It’s not like Faraday to request assistance so genuinely. Letters begging for help come, oh yes, but never with a real weight behind them. This is written urgently, delivered urgently, with the magpie who delivered it staying on Koschei’s shoulder.
Such a serious ask will meet a serious answer.
The mercenaries come in force, with Koschei commanding them. The resistance is fierce, fierce and desperate. Here he’d thought they’d abandon their citadel when pushed this far, but instead their eyes go wild, limbs severed and smashed before they stop fighting. This must be why Faraday wanted the help- he’s even pleased he swallowed his pride to ask for it, as the mercenaries fight until they meet Faraday’s far smaller force. Whilst splattered with dirt and nursing a limp, Faraday greets him with a cheerful grin as Koschei pulls him into a hug.
“Hey boss!” he chirps, “Thanks for coming so fast.”
“Wording,” Koschei replies, neutrally, and when Faraday looks at him blankly he adds, “Don’t worry. You were right to ask for backup.”
He pauses to look around. They’ve made it to the vault, now, but with the treasure being hauled away, it feels conspicuously empty.
“Pray, Faraday,” he murmurs, stepping around the cooling bodies, “What do you think they’re protecting?”
“What do people usually protect?” Faraday muses, slinging his railgun over his shoulder. “Things that can’t protect themselves. Things they care about.”
He spins around, arms thrown open.
“But this place’s full of dust and nothing else,” he continues, “So I don’t know.”
He jogs over to a wall and smacks it with his fist. Koschei winces delicately.
“Faraday-”
Faraday wheels around to the wall he just playfully smacked, his frills flexing up straight in surprise. Koschei’s hand draws down to the pommel of his sword, fingers flexing to grasp it’s hilt.
“Something wrong?” he asks.
“Nah,” Faraday says, faintly. He traces a finger along the dusty wall. Although Koschei can’t see, his soft brown eyes are narrowed. His thick tail lashes for a moment, and he side steps along the wall, his finger tracing a straight line- then moving up, and curving down. “Stand back a sec, boss.”
Koschei does not do that.
Faraday lays his hand flat down against the featureless wall and, in the blink of an eye, cracks ricochet across it’s surface. Violently plaster splinters away, as if shoved by a shockwave of force, the very wall seeming to recoil.
“Magical field,” Faraday says, drawing the word out, “A very delicate one, but super strong. Look at all this!”
Koschei hums in agreement, a little more wary than excited as the barrier- now visible to the both of them- peels off the wall. With it gone, part of the wall collapses, showing a passageway.
“Oh!” Faraday exclaims, taking a step forward before Koschei strides over to put an arm around his waist, stopping him.
“You’re injured,” Koschei says, “I’ll assume you didn’t realise that, and weren’t about to stumble down into the unknown with a gut wound.”
Faraday looks down. True to his words, Koschei has wrapped an arm just below a dark stain in his jacket, now resting his chin against Faraday’s shoulder. Which is awful posture.
“That’s where the blood smell’s coming from?” Faraday asks, turning his head up- awkwardly flattening his fins against Koschei’s chest- “I thought it was you.”
“Why would it be- never mind that,” Koschei mutters, letting go of him. “Trail me, please.”
“Are you sure?” Faraday says doubtfully, as Koschei gently moves him aside. “It could be dangerous. Shouldn’t I go first?”
“That’s exactly why you shouldn’t,” Koschei says, a little amused.
The pair of them descend further down. At first he assumes the oncoming stink is either an indicator of excessive plague energy stored underground, or a pit of bodies, neither of which he wants to deal with. But after the entrance turns into a distant light, Koschei stops.
“I can get us out if we have to,” Faraday says, without prompting. “I might also take out a mile around us, though.”
Koschei hums. He’s not particularly concerned about them being buried alive- although even thinking that is something he doesn’t want to imagine- but more what they’re going to find down here. The smell isn’t rot. It’s changing. It smells like decaying plant matter, not decay itself. The Wasteland has very little plant matter to decay, for the most part. Especially out here, in the middle of the Boneyard.
“Stay behind me,” Koschei murmurs.
“Awh, you care about me,” Faraday teases, nudging him in the back as they approach- something. It’s not well lit, but Koschei can just about make out an outline of an open arch. He has the glow of Faraday’s railgun to thank for that.
“Yes, I do,” Koschei says, rolling his eyes good-naturedly. “Look sharp.”
The dark room lights up with spots of green when Koschei steps foot into it. He squints as his eyes adjust to the tiny drops of bioluminescence. It’s small, a circular room. Only five or so paces across. With Faraday limping in after him, there’s an extra trickle of light.
There’s something chained up in here.
Koschei hears Faraday shuffle around before he grunts, and then a dull, amber light flickers on just above the open arch of a door.
Koschei takes a step forward and looks up, linking his hands behind him.
There’s a man suspended from the ceiling. Trussed up in huge iron chains, his body still mostly obscured by the lingering and oppressive shadow. Both wrists have been pulled high above his head, held apart by heavy shackles. Both ankles have the same treatment, pulled apart by shackles, and a huge collar clasps his neck.
This room stinks, not of dust, not of blood, but of plant life.
The man’s head moves by a whisper, and then, like some ancient thing waking up slumber, with great difficulty raises up. Bright emerald eyes open, violently sharp as they meet Koschei’s steady gaze. For a moment, the two men stare at each other.
Another set of eyes open on the man’s face. And then another. Eyelids peel open all down his exposed body, down his arms, his limp torso, his sunken stomach and legs, down his tail. They roll in their sockets before all focusing on Koschei, all bright, violent, emerald green.
Leaves begin to grow in the corners, where the wall meets the ceiling.
Faraday exclaims wordlessly in surprise and protest, but Koschei doesn’t move a muscle.
The leaves grow and warp, twisting around one another into thick vines that run down the wall to grasp the iron chains. More and more grow, before the chains snap, crunching under the pressure. The vines run around the man’s body, under his armpits, around his thighs as they hold him in place before slowly, gracefully putting him down on the ground.
For a moment, Koschei wonders if it’s the tension radiating off this unknown prisoner, or a genuine magical aura. Another moment passes; and then, Koschei blinks, and the prisoner collapses.
“Shit,” Faraday says, rushing forward as Koschei kneels down, propping the prisoner up as he collapses into a pile of uselessly atrophied muscles and calcium deprived bone. The two of them lift him back up, and find no resistance to this.
“-Leave,” comes the very, very faint voice.
A shaking hand tries to root itself on Koschei’s shoulder. All of the eyes roll and round on him again, before the man manages to look up. Tears stream down his face. He can’t make a fist, but the raw, wretched misery coming off him hits Koschei like a truck.
“Don’t- leave,” he chokes out, barely able to speak at all. “Don’t-”
“We won’t,” Koschei says, gently- and sounds as shaken as he feels. He can sense Faraday looking at him in alarm. It takes him a moment to re-establish the barriers around his own emotions, pushing the worst of this poor fool’s out. “We won’t, child. We won’t.”
“You got him?” Faraday asks, standing back up. Koschei nods, pausing a moment before collecting the prisoner in his arms. He weights practically nothing. He’s still looking up, radiating an unending mix of misery and joy, all cut together with fear so strong it fills the room.
“I wonder why-” Faraday begins, as they trek back up the passageway.
“Hush,” Koschei interrupts, his voice sharp. “We will figure that out later.”
“Softie,” Faraday says, under his breath.
A trail of leaves follow from the room, spilling from the tips of the weeping man’s fingers like blossoms in spring.
