Chapter Text
The cell was just as bright as he had remembered.
Experienced? Recalled?
It was bright. His arms were bound to his chest (weren’t they always?) with a tight vest, too tight to slip a finger free. Too tight to do… something. He knew there was something to be done. Something he could do.
But the lights were too bright and his head was too quiet.
He had a dream, in the time between this room and the previous. A dream of color, wind on his neck, his hands free from shackle. A girl tucked beneath his arm, curled sleeping on his leg. A group? The vision would get fuzzy at times.
The dream was not all pleasant, though, and there were moments like the time before this. He was on his knees, transfixed by something. Something burning. Skin sloughing off muscle, flesh coalescing into a charred, sinewy mess.
He snapped his eyes shut. It did nothing to quell the vision, but it felt good. He felt in control of something.
The cell was still too bright.
---
Caleb had been gone for two days. Beau’s knuckles had started to ache from the grip she carried her staff with.
“He wouldn’t have just left. Not without her.” She said for the thousandth time, gesturing at Nott curled up by the dying embers of their campsite’s fire.
“I know. I just…” Fjord sighed, his shoulders sagging. “I don’t know where we start.”
Kernquell wasn’t a large town, its one inn hadn’t even had rooms to spare, which left the party camping outside. At least it wasn’t too cold, but as they neared the southern Zemni Fields, temperatures fell faster in the nights than Beau was comfortable with. But Caleb had offered to scout the town, casing the few supplies stores they had before returning to the group. He was smart enough to not have run into trouble, Beau was sure of it.
“It doesn’t—”
“Sit right with you?”
She nodded.
“Me either. But it would’ve been the way to do it, right? Tell us he’s going for a walk and not return.”
Fjord had a point, but she’d rather die than tell him so. Not when the nagging thought at the back of her head urged her to acknowledge the thought that Caleb would’ve picked the perfect time to have run. He had a secret to keep, now. She had his secret to keep.
“I don’t get him leaving without Nott. I mean, she…” Knew too. Was in the room with us. Heard what he did. “He wouldn’t.” Her correction piqued her companion’s curiosity, and she cursed herself for it. Fjord cleared his throat, but she had caught his interest. Damn him and his stupid personability.
“Beau…” His voice was measured, honeyed. Like questioning a child. God, he sounded like her father. “Can you think of any reason for Caleb would’ve left now? I mean, it really seemed like he was starting to feel at home with us, in his own way.”
She kept her mouth firmly shut, only acknowledging Fjord’s question with a tilt of her head. He probably still gained all the information he needed from it, but it felt good to at least be brash about it. It was the least she could do.
He took the hint she reluctantly gave.
“That’s his business, though, isn’t it.”
“Yeah,” she said with an exhale, looking down at her boots.
“I’ll wake Jester for the last shift. Try to get some sleep, alright?”
She didn’t look up from the scuffed ground as Fjord shifted beside her, walking back toward his own bedroll.
Gods, Caleb was a pain in the ass. A helpful one, sure, but a pain. There was only so much blame she could place on him, though. His burden was a heavy one, she knew the thought all too well, but it was still his to carry. She couldn’t imagine what it had been like to hold something that close for that long.
Maybe he did run, and maybe he was right to do so. She could’ve told everyone. She could’ve turned him in. But Beau, in all her brazen confidence and biting words, was coming to like Caleb. In her way. Not in the way Nott did, doting on him like a son. Not like Molly, not even with the unacknowledged camaraderie of Yasha. She saw him like a warped mirror of herself. A brother in her anger, stifled where hers was acknowledged. He held back for the same reasons she pushed forward.
Fuck Caleb and her stupid compassion for him.
Before any further thought could be placed in feeling sorry for herself, a gentle hand was placed on her shoulder, and a groggy Jester, eyes still half-lidded, ushered her off to bed.
With a muttered excuse, Beau walked, measured, into the sparse woods far enough where the pattering of her fists against bark wouldn’t wake anyone else.
---
He closed his eyes and was somewhere else. It was nice to be so, the lights were getting too bright inside as his mind became fatigued. The sky was dark but clear, stars winking in and out between low rooftops and terraces. He was smaller, now, and welcomed the dream. His gait was regular, and he felt altogether more alive, for the moment.
Was this what all dreams were like? It was no wonder the previous had been so convincing.
He didn’t know where he was going, but his body did. Nose low to the ground, ears perked up. He could smell something familiar, and he was grateful for the grounding trail to steer his waning consciousness.
Time seemed to pass, but he didn’t mind it. The streets he wandered were empty, the few passerbys looming and clad in silver. He wove between their legs. Some of them looked down at him. One reached, but he skittered away. His body was so much more lithe, now. He felt stronger, in the dream.
Before long, the trail led out of the streets, over a wall, down into tall grass. He strode on without fear, eyes darting side to side.
His quarry was soon found, however, as the crackling scent of a dying fire brushed his nose. Without too much of a second thought, he slunk into the clearing, curling into the arms of a small figure by the embers.
He closed his eyes again, but stayed in the figure’s arms. It was much darker, here, and his mind could rest a bit. Even if he could still feel his too-large, unwieldy shoulders bound by thick canvas.
---
“You didn’t sleep a wink, did you.” Molly’s eyebrows flicked as he looked Beau up and down, eyeing the sweat crusted on her brow.
“Yeah, yeah, fuck off.” Beau picked at her rations, breaking apart the crumbled scone and handing a piece over to Jester.
“Beau.” Her singsong voice rung in Beau’s ears. “You have really got to keep your strength up. If you don’t—”
“I’m fine.” It came out harsher than she intended, but at least it pulled the eyes away from her. “Just was trying to think of something.” Her addition was barely a mutter, but she knew it hadn’t been lost on her companions.
Fjord was still half-lying on his back against a log, gentle snores coming from his slumped form. Nott had been gone when Beau had woken, but liked to hunt a bit in the mornings, so apart from Caleb’s absence, all was as it should be.
“Okay, so what can we try next?” Jester perked up. “I mean we haven’t checked in with the Gentleman yet, maybe when we go to him for a job next, we can see if that cat-lady with our blood can track Caleb?”
“It’s not a bad shout,” Molly chimed in. “He will most definitely charge us, but it would be well worth it. It’s just a while back to Zadash, and I’m not happy heading back south without anything to go on.”
“I know someone.” Beau bit back every word as she said them, but couldn’t stop. “There’s a… a girl I know who works in some of the shadier types of trade in the Fields. Only spoken a few times,” More than spoken. “But she’s as trustworthy as you can get with something like this. She has her eyes in a few places as far as the law is concerned, and I’d be much more willing to be in her debt than the Gentleman’s. Plus she’s probably not as far.” Probably. She let out a breath, not looking up.
“Why didn’t you bring her up before? If you have friends in the area you could’ve said—”
Molly cut Jester off with a shove. He was snickering. Curse his stupid purple ass.
“We’re cool, okay.” Beau shot him a pointed look. “It’s just been a while. I can ask the right questions to get us there.”
“Get us where?” Her staff swiped out, but Nott jumped over it with a deft hop.
“Gods above, Nott!”
“Get us where?” Unfazed, the goblin sat across the fire pit from the rest of the group, holding a small brown field mouse that she looked ready to dig into.
“Nott, where did he come from?”
Molly was gesturing to the orange-brown form that had been fast on Nott’s heels, now crouched lightly at her side.
“He showed up last night.” Nott was trying hard to look unhurried—but a faker knows a faker, and Beau cast a glance at her clawed toes clenching and unclenching the rocky dirt. “Slept for a bit. Then went back near the town.”
“What do you mean? Where did he go?” The raised voice of the blue tiefling caused Fjord to crack his eyes open as he leaned forward, brow furrowed.
“I’m not sure, we got to a big stone gate and I couldn’t follow. But it was official-looking. Lots of guards.”
“Shit.” Molly beat Beau to it.
“You think?”
“Well let’s go, then.” Fjord was already on his feet. “How far away?”
“It was to the east, I think. Further out than Jester went with her location spell yesterday.”
The hope brimming in Beau’s chest was new, and welcome.
---
The little green girl walked with him, and he wound around her ankles. She tried to communicate, to ask him something. He didn’t know what, but when his small body began to walk, her brow loosened a bit. He walked the only way he knew, back where he came from.
A passenger in his body, but the feeling wasn’t dissimilar from the room with the bright lights and the tight vest. A room that he was violently pulled back to when a hand cupped his chin. No matter how gentle the gesture might’ve been intended, it sent him reeling.
He blinked and was back in the bright place. His bare feet scrambled across the floor as he pressed further into the corner he had claimed as his own. A clean man was in front of him, with short cropped brown hair and eyes that could’ve once been called warm. They did not look at him with warmth. He was scum to them.
With a tug, he was pulled to his feet, and he nearly bowled over again from the momentum, but was caught by steady hands. He slumped into them.
Of course, there’s no use fighting it. The clean man said without moving his mouth. You will be just fine soon. Nothing to worry about.
He didn’t believe the man, not at first. But his eyes were so tired, and he could not think past the pounding of his skull.
Perhaps there really was nothing to be done.
He just wished he could be outside again.
---
Nott was crouched at Frumpkin’s level, staring into his amber eyes.
“Alright,” her voice was barely above a whisper, and Beau was certain it wasn’t meant for anyone present. “You’re going to be a good cat and lead the way, okay? Just like you showed me the first time.”
Beau could tell her patience was waning. Her flask, never empty, should’ve been at least two times over before the sun streaked the western Bromkiln Hills.
The rest of the group had no comment as they set out, their cart making steady progress trailing behind Nott, who followed the bright tabby.
It was nagging at the back of her neck: the thought that they had absolutely no plan. Not even the faintest idea what was in store before them. She could say she’d gotten out of worse, but that could be incorrect. Where could Caleb have ended up that he couldn’t have sent them even the faintest of signs? What could be happening to him that he was too preoccupied to let even Nott know that he was alive?
Their strange parade traveled for a mile or two before skirting around the city entirely, making for a rough stone mound in the far distance – walls so worn they could’ve been passed off as ruins.
“There’s less cover closer in,” Fjord mused, slowing the horses. “Before we are out of this thicket, how abouts we send a scouting party in, see what we can glean from that.”
“I’ll go.” Beau and Nott were quick on the draw, and made careful eye contact after their chorused voices ceased.
“Alright Beeaaaauu.” Jester drew out her name before flicking her in the forehead. “Bless you!”
The subtle shift in adrenaline and the extra spring in her step offered by Jester’s patron’s blessing was graciously accepted as Beau hopped from the cart, striding forward with Nott and Frumpkin. The former waited until they were out of earshot from the group before speaking in a low tone.
“No matter what we find, if he is hurt, I’m not hesitating.”
Beau nodded to Nott’s back before adding, quickly: “Deal. But if it looks like we can hold off and have more success with a plan… We’ll regroup. I’m just as unhappy about it as you are, but I don’t want him to have it worse off because of us.”
“Agreed.”
Their silence could be cut by a knife, the heavy air between the companions weighing on both of their shoulders. At least it was a shared burden, though.
The crumbling wall ahead was surprisingly well-armed, which sent a shiver down Beau’s spine. Casing the perimeter, they noted just one main entrance, with six crownsguard in total: two patrolling and four at the gates. There were at least two more in the main courtyard, guarding a squat stone building that couldn’t have been larger than a barn.
“I don’t like the look of this.” Beau motioned to Nott, beckoning her behind a rocky outcropping in the tall grass. She kept her voice low, eyes sharp on the guards. “I don’t like how heavily guarded it is, and I don’t like how unassuming it looks.”
“I have an idea.”
“Ominous, alright. Shoot.” But before Nott could explain anything, she’d slunk off into the grass, muttering under her breath. In the blink of an eye, her appearance melted away, taking the visage of a small halfling with bright red hair. Frumpkin followed close behind, winding around her heels.
She had better know what she’s doing.