Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

George’s legs ached.

Build a boat, sail down the river, survive.

His lungs felt tight and too small.

Build a boat, sail down the river, survive.

His breath was loud in his ears.

Build a boat, sail down the river, survive.

His pack bounced uncomfortably on his shoulders.

Build a boat, sail down the river, survive.

He didn’t dare look back, he could hear the thundering footsteps behind him, he could almost feel hot breath down the back of his neck, and the-

“George,” his pursuer sang, entirely too close for comfort. George yelped, and in spite of his total body misery ran faster, sprinting over the savannah towards the river.

For the last two months, this had been his life. Everywhere he went he had a shadow in the shape of a shaggy-haired masked man, with a stupid sword and a stupid bright yellow coat and a stupid lust for blood. He doesn’t know how this fucking nightmare of a person found him, or knew his name, or what he wanted-

Well. He knew what he wanted.

He’d seen the raised brand of the Mad King on Dream’s arm.

George ran harder, sweat pouring down his flushed and clammy face.

His shadow had appeared a couple of months back. George, homeless and adrift, had thought little of the man running towards him at the time, and it was only after he saw the glinting of his diamond sword that he began to be concerned. He remembers thinking his life was over then and there. But it hadn’t been. And that’s because Dream…

George looked over his shoulder, and saw that he wasn’t being chased. His hand instinctively went to where his sword hung and he drew it. This did little to calm him down.

He kept running. He had a plan.

He made it to the edge of the water, leather shoes sinking slightly in the sand, before slowing down. He put his hands on his knees and bent double, breathing heavily. Build a boat, sail down the river, survive. He repeated it in his mind like a mantra. Build a boat, sail down the river, survive. Build a boat, s-

He found himself knocked sideways suddenly, pressed down into the sand of the riverbank, two rough and calloused hands holding his wrists in place. His stone sword fell from his grip. He started screaming, thrashing around as best as he could, trying to throw off the body on top of him. But Dream was bigger, stronger. He didn’t stand a chance.

“I’ve got you!” Dream crowed, laughing at the top of his lungs, “Oh George, it’s all over now, I’ve got you right where I want you!”

“Shut up! Let me go, Dream!” George yelled, redoubling his efforts to escape.

“Stop squirming, Georgie,” Dream sang, “You’ll only make it harder for yourself! Oh my god, the look on your face when I grabbed you! Priceless!”

He kicked his legs out wildly, trying to dislodge Dream from his position, but Dream was undeterred. From where he was lying, he could see Dream’s sweaty face and feel his hot stinking breath waft over him. The mask, which covered about 3/4 of his face, remained firmly in place, taunting him with the childish smily face. His wrists were pressed strongly into the coarse sand above his head.

He was trapped. He was done for. Dream was talking about how hopeless it all was, laughing like the victor he knew he was.

In spite of the boasting, George noticed the grip on his left wrist loosen. Just a bit.

It was all he needed.

George’s hand clenched around a fistful of sand. He threw it directly into Dream’s laughing mouth.

Dream sputtered, leaning back a little. George squirmed out of his grip and made a dash for the river, jumping in feet first and swimming like a thing possessed across the wide and rushing current. He pulled himself, sopping wet and gasping for breath onto the opposite bank. He could hear Dream, still laughing, in the distance. He propped himself up on his elbows, and saw Dream right where he left him a couple of hundred yards away.

He was sitting in the sand and wheezing with laughter. George flopped back on his back and groaned. His hands began to shake as the adrenaline waned.

He’d left his sword there. Damn it. He’d given his fucking sword to Dream.

George had no idea how he knew Dream’s name. He couldn’t remember when he had first heard it, or under what context, or who from. All he knew was that Dream was called Dream, and George hated every inch of him. From his dumb swoosh of sandy hair, to his stupid smiling mask, to his obvious and stupid bright yellow coat, to his stupid propensity to let him go.

George had figured by now that the Mad King, or someone working with the Mad King, or someone working for the Mad King had ordered him dead. He couldn’t say he was surprised. What he hadn’t figured out is why every time Dream, fearsome ensign of the Mad King’s mercenaries, He Who Bathed In Battlefield Blood, The Manhunter Above All, kept letting him go. He must’ve been caught dozens of times by now. Each time it would have only taken minor effort to slit his throat and leave him dead.

Not that George was complaining.

The adrenaline was leaving his system, and he felt exhausted. He couldn’t sleep just yet. The sun had just passed its zenith, and even though he’d been let go once again, he wasn’t in the mind to test Dream’s generosity. He pulled himself to his feet and started chopping down a nearby tree, planing thick planks from the trunk and lashing them together to make a raft. It wasn’t impressive, but it didn’t need to be. It would float. He pulled a branch off, grunting with the effort, and shaped it into something that resembled an oar. Sweating in the heat, he pushed the raft into the river and clambered on, rowing away downstream.

After a while, he peaked over his shoulder. Walking along the bank in the distance, casual as you like, was a masked man in a bright yellow coat.

“Leave me alone!” George yelled. His voice echoed around the empty fields.

“No!” Came the response, dampened by the distance. George scowled and rowed with just a little more force. At least Dream didn’t have a bow. Once he was out of melee range, he was safe. Safer, at least.

-

By the time the sun hung low in the sky, George had found himself in a swamp. It smelled strongly of damp clay and wet mud, and there were lakes of stagnate water everywhere, and it was humid and hot. He wasn’t too fussed. He knew he’d be out of the swamp sooner or later.

He steered himself towards a nearby tree with flat enough boughs that he’d be able to set up some kind of shelter. It killed two birds with one stone: he’d be out of the mud and high off the ground. The height was mandatory. It meant he’d be able to hear Dream coming as he climbed his way up. He balanced his pack on a branch between his legs, and started searching around in it for something to eat. No meat. Campfires were dead give-aways for where he was, and it wasn’t just Dream he had to worry about. Out here, in the wilds of the Mad King’s territory, it was lawless. Kill who you like, steal what you want, nobody would stop you. If you were strong enough, nobody could. Things were generally less chaotic in the towns and villages, but he didn’t think he could go back to living in one. His chest hurt when he thought about the village he grew up in.

He avoided thinking about the village he grew up in.

He managed to find a loaf of stale bread somewhere in the bottom of his pack, which he broke in half and started chewing on. It wasn’t good, but by that point he was hungry enough that he’d eat nearly anything.

He was no stranger to hunger. These days, nobody was.

King Ryan had ruled for as long as anyone could remember. He’d abused his power for as long as anyone could remember too. Tax rates so high that no reasonable person could afford them, and then debtors jail for the ones who tried and failed to pay. Restrictions on things like fish, then meat, then wheat and carrots. Requests for presences in the capital, which nobody returned from. It was hell, and that wasn’t even addressing the other horrors that lurked in the night. Or the hunters he hired.

The sun set, and the moon rose in the distance. It was cooler at night. He pulled out a bottle of water, and noticed with annoyance it was the last one he had. He’d need to find somewhere to light a fire soon, so he could cook and purify water and whatever else. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a pinprick of light, and smoke rising in the distance. A darkened figure sat next to it, and even though George couldn’t make out the details, he didn’t think he needed to.

He rolled himself up in the bedroll and tried to ignore the noises of the night, staying awake with his axe in a tight grip until he physically couldn’t anymore, and sleep took him.

-

The sun rose, and the damp heat of the day settled over George like a blanket. He roused himself from sleep, scrubbing his eyes and looking around. No sign of Dream. That wasn’t in of itself unusual, but it was disquieting. Especially since he’d been able to see him last night.

He looked back towards where the campfire had been, but Dream had clearly struck camp and moved on already. Anxiety settled like a stone in his stomach.

George climbed down from the tree and settled himself on his raft again. It was time for a new plan. The swamp stretched out as far as he could see, but he could just barely make out the shape of some mountains in the distance. That would work. He just had to get out of this swamp.

He paddled himself along the shallow waters for the whole morning, and there was still no sign of Dream. It was starting to get concerning. George remembered the last time it had been this quiet for this long. He was definitely planning something. Some kind of trap or some other nonsense. George rubbed his arm, the memory of the last trap embedded in his mind.

(To Dream’s credit, George had to admit the trap was impressive. He still had no idea where he’d gotten the dispensers from, or how he had managed to source so, so many eggs.)

He noticed movement out of the corner of his eye, and turned his head sharply. Dream was rowing towards him in an honest-to-god boat, not just a shitty raft like George had made. He didn’t know where he’d gotten it. And he was rowing towards him fast, and with purpose, and had at some point lost his dumb yellow coat, and mask, and-

Oh shit.

George abandoned the raft and started splashing towards a bit of land a little distance away. There was no way he’d be able to out-row this person, hunter or not. His legs started to burn again, the memory of the chase from yesterday still in his bones. He waded awkwardly through the mud, stumbling now and then, and eventually scrambled up onto marshy land. He looked around for his next move, and took off running towards a crop of trees. Tree cover was good. Tree cover meant that it was harder to fight hand to hand, and it would slow his new shadow down. It meant-

Suddenly, George felt a prick in his shoulder, and he stumbled and fell with the force of it. He turned around to see an arrow embedded in his leather armour. He went to pull it out, starting to scramble to his feet, but his attacker was on him, pressing him into the ground and pulling his hands behind his back.. George caught sight of that branded insignia on his arm and felt his blood run cold. He started squirming, but the person on his back pressed his face harder into the mud. It was getting hard to breathe.

“Gotta say, you’ve certainly got chutzpah,” said the breathless voice from above him, “I can see why Dream took a liking to you. But King Ryan is getting bored of the chase.”

George tried to scream and got a mouthful of dirt for his trouble. He felt the arrow push closer, into his skin. He felt it draw blood.

There was no getting out of this one.

Well, he thought, well.

As sudden as it arrived, the weight on his back disappeared, and George lay there for a few seconds in shock before scrambling away, wiping the mud off his face as he went. His stomach gave a little warning lurch as he pulled the arrow out. Looking at it closer, it had clearly been dipped in poison. Fortunately for him, it didn’t get into his skin far enough to give him the full dose. Just enough to make him lose his appetite.

He turned around to see what had happened. He saw Dream in all his impractical yellow glory standing about a meter away from George. About a meter in front of George. Between George and the attacker. George had no idea who this new person was, but Dream had drawn his sword. George knew, intellectually, that he should run. He felt frozen to the spot.

“Dream,” the attacker said. He had an arrow clutched tightly in his hand

“Xilo,” Dream responded.

“Stand aside.” Dream looked between Xilo and George, seeming to weigh up his options.

“No.”

“Come on, be reasonable” Xilo said, taking a step forward. Dream raised his sword higher. Xilo paused.

“Leave it,” Dream said, his voice even and cold, “I’ve got him marked. This one’s my quarry.”

“You’ve been dicking around for too long, Dream,” Xilo said, his tone taking a harsher edge, “The King’s getting impatient. He can’t be left alive.” Xilo smirked a little, showing off his crooked teeth, “And besides, there’s a pretty price on his pretty head. I don’t believe this bag of bones was giving you that much trouble.”

“Fuck off, Xilo. This one’s mine. That was your last warning,” Dream said, getting into a more combative stance.

“Alright,” said Xilo, taking one, two, three steps back. “Warning heard.”

There were three breaths of silence.

In the same instant that Xilo drew his bow, Dream swung his sword at him, causing Xilo to stumble back a couple of feet. Xilo fired an arrow but Dream strafed right, ducking his shoulder out of the way. George scrambled away, staying out of the radius of the fight. An arrow wizzed past his face, just grazing his cheek and he stumbled back into a tree. Dream was on Xilo, hacking away mercilessly, but Xilo was undeterred, using the proximity to stab an arrow into a gap in Dream’s leather armour, right into the meat of his thigh.

George winced sympathetically.

Dream was undeterred, cutting out wildly and gashing Xilo on the cheek. Blood started to weep from the cut, staining his cheek and dripping onto the dark ground. Xilo reached behind him, eyes widening in panic when he noticed his empty quiver. He managed to get the bow up in time to block another deadly blow from Dream, and the wood snapped under the weight of the sword. He managed to get his own sword up just in time to divert another blow. George started trying to crawl away towards Xilo’s boat, but Xilo noticed and aimed a kick at George’s nose. He fell back, covering his face with his hands. His nose was bleeding, but it didn’t seem broken. He looked up just in time to see Dream get another good slash in, cutting through the leather armour and drawing blood from Xilo’s arm. He cried out in pain. Dream lifted his leg to kick Xilo squarely in the chest, and just as Xilo got another good (deep, that one went deep, that was bad news for Dream) slash in at Dream’s thigh, his foot collided with his chest and knocked Xilo prone on his back. Dream stood over him and in one fluid motion, drove the sword deep into Xilo’s chest.

Xilo didn’t move.

Dream pulled the arrow out of his leg and tossed it aside, and slowly turned to face George. George rushed to his feet and started running again, trying desperately to ignore the throbbing in his face. He heard a heavy thud and slowed to a jog, checking over his shoulder.

Dream had fallen to his knees, one hand pressed into the mud and the other gripping the handle of his sword. The blade was lodged in the dirt. Blood was seeping out of his leg and into the ground. George paused.

“Dream?” George called out. He heard Dream’s painful dry retching.

Definitely poison tipped arrows.

George weighed up his options. Dream was incapacitated. His leg was severely injured, and he’d received a good dose of pretty strong poison, and he was clearly exhausted on top of that. He might be able to get away, like really away.

If he left, Dream would die here.

He’d slowly bleed out, weakened by the poison and the heat and the fight. He would die in the mud and muck of the swamp. Alone.

Dream collapsed properly, face down in the dirt.

He’s trying to kill you, George told himself. But.

Well. Was he?

He would have died at the hands of this Xilo guy if Dream hadn’t stepped in.

He jogged slowly back over to Dream, standing just out of melee range just in case this was some kind of ruse.

“Dream?” he said softly. Dream groaned, trying to push himself up. His arms wobbled, gave out, and slipped. His grip on his sword loosened. George sighed. He knew what he had to do.

He slowly worked Dream’s hand off the sword, gently lowering it to the ground. He  swung out, limply, but George easily dodged back. He never thought, in a million years, he’d ever be man-handling Dream like this. It felt odd. Weirdly wrong.

He pulled the sword out of the ground with a little grunt of effort, and put it to one side. He managed to get Dream’s pack off his shoulders as well, and left it by the sword. Like this, Dream seemed small.

He rolled Dream so that he was lying on his side, and reached for the mask. Dream was gasping for breath a little, his skin sweaty and pale. His fingers had just hooked under the edge when Dream’s hand reached up and limply grabbed his wrist. It was enough to make George pause.

“The mask stays on,” he said, his voice rough.

“I have to check your eyes,” George said, trying to sound authoritative. He wanted to see how blown his pupils were, how they reacted to the light, he was pretty sure he knew what he was dealing with but he wanted to be certain-

“No…no… it’s gotta stay on…” Dream said. His voice sounded weak.

“Dream…” George tried to cajole, “come on, I’m trying to-“

He was interrupted by Dream retching again, this time a little more forcefully. George managed to tilt his head down just in time for Dream to puke up whatever was in his stomach. The smell was enough to make him feel worse. He turned his head away, trying not to breathe in too much, but kept his grip on Dream firm.

“Okay,” he said when it seemed like Dream was done, absently rubbing Dream’s arm, “the mask can stay on.” Dream groaned in response.

George looked towards Xilo’s boat. It’s not like he has any use for it, he thought. He hooked his arms under Dream’s shoulders and lifted him up a little. Dream’s head lolled back. He was heavy.

“God, Dream,” George huffed, starting to drag him (gently, gently), “you’re so fat.” Dream just groaned in response, limp and useless.

What the fuck am I doing, George thought to himself.

But he’d made his decision. Nobody deserved to die alone.

With no small amount of trouble, and lots of swearing from George, he managed to manoeuvre Dream into the boat. He pulled the ruined bits of armour off his leg to asses the damage. The puncture where the arrow had been stuck in looked worse than it was, the edges going slightly yellow as the poison spread through his body. The cut on his thigh was the real concern, still bleeding freely. George reached into his pack for the strips of cloth he kept for emergencies and started wrapping the leg. It would have to do until he could stitch him up properly.

He made sure Dream wasn’t at risk of falling out of the boat, or of suffocating himself, or of hitting his head, and then went back for Dream’s stuff. He threw it haphazardly into the boat, and turned to look at Xilo’s body. He grimaced, and started going through his pack. There wasn’t much in there that would be of much use, but he did find a little glass vial with a bit of powdered milk. That would certainly come in handy.

He pocketed the powdered milk, and tried to arrange Xilo’s limbs into a slightly more dignified pose. He felt sick to his stomach, looking at him lying there. But he had more pressing matters to think about.

“George?” Dream’s voice sounded thin, and straining with effort.

“Here,” he said, taking one last look at Xilo. Sorry, he thought, you really shouldn’t have tried to kill me. Thanks for the boat. Sorry.

George pushed the boat out of the shallows and started to row away. They needed to find somewhere high up and away from the water so that he could stitch Dream’s leg shut. He needed to find somewhere dry so that he could light a fire, as risky as it was. He needed a cauldron of fresh water to mix with the milk powder. He swallowed nervously. He needed a witch’s hut.

—

By some stroke of luck, he found one. He secured the boat to one of the stilts that kept it out of the water, and nervously climbed up. It had been a couple of hours, and Dream had already bled through the bandages. He’d also passed out, or George thought he had, lying quietly at the front of the boat and breathing heavily.

George waded through the water to the ladder that lead up to the trapdoor, put his hand on a rung, but hesitated. This was way more dangerous than anything he’d even dream of usually attempting. He thought of Dream, dying in the boat. He steeled his nerves and climbed up, listening for the sounds of feet or cackling. He heard none. Slowly opening the trap door, he peaked his head up. Empty. What’s more, empty and dusty. George smiled for the first time that day. Abandoned.

He climbed back down and went back for his things, grabbed the packs and dream’s sword, and climbed back up and left them in a corner of the room. He had no idea how he’d get Dream up here. Dream was bigger, and stronger, and heavier than George. He’d need Dream to do at least some of the work.

He dusted the place down a little, and set up a campfire on the little balcony outside (no door, just an archway, he should make a door, that would be more secure), under the full cauldron that sat out there. It was probably fine to drink, being rainwater, but he wasn’t willing to risk it. He still felt a little nauseous from the little bits of poison that had entered his system. He couldn’t imagine that Dream would be able to keep it down.

Dream. Right.

He climbed back down and dragged the boat over to the ladder. Dream hadn’t moved, but he was still breathing.

“Dream,” George said, cajoling. No response. He felt himself panic a little. He reached out and put his hand on Dream’s shoulder.

“Dream, come on. Get up. I can’t carry you up. You have to help me,” he said, a little more urgently. Dream groaned and moved a little, turning to look up at George.

“Dizzy,” he mumbled.

“I know. Get up,” George said, pulling on his arm. Dream went, limply, over his shoulder. George managed to drape him over the ladder, and started urging him up. Dream managed one rung and then stopped, pressing his forehead to the rung.

“I can’t….can’t…” he breathed. George watched his hands slip a little.

“Dream, please, it’s just a little ways,” George begged, putting a hand on Dream’s back to keep him on the ladder. Dream pitched forwards and started retching again, but there wasn’t anything in his stomach to bring up. He groaned, his hands slipping a little more.

“Dream!” George yelled. He was exhausted and aching and panicked and dirty and hot and scared. His patience had run out.

“If you don’t climb, we will both die. Do you understand?” He felt bad as soon as he said it. There were a couple of moments of silence. Dream nodded. And he started to climb.

It was an agonisingly slow process. But inch by inch, Dream pulled himself up. George was behind him the whole time, just in case he started to slip. But he didn’t.

After a good half an hour, Dream flopped onto the floor of the witch’s hut. George hurried up after him, shut the trap door, and pushed the nearby crafting table over it. He breathed a sigh of relief.

Dream lay on the ground gasping for breath.

Right.

He tried to move Dream (gently, as gently as he possibly could) to a corner of the hut, and turned him on his side. He was dry heaving again, and had one arm thrown over his face. George went out to the balcony to fill the bottle with water. It was bubbling by now, and good enough for what he needed to do next.

He pulled the milk powder out of his pocket and dumped the whole thing in, sloshing it around to make sure it got fully mixed. He put the other two bottles of water into the boiling water, filling them up and sterilising them. Two birds, one stone.

He headed back over to Dream, who hadn’t moved.

It wasn’t surprising. Poison like this made it awful to do anything. Moving made you nauseous, lying still gave you a headache. You felt weak and shaky and tired and dizzy. Talking was a chore not worth doing. It was a difficult potion to make, and an even more difficult potion to master. Especially now that the clerics…

His chest hurt when he thought about the clerics.

He avoided thinking about the clerics.

No matter how good the potion was, it would eventually make its way through your system and you’d be right as rain within two days. You could speed up this process with milk. Milk was hard to transport long distances without it going bad, so people would travel with powdered milk, when they could get their hands on it.

He approached Dream loudly, just in case his eyes were shut, and pressed the bottle into his hands.

“Sit up. You should drink this.” Dream shook his head a little. George huffed. Dream was a very annoying patient.

“Please sit up and drink it? It’ll make you feel better,” he tried. No response. George rolled his eyes.

“Come on. Up,” he said, and managed to get Dream up into a sitting position. Dream complained wordlessly, but George managed to position them both such that Dream was sitting up, leaning against George’s chest. George’s legs were stretched out either side of Dream, bracketing him in. Dream held the bottle loosely in his grip. Slowly, he lifted it to his lips and took a sip.

He drank slowly, and methodically, but he drank it and that was all George could ask for. His hand fell to the floor and the bottle rolled away. George eased him back down so he was lying on his side again. He seemed to be breathing a little easier.

“Thanks,” he said, standing. Dream grunted in response. George figured it was better than a groan. He went over to his pack and dug out his surgical needle and some more bandages, ripped from a blanket. He headed back out to the balcony, dumped everything in his arms into the boiling water and sat down, watching the sun start to set. From up here, the sun glinting off the murky water, it all looked very nice. Scenic. Dramatic.

He hung his head and caught his breath. Watching Dream fight with such ruthlessness and intensity had been disturbing. There was absolutely no doubt in his mind that Dream was a skilled and terrifying hunter. The only reason he didn’t kill George was because he chose not to.

Why the fuck had Dream chosen not to?

He’d done enough thinking. Wrapping his hands in his shirt, he grabbed the edge of the cauldron and pulled it off the fire. Scalding his hands a little, he fished the bandages and suture kit out of the hot water, and went back inside.

He knelt down by Dream’s leg. He’d moved a little since George had left him, and rolled onto his back. He’d also managed to wriggle out of his coat, and it was bunched up under his head as a make-shift pillow, leaving Dream in just a vest. That was good news. He gently pulled the blood-soaked bandages off Dream’s leg and assessed it. The puncture wound was looking better, and the yellowish tinge to his skin was already starting to fade. That put George at ease. The poison was leaving his system. The gash across his thigh was still bleeding, and looked terrible with all the dried blood around it. It would need to be stitched shut.

“I don’t know if you’re awake, but this is going to sting a bit,” George told Dream’s leg. He lifted a wet bit of fabric to the wound and started to clean it. Dream sucked in a breath through his teeth, but didn’t otherwise complain. After cleaning the wound, it looked better. It was a pretty clean cut, which would make the next process easier. He looked around, and saw a stick lying on the ground. It wasn’t the most sanitary thing, but beggars can’t be choosers.

George held the stick out in front of Dream’s mouth.

“It’s going to hurt. Bite down on it.” Dream seemed to hesitate, but eventually complied. It was then that George started the process of stitching Dream’s leg shut. Dream’s cries of pain were muffled by the stick, which was good. They didn’t need to draw more attention to themselves than they already had. It also allowed George to concentrate on the surgery he was performing. It took the better part of an hour, with Dream yelling himself hoarse and breathing heavily. George snipped the surgical thread and tied it off, noting the lengthening shadows in the room. He wrapped it in a clean white strip of cloth, and wiped his bloody hands on his shirt. Dream spat the branch out of his mouth and went lax in every limb.

“Give it to me straight doc,” he said, his voice hoarse and breathless, “how long do I have to live?”

George snorted, despite the situation. “You’ll be fine. Don’t be such a baby. Get some sleep.” 

Dream nodded once, and then fell into a kind of restful stillness. George sighed, and headed back out. He grabbed a bottle of water out of the cauldron and left it by Dream, so that he’d be able to drink it as soon as he woke up. George pulled a bottle out for himself and started to drink, the exhaustion of the day starting to creep into his bones in earnest.

It had been a long, strange day. And it wasn’t over yet. He had to choke something down (in spite of the lingering nauseous feeling in his stomach), and clean the dried blood off his face, and clean his clothes, and put out the fire, and keep vigil, and…

His hands began to tremble again, and he leaned back against the wall.

He’d just shut his eyes. For a little while. Then he’d get back to his plan. He just needed to rest his eyes for a little while.

He woke up to the early morning light and a blade a few inches from his face. He blinked up at the face on the other end of the sword, and slowly raised his hands. His eyes flicked down to her exposed wrist.

No brand. No insignia.

This was just some random person who saw smoke and thought she had found a free meal ticket.

The irony was not lost on him.

“What do you want?” he asked. He figured that if he hadn’t been killed yet there was a reason.

“Gimmie your stuff,” she responded. George swallowed.

“I don’t have anything worth stealing,” George said, his voice still rough from sleep. It was depressing how true the statement was. She scoffed and pushed the blade closer. George tried to back up, rotating so his back was to the cauldron and his shoulder was pressed against the wood. He didn’t want anyone else sneaking up on him. Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of the hastily constructed ladder leaning against the balcony.

“Please. You have a boat. I’m willing to bet you have some iron stashed away. Maybe some steak. Gold, emeralds, stuff like that. I wasn’t born yesterday.” A single strand of black hair slipped in front of her face.

“I’m telling you, I don’t have anything,” he tried again, his voice raising with barely contained hysteria.

“This is getting real old real fast,” she said, taking a menacing step forward so that she was at the same level as the archway. If she turned her head, she’d see their shoddy packs and Dream’s sleeping body. “I’m going to count to three, and by the time I get to three, you’re either going to hand over your valuables or be fish food. One-“

She didn’t get much farther than that. An arrow, fired from inside the hut, went straight through her neck. George flinched. She fell sideways off the balcony and landed with a splash in the water. He didn't bother looking down. He knew she was dead.

George peered around into the darkened hut to see Dream, hair sticking up all over the place, sitting up, a bow in his hand. They stared at each other in silence for several long moments.

“Good morning,” George said. The silence was only disrupted by the sounds of early morning birdsong.

“Morning,” Dream responded. His bow was still clutched in his hand.

Silence.

“How did you sleep?” George asked politely.

Silence.

“Pretty good.”

Silence.

“Good.”

Silence.

“I guess you’re responsible for the…” Dream gestured to his bandaged thigh. George nodded slowly.

“The bandaging, yeah. Not the…” he trailed off, making vague cutting motions with his hands.

“Why?” he asked cautiously. George thought for a while. Why had he helped?

“It seemed like an awful way to die,” he answered honestly, “face down in a swamp, sick and bleeding.” Dream seemed to mull that over for a long time.

“Well, thanks,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” George replied.

There were several moments of tense silence.

They both exploded into movement at the same time, Dream lunging forward and George jumping to his feet. He was already planning, realising he’d need to jump into the shallows and trust it would break his fall sufficiently and abandon all his things and give Dream an even bigger leg up than he already had-

A thud and a pained groan stopped his planning. He turned around, startled, to see Dream face down on the floor, groaning. George stood there awkwardly.

“Are you… okay?” he asked cautiously.

What am I doing, go, go, go go go go...  

Dream nodded, rolling himself slowly into a sitting position. He stretched his bad leg out in front of him.

“Yeah, I think so,” he said, rubbing his thigh.

“The stitches didn’t reopen, did they?” George asked, dreading the thought of another hour spent stitching Dream up as he screamed in pain.

Why do I care? Go!

Dream shook his head.

“No, no.” He settled back, leaning against the wall, his head leaned back so he was looking at the ceiling. He turned to face George, who was still stood like he was ready to bolt. Dream seemed to think about something, before eventually raising his bow and tossing it aside, way out of his reach.

George stood there, still trying to work out the trap.

“You can sit, if you want,” he said, gesturing to the floor. George knew he shouldn’t, but…

His hands started to shake.

He entered the hut and sat down, his back against the wall opposite from Dream. He put his head in his hands, already too full of adrenaline from nearly being killed again.

“Are you cold?” Dream asked. George peeked up at him, and shook his head.

“Just…tired,” he responded, putting his head back in his hands, “it’s just too early for me to have nearly died. Again.”

“Yeah,” Dream replied tiredly, “it looked like she really had you cornered. So did Xilo.” There was a long silence, as George waited for his hands to stop shaking.

“You gotta take better care of yourself, dude,” Dream said eventually, “It’s not just me out there hunting you.”

“Well,” George said, feeling brave enough to lift his face out of his hands, “I’m not the one who got poisoned and stabbed at.”

“I’m only in this situation because I was defending you!” Dream cried, and George thought he might be going insane because he definitely heard the bubbles of laughter at the edges of his voice.

“Yeah,” George said, “why did you do that?”

“You’re my quarry,” Dream said immediately, “my responsibility. I get to kill you.”

“Dream, you had like a thousand opportunities. You have a bow!” George pointed out, feeling the panic rise in him again.

“Yeah, well, maybe I'm just like a jealous boyfriend and want to be the only one who gets you," Dream said, a shit-eating grin on his face, "Maybe I'm sightseeing and want to see where you lead us next. Maybe I'm just hunting you for sport. Did you ever think about that, George?”

“Ugh, I hate you so much,” he said, rolling his eyes. Dream laughed.

“Sure. You hate me so much, which is why you lugged me all the way here, and stitched me up, and fed me, and gave me milk,” Dream said, holding up four fingers for emphasis, “four things! That’s a lot of effort for someone you hate.” George looked away. When Dream phrased it like that, it sounded stupid. There was silence.

“I appreciate it, though,” Dream said, his voice a little softer, “even if it was only delaying the inevitable.” George looked back at him.

“What do you mean, delaying the inevitable?”

“We both know I can’t get anywhere on this leg,” Dream said, gesturing to the bandages, “especially not when you grab your stuff and row away with boat. Wading through this muck is hard, and that’s without one bum leg." Dream shrugged, and George couldn't tell if it was affected apathy in his voice or not. "I’m a sitting duck. I’ll either starve, or someone will find me and figure that I have stuff worth killing for.”

The thought of someone showing up and stabbing Dream did weird things to George’s heart.

“When you phrase it like that,” George said, trailing off, “it doesn’t sound like either of us are going to make it out of the swamp.”

They both sat in silence for a little while. It was oddly comfortable. Dream started giggling under his breath, and George would be lying if the sound wasn’t weirdly nice.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Dream giggled, shaking his head, “just a dumb thought.”

“Tell me,” George said, feeling a small smile creep onto his face.

“It’s just, you need someone watching your back, and I need someone to help me walk, so it’s like…I just pictured us teaming up or something and getting out of the swamp together,” he said, waving his hand indistinctly. George started laughing as well.

The image of George side by side with his hunter, amicably travelling and working together was pretty funny. It was also weirdly wholesome, and he had been alone for a long time. The conversation with another person was…nice. Even if that person was the ruthless force of nature that was Dream.

He’s not so bad, he thought, and then quashed that thought as quickly as it appeared.

“What, like us working together? Sailing out of the swamp together and then going back to the chase once we get out?” George asked, laughing a little.

“Yeah! You know, singing songs around a campfire or whatever,” Dream added. George laughed.

“Sleeping in shifts, hunting for food, just sharing everything like real friends,” he was laughing in earnest now, and Dream was still giggling.

“Yeah! Exactly! And you’re all like ‘wow Dream, you’re so great, thanks for fishing up dinner, you’re the best…’” he laughed.

“Oh sure, and you’re all like ‘Oh George, you’re so amazing, you’re the best ever, thanks so much for all your help old friend!'”

They both descended into fits of laughter, Dream wheezing a little and George crying slightly. It wasn’t even that funny. It just felt good to joke with someone again, after so long.

“Yeah,” George said, wiping his eyes, “that sounds nice.” He looked down at his hands, which were still covered in mud and blood. He looked up and Dream was looking at him, head tilted slightly.

“Yeah,” he said slowly, “it does, doesn’t it.”

They both sat there and thought about what they’d said.

Dream held out his hand.

“George, I promise not to kill you until we get out of the swamp.”

George looked at Dream’s outstretched hand and thought about his options.

This was clearly stupid. It was risky and dumb and there was no way that Dream was just going to stick to it.

On the other hand, it did sound nice. And Dream wasn’t exactly in the position to be chasing after him at the moment. And it had been months since he'd had a conversation with someone who wasn't trying to kill him, and even longer since he'd had someone he considered a real friend... 

(His chest hurt when he thought about Sapnap. He avoided thinking about Sapnap.)

He shook his hand.

“I promise not to kill you until we get out of the swamp either,” said George.

A wide grin stretched itself over Dream’s face.

“It’s a deal.”

Chapter Text

George refilled the water bottles. Dream made some more arrows. George washed his face. Dream stitched his leather armour back together. George rinsed their clothes and hung them out to dry. Dream sharpened his sword.

Dream hummed while he worked.

George felt a strong sense of vertigo, looking at the bright yellow coat in his hands. For weeks after the first encounter, he flinched violently every time he saw yellow.

(Which was inconvenient, given that most things were yellowish. Pumpkins, carrots, leaves, the grass…)

And now Dream was sat not even five feet away, humming a folk song that George had long forgotten the words to. It felt surreal.

More than once, George had contemplated vaulting over the balcony balustrade and making a break for it, not daring to believe that it was real. Not just that he wasn’t being hunted anymore, but that he had a partner to travel with. That he had someone to team up with. And that person just so happened to be Dream, the murderous ensign of the Mad King.

“What kind of a name is Dream, anyway?” George asked out loud. Dream laughed a little, pausing in his work.

“It’s my codename, dummy,” he responded, “The Mad King gave it to me himself, I wasn’t exactly going to ask for an explanation.”

“Should you really be calling him the Mad King?” George asked over his shoulder. Dream sat, his dumb childish mask still firmly on his face, perfectly peaceably in the corner of the room. Dream grinned.

“Probably not, but I won’t tell him if you don’t.” George snorted.

“Okay.” He went back to washing the clothes out. There was a lot of mud and blood and sweat in them.

“Besides,” Dream said, the rhythmic sharpening of the sword continuing, “it’s not dumber than my actual name.”

“Wait, your actual name?” George asked, curious.

“What, you thought my parents hated me enough to call me Dream?” he laughed.

“I didn’t think about it too much,” George said, “I guess it makes sense. ‘Dream, brutal hunter in the Mad King’s corps’ sounds way scarier than like, ‘Dave the hunter’.” Dream started wheezing. George turned around, trying to stifle the smile on his face.

“Dave?” Dream choked out.

“What?” George asked, laughing a little.

“My name’s not Dave, thank God,” he said.

“What is your name, then?” George asked, teasing.

“You’ll never find out,” Dream grinned. George rolled his eyes.

“You’re so stupid.”

“You’re more stupid, stupid.”

He contemplated vaulting over the balcony balustrade and making a break for it. But he’d made a promise. And it felt good to not be alone.

They split everything. Dream carried the food, and George carried the tools and glass bottles. George had felt kind of weird letting Dream go through his stuff -

(“Seriously, dude, what IS this?”

“It’s a- never mind, I don’t have to tell you. Don’t touch it.”

“Is it food? It looks gross, all grey and wiggly.”

“No, you idiot, don’t eat it!”

“Why do you have this?”

“Why do you care?”

“I don’t!”

“Fine, then don’t touch it!”

“Fine!”

“Fine!”)

-but he couldn’t deny that the more organised pack was an improvement.

Later, as they waited for their clothes to dry, George reluctantly relit the campfire, and he and Dream sat out on the balcony, make-shift fishing string hanging from their toes.

They sat a good six feet apart in awkward silence. George was looking at Dream out of the corner of his eye. He was fairly muscular, his arms revealing the cords of his muscles every time they moved. He was also covered in scars, little nicks and scratches all over his tan skin. That wasn’t saying anything of the branded royal insignia on the inside of his right forearm.

He hadn’t managed to get a good look at Dream before. He was going to make the most of his opportunity now.

He felt a tugging on his toe, and started reeling in the fish. He pulled up a cod, and it flopped around on the balcony pathetically. Dream drew his sword and cut its head off in one smooth movement, before scooping it up and gutting it with frightening precision. George instinctively flinched back. Dream gave him a look.

“You don’t have to look at me like that,” he grumbled, sheathing his sword and throwing the cod towards George, “I did you a favour.”

“I…thanks.” George said. Dream nodded stiffly. George picked up the cod, skewered it on  a stick, and stuck it over the fire. He looked up at the sky and tutted.

“We should probably wait until tomorrow to head out, we don’t want to be travelling by night,” he muttered, fussing with the fish.

“Why?” Dream asked. George laughed.

“Good one,” he muttered. There was silence. He looked over his shoulder, and there was something defensive in the set of Dream’s shoulders.

“Mobs,” George said, trying not to sound like he thought Dream was an idiot. Dream relaxed.

“Is that all?” he asked, a little teasingly, “you scared of the spiders and zombies, Georgie?”

“They’re dangerous,” George said tensely. Dream scoffed.

“They’re not, if you know what you’re doing.”

“Most of us don’t, Dream,” he snapped, “most of us didn’t get years of combat training.”

There was a tense silence.

“Sorry,” Dream muttered. George exhaled heavily, fussing with the fish more than was necessary.

“It’s fine.”

It wasn’t fine.

There was a splash, and the sound of a fish flopping around on the wood, and the sound of the sword cutting through flesh and bone. Another beheaded and gutted fish landed next to George and he flinched slightly. Dream chuckled.

“Dude, you’re so jumpy,” he said, gathering up his fishing stuff.

“I wonder why that might be,” George said sarcastically. There was an awkward silence as George skewered the new fish and put it over the fire. Dream sighed, and George heard him shuffling around.

He couldn’t walk on the bad leg yet. George thought he’d need to walk with a crutch of some kind for a few days, and even after that he’d be hobbling for a few weeks. At present, he mostly got himself around shuffling awkwardly along the floor.

He appeared in his peripheral vision, stupid mask still over his stupid face.

“I just keep saying the wrong thing, don’t I?” he asked quietly.

“Yeah,” George responded bluntly, then immediately felt bad. “But so do I, I guess.”

They sat in awkward silence, waiting for the fish to cook.

“Maybe we should make a deal to not talk about the fact I spent the last two months chasing you,” he said quietly. George huffed half a laugh.

“Maybe,” he said, “anyway, here,” He pulled the first fish off the fire and handed it to Dream, who manoeuvred himself into a slightly more comfortable position.

“Thanks,” he said, and started trying to peel off the skin. George turned his attention back to the remaining fish on the fire. His stomach lurched a little, but at this point he was starving hungry.

“I hate cod,” he muttered under his breath.

“Same,” Dream said sympathetically. George turned to watch Dream try pick the flesh off the bones, with little success. He smiled at George. “Wow, we have so much in common.”

George laughed. “Did you also take a long journey over the wilderness recently?”

“I did,” Dream said, “what a crazy coincidence.”

George laughed a little, some of the tension dissipating.

They ate in silence, but it felt more companionable this time. As the sun set, George felt his eyelids droop. He shook himself awake.

“I can take first watch,” Dream said through a mouthful of fish. George blinked over at him, not fully understanding.

“We’re sleeping in shifts, right?” he said, wiping his gross fingers on his shirt, “I can take first shift. I slept like a rock yesterday. You look dead on your feet.”

“I’m not…” George’s protest was interrupted by an unhelpful yawn. Dream snorted.

“Seriously, I’m good to take first watch. I’ll wake you up in a couple of hours,” he said, tossing the fish carcass over the side of the balcony.

George looked at the half-eaten cod in his hands and weighed up his options.

It was hard to remember, but Dream could kill him at any moment. George would be defenceless, even with Dream hamstrung as he was. Sleeping would only make that easier for him.

On the other hand, Dream had a bow, and a bunch of arrows, and a diamond sword. George had seen, several times in the last two days, how easy it was for him to take a life.  If Dream wanted him dead, he would be dead by now.

Dream reached over and gently pushed George on the shoulder, but it was enough to knock him sideways. George scowled at Dream, pushing himself back up into a sitting position.

“See, if you weren’t exhausted, I wouldn’t have been able to do that,” said Dream, grinning a little.

“You’re so annoying,” George said under his breath, going back to picking at his fish.

“Seriously, go spread out your bedroll. I’ll sit out here, and make sure the big scary monsters don’t get you, and I’ll wake you up at midnight. Okay?” Dream said. George thought about it, and chucked the rest of his fish over the side.

“Okay.”

He slept well that night, out of the elements with a roof over his head. The last thing he saw before drifting gently off to sleep was Dream, sitting out on the balcony, diamond sword in his lap, head tilted up towards the stars.

It was oddly endearing.

It was oddly comforting.

It made his chest hurt.

He tried not to think about it.

When Dream roused him for his shift, he only flinched a little bit. This, he thought, seemed like progress. After an uneventful night, they started packing their stuff to head out into the wilds again. George shoved the crafting table off the trap door, (‘Smart’, Dream had said, and George couldn’t help but feel pleased at that), they slowly climbed down, and got settled into the boat.

He caught sight of the bloated body of the girl from yesterday, and quickly turned his head. Dream just looked grimly on.

George started rowing away, pointing them towards the mountains. His arms were still tired from the rowing he had done a couple days before, and the going was slow. Dream was slumped over the stern of the boat, his fingers trailing in the water. It was only midmorning, and George was already starting to sweat.

“We should take turns,” Dream said, suddenly.

“What, rowing?” George asked, heaving another rotation of the oars. Dream turned around to face him.

“Yeah, if we’re going to be partners, we should take turns,” he said. The silence was only punctuated by the wet slapping of the oars on the water.

“We’re only partners until we get out of the swamp,” George reminded him.

“Well yeah, but we’re not going to need the boat once we get to the mountains, are we? So it won’t matter whether or not we need to take turns rowing.”

“How do you I was going to the mountains?” he asked suspiciously. Dream snorted and shuffled around a little.

“I’ve been following your lead for the last two months-“

“I thought we weren’t talking about that,” George interrupted.

“I’m just saying, I know how you plan. You look for a landmark and head there,” Dream said, putting his hands up in surrender. He pointed to the mountains in the distance. “Those are pretty obvious landmarks, I think.”

George scowled, and rowed on silently.

Dream settled back, infuriatingly unbothered. “Let me know when you want a break.”

He started humming again.

Before travelling with Dream, he was surrounded by silence.

George found himself missing the silence.

At some point in the late morning, the boat bumped against a crop of land. George climbed out and surveyed the surroundings. It looked like it stretched out to both his left and right pretty far, with no obvious way around it, and the shallows stretched out on the other side of it pretty far. He tutted, and looked back out towards the mountains.

If he had been in this position a few days ago, he would have just rowed around and hang the consequences. But he wanted to get out of the swamp and be done with Dream as soon as possible. It was probably irrational, but given his last three days George felt like he had earned the right to be a little irrational.

He looked down at his feet. It was a pretty narrow stretch of land, he thought. Maybe a hundred meters across.

I could probably drag a boat that far, he thought.

That was probably irrational too.

He headed back to the boat and dragged it through the water so that Dream could get out.

“What’s up?” he asked, looking up at George.

“It’d take forever to row around this,” he said, offering Dream a hand, “we’re getting out and pushing.”

Dream looked at him for what felt like a long while. George geared up for an argument, where Dream (rightly) pointed out that this was probably more trouble than its worth, and how it didn’t make sense to try and drag the boat over dry land and risk damaging it and-

“You mean you’re pushing,” Dream said, interrupting his thoughts. George noticed that he did that a lot. He rolled his eyes and Dream laughed.

“Come on, have some sympathy for the injured man,” he said, pouting ridiculously. He grabbed George’s hand and together, they heaved Dream out of the boat. George put one of Dream’s arms around his shoulder, and they slowly made their way over to a nearby tree. George set Dream down, leaning against the bark. Dream obnoxiously got himself comfortable, shrugging off his pack and exaggerating his stretching and sighs of contentment.

“Have fun!” he chirped, putting his hands behind his head and settling back. George huffed, went back over to the boat, and started pushing.

His arms were exhausted after the first few minutes. Sweat was pouring off him in waves, and his whole body ached.

You’d think that by now I’d be more physically fit, he thought, heaving for breath and pausing to wipe the sweat off his hands. His shirt was starting to soak through with sweat, so he pulled it off and dropped it in the boat.

He heard a wolf whistle and scowled, blushing a little.

Dream wasn’t helping.

“Oh, fuck off!” George yelled. Dream started laughing his awful, high pitched, annoying, delightful wheezing laugh.

George rolled his eyes and kept pushing, renewed sense of purpose instilled in him.

Push the boat, sail to the mountains, get away from Dream, survive.

It was nice to have a plan again.

“George,” Dream said.

“Shut up, Dream,” he said, “God, you’re annoying.”

“George, push faster,” Dream said. George felt his blood boil.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” he said, giving the boat a harsher shove, “that my hard work isn’t good enough for you, your excellency. You know, I was kind to you, doing all that. I didn’t have to stitch up your leg and use that milk powder on you. Do you know how hard it is to come across milk powder out here? And I didn’t expect anything in return except maybe, maybe a little bit of kindness back.”

“George-“

“Don’t ‘George’ me, Dream” he snapped, giving the boat another proper shove, “I’m in the middle of something! God, they didn’t teach you fucking manners in the capital, did they? Probably too fucking busy teaching you how to steal people’s food and torture clerics, right?”

“George, listen-“

“No, you listen, Dream,” he shouted, shoving the boat a little more, “I’m sick of you pretending like we’re the same. ‘Oh, we both hate cod, oh, we’re partners who think the same’. It’s you, and people like you, that made my life hell!”

“George!” Dream yelled.

“What?” George yelled back, and turned violently towards Dream.

He felt his blood run cold as he saw Dream sat there, bow in hand, arrow aimed at his head. He froze, the familiar panic settling into his blood.

The sense of betrayal was both unexpected and unfamiliar.

“Duck,” Dream said.

George ducked.

The arrow went sailing over his head, and landed with a squelch a little distance away. George, still crouching low to the ground, turned his head to see a huge, sickly yellow cube of something advancing towards them, an arrow sticking out of it.

“What is that?” he asked, hysterically.

“Slime,” Dream responded. George turned back to face him. Dream looked at him for a moment, before ordering, “go.”

The story went like this:

The swamplands were not homes for good, law abiding citizens of the Mad King’s fiefdom. The swamplands were where outlaws and bandits and witches lived, creatures with black hearts and cold blood.

The malice and cruelty of the denizens of swamps coalesced in the murk, and the half-aware, half-dead cubes of slime roamed the surface, hunting, hungry.

(George never paid much mind to stories like this.)

George redoubled his efforts to push the boat over the land, no longer feeling the burn in his arms or legs. He heard dream let off a volley of arrows but could see, out of the corner of his eye, the yellow-ish cube slowly advancing, creeping along the ground towards them. Undeterred. The arrows sunk in, and were slowly absorbed, and eventually dissolved. It didn’t look particularly bothered. It was getting too close for comfort.

“Dream?” George said hysterically.

“Just keep going,” he said, his voice level, “it can’t be in the water, it’ll dissolve, just keep going.”

“Dream, it doesn’t look like that’s doing anything,” he said, continuing to shove the boat towards the water. He glanced ahead. Only a couple more shoves and they’d be there.

“I know, just keep going!”

George kept going. The sound of arrows being fired off stopped.

“Fuck,” Dream said, “I’m out of arrows.”

George felt his blood run cold. He gave the boat another hearty shove.

“George!” Dream cried, and George turned around just in time to dodge out of the way of the slime. He pulled the Axe out of its holster at his side and swung, uncoordinated, at it.

The blade got stuck in the slime, and no matter how hard George pulled, he couldn’t dislodge it.

He stuck his hand into the slime instinctively, like he would into the trunk of a tree, and found himself stuck. He tried to pull himself free, and only found himself getting sucked in further. Distantly, he heard Dream yelling, but he didn’t have the presence of mind to understand what he was saying.

Inch by bloody inch, he started getting pulled into the slime. The more he struggled, the quicker it happened. He turned towards Dream, seeing the stricken look on his face, holding himself out as far as he could, but he was already up to his shoulder in slime. His leg followed, and then the rest of his torso.

He was screaming, he thought. He didn’t have the energy to think about it.

He shut his eyes, breathing heavily, only to feel the warm, gross, tingling sensation of slime encroach around his face. He took a deep breath and held it, one arm still outstretched.

The next time he opened his eyes, the whole world was yellow. He felt his lungs squeeze painfully and reflexively took a breath, his mouth flooding with viscous, bitter slime.

He shut his eyes again, feeling the panic well up in him as his thoughts started to go fuzzy.

Well, he thought. Well.

A hand, calloused and rough and familiar, grabbed onto his.

There was a weird sucking sensation, like swimming through jam, and suddenly George was spitting out slime and gasping in warm, humid air. He blinked rapidly, but his vision was still blurred.

Dream yanked him roughly out of the slime, and tossed him into the boat. George felt his arm bruise (but not break, that was good), and then felt the boat lurch forwards once, twice, and then it was in the water, floating away. He leaned over the side and kept coughing up bits of slime, retching at the awful bitter taste. After a little while, he leaned back, exhausted, and wiped the slime from his eyes.

Dream was sat by the oars, leg stretched out in front of him and breathing heavily. George chanced a glance down, but it didn’t look like the wound had reopened. Dream looked pale, and he was clenching his jaw in pain.

The slime stayed on dry land, seeming to watch them go, and slowly ambled away.

George balled his hands up into fists and pressed them against his eyes, willing himself not to cry. He felt stupid. The only reason they were in this situation in the first place was his own stubbornness.

“You good?” Dream asked. George nodded, glancing up at Dream and trying to wipe the slime off his face. He curled up in the boat a little, pressing his face into his knees. He pretended he hadn’t seen the tightness around Dream’s mouth, or the stiffness in his shoulders.

His hands began to shake.

“You really don’t know how to fight, do you,” Dream said, quietly. It wasn’t a question. George looked up at his stupid childish mask.

No, to put it simply, he didn’t. He wasn’t sure why Dream expected him to. He’d grown up in a nice, idyllic village, filled with bakers and farmers and sheep and cats to scare away the monsters. He was soft. He wasn’t dangerous to the Mad King’s rule-

Well. That was complicated. That was too complicated to explain right now.

“My parents were both librarians,” he said quietly, and hoped that would explain it. He hoped Dream wouldn’t ask any follow up questions. He put his head back on his knees. His chest hurt. He’d done enough thinking for today.

“Anyway,” Dream said, starting to row them away from the island, “That’s three to one in my favour.”

George blinked, slowly looking up at Dream.

“What?”

“Three to one,” he said, a smug smile on his face, “I saved you from Xilo, that girl, and now a slime. That's three. You only saved me once.”

George blinked.

“I saved you twice,” he said.

“What? When?”

“I stitched your leg shut, and cured your poisoning,” he said, holding up two fingers. Dream scoffed.

“That doesn’t count as two,” he said.

“Technically I also saved you from choking on your own vomit,” George said, holding up a third finger, “and the mobs,” he held up a fourth finger, “and drowning.” He held up a fifth finger.

Dream scrunched up his face a little.

“Three to two, then,” he said, rowing on. George rolled his eyes.

“You suck,” he grumbled.

“Aww, you’re just jealous that I’m a much better teammate than you,” Dream said. He nudged George’s leg good naturedly with his foot, and George couldn’t help but smile.

When he looked over, Dream was smiling too. He felt an unexpected pinch of guilt.

Dream had been a good teammate so far. He kept watch, and made sure George was in one piece, and laughed, and joked, and cared about splitting the work evenly.

He remembered telling Dream that he’d made his life hell.

“I’m sorry,” he said, looking back down at his hands, still covered in slime, “for all that stuff I said. I didn’t mean it. I don’t know why I said it.”

There was a short pause, but it felt like a long silence to George.

“Don’t worry about it,” Dream said flippantly, “I’ve got thick skin. I didn’t think you really meant it, and I only half listen to everything you say anyway, so apology accepted.”

George rolled his eyes again, looking out at the swamp around them, trying to stifle his grin.

They set up camp that night on the driest bit of ground they could find, the boat secured firmly to the trunk of a nearby tree. Dream slapped a freshly killed and plucked chicken carcass onto the fire. They spread out their bedrolls, and settled down for the night. George felt a little exposed, out here on the ground, but the smell of cooking chicken was pretty enticing. He tried to wipe a bit more of the slime off his arms, to little avail.

“Yeah, there’s no getting that off,” Dream said, poking gingerly at the chicken, “you really just have to soak in warm water and let it dissolve.”

“Gross,” George muttered, trying again to shake off the muck to no avail, “You’ve fought these before?”

“Yeah dude, I’ve fought pretty much everything in the overworld,” Dream said.

“Why? I thought the point of you guys was to hunt down people, not monsters.”

“Yeah well, sometimes when we’re hunting people, we run into monsters. The point is that nothing is supposed to get between us and our quarry. Like, if there’s a zombie there or something, you don’t want that slowing you down or hurting you or whatever,” Dream said.

They sat in silence, not acknowledging the elephant in the room.

“Oh,” George said eventually. “Thanks again for…you know. Not letting me drown in gross slime guts.”

“You’re welcome,” Dream said, smiling at him thinly, “can’t have anyone else killing you, can I?”

In spite of himself, George laughed. They slipped into an easy silence.

“Dream?” he asked after a while.

“Yeah?”

“I know we’re not talking about it but…why are you trying to kill me?” He didn’t dare look up at Dream when he asked. There was a long silence.

“Murderous ensign of the Mad King, remember?” Dream asked, his voice tense. George chanced a glance up, and Dream had rolled up his sleeves so the branded insignia was on full display. Lit only by the low glow of the campfire, it looked particularly menacing. It looked particularly painful.

“I know, but… just… why?” he asked again, lamely. He hoped Dream understood. Dream tilted his head a little, before seeming to come to a realisation.

“Oh, right. I don’t know, I didn’t ask,” he pulled the chicken off the fire and started carving it up, “all I know is that King Ryan sent me off to kill you, so he really wants you dead, dude.”

George’s mouth went dry.

“King Ryan?” he choked out. Dream nodded, seemingly oblivious to George’s distress.

“Yeah, he asked me personally,” he said. George tried to listen for sarcasm in his voice, and found none. “Not to brag or anything, but I’m kind of top tier. He usually sends me off for like, big names. He must really, really want to kill you.”

George felt a little dizzy. He couldn’t believe he’d caught the Mad King’s eye. He’d been so careful.

His panic was interrupted by a bowl full of chicken being shoved in front of his face. He startled a little, and took it with both hands. He looked up to see Dream looking at him. It was hard to work out what his expression was saying (damn his stupid mask).

“You okay?” he asked after a while. George nodded jerkily.

“Just uh… it’s weird to hear,” he said, “I didn’t think I was important enough for the Mad King to care about me.” He laughed nervously. “Nice to be known.”

Dream snorted.

“Yeah, sure. Anyway, you’re safe until we get out of the swamp. You’ve got me on your side,” he said, digging in.

Dream ate in one of the most disgusting ways, George had learned. He ate like a starving man every time, sucking flesh off of bone, and paying no mind to keeping his hands or mouth clean. George watched him, listening to the awful noises he made, and felt a little smile appear on his face. It was accompanied by a nice warm feeling in his chest.

“I guess I do,” he said, and started to eat. He remembered something and sighed, putting down his bowl and loudly swearing. Dream looked at him questioningly.

“That fucking thing ate my axe!” he said, despairingly. There were a few moments of silence.

“Did you seriously just remember it?” Dream started laughing.

“It’s not funny, Dream, that was my only weapon!” But George found himself laughing along with him anyway.

Far away, the blue mountains loomed in the distance.

They traveled for a few days uneventfully. Dream’s leg healed, slowly, but walking wasn’t such a herculean task any more. George managed to get the slime off his skin and out of his clothes. Dream made arrows. George purified the swamp water. Dream sharpened his sword.

Dream hummed while he worked.

Dream hummed a lot of the time.

Before traveling with Dream, he’d been surrounded by silence. The only noise he had to accompany his journey was the sound of his feet over dried grass, the rustling of an animal, and every now and then the twin footsteps of Dream, right behind him.

Now, it was like he had a jukebox everywhere he went. Sometimes, he missed the silence. Other times, when he felt on edge, or lay awake at night, he found it comforting.

When they set off that morning, having played several rounds of scissors paper stone to decide who had to take the first rowing shift-

(“Doesn’t count, you cheated.” 

“What? How do you cheat at scissors paper stone?”

“I don’t know George, you tell me, you cheater”

“Ugh, fine, we’ll do best five out of seven then, you baby.”)

-the sun was hanging low in the sky, and there was a fine mist over the waters. George looked up at the nearly cloudless sky.

“It’s going to rain later,” he said. Dream looked up at the nearly cloudless sky, and looked back at George.

“What? No way, that’s a clear sky,” he said.

“Trust me,” George said mysteriously, “It’s going to rain today. Maybe that might get the last of this disgusting stuff off me.” Dream shook his head.

“You’re wrong, there’s absolutely no way we’re getting rained on,” he said with finality.

A few hours later, with George rowing the boat, the first few drops started to drip from the sky. Within a few minutes, there was an honest to god downpour.

“I told you,” George said, flicking the wet hair out of his face. Dream opened his mouth to respond, then shut it again, putting up the hood of his coat. George felt a little jealous.

“What’s with your dumb bright yellow coat, anyway?” George asked, “it’s not very practical.”

Dream looked at him for several long moments.

“Yellow?” he asked incredulously.

George began to respond then paused. He looked over his shoulder. He could have sworn he heard something, a light giggling coming from the mists-

“Seriously, yellow?” Dream asked again, loudly.

“Shh, Dream,” he said.

“Don’t shush me, I need you to tell me w-“

“Dream, seriously, be quiet, I think I heard something,” George said, letting the oars drift in the water.

Miraculously, Dream shut up.

There was the sharp drumming of rain on the lakes of stagnate water. They both sat in absolute silence, barely daring to breathe.

They heard giggling in the distance. They turned and looked at each other.

“Witch,” Dream said. George nodded.

“She sounds pretty far away still,” he said, starting to row again, “let’s just be careful. Keep your ears…peeled.”

Dream snorted, but didn’t comment.

The story went like this:

Witches were once people, who had searched for knowledge in forbidden corners of the world, who had filled their brains so full of words and spells and magic that they had forgotten empathy, and lost their minds. Knowledge was dangerous like that.

It was only a coincidence that the Mad King started keeping registers of all known libraries after this story started circulating.

(George, the son of librarians, knew this one was a lie.)

They rowed along in relative silence, keeping a weather eye out for the witch. George pulled out his bottles and filled them with rainwater, whilst Dream kept his bow firmly in his lap.

The only noise was the rain, and the sound of oars through the water.

“George,” Dream said quietly, and pointed ahead. George turned to follow his finger.

Just barely visible through the rain stood a witch’s hut, not dissimilar to the one they’d inhabited a few days earlier.

The key difference was that this one had a figure, hunched over and cackling to herself. George took several steadying breaths, and turned back to Dream.

He was biting his lip, and George noticed that his grip on his bow had tightened.

He took one more deep breath, and resumed rowing.

“Just don’t look at her,” he murmured, “if we leave her alone, she might…she might leave us alone.”

“That’s Endermen,” Dream murmured back.

“It might be witches too,” he said. Dream settled back, eyes fixed firmly on the boat in front of him.

George rowed slowly on.

They glided at a glacial pace, passing parallel to the hut. The witch had fallen silent, watching them creep slowly by. George chanced a glance up at her out of the corner of his eye, taking in her matted brown hair and weathered old face. A bottle of dark, inky liquid was clutched in her hand.

She didn’t seem to be particularly interested in them, though. Just watching.

Then Dream raised his hand to wipe some moisture from his forehead.

Then Dream’s sleeve slipped down far enough to reveal the brand of the Mad King.

Then all hell broke loose.

There was a whooshing sound, and the shattering of glass, and suddenly Dream was drenched in dark liquid. He flinched backwards, hands covering his face, falling back into the water and flailing around. He was groaning in pain. Another bottle came whizzing towards George, but he ducked out of the way just in time.

He vaulted over the side of the boat, splashing through the water towards Dream, who was still lying on his back, hands waving about wildly. One slapped around George’s elbow and gripped, vice tight.

“I can’t see,” he said breathlessly, his chest heaving rabbit-quick, “I can’t see, I can’t see.”

George was on his own.

He heard the whistling of something flying through the air towards him, and ducked out of the way of another potion. It landed harmlessly in the water and bobbed around gently. George snatched it up to examine it further, watching the dark brown liquid slosh around the bottle sluggishly.

Potion of harming, he thought reflexively. Splash bottle. Designed to linger.

He looked back at Dream, floating helplessly in the shallows. He could press the advantage. Leave Dream here, get on the boat and sail far away. Not to the mountains. Somewhere else.

But he’d made a promise.

A plan started to formulate in his mind.

“I’ll be back,” he said, prying Dream’s fingers from around his elbow.

“George,” Dream cried, his voice high and thin with panic.

“I’ll be right back, you’re okay, I promise,” George babbled. Dream eventually relaxed his grip.

George splashed back over to the boat, pulling Dream’s sword out and clutching it in his hand. It felt heavy and foreign in his grip.

He hurried over to the witch’s hut and positioned himself by one of the stilts. From here, she’d have a much harder time getting him.

That just means she’s going to target Dream, he thought.

Dream was still floating on his back, hands covering his face.

George watched as another potion sailed overhead, headed right for Dream.

“Roll left!” George yelled.

For several long seconds, he thought it might have been too little, too late.

Dream rolled left.

The potion a few inches right to the right of Dream’s head, harmlessly bobbing up and down in the waves.

George dashed forwards, getting a clearer line of sight towards the witch, and threw the potion of harming at her as hard as he could.

He heard glass shatter overhead and ducked back under the hut, hearing the Witch’s yelps of pain.

Dream’s sword sat heavy in his hands.

He raised it up to his shoulder level, and whacked it as hard as he could at the stilt he was standing next to. It embedded itself in the wood with a satisfying thwack, and left a good-sized indent when he yanked it free. He did it again, and again, until he started to hear the wood groan.

He waded away as fast as he could towards Dream, and watched over his shoulder as the whole hut became unstable and collapsed with a huge booming sound. It sent out huge waves, carrying George and Dream up and down. George stood between it and Dream, sword clutched tight in his hand.

He saw the body of the witch bob towards the surface, face down. She did not move. He felt his shoulders relax.

“George, what happened, what was that noise? George?” Dream asked, starting to sputter and flail again. George didn’t think he’d heard Dream so panicked before. He backed up towards Dream and put a hand on his arm. Dream flinched at first, but his hand shot out and gripped the fabric of George’s shirt with a white-knuckled grip.

“I’m here, Dream,” he said, trying to calm him down, “I just…destroyed her house. She’s dead. I think.”

“George,” he said, still panicking, “I can’t see, what did she do to me? George, I’m blind, I-“

“Calm down, you’re going to be fine,” George said, helping Dream get his feet under him. He stood up, drenched from head to toe. His grip on George’s shirt didn’t lessen.

“Come on,” he said. He wrapped one of Dream’s arms around his shoulder, taking some of his weight off his bad leg, and led Dream back over to the boat. He picked out the bigger bits of broken glass and coaxed Dream in, giving him his sheathed sword back. Dream clutched onto it like a safety blanket.

“I’ll be right back,” he said, once again trying to twist out of Dream’s grasp.

“Where are you going?” Dream asked, his voice high with fear again.

“I’m gonna go rifle through the rubble, she might have had something useful on her,” George said, putting a firm hand on Dream’s shoulder. “I’ll be right back. Ten minutes, max.”

Dream reluctantly let go.

George gave his shoulder a comforting squeeze, then headed over towards the carnage, more than a little disturbed.

He’d never seen Dream even remotely afraid. Vulnerable, sure, and that had been weird in its own way. This was something else. Dream was usually unflappable, facing every challenge and threat with bull-headed confidence. He was usually fearless.

He was usually ruthless.

Hearing him frightened was a sudden and jarring reminder that he was human. George took a few deep breaths and headed over to where the witch’s body lay.

Weakened by the potion, the fall and the rubble had killed her.

George didn’t think he’d ever killed anyone before.

(Well. Not directly.)

He started going through her pockets. He found another small vial of powdered milk, which he immediately put in his bag. There were a few ink sacs and dyes, but nothing else of particular note.

He started going through the rubble, rotting wood caving in his grip. A lot of broken glass and bits of smashed up mushroom floated to the surface, but nothing useful. The rain had stopped by now, and the clouds started to part. He managed to find a bottle that wasn’t totally smashed, and it looked like an ordinary bottle of water. He opened it to give it an experimental sniff, and was met with the familiar mustardy odour of an awkward potion. He held onto that. He was about to turn around when something golden, glinting in the weak sunlight caught his eye. He pulled it out of the water and broke into a wide grin.

A golden carrot. Perfect.

He made his way back to Dream, putting all his stuff into his pack. Dream had curled up in a ball at the stern of the boat, the arc of his back nestled into the arc of the stern.

“George? That you?” Dream asked, looking around.

“Yeah,” George responded, clambering back into the boat, “I’ve got great news. Once we get somewhere dry enough to light a fire, we’re in the clear. You’re just blind, right? You don’t feel sick or lethargic?”

“Yeah, just blind,” Dream said, weakly sarcastic, “no big deal. I’ll be good to fight in a couple of hours.” George rolled his eyes.

“I’m trying to work out what she splashed you with. If it’s just blindness, it’s good news,” he said, rowing away. After a short while, Dream reached out and put his hand on George’s ankle, settling down to try and get comfortable. He let out a shaky sigh.

George didn’t comment on it.

They managed to find somewhere relatively dry for George to light a fire, and set up camp there in the early afternoon. He hung up his shirt to dry, and stuck the awkward potion on the flames.

Dream was curled up on his bedroll, grip still tight on his diamond sword.

He wasn’t humming.

It was just a little disturbing.

Whilst he waited for the awkward potion to boil, he started breaking the golden carrot up into smaller pieces.

George tried not to think too much about how instinctual it had been, to protect Dream. He had only barely considered leaving him there and using his opponent's vulnerability to his advantage. The first thing on his mind had been to get Dream out of the swamp alive and happy. That was dangerous.

As soon as they got out of the swamp, they were enemies again. George couldn’t afford to get attached.

The bubbling of a boiling potion jerked him out of his thoughts.

He pulled the bottle off the fire, only burning his fingers a little, and dropped the bits in. He swirled it around, watching the carrot dissolve and turn the potion a deep, dark blue. Little gold shimmers swirled in the bottle.

He pressed it into Dream’s hands.

“Drink.”

Dream drank without hesitation or question. George went over to where their packs lay, digging some fishing line out of Dream’s pack. In the excitement of the day, he’d forgotten to go hunting, and figured he’d make up for it now. He settled down near the water, his back to Dream and the fire.

“You should be able to see like, shapes and light in a little bit,” George said, as he tied the fishing line around his toe and chucked the hook into the water, “and your full vision should be back pretty soon after.”

“How?” Dream asked. George shrugged, then remembered Dream probably couldn’t see that just yet.

“I don’t understand the like, chemistry of it,” he said, feeling a tug on his toe. He started reeling in the fish, but it got away.

“No, I mean, how do you know?” Dream asked, sounding less panicked than earlier.

Hearing Dream sound so normal lifted a weight from George’s shoulders. He almost forgot that Dream had asked a question.

“I just thought,” Dream said, pressing on, “that this was all stuff only Clerics knew and…well.”

George’s chest hurt.

“Yeah, it is,” he said.

Dream was already trying to kill him. He didn’t think that him knowing what he was actually wanted for would make a big difference.

“So how do you know it?” Dream asked.

Even-so, George didn’t want to say it out loud. It felt wrong. It felt frightening.

“Put two and two together, Dream,” George said. He sounded weary to his own ears.

There was an uncomfortable silence. He heard Dream sit up behind him slowly.

“You’re a cleric?” he asked incredulously. Under different circumstances, George would have taken offence to the sheer disbelief in Dream’s voice. As it was, he understood.

“Well,” he said, looking down, “I was training to be one…before the…” He trailed off awkwardly.

He heard Dream stand up and slowly, painstakingly limp over. He settled himself on the ground, wincing, and stuck his bad leg out to the side. He was about three feet from George, within arms reach but not touching.

At least his vision’s coming back, he thought. At least you didn’t fuck that up.

“Before the uh… order?” Dream said delicately. George huffed a sad laugh.

“Yeah. Before the culling.”

He willed himself to not cry.

“Well, that’s fair, I guess,” said Dream, trying to inject some levity, “I mean, a threat like that would put anyone off w-“

“No, I didn’t stop after the cull was announced,” George said, not looking at Dream. He wasn’t sure why he was telling Dream this. He wasn’t sure why it mattered.

“Damn,” Dream said, and George must have been going crazy because he swore he heard appreciation in Dream’s voice just then, “ballsy. What made you stop?”

George pursed his lips, trying to keep his breathing under control. This was getting uncomfortably close to a raw nerve.

“My village got…” he started, and found himself unable to continue, “We had a bunch of clerics in the village. And hunters came and…”

“Oh,” Dream said quietly.

They sat in silence.

“Is that why I was sent after you?” he asked, “because you’re a cleric?”

George nodded, before remembering that Dream might not be able to see clearly just yet.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice rough, “I think so.”

They sat in silence for a long time.

“You don’t have to tell me anything else,” Dream said softly, putting a hand on George’s back. He nodded, grateful.

“How’s-“ he stopped and cleared his throat, and sounded more under control, “how’s your vision?”

“It’s back, alright,” he said, looking around, “it’s kind of blurry?” George was relieved for the change in topic of conversation. 

“That’ll go away in a couple of minutes,” George said, turning his attention back to fishing. He had a sudden realisation, and broke out in a wide (if slightly fragile) grin.

“Hey Dream,” he said, turning towards him.

“Yeah?” he asked, looking back at George. George held up three fingers.

“Three all,” he said, grinning. Dream’s childish mask stared back at him blankly, before Dream caught up and groaned, flopping dramatically back into the dirt.

“Damn it!” he yelled, startling some birds out of a nearby tree. George rolled his eyes, and laughed quietly.

“Don’t be such a sore loser,” George said, teasing, “Just because I save you just as much as you save me-“

“I’ve not lost,” Dream said, laughing through the words, “we’re tied! I can’t have lost if we’re even.”

“But not for long!” George said in a sing-song voice. He reeled in a fish and watched as Dream beheaded and gutted it.

“It’s only a matter of time before you do something stupid and I have to come rescue you,” George continued, sending the hook back out into the water.

“Mine was just bad luck!” Dream exclaimed defensively, “You’re the one who got sucked into a slime on purpose!”

“It wasn’t on purpose,” George said defensively, “mine was also bad luck!”

“Was not!”

“Was too!”

They sat there, bickering back and forth until the sun set.

Later that night, they lay on their separate bedrolls either side of the fire, staring up at the stars, their bellies full of fish.

“Hey, George,” Dream said quietly.

“Mmm?” George responded, already half asleep.

“Thanks,” he said.

“For what?”

“For not leaving me blind in the swamp. For calming me down. For staying with me.”

“Dream,” he said, sitting up on his elbows. Dream turned his masked face towards him. “Of course I wouldn’t have left you there alone. We’re partners.” George smiled, then hurriedly added, “Until we get out of the swamp.”

Dream nodded, smiling gently, and George laid back down.

“Thank you for telling me all that stuff as well,” Dream said after a while, “about the clerics, and the village, and…stuff. It must have been hard to talk about.”

There was a moment of quiet, except for the cicadas and the crackling of the fire.

“I appreciate you telling me, is all,” Dream whispered, almost too quiet to hear.

George stared up at the sky, cloudless and full of stars.

“You’re welcome,” he whispered back.

The mountains loomed in the distance.

It rained on and off for a week. They hunted when they could and fished when they couldn’t. They dried their clothes at night and teased each other about being shirtless. They didn’t talk about clerics. Dream’s leg healed bit by bit. He walked on his own, slowly and with pain and infrequently. They didn’t talk about George’s village. They talked, at length, about George's colour blindness. Dream talked, at length, about how his coat was a lime green, not yellow. They didn't talk about their parents. They bickered, but George found himself knowing instinctively that it was good natured. Dream didn’t want to actually annoy him. George felt the same.

They didn’t talk about where Dream came from.

Part of George wanted desperately to know why he had joined the Mad King’s corps, when he seemed so…pleasant. Kind. Human.

Every time he looked at Dream, sitting in the sun in his vest and sharpening his sword, he got double vision. He saw the man who had tirelessly hunted him across the country, phased by nothing, somehow always five steps ahead. He saw the man who had shot an arrow through the neck of a stranger without hesitation. The man who wielded a razor-sharp diamond sword like it was an extension of his body. The man who had signed up to be part of the ruthless killers that were the Mad King’s Manhunters.

He also saw the man who had saved his life, and who laughed with his whole body, and who had been terrified at the prospect of being blind. He saw the man who constantly tried to make George laugh. The man who he trusted to watch his back while he slept. The man who had let George live.

He was dying to know which of these two visions was the real Dream.

But he didn’t want to push. Dream didn’t talk about it. He never volunteered stories about his Mum, or his childhood best friend, or his time training to join the corps. By now, they had been travelling together for two weeks. He thought that if Dream hadn’t mentioned where he came from by now, there must have been a reason.

So he didn’t push the issue.

And they didn’t talk about it.

It was raining, and Dream kept pausing his rowing to look around and wipe the water from his mask.

“Ugh,” he murmured, picking up the oars again, “I can hardly see through this rain.”

“It’s your own fault for wearing that stupid mask…Mark,” George said. Dream shook his head, smirking smugly.

“Nope,” Dream said, “Not Mark.”

George had been trying to guess Dream’s real name for four days straight. They made the agreement that if he got it correct, Dream had to say. George was starting to run out of names. He tried switching tactics.

“Why do you wear that thing on your face anyway?” he asked, leaning back and crossing his arms.

“To protect my identity,” Dream answered completely seriously. George felt his eyebrows raise into his hairline.

“Are you serious,” he said disbelievingly.

“Yeah?” Dream said, a little defensively, “What?”

“Dream,” George said, breaking out into a small grin, “who are you protecting your identity from? You already work for the Mad King.”

Dream stared at George.

“Uh…the general public?” he said, like it was obvious, “so that if I have to go undercover I can take it off and people w-“

“The insignia of the Mad King is literally burned into your arm,” George said, his voice raising, “I don’t think that taking off your mask is going to make you any more inconspicuous.”

Dream laughed a little nervously, “Okay, okay, maybe it’s a bad disguise. You don’t have to rub it in. Anyway, I just like it. Makes it harder for people to guess what I’m gonna do. Like, they can’t see where I’m looking or what my expression is. Makes me more mysterious. And sexy.”

George laughed a little at the silly smily face that Dream was claiming made him sexy. Thankfully, Dream laughed along with him.

“I’m not much of an artist,” he conceded.

“I don’t think it matters whether you’re much of an artist or not,” George said, looking off to the side, “With your reputation, any mask you wear is terrifying…Calvin.”

Dream just shook his head. George cursed under his breath.

“But thanks, I guess. I think there was a compliment somewhere in there.”

They rowed on in silence, through the dense leaves and pouring rain. George was about to say something when they both heard voices in the distance. They looked at each other in a panic, before Dream grabbed George by the front of his shirt and pulled him down. George curled up as small as he could, and Dream covered him in the blanket from his bedroll.

In the damp heat beneath the blanket, George’s breathing was louder than thunder. He covered his nose and mouth with his hand, trying to slow his breathing and move as little as possible.

“Dream!” he heard a friendly voice call.

“Hey, Fish,” Dream called out in response, “Null.”

“What are you doing all the way out here?” the same voice called, getting a little closer. George’s heart started to beat wildly in his chest.

“Hunting,” Dream said simply, “you?”

“Same!” the friendly voice said. George thought it sounded vaguely feminine.

“Who’s your quarry?”

“No quarry,” she said, “a bounty.”

“Oh?” Dream asked. George was impressed at how even he kept his voice.

“King Ryan’s set this crazy bounty on some guy,” a second voice, much deeper and more masculine said, “Three hundred and eighty four emeralds for the person that brings him his head.”

Dream whistled lowly. George had to agree.

“What’d he do?” he asked.

“I dunno,” said the other masculine voice, “raised the dead? Made and sold potions? He’s some kind of cleric, at least.”

Fuck.

“Who cares,” the girl said, “for three hundred and eighty four emeralds, he could have done nothing and I’d still string him up by his guts. Like a flag. Like a really gross flag.”

Dream laughed lowly.

“Who’s your quarry?” She asked conversationally.

George held his breath.

“Some girl called Cassidy Gillian,” Dream said without hesitation, “debt dodger.”

Why is Dream doing this? thought George.

“Kind of a small fry for you, don’t you think?” The man asked. To George’s ears he sounded suspicious.

Why isn’t Dream betraying me?

“No big fish lately. I had to like, beg the King to send me out into the field.”

What does he stand to gain?

“Well, be careful out there!” she said cheerfully, “There’s something out in the swamp that’s taking absolutely no prisoners. You heard about Xilo, right?”

Is it his honour? Is it because he made a promise?

“Yeah,” Dream said, “poor guy.”

Three hundred and eighty four emeralds is a lot.

“Stabbed right through the chest,” she pressed on, undeterred, “right through his armour.”

That’s more money than most people would see in one place their whole lives.

“Damn,” Dream said, “Iron sword?”

Why isn’t Dream collecting his bounty?

“Or diamond,” she said cheerfully.

Maybe…

Dream laughed. “Where would the guy get a diamond sword from?”

Maybe it’s because…

“I don’t know, Dream,” she said, “you tell me.”

They’re friends.

“What do you mean?” The tension underlying Dream’s words snapped George out of his introspection. He felt the boat tilt slightly.

“Didn’t Xilo have a boat like this?” she asked.

George slowly reached for the quiver of arrows to his right.

“How’d you get that injury on your leg, Dream?”

There were one, two, three seconds of silence.

The boat rocked, and he heard the thwack of wood against flesh, and then they were jerkily rowing away. George heard splashing behind them, the two voices yelling to each other.

He peaked out from behind the blanket, looking up at Dream. He was rowing as fast as he could through the sheeting rain, checking over his shoulder periodically.

“Dream?”

“Stay down,” he said. He moved his head to the right, and a crossbow bolt whizzed past his face.

“Dream,” George said, a little more panicked.

“Fish and Null are fucking insane, and there’s a bounty on your head for over three hundred and fifty emeralds,” he said, ducking under another bolt, “stay down.”

“They’re after you too!” he hissed.

“I can hold them off,” Dream said, a determined set to his jaw.

“Not with one bad leg!”

“George, please!” Dream said, and his voice cracked with desperation, “Please, I don’t-“

He was cut off as a crossbow bolt grazed the flesh of his right bicep. He flinched back, pausing momentarily as they drifted onwards, carried by entropy. The voices got closer, whooping hollering in glee.

He saw a tree rising out of the swamp waters to his right.

Suddenly, his mind cleared. He had a plan.

He closed his hand around the quiver of arrows and pulled Dream’s bow loose of his pack.

Before Dream could say anything he climbed out of the boat and scrambled up the tree. He glanced back, but the two were still advancing towards Dream, who had drawn his sword. One of them reached out and grabbed at Dream’s coat, sword raised for a killing blow.

He didn’t even think. He stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled, loud and sharp. Three heads abruptly turned towards him.

“Three hundred and eighty emeralds, huh?” he yelled with false bravado, “I’m worth way more!”

The two bounty hunters immediately abandoned Dream, wading through the shallows towards the land.

George clumsily knocked an arrow and fired, just grazing the shoulder of the man. It didn’t slow him down.

Maybe this was a bad plan.

Too late for that now.

George leapt from the tree and started running, ducking and weaving through the dense trees. He could hear the two hunters behind him, keeping pace, firing off a crossbow bolt every few seconds. They were shouting to each other, but he didn’t care enough to listen too closely.

He felt the bolts go wide. He felt the rush of wind on his cheek as they went past him.

He didn’t have much of a plan, but the pounding of his feet over the wet, marshy ground, and the rain hitting him in the face, and the tightness in his lungs all felt awfully familiar.

He ran past a cave, ducking in momentarily to catch his breath and get out of the rain . They weren’t especially close, but still too close for comfort.

The cave was dark, and deep. It dripped ominously. He glanced in, trying to work out what his next move was. That was when he saw a dreaded, creeping, mottled figure emerge from the darkness, hissing quietly.

The story went like this:

Nobody knew where these things came from. They emerged from the night, from the darkest caves, from shady forests. All anybody knew was that when you heard the hissing you had to drop everything you held dear and run, and start looking around for a new house.

(George didn't need to believe or disbelieve these stories. He'd seen the creeper holes in the neighbouring town for himself."

George flinched back, backing out into the trees. The thing followed at a trot, keeping pace with him.

He heard the indistinct yelling of the bounty hunters.

He had a new, worse plan.

He started backing out, paying no mind to how quiet he was, and kept his eyes on the creeper in front of him.

It followed.

He heard the yelling get closer.

He started back peddling, checking over his shoulder every so often to make sure he didn’t run into a tree, luring the creeper towards him. He started heading back the way he came, keeping his fingers crossed that they hadn’t doubled back as well. He saw the glint of a crossbow bolt through the tree-line and ducked, right as it embedded itself in the tree behind his head.

He started running backwards in earnest, watching as the two started gaining on him.

(They haven’t noticed yet or they would have aimed for it, he thought)

He broke through the tree-line, and stood in the shallows. He glanced around behind him.

Dream was nowhere to be seen.

He swallowed and knocked an arrow, waiting for his moment.

The two burst through the tree line, twin crossbows raised.

“You’re slippery, that’s for sure,” said the girl, “But there’s nowhere else for you to go.”

George thought about saying something witty and cool.

The creeper emerged from the tree line, standing at a diagonal to the two bounty hunters.

George decided to say nothing at all and shot an arrow at it, praying, praying-

It hit the thing straight in the chest. It started to hiss louder. George splashed away into the shallows, feeling the sharp prick of a crossbow bolt in his bad shoulder-

There was an ear-splitting boom, and the cracking of earth. The two hunters were yelling, screaming, getting further and further away. George glanced over his shoulder to see the smoking remains of the creeper and a huge fissure in the earth.

He had a few seconds to think about how he’d probably managed to find a weak point through sheer luck, and how it had opened up a ravine, and how the loam and sand was probably not strong enough to withstand the explosive force of the creature’s dramatic death.

Then a bit of debris hit him square on his forehead and the world went dark.

He came to in the boat, to a wet, clammy, calloused hand gently slapping his cheek.

“George,” a voice was saying, “George, come on, wake up.”

He groaned, opening one eye just the smallest amount before shutting it again against the harsh light. He heard a quiet sigh of relief.

“You had me scared for a second,” Dream chuckled. George moaned in response.

“Head hurts…” he grumbled, trying to sit up.

“Yeah, I’m not surprised. I found you floating face up in the swamp near a creeper hole,” Dream said, starting to row them off. “Take it easy.”

George nodded, then immediately regretted it. He put his head in his hands and whined pathetically. Dream laughed a little.

“Well,” he said, “that was...”

“Yeah,” George said. He blinked a little, taking in his surroundings. Wherever they were, they were far away from Fish and Null.

It had stopped raining.

“Three hundred and eighty…” George trailed off, laughing a little, “I can’t believe he thinks I’m worth that much.”

“Yeah,” Dream said teasingly, “it’s like you said, you’re worth way more.”

“Oh shut up,” George said, lying back down, “it worked.”

He winced as his shoulder came into contact with the boat. He sat back up, gingerly, and craned his neck to check. It had been messily dressed with dry bandages. He looked over to Dream and his arm was bandaged in much the same way.

His heart felt warm at the thought of Dream trying to wrap his wounds.

“I’m really happy you’re awake, dude,” Dream said, “I suck at this stuff.” He gestured to his bandaged arm.

George thought about thanking him.

“Duh,” he said instead, starting to unwrap the bandages and gingerly pulling his shirt off, “Can you find us somewhere dry so I can do all this properly?”

Dream laughed quietly. “Okay.”

After boiling some water and disinfecting their respective wounds -

(“Ow, ow, ow, George, stop! That hurts!”

“Don’t be such a baby, Dream, I’m just washing it.”

“Do you have to, though?”

"Yeah, unless you want your arm to rot and fall off.”

“…”

“Stop pouting at me! Oh my God, I’ve seen little kids take this better than you!”)

George wrapped them both in clean white bandages, and settled down to cook dinner.

“I still think it should be seven-four,” Dream said, trying to wash the blood out of his coat. There was a dark spot on his sleeve that wasn’t coming out. 

“Well, you’re wrong,” George responded. Dream leaned forwards and started counting on his fingers.

“Xilo, girl, slime, Fish, Null, drowning, bleeding out,” he said, triumphantly holding up seven fingers.

“You don’t get bleeding out,” George scoffed, “I wasn’t going to die from that. You get six, max. And then I get infection, poison, witch, Fish, Null, creeper, and infection again.”

“Creeper?” Dream laughed.

“Yeah! I blew it up!”

“I wasn’t anywhere near-“

“But there’s one less creeper in the world,” George said smugly, “and it took out Fish and Null a second time. So.”

“Ugh, fine, fine! Six all,” Dream said, hanging up his coat to dry. George pulled a steak off the fire and slapped it in a bowl.

“But I’ll get you yet, Georgie,” Dream said in a sing song voice.

“I’ll get you yet…Kevin.”

“You already tried Kevin. It’s still not Kevin.”

George handed Dream his dinner and started tearing into his steak, listening to the disgusting sounds of Dream eat.

“You knew those guys?” he asked, and immediately regretted it. Dream stiffened, clenching his jaw.

“Yeah,” he said, “Fish and Null. I never asked their real names. They were like, totally insane. Super driven.”

“Xilo seemed pretty insane as well,” George said. Dream nodded.

“Pretty much all the Manhunters are,” he agreed, and shoved his mouth full of steak.

I should leave it, George thought.

“You’re not,” he said instead. Dream tilted his head a little in agreement.

“You seem…” he searched for something that wouldn’t sound terrible, “nice.”

Dream laughed, and it sounded sad. “Well. I’m different from Xilo. And Fish. And Null.”

George waited for him to continue.

“I uh…” he cleared his throat, “I never wanted to work for the Mad King.”

George leaned back in surprise. That was unusual.

The Mad King’s Manhunters were the best of the best, given the best equipment and the best food and the warmest beds. They were paid well and looked after, and in some senses existed above the law. In exchange, you killed for the Mad King. It was the cushiest job a sociopath could ask for. Hence why so many of them were mad. They’d been desensitised to murder, if they had ever been sensitive to it to begin with.

“Then…how…” he trailed off. Dream shifted uncomfortably.

“Um…” he said, looking up at the sky. It was cloudy tonight. No stars. “I owed the Mad King a debt, and he agreed to not send me to debtors jail if I joined his corps instead. Everyone else who joined wanted to like, kill and stuff. I just wanted to survive.”

George got the sense there was a lot more to that story than Dream was letting on.

He let it be.

“Wow,” he said, looking back down at his bowl. Dream laughed nervously.

“You’re actually really lucky you got me, dude,” he said, “pretty much any other hunter would have killed you in the first fifteen minutes of hunting you.”

George scowled. “So why didn’t you?”

There was a long silence. When George looked up at Dream, he saw the mask staring back at him. He got the sense Dream wasn’t looking at him, but rather off into middle distance. He was about to tell Dream he didn’t have to say anything, when Dream spoke up.

“I dunno. I’d been told you were like, super dangerous. So when I came over that ridge and you just sat there, blinking at me, armed with a stone sword. So I was like ‘really? This guy?’, and thought you must have been planning some kind of trap. But you totally weren’t. You were just way too easy to kill,” he said, laughing a little towards the end.

“Ugh, shut up,” George said, but there was no venom in it.

“Anyway, I was kind of enjoying being out of the Capital, and I figured that I could kill you pretty much any time I wanted, so I thought I’d just…enjoy the chase. For a while.” Dream’s voice dropped, so he was almost inaudible. “It was nice to just…not kill anyone. For a bit.”

George’s chest felt tight.

“And then Xilo showed up, and I wasn’t lying when I said it’s my responsibility to kill you, so I couldn’t just let him kill you. So then we fought, and then I blacked out, and when I came to I was warm and dry and…well. You know the rest.”

George did.

Dream was hunched over on himself, staring into the fire.

Dream was taller and bigger and stronger than him. But in that moment, George thought that Dream looked like a little kid, lost and alone.

He thought about his village, burned to the ground, and him running off into the wilderness.

The thought about Dream, stood before the Mad King’s throne, begging not to be sent to debtor’s jail.

“Well, thanks for not killing me,” George said, trying to break the tension.

“You’re welcome,” Dream said, way too earnestly. George smiled a little.

“Garfield,” George said. Dream looked up for a moment, before smiling, small and fragile.

“No.”

“Hickman.”

“No! Is that even a name?”

“Hunter!”

“No!”

“Iowa!” George said triumphantly. Dream was laughing now, strong and steady. George felt inordinately proud of himself.

“Iowa?”

“I’m sure there’s someone out there called Iowa,” George lied, crossing his arms defensively. Dream just kept laughing, wheezing in that painful-sounding way of his. George laughed with him.

That night, he rolled out his bedroll near where Dream had decided to take up watch for the night. If Dream found it strange, he didn’t comment.

George reached out and wrapped a hand around Dream’s ankle.

I’m here, he hoped it said, I’m here, I’m not leaving, I’ve got you.

Dream sighed, and it sounded happy.

After another few days, when the sun was still young and low in the sky, the boat bumped against a sandy bank. George and Dream shared a look, and George climbed out. He stood on the ground, shaded his eyes, and looked around.

They were still clearly in the swamp. The ground was soft underfoot, and the trees were still low and lopsided, and the stench of mud still hung heavy in the air.

But he couldn’t see any more lakes of stagnate water.

The mountains loomed in the distance, but seemed much closer.

“I think we have to ditch the boat,” George said to Dream, going back over and offering his hand. Dream grabbed on and slowly climbed out, finding his footing. He looked around.

“Huh.”

They turned back to the boat and pulled their stuff out of it. George felt weirdly sad to see it go. It had served them well.

“We should say a goodbye to the boat,” he said without thinking, and then blushed. Said out loud it sounded unbelievably stupid. He waited for Dream to comment on it.

Dream just nodded solemnly, and walked over to the boat. He patted it.

“Goodbye, Xilo’s boat,” he said, “thanks for carrying us all this way.”

He shoved it back into the water and it floated slowly away, somebody else’s for the taking.

They walked on.

Bit by bit, the ground became less marshy underfoot. The enormous lakes of stagnate water were well in their rearview mirror, the low trees faded away, there was a slight bite to the air. They found themselves on an incline so gradual, they didn’t notice they’d climbed a hill until they found themselves at the summit, looking out over a vast spruce forest. They were well and truly out of the swamp.

“Well,” said George.

“Yep,” said Dream.

“We’re out of the swamp.”

“Sure are.”

There were a couple of moments of silence. In the distance, there was the sound of a fox rummaging around in some sweetberry bushes. The mountains still loomed ahead.

“Is your leg okay?” asked George. Dream looked down, as if he was inspecting it through the leather armour.

“Yeah, I think so. It’s still, like, sore, and I’m probably going to have a bit of a limp, but I think I should be okay to chase you off the ends of the earth.”

“Cool,” said George. They lapsed into silence. The sun was high overhead, breathing the slightest warmth into the air.

“I’ll give you a head start,” said Dream, sitting down on a nearby bit of moss-covered rock. George snorted.

“Gee, thanks.” He looked out in front of him, at the huge, empty, lonely spruce forest that stretched out before him.

He looked back at Dream, at his stupid swoosh of stupid hair, and his stupidly cute mask, and the stupid impractical bright yellow coat that he didn’t find endearing at all. Dream had turned his face towards the sun, basking in it like a lizard. The corners of his mouth still pulled down ever so slightly.

George held out his hand. “Thanks for not stabbing me whilst we were in the swamp.”

Dream turned his face back towards George and shook his hand. “Thanks for having my back.”

George nodded once, and turned back to the forest. He tried to think about the route that would lead him through the forest and keep him obscured, but his heart wasn’t really in it. After a while, he picked a direction without reason, and started to slowly ease his way down the steep hillside.

Dream’s going to struggle with this incline, he thought to himself.

That’s a good thing, he reminded himself after a couple of seconds, he’s not your friend. He’s trying to kill you again.

He slipped and skidded his way to the bottom of the valley, and started trekking east, towards the mountain range. He glanced over his shoulder to see a bright yellow figure, carefully picking its way down the hillside. Two weeks ago, the sight would have made his heart rate increase, and his palms go sweaty, and his mouth to dry in fear. None of that happened now.

“You picked a bad route to put an injured man on,” Dream called out.

“I’m sorry?” George yelled back over his shoulder, but received no response.

He continued walking east. As the shadows lengthened, he would chance occasional furtive looks over his shoulder. Sure enough, about twenty feet behind him limped Dream. He didn’t seem particularly interested in picking up the pace to start hunting George in earnest. Things seemed weirdly tense and formal between them, like they’d never been before.

It was too quiet. He missed Dream’s humming. He missed the feel of his rough calloused hands pulling him from the intestines of a slime cube. He missed the way he’d tilt his head towards the stars at night, the way he held onto George’s ankle lying blinded in the boat. He even missed Dream, ensign of the dreaded Mad King hunting him down for sport and cackling maniacally as George screamed for his life. He missed the way Dream would grab teasingly at the back of his shirt, or tap his heels with the handle of his axe, or dash away into the undergrowth suddenly only to reemerge, flanking George and tackling him to the ground.

He missed his friend.

As the sun set, George set up his camp, lighting the campfire without thinking twice. An arrow embedded itself in the ground right next to where his hands were, and he heard the wheezing laughter of Dream coming from behind him. George scowled and pulled the arrow out of the ground.

“Thanks for the ammo,” he grumbled.

“Dude, you’ve forgotten what it likes to be hunted!” called Dream, setting up his own camp around twenty feet behind George. “Fires are a no-go!”

“Ugh, you’re so annoying,” called George. He was glad Dream was too far away to see the smile on his face. They sat in silence, staring each other down, twenty feet apart.

“This isn’t as fun as it used to be, is it?” Called Dream.

“It wasn’t ever fun for me,” George yelled back. There was another long pause as the sky darkened.

“George?”

“Yeah?”

“I never wanted to work for the Mad King.”

“I know.”

“What was that?”

“I know!”

Another long pause. Dream was sat, curled up on himself. It was hard to make out in the gathering dark but-

“Are you sitting cross legged?” yelled George. Dream looked up.

“Yeah?”

“Dream! You’ll hurt your leg even more!”

“Why do you care?”

“I don’t!”

“Fine!”

“Fine!”

George started digging around in his pack for his reserves of steak, before realising with a sinking feeling in his stomach that Dream had been the one carrying it all. He couldn’t just go up to him and ask for it, could he? They were enemies again. He’d given Dream a huge advantage and now he had to deal with it. He put his head in his hands and groaned to himself quietly. It had been stupid, what he’d done. He should have left Dream to die.

But even thinking that, George knew that wasn’t right. He couldn’t have just left him there, whether Dream was a friend or not. It was wrong. Nobody deserved to die alone.

He was startled by the sound of fat sizzling on the fire, and looked over to see Dream hunched down, pulling a second steak out of his bag to throw on the logs. George started backwards, but Dream put up his hands.

“I remembered I was carrying your share of the food and that’s it, I swear,” he said, taking a couple steps back, “I thought that…”

George nodded, gesturing to the other side of the fire. “Sit. I-if you want. I’m not making you.”

Dream sat down, bad leg stretched out to the side. They watched the steaks cook in silence for a bit, turning them every so often. Dream sighed, breaking the silence.

“Remember that first day in the swamp, with the slime?” he said quietly. George quirked an eyebrow up.

“You mean the one where I nearly died?” he said. Dream nodded.

“I remember watching you try to fight it, and just…thinking like, ‘this guy is totally harmless, what does Ryan want with him?’ Like, no offence dude, but..”

“I get it, I get it,” George said, feeling his cheeks flush, “what’s your point?”

“Sorry,” Dream said. He licked his lips and continued, "Like I said, I didn’t ask why he wanted you. I just did it because like… what else was I gonna do, you know? Say no to the Mad King? I might as well have, like, jumped off a cliff or something.”

“Yeah, it would have ended…badly,” George said. He flipped a steak.

“But then it turns out it’s just cause you’re like… studying to help people? And he didn’t like that? I just…” Dream looked down at his hands, “I don’t think I can… I think I have to…”

George’s mouth fell open.

“You’re…defecting?” he asked quietly.

There was a long silence.

Dream nodded once, and looked down.

“I can’t go back unless I kill you George,” he said lowly, “and I’m not going to kill you.”

George smiled at that, feeling warm and bright in his chest.

It had been, he thought, a long time since he had a friend.

Dream was still staring at the ground, picking at the grass. “I was wondering…” he started, “like, you can say no, and I’d get it, like I’d really get it, and I promise I won’t come after you if you say no, but I was hoping that maybe you wanted to keep travelling together? I don’t know, I just thought-“

“Yeah,” George said. Dream looked up, and there was a small, fragile smile on his face. Like he was hoping. Like he was trying not to hope.

“Yeah?” He repeated.

“Yeah,” George said, allowing himself to grin widely, “besides, I’ve gotta try and take the lead. If you die, I totally lose our contest. That counts for like, negative a thousand points. I have to keep an eye on you so you don’t do anything dumb that makes me lose.”

Dream laughed. Loud, and long, and wheezing. George giggled, pulling the steaks off the fire.

“You’re taking first watch, right?” he asked, taking a huge bite out of his steak. Dream nodded.

“As always. Gotta watch your back and keep you safe from the big scary monsters.”

“I hate you so much.”

“Love you too, Georgie.”

George fell asleep that night to the humming of a half-forgotten folk song, as Dream sat with his back to a tree, looking up at the stars.

Chapter Text

He watched George, curled up on his bedroll, the wind rustling his hair ever so slightly. George snuffled a little in his sleep and rolled over, revealing the green smudge on the back of his neck. Clay’s stomach went kind of funny, looking at it. A lot had changed.

He’d been proud of that Mark, when he made it. Most people get to Mark a shield or a boot - something that can break or be discarded. Not something fool proof. But Dream, brutal ensign of Mad King Ryan, had managed to Mark the skin. It wouldn’t go anywhere. He had George Marked until one of them died. Or…well. Or.

He dug around in his pack. No going back now, he thought.

After a short scuffle, his hands closed around a little metal circle, about the size of his palm. He pulled out the compass and looked at it in the pale moonlight, the red needle pointing towards George. Its’ true north. His true north. He clenched his hand around it.

It could be useful, he thought, if we get separated.

But knowing this was given to him by the Mad King, that this had been done with the intent of hunting George down and killing him, that was enough to put him ill at ease. And Clay had never been the most practical of people.

He raised the compass high above his head and brought it sharply down against a rock. The glass cracked, but the needle stubbornly pointed towards George. He did it again, and again, until it fell to pieces at his feet.

George stirred slightly, rolling over to face Clay and blink sleepily at him.

“Wuzzat?” He mumbled. In the moonlight, his bruises looked nearly black. He felt a rumble of guilt in his chest. Clay shook his head.

“Nothing. Don’t worry about it,” he whispered. George looked unsure.

“Go back to sleep.” He said. George nodded, and rolled back over. The Mark on his neck was gone.

He lifted his mask slightly to rub at his face.

No going back now.

Chapter Text

George has expected things to feel different, after their brief separation and reunion.

They didn’t.

Dream still hummed and sharpened his sword and looked at the stars at night. George still complained at him and tried to guess his name and plan for the both of them. They took it easy and waited for their wounds to heal.

George’s plans hadn’t changed much. They had to accommodate two people now, but that wasn’t much of an issue. Their current plan was to get to the top of the mountain, survey the surrounding landscape, find somewhere new to go, and survive.

George didn’t have a plan for what happened when they could stop running.

Deep down, he knew they could never really stop running.

But he liked to imagine, sometimes, late at night when he was several hours into his shift, him and Dream settling some long-forgotten corner of the wilderness. Planting wheat in the summer and making bread with it in the spring. Accruing a bunch of sheep and cows to eat. Watching the sunset over the land they had made home. Sometimes he imagined Sapnap emerging from the blue mists and joining them, sometimes they all had wives. Living out the rest of their lives comfortably, far from the reach of the Mad King.

He knew, as he watched Dream sleep, branded insignia bare for the world to see, it could never happen.

It didn’t make it any less pleasant to imagine.

They walked on, slowly, up the mountains, and into the biting cold.

Dream had decided to teach him how to fight. After George’s initial protestations that he knew how to hunt -

(“That's totally not the same thing, dude. A cow can’t carry a sword.”

“Some of them have horns though. That’s like…built in swords.”)

-he eventually relented, and they spent the evenings ‘sparing’.

Dream would make them both wooden swords and would start by trying to coach George through the proper form, walking him through some pretty simple drills. This never lasted very long, and the ‘lessons’ usually ended with them wrestling on the ground, pushing each other’s faces into the dirt and laughing. They’d throw the wooden swords on the fire at night and argue about who’d won. Dream told George he was getting better. George didn’t really feel like he was getting better, but didn’t want to argue with the grin on Dream’s face.

They managed another few weeks of uneventful travel, punctuated only by the occasional spider. The first time George saw one it was during his shift, and he shook Dream awake in a panic. He'd never seen one bigger than the size of his palm, much less one the size of his whole torso.

Dream had blearily sat up, rubbed his eyes under his mask, and killed the spider with a single arrow. He’d aimed for a fleshy part, a gap in the spider’s rough exoskeleton like it was second nature. George had stared, agape, and Dream had just rolled back over and gone to sleep.

The story went like this: 

Spiders came in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Some of them were harmless things that lived in the corners of your rooms and ate pests. Some of them were small but venomous, who could bite you and cause you some pain. Mostly, in the villages, they'd leave you alone. 

But as you headed out into the wilderness, they got bigger and bigger, and more and more likely to size you up and see you as a meal. Some of them were as big as you, and those were just the ones that lurked on the surface. Legend had it that there were some spiders that lived underground, in huge webbed caves, with a paralysing venom and acid in their blood. They would steal unsuspecting travellers and drag them down into their lair, never to be seen again. 

(George had first heard all this from Nick, when they were both small enough to squeeze between the barrels behind Nick's Grandfather's house and scare each other with ghost stories. George had initially brushed it off as nonsense, though a late-night flip through some of his parents' books had proven him wrong.)

George had waited for his hands to start shaking at the reminder of how ruthless Dream was, but it never came. They were partners now.

He slept easier knowing someone like Dream was watching his back.

They kept travelling east, heading further and further into the mountains. It got colder and colder, the fire at night becoming more and more of a necessity. George, who didn’t have a nice thick coat like Dream, took to wrapping himself in his blanket in the early morning and late afternoon. Dream had his hood up more often than not. Their breath started to fog out in front of them.

They passed by a village, one day, high up in amongst the tall spruce trees. They both slowed to a stop as they caught sight of it, the sounds of people muttering and kids chasing each other around the town square.

It was small, only one or two buildings standing above ground level, but the people were ruddy-cheeked and smiling. George thought about all the things he needed to buy (cloak, shoes, bottles, bread, sword, axe-) but couldn’t convince himself to move forward. All he could see were the phantom images of flames rising from the roofs, the sound of screaming and shattering glass.

He looked over at Dream. He still had no idea what he was thinking (that fucking mask…), but his mouth was tight. He wasn’t looking at George.

George put a gentle hand on his back and felt Dream startle slightly.

“Come on,” he said, and they gave the village a wide berth. Neither of them talked about it.

The views were incredible. As the sun set, George would sit and look back West, seeing the seemingly endless stretch of swamp, and beyond that the vast, blue ocean.

“Do you ever wonder what’s on the other side of the ocean?” George had asked Dream once.

“No?” Dream had responded after a while, “I don’t think there’s anything on the other side of the ocean. I’m pretty sure it’s just more water.”

“Hm.” George hummed.

“Is that where we’re headed next?” Dream had asked, and George knew him well enough by now to hear the light teasing in his voice.

“What, the ocean?”

“Yeah, to find the new world or whatever.”

“No,” George snorted, “We’d need to eat fish for the rest of our lives.”

One morning, as the sun rose over the mountains, George caught sight of the first glimpses of white. He felt a little spark of joy.

“Dream!” he said, excitably shaking Dream awake. Dream came awake suddenly, one hand on his sword, looking around for the threat.

“What?” he asked breathlessly, looking up at George. George was already stamping out the smouldering embers and packing up his bedroll. He turned to Dream and grinned widely.

“Snow!” he pointed a little ways up the mountain. Dream just stared at him.

“Come on, get up,” George said, pulling his pack onto his shoulders, “I’ve never seen snow before, and I don’t want it to melt before we get there!”

“Okay, okay, chill out,” Dream laughed, pulling on his coat and packing up his bedroll.

“It would be easier to chill out,” George said, “if we were surrounded by snow!”

He started bouncing on the balls of his feet, waiting for Dream to get packed. Dream had just barely gotten the pack on his shoulders before George took off running, yelling ‘race you!’ over his shoulder.

He sprinted up hill, legs burning, lungs heaving, and he barely noticed it. He glanced over his shoulder to see Dream, limping along at speed behind him, yelling at George to slow down and laughing.

He found himself laughing breathlessly as well.

Having the advantage of not dealing with a leg injury, George got to the snow-covered flats first. Recklessly, he threw himself face first into a snow drift and sunk down a little.

It wasn’t as soft as he’d imagined it, but it was every bit as exciting.

He heaved himself up wiping the snow off his face, just as Dream limped into sight. He bent double, putting his hands on his knees and breathing heavily. George felt his stomach constrict in concern.

“Are you okay?” he asked, going over to Dream. Dream nodded wordlessly, which was concerning in its own way.

“Is it your leg?” He asked, and didn’t wait for a response, “shit, I’m sorry. That’s a rough incline, especially if you’re running up it.”

George had been keeping an eye on Dream’s wound. It was healing pretty well, all things considered. He’d taken the stitches out a few days ago, and Dream had handled it as well as he’d handled everything else, which was to say not at all.

(“Ow, George! Cut it out! That hurt!”

“Settle down, Dream, seriously!”

“I’m fragile. You need to be nicer to me.”

“Do you want a honey candy to suck on?”

“Why? Do you have one?”

“Just shut up and let me do this.”)

Dream had been walking easier and easier, but he’d have a pretty big scar for the rest of his life.

Still, it was no excuse for George to just forget about his needs like that.

Whilst George was distracted by these thoughts, he had failed to notice Dream bend down and scoop up a handful of snow. He was startled out of his introspection when it made contact with his face.

George stumbled back, shocked, and Dream started laughing hysterically.

“The-“ he choked out in between laughing fits, “the look on your face! Oh my God!”

“Ugh, that’s what I get for caring about your feelings,” George said, wiping the snow off his face.

“Aww, George, you care about me?” Dream said, “that’s so sweet of you to finally say, I-“

George threw a snowball at his face, but Dream ducked under it just in time. George scooped up another one, and it made a satisfying smack against Dream’s shoulder. He cheered. Dream immediately started scooping up other handfuls of snow, a renewed fervour in his actions. George followed suit and dashed off behind a tree, glancing out from behind it. It was hard to tell behind Dream’s mask, but he didn’t think he’d been spotted.

“Oh George,” Dream sang, in that familiar way. Like a pavlovian response, George’s heart rate increased. Cradling his snowballs in one arm, he started to climb up the tree as silently as he could.

“Where are you, George,” Dream said again. George tried to stifle his laughter. He couldn’t give the game away just yet.

He crouched on the lowest bough of the tree, Dream perfectly in his sights. He was looking the other way.

George hurled a snowball at the back of his head, and it made contact, exploding out satisfyingly. He threw another one, which just clipped the side of Dream’s head as he turned around. George was laughing now, loud and triumphant.

He watched Dream bend down, scoop up a snowball, and hurl it right at his face.

It smacked him square on the nose and he lost his balance, falling backwards out of the tree.

He wasn’t super high up, and he’d landed on a little snowdrift, so it didn’t hurt too bad. He was winded, and his shoulder ached, but he thought he was fine.

“Shit! George, you good?” Dream called.

George formulated a plan.

He groaned a little, rolling onto his side and trying to surreptitiously grab a handful of snow. He heard Dream limp over to him.

“Did you hit your head?” he asked. George had half a second to feel bad about the panic in Dream’s voice before he heard him kneel down next to him, and put a hand on his shoulder.

As quick as he could, George sat up and shoved his fistful of snow down the back of Dream’s shirt. Dream flinched backwards, cringing at the feeling of cold, wet snow down his back. George laughed so hard that he started to cry, and Dream responded by tackling him backwards into the snowdrift.

They tussled for a while before both giving up, breathless and laughing. They lay there a long time before eventually calming down, the silence still punctuated by giggling.

“Seriously though, are you okay?” Dream asked after a while, slowly sitting up.

“Yeah, fine,” George said, “It wasn’t a super long drop. I’m made of tougher stuff than that.”

“Sure, whatever you say,” he said, getting to his feet. He held out a hand and George grabbed it, pulling himself to his feet.

“You’re the one who’s oh so fragile, Clyde,” he said, dusting himself off. Dream just laughed and mussed up George’s hair.

“Nope, but good guess.”

They continued East.

“What’s up?” Dream asked, as they set up camp later that night.

“Hm?” George hummed.

“You seem distracted,” he said. George shrugged, and went back to pulling branches for firewood off the tree he’d climbed up.

He’d seen dark clouds gathering in the distance.

George wasn’t stupid. He’d grown up in a village on the plains, sheltered by a birch forest. But he wasn’t stupid. He knew that up on the side of the mountain, the difference between good weather and bad weather was the difference between life and death.

What’s more was that tree cover had been thinning out. It was starting to get properly cold, and neither of them had the proper attire for it. Being in a mountainous forest was a different prospect from being out on the open tundra. Here there were windbreaks, and plenty of firewood, and animals for food, and shelter from most of any snowfall that happened overnight. There was none of that on the tundra.

“Hey,” Dream said, interrupting his thoughts. George blinked a couple times and looked down at the bundle of branches in his arms. He tossed them down by Dream’s feet and started to climb out of the tree.

“Seriously, what’s up?” Dream asked, starting to set up a fire. George shivered a little and drew the blanket tighter around his shoulders.

“Nothing,” he said, inching closer to the small flames Dream was able to coax from the slightly damp firewood. He dug around in Dream’s pack for some cuts of meat.

“George, don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t believe you,” he said.

George shrugged again, and skewered the pork chops on the end of some sharpened sticks.

“I just think the weather is about to turn,” he said, and told himself it wasn’t a lie.

If Dream thought he was being deceitful, he didn’t say so.

They sat close to each other that night, shivering in spite of the warmth from the fire.

At midday two days later, they reached the end of the tree line.

It had been snowing on and off for a few days by now, and an enormous field of white stretched out before them.

George paused, glancing towards the sky. The dark grey clouds hovered menacingly in the distance, and the wind would only blow them closer.

Dream put a hand on his back.

“Come on,” he said, urging George forwards, “we have to keep going.”

“I don’t know,” George said, glancing back at the forest behind him, “something just tells me this is a bad idea…”

“Look, George,” Dream said, “Fish and Null weren’t the only ones looking for you. There’s a really high price on your head, and I’m pretty sure I’m either wanted or assumed dead by now. We have to keep moving, or they’ll catch up.”

George nodded reluctantly. “We should at least get some more firewood. We don’t know when we’ll see it again.”

They cut the branches off a nearby tree and tied them to their packs. Their packs sat heavier on their backs, but George felt more secure and better prepared. He thought that was a pretty good price to pay for it.

They started walking over the Tundra, uphill, in the vague direction of the summit. The snow was deeper here, and any enthusiasm George had felt at the sight of it quickly waned as he struggled through the snow. Dream was significantly slower too.

For the first few hours, it was fine, if slow.

Then the wind started to pick up.

It was suddenly unbearable. George felt the wind cut right to his bones, He started to shake, not the trembling he was used to, but full body shaking. His teeth started to chatter. He checked over his shoulder and was dismayed to see Dream fairing no better. He’d tucked his hands into his coat and buried the lower part of his face in the collar of his coat. But the forest was too far away, by now, for them to turn back. They had to keep going.

As the sun started to set, it began to snow. George couldn’t see five feet in front of him. When he looked back, he could barely see Dream, and was suddenly very grateful for his bright yellow coat, which made him stand out against the dark.

Dream reached out a hand and grabbed on to the back of George’s blanket. They kept moving.

At least it can’t get any worse, George thought.

It got worse.

When the sun set properly, it was almost impossible to see where they were going. The wind was blowing a gale, and when Dream tried to tell him something the words got drowned out by the wind and snow. It was too windy to start a fire.

They had to keep going.

George had been through some pretty miserable times. When he was younger and got sick with the stomach flu, that had felt like it would never end. Months ago, when Dream had chased him through that desert, and his mouth had been dry all the time and sweat had been pouring out of every pore, that had felt like it would never end. In the abandoned Witch’s hut

But this, wandering through the freezing dark, through snow that nearly came up to his knees, toes going numb, fingers going numb, the only sign that Dream was with him being the pull at his back. This felt really, truly endless.

(He had, of course, gotten over the flu. And he had made it out of the desert, drinking thirstily from the first stream he saw. The thing about moments that feel endless is that they never actually are endless.

This time was no different)

In the distance, he saw a faint, flickering light.

A village.

A village would have buildings, windbreaks, places to light a fire.

A village would be warm.

George set his sights on the light in the distance and headed towards it with renewed vigour. They traveled on for a while before Dream abruptly stopped, noticing where George was headed.

He thought back to the tension in every inch of his body when they’d come across the village in the forest.

They didn’t have time for this.

“Dream!” he yelled over the howling wind, “We have to! We can’t stay out in this weather!”

He prayed Dream heard.

He prayed Dream understood.

He got a single nod in acknowledgment.

They pressed on.

Eventually, houses started appearing out of the white out. The windows were black, and the curtains were drawn, but they were houses none the less. The lamps, made of some sort of luminescent stone, shone brightly on snow-covered pathways. In other circumstances, George would have started to panic, or imagine everything burning to rubble around him, or heard the noise of horses coming over the hills.

They didn’t have time for that either.

George managed to pick out the shape of a barn and headed over to it, the going easier as the snow wasn’t as high here.

With a herculean effort he yanked open the door and stumbled into the dark warmth, dragging Dream along behind him. He shut the door and slumped against it, sliding down so he was sitting on the ground.

He heard a disgruntled oink come from the darkness.

For a while, he sat there shivering, his hands shaking like they’d never shook before. He blinked in the darkness, trying to distinguish shapes.

He was able to make out the looming shape of hay bales, and the bright yellow figure of Dream slumped against them. He saw movement out of the corner of his eye, and assumed it was the source of the oinking.

He heaved himself to his feet and threw himself down on the hay next to Dream.

It was warmer, now that they were out of the wind and snow. They hay was itchy, but It was insulation from the cold hard ground. George would take what he could get.

The wind howled and whistled outside, banging the shutters a little. George was just grateful to be out of it.

“You okay?” he murmured to Dream, still shivering. He pulled his blanket tighter around his shoulders. He felt Dream nod next to him.

“Just kind of cold,” he said. They lay next to each other, slowly warming up.

“I told you so,” George mumbled. Dream snorted, gently elbowing him in the side.

They kicked off their boots and rolled themselves up in their individual blankets on the hay bales, deciding without speaking not to sleep in shifts. He heard Dream shrug out of his coat and eventually stop shivering, but he couldn’t find that same relief. His blanket was damp from the journey, having been wrapped around his shoulders to try and keep some of the wind and snow off him. He lay there, cold and damp, as feeling slowly returned to his fingers and toes.

“Dude, go to sleep,” Dream said, rolling over to try and get comfy.

“How did you know I was awake?” George whispered. Dream snorted unattractively.

“I can hear your teeth chattering from here,” he said. George didn’t dignify that with a response. He just wrapped himself tighter in the damp blanket. He heard Dream sigh, and shift around.

“Do you want to share?” he asked. George blinked into the darkness before rolling over.

He could just make out the shape of Dream, holding his blanket open. Part of George wanted to be prideful and refuse, or to dodge the inevitable teasing from Dream he would inevitably endure.

He was very cold though.

He shed his blanket and shuffled over, curling up close to Dream in the space he’d made for him. Dream grabbed George’s blanket and his coat and pulled both over them, a comforting weight settling over their freezing bodies.

It was kind of awkward, lying so close to Dream. But as the shared warmth from their bodies slowly started seeping into his skin, he found himself unable to care.

In the dark, Dream’s hand found his wrist. He closed his eyes, his hands stilling for the first time in a long time, and drifted off to sleep.

He woke up to murmuring, howling wind, and the blade of an axe a few inches from his face.

It was only the second time this had happened to him, but he was getting pretty sick of it.

He sat up, willing himself to not blush at the fact he’d been found lying next to Dream. The blade followed him.

At the other end of the axe was a middle-aged man, his face weathered and aged. His beard was greying.

George slowly raised his hands. He saw a smattering of other villagers stood the doorway to the barn, watching anxiously.

“What do you want,” the man asked. His voice was old and rough.

“We were caught out on the tundra when the blizzard blew in,” George said, and willed the man to believe him, “we just needed somewhere to wait out the weather. We don’t want anything.”

“Awful convenient,” the man said, not breaking eye contact, “that two travellers like yourselves would be out on the snowfields. Most sensible folk know to turn back when the weather gets bad.”

“Well,” George said, “we’re not the most sensible of folk.”

“That much is obvious,” he replied.

“Were they bothering my pigs?” a higher pitched, more nasal voice asked from the crowd. Someone else shushed her.

“Look,” George said, “We just need somewhere to wait out the storm. We’re not looking for any trouble. We’re willing to work for our keep.” He hoped Dream was willing to work. He didn’t see why he wouldn’t be. The man scoffed, but started to lower the axe.

That was when Dream started to stir next to him, sitting up and rubbing at his face under the mask.

Without his coat, the branded insignia of the Mad King was on full display.

The group of people at the back gasped and collectively took two steps back. Two other men, younger and wider in the chest, rushed forwards and grabbed Dream by the arms, hauling him to his feet.

Dream, still half asleep, didn’t do much more than kick wildly.

“We have no bad blood with the M-… With the King,” the bearded man said, grabbing George by the front of his shirt and lifting him clean off the ground, “our taxes are paid, we’ve handed over our clerics, we’re not growing or holding any restricted goods-“

“Let go of me!” Dream was yelling, squirming, “put me down! George!”

“Tell the King that-“

“I’m not an ensign,” George hurried to explain. He shook his sleeves so that they slipped down, revealing his bare forearms, “I’m not an ensign, and neither is he anymore.”

“Do you think I was born yesterday, boy?” the man spat.

“Look, look at my arms,” he said, holding them up, “no brand. You can check my pack, I’m not armed. I’m-“ he took a deep breath, and gambled, “I’m wanted. There’s a bounty on my head for over three hundred and fifty emeralds. I’m a cleric.”

“George!” Dream yelled in alarm.

The man dropped him in surprise. George landed on his back on the hay, holding his hands up.

“What?” the man asked in bewilderment. It was deathly silent, apart from the banging of the shutters.

“I’m a cleric,” George said, and it still made him kind of sick and panicked to say out loud, “my village was burned down. I’ve been on the run for the last two…four months now.” He pointed to Dream. “He used to be a Manhunter in the Mad King’s corps, but he defected. He’s been helping me. I’d have been dead three or four times over by now if not for him.”

There were several long moments of silence and stillness.

“Why,” the man said, “would you expect us to believe that?”

George swallowed nervously.

“Because it’s the truth.”

There were several more long moments of silence.

“You’re a cleric?” The man asked, lowering his sword.

“Yes,” George said, trying to sound confident.

“Olivia’s got a cough and a fever she can’t shake. There anything you can do for that?” he challenged.

“Do you have any melon?”   

“Might do,” he replied.

“Bring me the melon and I’ll see what I can do.”

The man nodded and a young-looking girl dashed out into the snow. He looked over to where Dream was held tight by the two other men. It made him angry. He wasn’t sure why.

“You can let him go,” he said, trying to sound authoritative.

“Not until you prove you’re telling the truth,” came the immediate reply. George flashed Dream an apologetic look. Dream was staring at him, his mouth set in a hard line, expression indecipherable.

Damn that mask.

The kid came stumbling back in with a shrivelled, small melon.

“We got this from a wandering trader a few weeks ago, I don’t know if it’s still good I-“ she started babbling.

“It’s okay, it’s okay. Thank you,” George said, taking it off her hands. He stood up and everyone flinched back, but he just rolled his eyes.

He pulled out a handful of the strange looking mushrooms from his pack and poured them into one of his bottles of water. He lit a small fire (he was sure to do it far away from the stacks of hay bales) and stuck the mixture over the flames, waiting for it to boil. He broke open the melon with relative ease (it was just this side of rotten, it would do) and rubbed it down with a weird, shimmering powder, and broke the melon down into smaller bits. The potion started to boil, going an unappetising shade of blue. George poured the melon bits in and swirled it around, burning the tips of his fingers. The potion became thick, like mud, and turned a dark shade of grey. It wasn’t quite right, George thought the colour might be off, but it didn’t need to be perfect. It will do, he thought, giving it an experimental sniff, It will do.

“Here,” he said, handing it to the bearded man, “give this to her. She has to drink the whole thing in one go and she’ll be fine by tomorrow.”

He took it hesitantly and swirled it around. He was looking at George with a strange look in his eyes.

“You’re a cleric, all right,” he said. He handed the potion to the girl, who went running back out into the storm. “Not a very smart cleric, and not a very good cleric, but a cleric.”

George bit his tongue.

“You can stay,” he said, “until the storm blows over. Then you must leave.”

The relief George felt was overwhelming. He felt slightly weak in the knees.

But he wasn’t done yet.

“Both of us.” George asserted. The man scowled slightly. “He’s my friend. Both of us can stay.”

“You can stay,” he said pointedly, “the Mad King’s dog can freeze on his way back to the capital.”

George took a deep breath, and gambled again.

“Then you can send me with him.”

They stared each other down. Eventually, the man sighed.

“Let him go,” he said to his two bigger friends, and they dropped Dream’s arms. He immediately went to stand next to George, close but not touching.

The man kicked out the smouldering remains of George’s fire.

“You can stay in Leon’s house,” he said, “this weather won’t let up for another few days at least, and we need to use the barn.”

George scoffed, “won’t he mind?”

“He’s been summoned to the capital,” he responded. George felt his blood run cold.

“It’s the house on the end of the road,” the bearded man continued, “door’s not locked. You can’t miss it.”

George nodded and nudged Dream. They started packing up their things, stuffing them hurriedly into their packs. They pushed through the crowd of people, who for some reason refused to make way for them, and headed back out into the snow.

They’d only got a few paces when George heard the distant shout of ‘monster!’, and a rock collided with the back of Dream’s head. He stumbled forward, but stayed on his feet. George whirled around, furious.

A dozen or so eyes blinked back innocently at him.

He put a hand on the centre of Dream’s back and pushed gently, urging them forwards.

His hands began to shake.

They got into the house and shut the door behind them, and George dragged a chair in front of the handle.

The house was one room big. There were two beds pushed up against one of the walls, and a furnace placed under a window. There were two old stacks of dusty books in a corner, of the room, a faded carpet on the floor, the chair that was now in front of the door, another lonely chair, and a half-rotten desk.

“How rude,” George said, heading over to the furnace, “I can’t believe them. You help someone out, offer to work for them, and what do they do? Throw rocks at our heads.”

“My head,” Dream corrected quietly. He’d sat down in a corner far away from the door, on the opposite side to the furnace. George snorted.

“Yeah, you didn’t even do anything,” George agreed, stoking the furnace with a few bits of remaining firewood. “Ugh, these people. Well, we only have to deal with them for a couple of days, whilst we wait for the weather to clear. And on the upside, I’m sure we can find someone who’d be willing to trade stuff with us. I need a coat. And an axe. But primarily a coat. It was so bloody cold out on that Tundra, Dream.”

“I have emeralds,” Dream said quietly.

“Great,” George said, still distracted by lighting the furnace, “and we have an oven! That’s great news. It needs a bit of cleaning, but I bet we could make stuff in here. Like bread. Fresh bread!” He finally managed to get the furnace alight and let out a small cheer as light and warmth started to fill the room. He turned his head to grin at Dream.

Dream was still sitting in his corner, bad leg stretched out in front of him, head bent low.

“Dream?” he asked, his stomach twisting in concern. He did not receive a response.

“Dream,” he said in a sing-song voice, “there are beds here, Dream. When was the last time you slept in a bed?”

“Did you mean what you said?” Dream asked suddenly. George furrowed his brows in confusion.

“When?”

“When you said we were friends,” he said, still looking at the ground.

George looked at him for several long seconds.

“Well, yeah,” he said, feeling more than a little stupid, “do you not…want to be?”

“No, no, no, I do,” Dream hurried to explain, “I just…”

“Well,” George said, heading over to the cold part of the room and sitting down next to him, “We’ve been travelling together for about a month now, you know. And we bully each other all the time and tell each other jokes and stuff. I think that makes us friends.”

Dream turned to him and smiled, and it was so, so sad.

“You don’t even know what I look like,” he said quietly.

“Do I have to?” George asked.

“You don’t even know my name,” Dream said, even quieter.

“Well, not yet,” George waved his hand dismissively, “But I’m getting closer, right, Callum?”

Dream went back to quietly looking at the ground. He crossed his arms over his knee and rested his chin on them.

“Anyway,” George said, trying something, anything to get Dream to smile, “I think I’m in the lead by now. I made us stop and get firewood, and found the village, and got the villagers to like us,” he said, “and you just like, kept me warm. So that’s three to one for a total of nine to seven in my favour.”

He waited for Dream to find some technicality, like how the firewood only helped to make the villagers like them, or that they probably wouldn’t have died in the storm, or that keeping George warm involved several steps and should count for several things, or even remind him about the spider.

Dream just nodded silently.

George was starting to get really worried.

“Dream?” he asked, trying one last trick, “Chive? Clark? Claire? C-“

“Clay,” Dream said quietly. George blinked a few times in confusion.

“What?”

“My name’s Clay,” he said. He still wasn’t looking at George.

Clay. 

“Clay…” George said slowly. Dream (Clay) nodded.

“I’m not…” he balled up his fists, “I never wanted to be a monster.”

George’s heart sunk into his shoes.

“I know,” he said, “Dream, Clay, are you feeling alright? It wasn’t a big rock, but he did throw it pretty hard, let me-“ George reached out for Dream (Clay)’s head, going to examine the bump. Dream (Clay) just shook him off.

“No, it’s not that, George, I’m just-“ he grabbed two fistfuls of his own shaggy hair and tugged, gently, “I don't want to be a monster. I never even wanted to work for the Mad King!”

His breath was coming harsh and fast.

“I know, I know, they’re just scared people who don’t know any better-“ George said, putting a hand on Clay’s arm.

“They’re scared of me, George!” he cried, slamming his fist back against the wall, and his voice broke midway through, “and they should be! You should be!”

George startled at the loud smack of Clay's fist against the wall. He glanced down. The paint was cracking around where it had made contact.

“You should be,” he said again, quieter, “I’ve…I’ve killed so many people. So many. I don’t remember even half of them. I didn’t even think. I just…”

“You did what you had to,” George tried, and Clay just laughed bitterly.

“Did I?” he asked, and George felt a jolt of guilty panic to see tear tracks on his face.

George nodded.

“I…I didn’t tell you the whole truth, in the swamp,” he said, wiping at his face.

“I didn’t think you had,” George admitted quietly. Clay turned to look at him, briefly, and George just shrugged. “I didn’t think it was important. You’d tell me when you’d tell me.“

Clay nodded, and took a few deep, shaking breaths.

“My Dad was an armourer,” he said, quietly, “My Mom died when I was like, really little. I kind of knew that a Mom was a thing that I should have had, but it didn’t bother me. It was just me and my Dad, and that was fine.”

He started wringing his hands together. “The thing was that he was an armourer, and…you know. There’s only one person who buys armour in large amounts.”

“The Mad King,” George said. Clay nodded.

“Yeah. So, on the one hand that was good, because it wasn’t like he was suddenly going to be hit by, like, a tax, or an embargo, or anything. We weren’t, like, rich. But we were okay. But one day, the Mad King came through the village and said my Dad had short changed him. Demanded ten more sets.”

Clay cleared his throat.

“My Dad tried to show that he’d priced it the same way he’d always priced it or whatever, but the Mad King wasn’t having like, any of it. He told my Dad he owed him a debt. Dad couldn’t pay, so…”

George just nodded.

“He wouldn’t have lasted a week in debtor’s jail, George,” he said desperately, “he would have been dead within a month. So I went to the Capital and begged for his release. I said I’d do his sentence instead.”

There was a pause here. George, trying not to think too hard about it, wrapped his arm around Dream’s shoulders and gently tugged him closer. Clay went easily, resting his head on George’s good shoulder.

“How old were you?” He whispered. He felt Clay shrug.

“Thirteen? Twelve? I don’t know. Anyway. The Mad King said he’d let my Dad go, but he wanted to see me fight first. I…” he laughed, and it was tragically sad, “I didn’t have many friends growing up, Dad always said I was too competitive for it. So I mostly spent my time hitting armour stands with sticks and wooden swords. I got pitted against this sweet little guy with like, floppy black hair and glasses, and just… annihilated him. Like, I didn’t kill him. We had to fight hand to hand. So I beat him bloody, and he got sent off, and I started training.”

“They let my Dad go, but he had to live in the capital for some stupid reason. I didn’t see him much,” he said, sniffling again, “I was busy. Training. Killing. Whatever.”

Clay shifted a little and laughed bitterly. “You want to know the real irony? My dad got stabbed in the middle of the street like, three months later. It was just some random person who was down on their luck and thought my Dad had money. I was out learning how to track a man through a cave system.”

George rubbed his hand along Clay's arm, shushing him gently.

“I had nothing left,” Clay continued, his voice hiccoughing, and tears starting to drip off his chin again, “so I killed. I got really good at killing. And I guess I became a monster.”

“I don’t think you’re a monster,” George said quietly. His heart was hammering in his chest. He felt sick, full of the awful stuff Clay had told him.

He’d spent the last three years learning how to fix people’s aches and pains. Which things went in which potions to fix which ailments. How to dress a wound and make sure it didn’t reopen. How to set a broken bone. Diagnose internal bleeding. Cure sicknesses.

Clay was hurt in a way he didn’t know how to fix.

It was frightening.

He remembered the first time he’d been alone in the church and a guy came to him, clutching his obviously broken hand, asking for the cleric. The panic of not knowing what to do but knowing you had to do something.

“I don’t think you’re a monster,” he tried again. “I don’t even think you’re a bad person.”

Clay sniffled quietly into his shoulder.

“I spent two months trying to kill you,” he said miserably.

“You spent two months letting me go,” George corrected.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” he said, “Just because I didn’t kill you. I didn’t let you go because I thought you deserved to live, I was playing a game. I killed fifty other people. A hundred, maybe, without thinking. Most of them just people, George. I never asked what they did. I might have killed clerics. I might have killed people you knew.”

George felt his chest squeeze painfully. His stomach churned.

“Why are you telling me this?” he asked, and prayed he kept the horror out of his voice.

“I just…” he said, voice trembling, “I just need you to know. I’m not a good friend. I’m not a good person. I think, sometimes,” his voice dropped so he was almost inaudible, “I think I’m barely a person at all.”

George was quiet for a bit.

He thought about what would make Clay feel better.

He decided to go with the truth.

“Well, I think…” George cleared his throat, and looked up at the ceiling, “I think you were a kid about to lose his Dad, and who made a bad decision, and had to deal with the consequences of it.”

George leaned his head on Clay’s. The tough edges of the mask pressed uncomfortably into his skin, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care.

“I think you’re a victim. We both are,” he said quietly. Clay turned his face towards George’s shoulder, his back heaving, and stifled his sobs against the fabric of George’s shirt.

They sat there like that for a long, long time. The room slowly heated with the warmth of the furnace. With time, Clay calmed down, the shaking of his shoulders abating and his breath coming more evenly. He didn’t move from George’s shoulder, and George had no intention of making him.

“It’s eight-eight, for the record,” Clay quietly pointed out after the light started to fade from the windows.

George felt himself smile for the first time all day.

“Whatever you say, Clay.”

The furnace burned brightly and kept the room warm, in spite of the storm ravaging the village outside.

If they pushed the beds closer together that night so they were within arms reach of each other, nobody had to know.

As the storm continued, Clay and George took the opportunity to stock up for the road ahead.

George, being the closest thing the village had to a cleric, was kept busy with work. People would come to him with frostbite, wind chafing, bruises, slips, all kinds of ailments. Most of them were easily fixed, and at the end of each day he had a little pile of emeralds.

By his counting, he was being paid just barely over half of what he should have been. He didn’t complain.

Clay spent the first day sitting in the corner and watching George work, distrust radiating off him. George had grumbled about it, about how it made his patients uncomfortable, or how it was probably contributing to his pay cut, but he didn’t really care. A small part of him kind of liked having Clay there, scowling on his behalf.

It only lasted a day before Clay got bored.

The bad weather meant there wasn’t much for him to do except go down into the mines by the village. It was physically demanding, exhausting, and dangerous. Clay came back in the evenings covered in soot and complaining about how he’d had to save the other miners from spiders again.

George could tell he was secretly enjoying himself.

They didn’t talk about that first night they spent in the dead man’s house.

George did notice that Clay was a little freer with the amicable slaps on the back or ruffling of hair. George had asked whether he wanted to go by Clay or Dream, and he’d insisted on going by Dream when there were other people around.

(“I have to keep up my mysterious persona, George.”

“You’re wearing a bright yellow-

“Green.”

“Green, whatever. Clay, you’re like, the least mysterious person I know.”

“Aww, you don’t mean that.”

“I’ve met cats with more mystique than you.”)

George called him Clay when they were alone. Clay had insisted he didn’t care, but George had noticed the private smile on his face when he thought George wasn’t looking.

He hoped it was progress.

They traded for things they needed. Wood was in short supply but Dream was able to get the armourer to make them a shield. George got a nice, thick coat made from animal hide and wool that kept the wind out. He held an iron axe in his hand for the first time in a long time. They bought wheat and ate freshly made bread, and the first time George bit into it he nearly cried tears of joy.

He still felt on edge. The villagers didn’t trust them, and he felt eyes on his back every time he left the house to brave the weather, or laughed at something Dream had said. He woke up every morning half expecting to see the roof on fire. One day, he could have sworn he’d heard Sapnap’s voice and expected to see him when he rounded the corner. A boy he didn’t recognise had just blinked back at him with wide, big eyes, before running off into the distance. George had sat on the ground in the terrible weather, hands shaking, for so long that Clay had come looking for him.

(George didn’t remember much of the rest of that day, just being hauled to his feet and led back into the warmth.)

He went to sleep each night half expecting to hear footsteps outside his window and a banging on his door. Some nights he lay awake for hours waiting for it.

The weather looked like it would never end. Then, on their fourth day, it started to abate. George noticed that the visibility had improved. He could see down the road to the barn.

By the fifth day, there was barely any snow falling, and the wind had died down.

On the sixth day, George went around and collected his glass bottles from everyone he’d handed them out to, and they stocked up on bread. It had stopped snowing. Clay and George helped the villagers shovel snow off their pathways.

They left at first light on the morning of the seventh day, continuing East up the mountain.

They reached the summit by mid morning, insulated against the biting wind by their new warm clothes.

The overworld stretched out magnificently before them. They saw the mountain stretch down into a lush valley before them, the winding glimmer of a deep blue river cutting through the plains. A dense forest sprouted up to the left, casting strong shadows in the morning light. George thought he could just make out the shape of a village in the distance, at the foot of some gentle rolling hills, which stretched out as far as he could see. In the distance he was just able to make out the jagged shape of another mountain range.

In his time, George had seen some incredible things. He’d watched someones bones knit themselves together after they drank a properly made healing potion. He’d seen fireworks go off at night in showers of light to the transparent joy of village children. He’d seen the sun set over a vast and empty desert, bathing everything in a warm yellow light.

He thought this might be the best thing he’d ever seen.

“Wow,” George said quietly.

“Yeah,” Clay agreed.

“It’s…”

“Yeah,” he said.

They both fell back into appreciative silence.

“Hard to believe one man owns all this,” Clay said in awe. His hand went to rest on his covered forearm, over where George knew the scar of the insignia was. George laughed lightly.

“Almost makes you believe in the Pig-Nosed Lord, doesn’t it,” he said quietly.

Clay turned his masked face towards George.

“What?”

George just shook his head.

The story went like this:

Once, not too long ago, and not too far away, there had been a man tired of being subjugated. He gathered a band of rebels and stormed the capital, demanding the Mad King’s head on a pike. Being a reasonable man (it was here that the storyteller would pause for laughter), the King had demanded a duel, one on one, between himself and the rebel.

They had fought long and hard, but the Mad King eventually scarred his face, cutting off his nose and disfiguring him forever. Before the Mad King could deliver the killing blow, the man pulled a strange gelatinous orb from his cloak and threw it through an open window, disappearing in a cloud of purple mist.

Enraged, the Mad King declared him the Pig-Nosed Peasant, and ordered him hunted down. The hunters turned every stone over, smashed every pot and barrel in every village they could find. There were no signs of this man. Nobody had seen him either.

Rumours spread of a settled land, far, far away that was under the Pig-Nosed Peasant’s rule. He was a just ruler, fair, and kind, and he had built up a city beyond the reach of the Mad King. Those bold enough could find their way there and live in comfort and safety, never worrying about or wanting for anything ever again. He was no longer a peasant, but a Lord, and one day he would overthrow the Mad King and bring salvation to the people of the overworld.

Or, that was the story parents told their kids, the one adolescents whispered to each other salaciously in back alleys when they thought nobody would hear. It was the one George had heard, at the very least, gushing from Nick’s mouth when they were both no taller than pigs themselves.

It was the kind of story that brought hope. It was the kind of hope you outgrew.

(George didn’t want to admit to Clay how long he’d believed the fantastical tale of the Pig-Nosed Lord. He didn’t want to tell him he’d believed that somewhere, out in the mists of the world, there was somewhere free from the Mad King’s rule until a year ago.

He didn’t want to explain why he stopped believing either.)

Mercifully, Clay didn’t mention it.

They stood there for several long moments, appreciating the view, and feeling like Gods.

Then they began to shiver and started trudging down the other side of the mountain, sliding a little in the knee-high snow.

“Ugh,” George said, pulling his foot free of a particularly deep drift, “this is going to take forever.”

Clay stopped suddenly. George bumped into his back and stumbled backwards. Clay looked over at George, a wide and dangerous grin on his face.

“Hey, you wanna do something stupid?” he asked, shrugging off his pack.

His initial instinct was to say no, obviously not, they’re up on the side of a mountain with nobody around to help them for miles.

But.

But there was something enticing about the angle of Clay’s grin, and the way he’d worded it, and after the week they’d had they both deserved to do something stupid.

“What?” George asked, trying and failing to not smile.

“No,” Clay said, laughing, “You have to say yes or no before I tell you what it is.”

“Uh…” George said, and threw all caution to the wind, “sure. Okay.”

“Is that a yes?” Clay asked, slowly starting to shrug off his pack.

“Yes. Let’s do something stupid,” George agreed. Clay hurriedly took off his pack and unslung his shield from it, sticking it into the snow. George looked at the shield, and then down at the rather steep incline, and started to put the pieces together.

This suddenly seemed like a really, really bad plan.

“No, Clay, you can’t be serious!”

“I haven’t done anything yet!” Dream said defensively. He was definitely laughing. He put his pack back on and laid his shield face-down in the snow, and carefully manoeuvred himself so he was sat on it. There was plenty of space for George to sit behind him.

“Clay!” George yelped, and Clay only laughed harder, “No way! This is stupid!’

“Duh, that’s the point,” Clay said, holding his hand out enticingly, “come on, George. You already said yes!”

George groaned.

He took Clay’s hand and climbed on the back, wrapping his arms around Dream’s chest as tight as he could.

“We’re going to die,” he moaned. Clay started wheezing with laughter.

“No,” he said, trying to be comforting, “we’re going to be fine.”

Without warning, Clay gave them a little shove forward, and suddenly George was speeding down the mountain, faster than he’d ever moved in his life.

He was screaming, loudly, right in Clay’s ear (which was probably pretty rude, now that he thought about it), and his eyes watered at the wind, and the whole world was blurring at the peripheries of his vision. His whole body tingled with the speed of it, from the bottom of his feet all the way to his fingertips. He thought he might throw up, as they raced over the endless white 

His heart was racing, and he had a white-knuckled grip on Clay, and Clay was cheering, and Clay was laughing, and suddenly George was laughing, maniacally, loudly, brightly.

Chapter Text

They didn’t die.

They got off the makeshift sled and stood up, still laughing breathlessly. George looked over his shoulder at the rickety path they’d cut down the side of the mountain.

He laughed to himself, and flopped backwards into the snow, groaning melodramatically.

“Oh come on,” Clay laughed, “It wasn’t that bad.”

“I’ll never walk again,” George said, throwing an arm over his face, “My legs have been replaced with jelly.”

“Dude,” Clay tried.

“No, I see through your schemes now,” George continued, removing his arm and replacing it with his other arm, “You’re trying to give me a heart attack, it’s all part of your…schemes.”

Clay let out a loud, weird, wheezing sound that George had come to recognise as him laughing. It sounded painful, and George peaked an eye out to see Clay bent double, laughing in a sputtering, stuttering sort of way. George grinned to himself as he watched Clay sputter out the word ‘schemes’ before descending back into uncontrollable giggling.

George didn’t think it was that funny.

Maybe the mountain air had them both going a bit loopy.

“Okay, okay, I’m calm. Get up, dude, come on,” Clay said after a while. He held out his hand and George took it, pulling himself to his feet.

Clay picked up the shield and they continued onwards, along a flat ridge a ways down the mountain. If they were lucky, they’d be able to get down off the tundra and onto drier land by sundown. The path they were on would take them right down into a forest, where he’d be able to gather new firewood with his shiny new axe.

It was the little things in life.

George noticed that Dream was also walking much more evenly. His breathing was steadier. He wasn’t wincing after a few hours of walking. But he did still have a bit of a limp. He suspected Clay would have a bit of a limp for the rest of his life.

He tried not to feel too bad about it.

They walked along the ridge in single file, Clay in front, humming a jaunty tune. George waited for his hands to start shaking as the adrenaline left, but they stayed steady. He clenched his fists.

This seemed like progress.

They managed to get to the forest by sundown. There was still some snow on the ground here but it was easy to brush away, and the branches looked dry enough to start a fire. George got to work chopping off branches and rejoicing in how easy it was. Clay snorted and dropped his pack and shield.

“I’m gonna go hunt,” he said, “be back in a bit.”

“Why?” George asked over his shoulder, hacking away at a branch, “we’ve got plenty of bread.”

“But no meat,” he said, “and I’ve been craving a chicken sandwich for months.” 

“Ugh, you’re such a soft city boy,” George griped. Clay snorted.

“Ouch,” he said, walking away, “yell if you’re getting killed.”

“Okay!” George called back. He resumed chopping down branches, depositing them in a little pile on the ground. He glanced around.

The forest was very shady. The trees were pretty dense, and the leaf cover was such that you only caught the barest glimpses of blue beyond them. George noted this with mild relief. If it started snowing they’d have at least some protection.

He heard rustling in the bushes nearby. He felt his heart rate increase.

“Okay, Clay,” he said, starting to arrange the logs into a tent-like shape, “ha ha. I guess you couldn’t find a chicken?”

There was silence coming from the woods. George picked up his axe.

“Clay?” he said, standing up, “come on, you’re not funny.”

Silence.

George started backing over to where Clay had dropped his shield.

“Seriously, dude,” he said, turning in a slow circle.

He heard, through the silence, the creaking of a bowstring being pulled taught.

He fell to the ground as quickly as he could, scrambling over to the shield. It was heavier than he thought, but he was just able to wedge himself between a tree and the shield. He heard the thunk of an arrow embedding itself in the wood. He peeked out from behind the shield to see a flash of white duck behind a tree, and the glinting of an arrowhead in the waning dappled sunlight.

George ducked his head back down, just for an arrow to embed itself in the tree behind where his face had been only moments before.

Fuck.

He got to his feet, axe clutched in one hand, heavy wooden shield weighing down his right.

Clay wasn’t here to save him.

He glanced cautiously out again, but there was no sign of his pursuer.

He heard rustling in the bushes to his right and he wheeled around, waiting for a hunter to emerge, eyes full of bloodlust, swinging their weapons like-

George saw, through the trees, the off-white colour of bone.

Part of him was relieved.

Another part of him ran cold with fear. He’d never seen a reanimated skeleton before.

The story went like this:

There are things in this world beyond our understanding.

It looked slightly unstable, its bones floating inches from each other, connected by some kind of mysterious force. Empty eye sockets stared blankly out at him, teeth bared in a permanent grin.

The skeleton knocked an arrow and pulled it back, aiming for George’s head. He jolted sideways just in time, and lunged forward, clumsily swinging his axe. He knocked a vertebrate slightly out of alignment, but the pile of bones wobbled and realigned. He swung again, ducking out of the way of an arrow, and chipped a bit off the skeleton’ ribs. It didn’t even react.

George started thinking he was maybe, just slightly out of his depth.

“Clay?” he yelled, trying to keep his voice level. He received no response. He glanced over his shoulder for just a second, but it was all the skeleton needed.

He heard the noise of boney fingers wrapping around the hard steel of his axe and turned back. He tried to yank his weapon free of the skeletal grip, but the creature was full of supernatural strength. It was hopeless.

The skeleton yanked his axe right out of his hands and tossed it aside, knocking another arrow and aiming at George with frightening accuracy. He ducked behind the shield just in time.

“Clay!” he tried again, hearing the thunk and splintering of wood as the arrow stuck itself into his shield. He heard crashing in the distance and saw, out of the corner of his eye, Clay burst into the clearing, sleeves slightly bloodstained, dead chicken dangling from one hand, sword in the other.

The relief he felt made his knees go weak.

He watched as Clay dropped the chicken and swung neatly at the skeleton, slicing through the spine and knocking a vertebrate clean free. The skeleton swung his attention towards Clay, drawing and knocking an arrow with frightening speed.

George lunched forward and bashed it with the shield, throwing the skeleton off its aim and sending the arrow harmlessly into a tree.

In one fluid motion, Clay sliced through the bow with one hand, and (to George’s surprise) punched the Skeleton on the skull with the other. He watched the bones crack slightly and Clay’s knuckles darken with blood.

The skeleton wobbled, dropping the pieces of bow to the ground. Clay swung again, and knocked the skull to the ground.

The rest of the bones clattered noisily as they collapsed into a pile as the skull rolled away. Clay lifted his foot up high and brought it down sharply on the bone, shattering the skull.

Nothing moved.

Clay turned to George, grabbing him by the shoulders and checking him over.

“Are you okay? He didn-“

“Fine, I’m fine,” George said, gripping Clay’s forearms, “he didn’t get me.”

They both turned to the pile of bones now lying innocently on the ground.

“Chicken sandwiches?” Clay asked breathlessly.

“Sounds good,” George responded.

His hands started to shake.

Clay sat remarkably still as George wrapped his knuckles. Usually, he was whining and moaning and telling George to be more gentle. George would have been worried if Clay hadn’t been keeping up a pretty energetic debate the whole time.

“You don’t get two points for that,” George said,

“One for the skeleton, one for the arrow he had,” Clay said, wincing as George brushed over a grazed area he hadn’t noticed. George apologised quietly and tried to focus more on the task at hand.

“But the arrow wouldn’t have done anything if the skeleton wasn’t there,” George said.

“But-“

“No, I’m not going to back down on this one, Clay,” he insisted. “You get one. That still makes it nine-eight in your favour. Don’t be so greedy.”

“Fine,” Clay huffed, and they fell into an easy silence.  George finished wrapping this knuckles. Clay flexed his hand a bit.

“Thanks,” he said, shaking it out, “I can’t wrap my own knuckles for shit.”

“Well, I’ve had a lot of practice,” George said, searching around for the flint and steel that he kept on him.

“What, you get into a lot of fights, Georgie?” Clay asked, teasingly. George laughed.

“No, not me,” and then added, without thinking, “Sapnap did.”

George froze. Clay didn’t seem to notice.

“Sapnap?” he asked incredulously, “You thought ‘Dream’ was a stupid name but you knew someone called Sapnap?”

George nodded. His chest hurt.

“It was a nickname,” he explained, going back to trying to light the fire, “I don’t remember how he got it.”

“You said he got into a lot of fights?” Clay asked, giggling, “were they over people saying he had a dumb name?”

George’s chest hurt.

“No,” he said, hoping that would be the end of it.

“Was he your boyfriend? Was he fighting off other people who wanted to like, marry you?” he asked cheekily.

George’s chest hurt. He fumbled with the flint and steel.

“No,” he said quietly.

“Was-“

“God, Clay!” he snapped, throwing both flint and steel to the ground, “You can’t fucking leave anything alone, can you?”

He looked up viciously, and Clay had flinched back, cradling his injured hand to his chest. George’s breath was loud in his ears.

“You always do this!” he yelled, “Go poking your nose around in other people’s business, asking all these bloody questions about people’s private stuff! Why can’t you just leave it? I obviously don’t want to fucking talk about it!”

His hands were balled up into fists at his side.

His chest hurt.

“Okay,” Clay said quietly after a moment, “okay, I’m sorry. We don’t have to talk about it. I didn’t think that-“

“That’s your problem, you never think!” George continued. He pushed himself to his feet and stood over their pile of sticks, staring down at Clay.

“You must have at least two braincells, but you never bloody use them!” he wasn’t sure why he was still yelling. He didn’t think he was really that angry at Clay. “You just do, you never plan, you just do stuff, and then I have to deal with the consequences!”

That wasn’t necessarily true, he thought distantly.

“You’re so reckless, all the time,” he yelled, “getting into fights for no reason, risking your life for stupid stunts, hoping that I’ll get you back out of it-“

That definitely wasn’t true, he thought, at least, not about Clay.

“-and then you go running off into the distance, chasing some stupid baby-story, leaving me alone, Nick-“ his voice cracked.

Oh, he thought, blinking back tears.

His chest hurt.

He wasn’t talking about Clay anymore.

He pushed his fists into his eyes, trying to ward off tears. He took a shaky breath in.

“George?” Clay asked, quietly. Like he was a scared kid. Like he was an injured animal.

Part of George felt mad that Clay thought he needed to be treated so delicately. Another part of George, one which felt a lot like a scared kid or injured animal, appreciated it.

George sat back down, curling up on himself.

His hands started to shake.

Distantly, he heard Clay stand up and come to sit by him.

“Hey, I’m really sorry,” he said quietly, “I wasn’t trying to upset you.”

George let out a noise that was maybe half a laugh, half a sob.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” he continued, “if you don’t want to.”

He felt tears on his cheeks in spite of his best effort. He didn’t respond to Clay.

“Do you uh,” he said awkwardly, “I know you’re like, mad at me or whatever, but do you like, want a hug, or something?”

George thought about it.

He wasn’t really mad at Clay.

He nodded.

Clay put one arm around George’s shoulders, gently turning him so that he was more angled towards Clay, and pulled him close. George tipped his head so that his forehead was resting against Clay’s collar, face pressed into the fabric of the bright yellow coat. Clay brought his other arm around George, and it didn’t feel quite right, it felt more like Clay was getting ready to tackle George than hug him. Clay kept shifting around, like he was trying to work out the proper way to hug someone.

It was tragically sweet.

George laughed wetly, and sobbed on the inhale. Clay rubbed his back in short, quick strokes, that weren't quite comforting. He rested his chin on the top of George’s head. George wrapped his arms around Dream’s neck, the angle awkward because of the way they were sitting.

He felt himself calm down. Just a little.

Clay smelled like wet earth and campfire smoke. That was comforting. And the tight grip on him was welcome, even if it wasn't quite right for a hug.

(George tried and failed not to think about when the last time either of them had hugged someone was.)

George took a deep breath.

“We grew up together,” he said, eyes still squeezed shut and pressed against Clay. It came out slightly muffled. He adjusted himself so that he could be heard easier.

“You don’t-“ Clay hurried to say, but George shook his head.

“No, I…” he trailed off. “I want you to know. I just…I never had to tell anyone before.”

They sat there in silence for a bit.

“Me and Sapnap,” he started again, “we grew up together. He lived next door with his granddad. And he was like, my only friend, kind of. And one day, maybe three years ago? He said he was tired of living under the Mad King’s rule, and he was going to find somewhere that he could live free.”

“The Pig-Nosed Lord?” Clay asked. George nodded.

“It was stupid,” he mumbled, “I should have stopped him from going.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Clay said. George shook his head. He didn’t want to go into it.

“Anyway. That was the last I saw of him. Wandering off, pack on his back. He said-“ he swallowed nervously, “he said he’d come and get me. If he found it.”

“And?”

“And he never came back,” George said quietly. “He’s probably dead in a ditch somewhere. Probably died alone after he ran into a group of Hunters, or some wildling, or a horde of zombies, or-“

“Hey, hey,” Clay said quietly, interrupting George, “he might still be out there, you know?”

“It’s been years-“

“We’ve been out here for like, four months at this point,” Clay said, “and we’re fine.”

“But I’ll never know,“ George said, looking up at Clay. That same stupid mask smiled down at him.

Weirdly, it made George feel better.

“Look,” Clay sighed, “I get that it hurts. But…if you’ll never know, isn’t it nicer to imagine he’s just become like, king of the jungle or whatever?”

George thought about it.

“He’s gone to like, you know, live amongst the ocelots and parrots,” Clay continued, “swinging from tree to tree, naked-“

“Why is he naked?” George couldn’t help but smile.

“I don’t know, why would he wear clothes?” Clay asked. George huffed a quiet laugh.

“Living off jungle fruit,” Clay continued, “sleeping under the stars, learning the language of the birds…”

“Okay, okay,” George said, laughing a little.

“Maybe we’ll go find him,” Clay continued, “next jungle we come across. We’ll go looking for him.”

It surprised him, every time, how quickly Clay was able to make him feel better. He settled his head back against Clay’s chest, situating himself a little more comfortably. He looked at the pile of sticks. They should really build a fire soon. He didn’t want to move.

“If he’s naked,” George grinned softly, “I’m not sure I want to find him.”

“Hey,” George said quietly that night. He was curled up on his bedroll next to Clay, full of chicken sandwich and feeling worn out.

“Hey,” Clay said back.

“I’m sorry I snapped earlier. I was-”

“It’s okay. I didn’t take it personally. I thought you were probably dealing with your own like…whatever.”

They fell silent.

“Why are you always staring up at the sky at night?” George whispered. Clay shrugged. His head was tipped back against a tree, masked face staring up at the sky. George was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to see much past the tree cover, but a couple pin pricks of light shone through the darkness.

“The stars,” he answered in a whisper, “you can’t see ‘em from the capital. There’s too much other light around. The sky’s all, like, dark and stuff. So I guess I just like looking at the stars when I’m not there, so I can remember them when I’m back.”

“Oh,” George said. He tried and failed to picture a pitch black sky. “You’re not going back, though.”

“Yeah, I know,” Clay said, “old habits die hard."

He turned his face to George. “Get some sleep. I’m gonna wake you up in like five hours and you’re gonna be all grumpy with me if you don’t go to sleep.”

George, like the adult he was, stuck his tongue out at Clay. Clay just laughed quietly and put his rough, calloused, warm hand on George’s arm.

He fell asleep with the welcome weight on his shoulder, and the quiet humming of a song in his ears.

George woke up in the middle of the night for no particular reason. He rolled over and saw the mask lying on the ground. He glanced up and caught sight of Clay’s profile in the dying embers of the campfire.

He could have stared. He could have sat up and grabbed Clay’s face between his hands and taken in every inch of his face.

Of course George was curious. He'd been travelling with this man for months, and he still had no idea what he looked like, but. 

But.

He stirred loudly, yawning and groaning exaggeratedly, stretching out obviously. He heard Clay grab the mask and slip it back over his face, and tried not to be too offended by it.

They kept moving.

The weather improved, once they were properly down in the valley. It was cool but not cold, the perfect weather to travel in. There were huge fissures in the ground, ravines which ran deep into the earth. George saw the faint glow of lava emanating up from some of them. They gave these a wide berth. There were small pools of freshwater, and animals, and a clear sightline to their next landmark. He figured they should keep moving East, to put as much distance between them and the capital as possible.

Sometimes he felt overwhelmed. The world was wide, and they were tiny, and they could truly never stop running. Sometimes he felt like they were delaying the inevitable. Sometimes he missed the easy stasis he had living in his village.

Other times he watched the sun rise over the wide plains, and felt paradoxically free.

Most times he was too busy with Clay’s nonsense to think about any of this.

“Clay, come on, let’s go,” he said one morning, as Clay tried to scrub the dirt out of his sleeves. There was one dark bloodstain that was stubbornly not moving.

“My coat’s not clean though,” he said, pouting. George rolled his eyes.

“Nothing’s clean,” he said, hiking his pack up a little higher, “it’s only a matter of time until it gets dirty again anyway.”

“But George,” he whined, “It’s my signature thing.”

“Oh my god, you baby,” George said, “the next time we come across a village, I’ll go and buy you some soap. I don’t think water is going to do anything.”

Clay kept pouting, but he did shrug himself into his coat and pull his pack on. They bickered back and forth about it for the morning, and George was so engrossed in the debate about whether or not you could use hand soap to wash clothes that he didn’t notice the figure in the distance until Clay threw an arm out in front of him.

They both dropped to the ground, George’s heartbeat loud in his ears, and peered at the figure just below the gentle slope they were on top of.

Her back was to them, a dirty brown coat over her wide frame. She looked like she was trying (and failing) to start a fire.

She looked harmless.

“Wait here,” Clay said quietly. George nodded.

Clay got up and sprinted over to her, holding his diamond sword out in front of him.

“Don’t move,” Dream said, in that tone of voice George had almost forgotten. The girl meekly put her hands up. George couldn’t see the brand on her arm.

“The King wants you, huh?” Dream asked, and George’s eyes went wide. The girl nodded slowly.

How did he know?

“What did you do? Tax dodge? Kill? Go on, I’m listening,” Dream said, that awful sing-song tone to his voice.

“I h-had…” her voice was almost too quiet for George to hear, “I had fish. I was selling fish, please, please don’t hurt me, I’ll-“

“Shut up,” Dream said.

There were several moments of tense silence.

He contemplated standing up and rushing at Dream, tackling him to the ground like he knew he could and telling the girl to run. He got halfway up and then stopped.

He trusted Dream.

He trusted Clay.

George lay back down.

“Take off your coat,” he said. The girl scrambled to comply.

“Drop it.”

She dropped it.

“Run.”

“What?” she asked.

“Run!” Clay barked.

She grabbed her pack and started running, off over the hills and out of sight.

George got to his feet and headed over. Clay had bent down to pick up the girl’s coat.

“Clay?” he asked, “what was that? How did you know she was being hunted?”

Clay held the coat out to George wordlessly. George took it and looked it over.

“See that blue smudge?” he asked, pointing it out. A dark blue thumbprint stood out on the collar of her coat. George nodded slowly.

“She’s been Marked,” he said, taking the coat and heading over to a nearby ravine. “When we get sent out, we get given a compass, and a little thing of like powder. There’s something in the needle that means it points towards the powder, so if you get it on your quarry you can track ‘em. We call it Marking.” He tapped the smudge, “and this is a Mark.”

“Oh,” George said, following Clay. “Am I Marked?”

“Not anymore,” Clay said, “If you destroy the compass, you get rid of the Mark.”

“And?”

“And I destroyed my compass.”

They arrived at the edge of the ravine and looked down into its dark depths. Clay threw the coat over the side and they watched as it billowed and twisted through the air, descending dreamlike into the shadows.

George looked over at Clay, whose expression was indecipherable as always.

“So you were being like…helpful,” he said. Clay nodded.

“It also means there are probably hunters out here looking for her,” he said, heading back East. “And they might find us as well. So we have to be careful.”

“But you were being helpful,” George cooed, a wide grin on his face, “you cared about her. What’s next, helping old ladies carry their shopping?”

“Shut up,” Clay grumbled, and George was delighted to see a dark blush creep up his neck. He caught up and walked alongside him.

“Rescuing cats from trees?” he continued.

“You know I could kill you, right?” Clay responded, “I was the most fearsome ensign in the whole of the Mad King’s corps.”

“But not anymore!” George sang, “now you’re like, teaching kids to read and kissing babies, Mister Goody-Two-Shoes.”

Clay punched George on the shoulder none-too gently, but George caught sight of the upturned corners of his mouth.

They kept walking.

A few days later, it started to rain. George’s coat kept most of it out, but it was too damp to start a fire. As the night encroached and the rain showed no sign of letting up, they started to argue.

“We don’t need a fire, though,” George was insisting.

“But we do need somewhere dry to roll out our mats,” Clay responded. He gestured towards the cave they’d found. It sloped downwards, deep into the ground, and then seemed to slope back upwards. It would be dry enough for them.

It would also be dry enough for any number of other things.

“It just seems really risky,” George said. Lightning forked across the sky, and a rumble of thunder followed.

“Why?” Clay asked.

“Because monsters could be living in that cave, Clay!”

“Look,” Clay said, and put a hand on George’s shoulder, “We’ll build a wall out of like, dirt or something, and if we light a fire it will be nice and bright and we won’t get surprised by anything. Come on, I’ve got your back.”

George geared up to argue, when another flash of lightning came, followed by a loud smack of thunder.

“Fine,” he said, and gestured for Clay to lead the way, “when we die I’m totally blaming you.” Clay giggled.

“We’re not gonna die, come on dude, have a little faith in me.”

They slowly climbed down into the dark depths, sliding a little on the wet stone, and then climbing up to the slightly raised area. It was steep, and he could barely see, but Clay reached out to grab his hand and pull him up the final few feet.

George blinked in the dim light, trying to make anything out.

Clay had sat down, and George heard the clattering of wood and the sound of flint against steel. Eventually a few embers glowed dimly, and he caught the blur of Clay hurriedly pulling his mask back over his face.

George tried not to be too hurt by it, but looked away anyway.

It was a pretty narrow cave. If George stood in the middle, he wouldn’t quite be able to touch the sides of the cave, but he thought Clay probably could.

Behind them, the cave opened out into the wide world, and a thin stream of rainwater flowing into the cave caught the light of their campfire.

In front of them, the cave stretched down into the shadows.

“Okay,” Clay said, heaving himself to his feet, “let’s see what we can do.”

The ground beneath their feet was maybe half stone and half dirt, and George started scooping handfuls of dirt up and handing it to Clay, who was packing it into the vague shape of a wall. They had enough to block off the cave up to waist height.

It wasn’t the most sturdy thing, George thought, but it would hopefully be good enough to keep creatures out.

Unless another skeleton showed up.

Or a creeper.

Or-

“Dude, chill,” Clay said, and George hadn’t realised he’d been saying all this out loud, “caves like this echo. I’ll hear them coming from miles away.”

“If you can shut up for long enough,” George grumbled.

“You love the sound of my voice,” Clay snorted.

“Ugh, you’re so annoying,” George said.

“You love me, though.”

“You’re actually the worst.”

“Come on, George, say that you love me.”

George saw shadows moving beyond the wall. A flash of lightning from behind him illuminated a humanoid figure.

“No, Clay-“

“Georgie,” Clay whined, giggling a little, “I love you, why can’t you just say it back?”

George reached for his axe. Under the sounds of Clay simpering and giggling, he could have sworn he heard a deep, guttural groan.

“Shut up, Clay, seriously,” he said, getting to his feet. Clay swooned dramatically, flopping backwards against the low wall.

“Are you threatening me?” he gasped, putting one hand over his heart, and George saw the discoloured figure of a zombie emerge from the shadows, “All I wanted w-“

Clay was cut off when the thing grabbed him and yanked him backwards, yellowing fingers gripping tight onto his shoulder.

Clay yelped and fell, the wall crumbling a little under the pressure.

George didn’t think. He rushed forwards, swinging his axe at the arm of the creature. It fell off with little resistance, but it gave Clay the opening he needed to scramble free.

The thing looked at George with its gross, beady eyes, the flesh melting off half of its face. It was someone, once, maybe.

He tried not to think about that as he swung the axe with all his might. It stuck into the neck and got stuck halfway. Dodging the clumsy swings of its remaining arm, George pulled it free and swung again, taking the head off in a messy laceration. Dark yellow blood oozed forth from the neck as the body slumped over the wall. George used the edge of the axe to push it back.

They were soft, these things, and crumbly, and unstable. 

It didn't make George feel any better about killing it.

I didn't have what I needed to cure his sickness, he thought, it was us or him. 

He tried to be convinced by all this.

He turned to glance at Clay, who had grabbed his sword and looked like he was half-ready to run forwards. He dropped his sword and slumped back against the cave wall, looking at the fire. George came over and sat next to him, dropping his axe to the ground with a metallic clatter.

“Nine all,” he muttered. Clay just nodded.

“You’d have thought,” Clay said, “that they’d leave you alone. Since you’re like, a cleric or whatever.”

It took George a little while to work out what it was Clay was implying. He glanced over, but Clay had his view fixed on the fire.

George shook his head. Clay glanced over at him briefly, and huffed a little laugh.

“I guess that was a lie too, huh,” he said.

George looked back at the fire and nodded.

His hands started to shake.

The story went like this:

There are things in this world beyond our understanding, but not beyond the understanding of Clerics.

The secrets of life are one of these, and if you are wise enough, it is possible for you to raise the dead and do your bidding.

In recent years, there had been more and more sightings of shambling corpses and piles of bones around the capital and surrounding villages. The Mad King, in his infinite wisdom and knowledge, knew this was the work of Clerics.

The Clerics were, he said, amassing an army of the undead to dethrone him and put their own King upon the throne, sending the world into a time of darkness unlike anything that has ever been seen before or since.

They had to be culled.

An order went out; surrender your clerics or suffer the consequences.

(George’s village had suffered the consequences.)

If people were worried about how they would get medicine, or treatment, or who would watch the weather and cows, they needn’t. There were plenty of doctors in the capital they could go to for such things.

(Most people knew this one was a lie, but what choice was there? George tried not to think about it.)

“We,” he said, “we don’t. We don't make them. We never have.”

“So…where do they come from?” Clay asked quietly. George shrugged.

“Some people thought it might be witches,” he said, poking at the fire and trying to keep his voice even, “which would technically make sense? But I’m not sure.”

“So…all that stuff about the army of undead?” Clay started. George shook his head.

“Lies. He just wanted to control who got potions from where, I think,” he said.

“Oh,” Clay said. He sat a little closer to George. “And the Witches?”

“Ex-communicated Clerics,” he said, “when a Cleric makes a potion to hurt people they basically get kicked out of being a Cleric. A bunch of them move to the swamps or whatever. Some used to fight back against the Mad King, but it still, like, counts as betraying the whole Cleric oath-thing. Which would explain that time in the swamp. She probably used to…be a cleric. Fighting against the Mad King.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

They sat quietly, watching the fire crackle cheerfully.

“It’s all…really messed up,” George said, “my parents were both librarians, and managed to convince everyone it was a huge scheme. So we ended up harbouring clerics, and…well. I guess someone found out.”

“Yeah,” Clay said. “Is that why you can’t go back home?”

George shook his head. “They burned my village down. It’s all rubble. I think everyone but me is…” he blinked tears out of my eyes. “I don’t think anyone else…”

Clay reached out to put an arm around George. “Okay,” he murmured comfortingly, “it’s okay, you don’t have to say it.”

George heaved a sigh and wiped his face. “I was out behind the church, gathering this weird mushroom-y stuff we grow for potions, when I heard horses. I looked up and everything was on fire. My parent’s house had collapsed. They were pulling this old Cleric out of the church by his ankles. Maybe if I was braver I would have stayed and helped.” He saw Clay shake his head in his peripheral vision.

“You would have died,” Clay said.

“Yeah,” George agreed, “yeah. So I ran instead. Grabbed the pack full of mushrooms and just…ran.”

He looked at the fire, glowing cheerfully, brightly. “It’s all gone. My parents. Sapnap. The Clerics. I don’t have anything left. King Ryan took it all from me.”

“You’ve got me,” Clay said, hopefully. George leaned his head against his shoulder.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “I’ve got you.”

They watched the fire burn brightly in silence for a bit.

Sometimes, George felt overwhelmed by it all. He wasn’t sure if he could get Clay to fully understand the sheer enormity of everything. He had nothing left. There was nowhere he could go, nothing for him anywhere. When he died, here would be nobody to mourn him, nobody to remember him and all the things he had-

“You’re all I have left too, you know,” Clay said, interrupting his thoughts, and George could have kicked himself.

If anyone, anyone knew what it was like to lose everything, it would have been Clay.

George was surprised, sometimes, by how much they really had in common.

“Yeah,” he said, and felt himself smile a little, “what a pair we make.”

“Dreamteam,” he said, and nudged George a little, “get it? Because-“

“I get it,” he said, “it’s not very clever.”

“Because my codename is Dream,” he pressed on, “and the phrase ‘Dreamteam’ is already a thing-“

“I get it.”

“But ‘Dreamteam’ has the word ‘Dream’ in it-“

“Yeah, I get it, Clay please-”

“So it’s like-“

George pushed his hand over Clay’s face, pushing him away a little. Clay started giggling.

“Yes, Clay,” George said, “I understand the joke.”

They sat next to each other, watching the shadows beyond the wall. It was still and silent.

“I love you too, by the way,” George muttered, feeling himself blush.

Clay let out a quiet cheer.

They stayed up all night, watching the cave for any signs of life.

They kept moving.

Eventually, they exited the plains, and started heading back uphill. They came faced with a huge forest of enormous dark oak trees, with thick trunk and dense foliage. It was shady in the forest, and George couldn’t help but feel a little nervous. He thought heard the rattling of bones every time the wind blew through the trees.

He felt a little better with Clay walking abreast of him, humming a song that George had suck in his head for the whole week. It was weird how comfortable he felt around him. George trusted Clay to have his back, to keep an eye out for anything, to teach him how to fight. Just like Clay trusted him to watch his back and patch him up and keep them dry.

Months before, they had only known each other as hunter and prey.

Now, it felt like he’d known Clay his whole life.

They made their way through the dark oak forest, the going slow though the thick undergrowth.

“Ugh,” George griped, pulling his feet free of some vines, “this sucks. Let’s just go around it.”

He looked up and saw he was alone. He looked around.

“Clay? Where’d you go?” he called.

He got no response.

“Clay?” He called again, his heart rate starting to pick up. He heard rustling in the bushes to his right, and spun around just for Clay to pounce on him out of the shadows, tackling him to the ground. George yelped and struggled against him, but Clay was laughing. He felt himself calm down a little.

“Get off, ugh,” George said pushing at Clay’s shoulders. Clay obliged, sitting up on his heels.

“Just like the good old days,” Clay said, getting to his feet. He held out a hand for George, who grabbed it and pulled himself up.

“I keep telling you,” he said, dusting himself off, “those days weren’t half so fun for me.”

“That’s 'cause you suck at being hunted, dude,” Clay said, picking his way through the undergrowth.

“I bet it’s easier being the hunter than the quarry,” he griped.

“Oh yeah?” Clay laughed, “what would you bet?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “we share everything anyway.”

“You have to bet something. Otherwise it’s boring.”

George thought about pointing out he hadn't actually agreed to fake-hunt Clay. Then again, he was bored, and he did hate this stupid forest, and it seemed like something to pass the time. 

It wasn't like they were going to hurt each other anyway. George trusted Clay. 

“I bet…my honour,” George said. Clay nodded, and held out his hand.

“You’re on.” They shook on it and Clay sprinted off into the undergrowth immediately after, weaving through the trees. George stared agape at his retreating figure before chasing after him, just barely catching sight of his bright yellow coat disappearing around corners.

Clay was bigger and stronger and faster than George. This wasn’t going to work.

He paused, looking at the trees. A plan started to coalesce in his mind.

He scrambled up the thick trunk, pulling himself into the topmost branches of the tree. From up here, he could see the edges of Clay’s coat from where he lay in the undergrowth, waiting for George.

George climbed his way over, trying to stay as silent as he could. He gave Clay a wide berth, sneaking up behind him. Clay still hadn’t noticed.

George desperately tried to stifle his excited giggles. They’d only give him away. He watched Clay glance around himself, and then settle back down. George broke into a huge grin, climbing a little lower down. He was right on top of him.

Without thinking, he dropped out of the tree, flattening Clay to the ground and pinning him as best as he could. Clay let out a strangled cry and started trying to get George off. George had his hands in a vice-like grip on his wrists, cheering to himself. Clay was laughing, trying to get George to let go, begging in his weird, high-pitched, hysterical voice. Clay’s struggling rolled them down the hill, through the undergrowth, and they landed, still laughing in a clearing. George flopped off Clay’s back, eyes creased shut from laughing too hard.

“George, oh my god!” Clay yelled, getting to his feet, “you psycho! What the heck was that?”

He held out a hand and George grabbed it, pulling himself to his feet.

“I told you it was easier to be the hunter!” he said triumphantly, “I’ll just-“

They heard rustling off to their left and both stopped.

A few moments later a large woman emerged in the clearing, dressed in dark blue. She was followed by a man, wearing thick glasses with a crossbow in his hands.

The two pairs stared at each other. She squinted a little at Clay’s mask and brightly-coloured coat.

“Dream?” she asked.

Clay started to back away, sticking an arm out in front of George. George followed his lead.

The man raised his crossbow and fired. Clay just managed to duck behind his shield, and the bolt embedded itself in the thick wood. He turned to George.

“Run,” he hissed.

George turned and ran.

George’s legs ached.

Survive.

His lungs felt tight and too small.

Survive.

His breath was loud in his ears.

Survive.

His pack bounced uncomfortably on his shoulders.

Survive

He glanced back over his shoulder and saw Clay sprinting through the forest after him, crossbow bolts embedding in the trees around them. Beyond that he saw the woman blazing after them, and the man a little distance behind her. He caught sight of dark blood weeping from a cut on the woman’s arm.

He turned ahead and kept running.

They burst out of the dark oak forest and onto the plains, Clay catching up to him and urging him forwards over the flats. George felt an arrow graze his arm. He stumbled but kept running, following Clay as he pulled ahead.

He noticed Clay was headed for a wide ravine. George’s heart was beating so hard he thought it might explode.

In a single, overly confident bound, Clay vaulted over the ravine, hauling himself up over the edge on the other side. He spun around, drew his bow and took aim, and George heard the strangled cry of the man in the distance, followed by a thud. He aimed again and heard a guttural grunt from the woman, but her footsteps only got closer.

The ravine was getting very close.

“George, come on, jump!” Clay yelled, knocking another arrow.

George swallowed in spite of his dry throat.

“Hurry!” Clay yelled.

He ran as fast as he could and catapulted himself over the edge of the ravine. For several long moments, he didn’t think he’d make it.

Back when he was younger, he’d tried to jump from one tree to another. He’d misjudged the distance massively and fallen, breaking his arm. Nick had gone to get the cleric whilst George lay there, staring up at the gap, and trying to work out how he hadn’t been able to make it.

George’s chest collided heavily with the edge, his hands scrambling for purchase on the grass. It wasn’t comfortable, but he was stable. His legs dangled over the abyss, at Clay’s feet, laughing from relief.

“Come on, come on,” Clay said. He reached down to grab George’s hand and pull him up. George let go with one hand to reach up to him.

That was when he felt a heavy weight latch around his legs.

The woman.

That was when he felt his hands slip.

Suddenly he was falling, down, down into the depths.

“George!” He heard Clay scream, the noise loud and high pitched and hysterical. He wanted to say something back, but he felt the air being sucked out of his lungs.

The weight on his legs let go, and he felt the whoosh of air as a sword slice nearly missed him.

Well, he thought, well.

He squeezed his eyes shut and waited to hit the ground.

He didn’t.

He landed on something, squishy and with a lot of give. He peeked one eye open, just in time to hear the wet thud echo up from far below him. He cringed, and tried to sit up, but found himself stuck in place. He looked up and saw Clay’s masked face far above, haloed by the sunlight streaming down behind him.

“George!” he yelled, his voice cracking with desperation.

“Clay!” George yelled back, “I’m okay! I landed in a spiderweb, I think!” He watched Clay slump forwards, catching himself before he toppled down after George. George struggled a little against the sticky string.

“I’m stuck,” George called up.

“Okay,” Clay yelled down, “Okay, just stay there, I’m coming to get you. Just let me make a ladder.”

“Okay,” George called back. His hands started to shake a little, and he took a couple deep breaths.

He really needed to stop having brushes with death. It couldn’t be good for his heart.

He tried to look around himself, to get a sense of where he was. He was stuck in a spiderweb, that much was clear, a little ways down the ravine, maybe fifteen feet. He was on a small ledge covered in spider webs, thick and dense. He could just crane his neck up enough to see a dark cavern stretching out in front of him.

Eight glowing eyes stared back at him.

“Clay,” George called nervously, “hurry?”

“I’m going as fast as I can, just give me a second,” Clay yelled down.

George heard the hiss of a spider emirate from the darkness. He looked up to see the edge of a ladder peaking over the side of the ravine.

“Clay!” he yelled, “there are spiders down here! I can’t move!”

“You’re fine, you’re okay, I’ll be right down,” Clay yelled back.

George heard the scuttling of four sets of legs towards him. He started thrashing around as much as he could, but felt the sharp prick of two sets of teeth in his leg anyway.

His leg started to go numb.

Paralysis, his brain helpfully reminded him, so you can’t run. So they can drag you down into the depths and eat you.

He looked down at the horrific, oversized, hairy spider that had its front fangs stuck deep into his leg.

He reached clumsily into his pocket for the vial of powdered milk he kept with him. His other leg started going numb as well, the strange lack of sensation creeping up to his waist.

He dumped the milk powder straight into his mouth, coughing at how dry it was but managing to swallow most of it down.

The numbness stopped encroaching around his hips.

He couldn’t move his legs.

The spider grabbed him with its frontmost legs and started scuttling backwards, pulling George free of the web and into the darkness.

He was screaming, he thought. He didn’t have the presence of mind to attend to it.

He reached out for his axe and grabbed it, swinging wildly at the spiders legs. The blade bounced harmlessly off the creature’s hairy exoskeleton.

He was dragged roughly along the darkened crevice, barely able to see. He could hear the hissing of five, ten other spiders as he went, pitch black, into the underground.

Suddenly he was being wrapped up, spun nauseatingly fast and bound tightly in that same string. He struggled against it, flailing around as much as he could and screaming.

Please, Clay, please, please…

He heard the hissing of dying spiders, right as his face was covered and it started getting hard to breathe.

George couldn’t do much other than writhe around, trying to force air into his lungs. He heard the clanging of sword against exoskeleton near his head, and suddenly he was gasping in the frigid cave air, the blade of a sword slicing neatly through the string. George looked around in the near pitch-blackness, trying to orient himself, trying to work out where he’d come from and what was happening-

“Come on, George,” Clay said, both hands on George’s shoulders, “there’ll be more, come on."

Clay.

Clay was breathing oddly. Jerkily.

“Legs,” George managed to choke out, “I can’t walk, I can’t feel my legs-“

Clay roughly grabbed George and slung him over his shoulder like he weighed nothing. His shoulder dug into George’s stomach uncomfortably, but he didn’t feel like he could complain.

Clay ran haphazardly out of the cave, vaulting over spider corpses and ducking under spiderwebs. George thought he saw a couple start to get to their feet, but they were long gone by then.

They got to the ramshackle ladder and Clay started to climb, one handed, without even hesitating. George watched the ledge disappear below him, and suddenly he was back on the yellow grass under the blue sky.

Clay set him down gently and started checking him over, and that was when George noticed.

He wasn’t wearing his mask.

His face was blotchy and wet, but George thought he would deal with that later.

“Fuck, fuck, I fucking hate spiders, holy shit, you got bit, you scared me so bad,” Clay was saying in a rush, “fuck, where’s the milk, where did you put it, holy shit, George-“

“I used it, I used it,” George said, trying to reach out and touch him, to put a comforting hand on his shoulder. He couldn't get very far without his legs, “Clay, clay calm down, it’s fine, it’s fine-“

“It’s not fine,” Clay practically wailed, and his eyes were so wide and sad and expressive, “George, y-“

“It’s okay, listen, Clay,” he said, “it’s fine. I stopped it from spreading, it’ll work its way through my system and this time tomorrow I'll be fine. I’m going to be fine. Please, calm down.”

Clay took one deep, shuddering breath and suddenly George was being crushed against Clay’s broad chest, clutched so tightly it hurt, and Clay’s hands were shaking, and his face was pushed into George’s hair.

He clutched back, and let himself process it all.

“It’s okay,” George said, “it’s okay, it’s okay.”

“Oh my God,” Clay murmured into his head, “stop nearly dying. Stop dying.”

George pressed his face closer against Clay’s warm, smokey, yellow chest, hands fisting in the coat behind him.

They sat there like that for a long time, until Clay’s hands stopped shaking.

“Okay,” he said, pulling away slightly, “I’m calm.”

He rubbed a hand over his face and stopped, his eyes going wide. He looked down at George who smiled and shrugged.

Clay had a nice face. He had a broad jawline and a wide nose, and huge yellow-ish eyes. The corner of the smily mask was just poking out from his coat pocket.

“Uh…” he said, his eyes wandering, “it’s hard to see through the mask when it’s dark. I-“

“I don’t care,” George said, “It doesn’t have to be a big deal.”

“Yeah,” Clay agreed, relief clear in the set of his eyebrows and the shape of his eyes, “it’s not a big deal.”

“It’s just a thing.”

“Just my face.”

“A regular old face.”

"We all have one." 

"We all have regular faces."

Clay laughed a little, and wiped the remaining tear tracks off his face.

“Fuck. What a day,” he said, and got to his feet. He slung George over his shoulder and started heading back to the dark oak forest.

“Yeah, you’re telling me,” George said. Clay hummed in agreement.

“Ten-nine, by the way,” he said, and George groaned, going limp in Clay’s grasp.

“George,” Clay said that night as they waited for the feeling to go back to George’s legs, “We can’t keep living like this.”

He still hadn't put his mask back on.

George was getting more used to seeing Clay like this. His face was very expressive; something about the way his eyebrows were, or maybe his eyes, made it sickeningly easy to work out how he was feeling. 

Right now, there was exhaustion in every line of Clay's body. 

“What do you mean?”

“Like this,” Clay said, gesturing to where they were, “I just… I can’t do it!”

George felt himself bristle.

“Then kill me and go back to the capital,” he snapped, and he had the pleasure and guilt of seeing heartbreak across Clay’s naked face.

“That’s not…That’s not what I meant!” he snapped back, “You know that’s not what I meant!”

“What did you mean, then?” George yelled, “you miss being clean? Having three meals a day? Staying warm and dry and sleeping in a bed? Or do-“

“I can’t keep living like I’m gonna either die or lose you!” Clay interrupted, and George shut up.

“Do you get it, George?” Clay demanded, “every time we come across a hunter, we have to win. We have to win every single time.” He rubbed his face and let his hands fall either side of him. “They only have to win once. Those are losing odds.”

George sat silently, watching the emotions cross Clay’s face by the light of the fire. He was so damn expressive, it was almost upsetting.

George understood why he wore the mask when he was hunting.

“I know,” he said, trying to keep his voice level, “but what other choice is there? If we stop running, find somewhere to live, it’ll only make it easier for the hunters to find us. If we keep moving, then we keep putting distance between us and the capital.”

“There's another choice,” Clay muttered, eyebrows furrowed.

“Like what?” George laughed humourlessly, “going to the Domain of the Pig-Nosed Lord?”

“Yeah,” Clay said.

George rolled his eyes.

“I’m not a dumb kid, Clay,” he said, crossing his arms, “the Pig-Nosed Lord is just some stupid fairytale mummies tell their babies so they can sleep at night.”

“He’s real,” Clay said, and George looked over at him, expecting to see a mischievous glint in his eyes or in the twist of his mouth.

He found neither.

“What?” he asked, “Clay, you don’t seriously believe-“

“No, George, shut up for a second,” Clay said, shuffling closer. His eyes were deadly serious. “The Pig-Nosed Lord is a guy called Dan Richmond. He grew up in a village called Brightwater, in one of the deserts, which is now rubble. He stormed the Mad King’s throne room like ten years ago, and he was disfigured and escaped, and we’re pretty sure he’s found somewhere to hide out-“

“Shut up,” George said, feeling light-headed with hope he was desperately trying to stamp out, “stop lying.”

“George, why the Hell would I lie about this?” Clay demanded, “He’s real, I’m telling you. Every year we get, like, a briefing of what the Mad King’s goals are, and every single year ‘Find Dan Richmond, Pig-Nosed-Peasant’ is on there. He’s real.”

George sat there, processing it.

“I…what?”

“The Mad King said they were rumours because he didn’t want anyone else getting any ideas,” Clay pressed on, words coming quicker, “but he has a kingdom, somewhere far away. All we have to do is find it.”

“It just…” George tried, “it seems implausible.”

“Well,” Clay said, “maybe. But what do we have to lose?”

“Each other,” George mumbled.

“We’re always at risk of losing each other out here anyway.”

It hurt to hear that. He was right, but it still hurt.

“All we have to do is find it?” George asked meekly. Clay nodded once.

He was reminded of that day, weeks ago, where Clay asked if he wanted to do something stupid. George took a deep breath.

“Then let’s go find it.”

His hands stopped shaking.

Chapter Text

They decided to start heading north along the plains, to see if they could find a village.

Everyone had some version of the story of the Pig-Nosed Lord. They just had to find a version that said where they could find him.

It felt weird, to have a plan with an end-goal after all this time.

When he was younger, his plan had been to learn to be a cleric, and then help people. Afterwards, his plan had just been to survive.

Now, there was a concrete goal in front of him. Something specific to work towards. George still thought it was a pipe dream, a distant fantasy that he’d never be able to obtain.

Clay had sounded certain. He trusted Clay.

They walked along the lush valley. They bathed in the small ponds and cut their hair unevenly with their weapons. They made fun of each other’s patchy facial hair. They tried to get the last stubborn bloodstain out of Clay’s coat. They ate like kings, the animals plump and plentiful-

(“Another herd of cows!”

“Damn, we’re lucky today.”

“Clay, it’s this valley. I’ve never seen so many cows in my life. It’s like… Moo Moo Meadows.”

“It’s like what?”

“Stop laughing at me! It’s a well-known story!”

“Moo Moo-“)

They slept under the stars by warm fires and out of the biting wind. They argued about inconsequential things. Clay took to taking his mask off in the evenings, when it was just the two of them and the wide starry sky.

Clay talked about things George had previously never dreamed of having.

“I swear,” he said one night, flipping steaks, “first thing I’m gonna do in the Domain of the Pig-Nosed Lord is eat like, a whole cake in one go.” George laughed at him softly.

“I’m pretty sure that would make you sick,” he said.

“Nah.” Clay grinned up at him, wide eyes creased up in mirth.

“Well, I’m a cleric, and I’m saying that eating a whole cake in one go would make you sick.”

“Is that what they teach you?”

“Yep. Day one of…Cleric school.”

Dream giggled. “Well. It’d be worth it. I hear they don’t ration wheat in his kingdom, like, at all. Or steak, or fish.”

“Sounds great,” George said, and he tried not to sound too sad. Clay squinted at him anyway, pulling a dripping steak off the fire.

“You still don’t think it’s real,” he said slowly. George tilted his head to the side a little. Not agreeing. Not disagreeing.

“Dude,” Clay grinned, “I’m gonna say the biggest ‘I totally told you so’ when we get there. I changed my mind, that’s gonna be the first thing I do.”

“Sure, okay,” George said mildly. Clay snickered.

“‘Sure, okay’,” he said, doing an atrocious mimicry of George’s accent, “We’re gonna get there and you’re gonna be all like, ‘wow, Dream, you were so right, and smart, and funny, and handsome, you’re the best ever…’“

“Ugh,”  George grumbled around a mouthful of steak, “you’re so annoying.”

They ate in silence for a little bit, when a creeping sense of dread crawled up George’s spine.

“Clay?”

“Yeah.”

“Would they…” he swallowed, “would they let you in?”

Clay looked at George with as level an expression as he could muster. He shrugged with what George knew was affected nonchalance.

George could tell he’d already considered this. The Pig-Nosed Lord (if real) had to know that he was being hunted by now.

“Probably,” he said, and there was something in his tone of voice that told George he didn’t believe that.

They both glanced down to Clay’s forearm, where the raised brand of the Mad King’s insignia was hidden under his bloodstained sleeve.

When George planned, he planned for worst case scenarios. He planned for floods and famine and freezing weather. It’s what had kept them alive.

Clay planned with reckless optimism. It probably wasn’t smart. But it was what had kept them going.

“Well, the first thing I’m gonna do,” George said, “is smash your stupid face into a cake.”

Clay laughed a little. “Why?”

“‘Cause I can,” George grinned, “and it won’t cost me an arm and a leg.”

Clay laughed.

“That’s what you want to do with your newfound freedom?” he sputtered out, “You want to waste a cake?”

“That’s been my plan all along,” he said, grinning, “you’ve fallen right into my…trap.”

Clay started wheezing with laughter. It sounded painful, and George had the joy of watching his whole face crinkle up with it. He started laughing along with him.

For a brief moment, as he sat there by the warm fire under the endless night sky and listened to Clay laugh so hard it hurt, George felt untouchable.

Three days later, they saw a village on the horizon. George didn’t need to see Clay’s face to know that he’d tensed up.

George remembered that day a lifetime ago in the tundra and pursed his lips.

“We have to,” George said quietly, “they might know something about the Pig-Nosed Lord.”

“Can’t you just go on your own?” Clay asked, turning to him, his voice high and a little bit desperate.

“I really don’t think it’s a good idea for us to split up,” George said, trying to sound sympathetic, “What if hunters show up or something? We might get separated and never find each other again.”

Clay huffed a sigh. George watched his hand settle over the mark on his arm.

He put a hand on Clay’s shoulder.

“It’ll be okay,” he said, and tried to sound encouraging, “I’ll be with you the whole time. I won’t let anything happen.”

Clay smiled at him gently.

“Okay,” he said, and sighed again before squaring his shoulders.

George found his eyes drifting down to Clay’s arm, the mark only covered by a single piece of fabric. If only we had some other way of covering it up, he thought, running through the mental list of what he had in his bag. Spider’s eye, rabbit’s foot, bedroll, bandages, w-

He stopped suddenly and groaned, shrugging off his pack and digging through it. Clay turned to him suddenly.

“What?” he asked.

“I’m so stupid,” George said, fishing out a roll of makeshift gauze, a splint, and a triangular bandage, “we both are.”

“Are you hurt?” Clay asked.

“No, give me your arm,” he said, standing up. Clay just stared at him.

“Seriously, Clay, take off your coat and give me your arm.”

“…okay?” Clay set his pack down and took off his coat, holding both arms out. George gently pulled the one with the brand towards him.

It was raised up from his skin, dark and angry. Thinking about Clay being branded with a cattle iron, barely out of boyhood, desperately trying to save his father, alone-

He tried not to think about it.

George started wrapping the gauze around his arm, and Clay started laughing.

“How didn’t we think of this sooner?” he asked, giggling.

“Hold still, idiot!” George said. He wrapped Clay’s forearm up to his elbow, carefully placed the splint with practiced precision, and secured the gauze around Clay’s hand.

“What are we saying happened?” Clay asked.

“Broken wrist,” George said, “you probably did something dumb like fall down a ravine or out of a tree.”

“That was both you!”

“Shush! They don’t know that,” George said, pointing to the village, “and for the record, I jumped out of the tree. It was calculated.”

“You’re so stupid,” Clay smiled, shaking his head.

“You’re stupid, stupid. Go put on your coat.”

George secured his wrist in place, elevating it to look more realistic. He stood back and admired his handiwork.

Clay looked harmless. Except…

“Dude,” George said, laughing, “you’ve gotta put away the sword. And take off the mask.”

“What?! No way!” Clay cried, his ‘good’ hand instinctively going to where his sword hung. George rolled his eyes.

“It’s a diamond sword, Clay,” George said, trying to be patient, “If we’re trying to go, like, undercover or whatever, you can’t have it out. It’s a dead giveaway that you’re like, dangerous.”

Clay scowled, looking down, and George felt kind of bad for laughing.

“Come on,” he said, “I can stick it in your pack, so it’s hidden but you could still grab it in an emergency. You don’t have to like, leave it here forever.”

Clay nodded, taking off his mask, and storing it in an inside pocket of his coat. He started unstrapping his sword’s scabbard from his belt and held it out to George, who tucked it into his pack such that only the handle (which was innocuous enough) stuck out.

“Great,” George said, giving Clay another once-over, “now you look just like everybody else.”

“I’m better looking,” he grumbled, still scowling at the ground. George laughed a little.

“Whatever you say, Dream. Just remember not to use your ‘injured’ hand,” he said, and they started walking towards the village.

“That’s easy,” he said, still clearly a little sour, “I’m ambidextrous.”

George stopped, turning towards him, eyebrows furrowed.

“What? No you’re not, you’re right handed,” he said. Clay turned to him, and his expression lightened slightly.

“No,” he said, waggling the fingers of his ‘uninjured’ left hand, “I’m ambidextrous.”

“Prove it,” George said.

Clay drew his sword with his left hand and wielded it with all the grace and ease as he usually did, whirling it nearly through the air in what was probably an overly theatrical display of skill. He sheathed it again with some difficulty, and grinned over at George.

“Show off,” he said and started walking. From behind him, he heard Clay laugh.

He felt a smile creep onto his lips.

When they arrived in the village, nobody spared either of them a second look. George was relieved. He glanced up at Clay, whose wide-eyed, slack jawed expression said it all.

To these people, busy with their lives, haggling with each other, carrying heavy crates of supplies to and fro, he was nobody at all.

He wasn’t a hunter. He wasn’t a monster.

He looked down at George, who grinned up at him, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“Come on,” he said, “we’ve got stuff to do.”

The first thing they did was buy soap from a young woman, who gave them both discounts. George wondered for a fleeting moment if one or both of them were being flirted with, before he glanced over his shoulder to see her stick her face into a bag of dried flowers and breathe deeply.

He gave his armpit an experimental sniff and flinched back. Oh.

They bought the merge amount of vegetables they could afford, George haggling the price down to something approaching reasonable whilst Clay stood behind him and shifted from foot to foot.

At one point Clay bumped into a man, causing him to drop his box of dyes, scattering them across the street.

“Watch where you’re going,” he’d barked, and George had felt an unexpected spike of anger run through him on Clay’s behalf. Clay had just stood there, sputtering.

“Sorry, sorry,” he said, bending down to try and pick up a clump of dark dye that had rolled to his feet. The man snorted.

“You will be,” he said, snatching the dye up before Clay could grab it, “young people like you just have no fucking respect, do you?”

“Hey,” George said, stepping forward. Two pairs of eyes swung towards him, “leave him alone, it was an accident.” He picked up a wad of damp blue dye and tossed it towards the man, who caught it neatly. By now, they’d gathered something of a crowd.

“Some accident,” the man said, “he walked right into me.” He turned back to Clay, “what are you, kid, blind?”

In the space of a single second, George formulated a terrible plan.

“Yes,” said George.

The man’s eyes went wide and his face became pale. George, trying to contain his laughter, went to stand by Clay and put Clay’s hand on his shoulder. George shot his best withering look at the man, who flinched back satisfyingly.

“Come on,” he said, and Clay meekly followed George’s lead.

They walked slowly at first then, once they were alone, a little faster, running and collapsing behind a building out of sight, doing their best to stifle their laughter.

“Oh my God, George!” Clay whispered harshly, wiping the tears from his eyes, “that-“

“I know, I know,” George was saying lowly, breathless from laughing, “I- the look on his face, Clay!”

“I’m gonna pee, oh my God,” Clay said, bent double and stifling his laughter in his coat. George took several shaking breaths that were still giggles on the exhale.

“Ugh,” George said, wiping his face, “he deserved it anyway. What an asshole.”

“Thanks,” Clay giggled, but the look on his face was too sincere. It kind of hurt to look at.

“Any time, blind boy,” he said. Clay got to his feet and held out a hand to pull George up.

George looked around. They were a little distance away from the centre now, stood behind a tall stone building. It looked abandoned, the glass stained and discoloured from use.

“Oh,” he said quietly, and felt his mood dampen.

“What’s up?” Clay asked, coming over to stand by him. George started walking around the side of the building.

“I think this was the church,” he said quietly. Clay’s footsteps followed him close behind.

“Oh,” he said.

They walked around to the front, staring at the large, rotting wooden doors and what remained of the crumbling tower. Whichever cleric had lived here, they’d been gone a very long time.

“Damn,” Clay muttered.

“Yeah,” George said.

It was weird. Both of their lives had been so fundamentally disrupted by the Mad King and his laws. But it was only when they saw something concrete, like a derelict church, like the brand of his insignia on sensitive skin, that George was reminded of it.

He was startled out of his introspection by the creaking open of the big church door. The barest sliver of a face peaked out, the rest obscured by shadow.

“What do you want,” it asked, and its voice was feminine and low and rough.

George and Clay stood there, frozen.

“Well?” she asked.

“We were just…looking at the church,” George said, gesturing to it.

He felt the singular eye he could see boring into his soul.

“Is that all you were looking for,” she asked, “Cleric?”

They both tensed. Clay’s hand went for his sword, but George held out an arm, glancing over at him. Clay gave him a long look, but put his hand back by his side. The woman laughed, and her giggle echoed ominously.

“Witch,” he said lowly, and Clay nodded once.

“Now,” she said, her grin revealing her yellowing teeth, “That’s not a very nice thing to say, is it? It’s such a loaded term.”

“What do you want with me?” George asked, and tried to keep his voice steady.

“It’s not about what I want,” she said, pointing a stubby finger out of the shadows at George, “I want to know what you want. Loitering outside my church, pretending you’re blind, bothering the people in the village.”

George glanced over at Clay.

“We…we’re looking for the Pig-Nosed Lord?” George said, and he hated the uncertainty in his voice. She quirked an eyebrow.

“Who’s been filling your head with such flights of fancy, boy?” she asked, and her eye swivelled towards Clay, “it wouldn’t happen to be you, would it?”

George’s heart started to race.

“Maybe,” Clay croaked out.

“Do you know about the Pig-Nosed Lord?” George said, and tried to sound more demanding. Her eye fixed on him again.

“That’s not information I give to just anybody, little Cleric,” she said, the grin gone from her face. “What will you give me in exchange?”

George’s mind raced.

“I have-“ he cleared his throat. “I have a spider’s eye. Fermented for twelve months.”

She leaned a little further out into the light, and George could see that half of her face was covered in burns.

“What’s a sweet Cleric like you doing with one of those?” she asked suspiciously. George took off his pack and hurried to explain.

“It’s- it’s an emetic. If someone’s swallowed something poisonous you can make them throw it up,” he said, and pulled the gross, grey eye out of his pack. He walked forward and held it out to the witch.

Fermented spider eyes were really very poisonous. The barest sliver added to a thick potion was enough to make you puke up everything in your stomach. But any number of well-meaning potions could be turned to poison with the addition of a fermented spider’s eye.

He thought a witch might have some use for it.

She held out her hand and George dropped it in. Her fingers slowly closed around it and she sniffed it experimentally.

“Twelve months,” she said, and George couldn’t tell if she was asking for clarification or agreeing. He nodded.

She opened the door a little wider and beckoned George in. He walked forward hesitantly, Clay following behind.

“No,” she said sharply, and they both paused. He could just make out her figure through the shadows. “Just you, Cleric. Your travelling companion can wait outside. This won’t take long.”

George looked over his shoulder at Clay, who clearly thought this was a terrible idea.

He nodded once, and George nodded back. He followed the witch into the shadows of the derelict church, and heard the door groan shut behind him.

It was dark inside the church, and the earthy smell of old books was thick in the air. George stood for a while, blinking in the darkness, letting his vision adjust.

He allowed himself to think back to the church of his village, with its neat bookshelves and organised chests. A shelf with remade potions of healing. A barrel full of glittering powder. A clean bench where people came to have their wounds dressed. Herbs and rabbits’ feet drying from the ceiling. Orderly. Tidy. Everything in its place.

This church was filled with clutter, stacks of books and sheafs of paper everywhere. There were overturned tables and chairs half-hacked apart. For firewood, maybe. He peaked into a barrel as he passed by, and saw piles of things, stacked with no rhyme or reason.

When he turned around, he was face to face with a skull. He stumbled back, falling onto his back, crying out. The skeleton took an unsteady step forward, reaching out with its awful hand for his neck-

“Leave him,” the woman said, waving her hand, not even turning to watch the scene transpire, “he’s a guest.”

The skeleton immediately stopped, shambling its way into a corner and collapsing into a pile of bones. George shakily got to his feet and shuffled forwards. He flinched again when he heard banging on the door. The woman paused, turning.

“George?” came the muffled voice of Clay. George glanced back at the woman, who gestured for him to respond.

“I’m okay,” he said, “I just…tripped.” The woman giggled, and it echoed through the church.

“What a sweet friend you have,” she said, making her way to the back of the room. There was a desk and an overstuffed chair, surrounded by unsteady towers of books, pushed against the back corner of the church. He caught sight of a brewing stand, seemingly the only thing not covered in dust. George followed.

“I guess.”

“So worried about you,” she said, nudging her chair out of the way and rummaging through a pile of thick, leather-bound tomes. George sat down on a bench opposite the desk, and noted how clean it was.

“Yeah,” he said, unease settling in his stomach. She grinned over at him, pausing in her rummaging.

“So scared of me,” she said, and George’s hands curled into fists.

“Well,” he said, and couldn’t finish the sentence. She went back to digging through her bookshelves.

“You called him ‘blind boy’,” she said, and George heard the menace in her tone, “I could make that happen, you know.”

“No,” he said hurriedly, “no. It was…”

“Am I not allowed to tell a joke?” she asked, with exaggerated innocence. George felt very wrong-footed, and was reminded of that day a week ago when he was caught in a spider’s web, unable to move.

“You shouldn’t talk to me like I’m a child,” he said, voice steady.

“Oh?”

“I’m dangerous,” he said, “I’ve killed monsters.”

“What makes you think I’m a monster?”

“You rescinded on your oath. You’ve got powers no human has.”

“What a strange little Cleric you are,” she said, heaving a book out from under a pile.

“I’ve killed witches before, you know,” he said, mimicking the timbre of Clay’s manhunter voice.

“And that makes you…what?” She asked, placing a book on the table between them and flipping through it. “A man? A hero?”

“More of a hero than you,” he snorted, his heart racing. She tilted her head slightly.

“Look at this place,” he said, gesturing to the mess, “you swore an oath to help people. And now what are you doing, making potions of weakness? Raising the dead? Collecting spider’s eyes to poison anyone who crosses you? You can act al mystical, but you got yourself in this position. I’m not scared of you. You’re just a failed cleric.”

There was a long pause.

“Tell me, young Cleric,” she said, her voice low, “who is serving the people better? The Clerics who stuck to their oath and lie in the earth, or me?”

“At least they never hurt anyone,” he said, leaning forward.

“And you haven’t, witch-killer?” she asked.

George shut up.

“Did you hear, in town,” she said, “anyone coughing? See anyone with a limp or a badly dressed arm? Anyone sick? Dying?”

George hadn’t. She leaned back in her chair, and George felt the full force of her withering glare.

“I serve this town, still, even if I betrayed my oath,” she said, “when the hunters came for me, I did not turn belly up. I did what I had to.”

George didn’t have anything to say to that.

“You might find,” she said, her voice a little more gentle, “the world is not so black and white as you think.”

George opened his mouth to respond, but was interrupted by her turning the book around and pointing to the page. He leaned down to read it in the dim light of the church.

“The story goes like this;” she said.

“The Mad King’s domain covers hundreds of thousands of miles, one cannot escape it on foot. You must travel inter-dimensionally.” George squinted up at her, but she aggressively tapped the book. He turned his attention back to the page.

“Constructing the portal requires lava and water, formulated in this position,” she said, pulling out a sheet of paper and a quill. She thrust both at George. “Write this down. You will need it.”

George began frantically copying the diagram onto his loose bit of paper.

“Once you have it built, you need to light it. Flint and steel will work fine,” she continued, “You’ll find yourself in a kind of underworld, they call it the Nether. It will be hot. You won’t be able to roll out bedrolls; they’ll catch fire and burn. There will be all kinds of creatures who will wish you harm. Lakes will be filled with fire, not water, so you will bring as much water as you can carry with you.”

“It will be hell.”

“You need to search for a kind of fortress made of black brick. They say a portal that returns you to the overworld is there. They say it’ll take you to the heart of the Pig-Nosed Lord’s domain. Seek it out and travel through it, and you will be free from the Mad King once and for all.”

George finished the diagram, checking it carefully against what was in the book and tucking it safely away in an inside pocket of his coat.

“Or at least,” she said, shutting the book and dropping it on the floor with a heavy thud, “that’s what the stories say.”

A thought struck him, suddenly.

“Why are you helping me?” he asked.

She grinned at him, revealing her yellowing, sharp teeth.

“You traded a fermented spider’s eye for it,” she said. “And besides. Just because I’m not beholden to the oath anymore doesn’t mean I don’t want to help people. It looks a little different now, granted, but. Help is help.”

George gave her another long look.

“Go,” she said, waving her hand. The large wooden door swung open. “Your friend is alone.”

Something about the way she had phrased it disturbed George. He practically ran down the aisle and burst out into the early afternoon light, seeing Clay getting to his feet in wide eyed relief. George gave him a cursory check, (fine, he was fine, why wouldn’t he be fine) and saw Clay do the same to him.

They were fine.

The door slammed shut by them, both of them jumping at the noise. Clay turned back to George.

“You’re okay?” he asked. George nodded, smiling in what he hoped was a brave and reassuring way.

“Better than,” he said. He reached into his coat pocket and held the piece of paper aloft. “I found a lead. Come on, we’re going to need to buy a bucket.”

They sat close to each other that night, Clay’s sword back by his side, arm freed from the bandages, and they looked up at the stars.

They came to the end of the plains just two days later, the flat land sloping down towards the ocean. They’d had no luck finding a lava pool big enough to make a portal, and none close enough to the surface. They’d passed a few ravines that glowed up from their depths, but after their last escapade neither of them were particularly eager to go down one.

They stood on the sand, looking out at the vast blue ocean.

“What now?” Clay asked. George shrugged.

“We could double back,” he said. Clay shook his head.

“I would have noticed if there had been any lava pools anywhere,” he said, “just like…normal pools. Filled with dumb useless water.”

“Ugh,” George said, shaking a little sand out of his boot. “Well. I guess…we just have to walk along the coast line.”

Neither of them moved.

“It’s kind of, like… huge,” Clay said, eyes still stuck on the horizon line of the ocean. George nodded.

“Makes you feel all small,” he said.

“Well,” Clay said, a smirk in his voice, and George immediately recognised his misstep, “you must always feel small though, right?”

“Ugh, you’re the worst,” he said, glancing up and down the coastline. They might as well keep heading East.

“George,” Clay whined, “you can’t mean that! You love me!”

“Shut up Clay, seriously,” he said, starting to walk away.

“George, say that you love me,” he said, catching up to George easily.

“No,” he huffed, trying not to smile. He heard Clay shuffling around behind him, and suddenly there was a strong grip on his pack.

“Say it!”

“Let go!” George laughed, shrugging out of the pack, jogging away.

“George! I love you! Why can’t you just say it back?” Clay was faster and bigger and stronger than George and caught up with him easily. He grabbed George by the back of his coat, and George shrugged himself out of that, too.

“Because!”

Suddenly, he was slung over Clay’s shoulder, secured firmly in his grasp. Clay started marching towards the ocean with purpose. George’s heart stopped.

“Clay! No! Cut it out!” he said, squirming in Clay’s grasp.

“Say that you love me, George,” he said in that sing-song voice. The ocean was looking very close.

“Fine, fine, fine, just put me down!”

“Not until you say that you love me!”

“‘That you love me’, there, are you satisfied?”

“It’s literally just three words, dude!” Clay was calf-deep in the water by now. He loosened his grip slightly, letting George slip down a little, and he scrambled for purchase to keep himself on Clay’s shoulder.

“Fine! fine, okay, just give me a moment,” George said, trying to push himself further away from the water. Clay stopped. He took a deep breath.

“Clay… I l-“

Before he could finish his sentence, he’d been launched out of Clay’s grasp and rolled into the water, landing with a splash. The salt stung his eyes and burned in his sinuses, and he came up coughing out water. Clay was laughing in that painful, annoying, amazing way. George stood up, shaking water out of his hair like a dog, trying to direct it at Clay.

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” Clay laughed, not sounding sorry at all. George splashed at him, soaking Clay’s front in seawater. He flinched back and splashed at George, still giggling profusely.

“You’re so dumb,” George said, and tried his best so sound annoyed. It was hard to do through a smile. “You’re lucky I took off the coat before you threw me in the sea, or that diagram thing would have gotten all ruined.”

“Well at least I’m not all covered in water like you,” Clay grinned. George rolled his eyes and turned away, before turning back around as fast as he could and tackling Clay backwards into the water. He fell backwards with a strangled ‘ack’, grabbing George around the waist and twisting them both so that he was underwater, laughing childishly.

A few hours later, they lay half-naked on the shore, letting their clothes dry under the setting sun, and giggling breathlessly.

“Hey,” Clay said, turning to face George. He’d taken off his mask so it could dry properly, and his eyes were big and earnest.

“Hey.”

“Do you think we would have been friends if we’d grown up together?” he asked. George shrugged.

“Probably.”

“What about Snapmap, or whatever his name was?” He asked. George grinned over at him, laughing a little.

“Sapnap?” he laughed. Clay laughed back, but nodded. “You two would have gotten on really well. You both have the same favourite hobby.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Annoying me,” George said cheekily. Clay laughed, punching George lightly on the shoulder. They fell into an easy silence.

“Why do you ask?” George asked. Clay shrugged.

“I was just thinking-“

“That’s a first.”

“Shut up,” he giggled, “I was just wondering how my life might have been different if we’d like, met when we were kids or something.”

George pictured it; the three of them climbing trees and chasing sheep, arguing over who was tallest and who could run the fastest, getting into trouble and throwing each other under the bus, watching the stars fade in at night and being dragged back inside by their parents.

“Well,” he said, looking back up at the sky. He could just make out the north star beginning to shine through. “Better late than never.”

They got dressed as the sky started to darken, their clothes a little stiff from the saltwater, and started to look for somewhere to set up camp for the night. They headed back up onto the plains and glanced around in the gathering dark.

“George,” Clay said, and turned him so he was facing west, “see that?”

George squinted.

“That orange glow,” Clay said, pointing into the shadows.

He saw a faint light emanating up from the ground a little distance away. He nodded. Clay clapped him on the back.

“Come on,” he said, and started jogging towards it. George followed, hope rising up in his throat.

They found themselves stood in front of a large pool of viscous, bubbling lava, heat rising up from it almost unbearably. It was unlike anything else George had ever seen. Thick, moving sluggishly, bubbling up and popping every now and again.

“Good spot,” George said, his voice full of awe, and saw Clay beam over at him, lit from beneath by the molten rock.

It suddenly became very, very real. They were about to build a portal to another dimension. One filled with monsters and fire and all kinds of new awful hazards. One where there wouldn’t be any food or water for as far as they eye could see, chasing the pipe dream of a black castle over a fiery lake.

“Let’s build the portal tomorrow, George said.

“What? No,” Clay said, affronted, “come on, let’s go! I’m dying for a slice of cake!”

“No, Clay,” George said, backing away, “I…the diagram is really complex, I don’t know if I can read it by just the light of the lava. And we need to prepare, we need to…to get water, and food, and all kinds of other supplies, I can’t-“

“Okay, okay,” Clay said, putting a hand on George’s shoulder. He looked up, and Clay looked a little concerned. “We’ll start on it tomorrow. That’s fine.”

George smiled at him gratefully.

They took five days to gather up their supplies. Clay spent most of his time fishing and smoking what he caught, whilst George purified as much water as he could. Clay went out one day at dawn and came back at dusk, his hair a mess and carrying a pack full of wool.

(“You know, for bandages?”

“I…Thanks. Why do you look such a mess?”

“The sheep really didn’t want to give up their wool. I had to like, chase them down and then pin them to the ground and stuff.”

“You spent the day chasing sheep to sheer them? With your sword?”

“Don’t laugh! I did something helpful!”)

George spun the wool into bandages. Clay sharpened his sword and hummed. George took the second shift, and watched the sun rise each day with a creeping sense of dread.

Each sunrise brought them closer to the moment they would need to build the portal and go through it.

“George,” Clay said on the dawn of the sixth day, “We can’t keep putting it off. The longer we stay here, the better chance hunters have of finding us.”

“I know, I just… don’t think we’re ready,” George said.

“Dude,” Clay said.

“What?”

“We’ve got like, more than enough of everything. The smell of smoked fish will never come out of this coat, and I don’t know how we’re even going to carry all that water.”

George wrung his hands.

“I just don’t get what’s not ready” Clay said.

George scowled at the ground.

“I…” he trailed off.

He didn’t want to tell Clay about his nerves.

Clay seemed so confident about everything. He jumped feet-first into whatever got thrown at him. He faced pretty much everything with a smirk and a flourish of his sword. Even now, faced with the prospect of entering an underworld that had been described as ‘Hell’, he was rearing to go.

Clay put a heavy hand on his shoulder, and he looked up at the smiling mask. Clay shook him gently.

“Come on,” he said, “I’ve got your back, and you’ve got mine, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then we’re gonna be fine.”

George couldn’t help but crack a smile at that.

“Yeah. Okay.”

They set up a kind of scaffolding out of mud and sand, and started carefully scooping up bucketfuls of lava before dousing it in cold water. The lava solidified into a smooth, dark rock, shining in the light of the sun.

It was slow work, and George and Clay both burned their fingertips quite badly, but after a couple of hours they had a lumpy ring of the dark stone, standing free of dirt scaffolding.

George held the flint and steel in his hands. He knelt down and struck the flint against the steel, sending sparks out and onto the base of the ring.

He flinched backwards as the once empty space in the portal was suddenly filled with fire, loud and roaring, like a bonfire. After a few seconds it began to abate, emanating out from the centre, and leaving behind a dark blue film which rippled like water.

George stuck his hand into it experimentally, feeling the weirdly slimy consistency of the portal. When he brought his hand back out it was bone dry. He turned to Clay, who just shrugged.

“Weird,” Clay said. George laughed under his breath.

“That’s one way to put it.” They both turned back to the portal.

“Well, let’s go!” Clay said, striding forward. As he walked through the portal, he disappeared, almost as if he had walked through a door. George took a deep breath, and followed.

It was a weird sensation. His stomach lurched like he was moving incredibly fast downhill, his exposed skin tingled, he felt his eyes water.

He stumbled out into the dry heat of the Nether, and found himself in Hell.

There was a dark, slightly squishy substance that stretched out as far as he could see, stretching up into a sheer cliff behind him, and out into a dark forest ahead of him. He saw columns of lava cascading from the ceiling, made of that same dark stone.

He saw Clay, bent double, hands on his knees just off to the left.

“Ugh,” Clay said, standing upright and shaking himself a little, “that sucked.”

“Yeah,” George said. “I don’t think any of this was designed to be like…” he looked around at the burning wasteland, “comfortable.”

“You said the old lady told you there were things that lived here?” Clay asked, wiping off his sleeves. George nodded.

“Monsters and stuff, yeah. We should be careful.”

“No way there’s anything alive here,” Clay said dismissively, “What are we looking for, anyway?”

“Some stupid castle made of black bricks,” George scoffed, toeing at the black stone under his feet, “super useful. Everything here’s black.”

There was a silence long enough to be concerning. He glanced up at Clay, who was staring at him.

“Black?” he asked. George nodded. Clay looked at him for a few seconds longer before seeming to have an epiphany.

“Oh yeah. Colourblind,” he said. George laughed a little.

“This stuff isn’t black, it’s all red,” he said, heading over to the ledge to scout out the area.

“Huh,” George said, following close behind. “Spooky.”

“Very.” Clay shielded his eyes and looked around the fiery lake, then sighed.

“No castle as far as I can see,” he said. George groaned, and started looking for a way out.

The portal they’d come through gurgled enticingly. They could turn around and go back to the overworld.

George got the sense they had passed the point of no return.

“Well, we can’t go that way, because there’s a huge pit of lava…” he said, and looked back the way they came. The other two directions were blocked off by cliff faces. That just left one remaining path. He hoped it wouldn’t lead them astray.

“Well,” George said, trying to sound braver than he was. “come on. Let’s get going.”

They travelled for several long hours, sweating profusely in the heat of the Nether, only pausing to drink water and snack on smoked fish, to their mutual disgust. They’d wandered into a forest of some sort, the trees tall and the leaves sturdy enough to stand on. A sheer cliff face rose up to their right, and the lake of lava stretched out below them to their left. Clay walked slightly ahead, pausing every now and again to try and look around for the black castle. George kept watch for monsters. They hadn’t seen any, but George had seen the signs (scratches on the trunks of the weird mushroom-trees, bite marks in the fungal undergrowth, cloven hoof prints in the strange soft stone). He was thankful they hadn’t seen anything yet.

Clay dropped down from the top of the mushroom tree.

“Anything?” George asked, trying not to sound too hopeful. Clay shook his head.

“Just more of the same.”

George tutted, hiking his bag further up his back, and tried not to think that everything they were doing would all be for nothing.

They walked on without saying another word. Clay hadn’t been this quiet in a long time, and George would have been worried if he hadn’t heard the loose, disconnected notes of whatever song he was humming.

He heard hooves in the distance. He reached out and tugged on the back of Clay’s coat. Clay stopped, tilting his head, listening.

There was grunting and snorting. The thrumming hoofbeats were getting closer.

“Pigs?” Clay whispered.

George thought back to the scratches in the wood, the huge gouges that had been taken out of thick tree trunks.

If they were pigs, he didn’t want to think about how big or aggressive they were.

Something about the look on George’s face must have communicated this, because Clay silently stepped back and crouched in the undergrowth. George took cover behind a tree, axe gripped tightly in his hands.

The hooves were getting closer. George thought his heart would burst out of his chest.

He glanced around the corner and flinched back as two monsters came barreling towards him.

They looked human, sort of, except for their floppy pig ears sticking out either side of their head. They had two blunt looking tusks sticking out from their mouth, jutting upwards. In their weird, fat fingers they held golden swords, and their dark eyes shined in the light of the lava.

George ducked back raising his sword, and watched as they sprinted directly past them, cloven feet drumming on the ground, squealing at each other in high-pitched tones that kind of hurt George’s ears. They kept running, shoving each other in an effort to get away as fast as possible.

George turned to Clay, confusion clear on his face, and pointed to the two retreating figures. Clay shrugged.

Thats when they both heard the low grunting and thunderous hooves of another, much larger creature.

They watched as an enormous pig, bigger than a cow, bigger than any creature George had ever seen came hurtling into view, its eyes milky and empty, black spines along its back, huge sharp tusks that stuck out either side of its enormous head. Its mouth hung slightly open, rows and rows of razor-sharp teeth glinting in the dim light.

George’s eyes widened as it stopped and snorted a couple of times, scenting the air. With a ear-splitting squeal, it turned towards him.

George dropped his axe and scrambled up the tree, struggling to get a solid grip against is sweaty palms. He was about halfway up when he felt the whole tree shake, and he slipped down a little.

The pig was tossing his head against the trunk, whacking his sharp tusks against the wood. He did it again, and the tree shook and groaned.

George climbed up a little bit higher, trying to focus on what was above him, not what was below, or on the shaking of the tree, or-

The tree stilled abruptly, and he glanced down just in time to see an arrow glance off the thick hide of the pig. It turned past the tree to where George knew Clay had hidden.

He used the window to climb the rest of the way up the tree, pulling himself up onto the dense and thick foliage. He stood on the top and waited for Clay to climb up, waited for Clay to brag about how he’d taken the lead in their contest for who was saving who.

He heard Clay cry out in pain instead. He flattened himself so he could see what was happening below him.

Clay was hacking away at the pig, backing up to try and stay out of its range. He’d gotten a cut on his arm and his dark blood started to stain his coat. His sword, razor-sharp, well maintained, sharp enough to cut through armour, kept bumping harmlessly off the creature’s hide.

George started breathing heavily, his mouth went dry.

Clay’ll be fine, he told himself, he always gets himself into trouble, but he always gets himself out of trouble too. He’ll be fine. He’s-

Whatever he’d been thinking stopped abruptly as he watched the pig ram its head directly into Clay’s chest and scoop him upwards, sending Clay flying through the air like a rag-doll.

George had been afraid before. Watching Sapnap become a smudge on the horizon, that had been frightening in a low, twisting sort of way. When his village had been burned down that had been frightening too, like the world had slowed to a crawl, like his timeline had been cut short. The first time he’d seen Clay had been frightening, spikes through his legs and tingles on his skin, and when he’d fallen into a ravine as Clay screamed his name with more heartbreak than he could process, that had been frightening in a shivering, shaking way.

None of it compared to the fear he felt watching the arc of Clay’s body as he sailed through the air, landed heavily, rolled a little distance into a small clearing, dropped his sword, not get up, not get up, not get up.

It was all encompassing. It felt like he couldn’t process anything else. It was metallic in his mouth. It buzzed in his teeth and behind his eyes, crawled down his throat, it vibrated through him down to his toes, skin feeling blisteringly hot and freezing cold at once.

And then it congealed into rage.

Rage.

Rage.

The beast was making its way over to where Clay lay, and it walked directly under George.

He didn't think. He didn't plan. 

He dropped down onto its back and held tightly to its spines.

The thing squealed, charging in a random direction, tossing its head to try and shake George loose.

George held fast.

It careened around the forest, smacking them both into trees and undergrowth. He felt his arms bruise, his eyes water as he was pulled face-first into a low lying branch. Every now and then the beast would stop wot toss its head, trying to hit George with its sharp, enormous tusks.

George reached out with one hand and grabbed one.

The creature squealed again, ear-splitting, blood chilling, and started running again, running through the forest.

George pulled down hard on the tusk he had a hold on, and steered the pig directly into the trunk of a tree at full speed.

The creature collapsed, dazed, and the tree groaned ominously.

George watched as the top of it began to tilt towards them, almost in slow-motion.

He flung himself off the pig just as the tree came crashing down with full-force, landing with the crunch and snap of bone and wood as it landed on the pig. George watched breathlessly for several long seconds, but it didn’t move.

He waited to feel the guilt that usually came with him taking something’s life, but he found himself unable to care. It’d hurt Clay.

Clay.

George turned on his heel and sprinted through the forest, following the clear lines of destruction the pig had carved out for him, and burst into the clearing where Clay still lay.

He hadn’t moved.

George’s hands started to shake.

He ran over and collapsed to his knees in front of Clay’s body. His arm was still bleeding, that much was clear, but it didn’t look like he was lying in a puddle of his own blood, probably, maybe, it was hard to tell, everything was the same dark colour of freshly shed blood, and George had rarely thought much of his colourblindness until now, as he kneeled over Clay, trying to work out if he was bloody or bleeding, trying to work out if he was dead or just dying.

He fisted his hands in Clay’s coat and took a long breath.

“You’re a cleric,” he mumbled to himself, “you know what to do. Act like it.”

He reached two shaking fingers out and pressed them gently against the right side of Clay’s neck, where jaw met throat, and waited.

He held his breath,

He felt the thumping against his fingers, steady, not too fast, present. Alive.

He hovered his hand just above Clay’s mouth, and felt the gentle puff of breath against that.

He was alive.

George went limp with relief, resting his forehead against Clay’s chest, feeling the gentle rise and fall of it.

He allowed himself three breaths to gather his thoughts.

Clay’s arm was still bleeding. And on closer inspection, there was blood dripping down the side of his head. He probably smacked it, he probably hit his head pretty hard, it was probably a graze or something.

The arm was more pressing.

George shrugged off his pack and started rooting around in it for the bandages, pulling out a pad, a length of gauze, and a suture needle. He gently eased Clay’s arm out of the sleeve, trying not to jostle him. He wanted to get them both to higher ground, just in case more of them showed up, but he didn’t want to move Clay. He might have injured his neck, or somewhere on his back, and moving him could spell disaster.

He tried to inspect the cut as best as he could, but his vision kept blurring. He groaned in frustration and blinked tears out of his eyes. Focus.

He remembered the last time he had stitched Clay shut, back when they were strangers, a million years ago in the abandoned witch’s hut in the swamp. He’d been stressed then, but focused. Clay had just been another body back then. Now he was a whole person with aspirations and quirks and flaws and a smile and a laugh. Now he was a friend.

He had to act as though he was still just a body.

He had to focus.

His hands stopped shaking

The cut went deep, he forced himself to think, but it wasn’t bleeding like it had severed any veins or arteries. It didn’t look broken either, which was lucky. It tore messily through the tissue, though, and would be a pain to stitch shut.

It would need to be stitched shut.

George threaded the needle with hands that were suddenly steady and even, the hands of a surgeon, and started knitting the skin back together. He was distantly thankful that his patient wasn’t awake for this, it would hurt.

It was only a few moments later that Clay started to stir, and all the careful distance George had created went out the window.

“Clay?” He asked, his hand stilling, “are you awake?”

He moved his head and groaned again, looking like he was trying to sit up-

“Lie back,” George said, putting a hand on Clay’s chest, “don’t move, don't move, I’ve got a needle stuck in your arm and it’s gonna suck if you jerk on it.”

“George?” Clay asked, his speech slurred, and George took a deep breath. Slurred speech, hit his head, he has a concussion.

“Yeah, how do you feel?” he asked. Clay winced a little.

“My head hurts,” he said quietly.

“I’m not surprised,” he said, “you hit your head pretty hard.” Clay just groaned in response. George had almost forgotten what an unhelpful patient Clay was.

“Clay, listen, I need to take your mask off, okay?” he said, reaching for it with the hand not holding a surgical needle.

Clay nodded, then winced. George gently eased the mask off Clay’s face and set it to one side, leaning over to get a good look at his eyes. They weren’t quite focused on his face. Definitely concussed.

“Clay, where are we?” George asked, heart in his throat. Clay blinked a little, his vision seeming to sharpen.

“Like, now?” he asked, eyebrows furrowed. George nodded.

“The Nether,” he said, like it was obvious.

“Do you remember what happened?”

“We were…like, being attacked?” Clay said, trying to remember, “by a huge...pig monster?”

“Do you feel nauseous?”

“No?”

“Are your ears ringing?”

“No.”

George let out a small sigh of relief, going to inspect the cut on Clay’s hairline. It wasn’t huge, just bleeding a lot, as head injuries did. Not a concern. He thought it probably came from the mask, digging into his skin as he landed face down on the ground, tumbling along the ground limply, hurt, alone-

“George?” Clay asked, and he glanced back down. Clay was looking concerned. “Am I…okay?”

George tried to smile encouragingly. He thinks it probably came out a little strained.

“You’re gonna be fine. You’ve got a mild concussion, but I don’t think it’s going to be a worry,” he said, putting a hand on Clay’s shoulder. He nodded, not looking totally convinced.

“You’ve got a laceration on your arm that I’m gonna have to stitch shut, and there’s a cut on your head that I’ll need to bandage, but you’ll live to die doing something stupid another day,” he said. Clay groaned.

“I need stitches?” he wined. George nodded sympathetically.

“Again?”

“They’re on a different part of you this time.” George pulled out a stick from his pack and held it out in front of Clay’s mouth. “Bite down on it when it gets painful.”

“I’m getting déjà vu,” he grumbled, but bit down on the stick. George took a deep breath and set to work.

Clay wasn’t screaming in agony this time, but he did whine whenever George did anything.

This time, George also had to watch the fear and pain cross his face every time he stuck the needle in him. George swallowed. He wished he had something for the pain. All he had was him and his stupid mouth.

“Did I ever tell you about the time me and Sapnap got banned from the Shepherd’s workshop?” he blurted out in between stitches. Clay blinked up at him and shook his head slightly.

George launched into the story. It wasn’t particularly exciting; they’d just gone in and thrown dye at each other and made a mess, but George embellished every detail, described every splatter. He was trying to distract Clay from everything. 

He might have been imagining it, but he thought that Clay might have been wincing less whilst he spoke.

After a long while he tied off the thread and wrapped the arm in some clean white bandages. Still talking, he moped what blood he could off Clay’s head, and wrapped gauze around that cut too.

“There,” he said, trying to sound chipper, “I’ve mummified you.”

Clay chuckled slightly, and stopped abruptly, clutching his ribs. George started to panic.

“They hurt? Does it hurt to breathe? Do you need to cough? D-“ Clay put up a hand, and slowly pulled himself into a sitting position. George put a hand on his back to help him up.  Clay reached out and grabbed the mask, tucking it into a coat pocket.

“I’ve cracked my ribs before,” he said, “this isn’t as bad.” George breathed out a small sigh of relief.

“Come on,” he said, urging Clay to stand up. He seemed pretty steady on his feet. George got to his feet too, and grabbed the sword, where it was lying a little distance away. He handed it to Clay, who sheathed it.

“Alright, let’s go,” Clay said, turning to keep walking, but George stopped him with a gentle hand on his uninjured arm.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. Clay looked back at him questioningly.

“You need time to recover.” Clay scoffed, but it was weak, and there was something in his eyes that said he knew George was right.

“Seriously, Clay, what if I was the one who’d gotten beaten up by a pig?” he asked. Clay pursed his lips, then sighed.

“Okay, okay,” he said.

George led them over to a tree covered in thick vines, grabbing his discarded axe as he went. It was slow going, and Clay was walking with a limp, but they managed to get themselves up on top of a tree.

“Ugh,” Clay said, flopping gently backwards. “Everything hurts. My leg hurts. My arm hurts. George, my arm hurts.”

George smiled at Clay and flopped down next to him.

“Next time don’t get into fights with monsters.”

“I was saving you!” Clay said indignantly, “so eleven-nine, by the way.”

“I killed it,” George said, “and brought you back from like, the brink of death. So eleven all, by the way.” Clay sat up abruptly.

“You did not-“ Clay started, then stopped suddenly, wincing, his eyes screwing shut.

“What’s up?” he asked, sitting up.

“Nothing, nothing, just a headache,” he said, lying back down.

“You hit your head really hard,” George said, “I’d be surprised if you didn’t have a headache.”

Clay didn’t say anything in response.

It was weird, sitting there and watching Clay in pain. It was different when he wasn’t wearing the mask. It was much clearer that it hurt, in the shape of his eyes and the set of his eyebrows. He wanted to do something. He wanted to do anything that might help.

Well. Lying on the stiff foliage probably wasn’t helping.

George shifted around so he was sitting near Clay’s head, and gently pulled his head into his lap. Clay gave him a questioning look, but didn’t mention it otherwise.

George slowly ran his hand over Clay’s disgusting, bloody, sweaty hair in long, soothing strokes.

He found himself absurdly thankful for it. For his gross hair, his flushed face, his stupid coat, his cheeky grin, his snark, his annoying nature, his inability to lie quietly when he was hurt. He felt like he’d been too close to losing something precious. Like he’d nearly lost everything he had.

Clay sighed in contentment, shutting his eyes.

“Thanks,” he mumbled, “that’s helping.”

“You can’t go to sleep,” George said, “I wanna make sure you aren’t like… secretly super concussed.”

“Then keep me awake,” Clay grinned, cracking one eye open.

They sat there like that for a long tome, George gently stroking Clay’s hair, and talked as they waited for the worst of the pain to fade. George found himself glancing up at the ceiling above them now and then, unnerved by the lack of stars.

It was hard to tell how much time was passing. There wasn’t a sun or moon to tell the time by, and the light came from the glowing lakes of lava. Enough time passed for George to let Clay nap for a bit, satisfied the concussion was minor enough to not cause too much damage. Clay fell asleep curled up with his head in George’s lap. George kept watch, flinching every time he heard snorting or the sounds of hooves.

Every now and again the humanoid pig creatures would walk past them, looking up at them suspiciously. They dragged the bloody carcass of the dead pig-monster away at one point and didn’t bother them again after that.

Clay woke up at some point, insisting his headache was gone and he was feeling fine, and could they please just keep moving and get out of this stupid underworld. George reluctantly agreed, and they climbed back down and continued on their journey.

They went slower and more cautiously, sticking to the places where the forest was most dense. Clay was walking with a bit of a limp again, the fall exacerbating his old leg injury. George tried to offer to take stuff out of his pack, or a shoulder to lean on, but Clay waved him off. He said he was fine, but George knew better by now.

The journey was largely uneventful. George came across a partially broken crossbow and a little bundle of bolts, probably abandoned by one of the humanoid pigs, and thought he could probably restring it. It was more useful to have than not anyway.

They crept through the undergrowth for a long time, eventually emerging into a flat and empty plain.

It stretched out in all directions, flat and even, and the ceiling seemed very high up.

They sat down and pulled out some food and water, complaining about the fish and trying to wash the taste out with the water. George was watching Clay closely, trying to work out what was wrong.

Clay hadn’t been silent. They’d been arguing over what the score was for hours at this point before eventually settling on eleven-ten. But there was something off. He wasn’t humming, for starters, or making jokes about how George was short, or their situation. He’d put his mask back on, but George could see the downward lines of his face clear as day.

He cast around for something funny to say.

“This place sucks,” is what he came up with, and Clay huffed a humourless laugh.

“Yeah,” he said, stretching out his bad leg, “big time. At least we don’t need to, like, start a fire or anything to keep warm.”

“And we don’t have to worry about getting rained on,” he said, “No creepers or skeletons, to worry about either.”

Clay huffed again in that half-laughing way.

“When you put it like that, it’s the ideal vacation spot,” Clay pointed to a spot a little distance away, “I’m gonna build my cabin there.”

George laughed a little and choked down some fish, and they fell into an easy silence.

George was still watching Clay. He didn’t think he’d helped all that much, and he wasn’t convinced that all of his stony silence was from pain. George opened his mouth to just ask what was wrong, when they were both startled by a high-pitched sobbing sound. They got to their feet, drawing their weapons, and stood back to back.

By now, they’d learned that just about everything in the Nether was dangerous. They looked around the wide empty plain, but were alone. The cry came again, and they both looked up.

Hovering in the air was a huge white face, grey tear marks running down from its eyes. It had tendrils where its neck should have been, and it was crying huge, wet tears.

George glanced back at Clay who merely shrugged in response.

The creature looked down at them with big, sad eyes. George suddenly felt really, truly small.

It opened its mouth and retched audibly, and a flaming rock came flying from its mouth. George and Clay both jumped out of the way of it, and it exploded when it hit the ground, sending dusty particles of the weird soft rock all over the both of them. George was knocked backwards onto the ground and glanced over at Clay, who’d managed to not land on his bad arm. He was scrambling to his feet, but stumbled, and tripped and fell in the recently-created crater.

The weird head was still crying, sobbing. It retched out another flaming ball of stone and George dodged back, stumbling but staying on his feet.

“Clay!” he called.

“I’m fine!” came the response, his voice weirdly strangled. He saw Clay’s hands shoot up over the side, then slip back down.

The head kept crying, and spat another ball of flame at George, who dodged back.

“Clay, come on, shoot it!” George yelled. This was bad, this was really bad, they were so, so fucked-

George stopped moving abruptly. Was Clay laughing?

“George!” He wheezed, “I’m- I’m fuckin’ stuck!” 

“Clay, you-“

He was cut off as the ground beneath his feet erupted suddenly and he was knocked backwards, winded.

He propped himself up on his elbows and watched as the thing turned its attention to Clay and spat at him, and George just caught the flash of a shield as Clay whacked it back up at the head.

It collided with the creature, exploding, and it dissipated into mist. George was bent double, breathing heavily, whilst Clay laughed his head off.

“George!” he laughed, “come on, help me out! I’m stuck in a hole!”

“It’s not that funny,” he muttered, but he didn’t much care.

It was good to hear Clay laugh again.

He went over to the crater where Clay was stuck, leaning against the side of the hole and crying with laughter. George grinned down at him.

Clay looked up after a while and held out his hand. George hauled him up.

"Why didn't you shoot it?" he asked, gently punching Clay on his good shoulder. Clay gestured to his injured arm. 

"Can't pull a bow back," he said, still laughing a little. 

"You scared me!" George said, trying to sound angry. He knew he was just laughing. 

They kept walking.

After a while, Clay started humming.

—

They travelled for a long time, through dark, stoney spaces, through wide deserts, through a bright blue forest. They stopped for meals and hid from the pig monsters in trees. George restrung the crossbow and tested it against treetrunks .

("Dude, you suck at this."

"I've never used one before!" 

"That's obvious." 

"Then tell me how to use it!"

"Okay, okay. You wanna rest it on your shoulder-" 

"Like this?" 

"Yeah. Then look down the sight line, and keep your eyes on whatever it is you want to shoot." 

"Okay." 

"Then don't jerk, just gently squeeze the trigger-yeah! See, there you go!")

There was no sign of anything that could even remotely be described as a ‘black castle’, and Clay was being all weird again. He was walking a little unevenly, but he went through long stretches of total silence.

Eventually, George got tired of just trying to guess what he was thinking.

“Hey,” he said.

“What’s up?” Clay asked.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” Clay said mildly, turning to look at George, “why?”

George shrugged. “You’re being…quiet. Usually you’re all loud and singing and whatever.”

Clay just shrugged back and walked on through the blue forest in silence for a bit.

“I dunno,” he said after a while. “I guess it’s all just like, a lot harder than I thought it would be. Like, those pig things are really, really hard to kill. And everything else wants to kill you as well. And it’s all hot and weird and red, and we haven’t, like, made any progress.”

They came to the edge of the land, stopping and looking out over the huge lava lake.

“It’s just kind of-wait.” Clay said, stopping suddenly. George looked over at him in concern. Clay pointed in the distance.

“See that?”

George didn’t see at first, but as he squinted through the waves of heat and dust, he could just make out a shape in the distance.

Square. Rigid. Manmade.

“It’s black, I promise you it’s black George,” Clay was saying excitedly. George could scarcely believe his eyes.

“That’s it, that’s gotta be it, right?”

“Y-yeah,” George managed, a smile spreading out across his face.

They’d done it. Clay started cheering and George didn’t have it in his heart to remind Clay they were at risk of being attacked at any moment, too full of relief and joy and excitement himself.

“Now we just need to work out a way around this huge stupid lake,” Clay said, lifting his mask and using it to shield his eyes.

George gave it a cursory glance and saw that the lake stretched far out either side of them.

“Ugh, can we take a break?” George asked, flopping down onto the ground, “I’m exhausted.”

“Duh,” said Clay, still scouting the area, “you haven’t slept since we got here dude.”

“Neither have you!”

“I napped!”

“Because I forced you to!”

“Well maybe I should force you to!”

“No way, we’re so close already,” George said, pulling a face.

“Yeah, do you want to be drooling on the shoulder of the Pig-Nosed Lord when we get there?” Clay asked, “He’ll be all like ‘who are you’, and you’ll just be like, snoring, and then we’ll both get sent to prison for being rude or whatever.”

George rolled his eyes and pulled out some water bottles from his pack. He gently tossed one to Clay, who caught it deftly and drank from it. George did the same, looking down at the smoked fish he kept in his pack.

“I’m so sick of fish,” George grumbled. Clay came over and sat down next to him, stretching his long legs out.

“Same dude,” he said, “When we get out of here, I’m never touching a fish again.” George laughed.

“I don’t understand how anything lives here,” George said, passing Clay a hunk of dried fish, “like, I haven’t seen anything that looks like you could eat it.”

“Probably like, mushrooms or whatever,” Clay said, then sat straight up.

“What?” George asked.

Clay got to his feet and dashed unevenly off into the forest. He came back a few minutes later, arms laden with bright blue mushrooms, and a huge smile on his face. He dumped them proudly at George’s feet. George just stared at them blankly.

“No need to thank me, George,” Clay said, sitting back down, “All in a day’s work.”

Clay picked one up and went to bite into it, but George snatched it out of his hand.

“Clay, are you stupid?”

“What?” Clay laughed.

“These are bright blue and covered in yellow-“

“Orange.”

“Whatever! What food do you know that’s this colour?” George yelled, waving one at him.

“There are berries that colour!” Clay said defensively.

“They’re poisonous!”

“They’re still food!”

“They kill you if you eat them!”