Archive of Our Own

On her knees beside her commander, sobbing into her hands, the knight's relief flooded the dank dungeon cell.

Her rescuer stood behind her. The one he had rescued stood guarding the door. Well-used, well-loved gauntlets could not muffle the knight's tears, and in her joy, she made no attempt to keep quiet.

Outside the cell, shuffling, heavy footsteps warned against such an outburst. They were not alone down here, whether D'arce Cataliss believed herself to be, with him.

Heaped against the wall in armor too dented to have offered much protection against the torture he endured, the fair-haired man stirred as if revived; as if all he needed were the tears of the lieutenant of the Knights of the Midnight Sun.

Behind the knight, the leader of their disparate party opened and closed his fists. The calluses scraped like flint against stone. Cahara glimpsed the flexing forearms and heaving chest of the man who had been at the head of the line this entire time, torch raised, four-eyed hound at his heels.

This was Ragnvaldr's mission. Whatever he said, Cahara had been content to follow. Were it not for him, he would have been stuck down in the mines with the specters and no tinderboxes for the rest of his short, miserable life.

"Thank you," the once-proud knight sniffled as she regained her composure. Pale heart-shaped face shining up at them, blue eyes wild in the wan light. "Thank you for helping me find him."

They may as well have left her, then. She clasped her hands at her breast and beamed at the mess this place had made of her commander.

"Oh, Le'garde... what did they do to you...?"

"Ah..." Cahara looked back at Ragnvaldr, whose teeth ground against a memory he did not share with them. "This is great! We found him! We should get going, yeah?"

After years on the streets, years more running with mercenaries, Cahara knew how to spot murder in a man's eyes. He looked right into that impending violence and was unafraid.

If it came to it, Cahara would fight Ragnvaldr to protect the payment D'arce had promised him. But he would rather it not come to that. Ragnvaldr may have been a brave explorer, but Cahara killed for silver.

And D'arce had told them last night, around the fire, how she could not confess her love for Le'garde to anyone. Not a soul, in all these years. He was the only man she ever loved, and she kept that love to herself. Before she ever set foot in this place, she swore she would not leave without him.

Cahara had had plenty of petty revenge in his twenty-six years. Never had he sought the sort he saw shining in Ragnvaldr's eyes.

Then the tall outlander blinked. He gave a tight yet true smile. And he turned from the sight. Left the wisp of a man who could not possibly be Le'garde, Captain of the Knights of the Midnight Sun, beaten unconscious on the cell floor.

As he left, Moonless--blue-furred and breathing through rows and rows of bloody uneven fangs--canted her head to the side, likewise uncertain. She glanced back at Cahara only once before following her master.

"Hey!" Cahara hissed under his breath.

Behind him, D'arce had abandoned her tears to collect Le'garde's lifeless body in her damp palms. This was the closest she had ever come to confessing her love to him. They weren't going anywhere.

Cahara left them as they were, and dashed after Ragnvaldr.

Paces ahead, his huge hands continued to curl and uncurl as he stalked away. As Cahara closed distance they tightened without releasing, as if drawing blood from the thick of his own hand would satisfy the lust Cahara saw in his eyes. His own steps were hollow to his ears as he hurried in Ragnvaldr's wake.

"Ragnvaldr!" he tried again, louder.

With a rolling boulder of a sigh, Ragnvaldr turned. Sweat painted his bare chest and neck, and the now-lit wall sconces reflected in the gold highlights of his unfettered red hair, the sheen on his skin. His eyes squinted against the darkness behind Cahara, who planted his hands on his hips and scowled.

Moonless did her part and guarded the corridor behind Ragnvaldr.

This was not a place to stop. Even the cave wolf knew that.

"Where do you think you're going?" Cahara asked, gesturing towards the prison cell they'd rushed to find and abandoned as quickly. "We can't leave them here."

"It's her decision," Ragnvaldr said, firm. "I saved her from the cave dwellers once. I cannot save her from her own poor choice."

"Rescuing her commander is a poor choice?" Cahara scoffed, crossing his arms over his vest. "You're a hard one, huh?"

Ragnvaldr shrugged. "He is not a good man. Her tears prevent her from seeing this."

"All I'm saying," Cahara held up his palms, "is he's the reason we're all here. He knows where to find your relic." Ragnvaldr frowned at him but did not interrupt. "You felt how creepy it was in there, right? Of course, she's overwhelmed." He dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Besides, the way she was talking last night? They're lovers." Ragnvaldr sighed as Cahara resumed speaking in a hushed voice. "Give her a few minutes, man. We'll all leave together."

"He will not leave. The darkness is in him. It would not surprise me to hear it wants him to join it."

Within the walls, something heard them.

Cahara knew exactly what had followed them into the catacombs when he heard the maul connect with the wall's interior. One swing to loosen the thick, timeless bricks, and then they fell, one two three rows at once. Enough to reveal the head of the monster who began stalking Cahara the second he stepped foot in the mines upstairs. He was responsible for the relentless terror scratching at Cahara's backbone the last several hours.

Without a word, Ragnvaldr whipped out an arm and checked Cahara into the wall around the corner, into an alcove where the captain of the dungeon's guard had been storing supplies. Piles of crates would have offered minimal cover even if their pursuer had not already spotted them. Though they made no sound, they were not safe.

The creature formerly known as Captain Rudimer squawked in indignation and used his unnaturally muscular body to push through the wall, sending a cascade of heavy bricks crumpling and pouring to the floor. His maul hit once, then again, widening the entrance. Bare feet slapped, and he walked with oppressive purpose towards them.

Both men held their breaths. Moonless did not even growl. She, too, was afraid.

"Stay behind," Ragnvaldr whispered as the Crow Mauler's shadow fell across the floor.

"Like hell! He'll kill you!"

Quicker than he'd ever done anything, Cahara freed a beartrap from his pack and pried it open. Threw it like a disc into the monster's path.

It was a monster. Its appearance pricked at the abscess of every irrational fear Cahara had ever hidden from, a lance threatening to burst. Cahara could not look him in the eye, either set of them, without losing his breath.

The clang of the beartrap closing ought to have brought the pleasure of knowing they'd immobilized an impossible enemy. In any other situation, Cahara would have heard that noise and crowed in triumph, knowing the upcoming fight would be much easier if they could not avoid it altogether.

That triumph never came.

One of its great heads chirped, the other answering, beaks clicking like a warning. The pillar of muscle began walking as if its foot was not caught in a beartrap.

Fights in this place went one of two ways: ending in seconds, with the victor walking away without so much as a fleck of spittle on their armor, or they required strategy to avoid barely limping away from them. They took dismemberment, retreating and considering their supplies before returning to try again.

Cahara had already been caught by the guards upstairs. Forget overconfidence; what confidence he had entered the dungeon to begin with fled when that guard knocked him down in the prisons upstairs and grabbed him by the boots.

If he did not keep his head on straight, this thing would kill them in seconds.

He could not stand before the eight-foot-tall monstrosity and give voice to the mantra pounding in his head. He could not count the ridges of abdominal muscles, consider the incongruous cleanness of the sheet around his waist, consider how that maul had fused with his arm.

"You have the darts?" Ragnvaldr asked.

"You got the vial?" Cahara countered.

Glancing back at him, Ragnvaldr chuckled--a short-lived sound with the danger facing them. The Crow Mauler's shoulders rolled, and the muscles rippled as he sized up the pair. Moonless lowered her stance, her blood-stained fangs bared, powerful throat loosing a warning that the monster did not heed. He was too far gone, and more powerful than all three of them together.

Before the men could act, Moonless pounced. The Crow Mauler stepped back, and her jaws snapped shut on empty air.

Ragnvaldr turned, his right arm winding up to pitch the vial of red liquid. It shattered across the beak of the left-side head, and the corrosive fluid found both sets of eyes. The surfaces of the monster's eyes ruptured, and vitreous fluid splattered on the floor.

Though his stomach turned, Cahara did not hesitate. He stepped out from behind Ragnvaldr to whip the handful of poison-tipped darts at the broad, bare chest blocking the path forward. The Crow Mauler's pectoral muscles sopped up the poison, and the darts hung from their tips as Moonless prepared to leap again.

Though she was fast the Crow Mauler was faster, and roused, ready to swing the long, heavy spiked weapon that served as his left arm. He unleashed the attack before Cahara could scramble back behind Ragnvaldr. Even without his eyes, the former captain's left arm was powerful. He did not need to see to twist at the hips and strike.

Instinct brought Cahara's arms up to shield his face, and instinct told Cahara to step back when he heard the heavy metal rushing towards him. He wasn't fast enough. This was the second time he had not been fast enough in this place.

The maul's rust-tipped teeth punched through Cahara's leather glove to snare his flesh, and the force of the swing knocked a cry from him, sweeping him off his feet. Where it pulled away rang with fire, sickness sprouting inside of his flesh like roots in soil, whatever was on that weapon was in him now, it was climbing a ladder made of his bones, rope made of his blood vessels, it was going to keep climbing until it found his heart, just like the hunger in this place was pervasive and unnatural the sickness was pervasive and unnatural, he was going to die he knew that when he heard Ragnvaldr grunt with the impact of the weapon against his own arm. As Ragnvaldr drew his blade and struck, hard, the leap and the chomp and the tear of the hound following her master's weapon to a higher, deadlier place, Cahara had no idea if they were triumphant. He couldn't breathe. Every beat of his heart told him what he could not ignore.

And then a hand around his uninjured arm. Warmth at his side.

"Breathe."

"I'm going to die... I'm going to fucking die--"

Ragnvaldr grabbed the sides of Cahara's head, angling his eyes, anchoring him to the piss-reek and the death-choked stone and his own cursed body. When Ragnvaldr inhaled, Cahara nodded and mimicked him. In, hold, out, until he was no longer panicking.

"The changed ones cause you fear," Ragnvaldr realized.

Cahara shrugged. "Everyone's afraid of something."

"Ghosts," Ragnvaldr said, and released Cahara's face.

The air smelled worse when he stepped away.

"Ghosts?" Cahara echoed.

"Ja. Specters. They are the thing that causes me fear in this place."

"But you made it through the mines."

Ragnvaldr's turn to shrug. "It was too far to turn back. If I had, I would not have found you again."

"Heh..."

From inside his pack, Ragnvaldr removed a smooth, dark stone. Cahara watched as he held it over the corpse of the fallen monster. His—its—soul glowed briefly blue before screaming into the stone.

Satisfied, Ragnvaldr tucked the stone into his hip pouch.

If Cahara wanted to get paid, he ought to turn around and reintroduce himself to the pair they left in the cell. He ought to tell the captain his name, that D'arce had hired him to escort them to Rondon. That ought to be what happened next.

He wasn't going to make it that far.

"I don't want to die down here, man," Cahara laughed. It was true. Too far to turn back or not, he was afraid. "This job's not worth it."

As if measuring out his words, Ragnvaldr stared at the floor while he thought.

"That infection will kill you before we can reach the front gates," he said.

Ragnvaldr held out his hands and hauled Cahara to eye level. That well-traveled fur armor around his shoulders smelled so good Cahara took his first deep inhale in what felt like days.

"The yard. Let us search there."

"... the yard," Cahara blinked.

"Yes. I believe I know a shortcut."

"Does it involve climbing?"

"... now that you mention it, I think it might."

They passed the hole the Crow Mauler made in the wall, and found it full of dirt. No other rooms stood between the corner and the cell door. Nothing for him to have been standing in.

"It doesn't make sense," Cahara frowned. "How did he—?"

"Do not think about it," Ragnvaldr grumbled without heat. He was holding his forearm up against his chest, and Cahara realized he, too, was bleeding. "If the things you see in this place begin to make sense then you are already lost."

"Heh. You're right..."

They passed a vast, dark corridor and a locked wooden door; another lightless, heinous-smelling corridor lay beyond that. At the end of the tight hall lay the mine entrance on the left, and a caged doorway on the right.

When they exited the mines earlier, Cahara insisted on picking the lock to the stairwell. Just in case they had to run. As he had seen it, he and Ragnvaldr would carry the captain and his knight would keep her sword ready. Moonless would behead anything that came at them in the dark. That was how they would make it out of here, all of them, alive.

"Do we have any bandages?" Cahara wondered as he assessed the spiral staircase. Up, and up, and it somehow reeked worse than the catacombs.

Ragnvaldr shook his head. "I don't think so." He paused. "You are cold?"

"No," Cahara lied.

Ragnvaldr swallowed his response and produced from his pack a bottle of whiskey. He cracked it open without another word.

"You sure that's such a great idea?" Cahara interjected. "You're bleeding too, you know."

As he glanced down at his arm, the reality of their situation slammed into Ragnvaldr. A blow he had not seen coming. He staggered, resting his back against the wall, drink forgotten. A sigh brought his gaze back to Cahara's face.

"I will be fine," Ragnvaldr said, and took a stiff drink. When the bottle came his way, Cahara accepted it. Would have been rude to turn down a drink from the man who'd saved him so many times.

In silence, they agreed to take the stairwell. It was the most direct route to the surface. Backtracking through the mines would have been foolish.

"At least we aren't going through the blood pit," Cahara acquiesced.

"It is a shame. I had hoped to brawl with one of those lizard men before we left."

Cahara frowned. "Those things have a soul you need?"

"No. They seem a worthy opponent."

Cahara snorted, and braced himself on the landing wall. The air felt no lighter the higher they climbed.

"No bandages..."

"I want you to know," Ragnvaldr called down to him, "that despite our present situation, delving these dungeons with you has been... rewarding."

"I stole two blue vials from you," Cahara laughed.

"Ja, and yet here you are, traveling with me."

Cahara shrugged. "You didn't accuse me of theft the second you saw me."

"We both knew what you did. This place drives men to their nature. Yours is survival. It would be a shame to see you succumb to something so foolish as a festering wound."

"Yeah, well, yours is bleeding. Keep an eye out for any fabric we can use."

"Agreed. Without a bandage, I cannot remove your—"

"Whoa!" Cahara said. He wanted to slap the back of Ragnvaldr's calf with the flat of his scimitar, and restrained himself. "No way, man. It's not that bad. We're not sawing off my arm."

They reached the landing two stories up, and Ragnvaldr glanced at Cahara, as if to ask if he had seen what Ragnvaldr had. Cahara glimpsed the dark doorway and nodded.

Without complaint, he took the stick from Ragnvaldr and held it still. Ragnvaldr lit the oil-doused rag with the tinderbox, without speaking. Were every torch they stole from the mines not treated for combustion, they might have considered disassembling them for bandages. The blood dripping down Ragnvaldr's arm might stop if he put pressure on it.

The flame's awakening brought the contents of a storage room into gloam-cloaked view. Ragnvaldr took the torch from Cahara and made room for Moonless to investigate.

They found no monsters waiting for them in the unlit corners. No ghosts, no decrepit priests. Only supplies, a rotting carpet, and an incongruously clean wingback chair. Its cushion was firm and its wood polished and free from dust. In the torchlight, it looked like a throne.

Ragnvaldr cracked open a warped barrel with his hunting knife, and the torch illuminated a smile.

"Heh," he breathed, holding a metal contraption aloft like a prize. "Look what I found. Your favorite weapon."

"Very funny," Cahara said. "If it was a night lurch, it would have worked. It's not my fault Captain Rudimer was built like an outhouse."

"You want it?"

"I'm not carrying it." Cahara knew he was whining, but damn, he was tired. "It's heavy."

Ragnvaldr dangled it, its mechanisms jingling like a bell.

"If you want it, I will carry it for you."

Cahara considered the matter for longer than two seconds.

"Well," he decided, massaging his aching shoulder. "If it's not too much trouble. Might come in handy later."

The beartrap joined the other weapons on the outlander's belt, and Moonless sniffed it.

"Nothing else?" Cahara asked, as he watched Ragnvaldr crack open crates.

"Nothing but dirt."

Neither saw any use for dried shit. They left it where they found it; and left the room without sitting on the chair.

The hound emptied her bladder against the wall as if to mark a place they ought never to return to and began to climb the stairs, knowing the men would follow her. Knowing they would use these stairs again. Knowing the men were foolish. An endless soul and a tormented soul; of course, they would come back down here.

"Be cautious," Ragnvaldr called in a low voice. "The evil in this place is of pure kind. It's not here just to torment us, it's here to spread its roots into the surrounding world. Even if the dungeon's vile traps and decrepit monsters would lead you to believe otherwise, it doesn't have such grand ambitions in this world. Its interests are already past it. This place is a mere relic from its long history."

The stairs stole more of Cahara's air the higher they climbed. It defied logic. He ought to have had an easier time breathing, not worse. His heart was pounding as if to escape his chest. Punching the insides of his ribs, screaming in protest of its fate. Not like this. This wasn't what he meant when he said a man should take care of his family. This wasn't what he meant when he said he would take the first job; when he assured the knight he could handle anything any environment threw at them, let alone something contained and abandoned like the dungeons.

"What is it?" Ragnvaldr called down to him. A rescue rope.

"Hmm?"

He hadn't realized he'd been walking slower. Cahara hauled himself up the last few steps and braced himself atop a pile of crates. He no longer had the energy to dig through them. His body wanted rest, and he did not trust it with rest. If he stopped moving, he was afraid he wouldn't get up again.

Not like this. Not like this. Not like this.

"Come here," preceded a firm hand on his upper arm. "This place has seen much cruelty. Too much. Let's not add any more. Sit. Have a drink."

"We're almost there," Cahara protested. "Let's keep moving."

"No. We must pause to tend to your wound, or you will not make it the rest of the way."

"You aren't looking much better yourself, there, dollface."

Ragnvaldr snorted and produced a key he had pilfered from a dead guard. It had let Cahara out of a cell earlier. It let him into one now.

"Sit," Ragnvaldr said again, gentling Cahara from his feet back onto the wooden cot. Heavy gulps of air told him a waste bucket sat in the corner. In the silence, he heard flesh-eating flies swarming the carcasses outside.

Before he looked at his wound, Ragnvaldr looked into Cahara's eyes.

"Wow," Cahara breathed, a realization hitting him. "They're green..."

"Yes. Listen to me. We are nearing the surface. You should stay here and rest. I will return when I have--"

Hell, no. Cleared out or not, it would be Cahara's luck for some unseen necromancy to raise the monstrous dead scattered around the place in Ragnvaldr and Moonless's absence.

He scoffed and asked, "Why would I do that?"

"You wish to lose your arm?" Ragnvaldr jerked his chin. "The infection is spreading."

Cahara laughed. He refused to look. He couldn't. If he saw how much was lost, he would never leave. He would lock the door behind him again and lay on this miserable cot until he fell asleep. Find his way back to Rondon in his dreams.

"I feel sick," he confessed. He touched the cold bedsheet beside him, and said, "You sit down. I'm not the only one dying, here."

Though he canted his head, Ragnvaldr did not move.

Moonless heaved a sigh, as if she knew something they didn't, and parked her great backside in the cell door. Four glowing red eyes aimed into the corridor, she saw plenty they couldn't. The sconces Ragnvaldr lit on his way through earlier still flickered.

"Sit," Cahara said again.

This time, Ragnvaldr nodded, and sat.

Cahara wondered what he thought, earlier, finding him huddled in a corner like a bloody rat. If Ragnvaldr had known he would grab what he could carry and split at the earliest opportunity, or if the betrayal surprised him. If Ragnvaldr had been betrayed before, or if all of his hardships came from the natural world. If Ragnvaldr had truly forgiven him after finding him wandering the mines without a source of light, or if all this time he was waiting for the second knife to his back.

Even if he wanted to, Cahara couldn't carry any extra weight. All he would be able to pocket were silver coins, and those would be of absolutely no use to him when he keeled over at the main entrance. A heavy coin purse wouldn't do him any good when he was dead.

I should have listened to Celeste, he thought as he set his lips and tore a strip from the sheet. Tore another. His companion's arm was too wide for one bandage.

"These sheets are filthy," Ragnvaldr observed.

"Oh, for sure."

In silence, Cahara wound the sheet around Ragnvaldr's forearm. Secured it in a figure 8 around his elbow, so he could still draw back his bow. Cinched a knot so tight they would have to use a knife to change it, later, if the bleeding had not stopped.

If Sylvian had as great an influence on this place as Gro-Goroth did, Cahara wondered if every small advantage they found in this place didn't have exaggerated benefit, the way the smallest cut could demand an amputation within hours.

When the job was done, Ragnvaldr patted the bandage and flexed his forearm.

"Thank you," he said. "I could not have done half as good a job alone."

"Can't have you dying on me," Cahara smirked. "You might have to carry me out of here."

"Oh, I doubt that. You are tougher than you look. Would be a shame to have to carry you instead of continue on together."

"Oh, yeah?" He could not help but laugh. "Hunting dark souls isn't the same alone?"

Ragnvaldr thought before he answered. His gaze aimed at the water-ravaged bricks. The dripping of water and the weight of the dead filled the space with constant background noise. Absolute silence but for the water.

"I may have underestimated you at first," Ragnvaldr shrugged. "I will not continue to sing your praises while we are in this dark place. You must rally, Cahara of the South, that I may sing your praises in the light."

"Sing my praises, huh?"

Cahara braced himself on the cot and hauled himself standing. Nothing to be done for his arm, but at least his companion's was no longer in danger of bleeding him to death before they saw the sun again.

Lest he be forced to hoist himself standing, Cahara held his injured arm behind his back and offered his right palm to Ragnvaldr. The way he coughed and swallowed down a laugh, it was as if no one had ever shown him chivalry.

Then Cahara considered he was, in fact, going to die of this infection. Chivalry only applied to knights. To male knights. To male knights over a century ago. The women at the brothel where Celeste was indentured always complained about the practice being dead when Cahara came by to bring her fresh fruit or massage her calves and hips.

Ragnvaldr must have seen Cahara's life flashing before his eyes. He accepted Cahara's palm, and used his own strength to stand. He placed a hand on Cahara's shoulder. The pressure drew him back.

"Hmm?" Cahara asked.

"You will escape, Cahara of the South." Ragnvaldr squeezed his shoulder. "Do not give in to despair."

"I'm not," Cahara sighed, taking back his shoulder. When they were in the sunlight, he decided. That was when he would embrace the man. Not down here. "Show me where this shortcut is."

No room for complaining—Ragnvaldr took hold of Cahara's wrist and slung his uninjured arm over his thick shoulders. Cahara tightened his grip and allowed himself to be pressed against Ragnvaldr's side. To take deep breaths of his battle-fragrant fur armor, his skin, his sweat; to be comforted by the contact.

They wound their way through the tomb-silent prisons, Moonless trotting ahead of them, shuffling footsteps shouting as their heels struck the rusted iron. Cahara counted the dead they passed. Every guard, every juvenile flying creature.

"Their mother was a real challenge," Ragnvaldr said with a low laugh. "Were not for Moonless here I may have been in trouble."

They rounded a corner, and as if she had heard her own name and remembered her own quest, the hound lifted her rear leg and painted the metal rails with her urine. The thick liquid pattered into the darkness, and Cahara decided he did not want to think about what lay at the bottom. How many warriors had come into this place, and how many of their corpses now littered the lowest level of this hell.

"How many more do you have to fight?" Cahara asked as they began their arduous ascent up the prison's stairs.

"It is as I told you before. I intend to collect every dark soul I find, and leave this place cleansed. With time, nature will reclaim the land, and the dungeon will crumble. This is my quest, as you call it."

They crested the stairs and returned to the first of the terranean levels. They had returned to the basement, and Cahara knew they had at least two more sets of stairs before they were back outside, and would be able to feel the sun on their skin. Ragnvaldr's was slick with a sweat Cahara had seen come over men when they were low on blood. They both smelled the sickness breeding in that wound, even if Cahara refused to look at how bad it was.

Before his mind could wander, they came upon a crumpled pile of golden armor.

Earlier, when he rushed through the basement after that damned knight, Cahara saw this monstrosity patrolling the corridor. He had rushed through the shadows rather than stopping to learn the layout of the place. Maybe if he had stopped, or at least slowed down a little, Cahara wouldn't have run straight into one of those guards, thinking he had heard D'arce.

Even taller than the mutated guard captain, with thick grates over his helmet's visor and huge lantern bells at the ends of his arms, the animated armor had toddled in a mindless, set pattern back and forth through the pillared vestibule leading down into the prisons. Based on where it fell, and how, Ragnvaldr surprised it coming down from the second level of the basement.

Cahara could imagine him crouched around the corner in the other room, using a crypt for cover, studying the animated armor for signs of weakness. How he had managed to kill the thing on his own was a story Cahara would have to ask for later.

"Hold," said Ragnvaldr. "Moonless, keep watch over him."

As they waited, Ragnvaldr approached the heap of armor with an expression bordering reverence on his severe features. A thick jutting brow, a jaw one could use to cut steak, all those muscles; yet Ragnvaldr's eyes were gentle. He removed one of the cold, lifeless soul stones from his satchel and held it to the flamelight, reading its usefulness. Satisfied, he held the soul stone over the empty armor.

Moonless was unmoved, but Cahara almost leaped backward at the sight of a soul screeching out of the armor and curling itself inside the stone. Earlier he had not watched closely with the ringing of his death sentence still loud in his ears. He was enjoying a numb sort of peace, the nearer it drew. Watching the stone contain its soul. Swirling, illuminating, proving the armor had once contained a man. Like everything else in this place, the darkness had taken over whomever it used to be.

"Here," Ragnvaldr said as he held out the stone.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" Cahara asked with a laugh he hoped did not sound unkind.

"Put it close to your heart. It will keep you safe."

"Heh." Cahara ducked his head so Ragnvaldr would not see what little life he had left rushing to his cheeks. He shook his hair from his eyes and held out a gloved palm. "Sure. Thanks."

Though the leather of his vest more than muffled the soul's glow, he felt cloaked in chainmail as soon as it was tucked away.

With a decisive nod, Ragnvaldr said, "Much better. Now, stay close to me. I may have forgotten one of the floating beasts upstairs."

"Oh, I hate those things..."

At the top of the stairs, Cahara could no longer pretend. He was dying.

He forced himself to take deep, slow breaths. He envisioned his lungs filling and emptying, performing their intended and only purpose, but his heart beat too quickly. He could not convince himself he was not suffocating beneath the weight of his own impending death. Panicked gasping was the only sound in the dungeons, and it followed them like a specter's keen.

They stopped in front of a cell with white-hot daylight pouring down through a hole in the ceiling. Someone had been tossing bodies down a useless well for what well may have been years, judging by how high the corpses were piled.

"You can climb?" Ragnvaldr asked, grim.

"If it'll get me out of here," Cahara agreed.

That answer did not please his companion, but he accepted it. Tried the door, and was unable to coax it open.

"Here," Cahara said.

"It is locked from the other side."

"Well, then I will unlock it from the other side."

Using his senses of touch and self-preservation, Cahara gingerly poked his tools into the unseen lock. Though his fingers slipped more than once, and he felt his patience waning, neither Ragnvaldr nor the snaggle-toothed monster behind him made any sound intended to rush him or communicate frustration. He leaned against the cell bars, summoned his strength, and pushed up on the rusted lock.

With a scream, the hinges broke free of their stasis. The door yawned open. The passage was theirs.

"Moonless," Ragnvaldr commanded, pointing to the light. "Go."

Her throat imitated the door's hinges. She didn't want to leave them. Didn't want to leave Ragnvaldr, specifically.

"I'll give you some meat if you listen," Cahara lied.

She narrowed half of her four eyes at him before turning and scrabbling up the pile of corpses.

"She doesn't need me," Cahara muttered, finding his footholds on the dead and rotting bodies. "This is a banquet for her."

Ragnvaldr laughed in earnest and followed close behind Cahara. Knowing he would not fall and slide back down gave Cahara a figurative boot to the ass. He climbed as if one of those floating jellyfish creatures was on his heels, scrabbling until he was at the top of the pile. He stood on the shoulders and pelvis of a corpse twice his size, wrangled the edge of the decaying stone well, and tried to boost himself over.

He did not mean to cry out. The pain in his arm defied his ability to describe it, let alone ignore it. He could neither make a fist nor bear weight. He tried a second time, and the fire raced up his arm bone, into his shoulders, like a powder trail was leading it straight for his heart.

"Damn it!" he growled. Tried again without his arm. Tried using his elbow, his armpit, anything to brace himself. When he growled again, it was wordless. He was reduced to a mindless animal.

If they didn't take the arm off, it was going to kill him. He couldn't go back to Celeste with one arm. He was barely any use to her with two.

"Do not complain," said Ragnvaldr as he took hold of Cahara's hips. All the warning he gave Cahara before he boosted him, like helping a child climb a ladder.

Straddling the well, Cahara waited for Ragnvaldr to clamber out of the open grave and regain his feet. His intent was to swing his leg and stand; easiest thing in the world, nothing compared to climbing buildings and leaping from rooftops. The infection disagreed and collapsed his legs when his soles touched the ground. Cahara would have spilled had his companion not caught him beneath the arms, palms hot as the sun against his graying skin. The sun was cold by comparison. Shivers wracked his bones, and the thought of vomiting washed over him, an oily wave slamming into his stomach.

"Easy," Ragnvaldr soothed.

"I'm fine," Cahara choked out, though his fingers clenched the damp leather straps of Ragnvaldr's armor; though he wanted to lay against his chest like a lizard on a rock and wanted to thrust him away, to regain his space. He couldn't get enough air.

He had to tell the truth.

"Rag... I'm dizzy."

"So have a rest," Ragnvaldr said, doing him the kindness of not speaking as if he were dying. "This is as safe a place as any."

Cahara didn't want to rest here. The air was wrong. That wrongness was in his hair, coating his skin. The thought of dying in the grass coated in wrongness made him want to weep.

"Come." Softer. Ragnvaldr helped Cahara sit beneath a tree whose shade was too sparse to be of any comfort.

"Don't leave me," was the last thing Cahara convinced his throat to say before he slumped, throbbing arm clasped against his vest.

"We have two options, Cahara of the South. I cut the arm, or I find a remedy. Here there should be something. You must stay with me long enough for me to search. If I return to find you dead, this all will have been for nothing."

Cahara wanted to protest. All his life he had been able to quit anything that did not suit him. He could not quit this. He had to see it through.

"You will not die today," Ragnvaldr said with an air of promise, clapping Cahara on the shoulder that was not in danger of losing its limb. "I did not come here to collect the soul I need from a good man."

He didn't want to push him away. He wanted him to stay. That was when Cahara decided.

Without his permission, his eyes rolled away from Ragnvaldr's face. Took the rest of his skull with them. He followed threads of sunlight from the sky to the corner of the yard.

"Huh," Cahara breathed.

Without question, Ragnvaldr turned and stood, following Cahara's bleary gaze. They both saw plant growth; the glistening trichomes on the leaves of a blue plant, and the hearty leaves on the end of its green counterpart.

"Are those...?"

"Herbs," Ragnvaldr confirmed, squeezing his shoulder again. "Rest. Moonless, stay with him."

If she pissed on anything while she waited, Cahara was too far gone to notice, or hear, or think anything other than the drumbeat plea in his ears. I don't want to die. I shouldn't have come here. I don't want to die.

Cat corner to Ragnvaldr's destination, a door Cahara had glimpsed and thought nothing of cracked open. A tall man, pale as a drift of snow, with hair as long as a cruel night in the mountains and an expression to match. His robe was the same long, flowing black affair typical of the dark priests. He carried a timeless yet unbattered wicker basket over an arm.

Clinging to what consciousness he could steal, Cahara watched the dark priest shuffle through the yard, plucking the herbs growing between abandoned supply crates and barrels. Meandering down the path to the well, his destination was the same corner Ragnvaldr approached.

An arrow notched and loosed flew to strike the ground less than a meter from the dark priest's feet.

"Hold it!" Ragnvaldr bellowed. A pause. The bowstring slackened as he chose conversation over violence. "I see. Seems you still retain your sanity. What are you doing here?"

"Huh?" snapped the dark priest. "What does it look like?"

"What are these herbs? You know them?"

From where he lay, Cahara thought the dark priest sounded absolutely miserable. As tired and dusty as the corridors within the inner halls, where the priests kept up their chant to the old gods. His heavy robe scraped the walkway behind him as he walked closer.

Cahara's scimitar hand itched. He could not find the strength to grip the hilt.

"If you mean harm," Ragnvaldr warned, "come no closer. If you intend to use your knowledge to aid a dying man, I extend my hand and welcome you to my traveling party."

A breeze caught not only the creak of the dark priest's throat but, Cahara realized for the first time, ropes.

Bodies swayed from archer posts, three on each side of the path between the entrance and the inner hall. Two, Cahara could see without twisting. They had been dead long enough, and they were still heavy enough, that Cahara eliminated the stranger as their source. Even if he could climb the posts to tie the nooses, there was no way in hell he could achieve the same task twice.

"His arm is infected," observed the dark priest.

"Ja. Down in the catacombs."

The dark priest heaved a long sigh.

"Do you possess a green herb?" he asked.

"Here. Show me what to do."

"Don't shoot me. I can't help with an arrow in my eye socket."

Cahara must have been delirious. The grass almost looked as if morning dew weighed it down. In the haze of his fever, Cahara could have sworn he saw skulls. Could have sworn every blade of grass was a noose with a dead man hanging at the end of it.

Ragnvaldr brought his spoils and their new companion back to the tree, and crouched by Cahara's boots while the dark priest hovered behind him. While Moonless circled not like a vulture, but like a sentry.

"What is your name?" Ragnvaldr asked as he held up a single green herb.

Distaste colored the man's pale face. He plucked the herb from Ragnvaldr's fingers and deposited it into a mortar.

"My name is Enki. Does that satisfy your curiosity?"

"No," said Ragnvaldr.

The plainness of the response kicked a laugh out of Cahara. He could not remember the last time he felt so dizzy; as if the world itself, the open graves below them, had grabbed hold of him--were dragging him into the dirt while he screamed for help. As if the dungeons themselves were shoveling dirt on top of him, adding weight to his chest. Even if he could see the sunlight and hear the grinding of the herb, his heart screamed every time it beat, Not like this! Not like this! Not like this!

He could have imagined plenty of nobler deaths, were Ragnvaldr not crouched beside him, holding the slab-cold hand in his hearth-warm palm like an injured animal. Examining it.

"Good news, Cahara of the South," Ragnvaldr said as he removed the torn glove from his arm. "I do not have to remove your arm. You are going to live. This is Enki. He will help us."

"Great," Cahara said, forcing a smile that drained him back against the treetrunk. "Enki, I'd shake your hand, but I don't feel so good."

"This is a poultice," Enki said as he nudged Ragnvaldr aside with his boot. "It will act quickly. Hold him still."

Cahara tried to sit up, and his blood repaid him by leaving his head. He wilted against the tree trunk, eyes wide in his skull.

"I thought you said—"

"It will burn," the priest spoke over him. "I don't want you thrashing about. Brute like you, I doubt you can control yourself even when you aren't two steps from Death's door."

Though Cahara grumbled, Ragnvaldr did as he was told. He shifted Cahara from the tree's trunk to his own, planting one knee by Cahara's hip and securing his shoulders in a firm arm. Ragnvaldr gently held his infection-lost wrist in his free hand and clasped the ridge of Cahara's upper arm in the other.

Compared to the infection, the sting of the herb was not only tolerable but welcome. Cahara winced and grit his teeth, happy to prove Enki wrong by remaining still, even if he did dig his heels into the dirt and bury his face in Ragnvaldr's shoulder. Silence was the greatest retort for a man like Enki.

"You're alright," Ragnvaldr reassured him, quiet in his ear. "I've got you. Be strong."

Cahara squeezed his eyes shut and nodded.

"There," announced Enki. "It's a powerful herb. If you managed to step on a nail or acquire any other infections on the way up, this will eliminate it." Enki stood, and Cahara realized the scowl on his face was permanent. "Now. Why are you here?"

"I was hired to," Cahara managed, at the same time Ragnvaldr began to say, "I've come to retrieve—"

Ragnvaldr closed his jaws, yet Enki announced whose answer he was more interested in by looking straight at him.

"Have you found him?" Enki asked, straight-on as one of the outlander's arrows.

"Ja," Ragnvaldr said. "We located him down in the catacombs."

Enki considered this in silence. Cahara did not.

"What," he asked, "are you looking for Le'garde, too?"

"When I first came," Enki confessed, "I expected to find the prophesized man in the dungeons. At least... a man of great potential. I'm sensing the beginning of a new era following him."

Cahara glanced at Ragnvaldr and found him listening intently. No furrow in his brow, no scowl on his lips. His eyes were not far away and focused on what he lost.

"How do you know of this man?" Ragnvaldr asked, his tone inscrutable.

"I don't know much about him, other than the brief visions I've seen through the mist..."

"Great," Cahara said. "If you like visions, you should come with us." He hitched a thumb at Ragnvaldr. "He's not leaving any time soon."

"Are you two able to heal yourselves?" Enki asked with a quirked eyebrow.

This time Ragnvaldr glanced at Cahara first. That was answer enough for their new companion, who heaved a weary sigh and went on, "You're familiar with the cult of Sylvian?"

"Ja." Now Ragnvaldr frowned. "They are here in this place also? I met the cult of Gro-Goroth in the mines."

"I hear the God of the Depths is in this place, as well," Enki said, his eyes drifting towards the inner hall. They quickly snapped back. "Well... I have to go that way, and you two appear more than capable of handling those guards."

"What a flatterer he is," Ragnvaldr said to Cahara, as if they were alone.

Flatterer or no, he wasn't half dead, and four bodies were better than three. Cahara pushed open the double doors to the inner hall, and Ragnvaldr handed Enki a torch.

"The quicker you move," Cahara grinned, "the less likely they are to catch you."

None of the containers in the inner hall offered anything they might drink or apply to their wounds to hasten their healing. By the time they crept from the pantry around the chanting priests and into the library, Cahara was worried they would have to delve deeper to find the supplies they needed anyway.

The library was isolated and, once a torch was installed in the wall, well-lit. Enki set down his basket and went straight to a bookcase, reading the spines with his fingertips before removing one whose spine read Creation of Life.

Cahara knew better than to touch that topic.

"The northwest corner?" he asked instead.

"Hmm?" Enki asked, already absorbed by his own task. He waved them away. "Yes, yes. They're impossible to miss."

With a shrug, Cahara pulled his satchel from his back and rummaged. He found a fake book in the main entrance library while rushing after the knight earlier. Thanking his instincts, Cahara followed heavy scuff marks to a bookcase with no distinguishing characteristics, but for one glaringly empty space on the middle shelf.

The mockup book fit like a key. A latch released. The bookcase slid back and aside, revealing a short staircase into the backyard.

"Stay here, Moonless," Ragnvaldr said.

She protested, glancing at Enki as if her complaint was obvious.

"He will take care of you, and you need to watch out for him while I'm gone. We will clear debris and head down again soon. You must be patient. Here."

Ragnvaldr unwrapped a thick chunk of raw meat they had not yet cooked, and she sat with a loud thump, tail swishing so hard it disturbed the dust on the floor. Her jaws accepted the offering with grateful crunch, and she turned to lay at Enki's feet.

If he noticed, he did not look up from his reading to chastise them.

"Ready," Ragnvaldr said, and led Cahara into the backyard.

The light was hot-bright to Cahara's eyes, and even Ragnvaldr squinted, once they were outside again. They both saw the massive statue of Alll-mer in the center of the back wall, and the demolished archway that would have led into another section of the backyard. That would, again, when they were finished here.

"Hah!" Cahara said, pointing when he found the path winding through the trees. "I'll bet that's where the cult is."

Out of the trees and the hush and the green haze rose a wooden gateway. A masked woman stood nude before it.

"This must be the place..."

Ragnvaldr rumbled in confirmation. "You know what happens at the ritual, ja?"

"I can sort of see what's happening."

"You are prepared?"

Cahara snorted. "As prepared as I'm going to be."

They could not tell whether the woman at the gate was smiling, or whether she was under the same trance as the dozen or so couples who were writhing in pairs on the grass. Her mask covered her entire face from hairline to neck, and its eyes and mouth moved as if fused with her flesh. Tall, furry rabbit ears stood up straight as she spoke.

"First one's free," she greeted them.

"Great!" Cahara chirped, not so sure he liked the implication they would return.

They wound their way through the rutting participants. The couples were all masked, and their flesh moved as if part of one entity though they were no larger than a pair. Women rode men like stallions while men pumped other men into the grass. Cahara and Ragnvaldr found the only upright body in the yard, a man wearing a matching mask and a modest erection. His hollow eyes followed them as they approached.

"Do you need a partner?" he asked both of them at once.

Ragnvaldr was silent. Uncertain, for the first time since Cahara had met him. As if what he wanted and what he thought he had to say were two different answers.

They didn't have time for that. Cahara grabbed Ragnvaldr's hand.

"No," he said. "I brought mine."

Though his eyebrows lifted, and a corner of his mouth followed after, Ragnvaldr knit their fingers together.

"Take off your clothes and put on a mask," droned the tender.

They followed instructions, removing armor and accessories and the last of their auspices until they were masked, and bared before each other.

Cahara was confident. He always had been. Didn't matter who he was with, or where, or what condition he and his lover were in. They could have been on a stage, for all he cared. They could have been at the bottom of a pit, facing certain death. A lay was a lay, where Cahara came from.

The act meant something to Ragnvaldr. He hadn't said as much, but Cahara saw the thirst for vengeance in the man's eyes. The Knights of the Midnight Sun took something important from him, yet he let their captain live.

Despite what brought him here, Ragnvaldr's body responded to the pollen in the air. If not the pollen, then Cahara himself. Ragnvaldr was the largest of the men in the field. His muscles were developed after a lifetime of hard work, his eyes soft on Cahara's face—not his mask, but the man beneath it—and as the ritual settled over them, neither had to command his palms to find the other's skin.

Neither had to command his hips to seek. A lithe body pressed against the more powerful one.

Cahara was not paying attention. A vial of oil appeared in his free palm. He huffed out a silent laugh and held it up for Ragnvaldr's inspection.

With the same silent reverence with which he had brought the soul stone to the dead pile of armor, Ragnvaldr accepted the vial from Cahara. When silk replaced sand, Cahara's entire body gasped towards his partner. Their cocks slid together, and that was better than a green herb. The vial went away again, taken by the attendant or dropped into the grass or a figment of his imagination. Perhaps Sylvian needed them to enjoy what they were about to do to each other, at least a little. At least to start.

Unable to kiss with the masks in the way, Cahara about lost himself in the green of Ragnvaldr's eyes, the only part of his face visible, the loudest part, the holiest part. If he lost himself it would not be to the trance but to this man. He would have been lost if they had done this beneath the statue of Alll-mer, one last act of blasphemy before they carried on into the darkness. They needed this. Alll-mer would not bless them if they loved each other. Only Sylvian would do that.

Their bodies were battered and bloodless, yet Ragnvaldr did not hesitate. They glid as if following the steps of a practiced dance. Down to knees and palms in the grass. Breath on the back of his neck, he swore he felt breath on the back of his neck though he heard Ragnvaldr's breath inside the mask.

When Ragnvaldr entered him, it did not feel like entering combat. It was his fingers, not him, carrying oil from their frottage; when he touched Cahara, it felt like healing. Like he knew what happened, and how to take it away. The ritual would not allow for moaning. Not like in the brothel. Cahara took a deep breath and sank onto Ragnvaldr's finger, christ it was healing, if he could have kept taking his hand inside of him he would have but Ragnvaldr retrieved it once he trusted Cahara was not lying. He was ready.

And the depths of his partner's breaths announced the strength of the trance settling over him. Beneath him, Cahara trembled. Overtop, Ragnvaldr held a shoulder still. Held a hip still. Massaged, and explored, making up for his silence with his touch.

Trance or no trance, Cahara reached up and grabbed the hand on his shoulder. The hand that killed to keep him safe, when all his other tricks had failed him. An invitation. He wanted him closer.

Ragnvaldr found Cahara ready, and when he nudged forward, he did not have to force him like a rusted-shut door. He slid open, the lock a proper fit. They squeezed each other's hands instead of grunting.

Come on, he could not say as he lowered himself to his elbows, did not have to say. Ragnvaldr followed him into the grass, knees parting thighs, making room. They were gone. They were part of the sea now, they were pulsing in time with humanity, with children who could never love their creator the way that she loved them. They did this in her name. If they did this forever—

If they did this forever, they would be gone. They wouldn't be them anymore.

Whether he had the same thought at the same time or whether his own fears kept him from disappearing, Ragnvaldr wasn't gone, either. It wasn't just anything. He held Cahara's hips with carnal strength, yet even as he drove him down into the grass, hitting him with a bolt of pleasure every time he surged forward, Ragnvaldr was not frenzied. He was holding him.

If they spoke, it would break the contract with Sylvian. Their flesh would stop mending. His arm no longer throbbed, his legs no longer ached, the pain in his knees was gone, all he knew was the pressure and the burning and the care with which Ragnvaldr moved inside of him.

He wanted to cry out. He wanted Ragnvaldr to know this may have been for Sylvian but it wasn't a ritual of endurance. He wanted him to know this felt good. He felt. He felt.

Twisting, Cahara tapped the forehead of his mask against Ragnvaldr's and drew his attention. His eyes. They were present, not gone to the void.

All it took was a jerk of Cahara's chin, a nod of Ragnvaldr's, and he was on his back, lean thighs parted for thick ones, bare feet braced against a hard lower back. This was what they needed. This was healing. This was making love in Sylvian's name. He threw his arms out and Ragnvaldr grabbed his hands, bare skin to bare skin, no gloves, elbows bearing weight, masks in place, so long as they stayed in place and their throats were silent this was healing this was healing this was—

Ragnvaldr's hips jerked, and pinned him to the ground.

Cahara shivered, and entangled him in his limbs.

They were the only ones in the field to finish. They were the only ones to paint each others' bellies with their seed. The books had other uses for their seed but this was for them, they were the only ones looking into each others' eyes because they could not shout each others' names.

Whether or not she was pleased, Sylvian released them. The first one was free.

Stepping out of the gateway, the entire way through the backyard, Cahara was glad they were unaccompanied. He said as much as he ensured the Iron Shakespeare's soul was secured inside his vest.

Ragnvaldr caught him adjusting the glowing stone, and smiled.

"Next time," Cahara said, "we should ditch the masks." Though the smile persisted, Ragnvaldr was silent. With a shrug, he added, "I wanna hear what you sound like, is all."

That knocked a soft chuckle out of Ragnvaldr, who dropped his gaze. They maintained their pace for three steps before a deep breath raised his head, and he took Cahara's gloved hand in his bare one.

"You know what we call a bunny, back home?" Ragnvaldr asked.

"What's that?"

"Pupu."

"Pupu?" Cahara crowed. "Oh, no."

"Oh, ja. A cute word for a cute baby rabbit."

"Those were not cute baby rabbits."

"Well. Then I will use the word for you, pupu."

It was not the sun heating Cahara's ears, but a blush. To Ragnvaldr, it seemed, this was a gift.

If he can keep laughing all the way to the end, Cahara thought, this might not be a mistake, after all.

"You know what? I like that. Just don't do it in front of the dark priest."

Enki must have heard them coming. They laughed as if the corridors were empty.