Chapter Text
It was the end of the world, or so it seemed to Molly. The wind was howling around his ears, and his skin was raw from gusting grit and debris. Caleb grunted as he was pelted, and Molly tried to shield him, through it seemed impossible. They were both kneeling beside the rock formation, which provided some shelter. However, from the way the grass was bristling, tearing up and twisting into the air, there was no telling how long it would last.
Molly growled, "How is he doing this?"
Caleb squinted, though between the madness of rushing bodies and torn earth and screams, neither could see much. "I believe he is possessed," he said, his accent made almost indistinguishable by the roaring in Molly’s ears. "There is something in him, something inhuman, though I do not know what that might be."
"Or who," Molly said, wincing as a stone caught him in the eye. “We didn't exactly prepare to face a god."
"Perhaps not a god," Caleb corrected. “But it is not good. We must get out of here."
A good plan, but more easily said than done. They could probably get away if they followed the crowd, but Yasha was down there. Plus Fjord and Beau. Mouth dry, Molly said, "Can you send them a message?"
Caleb raised his arm. "Beau. Beau you must leave." Almost immediately, his brow tightened. "She is hurt. And Talisman is looking right at them."
He saw what Caleb was referring to. Until this moment, the destructive power swirling around them had seemed all-encompassing rather than targeted. Now, though, Talisman’s eerily levitating body was turning, and his eyes, lit up like lightening, beaded on three familiar figures. His magically amplified words rang throughout the basin, and the malice of them was like a cold sluice of rain water, going straight to Molly's heart.
"WE WILL SEE WHO IS DEFEATED."
Molly rose. "He’s going to kill them."
"Perhaps there is a way to…" Caleb was still kneeling, and instead of looking at their enemy, he was staring at his hands.
Mollymauk all but dropped beside him. "Tell me, Caleb."
The man shook his head. "I do not know for certain. This is – out of my experience, but..."
When he started to drift, Molly actually shook him. "No! There is no time for that. No time for doubts, no time for second guessing. Tell me. What are you thinking?"
"If he has been marked by a deity, or even a higher fiend or archfey, there is nothing we can do. He would be too changed, to endued with power to be affected. But if he is possessed, Mollymauk, if he is just a conduit –"
The pieces snapped together in Molly's mind. His head swung around, trying to discern if there was anything that might tell him...and what he saw was blood. "His body's not taking it, Caleb. I think he is possessed." However, he'd seen Fjord's blast dissipate like it was nothing. How could this knowledge help if they couldn't get close?
That was when it came to him, the solution. They'd done it a thousand, thousand times. In fact, it had been almost the first thing they’d learned Caleb could do, and since then they’d taken advantage of it so often that, until yesterday, it had been taken for granted.
"Frumpkin," he said.
He saw the moment his meaning struck because Caleb went rigid. “You want me to –”
"Can you?"
Numbly, the man recited, “The bond between a familiar and its master is such that a spell can be cast through the animal form, provided the range is touch.”
"No, Caleb. Not can it be done. Can you do it?"
Because they'd meant to give him time, to let him reconnect with Frumpkin when he was ready. Now there was no time, and Molly knew that merely giving Frumpkin a command wouldn’t be enough. It would take human intelligence to pull off what he was suggesting. Which meant Caleb would need to plunge himself once more into his familiar’s mind and spirit. But could he?
Caleb's lips were pressed so tightly together they were almost white. "I'll need to get closer."
Without the outcropping to protect them, they staggered under the full weight of the wind. It was very hard to move over the broken incline. More than once, they fell, and each time Molly's heart went into his throat. If they turned an ankle or cracked open their head, everything would be lost. Finally, they reached the fringe of the river bank. By then, everything was screaming. Magic and electricity baked the air, and Molly was afraid to search the battlefield, terrified they were too late.
"This will have to be close enough, Caleb. Caleb?" Pressed together as close as they were, Molly could feel the man shaking. And, oh, Moonweaver, they had no time for this. "Caleb," he pleaded. "I know this is a lot, but I'm begging you. Don't go away on me now."
Yet there was a limit to what a man could do. Molly knew that, and trauma had a way of rearing its head at times that suited no one. It was rattling around in Caleb now. Too hard a push, and he might retreat entirely. But if he sank, what would that mean for Yasha and the others? The thrill of utter terror that streaked through him had Molly yanking Caleb back and raising his hand, ready to strike him if that’s what it took. However, even as he did so, a strange calm crossed his anxious mind.
'I can't force him,' he realized. 'If he can, he can. And if he can't, he can’t.' Talisman's assault, the half-orc's insane decision, this terrible situation. None of it was Caleb’s fault, and Molly would be damned if made his friend, coming apart in his arms, responsible to fix everything.
So instead of cajoling, he wrapped his arms around Caleb, guarding him as best he could from the wounding wind. He kissed the top of man's head and said, "It's alright, Caleb."
Caleb shifted. “But, I –”
“No. No buts.”
“But if I don’t…”
“It’s not your fault,” Molly said, as earnestly as he could. “We all have to die sometime.”
He felt hands digging into the back of his coat. A forehead dug into his shoulder. It muffled Caleb’s words, which were already so quiet he could barely hear them. But hear them he did, not broken as he’d feared, but tight and sincere. “We have survived too much to die now.”
Molly chuckled, despite everything. “I don’t think it works like that, dear.”
“I don’t want him to kill us.”
Molly heard the determination, and his heart thumped as a tendril of hope surged. “Caleb?”
"If I do this, if I go into Frumpkin, you will...you will watch me, ja?"
It was the easiest promise Mollymauk had ever made. "You have my word."
He felt the gradual, deliberate loosening of over-tightened muscles. “Alright,” Caleb said, and then he drew back enough to hold up his wrist, his hand, his missing finger, and call on his familiar.
It took him two tries, but Caleb snapped his fingers, and a tiny, huddled animal appeared. It mewed pitifully. Caleb touched its head with tenderness, speaking in Zemnian. Then he closed his eyes, and when he opened them, both he and Frumpkin were staring out into a world through otherworldly blue. The cat looked up at Molly and cried in a voice so small it made Molly want to scoop the animal up and press it against his chest. But it wasn't the cat who needed his protection. It was the man who’d been entrusted into Molly's care.
"Go," he urged, and the cat flew off in the direction of the field.
He tried to follow its orange coat as it dodged through patches of torn grass and stones that rolled as easily as autumn leaves before the wind, but it was impossible. More than once, Frumpkin disappeared entirely, and Molly feared the animal lost, squashed, lacerated, or trapped. The only reassurance he had this was not the case was Caleb, who muttered under his breath as he concentrated. Then, as suddenly as Molly lost sight of it, a tiny orange figure appeared on the fringe of the battlefield. Caleb was panting. "I see..."
Mollymauk wanted to bolster his courage, to reassure him he could do what no one else could do, but while Caleb was in Frumpkin, he was deaf and blind. So Molly pressed his face against Caleb's ear so the man could feel the vibration of his voice, even if he couldn’t hear the sound. "You can do it, Caleb. I'm with you. We're all with you. Go get him."
Caleb took a long, trembling breath, and then Frumpkin shot across the final stretch of the ruined, craterous landscape, an insignificant speck on a field of giants. "I have to touch him," Caleb murmured. He held his wrist to his mouth. "Fjord."
"Fjord."
A whisper tickled his ear, interrupting what Fjord was certain would be his final moments alive. The world was full of hissing lightning, and nothing so small as a voice should have been heard, but this voice was not brought to him by a physical sound. Magically, it spoke, giving him the message of a friend.
"Caleb?"
"I need to touch him, but the wind is too high for Frumpkin. You must get Talisman on the ground."
Initially, the words made no sense. Caleb wasn't here, and even if he were, Talisman's state of hypervigilance would mean the wizard had no chance of approaching near enough to touch.
"Fjord," this time it was Beau. She sounded half out of her mind. There was blood soaking through her pants, and her shoulder was a mess. Yet her eyes were trained to a monk’s standards, and even dull with pain, they missed nothing. At the moment they were fixed on something behind their enemy, and Fjord followed her gaze.
"Well, damn," he said, struggling to his feet and mustering his strength. Possibly for the last gambit he would ever make. He inhaled deeply, took new grip on his falchion, and stepped into the mist.
Through eyes that were blue with fire, a cat with the soul of a man waited on a battlefield. The wind was almost tearing it off its feet, but the cat was not always a cat, and it was able to cling to the earth – just. Inside, the spirit of the man was quaking. The last time they’d traveled together, he had gotten lost. This time death was roaring overhead. Frumpkin saw the beast, the one who had taken their – his – hands. The one who had torn and burned and laughed. The part of it that was not a cat, that was near-immortal and powerful, wanted revenge, but the part that was a man had a different aim, and he was the one who was in charge right now.
The opportunity came in a green blur. Their friend had appeared within the mist, and he was grappling the beast. Not enough to defeat him. He was a toy to the possessed creature the beast had become. But his weight did bear the creature to the earth, and before he was cast off, boneless and steaming with electrical energy, the beast touched the earth with one foot.
Frumpkin's hindquarters bunched.
It leapt.
Beneath Molly's arm, Caleb let a handful of powdered iron fall to the earth. His lips moved as he incanted, "Protection from Evil and Good.”
Talisman – or the thing inside him – screamed.
It ended with the cooling earth. The clouds untwisted, and as they did, a warm rain began to fall. It soaked into the ground, softening its edges. Down in the river basin, Yasha raised her face, letting it fall on her skin. Propped up and mostly insensible of anything but the sudden quiet, Beau offered a wavery smile. The pelting drops revived Fjord, who was several feet away. Though he hurt in every joint and sinew, he drew himself onto his elbows and looked across the clay.
A dead sorcerer lay on his back.
Fjord let out a shuddering sigh. "Bless the Maker."
Somewhere above, Caleb came back to himself. A bloodied Mollymauk gripped him with concern. "Are you alright?"
Caleb took stock, finding bruises and nothing more. In a voice hoarse with strain but otherwise intact, he said, "I am well. And you, Mollymauk?” Molly’s answer was a full belly laugh. It was a wild, we-are-alive-against-all-odds kind of laugh, and Caleb understood. He even felt a bit like laughing himself, at least if his side and ribs hadn't been so tender. "Ahh. On second thought, I may have been struck by a stone."
Molly's laughter died down to giggling. "A stone, eh? I wonder how that could have happened."
"Oh, be quiet," Caleb answered, but his mind had cleared wonderfully. For the first time since waking, he felt not-terrible. It was ironic, really. The earth around him was torn asunder. He did not know where their friends were or how they had faired in those final moments of battle. However, something within, something he couldn't define, told him the worst was past, that the near-catastrophic threat and been held back for now, and that the beast who’d hurt him had paid for what he'd done in a most permeant way. And Molly... He grasped the man's sleeve. "Thank you."
Molly, who had been casting around eagerly, probably for their friends, paused. "For what?"
"For watching. For always watching, Mollymauk."
He smiled, warm and earnest and without a hint of mockery. "Always,” he said, and winked.
Caleb was opening his mouth, searching for a rejoinder that wouldn't be too sentimental, when a shrill voice broke over everything, and then his arms were full of goblin. "CALEB." He held Nott, let her rake her claws over his face and hair, unmindful of the scratches. Frumpkin did the same thing, bless him. They both loved him more than he deserved.
"Hallo, Nott," he said to her. The realty-altering moment was past, and they had survived.
It ended as it so often did – on the road. Their cart was creaking its way down a dirt path, the noise of the horses and the chatter of their friends filling up the empty spaces. Molly tipped his head back, letting it rest it against the wooden sideboard, and smiled at the canopy overhead with its dappled sunshine. A patch of rays settled on his belly, and it was warm and golden.
"I don't think I've ever been so happy to leave a place," Fjord was saying from one of the horses.
Of course, Beau had to be contrary, even after having her leg half burned off. "I don't know. Labenda Swamp was a pretty nasty place, and I can think of a few others I've been glad to leave behind. Pamell at least had good ale."
"Not in the end they didn't," Nott grumbled. She was still put out that the tavern had been partially demolished, and the owner had not reopened while they were still in town. She had her bottomless flask, of course, but Molly had tasted the stuff, and aside from a very efficient burning sensation, it didn't do much for the palette.
"Oh, you two are so grumpy." From atop the other saddle, Jester was attempting to share something of their latest adventure with the Traveler. Her tongue was sticking out, which was cute, but she wasn't finding it easy to sketch on horseback. Finally, she sprinkled a bit of sand to dry out the ink and clapped the book shut. "Which is stupid, because everything turned out okay. The crownsguard were super nice to us, those cute kids are in good hands with Johann, and we even have the scroll for the Gentleman."
They did, against all odds. It was nestled into Jester's haversack, somewhere next to the reality-altering dodecahedron, dozens of battle-claimed swords and daggers, and probably a thousand pastries. That scroll had been at the very, very bottom of Molly's priority list a short time ago, but he was glad now that Nott and Jester had kept their heads and taken care of things. He had no idea if it would be relevant after that god-awful mess they'd left behind, but if there was one thing he knew about shady, underground figures, it was that it was better to keep them happy and thinking of you as little as possible.
"We also kind of blew up the town," Beau muttered.
"Nope. We are not taking responsibility for that," Molly said, thumping his heel against the bed of the cart. "It was that bastard and nobody else. Hell, we might’ve even saved the world."
"That's a bit melodramatic," Yasha said. She was walking alongside, and the sunlight made her woolen tunic look so white it almost glowed.
"Did you see those rocks? Did you see those bolts of lightning?"
"Yes," she said simply, at the same time Beau rubbed her thigh and muttered, "I sure did."
"I think we can agree we were damned lucky," Fjord spoke up. "But if it's all the same to you, I'd rather not be involved in any more end-of-day’s events for a good long while. And if I never see another sorcerer again, it will be too soon."
"Aren't you a sorcerer?" Jester asked.
Fjord looked affronted. "I am not."
"How do you know? Maybe you're great-grandma was a dragon!"
"My grandmother was not a dragon."
"But she could have been, Fjord. Did you ask her?"
The absurdity of the light-hearted back and forth was relaxing, so Molly tuned out all but the sound of their voices and returned to his enjoyment of the forest. Someone clearing their throat drew his attention. On the other side of the cart, Caleb was reading a book. Frumpkin was there, too, a little orange bread loaf with half-lidded eyes, blinking in the sun. Both cat and man looked tranquil. It was a nice thing to see. It coaxed Molly out of his pending nap long enough for a quiet conversation. "How are you feeling?"
"As you know, I am completely well. After all, in the end I was one of the least injured."
It was technically true. Once the dust settled, several of them had needed a healer. Fjord was bleeding internally, and as he swayed under the effects of Johann’s healing hand, Molly had clapped his shoulder and offered a quiet cough. Fjord met his eyes, and an understanding had passed between them. Caleb and Beau, meanwhile, had been engaged in one of their uncomfortable hugs, though Beau’s grip seemed less stiff and more earnest than usual. “I’m sorry,” she muttered into Caleb’s shoulder.
His hand went pat, pat on her back. “It’s okay, Beauregard. We can start again, ja?”
All in all, they'd made out okay, or at least with the same number of body parts as they'd started out with (which...yeah, maybe it was too soon for that kind of joke). Still, a kernel of worry remained. Because despite the normalcy of the moment, and though Caleb looked physically healthy sitting across from him in the cart, that didn't erase what happened or disqualify the possibility that some mending was still needed.
So he pushed, just a little. "I noticed you were awfully careful this morning, putting on those bandages of yours." He glanced at Caleb's wrists, hidden beneath strips of linen.
Caleb's foreshortened finger shifted against the corner of his book. "Do you regularly watch your companions as they dress, Mollymauk Tealeaf?"
"Oh, yeah. Definitely," Molly said without shame. Because, hey. Truth. Plus, he wasn't going to let go of an opportunity when it presented itself.
Rather than respond directly, Caleb asked a seeming unrelated question. "Do you remember me reading your fortune?"
"The Eight of Swords." Mollymauk could see it now, that token of the future. At the time, its meaning had been obscured, all fancy and no substance. The thought of it now made him frown. "I suppose it came true, didn't it?"
"No," Caleb said. "The Eight of Swords is binding and abandonment. I was not abandoned."
Molly lowered his voice. He didn't want it to travel. "Weren't you, though?"
The man shook his head. "No, I was not. I won't pretend that I don't think of it, especially when I see what was left behind, but I think I will carry these marks easier knowing they will not keep me from going forward." Frumpkin chirped, nudging his hand, and Caleb stroked him. "Nor will I forget how far I've come from being alone." He huffed a soft laugh. "A little ironic, I know, but the way the mind works is a funny thing."
Nott, who had been sitting with her feet hanging off the back of the cart, turned her head. "I love you, Caleb."
He had such a fond expression, when he looked at her. "Ah. Thank you, Nott. You know I care for you, too."
"We all care," Beau grunted from her seat above him, because of course she had been eavesdropping. Her face twisted. "Gods, that sounds stupid."
Jester giggled. "It's okay, Beau. We love you, too."
Beau made a gagging sound, but she didn’t mean it. Molly knew because he could feel it in his own chest, the warmth of companionship. To think, he'd worried this was destroyed such a short time ago, but it seemed their bonds were more durable than he'd suspected. He glanced once more at Caleb and found him gazing at Beau and Jester while they bickered, at Fjord, who was pretending not to listen, at Yasha, holding onto the cart with her hand near his neck, and at Nott, who had pulled out her buttons and appeared to be sorting them by color. He caught Molly looking, and – Molly swore – he winked. "Have you also a declaration of love, my friend?"
Happiness bubbled up in Molly's chest, and he tilted his head toward the sun. "Gods, I love you people. You know, I really do."
"Very flattering," Caleb said, turning a page. But he was smiling – Molly swore – and that was enough for the moment, here in this place where they were together, sincere in each other's faith and in one another’s trust.