3.4 - Transition (Patreon)

3.4 - Transition

Sophia

It was quiet.

That’s what stood out to her.

The moments after a fight in the Wards weren’t quiet. There were cops around the scene, PRT personnel, Armsmaster or Militia asking for a debrief, Piggot screaming her head off and bitching endlessly about whatever bug had crawled up her ass.

That’s not what happened here.

They were all quiet, as though they were afraid even the barest sound would set Hebert off again. Even Shadowheart’s half mumbled thanks to Lae’zel were given under her breath.

Karlach stayed with Hebert as she cried, Durge gave quick, sharp orders directing, Wyll to get Mayrina down and Gale to help him search the Hag’s hovel. 

Sophia herself had stood next to Emma and Madison, Emma who had a thousand yard stare and Madison who was looking at nothing but the floor as though she were wishing it would rise up to swallow her whole. 

Gale and Durge walked out of that hovel with an iron crate full of magical items and components and the Lizard just said “We’re leaving.”

And that was it.

No one said a word. The climb back up through the tunnel had a silence that pressed down around them like a crushing weight. All of the traps, the poison, the hexes, the illusions, they were all gone, leaving nothing more than twisting roots and a dank cave as they made their way back up to the surface. 

They found the ox near the exact same place where they’d left her, and yeah, she had shat all over Ethel’s floors.

“Take them, start making camp on that hill we spotted before.” Durge ordered Lae’zel, Karlach and Astarion. “We’ll settle things here and join you shortly.”

“Alright.” Karlach was the one who spoke, nodding at the man.

Hebert was standing beside Durge, who’d had his hand on her shoulder practically the whole walk up here. Her face was shrouded in the shadow of the rapidly approaching night and the tresses of her own hair. All Sophia could see was the thin lips of her too wide mouth pressed together in an eerie, still line. 

“Come on love.” Karlach urged gently. “Let's get you out of here.”

Hebert started walking without a word.

—

Camp and dinner were prepared in the same tense silence, that oppressive awkward weight hanging over every movement. By the time the others made their way out of the tea house, recounting everything that they found, from a petrified dwarf to a Drow trapped in illusions to Mayrina being sent off with the zombie of the husband Ethel had promised to bring back, night had well and truly fallen, and adding to the eerie silence was the utter absence of the nightly chorus that came with it.

Crickets, mosquitos and even the frogs; everything across seemingly the whole swamp lay completely and utterly still.

It gave the creeping dark an all too real… drowning feeling.

Emma was sitting between her and Madison, curling in on herself, head pressed to her knees. She hadn’t said a word either.

Dinner was scraps of that hard tack bread and salted meats. She was getting sick of both by now, but food was food and not even she wanted to hear her own bitching right now.

So she ate, they all did; quietly, mechanically and the heavy, thick, inescapable quiet seemed to swallow the sound of their eating.

It was the Lizard that picked up the plate of food, and carried it towards the top of the hill.

He returned just seconds later, plate still carrying food. “She’s fallen asleep.”

The Twink wasted no time at all. “Right, so now that we can all seemingly breathe again-” He paused, tossing an obvious look their way. “What exactly was that back there?”

Sophia sneered at the twink. “The fuck you asking us for? She’s the one who went psycho.”

“Oh no.” The elf smirked, showing off his pearly whites. “I know hatred my dear. And that’s not born from nothing. What exactly did the three of you do?”

“The fuck makes you think we did anything?” Sophia shot back, only for Madison to flinch.

“Soph-”

“Shut the fuck up!” She snapped at the brunette, the smaller girl flinching like Sophia had hit her, fucking weakling!

“Even if the connection hadn’t been open down there, that reaction would tell me more than enough.” Healer-hands said, her voice cold as ice, glaring at them. Sophia met that stare through sheer stubbornness trying to hide her wince as Shadowheart confirmed that- yeah, Hebert’s tadpole had been ‘broadcasting’ down there.

She thought that she’d had a handle on everything she saw from Hebert’s life back at the beach. That she’d successfully locked it away into whatever mental cabinet it fit into labeled ‘forget about this shit’.

She’d been wrong.

Hebert’s rampage smashed that cabinet, hell the whole goddamn office space wide open, and Sophia felt like she’d been punched square in the jaw with every instance of heartache, doubt, uncertainty and fear of what felt like the girl’s whole life thrown back in her face in just ten seconds worth.

And hanging above it all, through every sliver of memory and shred of recollection was the pain.

Sophia had thought she understood pain.

Now she wasn’t so sure.

It had been suffocating. A choking miasma that felt like it was gripping her throat and chest in a vice that would never let go. For a long interminable moment she genuinely thought her whole diaphragm had stopped working and she’d never be able to breathe again.

And then the connection was cut, severed, and Taylor had beaten the Hag to death with her bare hands, and looked like she was ready to keep going with Emma.

“Listen-” Boy-scout sounded hesitant, and the look in his one remaining eye was troubled. “Whatever happened it can still be made right.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” Karlach’s voice was grave, and the Tiefling’s eyes practically glowed yellow in the shadowed dark where she sat just up the hill, between everyone and Taylor.

“Youth… is when mistakes can be made.” Mullet said carefully, looking around. “We’ve all had our… misadventures and ill decisions. Things we regret. So-”

A shadow stepped up to her right and Sophia just barely stopped herself from startling. When the hell had he gotten so close? How had he gotten so close.

Durge knelt at her side, pale skin contrasting with the blood red of his eyes that, much like Karlach, glowed in the gloom with an eerie light. 

“You can tell them… or I can.” The Dragonborn said and Sophia glared at him, sneering, calling his bluff.

“The fuck you gonna do Lizard breath?” She taunted.

Durge didn’t say a word, just stared at her, with an eerie, unnatural stillness that made the hairs along the back of her neck stand on end. 

Then, the tadpole pulsed.

It wasn’t like Taylor’s, or anyone else’s connection. It was like a knife, a scalpel. Durge slipped through even as she tried to force him back out, slipping past whatever meager defenses she had like water moving through a net.

Her mind unfolded like a literal open book, and then- was slammed shut. The connection closed.

But the warning was clear.

Sophia snarled, her hackles rising, even as the first tingling of fear scratched at the back of her mind, her first reflex was as it always was, to fight back.

“We hurt her.”

Her head snapped back around, shouting now! “Madison!”

The tadpole pulsed again and Sophia winced in pain, she felt Durge’s will overtake hers, a full bodied muscle contraction holding her and himself still as she tried to fight his hold, almost literally pound for pound.

And in her silence, Madison rushed out to say everything.

Sophia’s eyes darted towards Emma, but the redhead hadn’t reacted, still sitting there. It didn’t even look like she was breathing.

Madison started to cry, the whole story gushing out like intestines spilling from a sliced open gut in all of its horrid, gory details.

Expressions shifted, hardened, eyes growing cold, frowns growing deeper, 

When it was all done the silence… reminded her of the one down in that cave. 

“Well.” The twink sounded almost delighted. “Aren’t you just the industrious little band of up and coming torturers! Ahaha.”

“This is no laughing matter!” Gale snapped, glaring at the elf before he turned back towards Durge. “You knew about this?!”

Durge’s hold suddenly slackened, the connection severed again and Sophia could move, breathing heavily as she regained control of her own limbs, the Dragonborn standing as she shot to her feet, her whole body tensing, ready to swing on the lizard.

Durge loomed over her, nearly seven feet of muscle staring her down. His look conveyed one message.

Back. Down.

Sophia felt frustration clawing at her ribs, the pressure building between her temples.

Don’t back down. Don’t be weak. One part of her mind screamed, that need that ethos that had guided her like a north star for her whole life rang hollow in her chest, but it was the only thing she knew, the only thing she could cling to.

And then, the Boy-scout was there.

Wyll interposed himself between her and Durge, staring at her with an expression that looked genuinely heartbroken. “Sophia.” He said gently.

She scoffed… but she took the out turning and walking away, from him, from Emma, from fucking Madison, all of them, the cold night air filled her lungs and did nothing to ease the burning in her chest.

 A moment of quiet passed, and the thing that broke it was Durge as he turned away from her, looking at Gale across the fire. “I did.” he answered the Wizard.

“And you didn’t say anything?” Gale demanded, his arms rising as if beckoning the skies for an answer. “Gods above why!?”

The Lizard just shrugged. “It was not my story to tell.”

“She did not kill you for it.” Lae’zel almost seemed to be musing things to herself rather than talking to anyone in particular. “Weakness or Cowardice. Which reason; I wonder.”

“Perhaps because she’s someone with morals! Something most of us seem to be lacking it seems!” Gale began to pace. “The assumptions you’ve let us make-”

“Were your own mistakes.” Durge interrupted harshly. “Do not blame me for your assumptions, Wizard. At least I know her well enough to understand that she wouldn’t have wanted me to go airing her past for the world to know.”

Gale still glared at him, Durge’s look was one of aloof disdain, a contest of wills and silent conversation passing between them.

And then, Karlach stood up.

The massive woman didn’t say anything, not to anyone. She walked across the camp, her eyes still glowing eerily in the gloom.

Then… she knelt infront of Emma.

“Why’d you do it?” 

Her voice was little more than a whisper, and like Durge’s stillness before it made Sophia’s hairs stand on end.

She’d never heard the woman’s voice ever take that tone.

Emma, for the first time, seemed to finally acknowledge what was happening around her, lifting her head, meeting Karlach’s fiery gaze. “I…” Her voice cracked. “I need to be strong.”

“What does that even mean Miss Barnes?” Wyll demanded. “How did… any of that make you strong?”

Emma didn’t answer. 

Durge sighed. “Ethel was not lying about one thing. Miss Barnes mind was damaged long before this moment.”

Damaged!? 

Sophia finally found her voice. “Fuck you!” She spat. “Emma did what she had to do!”

“Aha!” Astarion practically giggled. “Far be it from me stopping you from enjoying a diet of your own shoes, but I don’t think your audience is particularly receptive to hear what you have to say right now. Just a thought.”

Sophia snarled, flipping the elf the bird who made a mocking gesture of catching it and blowing a kiss back.

Karlach’s entire body seemed to pulse with heat and Sophia could see the slow, steady glow in the woman’s chest growing bright, like a torch in the night.

She stood up, not saying a word, but Sophia could see her clenched fists were trembling droplets of boiling blood hissing as they struck the dirt at her feet.

“I’m going to bed.” She said after a long, tense moment and then turned, marching up the hill, towards where Taylor was already sleeping, leaving the rest of them alone.

The cold of that night as they each eventually went to sleep… had nothing to do with the temperature

(X)(X)(X)

And here we cap off arc 3. Everything is now out in the openNext arc is going to cover a few things, of course everyone's "reaction" to this bit of news, where the proverbial dice fall in terms of how they treat/re-evaluate each of the girls and how they interact with them and of course, Blighted Village.Where absolutely nothing of any significance is waiting for anyone at all. Certainly not any multi-legged friends. We're gonna have a good time! :D