Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Remember that time when Darius shoved me off a cliff,” Therion says, in a world that doesn’t exist.

No, what the hell, Alfyn doesn’t say in this world, because this Alfyn knows that Darius shoved him off a cliff. This Alfyn knows Therion; everyone knows Therion, in this world, all his ugly past, and Therion does not spend this life waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for the day that Alfyn raises his axe to his face with a horrible snarl or H’aanit draws her bow on him like he’s nothing but prey to her or Primrose comes at him with her knife and death in her eyes. 

“Yeah?” This Alfyn says with an unspoken and? dogging the questioning lilt of his voice, because somehow this Alfyn knows that Therion was betrayed and cast aside and flung from that cliff like trash and that his heart broke from it, is still breaking, might never stop breaking because Darius might have only ever seen him as a tool but for Therion it was real, every second of it, and the realization of just how much he had trusted Darius sometimes boils up in his chest like fire and leaves him breathless, choking on embers, burning alive from the lungs out. This Alfyn knows, and for some reason, for some godsdamned reason, he’s still here, hasn’t realized what a mistake that is, hasn’t thrown him aside like he should.

“I shouldn’t have survived that,” Therion says, and there’s an apple in his hands. He breaks it in half with a twist of his wrists. Here he is, again, in this world, speaking those truths he never dares to say out loud. “I shouldn’t have survived. I don’t know why I did.”

“Maybe a god took favor on you,” says Alfyn, but he’s not Alfyn, not quite: something glitters in his eyes, an extra depth, and he tilts his expression into a sly, mirthful smile that Alfyn could never manage to pull off in real life, not really.

“Why did you save me?” Therion asks Aeber, who uses Alfyn’s face to laugh in sheer delight, and pulls out a knife from stardust and the discarded fragments of dried herbs in Alfyn’s abandoned jars. Alfyn could never spin a blade between his fingers like that, no matter how hard he tried to keep up with Therion and Primrose, that one drunken, giddy night where nothing was horrible and nothing hurt.

“You should know better than to think you’ll get answers from me just by asking,” Aeber laughs, and wiggles half of Therion’s apple at him all mock-admonishing. He tosses it into the air, tucks it into Alfyn’s pocket, and winks.

“So I need to steal them, then.”

“You’d steal from a god, would you?” Aeber’s delight is a palpable thing, filling the air with something heavy and divine. It feels like standing on a precipice. It feels like being on the cliff again, and only just about to fall. There is no fear. Aren’t people supposed to be overcome in divine terror at their gods?

“Is that why?” Therion asks. He feels the scar across his bad eye split open, start oozing something thick and cold. He doesn’t reach up to touch it. This is a feature of his nightmares he has long familiarity with. “Is that why you saved me? Because I would steal from a god, if it had what I wanted?”

Aeber reaches out, swipes a single finger through the ooze starting to drip down Therion’s chin. His fingers come away golden. “Oh, my little thief,” he says fondly. “You’re still asking, though you know you’ll get nothing. Has the world taught you nothing?”

“I’ll take them from you, then,” Therion says, and bites into his remaining half of an apple. Cool and crisp and unblemished, the sweet flesh gives off a juice that floods his tongue, and he knows, somehow, that what he is eating is not, precisely, an apple as he would understand it. 

Aeber looks at him, looks right down into the core of his marrow, into everything that makes Therion who he is. “Are you sure you want to?”

When Therion was fourteen, he lost an eye and got shoved off a cliff by the only person he honestly, truly trusted in the world, breaking his bones and his heart in the world’s worst two-for-one deal ever. It took months for his bones to piece themselves back together, longer than it should have, because a thief with two useless hands and one eye, a thief that can’t even walk but has to drag themselves around because half the bones in their body are broken is not a thief, but a beggar, too poor, too broken for even an apothecary to take mercy on.

Therion survived by the skin of his teeth, and here’s the thing: when you’re in that much pain, when death is so close that you can feel the reaper breathing down your neck, you don’t have pride, or dignity, or whatever tripe it is that people like to bring up to make suffering more noble. Therion begged and scraped and was pathetic, like he hadn’t personally stolen such a fortune throughout his life to make a king’s treasure look like a pauper’s earnings. He begged, because even though every breath was agony, every beat of his heart setting fractures aflame, even though his heart had broken so thoroughly that sometimes the pain of it outweighed the hell his body was going through, he didn’t want to die.

If this was a story, this is where he would have been shaped, carved, created; this would be where they point back to where he stopped being ordinary, and instead, became something great. You know the shape of it; heroes go through suffering and in the end it’s all worth it, because that’s how stories work, isn’t it? You go through pain and come out the other end stronger and kinder and wiser and better. 

But no.

No, every time he felt shattered bones grind against each other, every spike of pain from his body, from his heart- well, it was just a lesson, is all it was, and every agonizing beat of his heart ground it in deeper- trusting is a mistake.

Because, fuck. Fuck, Therion doesn’t want to say it. Goes out of his way to never say it out loud, because if he does, he doesn’t know what he’ll do. Maybe he’ll fall apart. Maybe those fractures that never healed quite right would finally give way and send him crumpling to the ground. Maybe the shards of his heart would dig into his lungs and he’d drown in his own blood.

But gods above, he had trusted Darius like he trusted in the sunrise, in the sky. The sun would rise, the sky would always be out of his reach. Darius was his partner, and always would be.

But to Darius, what was he? A tool, a toy, just something to use? Darius had laughed, that day on the cliff, and Therion’s never going to be able to forget the glee , the glow of satisfaction that had lit his eyes before his temper took over and Therion went over the edge. He’s going to remember it forever, because the exact moment that he felt his heart break is something he’s not allowed to forget, not ever, and Darius-

-fuck.

If Darius had asked, Therion would have become a monster for him.

He can see it, in one world- where he kept coming back to Darius’s side, never aware that Darius would kill him as easily as swatting a bug, without so much as a second’s mourning; bought with nothing more than praise, an unthinking dog. Sometimes longing twinges in his chest for that praise, and it makes him so sick he ends up retching for hours, curled in on himself with clawed hands digging into those old wounds, flaring pain bright, a reminder, a memory, punishment. 

Devotion is a horrifying thing. Devotion, trust, hope- they can’t be given out so freely. To be devoted is to enslave yourself to another. To trust is to invite betrayal. To hope is to leave your soul out where it can be broken by a whim. 

When Therion was fourteen, his heart broke. He broke, in just about every way possible. But he survived, clawed himself back up out of what should have been his grave through pure desperation, and he lived.  

Therion is twenty-two. He’s a living legend in his own right, hearing rumors and stories about himself in every tavern. He is known, but utterly unknown, and in that, there is safety. He works alone. 

Therion is twenty-two. His bones ache. His heart hasn’t stopped hurting for eight years.

Therion is twenty-two. He knows better than to trust.

“You leave yourself open when you wield your sword,” Olberic says.

I’d like you try and do better with a bad shoulder, Therion thinks peevishly, said shoulder oh-so-helpfully sending a shiver of pain down to his fingertips. And then he thinks it over, and realizes that yeah, Olberic probably would do better even if he was stuck with Therion’s barely-cobbled-together disaster of a body. Olberic walked around on a leg cut open from knee to ankle yesterday until Tressa tried to figure out who was leaving blood all over the road, because he had apparently forgotten that he’d been injured. The same aches that have Therion wishing he could just slip out of his body and let it do this whole walking thing by itself probably wouldn’t even be noticed by him.

Therion doesn’t bother saying any of this. He just raises a single eyebrow at Olberic, belatedly realizes that his other eyebrow is hidden and thus the entire gesture has just about no impact, and switches to trying to physically put off judgmental displeasure with every bit of willpower in his body.

Olberic doesn’t notice, because almost nobody here is capable of picking up body language, apparently. “You cover yourself completely when you wield a knife, but with the sword, I could not help but notice that you do not block attacks from above, and- to my eyes- your left side is completely disregarded.”

He pauses, like he expects Therion to give out a reason why. Like he didn’t know full well, at this point, that Therion didn’t do “friendly” conversation.

“I… apologize, if I am overstepping,” Olberic says slowly. “But- you cover your left eye, and sometimes, there seems to be a scar-”

“You’re overstepping,” snaps out of Therion’s mouth without his permission, something cold and icy flooding his insides. His fingers twitch- he shoves them under his cloak. 

His bad eye burns.

Olberic, damn him, just dips his head silently and starts shuffling through his bag.

Therion digs his fingers into his ribs hard enough to hurt.

He’s left alone, that night, allowed to stew in anger and horrible, sloshing fear at the edge of the light, just waiting for Olberic to bring it up again. To bring it up to Ophelia and her weird, pushy-sweet way of getting in your business, to Cyrus and his god-awful nosiness, to Alfyn and his stupid inability to leave anyone to themselves when he thinks there’s something wrong.

He doesn’t.

And the next day, without so much as a word, Olberic stays on Therion’s left side in battle. Therion actually comes out of three successive fights without any injuries, and not once has anything made it through Olberic to get at his blind side.

And still, he doesn’t say anything. Even though he knows, now, he has to, knows one of Therion’s weaknesses. He’s too damn observant. He might even know about the fucked-up shoulder, how it just can’t move at the angles it should, because, as Theiron is slowly coming to realize, Olberic just. sees things.

But he doesn’t talk about them.

Not a single knowing look. Not a nod, not a word, hell, not even a blink out of place. Even as it continues. Even as he keeps on covering Therion’s left, settling easily into place like this was normal, like it’s absolutely nothing, that he knows one of Therion’s major weaknesses.

Therion doesn’t… know what to feel about that. Is he just waiting for the right time to stab him? Is he holding it later for blackmail? What does he want, for the love of the gods?!

But asking would be another point of weakness that Olberic could wedge into, another thing that could be used against him, so Therion stays silent.

It’s killing him, waiting for the other shoe to drop. One week, two, and nothing happens. It’s absolutely maddening.

Therion has to get those dragonstones, fast. The sooner he gets them, the sooner he can vanish somewhere none of these people can find him. The sooner he gets them, the sooner he can get away from Olberic and his quietly-knowing eyes.

Then Olberic goes and wins a tournament, and his story comes spilling out, and fuck.

Fuck.

Therion doesn’t learn, does he?

He hears a story about a trusted almost-brother and a betrayal and he sees himself in the broken pain in Olberic’s eyes and voice and the slump of his shoulders, and he can’t. He can’t. He walks right out the coliseum and locks himself in his room in the inn and loses time to the pounding of his heart and molten ache in his bones and Darius’s wild, gleeful laughter.

He comes back to himself at dawn, body a snarled tangle of stiffness and insidious, bone-deep throbbing, steady pain. He uncurls himself slowly, agonizingly, and stares vacantly out the window at the sunrise. The fool’s bangle scrapes against the floor, and part of him feels like the heavy lump of metal is all that anchors him to the world.

Olberic was betrayed by someone he loved- someone he trusted. Trusted like the sunrise, trusted like the sky. Olberic trusted, and that trust broke him.

Therion has to- he has to-

Therion doesn’t know why he’s so invested, suddenly, but he wants to tear his heart out of his chest and throw it in a bonfire, just so he can stop feeling.

Hah. Just mention betrayal, and that’s all it takes to trap Theiron, eh? He’s stuck, now, can’t look away, stupidly, morbidly invested.

How does this end? With Olberic dead by his betrayer’s hand? The other way around? Do parallels happen in real life as often as stories say they will, and someone ends up shoved off a cliff? Who ends up with a useless eye and a broken body, and who walks away to live their life unmarred?

If Therion watches this, will he be able to predict what would happen if he ever had to look Darius in the eye again?

“I thought gods were supposed to only favor the strong,” Therion says, in his dream.

“We do,” says the god wearing Primrose’s face, dark magic rippling around her body like fine silk. The slide of her skin over muscle is utterly unearthly, and has nothing to do with humanity.

“Then why was I saved, when Darius was there?” Therion asks, and blood blooms over his tongue. He should be choking on it. He doesn’t. His nails are digging into his palms. His broken body screams at him, the fool’s bangle dragging at his arm. “If he won- if he was stronger- was it a mistake?”

There is softness in Primrose’s eyes that does not belong there- everything about Primrose is razor-sharp, guarded, and even her gentleness comes along with a hard edge of steel. She reaches out a hand, and her fingers press into his broken, crooked bones.

“No,” the god says. She sinks claws into his skin, and he chokes on another wave of sickening iron tang, locking his knees, refusing to let them buckle. Her face brightens in silent mirth, but not to share with him- more the kind mothers direct at children who aren’t old enough to understand why everyone is laughing but them.

“No,” the god laughs. “There was no mistake.”

And she shoves him off the cliff.

Here’s the thing about betrayal.

It does something to you- to all of you, everything that makes up what you are- and the change it makes is forever.

When will he stab me?

When will she throw me away?

When will he hurt me?

When does the other shoe drop?

“It’s just sad,” Tressa mumbles, kicking at the ground rock near her foot. “That he lost his friend like that, you know?”

Therion says nothing. Inside his head, he methodically curses Primrose and all her ancestors for sticking the two of them together as a search party. He knows, intellectually, it was because they were the two fastest members of the group, and so they could cover more ground quicker. 

Doesn’t stop it from feeling like some twisted kind of punishment. Probably for running off after Olberic’s-

After Olberic’s… story. That he can’t think about. At all, and stamps down ruthlessly because treasure. Think about the treasure. Think about how sadistic Primrose is. Think about what kind of hell it’s going to be dealing with this one . 

Welcome to hell! At least that feels like what his life’s becoming.

Especially when Tressa whirls on him, all squinty-eyed and shaking her spear at him. “ Which reminds me- don’t you go stealing any of this treasure, when we find it!”

What the hell. “The guy’s dead. What’s he going to care?” Therion argues. Seriously, she has no issue picking up those purses she finds everywhere from literal dead bodies, hypocritical, much? No, for real, how does she keep finding those? Does she have some ungodly merchant-money sense, or something?

“That’s not the point!” Tressa’s cheeks puff out at him. “This stuff is important to Captain Leon! We need to bring it back to him!”

“He’s already rich! And it’s not like he has an inventory or something of everything here!” This was his rival’s treasure horde. This Leon guy should have no clue if something’s missing or not. And Tressa was expecting him to skip out on swiping himself some pirate treasure? Hell no.

If this guy didn’t want his treasure to be stolen, then he shouldn’t have put it somewhere a passing thief could find it. And drawing a map? It’s almost like he had gone ahead and sent out a gilded invitation.

“Doesn’t matter!” Argh. “Besides, don’t think I won’t be able to catch you if you try!”

“Like hell you will,” Therion can’t help retorting, because seriously? Tressa? Catch him stealing? He’d like to see her try. “Did you miss the whole ‘master thief’ spiel, or something?”

“I can!” She insists. Therion snorts, picking up the pace. Tressa squeaks as she’s left behind, and the rapid patter of her feet echo along the cave walls as she scurries to keep up.

For a blissful moment, the only sounds were that of a distant drip of water, and their shoes on the stone.

Then Tressa goes and ruins it. 

“I really can. It’s cold in here and everything,” Tressa mutters mutinously, and he can’t look at her because she’s on his blind side. Great.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Therion demands. 

“You’re slower when we’re somewhere cold! You never bring back as many stolen things, and I’ve seen you almost get caught a few times in Flamesgrace, but only there! And, uh...” Triumph fades to sheepishness. “Your hands kind of. Start shaking? It’s not loud, but your chain sort of. Starts making noise? So it’s pretty easy to tell where your hands’re going.”

Damn.

This. 

Entire.

Group.

Therion cannot let the resident infant think that she has something over him. Bad enough that she can reduce him to bickering like a child with hardly any effort- how the hell did she manage to notice- the godsdamned apothecary hasn’t noticed his issues with the cold! Not a single person’s caught him stealing since he managed to get ahold of how his body worked again, it’s been five years since the last time that someone-

Yeah, no. He stops in place, turning on his heel abruptly, veering so that Tressa ends up bumping into him with a yelp. Unshackled hand darting out under the cover of his cloak, silently thank you very much, and jackpot.

“Yeah,” Therion drawls out, holding her purse out, dangling from one finger by the string. Tressa’s eyes go wide. “Real slowed down. So easy to catch.”

“You- you!” Tressa screeches, lunging for her purse, and Therion backpedals out the way, keeping it out of reach. When she goes for him again, he grabs for one of the dangling bags off her backpack.

“Wow, you sure are catching me in the act, huh, I can’t believe I’m being stopped like this-”

“Give it back you dick-”

The thing is.

The thing is.

Sometimes you get betrayed and your body and heart gets broken, and you spend eight years cobbling yourself back together as best you can, three years of healing and five years of building yourself up as a legend, but the person who betrayed you took something important with them, some vital part of you, and so you can’t. You can’t put yourself back together to how you were before.

Therion spent eight years trying to put himself back together. He earned his reputation, has the right to be cocky about it. Thievery is the only part of him left that feels whole, unblemished. The only part of him Darius didn’t ruin. The only part of him that was always him, because he was always better than Darius when it came to theft. 

He’s a different person when he’s playing the Master Thief. Braver. Bolder. Unbroken. Invincible. He can tease and taunt and for a breathless, wonderful moment, he feels no fear. The cliff is nothing more than a bad dream, a child’s nightmare. He’s safe. Nothing can hurt him.

But then reality comes crashing back in and he’s just Therion. Just Therion, who can’t move on, who can’t deal, who can’t hear a story about betrayal without the air freezing in his lungs, who can’t stop opening old wounds because he doesn’t know how to cope without the reminders, the memories. And Therion- sometimes he thinks he’s stuck at fourteen forever. 

Sometimes he thinks he never stopped falling off that cliff.

“I don’t understand,” Therion says, lying broken half-in the river.

Ophelia, seated cross-legged across from him, tilts her head. Great wings of flame wreath her, scorching the earth where she sits. “What’s there to be confused about?”

Therion breathes, feels the sharp edges of his ribs press into his lungs. His breath is stuttering, bubbling in his chest. His left arm is a twisted ruin. The river sweeps up his blood and carries it away, swirling it in a lazy spiral as it mixes with the currents. 

“This should have killed me.”

“Yes,” Ophelia says, her face nothing more than a halo of light, blinding and radiant. “It should have.”

“But it didn’t.” 

“It didn’t,” she agrees. 

“Could this have really been the favor of a god?” Therion asks. Vultures circle overhead. He can feel the air of their wings. “Or was it just- chance?” Dumb luck? One-in-a-million, everyone dies when they’re pushed from a tall cliff but you- you lucky boy- you get to survive, get to drag yourself out of your grave, get to suffer and beg and almost die a hundred times, not from the fall, but the aftermath. Does this suffering please the gods? Was this a trial, made just for him? Or was everything, always, just mortal chance, and mortal luck, and mortal mistakes?

Ophelia hums, reaches out both hands, and cups his face. Her fingers smear soot on his cheeks, gritty and cold, like a fire burned out.

“Does it matter?” She asks, serene, peaceful. The tip of a finger brushes his nose, slides across his cheekbone. The vultures are close.

“Yes,” Therion says. A feather glides across his lips. 

“Why?” She asks. Her thumbs paint soot over his eyelids, grinding grit into the broken skin. Where it touches his blood, fire sparks into hungry life.

“I don’t know,” Therion says, and burns.

The first thing Therion sees when he opens his eyes is Alfyn.

His groan is only about a quarter actual pain, and three-fourths oh hell, not this bullshit.

“Oh shit, you’re awake,” Alfyn says, because he’s a trained apothecary with professionalism in spades. 

“Gimme my shirt,” Therion slurs through what he desperately, vaguely hopes isn’t a broken jaw, and tries to shove himself upright because maybe if he moves fast enough Alfyn can’t argue with him.

“Uh, hell no.” Alfyn’s stupid backwoods bumpkin hands push him back to the ground, not that he even needed to try- the barest amount of force and Therion’s useless fucked-up shoulder gives out without even trying to put up a fight. For Alfyn, at least. For Therion? Solid bolt of pain going straight to the base of the skull. Fun.

Therion blinks stars out of his eyes, and is about to insist, violently, that Alfyn give him back his godsdamned shirt, when Alfyn does something utterly horrible to one part of his chest and he’s left half-choking it off, biting the inside of his mouth hard enough that he feels his teeth break the skin.

“Sorry, sorry,” Alfyn says in his Apothecary Voice, low and soothing but still firm, and Therion hates that it works on him almost as much as everyone else. “That was the last stitch, promise. Unless you bust ‘em back open, then I’ll have to redo ‘em. But really, almost done.”

Hurry up , Therion wants to hiss, but then Alfyn’s dumping the much-loathed wound cleaner on a rag, and the rag’s freezing-ice-bonfire-searing on his ribs and it burns, his hands twisting into the grass and earth like he could dig the pain out from under his skin if only he gripped it hard enough.

It’s an unfamiliar pain, for all he’s had the displeasure of experiencing it every single time he’s gotten so much as a nick from anything since they started traveling together. Therion’s used to the pain of wounds being inflicted, the ache of barely-healed skin and bones being pushed into work before they’re completely ready. He’s not used to the pain of healing. 

Counter-goddamn productive, if you ask him. This stuff’s supposed to be helping. Why does it hurt worse than actually being stabbed?

“Aight, bandages!” Alfyn’s ungodly cheery voice rings in his ears like bells tolling his doom, and by the time Therion’s brain clears of the violent roar of white noise, he’s propped in a slump against Alfyn’s leg and half-wrapped in what feels like way too many bandages.

This is the first time Therion’s been the half-conscious person being cheerfully manhandled by Alfyn. He hates it with a passion like burning. Time keeps skipping- one second Alfyn’s wrapping bandages, the next he’s tying them off, then he’s got Therion by the jaw and tilting his head to the side, pressing fingers into something that hurts like absolute hell with nothing more than a considering hum. Also, he wants his shirt back already, godsdamnit.

He tries to say as much, but Alfyn’s kind of limiting the motion of his jaw. Having hands that close to his unprotected throat is terrifying. Therion can’t stop himself from picturing Alfyn reaching just a bit down and pressing, choking him while he’s helpless and can’t do anything to stop him- Alfyn reaching for his axe, lining the blade up- 

“Good news, you didn’t break your jaw,” Alfyn says, finally moving his hands away. “It’s gonna hurt like hell for a while, though, and you’ve got a nasty bruise…”

The sounds of Alfyn rifling through his bag is familiarly foreboding. Therion takes advantage of his relatively upright position to shove himself the rest of the way up.

His entire body screeches in protest. Therion ignores it with the ease of long practice, and only somewhat manages to ignore Alfyn’s silently judgemental look. Something about being vertical is helping his head clear- he’s willing to fight Alfyn on his right to stay upright, even though he knows for a fact he’ll lose.

Alfyn doesn’t actually do anything about it, though, just digs deeper in his bag, so Therion takes the opportunity to look around and try to find his shirt, shawl, and scarf. Laying around half-naked in the wilderness is uncomfortable. At least he doesn’t have an audience.

“Here we are!” Alfyn surfaces from his bag with the light of triumph bright on his face. There’s a vial of dark red something between two fingers, and a little sealed pot in his palm. 

“I already know you’re not gonna let me put these on you myself, so here you go,” Alfyn says, waggling the things in Therion’s face. “The pot’s got a bruise balm. Rub it into your jaw, gently, twice a day ‘till it’s gone. It’ll help it heal faster.”

… The stuff in the pot looks like every balm he’s ever swiped from an apothecary before. It doesn’t even smell any different. How do apothecaries keep track of what’s what? Or is it just that every balm is the same, and they’re marketed to do different things because it’s more profitable that way?

Not that that tracks here, because Alfyn and his actually horrible business sense, but. Whatever. 

“And this,” Alfyn says brightly, shaking up the ominous dark red liquid, “Is for your shoulder and leg. Work it into your skin whenever things start flaring up. It’s a mild one, so if you need something stronger for your pain, let me know and I’ll mix you up something different.”

Ffffffuuuuuuck.

“What pain?” Therion says, mostly just to be a contrary asshole, and also because shit shit shit fuck godsdamnit. Gods damn it all. Has everyone figured out how much of a disaster his body is, and they’re all just waiting to spring it on him one at a time?

Alfyn’s face has never been so flat. “Therion. I’m an apothecary. You really think that’s going to work?”

Well, it was worth a try.

Alfyn sits back on his heels with a sigh, toying with the vial. “Look. You’ve got a lot of old injuries, right? The bones in your shoulder are all messed up, like they broke and weren’t set right when they healed, and that’s just the start. I’m not going to ask you what happened, but I am going to help, as much as you’ll let me. Okay?”

… Why is he like this.

What does he want, why he is fucking like this, there’s something hidden here under the surface and Theiron can’t tell what it is, where’s the trap, when does the axe fall-

“Why?” Therion blurts, completely unable to help himself and hating it. He already knows the answer, and that’s not even the question he’s asking really anyway but he knows what he’s going to get in response, Alfyn’s only given it out a hundred times to everyone he’s stopped to help without charge, every bandage and balm and tincture-

“Why not? It’s what I do!” Alfyn smiles like the sun, and Therion has to look away before he gets blinded.

I think I only survived this long because a god decided to spare me on a whim, Therion says, in a world that doesn’t exist.

Sometimes I think I died when I was fourteen and sometimes I think about the man who might have killed me and I feel my heart breaking all over again, Therion says, in a world that doesn’t exist.

I think I’m starting to get used to working with people again and I’ve never been so scared, Therion says, in a world that doesn’t exist, and somehow, through some absurd act of divine mercy, everything turns out okay.

Primrose’s eyes are empty and hollow, and Therion doesn’t know what keeps him by her bedside as she stares into nothingness, the ruby dragonstone heavy in his pocket.

Oh wait. He does.

That sickening twist of familiarity roots him to the spot, just like with Olberic. 

Just like with Olberic, he’s not going to be able to walk away from this- transfixed, ensnared. Someone’s falling from a cliff, and all he can do is watch, frozen in place.

Betrayal, betrayal, everywhere you look. Sympathy pains twisting his heart and lungs and bones.

Primrose does nothing for three days. For three days, she lays in bed, doesn’t respond to voice or touch or Alfyn tending her wound. For three days, Therion slips in to stare at her for hours on end, leaving only when he can’t stand it anymore and has to go shake himself apart in a hidden corner, digging his fingers into aching bones.

He falls. Off the cliff, into expectations. He knows how this goes. He sees it in his reflection, in Olberic’s eyes.

And then on the fourth morning, Primrose rises from her bed and bursts into a storm of pure wrath, rage burning in her eyes like the eternal flame the church preaches of.

“Primrose,” Alfyn says, blocking the door. “Go lie back down.”

“Alfyn,” Primrose snarls, every line of her body promising nothing less than absolutely breathtaking violence. “Get out of my way.”

Well. This is terrifying, Therion thinks, and escapes out the window before he can get pulled into the brewing fight.

Primrose, defying Therion’s expectations, does not take after him and Olberic when it comes to betrayal. There is no shaking hands, no haunted eyes, no withdrawing into the self.

There is incandescent fury, and Simeon is going to die, because Primrose’s response to being betrayed is apparently to go hunt down the betrayer and violently murder them. How fun! How terrifying! Is that the specter of death Therion feels approaching? Are the vultures closing in?

If Darius had tried to shove Primrose off a cliff, she probably would have gutted him before he could lay a hand on her. Therion actually doesn’t feel like shit about this, for once, because Primrose is Primrose, and she’s maybe the most dangerous person he’s ever met. Anyone who can hold onto a decade-long murder plot and actually carry it out is on a completely different level from the rest of humanity, and Primrose is welcome to it. Therion’s just going to stay down here, where all he has to worry about is thievery, and being blackmailed into more thievery, and oh yes, escaping crazed mages who lost their minds over the thing he’s been blackmailed into stealing. Nice and simple.

Anyway. Yes. Primrose got stabbed and dumped on the floor to die by someone she loved and trusted, and now Therion’s pretty sure she’s keeping herself occupied by imagining all the ways she’s going to maim Simeon before she lets him die. So that’s nice. Alfyn’s clearly just waiting on the sidelines for her to collapse so he can herd her back to bedrest, but because Primrose apparently can run completely on rage and spite and nothing more, she’s still upright and pacing back and forth in front of the inn’s path while they wait for the others to come back so they can leave.

Therion’s almost certain Alfyn ordered everyone else to take as long as humanly possible to get ready, which, don’t get him wrong, good strategy in principle, but also, Primrose is ready to raise hell and clearly isn’t going to wait. Therion would put money on her just heading out herself if the stalling drags on long enough.

And he would get that money, because Primrose lasts until the bells chime out the hour before she turns on her heel and goes straight for the gates. Alfyn swears, running after her after a hasty tripping-over of feet.

Hm. Time to leave, Theiron thinks, and melts into the crowd.

Therion’s dreams only ever happen in one place. The jagged canyons of the Cliftlands are sunk deep into his soul, the grime of it under his nails and in his lungs and ground into his skin. The Cliftlands is where he broke. The Cliftlands will haunt him, it seems, forever, like some purgatory, or a hell made just for him.

“Is this real?” Therion asks, the wind roaring deafeningly through the cliffs, tearing his words from his mouth. His scarf whips around his neck, tugging with the howling gales, flickers of pressure around his throat.

The god wearing H’aanit’s face has her hand buried in his chest, and she wraps clawed fingers around his heart. “Do you want it to be?” She asks.

When you fall off a cliff, what do you do?

Do you scream? Claw for the walls? Cry? Close your eyes, and wait for the end?

What are you supposed to do, when you fall?

“I need to know how to pick locks,” Primrose says, sparks snapping in her eyes, absolutely aware that she’s cornering Therion with a full audience in this tavern and absolutely not caring.

“Uh,” Therion says, trying really hard not to stab her on reflex.

“I took a set of picks off a body, but I don’t know how to use them.” Primrose continues. Why is she saying this out loud with her face where people can hear her. Does she not care- wait. This is Primrose. Of course she doesn’t care. Therion really doesn’t learn at all, does he-

The picks.

Have blood on them.

…

Gods. 

Therion ends up giving Primrose a crash course on lockpicking. Because she’s terrifying.

It is, maybe, somehow, almost something that could be peaceful if you squint at it sideways. Primrose isn’t prone to chatter, and she’s smart enough that she gets the process down in almost an insultingly short amount of time.

“Nowhere to hide now, head of the crow,” she says grimly, holding up one of the picks in a way that could, theoretically, be used to stab someone in the eye.

Therion has exactly one working eye. He watches the point of the pick very, very closely.

And then Primrose gives him the world’s most awkward pat on the shoulder. They both freeze, Primrose’s hand locked on his shoulder, Therion essentially a block of stone.

Neither of them move.

Therion is dying. What is this. How is he supposed to react to this? Is this a thanks-pat? Therion’s never been thanks-patted before. He hopes he never is again, at least not by Primrose. The only reason Primrose should have her hands that near his neck is to threaten him with a dagger. It might actually be more terrifying that she isn’t.

“... Thanks,” Primrose says, and drops her hand.

“... You’re… welcome…?” Therion says slowly, peripherally aware of the standard response but never really having any reason or chance to actually say it.

They both just. Stand there. For what feels like an actual eternity. 

Then it’s mutual nodding, a silent agreement to never speak of this again, and they both walk away.

“Does it actually matter?” Therion asks as he falls, falls, falls, topples forever into the abyss. “I don’t remember why I want answers, anymore. Does that mean they don’t matter, in the end?”

Tressa tumbles alongside him like a leaf, laughing like a child. She reaches out golden hands, cool metal wrapping around his wrists. The skin under her hands stiffens, locks in place. The chain of the fool’s bangle rattles against itself, and the sound bounces off the canyons, turning into a deafening din.

“Why are you so sure that a god would have your answers?” She asks, and yanks them back up into the sky once more.

Sometimes people talk about gods. Sometimes people talk about death.

Sometimes they talk about looking them in the eye, and here’s the thing that’s so hard to get across- you cannot tell the difference.

Therion fell from the cliff.

Was it a god who saw him fall, and decided to spare him? Or was it death, who fell with him, and decided to walk away?

“How did you manage this,” Therion asks, staring down the hole. There is a skeleton down there. Cyrus appears entirely unconcerned by this.

“Ah, my student- Therese- heard tell of what Lucia and Yvon were planning, and came to warn me. It was she who helped me escape, only to be captured by Yvon.” Cyrus frowns down at the hole. “However-”

“No, no, not what I meant,” Therion interrupts. “You- you said you were knocked out? And thrown down there?” 

“Yes?”

“Down there. That really long fall. Onto a stone floor.”

“... Yes, I believe I said that. Therion, are you quite alright-”

“And yet here you are, without even a bruise.”  

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” Cyrus says, and rolls up a sleeve. “Ah, yes. No, I’m afraid I didn’t escape being bruised, though it could have been much worse.”

The bruises are small little dots, clearly from laying on rough stone, and not the impact of the fall. What the hell.

This is unfair, is what this is. 

Therion keeps fuming all throughout finding the others, dragging them back to the creepy house with its death-hole, and hunting through the creepy house for Cyrus’s kidnapped student. Cyrus has some kind of speech that’s probably pretty impressive and all, when they find the creepy headmaster and he turns himself into a literal unholy abomination, but really?

Yes, Therion’s maybe a little stuck on thoughts of falling. He has the completely absurd image of Darius shoving Cyrus off a cliff and Cyrus just bouncing all the way to the bottom, getting up afterwards and dusting off his coat before breaking into a lecture about the Cliftlands, and, like, some magic history shit as pertains to blah blah blah scholarly nonsense and all that.

Which is just weird to be thinking about in general, let alone in the middle of a battle, so Therion lets his mind go blank and pulls out his dagger, and falls into what almost, if he lets himself think about it, is becoming a rhythm with the others. Olberic on his left, weaving back and forth and around with Tressa and Primrose, trading off blows with Alfyn-

But then he fucks up, again, somehow, because in the moment between one breath and the next something goes bright and giddy and perfectly clear- it feels like a perfect heist, it feels like being on top of the world and no one can catch you, it feels like the riches of the world at your fingers and you’re invincible, untouchable- and he moves, and something cleaves through the unholy abomination that was Yvon and he dies, crumbling away into dust with an enraged scream.

“What the fuck,” Therion says, staring down at his dagger, which absolutely shouldn’t have been able to cut through An Entire Whatever-The-Hell-That-Was.

“What the fuck,” Tressa echoes, staring at him while still in her awkward half-crouch where she was going in for a stab.

“Divine skill,” Ophelia says faintly, wide eyed, blood bright against her hair.

“Was that really?” Cyrus gasps, turning so fast he knocks Alfyn back over with the swinging weight of his coat.

“Argh,” says Alfyn, face back on the floor for the second time in as many minutes.

“Can someone get me down, please?” Cyrus’s student asks faintly, because apparently between the screaming and the transforming and the fighting they all forgot they were supposed to be actually doing something, here.

“What the fuck was that,” Therion demands, pinning the god wearing Olberic’s face against the wall, shaking a dagger in his face. The dagger isn’t his, instead some creation of unearthly-sharp metal and intricate etchings that spiral infinitely. It hurts to look at. He doesn’t care.

The god laughs at him, and turns into a swarm of vultures, spiraling up to the sky. The dagger melts in his palm, molten metal oozing between his fingers, and his hands are left empty once more.

Therion is twenty-two years old. Eight years ago, he was pushed off a cliff by the person he trusted most in all the world.

Therion is twenty-two years old. He’s getting pretty sick of dreaming about cliffs, and vultures, and gods wearing the faces and bodies of people he knows.

Therion is twenty-two years old. He’s apparently, definitely, indisputably favored by some god or other. He doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry about this.

“I am so sorry,” Ophelia says, cringing.

Therion doesn’t say anything. Because he’s too busy making sure he’s completely unable to be seen in his little corner. By anyone.

“I didn’t think, before I spoke,” Ophelia keeps saying, mournful apology practically radiating off her body. “I should have realized-”

Therion breathes in, sharply, and contemplates screaming.

She is going to get him caught.

Forget pride, forget dignity, forget everything, Therion’s resorted to actually running away, full tilt, every time he sees Cyrus. Divine skill this, divine skill that, Therion doesn’t know how he did it and he would very much like to never do so again, he will give up thievery and live life as- as, something, he doesn’t know, a guard, if it meant everyone would drop the whole Therion has the attention of a literal god thing.

Why do they keep asking him about it?! He doesn’t know! How the hell would Therion know what godly attention felt like, huh?! Whatever answers they’re looking for here, he sure as hell doesn’t have them!

Oh hells Cyrus just walked in.

“-intensely personal, I know- AH!” Ophelia yelps as he snatches her and pulls her into the niche. Effectively setting off a beacon, thanks, Ophelia! Cyrus is closing in like a vulture on a carcass, and Therion’s not about that corpse life, thanks.

Time to go, right now, goodbye, fare-thee-well, Theiron is gone.

“Wait- Therion!”

Hahaha. Bye.

(Here’s the thing about divinity- humans just aren’t made to hold onto it.

Humans hold onto other things, like nightmares, hope, scars, dreams. In a way, they were made for them- perfect vessels, holding sorrow and joy and anger and nostalgia like they were shaped just for them.

How can a human possibly be expected to describe what it was like, to have the divine slide underneath your skin, ill-fitting vessel as it is? 

There are no words that have been made, for what you have experienced. What it feels like, heart and soul and mind, to be caught up in the grip of a god’s divine power and when you ask them how does it feel to be favored by a god, and can you tell me what it felt like-

They can’t.

Humanity wasn’t made to hold onto the gods.)

“You know, I’m thinking about taking some cues from Primrose,” Therion tells the god under Cyrus’s skin.

Maybe it should be more unsettling, that he can’t tell the difference in the face- Cyrus and divine puppeting entity alike, they both look at him with eyes that see more than they should. Maybe it’s a mage thing. 

But Cyrus’s hands are melting like candle wax, and the god lifts his hands to let molten drops rain onto Therion’s hair; wax solidifying in an instant, weight and heat pressing into his skull.

“And what would those cues be?” the god asks, knowing smile wide and infuriating and inhuman. Heat drips from Therion’s hair, falls into the dip of his scar, traces the mournful, aching curve of it.

“Problem-solving through excessive violence, for one,” Therion says, and strikes out, splattering the molten arms into a thousand burning drops, shattering the dream.

Should you fear, when you face down a god?

At this point, Therion might not be capable of it.

“Thou art… rather poor at hiding,” H’aanit says, peering down at him.

“Good to know,” Therion wheezes out over the snow leopard laying on his chest.

The look H’aanit gives him pretty much pierces him to the marrow, makes him freeze like a hunted rabbit. “It occurs to me,” she says thoughtfully. “That thou could be of use scouting our path ahead with Linde and I.” Linde makes a purring mrowr noise, rubbing her face against Therion’s chin.

Therion doesn’t bother waiting for her to work around to actually fully finishing the way out she’s giving him. “Please, for the love of the gods, let me go with you. I will steal you anything you want. A new bow? Enough leaves to fill a house? A crown? I can steal a crown.”

H’aanit laughs. “No, no stealing necessary. Comen, then. Linde, let him go.”

Linde takes her sweet time getting off of Therion, leaving behind absolute mountains of white fur. Therion doesn’t even care, because he’s saved.

And then they’re leaving. And then, they’re all in the desert, and everything’s okay, and they reach town with it’s oasis and its black market and its guardsmen and-

And-

And-

Wellspring is a clusterfuck on so many levels.

Okay, first of all? Olberic and the whole duel-to-the-death thing with his betrayer. Erhardt. Whoever. That didn’t actually end with someone dying, even though Therion’s pretty damn sure that’s what a duel to the death means, but hey, what does he know! Nothing, apparently!

Olberic, Erhardt, the whole confrontation thing, fighting in the lizard den. Therion hates every single second of it, hates that he can’t stop feeling like he’s teetering at the ledge of a cliff, and can’t quite decide whether or not he hates Erhardt.

Therion desperately wants to have a breakdown, overcome with an absolutely overwhelming desire to just laugh until his ribs split open and he bleeds out on the floor. Olberic declares to the world that he never lost his worth, and Therion’s heart and lungs all tangle together until they’re snarled up into a knot of something that burns, low and dull and aching- Is that it? All Olberic needs is a conversation, a fight, to declare himself whole, and he’s fixed? Just like that? 

So that’s a whole thing, and Theiron puts off going to the black market, because gods, he’s just going to get himself stabbed if he goes out tonight. He can’t stop hearing the wind howling in his ears, tasting blood on his tongue, seeing flashes of dull green out the corner of his eye and jumping out of his skin. So he downs way too much ale, crashes for three-fourths a day, suffers through Alfyn’s hangover cure, and then goes out to do his reluctant “job”.

And then there’s Darius.

Fucking.

Darius.

And Therion tips off the cliff.

“This is fucking bullshit,” Therion says, barely balanced on the edge of the cliff.

“Maybe so!” The god wearing Darius’s face says cheerfully, and shoves him off.

Darius has another devoted thief he’s hooked in, some young fool that’s willing to die and kill for him, and Therion can see himself in him so clearly it makes him sick.

He doesn’t know what’s happening, inside his head, his heart, the world, there’s a white void in his head and a deafening roar like wind in a canyon ringing in his ears, he’s chasing after Darius and he doesn’t have a plan. This isn’t Primrose and her crusade for vengeance, isn’t Olberic and Erhardt and their reconciliation. This is Therion, the fourteen-year-old who broke inside even before the fall, chasing after the man who never saw him as anything other than a tool to be used.

He doesn’t get to find out what he’ll do, if he gets his hands on Darius. He blinks. He’s running through the cave. He blinks. That devoted thief is blocking the way, faded dark green vanishing into the tunnels behind him. He blinks.

The thief is dead.

Darius is gone.

He’s falling.

A sigh. Primrose is sitting to his left, chin propped on her hand. A rock glances off his shoulder- it shatters, broken shards of bone tearing into his skin.

“I suppose you’re going to give up now, aren’t you?” She asks, an extra set of arms twining her hair around her fingers, dark, pitiless voids for eyes.

“Fuck you,” Therion gasps, and throws a dagger into her eye.

Surprise twists her face, makes the skin ripple and distort, the dagger with its infinite, dizzying designs freezing, hilt-deep, in her eye socket, and they stop falling with a jarring wrench on the world.

Therion gets to his feet, suspended on nothing, dizzyingly, achingly high above the ground, and pulls another dagger from stardust and the blood off his skin.

The god wearing Primrose’s skin looks at him, the dagger in her eye sliding deeper, flattening, pressing until those infinite patterns are nothing more than raised golden marks on her skin.

“Oh,” she says softly, a slow, delighted grin turning her face from something that could be said to pass as mortal to something that could never, not even in a dream. “There it is.”

Therion is twenty-two, and he has a knife.

Therion is twenty-two, and he’s reached a point in his life where he’s willing to use it on anyone, up to and including maybe-gods that won’t let him have a single night’s sleep without shoving their noses into his dreams.

So maybe, in one world, Theiron spills his story to the seven people he’s been more or less stuck with for the past few months, and he’s not scared. In that world, maybe Therion can speak of Darius and the cliff and his broken heart without his lungs freezing in his chest, and his hands don’t shake, and his head stays clear. 

In that world, Therion might talk about how he’s dreaming of gods, and all around the table, everyone realizes that they’ve all been dreaming of gods in the guise of others, and maybe they’d all find camaraderie here, in that divinity haunts them all, and not a one of them knows why. What does it mean, when eight people who travel together have divinity in their dreams, when the thief’s dreaming of cliffs and falling and the scholar’s dreaming of otherworldly power looking out upon the world with his eyes and the dancer is dreaming of being a little girl in a study still slick with her father’s blood as gods speak to her through his corpse?

In that world, they sit, and they talk, and they think. And the answers they come up with are not comforting, but it binds them all the closer.

This is not that world.

Therion doesn’t go to Northreach. 

He shuts down questions about Darius. He fades out, comes back to himself in dark corners, clawing at his bad eye, shoving fingers into his old broken bones, feeling the lurch of falling in his stomach over and over. He’s found, a few times, strange-familiar hands dragging his own away from his skin, their worry burning on his skin like fire. Alfyn teams up with H’aanit and Cyrus to track and corner him twice, and the bitter taste of herbs linger on his tongue for hours. And then he keeps having to taste those herbs, because just like everything Alfyn makes, it actually helps, godsdamnit, quiets the screaming of the wind and Darius’s laughter for a while, gives him control back over his lungs, keeps the pounding of his heart from deafening him.

“So, just checking, is this another thing you’re not going to answer any questions about ever-” Alfyn asks, mixing together another batch of the herbs and the ominous red oil that Therion suddenly has to fight Olberic and H’aanit over now, because surprise! He’s not the only one whose body clings to the ghosts of old pain, apparently.

“Yes,” Therion says, and takes off with the oil as soon as it’s done, only to get flattened by an entire snow leopard the second he’s out the door, gods damn it all.

He knows Darius is in Northreach, he knows everyone else knows, he knows they’re all wondering why he isn’t trying to push them to travel up and confront him. Therion’s gone out of his way to avoid saying anything about his past- they don’t know anything about the situation, except what they overheard. They know there’s a history, there. 

They know that just mentioning Darius is an Issue with a capital I, but that’s thanks to everyone getting a front-row seat to just how fucked up Therion is because he doesn’t remember much of the days after confronting Darius. Therion’s pretty sure remembering would be a terrible idea and might actually kill him through pure humiliation, so he falls back to his old standby: pretending nothing happened at all.

It really doesn’t work, but whatever. He’s doing fine.

He doesn’t go to Northreach. H’aanit hunts down the Redeye, and all of them almost die a dozen times apiece. Divinity burns in her in the middle of the fight, Ophelia whispers Draefandi with reverence in her voice, and H’aanit calls down a divine shower of light that pierces the Redeye through, it’s dying scream something from a nightmare.

Therion has a debt, here, so he rescues H’aanit from Cyrus’s torrential interrogation. They end up spending an hour comparing how they move in their own elements, Therion’s quiet steps on cobblestone town streets and H’aanit’s breath-silent forest walks, and promptly become the world’s clumsiest fools the moment they try to switch it up. Linde pins him to the ground and starts licking his hair. Giant cat spit is disgusting, but at least it’s not blood, and if Therion might have wheezed out a laugh or two, well, Linde will never tell.

And in the morning, they move on.

“What the hell is so damn interesting about my dreams that you keep showing up?”

“We’re waiting,” The god tells him, reclining with Alfyn’s body on a table, taking an idle bite out of half of an apple. “You’re all going quite fast by mortal standards, I assume, but there’s still so much that has to be done. The question is, will you?”

“That’s the clearest answer you’ve ever given me and it’s still confusing,” Therion says, and wishes for a knife, which is quickly becoming his go-to when dealing with gods. A knife appears in his hand, which is convenient. 

The god makes a knife of his own appear. Therion makes a second dagger appear in his other hand in response, and also because he can. The god, apparently, finds this hilarious.

“I think you should wake up, now,” the god says through a mouthful of apple, and blinding pain rips through Therion’s bad eye and he wakes up on the floor of the inn, his scar split open and weeping blood down his chin.

How does it feel to be favored by a god?

Mostly irritating, really.

“Would you stab a god?” Therion asks Primrose, itching irritably at the bandage on his face.

Primrose pauses, something odd flickering in her eyes, like she’s remembering, or thinking, or imagining. “... Yes.”

“Just because?”

“Yes.”

Maybe that was taunting fate just a little too much. 

Because two days later, they find a cave and Ophelia feels something divine coming from deep within and Cyrus almost walks into a wall from how thick the magic in the air is, and of course they go inside. Of course they keep going when they start seeing the crumbling structure of a shrine. Of course Tressa reaches out to poke the spark of light in at the peak of the shrine with her spear. After all, why not? 

What could possibly go wrong? 

FUCK.

“Healing healing healing healing!” Tressa squeaks, diving past Therion, leaving him to face down the towering form of Balogar, the Runelord, who considers him with shadowed eyes, and brings down a sword seven times Therion’s size towards his heAD OH GODS.

Therion has his knife, which was, until now, his go-to when dealing with gods. Unfortunately, this god is not in a dream, which means he can actually die here, and he can’t make knives out of moonlight and blood and the dust of forgotten things. 

Hey, here’s a fact for you, Cyrus! Gods are terrifying when they’re fighting you for the right to their power, or whatever the hell this is!

Oh, oh, here’s another fun fact, but this time for Therion and everyone else- turns out, Cyrus is terrifying, too! Because he’s standing there in the middle of a maelstrom of pure magic so thick even Therion can feel it in the air, thick and heady and full of promise, and the bolt of lightning he calls down from the heavens descends like it was shaped by the divine, the peal of thunder as it rips into existence deafening to the point that Therion didn’t realize his and everyone’s eardrums had burst until Ophelia’s healing magic washed over him in in a wave of scorching fire, sound slamming back into existence with a horrible pop. Hahaha, how fun! This is hell! Welcome to hell!

Oh, look! Here comes Primrose with her knife and hey, she just stabbed a god! Looks like Therion was spot-on about her problem-solving process, which is clearly to stab something with a dagger until it stops being an issue, even if that something is an actual deity. How interesting! Even more interesting is how this actually does something, so Therion decides to emulate her and his dreams and goes after the literal god in the room with a completely ordinary mortal knife.

Why the hell not? The universe has completely lost its mind, they’re fighting a god, they’re a thief and a cleric and a dancer and an apothecary and a merchant and a warrior and a hunter and a godsdamned scholar, and of all the times to realize he, somehow, trusts every one of these idiots not to stab him in the back, how’s a fight with divinity for a backdrop?

“Holy fucking shit, we didn’t die,” Therion says, staring at the spot where a god just broke apart into light and magic and faded away.

“Oh gods we just fought Balogar,” Ophelia wheezes, possibly having some kind of religious crisis.

“The Runelord,” Cyrus says rapturously, and oh, fuck, here we go again-

“I hate you,” Therion tells the god floating in front of him, all armor and drifting runes and not, actually, wearing the face of someone he knows, for once.

“That’s rather rude, considering I just bestowed upon you the ability to make those daggers you’re so fond of flinging around here in the waking world,” The god sniffs, crossing his arms, appearing nothing short of the image of a jilted lover. It’s horrifyingly jarring with his whole armor-floating-runes-terrifying-massive-sword thing.

“What,” Therion says.

The god sighs. “Mortals,” Balogar complains, and kicks him out of the dream.

“What,” Therion says, sitting bolt upright in his bedroll, staring at the faintly-glowing dagger he just pulled from the passing breeze and the tang of iron lingering under his fingernails.

Olberic, who just watched him grab at the air and suddenly be armed with something very sharp and deadly looking, makes a faint choking noise.

Tressa, mouth still frozen in a yawn, as wide-eyed as a startled fawn, slowly reaches out and pushes his hand down until the dagger hits the rock.

“No,” she whispers, staring right into Therion’s eyes.

“This isn’t real,” he tells her, even though he’s already pressed his thumb against the edge, twice, and is currently dripping blood on the edge of his bedroll.

“You aren’t real,” Tressa says, and then, because she’s a brat, adds “I’m telling Cyrus.”

Therion’s only reprieve from next morning’s interrogation comes in the form of arriving at the town where Primrose’s next murder victim has gone and holed himself up in.

It’s barely a reprieve, because Therion takes one look at Primrose’s face and somehow, to his absolute horror, realizes that he’d take getting stuck with Cyrus trying to poke holes in how he exists over being in Primrose’s line of sight right now.

Just pay him no mind, and back to the end of the line he goes. Absolutely no need for Cyrus or Primrose to look this way right now, not when that nice distracting stranger’s being all suspicious in front of them…

… Wait, what was that about a theater?

Primrose kills Simeon, and Therion would thank the gods that he was too busy fighting mannequins to see exactly how horrifying and gruesome it was if he wasn’t pissed off at the lot of them. Also, he caught a solid blow to the head about maybe halfway through so most of the fight kind of turned into a blur, which he regards more as a blessing than anything else.

The flashes he gets are full of Primrose screaming like some harbinger of rage and fury, blood bright on her skin, pure ruthlessness stripping away the grace of her steps. He thinks he remembers her standing over that bastard’s corpse, snarling like a feral thing, triumph rolling off her shoulders; but then, he was probably unconscious at that point, so that could just be him assuming.

There is no mistaking the dark satisfaction in her eyes, an odd sort of peace that slackens her shoulders, unclenches her jaw, in the days that follow- Primrose got what she wanted, actually fucking pulled off a ten-year triple-murder plot, and Therion hopes that he never gets on her actual bad side, ever, because if he does then she’s going to kill him and it won’t be in a half-assed way, like kicking him off a cliff and assuming the fall does him in. 

It doesn’t matter that they have injured- no one wants to stay here, in this creepy town of puppets and actors, so they all make tracks and head up north. It’s almost peaceful, for a while. Nobody mentions Northreach.

Tressa wins some kind of merchant fair, for some ungodly reason, without the precious priceless stone she’s been toting around and Therion’s been pushing down the urge to make off with every time it almost falls out of her bag. Grandport’s not bad hunting grounds, at least not for a thief of his skill, and Theiron lightens more than a few wallets in the name of keeping his full. It’s absurdly relaxing, almost, going through the old, time-worn motions, feeling his purse grow heavier with a methodic steadiness.

Then Goldshore happens.

Is Therion ever going to be able to hear stories of betrayal without feeling as though every old wound is being torn back open? Can he not, just once, hear about trust being put in the wrong place without feeling horribly, dizzyingly sick?

He can’t, it seems. Ophelia sobs over her dead father, her sister’s betrayal, composure gone in the face of what was dangerously close to an overdose of sleeping drugs and broken trust.

Therion closes his eyes, digs his nails into the wood of the floor. His stomach flips; all the sensations of falling, but no wind howling in his ears. 

“I know you’re just showing up to fuck with me, but does it always have to be here?” Therion asks irritably, scowling at the stone of the Cliftlands under his boot, twisting his heel and watching the dirt curl into impossibly intricate circles. He’s on the edge of the cliff again. The god wearing Darius’s face rolls all of his eyes at him, the third and fifth ones just slightly out of sync with the rest.

“This one’s all on you, buddy,” he says, and the stone under Therion’s feet crumbles away like sand, and again, like always, he’s falling.

The world whites out before he hits the bottom.

Therion’s getting almost resigned to waking up on the floor, at this point. 

Things start getting wrapped up so quickly, time almost blurs before Therion’s eyes. 

Ophelia saves her sister, near immolates a man with holy fire and a pure rage that could rival Primrose setting her aflame, a beacon in the dark; Alfyn saves that walking wreck of an apothecary despite the man doing his best to die out of pure spite, or grief, or something dark and poisonous that’s chewed his heart through to leave something empty and hollow behind. Alfyn dragged that dark thing out of its hole and set it on fire, metaphorically, and possibly also a little literally, but the guy got back on his feet and he’s not dying anymore and there’s something that could almost be a spark, there, in his eyes, so it’s all the same in the end- another life saved by Alfyn’s hands.

Therion doesn’t go to Northreach.

Olberic hunts down the man who’s actually behind the fall of his kingdom, and Therion still doesn’t actually understand what was happening there because he wasn’t actually in the room where everything went down. He contents himself with methodically robbing every single soldier in town absolutely blind, and makes off with enough healing items that he actually has Tressa coming after him, stomping her foot, demanding to know if he robbed a merchant of their supply.

Therion doesn’t go to Northreach.

They fight another god. Three of them, actually, one after another, and they’re all just as horrifying as the very first. Therion’s just happy that none of them came after him in a dream afterwards, like Balogar did. Going by the sudden appearance of new skills, however, Obleric and Cyrus might have had a god come poke at them in the night. Therion thinks it’s a pretty safe bet, especially after Olberic spends a day wandering around in a half-daze and then pulls out an obscenely overpowered attack that leaves him looking down at his own hands in a clear move of pure, shell-shocked what-the-hell-just-happened?

Cyrus, on the other hand, is visibly having the time of his life making himself into an even more horrifyingly overpowered nightmare of a mage. The absolute carnage that was left behind the first time he dropped the same spell Steorra almost killed them all with a dozen times over on a group of enemies is going to haunt Therion’s nightmares forever.

Cyrus even gets a chance to go all-out with those fancy new gods-bestowed powers, because it turns out that the headmaster’s assistant is a mastermind of her own, and also a book-hoarder. Therion actually thinks that Cyrus is more offended at the book-hoarding and the complete and utter lack of scholarly professionalism going on than the whole murdering-and-manipulating thing, which says a lot about his priorities in life. 

The fact that the ruins don’t come toppling down to bury the lot of them is astonishing, especially when you start realizing that some people in this party like abusing the hell out of some literally ground-shaking attacks, Cyrus Albright that means you.

“Hm?” Cyrus asks, distracted, not looking away from the wall that’s approximately an inch away from his nose. His captives, Ophelia, Olberic, and Alfyn, are muttering together in a circle of furrowed brows and concerned hand-waving. Olberic is eyeing the wall in a way that implies, based off of the other things he’s given that look to, that he’s wondering if applying his blade to the problem would resolve it more swiftly.

“Nothing,” Therion says, and beats a hasty retreat to go help H’aanit, Primrose and Tressa stab more vampire bats.

That whole fancy mural about doom and death that Cyrus spends an hour muttering over after Lucia’s been defeated and they’ve all managed to avoid having the ruins topple down upon their heads is so very cheery. After the absolutely ridiculous amount of vampire bats, and the thing with the sword, and the thing with the sentinels, Theiron very much hopes he never has to see it again. But also, he suddenly realizes that he would rather stay there looking at it forever, actually, because now everyone’s finished up their business save for him.

Fuck.

Fuck fuck shit fuck.

Nobody says anything. Nobody so much as breathes a word.

And yet.

It’s pretty damn clear that their path is taking them on their ambling, merry way to Northreach.

Hahaha.

Fuck.

Therion’s going to die.

Therion’s dreams are full of Aeber’s laughter. Over and over, bouncing off the cliffs, ringing in his ears.

He can summon magic daggers now, and yet Aeber, the crafty bastard, doesn’t even show up wearing other people’s faces anymore, so Therion can’t even take out his violently overwhelming nerves with a little cathartic god-stabbing.

Rude.

… Is it blasphemous to call a god rude, even if that god is a giant dick that’s been haunting your nightmares for about a year?

Probably not as much as all the god-stabbing, but still. If Therion’s being a blasphemer, he’d like to know so he can revel in it properly. Not that Aeber would care- the more Therion loses his patience, the more irritated his shouting, the louder Aeber laughs.

At this point, Therion’s going to be hearing those cackles on his deathbed. If he’s even allowed to have one, that is, assuming Darius doesn’t just murder him properly this time and dump his body off the nearest cliff. Because of course there’d be a cliff.

There’s always a cliff.

Northreach is cold.

Every single bone in Therion’s shambling wreck of a body hates it here.

Darius physically could not have picked Northreach as his throne with that in mind, because he thought that Therion was dead and absolutely wouldn’t have bothered to think about where, in this world, he could set himself and his little kingdom up at that would cause the most inconvenience and pain to Therion possible. For one thing, that would imply he spent any time thinking about Therion at all.

Therion doesn’t care about that, because keeping a constant internal litany about Darius being an inconsiderate bastard is about the only thing that’s keeping him sane right now.

Northreach is terrible. If Therion lives through this, he’s never coming back.

And then they actually reach the town.

Therion’s never been the subject of a wanted poster before. He’s not all that thrilled with the experience.

“Who even drew these?” Tressa mumbles, barely at the edge of his hearing and Therion wouldn’t have picked up on it at all if every single one of his senses weren’t on high alert, because this town is hell, actually, a frozen icy hell, and he can’t stop expecting Darius to pop out around any corner at any second and kick him off a cliff that doesn’t actually exist.

It’s funny. He’s associated Darius with cliffs for so long, he kind of forgot that there isn’t one following him wherever he goes. Look out behind you, nothing’s there! 

“A rather skilled artist, whoever it was,” of course Cyrus sounds impressed.

Primrose slides up beside Therion, nudges into his shoulder like a cat. “Rather inconvenient, having your face all over town,” she muses, the sharp glitter of her eyes slanting into something that could almost be considered teasing. If Therion was a sensible person, he’d be terrified by this. Because he’s an idiot that’s somehow becoming desensitized to entirely too many dangerous things to possibly be healthy, instead it’s almost comforting.

Wow. He’s really losing it. The next time they come across a dragon (and gods, Therion hates that he’s saying next time instead of if) is he just going to cheerily walk into its open mouth?

Isn’t that basically what he’s doing? Except he’s trailing seven other idiots behind him, so he guesses the dragon’s about to get a very filling snack.

That, or indigestion via a lot of sharp and pointy weapons and also magefire. An absolutely terrifying amount of magefire.

… Maybe. Maybe Therion can just chuck Cyrus at Darius, and then come back for the dragonstones later once the explosions stop? That’s a plan, right?

Right?

That plan is nixed from existence at about the same time he realizes that there’s a fuckton of guards around.

Fortunately, however, Therion is adaptable. And there’s a lot of guards wandering off on their own. In fact, one’s wandering right over this way, and wouldn’t you know, Therion’s feeling pretty cold right around now?

Heyyy, buddy. That sure is a nice, warm-looking cloak you have there...

Maybe Therion’s plans are just doomed as a whole.

After all, is there actually much point in disguising himself when he’s trailing seven of the most visually recognizable people in all of Osterra? 

Probably not. What kind of mountain brigand has a Sister of the Flame following them around, huh? What about an Atlasdam mage, or an apothecary, or a trader?

They really can’t be more conspicuous if they tried, which is why Therion uses his illicitly-obtained disguise to get by the first three sets of guards and then just kind of. Melts. In despair.

This is the future of thievery, ladies and gentlemen. Mindless groups of idiots that can be bullied into letting entire groups of strangers by as long as the one in front dresses in the right clothes and shouts too much to let them think.

Alfyn pats him sympathetically on the shoulder. Out the corner of his eye, Therion sees Ophelia bob a nervous, unpracticed curtsy to a passing brigand, who takes one look at the lot of them and sidles away, so clearly projecting ‘I didn’t see this’ that Therion, swear to the gods, almost starts weeping.

Behold the master thief, everyone. Being pity-ignored by a bunch of two-penny robbers. 

Gods, his reputation must be sunk into the sewers at this point.

And then:

Darius.

Darius is.

Darius is.

Darius is-

In a world that doesn’t exist, Therion walks through the door and drops to his knees at Darius’s feet and Darius smiles and claps a hand on his shoulder, and the knife slides into his blind eye so smoothly-

-In a world that doesn’t exist, Therion turns with a blade in his hand and the calm buzzing contact of Darius’s hand alive on his skin and faces down seven figures looming at the door with something dreamlike in his head and at the end of it all his dagger drips, drips, drips-

-In a world that doesn’t exist, Therion bleeds out on the floor, side-by-side with Darius, wheezing out a laugh through the blood in his lungs-

-In a world that doesn’t exist, Therion bleeds out on the floor as Alfyn presses his hands bright-hot-painful against something crucial and vital and dying even as they’re all bleeding from what he’s done to them and Therion dies laughing because damn you all, even when he’s the betrayer nobody ends up as broken as he was-

-In a world that doesn’t exist, Therion kills Darius quietly, silently, the lines between thief and assassin blurred so smoothly, and not a word passes either of their lips as the deed is done-

-In a world that doesn’t exist, Therion steals the dragonstones in a moment between heartbeats, nobody to see, nobody to hear, and he’s long gone before Darius knows to set out his bandits after him, howling for his blood, his head, his heart-

-In a world that doesn’t exist, Darius looks him in the eye, all unnatural calm and the endlessness of a god, and whatever it is that’s living under his skin says I am the one that spared you and Therion cannot tell if it is Death or a god or simply his mind, finally given out to madness under the strain of it all-

In a world that doesn’t exist, Darius is-

Darius is-

Darius is-

Darius is just an absolute clusterfuck.

There’s a lot of shouting, a lot of fighting, white-hot lines carved into his skin. It all turns into mostly a blur, if Therion is honest, which he generally tries to avoid being.

Old injuries blend with the present- His eye burns, old broken bones setting his nerves to screaming with every shift of his weight. Did he break open the skin of his shoulder while falling, or is it because Darius got him on the ground and drove his blade straight through it? Is blood running down his chin from his eye, split back open again with his own dagger, or is it from a head wound where his temple went crashing into the pedestal where the dragonstone gleams indifferently in the torchlight?

It’s not even Therion that lands the final blow- no, he’s too busy clawing himself to his feet, all frantic-animal where’s-the-hunter, and it’s Olberic that knocks Darius down, that ends it.

They’ve won.

And Therion looks at Darius, scrabbling around on the floor, spitting vitriol at the top of his lungs between gasps, and realizes- this didn’t make the betrayal hurt any less.

“You never meant anything to me,” Darius says, in a world that doesn’t exist. Therion’s dagger is in his hand, gently dripping his own blood down onto his face. Therion’s scar is split back open, a careful hand tracing the curve of it. His blood is red, not gold. No gods laugh in his ear.

“You always meant too much to me,” Therion says, in a world that doesn’t exist, and as the dagger plunges down, he throws himself forwards, knocking both of them off the cliff to topple down, twisting and fighting in the air.

In a world that doesn’t exist, Darius hits the ground first.

Therion leaves behind Northreach, and Darius, and he doesn’t even know if it’s a corpse he’s turning his back on or his old partner, alive and seething and furious and plotting revenge.

His pockets are weighed down with the two last dragonstones, cold and heavy. He thinks of Darius’s eyes- full of fire and derision and that temper of his, always too fast to snap, too loud, too impatient.

Darius was a shit thief. He always had been. More a highwayman than anything else, and maybe that’s why Therion’s still alive, because honestly, kicking someone off a cliff is kind of a really inefficient way to kill someone, if you’re not sure the drop is absolutely without a doubt fatal.

Therion very carefully ignores the part of him that always comes out at night, that voices itself when he sleeps, that whispers that the fall should have killed him anyway, and his survival is still a mystery. The part of his mind, that slowly, terrifyingly he’s starting to realize- he doesn’t actually care about, that much, not anymore.

Darius didn’t have any answers, anyway- and what questions Therion did ask, he regrets getting the answers to.

Then again, isn’t that basically the whole Darius experience, right there? Therion sick with regret and craving and all his insides tangled up into a horrible knot, shaking and dizzy and the ground vanishing under his boots.

Not part of the Darius experience is where Tressa pops up under one of his arms with a barrage of high-pitched sounds that are impossible to ignore; Cyrus and H’aanit in a lively debate about the wildlife of the Frostlands; the warmth of Ophelia’s healing magic with the sharp-bitter tang of Alfyn’s herbs; Olberic and Primrose two circling shadows on the edge of the group, complete opposites for all that they take up the same role, watchful eyes and sharp edges pointed out at the world, keeping the center of their circle safe and guarded.

It’s hard to focus on his pains and regrets this way- with conversation bright in his ears and countering Tressa’s needling as fast as he can, Linde’s huge warm mass headbutting him in the knee so hard he topples over, almost landing face-first in the snow as Primrose snickers behind him.

His stomach still twists and flips with falling. But it’s something small, manageable- it will catch up to him tonight, at the inn, when there’s no more distractions, turn him to a shaking wreck that can’t tell which way the impact of the fall will come from. 

It will come. But it is not here right now, and the dragonstones are in his pocket, and soon the bangle will be gone; can’t he just think about that for a while, now? Just for a few more hours, before reality comes back, and his body realizes just how close he has been to his betrayer?

Just a little while longer?

He wakes up that night wheezing, shaking, clawing at his ribs, his shoulder, his eye- there’s a pale blur in his vision, noises in the air and all without meaning to his ears. There’s hands pulling his fingernails out of his skin, something cold and soft pressing against his face, and in the little icy inn, surrounded by snow and dark, Therion chokes on his own breath as he claws his way out of the old nightmare, fourteen-in-heart and stomach flipping with the sensation of falling.

This night, for this dream, there are no gods. Only Darius. Only Therion. Only the cliff.

Just as it always was, all those years ago.

The thing is.

The thing is.

The thing is that sometimes you hunt down the person that hurt you, and you’ve grown. You’ve found something that you could, almost, if you’re willing to admit it, might be happiness; something that could, if you tilt your head just right, be called some kind of peace. You could have become powerful enough to face down gods, have lived through other people experiencing something similar to what broke you so long ago and come out the other side. 

But when you face them, you still have that old, torn-up heart, that blind eye, those broken bones.

You change, and you face the person who you trusted like the sunrise, like the sky, before that all got shattered, before you fell off that cliff. And there’s still that part of you inside your head that makes you sick, that craves their approval, that curls up and cowers, that desperately tries to search for where the next cliff is because if you’re going to be falling anyway isn’t it better to know, to expect it, to catch sight of the drop before you go tumbling over it?

You change, and you find happiness, and you’re still falling, inside.

It would be nice, wouldn’t it, if all it took to make you whole again is to look the one who broke you in the eye and refuse them their victory? If that was all it took to stop hurting, to stop falling, for your heart to neatly put itself back together and lo and behold, suddenly you’re healed! You’re your old self again, fresh-faced and full of trust and you never, ever have nightmares of falling ever again.

Yes. It would be nice if the world worked that way.

It would be nice if eight years of pain, eight years of nightmares, eight years of self-hatred and fear and longing, eight years of clawing himself up from the bottom of the ravine- it would be so nice, if the last eight years could be erased, just like that.

But then- would that not be setting himself up to suffer all over again?

How far back would he have to burn out of himself, to erase everything Darius did to his life, so it could never happen again?

Therion stands at the end of his stint as a little rich girl’s errand boy, and he is and is not the same as when he was first caught. The shackle presses into the bones of his wrist. His eye is still blind. He still aches when it rains.

Darius is still a sharp-edged spot of pain, a knife that likes to twist itself in his heart. Even now, even after looking him in the eye, even after fighting and winning against four actual, genuine gods.

And if you think about it, the difference there- doesn’t it come down to fear?

Therion fears Darius. Maybe he always will. He fears the power Darius had and has over him- from capable thief to a scared teenager in an eyeblink, stealing rational thought from his mind, turning him into someone else, someone that he hates, someone that, in the past, he was. You give people so much power when you crave their approval- when you care what they think of you. It’s collaring yourself and handing over the leash. It’s locking the shackles onto your own wrists while someone else holds the key.

On the other hand. Gods.

Therion can’t fear gods anymore. There’s just some part of his brain, somewhere, that took his self-preservation and burnt it right out when faced with the divine.

It’s going to come back to bite him in the ass. Therion just knows it. Why would a god bother to mess with him so much if it didn’t want something out of it?

It’s only a matter of when the jaws of the trap are going to snap shut.

Heathcote had unlocked the fucking bangle. 

Therion can’t stop laughing when he realizes that he literally could have just hooked the damn thing off his wrist and chucked it in the ocean after the fucking red dragonstone.  

He’s pretty sure Aeber’s laughing too. Specifically at his expense, for not checking the fucking lock after Heathcote got his hands all over it. What kind of self-respecting paranoid thief does that make him, now?

Not paranoid enough by far , as it turns out.

In his dreams, Theiron’s falling again.

“So,” Aeber says conversationally, chin propped on hands. The god grins at him with his own face, the wind tossing his hair back and exposing his blind eye. The eye and scar drip thick gold, drops tumbling through the air like rain. “About how you said you’d be willing to steal from a god.”

“... The Dark One,” Tressa says slowly, pure incredulity spreading over her face. “You’re telling me we might literally have to fight the thirteenth god. The one that the other gods sealed away. Because we can totally do that.”

Ophelia is pressing her knuckles to her lip. Theiron is almost completely certain that she’s screaming on the inside.

Cyrus doesn’t look up from his tome. “Unfortunately… yes.”

“That’s…” Alfyn looks down at his axe, like he’s trying to figure out how it would fare against the Dark One in a fight. Therion thinks the answer there is badly.

Primrose, on the other hand, is also considering her weapon, and Therion would bet that if she wanted it to stab the Dark God, it would, and it would do just fine, thank you. 

H’aanit and Olberic are stuck in a flurry of conversation over the map already, talking about things that sound dizzyingly strategic. Is there a strategy for taking down a god that needed every single other god to seal it away? Apparently they’re going to make one.

As for Therion? Well...

“I hate you,” Therion shouts at Aeber over the howling of the wind. “Galdera? The fucking Dark One?!”

Aeber laughs at him with his own face, a full-throated, delighted cackle, and falls with him all the way down to the river below.