Chapter Text
Keefe blinked, almost completely certain that he was hallucinating right now. But his vision of the bulky figure kneeling in front of him cleared, leaving no doubt in his mind. She was back. She had found him.
“Ro!” He launched himself into her middle, wrapping his arms around her. His hands barely reached her back. Then, he reeled back and punched her in the stomach, albeit without any force. Not that he could have caused her any harm even if he wanted to. “Where have you been ?” The sudden onslaught of emotion reminded him that, just over a minute ago, he had been lying on the ground waiting for someone to kill him. His nerves were frayed and, quite honestly, he was about one minor inconvenience away from another mental breakdown.
“Woah, there,” Ro said, forcing him back onto the ground. “We’ll get to that later. What happened to you ?”
“Elysian,” Keefe replied. He was only half lying. Seeing that she only looked more confused, he almost facepalmed. “Right, you don’t know.” He explained everything he knew about Elysian as best he could while also summarising as concisely as humanly possible to save time - until he reached the part where Elysian trapped them in a wacky fourth dimension… which Ro was also currently in.
“How… How are you here?” He asked, eyebrows furrowing. Ro twisted one of her brightly coloured pigtails around her finger, seemingly deep in thought - an expression he would never had thought he would see on her face.
“I have no idea.” She dropped the pigtail and unsheathed one of her daggers. She probably felt better with something sharp and pointy to fidget with - or stab someone with. Whichever came first. “I was chasing some of the traitor ogres through a forest pretty similar to this one. I was right on Cadfael’s tail when he vanished, and I stumbled into a clearing and saw you.”
“That makes… no sense.”
Ro shrugged. “Not making any sense to me either.”
The confusing magical anomalies just kept on coming. But Keefe didn’t have the time to study the nonsensical workings of this place. Pushing himself back onto his feet (with considerably less difficulty, he noted with relief), he adjusted his cape, which had, unsurprisingly, become twisted at some point. “Whatever. There’s something more important we have to do.”
“And that would be?”
Keefe swallowed hard. “Rescuing Sophie.”
Ro’s head snapped up with astonishing speed. “ What ?”
“Elysian took her. I don’t know why, but it can’t be for anything good.”
“Why are we still here then?” Ro exclaimed. “Where did she take her?”
Keefe pursed his lips. “That’s the problem. She teleported.”
Ro cursed in response. “You stupid elves and your stupid magic.”
“She’s not an elf, Ro.” He decided to ignore the dig at elves for the moment.
“Similar enough,” she said with a dismissive wave. “How are we supposed to find our girl?”
Keefe knew the answer to her question, but he wasn’t exactly sure how to explain it - nor did he have the energy to figure it out. He knew he had a connection to Elysian. He could feel a buzzing in his head when she was near, and he was always hyper-aware of her gaze, despite it being hidden under her hood. So maybe… maybe he could use that to his advantage. It wasn’t a lot, but it was something. And right now, he would follow anything to the ends of the world if it held even the slightest chance of finding Sophie.
“Just follow me,” he said in answer to Ro’s question.
“But I thought you didn’t-”
“Call it intuition.” He was lost in the feeling, sniffing Elysian out like a bloodhound. It was like reaching out for an invisible string. A few minutes of groping around blindly before he would feel the tug of the rope, pulling him in the right direction. He was so immersed in his task that he almost didn’t hear Ro’s indistinct grumbling.
“Isn’t your intuition what almost gets us killed every other day?”
“Exactly. This intuition isn’t mine.” Keefe turned his back to her and started walking towards the trees. Into the wilderness it was, then. Ro probably thought he was going insane, but for whatever reason, she followed him without question. He could hear her footsteps trailing behind him, and he felt all the more safer for it.
Damn. He had really missed her.
The invisible string ended up being a hell of a lot more tangled up than Keefe had anticipated. He and Ro had been walking around the forest for what felt like hours, but when he checked his watch, it had barely been ten minutes.
“Please tell me we’re at least a tiny bit closer to finding her,” Ro said. She rarely showed any outward emotion, covering it up in bad insults and an indifferent facade (he could relate to her in that way), but he could detect a note of anxiety in her voice. He couldn't blame her, seeing as he was pretty much a nervous wreck himself. Normally, he knew Sophie could handle herself, but Elysian freaked him out in a way not a lot of things could. She was right up there with his dear old mother and her psychotic, grand schemes.
Keefe felt a sharp tug towards his left, where the undergrowth seemed to be lessening. “I think this is it,” he murmured. “Somewhere beyond this shrubbery - ugh !” He shook a bright orange insect the size of his eyeball off his arm hastily. He was up to his knees in grass, and his hands were covered in tiny nicks and scrapes from pushing branches out of the way. Ro, of course, had suffered no such fate thanks to her extraordinarily tough ogre skin, Keefe noted with a touch of jealousy.
“Outta the way, Hunkyhair.” Ro pushed in front of him, whipping a hatchet out of who knows where and launching herself at the offending plants. As efficient as she was, she barely made a tiny hole in the mess of branches and vines in front of them. Still, it was all Keefe needed.
“It’s a window!” He exclaimed. The window was coated in such a thick layer of grime that Keefe could barely see through it - but it wasn’t so clouded that he couldn’t make out two vaguely humanoid shapes moving around inside. “That has to be them. Keep going!” He drew his own knife, a dagger Ro had given him ages ago while attempting to turn him into some semblance of a fighter, and started hacking away.
“Sounds like Blondie’s gotten herself into a scuffle,” Ro said. Keefe could hear the distinct sounds of a fight, before what sounded unmistakably like Sophie’s voice. His eyes widened.
“She needs our help, Ro.” She nodded in agreement.
“Alright, that should be enough. Stand back.”
He watched in awe as Ro took a running start before deftly kicking in the window, the glass shattering into a billion miniscule crystals on impact. The sound immediately garnered the attention of both of the people inside the room, who seemed to be locked in close hand-to-hand combat. Even still, Keefe noticed Sophie’s eyes light up in recognition when she saw Ro, before they slid over to hold his own gaze.
“What is the meaning of this?” Elysian hissed, her grip on Sophie visibly loosening.
“Listen, lady, I only learned who you are like fifteen minutes ago, but it’s pretty clear that you think messing with these kids is funny.” Ro drew her signature dagger. Taking it as a cue, Keefe discreetly slid a throwing star into his hand. “That being said, back the
hell
away from Sophie.”