Chapter Text
1.
Yasha doesn’t know how long she’s been down here, in the dark. She can’t sleep, which means she can’t wake up from this nightmare, won’t wake up to find her chains gone and the morning sun streaming through the window of whatever inn they’re staying in, Jester curled up on one side of her and Beau, sprawled and snoring on the other.
“Stormlord, hear your warrior call to you, even though I am far away from the sea and the sky. Grant me the strength to defeat my enemies. Grant me bravery to face my own death if it comes for me, with my head held high. Please, if I must die, let it be under the open sky and not down here in the dark, in chains.”
The words are a mumble, broken bells falling on shattered glass. Yasha’s throat hurts from screaming, and her chest aches from where the cleric had touched her. Whatever magic they had used had felt like she had been flayed with knives from the inside out, and she wouldn’t have been surprised to have seen her own blood on the floor afterwards. But no, they had made sure to weaken her without spilling her blood. The cleric had spoken of rituals, reconsecration, the weakening of bindings, the breaking of chains.
Yasha can’t break her own chains. She had tried, both in panic and in rage, when she had first woken up in the dark, back when she had been strong enough to maybe have a chance. They might be enchanted not to break, she isn’t sure, but she knows the manacles around her ankles and wrists and neck are magical, sending a constant stream of low grade agony throughout her body. The pain makes it impossible for her to sleep for more than a few minutes at a time, and the exhaustion is wearing at her.
You have robbed me of rest and dreams, and so I shall do the same for you, is inscribed on the manacles in flowing, Celestial script. It reminds Yasha of something, a tale about an aasimar that had fallen into darkness and had used their talents to craft tools of torture in retaliation for what had been done to them and their companions. Yasha wonders if this means the tales are true. She can’t find it in herself to appreciate the irony.
Yasha leans her head back, the chain from the manacle around her neck connecting her to the wall clinking against the stone. They’ve chained her to the wall like a dog, and she’d be angry about that if she had the energy for it. Instead she closes her eyes. She’s tired. So tired.
Darkness. Darkness bound in chains of gold and it’s raining blood and the chains are breaking link by link and the darkness laughs as feathers fall from the sky black and gray and white and the feathers are dripping blood and—
“Yasha?” Molly’s voice stirs her from her half sleep, and for a moment Yasha thinks that maybe everything was a nightmare, the ambush and the fighting and the chains. But no. Yasha still feels the manacles against her skin. She doesn’t open her eyes. It was just a voice from her dream. Wishful thinking, a hallucination brought on by stress and near starvation.
“What is this? Is this real? Is this true? Yasha, what happened to you?” Molly’s voice sounds frantic. “If this is a nightmare then I’d like to wake up now, please.”
Yasha raises her head and opens her eyes. There should only be darkness, she shouldn’t be able to see anything at all. Yet there’s Molly, washed out as if he was standing in a shaft of moonlight. She can see through him to the back of the cell if she looks hard enough. She’s awake now, she knows that, but is this a vision? Is he seeing her somehow, wherever he is?
Molly goes to his knees in front of her, hands passing through her chains when he tries to touch them. He snarls in frustration before looking her in the eyes. “Yasha, what happened? Where are you?”
“I don’t know,” Yasha says. She might as well treat the Molly in front of her as if he is there somehow, she has nothing to lose by doing so. “I was traveling through a pass in the Ashkeeper Peaks and there was an ambush and there were just too many of them. Cultists of the Chained Oblivion, I’m pretty sure.” Their clerics and warriors had bore chain tattoos at any rate. There were less of them now, she had killed more than a few of them before they had overwhelmed her. “I woke up here. In the dark. Underground.” She has to stop speaking then, just for a moment, to push down the panic threatening to claw up her throat. This isn’t like before. It isn’t.
“Shit. Okay, okay, okay.” Molly sounds like Jester for a moment and Yasha has to wonder if she’s going to see Jester or Beau or Molly or any of the rest of the group ever again, and then she pushes the thought away. It’s not a useful thought. “We’d heard rumors about possible cult activity up near the mountains. Maybe we’re close. We have to be close.”
Yasha wants to believe that to be the case, she really does, but she just doesn’t know. Her sense of where Molly is only directional, it has nothing to do with distance. “You’re northwest of wherever I am, that’s all I know. Look for a ruin, or an old temple. That’s what they want me for. To use my blood in some sort of ritual.”
“We’re not going to let that happen.” Molly’s voice is firm as he looks her in the eye. “I’m going to find you. We’re going to find you. I prom—“ Just like that, Molly is gone, if he was ever really there.
Yasha leans her head back against the stone and closes her eyes. “Please let that have been real,” she whispers into the dark.
Time passes and Yasha drifts in and out of half dreams until the door to her cell opens and she is awake instantly, kneeling, head bowed, muscle memory from what seems like a lifetime ago coming into play. She has to remind herself where she is again, what she’s doing. She had a plan, when she had first woken up, down in the dark, and the plan hadn’t changed. She’s going to pretend she’s terribly weak, so her captors would let their guard down. She’s going to let them lead her to wherever this sacrifice was going to take place, and then she’s going to rage. The fact that she’s so exhausted and drained that her rage might actually kill her does not alter her plan in the slightest. She wants to believe that the Mighty Nein will find her, but she isn’t going to depend on that. She’s going to go down fighting, one way or the other.
Yasha doesn’t have to pretend that she feels five minutes away from death as they cultists lead her by her chains through the tunnels, slowly heading upwards. It’s a struggle to simply walk, but she knows that if she falls that she will just be dragged. She prays silently as they lead her up into the light of the setting sun, into a ruined temple, as she reaches down inside herself to where her rage lives. She can’t find the cold fire that normally burns within her heart, the fire that casts shadows and gives no light.
Stormlord, hear your warrior in their last moments. Grant me the means to bring down my enemies even if it means my own death, which I gladly give to you.
Thunder rumbles in the distance as if in answer to her prayer as Yasha is lead to a spot where sigils are carved into the stone. There are hands on her shoulders, trying to force her down, force her to kneel, and Yasha feels a spark of ice in her heart because she is not going to die on her knees.
“There isn’t a hell deep enough for where you’re going!”
Several cultists flinch back from the Infernal shout, but Yasha just looks up to see Molly and the rest of the Mighty Nein standing before the group of cultists and holy warriors, weapons at the ready.
“What Molly said!” Jester cries out almost gleefully in Infernal as she manifests her spiritual weapon, her lollipop ridiculous and deadly.
Next to Jester, Beau smiles grimily, eyes shining. “You fuckers are going to pay for hurting my girlfriend.”
“Our girlfriend,” Jester corrects.
“Our friend,” says Fjord, sword dripping seawater and something old and ancient looking out of his eyes for a brief moment.
“Our family,” and that’s Caleb, fire in his hands and burning in his eyes as Nott loads her crossbow and nods at Yasha firmly as if in agreement.
Molly looks right at Yasha, and his smile promises death to their enemies. “My True North,” he says, in perfect Celestial, his words dark bells ringing in moonlight.
Yasha feels that spark of rage kindle into a fire of blue flame, of ice. This is no longer about dying well, she thinks as the battle begins, as the Nein rush at the cultists. This is about protecting everyone she loves, in all the ways she loves them. She roars as the icy rage consumes her, as her wings unfurl and her eyes go dark. Some of the cultists run, not that there’s anywhere for them to go before they get cut down by swords or fists or spells or bolts. The bravest of them advance towards her, and Yasha feels herself smile. The strength of her rage won’t last long, but it’s there.
They should have given her heavier manacles. They should have shortened the length of her chains. One by one she takes her enemies apart with her bare hands, just like she had taken people apart in the pit when she had been young, her face stone, her heart ice. She’s not sure how long it is until she runs out of enemies, until strength flows out of her like water, her wings vanishing as she falls to her knees. She feels her heart falter in her chest as her eyes close—
Cold hands on her shoulders and warm magic rushing through her, chasing away the pain, giving her strength again. That has to be Jester. Yasha opens her eyes and reaches for her, only to pause with her hands half raised when she realizes she’s bloody nearly all the way to the elbows. Jester looks scared and sad all at once and it makes Yasha’s heart hurt.
“Where did you learn to fight like that?” Beau, on the other hand, looks awestruck. “That was amazing. And gruesome. And kind of hot. And amazing.”
“Later.” It comes out as a broken whisper. Yasha rubs at her arms as if that will get the blood off and only ends up smearing it around. She looks around for Molly and doesn’t see him, or Fjord either. From somewhere distant she can hear the sounds of fighting, and Fjord and Molly’s triumphant shouts.
“Yes, perhaps story time can wait until we are not surrounded by dead people in an evil place, ja?” Caleb says, kneeling next to Yasha and looking at her manacles, hands moving in a spell. “Abjuration magic. Hmmm. Nott, you are better with locks than me, come look at these.” As Nott comes over, Caleb whispers to Yasha in Celestial. “You don’t have to tell anyone anything you don’t want to.”
“I know. I want to. Just… not now.”
Caleb nods and then Nott is there, frowning at the manacles and poking them with one long finger. “I have a spell I can try, but it’s going to be really loud.”
Yasha just nods and Nott says a few words and then there is indeed a very loud sound, like someone knocking on a door, only much louder. The manacles on Yasha’s arms fall away when Nott pulls them open, clanking to the ground, and Yasha flinches at the sound. Nott repeats the spell for the manacles around Yasha’s ankles, and the one around her neck. For the first time in who knows how long, Yasha isn’t in constant pain, and the relief is so great she’d cry if she could, but she’s too tired for tears.
Yasha hears footsteps behind her and she turns her head to see Fjord walking towards her, carrying her sword in its sheathe. “Thought you might want this back, one of them warrior types was using it.”
Yasha doesn’t move to get up or take back her blade. She’s so tired. What she wants most in the world is to be far away from this place and somewhere peaceful to fall asleep in. And then breakfast and more sleeping. She turns her head away from Fjord and Jester gives her a look, one that’s less scared, less sad.
“Is it okay if I carry your sword for you?” Jester asks. “You are probably very tired after, you know, everything.”
Yasha nods. “Please.”
Jester gets up to take the sword from Fjord and Molly takes her place. He takes a canteen from his belt and pours water over her hands, washing the blood away. “Are you okay?”
“What the hell kind of question is that?” Beau asks indignantly. “Of course she’s not fucking okay! None of us have been okay since you woke us up in the middle of the night and told us she was in trouble!”
Beau doesn’t understand that the question is half ritual, half in joke, something familiar that Molly knows Yasha needs right now. “You found me,” Yasha says to Molly, and it’s not quite an answer.
“I promised I would,” Molly says. “And it was a promise I meant to keep, even if we had been too late. I would have gone to the Matron of Ravens herself to find you. Thankfully it didn’t come to that.” He smiles, not his usual wide smile, but a more subdued one. “There was a moment when I thought—“ Molly shakes his head. “We had gotten turned around, these mountain paths are tricky, and we couldn’t get our bearings. We were frantic.”
“And then Molly’s eyes went all silver and he started talking to someone we couldn’t see, and it was all very mysterious,” Jester said, kneeling beside Molly. “And then Molly said that the Moonweaver said we had to follow the storm. So we did, and you’re here and you’re not dead and everything will be okay now,” Jester says firmly, as if saying it will make it so.
Yasha looks up at the sky, at the storm clouds rolling in. Soon the rain will wash the blood away from the stone, and time will take care of the corpses. Today her past saved her instead of weighing her down, and she doesn’t know how she feels about that yet. She doesn’t know what to do about that look in Jester’s eyes, the one that is a little bit sad and a little bit scared.
Yasha thinks it’s rain on her face at first, but it’s not, it’s tears. And then Molly’s arms are around her, and Beau and Jester, and Fjord and Nott manage to crowd in. Frumpkin appears suddenly on Yasha’s shoulder, purring. Molly is Yasha’s True North and always will be, but right now, in the circle of everyone’s arms, Yasha feels like she’s come home.