Chapter Text
***
ㅤ"Don't close your eyes," Cahara hisses, "don't you fucking close your eyes, don't you dare, you hear me?!"
ㅤ
ㅤIn reply, a faint sigh slips from the man's lips, trailing into a thin, wet rattle at the end. This sound comes from a chest that's been run clean through.
ㅤThe body in his arms almost burns like a live ember from a fire. He won't last another half hour, and he's already lasted longer than anyone had a right to. A day, maybe two. These last hours, his body has been losing the fight, inch by inch. And there was nothing around — absolutely fucking nothing! — that could have helped. Just a lone thief with pockets long since picked to the earth.
ㅤIn the first hours, Cahara kept up his nerve. He ran his thumb over the last stub of azure grass he'd managed to rip from the ground near the meadow of eternal pleasures, and treacherous as it was, he thought about keeping it for himself instead of giving it to the stubborn outlander. But when the man sagged and crumpled among the corridors, the mercenary had no choice left but to shove the weak — still a panacea, barely — between his teeth. By then, he wasn't even waiting for any kind of gratitude. He just wanted it to work. And it did, but only for a while. Then the bleeding came back worse, and the broken bones wouldn't stay set under the pitiful bindings he'd tied around Ragnvaldr, who by then could barely drag his own feet.
ㅤ"Abandon him."
ㅤThis thought tastes hella wrong. Almost foul. How many times had the outlander pulled him from the jaws of death? How many times had he covered him with a well-placed shot so Cahara could duck around a corner? Now that the debt had come due, running was the most cowardly thing he could do. The mercenary knew it. And still his teeth ground together so hard he felt them nearly crumble.
ㅤ"You won't get far carrying this."
ㅤAs if the man lying across his knees is trying to say the same thing. His cloudy, marsh-grey eyes are fixed on Cahara. No anger in them. No desperation. Just that quiet, tired acceptance of what's coming. "Rag, are you still with me? We'll figure something out, just wait—"
ㅤCahara's own blood has been seeping for a long time now. The wound near the small of his back from the ballista shots throbs dully, and the filthy rag he'd hastily tied around his thigh is doing next to nothing. A little longer, and he'll start blacking out too: he can already see the heralds of it — thousands of tiny, coloured sparks before his eyes, flaring and shifting and assembling into a motley kaleidoscope. The sickly gold glow of the old City of Gods.
ㅤAt least he's still on his feet. More than can be said for the man who, not so long ago, was okay.
ㅤThe corridor ahead is empty. No cabinet. No shelves. Not even a busted old urn. This fucking place was cursed.
ㅤ"Think, Cahara, think!.."
ㅤThen he sees it — a small, loose pile of stones near the opposite entrance, barely visible in the dark pressing in around them. Usually that means a passage ahead. Leading... somewhere. Definitely somewhere. He just has to try to dig it out.
ㅤThe far edge of desperation. The kind where you stop caring about the skin on your hands, about the stone grit flying into your sleepless-swollen eyes, about your nails ripping bloody. Laying the outlander's limp body aside, mercenary starts clawing — hard as his muscles allow — hurling large stones aside, almost howling aloud when another sharp shard rips open the barely healed cuts on his palms.
ㅤDarkness beyond the gap was thicker than the dark around him. But no smell of rot or shit, not even close. Maybe it's a scrap of solid ground in there. Maybe it's safe. Cahara can only hope it really is. The last stone, slick with foul bloody slime, is hurled aside. He finally peers inside.
ㅤIt's just a corner. A corner with a tiny chest, covered in dust. What are the chances no one's opened it before them? What are the chances there's anything useful inside at all?
ㅤ"Hold on," Cahara whispers, his chest suddenly too full of something that might be hope, crawling toward the gap and reaching in, feeling for the lock. "I've got a bent pin somewhere..."
ㅤFor the next five minutes, thin salty streaks cutting tracks through the grime on his cheeks, he works the lock. His fingers won't do what he tells them. On top of that, the dark is starting to swim around him, and he's no longer sure if the miseries he's lived through are even real. Another few moments, and lock clicks open — snapping his pick in the process. No matter. He still has scimitar. For later, if they find more keyholes like that one, or chests, or locked doors, or...
ㅤ"If only. Oh right."
ㅤThe lid is open. Inside? Almost nothing. Just one thing. Glass sides, cool to the touch, sending a pleasant shiver across the places burned raw with pain, easing it just a little. A vial. Half-full of that blue liquid he'd seen before in these dungeons.
ㅤHe remembered how a heavy, firm hand had pressed the walls of a similar flask to his lips. "Juo se*!" a foreign voice then rang out. And Cahara obeyed, pressing himself against the bars of his cage where he'd been rotting for what felt like forever. He'd drained every last drop. The northern tongue scraped his ears like a blade on stone, but even a fool could have understood: Ragnvaldr wanted him to drink that. He wanted to save him.
ㅤNow, that familiar blue shimmer makes his stomach clench. His whole body is crying out for it, that water to pour down his throat, to knit his wounds, to make each cell in him remember what it felt like to be whole. And under that, the animal terror that if he passes out now, he might never open his eyes again. And something else... something in the air is shifting. He couldn't yet say what exactly it is, but...
ㅤLike a rabbit that's caught the snap of a twig, Cahara glances back over his shoulder. There, a few steps away, the outlander lies as before. His chest, which had been lifting just moments before, is still now. Utterly still. And that stillness — that is one of the worst things Cahara has ever seen. "This little sip won't be enough to get him back." He licks his cracked lips, staring back at the gap in the stones, turning the glass over and over in his fingers. Then he crawls closer. Ragnvaldr's eyes are nearly closed. His mouth has gone slack, thin trickles of blood running down his chin and throat. Only the faint sliver of grey-white beneath his thick reddish lashes tells Cahara he's still there.
ㅤOnly here does he understand what has been wrong all along. The silence. Deafening. Pressing against his ears.
ㅤAnd Ragnvaldr's breath that had been echoing through these endless, tangled tunnels — he could no longer hear it.
*Drink it (finn.)