There Are Bridges You Cross You Didn’t Know You Crossed until You’ve Crossed
Ch3 of Don’t Leave Me 'Til My Sorry Life Has Ceased
Prompts: Necessary, Monster
The time has come to do the spell to kill Domina Profundis, and it's Callum's last chance to put everything as right as he can.
The trip to the mainland was unceremonious. They pulled on dark cloaks to shield from the raging weather and to avoid recognition, trekking through muggy swamplands to a hut made of rotting wood, a house that the witches from the fairytales always lived in.
Its occupant was, in fact, not a witch, but a dark mage, which were basically the same thing anyhow. His face was more marred than Callum’s now, buzzed black hair shot through nearly entirely with white, and a clouded-over eye that still seemed to see him, only ten times more creepy. Callum didn’t care for his name, because a name meant he was a human, too, and he was better than so few these days.
“Finally getting your revenge, eh?” the man chuckled as he rummaged through his cabinets.
“Tastes even sweeter after all this time,” Finnegrin replied. “I knew you’d hold onto it.”
“Knew what you’d do to me if I didn’t,” the man snorted, and he shrugged.
He finally procured the unicorn horn, and Callum stepped back, breath catching in his throat. It gleamed silvery-white, the color of Rayla’s hair in the candlelight, spiraled and twisting much longer and much pointier than he’d envisioned. The end, the stump where it had been sawed off, Callum realized, stomach churning, was still stained with blood. Dark and crimson, smelling of mud after a long day and faded floral perfume instead of the usual vomit-inducing metallic scent.
Finnegrin clapped his shoulder. “He can carry it. Wrap it up real nice, won’t you?”
The artifact was delicately wrapped in a red cloth, handed to him with care. Briefly, Callum considered dropping it and hoping it would shatter into a million unusable pieces, but under Finnegrin’s stern gaze… He’d know it was on purpose, and Rayla…
He could do nothing but accept it, marveling at the priceless relic in his hands. Surprisingly heavy, was all he could manage to observe through his heartbeat in his ears. This was real. He was really going to just… repeat history, and roll the dice and hope they’d finally get to go free? Surely that couldn’t be the only option. There was always some creative solution.
And then they were being escorted out, the man likely unfathomably relieved to be rid of them, Callum thought with envy burning at his ears, and back into the raging storm outside.
“We should get out to her hunting grounds by sunset in two days,” the elf informed him, strolling leisurely with his hands in his pockets. “You’ll do it then and there.”
“What, no sassy comment? Come now, they’re amusing.”
“Nope.” He looked downward, to his soaked boots, tears pricking at his eyes. Where was the Callum who would have fought this tooth and nail the way Rayla was? Why was he utterly defeated ?
He tsk ed, practically begging to be clocked square in the face again. But he was only mercifully silent for a moment before he began whistling a jaunty sailor’s tune, the legend of that missing sailor Callum recalled hearing on Katolian piers when he was young, flipping that blasted coin with his thumb.
