#godhands

[onwesterlywinds]

PROMPT #12: Quarry

The further they delved into the limestone quarry, the more often Marco looped back or turned to peer over his shoulder to ensure they weren't being followed.

"It's not even the cutthroats or the revenants I'm worried about," he whispered, as though the admission itself put a target on their backs. "It's Priya."

Ashley's stomach dropped. "Priya?"

"She's been spotted coming this way more than once. I just want to make sure she-"

Marco stopped walking as his words failed him, and Ashley didn't realize they had half the tunnel separating them until the light of Marco's lantern had faded almost to nothing.

"Hey," he murmured, and even from so many paces away, Marco lifted his head to look at him. "She'll be fine. They'll all be fine." It was a reminder in part for himself as well, as there had been no word from Élodie in weeks.

Marco breathed in deep, then exhaled; he did this at least sixteen times that Ashley counted, and many more that he did not.

"What is this place, anyway?" Ashley asked him. Despite its age, tunnel bore no similarities to what little he'd seen of the Undercity's Skallic ruins, or to any other signs of ancient civilizations.

The question did not distract Marco from his anxieties, but it did seem to better ground him in the present. "No one's really sure. I used to come down here a lot when I was a kid. Or at least, it's where Hazal would just… find me."

They rounded a sharp turn imposed by an outcropping of banded rock, and then another - and then the lantern's light distended against a curvature of black metal shaped not unlike a ram's horn.

Ashley's knees buckled before he could master himself. All at once he lay gasping against the cold limestone, staring into a series of weldings and fittings that made up a skull and jaw, and a single glassy lens that might have passed for a dead eye.

"Marco," he whispered, because it was just about the only word he could manage without the threat of sickness.

There came a faint rattle from somewhere inside the skull, which echoed further down the cavern - and then Priya emerged from the thing's mouth, trembling.

"Hey, Priya," Marco said to her, much more calmly than anything Ashley felt.

The girl looked between them, then said, "He knows you're here."

[staticwings]

Spray N' Pray. #figma #nipako #nipakochan #figmanipako #ultimatenipakochan #littlearmory #godhands #godhand #nippers #p90 #p285 #smg #submachinegun #sprayandpray #spraynpray #toy #toypics #toyphotogrphy #toycrewbuddies #toystagram #toysofinstagram #fun #posing #actionfigure #actionfigurephotography #photography #hobbyphotography #fun #funwithtoys #effectparts #gunfire https://www.instagram.com/p/COiZ2Nvgr8-/?igshid=1enj8u37v0z8u

[rickjr29]

Prosper, my convo with @rico2one4ready yesterday brought me to another place of humbleness, an reminder of who i am & being a light to everything i touch ! Appreciate you dawg . 📽 @shotbyjayc #positveenergy #entrepreneur #photography #business #dallas #shows #art #artist #love #passion #world #GodHands S/0 to @cltrclub https://www.instagram.com/p/Bnydi5yHz9q/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=4yr8322a04al

[sadvibespatrol-blog]

[onwesterlywinds]

PROMPT #19: Weal

Contains body horror, mild descriptions of violence, and allusions to kidnapping.

"Blackram."

He jolted awake, halfway to mistaking the voice for the red-masked man's. But it was only Sid, standing over his bed. The first thing Blackram saw was the knife in their left hand.

"Where is she?" Blackram mumbled, because he had been stirred from his first bells of sleep within the last few days. "Sigrid, she-"

Sid shook their head. "Still where you've left her. Blackram, enough of this. You've not left the catacombs for weeks."

Some irritation he could not fully place propelled Blackram out of bed. He rolled out his shoulders, flexed out the fingers of his right hand and felt the familiar ache in his palm. A fresh stream of blood and pus and something else he couldn't readily identify in the dark oozed out from the wound; tamping down his disappointment and some muted stirring of dread, he went to go to the water pump near the cliff face to wash it out for the umpteenth time.

"You've been getting weaker by the day," Sid argued. They stowed their dagger at their waistband and lifted up a bucket, setting it down with purpose beside where Blackram knelt at the spigot.

"Which is why I told you I didn't want to be woken."

They rolled their eyes, then began to pace. "How much longer will you kill yourself for this red-masked devil? Drive yourself ever deeper into your debt to them?"

"It's… not…" Blackram winced as the cold water touched his skin, until the chill overrode all other sensation and left his flesh numb. "It's not… a debt." He had known debts: his bounty hunter father had not come into his profession out of any joy for it, but to settle a blood feud for the man whose partner he had killed. He didn't have the words for what it was, though perhaps "gift" was the closest he could think of.

He knew far better than to say as much to Sid, who was already laughing - as dry and humorless as the bone dust littering the halls above them.

"What is it that has you so enthralled, then? This poisoned notion of godhood?" Sid held their arms outstretched, perhaps to indicate the majesty of the whole of the catacombs. "You are already a god in your own right, and your people see as much. Why don't you? Speak to any of the bones, if you've any doubt of it."

With his good hand, he closed off the water from the spout. The flow of fluids from his hand had not ceased, nor even abated. "That's enough, Sid."

"Surely it cannot be for this woman you barely know."

And what if it is? he longed to ask. Instead, he turned away in the hopes of finding a clean bandage.

Sid accepted his silence as tacit agreement, but they did not pursue the topic. Something had shifted in their demeanor - a tautness to their posture. "Have you ever seen a person die by infection, Blackram?" they said at last.

"No." The closest he'd ever come was seeing fever tear through the Saltery when he was yet a boy.

"It is one of the most agonizing deaths imaginable. Regardless of which part is infected, the organs shut down one by one, all while the brain screams for relief." They offered a moment of silence with which he might contemplate this death for himself. "I would not watch you suffer such a fate, my friend."

Blackram's eyes trailed downward to the barest glimmer of the blade tucked into their waistband. "Nor would I ever ask such a thing of you. Which is why, if you've any qualms with…" With what - his leadership, his priorities, his friendship? "…any qualms about us, you can say your piece, here and now, or you can leave."

Sid drew closer. They had shared so much of themself over the past few years, such that their proximity should not have been unnerving, and yet Blackram readied for the worst.

"Very well," they said, their voice uncharacteristically light. "I have never known you to sway from your course. Until, that is, you began to heed your red-masked benefactor." They raised their hands in surrender, and the dagger was there, gleaming in the candlelight; Blackram had not even seen them draw it. "But only one thing upon this star can bring about the ruin of a god such as you, and it has already begun its work. …Farewell, Blackram."

The words filled him with a dread he could not fathom, a fear as opaque as the warning itself. Sid was walking away with their back turned, as sure of their retreat as they had been throughout all their other partings from the catacombs. There was a twisted sort of relief to it nonetheless, what with the understanding that they could simply part ways, even if they would never again speak as friends, and that it would not inherently consign Sid to death-

They mean to excise the infection.

The whisper in his ear was unmistakable this time, even welcome amid his turmoil; nevertheless, Blackram's panic gave way to rage. "What do you mean?"

But the Ascian remained silent - and in truth, he needed no further prompting.

Immediately before the curtain, Sid stilled at the sound of his voice. Blackram took a step toward them, then another, until he lunged for the dagger in their hand and somehow wrested it from them.

"You," he panted, "will not lay a finger on her."

He slashed outward and the blade came away red. Sid loosed a cry of pain, but Blackram could not determine amid the darkness where they'd been struck; he saw only Sid's pale hands reaching back for the dagger, reaching for him. They had only to grab his right hand at an awkward angle and squeeze, and the pain from the infection was enough to make Blackram abandon all his other instincts.

"Listen to me," they said, beseeching. Their gaze flicked to the blade, which lay upon the floor of the cavern, out of reach for them both. "This cannot be what you want."

Blackram swung a fist; they dodged backward more out of luck than any real dexterity. They had only a few fulms until they reached the curtain that blocked off his chambers from the rest of the catacombs, and Blackram did not know who would be near enough, quick enough, or bold enough to respond to an alarum about his second in command. Sid tried to flee, but Blackram sent them sprawling with a kick. As they fruitlessly scrabbled for purchase upon the stone floor, Blackram lowered himself to their level.

"You meant all along to murder Sigrid. Do not deny it."

Sid sputtered, and spat out a mouthful of blood. "Bastard," they wheezed, an insult all the more ironic coming from them.

Blackram took hold of them by their hair, prompting another scream, and dragged them through the curtain with every onze of his fading strength.

All at once, for the first time he could remember, Blackram resented the distance of his chambers from the catacombs' main artery. He leaned against the rough limestone wall to catch his breath but did not remove or loosen his grip from his friend.

He longed to show some modicum of restraint, even now, and yet his Echo flared before he could control it. Here, amid the remains of countless dead from eras past and the tumult of their cries, Blackram recognized but one: further up along the wall lay a set of bones that had been cracked long before decay and age had reached them. He felt anew for himself the harsh sting of the lash, the agony of the metal rod that had broken the defiler-chief's body for the last time, so painful for its resurgence that he almost dropped his own captive. His right hand, racked by the persistent, pulsating ache of the wound Sigrid had dealt him, refused to heed his base instincts.

So too was he nearer to Brynhilde's crypt than he had been in weeks. Even now, even with so great a distance left still to traverse, the sound of Brynhilde's dying gasps filled his ears.

Vasu rounded the corner at that moment, just as he righted himself and gave Sid's body another hoist upwards along the ascending path. His mouth fell open in shock.

"Get Merfyn and Unsynskaet," Blackram ordered. "Tell them… tell them to ready the Iron Maiden."

[onwesterlywinds]

Arms Against Invaders

Part of my Godhands series, set roughly in the year 1543 of the Sixth Astral Era - thirty-four years before Hydaelyn’s present-day, and fourteen years before Ala Mhigo’s fall.

For all appearances, the door to the Balam Ring's warehouse sat unguarded. Ashley approached with J'zhal's keys wrapped tight in his hand, and with Marco and Élodie guarding his back; they held their breath as one as he inserted the key into the massive padlock-

"What are you doing?" Élodie whispered.

"It's stuck," Ashley hissed back.

"Move over and let me try," she commanded.

Marco shushed them both, then said to Ashley, "Give it just a little wiggle."

Ashley shook the key precisely as instructed, and the pins at last slid home. He breathed out a sigh of relief as the lock sprang open with a muted click; he slid the shackle free of its roost, then opened the door with the utmost care, ilm by ilm, the better to keep the hinges from creaking. Élodie and Marco slipped inside through the fulm-wide gap while he pocketed the lock for safekeeping. Thin though he was from learning to rely on one meal a day at most, he had to contort his torso to follow in after them.

The warehouse's interior was made up of one large, high-ceilinged room, its walls lined with wood in order to either insulate its contents from the fluctuations of the earth or prevent any noise from escaping. Towering shelves stood in neat rows along a central aisle; electric lanterns strung up from the rafters overhead illuminated the space with a dim, warm glow. The sudden sight and smell of so many old things was disorienting at first, all the more so by the fact that Élodie and Marco had seemingly vanished - until Ashley heard even, untroubled footsteps approaching from behind one of the nearest shelves.

Off to his left, Élodie was in the middle of stepping up onto a shelf covered in rolls of parchment and climbing, row by row, until she reached the very top and hoisted herself up into the rafters about twelve fulms up. Marco clambered after her, scaling the height in half her time. Ashley took up the rear as the steps grew closer, grateful both for the chance to distance himself from Élodie and the means to mimic her foot and hand placements to ensure his own path up.

His arms ached in protest by the time he reached his friends - yet once he did, he had a perfect view of the spot where a patrolling Balam Ring guard, a towering Roegadyn, would have turned the corner to find him had he been only seconds slower.

Élodie set off along the rafter beams, moving as surely and as silently as when she crawled through a stone walkway. Only as he watched her did Ashley consider that he had no idea what a stash of vera root might look like, and that he could not readily identify what it was they were looking for.

From above, the lanterns hanging below them illuminated the warehouse in full, revealing the distinct sections into which the stores were divided. Directly below them sat piles of books and papers, scattered in heaps rather than sorted by their spines or in any discernible pattern. Upon closer inspection, the papers concealed stashes of weapons and other contraband; Ashley noticed the dull gleam of bone protruding from under one scrap of parchment and glanced away before he lost any more of his focus.

The entire right side of the hall was filled with clothing near the door, and food closer to the back: in one corner, massive haunches of smoked meats hung suspended from hooks chained to the ceiling, and the walls bore niches into which assortments of cans and jars had been stacked. Ashley's stomach growled at the sight of so much food readily available, as if he hadn't polished off most of the previous day's loaf of bread.

Élodie paused so suddenly that Marco nearly ran into her. She pointed down the row below her at an open barrel pushed all the way up against the wall. It was filled with a powder that appeared sickly yellow in the dim lantern light, tucked alongside other barrels near shelves of jars and vials of varying shapes that could only contain reagents.

"Fuck," she muttered.

"What?" Ashley shot back.

"That's tens of thousands of gil's worth." She stared down at the barrel in contemplation for a moment longer - then she swung her feet over the side of the beam, placed them gingerly upon the topmost level of the nearest shelf, and silently climbed down to the floor. Marco did not follow suit: instead, he leaned his weight to one side and motioned for Ashley to move past him, already staring down along the other rows of the warehouse to keep watch for the guard.

As Ashley descended, the lanterns in the warehouse flickered with a noticeable hum. He moved to position himself in front of Élodie and the barrel, the better to obscure her in case the guard interrupted their work - then figured it was moot, given that she was at least a few ilms taller than him regardless.

"Hold your breath," Élodie whispered. "The fumes from this'll give you headaches." She retrieved a sack from her belt and reached inside it for a metal scoop not unlike one he could have found in the markets far above their heads. As Ashley slowly breathed in through his nose, he caught a heavy, faintly floral scent and recognized it as the lingering odor of the Jan's bloom he'd harvested with her no more than a week ago.

He pressed his lips together tightly to avoid exhaling.

And then the lanterns in the cavern went out, plunging the warehouse into darkness.

"FUCK!" the Balam Ring guard screamed.

Another voice joined him from a different corner, where Ashley had not seen anyone keeping watch. "Crater! What's going on?!"

"IT'S AN AMBUSH!"

Élodie's thin fingers encircled his upper arm; he thought he could hear her shoveling vera root into her bag with her other hand. He had no idea what, if anything, her Duskwight vision enabled her to see, or if she was acting on instinct like he was.

The other guard ran past their position, their footsteps light enough to belong to a Miqo'te. "You get the torch, Crater. I'll-"

The voice cut off in a wet gurgle.

And something passed beside him - an old, musty scent. Élodie breathed hard, digging her nails into his skin.

From the direction of the door came a tapping, the furious striking of a flint. A torch flared to life, and in a moment, its bearer screamed; he sprinted down the central row of the warehouse and within seconds laid eyes on Ashley and Élodie. "YOU!"

At the guard's feet, illuminated in the meager torchlight, his companion lay face-down in an ever-widening pool of blood.

Ashley threw out his arm to allow Élodie her chance to escape, to climb back up the shelves, but she did not let go of his arm. The Roegadyn guard stepped in closer and drew his axe with one hand.

"WHERE IS IT?!" he bellowed. "WHERE'S THE VERA ROOT, YOU LITTLE-"

A dark shape - Marco - dropped feet-first from the rafters and collided hard with the guard's chest, sending him and the torch sprawling to the ground. In the instant it took for Ashley to pull his friend to his feet, his eyes fell to an empty space along the wall where the waist-high barrel of vera root had been.

Élodie ran through the dark without letting go of Ashley's arm; she guided him and Marco along the center aisle, back toward the exit. They stopped at the door, and all three of them groped in desperation for its interior handle, until Élodie let out a grunt and a beam of light from the tunnel beyond widened like a beacon. She tore through it, then Marco - but before Ashley could follow, Marco let out a muffled scream.

On the other side of the door, a black-robed figure grasped Marco from behind, pressing a dull knife to his throat.

Ashley pulled his own knife free of his waistband and stabbed furiously through the heavy black cloak, over and over again, into the first place he could reach - some approximation of the lower back. The man let go of his dagger, let go of Marco, and crumpled into a heap on the ground.

Marco stumbled, wide-eyed, but kept his balance. "I'm fine," he panted, and grabbed at Ashley's arm to pull him onward.

Three more Balam Ring blades ran up the path to the warehouse, weapons drawn, and at first Ashley's heart gripped with terror to think they'd met their end; then Élodie darted off to the right, into a narrow alcove he would not otherwise have seen.

"THIS WAY!" one of their pursuers called.

"Wait," another shouted. "J'makh, he's been-!"

"GRAB THE BASTARD!"

A confusion of panicked shouts and ringing blades arose from behind them, but neither Ashley nor the others spared so much as a glance, and within seconds, only a single set of footsteps followed in their wake. The walls of the passage ahead were illuminated with the same electric lights as the rest of the mines, but their path was covered with dust-strewn detritus of all kinds: slats of wood and sheets of metal, enough of a hindrance to keep them from barreling through at an unfettered sprint. Ashley fought to maintain a pace just behind Élodie, to track where she stepped and mimic her movements precisely.

Whether due to a lack of grace on his part or the mere fact that he was doubtless heavier than she was, a piece of metal that had borne her weight without protest shifted and imbalanced him, sending him sprawling to the earth. He landed hard on his forearm, the one still holding his bloodied dagger, and only barely bit back a cry of pain. In front of him, Marco and Élodie turned; Élodie gasped in fear or worry.

"GO!" he shouted back at them. Their remaining pursuer could not be far behind, and Ashley would not have them squander the precious seconds it would surely take him to stagger back to his feet. His friends heeded him at once, without a word of instruction or well-wishing. By the time he heaved himself upright, they were gone.

He told himself he had to be close on their trail, or at least closer to them than their pursuer was to him. No matter how insistent he had been for them to leave him, his panic sunk in deeper the further he traveled through the tunnel without any trace of them. His anxiety only heightened as the route ahead split into two. The main path bent off to the right, down which the lanterns burned brightly along the walls; a thinner alcove jutted off to the left, stretching into complete darkness.

With no time to consider which path his friends might have taken, Ashley's reaction was a nervous, animal one: he sprinted along the main path, eager for any trace of light after his unwanted stint in the darkness. The main tunnel branched off into other, smaller veins after the first bend, each of them decorated with pickaxes and other tools laid beside their mouths that might have given the impression that their attendants had simply left for a meal break, were the materials not rusted through. Ashley committed every curve and outcropping in the stone walls to memory for when he would inevitably have to retrace his steps. For only a moment, the tunnel before and behind him went silent as he slowed his steps - as an understanding settled upon him that he was, for all practical purposes, alone.

Then there came the shuffle of staggering, uneven footsteps, and the lights again went out.

Behind him, someone let out a low, menacing laugh from the darkness.

"How d'you like that, boy?" said a quiet voice. "One of the gifts from our lord."

Ashley turned to face the speaker; though he could see nothing at all, he would not readily expose his back, as the man had to him. Rule number one of the Undercity. He crept backwards in utter silence, keeping the fingertips of his left hand pressed against the rough-hewn wall, fighting the rising tide of doubt and panic.

"There's more where that came from. All kinds o' knowledge, 'specially for you - strengths? abilities? Blackram's made it clear you're to have your fill. Anything you want to know, yours."

Somehow, the sound of Blackram's name was all the more terrifying in the dark.

"You really got me good, though," said the man - the Blackram Knight. His voice came from closer still. "Fuck. Never been stabbed like that. Never would've taken you for a topsider if - well. If I didn't know better."

The stone beneath his fingertips curved sharply. He traced a single foot behind him and felt only hard stone; when he shifted his weight, the tunnel wall was flush against his back.

"And speaking of what I know... Blackram won't be happy if I have to break something to get you to come along. So let's make this easy for the both of us."

Ashley gripped his dagger just a little tighter. His hands were still sticky from the blood he'd drawn from this same man only minutes ago; that blood had begun to congeal on his fingers, in the creases of his palms and along the curve of his right wrist. But he could see nothing at all, did not know how or where to charge without rushing headlong at a man who could seemingly control the lights at will.

Even so, he was done with cowering where Blackram was concerned. He knelt down, found a pebble, and tossed it behind the Knight with a resounding clatter.

His pursuer merely chuckled. "Nice try, lad. I'll make a note to help you with your evasion once you join up with us."

He had never been more tempted to hurl a good string of curses, thought up after his encounter with Blackram in the sewers. Somehow, the words refused to come to life.

"Right." The man's voice lowered. "Between you and me, you've just hit a dead end. I'd rather not-"

Ashley sensed the movement well before he heard it, as if he could feel the motion in the tunnel's thin air. The Knight, mere steps away, reached to grab his hair; Ashley turned and buried his dagger into the first place he could reach, only his blood-soaked hand lost its grip on the hilt before he could think to hold it tighter.

He cursed himself for the mistake, fully expecting it to be his last - only the Knight made no other move to attack him. He simply let out a rattling, wheezing noise and collapsed with a hard thud upon the stone.

With the exhalation of the Knight's last breath, the lanterns along the wall surged back to life with a hum and flooded the tunnel with their illumination. Ashley blinked against the stinging in his eyes - and at the sight of the Blackram Knight, a tall, thin man with a black cloak, ragged gray hair, and an X-shaped scar across his right eye. His eyes were wide open. Ashley's knife was buried in the side of his neck.

"Fuck," Ashley whispered, before he could help himself. He had no time to dwell on it. He drew the dagger back, needing to pull with all his might against what could only be his spinal cord; he fought a retch as the blade came free with a resounding splat.

He did not have to trust in his shaken memory as he retreated back down the tunnel: his pursuer had left a trail of blood from the wounds in his back. For all that Ashley had endeavored to memorize his steps, the walls and their branches looked completely different from the opposite direction. Ashley followed the droplets back to the spot where the tunnel first forked, his knife still at the ready.

The Balam Ring's shouts carried from down the tunnel back to the warehouse.

"Took the entire barrel of vera root," someone fumed. "The entire barrel."

"No time for that! J'makh's bleeding out - get J'zhal and one of the healers, now!"

A hand reached for his right shoulder, and Ashley swung his fist before he could fully react. Marco barely dodged out of the way, then pulled him into the passage to the left - the way he and Élodie had surely taken.

This way, Marco mouthed, and again he followed them until lights glimmered up ahead and they reached the lower end of the Sprawl.

***

They maintained a determined air of casualty as they made their way back through the Undercity's lived-in regions: laughing amongst themselves at a nonexistent joke, sharing a quiet nod or smile in greeting to those they passed, and doing their utmost to act as though they were not in a hurry to put as much distance between themselves and Balam Ring territory as possible.

But neither could they return to the Place of Free Words, or anywhere else they had been reliably seen over the past week, for if the Ring were lying in wait for them, it would be in one of their recent hideouts. They instead took a roundabout path to a deserted stretch by the Sanctum, Laurel Sigil territory, where mages trained to fight the undead; they settled into a passage where they were reasonably confident their voices would not carry, where Ashley rinsed his hands and arms and face free of the Blackram Knight's blood under a saline water drip.

"Listen," Marco said at last - the first words he'd spoken without artifice since their escape. "I know what it was you did for me back there, Ashley, and I'm... I'm really sorry."

Ashley shot him a quizzical glance. "What do you mean?"

"I wouldn't be here right now if you hadn't knifed that Balam Ring bastard who grabbed me, and I'm not taking it for granted. I get what it means to do your first killing, and I-"

"Oh." Marco paused at the interruption, as Ashley sorted the words Marco shared against the reality of all that had taken place. "I, uh... yeah, I killed him, but... that wasn't exactly how it happened."

"Huh?"

He swallowed hard. "The one following us into the mines, he wasn't one of the Balam Ring - he was a Blackram Knight." Marco's eyes widened in alarm. "It was me that fuck was after, not either of you: he knew which way I went after we split up. Then he made the lights go dark somehow - he did it in the warehouse, too - and he was talking shite to me about going with him quietly. He reached out for me while I couldn't see anything, and I... yeah. I stabbed him."

Marco started pacing, running a hand through his hair. "Fuck. That's... Still, I'm sorry."

"Don't be. He got what was coming to him, for siding with that scum." Marco completed a full circuit of their resting place and Ashley threw out his clean hand to halt him, to catch his full attention. "But I'd have done it to anyone who hurt you."

A grin crossed Marco's face - unsteady and self-conscious at first, then exuberant. Marco embraced him tight around the middle, briefly buried his face into Ashley's shoulder, and whispered a quiet "Thanks, Ashley."

"You said the Blackram Knight was the one who turned off the lights?" Élodie interjected. "I did wonder - right when the warehouse went dark, I was trying to get as much of the vera root as I could. Then I felt someone brush past me, and when I reached for the barrel again, it was just... gone."

"Maybe he wasn't working alone?" offered Marco, extricating himself from Ashley.

"Even so," Ashley mused. "That barrel was massive, you said so yourself. How could anyone have taken it just like that?"

"Did you get enough for your potion, at least?" Marco asked Élodie. At that, Ashley's heart began to pound; he had not even considered the possibility that all they'd endured might have been for naught.

Élodie pulled down the front of her dress to reveal her small sack double-knotted to the front of her bra. Ashley confirmed the size of her haul, then quickly averted his eyes, lest he be accused yet again of gawping. "It's more vera root than I've ever had at once," she said. "And probably more than I've ever used in my life, at that. So thank you, both of you."

Ashley shrugged, as if the events of the last two days were merely something out of someone else's far-fetched drinking story. "Just glad to help."

Marco leaned against the wall next to him, a frown settling over his face. "You're doing okay, though?" he asked. "Fucking sucks to kill someone. Sorry if I'm prying, just... I've been there."

"We both have," Élodie confirmed.

He was neither surprised nor uneasy to learn both his friends had killed before; if anything, it offered him a comfort. "I'm okay," he said, then amended his statement when it weighed like a lie on his tongue. "I'll be okay. Probably feel better once we keep moving, and all that."

"That's the thing," said Marco. "We're gonna have to lie low for a bit after all this. No telling whether the Balam Ring know the Knights were around today, but it's us they'll be after."

Élodie snorted. "Easier to collect from three shite-nosed kids than from the most dangerous lord the Undercity's ever seen."

Ashley's limbs already itched from the prospect of holing up somewhere safe and secure, when his body still recalled so vividly his run through the mines. But he, Marco and Élodie had overcome enough impossible situations over the last few days; even he, with his limited taste of danger, knew better than to keep testing his and his friends' luck.

"Good news is? We'll be in a better place to sit still with all that gil you nabbed up top." Marco jostled Ashley's shoulder. "Fresh bread every day."

"And," Ashley said, "hopefully lying low means I'm not gonna hear Blackram or one of his fucking Knights talking at me for a long fucking while."

"Little victories," Élodie agreed. "Sometimes, down here, those matter the most."

[onwesterlywinds]

The Body Fragile Yields

Part of my Godhands series, set roughly in the year 1544 of the Sixth Astral Era - thirty-three years before Hydaelyn’s present-day, and thirteen years before Ala Mhigo’s fall.

Content warning for sexual assault and body horror.

GODHANDS IS NOW ON AO3! If you like it, send over some kudos!

Once, in the early days of her service to the crown and only some few moons after her father's death, Sigrid had been sent out to attend to Theodoric and Hrodric on a stroll through Queen Edila's gardens. Theodoric came across a dead marmot and at once took a stick to it. He poked it over and over again until its half-scavenged, half-decayed innards collapsed into themselves and spilled out over the earth. That single act of violence loosed a stench so foul that Hrodric went running; even Sigrid had to cover her face and recoil from it. That memory was one of the very few of her own that would overcome her once the vera root took hold, though it came more as a dream than a recollection: it seized her whether or not she wished it to, usually whenever Blackram seized her in kind.

***

"It's alright," Blackram whispered, again and again, as his blackened hand moved across her skin, as his body moved over top of her body. He could not reach her when she was like this, not truly, but her distress was an agony for how deeply it had taken root in him. If he could not soothe her, he would soothe himself, and he would speak to her as he did not ever need to when they were truly one.

Each time the primal's influence waned, they spent at least a week abed while they shook off the mantle of divinity and regained some semblance of their selves. It was a harrowing process made somewhat less so by the warmth of Sigrid's body lying next to his, and the persistence of their bond, and the knowledge that their suffering would soon be at an end.

***

His given name, she divined from their pervasive mental thread, was Grimms. It was not that he disliked the name for any reason; he simply doubted whether or not he was worthy of claiming it. Every woman and man who had spoken his name aloud had met a brutal end, and rarely ever by his own hand, as if the Undercity itself could expunge any trace of it on a whim. As such, he preferred Blackram, the title of his own making, at least until he could pass it on to a deserving heir.

***

Ashley. Their heir could only be Ashley, and yet this conviction invariably brought them pain twinned with pride. Sigrid would weep from it, no matter how much vera tonic she'd imbibed, and the prospect of Brynhilde's son as her son - their son - brought forth in him her visceral grief and guilt, as debilitating as their shared sickness. Of all he had done to secure the Undercity, to remake it on Sigrid's behalf, he could not yet fathom what it would mean to bring Ashley into their fold: in fulfilling his own destiny, in treating with the power of the gods, would he condemn his only scion to this same hell?

Only the Ascian would know.

***

Some days, when he needed solitude but ached for her closeness, Blackram would carry her on his arm to a spot deeper still than the catacombs: a placid saline lake where snowflies gathered to flit above the surface if the air was warm. While there, he would release her for some few moments to tend to his own musings, and she would run her toes along the smoothed rocks that comprised the banks until her last dregs of energy were spent and her legs would heed her no more.

It was akin to how the Saltery had found Blackram's mother so long ago, floating face-up and stone-cold in the shallows of Loch Seld. In life, the lot of them had called her a banshee - one of the beings that haunted the valleys with their wailing lamentations since long before the flood - and even as they hauled her corpse from the water, her hair and lips and lashes crusted with salt, they handled her with far more caution than reverence.

***

The Undercity was deep in the throes of winter, and only the salt of the lake kept it from freezing over so far beneath the earth; the snowflies were well into hibernation for the year and would not return for another few moons at best. The cold settled itself upon every ilm of stone like a fine shroud, brutal to bear without the warmth of their bed, and the bite in his boots intensified as Sigrid stretched out her own feet into the frigid, numbing depths.

Through it all, his dead hand ached worse than ever.

"You're late," drawled the red-masked figure.

***

No matter how deeply the vera root infringed upon her consciousness, no matter how low she had sunk into vague scenes from her memories or Blackram's, that voice had a way of cutting through the debility, the cold, the fear. Half the time it did not sound like Common, let alone any other language she had ever heard, and yet she understood it better than she understood her innermost thoughts.

She would have to simply lose herself, as she had learned to do while chained to the catacomb walls at this voice's behest, while lying futilely on her back, while Blackram whispered over and over that it was alright. She threw her head back to the cavern ceiling and a moan escaped her lips - the first sound she made in longer than she could remember.

***

He had grown used to the Ascian's dramatic entrances. Whoever they were and whatever their origin, they defied every law the Undercity imposed upon its denizens. The passage before him, now only a vague memory of Skalla, was the sort of place no living soul could traverse without leaving some trace of themselves - and yet there his benefactor stood, surveying the clawed tips of their gloves as dark currents from the void swirled around them.

"We've done it," Blackram declared. He was breathing heavily, as though he had run a malm while wracked with fever, all from the strain of having carried Sigrid to her point of rest in the pool. "We've summoned Zalera of our own flesh and survived."

The Ascian gave him an evident once-over from behind their blood-red mask and scoffed. "Albeit the worse for wear."

Blackram gritted his teeth but offered no retort. He would endure the weakness, endure the chills, endure his own dead hand until the primal was to be brought forth again. The only other choice was for him to lie down and die - and if he were to perish with so much left undone, then so too would Sigrid.

"We have fulfilled our end of our bargain, done as you instructed. But I would ask something different of you in exchange."

The Ascian's smile widened, ever the more unsettling for the fact that it was their only visible feature. "Oh?"

"I set my previous terms before Sigrid and I were joined - and now, there is much more at stake than the specifics of my past. I would inquire instead of the future."

"Hmph." They shrugged, rolling out their shoulders. "This could be your only chance for answers - to know of yourself, where you came from, how you came to be. You would deny yourself this knowledge forever?"

If this was a trial, a test of wills, he would overcome it. For Sigrid's sake. "I would."

"Suit yourself - though I must warn you that foresight is not a gift I possess. Nevertheless, I would not have your deeds be met with a reward you deem unfitting. Ask whatever you wish, and if it is within my knowing, I will grant you your answer."

For the briefest of moments, a glimmer of Skallan tilework, as blue as a clear morning, captivated his attention from somewhere off in the darkness. "If our heir should take up the mantle of Zalera in our stead," he began, and found that his question evaded him until only a fatalistic certainty remained. "...He will suffer as we have."

His benefactor did not move. They gave no sign that they were even breathing, let alone listening; when they spoke again, it was in a voice far softer, far more deadly, than any they had used before.

"That is something no one can say. What you have achieved thus far - the binding of two souls in service of a primal - is without precedent for your kind. Whether this mantle can be passed down to another will depend entirely on this boy, and perhaps on what he can learn from you."

And for the first time in longer than Blackram could remember, his gut clenched with stirrings of hope.

"Now, then. If that's all, you'd best return to your lady love. There's no telling what she could get up to unattended, even in her state."

Sigrid would be missing him; she was alone and cold and so distant in body and mind. But he was halfway to the primal's haunt, and he could use the last of his strength to make that journey alone, to gather what he needed with her none the wiser.

"Oh, and Blackram?"

The Ascian was at his flank in an instant, tucked into his blind spot faster than he could blink. He raised his arm to fend off an attack, only for the Ascian to whisper in his ear.

"Your success has also earned you this..."

They did not speak the next words aloud. His father's name fell into his thoughts as though it had been there all along.

***

The knife brought her back to herself. Her hand slipped to the stones at the pool's edge and touched its hilt, and she knew it at once as a gift from Rhalgr or Byregot or Brynhilde. Its blade was rusted along its edge but plenty sharp at the tip, sharp enough to pierce skin, perhaps rupture vital organs. For the first time in moons, she was reminded of her father - not a specific moment in which to lose herself, but the sound of him at work in their home's basement forge, then the smell of his sweat when he'd emerge at the end of the day. The memories stung her all the more for their vagueness, for the reprieve they could not grant her.

And she was alone. Blackram had yet to return for her, though she could sense some decisive purpose driving him deeper into the cavern, much deeper than his talk with the Ascian had required. The vera root was wearing off and her pulse was quickening, and the salt on her tongue tasted of Brynhilde.

She tucked the knife into the band that tied back her hair, though her arms ached to stretch them so, and she prayed the glint or press of it would not alert Blackram when he came to pick her up once more. When at last he reappeared, he lifted her across his unblemished left arm, steady against his shoulder. He whispered words she could not make out, adjusted her headband to cover her eyes, and the knife did not fall. She endured the familiar, troubled movements of his body as he walked them back up to their chambers in the catacombs, where a new horror beckoned.

A swath of red lay across the bedsheets, so violent in its scattering that she retched. She could smell the rot of flesh from him and from everywhere, as overpowering as ever. She backed away from the bed even as Blackram reached for her, shaking her head and trembling all over.

Get away from me. The words would not leave her, no matter how she screamed.

"Sigrid," he whispered. He held more of it in his blackened hand, its perfume overpowering; a bloom of-

Red lilies.

He reached for her but the knife was already in her hand. He reached for her and she stabbed outward until the lilies fell to the stone at their feet. He reached for her until he drew back with a hiss of pain, a shuddering gasp, a gush of blood flowing freely from his side.

He reached for her and held her fast about the waist, stanched his wound with her skin, pressed his dead hand to the base of her spine and bared his soul to hers.

Blackram, bastard son of Titus yae Galvus, summoned Zalera from their agony once more.

[onwesterlywinds]

Catspaw Blackmarket

Part of my Godhands series, set roughly in the year 1543 of the Sixth Astral Era - thirty-four years before Hydaelyn’s present-day, and fourteen years before Ala Mhigo’s fall.

GODHANDS IS NOW ON AO3! If you like it, send over some kudos!

"Get up, Ashley."

The voice tore him from sleep, and the accompanying nudge to his foot sent his dreams scattering. He lunged forward from his pile of discarded jackets, grasping for his bearings, only for something made of rough-spun fabric to collide with his face: a plain hempen bag, which fell into his lap as his heart pounded and his thoughts raced in confusion.

"Morning," said Élodie. She sauntered into his field of view, spinning a keyring around her finger - the key to the safehouse where he and Marco had taken up shelter. "We have to head to the Profondeurs right away, so the longer it takes for you to get up, the more we'll need to run on our way there."

It took him several tries to fully grasp what she was saying. "What the fuck?!"

"I'm serious. We're on a tight timeline, so you'd better come to life quick."

Absent was a teasing comment, or even an exhausted groan at his flank; sure enough, when he glanced around the safehouse, there was no trace of Marco where he had fallen asleep beside Ashley only a short while before. "Where's-"

Élodie set herself to tying back her long black hair into a simple bun. "He's getting your knives repaired in the Sprawl. We'll meet him there later, assuming our own work goes well, but he said I could borrow you for a bit. We talked it over right in front of you; you really slept through it all?"

"Ugh." He blinked and tried to rub the last remnants of sleep out of his eyes. "Yeah, I... I've just woken up."

"I hadn't noticed," she quipped. "So are you ready?"

He had half a mind to refuse to go with her as a matter of principle, to insist that she ask for his assistance before taking it for granted. But he would never deny Marco his presence, just as he had no good reason to deny Élodie whatever she needed now. His safety with her was no question: he had never seen Marco or Élodie lie to one another, and Marco would have put up much more of a fight if he'd left against his will. "Why the Profondeurs, then?"

"Listen, not to be an arse, but there's literally no time. If you're not coming with me, fine - but I need to make this happen or I'm fucked."

He staggered to his feet in his effort to quickly find his balance. With his knife in Marco's hands for repair and no other possessions to call his own, he needed scarcely any time to ready himself; still, he took a moment to stretch out his shoulders and breathe in deep before he gave Élodie a nod that was much more confident than he felt.

"Lead on," he said.

Were someone to ask him the way into the Profondeurs, Ashley would have thought himself capable of giving directions. Several times along their run, he recognized paths that led toward the deepest reaches of the Undercity: paths from which he had seen other Duskwights come and go, or crossroads that he had carved into his memory from piecemeal snippets of maps and muscle memory and directions spoken aloud. Élodie's chosen course skirted every one of those instincts, had him second-guessing himself and his position in the Undercity at every turn.

The two of them met with only a few others along their route - not deliberately going out of their way to remain unseen, but crossing just enough bypassers to avoid attracting suspicion. Only the final half malm of their journey was completed in solitude, as they traversed a narrow precipice jutting out over a deep and bottomless darkness below. Ashley made it more than halfway across before he realized what it was he faced, and just how near he was to some unfathomable end. From there, once their path widened, Élodie lowered her stance into an impossibly slow pace and Ashley followed her lead, treading with greater care even than when faced with the threat of falling to their deaths. He knew better than to ask the reason for their sudden caution. He traced out her footsteps with care until his calves ached from the strain of it, and yet his steps were as silent as hers. The quiet submerged him as surely as the darkness, until he heard, as clearly as if it came from somewhere deep within him, a series of low and steady clicks. They continued on; Élodie paused once, still crouched, to let out a deep exhalation of breath. He did not see when whatever danger they strode through had passed: Élodie simply rolled out her shoulders and resumed her usual posture.

"Right," she said, speaking as confidently as though their trek had not just demanded their utter silence. "We're here."

Élodie flicked open her lantern and blew out the candle. Whatever sound Ashley might have made to stop her died in his throat. He needed only to blink for his vision to adjust, and spots of deep gold bloomed into his view. The entire cavern shimmered as if lit by distant stars.

"Whoa," he breathed, despite himself.

She let out a rare snort of laughter but did not slow her pace. "It's called Jan's bloom. I need as much of it as we can gather. Here-" Her outline came closer, manifesting in the darkness more as the absence of gold than as any distinguishable shape. With one hand, she gently clasped his wrist; with the other, she passed him a new knife to replace the one Marco had taken for repairs, one with a dulled but even blade. "It should come right off the walls with this." Still holding him by the arm, she directed him over to the gold-speckled stone, where she held her hempen bag at the ready and ran her own knife along the cavern wall. With a light and tinny scrape, the moss fell easily into the sack.

"You take up that side," she instructed, and though he could not see where it was she pointed, he headed over to where the gold seemed to gather in the brightest clumps and she did not redirect him. The motion of scraping while holding the bag steady required somewhat more coordination than Élodie's example had made clear, but after only a few rounds of fumbling with the fabric, he set himself to work and soon fell into a rhythm marked by the almost melodic sound of metal against stone.

The moss gathered quickly in his bag, and the more of it he collected, the more his vision and hearing adjusted to his darkened surroundings. Soon every ilm of him, down to his bared nerves, responded to each and every stimulus: a subterranean breeze, a droplet of moisture from the cavern's high ceiling, even a reprise of the clicking they'd heard before summoned from somewhere deep in his mind.

"So, uh," he said at length, "what does this stuff do?"

"It's a deadly poison that kills Hyur on contact." He could not see her grin amid the darkness, but he did not need to; before he could even open his mouth to respond, she continued, "It has lots of different properties. On its own, it's a cure for sunlight headaches - or, if you steep it overnight along with some other herbs, it can help with anxiety. My aunt takes it, or else she doesn't get out of bed."

It was the first Élodie had ever spoken of her family. Rather than risk prying, he nodded, then remembered she likely couldn't see him in the dark. "So why do you need so much? Why bring me along?"

"It's... a long story."

"Élodie." His hand holding the knife stilled, hovering over a clump of Jan's bloom as thick as his thumb. "Come on."

"What?!"

"I'm just saying. I'm here because I chose to be. I'm just asking if I have any reason to worry."

For a while, she said nothing at all, but the sounds from her knife came faster than before. At last, she said, "Fine. I needed your help because this'll be my last time in the Profondeurs for a while. Maybe ever."

"Did something happen, or-"

"I really don't want to talk about it," she said. "Not right now, at least. How's your harvest coming along?"

He reached into his bag and gently pressed down on the moss he'd gathered. "Little under halfway full."

He did not hear her come up behind him until she breathed next to his ear. Her sudden proximity made him jump; he had not been so close to anyone except Marco for a long while. From somewhere near her neck, he thought he caught the scent of a vaguely earthy-smelling perfume.

"You're getting the hang of it," she said. There was no malice, no urgency in her voice. "Here-" She reached her knife arm over the top of his, coming up close behind him; she scraped her own knife along the underside of a small outcropping of rock, from which Jan's bloom growing in thick and lush clumps fell with ease into his open bag. She placed one of her hands on his elbow, as if to direct his arm holding his knife. "Open your mouth," she directed.

His face burned red in the darkness. "What?!"

"You'll be fine," she shot back, then adopted a teasing, singing tone. "Come on!"

He did as she instructed, waiting with his mouth hanging wide for at least a few seconds and feeling every ilm the fool, until Élodie placed a drop of Jan's bloom upon his tongue. It tasted like nothing he had ever tried before: bitter enough to make him nearly recoil at first, yet ending on a sweetness that reminded him of rolanberries.

"Don't worry," she said. "It's harmless like this - you can eat it right from the rock." Élodie demonstrated this by lifting the glint of her moss-laden knife to the height of her own lips. "Heat's what activates its properties. Put it in tea water, or leave it out on a hot day, and that's when it'll really start to kick in." She gave another look into the contents of his bag, then back up at him. "You look cute when you blush."

"Wh-"

"I can see way better than you in the dark, remember?" As he reeled at this newfound knowledge, she said, "Let's give it another quick go-around and then head out. I'd rather not have enough than risk getting caught here."

Élodie used the light pooling in her bag to find her matches. In the middle of her motion to reignite her lantern, she paused, bit her lip, and glanced back up at him.

"Thanks for coming with me," she said. Her voice held an unfamiliar waver. Then the lantern glowed anew, obscuring the Jan's bloom upon the walls once more - and as his eyes stung from the sudden brightness, he had the good sense not to comment on the tears gathered in her own eyes.

***

Ashley did not know when or where he had first heard tell of the Undercity as a child. He might have insisted he'd known of it for as long as he could remember, were it not for a string of nightmares he'd once had - of falling through cracks and haunted treasure and blades in the dark - that had forced his exasperated mother to sit awake with him for the better part of a week.

The Sprawl resembled those dreamlike fascinations more so than any other part of the Undercity he had yet seen. It was itself the closest thing the Undercity had to a city beneath the earth, with shops and dwellings crammed into close proximity under a low-hanging ceiling of stone. Most streets were only wide enough to permit a few people to pass, and blue lanterns illuminated the paths in lieu of a bright sky overhead.

Élodie scarcely bothered to conceal their harvest as she marched him through the narrow lanes. There was a pageantry to her carelessness: here, every step they took was under scrutiny, more so than even during their earlier journey in the Profondeurs. Together they passed conversations held at a whisper, children who halted to stare with open curiosity, curtains drawn and opened at random.

They ducked past a pair of green-robed Roegadyn and turned sideways down a grimy alleyway. There they arrived outside the Catspaw, a shop that to Ashley blended in with the rest of their surroundings, tucked behind a metal grate with a beaded curtain as its only defense. It resembled any other seedy apothecary one might have found in the Ala Mhigo, albeit with fewer wares on display.

"Wait here," Élodie said. "Don't talk to anyone, don't touch anything."

He might have protested at her lack of faith, were he any less exhausted, but the compounded fatigue of running and sneaking and secrecy were beginning to weigh on him. He merely held out his sack of Jan's bloom for her, and she took it with a wink.

Élodie pushed aside the curtain and the shopkeeper lifted his head to greet her. He was an older Duskwight man, though sturdy for his height; his grimy white hair was tied back from his shoulders in a low ponytail, and he offered her a smile full of perfectly straight teeth. They spoke together in tones too quiet for Ashley to distinguish words from, though the shopkeeper glanced his way more than once and Élodie often huffed and sighed and made a show of setting the two bags of Jan's bloom upon his seller's counter.

"Hey," came Marco from his left side.

Ashley let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding; his arms were crossed tight.

"How'd it go?" Marco asked.

"It..." Ashley shrugged, then figured Élodie's "don't talk to anyone" was unlikely to apply to Marco. "She's still in there, selling our haul. We were just about to go and meet you. What about the knives, did you-?"

"All set." Before Ashley could see that Marco had moved his hand, his friend slipped his newly resheathed dagger into his waistband at the left hip. "And I ran into Hazal, an old ally. She said she's got a job for us both, if you think you'd be up for some intimidation."

He made a noise before he could help it. When Marco gave him a look in response, he said, "Intimidation? We could scare the piss out of little kids, maybe, but I doubt we'd be anything but a nuisance to folk bigger than us."

Inside the shop, Élodie slammed her palm down on the counter with a bang, and he and Marco both jumped in alarm. "What do you mean, there's none left?!"

The shopkeeper appeared unfazed; if anything, his unctuous smile grew ever wider. "I mean precisely what I said," he drawled. "I've no more vera root for you. My supplier has doubled their asking price, and it's more trouble than it's worth to keep it stocked. Your attempts to blackmail me will not conjure what you need."

With a single breath, Élodie drew herself up to her full height. "How dare-"

"Do not think me a fool, Miss Fiel," the shopkeeper continued, still baring his perfect teeth. "It took all of a half a bell for word of your disownment to reach this street."

"I-"

"Allude to my relationships all you wish. Your juvenile gossip will not conjure vera root in my stores - nor will it make your dear Maman Hélène love you as before."

The words found their mark. At once Élodie stepped back, almost staggering, as though the shopkeeper had struck her. Ashley darted through the beaded curtain at once, sending its strands skittering against one another, and took up his practiced defensive stance between Élodie and the counter. Marco did not follow him inside but instead kept close watch at the entrance.

"You shut the fuck up," Ashley snarled.

"I need the vera root," Élodie sobbed behind him. "For a potion, it's-" My aunt takes it, or else she doesn't get out of bed. "Please."

Ashley unsheathed his newly repaired dagger, and the shopkeeper's sunken eyes followed the glint of its blade. "Tell me who your supplier is."

"Put that down, you pathetic, shitesucking little-"

"Tell me who they are. And if you lie, I swear I'll tear this place down."

Again the man's eyes darted to the blade lowered at Ashley's side, then to something on the shelves behind Élodie. "The Balam Ring," he said. "It's J'zhal Nunh of the Balam Ring. Now get out."

Élodie took in another unsteady breath from behind him. From the corner of his eye, Marco gave the most imperceptible of nods.

He opened his mouth to deliver one last parting threat to the shopkeeper but found his mind utterly blank. He resheathed his dagger with one hand, led Élodie out of the shop with the other, and made a hasty retreat with Marco into the shadows of the Sprawl.

"Well," Marco quipped. "At least we know you are up for intimidation."

"Oh, fuck off."

His friend only laughed. "I'm serious! That was amazing. And bloody terrifying."

Behind them, Élodie fell to her knees and wept.

"Hey." Marco's humor fled at once as he and Ashley rushed to her side. "Hey, now. We've got you."

They had to support her weight for the rest of their journey back to the safehouse. There, in their relative privacy, Marco gave her the last of their clean water and Ashley did his utmost to bundle her in the jackets they'd slept upon the previous night, but there was little else for either of them to do for her until the majority of her tears subsided.

"I'm sorry," she whispered at long last. Marco immediately shook his head, but she pressed on. "My clan's matriarch, Maman Hélène, she... she told me I wasn't allowed to go topside anymore. She was angry I've been learning alchemy; in my clan, it's something only married women do. She wanted me to marry her son and succeed her one day, but he's vile, and he's allowed to go topside whenever he wants, and... and it wasn't fair. So I left."

"Fuck," Ashley breathed.

"Wh-What?"

"You'd get kicked out of your family just for going up to the surface?"

Élodie heaved a shuddering, sniffling breath. "Our matriarch's word is law, Ashley. That's been our way, ever since the Gridanians drove us out of Gelmorra."

He had no response to that, and so he labored to wrap his thoughts around the enormity of what she was saying, and all that she was surely leaving unsaid.

"I d-didn't want you to think worse of me," she stammered. "Your family's been murdered, and Marco never had one to begin with." Her lip trembled, and the rest of her words fell out of her in a rush. "And I just left mine - all because I was too stupid and selfish to do the one thing asked of me."

"You're not," Ashley said. "You're not either of those things. And I'd never think worse of you for leaving a family like that."

"My aunt was depending on me," she sobbed. "She needs the tonic I make for her, and now... Now I don't know how I'll ever see her again."

"Listen," said Marco, gently. "This aunt's the one who raised you, right? The one who took you in after your parents died?"

Élodie nodded.

"She won't give up on you that easy. From everything you've told me about her before, I bet she'll find a way to see you. Even if she's stuck in bed for now. 'Sides-" He set a hand on Élodie's shoulder as it began to fall once more. "There's plenty of other Duskwights who live outside the clans, most of 'em decent enough. I bet you'll have them to look to. So this isn't the end, yeah?"

"Y-Yeah."

"And you've got us," Ashley added, then immediately wondered if he was jumping to conclusions. "If you'll have us."

She gave a heaving sniff and wiped at her streaming nose with the back of her hand. "It's good this happened."

"Yeah?" said Marco.

"Yeah. It means I can join you now, really join you, without putting a target on the others' backs. Now that I've no family to speak of, Blackram will have no one to go after. And I... don't have any more excuses to keep my head down."

Marco's eyes darted to meet Ashley's, and the same grave understanding passed between them. Without speaking another word, Élodie curled up beneath the bundle of fabric and laid herself down to sleep. Ashley huddled beside her, weathering her every muffled sob even as he kept his open eyes fixed upon the door - even as she wrapped her arm around his waist, and Marco draped his arm across them both.