Chapter Text
There were footsteps above him, heavy, armoured feet that made the wooden planks shake and bend. Tommy’s hand was already covering his nose and mouth, and as dirt and splinters rained down over his face, he was happy he had had the foresight to do so.
His other hand was clutched around his necklace, the sharp edges of Lady Prime’s symbol cutting into the palm. It grounded him. Focused his attention away from the way the frozen lumpy ground beneath his back was pushing into his body, already bruising if the spreading ache was telling him something.
The path above him started to shake yet again, less this time, the distinct sound of hooves heavy but slower than the earlier group of armoured scribes.
“The southern and western districts have been cleared.” A voice called out. One of the older clerics, one who used to hum and mutter disapprovingly whenever Tommy got back dusty and dirty after a day’s work, yet still ordered an extra heaping of food for him. “North and East should be done shortly. We suspect he’s taken to the woods, that wild child.”
How he still managed to sound fond, the disconnect to the rope burns on Tommy’s wrists, had Tommy almost break his cover to yell at him.
As Dream answered, voice coming from beside the horse that could now only be Spirit, Tommy thanked Prime for her foresight to keep his mind before his temper.
“Send the scouts out, I’ll lead the hunt once they get back.” Dream spoke, and of course he would be there. Of course he would personally come. “We’ll bring him home. Don’t you worry.”
Nightfall was coming, and the air was quickly turning from uncomfortable chilly to downright dangerously cold, his own steamy breath escape from the slivers between his fingers. Tommy hadn’t exactly had the time to grab a warmer coat, sturdy boots the only thing he’d been able to carry before his escape was discovered. He had hoped that they would have given up, thought him to lose his life somewhere during night, something still very, very likely with the way temperature dropping.
The way that Dream seemed to refuse to give up on him should have sent a spark of gratefulness, now, it only made him feel rotten.
The tenacity was an aspect of the priest that Tommy had appreciated, until he was on the wrong side of it. Prime was a religion that married well with the grind, so the fact that Dream had never shied back from getting dirt under his nails or clothes soaked with sweat had been something that had earned Tommy’s respect back when he was first taken in by the church, and from the way that Dream perked up when he saw Tommy already up in the early mornings working on the Prime Path he would have expected the respect to be somewhat mutual, somewhat equal.
Prime Path had always been theirs, their gift to their Lady and the other followers of her guidance. Sure, a lot of other people had been there too, helping along, but they were the ones who had been up early in the mornings and stayed until it was time to light the lanterns that lined the path.
Tommy was just praying, silently mouthing words behind his hand, that Dream didn’t know every nook and cranny of the path. That he didn’t know the small pockets between the wood and the frozen ground below.
Which was a ridiculous concept. Praying to Prime to not let her priest find him.
But maybe it was working; and he should not have any doubt, because the voices were slowly continuing along the path. Further into the city and away from the church.
“He’s always been such a good child. I don’t know what happened.” He heard the cleric distantly sigh, and Dreams answering laugh.
“We’ve all had a breach of faith, in our way of life.” Bullshit. This wasn’t a breach of fate. This was faith-arson. Take-faith-behind-the-barn-and-shoot-it. Faithicide “It has been difficult for him lately to understand the bigger picture. What this would mean for Prime.”
Oh, Tommy knew exactly what it would mean.
“You’re probably right.”
Tommy counted seconds in his head, just long enough to have them disappear around the bend, and then started to move, twisted himself around to crawl on his arms through the claustrophobic space the opposite direction from where Dream and the cleric was heading. He lifted his necklace and placed the symbol between his teeth, just to make sure that it didn’t drag along the ground. Puffs of his breath coming out from between his teeth.
If the search had cleared some areas, Tommy could try and go through those and escape, sneak out to the lake in the south and use the protection of the falling darkness to take a rowing-boat out of sight. But if Dream was out looking for him. That meant that he wasn’t at the church.
They wouldn’t expect him to go back to the very same place he had escaped from.
Slowly, but steadily, Tommy made his way to the church, using the underside of the Path and only going above whenever he couldn’t hear anyone or knew he was out of sight. Grateful of his slight build that made it possible to pretend he was a worm through the tightest parts, ignoring the sting whenever hard ground or rough wood scraped against his exposed skin. It was even colder now. The air damp and freezing from the nearby rapid, its roar Tommy a constant hum in the background.
Going through the main entrance would be instant game-over, but he had noticed that a bit of the foundation used to leak during heavier rains. The stacks of cobblestones he had gathered, piled up in one of the storages, would have been used to restore the deteriorating wall. A project he had planned to finish before the first glow of spring sent rains and meltwater coursing from the mountains looming in the north.
Now, instead of fixing it, Tommy braced himself against the timber behind his back, and aimed a kick towards the brittle stones in the foundation. Timing the hits to the noise of people moving above him.
When the stones had been loosened enough, Tommy squirmed around to use his hands instead, opening a small gap in the foundation of the church. Listening, and hearing no voices, Tommy wriggled into the church’s basement.
It was a place he had only been allowed to see twice. Basement was not quite the proper name for the space below the church. Larger than the church itself, dug out straight from the earth and only lit by magical light, the earthen chamber was fortunately empty as Tommy climbed down the cobblestone wall to land as quietly as he could on the dirt floor. The soul-lanterns were forever lit, hanging from the ceiling, and bathing the space with a cold blue light, and painting the roots that took up the centrepiece of the room with long and twisting shadows.
The blue fire that hung like a heart inside the roots was free and moving, constantly shifting as if it was struggling against a storm that raged from the inside. The light was blinding through where the roots didn’t quite cover and Tommy made sure to not stare right into it, pushing away the memory of Dream shielding his eyes the first time he had been allowed down here. Young and bright-eyed, honoured at the opportunity. The fire crackled and breathed, this close it almost drowned out the distant noise from the rapids running on the other side of the church.
Right above him, one floor up in the church, the Prime Log had its place. An old and gnarled large trunk from the establishment of the city and church decades ago, the wooden altar still alive by the roots that hung like a petrified vortex through the open space and digging further down into the ground, reaching out towards the wall in some places.
The purple shade was new, shimmering and pulsating in the room, coming not from the lanterns but from spots on the roots itself, like a rotten infection had taken place. Looking closer, it wasn’t an infection as much as intentional cuttings, runes that had been carved straight into the roots of the tree that made up the very centre of Lady Prime’s connection to the mortal plane.
Tommy felt as if they had been carved into his own skin, drifting with his fingers over the runes as if he could heal it with his touch. He’d seen these runes on the swords of the scribes, on the bows that the guards used to keep lumbering undead away from the city during the night. Flames.
Just waiting for the right moment to be activated.
He exhaled, his breath shaking heavily.
“Sorry Prime.” Tommy whispered, leaning his head against the roots. “I wish I could bring all of this with me. But I don’t thing even I, as large as I am, can carry all of the log in my pocket. I’ll do my best though. I won’t let him kill you.”
Waiting as for a sign, and getting none except his own shivering breath, Tommy took a grip on the roots hanging above him. He heaved himself up. The roots themselves were as thick as the branches of a hundred of years old tree, easily holding his weight as he made his way up.
It was like climbing a upside down tree, the roots swinging but not breaking under his weight as he continued up towards the actual altar, finally finding the ceiling above him, placing one hand against the spruce-floor to keep himself steady.
Through the gap between the flooring and the Prime-Log, where the altar broke through to the church above Tommy could see shadows move about, restless and hurried. Nostalgically similar as right before a gathering.
“Please. Please, come on. Let me help.” Tommy murmured.
The trunk of Prime log was large enough that Tommy would have been able to lay on top of it with only his feet dangling off the side. It didn’t mean much when he was above at the altar, but now below he had to slow and precariously climb around the log, searching with eyes and hands in the meagre light trickling down from the gap and flickering from the blue flames below, when a small glint of pale green entered his vision.
“Yes. Yes. Yes.” Tommy cheered, seeing a small new stem sticking out from the side of the trunk, wedged right under the floor. Two small leaves already on it, reaching up towards a sun that it couldn’t see. A small, desperate attempt to flee, the stem bending slightly as he gently curled his fingers around it. “Thank you, thank you for trusting me. Thank you! Yes!”
His cheer echoed, loud in his own ears, and Tommy froze. The above room had suddenly gone quiet.
Slowly turning his head upwards, he found himself meeting equally surprised and shocked eyes through the small gap in the floor. Centimetres away from his own face.
“Shit!” Tommy shouted, as he jerked back from the ones looking down at him, and the grip he had held slipped and he fell down, almost rolling through the intertwining roots down to land in a twisted nest of them. His back ached and one of his arms were bruised as Tommy groaned, grateful he hadn’t hit his head on the way down and opening his eyes from where they had closed during his fall, he was met with blinding blue light. The soul-flame at the middle of the roots meeting him close enough that he could feel the burning heat singe the hair on his head as he scrambled away.
The noise it made was like a forest collapsing in a hurricane. It sounded like it was howling and screaming in rage and fury from the earth itself.
The flames flickered and shifted, died down just a moment and something in the middle of the flames laid bared for just a second within the flames, and gone the next. A golden, shimmering crown, jewels glistering and filling in intricate designs in the metal that should for all matters and purpose have melted in the spiritual flame.
“Get Dream! He’s here!”
The call from above pulled Tommy back to the present and he pushed himself away from the flames, falling down another set of roots and this time landing ungracefully on the ground. Miraculously, he didn’t break anything, and in the hand that had gripped the small cutting torn from the Prime Log; there it still laid. Perfectly safe and sound in his grasp. A living essence of Prime herself.
Giving one last forehead-bump against the roots, Tommy scrambled up and towards the wall, towards the entrance he had made, just managing to climb up as the trapdoors from the opposite side of the room opened; lanterns' light spreading into the room and a rope-ladder dropping down into the chamber.
Tommy did not even take a moment to look who had found him as he squeezed himself back through. They knew where he was. The noise of people moving, yelling, made that far too obvious as Tommy didn’t even care to try and hide beneath the path again. It would just serve as a trap, an end-game place for them to corner him and have him right back where he started.
He couldn’t let it end here.
Lady Prime had given him a second chance at life after Wilbur's death, this very church taking him in. He would not let it all go up in literal flames.
The devotees in the church were opening the door just as Tommy pushed himself up from the Prime Path, and from the way he had come from the rapid hoofbeats sounded on the Path, flicker of familiar green in the light of the lanterns’ reach.
Tommy dodged a hand reaching out to grab him, setting off without a plan, legs moving before his mind could decide where to go. As he rounded the corner of the church, an arrow pierced through the air beside him, just barely missing his side as he stumbled down the hill down towards the river. There were no guards waiting for him, all pursuers behind him, and as Tommy approached the bridge that served as a crossing over the river further up north, he quickly understood why they hadn't been trying to cut him off.
Building this part of Prime Path had been hell. Even in summer the river was dangerous at best, quickly going deep and filled with outcroppings of stones that could tear a person apart, and they had been so careful and moving slow to make sure that no one fell in while they finished it.
Now the bridge was gone, the middle part of it broken down to splinters, creating a gap that he would not be able to cross.
Tommy’s heart was in his throat, tasting blood. He had to focus to not clutch too fiercely around the cutting held in his fist, his hands shaking as he watched the water below. It looked like a living void, barely any reflections of the torches and lanterns that was coming closer from behind him.
“Tommy!” Dream called, and Tommy twisted around, taking a step backwards and feeling the wood groan under his boots.
“Give up.”
Dream had dropped down from his horse, a crossbow hanging loosely in his hand but he was standing still, staying on the topside of the hill, the church a bright background that had him in shadows. The rest had stopped up at the church, watching and waiting. With the hand not holding the crossbow, Dream reached out, open palm towards him and though Tommy could not see his face behind the mask he knew that all he would find would be a fake porcelain smile. “Come back home.”
In winter, the river was guaranteed death.
Tommy closed his eyes and took a step backwards.
He jumped.