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Bra’ad is, first and foremost, an entertainer. The rush of the wind, the height of the wall, the irate voices of his audience in pursuit– the dizzying rush of performance! It makes him feel alive.
In this moment of action, he hums like the ever-singing cord of a lyre. He dances with the sweet yellow fire of movement, hovering in his lungs and burning at his limbs. He walks the brittle edge of danger like a tightrope.
Except with how much fun this is, it feels more like doing a cartwheel and several flips on a tightrope. And then sticking the landing.
He turns around to taunt the guards in pursuit once more: “I’m a clown, so don’t make a fuss! I know how to juggle, so juggle these nuts!” The nearest guard looks dumbstruck and floundering.
Man. He should do this more often. Maybe he won’t dress as a clown next time. It would be really funny to make Mountain come along if he was in Cornelius-garb, though. His face when Jacquois-Cornelius walked in was amazing.
The shouting is getting closer. Right, the guards. Well. All good things come to an end. This has probably been enough time for the rest of everybody to do… something, for sure. Now, he’s just… gotta… get down.
Hm. Fuck. The bright adrenaline mixes with dawning, horrific realization in a really fun way. Just a super great way.
Because this wall is really fucking high . Shit, what is that, eighty feet? Right. Okay. There’s gotta be something– soft. Something that can break the fall. The eighty-foot fall.
A flash of light catches his eye, and he can see it– a slip of refracted light snaking its way along the edge of the wall. A river.
A river.
Now, Bra’ad never really went to school. Sylnan had tried, of course, but education just cost too much, and the priority was always food. Despite that, he tries to do some calculations in his head, and the answer he comes to is the one that has never failed him before.
Fuck it.
Bra’ad looks up at the spires of the castle, delicate and pitiless things, built up with pale gray stone. He thinks about the way the sun shines off of their peak. He looks back at the cottage where the Sylnan and the rest are probably lying their asses off. He makes eye contact with a rapidly approaching guard. His face is lean and squarish, and his hair is brown. The towers shine mercilessly, the guard's eyes widen, and Bra’ad leaps.
—
When Sylnan’s brother scales a goddamn fifty-foot wall in a clown costume, Sylnan’s first thought is not what the fuck. That’s his second thought. His first thought is who taught him that? ‘Cause Sylnan certainly didn’t. He took care of Bra’ad for their entire lives, and he wasn’t this kind of role model.
Well, most of their entire lives. He winces at the old ache of Bra’ad’s year-long trip, and does what Vengalors do best: ignore their problems.
There’s more important matters to handle, anyway. Bra’ad can handle himself.
…What the hell, of course he can’t handle himself. This is Bra’ad. This is his dumbass little brother. Sylnan gets halfway through calculating the expected property damage before the guards break through the goddamn door. Ah. He had forgotten about that. He begrudgingly lifts his hands over his head, puts on his most righteously annoyed face, and attempts to bargain.
“Excuse me? What are you doing–” The muffled, unintelligible, and damning voice of Jacquois echoes from the second level. Ah, shit. That’s them bust. Right. He surreptitiously slips a lockpick into his mouth. After a lifetime of conning, he knows when the jig is up. Best thing they can do right now is not say a word.
“HEY. GET YOUR HANDS– OFFA ME–” That! Is Mountain. Great. At least Vel’s got him, he thinks as they exchange a Suffering Look.
As they walk through the cold gray halls of the castle, Mountain is loud, Taxi is suspiciously missing, and Sylnan is just having a great time. Just a splendid time. A few minutes of hostile sauntering leaves them in the third-worst prison he’s ever been in (according to Sylnan’s running Prison Tier List).
There’s a real chill in the air, and the ground is decidedly not soft, and everything is dirty. But Sylnan has been the Rat King’s roommate for half his life, so he does not have a single fuck to give. He fiddles with the lockpick and listens to Mountain complain about guards, alcohol prices, and clowns. He doesn’t think about Bra’ad, because if he thinks about Bra’ad he will probably panic a little bit.
There’s probably nothing to worry about. It’s been, like, an hour. If he hasn’t shown up now, that means he got away.
Everything’s fine.
—
Everything is not fine, Bra’ad thinks, right before he hits the water. All the air in his lungs is ripped away, and the cold, dark water rushes to take its place. The panic is almost worse than the drowning. He’s scared. It hurts.
And then nothing.
—
It takes a few more hours of nothing, but finally Trystan arrives, accompanied by a suspicious tabby cat who is definitely Taxi. Sylnan scratches tic-tac-toe grids on the walls with his lockpick.
Taxi shifts back into his usual form in a flash of green light, and frantically grabs the metal bars of the cell. He’s breathing quickly.
“Sylnan,” Taxi gasps. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Taxi? Taxi, what’s wrong? Breathe.” Velrissa speaks because Sylnan sure as hell can’t.
“I can’t just breathe , Vel! Bra’ad is– he’s– fucking gone!”
“Yeah, yeah, like he escaped,” Sylnan pleads, prays, kills the dizzying terror buzzing at the back of his skull. “Like he’s out of the city.”
“ No,” Taxi shakes his head. “No, Sylnan, they said a guard pushed him off of the castle walls. They– one of them saw– He’s dead.”
Vel has frozen in place. Mountain reaches for his flask. The world is ending. Has ended?
“Hah,” he holds his face in his hands. “You really– you really had me goin’ for a second there, Taxi. You really–”
He looks at Taxi. It’s funny– he hasn’t known him for long, but Taxi looks deadly serious.
“Goddamn.” He says, wonderingly. He punches the wall. It doesn’t hurt enough. “God damn it.”
“ Fuck.” The gods are cruel, cruel creatures. They demand so much, he thinks as he curls up in a ball in the corner of the cell. He needs his back to a wall right now.
He stares into nothing. It feels like there’s a malfunction in his head, a problem with reality. Cruel, cruel, cruel.
It feels so wrong. His head is stuck in a loop. Like somehow, the most important person in his life is– gone.
This feeling… it’s sort of like the feeling of missing a limb. Or maybe this is how it feels to drown on dry land. Or maybe this is what it feels like to die.
Ah. That would be a mercy, at this point.
Sylnan digs his fingers into the fabric of his cloak, taps each in order in number in calculation. One, two, three, four. As if to apply reason to reality, to categorize and to sort. The motions stutter over where his pinky should be. Mercy, mercy, mercy.
Oh, that’s what this is. Holding onto Bra’ad’s hand like an anchor as their father walked away from the orphanage. Katherine’s golden hair, hanging tangled and halo-esque over her unseeing eyes. Their mother’s granite headstone.
Clawing, shattering grief.
—
The next few moments for Bra’ad are shattered. There’s just– snapshots of feeling. Water in his lungs. A deep, radiating cold. A dull ache in his left leg. The silky smoothness of river-bottom sand. A virulent, sickening purple light.
When the world is together again, there's gritty sand in Bra’ad’s mouth, his tattoos are faintly glowing, and everything hurts.
He’s not dead, though, and that’s way more than he could have hoped for ten seconds ago. The forest stretches, black and pine-y into the distance. The white limestone wall looms ever-higher.
Bra’ad’s lying on this half-hearted scraggly imitation of a beach, gravel and clay unearthed by the river’s low waters. He just breathes: In… one, two, three, four.
“Out… one, two, three, four. Feelin’ better, bud?”
Just like when they were kids. See, the abandoned factory got boring when Sylnan had to leave for “work” (thievery). It got boring and cold and lonely .
So Bra’ad liked to sneak out. He would slip through the tarnished brick alleyways off of Market Street in a circuitous loop down to the docks.
And Bra’ad would sit on his spot on the pier and watch the fishing trawlers return, and the shipping freighters’ chaos as they loaded up cargo. Sometimes, he’d even bring out his makeshift flute– his new and beloved creation, the kazoo, and play made-up songs for coppers.
Yeah, he was practically a fixture of the harbor. That’s why he saw, one day, the horror that a fishing trawler hauled up. It was a fish, bloated and monstrous in death. Its needle-like teeth were frozen in a gaping smile.
Later that night, huddled in the warmest corner of the factory, he hesitantly asked Sylnan for the monster’s name.
“That sounds like a lanternfish,” he had said. “There’s no light that far down, so when little fish see the glow, they go swimming for it. And then the lanternfish… gets ‘em!” Sylnan gestured with clawed fingers.
Bra’ad had nightmares about its glassy eyes and lightless seas for a week. Sylnan would count with him to bring him down from the nightmares, the way they used to do in the orphanage.
And so now he breathes, measured, exhausted, alive.
“In… one, two, three, four.”
—
Out.
Sylnan sobs into an exhale.
The others have left. He doesn’t know where. He also doesn’t fucking care where they go.
In.
His breath comes too quick, stuttering, incomplete, halting gasps.
The concrete wall of the cell is ice-cold. Sylnan places his palm flat on the stone, like maybe the freeze will shock reality back into place. His hand is shaking. It all reminds him of—
Bra’ad’s hand extended, trembling wildly with fear, adrenaline, violent power.
A scorched, terrible black mark on the wall.
Paralyzing cold terror that hung in the air and choked out every word that Sylnan wanted to say.
So Sylnan didn’t say anything. He walked away.
Gods, fuck all of this.
It was so nostalgic, seeing his brother at the docks. Taller and blonder and the exact same as when he left. He used to love the docks so much as a kid.
—
You could only really see the sky from the docks. Anywhere else in the Wharf, the sky was a bright little sliver, trapped by high, dark walls. But at the edges of the city?
It went on forever; a spinning blue eternity.
And the sails would glide calmly in the bay, tiny white flashes like sardines in a barrel.
And Bra’ad would watch the travelers’ ships, too, those flighty and frail seabirds, beautiful in all the ways the Wharf is not. And he’d imagine, in his brightest daydreams, surprising Sylnan with tickets that he’d bought, tickets to get out of the Wharf and go somewhere else, anywhere else.
And as he grew older, he added more people. It was tickets for him and Sylnan, and then Ugarth as well, and then Katherine too, and they’d be happy. Really, truly, happy.
And then one day, he finally did run away on one of those delicate, dancing white ships.
Alone.
—
Sylnan spends a lot of his time alone. Makes it difficult, sometimes, to do shit that he’s not very good at.
Sylnan knows what he can do. He can steal, con, kill. That’s easy enough. But the things he wants to do? Hah!
He couldn’t go down to the docks for months. Couldn’t look at the fucking– monument of all the ways he’d failed Bra’ad. How long did he spend in the abandoned factory plotting out of all the ways he could have done better with glass-shards of memory?
One day, exactly one year from when Bra’ad left, he finally did go down to the harbor. He just– sat on the edge of the pier, in the dead of night, and stared. And for the first time, he finally let himself think. What was Bra’ad doing out there, in the huge, dangerous, beautiful world? Was he happy? Was he safe?
Where is he?
Well, Sylnan knows now. The image of his little brother collapsed, lifeless, on the ground outside the walls is more than he can fucking bear.
And not for the first time in this horrible cell, he thinks: why?
Why did Bra’ad climb the walls? Why is he here, like this, again? Why does everyone always leave?
—
Bra’ad needs to leave. He’s frankly very surprised that he’s not dead. And, like most bad emotions, he doesn’t have time to sit here and process.
When he tries to stand one leg holds up just fine, but the other collapses with an electric shock of agony and a reverberating feeling of wrongness, and he’s back to face down on the gravel and sand. Shit.
Okay. Broken leg. Not cool, but better than dead. Hoooooow the hell is Bra’ad going to trek through the fucking woods with a broken leg.
Maybe he can go back up the wall? He looks up. The white, blazing limestone climbs to the clouds.
“Whooooooooah, I should totally be dead. Wow. The gods were feelin’ merciful today.” Bra’ad murmurs to himself.
There’s a shock of pain from his leg, again. Bra’ad traces the glowing purple tattoos on his palm and wishes he could heal like Velrissa.
Wait. Glowing?
“Hmm. Yes, merciful is one way to put it, dear boy.”
Fucking hell. Bra’ad can feel the blood drain from his face. Okay. Ohhhhkay. Smile. Smile and do not fucking let Obnoxshai see any goddamn– fragility or you are dead .
—
Mountain and the rest approach the worst fucking cell in the entire world (according to Sylnan’s running Prison Tier List) like the earth is made of porcelain and Sylnan is a volatile explosive.
“Hey, Sylnan. That bastard king granted us… a pardon or what-fucking-ever. To investigate Jacquois. C’mon.” Mountain unlocks the cell door.
Sylnan stands up. He walks with them. He doesn’t say anything or look at anyone. He wishes he could explode, could scream and throw things and crack the earth. But he can’t.
He just walks, and stares at nothing, and breathes. Like how he used to after nightmares.
Maybe he’ll wake up soon. In , one, two, three, four. Out…
—
Bra’ad has one fucking chance with Obnoxshai. That’s how it always goes. With that asshole, you’re constantly one slip-up from something… really bad. But it’s going to be fine. It’s going to be fine. Breathe.
Obnoxshai looks like a half-elf today. What a bastard.
“ Ob! Ol’ buddy, ol’ pal, thanks for the save right there! Knew ya wouldn’t let me down!” Bra’ad should’ve known . From the second he didn’t drown in that pitch-black water he should have fucking known Obnoxshai was pulling some shit.
“I wouldn’t say… pal, really. We’re much closer than that, aren’t we, Bra’ad?” His voice feels like mahogany and his words sound like a thousand whirring termites. He walks closer, the jagged heel of his black stilettos sinking into the shifting gravel riverbank.
Oh, shit, shit shit shit. This cannot be good. His eyes glow faintly, like a small light at the bottom of the sea.
Obnoxshai looks down at him with his glassy, empty, lanternfish eyes and suddenly Bra’ad has to be standing . Except, when he tries to move up, he fucking can’t, and it hurts, so much, and Obnoxshai is still looking at him like–
“No, much closer,” Obnoxshai murmurs into a sickening smile. “I’m your generous and helpful patron, after all. And you, Bra’ad? You’re a debtor. ”
Bra’ad stills. He thinks about lightless seas and a radiating glow; flightless pale ships and a scorched concrete wall.
He grits his teeth and pulls himself up, careful to keep his weight on his good leg. He looks Obnoxshai straight in the eyes.
Vengalors don't kneel .
—
The cathedral’s stained glass depicts a kneeling, benevolent king. Sylnan looks him straight in the eyes.
Sylnan is being sort-of led around right now. He’s not upset about it, though, really. No, he doesn’t feel much of anything.
Beams of sunlight branch from the king’s head like so many cutting shards of a halo. The colored glass covers Sylnan in a violent red light that dances and cuts and dissipates softly into the air.
Mountain is talking to a large, steel-coated man. They called him Dominion. Something about looking for evidence. They’ll get to leave the castle soon.
Vel asks him something, but he is a million miles away. He is blank.
They walk the cobbled streets of the Wharf and Sylnan wonders why it isn’t all on fire.
It’s odd, he thinks, that the world is still here. That the Wharf looks the exact same. Like it hasn’t been irreparably broken, like it’s not missing something essential. It’s fucking unfair.
—
Bra’ad really didn’t think this is where he was gonna die. Huh. Like most things in his life, this feels, perhaps, a little bit unfair.
“You see, Bra’ad, I’m here to collect what I am owed .”
“What you’re owed? ”
“Your soul . You traded it away for my power, dear boy.”
“When I died, Obnoxshai. You get my soul when I die. And I feel pretty alive.”
“Your brother doesn’t seem to think so.”
Bra’ad freezes, like he does every time this slimy bastard even thinks about Sylnan.
“The castle’s rumor mill is quick, you know! A few guards saw you go off the edge, and well– people don’t typically survive this kind of fall. You can thank me for that, by the way. The guards got a little talkative, and bam!” Obnoxshai snaps his fingers. There’s a cascade of purple sparks. “Your party suddenly hears an interesting story! Your brother wasn’t too happy to hear it, of course. I wonder what he’ll do, now that you’re dead?”
Fuck. Sylnan is gonna kill him, hug him, and then kill him again. It’s okay though, he just needs to get out of these fucking woods. Then he can find them all, and Sylnan can cry on him a bit, and everything’ll be okay.
“You know, Bra’ad, no-one looks for a dead person.”
—
Taxi and Vel and Mountain went off to look for dead people. Apparently, the cemetery has something interesting to investigate. Sylnan had told them that–
“I’ll be fine, really! I promise.” It’s a sign of how little time they’ve really spent together that the rest of his friends don’t recognize his lying voice.
“If you’re sure, Sylnan.” Velrissa looks worried.
“Yeah, of course! It’d be suspicious if I brought you guys into the Thieves’ Den with me, anyways.” Maybe he will go to the Thieves’ Den. Maybe he’ll go to the abandoned factory. Maybe he’ll go to the docks. Sylnan doesn’t know what he’ll do.
“I don’t know about this–”
“It’s fine, cat. Give him some space.”
Yeah. He just needs some space.
The path to the Thieves' Den is familiar, the bustle inside even more so. He thinks he might’ve done something… rash, had he gone to the factory or the docks.
The first thing he sees inside is a hulking figure. He’s a bulky, blue-skinned orc that Sylnan distantly recognizes as their target.
—
Bra’ad has realized, recently, that he hates being the target of Obnoxshai’s attention.
“...What?”
“And I do so love our games together.” Obnoxshai grabs his arm abruptly. His nails are unearthly sharp, and they cut into his skin. His hand feels disgusting. It’s– he feels trapped.
It’s unintentional. He doesn’t even mean to— a flash of steel pushes Obnoxshai away, and Bra’ad holds onto his short, shitty dagger like a lineline. Adrenaline courses through him, manic and frayed. And fucking terrified .
“Now, don’t make any poor decisions, now!”
Bra’ad holds the knife up. He looks at the shine of metal. There’s no way to win, here.
But he’s a survivor. He doesn’t need to win, he thinks, as he turns the blade of the knife towards himself.
Obnoxshai’s noble appearance contorts into a snarl.
He just needs to live.
He brings the knife down across his cheek, slashing through the tattoo’s lines. The fucking brand Obnoxshai burned into him. It’s viciously satisfying.
He pulls out his book, too, and starts to rip page after page frantically, desperately. Bra’ad stabs it through the binding as blood drips from his face. His tattoos are flickering light. Obnoxshai looks pissed. He looks really pissed, he notes gleefully.
“You… You worthless fucking pixie .”
Huh. What a bitch. Bra’ad throws the book into the fucking river.
It’s cathartic as hell. His tattoos disappear from his skin, and weakness immediately drags at his bones. He drops his knife. He didn’t even know he could do that.
“ There! There, I broke your… I broke your pact. Now, you can fuck off .” Bra’ad can’t feel the arcane web anymore. Its absence is tangible. But what’s also tangible is the desire to get the fuck away from this insane asshole.
“Foolish, useless mortal.” Obnoxshai looks like he’d like to skin him alive. He clenches his fist. “ Fuck the rules. I’m going to kill you.” Oh, shit, Obnoxshai looks like he’s going to skin him alive. His spindly fingers close around Bra’ad’s neck, and suddenly he can’t breathe. “You’re going to die here, and you will be forgotten. Just like your mother.”
He can’t breathe. Fucking hell, he can’t breathe . The panic is dizzying. Or maybe that’s the lack of air. He frantically scratches at Obnoxshai’s hands. This is not how Bra’ad thought he was gonna die.
“Please–” He chokes. It hurts.
Obnoxshai smiles, wide and monstrous, and Bra’ad swears he can see needle-like teeth.
—
Sylnan digs his fingernails into his palm, relishing in the needle-like pricks of pain.
It would be dumb. It would be so fucking stupid to confront that orc here. Alone. But it’s all– just. Really fucking hard, right now.
It used to be easy.
It was easy to patch up Bra’ad’s scrapes in the orphanage.
It was easy to steal and con when they shared a loaf of warm bread by the abandoned factory’s window.
It was easy, when Bra’ad looked at him like he was someone worthy of his admiration.
The blue orc gets up from his table and starts to leave.
It was easy to protect him, to care for him, to yell at him when he did something dumb, to be proud of him, to hold his hand and hug him and sing him those old elven lullabies that Mom loved.
It was so, so easy to live for him when Sylnan had nothing left.
But Bra’ad isn’t really around anymore.
Sylnan shifts into a rat and follows the Blue Orc into the sewers.
—
There’s a moment, when the black is shifting and murmuring and bubbling at the edges of his vision, and the cold dark fear of death animates every nerve in Bra’ad’s body with sharp, electric adrenaline, and the burning red pain of each stolen breath singes with resentment and regret, where Bra’ad feels fucking helpless.
Just like he always did. Just like he always was. That’s why he took this stupid, idiot pact in this first place.
He just wanted to help.
He wanted to be– to be more than just some fucking pixie.
Gods, he only ever wanted to make his loved ones proud.
—
Sylnan only ever wanted… well, he’s not sure, anymore.
Right now, he wants to win this fight. Apparently this guy can, like, sniff people out? Even when they’re rats? Sylnan really doesn’t know. He dodges just out from the path of a heavy blow from the Blue Orc’s scimitar, and unsuccessfully slashes towards his side with his daggers.
What he wanted really got mixed up with all sorts of things, in his head. He wanted to make money. He wanted to keep stealing and sleuthing with Ugarth, bringing home food and saving up for… something. A real home, maybe. And to do that, he did– horrible things. He hurt innocent people.
A glancing slice cuts into Sylnan’s arm from where he wasn’t quite fast enough. He brings both daggers in an x in front of him and manages to sink one into the orc’s side. This is– not an easy fight.
Then… he wanted to stay with Katherine. He loved her. He loves her. He looked for her for so long. And no-one ever knew where she went. Until she was dead.
The Blue Orc scores another deeper cut on his leg. It’s getting harder and harder to evade his strikes. Maybe this would’ve been easier if he had someone else with him. But– hah! He sent everyone who could’ve helped away. Just like he always does.
Before everything… he had wanted to take care of his brother. To keep Bra’ad safe. He promised mom, after all. And that– gods, that went so well.
It’s here that he makes a mistake. He stays still for one second too long, and then– there’s an all-consuming, blazing agony in his chest as he is fucking stabbed.
Damn. Who’s he trying to fool? Sylnan only ever wanted to make the people he loves happy.
—
There’s pain, and frenzied fear, and adrenaline, and the world– freezes.
Everything goes white. For a second Bra’ad wonders if this is that next life Vel talked about, all pure and blank.
And then, searing golden chains whip around Obnoxshai and he’s yanked backwards and away, blessedly away and Bra’ad falls to his knees, gasping. Each breath feels like sandpaper against his lungs. Thank the gods, thank the gods, thank everything.
“Obnoxshai.” A new voice. An old one. Who the fuck is that? What is happening?
“You have not yet exceeded my power, child. You should have known better than to meddle with Fate.” Bra’ad looks up, only to see Obnoxshai, powerful and composed Obnoxshai, thrashing against golden restraints and a solem, elderly man standing next to him. The old man turns to look at him, but it doesn’t feel predatory. His eyes are kind. What the fuck. Who is this.
“Oh, Bra’ad. Sorry about him, by the way.”
“You’re–” His voice is high-pitched with incredulity and whispery with damage. “You’re sorry about him?”
“Yes. My children can be very rebellious, at times.” His children. Huh. Yeah, yeah, this is fine.
“Oh, it’s fine! He just wanted to– to kill me!” Bra’ad laughs, because otherwise he’ll either start crying or go insane.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“What
do you mean?”
“This isn’t how the story goes. You and your friends– well. There’s more to it all. You’ve got farther to go, yet.”
“Look, thank you, and I mean really, thank you for dealing with, uh, him over there,” Bra’ad does a tiny wave to Obnoxshai, who snarls. “But I almost died, just then, so I’m gonna need a little bit more than that?”
The old man sighs. “Stay with your group, child. It’s fated.”
“ Fated,” The words reverberate down his spine and sing underneath his skin. It feels right.
The man takes Bra’ad’s hand in his own. His grip is strong and warm. The second he touches the old guy, there’s a rush of warm light, and he can– feel the arcane web pulse and twist under his fingers. Then the all-encompassing white flickers, and they’re in the sewers of the Wharf.
This is, perhaps, one of the most confusing days of his life. Then he remembers Obnoxshai chained up. Maybe it’s the best day of his life, actually? But– wait, shit! Sylnan thinks he’s dead. Nevermind, it’s a horrible day.
“Your brother is around here, in grave danger. Be quick, Bra’ad.”
Sylnan’s in– huh?
The old guy disappears, and Bra’ad decides wholeheartedly that he is going to emotionally dissect this experience later. Because he’s got much more important things to do right now.
One attempted step upwards, and the definitely broken leg that he sort of forgot about fails in a spectacular way.
“ Fuck,” He hisses under his breath. He doesn’t even know what Sylnan’s even up to, but if he thought Sylnan was dead, he’d be doing some very stupid things.
He puts his hand over the branching, radiating pain in his leg. His magic feels– different, now. And usually he wouldn’t even try, but– lullabies resound in the marrow of his bones and warmth wells in his joints. His magic is different. He is different.
When Velrissa healed, she… sort of put her hand like this, and she closed her eyes– and a twist of his fingers, a pull of magic in the right place– he focuses the energy into his leg, and with a soft, resonating hum, a golden light blooms from his fingers. The pain goes away.
Bra’ad remembers the scorched wall in the old factory, still humming with eldritch magic, and the fear in his older brother’s eyes. He feels the heat and light coming from his hands and tries not to cry.
When he steps on his leg this time, he can stand. He takes one more faltering step, and then another, until he’s sprinting into the depths of the sewers.
—
You know, for all the slowly spreading blood, and the agonizing ache in his chest, and the cold numbness tingling against his fingers, Sylnan didn’t actually think he was going to die. Not until he started to see Bra’ad. His dumbass little brother. His dead little brother.
Ghost-Bra’ad still has clown makeup on. That’s the last cruel laughs of his fading conscience. “Hi, Bra’ad.” He laughs a little bit, lightheaded and hurting. Bra’ad looks shaky and spacey and tall. When did he get so tall? “Bra’ad. Ha. I gave you that name. D’you remember? … No, you wouldn’t. You were so small. Y’know I never–” Sylnan coughs, and he can taste iron at the back of his throat. “We’d always say that one day we’d get out of the Wharf. We’d– find someplace better.”
H e continues, quieter. “How has this fucking place killed us both?” The stillness and cold resonates through his bones. “Hey… Bra’ad.”
Sylnan smiles, takes a deep breath, and pretends that he can’t feel blood bubbling in his lungs. “I missed ya, bud. How’s mom?”
The black overtakes his vision for a second, and when he’s back, Bra’ad’s kneeling next to him, face illuminated by golden light. There’s a bleeding gash on his cheek, and he’s crying. That’s not right.
“Sylnan, Sylnan, please–”
“You… a’right?” Sylnan mumbles. It’s hard to speak, difficult to make his mouth move in the shapes that form words. Everything is hazy.
“ Sylnan!” Bra’ad’s voice is muddled, frantic, and desperately relieved. “Sylnan, oh my gods, oh gods, are you–? Count with me, bud. In, one, two, three, four… out, one, two, three, four. In and out. Gods, just– in and out. C’mon. Breathe. Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. Just like that. Breathe with me.”
And, oh, it hurts, but he trusts his little brother. Sylnan takes one halting breath in and out, and then another, to the tune of the numbers.
“Oh, oh thank the gods. Hey, I know you thought I was dead but like what the fuck , man? You’re– bleeding to death in a sewer! In a sewer? First it was Cornelius and the wall , and then Obnoxshai , and then the fucking Old God Guy and I– my magic feels weird , and you almost died , and I just–”
What? What’s he… where is that light coming from?
Clarity starts to return in fragments.
First is the feeling of warmth emanating from his chest, the way he can feel his body stitching itself back together again.
Second is the realization that Bra’ad’s tattoos are gone. The purple lines have just– disappeared, and the light and heat is emanating from Bra’ad’s marking-free hands.
Third is the comprehension of Bra’ad’s words.
Sylnan tries to raise his hand and finds that he can. The numbness is gone from his fingers. The pain is fading from his chest, and when he tries to breathe again it’s easy. He pushes himself up from the ground, grabs Bra’ad’s hand to steady himself.
“And the fucking– river and my leg , and we’re Fated, apparently, whatever that means–”
His hand is warm and solid. Alive.
Huh.
Sylnan pulls him into a tight, desperate hug. “I know I don’t say it enough,” He says, and his voice is rough. “But I love you.”
Bra’ad is quiet for a moment, and then he squeezes back just as tight. “I love you too.”
“But seriously, though, I have had the weirdest fucking day.”
And Sylnan laughs, wretched and loving, and Bra’ad helps him up with a hand newly remade, and they walk together out of the lightless sewers, bloodied and healing.
They meet their party again with cheers and astonishment and they are whole. Once more, the Fools stumble towards that soft, radiating sliver of resonance that hums with song and glory.
It sounds like fate.