Chapter Text
Edward Elric has had worse days. Well. He has had, specifically a worse day, but he’s trying not to think about it as he works his way through a fleshcrafted abomination of a vessel side-by-side with a pair of chimera women (one obviously with some kind of lizard, the other still undetermined, but obvious by the points of her ears) who don’t even speak his language.
Of course, there’s a certain superfluity to sharing a language when you can just do some weird psychic bullshit and share your thoughts like that isn’t breaking at least three laws of man and nature. He wants to be able to focus more on that, and pick it apart, figure out what makes it tick, and figure out just what it has to do with the worm that the whatever-the-fuck-it-was put in his eye, but has he had five minutes to put down a note? No! Not that he has a damned notebook to write anything down in--
--which is the least of his problems, focus, Ed!
Something roars, and something else impacts the monstrous vessel (seriously, what sick mind thought it up, and can he punch them in the face? A lot?), and Lizard Girl snaps something, at the same time as she does the weird psychic bullshit, and right, he gets it, they need to somehow gain control of the heinous abomination. Ed can get behind that sentiment, if only because controlling the thing means the possibility of taking it back to Amestris, finding Al, and almost as importantly, a competent surgeon to get rid of the thing squirming behind his eye.
He gestures for Lizard Girl to lead the way, if only because she seems to know something about the layout of the abomination, and isn't that creepy? She's treating the whole thing like hostile enemy territory though, which is a point in her favour. Pointy Ears (sure, they both have pointy ears, but only one of them has them as her single distinguishing characteristic) seems to know about as much as Ed does, and has less of an idea of how the weird psychic bullshit works than Lizard Girl.
Hot air blows over Ed from a gaping hole in the side of the abomination, and he can't help a glance out at what looks like a very religious desription of Hell, right down to what look like winged demons and honest-to-science dragons. The first time he saw--all of that--stumbling out onto an exterior part of the ship and into an ambush by Lizard Girl, he had thought he was hallucinating. Then he had thought some rogue alchemists had somehow gotten very busy.
The more time passes, the more he sees, the more he suspects that he's wrong on both counts, and he manifestly Does Not Like That.
Flashes of things seen in the Gate pass through his mind, and he pushes them away; there are some revelations best left for never, and 'Hell is real' should have been one of them. His efforts in that area do not, as usual, matter, and he understands the sulphurous composition of fiendish blood, and how it differs from human. A good thing to know, as they reach what must be the bridge of the abomination, only to see a half-dozen twisted creatures that certain knowledge tells Ed are not chimeras, including a tentacled monstrosity like the one that put the worm in Ed's eye--
Rational thought takes a short break while Ed claps his hands and recomposes the flesh-and-bone of their erstwhile floor into a jagged set of spikes for the tentacled thing and the demon--devil--whatever--it's fighting as well--
The abominable vessel lurches, and Ed barely keeps his foot--nope, it's gone, he's lost it, only catching himself by digging automail fingers into a fleshy outcrop.
The demon-devil-fiend's flaming sword goes flying, and lands neatly in the hands of Lizard Girl, who gives a brief, fierce, fang-filled grin, and gladly drops her own sword in favour of it. Ed can't blame her; it is objectively cool, and he would like a chance to take it apart and put it back together again, just to figure out how the fuck it works, but all of that has to wait, because there's a voice echoing in his head, making demands that he only understands because of weird psychic bullshit, and frankly he has had e-fucking-nough of it.
"Go!" he snarls at Lizard Girl, who takes his meaning even without understanding him, as he claps his hands again, and drops to his knees, and fucks. Shit. Up.
There is not a great explosion of gore, though he can admit, if only to himself, that he was tempted to pull a Scar and just deconstruct fucking everything. But no, that would leave him, Lizard Girl and Pointy Ears falling through the air in what his gibbering atheist brain can barely comprehend as probably really Hell, or at least the place that stories of Hell are based on, so. Hell.
What he does is almost as simple, anyway: carbon, and lots of it, pulled from what becomes a slurry of other elements, and arranged into a neat cubic lattice around Tentacle Face and the ex-owner of the flaming sword--not to mention all the other nasty little things flying and running around. If he were a lesser alchemist the feat would leave him reeling, maybe even unconscious. If he were in Amestris he'd be in deep shit for the amount of fuckery that much diamond would do to the economy. But he's neither a lesser alchemist, nor anywhere remotely in Furher Bradley's jurisdiction, and so fuck the rules, Ed does what he wants.
Pointy Ears says something that sounds like it means 'what the actual fuck', and Ed can't help flashing her a toothy grin.
Lizard Girl reaches what passes for the helm, at the same time as a--yep--fucking dragon (with another Lizard Person riding it, he notes) lands on one of the gaping wound in the abomination, and Ed can see those licks of flame--
He claps his hands, ready to bring up another wall of carbon to eat what he suspects is fire breath and Lizard Girl does something--he can feel the resonance right in the psychic bullshit--and then the whole world is lurching.
The dragon is gone, the fiery, Hellish landscape is gone, the warring fiends are gone, and in their place is a starry sky, a blessedly cool breeze, and the inexorable pull of gravity.
Ed falls.
The next thing he is aware of is the sun on his face, the crick in his neck, and the horrifying sensation of sand in his automail.
Winry is going to kill me, he thinks, before he thinks to sit up, and shake off the weirdest dre--
"Not a dream," he states flatly, out loud, when he opens his eyes. Because he can still smell the abomination, and more than that, he's not even a quick jog from what looks like--what has to be--the ocean.
Ed has read about the ocean, but living his whole life in land-locked Amestris has deprived him of the dubious privilege of seaside vacations, and sickening trips on the waves; wherever he is, it's a long way from home.
"Damn it," he curses, and kicks the nearest rock, viciously. It fails to make him feel better, even as it flies in a neat arc into the shimmering blue-green sea. The sea that he can't even enjoy, because while Winry's automail is the very best there is, he doubts she had salt water in mind the last time she upgraded it. Even the thought of the corrision--to say nothing of the inevitable dressing down--is enough to make him shudder.
He kicks another rock, and then picks one up, and hurls it. Neither make him feel any better, but the actions do release some pent-up frustration, and let him concentrate on his next steps, namely check for survivors and secure food and shelter.
Food and shelter will be easy enough: he can alchemise a shelter, or sleep under the stars. It's not like it'll be the first time for either. The presence of bits of worked wood and cloth that were probably part of boats and sails tells him that there's fishing to be had here, and all he needs to do is make a fishing rod and have a bit of patience.
Survivors, on the other hand...
That's going to be the tricky part.
Or so he thinks, until he stumbles on Point Ears not a hundred metres from the place he woke up, in the opposite direction from his first wandering. Naturally. She looks relatively unscathed, much as Ed himself, not that that means anything. When he bends to check her pulse, she comes suddenly awake.
She says something he doesn't understand, and swiftly moves to hide a--well, a spiky polyhedron, covered in unfamiliar symbols that still somehow niggle at that part of his brain that remembers what he saw in the Gate, and giving off a faint, suspicious glow.
"What's that?" he asks, pointing at the place she tucked the Thing away. She narrows her eyes, and responds, once again in that language he doesn't understand. She looks at him, lips pursed together, and repeats herself, more slowly.
"What... is... that?" Ed asks, giving her the same treatment, and pointing insistently at the Thing. He's never seen anything like it, but he's seen more than enough Suspicious Alchemical Things to know one when he sees it.
She answers him in a firm tone that means 'none of your business' if ever he heard one, and--briefly, their minds connect. He sees the Thing, he knows that it is important to her, so desperately important, she needs it, almost like he needs--
The connection fades, leaving them both briefly reeling. Ed scowls, and. He's a smart guy. He can figure this psychic bullshit out; it's the most annoying thing that has ever happened to him, and he would like very much to know exactly how it works, but. He can feel where it comes from, right behind his eye. The same place that nasty worm-thing is wriggling around. Yesterday, he would have said it was impossible, to connect to someone else's mind like that. To their soul, even? At least not without delving back into the kind of alchemy that he really ought not again.
It's stupid, but clearly not impossible, and it's the only means they have of communication, which means that he damned well has to figure it out.
He starts by thinking really hard at the worm-spot, 'Show me the Thing!'
Nothing happens.
He tries again, thinking even harder.
Still, nothing happens.
The third time, instead of thinking hard, he thinks sly, the way he imagines Mustang must think all the time, juggling his plots and playing the fool.
Nothing happens again, but then, the worm is mostly quiescent; if Ed didn't already know it was there, he might not feel it at all. This lends strength to the hypothesis that the worm has something to do with the weird psychic bullshit, but it remains by no means conclusive. He reflexively reaches for his notebook in his coat pocket, only to recall that oh yeah, he doesn't have either.
Pointy Ears is giving him a look, somewhere between consternation and pity; the latter is frankly offensive. She sighs, and says something to him in a second language, this one just as incomprehensible as the first. So they're doing this now?
He tries one of the handful of phrases he knowns in Ishvalan in response, and she shakes her head. The three words of Xingese get a similar response. Well. Good, because that would have been less than helpful, still. Her frown deepens, and after a moment, she enunciates a word to him.
Pauses.
Points to her shadow. Enunciates the first part. Points to the left side of her chest, and repeats the second. Repeats the whole thing again, and taps her fist on her chestplate--which is another thing he hasn't been thinking about, the old-fashioned armour on both Pointy Ears (Or, he guesses, Schattenherz, if she's so insistent he know the meaning of her name) and Lizard Girl.
"Shadowheart," he says, repeating the name finally. She nods, and gestures to him.
"Edward Elric." He takes care to enunciate his name as carefully as she had hers, adding, "Ed." And thumps his chest the same way she had, for emphasis.
"Ed," she repeats, and nods. Gestures between the two of them, and then in a circle around her head, speaking the whole time, slowly; he can guess her meaning: Let's look around together. It's not a bad idea; she's armed, and he saw her flinging something around back in the abomination. She'd be the first chimera he's ever met who can, but he won't be looking a gift alchemist in the mouth. Not yet, anyway.
"I'll go first," he says. She only has a mace of all things, while he can hit anything in his line of sight if need be. He gestures to match his words, hoping she gets the idea, and--well, she's an alchemist, she can't be a complete idiot, right? Luckily, his thin faith is rewarded, and she nods, falling back to let him lead.
Good.
First thing's first, he claps his hands, and pulls a new coat out of the nearest shrub. It comes complete with notebook and pencil in the pocket, because it's all made of mostly the same stuff, so why not?
Shadowheart stares, and asks him something incredulously; probably the usual line about his lack of even the simplest circle, much less an array, and how does that not violate equivalent exchange, and blah blah blah... just in a foreign language, so he can't even blow her off verbally.
"Don't worry about it," he says anyway, waving dismissively, and pulling the coat on. Better. He feels better with that extra layer between himself and the world, and there's almost a spring in his step as he strides down the beach.
He quickly finds the first body, not far from Shadowheart at all. He can see a few more, even as he tries to decide just what to do. What do you do with dead people, like this? He has no idea. Pull the bodies to the side of the path they're on, he guesses, lay them out...
"Shit."
Shadowheart asks him a question, a little pointed, and he shrugs in response. She shakes her head, and starts rifling through pockets, and--really? Really? Looting the dead? She turns to the barrels and crates piled around, and after a quick check, scoops up a backpack lying abandoned on the side of the road.
Do what you need to do to survive, says a voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like his Master. Whatever it takes to get back to Al. That's Ed's own voice, chiding him now, and okay, he gets it.
He joins in the looting, but when they're done, he claps his hands, and sends the bodies into sandy graves. A second reaction gives them a grave marker, complete with fierce guardian gargoyles. It looks pretty cool; it's the least he can do. Shadowheart eyes him again, clearly off-put by his ease with alchemy, and he just shrugs. He's hardly going to stop now. She asks a question, gesturing first uphill, toward the wreck of the abomination, and then further down along the beach toward what looks like some ruins.
The worm behind Ed's eye squirms, suddenly active again, as he considers the question, and that decides him: they're heading for the ruins. Fuck the brain worm, and whatever it wants.
"This way," he says, pointing down the beach, before leading the way. Shadowheart keeps up, her armoured steps unexpectedly quiet along the path.
Whatever Ed might have expected along the way, an alchemical array springing to voilet-lit life as he passes by it was not it. He jumps half an entire metre in the air, and thankfully does not yelp. Shadowheart has mace in one hand and a glow in the other and she's squared off against the array within seconds, and Ed can't fault her reaction. He almost did something unfortunate himself. He parts his hands, holding onto the alchemical potential, and eyes the array.
The layout is unfamiliar; asymmetrical, for all the requisite circles are there, and unbalanced in the reconstruction phrase. There's more here that he's never seen before, and he can't quite make sense of it on a basic once-over, so he realeases the alchemical potential in his hands, takes out his notebook, and copies it down.
He could just activate it, and see what it does, but he's not an idiot. Accidentally disintegrating himself won't get him back to Al. And there is definitely a disintegration-adjacent component to this array.
His brain worm squirms again, distracting him from his task. Shadowheart groans, and clutches at her eye as well; does she have one too? Signs point to maybe, and ugh, no, why? What the fuck, Tentacle Face? Ed should have punched it. (Him? Her?) He does his best to ignore it, to ignore the quiet urging to go back to the abomination, and keeps drawing the array.
There's a ruin as well as the array, a building with an intact door, and that implies other people, maybe someone who speaks his language, or speaks Shadowheart's language, and once he has the entire array copied--twice, just to makes sure--he tries the door. Locked, which is whatever; it's easy enough to open the wall beside the door, and...
"Oh. It's a tomb." That's... a disappointment. They're much less likely to find living people in a tomb. Especially one as heavily trapped as this; Ed spots pressure plates, and the mechanisms they're likely connected to, and, yeah, nope. Locked door, untriggered traps, not likely to find survivors here. He closes up the wall.
"Guess the worm gets what it wants," he mutters to himself, and gestures up toward the wreck. "Ready to check it out?" he asks, not that Shadowheart will understand. She answers him anyway, and gestures for him to lead the way. He does, and notices something new along the way: one of those nasty little brain creatures that had been running around the abomination. Which.
How????
A brain with legs. And tentacles. How. Why. What mad alchemist's mind had spawned that heinous thing???? Ed has a sinking feeling that he's going to have to find out. Wouldn't that be just his luck?
The thought of one of those things touching him is repugnant enough that he readies himself to transmute--and it's a good thing, too, because right after another corpse, they come across a trio of the damned things, scurrying about way faster than anything with legs that short ought to be able to, and he just.
No.
It's the easiest thing in the world to take the readied alchemical potential in his hands, and transmute the bone in the crashed abomination into spikes, thrusting up through disgusting soft tissue with an awful squelch, piercing each of the nasty brain things--
Unfortunately, it doesn't kill them, and one of them somehow manages to wriggle off the spike, and finish its charge toward Ed. Before he can react, Shadowheart moves in, and smashes it with her mace, splattering brain matter on the fleshy ground, and on both of them as well.
"Did you have to kill it like that?" he grumbles, flicking a lump of grey matter off of his arm, before the second brain thing wriggles its way free, and charges. It meets the wrong end of Ed's alchemyt again, this time with the Scar special, because very no. The third one, despite its struggles, is on the longest of the three spikes, and can't quite manage to get free. Shadowheart finishes it off in much the same way as she had the first. At least she's the only one in range of the splatter this time.
Once that's dealt with, Ed first loots (sigh), and then makes a cool grave for the other corpse. Again, it's the least he can do. And then...
It's time to explore the wreck. He recalls seeing other people in those horrifying pod things, like the one he woke up in. Shadowheart had been the only one he could free, but there have to be other survivors. There have to be.
An hour of searching and one more dead Tentacle Face later, and Ed's starting to think that there might not actually be any survivors besides him and Shadowheart; there's not even a trace of Lizard Girl to be found by the time he's putting out an expanse of fire (borrowing a bit of Mustang's bag of tricks to transmute some CO2), and leading the way up along a path by the cliffs.
That's when he sees it. A--what looks like a--portal, spinning and coruscating in the side of the cliff, with a hand sticking out--
Ed doesn't even think about it; portals are bad news, but hands mean survivors, and hell, he can grab on and pull, right? Right. A man's voice comes from the portal, strained, but hopeful and encouraging, and--
Hold on, Ed recognises the symbols just visible on the outside edge of the portal. They're identical to the ones in the array down by the tomb, and if this is what that does, then of course it makes sense, and it clicks, the way that it always, always has, ever since he got that look at the Truth.
"Hold on!" he shouts, hoping that his meaning is conveyed, even if his words aren't understood. He presses his fingers to the array, and works it like so, pushing it to reverse, and reverse it does, abruptly disgorging a purple-robed man out onto the road before going quiescent. Ed catches the man before he can fall on his ass.
Said man immediately begins prattling on like he enjoys the sound of his own voice, and Ed almost regrets pulling him out of the portal, until his brain worm twinges, and his brain twinges, and there it is again, that weird psychic bullshit that he's experienced with three people now. He sees the abomination, he sees a book, he sees... a woman? Blabbermouth's girlfriend maybe, given the emotions that come with the image, and, ew, Ed does not want to be privy to anyone else's love life, thanks. He reflexively pushes the thought away.
Blabbermouth stares for a moment, and starts talking again, more slowly. Then he tries a second language, and then a third, frowning when he makes no headway.
Shadowheart interjects something almost derisive, and Blabbermouth responds incredulously, before giving a dismissive flick of his fingers and smiling confidently. He grips Ed's shoulder reassuringly, and says something with just as much confidence, before letting go, and pointing to the setting sun, and asking another question.
Ed's pretty sure he gets the gist: set up camp before it gets too dark. Yeah, it's a good idea. And there's a spot he can see from here that's not too bad from a defensive point of view, once he sets up a couple walls, and a nice little house with three beds for them to stay in. Blabbermouth watches him with very evident interest, and then proceeds to make his own contributions to camp in the form of glowing stones littered about like torches, as if that's not completely impossi-- Well.
Not impossible, since it's obviously happening. But highly improbable, and quite the feat of alchemy, especially since Ed doesn't see him drawing any arrays; he intones a word, and makes a gesture, but that much is obviously theatrics designed to throw off any observers. He probably has a tattoo somewhere that Ed can't see; likely under his long sleeves. He could be hiding any number of arrays like that, actually, and probably is; Ed can see the swirling edge of something tattooed on his chest, too. It's a taunt and a tease, and exactly the kind of thing a cheeky master alchemist would do.
There's not nearly enough of the array to figure out what it does, so Ed stops ogling, hopefully before he's noticed, and gets both their attention with a "Hey," before pointing to his eyes, gesturing in a circle around his head, and holding up one finger.
"I'll take first watch," he says. They're both sharp enough to catch his meaning, and Shadowheart is quick to hold up two fingers. Blabbermouth, who hasn't bothered to introduce himself in a way that Ed can understand, shrugs and holds up three. And then he says something else, and without further ado, produces a pot from... somewhere.
It's the smoothest damned transmutation Ed has ever seen, and combined with the sleight of hand looks like magic. He must be a hit at parties.
He sets it on the fire, and makes quick work of the scavenged supplies Ed and Shadowheart provide, and before long, they're having a surprisingly acceptable stew for dinner, eating from bowls with spoons that Ed transmuted from the earth. Nothing fancy; the kind of thing that can be easily discarded and returned where it came from, leaving little trace behind.
Watch is quiet, and so are the others', because nobody wakes him. What isn't quiet is when he wakes up, and leaves the little house for the fire, and finds Blabbermouth already stirring the pot, and he immediately starts talking at Ed.
Or rather, he intones a few words, makes some sharp gestures, and then touches Ed, and--
"Hello, can you understand me now?" Speaks what sounds like perfect Amestrian like they weren't completely mutually unintelligible the previous day.
"What," Ed replies. "How the fuck--?!" He is not awake enough for this. He is nowhere near awake enough for this.