Archive of Our Own ^beta

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.

Chapter Text

"No, wait." Ed holds up a hand to forestall the sesquipedalian explanation he can feel is coming. "Why couldn't you just speak Amestrian yesterday?"

"Ah, because I am not actually speaking 'Amestrian,'" Blabbermouth answers. "You are currently under the benefit of the tongues spell, something which I would think to be perfectly obvious, although perhaps given the evident differences between our magical--"

"A spell," Ed interrupts him there, because what. No. "Magic isn't real. Alchemy is a science, with well-understood laws and principles."

"So is magic," Blabbermouth replies, too mildly. "But I can see I'm getting ahead of myself; the spell only lasts for an hour, and here I am wasting it on minutia. I am Gale of Waterdeep, and you have already met Shadowheart." He gestures to where the chimera woman has taken over the stirring of the pot.

"Edward Elric," Ed replies automatically. Fullmetal Alchemist, he doesn't say, because what's the point? It's an Amestrian title, and he has a sinking feeling that that means less and little around here. He feels a sudden pang of loss for his ability to blithely go where he wants, and do what he wants, all on the weight of his watch. In the next moment, he feels the glee of a weight lifted, because as he had observed on the abomination when he transmuted all that diamond: the only laws left to stop him are the laws of physics. And those are much more flexible than people give them credit for. (A memory of a vision of a detonation; maybe too flexible.)

"A pleasure, Edward," Blab--Gale replies.

"Ed is fine," Ed says, automatically. "Now what's this about a spell?"

"That can wait," Shadowheart speaks up. "We have more important things to discuss. Like the illithid tadpole and ceremorphosis."

The what and the what?

"The what and the what?" Ed says out loud. Five minutes later, he wishes he hadn't asked.

"So what you're telling me is that this thing-" he points to the spot between his temple and his eye where the disgusting parasite is lodged "-is going to turn me into one of those ugly Tentacle Face bastards, and there's nothing I can do about it?"

"Not nothing," Gale replies. "If we can find a cleric, or perhaps a druid of sufficient ability, or even an extraordinarily skilled surgeon--"

"I'm going to stop you there," Ed says. "I'm not letting anyone with knives anywhere near my brain. I don't want an accidental lobotomy." Gale tilts his head slightly.

"Lobotomy? I'm sorry, the word isn't translating; there must not be a Common equivalent," he says. And yeah, there's that again. Some kind of apparent magic (which Ed sincerely doubts; it has to be something to do with the weird psychic bullshit, right? (Ignoring the fact that the weird psychic bullshit is connected to the brain worms...)) that magically translates their speech for each other--! It's absurd, and yet: not impossible, since he's actively living it.

"It's a surgical procedure that separates your frontal lobe from the rest of your brain," Ed explains. "It fucks you up in the head, makes you all passive and shit." He's seen lobotomy patients. In a sanitarium. Once. Poor bastards. Gale winces.

"I understand your reluctance in that case. Perhaps we should remand the surgeons--however skilled--to the place of last resort. Passivity is better than ceremorphosis," he says. Ed hates to admit, even to himself, that the man has a point. “And,” Gale continues, “likely nothing that cannot be helped by a restoration spell, right Shadowheart?”

“Likely,” she agrees. “I think this stew is going to burn, Gale.”

“Oh, let me—“ The conversation breaks long enough for Gale to save—and then serve—breakfast. Which is last night’s leftovers, but eh, Ed’s had worse. Gale at least seems to know what he’s doing with a cookpot, which, well. Ed can manage ‘not raw’, but fine cuisine has never been a passion of his. Oh, he’s sure he could manage if he tried, but why bother, when someone else is willing to do the scut work?

“So priority one is finding someone who can safely get these things out of our heads,” Ed says, around a mouthful of stew.

“An accurate summation of the situation,” Gale agrees.

“We should also see if we can find any other poor bastards with these things,” Ed adds. “Nobody deserves ‘ceremorphosis.’” Human transmutation of the worst fucking kind, ugh. The damnes worm wriggles behind his eye as if in response to his thoughts.

Fuck you, he thinks at it, with all the vitriol he can muster. It’s quite a lot of vitriol. He thinks he feels it flinch; good.

“I think we would have found anyone else left yesterday,” Shadowheart says. Ed gives her a flat look, and she doesn’t roll her eyes at him. “As you like.”

“Better in the end, I suppose to say that we tried,” Gale adds. “But I am no more optimistic than Shadowheart about finding any other living soul; we all had the luck of Tymore herself on our side to have survived that fall. Well, and no little skill, in my case.” Ed does roll his eyes; he also notes the little wrinkle of Shadowheart’s nose at the name ‘Tymora’. Clearly a common cultural touchstone.

“Who’s Tymora?” he asks.

They both stare at him.

“Goddess of Luck, patron of adventurers,” Shadowheart says. “Is that ringing any bells?” Gale leans in, a sudden flare of interest in his eyes.

“You don’t know her? Where are you from, ah, Amestria?” he asks. “Do you follow the Mulhorandi pantheon then? Or some other, father flung collection of gods?”

“Even the most insular drow would recognise Tymora,” Shadowheart scoffs. “She is… not to my taste, but anyone would be a fool to dismiss her—or her favour,” she adds.

“It’s ‘Amestris’,” Ed corrects. And—he has to check. He just. “Are you seriously talking about a goddess like she’s real?” Gale at least, for all his talk of magic, struck him as a little more rational than that.

He’s not sure what exactly he’s expecting, but it’s definitely not a lecture on gods, worship, and the importance thereof. From two fronts no less. He’s almost relieved when whatever it was that Gale did—his ‘spell’ for want of a better word—to allow them to understand each other wears off.

“Oh,” Gale says in consternation, followed by a sheepish string of words in an apologetic tone. Hopefully apologising for wasting all their time with a ridiculous, pointless lecture.

There are no gods. Only the Truth, and it’s an asshole.

Gale does his thing again: words, precise gestures—oh. Oh of course. Somehow Gale—or whoever taught him—figured out how to draw an alchemical array in the air? At least that’s Ed’s current hypothesis.

It doesn’t quite ring true; there’s something he’s missing, he knows. But hey, now he can ask:

“So how does it work? Do you just sketch the components with your hands, and somehow close the circle with the air?”

“Well, Air is actually a component of the spell, good eye,” Gale replies. He then proceeds to start outlining the ‘spell’, how it connects to and draws on something he calls ‘the Weave’, and he’s about four sentences in to explaining the Air component when Shadowheart pointedly clears her throat.

“As fascinating as I’m sure this lecture is, we wasted the time of the last spell. I thought you wanted to look for more survivors, Ed.”

“Damn it, you’re right,” Ed sighs. “Save it, Gale,” he continues reluctantly. “Let’s go looking.” They douse the fire—well. Gale douses the fire with a snap of his fingers, and Ed gets rid of the campsite with a simple transmutation that leaves only the barest trace—and then only if you know what to look for. Gale looks around at the now-inoccuous bit of landscape, and comments:

“You are a truly talented Transmuter, Ed.”

“Damn right I am,” Ed agrees smugly. “Skilled, too.”

“True, talent only takes you so far,” Gale replies. They talk more about Gale’s ‘spell’ as they walk, and Shadowheart joins in as well, as the discussion turns to common ‘somatic components’—the gestures Gale (and apparently Shadowheart) use to craft their arrays in the air.

“The verbal component is just as important,” Gale argues, as they come up the top of the cliffs. “The somatic conponent forms the shape of the spell, the verbal gives it intent, and, when necessary, the material component provides the thaumaturgical—say, I think I see someone, up ahead?” He points, and, yeah, the white-haired guy is just standing there, looking lost. As Ed watches, he runs a hand through his hair, half-turns, and startles at the sight of them.

"Hurry!" he hisses in an undertone. "I've got one of those brain things cornered." He shifts on his feet, redistributing his weight as Ed and his party draw closer. There's something about the way he moves... Ed's eyes narrow, and he shifts his own weight, ready to spring into action; he can hear the others following his lead, having clearly recognised his superior instincts.

"Where is it?" Ed asks, keeping the man in his peripheral vision, even as he tries to sidle into an advantageous position. Uh-huh. Something moves in the grass; at the same time, the stranger strikes like a snake, blade in one hand, the other grabbing for Ed's shoulder. Like many others who have tangled with the Fullmetal Alchemist he is not expecting two things:

One: Ed's automail. He catches the knife with it, ignoring the way it cuts through his glove and grinds, metallic against his palm.

Two: Ed's hand-to-hand. Once the knife is stopped, he takes advantage of the man's obvious surprise, and drops, sweeping his automail leg through the man's own, and taking him down in a tumble.

Then it's grappling for a few seconds, but Ed's automail is another advantage there in terms of weight and leverage, and that's all that matters when you're grappling. Or, well, all that matters when you're grappling with someone who clearly isn't as good as you are otherwise.

Ed gets the albino motherfucker flat on his face in the dirt, knife tossed aside and arm pinned behind his back.

"Wanna try that a--" The weird psychic bullshit hits him like a train, and he's suddenly walking through dark, busy streets, the building close like in older towns and cities. Walking--no, prowling--and then just like that, it's gone, dissolving into nothing but light... and fear. "You have a brain worm too. Probably. Did those tentacled motherfuckers get you, too?" Ed asks, as his consciousness refocuses on the here-and-now. Interrogate the maybe-survivor first, worry abopubt weird psychic bullshit later.

(Ed's getting really tired of the psychic bullshit, though. He's seeing, hearing, feeling bits and pieces from these people. He's pretty damned sure the weird psychic bullshit is a two-way street, so... what the hell are they getting from him? The thought makes his blood run cold.)

"Did they--wait, I thought you were with them," the man says, red eyes wide with dismay as he looks back at Ed over his shoulder. It's only now that Ed notices that, much like Shadowheart, this guy has pointy ears too--and his are even longer and sharper than hers, the tips of them poking out through his hair. His skin, Ed notes, is almost pale enough to blend into said hair; together with the red eyes, that says albino as clear as anything. What he's doing standing out here in the sun is anyone's guess, but Ed's not the boss of him; maybe he has killer sunblock.

"Wrong, pal. They had me in one of those damned pods, too," Ed replies.

"Damn," Albino breathes. "I was hoping you could tell me what they did to me. Ah, no harm done, so could you let me up?"

"We gonna have a problem if I do?" Ed asks.

"Of course not, it was a simple misunderstanding," Albino replies. There's a line of tension in his back, through his shoulders, but Ed thinks he's telling the truth. He lets up, moves away, and scoops up the discarded knife--a proper dagger, really-- as he rises to his feet, putting more than an armslength between him and Albino.

"I'll hold onto this for now though," Ed says, flipping the blade, and catching it, pointedly, by the sharp end.

"If it makes you feel better," Albino says, holding up empty hands. He has sharp teeth to go with sharp ears; more evidence of chimerism. "My apologies; it seems they took you the same as me. My name is Astarion; I was in Baldur's Gate when those beasts snatched me"

"Edward Elric," Ed replies. And seriously, don't any of these people have last names? "Where's Baldur's Gate?"

"From here? I don't know," Astarion admits. "More importantly, do you know anything about these worms?"

"Unfortunately," Ed replies grimly. "According to Gale, they're how those tentacled bastards reproduce--if we don't get them out, we turn into tentacled bastards."

"The process is called ceremorphosis," Gale offers.

"Wha--I don't care what it's called, are you serious?" Astarion demands, a hint of incredulous panic entering his voice. Ed nods, and the poor fucker takes it about as well as can be expected. A mirthless laugh, and,

"Of course it'll turn me into a monster," he says, bitterly. "What else did I expect." Yeah, that's definitely the voice of a man who's been an experimental subject. Ed tactfully refrains from mentioning anything, but so far he and Gale are the only unaltered humans he to have survived the crash--and Ed's not entirely certain that he himself counts, given the automail.

"Although," Astarion continues after a moment, thoughtfully. "It hasn't happened yet. If we can find an expert--someone who can control these things--there might still be time."

"That's the plan," Ed says. "Gather survivors, and find someone who can get these brain worms out."

"We're hoping that if there are any other survivors, they might know something we don't," Gale says.

"That too, I guess." Ed waves his hand. "Mostly we're looking for survivors because nobody derserves to be turned into one of those assholes."

"Frankly, the fewer mindflayers the better," Shadowheart puts in. "Now, are you coming with us, or not? We have limited time as it is."

"Yes, I suppose we do," Astarion agrees. "You know, I was ready to go this alone. But maybe sticking with the herd isn't such a bad idea. All right-" he gives a little bow "-I'll join you. Lead on."

"No more trying to stab any of us," Ed admonishes, before offering his knife back. It was just a misunderstanding. He's had worse.

"I wasn't going to stab you," Astarion replies, as he takes his knife and vanishes it somewhere with some admittedly skilled sleight of hand. "I was planning on decorating the ground with your innards."

"Did you really just say that out loud?" Ed's starting to rethink giving the man his knife back.

"Better to be honest, don't you think?"

"In that case, it's a good thing I kicked your ass instead," Ed responds, with a razor-sharp grin.

In the spirit of honesty. That's all.

They move quickly then, scouring the remains of the shore, the abonmination, and back over by the tomb. Gale lingers by the alchemical array, as distracted by it as Ed had been.

"Fascinating," he murmurs. "It appears identical to the portal that I used to avoid splattering all over the countryside--the very one you pulled me from, Ed."

"It is," Ed confirms. "Exactly identical even, look--"

"Ed," Shadowheart interrupts. "We're almost out of time. We need to--"

"Shh, do you hear that?" Astarion asks, pointing up above them. The party quiets, and everyone tilts their heads in that direction. A faint snatch of voice is carried on the wind. An argument, maybe? Ed claps his hands, and transmutes a staircase up the side of the tomb--he'll put it back later--and yep, there are people up there! They stop their argument to look at Ed, hands drifting towards weapons.

"I'm not looking for a fight," he starts. "Just any survivors of that crash."

The kid--no, actually, a really short guy he almost makes Ed feel tall--gives him a narrow-eyed look, and says something in a now-familiar-sounding string of nonsense.

"Gale! Your thing wore off!" Ed calls back below. The amount he moves means that the arrow aimed for his head just grazes his scalp instead; stings like a sonovabitch, bleeds like one too, but it's not his first scalp wound, and it sure as fuck doesn't stop him from clapping the asshole archer--and his little friend, too--into a science-damned cage, because--

"I said I wasn't looking for a fucking fight--"

Something--three somethings, in rapid succession--hit him like three blows from Major Armstrong's fists, and what the hell where had that come from--?! A sharp shriek answers his question, as a woman with a staff--a staff?--on the right trajectory takes an arrow to the shoulder, followed seconds later by a one-two-three impact of--some kind of force, the fuck--and Shadowheart's intonation, and. The cut on Ed's head stops bleeding as some unfamiliar energy, cool and refreshing, washes over him.

Suddenly the odds of that weird thing she’s carrying being at least philosopher’s stone-adjacent are on the board, because that was healing alchemy. At a distance.

At a distance is the way another arrow comes for Ed, this one pinging off his automail leg; it probably would have crippled him if it had hit his normal one. There's a fourth asshole there, who Ed can see now, and line of sight is all he needs to transmute the ground under the guy into another cage. He shouts in alarm, losing his footing, since Ed uses the literal ground literally under him for materials.

He wishes Al were here. This would have gone so much better with Al. People like Al. He's the nice Elric, until you piss him off. He's knocked out of the thought by a fireball to the face, courtesy of Staff Bitch, which, what??? How????? Flame alchemy is a big fucking deal, and Ed should know with Mustang as a commanding officer, and Gale's trick of putting out the fire earlier comes to mind. It's not the same thing at all; Ed can think of a half-dozen ways to do that without even trying. But throwing fire is something fucking else and--

His train of thought is cut off as Staff Bitch take another arrow, this one right to the heart, and drops like a sack of potatoes.

Fuck.

She's dead. It's not Ed's fault, he knows that; not only did he not kill her, she was trying very hard to kill him! But he kind of really wanted to interrogate the fuck out of her, and now he can't do that. Because she's dead. And despite himself, he feels a little guilty.

Another arrow whiffs by Ed, and he has had e-fucking-nough. He stomps over to Asshole Archer, claps his hands, reaches through the cage, and deconstructs the fucking bow.

That, of all things, gets the bastard--and his other caged compatriots--to quiet down, alarmed.

Well.

Of course they're alarmed. They've probably never seen an alchemist pull the Scar Special, even on an inanimate object. Probably, they're imagining themselves on the receiving end. Not that Ed ever would, but it's a great intimidation tactic.

"Are you fucking happy now?" he demands, not caring that they can't understand him.

A hand touches his shoulder, and he whirls, only to find Gale, withdrawing his hand, not the least big worried.

"Try now," the man says, and hell yeah, that's communication back, baby. "Although I'll warn you, that's the last of those I have in me for the day."

"Thanks," Ed says shortly, and then turns back to the Asshole Archer, and repeats: "Are you fucking happy now?"

"I--" The bastard chokes on his words.

"I didn't come looking for a fight, but your fucking around got your friend killed," Ed says, gesturing at the still, green-clad form of the slain alchemist. "So I'll ask you again: are you fucking happy now?"

Mutely, the man shakes his head.

"Here, it wasn't us the killed her, it was your lot," the short man in the other cage protests.

"I wasn't asking you," Ed responds. "I was asking the asshole who started the violence."

They don’t have anything to say to that, because of course they fucking don’t, because Ed is right, and the proximal fault lies with the fucker who started things.

“Be that as it may, let us not forget whose arrow ended her life.” Astarion’s comment is. Not welcome, but Ed grits his teeth; if the albino wants to take on some of the guilt, that’s his burden to carry. Then again, maybe, given his flippant remark about Ed’s innards, he’s not the sort who feels much guilt.

Ed hopes not. He hopes that all of these people he’s found himself with still have consciences. He meant what he said though, that nobody deserves fucking ceremorphosis. Even if he ends up with a Kimbely in his party.

“We should kill the rest of them,” Astarion says, and there’s a glint in his eye that says that it isn’t a matter of pure pragmatism. (Ed can see the pragmatic side of the suggestion, and he rejects it out of hand. There are other, better ways of doing things, damn it.)

“Please don’t kill us,” Asshole Archer says. “We’ll—let us go, we’ll just leave, right?” He directs that at his comrades in the orher cage, and they nod their agreement.

“All right. I’ll take you at your word.” Ed claps his hands, prepares the transfiguration; Asshole Archer flinches. “Get the fuck out of here.”

He removes the cages. Asshole Archer and his friends make a run for it, leaving their comrade’s body behind.

“Letting them live may be a mistake,” Astarion comments.

“It wasn’t,” Ed counters.

“You truly believe that, don’t you,” the chimera says, sounding almost pitying. “Hopefully it won’t mean all our funerals.” He strides away soundlessly, light on his feet, to rummage in the pockets of the dead woman.

Ed’s going to have to give her a grave, too.

At least we’re in a good place for it. The morbid thought flits through his head as he peers down through a hole in the ceiling below him into the tomb.

“Do you see anything interesting down there?” Gale asks, stepping up beside him. Ed shakes his head.

“I’ve been in there,” he says. “It’s just a tomb; nothing worth disturbing. Full of traps, too, so I don’t think anyone’s taking shelter in it…”

“On the contrary, clever rogueish types might well be using the traps to their own advantage,” Gale points out, and fuck if he doesn’t have a point.

“All right,” Ed says. “I’m going in. Who’s coming with me?”

In the end, all four of them end up down in the tomb. Gale does his light trick to the end of his staff so they can see, and Ed really wants to know how he does that. He claims ‘magic’, but really. Does he think Ed is some kind of kid just fucking around? He sure as hell hopes not.

They find themselves in a room full of mouldering old furniture, mouldering old papers, and mouldering old books--Ed's favourite kind. He picks one up hopefully, and finds it filled with incomprehensible gibberish.

"Yes, I am afraid that the tongues spell only applies to the spoken word, not the written," Gale says. He reaches for the book, and Ed lets him have it. Someone ought to benefit from whatever's in it--even if it's just a salacious novel. Not that it feels like one, with hard covers, and leather binding. "'Death and Divinity: A Godly Guide'," he reads aloud. "Might be worth a look, back in camp, for you." He stuffs it into his pack. "Never fear, we can work on your literacy and fluency at the same time. --Did you hear that?" He tilts his head toward the door, and the rest of the party follows suit, Ed included. He does hear something, now that Gale mentions it: a sound like footsteps, and maybe a voice?

Astarion holds a finger to his lips, and slips silently up to the door, crouching behind the lintel, and easing it open a hair. And then another. And then another, before he stops, utterly unmoving, even holding his breath. He watches for several agonising seconds, and then eases back.

"There are five of them," he says in the sort of low voice that isn't a whisper, has no hissing sibilants to carry. "Three in the hall, and two in the next room--I just barely made them out. There might be more," he adds. "There's no way to be sure."

"Sure there is," Ed replies, and starts for the door, only for Shadowheart to snatch him by the scruff of his coat.

"We're taking them by stealth," she says. "If we proceed at all."

"We don't know they aren't survivors," Ed points out. He doesn't slip the coat, not yet.

"I doubt they are," Astarion says. "They're far too well-equipped. I agree with Shadowheat. I can slit two of their throats before they even notice that we're here."

"What, not good enough for non-lethal takedowns?" Ed snaps back.

"I just don't see the point," Astarion replies airily.

"What do you suggest?" Gale asks. "Because at the moment, Shadowheart and Astarion are the only ones with a plan, I'll point out."

"I go out there, ask if they're survivors," Ed says slowly. "And if they aren't, we just leave." Like it's obvious.

"That's a good way to get yourself shot again," Shadowheart says.

"It grazed me," Ed counters. "I've had worse sparring with my brother."

And then he slips the coat, and out the door.

He doesn't get a word out before there's another arrow coming for his face. He solves the problem by ducking, clapping, and transmuting a wall to fill the hall from floor to ceiling.

"Fuck," he says.

"You idiot child," Astarion snarls, striding out after him. "Next time--"

"I get it, I fucked up," Ed admits, throwing up his hands. Shadowheart wordlessly shoves his coat back at him. He takes it.

"Now we've lost the element of surprise," Astarion complains.

"Not really," Gale says. He eyes Ed's wall speculatively. "I doubt they were expecting this. Say, how much control do you have over the spell after you cast it?" he asks.

"It's not a spell," Ed corrects. "It's alchemy. And I have as much control as I want." Obviously.

"You can do that with alchemy?" Gale asks, sounding utterly fascinated. Ed can't blame him; it's way better than 'spells' and 'magic', however they're accomplished.

"Damn right," Ed says, smugly. "I'm probably the best there is." Except Al and Master Izumi, but neither of them are here to correct him, so he can say what he wants. He's definitely the best alchemist here, wherever here is.

"Can you make the wall extend spikes out into the hall?" Gale asks it the way one would ask an academic question, not like he's asking Ed to kill five whole human beings.

Ed feels sick.

"Ooh, I like the way you think, wizard." Astarion, of course; Ed isn't even surprised anymore.

"Ah," Gale says, a note of understanding in that one single syllable. "I take it then that it's not so much a question of capability as of willingness. Well, I can't blame you; you wouldn't be the first incidental adventurer to find that he has no taste for killing. I prefer to avoid it myself, but sometimes it can't be helped."

"Yeah," Ed says flatly. "It can. It's a choice. It's always a choice."

"So choose to do it, and take out those fools on the other side of the wall," Astarion says. Shadowheart has remained out of the argument this time, watching Ed with a curious look, as if he doesn't quite make sense to her. "Before they find a way to break through, and kill all of us," he adds, acidly, when Ed doesn't move to do anything.

"I have a better idea," Ed says, abruptly, as one occurs to him. He acts before anyone can ask. Clap, and down, sending the transmutation through the ground, changing the density of it, moving these molecules here, and those molecules there, and then the floor on the other side of the wall is about as tough as paper, and muffled shouts can be heard on the other side of it, as the people there fall right through into the sinkhole Ed made under it.

He takes down the wall with the same transmutation. It leaves them with a clear view of four people--the fifth seems to have evaded Ed's little trick--in a hole, on their backs, their knees, or some other version of prone or compromised.

"We're not looking for a fight," Ed says. "But if you start one, we'll win it." Another clap, and he transmutes his automail the way he always does, a gleaming sharp blade coming off the back of his fist. He hears a gasp from his own side, but he isn't sure who it's from. Someone in the pit curses; it's not one Ed's familiar with, so he files it away for later use.

"Could've fooled us, springing out like you did," a voice calls from the door across the hall, where the fifth member of the erstwhile enemy party escaped from Ed's sinkhole.

"Yeah, whatever, point is, we're not," Ed counters. "We're just looking for survivors of that abomination crash up the beach?"

"That fuckin' thing?" the voice calls back. "No way, ain't none of us. We're just adventurers, you crazy asshole."

"Fuck," Ed grumbles. "All right, that's it. We're out of here." He claps his hands, and puts up the wall again, leaving a weak spot so that they can find a way out again. He's not going to wall them up to starve or die of thirst or anything.

"Well, I have to say, I'm surprised that worked," Astarion comments. The knife in his hand vanishes, tucked away somewhere behind his back; probably the curve of his spine. Ed makes a note of it.

"I'm not. Intimidation works almost every time, in my experience," Ed replies. He returns his automail to normal, and tries to ignore Winry's scolding voice in his head. He does not succeed.

"I thought you said this place was a tomb," Gale comments, as they continue down the hall.

"It is," Shadowheart replies. "Although this part of the complex appears to be an old refectory--clearly it is more of a temple with a tomb attached, than just a tomb. Or perhaps the other way around," she allows. "If my orientation is correct, taking that door should lead into it."

Astarion heads for the door without even asking, and finding it locked, he produces a set of picks, and springs the lock without knocking a hair out of place.

"Impressive," Gale comments.

"Hardly a challenge," the chimera responds. He tucks the picks away, and eases the door open, before nodding to Ed and Shadowheart. Shadowheart goes for a look first, surprisingly light on her feet for all her armour, and she nods.

"That looks like it," she affirms. Ed takes a peek next.

"Yep," he agrees. They all pass through the door, and Astarion jimmies the lock shut again behind them.

"Better safe than sorry. I notice you didn't leave them a way out--"

"I did," Ed interjects. "There's a weak spot in the wall."

"--pity. Well, better safe than ambushed by an enemy you could have left cooling in a pool of their own blood."

Ed just rolls his eyes at Astarion's words this time; he has a feeling the albino is trying to get under his skin, and he won't allow it.

As he had noticed before, there are traps in the tomb. There are fuckloads of traps, and Ed isn’t certain how to disable them without just setting them off. Luckily, Astarion is. It turns out the chimera is a dab hand at more than just lockpicking. The thought that Astarion might be useful if something happens to Ed’s automail flits through his head and is rejected out of hand; the guy just sets off too many alarm bells to be trusted near something so sensitive. (Not to mention Winry would murder him.)

Still, he does make short work of the traps, and everything is fine, until the whole party starts rummaging around in the sarcophaguses!

“What the hell do you all think you’re doing?” Ed demands. “Can’t you let the dead rest?”

“They don’t need their stuff,” Astarion points out. “We might. We can certainly use their gold.”

“We’ve been over this, Ed.” Shadowheart sounds both sympathetic and annoyed at the same time. “Whatever your gods may think of disturbing the dead, you can make your atonement later.”

“I don’t have any gods,” he reminds her. “It’s just basic decency.”

Astarion looks at him like he grew a third leg—Ed checks, just to make sure he hasn’t—or like maybe he’s gone insane.

“I don’t have much use for gods, but at least I acknowledge them,” the chimera says.

"It's base ignorance to do otherwise," Shadowheart says, from where she's pulling a few oddly-shaped coins from a sarcophagus.

"In my experience, the opposite is true," Ed replies. "Until you can provide evidence that gods exist, I have no reason to believe, and every reason not to."

"That sounds like a story," Astarion says. "Don't share it."

"I wasn't planning to."

They go first one way--toward the way out--and then the other, deeper into the--yeah, it's a temple. With a tomb as an entrance.

"What kind of fucked up temple has a tomb for an entrance?" he asks.

"One to Jergal, scribe of the dead," Shadowheart says, pointing her chin at the statue that they can all see now, lit up by a beam of light coming through a hole in the ceiling. "I recognise the statue."

"Never heard of him," Ed comments.

"I'm not surprised," Gale says. "His worship was superceded by Myrkul, and later Kelemvor as gods of death. I suppose there may still be some adherents somewhere, but not here. This place has been abandoned for centuries."

"And yet, his last attendants remain, even in death," Shadowheart says, pointing out a robed body curled up near the balustrade.

"Let's have a look around," Astarion suggests, before prowling off in one direction. It's a good idea. Ed takes the opposite, heading toward the back of the room. He stops by the statue long enough to look at the scroll, and the plaque half-hidden by the plants growing in that spot of sunlight, but none of it makes sense to him, of course.

A quick investigation reveals nothing interesting or useful, and so Ed carries on, picking his way through the rubble, and up the flight of stairs to the statue's left. He can hear Gale doing the same on the right, his steps less sure than either Shadowheart or Astarion. Ed's having a bit of trouble himself, in the dim light.

Said dim light doesn't stop him from noticing the fucking button on the wall though.

"Guys, I found something!" he calls, belatedly hoping that Gale's 'spell' hasn't worn off yet. It either hasn't, or his meaning is conveyed anyway, because they all converge on him.

"What is it?" Gale asks. Ed jerks a thumb at the button, just visible in the shadows.

"It doesn't seem trapped," he says. "So I'm going to push it." No objections are made, so he does just that. A hidden door in the wall the button is on slides open, but before Ed can exclaim his triumph, the dead bodies in the room.

Start rising.

Chapter Text

"What the FUCK?!" Ed exclaims, his voice higher than usual. And then he doesn't have time to think about it, because the un-fucking-dead have fucking risen like something out of a penny-fucking-dreadful, and Astarion is thowing fire at one, and then moving to give Gale a clear shot of--it's that weird raw force thing again, and the sense-memory of the sensation hits Ed for a moment before he can stop it.

He shakes off his startlement as that walking corpse collapses, and claps his hands, transmuting spikes from the floor for one of the undead, even as Shadowheart lobs a glowing bolt of golden light at another. The one caught on his spikes manages to do--something--and shoot a--a--beam of ice right at Astarion, who dodges it neatly. It leaves a patch of frost where it impacts the ground.

The dead should stay dead, damn it!

Astarion hits the same walking corpse targeted by Shadowheart with an arrow this time, and Ed can hear him bite off a curse when it bounces off of bone. Gale's thing strikes it moments later--it and another one, approaching from the direction of the gaping hole into a natural cave, two bolts for the first (it collapses), one for the second.

...fuck it.

Ed charges up and delivers a Scar Special to the corpse on his spikes, and is most of the way to the one by the cave, when he notices a fifth corpse, this one wearing robes like the one on his spike. Like Gale. Like the woman killed in the skirmish earlier. Like--look, he can take a hint, okay? Robes means 'magic'. Which means ranged attacks around here, so he diverts his attention to that one--

--and takes ice right to the face It chills him to the bone, and makes his automail creak ominously for a moment. Moving feels suddenly like he's in a fucking snowbank, the cold dragging him down and making him clumsy--

Shadowheart flings more radiant golden light at that one, but her shot goes wide. Astarion hits it with fire. Again. Like it's no big deal. Gale focuses on the one near the cave--it's almost on Ed, but that does it in--and in a few seconds, Ed is able to move again, properly, and introduce his fist to the walking dead. The thing crumples under his blow. It's very satisfying.

He takes a few seconds to breathe. No more walking dead. Okay.

"What the fuck was that?!"

"I take it then that you are unfamiliar with the undead? Is necromancy not practiced in your homeland then?" Gale asks, frowning a little. "Even if you don't use it, it's not a good idea to be completely unfamiliar with it. One never knows when one may stumble upon something like, well, this." He gestures around at the re-dead. "Knowing how to deal with them is key to surviving an encounter--you did well enough, though, especially with that touch spell of your--what do you call it?"

"It's not a spell," Ed says, automatically. He feels. Numb. It's too damned much. "Necromancy? And it works? How the hell do you bring back the dead without--dire consequences?"

"First you need to understand that necromancy encompasses a great deal more than just reanimation--which is not, I hasten to add, anything like true resurrection," Gale starts, before abruptly cutting himself off. "Then again, perhaps now is not the time," he says reluctantly.

"Oh no," Ed replies, focusing on the older man. "I want to hear this. I want to hear all about it." So he can stop it.

"In that case, why don't we carry on this conversation while we investigate that chamber which revelation caused the rise of our erstwhile foes?" Ed nods.

"Keep going, I'm listening." Gale does. In spite of himself, Ed finds the lecture fascinating. There's a lot more emphasis on the mystic than he's used to, even with the most wishy-washy alchemists, but there's a surprisingly logical grounding in the way it works once Gale finishing explaining what he calls the 'School of Necromancy' even is. Learning helps; he's starting to feel on a more even keel by the time the bodies are looted, and they're back in the alcove on the stairs.

Things aren't fine--his entire world has been upended twice in two days--but he's coping (he is!) right up until Astarion shoves the sarcophagus open, and out steps another walking corpse.

Ed's mind goes to static, and the next thing he's aware of is Shadowheart beside him, hand on his left wrist, taking his pulse, a halo of light behind her head--Gale's staff, presumably--and...

She says something incomprenhensible. However long he was out, it was long enough for Gale's 'spell' to wear off. Damn.

Shadowheart reaches to help him sit up, and Ed's feeling shitty enough that he lets her. First to sit, and then to stand, slow and easy; she says something else incomprehensible along the way, and Ed just shakes his head.

"Gale's 'spell' has worn off," Ed informs her. He recalls the older man saying something about it being the last one for the day; he wonders why that is. Is it the last time he's willing to do it? Is there some energetic limitation? Is there a time related factor to it? He should have asked when he could; now all he can do is stand here like an idiot, looking around for a walking fucking corpse and not even able to ask if his murder-happy companions managed to re-kill it. He doesn't see any bodies.

“Where’s that… thing?” Ed asks, gesturing at the sarcophagus so that they get the point. Gale replies, gesturing toward the ceiling—the sky, maybe—and makes a rising-and-setting gesture; right, Ed gets it. Tomorrow.

Astarion makes what sounds like a derisive comment, and Ed reflexively flips him off. The chimera’s responding grin is sharp with fangs, just for a moment.

Ugh.

Ed pointedly flips him off again. Shadowheart shakes her head, and says something that sounds almost resigned. Gale on the other hand says something best described as cheerful from where Ed’s standing. He only wonders why for a few more seconds, before Gale hefts his staff, and clearly enunciates a word.

Right. Ed’s not an idiot; he points to the staff, and repeats the word. Gale smiles, and nods, saying another word as he does.

It’s something to do, anyway, while they head for the natural cave the broken wall opens into. There's not much--a river, the sun shining in from the cave mouth, and, right where Ed himself would have stuck an escape hatch, a lever and a ladder hanging from the ceiling. Astarion says something, holding up a hand, and the party comes to a halt while the chimera examines the lever.

Evidently having found nothing untoward, he pulls it, and the ladder drops. Well that saves Ed the effort of making a staircase up to it. Astarion is also the first up the ladder, easing open the trap door at the top, and having a look out through it, before lifting it open, and climbing out into the sunlight outside. Gale gives Ed the words for 'lever' and 'ladder' before heading up the ladder himself. Shadowheart follows, and Ed brings up the rear. The rest have spread out a little, examinging the path they've found themselves on, as Ed tips the trap door shut with a thud.

Astarion does a good, but not perfect job of hiding a wince at the sound; those ears are probably sensitive. If he were less of a jerk, Ed might feel bad.

The path leads around the temple, back to the courtyard where they had their skirmish earlier. Ed slips ahead of Astarion; there's another path from the courtyard, and he wants to investigate it. The others follow him without protest; they're probably curious too.

What they find at the end of the path--where it intersects with another--is a broken cage, and two dead--creatures. Dressed like ordinary people under their armour, sure, but they look like... well, like the creatues Ed had seen back when the abomination was flying through what might as well have been Hell. Minus the wings, sure, but the resemblance is uncanny.

"Tieflings," Gale says, and Ed wonders if that's their word for chimera. Nobody bothers to check their pulses, but Astarion does check their pockets, and seems disappointed by what he finds. None of his three companions seem surprised, disgusted, afraid, or even the least bit put off by the dead... people's? Appearance.

They are people, Ed thinks, looking at their clothes again. The kind of well-worn things anyone might wear, armour aside. And... it's just this feeling he has. Like he's starting to feel like maybe it's not that chimeras are common around here, but...

It's unsettling. He doesn't like it.

There are too many things he doesn't know, and not enough vocabulary to ask any damned questions, and he really doesn't like that. Nobody objects when Ed gives them a proper burial, which adds weight to the notion that these people are some flavour of... normal for here.

Note to self: Ask just where the hell 'here' is.

After that, they continue to follow the path around, and generally north, if the position of the sun is anything to judge by--not that he even knows what Hemisphere he's in, so maybe they're heading south, who knows? Not Ed, and he can't even ask.

He's in the middle of another exchange of words with Gale when his ears catch--the sounds of--a battle?

"Hey," he says sharply. "Anyone else hear that?" he asks, pointing to his ears, and then ahead along the road. Seconds pass, and Astarion and Shadowheart both nod; the former slinks into the shadows of the cliffs, moving ahead. Ed follows suit, on the opposite side, trusting Gale and Shadowheart to follow behind.

There's a rise in the road, leading up from the middle of it, onto an outcropping. Ed takes it, while Astarion sticks to the shadows; Gale follows him, and Shadowheart circles around the other side of the outcrop.

At the top is a—twisted abomination of alchemy, is all Ed can think. Short, squat, and frankly hideous, with a smell that smacks him like Winry’s wrench, and it’s wielding a bow and arrow. Ed has a feeling he’s going to get very tired of archers. A second… whatever it is… catches his sight, and he can hear more ahead—and the shouts of people in combat.

Ed needs to make a decision, and he does, quietly pressing his hands together, and transmutes a pair of stone domes around the whatevers. The air inside should last long enough for them to finish this, and then maybe they can… Ed doesn’t know. It might come down to something like killing them, even if Ed would rather not.

Ed crests the rise just in time to see a dark-skinned man wielding a rapier of all things leap into the fray.

There are a half dozen whatevers menacing a trio of people backed up against a wooden portcullis, and even as Ed assesses the situation, one of the whatevers lands a vicious slash across the torso of one of the people; the man is still standing, but the blow staggers him, and he cries out in pain.

Astarion chooses that moment of distraction to sneak up and slip a knife into a gap in a whatever’s armour, yanking it out with a nasty twist that leaves whatever-guts in a widening pool of red whatever-blood. The others notice him then, and one takes a swing at him, snarling fierociously. Astarion fails to slip away from the bow this time, and the whatever slices him across the forearm and shoulder. In the next moment, Gale is throwing a ray of ice--not unlike the undead monstrosities from earlier in the day.

How?! his brain demands, even he leaps down himself, kicking the attacker away from Astarion. It hits a nearby rock with a sickening crunch, and then Ed doesn't have time to think about it, or to hesitate: it's a life-and-death fight, with more than his own life on the line, and he has already learned the hard way that sometimes he just can't afford to hold back.

One of the three defenders goes down, and Ed charges over to shouldercheck the attacker away from the man, and applies a spinning backhand to another whatever. It stumbles, and is perfectly positioned for Astarion's knife in the throat, and Ed has to live with the fact that he did that: he didn't land the killing blow, but he sure as hell set it up.

Distantly, he's aware that Shadowheart has reached the battlefield, and is laying into one of the other attackers with her mace; even more distantly, he's aware that someone up on the wall is shooting down into battle with a crossbow of all things--have none of these people ever heard of guns?

Rapier Man dispatches another of the attackers, and Ed sets up another for Astarion, and then--it's over. Even the giant monster wolf that was fighting with the whatevers lies in a heap, bleeding out--

"Shit!" Ed dives for the fallen man in a slide, yanking his (bloodied) glove off of his flesh hand, and feeling for a pulse. He finds on, weak and thready. "Shadowheart!" he calls, and she comes, frowning a little. She asks him a question, and he doesn't understand, obviously, but he gets the gist well enough, and, hell. She managed healing alchemy at a distance, so he just gestures at the downed man.

Thankfully, she understands. Thankfully, she's willing to help, and with a touch and two words--and nothing more, Ed is close enough to see and hear everything this time--the man returns to gasping, agonised consciousness. His companions get him up, and then all of them are ushered in behind the portcullis. It closes firmly behind them; Ed resists the urge to look back. Ahead, there's a whole group of people with horns and tails--like the corpses by the broken cage--all dressed like perfectly normal people, and nobody else seems to be surprised by them.

That's two points of data indicating that they were some kind of perfectly ordinary for here. Which. Sure, okay, might as well, the dead rose when Ed pushed a fucking button, so sure. Maybe Astarion and Shadowheart aren't chimeras, either. Maybe Lizard Girl isn't even a chimera! Ed doesn't fucking know anymore and he can't even ask, and---

He takes a deep breath, and stops in his tracks. Another deep breath. He can't afford a breakdown right now.

"Gale, what the hell is going on here? What are these people, what were those... creatures?" He gestures at the Horned People, and back out at the attackers, and he hopes Gale understands enough--or at least understands his utter frustration with the situation.

Gale puts a hand on his shoulder, and says something that at least sounds sympathetic.

"[Something something] you," Ed thinks he says. "[Blah blah blah] tieflings," he says gesturing where the Horned People are arguing about something. "[Blah blah, something something] goblins," he says gesturing toward the portcullis. Shadowheart asks a question, and Gale answers her; Ed has no idea what they're fucking saying.

He has no idea what's going on either when Astarion pokes his nose into the argument, and everyone leaves it upset. Except the albino, who seems more amused than anything. Ugh. What an asshole.

Shadowheart is the one who leads the way further into... an inhabited cave system. Huh. That's pretty good thinking, defensively speaking. The little cave-village doesn't really feel like a proper living place. There's a tension in the people, one that Ed has seen before, in refugees.

"...shit."

Gale starts to ask him something, and stop, sheepish. Ed sighs, and gives him a scowl. Can it be tomorrow already?

Shadowheart stops to talk to a short man, briefly, and then moves on, following the path to the right, where Ed can see a set of pells, and a number of the... tieflings training at them. Small tieflings--kids, Ed realises. That's what does it. That's what drives it home: these aren't some misbegotten alchemical experiment, but some kind of real race or species of people. How, he doesn't fucking know; there aren't any of these people in Amestris, or any of the countries around it, and as far as Ed knows, there never have been. That doesn't mean that they don't live in some other, more far-flung nations--obviously.

Obviously.

Ed doesn't know if he can handle any more paradigm-shifting experiences today. He just fucking doesn't. But here he is, two in one day. At least two.

Rapier Man is with the tieflings, helping to train the children. He's... well, he's much gentler than Master Izumi would have been. She would have laid that kid flat on his ass. Ed has no idea what the guy is playing at, and--

The brain worm squirms, and he has a moment of connection--the abomination, 'Hell', he--fuck him, Rapier Guy is a survivor. The others have noticed it too, experiencing the connection even as Ed does, a weird, simultaneous merging of minds that lasts for a heartbeat, two, and then it's gone.

Rapier Guy strides over to them, speaking. As he approaches, Ed notices that his right eye is gone, replaced by a carved stone prosthetic. It's. Okay, it sucks that the guy lost his eye, but it looks pretty badass. Not that Ed would ever say so. that would be ruder than even he can imagine. But if you have to have a prosthetic...

It's like his automail. He wouldn't have it if he didn't need it. But Winry's a genius, and she made it look cool.

Gale says something, and Rapier Guy answers; they exchange a few more words, before Rapier Guy finishes crossing the distance to their group, clearly falling in with them.

"I'm Wyll," Ed thinks he says, and then looks to Ed, and repeats himself, tapping his chest: "Wyll."

"Edward Elric," Ed replies. "Call me Ed."

Wyll says something else, smiling. 'Nice to meet you,' maybe.

Not being able to communicate is frustrating.

All Ed can do is follow along and try not to dwell on the fact that he definitely helped kill people today. The woman earlier, that was plainly on Asshole Archer. But the goblins... yeah, Ed played his part in that. They were people. They had to have been. And even if they were attacking.... who knows who was actually in the right in this case? It had looked like the humans, fighting defensively as they were, had been, but how was Ed to know if that was really the case? It doesn't seem to be causing his companions any grief to have killed them, but he's pretty sure Astarion at least wouldn't know grief or guilt if they bit him in the ass, and the others... Well, they have a pragmatic streak, that's for sure. Maybe more than Ed, and he likes to think that he's more pragmatic than most.

But not about killing people, damn it.

Despite his best efforts, he's still dwelling when they come around, and back out of the cave, and off to the side, and--

Ed moves, body reacting on its own when the big hairy creature attacks the pink tiefling. He knocks her out of the way, and catches its weapon with his automail. It jerks back in surprise--even if it's used to armour, Winry's work is better than anything it will ever have encountered before--and Ed follows up with a kick. Seconds later, too quickly for it to react again, its throat sprouts one of Astarion's arrows, and Gale's ice beam takes it in the chest. Another breath later, Shadowheart moves in with her mace, and bashes its head in with a thud and a messy squelch.

She yanks the weapon free, and shakes blood and brain matter from it. The creature falls.

Instead of being put off by the sudden violence, the pink girl is nothing but grateful, babbling at them, before taking off.

Ed.

Ed transmutes himself a chair, and sits the fuck down.

Chapter Text

The rest of the group seems to take that as some kind of cue, and starts clearing the area for a camp. Ed lets them. He just. He needs a break. He won't say that this has been too much, but... hell, it has been too damned much, and it doesn't look like it's going to be letting up any time soon.

It’s like one of those soaking spring rainstorms, just pouring and pouring and pouring over him, and he has no shelter to duck under to get a moment’s reprieve. Worst of all, for all that he has found himself with a group of weirdos, he is still fundamentally alone, isolated by his lack of language and the common cultural touchstones they all obviously share, and—no, that’s not actually the worst.

The worst is the complete lack of Al. His complete lack of knowledge of what’s going on back home, besides chaos, probably. He can just imagine the flurry of activity, the grim searching the—would his absence delay the plan of the homunculi’s leader? Or would they all forge ahead in his absence, leaving everyone else to try and thwart it without him?

Part of Ed wonders if he would even care that much if Al were with him. In the next minute though, he’s thinking that of fucking course he would, there are a lot of people he cares about back home, not to mention the literal millions of innocents who would be caught up in the madness—

Gale waves for his attention, and asks something, making a roof-shaped gesture with his hands, and oh yeah, none of them are competent enough alchemists to make the kind of shelter Ed can. It’s a distraction from his thoughts, so Ed transmutes a building for it. He further distracts himself by focusing on the details: a kitchen with a fireplace and chimney to cook in, separate rooms, decorative scrollwork and protective gargoyles. Maybe a few extra gargoyles than are strictly necessary, but who can blame him when it looks so cool?

He resists the urge to add murder holes and crenellations; they don’t need something like that for a camp.

The party stares, Gale with open admiration and pleasure, Wyll and Astarion with blatant incredulity. Astarion says something that sounds a lot like ‘what the actual fuck?’ Good, Ed’s no longer the only one having a confusing as fuck day.

Shadowheart is harder to read, but she seems pleased. She peers into each of the rooms, and then selects one with an off-hand commment that sounds like ‘thanks’. Ed chooses to take it as such.

He returns to his chair afterwards, and finds himself annoyed that he can’t… do anything else. There’s nothing to do—well, he could hunt, but how the fuck does he explain that to everyone without looking like an idiot? He has no idea, and that just makes him even more frustrated.

It comes to him in an instant: his notes. He can take some damn notes, get everything down in writing, and maybe figure—something—out.

He’ll start with Gale’s lecture on fucking necromancy. It’s still relatively fresh in his head, and it was, admittedly, fascinating. Absolutely batshit, but fascinating. He can even see, a little, how it relates to the Hermetic principles he's familiar with, alchemically speaking. It's not really about... death, necessarily, or the dead, not the way Gale explained it. It's more like... applied entropy, in a sense, though Gale had called it 'negative energy', which is as wishy-washy a term as Ed has ever heard.

He allows, of course, that it might be a... kind of translation error. That's certainly got to be possible, with magical translation 'spells' that somehow actually work, as if they're actually magic. Which they can't be, because magic isn't real; any sufficiently explained magic is just another science waiting to be discovered, Ed is sure. He just needs someone--probably Gale--to provide a sufficient explanation.

Which needs to wait for tomorrow. Because somehow he can't 'cast' his 'spell' again today. For some reason. It makes no sense to Ed; it doesn't seem as if it tired him out, any, but the others had accepted the limitation as easily as they had the tieflings, which says to Ed that it's a known and accepted limitation of the local alchemy.

He makes a note to ask Gale about it tomorrow. Along with a thousand other questions he needs answered--ugh. He needs to prioritise. The problem is, he really just does not know what to prioritise, and he has met himself; he knows that he'll spend countless hours discussing alchemical minutiae if someone gives him half a chance--at least if he's speaking to someone halfway intelligent. Most people, even other alchemists, are just too damned slow.

Gale isn't slow; he'd answered every question Ed had put to him without hesitation, and Ed has every expectation that he will continue to do so--once Ed can fucking ask questions again.

Wait. He does have one priority: No more wasting time on god talk. They wasted way too much on that earlier, when they could have been doing literally everything else. No matter how important Gale and Shadowheart think that their gods are. (What were they called? Mystra, he thinks, and... he doesn't think Shadowheart mentioned any name. Maybe her god is like the Ishvalan's god, some nameless all-knowing thing.)

Ed turns to a clean page in his notebook, and writes that at the top. Beneath it, he starts a list of questions, just as he thinks of them, not in any particular order. He has about fifty when he notices the smell of cooking food coming from inside the cool little house he transmuted. His stomach decides to remind him then that he's a growing young man (he is growing, so what if it's slow?) and he should eat.

He wanders in, and finds Gale working on dinner again, chatting idly with Wyll; the other two aren't anywhere to be seen, but since he didn't see them leave, Ed assumes they're both in whatever rooms they've picked.

"Ed!" Gale calls, waving a greeting. And then he says something else, beckoning Ed over, and hey, maybe dinner's ready and he wants some bowls transmuted?

It turns out that that's not it; it's actually another language lesson. Ed's fine with that; he learns a lot more nouns, at least. Other words are more difficult, but by the time Ed's transmuting bowls and spoons, he has the words for 'eat' and 'drink.' He also definitely has 'you', 'I'--or maybe 'me'--which is... not fucking much, but it's more than he had before. Wyll also gets in on it, giving Ed more nouns to work with, while chatting with Gale. He also tries, Ed thinks, to provide more verbs, but he's more enthusiastic than skilled in the area of linguistic education.

Ed... appreciates the effort, anyway.

Shadowheart joins them, but Astarion doesn't; somehow Ed's not surprised that the asshole is standoffish. Just for that, Ed eats his portion. Nobody objects, although he thinks Wyll starts to. Not that he has any way of knowing for sure.

It's frustrating.

Dinner's good, at least; if he ever wants to retire from alchemy, Gale could make a good living as a cook. Ed polishes off his seconds, listening to his companions' conversattion, paying attention to patterns in their speech, and hoping he can pick something up from them. He's honestly expecting it to be an exercise in frustration, but to his surprise, he is able to pick out patterns, and more individual words than expected. Not enough to understand a damned thing, but it occupies his mind, and gives him something to think about other than his predicament.

That only lasts until the end of dinner, when everyone parts to their owen rooms and business. Ed takes cleanup, and Gale sticks around to keep him company--and give him more words. He gets a few more verbs: wash, or maybe clean, see, and most importantly, Gale manages to convey speak to him. It's useful as fuck, because now Ed can point to something, and grunt like a caveman: "How speak?"

The first time he does that, Gale laughs in delight, and just gives him a phrase that Ed, in all his linguistically talented glory, interpretes as "How do you say---?" It works that way, anyway, the words he knows for sure are in there, it works. Cleanup takes about three times as long as it ought to thanks to the lessons-slash-word-game, but that's fine. Ed would rather do this than dwell on things he can't do anything about right now.

It's only when they're done, when Ed finally goes to his own room--transmuting himself a door and a bed as well, because why the fuck not? Who's going to stop him?--and falls into bed (he remembers to take his shoes and coat off) that all his earlier thoughts come rushing back.

The first thing that enters his mind again is worry for Al, because of course it is. What is his brother doing without him? How is his brother--no, no, Al's probably doing just fine without Ed, actually, he has plenty of support, and even actual friends, it's just... Ed's not doing so well without him. They've been separated before, but never like this. Never across Truth-only-knows how much distance. In the best case scenario Ed's only on the other side of the planet from his brother. The truth of the matter is, though, that he remembers being on the abomination when it teleported from might-as-well-be-Hell--an impossible, raging inferno of a place, filled with lava and diabolical monsters--to the skies of wherever-the-fuck-here-is, and--

He doesn't want to think about it, about the possibility of other worlds, because that opens up whole new doors of madness that, and Ed should know, are best left closed. Gods and demons, maybe. Magic? Well, how the hell else do you get giant teleporting abominations flying through the sky with no visible means of lift or propulsion? Might as well be magic.

It's on that somewhat hysterical thought that he falls asleep.

And wakes to a dark-skinned woman clad in shining, old-fashioned armour standing over him with a glowing hand.

"I came just in time," she starts, before Ed rotates his hips, flinging himself into an ungraceful flop on the ground rather than the kick he was aiming for. He feels oddly heavy, and it's not just the automail.

"What did you do to me?!" he demands, and belatedly realises that she's speaking and he understands her.

"I stopped you from transforming into a mind flayer," she says mildly, but only half his attention is on her. The rest is screaming at the purple sky filled with stars, the floating rocks, the purple haze, the off shade of green of the vegetation, the fact that he's on the ground--

"This is a dream," he declares. "I'm dreaming." The woman's face is unreadable, a benificent expression still gracing it.

"Yes," she says after a moment. "But that does not mean that this is not very real. Just as I saved you before when you fell from the nautiloid, I have saved you now; you'll not become a mind flayer. Not while I'm around. I'll protect you."

She offers him a hand up, but he ignores it, managing to rise himself this time. That heavy feeling lingers, conflicting with a sense of lightness in his head. Fucking dreams. He wishes he'd bothered with that book on lucid dreaming he'd seen once in a bookshop.

"We haven't much time," the woman says. "So listen closely."

"Why?" Ed demands. "Why should I listen to you? Who the hell are you, anyway? What the fuck are you doing in my dreams?"

"Your life and your very soul depend on listening to what I have to say," she replies. She takes a few steps, only to stop when she realises that Ed is staying right where he is. Her expression doesn't change, not even a hint of annoyance flashes through her eyes. Ed's going to have to try harder.

"There is great potential within you," she tries again, only for Ed to interject smoothly,

"Yeah, tell me something I don't know."

"This is different," she responds, and there it is, a minute shift of expression that tells Ed that he's gotten under her facade, just a little. "It comes from that parasite. Your instinct is to resist the power it gives, but you must accept it, nurture it," she continues.

"I don't, though," Ed points out. "I could just find someone to get rid of it, and my problem will be solved."

"There is more at stake than you know," she almost snaps. Calms herself, and turns an almost pleading look on Ed. "I will keep it from consuming you, but for the sake of both of us, you must learn to wield it."

Ed has met a lot of suspicious people in his life. He knows suspicious people. This lady couldn't be more suspicious if she tried.

"No thanks. You've got the wrong guy," Ed says. He tries, and fails, to wake himself up. Dream Invader takes another few steps, and stops, looking back at Ed. She almost looks annoyed. Good.

"There is something you must see," she says.

"I don't, though," Ed says again. "I don't have to do anything you want me to."

"You will want to see this," Dream Invader says, a note of persuasion in her voice.

"I don't, though," Ed repeats insouciantly. Dream Invader's eye twitches. "But I will if you tell me how I can understand you."

"Because this is a dream, the usual barriers to understanding are meaningless," Dream Invader sighs. "Now will you come?" Ed responds by gesturing her to lead the way. He follows, and watches as a bunch of floating rocks wreathed in glowing purple mist part to reveal the most fucked-up shit he's seen since he--

Flashes of knowledge rise from the depths of his mind, things he has known since that day that never made any sense, things he can almost grasp, if he just--

"A fight for the fate of Faerûn." Dream Invader's mind cuts off his thoughts, leaving him grasping for the threads of knowledge. Nothing. Just a giant skull with a shimmering rainbow barrier around it, more floating rocks, and what looks to be beings made of light zipping around--maybe attacking it? Fuck if he knows. "A fight we are losing. For now," she continues, with no apparent notice of Ed's little crisis. "You can change that. But only-" she looks at him with widened eyes that are probably meant to be imploring, but only come across as freaky "-if you embrace your potential."

"That assumes I know or care what Faerûn is," Ed points out. A look flits across her face too fast for him to catch it, almost.

"Faerûn is the name of the continent you are on," Dream Invader says slowly, and then starts, looking about. "I must go. The enemy is closing in. I will be back." Well doesn't that sound ominous.

An explosion of purple light bursts out from the giant skull, and Dream Invader flings up a hand in front of herself, as if that could stop it. Ed claps, preparing to transmute the ground into a barrier, but he's interrupted when Dream Invader flings her other hand open at him, and an invisible force pushes him back.

"Wake now," her voice echoes in his mind, as his vision starts to go white. "You'll feel better--I promise."

Ed comes awake all at once, flailing some, and--

Annoyingly, he does feel better. Not a lot better, but the brain worm is quiescent, and his body feels lighter. It annoys the fuck out of him, so he stomps back into his boots and yanks his coat back on, and heads outside into the thin light of dawn.

He's not the only one up early; Astarion is also out there, facing east, watching the sun rise. He looks uncanny in the early morning light, with translucent skin, and shimmering hair.

Albinism. Poor bastard. Ed can't believe that he likes the sun so much; maybe it's just fatalism, given the worms in their brains. Ed leaves him to it, and heads in the opposite direction. He ends up on top of the wall, near the portcullis. He exchanges nods with the horned man--with yellow skin, and eyes like burning brands in his face--on watch up there, and finds a good spot to sit, and do a bit of staring himself.

Staring, and thinking. That had been no ordinary dream, last night. As horrible as the thought is, he has a feeling that the Dream Invader was just as real as he is. But how? What weird psychic bullshit is he being subjected to now? He wonders if it was just him, or if anyone else had--

Gale, he recalls abruptly, should be able to do his thing again, allowing Ed to communicate.

He's on his feet and striding back to camp before he can even think about it. Astarion is right where Ed left him, but there's someone else out near Ed's little house, someone--

Ed shrieks, leaping back two entire metres as the walking corpse opens its mouth and speaks to him:

"Young man," it says, perfectly comprehensible, a part of his mind notes. A hand lands on his shoulder--Astarion. The man says something annoyed, makes a noise of frustration, and then calls for Gale.

Said man comes out, half-awake, takes a look at the situation, and makes a handful of gestures, speaks his incantation, and touches Ed.

"Relax, Ed," he says, once he's done. "Withers is harmless; he's here to help."

"How can a walking corpse 'help' with anything?" Ed hisses, not looking away from 'Withers.'

"Well," Gale says. "He says he can bring any of us back, if we die in battle."

"No fucking way," Ed says instantly. "We're not raising the dead, especially not me. If something kills me, let me lie." He is deadly serious as he says it. Withers tilts its head slightly.

"If that is your wish," it says. "But know that my abilities are in no way the like of those that you know, alchemist."

Ed's eyes narrow.

"And what the fuck do you know?"

"Much," the corpse replies, and no, nope, it's too damned early, Ed can't handle this. He turns on his heel, and strides away; maybe Withers isn't hostile, but Ed just. He can't stand the notion of a walking corpse, and his brain is already overloaded, and he just started the day.

"Are you all right?" Gale's voice is a surprise, which doesn't say anything good about Ed's situational awareness. He's in bad shape, and he needs to get it together.

"Oh yeah, I'm just fine," Ed drawls sarcastically. "I'm surrounded by weird people, the walking dead, weird dreams, abominations, and oh yeah, a brain worm. And did I meantion the talking corpse?" He gestures back towards where he just knows Withers still is.

"It... is rather a lot, isn't it?" Gale says, wryly. "--and, did you say weird dreams?" he asks. "That's funny, I had a strange dream myself. A visitor came to me, a vision of unparalleled beauty and power. She told me she was watching over me, protecting me. And that our tadpoles could be beneficial, if we embrace what powers they had to offer."

Ed snorts.

"Don't tell me you bought that claptrap," he says. "I had the same damned dream, and if that doesn't tell you something suspicious is going on, what the hell will?"

"It was uncanny," Gale admits. Good. "I'm not entirely sure what to make of it."

"We should see if it bothered the others," Ed says, which means he has to go back by Withers, damn it. He grimaces.

"I imagine that if we did, and it truly was related to our tadpoles, that the others did as well, but you are correct, it would be wise to confirm that."

Ed does not want to even look at the talking corpse again. But he and Gale are in agreement, so he nods.

"Let's go," he says, and leads the way back.

The smell of cooking porridge reaches his nose as they approach; Withers is, thankfully, nowhere to be seen. A thread of tension runs out of Ed's shoulders, leaving his right shoulder and automail socket aching.

"Did you have a weird dream last night?" Ed asks Astarion, bluntly. The albino is still watching the sun, but he turns to regard Ed with an arched eyebrow.

"I did," he says slowly. "A vision, promising me protection, and all sorts of delicious powers from these parasites in our heads."

"Don't tell me you bought that bullshit," Ed replies. "A mysterious stranger invades our dreams, promises the world, asks us to 'embrace your potential'?" He scoffs; he knows what his potential is. "No thanks. It wants something from us."

"Whether it wants something or not is immaterial; we should see what these tadpoles can do for us," Astarion argues.

"I disagree," Wyll says, from the door to the house. "Ed's right, we should be careful. We don't know that the 'visitor' isn't the tadpoles themselves, trying to manipulate us with a little trick."

"Thank you," Ed says. Wyll nods.

"No good ever came from trusting honey tongued strangers conjured up by illithid worms." It's Astarion's turn to scoff.

"Nothing was ever gained from timidity," he counters.

"I think," Gale interjects, before Ed or Wyll can argue futher with Astarion. "That we should withhold judgement until we have more information. We don't know if we can trust this menifestation, but at the same time, we don't know that we can't. It could well be that she is the one protecting us, somehow; none of us yet show any signs of ceremorphosis, and we have no other explanation so far."

"And if there is some way to take advantage of these abnormally quiescent tadpoles, we should seize it," Astarion says.

"I thought I heard a ruckus," Shadowheart says from behind Wyll. He steps out of the door to give her room to join them. She does, wearing a close-fitting leather ensemble that Ed has to look away from. Luckily, her face is right there. "I was hoping my imagination had gotten the better of me, but this must be something more."

"That's all of us then," Ed says. "Still think it's a good idea to go mucking about like it wants us to?" he asks Astarion.

"Not all ideas worth pursuing are good ideas," the albino replies, and Ed will never admit (out loud, to anyone but himself) that he agrees with the sentiment. Sometimes the only ideas you can pursue are bad ones. This isn't that kind of situation though.

A burning smell fills the air, and Wyll curses, and scrambles back into the house. Shadowheart steps aside for him.

"It claims to be our ally," she says. "But I don't know."

"More research is needed," Gale suggests. "Perhaps there will be someone among the druids who can help us--ridding us of the tadpoles, or at least providing us with the information that we need to do it ourselves."

"What's a druid?" Ed asks.

Chapter Text

Gale explains what a druid is. Rather incredulously, but he does. Ed is the one left incredulous by his explanation, because, really? Really? Weird mystics who get supernatural powers from nature sounds like something out of the kind of fairy tale Ed had abandoned before he was even five years old, but apparently it's just as normal as walking corpses and tieflings here, wherever here--

Faerûn. The name from his dream flits through his head.

"Hey. Is this place called Faerûn?" he asks

"Yes, of course," Gale says. "Obviously, you aren't from here; I've never heard of Amestris myself, for instance, and I'm very well educated."

"Dream Invader mentioned it," Ed replies. "That's how I know it."

"Hm, I recall that as well. That adds some substance to it, doesn't it? Yes, this is Faerûn," Gale confirms. "On the Sword Coast, not far from Baldur's Gate, if I may make an educated guess. Which is to say, we're on the west coast of Faerûn, within a couple of days of a major port city," he continues. "So as I was saying, the final thing that druids are known for--perhaps what they are best known for, ultimately--is their ability to wild shape, which is to say, they can transform into various avatars of nature--animal shapes for the most part, though I have read of some druids able to take on the shapes of plants, or elementals... are you all right?"

Ed is not all right.

His head is buzzing, his ears are ringing, and the static is creeping in.

"Ed! Pull yourself together!" Gale almost shouts, grabbing Ed by the shoulders and giving him a shake. It knocks the buzzing right out of him, and he shakes Gale off. Gale, to his credit, immediately lets go, and takes half a step back.

"I'm fine," Ed manages. "Thanks."

"No need, and I apologise for grabbing you like that."

"Can we talk about something else?" Ed asks. Druids are. Too much to handle right now.

"Actually, we should go and speak to the druids," Gale says. "We heard yesterday that they may have a healer who can help--and we should seek the aid of that healer, before they finish the ritual to seal off the Grove."

"The what to do what now?" Ed's head throbs, and it has nothing to do with the brain worm.

"The druids are in the midst of performing a particular ritual," Gale explains. "The Rite of Thorns, I believe, which will seal off this particular grove from the rest of the world for... well, forever, so far as I'm aware. I am an expert in many things, but I must admit that the particulars of this ritual are not one of them. I'm afraid you would have to ask a druid, and they are, as a whole, less than forthcoming with what they consider to be their secrets. In fact, this might be a rare opportunity to glean something from them," he muses.

"You think they have a good surgeon?" Ed asks. Seems out of character for shapeshifting nature mystics but what the hell does he know?

"More likely they have someone skilled with healing and restoration magic," Gale replies. "They would have to be much better than Shadowheart," he adds. "Or perhaps somehow just a true expert in illithid parasites, but we lose nothing by asking, and have everything to gain."

Ed resists the urge to sigh.

"You're right. Let's get the others and go ask."

Half an hour later they're descending the stairs to the sound of an argument.

"Let my daughter go, right now!" is the first thing that Ed hears clearly, one of the horned refugees making the demand of what has to be a druid, a woman dressed in leather, leaves, and antlers. The two with her are dressed similarly. It's almost, but not quite like a uniform of sorts. Maybe a uniform with heavy customisation.

"She is a thief, hellspawn. And you will wait for Kagha's judgement. Now get back!" the druid--Ed's assuming, but she looks like what he imagines a shapeshifting nature mystic might--responds.

The horned refugee--the mother--snarls in frustration.

"Let me through, lawless bastard, or I'll rip your damned throat out!" The man to the left of the spokesdruid responds by roaring, glowing, and turning into a motherfucking bear, okay, fuck, Gale wasn't making shit up, druids turn into animals in contravention of all natural laws and aren't they supposed to be nature mystics? Shouldn't nature mystics be concerned with upholding the laws of nature and not violating them so flagrantly?

Conservation of mass, conservation of energy, equivalent exchange, Malburg's law, Konstantin's law... it's a babbling litany in his mind as he watches the mother and her comrades give up and flee back up the steps.

Maybe, he finds himself thinking. These druids can actually do something about this brain worm. He's torn; investigate the child, or go to the druids? The decision is made for him when Astarion strides on past the refugees, and demands admittance to the grove. Because of course he doesn't give a shit about the fate of some kid. Ed huffs, and follows after, the rest of the party, bar Wyll, following.

He catches Wyll's eye, and nods toward the mother; Wyll nods back in return. Good, someone's on it.

"A moment, Jeorna," Ed hears as he arrives beside Astarion. The spokesdruid leans down as the other--a short, pointy-eared man--whispers something to her. It's soft enough that Ed can't make out a word of it, no matter how he strains. Before long, the woman straightens.

"Oh, I understand," she says. "You." Her eyes fix on Ed.

"What?" he immediately responds.

"Apparently, Kagha wants to see you. Go ahead."

"These guys go with me," Ed says, jerking his thumb back at everyone. The spokesdruid nods.

"Fine," she says, as easy as that. Why couldn't she be as accommodating to the refugees? The same reasons, he thinks darkly, why nobody is accommodating to refugees.

Wyll catches up easily, because Ed is stopped in his tracks just a few steps beyond the guard druids because what in the actual fuck. Coruscating green energy rises from a great stone circle, added to constantly by people--druids, probably--standing around it, chanting, and raising their hands, glowing with matching green light. He can feel it, the potential, brushing over his skin, and thrumming in his head. The brain worm squirms behind his eye, clearly uncomfortable, which is a good sign, as far as he's concerned.

"So, it turns out that the girl--Arabella--tried to steal their idol of Silvanus, which they need for this Rite of Thorns of theirs," Wyll tells them. A little smile curls Astarion's lips.

"Breaking into druid chamber to steal a sacred relic? Oh, she sounds like fun." Ed makes a face at him. "You can't deny it, you're thinking the same thing." The worst part is, the asshole's right. She sounds like a precocious brat, and Ed has a bias toward precocious brats.

"We're going to speak with this Kagha anyway. Perhaps we can intervene on behalf of the child," Gale suggests.

"I'm not so sure we should," Shadowheart counters. "It's not any of our business. We need to find this healer, first and foremost."

"Depending on what Kagha wants from us, it might be a simple negotiation," Wyll says. "And I think we should save the girl. She's just a child who made a mistake. She doesn't deserve to be judged by people who hate her."

"I agree," Ed says. "Now let's find Kagha."

He resolutely tears his eyes away from the green glow of maybe the rite that the druids are performing, and strides off deeper into the grove.

Ten minutes later, they haven't found Kagha, but they have found a tiefling child and some horrifying chimeras that Gale calls "Harpies! Ignore their song, they can hypnotise you!" Harpies never counted on Edward Elric; he just transmutes some ear plugs, and goes to it.

He is hampered somewhat by the fact that the harpies can fly, and that they're by water that quickly gets deep enough to be very dangerous for Ed, with his automail.

Most of the party has some kind of ranged attack; Wyll's green beams of light are the most surprising. Ed's not sure why, but they are. Ed focuses on defence, leaping in front of the kid and his companions, blocking attacks, and striking back when the harpies are in range.

Once again, combat ends in death; not for any of them, but for all of the harpies. Ed didn't strike any of the killing blows, but he contributed to almost all of them, and he's very aware of that fact. He's reminded of the goblins, dead before the gates of the grove, and he remembers, suddenly, the sickening crunch as he struck one into a rock.

Fuck.

"So this may be a fucked up question," Ed starts. "But are harpies people?"

"No," Wyll says, shaking his head. "They're monsters; a threat to everyone around them."

"Well, they do have a certain crude intellect, and culture," Gale corrects. "I would say by that standard, they might be considered 'people'. But if so, they are people who are inimical to other people. Consider that they were luring that boy to his death and likely consumption, and they would have done the same to us without a shred of hesitation or remorse. Out here, it's often kill or be killed, I'm afraid. Personally, I prefer the predictable, monster-free hum of city life."

Astarion barks an incredulous laugh.

"Monster-free? You're from Waterdeep. The greenest child on the Coast could tell you what a lie that is."

"You're thinking of Undermountain," Gale says, matter-of-factly. "And what happens in Undermountain, stays in Undermountain."

"I'm sure."

Gale snipes back, something incomprehensible. Damn it.

"Gale," Ed says, getting his attention from his argument with Astarion. He makes the gesture that the older man uses when he does his thing, and Gale replies, before casting his magic spell again, and touching Ed's shoulder.

"There we are," he says. "We ought to get on with things, while the spell lasts. I only have one more left."

"I meant to ask you about that," Ed says, as they head back up the winding cliff path.

"Oh, yes, you seem to cast rather more like a sorcerer than a wizard--" What a what? When Ed asks, Gale is perfectly willing to explain. In detail. With diagrams even, when Ed hands over his notebook.

It makes sense. It makes too much sense, in the way that alchemy does some times, or those other things that just click in his head, and he knows that this is more knowledge from the Gate, making itself known. How much has he missed because he doesn't know it's there?

There's something else that he can feel in that place in his mind, in his soul, but he's not sure he wants to go there. Not now, not when so much else is going on. The worm wriggles, as if to emphasise the thought. Eugh.

"So, see, I don't 'cast' at all," Ed concludes, finally. "It's a completely different paradigm."

"Yes, I see," Gale agrees eagerly. "But not one so different as to be irreconcilable. I think with some work, we could reach the point where one overlaps with the other, and generate a unified theory of the arcane."

"A lot of work, you mean," Ed says. "Alchemy works within natural laws, while your 'magic' inherently violates them."

"Ah, but does it? Magic is a natural force in and of itself, and it has its own laws that it obeys, and that must be obeyed, even by the most gifted of mortals." He sounds rueful as he says it, and Ed finds himself wondering what the story there is. Because there obviously is one.

...hell. There's only one story when it comes to regret about the violation of natural laws.

"You tried to circumvent them, didn't you," he states flatly. Gale looks at him, startled.

"I, well, how did you...?" Understanding flickers in his eyes. "I see. What a strange world we find ourselves in, my young friend, who have reached beyond what was intended for mortal man, and found nothing wanting but ourselves."

Ed shoots him a sympathetic grimace. He wonders what the price is for trying to violate the laws of magic. He doesn't ask; it seems a bit too personal to pry into when surrounded by all these druids.

They do eventually find Kagha, threatening the missing girl with a venomous snake and--

"Just who the hell do you think you are, threatening to kill a child for the kind of dumb mistake that any kid could make?!" Ed demands. The pointy-eared woman whirls on him, eyes narrowed, nostrils flaring--her snake rears, hissing at Ed, and the girl--Arabella-- flinches.

"I am in charge of this grove," she says. "I am Kagha. This devilspawn--"

That's all Ed needs to hear.

"Fuck you, she's just a kid. Now tell me what the hell you want with us, so I can take her and get the hell out of here."

"Do you have any idea what this parasite did?" Kagha demands.

"Don't know, don't care. She's just a kid," Ed responds. He crosses his arms, and looks down his nose at her, just to make the point. Her hand curls into a fist.

"I invited you here to thank you for your service to this grove, and this is how you behave? I'll have you cast out--"

"I apologise for Ed," Gale says, stepping forward. "He is young himself, and as you can see, quite impulsive. If you truly meant to thank us for helping the grove, then you can do so in two ways: letting us see your healer, and remanding the girl to our custody. We'll see to it that she stays out of trouble."

The snake hisses again, and Kagha looks at it, almost like it's talking to her. All things considered, Ed wouldn't be surprised at this point if it is.

"Apology accepted," Kagha says, with acidic false grace. "But I do not accept your terms; you may visit Nettie, but the devil will be imprisoned here, and the rest cast out." Her eyes turn to one of the other druids in the room. "Rath--lock her up. She remains here until the rite is complete. And keep still, devil," she adds, leaning in to menace the girl. "Teela is restless." The snake hisses directly at the girl this time. Once more, she flinches--and bolts. The snake strikes--

"--NO!" Ed shouts, but it's too late, the thing is too damned fast. He's still across the room and grabbing the thing before anyone else can blink, even as Arabella falls. A trace of venom remains on its fangs, and Ed gets some more as it strikes his automail, now he snatches a glass bottle and if he can just transmute some antivenom and a hypodermic--

Arabella twitches, and goes still. No rise or fall of her chest. No. No.

Ed yanks his left glove off, and checks her for a pulse.

Nothing.

He's too late.

Shadowheart, he realises, is on the ground beside him, speaking under her breath--praying, Ed realises--and making odd gestures, even odder than the usual 'magical' gestures she and Gale make. A sense of... something hangs about her, and Ed would swear she's glowing somehow--

It is not quite Shadowheart's voice that intones the words, not quite Shadowheart's hands that touch Arabella--Ed can see, can feel a second set, ephemeral but decidedly there laying over her. A pale blue light rolls through the girl, and in the next moment, she draws in a breath, her burning-ember eyes open wide and glowing brighter than before.

"It is done," the voice that isn't quite Shadowheart says, and before Ed can interrogate it, Shadowheart shudders, and that second presence is gone, as if it never was.

"My Lady must have plans for you," she murmurs to the girl. "Your life in Her service, perhaps. We will speak, later. For now..." she shoots a look at Kagha, who is watching with wide-eyed incredulity. "Go to your parents."

"What the fuck was that," Ed asks, as incredulous as Kagha looks.

"I prayed to be able to intervene in the child's fate," Shadowheart replies. "My goddess answered."

"Yeah, but she was dead," Ed points out.

"How dare you flout the laws of nature in this very grove!" Kagha snarls, and oh hell no.

"Shut up!" Ed snarls back. "She wouldn't have needed to if you hadn't told your damned snake to attack a kid, you crazy, sadistic bitch!"

The bitch just scoffs, draws herself up, and looks down her goddamned nose.

"I do what is necessary for the safety and prosperity of this grove. Children are not above the natural order, boy."

"There's nothing natural about imprisoning and executing a kid," Ed snaps back. "And watch who you're calling a puny worm the size of a bean!" She looks confused then, good; the enemy should always be confused. And she is definitely the enemy.

Raising an arm, Kagha points imperiously to a doopr leading out of the room.

"I will keep my word, and allow you to visit our healer. Now begone from my sight, before I give Teela a new target."

Shadowheart slips an arm through Ed's, and leads him away. Wyll follows. Astarion--

--where the hell is Astarion? Ed hopes he took the chance to visit the healer and get them an answer already, so they can get out of this fucking place, but no, he's not back there, only a short broad woman, standing over an injured bird, who says:

"I see you. Just give me a moment."

"Is there anything I can do to help?" Ed finds himself asking. No point being rude to the doctor, and she had nothing to do with the mess just now. She hadn't helped anything, but she hadn't sided with the bitch, either. She ignores him, focusing on the task at hand. She gestures, and intones two words, and as the green glow swirls around it, the bird rises to its feet.

It's fucking impressive is what it is, even having seen Shadowheart's literal miracle just minutes ago. Because what the hell else do you call it? Even discounting the idea of divine intervention--Ed will believe it when he sees it--what the hell else do you call that? She was dead, not breathing, heart stopped by the venom flowing through her veins, and Shadowheart, somehow, brought her back. With words and a touch, and no sign of alchemy whatsoever.

Something pale moves in the corner of Ed's eye. He glances over, and sees Astarion, returned from wherever he slunk off to.

Later, the albino mouths, and holds a finger to his faintly smirking lips. So, he found something interesting, it looks like.

"There," the woman, maybe this Nettie they're looking for, "It's up to her now. Life or death. Now, what was it you needed?"

"We're looking for Nettie," Gale says, before Ed or anyone else can answer.

"You found her," the woman, now confirmed to be Nettie, says, eyeing them a little warily. "But I still don't know what she can do for you."

"Do you know anything about illithids?" Ed asks, cutting right to the chase. "Specifically, their tadpoles, and more specifically, getting them out of someone's head?"

"Illithids--mind flayers? You have a mind flayer tadpole?" There's a quaver in her voice, barely noticable, and she leans away like Ed's contagious.

"I'm afraid so," Gale says. Her eyes flick around from one to the other of them, each in turn, before landing on Gale again.

"All of you?"

"All of us," Gale affirms. "Is there anything you can do?" he asks. She regards them through thoughtfully narrowed eyes.

"I--I'll do what I can," she says, carefully. "Come, follow me. I might be able to help."

Ed exchanges a look with Gale, and then glances back at the rest of them. Wyll and Shadowheart nod; Astarion shrugs, and gestures for Ed to lead the way. He falls in behind the rest, as they follow Nettie deeper into the druids' lair.

Chapter Text

There's a dead body, laid out on a slab in the back room that Nettie leads them into, because of course there is. This one has long pointed ears like Astarion and Kagha, but odd, dusky grey skin. It's not the kind of grey that comes from death, either, because from what Ed can see from his mouth and lips, all of that has a more violet cast to it than those of humans as well. (Part of him wonders if that carries to the organs as well; a perfectly natural curiosity for a scientific mind.)

Nettie notices his curiosity.

"That one has the same problem as you. Attacked us in the woods, together with some goblins," she explains. "Tadpole crawled out of his head soon after." Well at least there's no question what she means by 'same problem.'

"This drow had the same kind of parasite as we do?" Wyll asks, eyeing the corpse warily. Ed files the name in the same place as tiefling; proper nouns for different people.

"Seems so," Nettie replies. "Gave Master Halsin a right start."

"Who's Master Halsin?" Ed asks, as the woman turns to rummage through a collection of bottles on one of the benches. He can see preserved tentacles in the collection, among other things, including, now that he's looking, a brain worm. It must be the one that crawled out of the dead drow man.

"Our First Druid," Nettie replies, almost absently, as she keeps looking for... whatever it is she's looking for. "It's why he joined the adventurers on their expedition," she continues. "To find out what was happening." She turns back to them with a thorned branch in one hand.

...Okay, it makes sense that the nature mystics would have a nature-based solution, but if she puts that thing anywhere near Ed's eye...

He reminds himself not to jump to conclusions based on paltry evidence.

"What adventurers? Expedition?" She gives him an odd look.

"Are you experiencing memory loss?" she asks, grip on the branch tightening. "Or any other mental symptoms?"

"Ed isn't entirely caught up on the goings on yesterday," Gale explains. "He and we can only communicate by virtue of a tongues spell, and we are acting with some haste, as to not waste it. I only have one casting left today, so by all means continue, but please bear that in mind."

"I see," Nettie replies. She looks thoughtful for a moment, and then continues, "The people outside the gate, who you helped rescue yesterday, Master Halsin was with them. It's a pity you got me instead of him. He understands these things--studied them. Still, we have options." She starts to pace to the side, around the group. Once again, Ed notices the thorned branch in her hand, and he's not the only one.

"What's that for?" Shadowheart asks, pointing her chin at the branch. Nettie shifts a little, fingers flexing around the branch.

"It might help," she answers cagily. "But first thing's first--tell me about your symptoms. Have you noticed anything strange happening?"

At that, Ed just has to laugh.

"Lady, for the last three days, everything has been strange. You really want to know?" She nods. "Fine. I've been scooped out of my bed by tentacle-faced monstrosities, swept into an abomination of fleshcrafting, had a brain worm stuck into my eye, subjected to weird psychic bullshit--"

"What do you mean, 'weird psychic bullshit'?" she interjects to ask.

"It's happened to all of us," Wyll answers, before Ed can. "A kind of... melding of minds, with others who have the tadpoles." Nettie's eyes widen, and she leans away minutely.

“Victims can identify each other?” It's more than half rhetorical, Ed thinks. "Not that the others know that they're victims, of course."

"What makes you so sure of that?" Ed asks.

"They're not like you, at any rate," Nettie allows. "They haven't come looking for help, or even done more than attack, so far. Did you really pick up the parasite on a--what did you call it? Fleshcrafted abomination? What exactly is that? Halsin was desperate to find out where all this was happening."

"I believe Ed is referring to the illithis nautiloid," Gale explains. "Which is indeed an abomination of both flesh, and craft."

"Yeah, that's it," Ed agrees. 'Nautiloid' is the same word that the Dream Invader had used; if Gale's familiar with it as well, it's probably the proper term for it.

Ed's going to keep using his own; he likes it better. Nettie frowns, troubled.

"But Master Halsin was so sure..." She trails off, and Ed can see it in her eyes, the moment she comes to some decision. About them, maybe. "Look, you've been straight with me, so I'll be straight with you. You're dangerous. All of you are. It's especially dangerous that there's more than one of you. If you transform here, we're all dead. But you're good souls, and you deserve a chance to save yourselves." She tucks the thorned branch away as she speaks, and yeah, he thought that thing was suspicious.

She reaches into another pocket, and pulls out a vial, structured and padded to be carried around.

"This is a vial of wyvern poison," she says, holding it out. "Swear to me you'll swallow it if you feel any symptoms."

"I swear it," Wyll says, stepping forward to take the vial. "I can't speak for the rest, but I for one would die before becoming one of those things."

"Why should we take anything from someone who was planning to kill us?" Ed asks, irritated.

"It seems at best ill-advised," Astarion agrees.

"I'm with Wyll," Shadowheart replies. "I'll drink my share if it comes to that. You have my word."

"And mine as well," Gale says. "Much as it pains me to say, death is far preferable to whatever existence remains beyond ceremorphosis. Enslavement to an Elder Brain for one," he adds thoughtfully. "And a highly specialised diet for another--brains," he adds, at Ed's look. "The brains of sapient creatures are all that a mind flayer can subsist upon. They are known to breed slaves purely for the purposes of dining."

"Fuck," is all Ed can respond.

"This is the least of why I want you to swear to me," Nettie says, insistent. There's something in her eyes that takes Ed a moment to recognise: fear. True fear. The kind he can recall feeling himself, if only a handful of times.

"You're asking me to kill myself," he points out, flatly. "To just give up and end it all."

"I'm asking you to save yourself. Your soul, if nothing else--ceremorphosis destroys that, as well as everything else," Nettie says. "It's a fate no-one deserves."

The echo of his own thought--and Gale's nod, when Ed looks at him--is what tips the scales.

"Fine," Ed says. "I swear it. Astarion?" The albino clicks his tongue, and rolls his eyes.

"All right, fine, I swear it too." Ed can tell he doesn't mean it, but it seems good enough for Nettie, who hands the vial over to Wyll, who pockets it gingerly.

"I hope it doesn't come to that, but... thank you," Nettie says. "You know," she continues, concern thick in her voice, "I've spent my life treating folk, and never once saw a mind flayer infestation. Then suddenly, there are dozens of you--maybe more."

"Wait, what do you mean, dozens?" Ed doesn't yelp, but it's a near thing. That's a lot of fucking people to track down and corral, although--he does recall what Nettie just said about the others not realising they're victims. That makes his gut curl uncomfortably.

"I mean dozens," she replies calmly. "At least. Master Halsin and I were tracking them, studying them, trying to figure out what the hells was going on. Because you should all be changing," she carries on, right over whatever Gale was just about to interject. "There should be a small army of mind flayers out there! But you're not. 'Weird psychic bullshit' aside, you seem perfectly normal."

She must have a weird idea of normal, Ed thinks. In the next moment he want to smack himself on the forehead; of course she has a weird idea of normal. She's a shapeshifting, bird-healing nature mystic who probably does ten impossible things before breakfast every day.

"It sounds as though we should see your Master Halsin," Gale says, finally getting his words in.

"You should. And if he were here, I'd have taken you to him immediately," Nettie says. Her lips purse briefly. "But he's not; those adventurers came back without him."

"You've worked with him though. There must be something that you know," Astarion says. He's frowning a little, and Ed doesn't think he's ever seen the man look so troubled.

"I can tell you one thing," she replies. "That thing in your head is like nothing we're ever seen from mind flayers. It's one of their worms for sure, but this one gives you powers--telepathic connections. And it doesn't turn you into one of them."

"If it doesn't actually change us, then what was the point of making us swear an oath on wyvern poison?!" Astarion demands, as outraged as Ed feels. It's odd and uncomfortable to say the least to be agreeing with the asshole on any level, but when the shoe fits...

"If you'd let me finish," she snaps back, just a little annoyed, Ed thinks. "I was going to say that it doesn't turn you into one of them yet. It's a precaution. Maybe it's unnecessary; I hope it's unnecessary. But it's a failsafe, just in case."

Less a failsafe and more of a killswitch. Ed keeps the thought to himself, but he can see that he's not the only one thinking something like it.

"So I'm not the only one who thinks it's just a matter of time," Gale says, rather cynically if you ask Ed. Then again, the man has reason to be a cynic, doesn't he, alchemist? The thought comes in Truth's voice, and Ed shoves it away.

"There's a lot we don't know," Nettie temporises. "Infected--folks like you--have been converging on an old temple of Selûne, and I've no idea why."

"Maybe hoping She can cure them?" Wyll suggests. Ed and Shadowheart scoff at the same time, and in the next moment, meet each other's eyes. She looks as surprised as Ed feels.

"What, I thought you believed in gods?" he asks her.

"Not that one," she says, her voice laced with derision. "Not all gods are the same, Ed."

"Could've fooled me," he responds, rolling his eyes. Nettie frowns at both of them.

"Nobody has worshipped there in living memory of the grove," she says gravely. "It's been abandoned a long time. Still, when he heard the adventurers were going there, Master Halsin saw a chance to get answers. Joined on the spot. Whatever he found there-" she looks down, sorrow crossing her features "-he didn't make it back."

"Do you think he's still alive?" Wyll asks. Ed can see the hope in his eye. It's there in Gale's and Shadowheart's, too. Astarion, for the moment, is a cypher.

"I think so. I hope so," Nettie corrects herself. "I've sent birds to find him, but they can't get close without goblins trying to shoot them down."

"Wait, wait, wait," Ed interjects, waving his hands to cut off anything further. "I know where this is going--you want us to find him, right?" Nettie tilts her head slightly, and regards him without blinking.

"You're one of them, technically speaking," she says. "They won't kill someone carrying their parasite."

"You don't know that," Ed points out, shaking a finger at her. "For all you know, they'll know we aren't with them right away, and kill us to recover the parasites, and put them in some other poor fucker's head." She opens her mouth. Ed forges on. "I'm not saying we won't do it,w hell, it sounds like your Master Halsin might be our best chance at getting out of this mess alive."

"Then--"

"You said you'd be straight with us! So don't make fucking assumptions about how things are going to go," Ed snaps.

"But you'll go," Nettie answers, after a moment.

"Not just up to me," Ed admits. Sure, he's been leading this group of weirdos, somehow, probably because they all recognise his inherent superiority, but he's not actually a dictator. He's not going to force them into what sounds like a really dangerous situation. "Guys?"

"I'm in," Wyll says immediately. "I'd go even if we didn't have this little problem." He taps his temple. "The Blade of Frontiers can't leave someone to an uncertain fate."

"I expect there will be plenty of people to kill," Astarion says. "Or at least goblins." Ed takes that disgusting statement as a 'yes'.

"What's life without a little adventure?" Gale asks, with half a smile. "You can count on me." Shadowheart finally just nods. Ed turns back to Nettie.

"All right, I guess we're in. Tell us everything else you know about this temple and the people in it."

'Everything else' turns out to be not very much: the presence of goblins and drow, the worship of something called 'the Absolute'--and doesn't that sound ominous--and the presence of more--maybe many more--people with brain worms. She also gives them a general direction, which is helpful, but not very.

"I still feel like we need to take out Karlach, first," Wyll says, frowning a little as they leave. "These tadpoles are a problem, but Karlach's a threat to the entire Coast."

"Who?" Ed asks, blankly.

"--That's right, you didn't have the spell when I explained," Wyll replies. "She's a devil, escaped from Avernus to wreak destruction on the mortal plane."

"A literal devil, from... Avernus? Is that another name for Hell?"

"It's one of the Circles of Hell," Wyll supplies.

"You don't believe in gods, but you believe in the Hells?" Shadowheart asks, a little snippily in Ed's opinion.

"I believe in Hell now because I've seen it," Ed emphasises. "Believe it or not, I've been to places just as bad. They just weren't on fire--or an extradimensional plane of eternal torment." Just an extradimension plane of consumption and death inside of Gluttony. Well. Maybe it's not so hard to believe, given that. His mind still refuses to quite accept it.

The brain worm throbs as he thinks of Gluttony, and his companions all wince.

"What the..." Wyll trails off, staring incredulously. Shadowheart looks a little pale, and Gale frowns deeply at whatever he saw through the mental link. Astarion, on the other hand, just looks intriged because of course he does. He's probably a serial killer or something.

"You weren't meant to see that," Ed says.

"I don't think anybody alive was meant to see that," Wyll replies. "Whatever plane that was... how did you make it out alive?"

"I almost didn't," Ed admits. "And I'd rather not talk about it."

"That's wholly understandable," Gale says. "But if you ever do feel the need to speak of it, I'm sure any of us would be willing to listen."

"...Thanks." It's grudging, but Ed does mean it; these people have known him for a couple of days, they've barely talked, and still they manage to find some sympathy for him. And it is sympathy, and not pity; he's not quite sure how he can tell, probably more weird psychic bullshit, but it helps.

"And entire plane filled with blood, though," Astarion says, thoughtfully. "I must say, I'm intrigued."

"Have you ever been in a charnel house?" Ed asks him. "Or stood over a mass grave? It's something like both of those, but worse. The smell is the least of it," he adds. "But you wouldn't think that, smelling it." He pushes the memory of the smell at the brain worm, because hey, he might as well try that shit again, and somehow, this time, it works: Astarion goes even more pale, and wrinkles his nose, the corners of his lips turning down.

"I fear that it's the kind of scene we'll be seeing up and down the Coast if we don't stop Karlach," Wyll says. "I don't know if I can explain to you just how dangerous an actual devil is."

"More dangerous than a pack of mind flayers?" Shadowheart asks pointedly. "I somehow doubt a single devil is going to be more of a danger than we potentially are."

"We can look for her along the way," Ed says.

"People will die if we don't stop her," Wyll says. "She's the reason I was in Avernus to begin with."

"People will die if we don't stop us," Astarion snaps. "And I for one would rather bath the Coast in blood than turn into one of those things."

"The Coast will be bathed in blood no matter what we do, if we cannot agree on a course of action," Gale says. "I for one agree with Ed. We have a lot of ground to cover between here and the temple, and I think there's every chance that we will find her along the way. If we pick up her trail, we can follow it," he adds to Wyll. "Otherwise, we forge on, and look for our solution--and the druids' Master Halsin--in the temple."

“I can agree to that,” Wyll says. “I suppose I can’t face Karlach if I turn into a mind flayer. Now let’s find these adventurers.”

“Ed, if the spell wears off before we find them, do you want the last one, or should I save it?” Gale asks. It’s a good question. Ed gives it the thought that it deserves as they climb up the stone stairs that leas back to the caves the refugees have taken over.

“Save it,” he says finally. “I’m pretty sure you guys can interrogate them without me; all we need from them is information about the temple, right? I’d rather have communication available if something urgent comes up.” It’s a tough decision to make, but fate has thrown his lot in with these weirdos and he has to trust them sometime, right? Something like this seems safe enough.

Gale nods easily.

“All right. That sounds… practical. The spell will be wearing off in the next ten minutes,” he says matter-of-factly. “So if there are any questions you want to be sure we ask, try to come up with them before then.”

Naturally that statement means that Ed literally cannot think of any fucking questions before the ‘spell’s’ duration runs out. He’s left with basic words and gestures, much to his irritation.

They find the adventurers not three fucking minutes after the ‘spell’ wears off. Because of course they do. Ed understands essentially none of the exchange, but it ends with Gale receiving a map and a letter of some kind, so he's going to mark it down as productive. The older man then leads them back up and out to their camp, where fuck no Withers is hanging out nope nope nope nope nope

Ed turns on his heel, and strides away, shaking his head. He cannot handle a walking, talking corpse, that knows things.

"Alchemist," the thing calls. "I apologise for frightening you."

Oh hell NO.

Ed turns back on his heel, and marches right up to it.

"I'm not frightened," he snarls. "I'm offended. Get it right!"

"My existence offends you?" There's a weight to the question that Ed does not miss, and it leaves Ed off balance enough that he just shakes his finger, and goes into the house.

After a moment, he transmutes a door. They should have a door anyway, even if they're only here another night, those druids also give Ed the creeps.

The rest of the group comes in around thirty seconds later.

"[Something something] you [something] Withers," Gale says. "Do you [something something]?" He makes an aborted gesture, like the spell, and Ed shakes his head; they're supposed to be saving it. And then Astarion says something in that tone* he has, and Gale sighs, uses his 'spell', and just like that, Ed can understand.

"Astarion says that he found something we're all going to want to hear about," Gale says.

"Only if you care about screwing over that Kagha," Astarion states. Ed's eyes snap right to him, and he gives a sharp grin. Ed sees it for what it is: a kind of peace offering. They have to get along if they want to get things done, but Astarion's a bastard who doesn't know how to be any other way. And so he's found what he thinks is dirt on someone Ed really fucking doesn't like. As a bribe, he could do worse.

"Let's hear it," he says.

"Well, while you had that druid distacted, I did a little looking around," Astarion starts, and then he goes on to explain the information he found about the Rite of Thorns--usually forbidden--and also the hidden chest with information about shadow druids (great, more weird nature mystics), and a very suspicious note.

"Do we have any idea who 'Olodan' is?" Ed asks.

"No," Astarion replies. "But I think I know how we can find out."

Swamp-docks.

Tree.

Meet me alone.

Yeah, that's suspicious as fuck.

"It does seem very suspicious that a druid with an interest in the shadow druids would begin leading the Rite of Thorns at almost the very moment the actual First Druid of her circle goes missing," Gale muses.

"What the fuck is a shadow druid?" Ed asks.

"A faction of druids who are fundamentally opposed to civilisation, and aren't opposed to using violence to drive it away," Gale explains. "I do wish I knew more detail than that, but as I previously noted, druids are notoriously secretive about..." He trails off, lips thinning for a moment. "Well, I suspect it would be faster to list those things that druids are not secretive about," he says, with a little shrug. "I wish we had been less closely watched; I might have done some snooping myself."

"Leave the 'snooping' to the experts," Astarion says, and surprisingly, pulls a book out of his bag, offering it to Gale. "I want this back when you are done." Gale takes it, with a look as astonished as Ed feels.

"Thank you, Astarion. I would never have asked."

"I know." The albino smirks. Gale is already flipping through the book, eyes visibly devouring the text. Astarion produces the map from earlier (hadn't Gale had that?).

"Give us a table, Ed, if you would?" he asks, waggling it. Ed does, and chairs to match. The table is an elaborate baroque piece, just because he can, and so are the chairs. They're also solid stone, because that's what he has to work with, and he can't be bothered with the energy necessary to turn the stone into something else, even if it would be super-easy to give it a little nudge, and maybe make a nice black marble piece, and hey, nobody's stopping him from adding gold veins, and...

The table has a gold-veined black marble slab for a top, because who's going to stop him?

Fucking nobody.

Everyone else just stares, as well they should. Gale looks up from his book, and silently runs his fingers over the tabletop, and they slide easily on the glossy surface.

"Not an illusion," he comments.

"Please, like I'd waste my talents on anything but the real thing," Ed replies.

"Lovely," Astarion says.

"It's very impressive," Wyll allows, copying Gale's move, and running his fingers over the table. "I've honestly never seen anything like it."

Ed nods, yes, yes, praise him.

"I agree," Shadowheart says. "It's both lovely and impressive. We're also wasting time."

In response, Astarion opens the map and spreads it out. Shadowheart nudges Gale, who's already lost in his book again, and the older man looks up, blinks, and closes it.

"All right," he says. "We're here." He points to a spot on the map. It's unmarked wilderness on the map. "The temple is over here. And it looks like there's a swamp marked here on the map, by this vilage, halfway between here and the temple. We could visit it on the way, and see if there is any substance to this note of Kagha's."

"What's the distance scale?" Ed asks.

"Half an inch to the mile," Gale replies. Ed stares blankly at him.

"What's that in centimetres to the kilometre?" It's Gale's turn to look at him.

"Fascinating. It seems we do not share a measurement scale. This could be a problem later, but for now, let us just say that the distance shown here is about a day on foot between here and the village. Maybe a little more or less, depending on weather," he adds wryly.

So, a minimum of around twenty kilometres then. He eyes Gale, considers his apparent age, and knocks it back to maybe fifteen.

“So if we leave now, we’ll reach the swamp in the middle of the night,” he muses, absently rubbing his chin. “Sounds like the perfect time for an ambush.” Astarion flashes a toothy grin.

“Perhaps you are a man after my own heart after all,” he comments.

“We’re not killing anyone,” Ed says pointedly, rolling his eyes. “You can’t get information from a dead man.”

“Actually, you can,” Gale says at the same time as Shadowheart says,

“You can, though.” They look at each other, and Shadowheart gestures for Gale to continue.

“There is a spell for that: speak with dead. It’s a simple matter of preparing it for the day. Or,” he continues, pulling a pendant out from under his robes. “Just using this. It has the spell enchanted into it,” he explains, even as Ed yanks off his left glove, and reaches out to touch the—damn, he can feel something there.

“What the fuck,” he states.

“It’s a spell of the necromancy school, although some of the principles used in its composition are borrowed from divination, for obvious reasons,” Gale starts. Ed’s inclined to let him go, and get an actual explanation even if only two thirds of it really makes sense, when Wyll interrupts:

“If you really want to get on with that ambush, we should leave.”

“Before we act hastily, let me remind everyone that we have no way of knowing whether or not that meeting has already taken place. In fact, I would posit that it has already taken place, since Kagha would be unlikely to invoke the Rite of Thorns when she needs to leave the grove,” Gale says, before anyone else can respond.

“That’s a good point,” Ed says, frowning. “We don’t really have any way to verify it besides checking it out, though.”

“We may learn something useful regardless,” Shadowheart says. “I say we should go.”

“I’ll agree on the condition that we plan to stop for the night, and carry on in the morning, instead of pressing straight on,” Gale says. “I’ll need rest if I’m to be at my best for spellcasting, to say nothing of maintaining the tongues spell.” He sighs. “It’s really a shame there’s no arcane laboratory here. A necklace or a ring of tongues would be just the thing.”

“I’m surprised, Gale. You didn’t strike me as the type to engage in wishful thinking.” Shadowheart arches an eyebrow at him.

“I’m a wizard, Shadowheart. Wishful thinking is a good two thirds of my profession. The other third being the manifestation of those wishes into reality,” Gale adds, before someone can snipe at him. “Literally so, if you are capable of casting the wish spell, and of a sufficiently legalistic mindset to be able to do so safely.”

Gale carries on to describe just what he means by that, as they start packing up camp, to Ed's mounting incredulity. Because what in the fuck. What in the actual Truth-fearing fuck.

"I don't believe you," Ed says flatly, after he's taken down the house. He left his chair and the table as a memento, and so the druids know he's coming back. And also, frankly, that table turned out far too cool to dismantle.

"He's telling the truth," Wyll says. "I have never met a wizard that powerful, but I know that it's possible."

"That kind of reality warping bullshit is absolutely bullshit," Ed insists. "How does that even work? You just say 'I wish I could speak whatever the fuck this language actually is' and bam, you can speak it?"

"Well, yes," Gale replies. "Although if you phrase it like that, you'll probably end up speaking Common and only Common," he adds. "I would phrase it... hmm. 'I wish that, in addition to the languages I already speak, I could also speak Common.' It's a bit rough, but it would ge the job done. Still, it would be a waste of a wish on a problem that can be solved with a necklace of tongues, or just a little study. That much power should never be used frivolously." There's a brief wrinkle between his brows, and his eyes darken, reminding Ed that he's a fellow transgressor against the laws of nature.

Maybe it's not so impossible.

The thought is simultaneously nauseating and electrifying.

Gale meets his eyes, and his lips quirk wryly.

"I assure you," he says. "It is very possible. I take it such things are not possible for you?"

"Not even close," Ed says. "Alchemy can be used for many things, but it's grounded in real, physical phenomena--"

They run out the rest of the time on Gale's 'spell' discussing the things that are and are not possible with alchemy. They don't even have the time to get anywhere near human transmutation, thankfully. He knows they're going to get there some day, if they keep going down this path, but mostly what he ends up discussing is the difference between illegal and impossible. Ed is happy to desmonstrate a few things, specifically diamonds and gold, because he can and it utterly delights the whole party.

"I can't believe it," Astarion declares, holding a diamond--cut, not rough, because Ed's not a savage--up to the afternoon sun, and watching it sparkle. "These are real? They won't vanish, or turn into worthless rocks in an hour?"

"One hundred percent real, true, genuine, bonafide diamonds," Ed declares, smugly. "And gold. Diamonds are easier though, since they're just carbon--the same stuff as coal," he adds, at Astarion's confused look.

Wyll holds a lump of gold the size of an eyeball, and just stares at it, utterly aghast.

"You could destroy the economy of the entire continent," he says.

"There's a reason transmuting this stuff is illegal back home," Ed says, breezily. "But there's nothing stopping me from doing it here."

"No," Wyll agrees. "Except maybe your conscience."

Ed considers that, and then shrugs.

"Maybe," he says. He will absolutely make as much gold and diamonds as he needs or wants. Or anything else, for that matter. Gale and Astarion both look like they've had two completely different revelations, and Ed knows them both: the revelation of greed fulfilled, and the revelation of materials fulfilled. He knows them both well.

And that's when the 'spell' runs out, to Ed's eternal frustration.

They keep hiking until sunset, when Astarion breaks off, heading into the dark. He's probably more comfortable in the dark than in the light, given what Ed knows about albinism. He rejoins the party at just about the point where it's getting too dark to see, a cheerful spring in his step. He says something, and Shadowheart answers, before gesturing them all to follow him.

He leads them off the path, through a clump of brush, and under some trees, and out into a relatively flat, relatively clear area. Astarion gestures broadly at it, and flashes a toothy grin. Ed grins back, steps forward, and transmutes them a house for the night. It's not as nice as the house he had made at the grove, but it has separate rooms, a kitchen, and a door. Gale claps him on the shoulder, and says something that Ed takes as 'thank you.'

Ed makes a table and chairs as well, and then sits his ass down, and pulls out his notes, his contribution to camp done. (And by 'contribution' let's be real, he means 'whole ass camp.' There will be no miserable sleeping on the ground in tents while he's around.)

Gale makes dinner again, putting together another stew from whatever the rest of the party has scavenged. Once again, it manages to be better than Ed expects; the man is probably a dab hand at normal chemistry, as well as his 'magic'. Ed works on his notes between bites of food, until Wyll cajoles him into putting them away, and working on words.

Astarion produces a knife, and helpfully provides him with a few new verbs: stab, slash, and what he interprets as cut. It's exactly the shit he expects from the albino, but it's helpful shit, and he thanks the man for it.

Wyll helpfully provides punch, and Shadowheart gives him a handful of weapon nouns to go with his new violence words. He has such helpful companions.

Full up on dinner and words both, Ed indicates that he'll take third watch. Shadowfire indicates first, and Wyll second. Astarion sighs, and holds up four fingers, indicating last watch. Gale, having explained that he needs a full night's sleep for spellcasting--and having had that confirmed by the others--doesn't have to stand watch, the lucky bastard.

As Ed falls asleep that night, all he's hoping for is a complete lack of dreams.

Chapter Text

Ed sleeps fitfully, but he does sleep, and dreamlessly too. Since that's all he had been hoping for, some would say he can't complain, but when Wyll wakes him, he can't help grumbling. He had just fallen asleep from his last turn in bed. He gets up anyway, and makes himself some steps up to sit on the top of the house. For the view.

He tips his head back, and looks at the sky. The moon is a waxing crescent, assuming the moon works the same here. From the way it trails something sparkling and glittering behind it, he's uncertain of it. Gale will know; he can ask in the morning, when they can talk again. In the meantime, Ed can start sketching the sky, outlining the stars and inventing constellations. It's something to do other than stare out into the night, and wondering what the unfamiliar sounds mean.

Oh, they're not all unfamiliar; there are crickets, and other night insects. But that oddly echoing sound? What is it? And what about that hissing? Owls hiss, but is that an owl? Nocturnal snake? Lizard? Something else? Ed just doesn't know.

He realises that, as much as he's concerned about the unfamiliarity, he's still smiling; it's exhilirating, knowing that there's so much to see, and do, and learn! It would be great, if he only had Al here.

The thought threatens to make him melanchoy, and he can't really afford it. He wonders what Al would think of the people Ed's found himself thrown in with. His brother would like Shadowheart, he thinks, and that's as far as he gets before his thoughts are interrupted by an unearthly yowling scream out in the dark. He springs to his feet, and in the next moment, the yowl echoes again, and he recognises the sound of mating foxes. He laughs to himself, and sits down again, swinging his feet over the side of the roof.

He doesn't hear the footsteps, up until Astarion makes a deliberate scuff on the roof nearby. The man asks a question--likely 'what the fuck was that and why aren't you doing anything about it?' Ed knows a city boy when he sees one. Mustang wouldn't recognise the sound either. In response, he transmutes a section of the roof into a model of what he heard, and very broadly rolls his eyes.

Astarion laughs, and wanders off again, back down into the house, leaving Ed to his thoughts.

"Yeah, good fucking night," Ed grumbles. He leaves the foxes, just in case someone else wakes up to ask, but by the time the sun's coming up, no-one has, and he puts it down to Astarion's ears. The albino joins him again on the roof as the dawn arrives, turning to face it. Ed points to his eyes, points to Astarion, and gets waved away for his trouble. All right then, Ed will take that as a yes, and head back into the house, and get the fire started for breakfast.

Gale joins him before long, nose in a book even as he starts making breakfast, and hey, this is Ed's chance to get some very important new words.

"Hey Gale," he says. "How do you say--" He points to the book.

"Hm?" Gale blinks at him, and smiles. "Book." He pulls a second out of his bag, and provides the plural, and they spend the rest of the time untill breakfast going over more and more vocabulary. He gets some cooking vocabulary this time too--and gets to add 'chop' to 'stab' and 'slice'.

Once again, Astarion doesn't join them for food; it's a bad habit, skipping meals, but Ed's not actually the boss of him, and he is actually a grown-ass man, and damn it all to fuck. Ed groans, grabs a bowl, and turns to head to the roof--and Shadowheart grabs his sleeve, and shakes her head.

"Seriously? You're stopping me from feeding him?" he asks, not caring that she won't understand. She should understand his tone. But in the next moment, Astarion appears in the door, and Ed understands; she must have heard him coming. Shadowheart says something to him, and he helps himself to the bowl in Ed's hands, before traipsing back outside, presumably to eat in the sun.

He really likes the sun, Ed observes, and helps himself to seconds. He isn't done by the time Astarion returns with an empty bowl; Ed jerks a thumb to the pot, and raises two fingers, making an inquiring noise around his spoon. Astarion shakes his head, and just adds the bowl to the small pile with Wyll and Shadowheart's, waiting to be transmuted back to the nothing much Ed made it all from. Well, his loss, Gale's gain; it's the self-styled 'wizard' who finishes off the pot today.

Once food is done, and the dishes cleared, Gale lays out the map on tha table, and gives Ed the power of communication once more.

"All right," the man says. "We are, according to my calculations, right about here." He taps the map.

"Closer to here," Astarion says, pointing to another spot, close by. "You can just see this village from here, from atop this quaint little house of Ed's."

"Quaint?*" Ed demands.

"The gargoyles are very... homey," Astarion answers. Great, the first person to appreciate Ed's aesthetic and it's the probable serial killer. Better than no-one, he guesses, but it's--

"I agree," Shadowheart says. "Guardian beasts, however static, do lend a certain coziness to the whole thing. But we're getting off topic, aren't we?" she asks pointedly, tapping the map.

"Right," Ed says, leaning forward over the map. "Are we going around the town, or through?"

"Through looks faster," Astarion observes. "But raises the odds of word getting back to Kagha's conspirators of our presence here."

"Isn't it supposed to be infested with goblins?" Shadowheart says. "That's what those adventurers said."

"And how far do you trust them?" Astarion counters.

"We saved their lives," she points out. "For most people, that counts for something."

Ed tunes out the bickering as they continue, and studies the map. It doesn't take him long to reach the conclusion that going around is their best--and easiest--bet.

"We're not looking for a fight," he says. "Right? Just dirt on Kagha." Astarion clicks his tongue, and fucking pouts.

"I wanted to kill someone," he complains. "Even a goblin would do." Ed gives the bastard his very best 'fuck off' look.

"We're not going to cause trouble just so you have an excuse," he says.

"But we could," Astarion points out.

"It's faster to avoid them," Ed carries on, ignoring him. He's just being an ass on purpose right now; Ed should know, he's done it often enough himself to recognise it when he sees it from the other side.

It is, he has to admit, really annoying.

"We'll go around here, following this trail," he continues. "That should get us into the swamp with no goblin interference." He hopes; he knows he doesn’t actually know enough about goblins to tell—maybe they’re actually extra diligent about perimeter security, and there will be three whole-ass patrols between them and the swamp, and Astarion will be able to bathe in blood to his serial killer heart’s content.

At least he isn’t the unhinged kind of bloodthirsty asshole.

The party cleans up and heads out again in short order after that, back, for the moment, on the dirt track that passes for a road around here. Unfortunately, they swiftly encounter a lone goblin, wandering around in some semblance of a patrol. Before Ed can say or do anything--before anyone can say or do anything--Astarion appears behind it, and slits its throat. He follows that up with a knife to the kidney, just because, and then lets it fall to the ground, gurgling out its last.

"We could have just sneaked by it," Ed says. Astarion shakes the blood from his blade, and wipes the traces on the goblin's sleeve.

"And it could have noticed us," the killer replies calmly.

"Astarion's right," Shadowheart says. "We're better off without the risk of having it at our back. Now, let's carry on." They do. It takes long enough to get down around town that by the time they come across a couple of farmers menacing a little old lady, Gale's 'spell' has worn off, and Ed has no idea what any of them are saying. The men are very angry about something, though, and can't seem to be dissuaded from their anger no matter what anyone says (though he doubts Astarion is actually saying anything helpful, from his tone of voice).

Suddenly, the old lady says something very hard and very angry, and fucking vanishes in a cloud of smoke and sparks.

Ed is not ashamed to admits that he yelps, and jumps a whole metre back, pointing at the place the old hag was moments before.

"What the fuck?!" he demands. Nobody misses his meaning, and Gale quickly returns the power of communication to Ed.

"It appears that the old lady, Ethel, is more than she appears. Judging by our proximity to a swamp, her demonstrated arcane prowess, and known propensity for brewing potions, I would hazard a guess that she is a swamp hag," the man says, as soon as he is sure that Ed can understand him.

"Yeah, she's an old hag, but what does that have to do with it?" Ed asks.

"Oh, are you not familiar with hags?" Gale asks. "They're technically a type of fey, and one of the sort that you least want to get tangled with, if you ask me." He carries on then to describe them further--there are three kinds, apparently, each as ugly as the last, but capable of disguising themselves with illusions, and--

"Whoa, whoa, hold on just a minute, illusions?" Ed demands. Gale grins at Ed even as he expresses his skepticism.

"Like this," the 'wizard' says, and with a wave of his hand, an elegant chair, completely out of place at the edge of the swamp, just appears. There's something off about it, and after a moment, Ed realises that the edges aren't true, the form is faintly translucent, as if it's not really there. He waves a hand through the space it occupies, and, yep. Not there.

"What the fuck, Gale."

"It's really very simple--incredibly simple in this case, this is a minor illusion, the sort of cantrip even a child could cast," Gale replies. "The School of Illusion is much more popular--and less reviled--than the School of Necromancy," he continues, and begins to lay out its tenets in the same way that he had fucking necromancy.

Ed takes notes, and asks questions, until they are eventually interrupted by the clearling of Shadowheart's throat.

"While you two academics were over here wasting time, Astarion and I learned that those two young men had a reason for confronting the hag. Apparently, their sister was kidnapped by her." The way Shadowheart says it is matter-of-fact, as if she doesn't really care, but there's a tightening about her eyes that puts a certain lie to her tone.

“Well, fuck,” Ed says, succinctly. “Damn it. If even half of what Gale’s said about hags is true—“

“—I assure you, it is,” the ‘wizard’ interjects.

“—if even half of that is true, we can’t just leave her there,” Ed finishes. Damn his stupid conscience anyway.

“We could, though,” Astarion points out, to nobody’s surprise. “It’s not like it’s any of our business, and if she is a hag, do we really want to be on her bad side?” He pauses a moment, and adds, “Further on her bad side.”

“I’ve taken on worse,” Ed says, not a little grimly. Granted, the ‘worse’ had been invested in, for the moment at least, keeping him alive, but alive didn’t mean well, or intact. And Gluttony hadn’t actually given a fuck. And he’s also fairly certain that, given then chance, Envy would have kicked him off a cliff and called it an accident.

“I don’t think we can afford to detour specifically for this,” Gale says, with obvious reluctance. “In case anyone has forgotten, we’re running on an unknown, but limited quantity of time.” He taps his temple beside his eye, and the sudden reminder makes Ed grimace as he is now very conscious of the thing in his head threatening to transmute him into a tentacle-faced abomination—

“Yeah, all right,” he agrees, just as reluctantly. “We won’t go looking. But if we find her, I’m doing something.” What, he doesn’t know.

“Far be it from me to get between you and some unwarranted heroics,” Astarion replies, raising his hands briefly, fingers spread, a mocking gesture of acquiesence.

“Hey, I only engage in wholly warranted heroics,” Ed snaps back. He wishes he didn’t have to, but damn it, he has a functioning conscience and sometimes you just have to do what you have to do.

They head further into the swamp, a remarkably picturesque place, with clear water, and lush greenery that makes even Ed want to just… stop and take it in for a moment. He doesn’t, of course, but he can acknowledge the want.

There’s an odd pressure in his head, Ed notices, something that makes the edges of his vision soft, and it has, he realises, nothing to do with the brain worm. No, it’s more like… He stops, frowning, and tries to focus his eyes around the softness that wants to take them over.

The pressure increases, and Ed has the distinct feeling that something is trying to fuck with his head and oh hell no, that is not fucking happening. He grits his teeth and forces his monumental will against whatever-the-fuck, and then, like a joint popping back into place (and he’d know) something falls away, and the lush landscape surrounding them melts into a dank, fetid swamp. Not just any swamp, oh no, the perfect storybook swamp, surely inhabited by a baby-eating old hag of a witch.

Ed makes a noise—a grumble, a groan, a snarl—and drags a hand down his face.

“Really?” he asks. “Are the rest of you guys seeing this?”

“If by ‘this’ you refer to the falling away of the illusion cast over this swamp by, no doubt, one of its fey inhabitants, then, yes,” Gale responds.

“Seeing and smelling,” Astarion replies, wrinkling his nose. “Maybe we shouldn’t investigate Kagha’s associates after all. Why are we even doing so in the first place?”

“Because I have a bad feeling about her,” Ed replies grimly. “That, and she sicced a venomous snake on a kid, or have you forgotten that?”

“No, I don’t think any of us will forget that,” Astarion replies. “Nor the aftermath,” he adds, with a sidelong look at Shadowheart. Which, yeah. Ed has been trying—and mostly succeeding—in not thinking about that little incident. What the hell kind of power—aside from a philosopher’s stone—would allow one to overcome death like that? It's an uncomfortable thought, which is why he's been avoiding it for now. He has more immediate concerns.

“Let’s go,” Ed says, and strides purposefully into the swamp. He has no idea where he’s going, but it can’t be too hard to find, right? Right.

Wrong, it turns out. They wander through the swamp for long enough for Gale’s ‘spell’ to wear off again, and it feels like they’re going in circles, and the map is no help. Gale restores Ed’s powers of speech, and they all gather around to get nothing done.

“I say we give up,” Astarion says. “We tried, and therefore no-one can criticise us.” Shadowheart rolls her eyes at him.

“I know you didn’t want to do this in the first place, Astarion,” she starts.

“What? No, I think a light spot of blackmail and manipulation is all in good fun. It was once we found ourselves in a fetid swamp that I changed my mind. If that Kagha woman bothers you so much we can just kill her.” That last is said directly to Ed, who shakes his head.

“If we kill her, we’re no better,” he says.

“But we are,” Astarion interjects, before Ed can continue. “And killing her would prove it.”

“While this discussion has the potential to be philosophically robust, I do believe that we should endeavour to determine our location and proceed with our task—whatever it may be—prior to the termination of my spell’s duration,” Gale says, raising his voice slightly.

“And I just had an idea,” says Ed, who just had an idea. He doesn’t bother to explicate, just claps his hands and transmutes a staircase into the air, terminating in a platform ten metres up, well above most of the nonsense growing in the swamp.

“Well. That’s one way to get above the stench,” Astarion observes dryly. Ed ascends, and the rest follow.

“That looks likely.” Wyll states the obvious, and points to where a set of docks sits near a large, twisted tree.

“Yeah,” Ed agrees. Whatever thought he had in his head is cut off by the sight of what looks like winged, vaguely humanoid lumps of mud hovering in the air around their target. Astarion’s nose wrinkles before Ed can ask.

“Mud mephits. Wonderful. Just what we needed.”

“So I’m not missing anything, that IS sentient mud I’m looking at, right?” Ed asks, eyeing the wetly flapping things warily.

“Sentient, arguably sapient, and quite troublesome, yes,” Gale responds.

“It could be worse,” Wyll points out.

“Right. So. Is there any reason not to snipe them from here?” Ed asks, pointing down to the platform. They have the high ground, and it’s not that far.

“My bow won’t reach that far,” Astarion admits.

“Nor will my spells,” Shadowheart says.

“Nor, I am afraid, will mine,” Gale says.

“Guess I have to do everything around here,” Ed mutters, rolling his eyes. He claps, and drops to the ground, already forming the formulae for what he needs: stone, composed thusly, at this distance, in that form—

Alchemical energy crackles across the distance, and spikes lance out of the ground under each of the sentient mud creatures, splattering them across the landscape.

He is not prepared for what looked like twisted stumps to come to life and start walking.

“What the fuck?”

“Ah, wood woads, I believe,” Gale provides, recovering swiftly from the way he had been flagrantly staring at Ed moment ago.

“We can take them,” Wyll states confidently. “Especially with those mephits out of the way. Do any of you have a fire spell?”

“Yes,” Astarion and Shadowheart say together, much to Ed’s surprise. He didn’t realise Astarion knew any… magic.

“Not today,” Gale replies. “I assumed that our elven contingent would have that aspect covered, and chose instead to avail myself of the chill touch spell. Luckily, necromancy is still effective against anything that lives, and wood woads are, you may note, very much living, er, creatures, and not one of the many varieties of undead.”

Wordlessly, Ed transmutes another set of spikes through the animated timber, stands, and brushes his hands off.

“Or… you could just do that,” Wyll says, hand easing off his rapier. “Damn, that’s convenient. Is there anything you can’t do?”

“Bring back the dead,” Ed replies immediately, resisting the urge to hold his automail shoulder as the sense memory of losing his arm and leg briefly flood him. Self control. It’s all about self control. “Let’s go, before more of those things show up.”

They do. Ed dismantles the stairs and platform, leaving only faint alchemical traces behind when he does. He’s getting better at that; his transmutations still aren’t as seamlessly neat as Al’s, and they probably never will be, because he doesn’t actually care nearly as much as his little brother.

(Al cares a lot, about a great many people and things. And it’s not that Ed doesn’t care. He just worries that absent Al, he might not care enough.)

The path between their position and the big tree is a winding one, and Ed leads the way, striding through the muck and mire as quickly as he can. Much to his irritation, everyone else keeps up with ease. Stupid long-legged something somethings.

"Split up and search," he says, when they reach the tree. They do, and before long Astarion is calling,

"I found something!" All the way around the opposite side of the tree from where Ed was looking, of course, but the party re-gathers quickly enough, meeting at the spot where Astarion is smugly holding up a letter between his fingers.

"Excellent job. Now, what does it say?" Gale asks, without preamble.

"'Kagha,'" Astarion begins, reading from the letter. It's short, and to the point: Kagha is colluding with a group called the 'Shadow Druids' in order to take over the Grove.

"Oh dear," Gale says.

"What the hell is a Shadow Druid?" Ed asks, at the same time.

"A dangerous extremist," Wyll replies, frowning. "They've caused trouble around Baldur's Gate before--in the Cloakwood. They believe that nature should drive out civilisation by any means necessary."

Ed just snorts.

"Civilisation is nature," he says. "Human nature, anyway. I can't speak for anyone else."

"Be that as it may, that piece of sophistry is one that the Shadow Druids would no doubt reject out of hand," Gale says, smiling wryly.

"We need to get back to the Grove," Wyll interjects, before anyone else can add their two cenz. "They need to know that Kagha is in league with the Shadow Druids."

"And what if they already know?" Shadowheart asks. "What if the whole Grove is in on it?" Wyll shakes his head.

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it." Gale clears his throat.

"In that case, if everyone gather's 'round, I believe I can do something about getting us back there, quickly," he says. "You may recall those glowing sigils inscribed here and there? One of them was in the vicinity to the entrance of the Grove."

"What does that have to do with anything?" Ed asks.

"Well as it happens, I can exploit the resonance of the Weave incorporated into design of the sigils, and allow myself--and anyone or thing who happens to be in sufficient proximity--to be drawn to one. Much like teleportation, if far more limited in scope," the older man explains.

"Teleportation," Ed says flatly.

"You stone spiked a half dozen monsters at an impossible range, and you're incredulous about teleportation?" Shadowheart asks, she's one to talk, incredulously.

"Do you have any idea how many physical laws that violates?" Ed counters. "All of them. It's all of them."

"Flauting the laws of physics is, in part, the point of magic," Gale puts in, mildly.

"You're sure this will work?" Wyll asks.

"Absolutely positive," Gale replies, as confident as Mustang, and almost as smooth.

"I'm in, then," Wyll says, and moves to stand almost close enough to touch Gale.

"As am I." Shadowheart does the same, standing so close her maille brushes Gale's robes.

"Might as well," Astarion says, moving closer himself. There's a line of tension through his shoulders that belies his carefree attitude, like he doesn't quite trust Gale. Since Ed doubts the pale man trusts anyone or anything, he's not surprised.

And. Well.

"I guess this is happening," he says, throwing up his hands, and joining the rest of them. *But if I see the damned Gate, I'm blaming you!" he doesn't say, but Gale meets his gaze, and nods, as though he understands. He probably does.

Gale intones a word that makes no sense, even with his magic spell going, makes a sharp gesture, and then the world melts away into darkness and purple sparks.

Chapter Text

The darkness lasts for three long seconds, just enough time for Ed to wonder if something has gone wrong, before the purple sparks return, and the world resolves around them. He recognises the spot.

And he can no longer deny it: magic is real and it absolutely fucks all the laws and man and nature, and it's horrible and he wants to learn it.

"Ah, now you understand," Gale says, meeting Ed's eyes again. There's a knowing gleam in the wizard's eyes, and yeah, yeah, Ed fucking gets it now. He wants to talk about it at length and--

Deep breath, Ed.

"Save the Grove now, talk magic later," he says, and Gale just smiles broadly.

"We will indeed talk magic later, my friend," he agrees. "For now, we have business to be about."

Ed nods, and leads the way back into the Grove. It is essentially unchanged since they left, which on the one hand is good, because it means that whatever it is that the Rite of Thorns even is probably hasn't happened yet. On the other hand, it's bad, because it's giving Ed the absolute creeps now, and putting his hackles up; he doesn't like it. He just doesn't like it.

"Does anyone else feel like something ought to have changed?" he complains, as they pass from the caves into the Grove proper, where the druids are still standing in their circle, chanting, and now Ed realises that it really does mean something, really does do something, and that's. Amazing and fucked up, all at once.

"It's better that it hasn't," Wyll says.

"It means we haven't been found out," Shadowheart agrees, and then they reach the way down into the druids' living and working quarters, and Kagha's right there, so Ed doesn't even hesitate to march right up, note in hand, and say:

"Hey Kagha, what's this I hear about you and Shadow Druids?"

It's sure to set of some kind of confrontation.

He is not wrong.

It... was probably, he will realise later, not the wisest course of action. Gale's spell wears off in time for him to completely miss whatever the hell it is the rats-who-turn-into-people (what the fuck) say, what Kagha says, what Gale and Shadowheart say--

It's all over Ed's head, well outside the vocabulary he has acquired so far, and he hates it.

What isn't over his head is the way that Kagha and her allies attack.

The battle is a clusterfuck and Ed hates it.

He hates the way Astarion moves, darting in with his dagger--and a second he had acquired somewhere--to hamstring one of the former rats, hates the way Kagha calls up spikes of wood from the ground. Hates the way Wyll blasts Kagha with some kind of eldritch energy hates--

He hates it. He hates the whole thing.

The thing he hates the most is the fact that he himself has to kill one of Kagha's allies--it's shove an automail knife through the man's skull, or let him stave in Gale's, and that. Between his friend and someone who attacked them all as soon as looked at them.

Fuck.

It's fucked.

But it's no kind of choice.

In the aftermath, Ed sits beside the bodies, while the others explain to the druids what's going on. Or at least he presumes that's what they're doing; he doesn't know, and can't actually bring himself to care.

He knows, intellectually, that as a dog of the military he could be called on at any time to go to war, to fight and kill people. He also knows--although neither of them would ever admit it out loud--that Mustang had done his level best to protect Ed, particularly when he was younger, from the harder, harsher aspects of the life of a State Alchemist.

He knows that, in the quest to restore their bodies, he and Al might well have met opposition that they had to stop with lethal force. (He had long since resolved to dirty his own hands to keep Al's clean.)

The world he has found himself in is harder and harsher even than the one he had left behind, and the people he has fallen in with without a doubt have killers among them--he knows.

He knows.

So why is it fucking him up so damned much?

Gale comes to sit beside him, casts his spell; Ed barely notices.

"Thank you for saving my life," the older man says.

"...yeah," Ed replies. "You're welcome." He did do that; the stranger's life for Gale's, a man who would gladly have killed all of them.

It still feels bad.

"Was that... have you ever killed someone before?" Gale asks, a little awkwardly, and aw shit, Ed realises that the party has definitely sent him to give Ed the Talk.

"Not on purpose," he says. "But I've already had the Talk back home. First from my teacher, then from my commanding officer."

"Your--I'm sorry, what?" Gale blinks at him, visibly taken aback, and, oh yeah, Ed's never mentioned any of that shit before, has he? There hasn't been a chance, or a reason, or... anything.

"Yeah," he says again, shrugging. "Technically, back home, I'm part of the military." He pulls out his silver watch, and dangles it on its chain. "I'm a State Alchemist, operating under the auspices of the military and the government. There are more than just a few of us," he adds, tucking the watch away again. "Some operate directly as military officers, others, like me, are more-or-less free agents, unless and until the Fuhrer calls us to war." He shrugs again. "I took the test so I could access unlimited funds and research materials, and I haven't regretted it yet."

(That, of course, is a lie; there are plenty of times Ed has regretted his choice, but now is neither the time nor the place to talk about them.)

"Well..." Gale trails off, for once uncertain what to say.

"Are you done moping?" Shadowheart interjects. "We still need to find the First Druid, Halsin, if we're going to get these things out of our heads."

"Right," Ed says. "We've still got daylight; let's go." Getting on the move should help.

They clean up, and go.

"Your arm," Wyll says, once they have left the Grove again. "I've been meaning to ask... it's a prosthetic, isn't it?" Ed sighs. He guesses they're doing this. He pulls off his glove, and shoves his sleeve up enough to show off the forearm.

"Yeah. It's not just any prosthetic though: it's automail, crafted by the finest mechanic in Amestris. My leg, too," he adds, thumping his left leg. Something must show on his face, because Wyll's giving him a warily sympathetic look.

"I hope--" Wyll clutches his head, at the same time as Ed and all the rest of them do. For a moment, he's back in the basement, the alchemical horror that was the result of his and Al's attempt to bring back their mother right there, the armour, the blood on his hands--

Ed pushes it away with a gasping snarl. Damn it, no, that's private--

They're all staring at him. Even Astarion manages to look somewhat horrified.

“Ed,” Gale says quietly.

“Don’t. Ask.” Ed grinds the words out between his teeth.

“All right. I won’t ask,” Gale says, much to Ed’s relief. “But if you want to talk about it, I am here.”

“I won’t,” Ed says. Minutes tick by in silence, while they walk.

“We need to decide whether to go around the village full of goblins, or try to go through it,” Wyll finally says, breaking the silence.

“Around,” Ed says immediately.

"Through," Astarion says, at the same time.

"I'm with Ed," Shadowheart says. "We stick to the shadows, and evade our potential foes."

"My vote likewise goes with Ed," Gale puts in. Astarion does not, quite, pout.

"Around it is then," Wyll says. He brings out his map again, and they start planning their route, when they run into a snag.

“There’s no good way around it,” Shadowheart observes, frowning.

“I could get us around it,” Ed says. Gale hums thoughtfully, and Wyll traces his finger in a circle around the blighted town.

"Would it really be any faster, though, is the real question," he says. "Time is of the essence after all."

"Why, you have somewhere else to be?" Ed asks. Wyll hesitates a moment, before answering.

"I do, actually." He tells them about a demon named Karlach, apparently on some kind of rampage down the Sword Coast--where they currently are, Ed recalls--and Wyll is honour-bound to kill her. Or something; there's something he isn't saying, that niggles at Ed's bullshit sense. He stick a pin in that to investigate later.

“Right. Fine. Let’s try and sneak through then,” Ed finally says.

“I agree with the stealthy approach,” Shadowheart says. “But what if we’re intercepted anyway?” She has a point. Ed opens his mouth to reply, but Astarion beats him to it.

“I should think the answer is simple,” he says, twirling a knife demonstratively. “They’re only goblins.”

“They’re still people,” Ed argues, frowning.

“Your point?” Astarion asks. “It doesn’t matter if they’re goblins or sun elves, if they’re in our way, they’re in our way.”

“That’s no reason to just kill someone,” Ed starts.

“This arguing isn’t getting us anywhere,” Wyll interjects. “We need to focus on making a plan while Gale’s spell lasts.”

“Yes, thank you Wyll,” Gale says. “While I agree that we should try for stealth, if that fails may I make an odd proposal?” He waits for their nods or words of agreement before continuing. “I have noticed, and I am sure you all have as well, that our little uninvited guests seem to confer some measure of psionic ability upon us. As goblins are notoriously weak-minded, might it not then be possible to use that to in some way influence them?”

“It’s better than just killing them, I guess,” Ed says, still frowning. “But I don’t like the idea of giving those worm things any kind of… anything. What if doing that makes them stronger? Or accellerates the—“

“—ceremorphosis, yes, you make a good point,” Gale agrees, frowning as well.

They argue about the matter for another half hour; nobody can agree on a course of action.

“Fuck it,” Ed finally says. “We’re just going to walk in there like we own the place.”

“Does that work for you?” Shadowheart asks, a little sarcastically.

“Usually, yeah,” Ed admits. Astarion laughs.

“Fine. But if that doesn’t work, you realise that it will be my way?” Ed makes a face but doesn’t bother to dignify that question with an answer.

It will work.

Nobody is honestly more surprised than Ed when it does.

“What the fuck is a ‘True Soul’?” he mutters to the rest of the party.

“I am afraid I must admit that I have no idea,” Gale says, just as quietly. “However I believe it is obvious that it has something to so with our little problem.”

“No shit.” Ed had felt that resonance, same as everyone else. It's weird, it's bullshit, but it seems to have worked, so for now, he guesses he has to accept it. Even if it gives him such an ominous feeling... No, he doesn't like it. It makes him thing too much of dim basements and old parchments and glittering blood-red gems. There is a price to be paid for all of this, he knows, and he only hopes it's not too steep.

Half the buildings in the village are abandoned; the other half occupied by goblins. Everything is in the kind of disrepair that would make any decent villager feel ashamed.

The entire place makes Ed's skin crawl.

Luckily, by their map, it's pretty much a straight shot through to the other side.

"Hold on a moment," Gale says, part way through, because of course someone needs to make a detour.

"Make it quick," Ed says. "I don't want to be here after dark."

"It will not take us long; I merely caught a whiff of a rare reagent in the air, and--"

"Nope," Ed says. "Reagents later, getting through the creepy abandoned town now." Gale looks at him, and speaks a string of nonsense, and fuck his life of course the spell would pick the worst possible moment to end. Of. Course. And by his count, Gale doesn't have any more left. Which is weird; he doesn't seem at all tired. Ed will have to ask tomorrow, just what the limiting factor is.

So they go chasing Gale's reagent, and find another one of those teleportation sigils--that's useful at least--and what looks to be an abandoned apothecary. The party splits and starts scouring the place, and. Yeah, all right, apparently they're shameless looters now.

I guess it's not like anyone else is using this stuff.

Not that there's much to be found; even Gale's reagent seems to be missing, the smell coming from a broken bottle and a soaked shelf, just a chance scent in the breeze.

Astarion exclaims something, getting everyone's attention, including Ed's. What he's found turns out to be a trap door, and Gale's eyes light up. The rest of the party has a quick discussion; Ed understands maybe one word in five, tops, but it's better than no words.

In the end, they decide against going down, much to Ed's relief; he really does want to be out of town after dark. Maybe the current inhabitants think that Ed and his party are on their side for now, but Ed hasn't survived this long by not being a paranoid bastard, and he doesn't trust the weird psychic bullshit any further than he can throw it.

They make it through the rest of the village without further incident. Much to Ed’s relief, the sun is still a bare sliver in the sky when they leave across a bridge... and right into a camp full of yet more goblins. They seem to be lazier and less attentive than the guards at the ruined village gates, though; the party remains unnoticed.

"This was a bad idea," he mutters. "A really bad idea." Astarion mutters something in reply, and draws a finger across his throat; a clear suggestion to murder everyone in the camp, or at least that's how Ed reads it. Without using the weird psychic death worm bullshit, there's no way to know for sure, not right now, with Gale's spell worn off and uncastable. Shadowheart abruptly gestures them to follow, and slinks off; Ed and the rest follow, back behind the shelter of one of the ruined buildings.

A brief discussion ensues, quickly enough that Ed only catches maybe one word in six, before some agreement is come to, and Astarion leads the way back to the apothecary. Only one goblin sits in any immediate proximity, and he (she?) is easily avoided, as the whole gang piles down into the basement under the trapdoor.

Immediately, Ed notices the barrels and distillation equipment; the landscape on one wall, the desk and piles of books, the shelves... And all of it covered with thick swathes of cobwebs. The party starts to split to look around; Ed takes a moment to seal the door over with stone so that nothing can follow them down.

"Ah, good [something something]," Gale says, nodding his approval. He makes a bee-line for the books then, and Ed breaks off to make a circuit of the area himself. There's a lot of glassware scattered around the basement; flasks and alembics, the occasional beaker. There's a thick layer of dust on everything, in addition to the cobwebs; nothing living has been down here for a very long time. It should be safe enough for the night.

He immediately regrets that thought, as his brain chooses that moment to remind him of the existence of the walking fucking dead. At the same time, he considers that the walking dead would still disturb the dust and cobwebs, and he despises the fact that he has to consider that because the dead should not walk, corpses should stay where they are put, he of all people knows this, and yet.

And yet.

Magic is a thing.

A real thing that actually exists.

A force that can be understood, analysed, and manipulated to effects that no alchemist could ever dream of--Gale and his language spell and his fucking teleportation have demonstrated that well enough. And Ed feels that same hunger for knowledge in himself that he has always felt for alchemy. The need to know, that part of him that strives and grasps for more--

That teleportation woke that part up in force.

By the time he has completed his circuit, Ed can see the others have started setting up a camp, barring Gale who has taken the desk, and started work on... something, on a long, narrow strip of parchment that he has found, transcribing something from a book that Ed has seen him with a time or two. The glimpses he has gotten have reminded him of an alchemist's notebook; arcane symbols, and tight, neat handwriting, all probably in a code Ed wouldn't understand if he had the language.

"Hey Gale," he greets, and then asks in the language he has been learning, "What's that?" Gale flashes him a grin, and replies, repeating the words carefully; one is a word Ed already recognises, spell, and the other is unfamiliar. Gale holds up a finger, and resumes work on the spell scroll.

Ed wonders what it's for.

When it comes time to put dinner together, well, there's a perfectly serviceable burner down here, and it's easy enough to clean some of the equipment with alchemy. Gale is too busy with whatever he's doing to make dinner, so it falls to Ed to conjure up something edible for the rest of the team.

While it's nowhere near what Gale would somehow make for them, it's not... inedible.

Look it's not that Ed's a bad cook. He's an alchemist. He can combine certain ingredients in certain ratios and get the same result every time. He just lacks the ingredients that he's used to, and is having to make do with substitutions as suggested by the peanut gallery, and.

It's edible. It's not bad.

Ed wish Gale had taken a break from what he's doing to make dinner, damn it, but the older man is completely absorbed in his work on the spell scroll. He continues working while he eats, offering no more than an absent thanks for the food, and not evidently noticing either flavour or texture, unlike the others, who made comments so pointed that Ed needs no translation.

Astarion had taken one look at dinner and turned his nose up at the lot, the asshole. Jerk. See if Ed eats when it's his turn to cook, then!

(That's a lie, and even Ed knows it; he's a growing teenager, damn it, and he needs all the food he can get.)

Wyll volunteers for first watch, and Astarion second; Ed holds up three fingers indicating that he'll take third. The others nod in agreement, and everyone barring Gale and Wyll, bed down for the night.

Just what the hell is Gale doing?