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wolfjackle-creates · 1 year

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I'll Carry Your Heart with Me (Until I Find You Again): Part 3

And this is the third and final part of my hundred follower celebratory writing. The fic will continue past this, but it will be a while before I can return to it. I want to get back to Ghost!Robin and Bring Me Home first. This was a blast to write, though.

The angst starts here. Parts 1 and 2 were fun and fluffy. But things take a turn here. And it'll be quite a while before our boys can get back to happier times.

Mostly Jason POV with a short section from Danny's.

3.8k words. There wasn't a great place to break it up.

First, Previous

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Jason sighed as Danny flew out of his range of awareness, leaving him alone in his lair again. Though… he touched his lips which still tingled with cold and smiled to himself. At least this time he was left with some pleasant memories.

Turning his back to the swirling void, he entered the brick building that housed the most important parts of his home from before. Ignoring the kitchen, he walked through a door and into his bedroom. It was the only place he had yet to show Danny.

Though maybe he should change that?

He flopped down on his bed and touched his lips again before rolling over and burying his face in his pillow. God, he felt like a teenage girl. Was this why Dick liked to meet up with girls? Jason had kissed girls a few times before, but with Danny… It just felt so much better.

Maybe it was because his mouth was cool? Kissing him felt like a drink of fresh spring water on a hot day. Or perhaps it was the way they could project their feelings while kissing. And not needing to breathe was definitely nice.

He sighed and moved until he was staring up at the ceiling. How in all the realms was Danny interested in him? A dumb kid who got in over his head and died because of it.

Danny was still alive, too. With a sigh, he pushed himself up. He didn’t want his thoughts to go this way—he wanted to bask in their first kisses some more.

Would Danny get too old for him?

Alfred would have been able to set him right. Let him know if this was doomed from the start or if he might actually have something. And Dick… Well, first he’d tease. But after. They’d go to the gym and when he was tired out and sweaty, they’d go and get milkshakes or something and Dick would give surprisingly helpful advice. The type he couldn’t quite bring himself to ask Alfred or Bruce.

Bruce would be insufferable, of course. He’d insist on researching everything he could about Danny. Would probably stalk him, too. But after he was convinced Danny wasn’t trying to take advantage, he’d tell Jason to invite him for dinner. He thought they’d probably get along, too. While their personalities were quite different, their morals were a perfect match.

But no. He’d never get any of that. Because he had to be an idiot and die.

Though… did death have to be permanent? Danny had come back after all. And hadn’t several members of the Justice League died at one point before returning to life?

Could he do that?

Restless now, he got out of bed and made his way to the gym. These were the types of thoughts that only made sense when he was doing something physical. One routine in particular was his “thinking routine.” His dad would always call Alfred in if he saw Jason doing this one. How would he be able to come back?

Most of the stories he heard required something happen to the body on Earth. But he didn’t have that option. He was limited to the Infinite Realms. But… these lands were infinite. There had to be someone or something here that could help him. Maybe there’d be some information in Ghost Writer’s lair? What other ghosts had Danny told him about?

And then he remembered: Desiree. He froze, leg in the air as he was halfway through a kick. If he’d still been human, he would’ve fallen on his face.

Desiree had been able to rewrite reality so that Danny and Sam had never met. In doing so, she’d erased his death from ever happening. If she could do that, bringing Jason back from the dead would have to be a piece of cake. So long as he phrased his wish correctly.

Now that he had a new mission, he fell out of his fighting stance and made his way to the library. He had a wish with a genie to craft.

-----

With how time never seemed to work right in the Realms, Jason wasn’t sure how long it took him to craft his wish. But he finally had it. And this one shouldn’t backfire on him.

I wish I was alive again with a healthy body and intact mind.

Though he did continue trying to think it through. Would it be possible to twist this one? If it was, Desiree would find away. At least if Danny’s stories could be believed. And Ember and Kitty insisted that Danny downplayed his stories more than anything.

Which was hard to believe, even as a former Robin.

Now he had to find Desiree. And as much as he wracked his brain, he didn’t think Danny had given him any sort of clue as to where her lair might be located. And he didn’t want to just ask someone straight out. They’d try and dissuade him from going. Even worse since the only ghosts he really knew were ones Danny introduced him to. Apparently it was normal for a ghost to not leave their lair much for the first few years after death, so he hadn’t yet done much exploring of the Realms.

Though Danny had once tried to sketch him a vague map. Apparently things in the Realms had a tendency to move around a lot, but clusters did form among people of similar background. Medieval European ghosts clustered together in one area, Kryptonians could be found somewhere else, and so on.

Now, where did the ghosts from the Middle East gather? He looked over the map Danny had given him and chewed his lip as he tried to figure out where things were in relation to him. No sun or cardinal directions made it so much harder to orient anything. Which was probably the point.

But he did have some anchors to recognize. After being to Ghost Writer’s domain, he could find that again. And he’d once gone to visit Kitty and Johnny with Danny. So that was another point of reference.

Finally, he thought he had at least enough of an idea to get close. It would have to do, though Bruce would have insisted on more research.

But Bruce wasn’t here which was the entire point.

Well, that and he didn’t want Danny to get older and not want to date or kiss him anymore. It’d be fine for a few years, but what about when Danny was twenty or forty or whatever and Jason was still the same fifteen year old kid?

He shook his head. That didn’t matter because he’d be able to grow up, too. Dick would be there to tease him about his boyfriend. And Alfred would give him a hug and his favorite meal. And Bruce would help him finish school and get into a good college and would celebrate every passing grade with him.

With those pleasant thoughts, he exited his lair. He gave it one last look before setting off in the direction he believed would lead him to Desiree.

He hadn’t been traveling very long when he approached a lair who’s ghost was sending off such strong stay-away vibes that Jason was forced to go around. Putting him quite far off course. The ghost must have been strong to control such a large area of the Zone.

Gritting his teeth, he tried to reorient himself to get back on track.

Which is when he heard a menacing chuckle from behind him. “Well, well, well, if it isn’t the whelp’s friend. You’d make such good bait. With you at the center of my trap, I may actually catch the boy and finally get his pelt for my wall.”

Jason spun, Robin costume appearing as he did. Behind him, his cape flared. “And you must be Skulker. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“I’m sure you have.” Although his face was just a mecha suit, it grinned viciously. “But you will not find me so easy to escape.” Compartments on Skulker’s shoulders opened and a flurry of small missiles flew out at him.

A wave of Jason’s hand brought up a shield that easily deflected the projectiles. He turned invisible and quickly changed position, sending his own ectoblasts back at Skulker. After months of sparing with Danny, he knew how to handle himself in a ghost fight. He could even hold his own against Johnny when he came to visit.

Of course, fighting with Skulker was not on the agenda for today. He just wanted to get to Desiree.

“Can’t you see that I have better things to do today? Go bug Ember or something!” shouted Jason.

The only response he got was another missile sent his way. Only this one tracked him. Reaching into his core, Jason sent out a burst of flame, exploding it before it could get too close. There had to be something he could do to end this battle sooner rather than later.

At the very least, he could get some distance between himself and Skulker. He retreated a bit, wishing that the Realms had more cover instead of being mostly open void.

And then he felt it. The stay-away feeling from the lair he’d avoided earlier. Skulker shouted something else, though Jason didn’t bother to pay attention to the words. Instead, he made his way closer to the lair. To his satisfaction, Skulker followed.

It wouldn’t do to project his own presence, so Jason pulled in on his power, keeping it coiled tightly around his core. He focused hard on not projecting any emotions. Danny taught him how to hide his presence from other ghosts in order to prank Dani who had tagged along to visit.

Now, to make Skulker really mad. Jason turned to face his attacker and stuck out his tongue and waved his hands next to his head. “Na, na, na, na, na, na!” he called.

“Whelp!” roared the other ghost as he pulled out a huge bazooka and shot several blasts.

Jason immediately turned invisible and pulled his aura in even tighter, flying away from his position as fast as possible.

Not even a moment later, a loud booming voice called out, “Who disturbs my peace?”

Jason didn’t wait to see what sort of ghost it was, he just focused on escaping. After who-knows-how-long flying, he slowed down and looked around. He couldn’t see Skulker anywhere. More cautiously, he let his aura expand again. There were some ghosts around, but none of them felt aggressive or seemed to pay him any mind.

Now he had to figure out where he was and how far off course he’d gotten. Looking around, the doors and buildings he could see all looked old. Stone walls and thatched roofs. Weathered wooden doors. So he was in the territory of older ghosts. Excellent. Though the architecture definitely looked more European than Middle Eastern.

He pushed on. No way was he going to turn back now.

After passing who knows how many lairs, he stopped for a moment to try and get his bearings. Obviously just continuing on was not going to work.

“Thine garb is unlike any I have seen,” commented a voice from behind him.

Jason spun and came face-to-face with an elderly woman who he couldn’t help but describe as matronly. Her dress was extremely old and she had a head wrap, though wisps of shadow instead of hair were just visible under the fabric.

“No, ma’am. I’m just passing through.”

“A pilgrimage? Where dost thou go?”

“I… yeah. I’m on a pilgrimage. I’m trying to find the Middle Eastern ghosts. Er… Constantinople? The Ottoman Empire?” He had no ideas what the countries would have been called back when this woman had been alive and hoped he got wasn’t completely off. “In life, I had some teachers from that area and I wanted to see if I could learn more in death.”

She nodded in understanding. “Much can be learned in death that life left no time for. But thou hast been turned around. Thine destination is not in this direction.”

“Can you direct me?”

She smiled. “Certainly.”

Though once she started explaining the path, Jason sent out a few curses to the ancients. Why couldn’t things stay still in the Realms? From their current position, he was supposed to go down until he came to a lair which was a stone tower that flew red flags. Then he had to spin in a circle clockwise five times. When he stopped, he might be facing Queen Dora’s city. In that case, he had to fly in the opposite direction.

But he might also end up facing a fortress made of black stones and guarded by skeletons. If that happened, he should go left. If he found himself facing a forest with a waterfall, he should continue straight past it.

And for each option, another half dozen instructions followed. Thank the ancients Bruce had tested him on memorizing complicated directions constantly as Robin. He wasn’t sure how else he would have found the way.

“Thank you,” he said once she had finished.

“May thine journey bring thee peace.” And she was gone.

Jason repeated her instructions, going straight down until he saw the tower with the red flags. He spun. And found himself facing a medieval European city with a black and purple dragon flying in circles over it. On her head was a golden crown: Queen Dora. He turned his back to the city and flew in the opposite direction.

It took so long to come across the next landmark he was told to look out for that he was afraid he had done something wrong. But he had no other guide, so he kept going.

And eventually he found it. And the next one. And the one after that.

And finally, he noticed a change in the architecture. The towers became more graceful. The materials they were made of changed.

“Desiree!” he called.

No one answered. He kept going.

Every so often he would call her name. He let his aura spread to see if he could sense any powerful ghosts. The few ghosts that were around disappeared as soon as they heard her name leave his mouth.

For the first time, he started to wonder if this was a bad idea.

Just when he was about to give it up and turn around, a presence made itself known.

Amusement, curiosity, entertainment surrounded him.

The mix of emotions sent a jolt of fear up his spine. It felt so similar to how The Joker would laugh when he got them in a trap. How he laughed when he laid that last trap; the glee he projected as he smashed Jason’s bones with a crowbar.

“Who calls me?” echoed a woman’s voice in the void around him.

Jason forced his back to remain straight as he faced the direction he could sense the presence in. “My name is Jason! Jason Todd and I have a wish.”

Smoke gathered before him forming into a giant woman with long black hair and bright green skin. She smiled at him; it sent shivers down Jason’s spine. “Lucky for you, wishes are my domain. What do you wish for, Jason Todd?”

If he still had a heart, it would be beating fast in his chest. As it was, he was glad he didn’t have to breathe. Far easier to hide how much he was starting to regret this journey.

But no. He needed to do this. All his reasons for being here still existed. It was far too late to turn back now. “I wish I was alive again with a healthy body and mind intact.”

“So you have wished it, so shall it be!” Desiree waved her hands and Jason was surrounded in a wave of power. It twined around him. He was spinning and wind tore at his clothes. He slammed his eyes shut as laughter echoed in the tornado. He curled up, trying to protect himself from the unrelenting power.

And then everything was silent. It was dark and he was lying on his back. He pushed up and yelped when his head hit something hard right above his head. Where was he? What was going on? He banged on the top of the box he was in.

He needed out. He pushed and screamed. Something shifted and he pushed harder. It was cold, why was it so cold? Something broke above his head and he coughed as dust fell into his mouth. He closed his eyes and mouth tight and kept pushing. The surface gave. It poured down on him, but he pushed his way up.

Nothing could keep him trapped. Never again. When had he been trapped before? Where was he? He pushed through and his hand reached the other side of whatever he’d been trapped in. He pushed more. His other hand was free. He grasped and pulled himself free.

And finally he could breathe. And see. Someone was supposed to be here. Where were they? Why hadn’t they come for him? He needed to find them. They were here. They had to be. They wouldn’t have abandoned him. Not again.

Where were they? Where Were They?!

He pulled himself up. He stumbled. He kept going. He had to find them. The person, people?, who were supposed to be here. Why weren’t they here?

He took one step after another. They were nearby. A person! Right ahead! Was that them? No. It wasn’t. They were wrong! Why were they here? He pushed them away. They weren’t supposed to be here. They weren’t the right person. He kept going.

But everyone he found was not right. Why weren’t they right? Where were they?

The world got brighter. More people came out. They still weren’t right. It got dark. Where was he? Why was everything wrong?

Another wrong person. He tried to punch them. Only this time, his fist didn’t connect. They said something. The voice was wrong. He tried to kick, but that was stopped to. More people surrounded him.

His arms were pinned back. Then his legs. He couldn’t move. Why couldn’t he move? He tried to scream. Something was shoved in his mouth. He couldn’t scream. He struggled. He needed to get free. He needed to find the right person. Where were they? Where were they?

The world went black. When it lightened again, he saw a pool of green.

Green was safe. Green meant home and peace and an end to the fighting and the fear and the pain. He struggled, needing to get to it. But he couldn’t move his arms and his legs. And people were touching him. Surrounding him. Still the wrong people.

He thrashed and tried to scream. He wanted the right people. And suddenly he could move again. The people ran away from him. But that was fine. He didn’t want them near him. His legs hurt. And walking felt strange. But he stumbled forward. He needed to get to the green.

He sunk down deep and let the green take over. He breathed it in and everything made sense. This was right. This was home. The woman who brought him here was the right person. She was green and green was peace.

But when the green faded, all he saw was red. Red all over his hands and his arms and his clothes.

And he was so, so cold.

-----

Less than a week after their date (yes Jazz, he could admit it was a date now) at Ghost Writer’s lair, Danny returned to spend more time with his boyfriend. His boyfriend.

Only… when he got there, Jason’s lair was empty and abandoned. The island was entirely gone, leaving just the door. When he opened it, a layer of dust covered everything. The kitchen was filled with moldy food. Water overflowed the blocked sink. He floated above the floor, not wanting to step in the mess. What had happened? Where was Jason? The library. He had to be there. His hand shook as he turned the doorknob.

The mess in the library was almost worse. All the books had been knocked off their shelves and lay haphazardly all over the floor—spines broken and pages torn and bent. Jason hated damaging a book.

“No. No,” he whispered. This wasn’t real. A ghost’s lair reflected their state of being. Jason was okay. He had to be.

He backed out of the library. The gym. Jason always went there when he was upset. Only the gym was empty, too. It was in just as awful of shape. The punching bag had been split and it’s sand spilled over the floor. The weights were tossed about, the floor cracked under where they’d fallen.

There was only one more room. The only room Danny had never been in before.

With shaking hands, he opened the door to Jason’s bedroom. Clothes were strewn around the floor, torn and dirty. The bed was messy, but something was glowing under the covers.

He let himself land on the floor. He needed the connection to the world. Nothing felt real. The clothes piled on the floor meant his footsteps were silent, though his breaths echoed loud in his ears. It seemed to take forever to reach the bed.

His hand shook as he reached for the blankets and pulled them back one by one. Under the last one he saw what looked like a smoldering, black coal.

Jason’s core.

“No.”

Danny instinctively took a step back. That couldn’t be Jason. It couldn’t. He didn’t know how long he stared at the burning coal. He had to move. He stepped forward again and sunk to his knees by the bed. He reached forward and gently touched the core. It was barely warm to his touch.

It should have been an inferno. Jason burned so brightly. His breath caught in his throat. He couldn’t breathe. He fell the rest of the way down, face pressed into the dirty, dusty sheets. He flared his aura.

The core felt like Jason. It was him.

Danny pushed himself up enough to cradle it gently in his hands. How could Jason be so small? He held him to his chest and curled around him. Whatever happened, he’d make it better. He’d find out who had hurt Jason and he’d make them pay.

His eyes burned and the world grew blurry as he cried, curled around Jason’s comatose form.

-----

So, don't @ me about the "intact mind" thing. I will address that later in the fic. I promise it's not a plot hole!

Tag List

@britcision, @echoednonny, @adorablechaos, @letoasai, @saphjack, @emergentpanda-blog

#dpxdc #danny fenton #jason todd #desiree (dp)#dead on main #angst #and now the happy times are over #jason and danny both have some long roads ahead of them #i apologize for butchering the early modern english i had the guide ghost speaking #things will get worse before they get better #but they will get better #they just have to earn their happy endings #i honestly planned to stop writing after the kiss #but the rest of this flowed so easily that i had to continue

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ehlnofay · 5 months

Text

It’s not until she hears Sissel’s knees hit the floor that Efri is jolted back into her body.

She blinks, whipping her head around. Sissel is kneeling, bracing a palm on the ancient stone pavement, at the barrier – no, the barrier’s gone, it’s just Sissel on the floor. She lifts her head and meets Efri’s eyes; her hair is wispy and wild, the little plaits meant to keep it neat come loose and tumbling, her eyes wide. The barrier's gone, but still, her pale face is lit up blue.

“Are you okay?” she asks. She doesn’t speak loudly, but it echoes in the great stone chamber.

Nine, Efri doesn’t know.

She blinks again, looks down at her hands, clinging to the metal stick so fiercely that her joints ache. (Her own stick, her nice wooden one, is still on the floor somewhere, where it slipped out of her grasp when she hit the wall.) The lumpy heavy end of it, the clobbering end, is still resting on –

Not on. It’s in the thing’s head, fitted neatly in the opening of its dented helmet, the horns spiralling over the floor. There’s a tooth, perfectly preserved, by Efri’s foot.

One by one, she unwraps her gloved fingers from the handle of the metal stick, letting it drop to the floor with a clang so loud it makes her wince. Kazari is nosing at her side. (When did they let go of it? When did they get so close? She must have missed that. She feels out of the loop. Her heart is juddering like fish on a line, battering like some frightened trapped thing at her ribcage, and her breath is coming fast and heavy.) Absentmindedly bringing up a hand to press over her sore shoulder, she says, “’M fine. Not too – barely touched me.”

Kazari turns and spits on the floor. Efri blinks. She does it again, tongue lolling out of her mouth, face very disgruntled – and oh, Efri gets it. She does not glance down at the thing at her feet; she doesn’t need to, she knows what its arm looks like, chewed almost to pieces even through its banded armour. (If she hadn’t been so busy being scared of it, that sight might have made her a bit scared of Kazari. But not now, when they’re trying to hack and spit the taste of dead man arm out of their mouth.)

Efri unclips her canteen from her belt and holds it out. “Here,” she says. Her voice is rough. Her heart is racing too much to let constructing sentences be easy. “Not much, but –”

Kazari stands still while Efri tips half of the remaining water onto her tongue, and then Efri watches her swilling it around in her mouth, trying to bathe all of her teeth in it, before she spits it again on the floor at the dead thing’s feet.

The water is still clear. That’s something, at least; the dead man was too old to still have blood in him. Or maybe he was embalmed, drained of it hundreds of years ago, thousands.

“Are you okay?” Efri asks Kazari when they’re done, because they were the one doing most of the fighting, who was closest. They tip their head, shift their weight – wince when they put weight on one foot. Their lips peel back from their teeth. Their clothes on that side are singed.

Efri points it out. “Your robe,” she says, which makes it sound much fancier than it is. She’s too tired to think of a better word. She rubs a hand over her face, pushing the hair back over her forehead, says, “I’ll reinforce it for you when we get out.”

Kazari noses at Efri’s shoulder – the shredded fabric of her dress, the fraying edges stained with blood. Efri says, “I know. I’ll have to sew that up too.” Over her shoulder, she calls, “Kazari’s leg’s hurt, I think.”

“There’s blood on you,” Sissel replies. She peels her hand off the floor and leans back on her heels.

Efri touches her shoulder again. “’S fine,” she says. “Just a scrape. The blood’s drying already.”

It’s really sore, actually – the flesh abraded and tender, an ache sinking deep into the muscle – but it’s normal sore, the kind of sore you really should be after being thrown into a wall. It doesn’t feel sprained or dislocated or anything like that. Just like it will be bruised a whole rainbow of colours come tomorrow.

Kazari noses at it again. She leans too far forward and falters on her maybe-hurt leg – rights herself, wincing, and rolls her shoulder. It gleams, just for a moment, and she nearly stumbles again. Efri puts out a hand to steady her. (It doesn’t really accomplish anything – Efri’s strong, but she’s not that strong – but it’s the principle of it.) “What was that spell?”

“Pain relief,” Sissel says from behind her. “I think. Doesn’t actually fix anything, but.”

“You’ll be okay ‘til we find someone?” Efri asks, and Kazari nods. She presses a hand against their shoulder and nods back.

They both turn to look at Sissel, then, who’s just kneeling on the floor, sitting on her heels.

“You all right?” Efri asks her.

“All right,” Sissel confirms. She doesn’t look at them. “Didn’t even come near me.”

She’s staring.

Efri crosses the floor to stand with her. (She needs to lean on Kazari – her legs are too wobbly, and she doesn’t want to touch the dead thing’s stick, doesn’t want to look for her own. Kazari limps a little on their sore front leg.) There’s a moment of total, humming silence – all of them still and staring, necks craned back, looking up at the thing.

Whatever it is.

It’s a ball. Big and blue and shimmering, it floats above a wide crystalline dish set into the floor, spinning on an axis. Just spinning and spinning and spinning, endless motion. Its smooth surface is cut through with dark wavering lines, etched with lettering, and it doesn’t quite glow but it doesn’t not glow, either, the light moving across it silkily, like clouds in a blue sky. It looks like something that should be humming – a low pitch in their ears, an eerie shiver dancing over their skin – but it’s silent. Inert, maybe, but for the spinning.

“What is it?” Efri asks. Her voice cracks as she speaks. She looks down at Sissel’s face, staring as though mesmerised, illuminated by the room’s dim lighting – the fires that should not still be burning down here, the luminous not-glow of the ball.

Sissel says, “I don’t know. Something important.”

Hovering above the dish, it spins, and spins, and spins.

“Is it what the ghost was talking about?” Efri asks. She tilts her head and squints at it. It doesn’t – well, it looks strange and unearthly and powerful, but it isn’t doing anything. And it hadn’t been clear what the ghost was talking about, exactly, according to Sissel, just that it was something important – but what else could it be?

Sissel, still watching it, shrugs. “I don’t know,” she says. “I think so.”

Efri watches it with her, brushing a bit more hair out of her face. It’s sticking to her sweaty forehead. She feels a drip of not-dry blood running down her arm under her sleeve.

Kazari is staring at it too – just as confounded as the rest of them. Efri sees the light in their irises shifting as the ball spins.

They’re not learning anything from staring, the ball staying strange and mysterious as ever, so Efri raps her knuckles against her sternum to steady her breathing (it’s slowed a bit – not normal, but closer to it) and climbs up onto the stone rimming of the dish. Kazari, behind her, lows in consternation; Sissel catches her breath, a noise like a creaking door. “Careful,” she says.

“Promise,” Efri replies, and places her feet very, very carefully on the glassy blue flooring. Nothing happens. She doesn’t step on the dark curved lines as she treads toward the ball in the centre, slow and wary as if she were approaching a skittish animal. Nothing happens.

She reaches out, and, with just the tips of her fingers, she grazes the ball’s surface.

Nothing happens.

It’s cool to the touch, and smooth, like polished metal or not-frozen ice or delicate glasswork. It continues to spin gently under her fingers, warming her glove with friction, no smudges left on its clouded face.

It really feels like there should at least be a tingle running up her arm, a strange and unfamiliar current, a spark. But it’s just Efri, standing with an arm outstretched, pressing her hand to a ball.

“It’s not doing anything,” she reports, and Sissel clambers up onto the dish with her, fitting her palm to its gently hovering underside. Kazari balks, begins pacing agitatedly. Efri frowns. “Why isn’t it doing anything? Shouldn’t it be doing something?”

“It’s important,” Sissel says definitively. There’s ancient dust on her fingers, but none of it seems to transfer. “It’s something really special, I think.”

Efri shifts restlessly. She shifts her grip and tries to grab onto the dark ridged curves ringing its surface, but they slip easily away from her grasp as though her touch was no barrier at all. “But what does it do?”

Sissel shrugs.

Behind them, Kazari lows.

Efri drops her hand and grabs Sissel’s wrist. “C’mon,” she says, and when Sissel frowns at her, “We’re not going to learn anything about it this way. We have to look for clues!”

Kazari makes a more impatient noise. (Efri thinks she found a clue.)

Sissel gives the ball one last searching look and lets Efri tug her away, off the weird blue dish and down to where Kazari stands on the stone floor, at the head of the table where the dead man sat. Efri sniffs loudly and tries not to think about it too much. The table is smooth polished stone, worn a little away with time; Efri trails a gloved finger over the edge and directs her attention to where Kazari points with their chin.

There’s something carved into the surface, the edges blunted and shapes softened by however many years it must have been since it was put there. Efri squints, trying to make it out. She has to stand right up on her tiptoes to get the right angle to see much of it in full.

“That’s not letters,” she says eventually, frowning. She’s pretty sure she knows her alphabet well enough by now to know that. “Is it magic?”

Sissel shakes her head. “I don’t know what it is. It’s not like magical writing I’ve ever seen.”

Efri looks at Kazari, who also shakes her head. “Maybe it’s a different sort of lettering,” she theorises. It must have been written a long time ago, if it’s from back when the city had people. Onmund’s been reading all about it for ages, and he’s told her a bit – Saarthal was the city of Atmorans, populated by proto-Nordic people. All complicated history stuff. But they weren’t quite the same as Nords today, he said, so it stands to reason they had different writing, too. They’re supposed to be uncovering and cataloguing artifacts (at the thought, Efri glances back at the hovering ball and swallows an inane bubble of laughter) so she suggests, “Maybe you can copy it and we can show it to someone. I’m sure there’ll be someone at the College what knows what it is.”

Sissel, also standing on her toes, nods dutifully. “What will you do?”

The chamber they’re in is cavernous, and about empty but for the ball in the dish, the altar and chair, the body on the ground. “I’ll check him,” she says, and points. “See if he has anything on him that’s special.”

Sissel follows her finger and grimaces.

She digs out her note-paper and her stick of char, and Efri assumes it’s clues time, but when she turns she feels a hand grip her elbow. She looks back over her tattered shoulder at Sissel’s face, her furrowed brow.

“Promise you’re really okay?” she says, voice anxious and solemn.

“Promise,” Efri says, twisting her arm to touch her friend’s hand. Sissel presses her lips together and lets go of her arm.

Kazari trails after Efri to look at the dead man.

First thing is the metal stick. It’s magic someway, Efri knows – he waved it and threw her into a wall, flung spells with it – but she’s not sure how. Doesn’t know enough about enchantments. Didn’t need to, to use it; when Kazari clamped down on his arm she just ripped it from his grasp and –

She doesn’t quite exactly remember, actually, except for the bitter tang of adrenaline in her mouth and nose, the horrible grunting and scuffling sounds, the heft of the stick in her hands. Impact, over and over and over, against something that had a little more give each time.

Efri scrubs a hand over her mouth and grips the handle of the stick. It takes effort to wrest it out of the thing’s face, caught as it is by the edges of the helmet, and when it’s finally yanked free it’s – actually not as bad as she might have expected. There’s no blood, and the corpse was so desiccated it already didn’t even really look like a person anymore, so it registers less as someone with horrible violence done to it and more as a really gross art piece. It’s not nice. She doesn’t like the twisted, gaping mouth, teeth embedded wrong-ways in its tissue and scattered like coins over the floor. And one of the eyes, which had glowed unearthly blue, is now a dull, rotten black, squished like a plum in its socket.

It's worse the more she looks. She sniffs and turns away.

“This is magic, right?” she asks Kazari, testing the weight of it in her hands, the cool surface of the metal, and they nod. “A good artifact?” she adds, and they nod again, emphatically. Efri sets the stick aside and kneels.

It wasn’t wearing any clothes, really – or if it was, they rotted away. She touches the rusted armour gingerly, tries to avoid brushing her gloves against the shrivelled skin at all. Whoever it was had expensive taste, it seems – there’s jewellery in a shockingly well-preserved beard, pendants around the neck, armbands. Efri asks Kazari if each thing is enchanted. No to the armbands, no to the beard-ring, and then, pressed against the wizened chest where the flesh contours to the ribs, she finds some kind of necklace, sharp-edged and thrumming. Kazari nods to that, and, face scrunched up like an old fruit, Efri reaches around the ancient neck to slip it off.

She tucks it into a belt pocket with the tripwire necklace they found at the weird wall.

“Done,” Sissel says. She folds her paper and slips it into her own pouch. Her footfalls on the echo-y stone floor as she approaches the body for the first time are almost silent. “Did you find anything?”

“Necklace,” Efri replies, watching Sissel’s face pinch at the sight of him. “And – stick.” She scoops up the metal stick and holds it out. “He did spells with it.”

Sissel looks at it warily. “Is he a draugr?” she asks, glancing back down at his mashed-up face.

“I mean,” Efri says, “he’s got to be, right?” She’s certainly never seen a draugr before, but what else could it be?

(Calling it a draugr makes her shiver, the set of her shoulders quaking. She’ll stick to dead man.)

Sissel shudders. She reaches out to grip the handle of the stick, and Efri’s not sure if she’s taking it or just trying to keep herself upright. “I can’t believe that happened,” she says. Her voice sounds, suddenly, fragile. “I can’t believe we’re alive.”

“Me neither,” Efri says. She presses the tip of the stick into the ground so Sissel can lean on it, stands a little unsteadily.

Kazari, with a hushed murmur, telegraphs something. Efri recognises the head incline of understanding – she’s familiar with that word, that idea – and, after a moment, the flickering ear of doubt.

“They’ll have to believe us,” she says with conviction, because she means it. “We’ll show them. They’ll see for themselves.”

Kazari presses their nose to her head.

Efri clasps her hands together. “We’ll go tell someone now,” she declares – though it’s easier said than done; they were lost in the ruins ages before they even found the crumbling wall, the halls, this horrible wonderful chamber. But they’ll get un-lost eventually. They’ll get out eventually. Surely. They have practice enough with walking. “But first – help me find my stick.”

#little girl has a kill count now!! more at 11 #for context: I altered stuff leading up to the discovery of the eye #efri and sissel went off to play in the undiscovered halls of this ancient archeological dig site #on the grounds that efri has a great sense of navigation and they'll find their way back to the group no problem.#(efri has a great sense of navigation in the wilderness.)#(introduce her to a series of roads and buildings and she is lost in the sauce.)#their friends split up to look for them after they've been missing from a while (wandering around with great interest and no sense of place #(incredibly lost)#kazari happens upon them right as they've found a necklace at the end of a dead-end passageway that - when dutifully grabbed #for archeological research purposes - ended up triggering the wall to crumble or disappear or otherwise remove itself from the equation #and efri wasn't going to just. LEAVE that opening there.#come ONN kazari that's weird!! we can't just leave it!! what if it closes up and we never ever find it again and there's incredible secrets #that the college never finds! what if we never know what's through there!#we HAVE to know what's through there!#so on they go.#and so ensue the horrors #they pass a lot of dead bodies before the main all but those ones are all immobile #also sissel is the only one to receive the psijic projection warning. which she explains to the others as a ghost telling her secrets #which efri accepts bc this seems like the kind of place that would for sure have ghosts #and kazari goes sure that tracks this place is fucking creepy can we leave now (<- is also curious but HAS to put on a show of reluctance #because clearly no-one else is going to)#(permanent babysitter of kids with the worst self-preservation instincts imaginable)#(she is so strong. living every childcare worker's nightmare)#ANYWAY #:D #normal type stuff #posting because it matches the artwork I'm also posting! look at that thing!!!#fay writes #oc tag #efri

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