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Chapter Text

The new product out of Treviso was the worst and the best dream liquor Gawain had ever tried. The first time he stirred a few drops into his cider he still made fun of the dealer. It couldn’t possibly be that good. Half an hour later his brain was trying to claw its way out of his skull while the world bloomed into a beautiful, celestial and fleshy horror of melting shapes and whale-song that he somehow could touch with every tiny hair on his skin. It was horrifying. Exhilarating. He’d never had a similar experience before. 

He needed it again.

There was only one problem. There was no other source but Treviso and it produced very, very little of it. And everyone who tried it got hooked, just like Gawain. A single drop could cost a man his hovel, a vial was enough to buy a chantry and there just. Was. No. Supply.

Gawain was an expert in wyvern venom and its uses. Like so many things in nature, it was both deadly and delicious. And wyvern were apex predators, but humans would still turn them into little more than breathing flesh with no power or agenda of its own, using nothing  but their cruelty and ingenuity. The 27 wyvern on Gawain’s venom farm were a monument to this truth. 27 territorial beasts, taking up less space than a moderately sized village barn. Deadly monsters, whimpering and writhing in fear when their human captors walked the rows of cages. Anything, absolutely anything could be taught to fear the cruelty of man, this Gawain believed. Anything but the Blight, that was, but the Blight was de-fanged, withdrawing from the world. It was a new age, even if it wasn’t actually a new age, yet.

People would need lightning dreams to let them escape this reality. So far, Gawain, his wyvern and his alchemist could only offer small crackle-and-pop emulations of the true brain-melting impact of the new thing. He was ready to try anything, he imported rare and pricey substances to mix with the wyvern venom, but it wasn’t the same.

When he got another dose of the true Trevisan dream liquor he rode that lightning dream for hours while the walls melted and the sky spoke to him. The sky slowly turned into Tarvaul, his spy for a lack of a better word, who snooped around and told him about potential sources, dangers, enemies. 

“There is a wyvern-man at the Refarouy ruins,” he said. 

Gawain looked up at him from the nest of cushions he’d lain down on a good while ago to listen to the universe breathe and break and bicker. “A wyvern-man?” he asked. “A man who is a specialist in wyverns?”

“A man who is part wyvern. I saw him fly in and out. And he spoke.”

“Did you take anything before that?” Gawain slowly moved into a sitting position, his head swimming.

“No. Was clear as day. And he had an Antivan accent, Trevisan actually. Thought you’d like to know.”

Gawain grabbed the pitcher of water he’d brought with him to his nest. He drank until his tongue no longer itched, then he emptied the rest over his head. 

“Call in the hunters,” he ordered. “Let’s get ourselves a wyvern-man. If nothing else, it should be entertaining. And he may know about the dream liquor.” 

Lucanis had little interest in archaeology, once it became clear it was mostly dreary work cataloguing finds and making drawings of dirt. The serials depicted it as being a lot more adventurous. Emmrich, though, was in his element and that was enough to get Lucanis interested by proxy. Emmrich would study a new stone tablet with tiny, time-ravaged writing on it and then make excited exclamations while Lucanis watched him. 

He loved that. Watching him. The happy spark in the Mortalitasi’s eye when he had a new artifact to study, how his hands moved as he explained the importance of a certain burial. Lucanis would hunker down on some chair, talons digging into the wood while he sat, crouched and wings tucked in tight to not knock anything over. And then he’d just watch and sometimes throw in a few comments. This was the time they could steal, a few hours of him sneaking onto a dig or into the University. Bringing home a half-monster abomination to the staff housing had become an amusing game of him flying, climbing, and hiding like a teenager visiting a forbidden lover. 

At least on a dig, Emmrich usually had his own tent. With a sadly very small cot. But there was a mocha pot and now, with evening upon them, Lucanis breathed in the fragrant steam rising from the fresh brew in his cup.

Taste it! Spite leaned over him and stared at the beverage. Taste it now!

Emmrich stopped lecturing them on the nature of Storm Age coffin seals and smiled at them. “I hope the roast is to your liking. I got it from a local importer who does a lot of trade for luxury items with Antiva. This one is called ‘Queen Asha’s Delight’.”

“You don’t have to buy expensive coffee for me,” Lucanis reprimanded him softly. “I can buy my own.”

“Oh, certainly, but it made me think of you.”

He said it with such honesty and sweetness Lucanis had to look down into the dark swirls of coffee to not grin like an idiot.

“Thank you,” he said. “It’s excellent. Warm and with a note of chocolate.”

He looked up, grinning despite himself. “Like coming home.”

“Oh you.”

Emmrich snapped the book he was holding shut and reverently put it down before moving over and taking Lucanis’ head in his hands to lean down and kiss him. It started out as just a sweet, quick moment of lips touching, but then he lingered and his fingers crept deeper into his partner’s hair, nails softly scratching across his scalp. Lucanis hummed and leaned into the kiss, getting a quick touch of the tongue and a slight chuckle from Emmrich, who - per agreement - kept to the left part of Lucanis' lips and mouth, where his fangs bit dry.

The necromancer broke the kiss and nodded. “Yes, I can taste the chocolate.”

“That is all?” Lucanis asked with a huff. Emmrich smiled softly. “No, dearest. I think I’m done working for tonight. Will you reconsider and stay the night?”

“I can’t.” Lucanis downed half the cup. “I need to be back in Treviso tomorrow and would like to spend a moment at the Lighthouse. And … I travel at night.”

“I know.” Emmrich ran a hand over Lucanis’ head, looking both fond and sad. “Thank you for visiting me. Even if it was only for two days.”

He leaned in for another, longer kiss. Their breaths mingled, Lucanis put the cup down without looking, eyes closed and humming under his breath. His wings slowly unfolded and Emmrich laughed into the kiss, lifting his hands to place them, very gently, on the long finger bones. “Watch the shelves.”

“You need a bigger tent.”

“I will not make the obvious jokes.” 

Lucanis sighed and let his head fall and roll back. His tail snaked up to rest around Emmrich’s hips. “Thank you,” he said. “Always so cultivated.”

He stood and drew the necromancer in closer with the tail, then wrapped the wings around him, too. The wonderful, human warmth seeped into the thin membranes. He nestled his head in under Emmrich’s chin and breathed in his smell - shaving soap, a tiny hint of sweat, tea and the lavender oil his vest had been treated with. “I will not return here,” he said.

Emmrich moved to look down at him. “Why? I’m here for another three weeks and …”

“I feel like someone is following me. I don’t want to endanger you.”

“Lucanis, dearest.” Emmrich’s voice was soft and low. “I will respect your decision. But I’m not a fainting maiden. And if you are allowed to worry about me, I’m allowed to worry about you. Please be safe.”

Lucanis let himself be peeled off enough to meet Emmrich’s eyes. “I’ll be careful,” he promised. “Treviso is only a meeting, for now, not a contract. And it’s where I’m the safest.” 

Also, not alone, Spite chimed in. Will watch.

“Thank you, my lovely spirit.”

“See?” Lucanis said. “I’m probably just paranoid.”

He stretched, rose onto his talons and placed another, quick kiss on Emmrich’s lips. 

“Please write.”

“I will.”

Lucanis grabbed the cup, drained it and handed it to Emmrich, untangling wings and tail from him. “See you back at the University or the Lighthouse then.”

“I might come into Treviso for a bit, actually!”

“Then … to coming home.”

They dithered for a moment, like teenagers, then with a grin and a shake of his head Lucanis grabbed Emmrich’s hand and kissed his knuckles and grave gold reverently. 

Then he stepped out of the tent into the night. It was late enough that all the students were already off the dig site. He could hear them talking, singing and drinking at their little group of tents on the other side of the ruins. He smiled to himself and padded off into the darkness, lifting his talons to move soundlessly on what Lace insisted on calling his “toe beans”. He climbed one of the pine trees marking the boundary of the ruins and set off in a glide, Spite lending a few feathers and a little strength to the wings. The air was still warm, a steady wind coming in from the coast and the constant maneuvering and adjusting of wings, body and tail was a welcome workout and stretch for muscles rarely used on the ground. 

The Eluvian for the region, found by Bellara just a few months ago, was small and buried in a formerly half-collapsed cave, an hour of flight away. Which was also the maximum Lucanis was able to go without regretting it immensely the next day. He still needed breaks in between, the physiology of a human with grafted wyvern wings not meant for sustained and powered flight, even with demonic help. There was a tall poplar tree that he preferred as a vantage point ten minutes out from the dig site and he latched onto the talon-marked branches with a sigh and a long stretch of the wings.

Good. Flight. Spite seemed to be in a mellow mood, but the spirit loved Emmrich and enjoyed his company probably as much as Lucanis did. They just stayed there for a moment, loosening their shoulders, Spite slithering through muscles and sinews like a warm current, a touch of sunlight. So different from the cold and burning sensation of their first joining.

Food later? Spite asked. Churros?

“I’ll make madeleines,” Lucanis promised instead. “No need to use all that frying oil just for a few churros. It’s a waste.”

The demon grumbled. Then he suddenly went completely silent. Lucanis felt a change in atmosphere, too, something hard to describe. A minute movement somewhere in the dark, a sound that was not part of the natural Orlesian night symphony of chirruping cicadas and sighing poplar trees. The feeling of being watched was back, stronger than before, and he anchored himself to the tree with his tail, trying to gauge where it was coming from. Did he need to move? Or did he need to see the danger first?

If there was any danger.

Something hit his right wing just as he heard the twang of a crossbow string and he wheeled, jumped and tried to glide off - but the bolt had a thin, sturdy cord attached to it and it pulled, then ripped at the sensitive flight skin. He nearly somersaulted in the air, twisted and grabbed at the cord to stop it from butchering his wing completely, hooking his talons into the tree again. He drew a knife from his belt with his free hand and cut the cord just as there was more twanging and rustling in the trees around him. He dropped, bolts hitting the poplar, and tucked the wings in tight to crash into the foliage below and hopefully out of sight. 

People were yelling now, shouting orders. About it being on the ground, getting it. He listened and tracked the sounds around him, gingerly moving the injured wing to gauge the damage. He had three more knives on him which was three more than he had admitted to Emmrich, but habits were hard to break, and so he threw the one in his hand at the next person to yell, a shadowy movement in the dark to his right. A meaty thunk and the trickle of blood on dry leaves told him he'd got a solid hit.

He moved, dropping out of the tree and drawing two more small knives from under his vest and ran towards a single voice. Without warning he threw himself at them, hard to distinguish from the moonlight shadows around them in dark clothes covered in sewn-on leaves and ferns. They screamed and he quickly threw them to the ground, ducked to cut their throat, and then loped off into the dark. 

A sudden bright light blinded him and Spite yelled out, as Lucanis had to close his eyes. 

Left! 

He ducked and something drew a long and bloody line across his scalp. 

Behind! 

He dropped, rolled forward and turned and opened his eyes against the now many bright lamps to pick a target and throw another knife. 

Right! 

He moved back and another bolt missed him. Then he stepped onto a metal plate and he heard the crunch and snap of the jaws closing before he fell and he fell before the pain came. His right foot was caught in a bear trap, the heavy metal teeth dug into his flesh right above the ankle joint, where human flesh and wyvern scales intermingled, and he could feel broken bone grinding somewhere in that mess. He screamed the pain and frustration into the night while Spite howled - I didn’t see! What is it! - and lunged forward to grab the chain anchoring the trap to the ground - and him with it. 

Nets came down around him, over him and he mantled his wings, fighting down panic to not thrash and immediately get tangled in the weighted strands. But they were all around him now. Half a dozen at least, after he had killed or maimed two already. He jammed one knife into the opening mechanism of the trap and forced the jaws open with another scream, the metal slowly sliding out of his crushed leg, then snapped up the wings with the nets to throw himself, now free, to the right and at one of the attackers. Spite yelled and beat his own wings, moving them faster than humanly possible, and Lucanis buried his last knife in the man’s chest. He snarled at the rest, spread his now tangled and half-bound wings, the slit in the right one opening like a rip in a curtain. 

They hardly flinched. Instead they moved in and stabbed at him with short spears, topped with glass heads. They broke inside his skin, rammed into a shoulder, an arm lifted in defense, and poison entered his blood stream.

“Up!” he told Spite, cold dread settling in his guts. “Up!”

The spirit yowled and shivered inside him, the ethereal wings twitching aimlessly. Lucanis’ mouth went dry and his chest felt like it was caught in a vice. He swayed, then fell on top of the dying man. The nets pressed down on him and then there were loops of rope being thrown over him and tightened down. He fought the heaviness in his limbs, strained against the grip of the poison while tasting bitterness on his tongue. Someone tried to grab him, too close to his face, and he bit down on the arm, injecting his own venom in a vicious last ditch attempt to get them to back off, to leave him. 

The person screamed, then was told to shut up. 

“You know better!” someone said and put a boot between Lucanis’ wings. “Looks like a man, bites like a wyvern. Treat it like a wyvern. Idiot.”

Lucanis tried to buck, throw him off, but he only twitched. Whatever it was that they had dosed him with, it was like lead weighing his whole body down, slowing his very thoughts.

“You will … regret this,” he threatened breathlessly. 

“It talks!” The man giggled. Then he leaned down and pulled a thick leather sack over Lucanis’ head. “And now it won’t.”

Lucanis sluggishly moved his head, tried to dislodge the clammy, heavy thing. It was filled with sweet-smelling herbs that scratched at his face, tangled in his hair. He was still stunned, disoriented from the suddenness and viciousness of the attack, the drugs roiling and whispering in his blood, his head. He’d been with Emmrich just moments ago and now he was bound and held down, his breath getting thin, with poison closing a cold and cruel fist around his heart. He’d been so alive just a moment ago. He recognized no voice, had seen none of the faces before, he did not understand.

“I’m not …” he began and was kicked in the jaw, nearly biting the tip off his tongue. Someone stepped on his right wing and he shivered as the rip in the skin opened wider. 

“Bundle it up! You know the drill!”

The leader took his foot off Lucanis’ back, but he still couldn’t breathe. He moved his hands, tried to grab something, to drag himself away, anything. Rough fingers closed around his wrist, shoved up the bangle Emmrich had given him last year. 

“And it brings its own gold!”

A rip and a quick movement and the pressure of the bangle was gone. Spite howled and writhed inside Lucanis’ mind, wordlessly giving sound to his rising panic. 

“Hey, leave it for later! Bind the wings. And the hands.”

He was moved, rolled back and forth like a log of wood as they bundled up his wings and tied rope around the long, thin finger bones and the forearms to keep them closed, then looped a length around the thumb-claws to hold them together. He was barely conscious to hear them discuss how to proceed from there, but someone stepped on his tail and then hacked down at it. The pain was blunt and horrible, similar to the crushing and brutal weight of the bear trap, and he breathed in the dried herbs when he drew air into his lungs to howl. 

The world flickered in and out of existence and each time he found himself in another position. The limbs-askew chaos of Spite having tried to escape, then tighter and tighter bonds until he lay on the back of a cart, swaying slightly, bound elbows to knees, legs tucked with heels to buttocks, hands at the back of his neck and his broken tail lashed to his front like an unwanted extra bit of luggage shoved into a bag. When he tried to move his wings he choked himself, the thumb-claws were tied to his neck and he would have been able to reach the knots, even, but his hands were completely numb and useless.

He was still too drugged to feel panic, but a leaden hopelessness settled into his aching bones. He breathed the sweet and stuffy air inside the leather bag and it, too, kept him unnaturally calm and unable to grasp a full thought. The air became hot. Then cooler again. 

Finally he was lifted off the cart and carried until he was dropped into a tight space, as if stuck between walls of leaning houses. His head was grabbed and pulled, then cold metal bars snapped into place to the left and right and the walls holding him ratcheted even tighter. The pressure on his bound limbs and the broken ankle had him moaning quietly with what little breath his lungs could hold in this position.

The leather sack was pulled off and he looked at a dirty stone floor. And boots. As he began to lift his head, a hand grabbed his hair and forced it back down.

“Easy now!” The person chuckled. “Don’t know if you can spit poison but you better not try. Hold still and this’ll be quick. Also you’re the wrong size and shape for the cattle crush, this is awkward, but also I’ve hardly had any wyvern struggle as much as you did. Asshole.”

The hand let go just to give a quick smack to the top of his head. 

Lucanis breathed in as much as he could, tried to move his limbs but between the rope bindings and the pressure from the sides it was little more than a weak twitch and a tiny kick of his left, unbroken foot.

“I am not,” he said. “A wyvern.”

“Sure. But I think I recognize the pattern. We caught a juvenile wyvern for some Vints a while ago with the same nice color bands! Hey, you’re not under some spell that turned you human, little wyvern?”

Lucanis strained against the metal bars holding his neck. He could move his head up and down, but as he tried to, another horizontally locking bit was shoved down to stop him.

“No no no. You stay right there. Might need a nose ring, huh? But first, let’s sample the wares.”

A pair of pale hands moved a chisel towards Lucanis’ face and he yanked and shoved at the metal bars, but his head was truly stuck and with another person gripping his hair, the outcome was inevitable. 

“Open up or we break teeth to get in.”

A short, quick tap against his front teeth showed they meant it. He opened his mouth and a speculum was shoved in place, then quickly ratcheted open. His jaw creaked and even with the numbing and slowing poison still in his bloodstream, his heartbeat sped up even more. 

Spite shoved himself to the front, shook their head and hissed and spit angrily at them.

“Eyes glowing again,” a man said to his left. “This is some magical shit, I tell you.”

“Don’t panic. If it could do more than wiggle and huff, it would. Just hold it still.”

Spite relinquished control again and manifested, crouched down in Lucanis’ limited field of view. 

Do something! the demon yelled at him. Get us. Out! He then pawed at their face, trying to get the speculum out, but only hissed in frustration at the physical world.

A paper-covered jar was lifted up and his head maneuvered roughly to have the fangs bite down on it. When nothing happened, the leader gave a disappointed hum and began to dig fingers into Lucanis’ face. He pressed down on the still tender knot of scar tissue where the cheekbone had collapsed and Lucanis screamed wordlessly - it was too much, the wounds, the bound and numb limbs, the wrongness of the broken tail, the unrelenting pressure of the fucking cattle crush and he writhed, moved the tiny increments that he could, throwing a temper tantrum like Spite. When he calmed himself down again, breathing heavily and spit dripping from his lips, the demon stared at him, eyes wide.

“No venom sac on the left,” the leader said calmly. “But here.”

He pressed down on the right side and venom began to dribble into the jar. “See? Nice and clear. Don’t need much just for a first batch. There you go.”

He stopped the pressure and put the jar aside. 

“Now, if you’re lucky this is just a stupid misunderstanding and we’re gonna kill you quickly and be done with it. If we’re lucky this is what we’re looking for and you’ll be a permanent installation.”

He gave him a pat on the head, like you would a dog. 

“See you after a little trip on the moonlight road! Got a wyvern tail to catch and fly!”

They left. His jaw was still held open, his tongue drying out. Spite looked around and sniffed.

Smells like. Pain, he said quietly. Then he dematerialized. 

Gawain shook the little vial, watching the clear, greenish liquid cling to the sides. “Try it,” he told Merek, the alchemist’s apprentice, and handed the refined venom over. 

Merek took a dropper and put the tiniest amount on his tongue. He nodded, sat down and stared straight ahead, waiting. Gawain took a swig of water and watched his trial boy. Two sips later, Merek began to twitch, then hum, then he melted slowly into the chair he was sitting in, making small mewling sounds and grabbing at nothing.

“Looks good?” commented the actual alchemist, Marcaon. 

“It does.”

Gawain took the vial and left the room with the softly cooing apprentice and went to his private room. He laid down on his bed, took a dose and rolled up close to the edge of the bed so if he vomited, he’d just spew over the side.

He breathed in the mellow air of the Orlaisian night and breathed out sparks. Spirits rushed by, a laughing wyvern dancing across a sky of oil paints and flower petals and Gawain was ripped from his body into a world of starlight.

He only returned a little over two hours later, smacked his lips on the aftertaste of bitter happiness, stood, got the chamberpot out for a piss, and then stumbled from his room. Tarvaul sat there, waiting nervously.

“So much better when fresh!” Gawain exclaimed. He grabbed Tarvaul's head and kissed his hair. “We will be the richest drug makers in Orlais. In Thedas!”

He laughed out remnants of the stars he’d swallowed, hiccuped, and nodded. “Is the doctor here?”

“He arrived half an hour ago.”

“Excellent.”

Gawain brushed his sweaty hair back with both hands, gave a loud whoop and then ran down the stairs. “We have a fortune to make!”

Spite crouched down in front of Lucanis and peered into his face. 

We need to leave, he whispered, uncharacteristically quiet. Beasts. Are suffering. Here.

Lucanis, mouth and jaw aching from the speculum still stuck between his teeth, just shook his head. He was not a beast, but all he could utter were garbled, angry sounds. Like a beast.

Spite leaned in even closer, nearly touching his non-corporeal face to Lucanis’. Need strength.

He melted away and it felt like he trickled back into their body, bringing a soothing warmth with him. 

Then the door to the dark room with the cattle crush opened and several people came in, one of them he hadn’t seen among his attackers. The leader nearly skipped over in his eagerness and grabbed Lucanis’ hair, keeping his head down and then unlocking and retracting the speculum with the other.

“Two questions!” he announced. “Then we’ll proceed. One: Are there more like you?”

“No!” hissed Lucanis after carefully closing his jaw, loosening the overtaxed muscles in his face and wetting his dried-out tongue. 

“Can more be made?”

He nearly laughed. The only being who had the thousands of years of accumulated knowledge and magical ability to create a thing like him was dead, by his hand. 

“No.”

“Well, even if you’re lying, we’ll go with this. Maybe give you another chance in a bit and then you’ll probably be begging to give up anyone else with your funny little venom teeth for a little time off. Good. Doctor? The mixture you made for the wyverns worked pretty nicely.”

The new person stopped forward and with his head still held down, clamped in place between metal bars, all Lucanis could see were slightly scuffed shoes and creased pants.

“What …” he began and got slapped. 

“I’d like for him to not speak? Can we arrange that?”

“We’ll have to see what we can arrange,” the doctor said. “Never worked with … well … this before. I have some ideas and gave your builder a sketch, but this will be trial and error for a few weeks.”

Something clinked and then the man stabbed a needle into Lucanis’ neck. Within a few moments the world became fuzzy and free of gravity. He gagged on sudden nausea, then his face was covered with a kind of muzzle filled with sweet-smelling, wet cloth and he fell forward into a hazy semi-consciousness.

The pressure finally relented and he dropped through the opening sides of the cattle crush to the ground and was dragged, fading in and out. Once he opened his eyes to see Spite hover above him.

I will try. And get us out, the spirit promised.

Then he was heaved up onto a metal-covered table and in his disorientation he was back in the Ossuary, about to be chained down in Calivan’s work room. He limbs were a prickly, hurting mass of unresponsive muscle and he only whimpered vaguely into the drug-laden cloth. 

They cut and unwound the ropes and Spite pushed into the front, reared up and grabbed for a knife held by a very surprised, very panicky young man. They were strangely mingled, stuck together, Lucanis willing his numb arms and legs to move and Spite forcing them to with the magical bonds they shared, puppeteering from inside their bones. They overshot, grabbed the blade, but held on. His talons moved across the metal tabletop, screeching like chalk on shale, and his broken right foot crumpled under him.

As he fell, he still grabbed the drug mask and tried to pull it off, changed his grip on the knife and slashed at the air as the men jumped away, cursing. Spite spread their wings and then overbalanced and they fell off the table, rolling and Lucanis screamed as his broken tail thrashed mindlessly. He lost time and found himself staggering down a hallway, shoulder to the wall and dragging himself forward on one foot. Someone grabbed his tail and pulled and he howled, fell, lost time again. 

They were crawling towards the door. The knife was gone, but their right hand was bloody. A twang and a crossbow bolt nailed the half-slit right wing to the floor. Spite screeched and cried and finally, finally bled from his bones to kneel next to him.

I’m sorry, he said. I tried! I tried!

Lucanis vomited up bile and water and lost consciousness again.

He awoke because someone was cutting him open. He made an undignified noise, somewhere between a gasp and a whimper, and heavy shackles clanked as he tried to move. A hand pushed his head back down to the cold metal table but he could still vaguely see the doctor hunched over, moving a scalpel with one hand and spinning pale green magic with his other.

“Found the glands!” he said. “Should be able to …”

He cut something, deep inside Lucanis, and there was a horrible change of pressure inside organs and ducts and he tried to writhe, but was held down by nearly a dozen hands pressing against his torso and limbs.

“Fucker won’t stop moving,” someone said. “Hope they get him set up nice and tight, never want to hunt that thing down again.”

He tried to say he was not a thing, to curse, yell, but his throat was dry and every breath was laced with poison from the mask. Spite watched from somewhere behind the people holding him down, his glowing eyes wide. 

I’m here, he said.

Lucanis wished he wasn’t. Spite stepped through the men and put a hand over Lucanis’ eyes and he sank into painless darkness.

The next time, he awoke to a heavy, sharp animal smell. He flinched and wood and metal rattled slightly. He tried to look around but even that was impossible and it took a moment to understand the pain in his face. A metal ring had been inserted into his nose, up beyond the soft flesh and into the cartilage, and a light chain bound the ring to an eyelet in the floor. He was laid out with his neck on a wooden construction like a low doorway, heavily anchored to the ground. His throat was held by a broad metal band, as were his wrists, each a foot to the right and left of his head. He could feel his hips were similarly held down on a wooden beam, his feet dangling slightly off the ground and shackled, too. Tail and wings had been wrapped in leather bindings and tied to something above him, maybe even the ceiling. He tested the strength of the bonds but all he got was pain from the mangled wing and broken tail trying to move against the secure leather belts. 

“Wha ...,” he said and even that was hardly a syllable. Pain lanced through his tongue. A thin metal bar ran from under his right cheekbone through his skin and flesh, between teeth, through his tongue and back out the other side. He yelped in panic and blood and drool dripped down. He rolled his eyes, tried to so see anything that might tell him where he was, what this was. 

There was a wyvern to his left. Only a few steps away. Its wings were bound and it was stuffed into a cage too small for its bulk. Angry orange eyes rolled around to stare at Lucanis. A small tube of fine vellum protruded from its belly and a flask was collecting small drops of a greenish fluid.

Venom. Directly from its glands.

With a terrible feeling of horror he bent his neck and rolled his eyes down to see. 

A tube, carefully wrapped with clean bandages, dangled from his abdomen down to a collecting bottle. 

He went a little mad. 

All his crying and howling and fighting against metal and leather and wood was for naught, though. The only reaction was the hissing and rustling of dozens of caged wyverns all around him. When he had spent what little energy he had he watched flecks of foamy, pink spittle drop from his lips and slowly, deliberately shut doors in his head. 

Shut it all down. Don’t be here.

Spite leaned over him, as if his imaginary body could protect him.

They will come, he said. They always came for you.

Lucanis, unable to speak with the metal bar inserted into his face and tongue, could not help but remember that once it had taken them a whole year.

He had survived a year in the Ossuary. He feared this more.

Spite knew this body so much better than he used to. When he first had been forced inside, without understanding what inside meant, suddenly imprisoned in noisy and wet flesh with a quivering human mind vying for space? It had been a horrible puzzle to parse, to understand, a hated thing. Yet now he knew all parts and workings, knew that soul nestled up next to him, even enjoyed the movement and exhilaration of a bodily existence.

He knew, also, how fragile this existence could be. Knew very well how with bound limbs they were helpless, how pain dug into things that were not even of the body but of the mind. He remembered the many pains that had been wiped clean off their skin, the cutting and ripping, the putrid stench and horrifying deadly numbness of flesh withered in dry gangrene after hanging from their hands for days. This body had been remade often and in many ways and much more than Lucanis, Spite embraced the most decisive changes, although they had come to them in such torturous ways. Wings! And a tail. And taloned feet and venomous teeth, weapons to wield when no knife was at hand, to never be unarmed.

It was not enough. All Spite's determination and cleverness and viciousness had not been enough and they were imprisoned again. And somehow, it was worse for Lucanis. Spite did not understand, but he felt how his human became small and lost pieces of himself, cutting them off and hiding them. He let him. It had saved him before, becoming less in this way, keeping parts of himself buried deep. Spite had been a diversion, then, to hide behind. He helped! Even without wanting to, he had helped, even back then. And once they had agreed on a goal and a deal he had helped Lucanis stay alive in other ways, too. Had pushed him deep down where he did not feel when the pain and humiliation was too great for a human mind.

Spite was stronger. He took it. Sometimes Lucanis pushed him away when things happened that were horrible in ways Spite did not understand for a long, long time. Not until Emmrich and learning that some things of the body were for joy, but could be turned into demeaning punishment. They held each other and took the abuse for each other, echoing back and forth in their shared body, misunderstanding and still standing with each other.

Spite drifted, the center of his senses slightly untethered from the body. The wyverns, crushed and pitiable in their tiny cages, snorted and brayed. Great beasts reduced to things, producing a liquid the humans harvested twice a day.

As they did with their body now, exchanging bottles.

"Not much," one of them said and Spite, incorporeal, stuck his hand through his head and imagined it hurt, hurt a lot.

"He needs to drink, but he didn't the last two times I tried. But also stress is supposed to get production up. Would think this is enough stress, right?"

Lucanis made garbled noises, Spite distantly feeling the clink of the metal bar against their teeth, the blinding, digging pain of the punctured tongue, and balled a fist inside the human's head.

"Stress huh?" the first one asked. He reached out to tug at the nose-ring chain and this different, bright, ripping pain drove tears into their eyes. "Can surely get it more stressed."

And then he moved over, reached out a hand and ran it slowly down the underside of their broken, upwards-curled tail.

Spite hurled himself back into the body right as their heart rate jumped, cold dread filling their insides. Something cramped and more venom dripped down. The human whooped.

"See!"

The hand moved lower and Spite wrapped himself around Lucanis, who suddenly fought back. Inside, his voice was all muddled ideas and bits of impressions and wants and needs, but he had no outside voice to use. Spite felt his will to protect the spirit and it made him warm and hum with honey-golden feelings, but he did not relent.

You're not alone! he promised. I am here.

The were entwined, held each other in a way no bodily thing could, existing in a flow of thought-splinters and emotions and Spite did his best to hold on to his core. Not the anger, the biting and relentless need to fight and taunt. The calm and steady rock of a striving soul. Determination. Survive and get out. Survive and wait for help.

And so they both took a little of each other's pain as the human grabbed their tail with one hand, fishing out his beginning erection from his pants with the other.

At least the second human left with a scornful huff. "You're disgusting!" he called back. But he did nothing to stop the other one.

The one who grabbed a tub full of fat he had used on stuck bits with the cages and bottles, now pressing it inside their anus, pushing in first one, then two fingers to test. Lucanis whimpered and Spite shushed him.

We survived. Before, he said. Will survive again.

And they did. Spite weathered the pain of the breaching, Lucanis listened to the throaty grunts. They each let the humiliation, the helplessness and disgust float around them as it went on and on, pain bleeding into pressure and shame. And when the human finally leaned in after several quickening and haphazard pumps and gave an incoherent yell, spilling his hated and unwelcome seed inside them, Spite slithered through their body, distracting.

Lucanis still cried when they finally were alone with the wyverns. Their limbs shook. Spite let his image appear in front of Lucanis and knelt so he could see him with his face forced to look down, the chain to the nose-ring tight.

We survive, he promised him. We survive again and return. To our life.

Lucanis closed his eyes and his light went dull. Spite slipped back inside their body, held this light and keened silently. It was hard. To hurt like this. He forgave Lucanis for giving up, at least a little. But Spite would not.

He would get through and out and he would rip them apart once they gave him even the tiniest chance.

Chapter Text

Four days after Lucanis had left, Emmrich wrote a letter and sent it off with a student running into town to have it posted. The young elf looked at the address stating Treviso and nodded enthusiastically, basically skipping on his way out of the camp. It was a helplessly romantic gesture, writing letters, when Emmrich was a day of hiking away from an Eluvian and could just as well go and visit. And he would, maybe even before the dig was done.

He found he missed his demon Crow more than he had expected. Maybe it was the added fact that Manfred had stayed in Nevarra. The evenings tended to be long and lonely now with no one to listen to him prattle on and on about recent findings and after seven days of brooding alone over tea and his notes, Emmrich began to join his students in the evenings. He had been afraid to overstep boundaries, but they seemed more than happy to invite him to their campfire. And they had a lot of questions for him.

They wanted to know about the end of the world and how he had helped stop it, which made him blush and wave his hands and cite all the deeds of the other members of the Veilguard. They also wanted to know about Manfred and he was all too happy to talk about the leaps and bounds the former wisp was making in every field - his magic becoming more and more refined, his speech patterns more human-like.

And then they asked curious, unrelated questions. About whether he liked the coffee he had bought and when he admitted it had not been for him, as he enjoyed tea more, there were looks exchanged around the fire. About other members of the Mourn Guard, especially Vorgoth and whether he thought a being like them could be … romantically interested.

It took him a moment while he theorized about spirits and mortals and beings of different kind and how they might view relationships, but then he realized: they were fishing for hints. Someone had noticed he had an infrequent visitor who often stayed the nights and disappeared stealthily. Like a ghost.

He laughed into his cup, shaking his head, finishing with: "Love has so many aspects, so many facets, and we know for a fact spirits can experience love and loyalty, so who is to say which beings might find themselves in bed together - metaphorically in case of those who are not corporeal."

Someone had been watching them, but it had been curious students trying to find out whom their professor was seeing. Another former Veilguard member who was both a professional assassin and had been changed into a wyvern hybrid by a self-proclaimed goddess was probably not on their list of guesses.

He sipped his tea, the amusement making way for memories softened by time. The first time he had seen Lucanis after his violent change had been like an arrow in his flesh - a swift pain without prior warning, still thinking his friend had died to the roiling masses of Darkspawn outside Lavendel while saving Davrin's life. The thin and pinched face with dark, haunted eyes, the limbs covered in rope-burn, dirt and ulcers. And the wings. Quivering and both so wrong and beautiful at the same time.

It was hard to reconcile the shaken, suicidal man from back then with the teasing, warm and loving person waiting for him in Treviso. It was the strength, the grudging but inevitable acceptance and will to move on and do the right thing that had made him fall in love with Lucanis. That and the helpless, soft look in his eyes when he'd told him that he was loved.

He hummed, deep in thought, and thumbed his lip. Two more weeks at the dig site and then he'd have to chaperone his students back to Nevarra and then, finally, he'd be free to spend several days in Treviso or maybe the Lighthouse. In an actual, real bed with enough space for two bodies, three beings and a pair of unruly wings that liked to flap and rustle while their owner dreamed of flying.

"Thinking about something?" one of the students asked, a girl with more freckles than Harding.

"Or someone," the young man next to her mumbled and there was giggling.

"Yes, in fact," Emmrich admitted and enjoyed the hushed silence. "Is it so hard to believe a man my age might still have a lover?"

A lot of sputtering and No! and waved hands later he shook his head and grinned. "I am humbled and also a little surprised you take such great interest in this."

"There have been bets!" a young mage blurted out, Harald was his name. Everyone else joined in a chorus of Haraaaaaald!

"Bets?"

"On who it might be who visits you," Mia, the freckled girl, explained in an apologetic tone. "It's just a stupid thing that started because there is little else to do here."

"I say it's an Antivan," Harald began and was again harald!-ed. "Because of the coffee and the letter."

Emmrich just smiled and sipped his tea. "That's a yes!" Harald stage-whispered.

"But what about …" someone else began, Pieter, one of the older students. He got an elbow to the ribs.

"If the professor wanted us to know, he would tell us," Mia chastised him. "Leave him be."

"Oh, please," Emmrich shook his head again, fondly. "It is flattering. And I admit, kind of a fun game, too. My visitor is a peculiar person, for sure, I can only imagine the different hints and clues you might have gathered. But yes, they are Antivan."

Harald gave a little happy Yes! at that.

"Let's make a deal," Emmrich said slowly. "Whoever finishes the first object drawing tomorrow gets to ask another question."

"That is …" began Mia, but was drowned out by the gleeful crowing of the rest.

They spent six more days like this. His students learned his visitor was male, human, not entirely human, that he was younger than Emmrich, not a mage, and yet still able to fly. The last question had surprised him, but Pieter had such a mischievous grin that he decided to not ask more, but tell Lucanis they had been far less inconspicuous than they had thought.

Lucanis, who did not write back. So, having worked hard the last few days, Emmrich told his students to take a day off and go into Refarouy proper to enjoy themselves while he got out his hiking boots and marched through the warm Orlesian woods to the cave with the eluvian.

Tired and with burrs stuck to his robes he arrived in the Lighthouse to the soft greeting of the Caretaker.

"Is anyone else here?" Emmrich asked.

"No, dweller, you are the only mortal."

It was rare these days to find any of the Veilguard in the Lighthouse, as they all had their lives to live and their jobs to do and that was all well and good, but Emmrich still felt a slight pang of melancholy at the empty place. Harding's plants were still flourishing, at least. And some wisps still hung around Neve's former study.

And so he turned around, crossed the floating islands of the Crossroads again and stepped through the eluvian for Treviso.

Within less than a minute of arriving on the busy rafters of the Cantori Diamond, Teia came drifting through the other Crows towards him while Emmrich was still trying disengage from a sales-pitch for knives from a young Fledgling.

"Emmrich!" she called out to him and then hugged him with the uncomplicated friendliness that marked her as an outlier among her kind. He hugged her back and then stilled when she asked: "What brings you here?"

"Visiting the Wyvern," he said, teasing her with the nickname she'd coined for Lucanis. She drew back and looked at him with a furrowed brow.

"He's not here," she said. "I assumed he stayed with you for longer."

The light and happy feeling her hug had teased out from behind Emmrich's ribs turned into cold dread.

"He left for the eluvian, saying he wanted to return to Treviso. Fourteen days ago."

"Maker."

Teia stopped, all her many tiny movements, the craning of her neck, her hands that talked as much as her mouth, everything paused. Emmrich waited with baited breath.

"We need to tell Illario," she said quietly. "No further word to anyone else."

She grabbed his hand and began to fake happy small talk, asking about his dig and the weather in Orlais and commenting on his skin gaining some color and he stumbled after her, his tongue too numb to answer.

Lucanis was missing. He had been missing for fourteen days and he hadn't known.

Viago stared at the little vial while he changed his gloves, but it did not have the decency to disintegrate. Giolo, his newest apprentice and less than promising with his nervous disposition, stood next to the tiny glass bottle and shuffled his feet.

"Strange enough a seller could go undetected for this long," Viago commented. "Stranger still he claims to have 'Antivan wyvern venom'. There are no wyvern in Antiva. Yet an imbecile could not have stayed in business so long. Did you clean the set-up with 98 proof alcohol?"

"I did, Talon."

"Fine."

He turned to his row of flasks and glass bowls and inspected them. They seemed clean. He still wiped them down once more himself, then grimaced and changed gloves again. He hated having apprentices, but since he was the master poisoner he had to train the Fledgling poisoners. And deal out the immunization regimen. He'd rather do that.

He took a thoroughly cleaned dropper and began to divvy up the tiny amount of venom for several different tests. "This is not raw venom," he commented. "The viscosity is off."

"Drugs then?" Giolo asked.

"Drugs," Viago scoffed. He added the test substances and watched the colors, crystals and reactions. Definitely wyvern venom, alchemically treated to be used as a hallucinogenic and mood-altering substance. And yet something was off.

He took no notes. He just nodded, played it nonchalant. "Could you please get me a batch of distilled water from downstairs?" he asked and Giolo nodded and ran off. As soon as he was out of earshot, Viago went to one of the many cabinets full of flasks and opened it with a small, silver key. Everything seemed accounted for. He lifted several bottles marked simply L.D. and shook them.

Colored water.

He looked at the lock. No sign of tampering, but then again, picking locks was one of the first things taught to Fledglings. He closed the cabinet, locked it and walked towards the exit of his home. As he came past Viola, one of his more promising students, he waved her over.

"Giolo is in the cellar. Take him out and get him ready for questioning."

She gaped, then nodded. Good girl.

He grabbed his cane, stepped outside, hailed a gondola and paid extra to hurry over to the Dellamorte villa, pursing his lips at the ostentatious wealth on display. He'd grown up at the king's court and it had been less decadently rich than the First House of Crows.

He didn't let anyone stop him and marched up the marble staircases and down a hallway, trailing apologetic but increasingly angry retainers until he shoved open the doors to Illario's study.

To his surprise, Teia was there. As was Lucanis' necromancer, Volkarin.

Illario stood and looked at him, eyebrows raised in laconic question.

"We have a venom leak," Viago explained. Then he realized he was still wearing his lab gloves and grimaced, peeling them off.

Illario waved at his troops and they apologized, removed themselves and closed the door behind them.

"Explain," the First Talon said.

"I have reason to think one of my apprentices has stolen wyvern venom from my lab and sold it to people who have used it to create drugs," Viago explained in clipped tones while changing gloves. He always had a spare pare with him. "A probably very potent drug according to my first series of tests, no wonder since the hallucinogenic compounds are highly concentrated in the venom in question. It is a very special wyvern after all."

He looked up, having drawn the lamb leather gloves on tight until there was no wrinkle left, and frowned. Volkarin was even paler than usual and his eyes were unsteady. He seemed shaken. Teia and Illario looked angry.

"What?" he asked.

"Lucanis is missing," Teia said softly. "Has been missing for a while but no one knew."

That would explain it.

Viago nodded, took a deep breath and nodded again. "I do have my apprentice in custody. And we will bring in the seller. If you want to look into it? I cannot believe this would be coincidental."

"We will look into it," Illario said with a slight growl as he sat back down.

"This … what does this mean?" The necromancer looked back and forth between them. "Certainly we are looking at someone more powerful than some drug dealers?"

Teia put a hand on his shoulder and leaned in, to look into his face. It was a trick of hers, her giant doe eyes made everyone feel calmer and listened to. "It might be strange coincidence," she said. "But we should look at every bit of evidence we have, no?"

"We should." The necromancer settled down. Viago pulled over a chair for himself and sat down next to Teia. Illario leaned forward, hands steepled and elbows on his desk where letters and Contracts lay ignored for the moment.

"So. What do we know so far?"

And as Emmrich began to haltingly tell them about Lucanis' last visit, his feeling of being watched, a gnawing, horrible feeling began to settle in Viago's gut. A premonition. A dread he had last felt when battling gods. How could a man as able and deadly as Lucanis, armed not only with knowledge, training and a good amount of weapons, but with wings and venom teeth, disappear so completely?

He tapped his gloved fingertips against each other, trying not to fidget worse. He needed to go back to his lab. Test the venom drug.

Because … it had been fresh.

Fresher than it should have been if it was made from the stolen samples.

It was not in Spite's nature to be soft. He was the gnashing teeth, the vow of revenge, the stubbornness in the face of defeat. Or that was how he was born, changed, became Spite in the first place. Railing against his prison of flesh and the prison of bars and chains and pain beyond that and then the prison of memory and nightmare within.

It should not be in his nature, to be caring.

And yet he had to be. For Lucanis did no longer care for himself. He would not drink or eat, not think or plan or move. He just existed and even that was without will, without purpose. Spite tried to coax him into reacting, paced, yelled, complained, begged. Lucanis just stared, eyes half closed, at the ground and the puddle of bloody and then no longer bloody drool collecting next to the hook for the nose-ring-chain. He was fading.

Spite slipped into their body when the men came around, swallowing down water and gruel when offered. They undid the chain to the nose-ring and let the food and drink flow down a tube into their mouth. When Lucanis had been unconscious for days after killing Ghilan'nain, Spite had tried to eat and drink for them and it had been horrible, all the many tiny wet things moving in a throat, food and drink ending up in the wrong places making him think they were choking. And so he had learned and studied and even with the tongue held in the steel grip of the metal bar run through it, he got most of the sustenance where it belonged.

They fed and watered them, like they did with the wyvern. They checked their wounds and the abrasions on their limbs from the bindings and Spite let them without threatening them. And there was nothing he could do about everything else. When the body was afraid, when Lucanis was afraid, the drip of venom from his belly became quicker. And so they hurt them. Never much, but always cruel. Ripping out scales. Pulling the chain to the nose-ring. Touching them where they never should, pinching and searching and laughing at the mewling and flinching. The one who came back again and again to grab their tail and shove himself inside, rocking in stupid and sweaty animal need, enjoying their pain and humiliation while he moaned and laughed like he was telling himself a joke.

But they never spoke to them and Lucanis could not talk. In the Ossuary, they had been in pain and often tied up, even presented like an object of art in their suffering, unable to move. But Zara and Calivan and all the rest had talked to them. Used Lucanis' name and called him demon, taunted and provoked.

It had to be that. The lack of words. And so, when they were alone but for the wyverns suffering alongside with them, Spite drifted out of their body and sat down next to Lucanis' face and repeated the stories others had read to them when they were sick or Spite was bored at night. He knew all the words, safely ensconced in the light and memory of his being, but he was not a great storyteller. Language was tricky, it was both melody and rules and emotion, but locked up behind sounds.

But he remembered Bellara rushing through long sentences and then taking a deep breath. Emmrich's soothing cadence, moving through text like his hands moved through spells, precise and elegant and entrancing. Neve's slightly nasal impersonation of rich people. Even Rook, once, ploughing through several chapters of a romance with the blunt efficiency of a fighter on a battlefield, which had amused Lucanis to no end.

And Lucanis himself, reading to Spite, doing the voices and explaining things.

Haltingly, he began to talk. He made a mosaic of the ways to speak, borrowing from Emmrich most of all. He thought about leaving out the bits he found boring, but he did not know how long it would take for them to escape or for someone to come and help them, so he kept it all in. The landscape descriptions. The detailed parts about clothing.

He felt the light that was Lucanis move and he kept going. A tear fell down and Spite reached out to catch it, but it dropped through his ghostly hands. He looked up and met the eyes of his human. They were still distant, still buried under pain and fear and horror, but there was a sweetness there, too, something that felt like a thank you and a hand clinging to another.

Spite leaned in and licked through the salty water of the tears. He could not taste them but he imagined it and moved his hands over Lucanis' hair, soothing, like Emmrich often did.

And then he kept telling the stories, stopping only to let Lucanis sleep or to take over to eat and drink and let them clean and check the body. Or to take the pain.

They would survive this and among all the anger and resentfulness Spite smelled pride. His own pride.

His voice was a lifeline. His. In the dark of nightmare-riddled sleep he purred to himself while peeling the worst of the sticky memories and circling spirits from the Fade around Lucanis.

Spite was doing good.

He was being good.

And he loved it as fervently as he hated the cruelty he was fighting with just a voice and stories.

Viago watched as Teia sidled up to the alchemist. The slight, pale, and unhealthy looking man pretended to be checking the wares of an herb vendor, ignoring the elf in her casual getup of high-waisted blue silk pants and a deep-cut, loose white linen shirt. He knew something was up, then, no-one ignored Teia otherwise.

She leaned in and whispered something into his ear. He looked up and went even paler when she smiled. Spilling apologies, he tried to disengage and move away from the stall and the market, and bumped into Viago.

His eyes slowly trailed up from the gloved hand gripping his elbow to Viago's eyes.

"I'm sorry," the man said meekly.

"What for?" asked Teia, leaning over his shoulder. "Did you do something wrong?"

"I … bumped into you?" He nervously wet his lip.

"Try again," said Viago and clicked his fingers. Not easy in gloves. Viola stepped out from behind some lovely gobelins for sale on the next stall and dragged Giolo with her. Giolo with his bruised face and one pinky missing, which Viola showed off by lifting his right hand.

The alchemist swallowed with an audible clicking noise.

"I'm sorry for selling the poison without informing House de Riva?" he asked tentatively. "I am not Antivan. I apologize for misunderstanding local customs. Please. We surely can reach an agreement?"

"We can," Teia purred. "Come with us, we'll talk about it over a glass of wine."

They moved into a small trattoria where they had reserved the terrace overlooking the canal in the back. Viago poured wine for the alchemist and offered the glass to the tiny, sweaty man. He took it. looked into the purple depths of the drink and then back up at the Crows seated across from and next to him. Viola and the miserable Giolo sat next to the exit. Viago lifted a single brow, daring the man to wonder about poison.

The alchemist drank.

"I will make this quick and easy," Teia said. "We want to know where you get the venom from. The new batches, that you sell as Antivan wyvern. That is all. Afterwards we may come to an agreement for your sales in this city."

The man shivered.

"Please," he whispered. "I have family."

Viago leaned across the table. "So do I," he hissed. "And right now I'm looking for a brother of mine. So help us and I might let you live."

"Pleaaaaase." Teia jumped in, as always playing the sweet and calm counterpoint to his intensity. "No threats necessary, right? But my good friend here is right. We are looking for a brother. And we are the nice ones. You do not want to talk to Illario. Last one to hurt his family got his face smashed in with a hammer after spending a few months at the tender mercies of the guards at Velabanchel."

She stopped, pursed her lips. "Wait, you're not Antivan. Do you know Velabanchel? The prison? Or the First Talon Illario Dellamorte, the Bloody Handed?"

She was laying it on a bit thick now. But it seemed to work as the alchemist cringed down even further.

"They will kill me if I …"

"They might, but we certainly will if you don't." Teia said it sweetly, like discussing the quality of the wine. She leaned back, crossed her legs and smiled.

"We just need to watch and do nothing."

The man looked at the glass of wine and actually started to cry.

"An importer in Orlais," he said. "He's the middle man. Arnauld Silèm. In Refarouy."

"Wellll done," Teia praised him and stood. "I trust you have this handled?"

"Sure, my love," Viago said and kissed her hand. She giggled.

"I'll make travel arrangements and let Illario know," she said. "Don't be late."

And then she left. The alchemist stared.

"You're not poisoned," Viago explained and the man looked up in disbelief.

"What?"

"Not yet. You will keep on working and trading as before. Pretend. Every. Second. Of the day. Or we will know and you will be dead. Painfully. Slowly." Viago allowed himself a smile. "I have some creations I need to try out and I can only use them on Giolo once. Understood?"

"Understood," whispered the man.

With that, Viago stood, nodded, and left with his two apprentices.

"Stop crying," he told Giolo. "You will start on a course of wyvern venom doses to build immunity. You decide on the dosage and timing. If we find Lucanis alive, I will have him bite you. If we don't, you're dead no matter what. So get started. And don't think you can run."

He smiled mirthlessly. "I will just let Illario run you down if you do."

How strange that the messy, lesser Dellamorte fuck-up had become the name to invoke to get the Fledglings to tremble. But it did work. Giolo nodded and bit down on his lip to stop himself from sobbing.

Viago shook his head in disgust. "I need to pack," he said. "Take care of him, Viola. Well done."

The girl beamed at him. How strange it was, again, to be the Elders for a new generation by now. A different generation. Viago tapped the handle of his cane. As long as people didn't think him too soft for his title.

The way Lucanis would have been.

Viago walked along the canal, brooding. He'd called him brother and it had felt right. He'd come a long way since accidentally creating the demon moniker because he'd thought the intense, deadly, and withdrawn Dellamorte had been creepy. Even creepier than most Crows.

He found he missed the new Lucanis. The one who wore gold, invited him to the café not for business but just to enjoy talking to him, his dark and soft eyes always watching, amused and attentive. He sometimes thought back to a time when Teia had, half-jokingly, asked if they wanted to invite the demon into their bedroom, and was that not a whole other tangle of hard-to-parse feelings he didn't want to get into.

But missing him. Yes. That he could admit to. Like family. Like someone that belonged right here, with them. Even more than when they had thought him dead, three times over. He was getting soft.

All the more reason to strike at the potential wyvern-venom-farmers who had his … brother. And strike them hard.

Emmrich looked around at his students. They seemed happy, ready to work, relaxed. Mia's freckles had nearly banded together from the sunlight she got while her eyebrows had been bleached until they almost disappeared. He was about to maybe, probably ruin their day and he hesitated, then chided himself internally for it. It was wrong to ask his students for help, yes, but considering the circumstances, NOT doing it would be worse.

"My friend is missing," he started right into it. There was a little confusion and muttering, then Pieter lifted a hand.

"Your Antivan friend?" he asked.

A cold grip clenched around Emmrich's heart. Discussing it with his students, who had no connection to the Crows or the work of the Veilguard, made it all the more real.

"Yes," he said and had to clear his throat. His mouth was dry. "For probably 15 days now."

"So since his last visit," Pieter immediately followed.

"How can we help?" Harald asked. Not a heartbeat of hesitation. All the moisture Emmrich was missing in his mouth seemed to have migrated to his eyes.

"You …" he began and had to stop to breathe and nod and wait for a second.

"You were very diligent in tracking his comings and goings," he then said quickly. "So if you have any information on where he might have gone, please, please share it."

Mia took a step forward and looked around, worrying her lower lip. Then she nodded. "Good. Yarkub, you found the roosting tree. Let's start there."

They all muttered, nodded, grabbed satchels and bags and Yarkub, a short and stocky young man with already thinning hair and a full beard at only nineteen years old, moved to the front of the milling crowd.

"There is a tree," he began in his soothing, low voice. "With claw-marks and broken twigs a little more than half an hour on foot from here. A big, flying … being stops there regularly. Usually on nights you have a visitor." He blushed furiously now, Nevarran pale like Emmrich.

"It was just a harmless way to pass the time, Professor," he said with downcast eyes. "I know it must seem like… crossing boundaries. I swear we never meant to… I don't know. We're sorry."

"Don't be," Emmrich said, his voice rough. He felt the strong need to hug himself. All these young people, who had come here just to learn and get his signature on their documents for the University of Cumberland acting, in every way, like they cared for him. About him. And not just him, for Lucanis, although they never met him, didn't know him, as well. This kindness, as nosy and a little strange as it was, threatened to overwhelm him. An ounce of light adding to the tons of horror and apprehension he'd been feeling since Teia had let slip that Lucanis never returned to Treviso.

"If you help find him," he began, but was unable to finish the sentence. "Lucanis," he then said. "His name is Lucanis and if you help find him I will owe you everything."

Mia moved towards him, gently took his hand and turned him away from the rest of the students, led him a few steps towards his own tent. "We'll do anything to help, Professor," she said softly. "What do you need? Right now?"

"To be less of a silly old man," Emmrich said in a near-wail. Mia bit her lip again.

"A hug?" she offered. "I know this is inappropriate, but just as friends, not as teacher and student, maybe?"

He stared down at her, her face wavering with his unshed tears, and decided to ignore propriety. "Yes," he said and then began to actually cry when she moved in and slung her arms around him. He leaned down, wrapped her in his own grave-gold-adorned arms, and smelled the waft of summer sweat and chamomile soap on her hair. His tears dripped down on her head.

"You give great hugs," she said after a few moments of quiet.

"So I've been told," he said wetly. "And gladly."

She giggled, then caught herself and cleared her throat. "I'm so sorry," she whispered. "Again, inappropriate, but I would have bet on it. You are the nicest teacher we've ever had."

He straightened up and blinked. "Really?"

"Oh yes!" She smiled broadly, her eyes a little wet, too. "You are always kind, never lose your temper with us, are always willing to explain things again and you both know so much and are ready to admit when you don't know something!"

She sniffed, let go of him and wiped her face. "That's rare. You're meant for this, Professor Volkarin. We as a group are actually banding together and we'll try to hog the next excursion with you, too. It's been so great. Uh. Apart from this. We're so sorry. But we'll help in any way possible."

"Ready to go!" Harald called from behind Emmrich and he straightened his waistcoat. He turned around, nodded at the group and took a deep breath.

"Now. Thank you all for your help. If anything happens, stay behind me or if there is an open line of retreat, you run. And as long as we're on this search, please call me Emmrich."

Most of them seemed a little taken aback and Pieter's eyes went so wide they nearly popped out of his skull, but they nodded. "Let us go then," Emmrich ordered and they marched off, following Yarkub.

It was initially an easy trek, one Emmrich had walked before several times, straight for the Eluvian. Then it diverted a little off the path and up a hill, through denser underbrush and knee-high, dry weeds and soon they were covered in burrs and dust.

"That one!" Yarkub pointed up at a solitary, tall poplar tree. Emmrich followed his gesture and his heart fell. Several branches were broken, the leaves wilted and dead. Long scratches marked the tree-trunk, but even more telling were dark splotches and several crossbow-bolts stuck in the bark, one of them with a fishing line attached that dangled loosely in the wind.

"What happened here?" whispered Pieter, sounding both horrified and intrigued.

"We shall find out," said Emmrich and kept walking, moved closer. He needed to keep moving. He searched the ground and since there had been no rain, nothing but the steady sea-breeze to disturb the scene for weeks now, it was easy to find more signs of struggle.

The students fanned out, too, peering into the bushes and shuffling through the dry leaves covering the ground. Then Mia gave a startled gasp and flinched backwards, grabbing for Harald.

"Professor!" she yelled and Emmrich rushed to her side. She pointed. A single limb had been dug up from the ground, out of a shallow grave, and been gnawed upon by something with sharp teeth and great hunger. It had been a foot, now most toes were missing.

"Stand back," he told her calmly, while his heart beat loud enough to drown out the Sunken Star. "Just a dead body."

She nodded. "Just … mine are usually not that fresh," she joked weakly.

Emmrich lifted his hands and felt the energies seeping through the Veil. It was calm now, but there were echoes of upheaval and strong emotions. He carefully seized the right currents, let them settle into the ground, and then pulled. The earth opened and spit up a dead man. He'd been divested of anything of worth and put in the ground with just some threadbare clothes.

It was not Lucanis. Something brittle and painful unclenched in Emmrich's chest as he studied the pale and swollen face, then the body and the clothes that were writhing with maggots where a deep wound had opened up the belly. Someone behind him gagged.

"Now," he said. "This is beyond anything I could ever ask of you and I would advise you to leave."

His students murmured and he turned to look at them. A few nodded under his stern gaze and turned away. Mia, Pieter, Harald, and Yarkub stayed.

"Just… just so you're not alone," Mia said softly.

Emmrich nodded, his eyes burning once again. What had he done to deserve this devotion?

He quickly turned back around, breathed deeply and lifted his hands. Moving his fingers in the rhythm of a heartbeat, he opened his senses and thoughts to the Fade, flitting bits of memories and feelings rushing over him like tides.

"Let flame rekindle your sight," he spoke to the air and the dead body. Leaves stirred, the maggots stopped their feast and became still. "Let breath and light rise again."

The corpse twitched, shifted, then flailed with its decaying arms and nearly flung itself out of the shallow grave. It yelled and howled, an echo of the horror of the death still inscribed in its flesh.

"Tell me," Emmrich said sternly. "What happened here?"

"It killed me!" the dead man moaned. "It moved like an animal and killed like a man, claw and dagger! It struck us down. Vicious like a wyvern, but smart! Should never …"

He faltered. The head wobbled upon the bloated neck. "Should never have tried to catch it."

"Catch what?" Emmrich asked, both knowing and dreading the answer.

"The wyvern man. Face of a man and wings and talons and tail of a wyvern. Killed so easily. Quick."

"What did you do to him?"

The body shuddered. Fistfuls of maggots rained down like fat, ivory raindrops. "Never saw. Bled out before the fight was over. But heard the bear trap snap shut."

"Oh maker," whispered Harald behind Emmrich, but although he wanted to stop and say the same, to give sound to the horror he felt, he held on tight to the memories and Fade energies.

"Where would they bring him?" he asked. The corpse beat its arms against the ground and gnashed its teeth, but then it spit out an answer: "The Venom Farm. Seven Miles to the East of Refarouy, an old livery stable. That is where we keep the beasts!"

Emmrich ended the ritual and the body dropped back into the grave. He stared down at the dead man, hatred seeping through his thoughts, hot as coals and blacker than the deepest pits of the Grand Necropolis.

"Leave it," he said and turned. "And go back to camp. I need to take care of some things."

Wake up.

Lucanis floated somewhere near his body. He wanted no part in this.

Wake up!

Spite was insistent. He sounded worried, but also excited. Slow sparks of want, of need to help ran along the sluggish threads of Lucanis' thoughts.

I need you! The spirit hissed, nearly whined. I need you now!

Lucanis blinked back into their shared body. It was all aches. Forced into stillness, skin bruised until it opened into sores where it was held down on the scaffolding, muscles and sinews frozen in permanent rictus. His mouth was horribly dry, lips cracked and the tip of his skewered tongue sticking to his lower teeth. He flexed his fingers and made a vague, moaning sound. Hair stuck to his sweaty face. It was hot in the barn, hot and loud. The wyverns were bellowing and hissing, humans were arguing outside.

Spite manifested in a crouch next to him, as he had so often over the last however many days it had been.

They bring in a new wyvern, he said. His sentences had become more melodious, more natural with the long hours of retelling stories they had been read. They talked about it. Moving us.

The bright pink eyes peered into his. A chance. To run.

He couldn't nod, not with the chain to the nose ring pulled down tight, but he blinked slowly. Spite knew. They were too close not to know what the other was feeling. The spirit lifted his hands, cradled Lucanis' face in his ephemeral grip, and moved his lips in to mime a kiss to his forehead.

Need to be ready, he said and melted back into their body.

Slowly, painfully, Lucanis began to move the frozen muscles. They had been here long enough for the broken bones to start healing, he felt the hurt and itch of it in his right ankle and his tail. Knitting back together in the wrong alignment. He tightened and relaxed his muscles in tiny increments, strained his wings against the leather bindings and breathed deep and even into his belly, feeling the pull and prickle of things sewn into skin and organs where they didn't belong.

A shiver of disgust ran over him and he fought against the need to retch. Spite flowed through their limbs, bringing warmth and static, buzzing strength to aching limbs.

The barn door opened and several men came barging in. Lucanis flinched and heard the dripping of venom into the flask under him and he nearly cried, so deeply ingrained were the reaction and the fear by now, but he held on tight, half-closed his eyes and kept his breathing steady.

"It's been real docile," one of them said and Lucanis' insides cramped with icy fear. Docile to be grabbed and fucked like livestock whenever the nameless keeper felt like it.

We will kill him, Spite promised. Make it hurt, too.

"Good!" The leader sounded cheerful and patted Lucanis' head like a dog's. "Secure it, move it to the intake room. We need this space for the extra cage, so get to work on dismantling the thing. I think I'd like him moved to the cellar in the main building, now that we've cleared out some stuff. Too valuable."

He leaned in and flicked Lucanis' ear.

"Hey, I said we could renegotiate after a while, but you know what, if there is another like you out there, we're gonna find it. And I like you safe and secure just like this. Although if you behave nicely for the move, I might think about taking the poker out of your face, how 'bout that, hmm?"

Lucanis forced himself not to react and just blinked slowly.

"Not all there, huh," mused the leader, then moved away. "Get on it!"

He left and the rest went to work. Since the metal bands holding his limbs to the wooden structure were nailed down, they had to pry and heave at them, cursing and grunting like animals. The wyverns hissed, yellow and orange eyes fixed on the unusual activity. Jaws flexed and parted.

Lucanis stayed still when they freed first one hand, then the other, and then shackled them behind his back between wings and tail. The muscles in his shoulders and back burned and he let a dry moan escape. Someone laughed and then smacked him on the ass.

"That sounded filthy!" The person joked.

"Thing IS filthy. Shouldn't you clean it regularly, Maekin?"

"It's clean enough to use!" protested the one who delighted so much in tormenting him, no, them. Maekin. They would kill Maekin, he silently swore, just as Spite had. Kill him for the deep bite of the fear settled into his broken bones. The helpless shiver as that hand ran down the underside of his tail.

Venom dripped and he flinched.

"You're a sick man," one of the younger members of the group said.

His ankles were freed next and then quickly shackled, too. His talons had been clipped, but he flexed the broken nubs. The toe pads felt dry and cracked, itching nearly as much as the healing bone in his right leg.

The bands around neck and hips went at the same time and just a second later he was lifted up by his wings and tail and yelled in surprise and pain as his weight shifted onto different hurts and his face was pulled down by the chain to the nose ring - it was still attached to the ground. Dangling from shoulders and tail his weak, frozen muscles tried to keep his back and core from sagging so he could stretch his neck downwards.

He moved like a dysfunctional pendulum, tethered to one point by his face and shoved around by rough hands. The vellum tube sewn into his belly was tied off and wrapped around his body and then, finally, they swung him fully off the contraption that had held him captive for days and days and let him drop to the ground.

"Think it can walk?" A boot nudged him while he tried to get the seizure-like shiver under control that had taken over his limbs. He desperately reached for the feverish strength of Spite and felt heat and anger trickle into his mostly useless body.

"It can barely breathe. Come on, we got to drag it out and take the stand apart."

They grabbed his wings and dragged him past the rows of caged wyverns. The beasts pawed at the cage bars and screeched, their head-crests flared out and they showed off jaws that had been de-fanged. The thought that his own wyvern-tooth dagger might have come from a place like this had a wave of disgust crashing over Lucanis and he marveled at the fact he could still feel even more hatred towards these people.

"They're in a mood," one of the men commented.

"It's the new one," Maekin said. "She has a clutch hidden somewhere, couldn't find it though. But they smell different when they have little ones and it makes them all angry. Wyverns are bastards towards each other, but they will fight for eggs and fledglings, no matter whose."

They pulled him through the doorway and he recognized the room instantly, even with the noise and chaos going on. People yelled at each other, he was not supposed to be here yet, where to put him, get him up on the wall - but Lucanis only had eyes for the wyvern in the cattle crush.

Where he'd been too small to properly use the contraption on his body, she filled the space between the panels and she fought so hard the ratchets where bucking. Maekin stepped up to pull a lever and clamp the wooden walls down even tighter on the long, powerful body of the creature. Her head was caught between the steel bars just like his had been, and she hissed and tried to flare her lower jaw, but it was tied shut with leather bands.

Her orange stare became fixed on him. Her nostrils twitched.

Two of the men grabbed his bound wings and pulled him up until his feet left the ground and then pushed metal hooks through the membranes. He screamed, hoarse, around the metal gag through his tongue and thrashed weakly.

Noooo, moaned Spite. He loved the wings, had loved them from the moment they had been grafted onto their body, and as the fragile bones and ligaments stretched and a wet, pulsing pain ran down the bound and bundled-up mass of the already injured right wing, Lucanis accepted that they would probably never fly again.

A yank on the nose-ring chain to connect it to the hook on his right and he had to turn his head sideways. His back was to the rough wooden planks of the wall and he had to roll his eyes painfully, but he was able to see the wyvern. She had become still, watching, tasting the air.

"Good girl," one of the handlers said.

"Good boy," another laughed and slapped Lucanis' thigh. He twitched slightly and performed another husky, sad moan for them while he waited and gauged distances. He had leverage, with his back to the wall. His feet were shackled together with a short bit of chain, but his tail was not properly tied up again and the ankle-shackles were not connected to anything.

They bickered, moved around, ignored him for now. The wyvern dug her claws into the dirty ground to pull herself forward, straining against the metal bars, and Maekin jumped to the side as her jaws fought against the muzzle.

Now, Spite echoed his thoughts and they moved. They brought up their legs and then kicked out, their tail shoving against the wall to give them speed and reach, and one talon grabbed the leather bindings holding the wyvern's jaw shut.

The other grabbed the handle for the cattle crush and pulled.

Chapter Text

"Oh that looks delicious!" Teia purred and leaned over the table full of wares, giving Arnauld Silèm a very good look down her cleavage.

He was, understandably, distracted, while Viago scanned the wares on offer. Antivan coffee and spices, wine, fruit, some grooming essentials like exfoliating soaps and beard oil.

"The raisins are on offer," the man said and managed to move his gaze back up to Teia's face.

"How do you get it all fresh?" she marveled. "I miss Antivan food."

"Good connections," he laughed. He stretched to grab a bunch of grapes to pluck a single one for her. His sleeve rode up and Viago used up all his considerable self control not to cut the man open right then and there. He was wearing a golden bangle, stamped with flowers and dancing wyverns.

Teia caught his look, though, and then saw the jewelry too. A very distinct, tasteful piece that Professor Volkarin had gifted Lucanis years ago. Five seconds into their talk with Silèm and they already knew there was a connection.

Viago nodded and disengaged, moving away and around the stall. There was a back door with a lock that was decent enough to take him a few moments to pick while he listened to Teia flirting her way into the back room. It was all very trite and pretty quick, a lot of "showing her the more expensive wares" and her giving that silly little giggle she'd cultivated for this kind of work.

He waited for the quiet gasp and opened the door. Teia had the man with his back to a stack of crates, her second-favorite thin dagger drawing blood under his left eye, her other hand grabbing his balls through his trousers.

Viago moved forward and they exchanged a quick nod. She grabbed and twisted with her left hand and withdrew the right so the man could collapse. His pained howl was muffled by Viago's gloved hand clamping down over his mouth. He wrenched the man up, then threw him down so his head bounced off the ground.

He put his right boot on Silèm's neck, pressing down just enough to be threatening, tapping his chest with his cane. Teia hunkered down and played with her knife, throwing it, catching it after a few revolutions and then transferring it to her left hand so she could stab it through the man's shirt and into his left nipple. He squeaked - quietly, with Viago's boot and cane pushing down.

"We are looking for people who produce wyvern venom," she said sweetly. "Very special venom. You probably got that gold bangle from them, too."

"I …" he began and she tutted. Her knife moved lower and stabbed him slightly, to the right of his navel.

"Directions," she said.

He looked back and forth between them, searching for a spark of softness, a crack, anything that promised he might get out of this. He couldn't meet Viago's eyes for longer than a heartbeat.

"Take the road going East, five miles beyond city borders there's a turn and an unmarked road leading up into the hills. Follow it for about an hour until you come to a ruined gate house. There's a lookout there. Beyond the road continues on to an abandoned stable. That's where they are. Wyverns in the barn, people in the brick building."

Teia looked up and Viago nodded. She stabbed Silèm into his heart and Viago stomped down to kill the dying whimper.

The Seventh Talon stood, cleaned her knife and tied up her wild mane of hair.

"Let's go for a hike," she said and grinned darkly. Viago bent down, unclasped the gold bangle and handed it to her.

She looked at it and pursed her lips. "Repaired. It was ripped off," she remarked calmly. "I'll get it done right."

They left through the back door and Viago bought two riding horses, saddles and tack - his boots were made for sneaking and fighting, not for walking on dusty Orlaisian roads. Teia cooed over her mare and, despite the nature of their mission, looked so happy on horseback Viago decided to look into maybe acquiring horses for the vineyard. There was land for grazing there, too. He tied his cane to the saddle and swung himself up, quickly having the gelding canter out of the town.

The description had been correct enough and they followed the dusty roads easily, but just as they were about to stop and scout on foot for the gate house, they heard screams.

"Andraste's tits," Teia urged her horse forward, but around the next bend it stopped, eyes wide and rolling in panic. Viago jumped out of the saddle and ran over to grab the reins, then he looked down the road.

There was an army of corpses milling about the ruins. Green mist rose from their shambling bodies, Veilfire burned in their empty eyes. And amidst them, his long and bony face overlaid with the glowing illusion of a skull, stood Professor Volkarin.

"Teia! Viago!" he called out in a voice that echoed like a cemetery bell. The undead groaned and whined.

Viago, about to lose the horses he paid so much for, grabbed the reins tighter and yelled: "What in the Maker's name are you DOING here?"

The green skull visage evaporated and Emmrich stood before them, his face grim, but also sad. He walked towards them, leaving the shambling corpses behind, until he was only a few paces away.

"They have Lucanis," he said. His lips twitched in an aborted grimace and he stood straighter, drawing himself up to his full height. "They ambushed and caught Lucanis to bring him here as … as a wyvern, to produce venom. He is hurt and I will get him back."

Teia made a little "oh" sound of commiseration and easily moved towards the necromancer to hug him. The tall man shuddered and closed his eyes, clearly fighting for his composure. In the background, the small army of undead watched them with restless, glowing eyes.

"You could have informed us," he said as neutrally as possible. Emmrich looked over to him and raised a brow.

"Like you informed me about whatever brought you here?"

"Don't," Teia interjected, letting go of the mortalitasi. "We're here to follow the lead of the venom trader. Illario sent us and he expects us to work quickly. Now."

She dug into her pockets and produced a small bundle, something wrapped in a handkerchief. "We found this."

Emmrich took the object and unwrapped it and it was, of course, the golden bangle. He nearly dropped it and raised a hand to cover his mouth. Unshed tears glistened in his eyes.

"A trader had it, he gave us the instructions to come here. A stable, he said, for wyverns."

Emmrich nodded, obviously not trusting his voice. The hand holding the bangle shook.

"I'll get the horses hobbled and grazing," Viago said, turned away and did just that a few paces around the corner. When he'd lashed the forelegs of the animals loosely and grabbed his cane, he checked all his equipment. The gelding nuzzled his hair and Viago absent-mindedly patted the soft, velvety snout, counting vials and weapons. Only then did he return to the other two. He had allowed them enough time for the necromancer to be composed once more, although the man still held Teia's hand like she was his anchor. Viago knew the feeling. She patted it with a smile as sweet as datura syrup. Sugary, but with a deadly edge.

"Now what?" Viago nodded at the undead. "We were here for reconnaissance and, if a chance presented itself, a quick and covert extraction. Forgive me but this doesn't look quick or covert."

"No." Emmrich let go of Teia's hand and smiled grimly. "I brought an army. And the two people manning the look-out were nice enough to join it. We'll be very obvious and loud. A smokescreen, if you will, for you to … reconnoiter?"

Viago exchanged a quick glance with Teia, who nodded.

"Good," he decided. "Keep those things off of us."

"They are entirely under my control," the necromancer said a little too quickly. Viago doubted the man was fully under his own control. He decided not to argue.

"Then let's move," he said.

He and Teia ducked off the road and moved through the light forest. Viago grimaced at the many branches he had to duck and keep out of his face and the uncounted and unknown substances clinging to his boots. Still, he stalked through the trees as quickly and as silently as Teia. She seemed to be more in her element, but he'd rather swallow his tongue than make any comment about her elvhen heritage and forests.

Soon they spied the buildings through the trees. A low, sprawling stable and several smaller sheds. One brick-built house with a roof that was in dire need of repair.

The whole compound was in uproar, people were yelling at each other in front of the open stable doors. From inside came the braying of big, angry animals. Viago had never seen a living wyvern, but if there was anything else that could produce the long, deep-chested bellow, he didn't want to meet it either. Or, if he had to, from a good distance and with backup.

At least he had Teia.

She made quick gestures for Entrance and Back and they moved on, silently following the tree-line a few steps into the forest, where movement would easily be mistaken for just the play of shadows. There was no door at the back of the stable, but two windows which had been covered with tarps a little above head height. They waited a moment, watched two men get into a tussle at the front of the building, one punching the other who stumbled sideways like drunk. Their high, nasal Orlesian carried well and Viago picked up on the main complaint: Not doing their job and getting complacent.

The argument came to a sudden halt as two figures came walking down the path towards the compound. There were a few calls and comments, asking why they were here and not at their station. And then, as the two undead suddenly began to sprint and lunged for their living compatriots, they began to scream and scramble for their weapons. Green light flickered in the shadows over the road and a choir of moaning rose from Volkarin's little army of the walking dead.

Viago and Teia needed no other sign to act. They ran over to the wall and with a quick boost from Viago, Teia was up, cut the tarp loose and slipped inside. The braying of animals intensified, but the quick knock-sign was still clear.

Viago jumped, pulled himself up and rolled into the barn.

The air was hot and stifling and smelled like angry predator and rotten meat. Dozens of yellow and orange eyes stared at him and Teia and Viago had to fight down the instinct that would have him act rashly and, more importantly, irrationally.

The wyverns were all caged. Curled up and cramped in tiny, but heavy metal cages. They pressed their snouts against the bars, flared de-fanged jaws and hissed and bellowed at the intruders. Each of them had a glass bottle secured to the cage and vellum lines leading into them, filling them at a slow drip with a greenish, clear fluid. Disgust built like a tidal wave inside Viago and he lifted a gloved hand to cover his nose and mouth. When he had done his research on milking wyvern for venom, he'd come across mention of places like this. Venom farms, drawing the precious substance directly from the glands, keeping the animals in the cruelest form of captivity.

"Maker," whispered Teia and stepped closer to a single, strange contraption put up between the last cage and the outer wall. Two sturdy wooden frames with bands and shackles of metal attached to them. And leather belts hanging from hooks in the ceiling above. There were spatters of blood all around it and a half-dried slightly foamy puddle below the first frame, centered around a metal eyelet sunk into the ground.

The size and set-up were perfect to hold a single person in a helpless, bent over position while allowing access to their abdomen. Belts to keep the wings in position. And … whatever the eyelet was for. He didn't want to speculate.

The most important thing was that the person that had been held here was gone.

Viago twisted his disgust and sudden sting of horror at what the scene implied into cold and sharp fury. When the stable doors were thrown open, he stalked towards the man who came running in. Teia was faster, though, she ducked past him like a Par Vollen panther and had the man grabbed by the throat and thrown to the ground before he could process what was happening.

Behind the man, the undead came rushing after their prey, leering dead faces filled with unearthly green light.

"Stop!" Viago hollered in his best fledgling-wrangler tones. "We need this one! Lucanis is gone!"

The creatures froze, then stepped aside to make way for the necromancer. Volkarin's face was pale with wrath and fear, his bright eyes shiny with tears, but he moved with precision and control. Admirable, especially for a non-Crow mage.

"Lucanis is gone?" he repeated.

"But I bet he was here," Teia growled. "No, make it a certainty. I know he was here."

She looked up at Volkarin and whatever he saw in her gaze made him stop a few feet away. "And they held him like an animal."

The wyverns were still hissing and moaning around them. The mortalitasi looked at them and opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out.

Viago went over to one of the cages and casually picked the lock. He kept it hooked through the latches, but toyed with it, as he asked: "Where is the man you were holding. Antivan, has wings and a tail. Very distinct."

"Gone!" howled the man. "The new wyvern got free and they both ran! Gawain and most of the guys went after them."

He was crying. Ugly, too. Viago moved moved down the row of cages, but decided one beast would probably be enough. The wyvern watched him warily.

"Gawain?" Teia prompted the man.

"The boss. It was his idea to get the human wyvern. Guy killed half a dozen of us! But he insisted! Please …"

Viago reached the end of the right side of the stables and took another look at the wooden frames. There were small bits of dried, bloody skin stuck to them. It smelled like sweat and blood and piss. The cold anger only intensified.

"Which way?" Teia asked tonelessly.

"Southwest! Please! I did nothing, I just exchange the bottles and ready the shipments, I did nothing to him, it's just a job, please …"

Teia cuffed him around the head and stood. "We better hurry," she said and went over to the cage with the opened lock, checking the hinges. Volkarin was watching her, clearly not understanding what she was doing. Viago turned his back on the disgusting holding area and walked over to Volkarin, kicking the man on the ground in the side.

"You don't want to see where they kept him," he promised. "We should follow the hunting party and get him to safety. And if you please, let's herd the survivors in there and leave one undead. To open the cage."

Volkarin looked at him and understanding dawned. For a moment Viago thought the mage would protest or flinch, but then he nodded.

When they left the stables, the sound of screams and rending flesh followed them on the trail Southwest.

Mia's greatest strength was to remain calm under pressure and do things that needed to be done when her peers succumbed to stress. Which was why she stayed silent and didn't alarm anyone else when she saw the naked, winged man stumble out of the treeline and duck into Professor Volkarin's tent.

The rest was still preoccupied with what they had found at the roosting tree. The corpses, but also Professor Volkarin's cold demeanor as he reanimated the dead man. Many of them were Nevarran and corpses or necromancy were not as instinctively anathema to them as for the rest of Thedas, but it was still unsettling.

Mia, daughter of a scullery maid and only at the university thanks to extraordinary luck and several people taking a personal liking to her, had never had the luxury to be unsettled by anything. So she bit her tongue, excused herself and then pretended to walk towards the washroom-tent and sand toilet just to double back and slowly slip into the professor's tent.

"I'm a student," she quietly announced herself. "I'm coming in because I think you might be hurt. I can get you a healer's bag and I hope Professor Volkarin will be back soon."

She stopped right inside the tent flap and waited a moment to get used to the shadowy interior. It was a far bigger and nicer space than the students had, unsurprisingly, with a desk and chairs and a sleeping compartment half hidden behind a curtain.

The curtain twitched. Someone was hiding behind the foldable sleeping cot.

"If you want me to leave just tell me and I'll step outside and wait here for the professor," she promised. The answer was a garbled word that she barely recognized as Trade.

"Whe …" the person said and then fought hard to produce an "r" that ended up being just a frustrated moan.

"He's out looking for you," she explained. "You … are Lucanis, right?"

He moved a little forward, peering at her from behind the cot and again she was glad for her ability to not show her shock or dismay on her face. Because the rush of horror and pity she felt was like an icy hand clamping down on her insides.

They had been gossiping and creating theories about the professor's mystery visitor for weeks and months and she had pictured a rather pretty Antivan man, and he was striking in a way, yes, with dark eyes and black hair and high cheekbones, but she felt bad even acknowledging his looks when he was so obviously badly hurt.

His hair was dirty and stringy and stuck to his skin with sweat and blood. His neck was chafed raw, his lips dry and cracked. Behind him rose two strange shapes that she identified as wings, but they were bound with broad leather bands so they couldn't unfold. A butcher's hook was still stuck in one of them.

A heavy ring hung from his septum and a chain dangled from that. Like a lead for cattle. And below his cheekbones, in the dark hollows where he seemed to have lost a lot of healthy fat, protruded metal bolts.

He tried to speak again and his teeth clicked against something. It was a gag and it was implanted into his face.

She steeled herself.

"You must be in pain," she said softly. "And you want the gag gone. Right?"

He watched her with a raw mix of hope and distrust.

"I'm Mia," she introduced herself. "I study under Professor Volkarin. He's the best teacher I've ever head which will not surprise you, I guess."

She'd injected a little warmth and humor into her voice, despite the horror she felt. "And I would never betray his trust or hurt someone he … loves."

A shudder went through him and he made a small, keening noise. Then he nodded and lifted a hand to tap the side of the gag. His wrists were also rubbed raw - and still shackled. His hands shook and the chain connecting his wrists clacked with a dull noise.

"I will leave for a moment and come back with tools," she promised. "Just a moment."

She slowly ducked back out, moved quietly for the first few steps and then quickly marched back to the main camp. She ignored the other students, gathered some supplies, a flask of sweetened herbal tea, the salve for burns and blisters from her mother's cousin, a pain-easing drought she'd stashed for her next period, and a small metal saw.

When she returned, the winged man - Lucanis - had dragged a sheet off the camp bed and awkwardly draped it across one shoulder so it covered most of his front. He'd also slumped forward and his head, shoulders, and shackled arms were laid out on the simple bedstead.

"It's me again," she announced herself and he flinched. He craned his neck to look at her.

"Mia," she reminded him. "Emmrich Volkarin's student."

He made a small, rough sound that she could only describe to herself as "broken". She could now see a tail, too, and an outstretched foot - with a metal shackle around the ankle - that looked more like a lizard's limb. A broken lizard's limb. The talons were curled up awkwardly and one had cut into his own skin and drawn blood. He'd walked on that to get to the camp.

She put down the flask and the drought first.

"You look thirsty," she said. "This is herbal tea. Blackberry leaves, dried strawberries and sweet mint. With added honey. And this is willow-bark extract with sugared elfroot."

He eyed both, then got the tea, awkwardly pulled the cork and drank, trying his best not to spill any. The gag clacked against his teeth. His hands shook even worse when he put the flask back down, half empty.

Mia knelt on her side of the cot and took the bottle, stoppered it again and nodded. "Good," she said softly. "I brought a metal saw. Do you want me to …?"

He looked at her and she felt herself be assessed. He seemed to be in an argument with himself, small muscle tics in his face made the gag click between his teeth again and he pressed his hands against his chest. The bound wings twitched and she was hit with the sour-sweet raw-meat smell of a wound gone bad.

Then he opened his mouth slightly and she saw the long, wickedly sharp fangs. A warning. He was hurt, but also dangerous. She nodded. Then she lifted the metal saw and showed him. When he gave a twitchy nod of his own she leaned forward, gingerly took hold of the metal plug at the end of the gag and inspected it in the low light. It was welded on. Anything else would have been too easy.

"I will pull it away from your cheek for a bit," she narrated what she was doing. "So as not to hurt you with the saw."

He huffed a dry and bitter laugh. His breath smelled like sickness and blood. The tail twitched when she pulled on the metal bit and she saw, out of the corner of her eye, the bulging, knotty bend in the limb. Broken, too, and badly healed. Only halfway at that, too. She shoved her sadness at the sight, at the abject cruelty, to the back of her mind, and went to work, her right wrist touching the chain dangling from the nose-ring. It was that or forcing him to turn his head further and her stomach cramped at the thought of forcing him to do anything.

She put pressure and strength into the movement of the saw so it wouldn't catch. The iron had not been properly hardened and she made good progress while his breathing became increasingly labored. There was also a high, stressed-out keening sound and she did her best not to falter and keep going.

Finally the last bit of metal broke with a dry crack and she put the bolt and the saw down. He was already pulling on the bit from the other side and with a low yell and and a wet squelch he extracted it from his cheeks, his mouth … and his tongue.

He took a moment just to breathe while she lowered her eyes. She didn't want to stare. To her surprise, a small and vividly bright orange pair of eyes looked back at her. A small lizard's head had appeared between Lucanis and the cot and now blinked at her, tired. The nose was still crowned with an egg-tooth and the head-frills were wet and stuck to its neck. But that was a tiny, freshly hatched wyvern making a noise somewhere between a whine and a purr.

"Thank you," Lucanis said with a sandpapery, rough voice. He then touched his lips and closed his eyes for a moment. His shoulders shook and the chain hanging down from the nose ring gave a tinkle against the far heavier chain connecting his wrists.

"What next?" she asked in a soothing, low voice.

He swallowed, then opened his eyes again. "She needs food," he said and lifted the wyvern onto the cot where it stood for a moment before its legs gave in and plonked the tiny thing down on its behind. Mia stared at the man, his hollow cheeks and shaking hands.

"I don't know what baby wyverns eat," she admitted. "I'll try and find something. But what about you?"

He frowned, then swayed and slowly lowered his head back down to the cot. The wyvern sniffed at him and licked his ear.

"I …" he began. He then breathed through clenched teeth, shivering. Tears shone in his eyes. Mia could see how the scaffolding of immediate survival was crumbling and the horrors of whatever he had been through began to clamor for attention.

She acted on instinct and put one of her hands on his. Just a soft and light contact. She willed her fingers to be warm, a trick she had learned massaging her mother's aching shoulders. He sucked in air and stilled, then he slowly closed his eyes.

"I got away," he said. His words were still slightly slurred. The metal spike through his tongue and cheeks must have been … awful. Painful. "I got away."

"You did," she said. "You did. And … Emmrich will be back soon, I bet."

There was a rustle and voices calling out drifting over from the camp and she turned her head to listen.

"I think he might be here right now!" she told him and he straightened up slightly. Then his eyes went wide and he shook his head.

"No," he moaned.

"Get out here, little wyvern!" someone yelled, someone whose voice Mia didn't know. "Get out here or I'll slit this kid's throat!"

She froze, thinking, while there was more shouting and panicking outside.

Lucanis began to rise, breathing quickly and shakily, but she was faster. She stood and grabbed the curtains, drawing them close to hide the back of the tent.

"Stay quiet," she hissed. "Hide."

He shook his head, eyes wide in fear, and the nose-ring chain swung back and forth like a pendulum. "No!" he whispered fervently, picked up the hatchling and shoved it at her. "You don't know them. What they're willing to do. Hide her, please, you have no idea what will happen to her if they get their hands on her!"

Mia instinctively took the lizard and held it against her chest, while getting her first true look at him now that he was on his feet, the sheet he'd pulled off the cot hanging limply and hardly hiding anything. He was covered in sweat and dirt, but beneath that were bruises and cuts. His wings hung at different angles and the tail was skewed to the side, bent in a way that was painful to look at where it had been broken. Both hands and feet were still chained and the right foot was a mess. What upset her most in an undefinable way were the dirty bandages around his waist and the long, thin line of papery leather protruding from out of his skin. A mostly healed incision shone pink around it, with marks of rough stitches marching along the angry line.

Any kind of living being had to be protected from whoever was out there.

When Mia had been twelve her mother and another maid had hidden a young elven woman in the crawl space behind the pantry. It had been the right thing to do then, even if the lord of the manor had threatened everyone and even had a stable boy whipped that he thought was guilty of sneaking his plaything off the grounds. She would not betray her upbringing now, not like this.

"No," she said. "I won't let you. I'm a good liar. The rest doesn't know you're here. And the professor will be back soon, he'll …"

He'd watched her speak with increasing anxiety, wings and tail twitching despite how much they had to hurt, and then he moved. She was not exactly sure what happened, but he put a hand on her shoulder and stepped towards her and then she was on the ground, stunned, with the wyvern baby staring down at her face in bewilderment.

"Hide her," he croaked and left the tent.

It took Mia a moment to catch her breath, but anger and fear had her scrabbling back to her feet. She grabbed the pillow off the cot, shoved the wyvern carefully but insistently inside the case and then opened a travel trunk to stash the little thing despite its surprised protests. It … no she would be safe between socks and linen shirts.

Mia burst out of the tent and stumbled to a stop at the scene before her. Three men with crossbows and swords - and long poles with catch-loops at the end, bundled rope and heavy leather sacks dangling from backpacks - threatened the students. A fourth one held Harald by the hair and a knife to his throat.

Lucanis had his back to her and stood as quietly and unmoving as a deer before the snake. Strips of dry and peeling skin peeking from under the leather bindings on his wings fluttered in the breeze, otherwise he was like a statue, even his hair too matted with dirt, sweat and blood to move.

"Nice and easy," the man threatening Harald said. He smiled broadly and showed several golden teeth and a dark brown rotten one. "On the ground, face down. Hands outstretched before you."

Mia caught Harald's wild eyes and saw the disbelieving question in them. She nodded, feeling only slightly guilty. Yes, this was the man they had been looking for and yes, she'd hidden him from them. It was what she did, hide things or do things so no-one got hurt.

Great job she'd been doing today.

Lucanis tried to slowly lower himself to his knees but as he did, his right foot gave out and he fell, catching himself on his shackled hands. The chain still attached to the nose ring hit the dirt.

"They have nothing to do with this," he said. He sounded like a ghost. Hollow.

"Who said you're allowed to talk? Someone here got the skewer out of your tongue so believe me, they are on my shit list." The man put more pressure on the knife against Harald's throat and a thin red line appeared.

Lucanis lay down, quietly.

"Good," the leader said cheerfully. "Go get it trussed up properly and put the bag on, Maekin. Time to leave."

One of the three other men, a sullen-looking pale guy with thinning blond hair, disarmed his crossbow, unhooked a bundle of rope and went over to Lucanis to kneel on his back. There was a panicked, bright keening like a bird's call and Lucanis turned his head to be able to see, his eye wide and panicked. Maekin clapped a hand on the tail and with a leering grin dipped a finger underneath, teasing.

Mia could have chewed on her heart, it beat so loudly it must have been in her mouth. Her anger went white hot and she was only frozen for a moment because her wrath was undecided between screaming and hurling things.

Then she saw the dark-skinned elven woman and the only slightly tan human man behind the hostage-takers. They moved with a silent, stalking grace and no-one else seemed to have noticed them so Mia, for a moment, thought she was hallucinating. Then the woman nodded at her and made a circle gesture with one hand. A hand holding a dagger.

"What are you doing? What is this?" Mia spoke without thinking, just trying to get the men's attention focused on her. It worked. The leader raised a questioning brow and the one kneeling on Lucanis, giving a playful tug on the nose-chain, cackled.

"That's nothing you need or want to know," the leader said. "Shut up and step back."

"He's hurt," Mia insisted and her anger crept into her voice. "Badly. Did you do this?"

The one holding down Lucanis gathered the wings and bound the dew-claws together, then tied the end of the rope around his victim's neck. It looked like he'd done it before. It looked like he enjoyed it.

The two people sneaking up on the group had split, the woman heading for the leader and the man for the two crossbow-wielders.

"What's it to you?" the leader asked, mildly bewildered. "That's not even human. Or elven. You gonna cry about every cow in the stable, too?"

"If you treat a cow like that I'll cut off your fucking balls," Mia said before she could think. There was a stunned silence for a moment. Several of her fellow students looked at her like she'd blasphemed against the Maker.

The man holding Harald snorted, then laughed. But while he did that he lowered his knife. And that was how he died.

The woman who'd snuck up behind him grabbed his elbow from the inside, wrenched his armed hand away from Harald's neck and then stabbed her own dagger into the man's back. Right then, her companion kicked one crossbow-wielder in the back of his knee and hit the other with an actual walking stick, like he was out and about on an afternoon stroll. They flailed and fell and two bolts twanged up into the sky, harmless. As the two men hit the ground, their well-groomed attacker flung two tiny darts at them with a look of utter contempt and then walked away while the men began to spasm and blubber, seizing and foaming at the mouth.

Lucanis' tail whipped up, grabbed the one called Maekin around the neck and pulled, but he lacked the strength to yank him off his back. Maekin yelled, a garbled curse, and went for his sword and so Mia ran up to him, grabbed his hair and clawed at his eyes with her other hand and dragged him off Lucanis.

Lucanis rolled to his back, than scrambled to at least get onto all fours. He lunged at Maekin, grabbed his wrist and with a quick wrench the blade was his. He lifted it, murder in his eyes and his teeth bared behind the dangling ring in his septum, but then he saw Mia and hesitated.

She looked up at him and very calmly and clearly said: "I'll hold him down for you."

He swayed. Then he howled with pain and fury and there was an eerie pinkish light glowing in his eyes but he flung himself forward and stabbed Maekin low in the belly. And again. Then he let go of the blade and wrapped his hands around the man's throat and began to strangle him. He wheezed and sobbed louder than the dying man himself and Mia held on, pulled back the head until Maekin stopped moving and then a little longer to be safe.

Lucanis collapsed on top of the corpse and cried. The two killers who had appeared just in the nick of time very carefully stepped closer. The woman raised her hand, now unarmed, and spoke in a low and soft voice with a rich Antivan accent: "Lucanis?"

He turned his head far enough so he could see her and nodded. "Teia," he croaked. "Thank you."

The other students began to move, shout, panic and Mia got ready to extract herself from under the dead man to calm them down, but Professor Volkarin came running from the treeline and everyone went quiet. Their teacher had always been so self-assured, so in control of himself. The magic cast at the roosting tree had been unsettling, but seeing him now, with tears running down his face and yelling Lucanis' name before sliding to a stop on his knees next to the winged man seemed to break something inside of them.

Emmrich Volkarin leaned in, caught Lucanis' shackled hands between his and then did his best to gather the whole man into his arms. The weight pressing down on the corpse increased and Mia gave a little gasp. Now her professor stared at her.

"Goodness, are you alright, Mia?" he asked, catching his breath. Lucanis gave a huff, rolled himself off Maekin and closer to the professor and Mia could finally scoot away and then slowly back out of the scene.

The two Antivan killers watched her. The woman gave her a tiny nod and Mia nodded back. Then she rushed back into the tent, opened the chest and found the wyvern grumpily chewing its way out of the pillow case.

"There you are," Mia found herself blabbering. The tiny thing was healthy and hale and gave an imperious little trumpeting call, but let herself be picked up and carried outside. Her tail curled around Mia's arm. No-one would hurt her. On her way to the tent-flap, Mia also picked up the metal saw.

By now, the professor and the two other people were sat or kneeling around Lucanis and there was the green shimmer of magic.

"Give them some room," Mia ordered the students and they meekly did as she asked. The elf took the offered saw and began to work on the nose-ring. The man stared at the wyvern that was poking its blunt nose into Mia's right ear.

"What is that?" he asked with a strong Antivan accent of his own and the tones of someone who was used to authority, but maybe also to people trying to question said authority. Every word had a silent "or else" implied in the way he said it.

"A freshly hatched wyvern," she said. "A female."

"I see that," he said testily. "Why is it here?"

"Leave her, Viago," Lucanis interrupted him. Then he winced as the elf finished cutting through the ring and began to pry it open. "I … there was another wyvern. She took me to her clutch. This one was the only to survive."

He looked up at the little creature, his eyes still wet with tears. "You need to take care of her," he begged. "Please -"

"Shhhhh." The elven woman tried to shush him, but he was fighting to sit up now and so Mia knelt, too, and disentangled the small wyvern claws from her shirt. She held the squirming baby lizard out for inspection.

"She is fine," she said. "She will be fine. Both of you will be."

He stared at the little creature and hiccuped with a sob. Then he turned his head to look at the professor. "'m so sorry," he cried. "So sorry … I got away but …"

"How did they even …" began Viago and got an elbow to his knee from Teia.

Lucanis cried harder and lifted his hands to hide his face. The muscles in his jaw jumped and the hideous holes from the gag opened and closed like empty eyelids. "Didn't go to ambush a Crow," he finally managed to say. "They went to catch an animal."

And those were the last words he spoke before he slowly, but inexorably drifted off into unconsciousness.

Lucanis was lying on warm and soft things, propped up and arranged so there was no uncomfortable pressure on either wings or tail. There was hardly any pain, just a dull ache in his right wing, his right foot and half-way down the tail. This was unexpected.

He opened his eyes and looked directly into Spite's worried face. The demon stared at him with the inhuman intensity of a being that never had to blink.

Awake! he called out.

There was a gasp and a scramble and Lucanis turned his head slowly to the side to see Emmrich nearly falling out of a chair to lean over him.

He tried to greet him, but his face was slow and dreamy and his lips wouldn't quite part.

"There you are," Emmrich said and put a wonderfully soothing, cool hand on Lucanis' brow. "How … how bad are you feeling, dearest? Do you need anything against the pain? Fever?"

Lucanis frowned. He wasn't sure what had happened. Spite leaned closer and let his face hover over his host's heart, miming a soft hug. Breathe. It is past, he said.

Then Lucanis remembered and flinched so hard he dislodged several pillows in his carefully arranged supportive nest. The pain and fear and debasement, hands gliding down the underside of his tail, the steady tug of the ring in his nose and the click-click-click of the gag against his teeth with every swallow, every scream. The mad scramble and fight and holding on to the hurt and panicking wyvern, dragged through forest and underbrush and up a cliff of scree to where only one of her eggs had hatched.

She'd died there from her wounds, while she had licked her one hatchling clean and then stretched her neck to softly swipe her tongue over Lucanis bound and pierced wings, too. And then he'd walked, on a broken foot and shackled legs and held that small life pressed against his body, finding the way on blind instinct and need alone.

"The baby," he tried to say but it was a helpless, breathy splutter instead. Emmrich still nodded, turned and lifted a small wooden crate stuffed with a blanket. The wyvern was coiled up in her nest and blinked at him blearily. Then she rolled forward and out and plopped onto Lucanis' own nest.

He nearly sobbed with relief. She was unhurt.

"She is fine," Emmrich said in soothing tones. He still sounded close to tears. "She is eating well and already gaining weight. Taash came in and they have been feeding her every few hours. They also helped with freeing the other wyvern and right now we're still looking into what to do with them, but they are treated well and safe."

Lucanis stretched out an arm with clean bandages wound around the wrist and carefully gathered the little wyvern against his side. She decided the pillow she had landed on was a traitor and pounced, biting into the fine silk and producing the most adorable little growl.

"Good," he managed to say. Then he steeled himself.

"How bad?"

Spite, still hovering over him like he was lain on top of the sheets, poked a finger at the wyvern and imitated her tiny snarl.

Emmrich took a deep breath. "We'll have to get you stable enough to re-break and set the foot and tail properly. The …"

He faltered. "I am so sorry," he then said. "I didn't realize you never arrived in Treviso, I only learned of it too late and you were so close, just a few hours away, but …"

"No," Lucanis said and tickled the wyvern under her chin. She flared her two-part lower jaw and stretched her head-frills. Spite stared at the ferocious little thing, enamored. "No blame. Never for you. Please keep going. I need to know."

Emmrich nodded and wiped a long, elegant hand over his face with a sigh. "Yes. We healed the incision in your cheeks, but there will be slight scarring. We're most worried about the wings. We had to cut away several parts of the flight membrane to halt infection."

Lucanis looked up. "But the bones …"

"Are intact."

He let out a long, slow breath. The wyvern rolled onto her back and bit down on her foot. Her tail swished back and forth eagerly.

"The implant into your abdominal cavity," Emmrich finally managed to speak up again. "We. I… It is gone. As is one of the venom glands. I decided to leave the other one, although it was damaged, too."

Lucanis hummed and nodded. He took Emmrich's ringed hand and pulled it closer, pressed it against his cheek. His head spun with the strength of the painkillers in his blood and the lack of food.

"I don't care if I lose the venom," he said. "Kissing will be easier."

Emmrich snorted wetly. "But…" he began.

"Shhh." Lucanis tried to smile and gingerly extracted the wyvern's foot from her mouth with his free hand. She pounced on his fingers instead and clamped down on his knuckles in a play bite. "I'm alive. I'll be able to walk. Even fly, with Spite." He felt heat prickle behind his eyes. "I made it out."

"That you did," whispered Emmrich. Then he gave a little laugh. "I raised an army of the undead to break you out and you were already gone. Always so self-sufficient."

"You saved me enough to last me a lifetime," Lucanis said, honestly.

His professor, his wonderful, strange, loving, smart man looked down at him with unspeakable fondness in his eyes. Then the wyvern disengaged from Lucanis and bit down on a bangle on Emmrich's wrist.

He yelped and lifted his hand, the snarling animal dangling like a scaly and annoyed pendulum.

"We couldn't ask before," he said. "What is her name?"

Lucanis looked at the small thing, ready to attack anything and anyone. Utterly fearless.

"What's the name of your student. The one with the freckles. She … helped me."

"Mia?"

Lucanis nodded. "Mia."

Emmrich got Mia the wyvern to let go of the bangle and put her back in her box, where she gave a petulant squawk. Then he leaned down to kiss Lucanis' temple.

"She'll be proud to share a name with this one," he promised. "I'll tell her when I see her next semester."

"Good," Lucanis grumbled with the heavy exhaustion of healing. "I intend to sleep until then."

He closed his eyes, but could already feel the tug and pull on the sheets of tiny claws trying to climb back up, and allowed himself a smile.

They were safe. All of them. No matter if man or animal.