissed faelin’. People don’t make the smartest choices when they are blinded by their own drives.”
Attention veered to her softly, “Yer the one that has commonly said yah could move mountains, so… yah’ll just move a mountain with A-lil-villain.”
Calia fell silent for a long moment. Several long moments, actually to the point it might have seemed like she’d thought it better to not talk about it at all. As if she were indeed brushing off everything he said because she knew better. If it weren’t for the subtle signs that she was trying think – the way she cracked the knuckles in her fingers. How she chewed into the side of her cheek while her eyes were too busy staring off into nowhere instead of paying any attention at all to the cavern walls around them.
“…I guess I am not afraid of the magpie because, as you said, I am a more dangerous thing. What is there to worry about some small annoying creature I could crush with a breath. And that is if you didn’t already snatch it up first. Obliterating it before I could even blink.”
“…but I am afraid of Alewillan,” the admittance came soft, almost whispered under the light of his floating orb spell. Said with a cringe even, because Calia didn’t like the idea she was afraid of anything and it felt like saying it out loud was now going to make it real and rain down hell upon her.
“The jackals and the magpie, they are ruled by little instincts and feelings. Fawna and Alewillan? Or that thing in the Edelguard woods? They pull me, or something in me with a force that is so much stronger than anything I have ever felt, and right now, sure. I’m a fucking badass, I can pull out bones and shatter mountains, but in the moment something falls over me like some stupid curtain veil and everything I’m feeling is a thousand fold but worse because they know exactly what threads to pull to get the one they want.”
Well now, the length of the silence had been one thing, but the reveal at the end of it all? The means of her both confirming that her thoughts about how great and powerful she was hadn’t disappeared all the sudden, only that she was apparently more fearful about the more humanoid fae.
And what they pulled on her, in her. Which, “And what is the threads they pull on yah that makes yah fall? Last I checked, with the first nameless one, yah denied it pretty quick. Or least what I seen after we got there. Fawna used your uncertainty and our conflict to settle things inside you unfairly, and the second time she tried and failed. Yah got out of it. Then this Apple-willin’ also used the negative timing for themselves to glean over yah. From where I’m standin’, so long as yah ain’t on the teeterin’ edge of a fumble and frustration caused by that of myself as a right soddin’ pest; then yer pretty untameable.”
“From my gatherin’, I’m more yer catalyst that allows them to flit around in yah for twisted thin’s, which in this case, I can easily piss off to my smallest form so yah ain’t stressin’ over it. And I’ll be near enough that yah won’t have to worry about my absence either.” His stare remained on her even as they walked, “Unless there’s somethin’ more to it that yer not sayin’?”
Where in the nine hells did he manage to draw the conclusion that he was the problem in all of that? Simply because he was a pain in her ass? Now it was Calia oh so loudly rolling her eyes, trudging forward with her head tossed back in a weary groan.
“You can’t just decide you’re my greatest weakness, Archimedes!” she shot back in exasperation. “Of course you’re going to be the one to set me off raging mad, I’m thinking about you ninety percent of the time even when I’m not with you. Maybe recognize for a second that you’re also the one to come pull me out of whatever stupid mess I got myself into.”
The gods knew the only reason she wasn’t raging mad now was because he seemed to have a dozen new names for Alewillan and it was so damned stupid that she was having a hard time not stumbling over it. Somewhere between being frustrated, amused, and regretting she’d ever left his tower at all.
“I am trying to tell you that I depend on you to look out for me, because I cannot trust myself to recognize a threat when it’s fae. Because maybe I am like the jackals and magpie too, just young and stupid and desperate for whatever it is that pull they have over me. That I am not trying to be a pain in the ass with you, it’s just– you’re the one that’s real. No matter what it looks like I’m doing, at the end I am going to be in trouble and I am going to reach for you.”
“I never said that.” Arc countered, “Nowhere did I say I was yer greatest weakness. I said that each time we’ve conflicted, it’s been when they’ve gotten deeper in yah than if we hadn’t.” Now it was his turn to shake his head at her. “And stop tryin’ to correct what I’m sayin’. I damn well know who I am and the button’s I push then and now.”
He wasn’t trying to give her a narrative to read between, just stating what he seen. When they were fighting with another, was when Calia had fallen victim to the whims. When she was emotional and so ready to cling onto something that it didn’t matter what.
Which might be the answer in itself. So long as she wasn’t scratching and clawing for something that would just stay put, they’d have nothing to dangle in front of her face.
Funny how when she spoke and called herself both stupid and desperate, that it was those words that annoyed him. “Stop talkin’ about yerself like that, or we will be fuedin’.” His tone had hardened, a verbal sound that declared he actually wasn’t about to listen to her nonsense. Speaking lowly of herself even temporarily or for the moment. “It’s frustratin’ to listen to yah bread crumb yerself with all these sort of internal lies.”
Lungs inflated and eyes flickered backwards to check over that of shoulder. Studying the dark that slipped from under the casted light. “Be that confidence yah typically are and Already-forgotten-his-name won’t be able to touch yah. I ain’t goin’ anywhere as I said but I’ll do what yah need to ensure yah aren’t fumblin’ either. Don’t go lookin’ for deeper meanin’s in what I said that ain’t there.”
Calia growled at him, an actual deep throated snarling frustrated sound that came with a squint of her eyes at those first few words. To stop saying what he didn’t actually say, to stop correcting what he was saying. And in that moment of her clamping her mouth shut, debating if she was going to call him out on what bullshit that all sounded like, he himself shifted tone to that hardened snap. Claiming they were going to feud if she she didn’t stop talking ill about herself.
She didn’t know why that was the thing that softened her rising temper, or soothed those churning worries that she was going to set him off to being pissed at her when it came to little fae creatures. Maybe it was hearing the thing that actually was about to piss him off that had her hitting the breaks and trying to decipher where she was getting things twisted when they didn’t need to be twisted.
Don’t look for hidden meanings. She’d told him that about herself too once before. He said what he meant and what he saw, Calia needed trust him at his word.
“Okay,” she finally said with a slow release of breath. In their prior arguments, that’d usually come with her going silent and withdrawing into her own darker thoughts. Giving up, giving in, disengaging to spare herself from any more hurting comments.
This time, there was a new thing to turn to. Fresh and new, and even though in the moment with the way she tilted head, debating if she was even brave enough to dare try this new option, Calia’s steps inched her closer. First leaning into his arm until she fully collided into stealing her own arms around his waist in what was absolutely a pathetic cling.
They were about to have a standoff in the middle of this cavern with how this was all going. As he was being pretty blunt about his thoughts in which often had been the cause for them getting into the horn lock at all. But when it came to this nonsense that she would call herself desperate or stupid or trouble, it was more than enough for him to declare he’d had enough of that. It was no longer just honesty, it was a stone strong resolution that he was frustrated at her for such unfitting commentary.
It didn’t matter if it was her saying it or someone else, he’d had it up to his eyeballs with that sort of mannerisms.
While the soles of their shoes were clicking on stone and he absolutely ignored her attempt to growl at him originally, one would have to be blind not to notice how she stalled. Stopped and softened to where finally a singular okay spoke louder volumes. They weren’t guna bend down and start banging heads together again –honestly it was a surprised neither one of them had brain damage at this point- but rather, it was a mollifying understanding.
Allowing him a second or so further to be annoyed till he sighed to release it. Knowing he was tense about the whole interaction and trying to both instill that measure of confidence that Calia usually had in spades, while also trying to be thoughtful about how the fae with a vendetta might appear. With no knowledge or understanding of what type of fae they were and blah blah blah…
Her nudge into him that turned into this awkward attempt to hug and cling as they walked, Arc quickly adjusted. Moving arm out of the way so she might be able to align correctly without stumbling over either’s feet. Looping palm around to hold against opposite waist and squeeze. A silent acceptance that wasn’t done simply because of the mood but out of mutual comprehension. “Y’know… if that damn flyin’ rat was right… whose’s to say we can’t just bait the bastard into our trap. Rather than being caught with our pants down.”
And just like that, what might’ve soon become a blizzard of chaos had been tempered down into something warm and comforting. All those tiny little fears and festering doubts squashed in the wake of just reaching. Of getting that small physical squeeze of reassuring that things were not in a mess that was quickly to fall apart and send either one of them taking off into the shadows. The only thing better would be if she could shift shape herself and crawl into his pocket for a change.
“How often are you going to be with your pants down, bug?” she asked, completely unable to resist doing do. Clinging tighter with a squeeze, proving she was absolutely going to make walking difficult until she’d soothed her inner turmoil with enough crushing.
“Knowing he’ll be searching for me and lurking is good, though. His magic is… very illusionary? Flowery and misleading. It doesn’t lend itself well to stone, so at least we can breath until we break to the surface valleys again. And maybe Jaffa will be so eager to prove itself to you just to avoid being roasted, that’ll it’ll be a good nuisance elsewhere.”
It didn’t overly matter that walking would and was becoming more of a orchestrated challenge because it was minor compared to what could have happened. How they could have started hissing and growling and spitting venom at another once more. To rinse and repeat in the way he had expressed he was pretty tired of doing. So having Calia actually reaching out for that means of quiet comfort, there was naught a single complaint on his lip.
Replying to it rather as mind was working a bit towards their current and newest issue. One that didn’t have to be one.
Jaffa did have something useful after all. Demons were tricksy as well. The damn bird also corrected and said how they were different types though Arc wouldn’t admit that, her quip about his pants being down was met with a breezy laugh. “I’d prefer when I’m the one sayin’ when they can be up or down. Not being pants’d.” Strifing palm away momentarily to use claws to tame the little nest that Jaffa had made of her hair before returning to the means of squeezing affection; Arc was listening.
Illusionary magic that didn’t work well to stone. So this dethroned and recently reboned fallen king was more of the sort that needed earthy magic around. At least it made sense in the snow because the earth was simply hibernating. The stone was ever hard and required a level of control to make it move. “If the bastard is desperate, yah never know what they could pull. The difference in this is well,” Pointing at her with his other hand, “Fae,” then to himself, “Demon.” A smirk most wicked appeared, “Surely we can come up with some sort of frustratin’ plan to vex those whom think yah guna be on their plate, no?”
He’d put his claws through her hair to smooth out whatever knotted mess the bird had left behind that Calia had not been able to reach, which gave her a little shiver of a twinge that made her shoulders scrunch up. Not unwanted, not unliked, just a strange new awareness to something that felt so soft. Outside of her realm of usual things.
There was a more important conversation now that they’d navigated away from her disastrous moodswings, so she set the thought aside to focus on what could be done with this new bit of information.
“If someone took my bones out, I wouldn’t come within an arm’s reach of them, that’s for damn sure,” she pointed out. “Not to say I wouldn’t still try to kill them, because here I am heartless and hellbent on a murder but… I think he’ll be a lot more hands off than I ever would.”
Calia also knew who she was hunting and what he had in the palms of his hands. When she found the half-baked sorcerer wannabe she was going to pull him apart down to the very fiber of his being. The rest of the world knew nothing of Calia and made enough assumptions that even those that had mild successes had then discovered holding onto her was more difficult than expected/
For one very specific reason.
“Fae and Demon, yes,” she agreed. “I think you’re already that thing that vexes the fae, else they’d not be waiting until you’re nice and out of the picture before they try stepping in. Demons too for that matter. I’d like to see one try their damn luck in stealing you with me watching.”
This means of walking attached to his waist had finally made itself known to be impossible, to which Calia did finally pull away just enough to cave into intrusive wishes. She could not crawl into his pockets, but she could climb him like a damn horse. Stepping aside just enough to hop herself up on his back and cling there like some feral jungle monkey. All clingy closeness she wanted without being a hinderance to walking. Perfect!
“So yer thinkin’ they’d be the sort to stay well beyond arms length.” Arc hummed thoughtfully really turning it over in his mind. Feeling the means of what truth was there and the logical part that someone might try to avoid having their bones pulled out once more. Granted that was also on an assumption that Calia’s range was limited. But it also meant that they could deal with some other fae being looped in or some trap that was intended to get Calia into a place that she couldn’t attack.
“I don’t know if it’s really me the thin’ that vexes, bunny, but more the one who is on one side of this contract. The tether that has two sides, somethin’ we’ve learnt to make work but to another, it’s a leash. As yah found out with Argentina takin’ over. Who’s to say that it ain’t the motivation for them fae either. To remove me and put themselves in place so they can try and rope yah to obeyin’ their whims.” As she peeled away, he merely glanced to her.
Assuming she had her fill at this time, only to be startled a wee bit when she decided it was piggyback ride time! Striding and tackling herself up like it had never been a thought other than this in the first place. Leaving him a moment to balance, shift that of weight and surprisingly not offer a comment about it at all.
“Regardless, I think we best be thinkin’ of ways to trap the bastard too. We don’t know the ins and outs of their abilities, or what they could do. Illusionary magic isn’t very… narrow of a term.”
“I just mean that if they want to get at one or both of us, they have to separate us,” she murmured into his ear. “No one has tried to come at us both at the same time, that’d basically be suicidal. I’d be wary of anyone trying to get one of us alone.”
The second it came out of her mouth she was grinning and huffing a small laugh. “Going to make fraternizing with pretty things a little difficult with the potential of a bitey sort of the unfun kind.”
Now that she was thinking about it, that was legitimately going to suck having to question the intentions of every single person and thing trying to interact with them. The world was already exhausting enough for Calia just trying to weave her way around normal folk’s dynamics, and now she would have to be suspicious of everything on top of it? As she’d admitted… she did not know if she could trust her own senses when it came to fae trickery. That blindspot was so strong.
In the meantime she’d melted into his back, no longer having to use her feet to walk she could now be the hopeless lump she wanted to be. Without having to throw herself on the ground and cry like some dramatic dumbass. Instead she just hung her arms loosely around his neck and rest her chin just enough so she could speak to his ear without having to be unheard and muffled in his shoulder. He hadn’t said a peep about her hopping on his back, so she just trusted he wasn’t going to let her slip off to the ground.
“I guess the next time I’m sobbing or raging up a storm just drop me in the middle of a forest, something is bound to turn up. Start clobbering whatever comes too close.”
The heat flushing against his ear did make goosebumps pepper along his arms and the back of his neck, even if he was focusing on the means of the words. Humming to express some agreement, “I mean, if they know anythin’ at this point, it still suicidal to hammer at either of us alone.” At this point it should be well documented that Calia was absolutely no slouch in any manner of the word. A fighter with a weapon or bare handed whilst also having a control on magic that was both his and taking control of others.
One might have a better chance going up against a raging bull that her, honestly.
But to confront both of them as one, it was exactly why they were constantly being separated. Because Calia was right. It was a death wish to try to take them both on, especially if word had passed fast and far enough to detail and warp the encounters they did have.
“I ain’t droppin’ yah anywhere. And if I did, it’d be in the safety of the tower at this point. So yah don’t ever have to think about shit like that, even as a jest.” Supporting her legs as they… as he was walking along, the whole idea to use her as an emotional bait was entirely out of the question.
Calia laughed, soft and lazily now that she was being soothed in a way that she personally thought was pure ridiculousness – but if it worked, it worked. Whatever savage thing in her that thrashed and raged and twisted words into weapons, it had no power over this means of physical contact. It couldn’t twist that he carried her without complaint, could not hide the fact he had no tension in him. At least not until she suggested being dropped in a forest, then she could feel the sincerity in the way he paused when he said the words. No miscommunications, no lies told in her own head.
“The best way to set a trap is baiting it well,” she pointed out. Any hunter worth their salt knew that, and despite everything Calia was at least self aware enough to know a whole menagerie of pains in her ass would show up if they set the scene just right. Still the way he was so damn serious about not doing it did bring up that nice fuzzy feeling again.
“You come up with a better idea, then. You’re the brains, I’m the pretty one.”
There came a choice of turns in the cavern and Calia held out a hand to point to each, explaining the symbols carved into the arches that formed them.
“That way is going to start sloping downwards and we’ll have to cross through an underground lake. Good if you can swim, but not if you’re traveling with heavy cargo.” Then she shifted to point to the right side. “That way will open up into another giant cavern, but there’s no waypoint stop. It’s a going to connect to a bunch of other caverns, easier for travel but not necessarily safer.”
“Yeah well,” Ears shifted tellingly that even if that were the case, it was not about to be something he was about to do. “I ain’t no hunter in that way, so guess they’ll be shit outta luck.” It wouldn’t matter honestly to him if it were the best idea in the world, if it put her at a risk that was entirely unnecessary and merely a siren’s call to those who had personal desires to make her a trophy; then it really was too damn bad.
Tilting a little so a ring of violet could glance back at her with the whole means that he was apparently the brains of this operation while she was the pretty one. Narrowing slightly, “I remember when I was both pretty and brains. I’m startin’ to waste away into nothin’ but brains!” A smirk played across lips even if he was already trying to think of a better plan than hers. Which was not coming and he was entirely blaming it on the fact that shortly she was directing them once more through the caverns.
As long as they kept their guard up, they should be able to stay focused on a potential threat.
“And which way is it yah wanna go? And how far, eventually we best settle to rest a wee bit and make sure yer hungry little belly is replenished with somethin’ decent.”
“Brains sure won’t impress those mountain lassies, better start practicing your walk in tartan kilts,” she hummed, with amusement. Calia might’ve done a bit more teasing too, if he hadn’t left the choice of direction up to her. At this point it didn’t much matter, they weren’t deep enough into the mountains yet to feel that tug of her heart pulling her in any which way. She just figured since he now had to do all the waking, he’d get to choose the direction!
“It’s going to take us days to ground through all these passes,” she lamented with a soft sigh. “And we can’t be resting in the tower again or I’m definitely not leaving it so…”
Calia ticked a finger back and forth, considering each the directions. The cavern path would keep them dry and give them an easier place to bed down for the night. Except she kept thinking about that waypoint out of Caeldalmor, with the ghost town and it’s creepy new inhabitant. She’d honestly deal with more demons and annoying fae than ever see another of those soul collectors again.
That pretty much decided it for her. She pointed to the left towards the underground lake.
“I don’t need rest and food when I’m not slinging magic like a mad mage. When you get tired, you can climb in my pocket I’ll keep going.”
“I’ll figure out a way, surely that ain’t kilts and bein’ a bear.” He offered back, “Surely I’m exotic enough as is, that’s gotta stand for somethin’ and if they ain’t into brains. We both have seen how expertly dumb I can be, so that shouldn’t be any sort of problem.” Although there was enough sense in him that actually didn’t think he was going to be able to say the right things for a spontaneous dip into someone’s sheets.
Not that it was exactly something to worry about currently seeing as their direction was entirely relying on her means of direction. Which translated into she didn’t know yet and the idea of going back into the tower was enough that she would hermitize herself within it. Pulling a bemused chuckle, “I didn’t think yah’d be so shackled to such a place. Probably cause yer frolickin’ in magic and get to make cushions into cats, eh.”
Eyes followed the stretch of limb pointing towards the left that signaled towards the underground lake. Curious he was considering the last potential place like this he had slipped through fast and furious. Putting as much distance between him and Caeldalmor because he wanted to avoid being pulled back to the Abyssal hells for as long as possible. Seeking entertaining and putting vast distance between him and the one currently all snuggled up on his back like a baby opossum. “I still don’t think yah would turn down a meal when the chance arises, ain’t nothin’ wrong with takin’ comforts when they come. And I said I was guna behave. Well… maybe mentally. No more stealin’ rides off yah like some freeloading beetle makin’ yah do all the hoofin’ it.” A glance back to her was made, “A new leaf of being less of a pest… some days. Not all the time. I’ve got a reputation to still uphold.”
“Your tower is the first place where things felt quiet and at ease, so best be wary of anyone promising to lock me up in a tower because I might just gladly get myself kidnapped.” she mused with a grin. Although it was likely because in his tower she was wrapped in the well of his magic that made everything so blessedly quiet for her. No tugs and pulls from the outside world.
He took the turn to take them down to the waterway path and the beginnings of the slope downwards was subtle but almost immediate. It made her resting on his back a little easier but she could bet it had her weight feeling a little heavier. Tilting her face owards his ear with that smile, mostly just waiting for him to fuss about carrying her. Especially when he was making such a big deal about no longer wanting to hitch a ride with her.
“I also happen to like when you’re in my pocket or sitting on my shoulder,” she murmured. “So it’s not being a pest or a burden. It’s direct contact. A tiny little heartbeat that makes the world feel more solid. I don’t know… I guess sometimes I feel like if I close my eyes too long or if I am not holding onto something, I am going to turn into a mist and float away. In the worst moments I am sort of wishing for it, but I don’t really want to float away.”
They must’ve crossed into some new territory indeed for her to be giving such a quiet, candid admission. Those inner truths of where she struggled most.
That? Well that he could understand. The whole realm forged upon his well, within his well, surrounded by it was a place of tranquility… mostly. Said echoes that were attempting to get his attention and force some sort of clarity that he was either too stupid to see or too stubborn to want too; it typically was a space of calm. Of ease and silence without being silent. There was a reason it was designed as it was. Not so loud and boisterous as he was known to be but rather a state of mind that was often overlooked but appreciated no less in his own thoughts. “Is it really kidnappin’ if it’s allowed?” He asked mostly in a rhetorical fashion while watching his footing tilt.
The incline descending slightly but making a little more sudden than he expected, no less a bit of adjusting so they weren’t reenacting the human tale about Jack and Jill; his attention was a little more focused on that for a time.
Till breath was warming ear once more sending a new spread of puckered flesh to rise at the sensation, suppressing a shudder as she was expressing that she enjoyed him taking solace in her pocket or being present upon shoulder. Damn well knowing that a leaf had turned at some point because to look back at their first beginnings, he doubted she’d ever say such things. Granted, he would have utterly tortured her for speaking in such ways too, so strides were made. But what really stood out was the fact she was being authentic without suddenly trying to be so strong in the same breath.
“Suppose I ain’t that accustomed to such a thought.” Arc admitted rather than putting on some airs about him never knowing what the hell she was talking about. Whilst equally knowing that he was mentally going through some changes himself. Sorting thoughts into categories of use… of what needed work and what could be thrown out and eventually replaced with something better. Hopefully.
“Well… when yah put it that way. Suppose I can oblige and keep tuckin’ away if the need arises. Ain’t no need to go floatin’ away now.”
“I think I like to travel with someone more than being alone,” she admitted easily, for indeed now it was actually easy to admit these things without feeling awkward or stupid about it. He’d now seen her at her worst of worst, lowest of lows. There was so possible way for Calia to seem any more pathetic and terrible, so where was the point in not being free with her thoughts? He’d proven too he wasn’t going to needle her about them, so that made it all the easier too.
“Not with strangers, traveling with the refugees out of Caeldalmor was agony for a dozen different reasons. But in Edelguard I met someone named Rhelic who traveled with me and I think that was the first time I ever just… made a friend, I guess. It’s nice having company.”
As she melted further into the comfort of being carried, of being comforted without worry, it seemed Calia was happy to share her thoughts about everything and nothing. The way she had in those rare moments in Edelguard as they walked through the forests on the way to the Bladerift Tower, or leaving the town of Tir Elas. When she wasn’t so wrapped up in her own feelings and was given the space to just exist, she spilled all sorts of little details of things she hadn’t before.
Calia told him of the refugees, spefically the two girls that’d tried to befriend her. One being Isabelle, the pretty thing he’d spent the night with and the other being a chatty sharp little thing. She grumbled about trying to be friendly and how it never came off right to the point Esther took a quick disliking to her. Described the abandoned waytown in the mountains that was actually kind of incredible and a shame it was abandoned at all. Admitted the sharp pang of guilt she felt about the pair being killed by that soul eater, and that it still lingered there in the back of her mind that she should’ve done something more.
Then she told him about her time with Rhelic, sharing stories with each other by the fire and drinking themselves silly. What she did in Tir Elas when she spent a day on her own, and then later with Nova. Grumbling with a reluctance that her weakness to pretty things with light colored hair seemed to not discriminate! Otherwise she didn’t know what magic thing they possessed that made them so easy to get along with, when she found herself struggling in the Edelguard Palace and elsewhere.
There was no telling how long she talked when they were so deep in the mountain, without the light of the sun to give hints to the passage of time. Every wall of the caves looking exactly the same, only giving way to differences when the sloping would level off for a time before it shifted back downwards again. Eventually Calia realized he really was just going to keep carrying her the whole time without saying a peep, so when the passage was flattened enough for her to shift without throwing him off balance, she gave a quick squeeze with her arms to signal she was done with her clinging and dropped herself back down on her own two feet.
By now, though they could not hear it or see it just yet, there was this scent of water in the air. Shifting it from this stagnant dusty of earth, to something cool and fresh.
She was right, he would have just kept sauntering along without a bother about her being his living backpack. Had she asked about it, he’d have remarked about being a demon in some way. That he wasn’t as weak and feeble as his elven self was and that he wasn’t just for show but there was actual purpose for his physique. Everything and anything under the sun that would have just effortlessly claimed it to be not a care in the world.
Not quite there in the mental ability to just express he also found comfort in her proxy or he simply wasn’t cluing into that entirely yet. Notes of it but not so deep that there was a dawning of realization about it.
Merely listening as she details parts of the journey that he had either disappeared on or had been claimed by a demon that had decided he was on the menu that day. Whatever it was, he took in those tidbits and noted that she wasn’t wrong about her summary of preferring to travel with someone of familiarity. That without that, it was awkward. Something he didn’t correct or find fault with, simply agreeing even if he was a little less prone to that. Or rather, he never cared about awkwardness, he used it for his own whims.
Only once she started to shimmy down for her feet to find that of solid ground, Arc combed back the hair from his face. Brightening the orb of light to spread its gleam further as the air had absolutely shifted away from the stuffy hold of cave dust to fresh. “With how deep we’ve entered, mildly surprised it ain’t stinkin’ of sulphur.” Arc stated as he knew the closer they dropped in the earth, the more such smells existed and persisted in the presence of underwater heated lakes. “Keep going, or pause a moment to see if we can get some bearin’s from yer chatty cave walls doodles?”
“We have several miles yet before we start getting close to the toasty parts,” she answered, taking in a deep breath of the air herself. There was something about water that always appealed to her, maybe in it’s connection to frosty icy things. Other than the ocean where the sheer size and depth of it had actually been intimidating, it’d been a soothing element all in itself. There weren’t too far from the source of it now, so she shook her head about lingering and sight seeing what stories were told on the cave walls, to keep their pace moving forward.
It didn’t take long beyond that to discover the symbol warnings about this being a waterway had not been kidding, for soon the path of the cavern dip directly into shallow water a few inches high. There was no ledge or turn off path that get around it, travelers coming this way were going to have to wade their way through which certainly made the warnings about heavy cargo have a lot more sense.
Calia did not have a problem at all wading through those first few inches of water, though it was apparent in the way she wiggled her fingers at her sides that she was being wary and feeling her way through it. Using senses outside of human means to notice things that were not on the surface.
Eventually the passage opened up to the predicted cavern, a massive underground lake that stretched wall to wall, maybe for a mile in each direction. Here the cavern seemed to have it’s own source of bioluminescent light in the form of crystals jutting from the walls and ceilings. Where water trickled down from above where the ceilings were covered in some sort of moss, flowers and moving creatures. When droplets cascaded to hit the lake below, the sound set off a show of twinkling light in answer. Shining like a nightsky and reflecting in the dark depth of pools. When Calia snapped her fingers it set off the same reaction, as did the intake of breath she made.
This was now the newest most fantastic and beautiful thing she had ever seen in her life.
He gave her a huffing sound that might have been akin to complaining about the fact they weren’t near anything warm. Unclear if it was being sincere about that or just hamming it up for the mood, there was little reason to prolong such noise. Simply moving forward all the more with attention flickering back and forth to study what could be seen in with the aid of the light.
Although the second he stepped into water, there was in fact a complaint, “Wet feet,” Disliking that wholly as it was a uncomfortable sensation to wade through. Disliking wet fabric on his feet mostly but there was no way around this. Well, not within normal means which had he thought about the water prior to stepping into it; he might of switched to his beetle mode to fly. Or made some ornate magical display that was a floating boat for the mood even if it would have been far to shallow for it. Anything that didn’t require wet feet!
It was far too late now and it seemed that as they were moving, their ambient presence was to change into something that not even magic could give the same sort of colouring and awe too. For when the very cave they moved into was filled with bioluminescent lights and crystals, Arc was for once, quiet. Considering the space and feeling its very existence.
Curving attention slightly to her when she was snapping fingers and he was listening to how the water moved, how it glistened and reflected. It seemed beautiful certainly, “Not what I’d expect down in the bowels of the earth.”
The shimmers echoed even with his voice, like little chimes rippling in the air, bouncing off the crystal and the waters. That shift in her expression came slow and soft, brightening into a broad grin much the way it had in his little pocket realm when it dawn on her just what she had at her finger tips. Tilting her head and casting that sparkling green-eyed smile his direction as she lift her booted foot out of the water and oh so slowly set it to the surface.
Flash freezing the surface underfoot, taking a step upwards and taking off into a run, with every step freezing under her until she went into a long smooth glide. Sending that magic outwards in beautiful icy fractals to spread out the glacial surface just enough inches at the surface to make it sturdy. Every crack of ice popping making a sound that echoed in the luminescence of the ceiling, becoming a soft melody with each new step.
She’d done this once before at the pond outside the Edelguard palace, making music out of the trees and water. When she’d tried to draw him out of his melancholy through a sharing of magic, because it was the one thing about the pair of them that no one else really seemed to understand. She seemed to be remembering that moment too, for she hummed that little tune a she commanded water up out of the lake to shape large crystalized trees. Slide on her feet to carved out bushes and plants. Yet that was not nearly the end of this magic spectacle.
Calia grew his magic city out of the very ice.
Of course a little larger than he had with the space there to play. Drawing upwards the towers of sparkling silver, the houses and buildings taking shape out of paper thin delicate ice. Minstrel music being conjured naturally for her thanks to the properties of the cave and it’s strange formation, so she added little misty shapes of dancing creatures in the streets. Little rabbits and birds and frogs dressed in fancy little frocks. She slide through those city streets, skating on the icy with that royal elegance, gesturing her hands at the tiny city with joyous silent invitation.
Come play.
The moment Calia’s expression shifted he had felt the air around them change. Squaring off his shoulders slightly, hands folding behind his back with that habitual, almost scholarly precision he used whenever he observed something that genuinely fascinated him. And right now, whatever she was up to was fascinating.
Observing the crystals around them catching the movement instantly, scattering light across her skin in cool, glinting patterns. Then her foot fell—slowly, deliberately—toward the lake’s surface. The magic that burst from her heel came sharp and brilliant, a flash-freeze that cracked across the water in a clean, ringing note. Arc’s brows lifted. His mouth twitched, just slightly. “Oh-ho,” he breathed, more to himself than to her, as though noting a rare species in its natural habitat.
He watched with an attention so complete it bordered on reverence. Every step she took froze beneath her, then shattered into melodic cracks that traveled up into the vaulted ceiling and bounced like tiny bells through the crystal spires. The cavern itself seemed to join her dance, refracting her every movement into streaks of soft luminescence. She glided across the forming ice, graceful and confident, sending fractal frost blooming outward like silver-boned flowers.
Recalling at the pond and how they seemed to have their first kinda okay interaction, though his mind had been purposefully very messy. She had reached him through magic when words had failed, because magic was the one language the two of them shared without needing permission or translation. Now being recreated as if the mood needed a proper refresher and less of a hesitation between either one of them.
The ice thickened beneath her as she moved, the glacial surface forming a stage for her imagination. She slid toward the shoreline, sweeping her hands outward in elegant arcs that commanded the frozen lake to sculpt itself. Delicate buildings rose around her—houses, towers, spires—each carved from glittering facets of ice that caught the ambient glow and turned it into sheets of silver light. Gaining the necessary minstrel-song to clutter the petite streets. Detailing civilians till he was raising attention to where she soundlessly made the invite to what she wanted. And how easily a grin swept across his face in a slow, sly curve that he didn’t bother hiding.
He took in her creation for a long moment, letting himself marvel the way he once had as a child wandering the moonlit docks of Tír Élas. The towers glimmered. The mist-creatures swayed. The entire frozen city hummed. And then—because he was Arc, and because she had invited him—he gave the only reply he was easily best at.
A breath escaped him, soft as twilight, and he allowed the edges of his own magic to rise. Something articulate but vastly curious.
With a flick of his fingers, the mist-creatures she’d conjured quivered, then multiplied. Little beings—pale, shimmering, translucent—peeked out from behind arches and lamp-posts, their forms round and inquisitive. One waved both arms at another frantically. One attempted to climb an ice wall and immediately oozed back down. Two were embroiled in what could only be described as a heated argument about who had the better hat, despite neither wearing one. Arc let out a tiny puff of laughter, the sound bright as a chime against crystal. “A proper city,” he murmured under his breath, watching the chaos unfold, “Cannot exist without a proper mess, aye.”
Then his attention shifted back to Calia—fully, completely. He studied her for a heartbeat the way a poet studies a final line.
Feeling the thought till it had stirred and smoothed at its center. Forming the very idea of how he wanted to do this and not be something that was expected.
To replicate the motions of her own behaviours to where he could step up and out onto the formation of new ice beneath that of boots. Softly groaning as he gave her one smirk that seemed to merely say my turn.
The shift began quietly—no tearing, no warped shadows—just a dissolving, like his form had been made of dusk that someone exhaled into the air. Where he had stood now curled something small, lithe, and brilliant! And absolutely fitting every notion of his personality.
A fox of pure twilight.
Its fur woven from starlight and the faintest traces of violet nebula.
Its paws leaving footprints of soft luminescence on the ice.
Its eyes bright twin lanterns—violet, warm, curious.
Glancing to her with the same sort of silent invitation that was let’s play.
And the twilight fox leapt forward, scattering mist-creatures with flashes of star-powder as he darted into her frozen city, weaving between the little streets she’d crafted for them. The cavern glowed brighter for it—two magics interlacing, two imaginings dancing, and the air itself shifting to accommodate the joy of it.
Her gave her the sort of smile that could’ve shattered hearts and Calia knew in that moment that she’d enticed him into something thrilling. Waiting practically on her toes to see what ludicrous new addition he’d make to this city of magic, and he was not one to disappoint when an invitation was made, was he.
A proper city with a proper mess. Calia laughed with he entire body, ringing loud and musical in itself, for he could not have chosen to do anything more perfect. Perfectly Archimedes, perfectly Calia, perfectly whimsy and nonsense and chaos that made the world so much more vibrant and interesting. The little blobby things did not match her little sculpted animals, instead had the same silly energy as every googlie eyed creature she’d made to charm him. With their fussing arguments and toddling in all directions, the entire thing came alive in a new way.
When her laughter died and she caught him staring at her, there was a raise of her brow and a tilt of her head back. Another silent question of just what he was thinking, because she could see those wheels turning. Then he had to go and smirk in such a way that had her holding her breath.
He shifted so easily, like it was nothing to dissolve away into the shadows of a setting sun. Curling like smoke to reveal the last shape she’d have ever expected him to take. So used to the jeweled golden beetle, this fox of cosmic dreams was simply fantastic. Gorgeous.
Breath taking.
Calia followed after him in a heartbeat, unleashing magic with a rhythm so perfectly smooth that it became a dance. Adding flair and flourish to their frost blooming city with sweep of her arms and a spin on her feet. Becoming a swirling gentle storm, flicking her fingers to add lanterns and sparkling lights mirroring the opalescent hues of the cavern’s crystals. She led a parade of bunnies and frogs and ghostly blobs, playing little violins and beating tiny drums to herald the coming of an entire conjured pack of running fox kits.
And when that rapturous joy made her brave and bold and wild, she drew that starlight magic around her like a swirl of flowing silk and dared to shift. Zipping through the air like an icy bolt of static until she reformed fully into an entirely new body. Small, fluffy and petite. A snow fox in all it’s actualized glory.
…skidding across the ice without an ounce of grace and face planting into one of the ice formed buildings.
Needless to say, she was completely bewildered splooted there on all fours on the ice. Wink-wonking green-eyes trying to figure out what in the greater hells had she just done!
“Well now,” The disembodied voice decided it absolutely couldn’t not speak on the matter of the princess who was so afraid of shifting her shape not even a few weeks ago, now imitating him once more. “Should I be flattered yah be takin’ notes and copyin’ the demon once more?” Arc’s little feet sauntered over to where she had became a sprawled spread of fluffy white. Having less of a control on four feet than she had with two. No longer the current dancing ice queen but a discombobulated fluff ball that he was pretty sure she wouldn’t have chosen on most any other day.
A fox were sly. Rumoured to be mischief and impish nature all in animal fur so it made sense for him to select for the moment. But of course Calia did have a large spurt of mimicry in her blood for how often she mocked him with his own words or accents. Just he never thought her bravery would have come out to replicate the same animal for shifting.
With the frost under paw to keep him aloft upon this creation of ice, easily he crouched to bring twilight speckled nose close to her own. Vibrant rings of illuminated violets grinning at the fact this was the result of her play currently and had almost been inclined to flop on top of her just for the fun of it.
Resisted of course.
But the means of reaching over to tug on a pointed ear, was hardly as controlled. Pulling and pulling till he relented and began to spring effectively over top her body, “Come now, wee love… yah be wantin’ to play this game.” Arc leapt once more clean over to trot a few paces away with a look that even in animal visage, was still all him. All dreamy tomfoolery that yipped in the vocals of the very creature before sprinting once more to the city itself. Letting magic spread from paws outwards to enlarge the spectacle some what more that it was suitable for some petite fuzz balls to roam within it. Even if he was snapping jaws at one of their creations to make it run for its life, cackling like a delight pest!
What the fuck. What in the absolute fuck had she done!
Calia knew how she got there – brilliantly thrilled with the spectacle of magic, freely shaping it without fear or hesitation, connected to the very essence of the world that was hers. Chasing after his starlight fox form, so wonderous beautiful, ethereal, perfectly darling that how could she not want to try it herself. To see what it was like to run made of stars.
Somewhere in her casting it had not gone to plan.
He tugged on her ear and she might’ve snarled or snapped at him if she could get her tiny strange little body to move! Scrunching up her small little nose trying to tell him to Stop that!, and not yet figure out how to use her voice in such a form.
Damn him, he was far too amused with this!
Still… he was unconcerned and once her thunderous panic finally subsided, Calia began to test her newly shaped limbs. Struggling up onto all fours – and it was in fact a full struggle trying to figure out how these legs worked, on top of not slipping all over the ice! Once she got the hang of standing, she gave her head a shake, her whole body a shake! Right down to the long fluffy tail attached to her behind.
A few drunken style steps took her over to a reflective piece of the ice where she got a good first look of this form she’d taken. Eyes of deep fir forest green were the only familiar features, as she’d become an snow white dream of a little arctic fox. All rounded puffy cheeks, little black nose. An ear flicked. She was adorable.
Not quite the starry nebula of cosmic creation she had wanted, and yet she’d successfully transformed her shape without looking like some googlie-eyed couch cushion lump. One couldn’t be mad about that.
After a tentative few more steps, Calia slowly found herself growing more and more used to the new shape. Speaking still eluded her, yet as she gained control of her body, body language and her personality itself became far more pronounced. She lept into the city with a full sprawl, blinking at this new interesting eye level to snatch up one of the misty creatures and sling it down the road. Tap dancing her paws with a new sort of glee as she took off into a sprint, leaping over one of the towers with a swift boing, and lo.. once she learned the pouncing, off she went!
Zoomies taking over as she barreled over denizens of their ice city, made skidding stops to kick up snow at Archimedes, and laughed in that wicked little way that foxes laughed before zooming off again.
Thankfully he didn’t say it outright—he never did—but there was always something quietly, wickedly amusing about watching a mage’s first true shapeshift. Watching the body they crafted rebel against them, or fold in odd angles they hadn’t accounted for, or surge with too much power all at once. It wasn’t anything against Calia; far from it. Shapeshifting simply required cultivation—practice, rhythm, familiarity—and Arc possessed all of that in abundance. This was hardly his first time wearing another form. The beetle shape belonged to his demonology, a function of his bond, but the arcane side of his magic? That part had always made him an insufferable, inexplicable frustration to anyone who tried to categorize him.
Such things weren’t limited to being elf or demon. They were simply Arc.
He slipped through the towering crystalline structures of her conjured city as a cosmic fox, a creature of twilight and star-scatter, weaving between streets of ice like some furry celestial tyrant. Every so often he nosed at one of Calia’s created denizens—fluffy beasts, little blobs of colour, miniature half-animals half-ideas—and sent them skittering. His tail trailed constellations through the air as he went about this quiet harassment with almost scholarly curiosity, comparing how the beings reacted, how the snow shifted under paws made of dusk. All the while, his attention kept flickering back to Calia. He was prepared—always—to intervene if her magic bucked out of her control or overwhelmed her. But she didn’t need him. She was getting a feel for it, step by careful step.
Until she really got the feel of it.
She shot across the snowy expanse like an arrow let loose by a mischievous goddess, leaping from spire to spire with mounting confidence. And then—of course—she skidded directly at him, tail whipping, momentum absolutely unchecked. A wave of powdered snow blasted straight into his face.
The cosmic fox sputtered, shook his head, sneezed stardust, and fixed her with a theatrical, frost-speckled glare. She yipped triumphantly. He resisted the urge to laugh outright, but the curve of his ears betrayed him.
For a moment he simply watched her—this strange, brilliant mimic who absorbed every gesture she found fascinating. He wasn’t always the biggest fan of her borrowing his accent or echoing his phrases; it felt more like mockery than flattery sometimes. But this? Her joy in mastering a new shape? That… he felt strangely proud of.
Though pride quickly melted into mischief.
Only once she looked directly at him did he let the fox grin—broad, vulpine, and full of trouble. His gleaming starlit silhouette shimmered, wavered, and then broke apart into wisps like steam lifting from frost on a warm morning. Those drifting threads of twilight folded into themselves, condensing, reforming—
—and where the cosmic fox had stood, something smaller—far, far smaller—emerged.
A two-inch-tall Arc. Perfectly proportioned, unmistakably himself, dressed in a miniature winter coat the same way one might dress a doll except he was very much still him. He dusted imaginary snow from an equally imaginary lapel, tilted his head up at her with insufferable dignity, and stepped lightly into the streets of the glimmering ice-city.
Down here amongst her conjured world, the beasts and blobs now towered over him like gentle giants—though “gentle” was a generous interpretation. One of the blobby creatures waddled a little too close, looming like a curious moon with stubby legs! Arc looked up at it with the posture of someone thoroughly unimpressed that anything taller than three inches dared breathe in his direction. With the casual entitlement of a tiny monarch, he flicked his fingers at it in a shooing gesture, muttering something about “personal space” and “bloated snow-gelatin.”
He strolled onward as though he owned the city—because in his mind, he did. Calia might have built it, but Arc? Arc was already reorganizing it in his imagination. Adding little staircases. Changing the flow of traffic. Deciding which districts he’d allow to exist and which ice-tower he would simply “accidentally” melt later.
Every few steps, he paused to examine the craftsmanship of her creatures with a level of scrutiny that would make a jeweller cry. One fluffy, vaguely rabbit-shaped critter stretched its neck down to sniff him. Arc raised a brow at it, reached up, and patted its snoot with two fingers—slow, deliberate, and patronizing. The poor thing immediately froze with bashful pride. “Mm. Adequate,” he hummed, as if offering high praise.
Further along, he stopped by an icicle jutting from the crystalline roofline, tapping it with the side of his knuckles just to hear what sound it made at his new size. The resulting chime—higher, brighter than usual—made his ears perk instinctively. He tapped it again. And again. Then cursed softly when one of his bloblies copied him, tapping its own icicle with a goofy enthusiasm that made the entire cavern ring like mismatched bells. “Oh look,” Arc drawled under his breath, “I’ve started a cultural movement amongst the frost-initiated. How very inspirin’ of me.”
One of the larger constructs—a sort of floating snow-sphere with far too many eyes—drifted close in a slow, curious orbit. Arc did not slow down rather, he stepped aside as though avoiding an overly affectionate relative at a festival, craning his neck around it with a withering look. When it continued trailing him, he stopped abruptly, stared directly into whichever eye seemed the most sentient, and snapped:
“No. Bad cloud. Go… hover somewhere else.”
To his surprise, the thing obediently bobbed away. “Oh, so that’s how it is. Excellent. I accept my throne.” And with that smug, satisfied declaration, the tiny two-inch Arc resumed his stroll with renewed pomp. He even clasped his hands behind his back like a scholar inspecting architecture he fully intended to steal credit for later. Little puffs of snow burst around his boots—each footstep a stamp of ownership on Calia’s creation.
He was mischief incarnate. And he planned to explore every frost-swept corner of her city before she found him again. And then, without a word, he slipped into the nearest building—disappearing behind its frosted threshold with all the subtlety of someone who knew she would absolutely try to scoop him up or shake him around like a rag-doll if he lingered too long.
He had, after all, just enough functioning braincells to know better.
Calia swiftly discovered why faeling creatures loved being in an animal form. Something about being a small wild fox sang to her tempestuous heart. She boinged and pounced, sprinted and zoomed. Took corners in a mad dash, climbed up icy buildings and sent her own little creations scattering in bell-like squeals. The air smelled different, magic felt more sparkling. Calia loved the way it felt through her fur, loved that he was a vision of stars, love magic, she loved, loved, loved. Practically beaming with the feeling so strongly that it literally gave her fur a soft glittering glow. She was fae. One hundred percent authentic fae.
There was the curious consequence of not yet being able to find her voice in this form, which made her bodily expressions that much more animated and distinct in ways she’d had never expressed in her human body. Every single one of her thoughts coming across clear as day. Stopping to sit when he cast her that mischievous foxy look, nearly tilting her head full sideways with a suspicious squint when once again started to swirl magic about himself to shift shape.
The way her whole body started and front paws spread in front of her from the mere shock of him suddenly being a teeny tiny little Archimedes. One ear flicking, then the other as she crouched down low, sliding her body across the ice to inch closer. A few curious sniffs and the entire undivided focus that declared she was examining every single thread of the spell he cast. Analyzing it in her own strange way as she trailed after him and his miniature nonsense through the city streets.
Without her voice she yipped at him to stop being rude to her denizens. Made a scoffing bark that he’d claimed to have made cultural impact from the chiming noise now being drummed. Trying her absolute best to hide any amusement she had with the whole of his shenanigans, but she had no control over these fox features so every bit of her joy and mirth shone through in the flicks of her tail and the trotting of her paws.
In the very split second she’d looked away to admire the way a crystal spire shimmered rainbows of light, he’d vanished. Making do another full body sprawl of surprise and an entire circle around to see where he went. Those fluffy ears peeled back once she recognized the game, and slow as could be that very fox smile spread. A show of grinning teeth as she slinked into a hunter’s stance.
If she wanted she could find him by the bond alone, yet this was play! A sniff of her nose in he air came first, her ears doing a full airplane rotation to listen oh so carefully. Quiet as – well, a fox – she creeped and stalked. Once she found him, maybe she’d gum him a little bit just for sport!
Oh it was quite the absolute delight to live and breath and embed himself within the means of magic once more without having any rhyme or reason to its existence. Merely responding and flexing pieces of himself that had once been as easy going as a well greased machine. Now, it was having to shake some of the rust off as he slipped into one of the buildings and started to investigate its insides. Or rather, form said insides with more attention.
Adding little materials within that made them a little homey-er rather than just being a blank interior that was as forgotten about as a ruined city. Leaving him to create some icy steps upwards to an upper portion as he tilted to peek cautiously out one of the windows slats.
Getting a scene of the Calia fox living in her instincts as she scented the air. Ears rotating here and there for the subtle sounds that a hunting fox might find. Before lauching themselves straight up and down to head first for a nice tiny slumbering mouse under the snow. Which he was not about to be.
Especially when she began to creep and he had more than a few ideas that allowed him to create three copies of himself. At a quick glance, they looked seamless, but they had a bit of the wispiness that the denizens of this city possessed. Telling if you studied but for the moment, they would work well on acting as decoys for the snow fox fae.
Something that would likely tantalize her instincts all the more, as he shooed them off to go and flit themselves out the door he had entered. Separating so they might each slip into a different section of the city as to be the things she hunted while he, found his perfect little spot to be the final discovery.
Calia had always been a good hunter in her human form and she took to the instincts of the arctic fox like it was a second skin. Slinking through the magical made city of ice with not even the crunch of snow under her paws. Not a single sound to bounce off the crystals or ignite that natural musical chime of the lake cavern. Almost seeming to glide like a beautiful ghostly cloud as she carefully stepped around the whimsical shapes of various dreamlike critters and toddling blobs.
She’d spotted the tail end of a miniature boot and froze in place. Peeking her head around the corner to spy where he scurried off too. The she bounced was quick, launching up a good foot or two in the air before pinning him down with her paws to boop with her snout. Immediately going all puffy furred and alarmed when all that was left of him was a puff of violet mist, for the briefest of seconds believing she’d actually squashed him!
Of course, that was absolutely silly and she was soon snorting off a growl under her breath. Turning full body to look around now with a narrowing of those emerald green eyes. Picking up now that magic was involved in this hunting game. Not exactly fair, but Calia didn’t mind.
They never had chances to just play. To just exist and be magical menaces for the pure joy of it.
…and now that she’d settled into this new skin, she was figuring out how to manipulate magic within it. Where in her human shape she had always felt the need to be physical with her casting, that was not so easy to do as a small furry fox. As this little thing, she was having to practice a new skill altogether of weaving threads with thought and aura alone. Kicking up the smallest flurry of a blizzard to over take the rainbow city.
Calia became a blur in the flurry, white fur disappearing in the fall of snow with naught but those eyes of green giving any hint to where she stalked. Her denizens took on tiny hats and woven scarves. Wrapped themselves in cloaks and warmed themselves by cozy crystals taking on an orangey hue. The second Arc she snatched up out of the streets with a quick snap of her jaws, finding the magic tasted a bit like stardust and lightening. A third she found trying to menace bunnies on the street and she took personal offense to that with another snatch and a swallow!
The real one? Well, he was around here somewhere, and now she was no longer seeking by sound and smell, but by that little tingle of magic being manipulated.
Arc knew the precise moment the hunt changed due to the winds she conjured shifting a gentle drift to deliberate cover, when the entire tone of the cavern bent around her intent like a bowstring being drawn. Even from two inches tall and armed with nothing but well earned confidence and endless play, he felt the shift like a spark down his spine. He was in the middle of constructing the interior of a tall, empty tower—tiny hands sculpting crystalline rafters, adding an unnecessary spiral staircase simply because he found it aesthetically pleasing—when his first clone fizzled. Feeling the little pop of false consciousness burst into a tiny purple bubble. A little “Oh wonderful,” Arc muttered, placing a hand dramatically to his tiny chest. “A casualty. My poor, brave idiot.”
It was that moment he slid through the half-made doorway and down into the street, boots pattering quietly. Snowflakes the size of his torso drifted down now, Calia’s influence giving the city a festive storm. He darted between crystal lampposts, muttering enchantments into the walls of buildings he passed—adding fireplaces that shouldn’t function, windows that led nowhere, doors that opened into pocket closets that served no purpose other than to irritate future explorers.
And another clone burst somewhere two blocks away. “Oh come on, that one wasn’t even antagonizing anything… yet.” Lips curled as he made a hasty slip into a bakery-like structure he hadn’t fully furnished, snapping his fingers and conjuring shelves lined with pastries made entirely of compacted snow and coloured light. The third clone’s demise was loud—more dramatic than the rest—accompanied by the faintest hint of fox-teeth satisfaction through the bond that always sat between them like a shadow and a sunbeam. Arc placed a hand over his heart and let out an exaggerated gasp. “She ate that one. She swallowed him whole. The betrayal. The barbarism, the artistry…”
He wiped an imaginary tear as the wicked grin shortly pulled upon lips. Seemingly proud of her intention to be so barbaric even in this game though mentally noting it was in his best interest not to be caught by her just in case she did decided to lean too heavily into animalistic behaviours and did in fact, gulp him down.
Immediately he ducked through a doorway, scarmpering under a frost-laden table, then exited through a newly conjured back room that absolutely had not existed three seconds ago. Calia’s magic flurried harder, obscuring the world in a cyclone of glittering ice. He felt her in the storm now—felt her weaving spells with thought alone, her aura brushing against the edges of his senses like the tide licking stone.
Meanwhile, the real Arc flitted from rooftop to rooftop, slipping through windows the size of his torso, rounding corners with improbable speed. Making sure to add details as quickly as he could before Calia closed in. Soon making his magical artistry in the form of chimneys puffing violet mist, balconies growing from sheer ice walls, a little tavern sign swinging in a wind he conjured with a snap of his fingers.
But even mischief had its apex.
And Arc, dramatic creature that he was, always sought the highest point. So he climbed—leaping from icy ledge to icy ledge, scampering up spirals of snow, using sheer audacity in place of a ladder. Only then at the pinnacle of the tallest spire, overlooking the frozen dreamscape did he make himself rightfully at home!
A deck chair unfolded beside him with a clack, the fabric patterned in shades of indigo and celestial pinks so he might flop into it with a groan of pure, exaggerated fatigue. A pair of sunglasses—far too large for his face—manifested and dropped onto his nose. A reflective sun-panel, clearly salvaged from some otherworldly contraption, propped itself up beside him, gleaming despite the cavern having no actual sun whatsoever but those were unimportant semantics, now wasn’t it?
Adjusting his winter coat over his lap, because of course he was still in full cold-weather gear -boots, scarf, the whole kit kaboodle- never mind that the whole thing was completely at odds with the summer relaxation posture.
From below, wind howled through alleys. Buildings glowed orange with conjured warmth. Blobs put on tiny scarves. The storm flurried in thick, magical curtains making the whole city a vibrant lifeblood that one would could quickly forget they were in the bowels of the earth! “Well,” he murmured to no one but himself, reclining further, “If she wishes to find me… she’d better hurry. I intend to catch a tan.” He tipped his sunglasses down the bridge of his nose and peered over the edge of the spire, watching the swirl of white below with a fox-hunted smirk.
Calia followed the thread of his magic, every stair case made, every puff pastry, the glimmers, the sparkles, the silly little details. All at the most lackadaisy, slow speed of a predator that knew it didn’t need to be quick. Simply silent, steady, and patient for Archimedes was a predictable thing, wasn’t he! Naturally he would find himself a place to perch and over see the kingdom that he’d helped conjured with joyous whimsy.
Her blizzard through the city masked her perfectly, rounding corners until she found that singular spire. Letting him sit there at the top for a moment to soak in his smugness and moment of being absolutely ridiculous. All this use of magic just for magic’s sake, she was growing quite hungry now and predatory instinct certainly found itself a thousand times stronger in this fox body than it did in her human. Calia had to actively remind herself that he was not for eating.
She stuck her little paws into windows of the tower climbing up the back of it until she’d risen juuuust high enough.
A curl of pink tongue flicked out and licked him. Forgetting that he was in fact still super tiny, so that lick might’ve accidentally been more like a wet slap to the head!
It was barely noticeable but one that pulled regardless that had him inching the oversized shades down that of nose to look upon the steadily arising she-fox. Using the tower as leverage to help her to balance and peek over top his roosted spire.
Working mouth bare seconds that could have been spared as the flappy pink tongue appeared to slap him entirely right out of his concocted chair. Onto the floor and a little wetter than he had been seconds ago!
Stunned truly for that hadn’t been on his bingo card, blinking through the cockeyed darkened spectacles upwards at the white living cloud with a tongue that was the real fiend in all of this!
Looking to hands then up once more, lips curled into a sideways bend. Leaning back shortly on palms as he gave her a calculating consideration, “Aye she found the demon in the city, but now… can the mountain princess turn herself back to mortal flesh?” Arc asked even as he gestured, “Yer missin’ quite the view from my perspective, y’know.”
She’d ducked a little back town after unintentionally tongue slapping him off his silly little chair, completely amused but perhaps a tiny but sorry about it. Leaving nothing but back turned pointed ears and big wide green eyes peering over the roof’s edge. Giving a soft growl in the back of her throat as an answer… because… well.
Calia did not even know how to use her voice yet, so she wasn’t entirely sure she knew how to change back either. In the moment she’d just done it as she oft tended to do, so whatever craft it was that made it possible was a bit lost on her. Luckily for them both she wasn’t in a panic or terror, for the last time she’d tried the entire idea of changing her shape had scared the hell out of her. Actually for this very reason of fearing she might not be able to return to her natural self at all.
Now? Now Calia was quite liking being a fox. She was still magical and powerful. Beautiful and magnificent. But even better than that, she wasn’t a person anymore and she was oh so very tired of being a person.
However, he’d baited her with a fascinating view – a perspective of being oh so tiny – and like any magical thing that liked to stretch the limits of what they could do, she was already intrigued. Poking black nose up to give him a heavy sniff as if that was going to tell her what threads to pull to change size and form once again.
It took a great deal of concentrating until that ethereal glow of her snow white fur made a little shimmer until…. pop! Calia disappeared entirely.
Or rather she came dropping out of the sky to land on his shoulder, scrapping and scrabbling suddenly to hold on with her paws. Still a snow white arctic fox, only now she was the teeniest, tiniest little fox and had perhaps under shot how small she’d meant to be. After a very angry yip and a leap, came another pop!.
Calia landed on that rooftop on her ass, back to herself again and appropriately sized to scale – now instead of the black and brown traveling leathers she was decked out in a snowy white with fox fur trim. She glanced at her hands first to make sure they were actually hands and quickly ran her fingers through her hair to be sure it was hair and not fur… and that no lingering ears were there either!
“…good gods, that was brilliant…! I could be a fox forever!”
And her voice! Maybe she missed the sound of her own voice just a little.
She was incredibly good at the moment for being entirely unpredictable. For when he offered her the challenge of whether or not she could figure out how to return her body to that of a person and of course added on a little extra that the view presently from his miniature station was quite impressive; he did not expect her to pop out of existence onto him! As this petite fluff ball of pure white, scrambling desperately on his shoulder!
Startling him into this strange fumbling effort that was trying to avoid her falling off onto the ground to bounce across the ice spire’s top, and not knowing what to do at all!
Just that she used him as a stone to gain traction and leapt away to once more shift and finally appear back to her typical form. Dressed in similar attire that was suitable for the chill –which he did give her a look because she was the one that said the cold didn’t bother her that much- to where he was huffing at her in such a way that was a bit of exasperation for being both slapped by a pink tongue and being scrabbling assaulted by a tiny fox for a few seconds.
Sitting there. Waiting. Watching her sitting on the ground as well while checking her form was in fact back as it ought to be, till she was proclaiming how much she enjoyed that. “For someone who was terrified of doin’ it not even a few weeks ago, hmmm,” Arc shifted so he could climb back up to his feet, dusting off his butt from the snow.
Eyeing her a bit with a clear debate if he was going to even offer her a hand since she just recently assaulted him so brutally with little kit paws and decided that he wasn’t. Smirking at her in that way that simply said you’re a big girl, to meander purposefully closer to the edge of the towering ice pillar.
Leaning against its created balustrade to look down at the created icy world. With the sights watching blob and animal creatures going about their business unaffected once more by the reality as the coloured hues of the cavern casted quite the picture of awe around. He’d have said something about it but that would make him romantic and he was not about to fall back into that trap that was back at Tir Elas and her commenting about him being just that!
“A girl can discover new things and change her mind, can’t she?” Calia remarked with all due amusement, pointedly watching him give her a little smirk of refusal to help her up – not that she was expecting it at all, she just thought it was quite funny he’d made a show of it after she accidentally both tongue-slapped him to the ground as well as landed on him like a cushion during her wild transformations.
She still didn’t know how she’d done it at all. Only knowing that it had more to do with her being comfortable and at ease than anything else. He’d once told her that one couldn’t force magic to bend, you had to coax it and flow with it. Calia at her very best was when she was able to be lost within the magic until she’d blended seamlessly.
Drawing herself to her feet came with a bit of drunken wobbliness, finding that it would take some getting used to trying to flip and flop from the way one body worked to another. Even her head was still spinning a little, fox-thoughts, fox-instincts… she’d never known that changing shape could also alter how she viewed, experienced, and thought about things… Although was that a shape-shifting thing, or simply a fae thing?
She stumbled her way over to the balustrade, first and foremost giving him a look over and wrinkling her nose at that tongue-wet that had his hair sticking up at odd ends. Deciding it was her duty to pluck it all over and sent it off into a frosted mist so he was well and dry – not covered in Calia-fox slobber!
Then Calia was eager leaning over the side to take a gander at this glorious miniature world they’d created out of water, ice, snow and glowing mists of illusionary magic. Her blizzard had faded away now that she was no longer prowling the streets on a hunt, leaving it all blanketed in a find dusting of fluffy snow. Everything had come to a pleasant hush, the chimes and bells of the cavern sounding like a calming lullaby to the peaceful little scene.
They’d made something absolutely pointless, yet it was the most beautiful and wonderous thing she’d ever seen. A work of glittering art for no purpose other than being lovely.
Maybe a few of those fox tendencies were still lingering strong in her body language, as she leaned to bunt her shoulder against his arm in pure affection. Flashing him a bright and proud sort of grin that was nothing less than cheeky.
“Hmm that is the point of discovery ain’t it, to change yer mind.” Her remark was met with honestly and of course that little bit of knowing better that he possessed in these sort of moments. The ones that came from experience of having one opinion and learning through it to develop a better one. Meandering himself over to that of the works that was the city that was absolutely about to be an oddity more so in the cavern of crystals and lights, whilst she picked herself off the icy ground.
Although he gave her a few squinted looks only after she came over and was doing that thing that was sorting him out like some maternal figure that couldn’t stand the idea that he was out of place even if it was by her own hand… tongue. Whatever.
Till he was suitably rendered back into a state that was less slobbered and they were simply two itty bitty souls amongst the false world created and existing. Leaving him to look around quietly. Feeling the unseen tendrils of heavily threads of magic spun in every measure. Knitted and free flowing till she was bunting against him with a grin. Pleased with herself and utterly cheeky. Only foretelling that she was hardly done messing about and he was likely about to have to be on his guard.
Raising a brow at her as if to say what now?
“You make a beautiful cosmic fox,” she told him easily, still giving that cheeky grin. Calia shifted just enough to hop and sit on the edge of the balustrade, tilting backwards to get a good look of the cavern ceiling, that now felt like it was a thousand times farther away when she was in this tiny little space. Even though they were so small, their voices still seemed to carry enough to set off that luminescence that shimmered with every echo.
Recently it was near impossible these days to find moments where things were peaceful and full of joy, so there was no rush in her to get on with their traveling. Instead she sat there breathing it all in savoring each little second. True to her word that bad feelings were amplified to the point of despair… well good feelings were radiant and she had every intention of lingering in them as long as she could get away with it.
“Beautiful enough that I suppose you’re back to being the pretty one again. I’ll have to settle back into the dark so you can be the glittering star.”
Oh how that squint tightened at her nonsense about being beautiful cosmic fox was, “Magic.” Arc replied smirking, “Quite the useful little tool that invokes all sorts of whimsy and nonsense.” Matter of fact saying it in such a way that was just as common as air. As he really had no care about the means of appearance in such ways, but gave her a bit of a look that expressed if she fell off the top of the railing, she was going to have to save herself.
Which he figured she would, so it went without saying. Just not without a look at least.
For a moment in time, it was serene. Soft and quiet like a lullaby in a hold of breath that as they were simply there on top of the highest point; he was delightfully devoid of words and thoughts.
Till she was blabbering nonsense in that fae way. “Yah ever think I don’t wanna be a glitterin’ star?” Arc asked her point blank, then putting a faux hand over his chest. “I already know I’m pretty,” Making sure it was clear he was mostly jesting with her, “But that whole crap about being a glitterin’ star or whatever it means to be in the front view, feh,” His hand flipped away. “Not interested. Yer the star of this show, with all yer rabid fans, that dark space is all mine. Find yer own.”
Magic was his quick and curt reply, as if somehow claiming it was magic made it any less beautiful! Leaving Calia wondering if he’d forgotten just who he was talking to here, or if perhaps he’d not realized that everything about magic was magnificent to her and the fact he was masterful at it was genuinely impressive. For someone who loved to be a theatrical dramatic demon, he did not like to accept compliments.
Many things about him were worthy of her awe and admiration. Feeling that most sincerely now more than ever with every little thing she’d learned.
And his giving her that warning eye about her sitting on the ledge just made her tilt and lean in his direction, bracing a hand on the balustrade as she did so.
“It’s too late, I’ve seen it. You’re my glittering north star now,” she declared with genuine bluntness that was to be expected, if not usually in this sort of way. “As if it weren’t enough to see a nebula of stars in those horns every time your heart beats, now I’m going to be thinking about a starry fox. When we’re back on the surface I’m going to find us a meadow to streak through where we can chase fireflies and be a nuisance to lemmings.”
Once more he was looking at her, just now he was returning to leaning on the railing. Chin in palm and the violets of his serpentine stare resting as she braced herself and decided that she was leaning into her dreamy nonsense. This was entirely a fae thing wasn’t it?
“Didn’t yah just recently call me the darkness that surrounds yah in a far more poetic sense. Yah can’t keep changin’ it, how the hell am I supposed to become complacent and droll about it all if my job description flits all over the place.” Lips curled in such a way that expressed he found her efforts amusing thankfully.
Even if he was rolling his eyes at her with this whole effort of airs that he was sure was simply influence off of some magic high she had gotten. “Yah do that and Imma just streak buck ass naked instead of any shapeshiftin’. Yah know, keep it natural.”
Calia laughed and shrugged her shoulders. “Okay, maybe you are everything then,” she conceded. “The sun, moon and stars, the darkness and everything in between.”
In Calia’s mind that was just as true. Perhaps if they were two different people, in some warmly lit little cafe, chirping sweet nothings at each other, she might’ve realized that saying such things could’ve sounded sentimentally romantic. But he was a pain in the ass, and she was a pain in the ass, so all it really felt to her was a simple truth. They were soulmates born out of the violence of stars and that was all there was to it.
Immediately finding herself narrowing her eyes at him soon after.
“You think running buck ass naked is going to bother me in the slightest? As if I myself wouldn’t be absolutely thrilled to go running around naked much to the shock and awe of poor woodland creatures minding their own business?” That smile of hers turned into something akin to a vixen, apparently still very much in the mind of foxes when she leaned in even further.
“And I’d be running much quicker without worrying about tripping over my own dick.”
His mouth opened immediately at what sort of frilly goop was falling out of her own, about to point out that she should save such stuff for whomever next was on her list to put into bed and roll around in it. Suggesting how stupidly romantic it all was and how he didn’t say any of that. Where thoughts immediately grabbed a hold of how easily it would be for her to point out only he would think that and further continue the mantra that he was in turn, romantic as well.
So lips closed and simply shrugged at her. “Sounds like a hell of a lot of responsibility,” Never mind such commentary was in fact better served for whomever she was trying to get to her pants.
Settling instead to focus on the suggestion that in the future was some fae wildling about in nature that of course he had to comment that the only thing he would be doing is running with his own naked mortal rear out. Which of course, he didn’t suspect Calia cared about in the least. Which she pointed out and commented about how she would do the same much to the horror of any audience members.
Which he did have a quip about only to double take at her with the crude commentary about his private region. “The hell yah think I’m hung like a fucking godly horse?” Arc balked at her with a shake of his head, “And I’m more than concerned in a manner of seconds what sort of fellows yah been beddin’ if that’s what yah first suggest.”
Blinking at her with a highly judgmental and playful twist of attention, shortened to shaking his head. Only leading him to decidedly step forward to bring his frame up onto the railing to stand one moment. Liable to say something more about how he in turned worried for whatever next beau it was that she sought but remembered that he wasn’t supposed to say anything about that. So instead, Arc turned in his standing position and just considered her a moment. Before backstepping to take an immediate fall off the top of the tower and poofed out of existence!
Where the miniature town was promptly given the burst of brilliantly coloured bursts of tiny fireworks as he himself, rematerialized all proper and correct height a bit away from the ice city. Framing the whole thing between fingers. Making sure his exit was in fact, perfectly timed.
Calia sure as hell hadn’t been imagining him hung like a godly horse, yet now he’d put that image into her had along with his comment of just whom she’d been bedding! The immediacy of her cheesed grin and the way she scrunched up her shoulders foretold exactly where her thoughts were going so clearly, that no wonder he took a step up onto the ledge and lept right off.
Her laughter rang into the sky as his burst of sparkling fireworks peppered across her miniature city. Calia wouldn’t have taken him as bashful, but that surely seemed like a quick escape to her! At least leaving her with a beautiful spectacle to admire from the magically created perch. A blissful rare moment of just being truly okay.
And it was all shattered with a crack of ice.
The first crack hit the bottom of the widespread ice sheet with a loud SNAP. Hitting the underbelly with such a force that it sent a quake through the city of frost and misty magic illusions. The second came so swift there wasn’t even time to recognize what happened with the first, several chunks of ice burst open and it toppled down buildings and towers, sending them dissolving away into the cavern lake.
On the last, the entire sheet had been shattered – dislodging the ice sheet from anywhere it was anchored, ice floats speeding off in all directions from the wave of water surging up from the deep, dark depths of the lake itself. Calia letting out a few loud curses holding on tight to the balustrade before she and the entire tower itself went sinking and disappearing under the waters.
A figure rising out in a hissing spray, skin of opaque grey and dingy blue and shining with slimey smoothness. Four slits of black obsidian eyes were on each side of it’s head, if one could even consider it a head when it’s mouth cut straight through the middle of the oblong mishappened orb. Opening up wide like a book with rows of teeth and a bizarre wormy tongue squiggling out.
This was no natural cave creature, this was a demon. Without any shadow of doubt.
He’d been content to merely admire his finalized work of giving a magical end to the playtime that had been spurred on by the princess within. Mentally checking in that it was what he wanted and sure that it could be easily re-enacted in the future, but nothing… was going to prepare him for the sudden burst of it all.
Where it had been still and calm one moment, only to be breaking and shuddering apart because of the turbulence of the water. “Calia!” Breaking out the pitch of her name upon tongue and tilting his attention –having to hope that her stubborn tenacity and general I’ll fuck you up attitude was in full swing- came to rest upon something properly disgusting.
The shape erupting from the water.
Grey-blue sludge skin glistening.
Slitted obsidian eyes.
That mouth—gods above—that bisected, book-like maw dripping filth.
His expression froze into something deadlier than rage, and perfectly pissed off in a manner of seconds to feel an all too familiar niggling that declared this thing was from the hells itself. Not by name, nor by species, nor by any scholar’s catalogue of infernal taxonomy. No, the moment his gaze met that sludge-slick hide and those obsidian slit-eyes, something ancient in him rose like a blade unsheathed.
The shift was frightening in the way avalanches are frightening: inevitable, unstoppable, and somehow still quiet until they are not. Heat bled from his skin, not just warmth but the fevered pulse of hellfire simmering beneath a mortal exterior. Shadows constricted tight around him, clinging to his shoulders like wings waiting to snap open. The air thickened with that unmistakable scent—a mingled metallic sharpness and sulfur whispering through the cavern—his demon heritage rearing its head in a slow, hateful unfurl.
Then his anger bloomed into something sharper, something that carved the fine line between protective and murderous. His lips curled, revealing the ghost of elongated canines, the promise of violence gilded in a grin. “Hope yah not attached to yer heart,” Arc hissed softly, the grin widening until it split into something feral.
He didn’t wait for the creature to respond, that was far too much courtesy for it having crashed into their territory. His stance dropped immediately, knees bending, weight on the balls of his feet, spine coiling with predator precision. The ground beneath the water itself seemed to feel his intent and recoiled, a ripple of grit and dust retreating from where he stood.
Arc lifted one hand, fingers splaying slowly.
Claws.
Not the dramatic, monstrous talons of his true form—Calia had not granted him that—but enough. The tips of his fingers shimmered with obsidian sheen magic crackled down to his wrist, dancing in red-blue fractures under his skin like lightning trapped beneath glass. His other hand curled into a fist, knuckles whitening, veins rising as his pulse hammered with supernatural force. The protective instinct in him twisted into a painful knot—territorial, primeval, absolute. Body angled sideways, shielding the space behind him, making a barrier of his own form long before any spell could take shape. “Let’s fuckin’ dance,”
Calia discovered very quickly that being small might’ve been entertaining, it made the world around her that much painful when it came crashing down on her head. Battered by the swiftly broken ice city and near swept away by the torrential wave caused by the rising beast, she’d disappeared deep somewhere in the blackened depth of the cavern lake and nearly had the senses knocked out of her.
All she could see was the shadowy thickness of the hugest tallest legs somehow still plunging downwards to the unseen lake floor below.
Maybe it was a blessing, because she didn’t have time to over think her twist of magic to send herself back to her appropriate size. Swimming up towards the surface, sending bubbles full of explicits ahead of her.
Something caught her leg, shadowy and winding tight, jerking her to stop under the water so suddenly that she lost a good lungful of breath. Unable to let out a screech of surprise when it zoomed off under the depths, taking her along with it! Speeding under the water through the cavernous lake just as fast as it could go.
There was more than one demon down there. After all of this time and as far as they’d traveled, it seemed they’d finally caught up.
Towering half in the open air of the cavern and half standing in the massive depths of the lake, the slick grey beast with Archimedes let out a piercing high pitched wail that echoed and reverberated in the crystal chambers and bioluminescent ceiling turning the place from a beautiful peaceful music into a horrible, shattering noise. Even the rainbow of pastel colors had began to change hues due to the gnarly sounds, taking on deep, ruddy hellish tones of bloody reds and oozing greens.
It met Arc with a mighty swing of it’s long gangly arms, yet worse than that, it seemed to have a command of the water itself. Drawing up a huge waterfall of inky black to come barreling down.
Arc felt the tremor of the creature’s magic a heartbeat before it struck—just long enough to mutter, “Ah hells, really?” But not long enough to dodge. The demon’s gangly arm slammed into his chest with a force that felt like getting hit by a runaway siege ram!
The impact hurled him across the cavern, his body skipping once along the stone before hitting the wall with spine-rattling violence. Stone cratered around him, dust pluming out, cracks spiderwebbing outward beneath his back. His breath fled in a sharp, humiliating gasp as the bioluminescent ceiling spun above him in a nauseating swirl of red, green, and sickly orange. Pain flared molten-hot along his ribs, but instead of slowing him, it snapped something awake inside him. Magic surged through every nerve—wild, eager, vicious—until violet fire ran like liquid lightning beneath his skin. Arc shoved himself from the shattered wall with a hiss. “Alright, yah oversized sewer goblin,” he snarled, claws igniting in molten purple, “My turn.”
His counterattack came sharp, graceful, and cruel. Darting forward, feet barely touching stone, sliding beneath the beast’s next swing with an elegance that bordered on mockery. As he passed under its leg, he twisted his wrist—summoning a crescent of compressed arcane force that shimmered razor-thin and deadly. The blade kissed across the creature’s Achilles-like tendon with surgical precision. Flesh parted, tendon snapped, giving freedom to a fountain of steaming black ichor erupted over Arc’s arm, hot and reeking of sulphur!
Forcing the demon to collapsed onto one knee, sending ripples across the waters’s newly oiled surface, and Arc leapt backward—only for a water tendril to whip across his back, tearing a line of fire and knocking him into a tumble that sent crystals slicing across his skin. “Cheap shot!” Arc barked as he rolled to his feet, teeth bared even as warm blood trickled down his side. “Yah tryin’ to impress me or kill me? ‘Cause yer failin’ spectacularly at both.”
The demon lunged, maw yawning wide enough to bite him in half!
Arc twisted aside—barely—using its jagged tooth as leverage to flip upward and drive a violet-charged boot into the side of its skull. The impact cracked bone with a concussive boom, sending the creature’s head snapping sideways. “Thought yah’d dodge that, didn’t yah?” Taunting as he landed in a crouch.
But the creature recovered terrifyingly fast. A massive claw snatched him midair, crushing his ribs with brutal force. Pain exploded through him, white and immediate! “Easy there—buy a man dinner before yah start grabby hands,” He choked, even as his vision blurred.
Before the demon could apply more pressure, Arc shoved both palms outward. Raw, abysmal magic erupted between his hands—a jagged nova of red force that vaporized two of the demon’s fingers and sent a shockwave rippling across the cavern. Ichor splattered once more as the loach faced creature screeched and flung him aside instinctively.
Striking the ground hard enough to split it, but the momentum flung him into a roll, and he staggered upright despite the throbbing agony in his ribs. He was clearly getting out of shape if every other demon he met was able to make him wish he didn’t have ribs at all!
It didn’t give much time before it surged forward, pulling itself from the lake with a cascade of oily waves. Water wrapped around its arms like serpents. And he sprinted toward it—reckless, fearless, violet aura pulsing around him in erratic bursts.
Vaulting onto its arm, boots sparking against its hide, and ran up the limb like a predator scaling prey. As he climbed, he summoned a halo of floating arcane blades—six, then eight, then a dozen—each flickering in shades of violent purple. “Let’s see how yah like this,”
With a snap of his fingers, the blades shot downward in streaks of light, exploding across the creature’s torso in bursts of concussive fire. The beast reeled—but this time, it was ready. It slammed its arm sideways into the cavern wall with the intention to pulp him. “Oh shi—”
The impact landed like a meteor! The shockwave rattled Arc’s bones, but he held on—claws embedded deep, magic anchoring him like burning hooks. Pain blasting through his side, but he dragged himself upward with a snarl of defiance. “Yah really don’t want me climbin’ yah, do yah?” Growling as breath came ragged. “Too feckin’ bad.” Launching forward once more. Slipping in close so he might slam both claws in—and unleashed arcane bolt alongside physical force. Lightning poured from his palms, eating through flesh and muscle as he tore outward. A geyser of ichor erupted, scalding hot and putrid. It left to convulse, water magic rising behind it in a crown of serpents before crashing down.
Arc knew he couldn’t fully stop it—but he could blunt it.
He crossed his arms creating a defensive burst to detonated just as the water tendrils hit. The impact shattered the shield, hurled him backward, and sent him crashing through a crystallized stalagmite. Shards sliced past his cheek, embedding in his arm. He hit the ground in a crouch, gasping, trembling, ichor dripping from him like grease and still, his eyes burned bright enough to cast shadows.
The demon towered before him—broken, steaming, dripping, furious—its water magic pulsing in jagged surges as it readied another assault.
Arc wiped his chin, tasted iron and chuckled even through it all. “Look at us,” he rasped, straightening with a wince. “Bleedin’, gaspin’, makin’ terrible life choices. Like all my first dates,”
He curled his claws, flames licking up his arms once more, shedding the violet light for the more flame eating style of the hells themselves. The cavern floor cracked beneath his feet, glowing with rising power.
The beast mirrored him, limbs spreading wide as the lake churned into jagged towers.
Arc bared his teeth in a grin sharp enough to draw blood. “Alright then,” he growled, “Winner gets braggin’ rights. Loser gets to shut the hell up forever.”
Both demons lunged!
The cavern exploded into motion.
Magic collided with magic.
Claws with claws.
Wrath with wrath.
Two nightmares locked in a battle to determine which one had the right to keep breathing when the cavern finally fell silent.
The damn thing that had her by the leg jolted and swam so quickly that Calia couldn’t tell up from down with every sharp tug and jerk. By the time she nearly got the thing loose she’d be cracked against hard jutted stone, it squeeze even tighter until it’s barbed tendril had sliced through her pants and leather boots to latch into her skin.
She couldn’t breathe and it was a fucking problem.
Eventually desperation led to a jolt of electric magic – not the best for water but it did the work. Sparking up a nasty bolt of icy bright blue, giving her a real good look at the ugly piece of shit that had apparently been dragging her along by a weird wiggling tongue with the sort of open jawed face that was going to linger in her nightmares. Skin and eerie ting of grey and green, but what stuck with her was how familiar it’s style of form was to that demon that’d come to attack the fleeing village in Caeldalmor. Of course, that one had been a monster of ivory white – but she got the idea.
They were still looking for her after all.
There wasn’t time to think on that however! The second she was loose she kicked and swam towards whatever direction her body floated upward, breaking the surface of the lake waters to quickly discover that she’d been dragged far, far away from the lake cavern they’d started in. Shot through underwater tunnels to come out to some entirely different place in the mountain, where the air did in fact smell sulfurous and acrid. The water was far too warm and had this horrible sheen of toxic looking slime floating all over the surface.
Coughing and hacking too much to even get the fuck! shit! fucking shit! out of her mouth, Calia paddled for the rocky edge and quickly clambered out of the tainted waters. Huffing wildly to catch her breath, a survey of the place didn’t bring her any relief either. Goo and slime covered even the cavern walls here – worse than that! – there was a pile of gloppy ginormous egg sacks piled up in the corner. Apparently those demons had been nesting themselves the perfect little honeymoon location.
“Nope. NOPE. Nopenopenope.” Calia lit her hands up with fire immediately, already starting the swirl at her feet to send the whole gods-be-damned nest into a blaze of scorching death.
A wave of slimy cave water came barreling down on top of her as the Mother Dearest rose up from the depths, rising rising fully to it’s feat to let out the most horrible of ear bursting scream.
Calia scrambled to her feet, slinging slime from off her face, narrowing eyes and staring down the enormous thing straight into it’s own set of beady obsidian eyes. Going still in her stance, shifting her body just slightly… thinking, calculating. She was not one for snappy words and speeches, that was meant for playing and this piece of shit had ruined her play.
The beast opened it’s mouth in a sideways smile, summoning up high towers of the toxic waters behind it and smugly somehow conveying that Calia could not burn her way through her without drowning for the efforts.
Calia in turned smile right back. For she was not just of the tempestuous storm of lightning and snow, or the feisty element of fire. She too was the very stone.
There was more than one way to move a mountain.
Up from the ground beneath her feet she pulled it. Down from the cavern rooves above did she super heat it. The walls of the very place shimmered before stone started to crumple as hot magma came pouring out of the sides in scorching lava flows. The water of the underground lake started to steam, the air began to fill with black smoke.
Hot magma oozed down landing splat on those slimy egg sacks, popping and cooking them to a hideous roasting scent. With that the demon launched it’s full self at Calia and was met with a pillar of magma right too the face. Calia’s own fury taking full control in the moment to send that demon back to the hells from when it came, with no care in the world that she was going to end up taking herself with it at the entire cavern itself started to fill with molten rock.
The clash between them shattered what little remained of Arc’s restraint. When the demon hurled him backward with a blow that cracked a more dozen ribs and sent him careening through a forest of crystalline stalagmites, something inside him finally buckled, though it was no bone, nor the flesh, but the tethered part of him that kept his rage from swallowing him whole.
He staggered, breathing shallowly as dust rained from the cavern ceiling in glittering cascades, and for the first time since the fight began, his posture was no longer one of grim defiance or mocking resilience. His head hung, considering the tremble in hands. Clenching his jaw tight enough that a line of blood slid down from the corner of his lips.
And then the tether to Calia sparked sharply through his chest, a painful jolt of disapproval, of no, of you are not allowed—a warning as bright and sharp as a red-hot brand driven beneath his sternum. The pain tore through him, but the rage rising beneath it swallowed the sound he might have made. The cavern around him felt too tight, too small, too suffocating to hold the storm forming inside him. Ready to unleash and it was damn well going too!
The demon sensed the shift clearly had sensed the change as it immediately leapt forward. Water twisting into spears around its arms like jagged talons, the lake below it convulsing in an oily frenzy. He had barely dodged the first spear, the second tearing across his ribs, and the third punching straight through his shoulder with a sickening wet crack. Forcing him to stagger but he would not fall; instead, he stared at the creature through strands of blood-soaked hair, violet eyes Making his silence was worse than any threat he could have spat. The air vibrated as if recoiling from him.
Then it started.
The transformation hit him like a hammer swung by a god. His back arched with a violent crack as vertebrae lengthened, shifting under the strain until they felt molten. Skin tore open along his spine, each tear a searing explosion of pain as black spines erupted upward. His arms bulged grotesquely, muscles twisting into new shapes as if his bones were red-hot iron being recreated by the hellfires themselves!
Jaw split in two directions at once, ripping wider with a sound like tearing leather as new fangs broke through his gums. Legs snapping backward, reforming into the digitigrade structure of something feral and built for slaughter. Violet light bled from every new fracture, from every burned seam of skin. The tether to Calia convulsed, a white-hot lash of rejection that made Arc’s monstrous form seize, tremble, rebel—yet he pressed on, forcing the shift through the pain, through the torment, through the forbidden barrier she had set.
The cavern groaned beneath his expanding weight. Dust fell like ash from the bioluminescent ceiling. The demon on the far side of the lake froze mid-step, its watery tendrils unraveling and dripping to the floor in a sludgy hiss. When his head finally lifted, the monstrous face he revealed bore no trace of the man beneath. Twin infernos of violet burned where his eyes had been, and his maw, serrated and dripping, curled into something too primal, too furious to be called a snarl. Beneath the glow of the cavern’s soft lights, he looked like a nightmare carved from the bones of titans.
The other demon made the mistake of moving first.
It summoned a tidal wave from the lake, a towering sheet of ink-black water that tore upward like a living wall, ready to crush him. There was no effort to dodge or shield himself against it, instead he simply surged forward with such force that the water cracked apart around him, evaporating into steam and drifting away in ghostly ribbons. His claws carved deep trenches into the stone as he charged. When he collided with the demon, the impact sounded like boulders colliding at the bottom of the ravine! The beast flew backward, a limp thrashing projectile crashing into the far wall hard enough to leave a crater.
Arc didn’t give it time to orient itself! Launching upon it so it wouldn’t have time to even consider its next move!
Seizing the demonic loach by the throat, claws sinking so deep the tips scraped against its spine. The demon writhed, its limbs flailing as it summoned spears of water, striking Arc’s shoulders, ribs, and throat. Each hit drove through flesh, leaving gaping wounds that poured red-black ichor. But nothing would cease him now. Every movement was a declaration of violence. Every strike was a scream without sound. This was no longer a fight, it was the unmaking and the final ending!
The demon attempted one last desperate attack, a column of water erupting beneath Arc with enough force to pulverize a normal body. It lifted him momentarily—his massive frame silhouetted against the colours of the cavern—but he twisted midair, crashed down on top of the creature, and sank both claws into its chest. Tearing the pallid flesh till bones were breaking into mere spinters. Splattering the remains of gore across those of twisted features in a thick spray. He leaned in, monstrous breath steaming in the freezing cavern air, and tore the ribcage open with a roar that shook the lake to its depths.
As futile as it was, the other demon shrieked and writhed, but found itself held pinned as he pried the ribcage apart, exposing the pulsing, quivering heart deep inside the cavity. Monstrous claws hooked around its edges, dragging it free from the tangle of veins and sinew. The demon’s body convulsed violently as steaming organ was lifted to his jaws, and devoured it in a single, savage bite—crushing it between his teeth before swallowing it whole.
Silence crashed down like a final blow.
Arc knelt over the ruined body, shoulders rising and falling with deep, snarling breaths. The madness clinging to him writhed and curled like smoke, flickering purple against his very body. His claws dripped ichor. His chest heaved with the effort of holding himself through a transformation he should not have taken. The tether to Calia spasmed again, a distant echo of fear and fury mixed with something rawer—pain, shock, a plea he could not hear clearly through the haze.
But nothing touched him now.
Nothing guided him.
Nothing restrained him.
Arc stood—a titan soaked in blood and torn magic—and for a long, terrible moment, he simply breathed there in the cavern, power radiating from him like heat from a fallen meteor. The lake was still. The cavern was silent. The air itself seemed afraid to move!
And Arc, monstrous and magnificent, stood victorious in a ruin he alone had created.
There was no flare or elegance to Calia’s movements, for in her frustration and fury she did not move at all. Calling the magic to her and with it the molten depths of the very earth, with an expression of inevitable neutrality. No brutality came from it, no bitterness or flailing violence. This was death and destruction in it’s most simple forms.
That demon could summon up all the water it wished, rail at her with bludgeoning arms and ear-piercing screeches that shattered the meats in one’s brain. Yet Calia commanded magma as if it were a hungry starving thing, there to boil away the waters of the lake. Leaping on that enormous demons like ravenous dragons, swallow up arms and legs and torso and head, to drag it down into this new sea of scorching red.
Even when the flailing had stopped, skin having melted away and the bones of a head becoming blackened as it too sank beneath the flow, the magma didn’t stop. It kept pouring from the walls, dripping from the ceiling in globs of melted metal and stone. The air had become dim with so much smoke that her eyes burned, everything burned. Too hot for anyone to survive.
Calia welcomed it, hoped for it… gods, finally let her die and finally have some quiet. She was so tired of trying, so tired of finally getting a glimpse of something purely happy only to have it snatched away in the next instant.
Let the world be silent.
Something sharp and tearing twisted in her chest, yanking on her tether with fury as if in that moment screaming no. you are not allowed, and damn it all, she could not tell if that was meant for her – pissed that she would even dare try to fade away into the ether – or if it were because Archimedes was railing against it, fighting for his life against something that was meant for her.
It’d shaken her out of her stupor, bringing her back to full awareness where she’d found herself collapsed on the small piece of stone rock that hadn’t yet melted into the lava flow. Her leg burned, felt numb where that demon had wrapped it’s weird barbed tongue around it and dug poison into her skin. Her lungs felt like hot fire and the entirety of her was screaming in weighted exhaustion. Calia pushed herself to her feet, stumbling for the water’s edge, collapsing into it even though it too had become so heated from the lava flow that it was near to boiling.
Calia sank beneath the water, following the pull of the tether and it’s angry, sharp twisting. Swam until she’d managed to find a tunnel through the rock, where the tainted toxic water began to clear and slowly shifted temperature. Except, she was no speedy water demon and the underground rivers were endless.
It was too far, it was too much, and she was so fucking tired.
In the manner of a split second of almost being too late, Calia knew she did not want to die. Not pathetically drowned inside a mountain feeling pitiful about herself! She grabbed onto that tether and pulled with all of her might, every last bit of strength she had left in her.
He felt the pull like a spike driven straight through the base of his skull—sharp, hot, tearing, a violent yank on the tether that didn’t merely demand his attention but wrenched it! For a heartbeat he stood there in the ruined cavern, his monstrous form hunched over the corpse of the demon he’d torn apart, violet fire still dripping from his claws. His breath was a ragged growl, his shoulders shuddering with every heave of his chest, ichor steaming off his skin in violet wisps. He wasn’t Arc—not fully. He was something deeper, darker, older. His thoughts were jagged, primitive things flashing in broken shards through a mind overloaded by pain and fury. Consequences of demanding the control of a form without the allowance of the contract holder.
But the tether, that cut through the haze like a blade! And it would not be silenced!
His massive head snapped to the side, eyes flaring as the connection twisted again, the pain shuddering down the length of his spine. A snarl vibrated low in his throat, confused, wounded, enraged—not at Calia, but at the ripping sensation that clawed at a bond he was not supposed to strain like this.
Mine.
The word wasn’t shaped in language. It was instinct, a raw pulse of identity vibrating through every torn, monstrous nerve. His to guard. His to answer. His to reach.
Staggering forward a step, claws gouging deep furrows in the stone. His brows twitched, spasming as though trying to orient him toward the direction of the pull. But the cavern walls were thick, stone dense and layered. He sensed the tether through instinct more than thought—through the way it vibrated against his ribs, through the way it tugged his heart sideways in his chest.
Another yank—this one sharp enough to buckle his knees.
Arc roared, the sound echoing through the cavern in a blast that shook stalactites loose and sent ripples tearing across the black lake behind him. His claws dug into the floor as he steadied himself, his mind trying to fight through the animalistic fog consuming him.
It hurt to think. Every thought was a spark swallowed by the storm raging inside him. Yet the tether pulled again—this time not anger or pain but need, as if her desperation tore through the bond like a scream.
Arc’s pupils dilated, violet fire erupting in violent spirals from his eyes.
She is calling.
She is not safe.
Go.
Surging forward, slamming his bulk into the cavern wall. Stone splintered beneath his weight, but it wasn’t enough. Not fast enough. Not when the tether thrashed with fear so raw it made his vision flicker.
It was immediate to pull magic up from the deepest wells of himself—dark, boiling, unstable now that his monstrous form had ruptured the restraints on his power. Lightning crawled along his claws, through the stone, into the wall. With a guttural growl he shoved his hands forward and released the spell in a violent burst.
The wall exploded, rock vaporizing into shards and dust as a tunnel was carved by pure arcane force.
Still she pulled, as the tether twisted.
Arc crashed through the gap he’d made, claws digging at the stone as he dragged his massive body through narrow tunnels. His breath hitched, each inhalation dragging through a throat half-choked by fury and pain. The tether tugged him left, then down, then sharply right, and he followed with mindless obedience, each turn slamming his wings against stone as he forced himself through.
His thoughts flickered, broken things struggling to form coherence.
Another wall appeared and without hesitation he slammed his head into it, horns carving through rock. His claws followed, ripping stone away in great chunks as his magic flared again—unfocused, raw, devastating. Every time she pulled, he felt it like his bones were being torn from their sockets, like something inside him was unraveling.
A ragged growl tore free as he forced his mind through the haze long enough to shape a single, broken reply that surged through the tether toward her: “Calia… comin’…” His voice was distorted, more demon than elf, more animal than man, but the intent burned through it.
Another yank nearly toppled him.
Another tunnel collapsed behind him as he shoved through rock and magic and pain.
And Arc—bleeding, monstrous, half mad with rage—followed the tether with single-minded brutality, tearing through the mountain itself as he answered the call of the only person whose voice could reach him through the storm inside his mind.
Calia had no speed for which to swim, made worse as her leg went fully numb and she wasn’t sure if she was swimming forward anymore at all. Still, she forced herself to move almost pulling herself forward on that invisible connected tether itself. Even when the last of her breath left her with a stream of bubbles, she swept her hands through the water. Until that became as difficult as trying to walk knee deep in sand. There was no strong current to sweep her one direction or another, and when she stilled altogether she drifted upwards hitting the top of the jagged stone.
He was close, though. So close. Calia could feel the distance shrinking itself almost as fast as she could feel the dark trying to encroach it’s way into her vision.
Well. He was right about one thing. Stubborn tenacity ruled her, and if she were to fight death too, so be it!
Meet him half way, it was all she had to do. Gather enough to meet him half way.
Struggling past the exhaustion on all fronts, it was first a physical shove from the stoned ceiling downwards, a sweep of her arm to summon up force through magic to send her sideways into the tunnel wall. Hands to stone, it had to crack, crumble and shatter. At first all she could manage were fresh fault lines deep into the rock, it just took a little more. To coax the water rush and surge it’s way through the cracks.
When it broke through to a chamber on the other side it did so with such an explosive force, she came barreling through the torrential new water fall to land in such a rough fall she was pretty sure she heard herself crack. Somewhere she rolled and stilled, coughing up buckets of that damned water so hard her vision had tunneled to narrow specks. Caia could not tell how big this new cavern was or how much it would fill with the new waterfall up above.
All she did know, was on first sight of shining violet she could breathe again. The only she could seem to see in the mess of dark and chaos! That desperate grip on the tether was released in an instant, with a strong unmistakable wave of her relief. Safe. Safe. Lifting a shaking hand with an OK before she collapsed altogether into a sack of limp limbs and gasping coughing.
He burst into the chamber like an avalanche of stone and fury, his massive body tearing through the final wall of rock just as the waterfall she’d broken open thundered down around him. The impact of his entrance shook the cavern so hard dust rained from the ceiling in sheets, the floor cracking beneath the weight of a demon far too large, far too enraged, and far too forbidden to exist in this form without Calia’s consent. His chest heaved in deep, guttural pulls of air, each breath crackling with misty steam where it met the cold cavern air. He was hunched forward, shoulders broad enough to scrape the stone, claws carving deep gashes into the floor as he struggled to keep his balance. His form—jagged, massive, misshapen with power he wasn’t meant to wield freely—radiated pain as sharply as fury.
The tether lashed through him again, a bright, stabbing jolt at the center of his sternum that made his entire hulking frame jerk sideways. Arc snarled, the sound deep and thunderous enough to reverberate in the walls, but it lacked his usual sharp-edged rage. This one was confusion. Disorientation so heavy it dragged at his limbs like iron chains. His thoughts were fractured, each one sliding away like oil over stone.
The beast in him obeyed first, dragging his head up with a sharp, snapping motion. His violet fire-bright eyes swept the cavern wildly, the glow casting harsh shadows across stone. He was breathing too fast, each inhale strained, each exhale a rumble that shuddered through his ribs. His claws clenched reflexively, cracking the stone beneath them as he hauled himself forward in staggering, half-feral strides.
Then— He saw her.
A glint of pale form among the chaotic rush of water. A faint shape rolling to stillness on the flooded stone. Her relief hit him through the tether like a wave of cool water poured over a wildfire—so sudden and powerful his monstrous body recoiled, jerking backward as though struck. The purple blaze in his eyes flickered, the haze of rage thinning just enough to reveal something raw beneath it.
He lumbered closer, but stopped short—skidding enough to gouge long trenches in the ground. His whole body shook with the effort of halting his momentum, his claws flexing hard enough to splinter rock. Lowering himself slowly, instinct warring with intent, and dragged his massive weight forward until he was only a few body-lengths away.
Her trembling hand lifted—an “OK.” It nearly broke him!
Arc leaned forward, breath rasping hard, steam rolling from his lips in hot bursts. A deep, ragged sound escaped him, something halfway between a rumble and a wounded whine, his throat struggling to shape anything but feral noise. He tried to speak—tried to force her name past a mouth full of fangs and a throat still vibrating with demonic resonance. And found how quickly the he attempt hurt. It shuddered through him violently, a ripple that curled his claws against the stone. The contract screamed inside him again, a brutal lash of pain for staying in this form without her permission. His spine arched in a full-body shudder, and he wrenched his head away from her for a moment, as if afraid he might lash out by accident—not with intention, but instinct.
Needing to force himself to still!
A low groan rumbled out of him, thick with pain and confusion. His massive hand—claws still dripping with old ichor—pressed against the ground to keep himself steady. Turning back toward her slowly, cautiously, his movements heavy and deliberate, like he was holding back a storm with every breath.
His eyes—still burning violet, still monstrous—softened by the barest fraction. Shortened as another tremor wracked his body, dragging a rumbling growl from his chest that was more pain than anger. He dug his claws deeper into the floor to ground himself, to keep distance, to keep control.
With visible effort, he bowed his massive head—a gesture of submission, of restraint, of fear for her more than fear for himself.
Staying crouched low, body trembling with the strain of not collapsing and not surging forward all at once—half mind, half monster, and held together by the last thin threads of devotion still shining through the feral haze. Requiring to ensure she was safe, even if a bit more than waterlogged.
It took Calia a good minute to stop hacking up water and slime and fucking brimstone too from molten rock. Her lungs ached, her skin felt numb, something was definitely broken as it felt sharp every time she even so much as took a breath. Now that he was present, nearby, close, she knew she’d be fine and was oh so tempted to just lay there and let a nice deep sleep take her away.
Awareness was not letting sleep come, and it took her a few moments longer to realize a great deal of that pain was coming direct from the tether between them. Not straining in a way of trying to pull thin to escape, not a snap of angry emotions meant to punish. This was more of reaching a hand into a basket of yarn and realizing everything had become all tangled up and twisted into an entire mess.
Calia forced herself to sit up in the pool of water that was presently making a slow rise, wink-wonking both eyes to get her vision to clear. Partly because she was fairly certain she cracked her head more than once, and secondly because she wasn’t quite sure what she was looking at in the dim cave.
She’d seen him in a mangled demon form before, there in the underground of Edelguard, when he’d been mangled and cut to pieces. This was bigger, menacing, not quite right in the way he strained with it. Calia didn’t have a clue of how he wound up like this or why he wasn’t simply shifting back, but she could recognize the feelings in a heartbeat. The fear, the wildness, the lack of control within one’s own skin that made you feel like you were about to be ripped apart.
There had to be some irony in it now needing to be Calia who helped reigned someone in.
Calia took in a deep breath, hitching somewhere in the middle, but taking it in all the same.
“Walk it back,” she breathed out, slow and intentional. Letting that calm be the guiding line through their bond, for right now they were both safe. They were fine. “Breathe in-” she demonstrated again, “and walk it back, let it shrink away with every exhale.”
Arc reacted to her voice as though a blade had sliced clean through the haze. Welcomed if not a bit more confused than he originally would be.
His massive form jerked, muscles rippling beneath torn, steaming skin as the sound of her breath—thin, painful, but hers, cut through the feral fog like cold water poured on smoldering coals. His claws curled deep into the stone, cracking it under the pressure of his trembling weight. Heat blazed in his eyes, unfocused, wild, his pupils blown wide and darting between her shape and the walls, the water, the ceiling—searching for threats that weren’t there. His breathing came in deep, thundering pulls, each one shuddering like it rattled through ten lungs instead of one.
Her words filtered in slowly at first, muffled behind the instinct screaming in him. But the tether—tangled and burning, but alive—carried the steadiness beneath them. A requirement to focus as much as he broke against the contract, it did still have its effective and right now, she was trying to settle in a means of control that was flickering and waivering.
Arc’s head dipped low, his monstrous jaw clenching and unclenching like the effort to obey physically hurt—which, by all accounts, it did. The contract thrummed painfully under his skin, punishing him for ever having taken this form. His ribs heaved, spine creaked like boards under too much strain.
He tried to inhale the way she showed him.
It came out as a rattling, guttural hroaghh, half-roar, half-choked attempt at breath control.
But he tried again. And again. Feeling and grasping for the tether to steady soemthign in him. Even for a mere fraction of a second, anything was better than nothing!
His enormous shoulders shuddered. The bulk of him rocked forward, then pulled back sharply as if instinct warned him not to get too close. Breathing grew faster and he slammed a clawed hand into the ground to anchor himself, stone exploding under the force.
Minutes passed like this—trembling, growling, struggling.
Something had to crack and it came as a violent jolt shuddered through his spine. The form buckled, limbs folding beneath him as his silhouette flickered—one heartbeat monstrous, the next aggressively shrinking, muscles crawling over bone as if trying to retreat beneath the skin. He lurched forward, claws digging grooves as the tether yanked him toward her warmth and safety— but instinct recoiled at the same time, dragging him backward in a confused, frantic jerk.
His body contorted, shrinking and stretching in uneven spasms.
A war of identity.
Beast? Elf? Demon… everything, nothing!?
He sagged forward again, the monstrous shape collapsing inward as though the sheer presence of her voice gave his body permission to retreat.
For one brief, flickering moment, Arc’s demonic elf form re-emerged—slumped, soaked, steaming, covered in blood that wasn’t wholly his. His violet eyes flickered with a weak lucidity, pain carving deep shadows across his face. His chest rose in shallow, uneven pulls. He looked at her—truly looked—and relief crashed through the tether so sharply it nearly buckled him.
Then the backlash hit.
The forced shift, the damage to the tether, the wounds, the poison, the exertion—all of it collapsed on him at once. His body convulsed, the demonic elf form too costly to maintain. His skin flickered with violet static, his outline blurring. With a low, exhausted groan, he shifted again—this time downward, shrinking, fracturing into something smaller, denser, hardened as a defensive reflex not born of thought, but pure survival. The form that would allow him to heal in a swifter rate!
The beetle appearance took hold in a shuddering collapse, chitin cracking and sealing around his wounds as the last remnants of his strength drained out of him. He landed on his side, limbs trembling weakly before curling inward. Steam rose from his shell in thin, wavering ribbons, each breath whistling faint and pained through his mandibles.
But through the tether his relief pulsed like a heartbeat.
Found you.
You’re alive.
Safe.
Calia breathed with him, every hitch, every shudder, every painful twinge and sharp stab, with no knowing how much of it was her own or his and frankly not really giving a shit about it at the moment. Physical pain was nothing when it compared to feelings, and she was so well versed in the disaster that was feelings, she wasn’t about to let him get lost if there was anything she could do about it.
She was a hot mess of problems, but she could be this. The tether, the life rope. Hold him steady to the earth the same way he did for her.
It did feel as if it took a thousand years for the shift to begin. Had she any energy at all, she might’ve cringed at the sounds of bone bopping and snapping, shrinking itself back to proper shape. How the whole of him started to shed off that higher demon form to send him back to the one she was most familiar with.
Meeting the relief in his violet eyes with her own relieved dark green, just to see him.
Then he collapsed into himself like a dying star and Calia crawled herself across the flooded cavern floor to snatch him up into her palm before he wound up washed away.
“I’ve got you,” she mumbled hoarse, holding him tight. Firm and safe within her hands as she shot her stare around for the next step.
Time for Calia to do what Calia did best. Pick herself up off the floor and survive! Not that it was at all easy, drawing herself up to her feet and limping through the water like some drunken wet zombie. She’d headed through the big crashing hole he’d left in the cavern wall, climbing over rocks and following the path he’d wrecked through the mountain. Honestly impressed with the instruction of it.
Impressed and guilty too. That tidal of wave of feeling weighed heavy, proving indeed that hindsight was always a bitch. Second guessing every choice she’d made. For if she hadn’t so selfishly let her anger and fury take control, hadn’t let herself be bitter and slip into something near suicidal and morose, she could’ve killed that demon in a heartbeat and returned to Archimedes before he’d tipped himself over the edge trying to protect her.
Calia deviated the way back, choosing a detour off towards a different tunnel cavern, seeking the signs for somewhere dry and safe enough to rest. Discovering a sub-cavern, some old cave den with only the single entrance in and out. No water leaking or dripping anywhere, no cave bugs or creatures presently living within it. She used the bare minimum of magic to leech the water and slime off herself, and then to heat up some rocks to give the space a soft glow and enough residual heat to warm them.
She set his little beetle form just under the curve of her shirt on her collar bone, where he could get that direct contact for warmth and simply because she needed him to stay close and could bet he too would find it comforting. Sent more of her stubborn self through that tether where he could use her relentless energy to heal faster, even though he was likely to fuss about it later. Readying the excuse that him healing first was better for them both, because then she could just sleep!
And sleep was what she did. Slumping against the stone and letting out a last weary breath. They were safe for now and she could just sleep.