Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The first time Kyana saw The Hole, she was 4 years old. It was customary to bring the monks to the edge of the hole once they had a firm grasp on how to walk, and explain the growing list of duties they would be expected to perform as they aged. At least, that's what Kyana caught at the time as she was led alone to approach the sheer cliff in the stone cave. She didn't hear most of what Pryer Sefun said to her once they actually got to the Hole. She just stared down at the deep, sucking shadows and clung tightly to her Pryer's leg. She felt like any moment she'd find herself tumbling down it with no warning and disappear into nothing or be added to the unfeeling blocks of shadow.

"Are you listening, child?" Kyana's ears returned to her and she gripped the fabric of her Pryer's uniform tighter, trying her best to figure out what she'd missed before she had to admit she hadn't been paying attention. She never paid enough attention.

"Pryer Sefun says... we guard the entrance."

"... Yes." Kyana heard something wrong with the way her Pryer said it. It didn't sound like Kyana got the question right. "You are too young to guard it yourself. But very soon you will begin your training to strengthen your body and mind, so you can combat anything that crawls up from beyond the shadows."

Kyana's stomach tightened, and her throat wobbled. "There's things in there?" What could be down there? What could come out of there?

"... Yes." Kyana would have felt ashamed at having asked a bad question if the fear seeping into her from all angles didn't keep her preoccupied. "Don't be that way. You mustn't be afraid of what's down there, it will make you weak. And then you'll have no chance in a fight."

But Kyana was afraid. The Hole laid open and waiting, and she was so small...

"Kyana." A new fear seized her heart, a more familiar fear, and she fell in line without question. She straightened her back and snapped her gaze back to Pryer Sefun, and things felt normal again. "You will need to improve yourself if you have any hope of being useful in protecting the Senobium and the world at large from what lies beneath. And you are not permitted to give up on yourself, do you understand?"

Kyana didn't, not really, but shaking her head 'no' to a question like this always got her berated and sent to meditate on whatever the right response was. But the adults all always knew if she was lying. She thought about The Hole, about what could be down there, about the world outside the Senobium, and it came to her all at once how dark everything always is. How little she knew and how little she understood and how little she got right and how little she felt.

But... if she stayed this way forever... The Hole would surely swallow her. And it would be dark and cold and she would be afraid forever. She didn't want that.

"I can be big!" She said. If that's what it took to keep from being swallowed by The Hole, she would be big and big as big can be. Pryer Sefun smiled down at her and Kyana felt lighter. She never saw her smile that way, least of all at Kyana.

"Good." She said, and Kyana smiled back up at her, eyes shining.

A strange sound came up from The Hole, sending a chill up Kyana's spine, and her Pryer ushered her away. Kyana held desperately to the happiness she felt at Sefun's approval. She shut her eyes and impressed it into her mind and tried tried tried to ignore the cold yawning darkness clinging to her shoulders and digging through her skin.

She wasn't big, her little piece of happiness wasn't big. She didn't know how to be big, and no matter how big she got, she knew in her bones The Hole would always be bigger.

She understood in an instant. She needed to be better. She needed to do better, to work harder. Even if the Hole swallowed her, she'd thrown up before, so she knew swallowing things didn't make them vanish. She didn't have to be too big to swallow.

She had to be able to get out.

-+-

Finbar felt a smoldering burn along his right leg, at the very top of his thigh. He hissed and looked around, patting himself down in a bit if a panic. He shouldn't have anything on him or in his pockets that was doing this, and he never heard of a spell that could do that sort of thing. Had he been cursed and not noticed it? He felt the stinging sensation take on a shape, and then it faded in much the same way it came over him.

"Finbar? Is something wrong?" Love set down the basket she'd been carrying and flitted across the clearing to him.

"It's fine, you don't gotta worry yourself, sister."

"You're sure? You looked a bit skittish, and you don't exactly hiss like that on the regular."

"Maybe not, but it's nothing you oughta be concerned about." He absent-mindedly ran his palm over the previously burning spot.

"Well... if you're sure..." She crinkled her brow the same way she always does when Finbar tells her not to worry herself, and he leaned over and gave her a gentle kiss on the forehead.

"I'm positive. Let's get back to work."

He managed to distract himself all the way through the end of dinner, but as he changed out of his day clothes, he saw it. An image emblazoned right where that stinging burning sensation passed over him. It looked... ominous. A deep, dark purplish black fog descending on a figure with a small golden shard in their hands. He ran a finger over it. It seemed like a tattoo, but it couldn't...

It couldn't...

"Ma!" He stumbled to his doorframe, hardly caring for his disheveled state of dress. "Pops! I- I think I have a soulmark!'

There was a collective clattering and footsteps from all corners of the building as his parents and his grandparents and his siblings all rushed down the hallway. They immediately looked to his arms like any reasonable person, and he felt his heart in his throat because nobody with one soulmate has a soulmark on their leg. No one with two soulmates has either mark appear in their leg. No, he had three. Three soulmates.

The bubbling excited chatter of his family talking about who they had to tell and asking if they could get a better look and theorizing about his soulmates (Soulmates. Plural.) washed over him. He felt lightheaded. As his eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth birthday went by and he never got a mark, all the adults in the village told him to chin up, that surely his soulmate was just a late bloomer, or only a little younger than him, and Finbar heard the story of how brother D'irell didn't get his soulmark until he was 18 at least 70 times by the time he turned 18 and still didn't get one.

He knew..... he thought..... surely, he thought to himself as he turned 19 with nothing to show on his skin, it wasn't that he had no soulmate. Nobody had no soulmate... but their village was all the way out in the middle of the feywild... they didn't exactly get much information from the wider planescape. Maybe there were cases of people not having soulmates, and Finbar was one of them. Maybe he wasn't meant to have something so personal, so important. Maybe he just had to make his peace with it, he thought as he turned 20 and his left arm remained unclaimed and undecorated. He knew he wouldn't go his whole life unloved, or not loved 'the right way' or 'the best way', because he had his family, he had the whole village, who loved him and accepted him even without a soulmate. He'd just... have to learn to live with being alone and left out in this soulmates business.

And now, at 21, he had three. Three people out there connected directly to his soul, who could love him forever without fail no matter what changed if he gave them the same. It was enough for a while to overwhelm him, and it was only as he laid down to get some sleep and ran his thumb over the mark again, tracing out its outlines and fuzzy edges, that the image itself sank in for him. The first image of his soulmate. Clinging to something and lost someplace dark. His heart felt heavy, but he promised them, in that moment,

"I'll find you. And I won't ever leave you in the dark. Not ever."

A small girl somewhere planes away winced in her sleep as an image etched itself into the inside of her left arm, just below her elbow. A weed, native to the feywild.

-+-

Dani never wore sleeves partially because they could be grabbed by people trying to keep her from stealing, but more recently it became to show off that she had two soulmates, and one of them was very brave and cool. They'd have to be to leave a mark where they were protecting something so shiny and important-looking from such a huge tide of inky black. Or... purple? It was dark.

She supposed the flower on the inside of her right arm was alright too, it was pretty and popped brightly against her skin. Still, that soulmate was clearly the one who would need more than a little protecting, and the other one would need her help with whatever was trying to take their important glowy stuff, nobody could keep doing a thing forever. She learned that the hard way last month when she tried sleeping in an abandoned basement and couldn't take the rash whatever mold filling up the place gave her. And that aside, she had to imagine only being brave all the time would get very boring, even if it was really cool.

She also, of course, thought showing them off made her look very grown up, since most kids had to wait until they were around 12 to get their soulmark, but she's 5 and has two.

As the year went by and she turned 6, she learned showing off her soulmarks like that was super stupid, because people could point them out to the cops and they could track her down that much easier. And she didn't like the idea juddering in the back of her mind that they would be able to find her soulmates with them, too, and then... well, she couldn't predict the cops, but she sure as fuck didn't trust them with her soulmates. So she started wearing long sleeves and using them to her advantage by hiding things up them that would fit.

Her more delicate soulmate was much more active than her braver one. Soon after the first mark she got from them, a spiral of animal tracks and what she had to assume was all varieties of leaf to ever exist in ever imprinted themselves all the way down her arm. The "disparity" made sense to her. Sturdy things were usually heavy and reliable, but delicate things were much lighter and usually more "versatile". She liked knowing big words like "versatile" and "disparity" and "combustion", 'cause knowing big words meant you were very smart, and you can't steal smarts from someone, so the smarter she got, the more she would have. That's why she's breaking this fancy watch down– taking it apart to put it back together again when she could just use her adorable good looks and pawn it off somewhere.

Well, that and it was fun. It made her forget her usually-empty stomach and her blunt, broken fingernails and the painful knots in her hair. She liked it, she liked seeing the gears click together and imagining new ways to align and realign them, even if sometimes the ideas didn't work, because that meant there had to be another idea that would—

Her stomach twisted on itself, "demand"-ing her attention. She ate yesterday, why couldn't the food just stay in her stomach? It wasn't fair.

She gazed at the most recent mark on her right arm. An apron edged with oil and dust with pixies embroidered across it. Maybe her soulmate would cook for her. Then she wouldn't be so hungry all the time. But it could just as easily be the kind of apron the smiths and other craftsmen across the city used for all the other kinds of things you'd need an apron for. And besides, this soulmate was the one that needed protecting, she couldn't be going to them for food. She could get that on her own, thank you very much... just as soon as she tried out one more thing with this watch.

-+-

Kyana pinched and squished the new image on her leg that came in during lunch. On the back of her calf, a bunch of lines bordered by hexagons spread over and wrapped around to her shin, and beneath them in a few gaps and patches were pipes and these circles with chunks cut out of them that locked together. All of it this shiny orange-ish color, like some kind of metal. It was almost unsettling to look at, but as she traced the lines and shapes and shadows, she couldn't help being enamored.

"Kyana?" Kyana sucked in a breath and straightened her back, squeezing her eyes shut and returning to her proper meditation pose. She didn't know how Prior Widemun seemed to be able to sense that she wasn't meditating when his eyes were closed, but she stopped questioning it very quickly. Still, she thought if she was quiet, it wouldn't matter what she did while everyone else was doing the meditation.

"Remember, children," which at this point almost always meant remember Kyana, "it is not enough to appear dutiful and virtuous. The appearance matters far less than the material of your diligence and restraint."

A coil squeezed around Kyana's chest and wound up her throat. She didn't understand... How does sitting still a bunch help them fight monsters they need to move around to avoid? What was this supposed to do? It made her skull scream and her skin buzz awfully and her bones ache with something that she knew she'd get in trouble for releasing.

She took a deep breath, holding onto herself. She couldn't mess with her new mark, or the other marks down her left arm, but she didn't need to run her hands over them to think of them.

When she first woke up with the plant on her arm, she thought something from The Hole had gotten under her skin and she was going to die. She was very relieved when she went to Prior Sefrun and she explained that the mark was perfectly natural, and in time would fade and turn into a mark like she and the other adults had on their arms. Giant black blocks that meant they had mastered all there was to master about being a monk. She couldn't help but think they seemed an awful lot like The Hole, but... well, they fought the things that came up from The Hole, so it probably meant they knew so much about it that it was the most important thing they did.

That made sense... and Kyana wanted to keep whatever was down The Hole away from her bedroom, so knowing as much about it as she could only made sense.

These marks weren't about The Hole, though. Her Prior explained to her that the plant on her skin appeared far earlier than the other children... and she didn't sound too pleased by it. They clearly meant something bad, but..... but they really were pretty. And they were hers! Surely... surely she was just dumb. Surely she wasn't bad. That had to be it. She always did her best... and her Prior smiled at her sometimes when she did especially good! So...

By the time she turned 9, and the new mark didn't come on her left arm, but her right, she knew. It was fine when she was 6 and she gained a strange silhouette wrapping around just above her knee of blocky-pointy-domed shimmering mountain ranges with wedges of light at their very tops and clouds of dirt at their base. It was fine when she was 7 and a wooden shield carved with houses and people and trees wrapped itself around the outside of her forearm. Even just a few months ago, it didn't mean anything bad when a flaming hand tool with something written on it in a language she never saw before emblazoned itself around one of the bolts that lined the gears and pipes and brass plating on her shin. But then one of the other monks got his first mark. And that was when the Priors finally gathered them all together for a lesson on Vices.

When you begin getting marks on your skin, it's a sign of your Vices, the things that hold you back from improving, the things you should avoid. They were rarely literal, but they were important tools for developing discipline. They weren't to look closely at the marks of their fellow monks, or share theirs openly. You focus on yourself, not anyone else, and you don't leave yourself open to being dragged into a Vice.

She didn't want to look. She grabbed tight to her right arm where the now-familiar stabbed-with-a-hot-needle sensation etched something into her skin. Something that proved she was only surrounded by bad, that she had bad things inside her, that she had one more thing to work against if she was ever going to be good. Ever be who she was supposed to be.

She didn't want to know...

-+-

Frinbar ran his fingers back and forth over the shelf of books winding their full way around his left arm, just below his bicep. It seemed like the books were about anything and everything.

His heart felt so relieved, and he didn't even realize it needed relieving. They must be so smart, they must know a lot. Finbar knew enough to know that he didn't really know all that much. It scared him sometimes, because he had good intuition, but it left him with such big blind spots, and he just... had to make a call. It made sense one of his soulmates would be so smart, you don't become soulmates with someone just because of how much affection you'll hold for them. They're the person who slots against you to make you whole in just the right ways. Like a new way to prepare something that makes everything taste better and you never go without once you discover it.

"Oh, you get a shiny new soulmate and forget you're in the kitchen?" Elyse's voice buzzed against his brain and he smiled a subdued 'Fuck-off' kind of smile at her. It'd been about a month and a half on The Whipped Crown, and their routine was well established by now.

"I know perfectly well where I am, and I know you better turn down the heat on those slugs before they hit their ignition point and blow your pretty little eyebrows off."

Elyse scoffed and flipped the grenuker slugs Cardamom got from Ysgard for the kitchen to experiment with in her skillet.

"As if I would let that happen."

As he watched her work, his first ever mark from his third soulmate fresh in his mind and on his arm, Finbar couldn't help but think she was magic. He'd never met someone who could just... go through the world the way Elyse did. Like she knew everything worth knowing. He knew his soulmate wouldn't carry themself in quite the same way, because no one in the whole of the planescape was quite the same as Elyse, that much Finbar was certain of.

But someone out in the planescape probably knew a little more than her, and Finbar had a hunch he had that person on his arm.

-+-

Kyana, for the first time, forgot everything.

She forgot the progressively piling Vices on her arms and leg.

She forgot The Hole.

She forgot her training.

She forgot the Senobium.

All the Priors stood guard around them, and they were surely saying something, they brought them all up here for the first time because of some milestone, something to do with marking the occasion they were allowed... something –they'd never been let outside the first ten years of their lives– but she couldn't hear anyone.

The half-moon in the sky glowed, bathing them all in a soft light, and her eyes belonged to the stars.

Something deep inside her sang, like she'd just been given water for the first time in weeks-- months– Years! The air was fresh and cool and just the right weight against her skin. The night sat in her lungs and wrapped around her shoulders, and she just... stood there. Staring. Completely paralyzed with awe and a peace she'd never truly known before yet felt so familiar all the same. Nothing reached her, everything slipped from her, and she didn't even think to worry about how long the moment would last. Everything felt... quiet.

-+-

VR-LA stared intently at the newest addition to his soulmark. Tucked into one of the quilted squares on the inside of his upper arm was the same shape of a person hanging onto something like a magic item, surrounded on all sides and three other adjacent squares by purple, but now, the figure was filled with stars and seemed to spill those stars out to engulf the entirety of the rest of his quilting. It shimmered with iridescence, and he ran his fingers over it in a repeated motion to watch the visual catch the light, pressing down on the individual squares in repeating patterns that pinged pleasantly through his mind.

He began to worry last year about how his other two soulmates seemed to be growing and learning and changing, but his first, the first image he ever saw of the ones attached to his soul, only ever seemed to be surviving, wherever they were, hanging onto whatever magic belonged to them so they didn't lose it to whatever was trying to overtake them.

He wanted badly to know why stars. Maybe they loved astronomy, but he thought it made much more sense to have astrolabes and telescopes and things like that if that were the case. Maybe... they escaped from whatever was trying to take them. The stars were metaphorical, it meant they could go anywhere they wanted now. He hoped that was the case.

He also hoped that when he met his other two soulmates, they would understand if he favored his first. And surely he would meet this one first, they appeared first. Although this was his right arm, not his left, and people with one soulmate always got their marks on their left hands, so it made the most sense to meet the one that drew a city onto the inside cuff of his left arm. He wondered, for the hundredth time since he was 7, if he was the only one out of them with more than one. He was afraid if he split himself up between the three of them, he wouldn't be enough, and he wanted to be everything for them.

He prepared and everything! When the holy symbol for Silvanus appeared on his right leg, he devoted an entire corkboard to all the information about Silvanus and their followers as he could get his hands on. He translated the Primordial written across the wrench on his left arm; it either said 'crash', 'ignite', 'expand', or 'shake off' depending on the dialect, but in this very particular way that he couldn't quite hit on in all his attempts to clock the concept the word was getting at. He was going to be the best he could ever be for them, because they were made for him, and he was made for them. He wanted it all to click together just right.

-+-

Dani didn't like the most recent mark on her right arm one bit, but she didn't have time to be musing about things like that anymore. She had a job now. A real official job for a real official asshole.

To be fair, she was just soft enough to like him anyway like some kind of chump, and she actually had friends now that she worked for him. It took 15 years, but she had Plug for about 3 of them, so the transition to friends who talked back wasn't near as clunky as it could've been.

Not that it made her particularly keen on actively talking to them when they inevitably struck up conversation mid-task.

"Hey Dani..." Roy whispered to her as they weaved through the scrap yard, arms filling progressively with the looser materials that needed piling in a new spot. "... What's it like? Having three?"

Dani sighed. Eegan asked her that same question two weeks ago, and she regurgitated the same answer she gave him to Roy.

"Well, there's 3 times the chance I'll get distracted by a new addition to the mark, but y'know. 3 times the chance I'll be whisked away to live in luxury forever." She said the word 'luxury' like it was the slimy bottom of the ocean, because as far as she was concerned, it was. Roy laughed and rebalanced his load to grab some kind of broken headlamp looking thing. Dani felt a ping of pride as the prosthetic leg she demanded to fix when she saw its sorry state shifted exactly as intended and allowed him the proper range of motion.

"I can't imagine you matching with some efreeti or whoever. That sounds like one of those scripts they'd come up with in the East Theater that people with money think is way better than it actually is."

"Wow, even the fine arts are full of swindlers." She smiled wryly, picking up a cable from the ground and accidentally causing a deafening avalanche on the opposite side of the mound it was under. She and Roy winced and quickly rushed as far away from that as they could get.

After getting chewed out and berated "being taught a lesson on structural integrity", she and Roy were relieved of pickup duty and sent to the bunks. They'd probably have to get Eegan to sneak them dinner; the two of them weren't about to hazard asking Oto's permission to go out into the city to find a food stall. Dani flopped down and Plug made his cute little accordion noises as he slinked over and settled himself on her chest.

"You really are the coolest person I know..." Roy said to her. Her ears got hot and she frowned at him.

"Clearly something's wrong with whatever set of nerves you have that's responsible for gaging temperatures." On a literal level, Eegan ran redder than her, and he Roy just confirmed they were soulmates last week, so he should at the very least prioritize shit like that for the guy whose match ring was tattooed on his finger over the new girl at work. He laughed again.

"I mean it, I do, really." He said emphatically. She knew he was only like this because he was younger, but he really needed to stop being such a rube all the time. They'd only known one another a few months, and he talked like they'd been friends as long as her and Plug. "It's so rare to have three soulmates. I didn't even think it was possible until I met you. And I mean, you're so smart, and good at mechanic stuff, and you're like, the whole reason my leg is as good as it is now, and you made a cat!"

Dani allowed herself a twinge of a smile as she scratched behind Plug's ears. "I guess I am pretty awesome."

"Fuck yeah, you are!"

Okay, maybe he'd earned Rube Allowance. But only for her. He needed to toughen up soon, he was already nearly 14.

When he left to find something else to do ("Maybe if I volunteer, we'll be off the hook by morning.") Dani now, officially, had time to take off her gloves, roll up her sleeve, and brood over the latest mark on the inseam of her right arm.

It stared back at her. Multiple hands holding up hearts of different colors and types like offerings to compare against a central heart that she knew in her bones was her soulmate's. It was possible many different people just admired her soulmate, people tend to like admiring soft delicate things. And by people, she of course meant goobers. Still... she didn't like that it could also mean they had such a habit of sharing their heart that it was a permanent feature of their life and self. Everybody knows you're supposed to belong to your soulmate first. They're perfect for you, that relationship is The Relationship of your whole life. You could literally get in trouble with the law if you cheated on your soulmate, because that's another person's soul, and you'd have to be cheating with someone else's soulmate, and it's a whole big clusterfuck-y mess.

Then again, she had two other soulmates, so it was probably hypocritical of her to wish this one particular soulmate be more exclusive about who they give their heart to. And if the image itself showed up on her skin without her tattoo also blacking out... she had to imagine it was supposed to be that way.

... She had to trust them. If she didn't... what kind of soulmate does that make her? The rules for who to be soft around don't apply to your soulmates. Like how growing up a street rat stopped mattering the same now that she had a job that she was good at that people needed her smarts for. Like how nobody could steal the experience and expertise she had the way they could steal her stuff.

And of course, no one could steal her soulmate. She wouldn't let them if they were stupid enough to try.

-+-

VR-LA poked his head into DX-TR's room, who waved him inside.

"Just in time for your fitting." They said. VR-LA had already voiced his distaste for how necessary all this was, but if he was going to accumulate enough knowledge, he'd also start accumulating attention from people who didn't want him to have the knowledge he searched for. And that meant he had to be much more careful about who caught sight of his soulmarks, no matter how proud of them he was. It was absolutely not unheard of for powerful individuals to seek to harm others through their soulmate connections, and VR-LA was taking no chances.

"It looks good." E-DN chimed in from the doorway. It did, DX-TR was just as good with the rigging as they were with a sewing needle. A nice jacket and a long pair of pants in the same golden brown color as the clothes the rest of the crew wore. Hardly 19 and he was now an official member of the crew of the Per Aspera.

"Thank you." He said to them both. E-DN nodded and retreated to the kitchen where K-LB was finishing up breakfast and AS-TR was nursing their first ever hangover, an experience VR-LA would like to stay far away from as possible, thank you very much.

He went to his own room for just a bit, and quietly rolled up his new sleeves. Almost as if on cue, he felt a sensation like a tattoo needle on the cuff of his right arm. He held his breath (at least, figuratively) as an image formed beneath the polish, clear and rooted as if someone etched into him and filled the gaps with enamel, but sort of out of reach, like a standee in a snow globe. In the center of the golden sun already marking his arm just above the cluster of bird and squirrel tracks, (he looked it up immediately when they first came in) a pair of eyes -wide and searching- filled with interlocking pathways and miniature images appeared. No hand could possibly be so perfectly deft on another's skin to make the small shapes of a comb, a bundle of berries, a scrap of paper with such clarity, and it took away the breath VR-LA held.

He traced the lashlines, and it settled into his mind that no mechanite had eyes like that. He of course knew that it was unlikely all three of his soulmates would be mechanites, but... something charmed him, to know his first was some variety of organic. Probably not beastkin of any kind judging by the shape, but they could be just about any other variety of being.

I can't wait to meet you, stargazer.

-+-

Kyana dug her nails into her palm as her usual imaginings during meditation were interrupted by the now familiar feeling of another Vice etching itself into her right arm. She was grateful once again for the arm wraps that went all the way up to her shoulders. She could sort of feel the shape of it, and it took up less space than most of her other marks. She couldn't help her curiosity over what it could be, but obviously looking now was out of the question. She remembered sometime ages ago... maybe more than 10 years at this point — she remembered thinking she must just not be all that smart, and that was why she couldn't decipher the mysteries of the images on her skin, but she was pretty sure at this point that they were deliberately obtuse and confusing.

She chose to be optimistic about it and believe that the reason she had so, so many signals all over her skin for just how many things she needed to overcome to mature (and get to leave, she almost didn't believe it the first time she was told higher ranking monks got to do that) was just extra details, extra help so her path forward would be clear as possible. She had to be optimistic about it. She knew and the others knew it wasn't normal to have marks down both arms and one of her legs. The Priors all only had one limb blacked out, and she absolutely noticed Prior Cephram keeping a closer eye on her than most of the others. It was... comforting, in an anxiety inducing way. It meant she cared.

As Kyana scrubbed soap over her skin after dinner, she gazed at her newest mark; down the arm with the books, and the colorful silly-looking rendering that reminded her of both an explosion and clay mushing together at her elbow, and what looked like a golden circular window pointed at the stars— below the band of book spines around her upper arm, a... very strange image took up the previously free space. Wheels and circles and wheels superimposed over one another and stamped loosely to intersect and overlap like some kind of... aberration. All in these different colors that made her brain hurt to look at. It continued floating in her mind as she settled down for bed. She furrowed her brow, wondering what on earth she was supposed to do to avoid or overcome whatever that was. Wondering how she could ever learn to be the best form of herself if she couldn't even understand the seemingly endless list of things she wasn't supposed to be.

-+-

VR-LA stared at the wreckage of what... must have been his life. If only he remembered it. He remembered... people. People like him- mechanites. This ship was too big for just him. He was too small. He was too alone. He clutched the jacket around his shoulders tighter as he wandered the ship. That hole shouldn't be there; he patched it. That pipe shouldn't be making that sound; he did his best to adjust it until it stopped. Those wires shouldn't be exposed; he–

VR-LA crumpled to the floor as this wave of... hollowness overtook him. It made him realize he already felt rather hollow, but that was to be expected when your body and mind wanted memories and company you didn't have. This painful numbness -if pain could be described as numbing or numbness painful- that made some deep, primal part of his soul very, very afraid seized him by the right arm. He pulled his jacket away to see images that he knew should be familiar, because surely they'd been there a long time, but... all he knew is they were going grey and fogging over and it hurt and it hurt and it hurt...

—

Kyana stared down the hole (because really, she hyped it up way too much when she was little) and ran her hands over her arms, leaning more weight into her unmarked leg in her usual nervous tic. A new mark appeared just an hour or two before, and she didn't want to look because she felt it and it was so big and she wanted it gone. She wanted it all to stop. She wanted out of watch duty, she wanted out of meditation, she wanted out of training, she wanted out of this place where people hid around corners and everything felt like a test and these stupid, stupid marks were the things keeping her here. If they would just disappear, if she could just figure out how to sever herself from each and every one of them, but she didn't even know what most of them were supposed to be—

That was it. She didn't even know. And she didn't have to know. She could just... remove herself from them. They didn't have to be her Vices, she didn't have to investigate and agonize over them, maybe that was part of the problem, that the more she thought about them, the more she would succumb to them, maybe...

Kyana closed her eyes, and took a deep breath.

They're not mine. And they don't matter. They aren't part of me.

—

Finbar felt like he might throw up.

He gasped for air as he leaned against the nearest building. A few passerby looked at him strangely as if he was capable of caring. In this moment, his whole self felt like a dislocated limb and it was honestly impossible to notice anything or anyone. He could be in the 20th layer of the abyss for how much he knew about his surroundings and how hellish this felt. Something icy and awful creeped up his leg like a viper intent on tearing into his heart. Every ounce of Finbar wanted his soulmate here with him and away from whatever was trying to take them from him. He wanted to drive whatever it was into the ground, he wanted his soulmate safe, he promised, he promised he would find them, he couldn't just lose them without knowing them, he couldn't––

—

Kyana's breath came slow and cold as she repeated the mantra to herself.

They're not mine. And they don't matter. They aren't part of me.

She didn't bother focusing in on any one Vice like she was plucking them out one by one. She wanted them all gone as soon as she could manage. Each and every line and shape and color (and that's really all they were. She'd been stupid to be so enamored with something scribbled on her skin when she was younger) became clearer to her, not in the usual hot stinging of a new mark, but in an icy, dull sludge-like feeling. This must be how it was supposed to feel. Like... like a cold compress, maybe. That made sense. They talked about 'inner peace' and stuff like that in a lot of lectures. This growing silence and numbness must be what they meant by it.

She felt it, something like a separation in progress. She was on the right track.

They're not mine. And they don't matter. They aren't part of me.

—

Dani woke up screaming.

She clawed at her shoulder and wrestled for control of her voice. The others were waking up, of course they were, she just woke up screaming bloody murder because-... because--

She wound the standard issue ratty bunk blanket in her bed around her, curling up to wrap as much of herself around her left arm as possible. It felt worse than Oto's graphic descriptions of losing a limb to the machines they weren't supposed to stick their hands in and she fucking knew sure as shit he exaggerated those to high hell. This couldn't be exaggerated. Her soulmark blacking out could never, in any plane, in any time, in any way be blown out of proportion. It just couldn't.

She shut her eyes tight, she didn't want to see.

"Dani..?" Instinctively, she knew it had to be Eegan or Roy saying it. She bit down on her tongue and heard Plug making distressed stretching noises. "Dani what happened?"

If she let go of her tongue she might start crying, and she refused to cry, she refused.

"Dani, please?" The other one, whichever wasn't Roy or Eegan the first time.

A hand landed ever so lightly and gingerly on her back right along her left shoulder blade, and she set fire to the blanket.

"DON'T YOU TOUCH THEM!"

God fucking damn it, she was having a complete and utter fucking meltdown, she couldn't be fucking doing this, she needed to fix it, she needed to stop it, she needed to be there, she needed– needed--

"You're supposed to be brave..." She whimpered barely audibly, praying the others hovering near her bunk couldn't hear. "Don't you dare give up on me. Please... I just need more time..."

—

They're not mine. And they don't matter. They aren't part of me.

It was working... it was working, she felt them slipping away from her. Like when...

She remembered the first time she saw the stars and with a sharp pang she registered something in her screaming for her to stop.

Kyana choked and wondered how long she'd just gone without breathing. Her lungs burned and her ears rang high and distressing. Sensation returned to her arms and leg all at once, and it was like every mark coming in simultaneously, crashing into her in this horrible symphony of emotion and drilling aches. Her core juddered and shuddered and filled with lava and she faintly realized as her heartbeat came back to her that she might have been dying.

She broke down and cried.

—

VR-LA didn't realize he'd fainted until he came back to. He stared blankly into the seam between the floor and the wall. He no longer felt like he was being eaten by deadly ice termites from the arm up and he laughed in spite of himself. It was okay now.

Well. More okay than it was looking to be. That counted for something.

He removed his jacket completely and realized there were marks down his left arm as well. They were incredibly different save for the sun on his right arm sort of matching the flaming wrench and smoking scorched patch shaped like a burning hand on his left. If you ignored everything surrounding and folded into those items. He checked both canvases over, and they were both clear and colorful. He ran his fingers over the iridescent starscape on his right arm in repeated motions that caught the flickering light inside the ship, pressing down on the battered quilted squares in repeating patters that inexplicably pinged pleasantly through his mind. It felt calming. He liked it.

—

Finbar didn't know how Elyse of all people found him, but her tea was always perfect, and it settled his nerves as feeling returned to him and a new image branded itself into his leg, just below the clutter of animal tracks he always loved to look at. He was afraid to look, because he knew it had something to do with what just happened, and he wasn't ready.

"Hope you weren't running any important errands." She said flatly. He smiled weakly at her.

"Oh my current supervisor is gonna have my ass, but I can take it."

He didn't notice the way Elyse's hands tensed around her thermos, and in the wake of everything, he forgot for days to check what was added to his third soulmate's mark just an hour before it all happened.

—

Plug wrapped himself anxiously around her middle while Dani glared murderously at the new mark just above the inside of her wrist. She hated it she hated hated hated it. She dimly remembered being unhappy and concerned over the mark with the hearts on her opposite arm and wanted to shove her past self down a hill made of fucking sandpaper for fucking bothering with that shit. She didn't care if it was unreasonable, that the two weren't even remotely connected, that they were years apart, that this clearly wasn't the time to be reminiscing, she didn't care.

A hand brushed the ashes that used to be her blanket off of her bunk.

"Don't worry, I'm not looking." Eegan said softly as he gathered the ashes into a pile. He took them away, and Dani looked around to see the rest of the bunks empty, and the two of them the only ones in the room.

"Roy and Zaxxx shoved everyone out." Eegan explained to her.

"Why didn't you go with them?" Her voice fired out droning and hollow.

"I gotta let them know when you're back to sleep so they can come in again."

"So you're just gonna stand there and stare at me until I pass out?" She raised an eyebrow.

"I was more hoping to bore you to sleep, but I could stare into your soul for a while if that's what you prefer." Dani rolled her eyes and Eegan just smiled his soft little lopsided smile that she heard Roy sigh dreamily at once and refused to stop teasing him for. "I was having the weirdest dream before you woke us all up."

"Oh really?" Dani looked at him like it would put her in actual physical pain to even attempt to care.

"Yeah, there was some Tabaxi dude, I think I got yelled at and bridal carried, it was a whole thing."

"How ever do you expect me to sleep with such a riveting tale?"

"Maybe I missed my true calling as a writer."

Dani sighed and flopped backwards onto her bed. Eegan leaned against the post at the foot of the bed and she brought her left arm back up to her face to glare with contempt. A tiny butterfly with wet wings stretched itself out in a jar next to a broken cocoon.

"You and Roy are so fucking easy." She spat at him, maybe more venomous than she should have. Eegan shifted uncomfortably.

"Maybe. I... worry about it sometimes. Like... maybe it's too easy. And because we found one another when I was like, 17, that we'll burn out on one another and..." He sighed. "I feel guilty sometimes, that we matched so early and now he's just... tied to me. I don't actually know what some of my marks from him even mean. But then I'm scared I might not get the chance to find out because... you know how this city is."

"Not as bad as wherever they're at."

"... No. Not as bad as wherever that is."

Neither of them said anything for a while after that. Plug purred against her torso, pressing his face into her heart to try and comfort her, and eventually Dani pretended to sleep well enough for Eegan to wave everyone else back in. Roy cast a blanket over her, and she felt him pause.

"Be safe." He said, like it was a demand. A demand for whoever just put her through that. She wouldn't deny, she was angry, but she couldn't stay mad at her soulmate. They did just what she asked, after all. Without even needing to hear her. They weren't close enough. But she'd find them.

And then she could burn wherever they were right now to the ground.

—

Kyana must have passed out from exertion because she woke up to the sound of her door closing and someone's arm supporting her weight from beneath her shoulders. She murmured and managed to steady herself.

"Be careful." A soft voice whispered to her.

"Mmh." Kyana nodded faintly.

"Did you not eat or something?" The voice asked, guiding her toward the direction she was pretty sure her bed was in.

"Couldn't..."

"You couldn't eat?" They seemed confounded and Kyana managed to shake her head.

"No, the..." She knew they weren't supposed to talk about it, but she couldn't exactly care about 'supposed to' anymore now. "I couldn't... get rid of the marks..."

The person holding her up slowed to a stop, and Kyana managed to gather together enough consciousness to turn and actually look at them. She recognized this person, the same way she recognized all the other trainees. A person who was around whose name she had to search for if she wanted to actually talk to them.

"I mean... we're probably not at that level yet. We'd need way more training I'd think."

Of course. The word 'soon' was reserved for monster attacks and training sessions and lectures. Not leaving. No wonder it hadn't worked, she really was stupid. She didn't have the wherewithal to speak, so she instead connected her mind to... Ione. That was her name.

'It's too much.'

Ione jumped a little and Kyana felt the surprise through the channel. She learned it was rude to do around the time she was 7 and it just made people confused and upset at her, so she never mind linked with others if she could help it.

'I thought Daeharice was just messing with me, but that really is possible...'

'Sorry. I'm not supposed to.'

Ione gently deposited Kyana onto her bed and Kyana stared at both their shoes.

'Is it... the Vices? Are they really too much for you?'

Kyana curled in on herself, grabbing onto her arms and hiding her right leg behind her left.

'You know how... you could technically lift a boulder 5 times your body weight at any time, but you really shouldn't?'

Ione went, "Mhm," verbally, nodding her head.

'I tried to disconnect from all of them. I thought if I just... stopped thinking of them as mine and blocked all of it from my mind... I wouldn't feel this way anymore.'

Part of Kyana expected Ione to ask what she meant. But she didn't.

'That's not how it works... We only have one way. And it takes longer than that.'

Kyana shrank into herself. Stupid... stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid--

'You're not stupid!'

Kyana finally looked up at Ione.

'I'm sorry, I-' she quickly severed the mind link. "I'm sorry, it's... it's my problem, you've probably got enough on your own plate."

"... Just because it was a bad idea doesn't make you stupid." Ione said. Kyana looked at her like she was insane, because that was something only an insane person could say and mean. "I mean it. You can be the smartest person in the world and still have bad ideas. And you're not stupid, you... it's like you soak up everything like a sponge."

"I can't retain any of it." Kyana remembered all the lectures Prior Cephram gave her over the years about how enthusiasm is useless without discipline. The enthusiasm was kind of all she had.

"You retain all the important parts."

Kyana didn't have much to say to that. She retained the stuff that she had places in her brain for, (monsters, watch schedule, when the next time they'd get to be outdoors was and she could feel less pressure on her chest) but... she needed more places, she needed to improve, becauseif she didn't she'd be stuck here and stuck feeling like this most of her life for forever. That's why she tried to get rid of all these marks. Then she could finally...

Finally what?

"... What do you think it's like out there?" She asked. Ione blinked as she processed the question and furrowed her brow.

"I... well I think it was raining yesterday."

Kyana laughed and Ione hesitated.

"You've seen the mountain range, yeah?" Kyana said. Something in her told her she needed to hang onto the smile on her face.

"I mean, it's one of the only things to see all the way out here." Ione tilted her head, like she was trying to decipher Kyana. Not in the way most people sized her up, like they needed to judge and predict her. Ione just seemed curious and a little confused. Kyana grabbed onto that too.

"I wanna know how long it goes on for. I wanna climb to the top of the tallest peak and..... I dunno! See if I can... drink the stars!"

"Drink the stars?" Ione balked. Kyana laughed again, bubbling and maybe just a bit hysteric.

"I know that's not how stars work, but... but if I could walk on a real actual street with real actual people who aren't monks-- do-... Do you think they don't have to be so careful around their Vices? Do you think... this is really... all there is?"

"... It's all we have."

Kyana was about to nod along, to agree. But...

"Just because it's like this right now... doesn't mean it has to be this way forever."

Ione stared at her with something in her eyes Kyana couldn't quite identify.

"... You just did something really dangerous." Ione said quietly, stepping away. "Especially for you." Kyana bit her lip, she knew Ione didn't mean for that to hurt... "You need rest. I'll cover for you."

Kyana felt some tension in her body snap and she let out a breath. Ione almost closed the door behind her before Kyana managed to say,

"Thank you."

Ione paused, facing out deeper into the hallway. She locked eyes with Kyana one moment longer and nodded.

"Be safe." She said. Like it was a prayer.

Kyana slowly settled down into bed. She slowly unwrapped her arm wraps and gazed passively at the images across her skin. She stared long and hard at her right arm. At the alterations she found there.

A shattered pale blue crystal ball laid beneath her golden star window, which now had... something strange about it. Along with all the other marks that'd been there before. They were... faded and grainy. Not like a thing she could reach and touch anymore, and more like pictures in a story book.

Something clicked.

This all happened before Kyana tried to separate herself out from them all at once. And it only happened to the marks on this arm.

The Vices could change. They didn't just constantly pile up, they evolved. She wasn't sure what it meant, she didn't know what to do with the information just yet, but suddenly the world felt giant and vibrant and she knew she'd been right. It didn't have to be this way, she didn't have to live this way. She stared in awe at her crystal ball (hers hers hers, she had these marks that grew and changed with her, they could mean anything and they were hers) and it was clearer than ever.

She needed to get out.

Chapter Text

First thing upon seeing the mechanical man in the derelict spelljammer, Dani pulled his jacket back up his arms and around his shoulders, letting his soulmarks break up into vague lines and colors rather than actually look at them. He must be at least a little alive if they were any indication, and she wasn't about to have them exposed when he was already so vulnerable. She never needed to... fix a person before. She already knows she needs to be more careful with Plug than anything else she's repaired, and he's a homunculus with the sapience of a slightly temperamental desk fan.

She slips her fingers up under her right sleeve, over the flower she always wanted to ask her soulmate about once she finally found them. She knew this wasn't how it worked, but she still silently asked them to lend her whatever magic softness they possessed.

VR-LA felt a tap-tap-tapping somewhere outside himself. Gears clicked together, belts spun slow and steady, and his eyes zoomed and clicked and dilated into focus. Hot light entered his eyes and overwhelmed his vision as someone's screwdriver tapped against his temple.

"Ah hayre," a young woman with orange skin and dark hair that glowed like magma from within stood in front of him, screwdriver in hand and smelling of more than one variety of smoke. She switched over to common with an ease VR-LA wondered if he should be surprised by. The language she first used seemed... familiar. Ignan! Yes. "Hey, welcome to the world of the living buddy."

She continued to tap at his head, slightly softer this time. A grubby mechanical cat with a sparkplug tail and an unchanging expression that should look vacant but somehow wasn't walked across one of the many overcluttered workbenches sardined into the unfamiliar space.

"Interesting choice of words. But I will take them all the same." He hesitated just a moment, not sure if he was missing something but knowing he'd prefer a little more space. "Why are you... tapping me?"

"Well you, you seemed like you weren't really, y'know, working. So I... I thought 'well maybe if I tapped you with this screwdriver I could figure out what was wrong', and uh... something worked. So... that's science for ya." She smiled lazily with a soft crackly chuckle like firewood, though maybe lazily was an inaccurate descriptor. All her movements were fluid and a little slouchy, and she had dark circles under her eyes clearly tattooed there a while ago. She had some black bands around her neck to match, along with little lined blocks over the back and palm of her ungloved hand. "Trial and error, y'know, you test things out and some things they work, and some things happen to work 'cause they kinda work. I know what I'm talking about."

She seemed confident despite how criss-crossy and vague her explanation just was.

"I know what you're talking about." VR-LA nodded. He began to move to try and get a better bearings on this new space away from his ship. A belt around his torso stopped the motion and he fully processed he of course had to have been wheeled in here, being made of metal. He began undoing the buckle as the fire genesi who awoke him stepped back to lean against one of the tables.

"Oh, cool, you can move."

As he stepped out, just a little wobbly, he realized the jacket he took off after... whatever happened to him, was now back over his very marred and dented arms.

"Great," the mechanic across from him continued speaking, "could you do like uh... like, a wave for me, maybe do..." A smile that belied mischief tugged at the corner of her lip. "The wave?"

VR-LA had no idea what she meant by this, but he raised his hand to do a wave that came to him in the approximate shape of a square. She nodded, her eyes scanning over him.

"Okay good, good, all the joints seem to be functioning correctly." Her scan stopped and she pointed. "What's the big hole in your chest do? 'S been bugging me."

He looked down to the concave outlet in his right side ringed with indentations and a few runes. It occurred to him that none of the vague shapes of mechanites in his memory had something quite like this.

"Ah. Uhm... when you recovered me, did you happen to find... I can best describe it as a glass sphere with arcanic engravings on it."

She blinked as something clicked together in her mind.

"Yeayeayea, there were a bunch that were like smashed up and stuff and you had like, a secret box and there was a... orb in there– you gotta tell me about your ship— actually," her mind flipped and switched between tracks as VR-LA listened. "Is it Your Ship or is it like... up for grabs?" She whispered the last part with a glint in her eye that something intuitive inside VR-LA identified as... hungry almost. In a surprisingly unthreatening way. "D'you need– I- 'cause if you needs it fixed I- I know a guy. Uhhh... it's me. I'm the guy."

"You... you have the ship. You did not just recover me, you recovered the ship as well?" VR-LA leaned forward, tilting his head as something stirred in his chest.

"Yea, you were on the ship."

"May I... May I see it?"

"Yeah! Yeayeayea, c'mon man." She waved him over and they started out of the room and through the cluttersome chaotic scrapyard the workshed was in. VR-LA explained to her the mechanics of his memory spheres, and as he did, something flashed through her eyes. Something like recognition mixed with concern and deep thought, but she seemed to file it away just as quick.

"I remember... liking to view them;" he said, "revisiting them every so often. To hear that many of them are gone and broken is... saddening."

The woman who woke him frowned just slightly, a quiet sympathy in her eyes, and she reached up to give him a firm pat-pat on the arm, bringing his attention to the jacket again.

"Did you..." He paused his question as he realized something. "Forgive me, I don't... remember your name. Do I- have I known your name?"

"Oh, uh, well, probably not. I'm Dani. I do a lot of um... ship stuff."

He nodded. "I am VR-LA." He began to shuffle the jacket down his shoulder in an effort to gesture at his designation, but something like startled concern flashed across Dani's eyes.

"Hey, you sure about that, buddy?" She placed a hand over his.

"Sure about... what? My name?"

"No dude, your soulmark. I mean I know it's 'normal' to have it more visible," she said the word "normal" like it was some kind of disgusting unfortunate thing, "but I don't think you want just any stranger seeing that fresh out of whatever the hell you just went through."

The word 'soulmark' knocked against something in VR-LA's mind. It sounded... really important, and for some reason he associated it with the number 3.

"I... I think I used to know what that meant." Dani's eyes went wide with a mild alarm as he said it. She moved to stand in front of him.

"Alright. There's not really rules about showing or not showing your marks, at least not in Brass and especially not at The Heap, but I would say it is a very very bad idea to take that jacket off until you get soulmarks and soulmates re-explained to you. Capiche?"

VR-LA looked between his jacket and the stern expression on Dani's face. He thought back to the images on his right arm fading grey, dark grey, maybe even black, though he hadn't been conscious for that part if it happened.

"I am inclined to believe you, and the words you are using seem to... slot into the right places in my mind. For lack of a better term. I will wait for a more opportune time to hunt down a refresher."

She appeared satisfied by that, and VR-LA didn't really feel the need to ask if she was the one to replace his jacket anymore. That seemed rather obvious by now.

That same soft frown of sympathy returned to her face as VR-LA stood in front of the Per Aspera and did his best to explain its condition. She clearly cared about the workings and quality of things, and VR-LA couldn't help being a little endeared. He was happy the first person he retained the ability to remember interacting with filled him with this sense of levity and reassurance. It certainly felt nice to fall back on when her boss approached and nigh immediately suggested she 'un-restore' him when he attempted to assert his claim on the ship he knew in his cores had been his home.

"There's a lot of broken things that need attention, so..." She said it, and VR-LA felt safe.

She was the one he went to that evening for an explanation on the soulmarks down his arms.

"The marks are visual signifiers of your soulmates', like, lives and interests and personalities. Marks down both your arms means you have two. They appear on your skin, or I guess plating, because your literal soul is like. Glued to theirs, or like. Like you snap together like a set of magnets. You have to meet, you have to match, and you live with them for forever."

"... That sounds frightening."

It also didn't quite match up with his experiences so far with the marks, or at least not the one on his right arm. He doubted the blacking out was normal. It certainly felt like a thing never meant to happen. Dani, not reading his mind mid-conversation, snorted.

"Your soulmate's not scary. Unless you're into that I guess. They're like... They're supposed to be perfect for you. Like uhh... like they're your most important person, and you're theirs. You're supposed to just... fit. However you're meant to fit against a person, they fit you. And however they're meant to fit against a person, you fit them. It looks like a lotta different things even though romantic soulmates are supposedly The Most Important Kind. I don't buy that kinda bullshit 'cause if they were, we'd only have romantic soulmates, now wouldn't we? If all soulmates have the same effects on your soul, then they're the same amout of important. All soulmates are meant to meet and match, and no one can take your soulmate from you."

VR-LA slid his hand up over his upper arm, pressing on the star-covered squares of his quilting through his jacket and not catching Dani's slight change in demeanor in the latter half of that sentence. He didn't know if Dani was right about the 'no one can take them' part, because 'taken from me' certainly popped into his mind to describe the incident whilst he was in the middle of triaging the ship. He did the same little looping motions with his fingers over the squares, remembering the shimmer. Remembering he still had them now. It felt good, it felt grounding.

"... The notion does sound comforting. To have... two people out there who will find me."

"It's a real privilege having two."

"Is it unusual?"

"Most people just have the one. I happen to have three." A slightly smug prideful smile shone on her face, and VR-LA hummed aloud, happy to see it.

"I take it that's even more rare."

"Like ten times as rare as having two. Or... there's some math-y word for it..."

"Exponentially?"

"Yeah, that's it."

"... You've said 'match', as though it means something specific. What did you mean by it?"

"Oh. You match with a soulmate when you touch your hand that has the mark of them to their mark of you on their arm. Or vise versa. Basically you just gotta hold hands unless you're in some shitty story where one of you runs into the other on accident and your elbows bump together. One of my marks is down my leg, so I guess I'd have to be wearing shorts for it, but no way am I having my legs exposed in this dump, I've already shredded part of a jumpsuit, I'm not having that happen to my skin." She shook her head a little as if to get herself back on track.

"Anyway: when you touch mark-to-mark, a ring appears on your finger in basically the same way the other marks appear. So now you and everyone else knows you've met and you know who's your soulmate." She held a hand up and spread out her fingers to separate them from her ring finger as demonstration. "That's pretty much all there is to it."

"And... you have to stay together forever once this happens?"

"Well, I mean it's not– you don't die just because you're not in close proximity. It's just... your soulmate is your soulmate. You don't just meet them and decide 'Oh cool, let's go our separate ways, you have a nice life.' You like. Y'know. Stick together."

VR-LA wondered what the blacking out had to do with this. Was losing all his memories tantamount to leaving his soulmate before he met them and that's why it happened? But then why would it only affect one of them?

"... I worry... if I have two, surely their lives wouldn't readily match up just so, and... and I'm already... like this. I barely know if I'm... person enough for one soulmate, the way you talk about them. Let alone two. I... should I even have them in the first place?"

"Uh, duh, yeah you should??? All mortal beings do, there'd be something wrong if you didn't. I think some dipshits during that faction war nonsense were like 'Yes, we all have soulmates ~but should we~' as if that fuckin' matters; we all do, stop going up your own ass about it. And you just said you wanted them to find you."

She had him there.

"I did say that. Perhaps I'm being overly reactionary, I just... soulmates are clearly a big deal. I understand that, and I know I understood that before as well. So I... wish to handle it with care, and consider everything."

Dani nodded to him.

"Speaking of... handling things with care," He continued. "Is it really so concerning for my marks to be visible?"

"Oh, I mean..." He demeanor changed and her hands that so far swayed with her step and shuffled and jumped with the flow of her sentences began fidgeting in her lap. "Not really? I just– I don't like people knowing more shit about me than I want them to know, and you just woke up from... All That like, less than 24 hours ago, so I kinda... I mean, obviously there's nothing saying you have to have them covered or uncovered, it's just... I wouldn't want that. And... better safe than sorry, so... jacket."

A warmth bloomed in his chest. He tugged in little repeated motions at the bottom hem of the jacket, feeling it stretch around his shoulders. It felt tailor made just for him, and he realized with a bittersweet stickiness that gummed up his gears such a thing could very well be the case. And she gave that potentially-tailor-made jacket to him again because she wanted him safe.

"I like it. I think I will follow your lead."

She smiled at him and VR-LA decided whatever came before the Per Aspera and whatever the future held for himself –and these soulmates he was apparently bound to meet and bond with– didn't need to worry him in the face of his first friend smiling at him that way.

-+-

Dani took quite the liking to VR-LA. He was fun, even if he wasn't obvious about it, and that was the best kind of fun.

He ended up sort of attaching himself to her, which was a wise decision on his part, though Zaxxx or Eegan would be the wisest. His choice was better than fucking Mandy, that's for sure. She started sleeping in the ship, partially because she regularly passed out working on it without rest anyway and partially because she felt VR-LA could use the company. She sometimes missed being nearer to Roy, Eegan, and Zaxxx, and having Sadie's soft little lullabies she sang herself. But... strangely, sleeping on the Per Aspera was the best sleep she could ever recall getting in her life. If she ever wanted to sound like a crazy person, she'd tell anyone who asked that it felt like sleeping with a purpose. She wasn't just staving off debilitating exhaustion when she passed out, she was doing all she could on this project and keeping someone else company who really needed it at the same time.

"... Dani? May I ask you something... perhaps strange? After which I have something else to tell you, but it is of a... different flavor, so to speak."

Dani tilted her head, welding together a crack between the wall and metabolic ether tank. "How strange?"

"From my understanding, incredibly."

That certainly warranted full attention.

"Sure man, shoot." She pulled her goggles back up and turned to him over her shoulder.

"A soulmate is... a person you belong with, and who belongs with you in turn. A mutual weaving together of souls with great magical, cultural, and personal importance."

Dani nodded. "Yea..."

"What does it mean... if a soulmark were to... begin to black out?"

Dani's whole body tensed and the welding torch in her hand flared. A silence like spilt steel spread over them.

"Why are you asking me that?"

"I... I simply wish to know because... it's the only other notable thing that happened to me before you found me and the ship."

Dani slowly set the blowtorch down and turned to fully face him.

"You... both your marks were colored when I found you." Surely he wouldn't be this calm and shit if that kind of thing happened anytime in the last 12 hours. Had it happened like last week and she just never noticed? Fuck, that's probably exactly what happened.

"That is... part of the second thing, but that is for later. The blacking out was... temporary. Which is what confuses me. I didn't see the mark until after it started blacking out, so... I don't know if that's simply what happens when a new mark is added, but... I would suspect it's not." Something dark creeped into his tone and Dani knew it in her soul.

"... It means your soulmate was dying. Or... something else. Maybe they got resurrected, maybe they made some deal with a fae, I doubt it had anything to do with devils, that shit's usually final. Whatever happened to them, it was bad. It wasn't just your average run of the mill near death experience, something was affecting them on a soul level that would've removed them from your arm entirely." The silence only got half a moment before Dani lost any ability to bear it. "You said you had another thing to tell me?"

"Oh. Yes, I was... going through the memory spheres in that basket you found in my secret compartment. One of them was a considerable chunk of information regarding Sylvanis, which I found odd until in the memory I saw myself looking down to my leg, and I found..." He tugged up the hem of his pant leg and Dani bit her tongue at the sight of a shield with carvings of trees and little family houses and polished small people surrounding a center with what Sadie told her once was the holy symbol for Sylvanis.

"I think," VR-LA said with that smooth, light whatever-it-was that let Dani know he was about to say something cheeky, "it would be fun to start a club."

Dani laughed. "Guess there's a reason I took such a liking to you."

VR-LA made the little hum that Dani knew meant a smile. He seemed content to sit in this moment with her a bit, which was good because she needed time to construct a real top notch segue.

"Now, would ourrr hypothetical club be for exponentially unlikely numbers of soulmates or: for this?" She rolled up the sleeve on her right arm and turned it to show the matching shield.

VR-LA's eyes widened. You would expect a robot with no movable facial features to be less expressive, but VR-LA's entire body screamed whatever he was feeling, and if you paid attention to his eyes, you could see the way the lenses telescoped and the hoods of them shifted around to make his thoughts loud and clear.

"That is... I-I know having a soulmate in common doesn't automatically make you and I... mutually special to one another, but... I'm glad... that... you appear to be shaping up to be a fixture in my life."

Dani felt her ears heat up and her hair glow hotter and she reclaimed her blowtorch from the floor.

"Yeah well if I can get this ship up and running, we can go be fixtures in whoever's life together. Surprise them or some shit with two soulmates at once."

"You don't think that would be... overwhelming?"

"Oh it would, they're delicate. But probably not so delicate that they'd dissolve into nothing over something like that."

"How do you know they are delicate?"

Dani kicked the blowtorch back up, raising her voice to be heard. "The flower! And then the hearts and the pixie apron. All their marks are light and kinda fluttery, even the shield, it's got all that delicate carving work. They're definitely not from Brass, that's for sure."

"I had never thought of it that way. Though, admittedly, I've only given about one and a half days of thought to it in total." He paused. "What about the star storm? And the dish?"

Dani slowed her blowtorch-ing.

"I don't know. I never thought about the stars like a storm. And the soup mark... changed a couple years after I got it. It used to be... sketchy and pastel and shit. Now it... looks like that."

'Like that' being surrounded in a border like a portrait illustration, the colors turned uneven and bleeding into one another like watercolors and the lines taking on this ephemeral thickness Dani could only describe as final. A soulmark is never something trivial, so for an existing mark to actively change was nothing short of A Big Fucking Deal. She brushed a hand over her right leg absentmindedly, and wondered what happened to her least-thought-about soulmate. It wasn't that she cared about them less just because they showed up the latest, just... Dani was a very Out of Sight: Out of Mind kind of person, and she had way more opportinuties to think about her other two soulmates both before and after her third appeared on her leg. She discovered the most recent change in their mark weeks after it actually happened, since apparently it coincided with...

"Dani?" When did VR-LA get closer? She shut off the blowtorch again, looking up to see she'd already sealed the crack between the wall and the tank fully on autopilot. Go her.

"Yeah, yeah, sorry, were you uh, saying something?"

"Not really, you just... I've become familiar these past weeks with zoning the fuck out. And thought you might appreciate a... zone-in."

Dani let out her patented half a laugh. "Yeah. Yeah, thanks."

-+-

Dani zipped to and fro on the ship as VR-LA piloted it on its first ever test run. Oto was blissfully absent, so none of his prodding about if Dani 'should' be operating this way or that with 'such a valuable asset'. (on the condition that they not test the planeshift lest they disappear into the astral sea with "His Ship") The Sea of Fire lapped at the keel and the arcane lacquer held firm.

She started up, and now she's flying, she started up and now she's flying, she started up and now my ship is flying!

A maybe-crazed smile took up residence over Dani's entire face, and she barreled up to the helm to see VR-LA squinting against the compouned light from the sky and fire sea. Wimp behavior.

"How's it feel being pilot of the coolest vessel in all of Brass?" She said, leaning against the back of his chair.

"It feels..." He flinched slightly with a soft hiss, bringing up his left arm. The ship wibbled slightly, but didn't wobble, which Dani would've taken as a win if not for the searing drill sensation over her skin on her right shin. "Well I guess right now it feels startlingly painful."

Dani shook out her leg as her mark filled out and watched VR-LA pull up the sleeve on his left arm. She knew it was probably rude to watch, but VR-LA didn't make a move to hide the mark etching itself into the little rounded cuff on his arm, so she figured he forfeited. Forming there, she saw most of a golden circle with uneven spokes trailing out into a long line, then a familiar sail. Her eyes went wide as an angle of the hull of the Per Aspera filled out in warm shimmering detail on his arm. The two of them stood in silence and the entire ship drifted to a stop.

"VR-LA... Did you ever show me your left arm before?"

"I... I presumed you saw it when you returned my jacket to me."

"I mean I saw the colors and the fire..." Orange. Fire. If she looked to the area around VR-LA's mark of the Per Aspera, she found a patchwork of brass bolts and rivets and inseams. "But... but that doesn't make sense, I... we would've matched when I touched it if--" Her hand went to her thigh. To the now-faded ring of books there, the silly putty explosion over her knee that she always thought looked so fun and so stupid, the colorshifted wheels over wheels, the porthole to the stars...

The shattered orb that she got only months ago.

"VR-LA... do you know... how long you were asleep floating out in the middle of nowhere for?"

"No." He said softly as they locked eyes. "You never told me about... your other two soulmates. May I... May I ask what their marks look like?"

"... I...I'm pretty sure with all these stars all over my skin, fixing this beauty was inevitable, all my marks have stars on them somewhere. Down my leg there's... some weird wheel thing that's... sorta like a bad stamp job? My favorite part is the giant explosion. And... a few months ago, a shattered glass ball thing made all the marks... weird and fade-y."

She heard something like a smaller spool in VR-LA's throat straining. A breath catch for someone without lungs.

"Most recently though.... well, that one's a mystery since it appeared about the same time as that did," she pointed to the image of the Per Aspera on VR-LA's arm, "and in all this jabbering, I haven't exactly gotten the chance to.... check."

They both stared at the mark on VR-LA's arm before VR-LA went through the motions of a deep breath.

"May I see? It... seems like an equivalent exchange that you see my new mark and I see yours."

"Yeah... yeayeayea..." She tapped her heel against the ground a moment before kneeling down and untucking the leg of her jumpsuit from her boot. It felt almost out-of-body as she pulled away the fabric to find a garland of wispy blueish smoke dancing in a loose wobble around the outside of the porthole pointing at the stars. The bolts and metal weren't so grainy and faded anymore, and they glowed like the blueish fire at the base of a lighter. It created this strange visual where most everything else on her leg looked like an old capture, but the firey window and shattered memory orb stood out as if elevated above them. "Huh."

"I know that window." He slid from the helm to kneel next to Dani, getting a closer look. "It's the one in my room. Or- the room you found me in."

"You sleep there, it's basically your room."

VR-LA's left hand slowly drifted toward the image, but he hesitated.

"I... this can't be a coincidence..." He said with a tension Dani couldn't quite understand.

"Doesn't seem like one." She looked up to him. His eyes barely appeared to process anything. They floated around, landing repeatedly on Dani's leg before buzzing back away like an ashmoth around a patch of shade.

"... Would you accept me? Like this?"

"What are you talking about? I mean as far as we know you're like. Definitely my soulmate. And I liked you before we knew that anyway."

"Being a friend and being a soulmate are clearly very different things. I... if we were to confirm that my soul is bound to yours and I'm just..." He stared at the section of his mark visible on Dani's leg. "If I'm not even completely a person anymore. I... I don't want someone getting a damaged soulmate just because we stumbled upon one another at the wrong time."

Dani studied her definitely-soulmate-but-for-now-newest-friend as the silence wrapped around them. She thought about what Eegan said all those months ago, how he worried he and Roy would fuck up their entire bond just because they matched at the wrong time. How she still didn't get that, but apparently VR-LA thought it too. Timing is important in shit like steel forging and avoiding the cops, but a soulmate is a soulmate. You find them, you match with them, you support and work shit out with them. That's how it works. And here was the one she gave the least preemptive thought to telling her he wasn't a person yet like that's something you start and finish. Fuckin' dumbass.

"If I accepted you as my friend, I'm definitely accepting you as my soulmate. They're kind of the same thing if you squint."

VR-LA stared quizzically at her for a bit, then moved his eyes away and to the floor.

"... I'm scared."

Dani sighed. "Yeah. Soulmate stuff is... intense."

"Does... does anything... does everything just change? What happens, when the rings appear? What happens after they're there? What happens to the both of us?"

Dani shrugged. "We live together now. Not like... like we don't get a fuckin' house or something, I just mean... we ah... we know we're together now. We... nothing changes-changes. I just... instead of being together-on-the-ship with my buddy VR-LA... I'm on our ship. With my soulmate, VR-LA."

The words formed this... uncomfortable weight in her chest. She knew it was true... but she was also starting to actually get what VR-LA meant when he said he was scared about this stuff. That would not do.

"Unless you're too chicken to be stuck with me for longer than a few seasons."

VR-LA's eyes smiled and his shoulders relaxed just the littlest bit.

"... Let's find out." He reached for her and touched his fingers to the center of the window with its swirling wreath of fire lights. Dani sucked in a soft breath as that same familiar sensation wrapped itself gradually around her ankle. She scrambled to wedge her boot off so she could watch as, back to front, a brass band appeared across her ankle to match the one forming on VR-LA's ring finger. A blue inlay ran in a straight line all the way around, coming together at the front into a golden bolt glowing with the heat from the bright blue sphere inside it sparking with lightning. It was art. More and different than those stupid romance books she could vaguely remember skimming when she was younger and just learning to read. It almost didn't look like it was tattooed into her skin. It was real. So so real.

"Woah..."

VR-LA drifted his hand down to hold his ring and her new ankle bracelet next to one another.

"I didn't think it would scale so well."

"I mean... I'd say 'I coulda told you that' but I... couldn't really."

VR-LA laughed, just softly.

"Hey VR-LA?"

"Yes?"

"We should probably turn this thing around before Oto thinks we're flying off with it."

"Oh. Yes. You are right."

-+-

Dani and VR-LA looked at one another, then back out to the packed docks of Sigil. Oto told them there was a new crew member joining them here, but... he didn't actually relay much else of use. A Firbolg chef named Finbar, waiting for them 'at the docks'. So helpful. At least they were unlikely to lose him once they found him.

"Should we split up?" VR-LA asked.

"Sounds like a good idea. Just like. Yell really loud if you find him."

The sounds of the shipyard buzzed pleasantly over Dani. She knew this guy was supposed to be part of the chef's guild, but she didn't actually know what guildsmen from the Searing Tongue dressed like. Her stomach grumbled and she realized she skipped breakfast again. Hopefully this guy wouldn't mind putting his cooking skills to use immediately rather than later. VR-LA weaved though the shiphands and shipwrights and merchants and all other manner of person to be at the dock of Sigil, tuning out the noise and keeping his eyes up to about Firbolg height. He wondered sometimes what he'd do without Dani fixing the apparent module installed in his ears to dampen loud noise. Probably almost never leave the ship and fall into an awful irritability, no wonder he got it in the first place... whenever that was. He rubbed little circles into the ring finger on his left hand where the lightning met the heated hexagonal bolt, humming fondly to himself.

In his moment of distraction, he practically walked straight into a man wearing a cloak of leaves and various pieces of adventuring gear.

"Woah there, you okay friend?" He spoke with a slow easy drawl and reached a hand to VR-LA in an offer to steady him, which VR-LA didn't bother to take as he regained his balance.

"I- Yes, apologies, I... sometimes stop processing what is going on around me in places where... Everything Is Going On." He tilted his head back to properly look the man in the face and registered that with his size and those ears, he was certainly Firbolg. But they were looking for a cook, not an adventurer. "Um... if you aren't busy with something, could I trouble you with a question?"

"What is it you need to know Mr. Robot?"

"Uh, VR-LA." He did his usual little wave. "I am VR-LA. Hello. My assoulcia-- assoul– associate and I are looking for a member of the Searing Tongue to take on our ship, called Finbar. Might you know of him?"

"You could say that."

VR-LA cocked his head to the side, attempting to glean an insight into what in the plane of fire that meant. The adventurer's expression was easy and friendly, but just the slightest bit mischievous, as if he was in on a joke no one else was. It reminded VR-LA a little bit of Dani to be honest.

"What else could you say?" VR-LA knew that with Dani, not asking questions and waiting to see her latest game play out was the only course of action that kept one sane, but he was curious to see how someone who wasn't her handled further probing. The man in front of him, for his part, smiled a little wider. VR-LA counted that as a success.

"I guess you could say I've known him all my life and that he's a damn good cook."

"Really?"

"Absolutely. He wouldn't'a had a chance at graduating if he wasn't."

"As I would expect of a guild member. Have you seen him recently? Do you know where I could find him?"

"I just saw him this morning as I was leaving. He should be right where he needs to be."

VR-LA tilted his head further,  filing that comment away. "You live together?"

"I don't really have my own place at the moment, so."

"You're close with him, then?"

"Always."

"Are you related by chance?"

"Not exactly."

"Soulmates, then?"

The man barked out a laugh.

"Not at all. But third time's the charm. Would you like one more guess?"

VR-LA squinted, humming thoughtfully to himself. It sounded like the game was almost over, and he was determined to finish strong. This adventurer talked around Finbar's actual location, and he never actually gave any physical descriptors, which VR-LA supposed was a little his own fault for not asking, but it did seem noteworthy nonetheless. You'd think he'd try and confirm the Finbar VR-LA was talking about when he brought up the name; 'About 5 feet tall, dark circles tattooed under her eyes, looks like she could dismantle anything that whirrs in the space of two unnerving clacking noises, that Dani?'

If this Firbolg wasn't related to Finbar, and wasn't soulmates with him, then...

"You, Finbar of the Searing Tongue, are incredibly curious."

He laughed warmly and held out his right hand a second time for a shake.

"Finbar Broussard DuChasse at your service Mister VR-LA."

VR-LA, despite being made of actual metal, couldn't help feeling like a wobbly noodle by comparison when he placed his much smaller hand into Finbar's gauntlet to shake.

"So, where's that ship I'll be working on for the foreseeable future?"

-+-

"The two of you always have long sleeves." Finbar said over dinner about a week or so into coming on the ship.

"Yea." Dani said through a mouthful of noodles and bean sprouts drenched in chili oil. Finbar wasn't quite sure yet how to cook around her habit of adding spice to everything so she wasn't missing out on the actual taste of her food. He knew he would eventually, he was determined to with her, but for now she seemed content with any food regardless. She loudly slurped from her bowl and swallowed, picking up her drink. "VR-LA here's always had the jacket, I started doing it to dodge cops easier."

"Dodge them... Easier how?"

"There's not many people with two soulmarks down their arms, so if someone just tells them that, it's way harder to disappear."

"Oh." Finbar thought back to the very few occasions in which he had to dodge cops. His main solution had been Firbolg magics; it never occurred to him to take his soulmarks into account. "You... do that often?"

"Yeah. Why, you a narc?"

Dani was indeed a puzzle. One he refused to give up on.

VR-LA let his eyes drift to the partially visible mark in Finbar's left arm as they went on. He almost always dressed ready for a fight, so most of it was always covered. It never particularly occurred to VR-LA to look closely the past few days, but his eyes froze on an image of a shattered orb and a familiar faded grain overlaid atop the visible bits and bobs of the mark.

The other two looked to him as his fork clattered to the table. Not that he'd really been using it much, he had a bet going with Dani for how long they could convince Finbar VR-LA didn't eat.

"VR-LA?"

"You alright there?"

"I... you... Dani and I actually have that in common. Multiple soulmates, I mean. What about you, Finbar?"

Dani blinked at him, a slight crease appearing between her eyebrows. He did his best to convey with his eyes that This Was Important, and she boggled at him like she followed but did not believe where it was going. The two of them always considered their  shared soulmate to be... so unlike the person Finbar had been over the week. Still, he was from the feywild like the weed just below the flurry of stars. He kept pixies, and of course was a cook to match the apron and the soup. His cloak of leaves matched the nature motif across the marks, and he even carried a shield with him.

"I happen to have three." Finbar said with a smile very close to the one he gave VR-LA when they first met, an extra touch of pride across it. The game was afoot.

"For real?" Dani raised an eyebrow.

"Yep. I knew there'd be three when the first mark appeared down my leg. How 'bout you two?"

"Oh, I first thought I only had the two." VR-LA half-truth'd. "I also have three. One of them in common with Dani."

Dani smirked subtly to VR-LA (or at least as subtly as VR-LA ever saw her do anything) before giving her own answer.

"He suggested we start a club when we found out we both have three entire soulmates. You wanna join?"

VR-LA felt a sense of satisfaction as Fibar's eyebrows raised. Whatever he expected from the conversation, they already succeeded in catching him off-guard.

"Is there an initiation ritual I've gotta go through?"

"There is." Dani jumped at the opportunity. "VR-LA here showed me one of his marks when he told me, and he knows one of mine, so you are required to share one with the both of us."

"Oh, that's all?" He leaned back an inch or two in his chair. "I mean I would have both of these uncovered if the gear didn't get in the way. But I guess if that's the initiation."

VR-LA and Dani shared a look as he uncovered more of the mark with VR-LA's memory orb and blazing star window and inexplicable explosion. Finbar held his arm out and turned it to give them full view of the mark.

"Say Dani..." VR-LA said quietly. "Doesn't that... look a lot like one of your marks?"

"Oh yeah. Exactly. Wild."

Finbar's eyebrows scrunched up like his train of thought got snagged and he muttered softly to himself before it appeared to click.

"You happen to have met them yet?" He asked Dani with a hopeful glimmer in his eye.

"Oh yeah, VR-LA's great." Dani answered, an impish smile across her face. Finbar blinked repeatedly and turned to VR-LA, who smiled and waved with his left hand, flaunting his match ring for Dani.

"It took us much longer to find out than you'd expect, and of course Dani's matching mark isn't as readily visible. When one of your marks is down your legs, you can go quite some time without knowing you're in proximity to one of your own soulmates."

Finbar smiled at him a moment then seemed to get tangled up in thoughts.

"But I thought..." He glanced to Dani and scrunched his eyebrows further. Dani began chuckling to herself and continued eating.

"I actually have an image of the Per Aspera down this arm." VR-LA continued, pulling his jacket off one shoulder to properly display Dani's mark. Finbar's eyes turned the size of saucers and he appeared even more confused. Dani laughed out loud.

Some of Finbar's pixies came around to console him as he criss-crossed his lines and straightened everything out in his mind. Once he established something resembling a flow chart in his mind, he pouted.

"I knew you would be smarter than me." He pointed to VR-LA. "But I wasn't expecting you two to know eachother and both be in on being smarter than me."

Dani snickered to herself and proceeded to finish off her plate.

"I apologize for yanking your proverbial chain." Said VR-LA. "To be honest, both of us were expecting you to be... much different."

"Different how?"

"We'll show ya after dinner. Pass whatever the fuck that veggie n' whatever stuff is. And also the pepper."

Finbar huffed with a soft smile and did just that, making sure to pass the pepper with the salt. They were soulmates after all, it's very rude to separate them.

-+-

Finbar gazed at the two rings around his fingers in the light of the astral auroras. VR-LA was busy piloting, and Dani was either tinkering or passed out inside of the engine room. The first two days he thought it was a fluke, but even only a week in, he knew her actual room was just a formality. The two of them were... interesting. He never really endeavored to assume what his soulmates would be like beyond the surface things he thought for sure were true. VR-LA was smart, Dani was a city person who liked machines, his first soulmate... had a lot going on. He believed they'd more than likely have a sunny disposition.

They both really pulled one over on him over dinner. He knew the two of them must know something he didn't when it started, he just didn't expect that something to be that they both shared him as a soulmate. He knew one of them must be his soulmate when he first laid eyes on the ship. And if not one of them, then somebody else where the ship was from. The city and all of the brass gears immediately made sense when they visited The Heap to introduce him to Oto. The more he got to know Dani, the more he felt it had to be her on his arm. He had no clue why she was on the list of 'people whose souls knit tightly against his' but he was perfectly happy to find out through his time on the ship and all the time they spent together.

Over his right ring finger, a band that looked like masterful leatherwork came together in lovely simple metal filigree nesting an amber gem. On his left, a cool silver ring with a matching silver four pointed star almost glimmered in the starlight. He smiled to himself. He started worrying about VR-LA last year, after... after his short tea party with Elyse. He did his best not to feel guilty about stressing so much over his first soulmate that he didn't notice a change in another. When he did notice, he looked over Dani's mark again and again to make sure hers hadn't gone and decided to change when he wasn't looking too. He chalked it up to coincidence, but he still didn't like something broken showing up across one of his soulmates' marks. He knew, of course, that broken things were just a part of living, but... he couldn't help it. He spent what felt like so much of his life without any soulmates, and then one of them has something awful happen to them when he's not there to help them. He didn't want to ask just yet, but he wanted to know soon. To help a little better.

He reached down and ran a hand over where he knew his first soulmark rested still. He sent a prayer up to Sylvanis to take care of them while he took care of the soulmates he had near him now. The stars glimmered in the water and he hoped wherever they were, the stars loved them back as much as they clearly loved them.

-+-

Kyana ran from the Senobium. She ran from her Prior. She ran from the hole. She ran from her Vices or maybe she was running towards them or maybe with them or against them, she didn't know, she just knew the time for running was right now. She plunged through the pool of stars and her life evaporated off her skin, replaced with something like water and something like light. She couldn't quite breathe as she somersaulted through space, but she kicked her legs out and swam in any direction resembling further.

She broke the surface before she knew it and infinity sparkled around her.

So, so many stars...

Her heart thrummed so loud and joyous she almost didn't know what to do with herself. Her gaze swept down to where the warter rippled around her and held onto the powdery stars and smooth singing auroras. Slowly, she cupped the water in her hands. It glimmered and shone clear. She brought it to her lips and it disappeared down her throat with a coolness and clarity she never tasted before. She let out a huff of breath, then gently eased herself onto her back. Just floating there.

It all felt so right.

This sea of stars with auroras cresting across space and time.

Nothing clung or stung. Nothing dripped or gripped. Nothing could take her or shake her. It felt like home.

It felt like home.

-+-

Dani failed to bundle her liquid slinky of a cat efficiently into her arms as Finbar ushered her out of the kitchen and all the way up onto the deck. She would say getting her all the way to the top deck was a bit unnecessary, but the soup did almost go down in the collective scramble to get Plug under control. The chill of the Astral Sea air reminded her of why she gravitated into the kitchen in the first place and she pouted at her now-upside-down cat as he continued to squirm and twist for freedom. Finbar's next words took her completely off guard.

"What... in Sylvanis's great name is goin' on out he– alright– I think we got someone overboard guys."

"Wuh? But everyone's..." Well, it's perfectly possible not everyone's. "VR-LA, ARE YOU STILL ON THE SHIP?" She called to the bubble at the helm as Finbar pointed out in the direction of the overboarded party.

"Yes!" VR-LA called back. "What is this about someone being over board?"

"There's, there's a creature- a person... somethin' maybe," Finbar said. "I dunno what's out there. But there's something out there."

"I don't see it!" VR-LA helpfully supplied. Dani heard Finbar sigh softly in that way she became familiar with in the past two months.

"Okay. It's moving towards us, so just slow down a little bit or turn a... a little bit..." He started trying to physically signal which direction to go in to intercept the slightly iridescent sort of golden shape of a person out in the water. Probably about... 120 feet out? The wheels began turning in Dani's mind, and she tossed Plug to the ground, trusting him to land on his feet.

"We could, we could probably like... pull them in. Like we do with the anchor? Hold on. I have an idea." She paid no mind to Finbar's two-parts-alarmed one-part-intrigued expression as she quickly made her way to the railing, pulling out the crossbow she hardly got to use and tying some of the rope she had on her to one of the bolts.

"Dani..." VR-LA's voice came out with a sort of lamented disbelief. "Dani, I see what you're doing... Do not do that."

"Nah, nahnahnah." She waved her hand. "If they've been swimming out here, they probably can catch anything, right?"

Finbar came up beside her, pulling out that silvery sickle he used when their deliveries went particularly wrong.

"We'll see. If you hit them... if they get hurt, we'll be able to keep 'em up. Just be careful with that thing." He said with the gentle practicality that made her like him so much.

"Heheh. I'm not gonna do that."

The figure was nearly within range by now. Real athletic blonde probably-girl with tan skin and clothes that shimmered in the starlight. They waved and called up with a bright voice like the flash off a pocket watch and the slide of new socks on hard wood.

"Hey!! Thanks for slowing down!!!" The perfect position.

"HEY!" Dani yelled back. "CATCH!!" And fired the crossbow bolt. Just before it could pierce their chest, the hand they'd just been using to wave grabbed onto the crossbow bolt like it was natural. Excellent, maximum efficiency. Dani began pulling her in, and the Pixies in Finbar's coat all joined in, swarming down and tugging the young woman at the end of the rope along. Or... attempting to. She seemed charmed by their gumption.

Finbar started pulling as well, but around when their stranger was 10 feet from the ship, he paused and muttered to himself.

"Oh... oh no."

One hand on the rope, he reached under his apron to slip his gauntlet on the other, then in one swift motion yanked on the rope to pull her up.

"There's something in the water."

Dani readied herself for a fight. In a blur of force and motion, the girl splashed out of the water, throwing a dart that passed clean through its target below the surface. Something dark and wibbly and definitely not friendly. How the hell had Dani- well, no, she missed a lot of obvious shit the first pass. Just as quick, a kick of energy burst from the girl and two spiney clawed arms glowed golden as they reached from her shoulders, punching down at the monsters. By Finbar's tone, he seemed to take this as a challenge.

"We'll see about those arms." He said lightly. His sickle glowed red like a tired sun as he shot forth a thorn whip, forcibly dragging one of the monsters moaning and screeching out of the water. Dani decided an eldritch canon would be an excellent way to help and summoned one to cling to the ship's railing. She managed to fire it off before the creature let out a sound like nails on a chalkboard if the chalkboard was your sanity. She felt her skull split and her ears rang high and hard enough to bleed.

God, the enemy... enemy... on the ship-- She Let Her On The Ship–!

"Agh! Ow..." The stranger's treacherously chipper voice came through the manic buzzing in Dani's brain as she registered the haymaker to the shoulder she just clocked the former with.

"Dani, what're you doin' over there?" Finbar's voice soothed something going all jumpy in her, but she couldn't just ignore the clear and obvious danger in front of them.

"The enemy is on the ship!!" She hissed emphatically.

"Are we attacking... the person?" VR-LA sounded confused. "Or the... weird creepy spirit thing?"

The world felt like a headache as combat continued on. The smell of ozone crackled briefly past her. She fired a scorching ray into the creepy spirit thing. Finbar ended up on the sidelong mast in the scuffle. Somehow, the enemies evaporated and got the fuck out of her head, and she could get a grip on herself.

Dani watched as the girl she just punched in a magic effect induced frenzy reached out a glowing golden arm to help Finbar back onto the deck. He looked like he just got hit by a trolley. He flopped down on his back and the girl from the sea hovered over him.

"You good?" She asked.

"I uh... I'm very hungry, I think." He answered, and Dani smiled. By Dani's estimation, Finbar was allergic to admitting to being tired or beat up or any other variety of those things, but he never missed an opportunity to bring up food as a solution to... anything. She ran her fingers over his pixie apron and whatever that dish enshrined in watercolors was as he and their new guest managed to get walking below decks. Dani sidled up to the girl of the hour.

"I uh... I'm sorry I punched you in the face earlier," It was her face, wasn't it? "I don't know why I did that. Hi, my name's Dani."

"Oh! Hi, Kyana!" She smiled like nothing in the world could possibly go wrong. "Don't worry about the punching, or the crossbow bolt. It's all good."

"Nice."

"Honestly, I've had worse welcomes in my own home, from people I've known for decades, so don't worry about it. It's completely fine."

"Well that's ominous." Because it was. It was incredibly ominous.

"What?" Her complete lack of awareness was both endearing and concerning, so Dani made the executive decision to pull a Finbar and steer the conversation to food.

"Shall we go eat some soup?"

"Yeah, yeah let's do the soup. Soup sounds good."

-+-

VR-LA was liking this trip quite well. Dani hadn't exploded the box, Finbar still had no clue VR-LA was perfectly capable of eating, and Kyana was by far his favorite stranger he met since working on the ship. Something about the wide eyed sparkling energy she brought to something simple as stargazing... just watching her made him happy.

He silently soaked in the sound of Dani speaking Ignan. He had absolutely no clue what she and the Fire Newts were saying, but they accepted the package (even though Dani was visibly frustrated that they did not actually open it enough for her to see inside) and things seemed to be going well until he heard a voice from a ways behind.

"Kyana?"

The Kyana in question immediately tensed, along with all of the Fire Newts. She turned and VR-LA followed her gaze to see another human in similar clothes to her and about the same age approaching. The tension left Kyana as she recognized her.

"Oh my gosh," She smiled brightly, taking a few steps toward the other monk and actively ignoring the Fire Newts' continued hostility. "Hi, I didn't know we could go here! How are you?"

VR-LA thought it was very endearing, but the other monk didn't seem to.

"We?? I don't... I'm not here for fun. They sent me here to find you."

"Oh..." Kyana wilted, and VR-LA saw a puddle of water (or what he thought was a puddle of water) rise up and elongate into a strange tentacle creature with a barely-there simplistic face at one end. It locked its focus onto Kyana as its handler spoke again.

"They said you... fled? That you're a defector?" She didn't seem sure of her own words, like repeating back something you don't understand.

"Defector?" Kyana sounded genuinely and purely baffled. "That's... huh... Huh. I wouldn't think about it that way... actually all that phrasing is kinda weirdly hostile, now that I-"

"I'm supposed to bring you home." The other monk said firmly.

"Oh. That's. Uh..." Kyana brought her hands up to grab onto her forearms and tapped her right foot against the ground behind her left as she pulled in a breath through her teeth. "Ohhh this is awkward– I... super do not want to do that." She slumped. "I'm really sorry. I know I'm disappointing everyone, it's just, like... I... I-I just- I couldn't stay there. Y'know? Not forever."

More harsh Ignan chattered behind VR-LA, and he heard weapons readying.

"I can't go back there without you."

"Wh- says who?"

"Says... You don't--" Her eyes darted to the oozy reflective monster staring down Kyana. "You don't understand." The words sounded like ash. "I know you left for a reason. But you need to come back with me. Now. Okay?"

"I... I'm really sorry. I can't. I can't go back to that."

"You think you can run away?"

"Yes!" Kyana gestured around herself as though that were obvious.

"How long do you think you've been gone? We found you right now. Where are you gonna go?"

"Anywhere! Everywhere! The world is huge! Did you know?" Kyana leaned towards her, a begging lilt in her voice.

The other monk shook her head, unmoved. "No. I've never left. Like you. But... when you left..." Her composure slipped. "Things... got... worse."

VR-LA heard more skittish motion behind them.

"You need to come back. We need- we need to just go back to how it was. You need to come back."

Kyana didn't understand.

"I cannot do that. I can't go back to how it was." Why did they want her back so badly? Why was Ione acting this way? She didn't really know her, but... she seemed different back then, in that moment months ago. "How could I make things worse? It's just one of me. There's so many of everybody else, and they don't even-..." She glanced in the direction of these people who picked her up and fought with her and fed her and took her to this beautiful amazing vibrant city. She just found them, she just made friends with them, she didn't want them learn about her marks like this. "I didn't even think they'd notice I was gone..."

"That's not how they see it."

The girl's arm's lit with psionic energy and VR-LA's hand went to his staff. Their second fight in one day and they hadn't even caused any explosions about it. He couldn't help but chuckle to himself softly as Dani said in a much heavier accent than usual, "Will someone PLEASE just tell me WHAT'S IN THE FUCKING BOX?!"

Sandwiched between whatever kind of soap opera Kyana and this other monk were in the thick of and a group of armed warriors who did not look in the mood to chat anymore, VR-LA felt a deeply unpleasant buzz in his cores and moved about as far away as he could from the highest concentration of congregating combatants. He clicked the button on his Staff of the Clockwork Swarm to telescope it out to its full length, and turned to Kyana.

"Do you wish for me to attack them?" Nodding to the other monk and her monster.

"I-... I mean..." Kyana looked between the crew, her old associate, and the Incredibly Armed Fire Newts with an anguished expression. "I don't like any of this..."

VR-LA decided it would be best to hold onto his horses. Dani had no such reservations, summoning a patch of grease beneath the monk. She clearly came from the same background as Kyana, because it didn't remotely faze her as she rebalanced herself and lowered her center of gravity. As it happened, Finbar briefly said something to the Fire Newts, whispered something about eggs to Dani, then put himself between Kyana and this stranger.

"She ain't going nowhere."

Very quickly VR-LA got caught up in the aggressions of Oto's clientele. His jacket nearly burned up completely in a gout of fire. Absorb Elements came in mighty handy to keep it from becoming charcoal, and he compulsively tugged at its hem as he cast the spell. In the chaos, he saw the monk say something to Kyana before punching her and sweeping Kyana's legs from beneath her. The whirring buzzing energy within the Clockwork Staff spun forth from its end and a burst of mechanical wasps, beetles, and locusts swallowed the area the two of them fought in.

"I know you don't want to come. I know it's harder for you. I'll help you, if that's what you need. Believe me, it'll all be easier for everyone."

Kyana almost had time to properly process it and the emotions the statement gave rise to in her, but then the slithery slime creature made an attempt at her face and she was back in combat mode.

Dani promptly loosed a funnel of flames down the way that nearly had Kyana out of the fight as the mechanical insects VR-LA unleashed on the area went after the slithery slime tracker creature. She didn't know how, but Finbar was at her side now, slashing his sickle through the monster before turning to Kyana and speaking in a calm, gentle voice very incongruous with the current combat:

"I'm so sorry about Dani."

The name reverberated and the air went quiet and cool like late twilight. Kyana's next breath came with a rush of vitality as the burns and bruises soothed away on the breeze. She only got the one breath before one of the fire guys turned the air scorching again. It was a bad time. She rolled to her feet and grabbed one of the healing potions she kept for emergencies, downing the full vial in a single swig and not taking the time to feel the effects wind out from her throat and stomach to the rest of her. She locked eyes with Ione within the swarm cloud and bit her lip briefly.

"I'm really sorry."

They traded blows, psionic feedback kicking up and vibrating the air. Ione tried to stun her, but in managing to avoid the stun, Kyana felt the 'Krack!' Of a punch destined to knock her completely unconscious. The sounds of the mechanical bugs fluttered away, and the glow from her astral arms flickered out as she collapsed.

The memory of being quietly walked to bed echoed through her mind. She head Finbar's voice again. That sensation of healing night air that she realized reminded her of the Astral Sea. Ione's hand on her back quickly retreated, but a not-so-old prayer remained.

"Be safe."

The slash of a blade woke her the rest of the way up and she hissed in pain, watching the newts retreat and seeing the remains of Ione's slime creature scattered in gooey chunks throughout Dani's grease patch. Distantly she heard that very same Dani realizing they hadn't been paid for the delivery. This was far more chaos than she was used to, and overall? Not her favorite day.

That didn't mean it wasn't up there, though.

She pushed herself to her feet and Ione simply looked at her. All the other monks were always better than Kyana at the whole stoic composure thing, and even in her clearly frazzled under-pressure state, Ione kept whatever was swirling around inside her in.

"Your tracker thing's gone." Kyana said. "Alright? You can say you lost me. It'll be fine."

It had to be fine. It didn't make sense otherwise.

"You think that's the only tool they have?" Kyana's heart sank. "If I say I lost you, I'll just be the next thing they use to find you."

Neither of them knew where to go. Ione tried halfheartedly to stun Finbar out of the fight. VR-LA cautiously moved closer. Dani decided her priority was dealing with the payment from the newts. Kyana was just tired. Finbar gently pushed Ione back.

"This is your chance to go." He said. Ione didn't even hear him. Kyana knew those eyes. Ione was trapped. She was trapped and she didn't even have to be.

Kyana threw a few more punches. Ione dodged some of them, Kyana missed some of them. They slowed to an exhausted stop, and Ione cast her gaze down at the remains of the slithering tracker.

"... You were one of the lucky ones... I was one of the lucky ones."

"You could run away."

Ione almost scoffed. "And if they found me again?"

"... You could come, too..." Kyana took a step closer. "It cannot be that hard to run away." She thought a moment longer. "I- I mean it was, but now we're out."

Ione continued staring at the puddle with this hollow, mournful look on her face.

"When you left, they were... furious? In whatever way they can be. They took some of the monks." She pressed her lips together. Kyana waited with an awful feeling in her stomach. "I don't know what happened to them. But then they brought..."

She gestured weakly to the remains of her monster.

What could Kyana even say?

Ione finally lifed her head to gaze listlessly out at the city.

"I can't go back."

"I would not reccomend going back, all things considered." Kyana offered something resembling a concerned smile. Ione slowly started pulling herself back to the immediate area.

"I can't stay here though..." She looked around at the crew of the Per Aspera, then finally looked Kyana in the face. "Maybe um... I dunno. Keep moving; keep them covered; is the best advice I can give you."

"Yeah..." Kyana bounced her right heel behind her left.

"I know... I got lucky that I found you here. I don't know if they'll get lucky again."

"I hope not?" Kyana tried offering a smile, but it didn't seem right. "I mean... it's a big world out there. I don't think they'll be able to find you if you make it too hard for them."

"It's my only hope, that."

Hope's not in short supply then.

"Good luck, whatever way you decide to make it..." Ione said, looking off into some other direction again.

"You too."

"I just need distance from all of that."

"Yeah. Yeah, that sounds like the healthy way to do this, quite frankly..." Kyana took a deep breath and pulled her smile back from where it'd been hiding. She felt better for it. "If it helps, today has done nothing but reaffirm my decision to leave, so."

Ione almost smiled back. A hidden ghost of a grin.

"Yeah. In a sick way maybe... it was all for the best."

"Maybe."

"Just um... look over your shoulder, alright?"

"You too." Kyana said. Like it was a prayer.

Finbar saw the shame and upset written all over this poor girl as she looked around at the rest of the crew, then just... turned around, ready to wander through Sigil after never once leaving some horrible place he couldn't imagine the details of.

"Wait." He couldn't let that slide. Not right in front of him.

Something warm and safe bloomed in Kyana's chest as she watched Finbar reach out to Ione and take care of her before she left. Ione stayed quiet and shell shocked as she accepted and agreed to head to the docks.

"Thank you. You've been..." She huffed out some bitter-ish disbelieving puff of air. "I just tried to kill all of you."

"Seemed like your hands were tied." Finbar reassured her without hesitation.

"Is that not normal?" It didn't even occur to Kyana that deadly combat wasn't an omnipresent possibility from anyone anywhere all the time. "Frankly this is the longest most involved conversation we've ever had, so... Y'know. Outside world; fresh air."

That got a chuckle out of her. Kyana could swear she saw the memory of their last encounter appear in her eyes.

"Yeah... who knew being turned on eachother would be the way we officially made a real connection." Her face faded into something tired and distant. Kyana tapped her fingers against her wrists.

"... The stars... taste like... home."

Ione blinked at her and -for just a flash- she smiled. Silently, she turned and left, disappearing around a corner.

"Great news, guys!" The tension popped and fizzled away under Dani's voice. "We still got paid!"

Kyana turned to see her scooping waywayrd coins back into the bag the Fire Newts threw over the gate. They shimmered and clinked, and the visual was so novel to Kyana.

"That is quite literally the most money I have ever seen."

Everyone went about collecting themselves, and Finbar suggested stopping by someplace to rest. They talked like she was staying. They included her.

"Thanks for that, by the way." Kyana said. It wasn't everything she wanted to say. It wasn't everything she felt. "I don't think it would've been good if I had to go 'Oh, I need a place to move! Anyway, thanks for the lift I guess I'll find a different place to move'."

She caught some after shock of All The Nonsense and let out this exhausted noise.

"I suppose, formally," VR-LA spoke up, "at this point you've fought with us. It would be rather imprudent of us to just let you go on your merry way. If you'll have us."

"I mean, to be fair," Kyana smiled, a touch of nerves lingering. "The reason why I fought with you is because, uh, two people came hunting Me, Specicially. So, it still kinda balances out to being my fault."

The attention was on Kyana, so VR-LA, Dani, and Finbar didn't notice the little physical reactions they each gave as something new etched onto their limbs. Kyana was too wrapped up in trying to explain herself properly to hear the click of Dani's tongue and the soft puff of air from Finbar's throat and the almost-urgent way VR-LA's hand went to his wrist.

"I would absolutely love to hang out on your ship and have a great view of the stars for the rest of my life... uhm... thank you very much..."

Chapter Text

"Hey!"

Kyana blinked, startled, from her spot on the comfy comfy couch. A buggish figure like a praying mantis had just poured the entire contents of their drink over VR-LA's head, who seemed perfectly unbothered and unfazed. Unlike Dani whose face took the shape of sparking offense. VR-LA gently clinked his goblet of jubilation up against his faceplate, and Kyana followed suit, relaxing into the taste of it and the way it bubbled and shimmered in her stomach.

"You guys think you're a bunch a' funny tough guys, don'tcha?" Dani stomped one of her boots on top of the table, no doubt leaving a charcoal-and-grease covered footprint on the wood. Kyana scooched herself a little deeper into the comfy comfy couch. Dani could probably take lead on this one, she seemed to know how to handle people.

Kyana quickly changed her mind a bit when more of them appeared and they once again deliberately went to antagonize VR-LA. Dani simmered as one of them went to shove VR-LA in the chest before leaving.

"VR-LA," Kyana leaned over to him quietly, watching the group go. "I have a very important question."

"Yes." He turned to her, still appearing for all the world like he wasn't even aware he had a body, let alone one that'd just been doused in someone else's alcohol after being put through the wringer on her behalf.

"Do you want me to go punch that guy? 'Cause I can go punch that guy if y'want me to."

"If that would make you feel better, feel free to, but..."

"No no, I'm good, I've got this drink and this drink is really nice. But like, y'know."

He leaned a little more towards her in his own mechanical way. "I have the suspicion that given in a place like this, there is... somewhat of an aversion to mechanites and... I suppose things of mechanical nature. It does not phase me."

Kyana glanced around at the decor functionally devoid of all metal save for the hinges on the doors.

"People are just afraid of the future, man." Dani frowned confidently.

"Well, not necessarily..." VR-LA attempted to placate her.

"They're afraid of the shit that's real." She grumbled, still quite unhappy. Maybe she should try some jubilation.

"They also mentioned a war, which I am unfamiliar with..."

"Yeah, I didn't know about that either," Kyana slowly brought her cup back to her lips as if to hide preemptively. "But I was hoping somebody else would explain and I wouldn't have to ask....."

"... I suppose," said VR-LA, "that they could be referring to the more philosophical cosmic war waged between Good and Evil and Law and Chaos respectively. And, seeing as this is a feywild bar, it wouldn't be uncommon for mortals siding themselves with chaos to frequent this establishment and find one they assume to be aligned with the lawful planes... unwelcome."

Kyana blinked and nodded as if she understood.

"Well, the offer still stands." She said.

Approximately 20 seconds later she was making good on that promise with the help of a particularly spicy omlette.

-+-

"So these're the members of the new crew you've been running with?" Elyse looked around between Dani, VR-LA, and Kyana. Dani retained her post over the unconscious body of the thri-kreen they just collectively totally owned as Finbar introduced them.

"We got Dani over here. Wiz with anything that isn't nature."

"Sup." She waved to Elyse, casually shifting the weight of her ballista in her hands.

"And then we got the robot over here, VR-LA."

"Hello. I am VR-LA."

"Also real smart. I have the feeling y'all would get along real well, and I'm not just saying that 'cause you were there when I got my first mark for him."

Dani and VR-LA turned to eachother, then to Finbar and back again, both their eyes exchanging identical emotional information. Elyse, for her part, also seemed surprised. Not any of the other things running through Dani's head, but surprised.

"You met one of them?"

"Two, actually." Finbar nodded to Dani and she suddenly felt more flustered than she could ever remember feeling. She really should've expected this, and yet here she was, hair wisping slightly from the feeling of being publically pointed out as someone else's soulmate. It felt so different from introducing Finbar to the others at the Heap and she couldn't really imagine why. Was this what Finbar had felt? He seemed way more composed at the time.

Elyse whistled. "Holy shit. Two out of three and you never think to drop the news by me?"

"I'm dropping it now." Finbar smiled at her playfully and something about it... pinged something in Dani. She drew her eyebrows together into a puckered scrunch.

The feeling didn't quite go away as they walked down the roads to wherever this djini (ugh) Elyse was working for lived. Dani saw the two of them just... acting like that. Like they had history. Which they must if she was there for the first mark he ever got from VR-LA. Something..... something felt, and she wasn't quite sure what.

"Hey uh, Dani?" Kyana came as a welcome distraction. She leaned over to Dani as the group shuffled around in the flow of traffic, her voice whispery. "What was it Finbar was talkin' about with you and VR-LA being two out of three?"

Dani blinked at her. If she didn't already have a very clear and firm impression of Kyana from the last 10 hours, Dani would 100% think she was fucking with her.

"We're, ah, both Finbar's soulmates. All three of us have three, actually. You never seen anyone with more than one?"

"Soul mates..." Kyana turned the word over in her mouth like it was brand new and Dani felt that same ominous sensation that she got when Kyana told her about having worse greetings than getting shot at and punched by someone who hadn't learned her name.

"Yeah. Did they... didn't they teach you soulmate stuff in that hole you grew up in?"

"Am I supposed to know it?"

Dani was officially distracted from the unidentifiable feeling she got from Elyse and Finbar now.

"Also I didn't grow up in the hole, I grew up, like. Around it. And very close to it. All of the time. This is much better." Kyana smiled as though she didn't just functionally admit to not knowing anything about soulmates. If someone told Dani when she explained this to VR-LA that she'd be put in a position to explain it again to some completely different stranger without memory loss, she would not have believed them.

"I... yes I would think everyone everywhere is supposed to know."

Kyana straightened.

"Why? Is it like, not a rare thing?"

"Uhhh, I mean, Finbar, VR-LA, and me are in a pretty rare situation. It's uncommon but kinda normal to have two soulmates, but you'd have to go looking to find someone with 3. But I mean, everyone's got at least one. I think I heard once about someone somewhere sometime who had five, which is Actually Insane."

"There is a record of someone having 7 approximately 300 years ago." VR-LA nearly made Dani jump, hopping into the conversation.

"Seven soul mates?" Kyana's eyes grew wider. "Seven people who... who're like... mated to your... soul..???"

VR-LA's nonexistant eyebrows raised, and he glanced over to Dani. She confirmed his suspicions.

"That is a literal interpretation, yes. What... how familiar are you with the purpose of the marks on your arm?"

Kyana's step faltered and she crossted her arms in front of her, grabbing onto her elbows.

"I..." She sped back up. "Maybe we talk about something else. Like how you all found out you're soul mates."

Dani shared a concerned look with VR-LA.

"Are we telling stories, now?" Finbar turned over his shoulder from where he was next to Elyse.

"If you are, you better keep it short, we're almost there." Elyse said.

"Now you know no good story is a short story, Elyse."

"Then I guess you'll be telling bad ones, you've got plenty."

Dani felt a pang of that same uncomfortable... something. She didn't get this. Elyse seemed perfectly normal and chill. Finbar clearly trusted her. He was older than Dani and VR-LA (at least she and VR-LA assumed VR-LA was younger than him) so of course he'd have a lot of history with different people she didn't know about. Obviously.

Dani ran her finger over her match ring as Kyana scuttled further forward to ask after a supposed bad story from Finbar. It didn't really soothe whatever this intrusive feeling was, but it felt clear to her in the moment that whatever it was, she didn't actually want it, it was just there. She'd get rid of it. Sometime. She's great at troubleshooting.

-+-

"Kyana, would you like to helm? You seemed interested in this sort of thing back at Hira's."

VR-LA would be the first to admit he wasn't only doing this out of everyday friendliness. He'd been thinking quite a bit about the new mark on his arm he'd yet to check. That and perhaps if he had Kyana alone a moment at the helm, he might be able to probe just a little into... whatever was going on with her lack of knowledge around soulmates.

He was immediately distracted from this goal when she sat down at the helm and the ship sped up back to its original speed. Which it should not be doing with any noncaster at the helm.

"Curious... are you certain that you have no spellcasting abilities?"

"Uhm... pretty sure! It's mostly punches and kicks and stuff."

"Interesting... Are they... magical kicks..?"

"Uumm... the kicks, not so much." She thought a moment longer. "The arms might be magic. It looks pretty magic, y'know, if you squint. I haven't seen that much magic though, so who knows."

Like a pinball, Kyana's statement knocked against his initial purpose for bringing her here, then to the image of her astral arms. Arms with no marks on them. Considering monks of her level would be using psionics, they had to come from and be an extension of her.

"... Kyana... I don't mean to overstep, seeing as we've only known one another a day, but... Do you hide your arms deliberately? Is there a reason for it?"

Kyana looked immediately thrown off balance.

"Oh, uh... I do, it's a... it's a monk thing... I assume you're not always covering yours then?"

"Oh, well... I mostly do it out of habit. Dani is the one who introduced me to the idea. Finbar's the only one out of the three of us that doesn't actively cover his soulmarks."

"Soul marks. That's... that's what you call them?"

"Yes." A dubious sense of relief settled into VR-LA. Perhaps the Prime Material was so far removed from the actual planescape, they straight up had different words for these things; hence Kyana's initial confusion. Hopefully that was the case. "I'm very curious, what do they call them on the Prime Material?"

"Oh, well... I mean... the way you talk about them... it almost makes our word sound... kinda ominous, I guess."

"Ominous?"

"Yeah, they're uh... they're called 'Vices' where I'm from. I... I'm not really sure where that disconnect is, but then again I didn't really... get out much before yesterday."

VR-LA's brief relief gave way to more concerned anxiety.

"I see. And um... might I ask why you cover these 'Vices'?"

"Well, at the monastery, it was partially to keep us from looking at other people's marks, since that's their business and getting all up in someone else's business is the exact opposite of what you're supposed to do if you're gonna be, like, improving yourself. But I mean... I guess I just assumed you guys also did it 'cause that's like. Personal. Y'know?"

"It... it is."

"... Does it have something to do with soul mates?"

"It- yes, it's everything to do with soulmates."

He'd heard of monks forswearing material possessions and frivolous connections, but... this seemed... Wrong. Very wrong.

"Oh. How?"

"They're... The marks on your arm are meant to tell you about your soulmate. Or soulmates, in Dani, Finbar, and I's case."

"They... How do you know? How do you know they're for soul mates? How do you know they're your soul mates?"

VR-LA held his left hand out to her to show her Dani's ring. "We touched, and this appeared. Well, most specifically, because her mark for me is around her leg, it took us a little longer than it otherwise would've since you need to touch mark to mark."

"She has a mark down her leg?" Kyana leaned toward VR-LA, eyes wide and searching.

"Yes, it... it comes with the territory of having three soulmates. Each mark on each limb corresponds to one. Therefore all three of us do. Though I somehow doubt our third soulmates match as well. The situation we are in already is so improbable."

Kyana looked up at him with this... shell shocked look on her face. Then leaned back into the helmsman's chair, staring off into the middle distance. VR-LA reached over gingerly with his outstretched left hand to rest it on her right shoulder.

"It's... a lot to take in if you're hearing it for the first time, I know." Even though he wasn't sure why this particular reaction was happening.

"... Why... why does it... happen? Why are people... attached to your soul like that?"

"That's a big philosophical question. All everyone can collectively agree on are the observable facts of things. People are born with connections to one another, and those connections are either some metaphysical cosmic gravity drawing them to seek out and find one another, or are simply inevitabilities removed from time based upon coincidences of compatibility and proximity. They find eachother, and they now have something that's assuredly theirs and someone to be an assurance for."

"... What if there's not an assurance?"

"... There are cases... where a connection dies for one reason or another. It's... deeply unpleasant to say the least." VR-LA's hand went automatically from Kyana's shoulder to the patch of stars beneath his coat, pressing down in those usual patterns that calmed and distracted him.

"... Do you die too when that happens?"

"It feels like dying."

VR-LA didn't mean to say that out loud.

"I- I mean to say... Your soulmate is a piece of your soul, and you are a piece of theirs. If one soulmate dies, it's not entirely uncommon for such a thing to kill the other."

The ship jarred and VR-LA stumbled for his footing. Kyana reached out to him but trailed away before they could touch. The intercom bling'd on and Dani's voice scrackled into the dome.

"Please do not tell me we have another problem today already."

"No it's- everything's fine." VR-LA said. "Kyana's just getting used to the controls."

"Oh. Okay. You better be careful with my ship."

"Can do!" Kyana chirped, and VR-LA was struck with an uncanny disquiet at it. The intercom light fizzled off and a silence stretched over the two of them.

"Maybe... talking while driving isn't the best idea." Kyana said.

"Yes, perhaps." Even though all VR-LA wanted was to interrogate her further. "Would you like to keep the wheel? You seem a natural at it."

Kyana smiled small and soft.

"If you're okay with it."

"Absolutely. I'll leave you to it."

"Okay."

As VR-LA was just about to exit the dome, he heard Kyana hesitantly calling back to him.

"And take care of them... it's important."

VR-LA paused a moment longer and Kyana kept her eyes on the figurative stardust road.

"I always will."

-+-

The ship jarred, and Dani knew For A Fact that shit should not be happening. She untangled Plug from her arms and bapped a hand against the intercom. She only had it set up for shipwide broadcasting, and she wondered if maybe with the addition of a fourth crew member (who VR-LA apparently trusted to pilot, which was good because it meant Dani had more time to spend in the engine room) it would actually be useful to outfit a routing system. Could be fun.

Now that Plug was handled, though, Dani had time to roll up her sleeve and check over the mark on her left arm. She ignored the knotting in her stomach as she pulled the fabric back from the place on her forearm where she felt the newest mark.

The butterfly was out of the jar.

It rested on top now, wings closed and still a little wrinkly and accordioned. They were an ashen dead leaf kinda color and shape, and not very fancy looking. Camouflage. Dani pulled her sleeve back down and took a deep breath. They were safe. Her soulmate was hiding somewhere and they were safe.

-+-

Kyana stared out at the disappearing silhouette of the newly-heartless dead god on the ocean, running her hands back and forth over her forearms. Over... her soul marks. Kyana was well acquainted with the feeling of letting others down at this point. Of not being right for people and places. But this... this was so much worse.

She supposed she should be angry. Angry no one told her any of this stuff about soul mates. Suspicious about the way the priors reacted, about seeing for herself what happened to the monks Ione called unlucky. It was in there. Burning and boiling somewhere very close. She wanted to just throw it out. The Cenobium shouldn't matter anymore. Soon, they'd give up searching for her and... maybe it would all work out over there. She didn't much care what happened there anymore. She liked the astral sea and the Per Aspera so much better. If she could just stay in a life like this, she shouldn't need this betrayed anxious feeling twisting her throat and churning her gut.

But what did she do with everything else?

A squiggly popping 'mrrroooow' got her attention, and she saw Plug approaching. He almost seemed suspicious of her, but Kyana made the sound decision to believe that was the guilt talking. She crouched down and reached out to pet him. He didn't flinch away, but he did pause to sniff her hand. She scratched him behind the ears, getting small flecks of rust underneath her fingernails.

I must be on their skin, too.

What must they think of her? Did she really have three? Was VR-LA right or just mistaken somehow? That wouldn't make sense, he's soul mates with Dani and Finbar both, the three of them know what they're talking about. Maybe she could ask them.

She paused her pets in the middle of Plug's slinky accordion burlap, and he looked up at her.

I'll have to meet them eventually... if I don't die first, I guess.

Kyana turned her head back out towards the ocean and remembered all those petitioners she saw as she and VR-LA were switching out. She wondered how many stars clustering and reflecting off the horizon were actually people. How many of them died and took a soulmate with them. How many knew before they left that they'd be hurting someone by leaving.

Kyana didn't want to cry.

She went back to giving her full attention to Plug, letting the waves and the songs of the sea quiet her thoughts into a heavy blanket to calm the emotions and put them to sleep.

-+-

Dani couldn't help tensing her right arm as Finbar Kept Taking Damage. Her spectral gear spun faster with arcane energy as she instinctively reached through hammerspace for her flame canon only to remember they were In Hell and opting for the force ballistae instead. It occurred to her her particular specialties had probably reached the upper limit of their usefulness already. She leaned a little to the side to look around the guy whose spear was still sparking against her swirling shield.

"Kyana, I hope you got this!" She yelled over the noise of the train and the fight.

"What?"

Dani fired.

"You guys got this, right?" She said, climbing up through the hole in the ceiling with the spring in her step Finbar's Longstrider gave her without actually waiting for an answer. The wind fanned her hair into a bright hot amber whipping off into glowing embers that trailed behind her as she ran over the roof. She jumped down to the coupling between cars and glanced over into the next car over, less well lit and filled with crates and boxes.

That looks like storage. Dani smiled to herself.

A crackling flash went off in the car she just left followed by a slightly less crackly slightly less flashy flash, and Dani turned to check up on Kyana and Finbar. A blue glowing orb like one of VR-LA's data spheres perched on top of one of the benches and smoked and sparked slightly with residual spell energy; the same kind crackling around Finbar. Somehow the others had managed to work their way through a few more of the devils, but Dani didn't like how Finbar was looking no matter how chill he seemed to be about it. She rolled her shoulder and her canon skittered up to perch on her arm, then fired a blast that shattered the little window in the door, catching the devil nearest to Finbar in the shoulder and hopefully giving it a nasty concussion. Her eyes bounced back to Finbar and an idea fired all the circuits in her brain. She mashed her palm into the pocket she kept her spell components in. Slightly rusted iron filings stuck to her palm and she locked eyes with him.

"Fuck 'em up!" She yelled through the sharp new opening in the glass as she circled her thumb over her palm then turned it out, fingers spread, in Finbar's direction. He approximately doubled in size, but Dani didn't have much time to revel as two arrows shot through the opposite pane of glass behind her. One thunked against the car, but the other tagged her shoulder. She refused to lose concentration on a spell she Just Cast and her goggles shimmered around the edges as she hung on. The devils very rudely did not become intimidated by Finbar's extra dimensions and continued going after what was left of his consciousness. He hit the floor of the traincar, taking a few of the benches with him. Dani sucked in a breath as one of them attempted to stab into him while he was down only for one of the now-housecat-sized pixies to manage a deflect. Dani took the opening and with another volley of raw force shattered the bearded devil's skull. Even better than a concussion. It slumped headless to the ground.

Dani heard the sound of the devils that just shot her through the window approaching from the other car. She breathed in the heat and smoke. They got in quick, they just needed to get out quick.

"Kyana! You got Finbar, or do I get Finbar?"

"I got 'im!" Kyana's voice bobbed and weaved as she danced around the remaining devil. "Just gotta kill this guy first!"

Dani trusted Kyana's speed, she just carried Dani at the same pace as a locomotive. Dani made the executive decision to bound up on top of this next car instead of attempting to barrel through it, dashing across the roof as the train's momentum slowed to a stop from her earlier decoupling. She whipped her head over her shoulder to see the two gleaming baby masks staring her down and smiled. Her smile widened when she saw VR-LA drop from the Per Aspera behind them. Even better than she hoped for.

She felt something like a cold pang but worse up her arm, and from the way VR-LA lost his balance and fell to one knee, he felt it too. Dani planted one foot half an inch from the edge of the traincar and fired at the creature menacing the soulmate she could see. The blast knocked it clean off the roof, and the recoil sent her somersaulting down to the next car. Thankfully, this one didn't have a proper door to knock her head into, nor did it seem to have any more enemies. She propped herself up against one of the hell rides housed in the open section of the car and curled up around her right arm, taking deep breaths. She just... needed a second to shake it off. Kyana was there, this wasn't near as bad. Finbar was fine.

Kyana nearly started hyperventilating and actively pretended that the familiar pang of numbness in her left arm was just the poison. They could hate her, they could let go of her back, they had every right to. She couldn't be panicking over a soul mate right now, she needed to help Finbar, she couldn't let Dani down. She couldn't let the three of them down.

She knew pouring a healing potion directly into someone's bloodstream was a risk, but she also knew it made it take effect far faster and she did not like the look of those wounds. She fully understood why Finbar hadn't been jazzed about coming here, it was like the whole plane was against him specifically.

VR-LA's mind went a little blank. He was quite sure he cast shield on reflex, and he managed to get ahold of himself just enough to telescope out his staff and swallow the foes in front of him in mechanical insects. The static-y chill that just ran up his leg soothed itself away, and through the residual scree of the train wheels, he heard Kyana talking to Finbar. Kyana appeared in a blink, standing a bit ahead of VR-LA and astral arms glowing.

"Are you okay?" She asked with those same eyes.

"I am okay~" He smiled, dusting himself off. Finbar was okay, Dani seemed to be managing, Kyana was right where he could see her.

Dani took one last deep breath as she checked the leather ring around her finger. Still the same lines and colors, not going anywhere. She threw herself to her feet and hustled to the caboose, where the fuel to these hell rides was sure to be.

She found boxes, but more attention grabbing was the Gith chained to the back wall.

"Well you're not fuel." She said, somehow having the presence of mind to say it in Gith.

"Nnno." They gave her a bewildered look she was very familiar with at this point in her life. "I am not fuel. Who, might I ask, are you?"

He seemed very chill for an obvious prisoner.

"Uhh, I'm Dani. Me and my friends are robbing this train to steal little coins-- the fuel pellets. You haven't seen any around, have you?"

"I- ah-" He blinked. "I am sorry, when the train stopped, I assumed I was to be killed, then when someone else opened the door I thought it was -perhaps- to be rescued. I was not expecting to be asked... directions." He shook his head as he caught up with himself. "What? Are you looking for?"

"They're like, fuel pellets for those bikes that are outside. Yknow?"

"The soul coins?"

"Is that what they're called?"

"I- I think I know, it doesn't look like you're sure?"

"I'm sorry, Gith isn't my first language, I might just be forgetting the word. Is- Do you know where soul coins might be on this train?"

He looked at her in silence for a moment, then glanced upward.

"Cut me down, I will help you how I can."

Dani shrugged. "Alright." She walked up and aimed a firebolt at one of the chains. He introduced himself as Enoch once she managed to loose him completely. She heard the sound of VR-LA's distinctly metal footsteps approaching up through the last car, and it finally caught her eye as Enoch went about retrieving his stuff that the soulmark up his arm was completely blacked out. She hoped that wasn't recent. His clothes didn't have any sleeves on them to cover it up either.

"Hey, didja find the soul coins?" She leaned out the door to VR-LA.

"The What?" She heard Finbar a little further down.

Dani sort of assumed as Finbar obliged her desire for the flamethrower and spare hellride in the traincar that it was at least partially a way of apologizing for nearly dying on her and VR-LA not five minutes ago. So the kiss on the forehead they both got before he filed himself into the kitchen to revive Enoch a little more blindsided her a bit. Kyana looked between the door to the kitchen and VR-LA a few times. VR-LA (oblivious) simply looked at the door, awaiting Finbar's signal.

"You got some pretty good heat tolerance for someone not from a fire based plane." Dani said to her. That snapped her out of it a bit.

"Oh. Y'know, it's all about keeping a cool head and stuff. Staying centered, all that jazz. You can get through anything if you keep it together. Or at least that's worked so far."

"You are very adaptable." VR-LA said.

"Ehhhhh..." Kyana looked to the side. "Maybe!"

"I would say you are at least very good at rolling with the punches."

"Thanks." She smiled. There was a lull before she spoke again. "I... I hope it... didn't hurt. When... 'cause I- I wanted to be faster and I just..."

"Don't worry about it." Dani waved her off. "It comes with the territory. I'm surprised we haven't felt it before, to be honest; he's been an adventurer for like, how many years by now?"

"I do not know." VR-LA said. "We should ask him."

Finbar called them all into the kitchen and Dani went at her food with particular 'voracity'.

-+-

"... How did you... let them go?"

Kyana couldn't keep herself from asking. She was so used to the higher level monks in her life being... harder. Than Enoch. She only intended to ask after the Cenobium, just to verify... anything, really. About the way she was raised and the people who raised her. Hoping to find something new. Even comforting. It took him maybe five minutes to give her more than she ever could've hoped for. As he explained to her what he saw, this separate energy within her, she thought back. As she did, she pinpointed... something like an echo through a tunnel. The first night she saw the stars... it felt like harmonizing. Emerging in the Astral Sea and dreaming of this place, it suddenly struck her how fast and sure the word 'home' appeared in her heart. As if someone else had it ready and written down to give to her.

She thought to the sound of needing to stop.

He said he invited her to consider what she'd been taught. To observe and learn. He said there were similarities across monastic traditions. Judging by his own mark, letting go of soulmates was truly a monk thing. Maybe the difference was the Cenobium thought they'd be easier to let go of if you had no clue they were connecting you to another person. Maybe she was missing something. Maybe the hurting wasn't the rule, and VR-LA's experience with it wasn't representative. Maybe she could let them go easier this time, and they'd be okay without her.

Enoch looked down to his arm and took a moment before looking back to Kyana.

"I don't know that I could ever be said to have had them in the first place." He said with that same lulling roll to his voice. "It was some time ago by now. I never got to meet them, but... all losses can be accommodated."

Kyana scrunched her eyebrows.

"You didn't choose to?"

Enoch raised an eyebrow.

"In my experience, most would never willingly relinquish a soulmate."

"... I see..." The golden mask around her face blinked away into motes of light along with her astral arms. Enoch looked at her a moment longer then leaned down to give her a gentle pat on the head.

"Whatever your journey may be, I hope you know there is always love and support to be gained."

"... I'll try to remember."

-+-

Kyana held the dragonscale belt Enoch used to wear in her hands. He'd given her more than... anyone she could remember had given her. The light wreathing her vision pulsed. Some chemical reaction on a soul level sizzled over her body; the well of raw energy— the second note she kept hearing burned and trilled with Acheron's embattled pitch as she watched Enoch leaping through the air.

Absolutely not.

The light Kyana gave off perched on the mast flared like an overloading lightbulb, and Dani knew Kyana wasn't about to just let this happen. She turned to VR-LA and heard Finbar speaking the words to a Guidance spell. VR-LA was already out of the helm and unfurling his staff as Dani switched into the dome, sitting down at the controls and giving it as much juice as she could. Kyana was already a glimmer 40-going-on-60 feet off the bow of the ship as four mechanical wasps clicked and buzzed to far past their usual size and zipped after, hot on her tail. Kyana with her usual insane speed blindsided the dragon with a flurry of blows.

That is some of the coolest shit I've ever seen.

As if the mere thought fueled it, raw energy concentrated around Kyana's final punch and rammed into the red dragon in the form of an uppercut to the jaw that left it stunned and reeling. Kyana swung into position behind Enoch and very insistently pushed him along towards the wasps VR-LA sent out for them.

VR-LA managed to gently remove Dani from the controls as the Acheron battle high continued pulsing through her and she nearly drove them into a wall on pure adrenaline. The rising feeling of cresting back into the Astral Sea kinda washed the fog of war out of Dani and she took a moment to survey for any more Githyanki. This was interrupted by the much more important task of surveying the damage to her ship.

Kyana spent the transit time back to the sea flopped down on the deck. After, Finbar ushered everyone but VR-LA, who was driving, into the kitchen to patch them up some and give them some soup. Kyana took a moment to very pointedly return Enoch's belt to him.

"One life in the face of four others would be a small price to pay." He said, as if that were ever okay.

"No no no no." Kyana made sure she had his eyes in hers. "I don't trade lives. We're not doing that. Okay?"

Finbar backed her up. "On this ship, we watch out for our own."

Dani's one track mind did not take this moment to switch tracks. "We would appreciate it if you covered some of the repair costs to the ship, though, if you like. If you're looking for an exchange sort of situation."

It wasn't long before Enoch turned the belt over in his hands once more, then handed it right back to her.

"You saved my life twice this day. Please."

Kyana looked between him and the belt.

"It is a rite of passage for a Githxerai to obtain one." He continued. "But there will be more adventures to be had. I'm sure I will find some suitable replacement."

... Kyana reached out and took it from his hands to hers.

"Thank you." She said. "Always more adventues," Kyana smiled, "That's the best thing about being out here."

It all threatened to overwhelm her, but... while they both finished their soup and Enoch excused himself from the kitchen, she remembered the feeling of uproarious applause coming from within her as she threw her everything at an entire dragon. She remembered the taste of spice being soothed away by her first omlette and the bubble of jubilation. She remembered the stars and the whales in the sky and the buildings she couldn't wait to climb–

Kyana's hand went to her leg. Buildings. Of course! It'd been so long since she had a fresh angle— oh she wanted to know more! What was that writing, what did it say? Who were these people? What if they didn't hate her, what if they wanted her? She didn't know what to say to them. She didn't know them, but if they were sure to meet so long as her marks stayed with her, then... they hadn't let go of her. They hadn't given up on her yet. ... Did they get to choose? If it's really so painful to let go every time?

Kyana ran her hands over her arms. All the feelings swirled together into a strange flurry. A dust devil of conflicting thoughts and emotions. How it should or could or would go. If she should even be getting her hopes up. How long would it take? Could she meet them all at once? Were the marks like a map to find them? What would they say? When would they part ways next? Was it alright to use 'hers' for them when they were people and not just concepts and images?

"You alright there?" Finbar placed a gentle hand on her left shoulder. She saw that same sort of ring VR-LA showed her tattooed on his finger. Something intuitive said that must be Dani's despite it not looking much anything like VR-LA's ring for her.

"I think so, yeah..." She pressed her lips together and looked Finbar in the eye. "I... I don't know as much... about soul mate stuff as you three do. What... what did you think of them... before you met them?"

That wide and wodering shape to Kyana's eyes struck something as Finbar looked down to her. He'd looked into something like those eyes before. He wondered a moment... and decided to be more patient. Maybe he was on the mark, but one step at a time.

"Well... As far a soulmates go, I was a pretty late bloomer. Considering Dani and VR-LA were both from outside the Feywild, it makes a little sense. Time works a lot different for Feywild especially."

"Feywild... I think I've heard of that. That's where you're from?"

"That's right." He smiled. "Learned just about everything I know about nature out there."

Kyana perked up, remembering the animal tracks down her arm. She wondered if asking someone else to analyze your soul mark was rude or something. It must be... but maybe it wasn't?

"Those two actually appeared after my first mark." Finbar continued. "It was a pretty big event when it came in since I'd pretty much resigned myself to not having any by then."

"Is that possible? Dani says everyone has one. Well, mortals, anyway."

"And she'd be right. But I'm not near as smart as her. And out there in Hundkiln, everybody knew everybody. It wasn't lonely, but... I did have some trouble feeling settled the more it felt like I'd never get them. I guess you could say my soulmarks coming in so late is part of what led me to adventuring. Aside from the love of the hunt, mind you."

"Wow... I guess I kind of had the opposite problem..." Kyana's eyes gravitated toward the floor. "Mine came in so early I was a little scared I'd been infected with something from the hole we were supposed to punch monsters down. Although I guess... if they really do..." Did she say this? ... Finbar had three too. They... they were the same. "If they really do correspond to different people... my third one came in at what was probably actually a normal time. I... I don't really know what that means. If it means anything."

She looked back at Finbar again. He seemed... astonished wasn't the word. It was this light expression of... interest maybe? It wasn't bad, she could tell that much.

"What do you know. We've got another one in the club." He said. He held up his hand and Kyana went in for the high five. "Dani says there's an initiation ritual, but I'm pretty sure she just did that because she knew before me that we were soulmates."

"What? How? I thought you both knew when you touched."

"That's matching. It's like a final confirmation of sorts. Usually the way it goes is you take some time to match this new person in your life to your marks of them and see how you match up to theirs, then you reach for one another's hands and if you're both on the mark -pun not intended- you get your match rings. Dani and VR-LA both got to skip a few steps there since they both have my mark, so when they caught my mark for VR-LA here," He held out his left arm and Kyana's ears stopped working when she finally saw the segment of shattered crystal and grainy images.

"I..." Wait, no, Finbar was still talking- well now he's stopped.

"What's up?" Finbar asked, following her eyes to where they were locked on the visible snippet of his mark.

"Uhm... Nothing, exactly."

Finbar may not be smart, but he wasn't easy to fool either. She recognized VR-LA's mark.

"I uh... I zone out sometimes." Kyana smiled weakly. "I promise I don't mean to."

Finbar nodded, smiling genlty. "That's perfectly alright."

Her shoulders relaxed.

"So," Finbar resumed, waiting to see where this would lead. "Most arrangements only involve two people who don't know a thing about eachother before they piece it all together. Like I said, Dani and VR-LA had the jump on me."

Kyana laughed a little. "And... soulmarks are identical if they're on multiple people?"

"They are in my experience. Though if you've seen VR-LA'S match ring for Dani, you know it don't look nothing like this, so they're unique in that way."

She was right, it was Dani. She managed to keep herself from grabbing onto her elbow with the strange colorful explosion as she pulled her eyes back to Finbar's face.

"Uhm... so if I wanted to find them... or if... if they all have the same image of me over their arms... I... I'm easier to find?"

"Yeah. That sounds about right."

Kyana bit her lip. She wanted to pretend she was remembering the image down her arm wrong, but she'd looked at it so many times since that night. They were the same. If Finbar or Dani saw it, then they would know. They'd probably go to tell VR-LA or try and get the two of them to piece it together on their own.

Kyana was hit with the way VR-LA said it felt like dying.

"I... probably wanna lie low from them too, for a while." She summoned her smile again. "Y'know, until the coast is clear as far as the monastery goes."

Finbar wasn't about to push her. Life had clearly been so rough on her already, and he wasn't about to shove her around to do things she wasn't ready to be doing. He reached down and pet her hair gently, and he liked how her smile softened.

"We'll be here." He said. "We've got your back."

Chapter Text

The fire at the center of Agden's campsite flared and crackled as the fugitive bunnyfolk all around Kyana shared their meal. Kyana hoped Finbar and Love made it back safe.

The visit to the Feywild started perfectly nice. She first came on this mission because it seemed important to Finbar, but just being in the village and seeing everyone made her happy she'd taken up with the crew. Finbar's family were exactly the kind of people Finbar was, which is to say they were warm, caring, and had a tendency to take up a lot of space when they wanted to.

The first time the crew put their heads together properly, Kyana couldn't help but giggle when Dani said, "I appreciate you not overcomplicating everything by leading with the three of us being soulmates, because that would be, like, annoying."

Finbar assured the two of them that they would be getting proper introductions once the Agden business was over with, but the comment brought Kyana's mind to VR-LA. ... She wasn't very experienced at keeping secrets. She knew she could never bring herself to lie to VR-LA if he figured it out on his own, but... Finbar said there was an order to these things anyway. It honestly felt like cheating, knowing already. She hadn't even been playing the same game as everyone else up until a few days ago, and... it was just too scary.

She allowed herself one cheat: she made an effort to avoid his unmarked hand. At minimum, she needed things with the Cenobium to blow over before she went seriously thinking about people she's metaphysically bound to. The Cenobium still crowded more of her brain than she would like it to if she didn't distract herself. So, she decided to leave the thoughts about VR-LA and soul mates there and distract herself with the crew's latest excursion.

The scouting expedition with Love went on about as long as she presumed scouting expeditions must take, but... she couldn't say it went very well. Not horribly; if it'd gone horribly she wouldn't be sitting here eating this soup. But not well either, otherwise she'd be with the others back in town by now. She hoped if they were coming back to get her they wouldn't get hurt. What must they be thinking? She wished she could telepathically tell them she was alright, but, y'know, that only works within line of-

"Hey- Hey hEY HEY!!"  "Ow."

Sight.

"Well well well, what have we here?" Agden said with his usual menacing chipper bounce and an agitated string of thumpthumpthumpthumpthumps with his foot. "It appears we have more little babes lost in the woods today. Tell me, what are your names."

Kyana almost envied VR-LA's easy repetition of his usual greeting. The situation was floundering out of hand and he sounded exactly the same as when someone went out of their way to antagonize him fresh out of a fight. Dani didn't take after him when it was her turn.

"Uh- Hi. I'm Dani." Dani barreled through a greeting and immediately locked onto Kyana. "Kyana what the fuck dude, we've been looking all over for you!"

"Oh, hey guys!" She smiled the smile she used to use when playing dumb about where all the extra splinters in her hands kept coming from when today wasn't a craftworking day.

"Ah, didn't know you came through the portal with friends, very very fascinating." Oh that's dangerous.

"Actually they're from back at the monastery, I don't know how they got here." Kyana panicked sunnily.

Dani took up the persuading and Kyana managed to catch VR-LA's eyes and mind.

'As far as he knows, I came through a portal from the monastery, and I came here immediately. And I just added that I knew you guys from the monastery, sorry about that.' Kyana stumbled over her synapses trying to get the message across. The secret keeping corner of her brain nested itself behind a curtain in the face of the far more direct peril of their current situation. 'He doesn't seem immediately hostile, but I'm not sure how to convince him not to attack the village tomorrow.'

'Is the current plan to convince him to not attack? Because we have been making preparations in the village to prepare traps in the event that he does come.'

'Well I- I dunno if- if I'd say I have a plan? Strictly...'

Dani managed to move the audible conversation in a new direction. "Um- I love your scraf! Is it... where did you... get it?"

"Oh, quite a long tale. Sit down, I'll bend your ear."

It was, in fact, a very long tale. Most of the campsite was losing steam as he finally wrapped up the whole thing. Which is part of what made Kyana jump at the speed with which Agden snatched the knife Dani was just about to show him out of her hand mid-sentence.

"Ah-oh-uh-- Oh. It's gone." Dani shook herself off and picked back up somehow. VR-LA said Kyana was adaptable, but Kyana believed by now he was mixing her up with Dani when he said it. "I was gonna ask: right now it's just a regular knife, but I have abilities that could make it a bit more of a fun trinket. Do you have a favorite smell or sound?"

"Ooo, a favorite smell or sound.. um... I love the sound of... what's the word? You take something that someone loves and they do that....." Agden tiiiilted his head, then snapped it upright along with his fingers. "Crying! That's the word~"

'Yikes.' Echoed in Kyana's brain as VR-LA thought the same thing. The piece of her keeping secrets rustled quietly in response, and she kept it firmly on her side of the channel.

The yikes of it all only got yikes-i-er as Agden continued on with Dani, whistled, and the ground rumbled with a slow heavy set of footsteps.

"Now, I'm sure you guys have nothing to do with it. So I thought for tomorrow, y'know, if you're interested in staying, yknow, stay but maybe hang out for the night and Fergus can watch you for the night while we take care of this business we need to take care of. Then when we get back, we can talk about what things'll look like going forward."

Kyana looked to Fergus. Guys a little like him came up from the Underdark sometimes. The Priors usually handled them. Kyana somehow doubted Love and the others at the sleepy colorful village could do such a thing, especially with all the men on Agden's side. But if the giant stayed behind with them and Finbar was with the villagers... she didn't know.

'VR-LA, does the village stand a chance of fending off these two dozen dudes without us there?'

'... No.'

"Alright, alright. You got us. We didn't wander in here by coincidence." Dani shocked Kyana out of her mental conversation.

"Huh??"

"No, no Kyana, it's fine." Dani placed a hand on her shoulder like she was diplomatically settling a rowdy pet. Kyana darted her eyes back to VR-LA who seemed equally as surprised but less keen to interrupt whatever Dani was about to drop. "We heard tales of... there's this great thief Agden out in the Feywild. Someone who no one else could steal from, and..." She sighed. "We were inspired! Y'know we're in similar fields obviously you know Kyana's quite dexterous and myself I'm quite good with locks and things, and VR-LA here is of course a walking fount of information and diagrams and we just thought maybe our band could cross minds with yours and... I guess we weren't high enough level to engage in this battle of wits."

Dani sighed once again and sorta slumped her shoulders. Kyana crossed her hands behind her back and kinda glanced away the way she'd do back when she was being lectured about one thing or another. The beat of silence as Agden considered this new lie rumbled like the warning tremors before an earthquake.

"Now was that so hard? You could've come out and said that before. I'm a friendly guy! You don't gotta come up with all these charades and stuff. Tell ya what: like I said we got a big job tomorrow. You really wanna show your stuff? We'll all head down, and you can see how it's really done~ Waddaya think Fergus?"

The giant looked over and Kyana was glad his gaze was on Agden and not her.

"You're the boss so long as we get to stick it to those firbolg, maybe knock a few heads. They get rowdy? I'm totally in."

"Well," Kyana could hear a slight strain in Dani's crackly voice. "We never turn down a job..."

As everyone started breaking down camp and wrapping up whilst Kyana contemplated what they'd just gotten themselves into, she noticed a small scuttly thing appear on her lap. A spider. She'd never seen a forest spider before. Only cave spiders and weird nightmare underdark spiders. On its thorax was a little leaf. Why was that leaf familiar... Better question: were all forest spiders differentiated by the fact that they had leaves patterned on them?

The spider spontaneously decided to break out into a little dance. Kyana was pretty sure that wasn't normal spider behaviour. It seemed very polite and also like it wanted her attention. Kyana scrunched her eyebrows and switched the thread of her mind from VR-LA to this little creature. She'd tried this before with other things and they usually showed her things bugs and lizards notice if she dug through their brains. Worst case scenario, she gets a vague impression of what it's like to eat leftovers.

'Sup little buddy.'

'KYANA!' Kyana bounced in place a little from the force of thought. That was Finbar's voice. Finbar is talking through a spider, interesting.

'H... hello? Finbar? Where are you?'

'Hi, yeah, it's me.' The spider made a gesture. 'It's your ol' buddy Finbar.'

'Oh you are a spider!'

He took a moment to look around and locked all eight of his eyes with hers.

'I don't like this situation.' He thought.

'Yeah me neither...'

'I don't like what's goin' on, but I would rather take the fight here than anywhere else. So if there's some way that you could let everyone else know: Shit's about to get real up here real fast.'

'Uhhh okay. Gimme a second.'

Like two flicks of a string, Kyana sent one thought to Dani and VR-LA in quick succession.

'Finbar says it's about to go down.'

Dani jolted in place a little and VR-LA simply turned to her. They both nodded to her and collectively they all took a breath.

"I just remembered," Kyana smiled, standing up as Finbar hopped to the ground, "I totally don't like stealing material possessions."

-+-

Amidst the wreckage of the campsite, VR-LA bade the bugs follow the giant. He would not get away with threatening to take from VR-LA. They nipped and bit and stung until there was nothing left to nip or bite or sting. Finbar went about putting Dani's fires out and VR-LA decided to walk over the littler flames he could put out with a step.

"Oh my god." Dani straightened up from the edge of what used to be Agden's hoard, holding a lump of charcoal that might've been a wooden duck once. "There's so many un-sprung traps in the village."

There was some chatter about getting a move on, but Finbar called everyone together for a rest and to check them all over properly first. He made a light meal for them all and VR-LA figured the 'How long can we convince Finbar I don't eat' charade mattered less than how unbelievably exhausted the whole ordeal with the rabbits left him. Besides, Finbar's cooking was comforting. He liked this feeling better than whatever had been going through him earlier. Or... not going through him, he supposed, if he wanted to examine it. (he did not) Finbar and Dani seemed to be having a moment and so, comically, the charade was maintained.

"Oh, sweet!" He heard Kyana and turned to see her admiring a scar she only seemed to have just noticed from their excursion into Acheron. He couldn't help looking at her strangely.

Slashed diagonally over her stomach.

Dani's fire made the exact edges of it hard to discern. She seemed happy about it... Why did he feel like he was forgetting something?

He drank some water and let it go.

"It just occurred to me," Kyana said as they were wrapping up their impromptu camp out, "Agden's scarf is probably still magic. And he's not using it."

A spark of interest tindered in VR-LA. "I do like scarves..."

Finding Agden wasn't too much of an ordeal, but getting his body out of the branch was. Dani walked ahead a little, bored of not having a job to be doing, and Kyana acted as a connector between her and the rest of the group. VR-LA unclipped the strip of fabric he'd been using as a scarf and tied it around one wrist for the time being. Agden's scarf was insanely long as he wrapped it around the slightly corroded cracks in his collar. He had to re-wrap it quite a few times to be sure it didn't drag on the ground and Finbar laughed.

"You could probably use that thing instead of that old jacket to cover your arms if you really wanted."

VR-LA blinked down at the charred and fraying golden brown coat Dani found him with. At the rich blue scarf woven like a zephyr currently swallowing his shoulders. He wore the jacket because Dani wore long sleeves. It kept her and his other soulmate safe from prying eyes. And most certainly his other soulmate needed the extra safety. With how long it was, surely there was a way he could arrange the scarf to cover their marks like a sleeve would?

"VR-LA?" VR-LA blinked and looked back to Finbar. It occurred to him suddenly that Finbar laughing meant what he said about the scarf was probably a joke at the item's expense. He straightened his sleeves out a little.

"Maybe once I figure out the proper way to tie it." He smiled breezily and they set off to the village with Kyana and Dani.

When they got back, the preparations for the street play reenactment never to be were still ongoing. Love's exhausted eyes scanned the forest in a constant roll, catching on their group. She stood immediately.

"You're back!"

Everyone bombarded Finbar with questions and VR-LA played visual aide holding up his scarf as proof of their rabbit hunting endeavours. Almost immediately, everybody swung into a real, mostly-non-booby-trapped celebratory feast. Finbar of course took to the kitchen and Dani took to continuing to aid the folks still mid-trap-laying. Kyana followed, but not to help with laying the traps.

"I just feel like giant pits in the middle of living spaces never go well..." She said, surreptitiously untying a tripwire.

"You've obviously never explored every nook and cranny of the ship then." Dani said from halfway down a ditch. VR-LA was distracted from his people watching by a tug on his jacket. He turned to see a child who, unprompted, asked,

"Do you know why there are so many trees?"

While VR-LA had learned this past half year or so to pride himself on his wordsmithing, no flow of prose about the speed and emotional importance of plant growth in the feywild could preclude the indecipherable look this child gave him when he finished his explanation only to hear,

"No it's because we're in the woods."

VR-LA took a moment to wonder if he'd have better luck with children if he had access to his own childhood. Somehow, he doubted it.

Kyana had never experienced this kind of atmosphere, this kind of plane, this kind of town in her whole life. She walked the streets of Sigil, but the paths in Finbar's home were different and wonderful with a kind of contagious zing that overwhelmed in a different way from a crowded megacity the size of a plane. Kyana soaked in the voices and the air and let the impromptu party flow around and through her. It was probably exactly that which helped her notice Love. Still sitting where she was when they walked up to the village, looking for all the world like she didn't share the same space as everyone else.

So many people and she was alone next to the dark.

Love turned to Kyana as she heard her approach and offered her a smile and nod.

"What brings you away from the party?" She sounded less tired than she looked, but not by much.

"Oh, you know, ah..." The swirling buzz of everything ebbed into a background hum as the smell of whatever Finbar was cooking faded behind her, giving way to the sharp tang of living leaves, the heavy aroma of the forest floor, and what Kyana might call herself crazy for identifying as the smell of ambient magic. "They're all kinda new to me. Little loud, little overwhelming."

"I take it you don't come from a big family?"

What a funny word to be asked about. Kyana really only ever used it for birds and serendipitously located rocks before today. She never even tried carving things into sets when she had free time; nothing she made matched, and she hadn't cared to take any of it with her.

"Kinda depends on your definition I guess, but..." Kyana glanced over her shoulder, wondering how much of what Finbar had shown them of his home were things he carried around with him. Certainly none of it seemed like anything better let go of and left behind. "Not like this, at least."

"Not a lively one." Love supplied.

"Nnnno." She breathed out half a laugh. "You could say that."

"Takes some getting used to." Love nodded to her softly. "Sometimes you need a little time away from it, I understand."

"Is that why you're out here?"

"Well, you know, those Briggands aren't the only problem in the forest. Somebody's gotta keep watch. That's my job." Her eyes took a moment to sweep the forest as she spoke. "I'm the Hunter."

"So... it's just you. There's no one else who can, like, tag in? Let you go... party, get some meat?"

"Ahm... not the way it usually works. There's a... I know for you it's probably just a word, but here it's a title. I'm the Hunter."

"Oh..." Kyana felt the little gaps in her understanding filling out as Love kept going.

"There's one at a time, Finbar was actually the one before me. Rather good one, too, before he got lost." She shook her head a little. "Sorry I don't know if he's told you about that. I shouldn't speak for him."

"Oh, no, I... I think I knew he... well I knew he was from here. And he ended up out in the planescape somehow. And it seems like everyone gets lost before they end up there." She thought a moment longer. "Except for Dani. She's fine."

Love smiled a moment. "World's full of lost people."

Kyana knew a stopping place in a conversation when she saw one. She knew someone who could use a friend when she saw one, too.

"Yeah. Seems like it. Well, if you don't mind the company, I can ah..." She lifted up the nice wooden mug someone had handed to her full of some mulled something that smelled sharp and mellow all at once. "I've got my requisite Party Beverage so I can just hang out here, help you keep watch? Y'know, two sets of eyes?"

Love considered her for a moment before making some room for her on the giant acorn. Kyana smiled just a little warmer.

"Seem to have found your way to a... pretty good spot though, after gettin' lost. If you don't mind me saying."

Kyana smiled just a little brighter, the secret-keeping part of her fully put to bed in the wash of realization that Love was right. Kyana didn't much care about the 'losing' or 'finding'. Just... just being here and doing what she did with VR-LA, Dani, and Finbar so far... Being with Love, learning from Enoch, seeing the colors and contrasts and breathing all this new air... "Yeah, oh, no definitely. This is... really wonderful. I had no idea the universe was this big... and bright."

She leaned back a little to look up at the shimmerful neon swirl the sky transformed into in Feywild nights. How wonderful to meet stars that danced.

"But I love it."

Love asked after their 'dust up' with Agden as she called it, and Kyana felt something warm and happy and... echo-ish and shadowed all at once when Love smiled and nodded like it was the most natural thing in the world for Kyana to bring up Finbar's ambush plan. 'That's our boy' she said...

"Big hit when we lost him. I'm... happy he comes back to visit, but it seems now... seems he's found a spot pretty comfortable with all of you, so." She left the rest to the air. Kyana nodded and took a sip from her drink.

"Well y'know. I..." Kyana looked into the light reflecting off the inside of the mug. The whole universe wrapped around her and she was left wanting. Maybe she just wished she had people who were so unabashedly nice to her before the Per Aspera. Maybe she was mourning just how long she spent believing VR-LA and the other two mates tattooed on her skin were things to hide from... she was still hiding... how could she 'be' and 'do' if she was found out? If the crew knew what she put him through? If the other monks did just randomly find her like she found the crew? "I think you never really leave your family. Even when you leave. Y'know?"

"Maybe. I wouldn't know, I've never left."

"I wouldn't know," Kyana laughed just a little in spite of herself. "I've never really had a family."

She wondered to herself if all the little carvings she left behind felt lost. If they would ever find eachother. If they'd ask one another 'Do you not have a match either?'

"Well, you're welcome here anytime."

It wasn't the drink that made Kyana's insides melt and buzz in slow soothing waves.

-+-

Dani honestly forgot Finbar hadn't revealed the three of them were soulmates as she sat down at the table, and after managing to pull out the story about her and Plug and hearing VR-LA recount the memory from his special hidden basket, she figured there wasn't anything more to be said. Finbar stood up next, and she realized she was very much dead wrong as he recounted his dead mentor and all the things that drew him away and into the wider planescape. She imagined Cardamom's death had to be somewhere on her arm. The stars were there, his skills were there, his town was there, and she had to wonder which bases were still yet to be covered. The thought could have grown and blown across her mind that this sensation of missing history was at once the same and incredibly different from that strange prickly sensation she got from watching Finbar and Elyse together. It would've, had Finbar not blindsided her when he went on to say:

"But we all keep going, and there's always more people to share our lives with as we do. And I do have to apologize once again for leaving such an important story for so late, but while I was out there," Finbar removed his gauntlet and Dani was glad she wasn't mid-sip, because otherwise she would have choked on her drink. "I happened to find two of my soulmates." Finbar looked to VR-LA and Dani. "And I've been sailing with them for a bit of time now."

The table lit up with chatter and excited murmuring before a scrap of a breath could pass.

Dani was used to a lot of noise all at once, but she wasn't exactly used to that noise being directed at her. It took a hot minute as VR-LA scooched closer to her and she laced her fingers with his under the table, but eventually the firework show of juggled questions and half answers fizzled into much more manageable sparklers, and she could hear herself think again.

"You still haven't found your first?" Someone asked Finbar, and Dani couldn't help but pout just a bit internally. She knew it was stupid and that it was technically a good thing that they weren't fixating on her asking questions she didn't know if she had the social 'acumen' to answer well, but it seemed like a little bit of a quick jump. Not to mention... something about passing over her and VR-LA, asking about his 'first'. It dumped a growth potion over that same sprout of a sensation that took root upon seeing Finbar and Elyse's clear closeness and history. That thing she didn't want that she knew was fucking stupid, but... —and it still wasn't like she had room to talk. She had two whole other soulmates that weren't Finbar. In fact, if she thought back on it, she actually had to throw out a good amount of overheard disparaging comments over the years about what having more than one soulmate said about you. For every soft marveling sentiment Roy and Eegan were so keen on sharing, there were barbs found lodged casually in books and others' mouths about people like her and her soulmates being 'not even a whole soulmate' and 'loose and promiscuous'. Why did this one question dig into her in a way none of those turns of phrase and side glances ever could?

"They'll be ready to be found when they're ready. I've kinda got both hands full as it were, and I wouldn't have it any other way."

VR-LA did an awkward little wave and squeezed her hand gently under the table. Dani nodded to the group and immediately took a swig of her drink, squeezing back. She shouldn't feel so possessive like this. That was for insecure idiots who didn't understand what soulmates were even for. What, was she scared Finbar's one soulmate she didn't share with him would take him from her 'cause they came first? 'Cause it was highly likely that his first was the only non-platonic one he had and Dani reasoned out by now just what a serial romantic Finbar was? That was stupid. A stupid idea. She's smarter than that, she's better than falling into the trap of assuming he'd leave her and VR-LA. He wouldn't dare. No, that's a threat. She didn't need to threaten Finbar into staying. Stupid. She might strongly imply a threat to whoever this first soulmate was, though. Just in case they were the kind of person to make comments about split affections and being uncommitted.

Her train of thought crashed into a warm gentle smile and the quietly emotional tear that beaded at the corner of Finbar's eye as he continued, widening his gaze to include Kyana in his final statement.

"I've found more than soulmates. Y'all are family. And I'll do my best to make sure that we all stay together."

... She trusted Finbar. That was all she needed to do.

Well, that and surreptitiously switch out Kyana's wine for some water, 'cause she seemed to be shaping up to be an extremely emotional drunk, and Dani wasn't about to let her embarrass herself horribly, which she probably would if those big gobby tears and the way she held onto herself were any indication.

-+-

Kyana clutched her borrowed blanket around her shoulders, holding her knees close to her chest. Dani's mark on Finbar's arm was exactly the same as Kyana's fiery riveted cityscape. The one with an angle of the hull of the Per Aspera. That mark appeared not a month and a half ago, how could she have not connected those dots? Did she just assume that must be what spelljammers are Supposed to look like? The first place they stopped was Sigil where that very much wasn't the case! If she took a moment to be kind to herself, it wasn't like she saw any regular ships before. Her mark was only one angle, honestly she had no idea it was supposed to be a partial look at a ship until now, and only because it matched the Per Aspera exactly. Of course it matched the Per Aspera, her skin had been screaming at her for so long trying to get its point across, she imagined whatever rules governing soul mates had long been fed up with her.

Is that why she found two of them the moment she left the monastery, before even knowing what the marks really were? That force of gravity VR-LA talked about or the clicking together of gears that made the universe continue on decided she was never figuring this out on her own, so she needed to be catapulted directly to two of her soul mates at once to get it through her skull?

She was grateful she managed to begin holding her own against the wine shortly after Finbar made the announcement, otherwise she had no idea what this catalytic concoction of emotions would draw her to do.

She didn't want this... Finbar went around like soul mates were easy. Dani acted like they were background noise. VR-LA talked about them like simple facts that slotted against everything else in straightforward little ways. That wasn't true. They were hard and loud and complicated and sticky and... and they didn't deserve her. The two of them were perfectly fine together and with Finbar. They didn't need her, she didn't want this. She couldn't imagine what her first soul mate must be doing, but she could only hope they had another soul mate to take up their time that wasn't her.

She didn't like to feel like she was cheating, either. Knowing in the first place was bad enough, and keeping it from them when she did know... It just wasn't fair. Why was the world so big, yet she found the smallest chance to run into the people scribbled all over her arm and leg. All she wanted to do was hide. All she wanted was to be free to find all the things out there that weren't allowed to enter the monastery. The infinite thoughts and tastes and stories and experiences that she loved every time they crossed her path. It wasn't fair.

... She didn't want soul mates. She just wanted a family.

She managed something like a sleep by the time the sun rose. As Love set up to guide them back, she turned to them all and gave them a little warning.

"The rest of you are not from the Feywild, so there might be some... memory problems you might get upon exiting. Just so you're not put off by it."

"What kind of memory problems?" Kyana asked cautiously.

"Oh, y'know," Kyana did not know, "Just ranges from: nothing happens, to: you forget everything that happened in the Feywild."

"Oh..." Kyana figured she'd be a little enthused to potentially forget what Dani's mark looked like so she could go back to keeping just the one soul mate secret from the crew, but... it was all complicated. She certainly knew she wouldn't get to pick and choose what she did and didn't forget. Memories never work that way.

"Does anyone have any paper?" She turned to her crew. "I wanna write a couple things down."

Of course VR-LA had it. She made sure to take it from him using her left arm and grabbed the pen he handed her without letting their fingers brush.

Kyana looked up at the sky, and quick as she could, scribbled it down in inexpert strokes on the paper. She was much better with three dimensions, but she just needed a reminder of the sky. The planescape had so many different skies... Underneath her drawing, she jotted down the only word she knew she needed to keep.

'Family'

-+-

Of all the things Kyana didn't hang onto when leaving the Monastery, Ione seemed the least likely to return to her.

Her face was frazzled and frantic as she jumped her arms away, unpinning Kyana from the wall she just shoved her against with a stuttered apology. Kyana couldn't really blame her, everyone's favorite pastime back on the prime material seemed to be testing your reflexes, and old habits die hard.

Ione looked over her shoulder, ignoring Kyana's halfway charged 'good to see you'.

"Have you seen anyone- anyone else from the Cenobium?"

"Uh, no?" Calm down Kyana. She could be saying that for any reason. "But I've been in the Feywild for two weeks, so..."

"Good. You were off-world. That makes sense then." Her eyes continued darting around. "We should go. I... um..."

She said 'we'. "We should go?" 

Kyana supposed in the whole matter of leaving, they were a 'we'. If she could include Ione, she would include her.

"Yeah." Ione said tersely.

"Okay, we're goin' then." Kyana nodded, shifting her weight to prepare for speed.

"I just feel like... something's been following me. I don't know if... you've got that feeling."

Kyana's eyes went to each corner and shadow. Nothing and no one was nearby. She grabbed Ione's hand. "We're going to the ship."

Ione held on and squeezed to stop her. "You can't go there."

"What? The ship? ... Where my friends are?"

Something whisped through Ione's eyes like a snake in a pond.

"If..." Her eyes fell, her face still a worse for wear version of that trained composure she kept so well. "I'm sorry. If they're your friends. I didn't... know..."

A stone dropped in Kyana's chest.

"We should leave." Ione repeated, fixing Kyana with that same look from when Ione was sent to take her back to the Monastery the first time. "Now."

"What did you do?"

The surface rippled. Ione's words about being followed were a lie. But the fear was real.

"You can't get away from them." Her breaths came to her like she needed to consciously recall each one. "I thought... after I..." She winced, like her own words pierced her. "After we found you, I thought I could get away, but... I guess... they..." Ione let out this horrible bitter little laugh that was all air and friction. "I guess they planned for someone trying to... flee. After they looked for the person who fled. So... they found me."

Ione's hair which Kyana could never remember being this out of place fell lower over her face as she hung her head.

"I'm... s...sorry. I told them what I knew. That you'd taken... the bargain? With the salamanders?"

The rest muffled between Kyana's ears as her grip loosened. Ione let it happen, continuing on about the logistics of it all. She was the lookout. She was scared. She was still trapped.

She said 'we'.

A sound exploded from the heart of the ship loud enough to be heard on the dock. Wood splintered and Ione broke completely, searching for more purchase on Kyana's fingers.

"I'm so sorry," Sharp and arid and desperate. "I thought they were going to kill me."

That old sensation of ice and tearing reopened in Kyana's chest. She hated this, she hated all of this, she almost hated Ione. Maybe she did right now. How could she do that? How could she say 'we' to her? How could this happen? Why did they still want her, not even her soul mates should want her.

"We'll talk about this later."

Ione made no move to keep her.

Kyana's cape didn't touch her shoulders as she shot below deck to come face to face with her prior. She realized all at once her prior would probably never smile at her again no matter what happened here. She wanted to run all over again, but the ship is the place she runs to. What could she even do now but fight? Strange lights flickered and phased bright from the engine room, and it wasn't until she and her prior already traded their first blows that Kyana even realized Cephiram and Dani were most definitely not the same colors they used to be. VR-LA's voice popped into form from some intercom speaker on the other side of the room.

"What is happening?"

Finbar said something in response, but Kyana did not register it. More footsteps flurried in from above deck, but they were far too light to be VR-LA's. It was the last thing she heard before her ears began ringing from Cephram's stunning strike. Kyana's raw muscle memory managed to block another hit, but dazed reflexes couldn't save her from the smack to the face from her prior's staff. The last color she saw  before fainting was the purple of psionic feedback.

Heat. Some inferno passing over her. It rustled something in her chest as it danced across her exposed skin. Her whole skull cried from the way the blue light rendered her eyelids practically useless.

Useless. Worse than useless. A walking liability. Running liability.

She didn't wanna go back. Please, please don't take her back. She doesn't want this. Why is it never what she wants? Why is it always this way?

A weight landed strong and gentle on her forehead and there was Finbar's voice again. He called her... 'little miss'. He always said things like that. Warm familiar things, like he could keep her forever and would hold her gently every moment.

Her eyes took the area in again, and she saw Ione's nonfunctional conflict as she stood in the walkway. She saw Dani shooting Ione a look after shoving some kind of force based attack at Prior Cephram. Cephram most certainly wasn't having any of that. In a flash of motion and a shockwave from an elbow jab, Dani was down and Cephram's foot was on her chest.

Cephram fixed Kyana with a set of eyes she only saw whispers of in all her years at the Cenobium.

"You can leave with them breathing," She said in the way she would always tell kyana to get down from shelves and not touch the rare few interesting things in her little, little world. "Or leave with them dead. Your choice."

The residual heat from Dani's blue flames turned to ice in her chest.

Absolutely not.

She could almost feel the spines from her astral arms. She didn't know what kind of expression crossed the golden mask over her face, all she knew was that she would not be less. She would not give one inch away, and she would not be stolen from.

Kyana ripped Cephram through the doorway, off of her crewmate. In an almost animalistic claw, one of Kyana's astral arms loosed half the hair from Cephram's tidy bun. Feedback sparked and whined in wibbling holographics as Kyana threw punches at her prior, who blocked and deflected them without flinching.

"Cute. Do you remember who taught you?"

Kyana's soul flared, rippling across her astral visage with a golden pulse. In a flash, a stun rung through her entire body. With a much more utilitarian, much less gentle hand than Ione, Cephram grabbed hold of her and dragged her by the neck up the stairs. For an instant, Ione's eyes connected to hers all raw confusion and panic and devastation Kyana couldn't possibly reach through. The gaze was broken by Dani's loud 'MOVE!' as she shoved Ione aside without a second thought, grabbing onto Kyana's arm where VR-LA's mark was. When did she get back up? Finbar? Yes, that made sense.

Dani summoned another of her cannons, red hot and sparking blue on its insides. Kyana would've braced herself if her body would obey the signals her discombobulated brain kept attempting to send, but she needn't have worried. Dani stepped in against Kyana's shoulder and Kyana felt the fiery rumble of the flamethrower and Plug's growling hiss as an arcane zap lazered out from his tail, both striking true and leaving her silent prior with more burns and mars than she'd gotten in all 19 years Kyana was with her.

The residual amber in Dani's eyes glowed with molten anger toward Kyana's prior, searing shut the strange well of hurt and cold and sticking dark in Kyana's chest.

As Cephram kept pulling, Dani's blue heat left her. In the hand that was just holding Kyana's arm Dani somehow produced one of Finbar's kitchen knives. Was Dani always prepared like this? She swung for Prior Cephram with a viciousness and lack of hesitancy that someone always ready for a fight attacks. It felt... familiar. The memorized shape of fire and dirt and hands and heavy tools seemed to press deeper into her skin as Dani disappeared from view.

Prior Cephram didn't care. She was on the deck, on the way to take Kyana over the gangplank. A clicking-whirring-buzzing sound materialized and unfolded and Kyana turned to see the edge of an insect plague threatening to swallow Prior Cephram. The sound of metal on wood came towards them and Kyana had one moment to breathe seeing VR-LA approaching before her prior's arm wound around her neck. She pointed her staff at VR-LA as all four of Kyana's arms squirmed uselessly.

"I'm warning you." Cephram glowered.

VR-LA stared, impassive.

"Warning Registered." He chimed without moving a single joint. Kyana wondered what it was that made him like this sometimes. Wondered if it was written somewhere down her arm or if that wasn't quite how it worked.

In a zephyr of glimmering wind that smelled like spice and salt and magic, Finbar breezed to the deck and shot a thorn whip that latched onto Cephram's staff and dug into her wrist, yanking her towards his awaiting swarm of pixies whose wings fluttered above the spines in Kyana's astral visage to attack her prior.

"Let her go." He said.

Cephram chose to swipe at Finbar with the staff he pulled her in by. Kyana thought maybe she could wriggle out of her hold this way.

She woke up in a moonlit whisper between her prior's falling weight pulling at her shoulders and VR-LA's vise grip on her body. The vertigo of how this even happened made it hard to breathe steady. Dani and Finbar held onto either of her arms to keep her from falling into the clouds below. Finbar's long arm swung past her and she heard the sound of his blade impacting her prior and the hubbub of people turning to see what this scuffle could be about.

In spite of Kyana's crew, her prior's grip only tightened. Kyana dug her heels into the edge of the ship where bits of burnt gangplank splintered about. In a wrench that practically bruised her ribcage, VR-LA wrested her out of her prior's grip to the harsh sound of zapping circuits in his chest and hissing static in his throat.

"She does not belong to you." The icy pierce of his voice underscored with low whining mechanical drones seemed as if it should've made Kyana's ears bleed.

His grip didn't leave her as Prior Cephram with a strength and agility that left Kyana small and small and small refused to fall off the edge and swung her way onto the deck on her own power, going straight for Finbar. She swung, she kicked, she hit and didn't stun. Dani with that same burning that scrawled up Kyana's leg rounded up to Finbar's side and in the voice of someone stepping onto a fulcrum said,

"I thought. I asked you. To LEAVE."

A vicious wave of thunder rocked the air before her and threw Kyana's prior back against the railing. Immediately, Dani followed it up with a blast from her flamethrower and the body of Kyana's prior burned. Cephram didn't care.

Kyana pulled herself from VR-LA. The priors always told them to flank enemies any chance they got. She didn't even draw on the abundance of soul within herself. She pulled back her fist and slammed it into her prior. Her next strike hummed with the energy for a stun that didn't succeed. Her next strike slammed her prior off balance toward the railing. In the ugliest look Kyana's prior ever gave her, Kyana caught one breath as she started to speak.

"You-"

Kyana spun and kicked her off the edge completely with all the steel in Dani's soul drawn across her leg.

Nobody breathed evenly, and Kyana stared down into the clouds her prior's body disappeared beneath.

She really would never smile at Kyana again...

VR-LA's cores whined and spun in his chest, or maybe it was some other internal pulse-like mechanism. He took a moment to grab for the stars along his arm as the dark pang that ran through the mark moments before faded. He would've felt sheepish for saying something so possessive of Kyana just after it happened; his third soulmate's timing wasn't exactly related to her own soap opera nonsense. He would have checked his third soulmate's mark immediately once the monk went overboard, but he knew there was one more person on his ship.

While Dani disappeared down into the engine room, VR-LA turned to the sound of footsteps slowly making their way up from below deck. That same monk. That same girl who came for Kyana first. She didn't even do anything the entire time everyone else fought. Well, that wasn't entirely accurate, she disobeyed a direct order from her superior. He decided to reserve sentencing, but he also decided he wasn't going to trust her. He pointed his clockwork staff at her.

"State your intentions and purpose."

Her eyes didn't stay on him for long. They were only for Kyana, it seemed.

"I'm sorry..." She said. "After they sent me to find you, I... it was stupid. I thought I could get away."

Kyana told you that. Because she believed it.

"I-I told them what I knew... I'm sorry..." She didn't move any closer. Pinned in place with the same force that keeps a convict standing trial in the center of a courtroom. "I just... I saw what they did to... the other monks. The ones that became those slithering things they used to find you."

VR-LA's staff faltered. That's right. Kyana thought to leave first, but this girl didn't get that opportunity. Kyana had been safe with them even before Ione left. Something buried deep, deep in his evaporated emotional memory stood down, knowing for sure this was not some malicious switch.

VR-LA looked to Kyana, who slowly rocked back and turned her gaze to Ione.

"Do you know what a soul mate is?" Kyana asked her with all the energy of a turtle with a cracked shell.

Ione started a moment, her face crumpling into burnt out confusion.

"I... I don't... I don't think I do, no."

Kyana held her arm down in Ione's direction.

"That mark on your arm. It's not about you. It's about someone you're connected to."

Ione stared, disbelieving and uncomprehending.

"... It's good... that you stayed alive. It hurts them. If something happens to you. And vise versa." Kyana turned away again, and VR-LA wondered if he'd been more obvious than he thought a few seconds back or if Kyana was just that insightful. "... Maybe... you'd have better luck if you found some friends. Or your soul mate." Kyana almost scoffed. Some kind of laugh or a breath or something. "Though they'd probably find you first."

Ione flinched.

"I... " Tears began welling up and dripping from the blank exhausted expression she wore. "I don't even know what that would look like."

"For soul mates, a ring." Kyana said. "For friends... there's always time to learn."

A silence hung over the deck. Kyana didn't look at Ione, and Ione practically eroded away until she dashed into the street like a whisper.

-+-

Finbar creamed together butter, sugar, and blue food coloring and wondered what to do with this new information. After that ghost of black ice that shot up his leg whilst she was unconscious, there was no doubt in his mind. Kyana was the golden sunny fluttering person mapped down his leg.

He ought to tell Kyana the moment everyone settled. He had to, it was only right. How he'd tell her... he'd surely need to start gentle. This was important. Kyana was important, she hadn't been treated near gentle enough to this point.

Finbar hardly just passed one of the cupcakes off to Plug when the intercom hissed to life.

"Uhhh, guys? Something just... threatened me in my brain." Kyana said it with the same bouncy nervousness that Finbar heard creep in when she made active attempts to keep it together. "Sooo we might be in trouble? I-I can't tell."

Dani's voice overlapped Kyana's twiceover, muffled from the engine room and responding within the tin and wires of the ship comms.

"Didja threaten them back?"

"Oh, yeah. Yeah your expletives were very useful."

Finbar heard Dani's approval echo down the hall as he dropped what he was doing to rush to the deck. He put up his dukes, eyes scanning every board of the ship, the railings, the water, the horizon.

Everything was exactly as tranquil as it was supposed to be. Nothing on deck. Nothing on the sea.

He squinted. Nothing visible didn't mean nothing.

"Piss off, ghosts." He muttered.

He posted himself in front of the dome of the helm in Kyana's view. He was not taking chances. Not with his crew. Not with his soulmates. Not with her.

'So you're her protector.' The skin on the back of Finbar's neck crawled with the intrusion. 'So strong and proud.'

He took a deep breath.

"I don't know who's playing games, but I don't like it."

'No games. Dead serious.'

"Show your face." He balled his fist tighter, refusing to give in.

The impression of a chuckle came through. 'You really know nothing of me at all. Do you?'

"Show your ugly face, and maybe I can get to know ya."

'Hm~ Maybe soon.'

The voice disappeared like it was never there. Finbar spared a glance to Kyana. Her eyebrows scrunched together as she looked at him, and he smiled gently to her. She pressed her lips together and looked away, like an apology. He sighed silently to himself and returned to observing the deck.

The stars shimmered around them and he sent a small prayer up to Sylvanis that Kyana's little shard of starlight would stay safe like it had all the years he'd taken getting to her.

Chapter Text

VR-LA filed through the intact memory orbs he had with him. The corkboard he assembled on what Kyana's general magical-psionic-astral deal could possibly be sat untouched on the wall. The incident of his soulmate and Kyana nearly being taken from him again at the same time pulled his mind back to the first things he could ever remeber. And the first things he couldn't.

He decided he didn't like to lose things, and so to fix this: he would try once again to find his crew.

He couldn't count at this point how many times he scraped and ravaged every detail, every clue, every breath he could possibly grab from the vague shape of the incident that left him with nothing but the ship. There was an attack. There was fighting. Then there was no one.

He wondered now, his third soulmate fresh in his mind, if perhaps they were amongst his first crew. That the two of them just never noticed due to one reason or another, and the moment of his mark blacking out shortly after awakening had something to do with not just his soulmate, but his crew. He had no proof of this, but the idea fit itself on the shelf of possibilities for them.

He realized.

If he was so focused on the incident of losing them, he would no doubt miss clues to who they are and where they could be right there in older memories from his time on the Per Aspera.

The little orbs lining the shelves and walls of his room clicked and clinked and rolled as he rooted around for touchpoints, innocuous details, trends, anything. Any answer, any lead. He'd been at it for, what, 2 hours? All day? The Astral Sea was probably about as far as a mortal could get from a clock or linear system of time.

He held in his chest a memory that should not be as old and corrupted as it was.

Warm gilded colors. Shelves of books. A couch, a circle of runes drawn on the ground, test tubes and potion ingredients. A globe.

He was standing there, VR-LA was standing there, looking around. Was that a voice or was there just a feedback hum in his body from using the orb in this condition? In straining to hear, he almost missed it: A string of numbers written in greasepencil on his sleeve. First coordinate, comma, second coordinate, comma, third coordinate. Or... they must be coordinates, that was how math worked, but what if it was a code? No, no this place... this place was real, this place was... they were just here not a week ago. Or three weeks ago if you count Feywild time dilation.

The memory fizzled and dimmed completely before anything actually happened. He rewound it, searching, scraping, ravenous for anything more, anything to help, anything to know and to have again.

... He had the numbers at least. And as he settled into the corner of the room to power himself down, he took a moment to press little patterns into the shimmering stars on his quilting. Even after multiple close calls... he still had them. Wherever they were.

-+-

"We gotta run this stuff to Oto we're running really late, guys." Dani said, shaking the drowsiness off her brain. She adjusted her half ponytail a little, stretching in the light of the all consuming sun. Finally, a plane she could fucking see in. She leaned over the Per Aspera's railing for a moment as Kyana slowed the ship to a stop at the place in the harbor closest to The Heap. She had to take a moment to sort of turn her hands over in the light. Very much blue now, that'd take some getting used to.

Once they landed and started getting the crates off to the heap, she saw Eegan as she approached.

"Holy shit. Wow." He lifted his goggles, revealing the panda rings that always formed around his eyes where his goggles usually blocked the dirt and grime he seemed to be a magnet for. "Wasn't sure when you guys were gettin' back. That's... my polite way of saying: we thought you were dead." He darted his eyes deeper into the heap before focusing in on Dani properly with that usual undercurrent of softness that she became marginally accustomed to from those two by now. "How you doin'?"

"Yea. Not dead." She squinted at the horrible state of his gloves and overalls, not understanding how he remained so uniquely grubby since the day she first met him as a teen. "Don't get your greasy mitts all over the ship, I don't wanna see any hand prints on the walls when I get back."

"You never let me on the ship." He slumped like he would poutfully lean over an object of appropriate size if there was one.

"Yea, for good reason, Eegan, get it together!" She barked without stopping.

"I'm a mechanic too!"

"Not a good one!" She bobbed her head towards him as she walked past.

"I wanna see it! What if Roy and I had a baby and I didn't let you near it?"

"You know Roy wouldn't let you do that."

"Yeah, and I wouldn't do it in the first place!"

Dani rolled her eyes, and Eegan pouted at her with an expression Dani couldn't imagine had changed since the day he was 10 years old.

"C'mon- C'mon, please. Please. Please just... lemme."

"No."

His face squished like a stuffed animal mushed between the wall and a bedframe. She ignored him.

"You suck Dani, y'know that?"

"Yea. Deal with it."

"Y'know what," Eegan crossed his arms imperiously like he was about to dish out the world's lamest 'I know you are but what am I'-adjacent comeback. "Just for that, I'm not gonna tell you where Oto is."

Immediately he went back on this.

"He's in his office."

"Yeah, he's always in his office, Eegan. You and I both know where Oto is, Oto is in One Place All The Time!" At some point she started walking backwards to keep facing him as she navigated the usual flotsam and jetsam to cross the yard.

"He's been known to... to... leave." Dani could see the gears in his head fully whizzing past eachother as he failed at a comeback. "Sometimes..."

"Yeah..." Dani raised her eyebrows, not letting up.

"Yeah, well... sometimes he goes... and then he's out. Y'know."

"This is why I don't let you touch the ship, Eegan!" She yelled across the Heap before turning heel and resuming her place at the front of the crew.

"Yeah, well you'd probably lose a real baby!" Dani heard some clattering chain reaction go off the instant he stamped his foot, and he was soundly preoccupied.

Zaxxx brightened as she approached and only after a hug did they blink questioningly at her. It took her a moment to realize she was still very much blue. She shrugged it off and they darted their eyes to Oto's office and gave her a sympathetic look. They were really good at just... getting shit without necessarily making a big deal out of shit. This is why she liked them.

Finbar was in front of the door so she opened it for him, eyes up and back straight.

"Hey Oto! We're back!"

He had his back to the door. The brooding routine it seemed. That was easy.

"So..." he cocked his head to the side slightly. "My... favorite crew. Returned after all these weeks."

Oh fuck, right, she already forgot that part. He put down the stick of chalk he was doing math with and turned to them.

"What do you have to say for yourselves?"

"We brought back a crate of those coins you asked for, uh, From Hell." She jabbed her thumb toward Finbar carrying the box.

"Oh! Excellent! Fantastic! Alright." A single ember fluttered out from one of his dreads as the smoking dark crackle of his hair reignited into its usual warm flow.

"You didn't think we'd come back empty handed, did you?" Dani smiled. Oto turned to Finbar.

"It's, ah, Finbart. Right?"

"U-uhh... It's uh... somethin' like that," Oh, Oto was never gonna use his actual name again. "No 't' though." Too late.

Oto breezed through some more, pulling the 50 gold for each of them from a drawer as he explained his solution to the time dilation they wouldn't be telling him about was to ghost the Fire Djini he was selling the hellrides to.

"Guess you should've given us a time limit before you sent us t-"

Dani was cut off by the sound of a bloodcurdling scream slicing through the air from outside.

Dani knew that sound. Dani had made that sound before.

Her eyes locked fully with Oto's for an instant as her brain flooded over and something truly horrifying turned over in her mind.

The world blurred and smudged around Dani as she honed in on the source of the sound. She rounded a corner just as Roy's voice cracked against her eardrums, all wailing and pained.

"EEGAN—!"

He was crumpled on his knees, nails digging into his forearm as it clouded over black.

Eegan was supposed to be right here.

A pang ran through her skull at the memory of the unfamilar voice in her mind on the way back home.

Eegan wasn't supposed to be on the ship.

The enemy was on the ship.

Dani nearly bowled Kyana over and her lungs immediately protested as she ran faster than her legs wanted to carry her back to her ship. Going up the gangplank, her eyes scorched across the helm. No one inside the dome. She burned a trail down below decks, opening her multitool as she followed the stupid mother fucking god damned greasy grimy footprints Eegan left on her ship.

He stood swaying in place in the hallway. Hand on the wall, because of course.

Something like a spider legged tumor sat latched to the base of Eegan's skull, and it needed to be ash.

The bolt burned white and sizzled on impact, the heat so intense Dani began to sweat. Or was she already doing that?

It fell to the ground, charred like a piece of meat that fell under the grill. Eegan fell as well, thudding like the breaking of a bone. The thing just barely made a move to scuttle and Dani immediately threw her still smoking multitool at it. It stopped moving, therefore it stopped mattering.

She lifted Eegan's face from the floor. He was bruised from his faceplant, but breathing still. The thing didn't have teeth apparently, all the abrasions were where the weird spider claws had dug into the sides of his neck. As she lifted his head further, she looked into his eyes. He looked... well, he looked past her completely, like she wasn't even there.

Dani clutched Eegan's head in her lap protectively when she heard footsteps on deck. The familiar weights and details of her crew's walk cycles put her at ease and she immediately went back to Eegan. She couldn't see what his mark looked like, but she ripped off his glove as he continued to stare off into the middle distance. The ring he shared with Roy looked the same as it always had, so she presumed Eegan was out of danger. Her pulse pushed just a bit gentler knowing he was stable, but she still didn't understand what the fuck was going on on her ship to her friend and that could not stand. Kyana got there first, speedy as always, and Dani fixed her with an imperative gaze.

"Healing potions. Do you have them?"

"I-I... Yes!" Kyana fumbled around in the folds of her monk clothes and chucked a small metal vial with a pink band around the top at Dani. Dani practically ripped the top off it and poured it down Eegan's throat. He managed to swallow, so that was good. The scrapes over Eegan's neck knitted closed and the bruising on his face eased.

Finbar came up and walked around Kyana, taking in the scene. When he spotted Eegan, he crouched down closer and looked into his eyes. Dani held firm as Finbar brushed some of the hair from Eegan's forehead. The tight diagnostic expression on Finbar's face made her stomach churn.

"It looks like a stun, but that's not all that's happening... Whatever this thing did to him ain't something for a healing spell." He brushed some of the hair from Eegan's forehead. "This... this needs a restoration spell. Greater Restoration."

VR-LA made his way down the stairs. "Is any of us able to cast magic like that?"

"I can't." Finbar said, "So unless you've got something rolling around in one of your lil spheres, we've gotta find a priest."

"Eegan doesn't go to church."

"What's that gotta do with it?" Finbar looked at Dani, confused, and she couldn't help but snap a little.

"You think any church in Brass with a cleric who can cast Greater Restoration would spare one on some grubby genasi mechanic who doesn't even attend?!"

A new set of footsteps started up the gangplank and Dani resumed crouching over Eegan. As they drew closer, Dani placed them as Oto's. She handed Eegan over to Finbar and picked her multitool back up to meet with Oto. The charred remains of the monster crunched under her foot.

"Eegan's not responsive even after healing. I don't know what the fuck was attacking him, but it's dead now."

Oto surveyed the now crowded corridor, his eyes catching on the blackened lump on the ground. He looked to VR-LA.

"Do you know what that thing is?"

"It's uhm..." VR-LA looked between the creature, Eegan, and Dani, and she could see him filing through shit in his brain. "It's definitely a form of aberration. If a Greater Restoration is what it would take to bring Eegan back to himself... given all I-"

Strangely, his eyes snapped to Kyana. She turned back to him when she noticed, eyes sort of turning and churning in this way Dani couldn't decipher.

"I think this is a tool of Mindflayers."

That got everyone's attention. VR-LA turned back to Oto.

"This... brain spider... thing," Oh. Brain with spider legs. That was probably more accurate. "I believe is an Intellect Devourer. While I don't know the exact mechanics of it, the name feels... rather self explanatory."

Dani followed Oto's gaze back to Eegan, sat up now and staring vacantly as Finbar supported him. His blinking came slow and automatic. The rings around his eyes that usually reminded her of some soft dumb animal really only served to make it more haunting.

A clunky pair of footsteps started up the gangplank and Dani only needed one guess as to who that could be.

"I'll talk to him." She said, not leaving room for Oto to argue. She marched up the stairs to see Roy leaning on Sadie, eyes darting around desperately. When they caught on her, she wondered for just an instant if she volunteered for this because she thought looking at Roy would be easier than looking at Eegan. It wasn't either way.

"Where is he?" Roy's throat sounded raw. "Where is he, what happened to him?"

"Roy, take a deep breath, he's-"

"You expect me to BREATHE?!?"

Sadie squeezed him tighter and Roy immediately began to wriggle away from her. Dani intercepted him as he started for the hatch leading below decks. "Roy-"

"Get off me!" He pushed her away and she stumbled back. His leg caught on the first step and she grabbed him by the arm to stop him from tumbling and finishing the monster's job for it.

"He's not gonna talk to you. Something's really wrong." Dani gritted her teeth, willing Roy to focus on her. He didn't.

"Exactly!" He managed to get his feet back under him and tried to pull away again, but Dani put her weight into it this time. "Something's wrong, something's wrong with Eegan, how do you of all people not get it?"

"I'm trying to tell you before you go in there so you don't have a fucking breakdown!"

"WHAT THE FUCK DOES THIS LOOK LIKE?"

He finally turned to her and she wished he hadn't. The edges of his eyes were wet and his wrist shook in her hands.

"It can't get worse than this, it can't!"

Dani squeezed him tighter as he gulped down stuttery breaths.

"I know." She said. "I know, I just... He's not responding, and it'll probably be a while before he is responsive again. You've gotta know that, okay?"

Roy tensed then finally pulled his arm from Dani's grasp.

"He's my soulmate. I decide if I should be with him."

He went down the stairs.

Dani didn't want to be dealing with three close calls in one day. Two days? 24 hours?

Sadie walked up to her and leaned down to her level like she was 15 again. It occurred to Dani she was on her knees.

"You think there are any favors I could call in?" Sadie asked.

"He needs a Greater Restoration. I don't... I- I mean I don't think anyone we could know has magic like that."

Sadie got her thoughtful look for a moment, then fully poured her attention into Dani.

"If there's anything, we will find it."

Dani nodded.

When her eyes fell away, they found the trail of dirt Eegan left behind him when he walked on-board. Dani picked herself up.

"... We've got a broom somewhere. I'm gonna go ahead and clean up."

-+-

Why did he look at me?

Kyana's eyes floated and buzzed between the dead intellect devourer, VR-LA, and the boy who'd just functionally commandeered Eegan. She didn't really process what the others were saying.

Why did he look at me before saying 'mindflayers'? What'd I... this... this thing, it was what was talking out on the ocean, it must be, that just makes sense, it was...

This was because of her.

All of it. She brought it with her.

Kyana didn't really know where she was running to. Gods, this plane was so hot. That was a pretty loud crash behind her, The Heap had a lot of untenably high piles of junk. Were there more? How far would she have to run? Would she even find anything where she was going? She had to. It had to be better than here and now, it just had to. It didn't get much worse than this.

No. That was a lie. It could be much worse. That's why she needed to go now.

Was any distance far enough? Oh. She was causing a public disturbance. Sorry, sorry, don't worry, sorry. Sorry... she didn't say sorry before leaving. Ione said sorry. Kyana didn't even say sorry for hurting them the first time, she didn't have the spine to give them the courtesy of knowing it was her. And now she's running who knows where. Where did she go? How far could she go before it finally stopped mattering? Stopped being so bad? How far did she have to go? Where did she need to go? To hide? She couldn't hide someplace small, she couldn't stand being small like this anymore, she couldn't stand this she couldn't stand it.

Kyana's head pounded. This probably wasn't good for her, she should find someplace to breathe. How far has she gotten?

Kyana practically rammed into a wall trying to just lean against it and catch her breath. All her muscles were cramping up.

"Miss?" Kyana looked up to see someone very official-looking towering over her, short spear strapped to their back. She did her best to gulp down more air and stand up straighter. "What business do you have in this area of the city?"

"I..." She looked around. What area of the city was this? Dani would know. Dani knew so many things Kyana didn't. What must she think of her, knowing Kyana was the reason that happened to her friend? "I'm just... trying to... to get anywhere."

Kyana sensed that was not one of the acceptable answers to that question.

"And where exactly are you running from?"

Terrible question to ask. Worse question to answer.

"I... I'm... my crew, they... they're in danger because of me, I just... if you want me to leave, please just... point me to the nearest portal out or, or something I... I only want to go."

"You're saying you pose some kind of threat to the people around you?" Their hand landed on their spear and Kyana realized she should've chosen her words more carefully. Dani wouldn't have gotten herself into this. VR-LA wouldn't have been this stupid. Finbar would've helped her with this.

"I-I... just-there's- I'm not the problem." Aren't you though? "It's everything following me that's the problem, I... I just need to get away!"

"I'm going to have to ask you to follow me, miss. Before you get yourself into any more trouble."

Kyana couldn't stand this.

She followed.

 ~ ~ ~

"Please remove your arm coverings."

"Wh- why?" Kyana crossed her arms in front of herself. The usual nervous pose.

"We need to have a record of your soulmark on file as part of your description."

"But..."

The djini the officer brought Kyana in front of to do some statement filing-reporting-something fixed Kyana with a short, suspicious expression.

"Ma'am, I understand you aren't from around here, but any substantial disturbances and suspicious activities are documented in full for the safety and prosperity of the City of Brass. This documentation includes all distinguishing features of the offending party, such as soulmarks. If you never return to the city as you seem so keen to do, having this on file should not be a problem."

Kyana didn't want to. She didn't want to, she couldn't, she wanted Finbar, she wanted VR-LA, she wanted Dani.

"Excuse me!" The djini at the desk looked past her to the new voice and Kyana practically froze in place. That couldn't be real, that couldn't be him.

"I'm currently in the middle of something." The desk djini said. Kyana didn't want to turn around.

"This one says he knows the offender and can vouch for her." Said another voice. The Djini in front of Kyana flicked their eyes between Kyana and who she desperately didn't want to be behind her. Who she desperately-still wanted to hide behind.

"And what exactly is the relationship between a human from what I can only assume is the Prime Material and a firbolg?"

"We're on the same crew. Have been for a short time now." Stop recognizing his voice, stop recognizing his voice, stop recognizing his voice, please just leave me here, I won't be able to leave a second time.

"I see..." Kyana wasn't sure what the desk djini saw on her face, but whatever it was, it must've confirmed the claims to them. "And what does your crew do that would lead to this one making a statement that she is a danger to the public."

"I never said-"

"You are not being spoken to." They cut her off and her nails dug into her arms.

"She's... been going through a lot. There was an incident on the ship, it... it really shook the poor thing, and she is fast. Did anybody get hurt?"

"... No injuries or thefts have been reported. Only her disrupting the peace. I assume you crew a spelljammer? What is its registration?"

"Oh, ah... I don't really know all the proper wordin' for it or anything. The ship's called the Per Aspera. I was assigned to it as a member of The Searing Tongue."

His voice got closer and his hand landed on her shoulder. She saw VR-LA's match ring and she wanted to disappear. The desk djini sized the both of them up and set down their pen a moment.

"Public disturbances by non-citizens is a fine-able offense."

"I-I have money." Kyana's voice came out small and she shrank back under the gaze of the desk djini.

"And can you confirm it's not stolen?"

"I can," Finbar said for her. "First job we did with her was pretty big, and she's not a very big spender."

The desk djini's narrowed eyes bopped between the two of them. They huffed and leaned back a little in their chair.

"I'll let you off on a one time fine if and only if you can get this one to be cooperative."

"Oh I don't know that you need my help for that. What's the problem?"

Kyana couldn't help shrinking closer to Finbar.

"She has so far refused to remove her arm coverings to note her soulmark in the report."

"Oh." Kyana felt him looking down at her, but her eyes were firmly on VR-LA's ring. "You'll have to forgive her hesitating, most of the rest of the crew is pretty private about that stuff, too."

Finbar squeezed her shoulder gently.

"It'll be okay Kyana. You don't even gotta remove both, just the one with the mark on it."

Oh. They were lying. That... made it a little bit easier. Maybe. Maybe it was harder. She had one small grace that if she remembered it right, single soulmarks always appear on the left arm, so her mechanite shaped secret was safe. ... It didn't actually make her feel one bit better, but she knew she'd feel worse having to reveal it this way. She could lie to authority figures no problem, but she couldn't lie to Finbar, especially not about his soul mate. When he asked, she'd have to tell him how she hurt VR-LA because she was impatient and stupid and clueless. It wasn't wholly her fault, but that didn't mean she should've done it.

Kyana couldn't keep her hand quite steady as she unraveled the wrappings around her left arm. Finbar's hand slid to her back to steady her. Why was she... feeling so much about this? What was wrong with her? Most normal people have their marks fully or partially visible, she'd seen that much so far. She kept the habit of keeping them covered because Dani and VR-LA did it just fine and she needed to stay hidden.

Not that trying to run and hide actually accomplished anything. Clearly.

Still, she... she couldn't look as she held her arm out to be scribbled and recorded in some incident report. It... it felt wrong. It felt bad. And if she looked, then it would be real and she'd have to contend with that on top of everything else.

The desk djini clicked their tongue as they set down their pen.

"For a public disturbance of this level and the processing, it's going to amount to about 90 gold. You got that much?"

"I-I have diamonds." Kyana clutched her arm to her chest, already covering her leaves and animal tracks and shield and hearts. "How many would that be?"

Finbar led her out once they were finally dismissed. Kyana didn't say anything as they walked, presumably back to The Heap. Where the boy all her bullshit ended up hurting and the one she had to assume at this point was his soul mate were. Obviously she hurt him too. Gods, she had a talent for that, didn't she?

She was triple checking her left arm to make sure her mark was safely hidden away when Finbar finally spoke.

"You wanna get something to eat and do some errands? I had something I wanted to do in the city when we got here."

Kyana blinked and looked up to Finbar. His eyes and his smile were soft. She learned these past few weeks she really liked soft things.

She couldn't help smiling a little back. "Yeah. I can... actually take in more of the city for real that way."

Finbar didn't talk about her running away, or about the intellect devourer or the police station. He led her around the food district to a hole-in-the-wall looking place that served 'fusion' food, which did not usually involve a spell called 'fusion' or the like, like Kyana first presumed. The dessert tasted really good, and Finbar said he could make something like it for her another time.

Another time. Like he was still including her.

Her face fell a little before she could tell it not to, and he noticed.

"Hey. Today's been really hard on you." He said gently.

"I mean," Kyana offered him half a smile, "I can think of some people it's been harder for."

"They ain't here in front of me though, are they?"

No arguing with that, she supposed. She took another bite, staring down at her nearly empty plate.

"You don't gotta talk about any of it." He said. "I just wanted to check in with you properly. It's all a whole lot."

Kyana put her fork down. She didn't like this feeling. This feeling that'd been living and moving inside her as long as she could remember. She thought she'd left it behind with the mismatched carvings and dark twisty hallways and holes to punch monsters down. But no. It just lagged behind for a little before catching up to her. Would she ever be free of it? Ever? That was all she wanted. All she wanted in the whole of every new world.

"... Thank you. I'm sorry, I... I just realized I never thanked you, that... I would've been in so much trouble and... I wouldn't have thought to lie about the marks, and then..."

Just the thought of people like that having both the soul mates written over her arms –having VR-LA– made Kyana's stomach twist. She suddenly wasn't sure she could finish her dessert.

"It's no trouble. We're in this whole planescape business together. We're a crew."

Kyana locked her fingers together tightly.

Her eyes migrated to Finbar's hands and the rings printed plainly across his skin. They were his. His soul mates. What could they ever need from her? She hurt them both so badly already. They accepted a random stranger onto their crew, and now she's keeping secrets and hurting them and dashing off. No matter how far or close she was, she hurt her soul mates. And now their real soul mate just said 'we'.

"... You're so nice to me." Her voice cracked and her sentence ended in a squeak. Her posture went tight at the force of failing to stop the sudden surge of tears blurring out her vision, dripping down onto her ringless hands. "You're so nice to me, it isn't fair. W-where were you when they punished me for answering wrong before? When I was in trouble before? I-I was all alone, I was completely alone, and now you have both of them and I can't!"

Kyana screwed her eyes shut and heaved quiet shuddering breaths into her palms as she tried to make herself smaller. Please. Please let no one else in the restaurant notice. Please, please just this once let her hide away.

Finbar's heart broke into more pieces than he could've thought possible as he gazed at his very first soulmate. His big bright beautiful fluttering sunburst curled in on herself and sobbed almost silently, and moment after relentless moment he didn't know what to do with himself. Pepper actually reacted first, pressing an ash covered sprig of spruce into Finbar's palm. He blinked down at it before realizing what she meant by it and rolled it over the tips of each of his fingers, murmuring a prayer for peace to Sylvanis. The ash spread across his palm and the spruce burst silently outward, wrapping out around his and Kyana's shoulders as the mistletoe ash slid like sand into the shadows, making them soft and dark as black velvet.

Kyana didn't look up or seem to notice him casting pass without trace. He reached out gently to brush some of her hair from her forehead. She pulled in a sharp breath and immediately pulled away. She looked at his face which he knew looked pained and bereft, and she clutched her arms around her middle like if she twisted and squeezed as much of herself down as she could, she could fall through the cracks of the world.

"I-I... I can't... I can't have them, they aren't m-mine. They... they matter so much to you, and... and they're part of your family, and I... I hurt them, I- I almost killed them, I almost killed all of you. I only ever get you in trouble, and I- I still have the nerve to be jealous of you, god, can you believe that? I- I love this, I love the ship, I love the astral sea, I love you and Dani and VR-LA and going places and meeting people, I love it so so much, and all I do is keep secrets and make trouble and get people hurt, it's all I've ever been good for!"

Finbar couldn't stand this.

"... I wanted to be there sooner. The moment I knew about you, I wanted to keep you safe."

"Wh- B-but I, I'm the one the mind devourer thing- He- he still needs a Greater Restoration spell-"

"No. Not on the ship. Not whatever VR-LA meant with the mindflayer stuff." She was so delicate. He needed to be the most careful he'd ever been. "I... since I knew you. I can't not look out for you, Kyana. Because you're not only good for getting in and out of trouble. I... I get the feeling what you were saying earlier is that VR-LA and Dani are your other soulmates. Am I right?"

A noise strained through Kyana's teeth. After another moment, she nodded.

"I think I know what you're talking about. When you say you hurt them before. Before we all met, right?"

Kyana brought her feet up to the edge of her seat and curled into a ball. She nodded again.

"H-he told you? O-or Dani did?"

"... No. Do you want me to keep how I found out a secret?"

"I'm so sick of secrets!" Kyana's knees knocked into the table, jostling everything. The pixies got to work keeping things tidy and Kyana looked out at the rest of the restaurant nervously. No one else seemed to notice the small commotion. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

"It's okay."

"... Why is it a secret?" Kyana looked at him suspiciously.

"It's something I've been waiting on telling you. Two things I guess. I'll start with the first. When we talked about marks matching the other day, I showed you part of VR-LA's mark here." Kyana tensed some when he held his arm out. "I didn't say anything at the time, but I saw you recognizing it."

"Did you... ask him about me? Does he already know?"

"No. At least I haven't said anything." Finbar took a moment to breathe and spoke simple and gentle. "The reason I know what happened with you and VR-LA and Dani is because that mark on your left arm matches their marks for me."

Kyana blinked at him once, twice. Her hands went to her mouth and more tears spilled out and overtook her cheeks. Finbar knew there wasn't anything else he could say, and he doubted Kyana would be any more responsive to physical comfort. He reached over for his napkin and held it out to her. It took her some time, but she eventually took it, careful not to brush her fingers with his. It crumpled against her eyes and cheeks, and she didn't look at him.

"... he said it felt like dying..." She croaked.

"... It's not too pleasant, no. Sorry, by the way. About the thing with the train back in hell."

"Wh- I should be apologizing, I... Did you- are you okay?" Her eyes turned to him again and they were wide and round and searching as ever. "Are- I mean I know it was months ago, but I..."

Finbar smiled at her. "Don't you worry your little head. I'm just glad you came back to me."

She twisted and fiddled with the napkin in her hands. It took her a bit before she spoke again. "... I... you say that, but I wasn't even going to you on the Astral Sea... I didn't wanna be here. I didn't wanna go back to the ship... I... I was jus- just gonna leave... I was gonna leave you, I was gonna leave... everything I love."

Finbar knew he couldn't just reach across and wrap her in his arms, but that didn't stop him from wanting to. He'd been waiting to see her and look after her and save her himself if he had to for 15 years. He knew her by now. Not completely, but he knew she didn't need anyone grabbing for her and didn't need anything else weighing on her mind. He also knew that she most certainly did not need to go running off on her own again.

"How 'bout this: We can all come together to straighten out all the soulmate stuff once we've gotten a Greater Restoration for Dani's little friend. That devourer thing is already good and dead, so you don't gotta worry about it. And you can stay with the ship where VR-LA, Dani, and me are, so we can help you in the meantime to not get arrested for running on the sidewalk. Okay?"

Kyana blinked up at Finbar as she tried to reconcile everything from the past two hours. Had it even been that long? It felt more like the whole day.

She wanted to feel the kind of peace she felt on the Astral Sea again. She wanted to know about this second soul inside of her. She wanted to be sure nothing like what happened on the ship these past two days because of her would ever happen again.

"... I don't... wanna belong to someone else. I... I don't wanna be responsible for all of this..."

Finbar's gentle smile never left. "You don't gotta say you belong to anybody but you. And you ain't responsible for what anyone else does. You don't gotta do anything but be yourself and keep yourself safe."

"... But... I am responsible for you guys..." Her own throat made it so hard to talk. "I... you all act and talk- everyone acts and talks like soul mates are... I saw how Dani and VR-LA looked at me when they knew I didn't know. But I... I mean, according to Enoch, I don't even have the one soul, most of my psionics apparently come from whatever- whatever else is with me. I- and I think I like it? It's only ever been good to me, but... but I've only ever been bad to you... as a soul mate. I am responsible for you guys, I... we're all bound up in eachother, and I know you all and I know how important this is to you and I..."

A few more gobby tears dripped down Kyana's cheeks and onto her lap.

"... I don't want you guys to realize who I am... and then you guys have one less person you trust when you thought you could trust them implicitly. Two ways."

Kyana sat with the silence, looking down at the fading tear marks on her lap. Slowly, Finbar's hand moved over and rested on hers. She didn't want to look at Dani's match ring, but it was what her eyes locked on.

"None of us ever really compared notes 'cause we figured we didn't have all three of our soulmates in common. So I'm not gonna speak for Dani and VR-LA. But I still trust you, Kyana. I didn't stop trusting you after what happened when I didn't know you, I didn't stop trusting you when you recognized VR-LA on me, and I didn't stop trusting you when I had to track you down and get you away from the police. I've seen you growing. Not directly until this past little while, but looking at you now after everything, I'm happy to carry you with me, and I'm happy you found your way here to this booth eatin' this dessert."

The quiet hugged them a moment, and Kyana met Finbar's eyes again.

"What if I run away again?"

"I'll find you. Whatever way you might need to be found."

Kyana was used to statements like that sounding like threats. Especially with the last 48 hours she just had. But coming from Finbar, it was... nice. Knowing it was him down her arm, everything about the leaves and magic and safety clicked into place. There was no need to interpret inscrutable symbols anymore. It was just Finbar. She remembered the sensation of gazing at VR-LA's mark after Ione put her to bed all those months back. The idea that these marks weren't monoliths telling her how she was and how to be completely revolutionized her spirit. Dani apologizing for shooting at her to get her onboard took her by surprise when it happened. It seemed strange to apologize for something that never hurt in the first place, and even now after getting caught in her literal crossfire multiple times, Kyana still hated the idea of leaving Dani's orbit.

"... Will the others... can I... tell them some of it on my own? Before... before we all have a whole Thing about it?"

The tension left her in the face of his soft, warm, comfy smile.

"If that's what you wanna do, you do it."

Kyana scrubbed the last of the wetness from around her eyes and smiled back.

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it."

-+-

VR-LA watched Roy carry Eegan off the ship and couldn't help looking back out towards the city. He didn't like this feeling. He had no idea why Kyana ran off like that, but all the explanations he could deduce on his own tended to come up his fault.

It all just crunched together at once seeing the Intellect Devourer. He'd been trying to figure out how Kyana did the things she did when psionics very much did not draw on The Weave and therefore could not produce effects to the level of spectacular potency Kyana exhibited. He knew she was special somehow, and he also knew she didn't have quite a lot of information about herself, so of course he wanted to give the information to her. It just kept looping back to Mindflayers, and then an aberration appears on their ship after Kyana hears a voice inside her mind threatening her specifically the day they kill someone from her monastery which has a history of morphing monks into monsters for who-knows-what? So he looked to her and said 'mindflayers' and now she's who-knows-where because he just had to run his mouth. Well, he did have to give Oto an answer both out of basic politeness and because this was Kind Of An Emergency. He didn't have to look at Kyana and make her think he blamed her for this happening. That just had to be it, and now Finbar's off in Brass tracking her down and she's surely upset with him which makes perfect sense, but now that he knows this, he also knows she's in danger, and what if Finbar doesn't find her in time? He doubted there were any mindflayers in the flesh lurking around the City of Brass, but... well they sent this thing and the slime noodle to Sigil, who knew what other tools they had at their disposal? He had no knowledge of the enemy except history and cultural hearsay.

"Hey." Dani's voice snapped him out of his thoughts. She had a broom in her hands and a little pile of ash and dirt at her feet. "I forgot to grab the dustpan when I grabbed the broom. Could you get it for me?"

"Oh! Yes, absolutely."

He passed by her and made it all the way to the top of the stairs before he paused and turned back to her.

"Are you alright?" He asked, just loud enough for only her to hear.

She blinked at him and darted her eyes around in thought. Her grip on the broom handle tightened a little.

"I'll tell you after you get me the dustpan." She said.

When he did return with it, she chucked the ash-and-dust pile overboard and it sizzled in the lava below.

"... So..." VR-LA said, "Are you okay?"

"I don't fucking know, you tell me. You think I'm okay after flying my ship back home to fix all the problems the bullshit with the fight that left me blue caused, only to have my first friend get his fucking brain nearly deleted -maybe just straight up permanently deleted if we don't figure out all this Greater Restoration shit- all because he thinks 'Oh, I'm the oldest, I know what I'm doing, I don't have to listen to Dani when she says 'stay off my ship'.' And it's not even THAT big of a deal that he was on the ship 'cause he isn't capable of breaking anything I can't fix but now we have to run through the rest of the ship to make sure there's nothing else infesting anywhere else or whatever And Also Kyana's gone 'cause of course more things just have to go wrong in a row and I need to set something the fuck on fire or I am going to-- god fucking damn it, I'm hungry."

VR-LA blinked as he processed all that. His first salient thought was Dani never told him Eegan was the first friend she ever made. He realized actually that despite how much time he spent with her and how close he'd become with her since even before discovering they're soulmates that he didn't... actually know all that much about her life.

Dani leaned the broom against the railing and clapped a hand on VR-LA's shoulder as she walked.

"You wanna grab a hoagie with me or you wanna stay with the ship?"

"I'd... like to come with you."

"Alright then." She swung around the railing and walked down the gangplank with VR-LA in tow. He was pretty sure asking more questions about how Dani was feeling was a no-go, and asking after Eegan seemed... unwise. Usually silences with Dani were quite comfortable, but...

"Do you think Finbar's found Kyana yet?"

Dani glanced over at him. "I mean if anyone can find her, it's him. If they're not already on the way back, he'll probably get to her before something bad happens."

"Yes, you're right... I... what do you think it was? That made her want to run off so fast? She's never run from a fight or a monster before, so... so what do you think it was?"

Dani furrowed her brow.

"Man, I don't fuckin' know. I was already up on deck when she zoomed past me, shouldn't you know?"

"I... no, I was just finishing talking to Oto when she bolted and Finbar seemed just as blindsided as I was. Roy was still absorbed with Eegan, I doubt he knows or said anything. She... she's been under a lot of stress very recently though. So that's probably something to do with it. I... I confess, I think my comment about the mindflayers is what did it."

Dani turned her head to him fully, eyebrows raised in a 'You gonna just end that statement there?' kind of expression.

"I... When I brought up mindflayers, I... I looked straight at her because I... I haven't actually told anyone this, it started as an idle curiosity and then it grew into an entire... conspiracy board-- I've been trying to figure out what Kyana's deal is as far as like. Is she even a human? How does her monastic tradition even function? Why do her psionics manifest Like That? It's fascinating and also terrifying because I'm quite sure her monastery was run by Mindflayers."

Dani blinked and someone nearby who apparently overheard balked at the two of them and began walking faster.

"So... what, you think she ran off because she thinks you blame her for... That?" She gestured back in the direction of The Heap.

"I... I at least think she got spooked by me looking directly her as I explained what might be going on... You know she was the first one who heard the Intellect Devourer in her brain, and she already was technically the impetus of the fiasco with the monks in Sigil."

"Why the fuck would she run off into the middle of a city she's been to One Time because of that?"

"Well- people behave very irrationally under stress! I don't know, I just... I feel like it's my fault."

Dani sighed. "Look. The problem here isn't 'VR-LA hurt Kyana's feelings so bad she ran as far away from him as she could get without thinking'. The problem is 'Shit's fucked with wherever that girl comes from, and now we gotta deal'. It's not your fault the thing that I assume was waiting to jump one of us jumped Eegan instead."

VR-LA... almost felt better hearing that. He still felt like if he just hadn't added the extra nudge of pressure Kyana would be in a better place right now.

Dani struck up a completely unrelated bit of small talk after she presumably got fed up with VR-LA's silence. They got their hoagies and bottles of...

"Dani." Dani said, holding up the six pack of clinking soda bottles. The name Dani was scrawled across the branding in electric lemon lime and they were already beginning to sweat with condensation in the Brass heat.

"You... that seems quite the coincidence."

Dani scoffed and started back in the general direction of The Heap. "Where do you think I got my name?"

VR-LA blinked. It never occurred to him to ask just how far back Dani's street urchin status went. She was just Dani. But... knowing she was fending for herself so long she even had to give herself her own name...

"Do... do you remember your first mark from me?"

Dani took a turn to blink as they rounded a corner to a slightly quieter street.

"It was the bookshelf, up top." She tapped her upper thigh, which VR-LA of course could not see. He'd seen part of it from Finbar once or twice. A ring of shelved books like an arm band. "I figured it wouldn't be so grainy anymore by now, but I guess that.. kinda makes sense. You lost a lotta research in the... incident."

It wasn't the first time the loss of raw information on top of personal memories hit VR-LA, but it didn't really get any easier to grapple with. He was a little better at doing it by now at least, so the only tell he gave was the break in eye contact and a catch in his step as Dani found a stoop to settle herself down on.

"Ah. That... That does remind me." VR-LA hooked into the strange string of numbers he'd been puzzling over before more immediate matters grabbed his attention. "I... I've actually found a new lead. Sort of. More like a cryptic potential red herring."

Dani perked up and cracked open one of the sodas. (also named Dani, he wondered how long it'd take him to get used to that)

"I found what I... they might be coordinates, but of course the Astral Sea is... not so easily navigable. It was just three numbers in sequence. But.. I was in a location that... You remember the Balhanoth?"

"The what?"

"The creature sitting on top of the heart of that dead god that almost ate you."

"Ohh, that fucker." She took a swig of her drink and held one out to VR-LA. He accepted, and the sensation of the cold against his hands felt nice. Grounding he supposed.

"The strange... lab, study, whatever you call it; I saw it in a memory. It's a real place, and I've been there."

Dani looked quite interested now.

"I don't know how I'm meant to find it, I think if- if I went back to the dead god, the heart was where the illusory globe was, so maybe-"

"What are the numbers?"

"Huh? Ah, um... 008, 492, -073."

"Yeah, that sounds like you'd be navigating around a buncha' cubes, not a globe. Pretty sure globes have, like. Lattitude longitude going on. Also, if the monster was the one who made the globe, why would going to the dead god help things?"

VR-LA blinked. Admittedly he felt kind of stupid when she spelled out the logistics to him like that. He popped open his bottle of dani and listened to the sound of the fizz funneling up the neck.

"Well... well if we're navigating around cubes as you say, how do we know what plane to go to? The Astral Sea doesn't exactly have a measurable vertical axis."

"Axis..." Dani mumbled. She tore a bite out of her hoagie that seemed too big for her mouth, but she didn't struggle with it. "Well if the plane we're headed to doesn't work on a globe-based logic, then it's a plane without, like. A Ground. It's a plane with a 0, 0, 0. I don't really know much about most planes before we visit them aside from the kinda people you should be able to find there, but I'm pretty sure that place you remember being would be in Mechanis. It's a place a robot would probably be in a formative memory. I think."

Mechanis... of course. Was this his old home? No, why would he need to write down the coordinates to his own house? Did somebody know him there? What information did it have? How many times had he been in that study? What kind of place was it really like?

"I... I want to go there."

His hand went to his throat as embarrassment took him over. He hadn't meant to voice that, that was meant to just be a thought he kept to himself.

"I'm gonna say we'll have to wait until after we get Eegan a Greater Restoration, but Mechanis sounds pretty fuckin' cool once this shit's over with."

VR-LA blinked and turned to her.

"I..." His chest sort of gummed up. "But... I mean, it's not like I have anything to offer for, for the job I suppose. I..."

Dani squinted at him like he just said something incredibly suspicious.

"I just mean! I... I'm not sure how I'd pay you for the trip or anything and I... I don't want to just be dragging you around on my business."

Dani frowned, grabbed a section of newspaper wrapping up her hoagie, and rolled it up to bop him on the head.

"You idiot," She said, "You don't need to fucking pay us to help you, we're your friends. And besides, your business is my business. On like. A soul level."

VR-LA stared back into the slightly annoyed certainty in his soulmate's eyes. He fiddled with the bottle in his hands and shuffled his gaze away, failing to say anything to that. The warmth in his chest was much more pleasant than the heat of the city. He still wasn't sure after seeing the way his own shattered memories marred her and Finbar's skin if she should go saying things like that. She always talked like someone only in things to chase her own interests, but then she committed so selflessly to the people and things in her life. He was surprised at this point honestly that she didn't have a mark that just outwardly expressed that.

He looked down at the soda in his hands, where his crewmate got her name from. He knew she didn't think he needed to, but he resolved that he would give back to her for this. She'd given him almost everything since she woke him up. He would not have an inequivalent exchange with his friend. He loved her too much for that. She'd loved him too much for him to let it slide.

"Thank you." He said softly.

The soda tasted comforting, despite him never having it before.

Chapter Text

"Kyana, are you alright?" VR-LA asked. She supposed she should have expected that, but it still took her off guard to hear 'are you alright' instead of 'what happened' or 'what did you think you were doing'

"I... I'm fine now. I um... I'm sorry." Boy was that pulling more than its own weight.

"Oh, no, no Kyana, I'm sorry, I- I never meant to scare you like that. I... I'm sorry. You didn't need... all of that."

You didn't really need me pulling what I pulled on you originally, yet here we are.

"I got you a sandwich." Dani said unceremoniously, holding out a sandwich wrapped in yesterday's news with a slightly-soggy slightly-singed bun sporting little rumples and crackles in the crust.

"Oh, Finbar got me food earlier, it's... it's alright."

"Alright, more for me." She tore a bite out of it and turned to walk past the salamander manning The Heap's entrance. VR-LA held onto Kyana's eyes a moment longer before going to follow, and of course Kyana and Finbar went after. Oto met them halfway to the ship.

"I'm sure you can guess this establishment doesn't exactly have a health plan robust enough to cover extraplanar psychic ambushes." He said.

"We don't have a 'health plan' at all, Oto." Dani said flatly.

"Not a contradiction. As you know, trained artificers are in short supply, and I'll also have a second mechanic out for the count for at least a week if we don't fix this."

"And there is no one in Brass who'd be both able and willing to help Eegan with this." VR-LA verified.

"Not in any kind of foreseeable circumstances."

"I know a Cleric back in the Feywild, but..." Finbar spoke up, "Hundkiln don't exactly have a lot of avenues to gain magic like a Greater Restoration."

"Is... is there a way to do it in Sigil?" Kyana asked. "It seems like everything is there."

"We could ask Hira..." Dani muttered.

"Who?" Oto turned to her.

"Friend of a friend." Finbar said. "Or... boss of a friend."

"They're an air djini, but they're chill." Dani said. Oto's mouth stretched in a clear show of displeasure.

"Well, we can use all the connections we can get."

It took Dani much longer to notice than Eegan and Roy that one of Oto's very very few tics was the subtle twist of his left arm and the brief squeeze of his fingers. Eegan used to throw out theories about how that could be what he did when a new mark came in, or maybe he had some old injury he never told anyone about. He came up with a few explanations until the first time the three of them saw the black wall up Oto's arm beneath his coat. Roy said a few weeks later how he found it a little creepy that he genuinely wasn't sure if he believed Oto's soulmate was dead or if he believed Oto went and sold his soul to something before he found them.

The turn of his wrist and the flex of his fingers as he said what he said set Dani's mind back to it. She wondered if -whatever happened- he was missing them right about now. As much as Oto can miss a person.

"Are we able to sail back out to the Astral Sea through the portal we always come here through?" VR-LA turned to her.

"We... do always just kinda planeshift out whenever we make deliveries." Dani looked out to where the fiery ocean and sky rippled in a more-intense-than-normal heat mirage a ways off the docks. "No, yeah, I guess... I guess we don't actually have to use our planeshift to get out to the Astral Sea."

"I was wondering when that might occur to you." Oto said as if that was helpful or necessary.

"We wanna go grab him now?" Finbar asked.

"I think it is best to treat this as soon as possible, yes." VR-LA took the same tone he took when there was some danger off the bow of the ship.

"Roy's gonna be coming with us too." Dani doubted he'd so much as let Eegan out of his sight in the next 12 hours.

"Very well." Oto said, already turning away. "However you all fix this, make it quick."

-+-

"... I'm sorry."

Roy blinked and looked over to Kyana. She'd volunteered her hammock as a place for Eegan to rest and Roy was sat on a crate next to it, reading some book VR-LA lent him with one hand and holding onto Eegan's with the other.

"What do you..." He looked around the room a moment before he seemed to clock what she was referring to. "Oh. I mean... not like it's your fault."

"Everyone keeps saying that." Kyana muttered.

"What, did you invite that thing onboard or something?"

"I... No, but... I mean, it only wanted on the ship because... I was invited on."

"Oh, I get it." Roy said after a moment. He set the book down in his lap. "You're like Dani."

Kyana blinked and couldn't help the self conscious tense in her leg.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Dani... doesn't like letting shit slip through the cracks. You're saying this is your fault, but it's not anyone's fault when these sorts of things happen. Took a while for Dani to contend with that without it bothering the shit out of her constantly, but she has always gotten it. How'd you guys even meet, anyway? She's never this comfortable around strangers. Although I guess you've been with them at least two and a half weeks at this point."

"Oh. That..." Something in Kyana wondered if Dani intuitively knew, somehow, that they were soul mates. If that's why she was different with her than Roy thought she'd be. That was kind of foreboding. "They kinda plucked me outta the middle of this place." She gestured out toward the sea. "I was treading water and they were nice enough to pick me up."

"Woah... How'd you get all the way out here?"

"Oh, I was... looking to get away. Or to find something. Or... I just needed to run. And I ended up here."

Kyana looked out her window and onto the safe gentle ocean of stars and refracting light.

"I'm still sorry." She said. "I... I never wanted to scare anybody like that again, and then... I didn't even know your name and all the nonsense attached to me hurt you."

"... Hey, I'm Roy." Roy reached out with the hand he was no longer holding the book with. Kyana crossed the room and shook.

"Kyana." She smiled. "You know Dani?"

"Yeah, she's like... basically the second or third most important person in my life? Don't you tell her that, though. She's got a big enough head as it is."

Kyana laughed softly, but she couldn't help the way her right leg tucked itself behind her left.

"How'd you two meet?" She asked.

"She was the last of us to come to The Heap. Eegan managed to make friends with Plug, and that was basically the only way to make friends with Dani back then. I kinda assumed he was like. Some abandoned project of someone else, and then I found out she made him, and... Like, can you believe that? She's also the reason I walk as good as I do." He nodded down to where his prosthetic leg was leaned up against the other side of the crate.

"Other folks at the heap, they cobbled together the first version of that in order to free up my arms a little easier so I didn't have to get everywhere on crutches, and then she took one look at it and decided she knew Better actually. Oto had been teaching Eegan and I general mechanic stuff for a while, and Eegan was generally taking to artificing, but Dani? It's like. All she ever thinks about. I don't think she fixed it up the first time 'cause she liked me that much, she just saw something needed fixing and decided it was her job now."

Roy sighed and leaned back against the wall.

"Same with this place. Same with VR-LA."

"VR-LA?" Kyana tilted her head.

"Yeah, they haven't told you yet? He was on the ship and he was halfway dead as far as any of us could tell. Dani took him out back, strapped him to a table, and figured out how to make him start ticking again."

"Woah..."

"Yeah. She's really cool."

"Yeah... yeah she is."

They stayed silent a moment and Kyana took a step back. She knew if she heard about anyone hurting Dani the way she had, she'd want an apology at minimum. And Roy was clearly almost as close to her as he was to Eegan. Maybe just as close.

"You... I'm probably gonna apologize to you again. Just to warn you. I've kinda put Dani through more grief than anyone at this point."

Roy looked at her like she just said something ridiculous.

"I somehow doubt you could cause that many problems two weeks into knowing her and not have her constantly cold shouldering you."

"I..." She couldn't tell Roy before she told Dani. That just wasn't correct. It wasn't the right way for this to go. "She doesn't know yet."

Roy narrowed his eyes, his entire demeanor shifting.

"Keeping secrets from her?"

"... It hasn't been that long, I- I promise. Not... not since I figured it out at least. I'm planning to tell her after all this, I am, I just... She's important to you. So I'm probably gonna be doing more apologizing if everything leading up to now is any indication."

The furrow in Roys brow deepened.

"... If she forgives you, I forgive you." He said, like it was a sort of verbal contract.

"I'm honestly not sure if I want her to." That was clearly the wrong thing to say, but Roy was at least more willing to let it slide for the time being than the police. "But thank you."

-+-

Everyn's eyebrows rose as he opened the door to Hira's demiplane and saw the crew clustered around Roy carrying Eegan in his arms.

"To what do we owe the sudden visit?" His eyes gravitated to Finbar. VR-LA wondered if people were always going to assume Finbar was in charge.

"We... figured of all the people we knew, you folks'd be the best equipped to help us." He gestured to Eegan. "He's in need of some powerful magical medical attention, and we've got a spelljammer and hopefully a sufficient amount of y'all's trust to do something in return."

VR-LA admittedly wasn't paying much attention as they were led inside and Elyse and Finbar's usual back and forth managed to push back some of the tension. His mind clouded over with the dual beasts of 'We've got to shore ourselves up against Mindflayers' and 'I cannot stand one more second not knowing where this place in Mechanus is'. He trusted Roy and Dani to take care of Eegan; his eyes kept gravitating to Kyana who he could not for the life of him get a clear read on when she wasn't being her usual self. He hoped she'd bounce back, but what would happen if she didn't? What could he do? He'd only known her two weeks, he wasn't even sure if the past two weeks were simply her falling into a version of herself that was actually highly unusual and this was her real default state.

She didn't really seem to be enjoying the hypothetical default state, though, so either way it'd probably do to behave as though this was something she needed help with.

As Hira gravitated over, their hand slipped seamlessly into Everyn's left. The way Everyn's used the mage hand spell stored in the ring around his finger to let him continue shuffling through various things without comment or missing a beat made VR-LA think this happened regularly. His eyes hopped between both their left hands and saw a matching set of rings. How that worked out, VR-LA was frankly baffled and fascinated.

Dani kept her eyes on the papers shuffling in Everyn's hands as he and Hira listed some options on what to do with Eegan and what the crew could do in return.

"We recently derailed a train in hell, so if you've got any jobs like that, we can swing it." Dani said.

"Ooo, Elyse, what was that dish you said needed to be cooked over that one special brimstone?" Hira chirped.

Chiseling up some brimstone was nothing, surely a Greater Restoration was worth more than that. Not that Dani was about to fucking say that, that'd be shit haggling.

"The Pazumon Perogis?" Elyse's eyes lit up with interest.

"Oooo yes, that sounds delightful~ If you can have it here by tonight, Everyn will arrange for a greater restoration for this one and we can all have dinner together! It's been so long since I've had a casual dine-in. Oh we can pull out that cozy looking tablecloth, won't that be nice, dear?" Hira smiled brightly at Everyn who cleared his throat.

"You remember not to call me that during business..."

"Well yes, but dinner isn't business, it's a nice intimate get-together."

"So we're getting ingredients for dinner." Dani cut in.

"Oh, no, all brimstone is highly inedible, especially the kind you're getting." Elyse said.

"Equipment, then." Dani grumbled, prickling more than was possibly strictly necessary.

"I'll have you two put up in one of the guest rooms with some snacks and such while we get the Greater Restoration, should be done before the delivery's back." Everyn said to Roy. "Shall I draw up an invoice, or is this going to be fully informal?" He looked between the crew and Hira.

"Invoice." Dani wasn't letting this go wibbly on them. Eegan was too important for that.

As Roy and Eegan were about to be split off from the group, Dani heard a familiar tongue click. She locked eyes with Roy and knew what to do.

"I'll be right back." She said to the crew and followed where Roy and the still-catatonic Eegan were being led. Roy stepped closer to her and muttered to her under his breath.

"Kyana said something weird."

She raised an eyebrow.

"She said there's something she hasn't told you about. That she'd need to apologize to both of us over."

That got the second eyebrow up.

"It was after she apologized about the intelligence spider or whatever. Something different. I don't know what it's about, but she said she'd tell you once this was sorted out. So just... don't let her not do that. Whatever it's about."

"She's got a whole soap opera going; she's probably blowing something out of proportion."

"Dani..."

She didn't have to look at him to know what kind of face he was making, but he did deserve to be looked in the eye.

"I'll remember. You take care of Eegan, I'll get this delivery done."

"... Be safe."

Dani couldn't help the squeeze in her fingers and the twist of her arm.

-+-

Kyana tapped nervously at the arms of the helm chair. They were lucky, there was some devil or other Finbar knew who had the location of a portal to the plane they needed that was thankfully close to where they left off from Sigil. They'd be at the portal in a matter of hours, then they'd planeshift straight out once they'd gotten the whatever-the-special-name-was brimstone and sail back to Sigil. Simple. Then they'd have dinner and... and she'd tell Dani and VR-LA they were soul mates. And that she'd almost gotten them killed even more times than the extremely recent time she'd done that.

They'd be hearing it on full stomachs at least!

In his room, VR-LA stared at the corkboard he'd assembled to fully line up all the information he'd put together in a snap of inspiration upon seeing the intellect devourer.

Mindflayers were known to do exactly what they'd done to Kyana and the other monks. It made sense that she had extraordinary psionic abilities in that context. It also explained her fraught relationship with soulmates; they actively kept the idea of people outside the monastery who she was meant to meet a secret to trap her there. They parked over a large hole to the Underdark to avoid outside interference. They were willing to go to great lengths to close the can of worms that was Kyana's escape from that place. Open and shut. Keep an eye out for Mindflayers and be nice to Kyana and things will smooth out.

... It didn't feel like enough.

What Dani said, about them being friends. The way Kyana's ever-present sparkle dimmed whenever these things came up. The lack of... anything that belonged to her. This wasn't enough; if Kyana was his friend, she deserved the best from him. If they were even a little similar, she deserved something better than 'Yeah, you were raised as a slave/food for mindflayers' as all he could give her about herself. If she changed this much after just a day of being forced to contend with this, it was not welcome anywhere near her again if he could help it.

Kyana deserved better and he would damn well give it to her.

As he ascended the stairs, he thought for a moment this perhaps wasn't phenomenal timing for asking a little more directly after her soulmark, but it would only take a moment to get her answer. If she said 'no', he'd wait a little longer and try asking when she seemed more ready. If she said 'yes', he'd be able to start immediately, and there was no better time like the present.

VR-LA knocked on the door to the dome and Kyana blinked, turning to the sound and practically startling upon seeing him. An odd reaction, but she was quite stressed.

Too stressed to be answering a question like this.

He blinked back at her through the glass, suddenly unsure if he wanted to follow through. She tilted her head. No backing out of it now, he was trapped by the rules of social convention.

Maybe... maybe a different conversation. Something to keep her mind off things.

VR-LA opened the door and closed it behind him.

"Hi. I just figured it gets pretty boring in here staring out at the sea for hours on end."

Kyana tilted her head to the other side. "You... wanted to come hang out?"

VR-LA remembered far too late how their last talk in the dome went.

"If you're alright with that."

Kyana looked back out at the stars.

"Yeah... that's alright."

She didn't say anything else as VR-LA approached. He leaned onto the headrest and stared up at the sky, feeling... mostly rather stupid.

"Do you... think about them?"

VR-LA swiveled his head to look down at Kyana. Unusually cryptic, usually she favored nakedly unsettling.

"Who?"

"Your soul mate. The last one."

VR-LA blinked. He supposed this was one way to ease into the question he'd given up on asking.

"Not as often as... I feel I should be. But... if I think about them too much, I start to get..."



"Cold."

"Cold..." She repeated.

"They... You recall last time we talked about soulmates, how... I mentioned losing one felt like dying."

She nodded.

"I... I know that because I nearly did lose that one."

"... And now you feel cold whenever you think about them."

"Not exactly."

Kyana didn't say anything, but VR-LA felt the need to defend his final soulmate against his own words.

"I... All I know about them is the marks on my arm. And the first thing I ever learned about them was... they were in danger. And I was alone. And if they stayed in danger, I'd be without something very very important. So... if I try to dig too deep, I start... spiraling a bit? I... I haven't even told Dani and Finbar this, I... sort of expected to never say it."

"Not even to me?"

VR-LA blinked and Kyana's hands twitched.

"I-I mean..." She kept her eyes glued to the ocean. "You don't have to tell me, I'm... I'm not nearly that close with you, I don't... deserve something you wanna keep private."

"I..." So strange... He didn't like Kyana saying things like that. It wasn't good, it wasn't right. "I simply meant... I never imagined myself saying things like this to someone. They're my problems, not someone else's."

'Your business is my business. On like. A soul level.'

"Well, okay, Dani wouldn't like me saying that, but... I have three whole soulmates. They all have things that... I want to help with. And... I- I guess I never thought... anyone would come to help me."

"... Me either."

Kyana's voice rumbled like she'd been crying for years, and oh how VR-LA understood. VR-LA reached down to wrap his left hand around hers. For a moment she sat paralyzed, but eventually, she squeezed her hand around his.

"Well," He tilted his head to her. "We picked you up, didn't we."

Kyana laughed, and it was still wrong, but it felt good enough VR-LA could accept it.

"Thank you." She said. "I... They love you. I know it."

VR-LA squeezed her hand gently.

"I trust you. I... I trust them too, of course, but... Hearing it from you, makes it feel realer."

Kyana sniffled and the ship slowed.

"I... c-can you take over for me?" She asked.

VR-LA decided his question could wait a while longer.

"Yes. I can do that for you."

-+-

Kyana and Dani were covering Finbar and VR-LA from behind. The whole precarious operation was going well until it Wasn't. Kyana wasn't used to being able to Just Run From The Monsters, so Dani had to yank her by her hood initially to get her to start going. Kyana was perfectly content to hammer-toss the brimstone over to Finbar and hold off the peanut gallery until he was far enough away that everyone else could abscond back to the ship separately, but everyone else had been of the mind that they're all retreating together.

This worked too. Honestly, Kyana felt lighter running as a unit. The getting away mattered less than the moving when they were all going in the same direction. Her crew were the only landmarks she needed.

"Finbar, can you still transform into a stag?" VR-LA yelled over his shoulder, grabbing onto his magic scarf. Kyana batted away the most ambitious of their pursuers with a stun from her astral arm.

"Yeah," Finbar's voice tugged her eyes forward again. "But I wouldn't be able to carry the brimstone."

"Don't worry about that part, I need you to hot potato that back to Kyana and carry Dani. I'm going to hop into the ship and drive it over!"

"It'll slow her down!" Finbar protested.

"I can handle it!" Kyana picked up her pace to be closer to Finbar.

"FUCK OFF!" Dani shouted. There was a loud vibration of spell energy as she shot at some effect barreling straight for the four of them. It ricocheted off Dani's counterspell like angry pool balls and sparked with a grinding smoky sound.

"VR-LA, did you- forget- about the flying bugs- you can summon?" Dani was not having an easy time keeping her breath, but she certainly had a handle on her energy.

"... Shit, you're right. But I only have enough charges to summon enough to carry one person!"

The only reason they'd managed to run this far was on account of VR-LA using insect plague.

"Take Dani, I'll grab the brimstone and Finbar can carry me!"

"Alright." VR-LA twisted a dial and yanked on one of the telescoping sections of the staff. The top unfurled and in a blink two giant scarabs unfolded wings-first from the staff and swirled over to Dani. VR-LA flicked his scarf and it fluttered with magic energy. "I'll be right back!"

He left a blue satin streak behind him as he sped off.

"You-" Finbar's statement was cut off by the whiz of an arrow striking into the brimstone, nearly missing his wrist. "You ready?"

Kyana grabbed the brimstone and in a whisper and a motion so smooth it nearly stunned Kyana into stumbling, Finbar was replaced by a giant stag.

"Move it!" Dani was already on her own transportation and hooked her hands under Kyana's arms to help pull her onto Finbar while all three of them were still very much running at top speed. One of Kyana's astral arms grabbed onto Finbar's antlers in an attempt to steady herself as she pushed down on the ground and swung her legs out to land on his back.

Kyana pressed the block of brimstone between herself and Finbar and held tight to his neck as he carried her nearly faster than she'd gone keeping up with the train. She felt Dani's hand on her shoulder and for a moment... The adrenaline and the motion and the touch. The hot air flicking strands from her ponytail, the hard, smoldering edges of the brimstone, the rough callouses on Dani's hand over Kyana's shoulder. She didn't know why, but hurtling on deerback through hell towards the ship she could see intercepting them, not quite home free but not quite on the backfoot, this small collection of heartbeats as everyone converged at the end of this...

It felt, somehow, like a perfect moment.

A wisp of air straining under the sheer gravity of her emotion floated from her throat.

VR-LA cranked up the intercom system. It might've been deafening if they were stood on-deck, but at this distance, it fluttered and landed on their ears at an almost conversational volume. "Crew of the Per Aspera, get ready to planeshift!"

Finbar's pixies swirled out in glimmering rosy comets around Kyana as Dani's hand left her shoulder for more verticality.

"Finbar, get ready to hold on!" She yelled. She fearlessly jumped from the scarabs holding her aloft and grabbed onto the bottom of the deck between the railing, then used the edge of her multitool to roughly rip loose a rope and unfurl a ladder. Finbar's muscles rippled beneath Kyana with the force of his jump and the pixies all pressed into her back as he morphed back into himself, now functionally carrying Kyana piggyback as he grabbed onto the bottom of the ladder.

"NOW!" Dani called to VR-LA. Loud and clear on the intercoms, everyone heard,

"Now leaving Hades~"

Kyana squeezed tight to Finbar as the planeshift buffeted them on the ladder. Her ears popped and for a second she thought she might've been rendered temporarily deaf until the rumble of water and the lift of being submerged in the sea registered. She started to let go of Finbar to swim to the surface, only to feel the Brimstone begin to sink. Panic spiked her heart rate and she dove for it immediately. She reached down and for a moment she thought she might cry as her fingers wrapped around the arrow and the rock broke away from it.

The amber glow of her astral arms clapped around the chipped block of whatever-fancy-name brimstone. She whispered a soft 'thank you' to whatever it might be that shared whatever space her soul took up. She felt another arm wrap around her waist and she was being pulled back to the surface.

Kyana gasped and drew their very important delivery up to her chest, holding on with all four of her arms. Her heart thudded hard and fast as she finally caught her breath, staring out at the glimmering colors and sparkling stars rolling across the sky.

"You okay, little one?"

Kyana took a big, slow, deep breath and leaned her head back onto Finbar's shoulder where the water lapped at the both of them.

"I think... I will be once we're on-deck."

They managed to get themselves and the brimstone up over the railing and onto the floor where Dani was sat cross legged with a very cuddly Plug in her lap. The pixies all checked over Kyana and Finbar, and VR-LA made his way out of the dome.

"Everybody all right?" He asked.

"No new injuries." Dani said without looking up.

"Got the fancy brimstone." Kyana held up the unweildy rock then promptly dropped it onto the deck with a loud 'THUMP'.

"I think I better get to the kitchen." Finbar stretched his arms and made his way to the stairs. "How about some sandwiches to keep everybody full while we're gettin' to Sigil?"

"Yeah, sure." Dani was still preoccupied with petting her homunculus. Kyana decided to sit down next to her to hopefully get in on it.

"Sounds great." Kyana said.

"I will take up piloting, then." VR-LA turned back toward the dome, sparing an extra glance to both Dani and Finbar. Maybe Kyana was included in that too, being next to Dani. It seemed like it. Maybe. She didn't want him worrying about her... but she felt... warm. Being so worried over.

Kyana reached out and scratched Plug behind the ears. He purred and decided to stretch himself out with a gentle musical sound across both the girls' laps. They shared him in silence for a little while before Dani spoke.

"This is all basically sorted, long as no one decides to attack and steal the brimstone while we're in transit." She mumbled.

"Let's hope that doesn't happen. I am... not doing so hot."

"Mm... So whatever thing Roy said you had to tell me will probably have to wait, then."

Kyana froze.

"Oh, he... told you about that..."

Of course, that's what the two of them talked about back at Hira's away from everyone else. Kyana just assumed they were touching base and saying goodbye.

"I mean, yeah. What, you swear him to secrecy or something?"

"No, no I just... I guess it didn't occur to me he'd go out of his way to tell you before we even finished the delivery."

"They both go way too far out of their way."

Kyana looked up at Dani. She was one to talk, she was blue now exclusively because she went out of her way for Kyana. Someone she met less than two weeks ago. And if that was 'too far', what about Finbar, y'know, her entire soul mate?

"I guess... that makes sense for a family to do."

Dani's eyes darted to meet Kyana's. There was something... cautious there, in the way a lost animal is wary of any unverified shape and shadow. Not in danger, but that could change any second.

"We don't exactly look alike." Dani said.

"Oh, not at all. I just meant... Like, Finbar's village. They're... they have something with eachother. And... I see it with you three. Just... spicier, I think."

Dani chuckled and went back to looking at Plug.

"I think you and I are thinking of that word a little differently."

Kyana tilted her head. "What do you mean?" Did family mean something different in Brass? Just to Dani?

Dani huffed out another little laugh. "Nothing you gotta worry about. I get what you mean."

They sat quietly a while as the ship reached speed gliding across the water.

"I..." Kyana was a bit surprised to be the one breaking the silence. "It's not just you. Finbar knows, he... figured it out on his own. And... I still have to tell VR-LA about it. I..." Kyana's stomach twisted and she was surprised she was breathing evenly with how taut her throat felt. "I wanna talk to you two individually... before I call some crew meeting about it. I... hope that's alright."

"Is it time sensitive?"

"No. No, it's... it technically could wait forever if Finbar lets it. If... if I let it, I guess. I... I don't wanna just sit on this forever- I just... so much has been happening." Kyana's voice croaked and her eyes ached with a sudden surge of tears. "M-more things have been happening in the past week than have... ever happened to me in my life? A-and it's so wonderful and it's so hard and it's... what am I even supposed to say?"

"... Depends on what you have to tell me, I guess."

Dani still wasn't sure exactly how private a person Kyana really was. They'd met, what, a week ago? She was... not an enigma, Dani grasped what her deal was just fine, it was more that her deal was fuckin' weird. Dani knew considering the raw scale of the planescape that the weirdest thing about her life was the quantity of soulmates along her skin. Kyana was apparently raised as food for some of the most evil things in existence and she still turned out sunny and soft and energetic. It was impressive honestly.

"I..." Kyana blinked her eyes and Dani looked away from the shimmers of tears that dropped from her eyelashes. "I should've thought about how I wanted to say all this a little more."

Kyana didn't look up at Dani, which suited Dani just fine. Kyana's penchant for looking anywhere but directly in front of her made her much easier to wait out pauses with. Dani watched Kyana's fingers go over the ridges of Plug's body as she collected herself. She was so... shimmer-ish. Not the most solid, and prone to flitting and flickering, but... having her around was usually a good thing. She was also Very Attention-Grabby, even to herself. Wrapped up in her own issues like this. Dani had no clue what this thing could be, but she prepared herself for something roundabout and rambly regardless. They had time.

"I wanted to tell you two individually... b-because it would probably get way too much and a little chaotic if I just dropped it on both of you with Finbar running three-way emotional support."

Interesting... What made Kyana believe this..?

"I-I... the apology. I mean, the thing I ought to apologize over, it's... well there's not any easing into it, but... but I can't think of a good way to start."

"Start a bad way and fix it after." Dani told her. Kyana looked to her and Dani held her gaze. There was so much going on in there. "Try it."

"I..."

Kyana looked down to Plug and her brow knitted itself together in a little determined almost-pout. Dani knew this was serious to her, but she couldn't help the little flash of 'cute' that popped up in the back of her mind.

"I..."

She took a deep breath.

"I tried to get rid of my soul marks a while ago. One of them is yours."

The air froze in Dani's lungs.

"What?"

Kyana curled in on herself.

"I was... they never told me... I didn't think there were people attached, I just..."

Dani's hand migrated over to her left forearm, grasping on tight.

"They- I told VR-LA kind of h-how I was taught they work and... and that's when I learned... what happens when a connection gets cut off, I... Dani I almost killed you..."

The ends of Dani's hair flickered as all the emotions swirled together into a funnel that pushed out:

"How?"

"How..?" Kyana laced her fingers together anxiously.

"How the fuck did you even do that if you didn't think I was a person?"

Kyana shrank away and Dani could see the erratic fiery wisps framing her own face from the corners of her vision.

"I- I just... we couldn't leave if we had them, I... they told us... I-I said to VR-LA they said... they were Vices..." Kyana practically choked on the word. "And- and I had so many, I- I was so scared I'd be like this forever, I'd just- just be down there forever, but I couldn't stay down there, I couldn't keep them, so I thought- I thought if I just told myself they weren't mine and they didn't matter that... that maybe they'd let me go and I wouldn't be waiting on someone else to tell me I was allowed... allowed to see the stars when I wanted..."

Tears dropped down from her face and onto Plug's head in wretched little glimmers. Plug twitched his whisters and looked up at her, confused.

"P-please don't be angry... I don't... I know I can't just be asking that, but I... Please, I'm... I'm sorry....."

Dani remembered being 6 with void written across her shoulder.

Dani never saw the stars before her soulmate spilled them across her skin.

The most valuable thing Dani could conceive of for years and years was whatever her first soulmate held in their hands. Magic and important and glowing and golden.

Shimmery.

"Hey. Look at me."

Kyana reluctantly brought her eyes up from the ground to stare back at Dani so much sadder than Dani had ever seen them in all the years of having them on her skin. Dani inched closer and Kyana's shoulders tensed.

"I don't need you to apologize because your life sucked so much you wanted a new one. I don't need you to apologize for doing shit that makes sense. I don't need you to apologize for doing something you didn't know could get someone killed." Dani leaned in to drive her point home. "I need you to stay with me now that you're here."

More tears welled up out of Kyana's eyes and she tackled Dani in a big blubbering golden hug. Plug shwooped down to a more compact size and squiggled his way out from between them as Dani very woodenly brought her arms up around a sniffling Kyana in return. She was saying syllables, but Dani doubted even Kyana understood any of them.

She really is brave...

Dani rested her chin on Kyana's shoulder and just let herself be cried over. In all the years she'd been anticipating them, she actually never once thought about her soulmate crying. Not her first one. Not someone so strong and vibrant they drowned out despair in a shower of stars. Not someone who skittered like a squirrel and fluttered like a bird and shined like the sun and looked out at everything like every detail was worth seeing. Dani realized as Kyana held on tighter that... she didn't even question if Kyana was correct about them being soulmates. She'd touched both Kyana's hands before at this point, she was pretty sure. Honestly, she should've been baffled and suspicious when Kyana brought up one of the worst days in her life in relation to telling Roy she'd be apologizing to Dani. Still... Dani just knew. It fit correctly.

Kyana's sobbing tapered off and Dani stared up at the stars and auroras.

"... You got more than three soulmates, or are you a cool kid who gets to join the club?" Dani smirked. Kyana laughed and gods was that good to hear.

"I... it's three, yeah. I... I don't know if you figured it out, but... the other two are Finbar and VR-LA actually."

Dani nearly sat up and flung Kyana off of her, but settled for whipping her head to the side to look at her.

"I'm sorry what?" Kyana started laughing in earnest and pulled herself up to lean over Dani.

"I um- that's how come I said Finbar already knows, he... he saw one of my marks and it's the same as the one on you and VR-LA. And then I saw you and VR-LA on his arms. That's... that's how I knew about any of it."

Dani blinked up at Kyana.

"Do... I- and you didn't... match already?"

"I..." Kyana blinked. "I guess I just kind of... I didn't want to match with one of you before the others knew... y'know? He didn't... really even bring it up when he found out, although I was... having a bit of a breakdown that the time, so....."

Dani huffed and finally sat up, rolling Kyana off to the side.

"Can't argue with that I guess..." A memory came to Dani. Then some puzzle pieces. "... Did... the mark... for VR-LA. The one when... when he lost all those memories. Are those... connected?"

Kyana took a while to respond.

"I don't know what'll happen... when I tell him. I think of everyone he'd be most in the right to never forgive me for pulling something like that."

"... You're right. But he won't. Or, I guess, he will, he would forgive you if you told him what you told me."

"How come you think that?"

"You should've heard him when he thought you left the ship because he connected you to the mindflayers. He likes you and I think he'd rather implode than make you upset. In no universe does he hear this and think 'I can't believe her. She's awful, I wish we weren't connected and we never met.' He's like me, he has more than half a braincell."

Kyana pouted. "Are you implying I have less than half a braincell?"

"No, but you would need less than half to choose to do the things you're worried about from him."

Kyana considered this, folding her arms over her knees and looking out at the water.

"... I can... pull him aside after dinner, I think."

"Good idea. Group meeting tomorrow?"

Kyana took a big, deep, shaky breath.

"Can't it be next week?"

Dani chuckled.

"Three days." She haggled. Kyana nodded.

"Three days... Maybe two?"

"You're so bad at haggling." Dani laughed softly.

"I don't know how." Kyana resumed pouting. Dani bumped her shoulder against her soulmate's.

"Don't worry about it. I'll handle the haggling from here."

-+-

Finbar couldn't stay out of the kitchen and he and Elyse both knew it. She rolled her eyes and decided to 'allow him the extra perk of working with her'. She needed to stop saying things like that, he might start missing her so much he couldn't keep his mouth shut.

"It did end up going for a dip in the astral sea for a moment in transit." He told her as they set the brimstone over flame.

"It wha- how?"

"Had to make a quick exit and me and the little one had to grab on by the ladder, so we weren't exactly on-deck for the planeshift."

Elyse sighed a belabored sigh and opened up the fridge.

"Well, as far as I'm aware, any Astral Sea microbes wouldn't be able to survive in heated Brimstone, so it's not such a big deal."

As they fell into rhythm together, Finbar hazarded some littler questions. Where she's been going to get her ingredients now that she's working here. Who she's still talking to from the guild. Before this past week, they hadn't seen one another since the incident with Kyana's soulmark. It went on for a while like that, with Finbar re-experiencing the little details of the woman he never quite got unstuck from.

"How's the soulmates?" She asked as they turned the perogis over. "It felt a little pertinent, considering."

"They're... well, I'm not sure how much I'm exactly at liberty to say."

"I'm not asking for personal information, you ever heard someone go 'So, how's the wife and kids'? You've been with them about, what, three months now?"

"Well, minus two weeks for Feywild time dilation."

She paused a moment, looking down at the food more like she was looking past it.

"You took them to meet the family, then?"

... He never did that for her.

"Oh, more like the family came to pull them into a meeting. It was the job before this; Love came by to ask for some help, didn't even know about the three of them."

"Three of them? You met another soulmate when I was turned around?"

Finbar probably would've thought to come up with a lie about it being a slip of the tongue if he was talking to anybody else. She probably would've believed him, too, she didn't actually sound very serious.

"Well, not while you were turned around. I... we didn't wanna tell anybody before she was ready."

Elyse blinked up at him with raised eyebrows, turning to fully face him.

"Are you implying this is someone I know?"

"Not very long."

Elyse looked at him flatly, frowning.

"So I know it's none of my business but you can't be dangling information in front of me and not expect me to ask questions. Who is she?"

"C'mon Elyse, you're smart. Who'd I bring to the Feywild with me?"

Elyse scrunched her eyebrows a moment before it clicked.

"Oh."

"Yeah." Finbar reached over to check the underside of one of the perogis and got his hand swatted away.

"I'll know when to check. If you do it too early you'll fuck up the searing."

Finbar put his hands up in surrender and Elyse turned to check on the sauce and directed him to see after the veggies in the oven.

"... When did you find out?" She asked after a while.

"Yesterday, actually."

Finbar could hear the surprised exclamation point appear over Elyse's head

"... Yeah, okay, guess that explains why I'm apparently the first to know. Aside from the others, probably."

"I think she's looped Dani in, but she's... waiting on VR-LA. For obvious reasons."

"You realize I know very little about those three, right? Why is it obvious?"

"Well, I won't speak for either of them, but... you remember the incident with her before I met her, the last time we had tea."

"Yes..." In that same old disapproving tone like she wanted to speak to the manager of the universe.

"It coincided with a mark from VR-LA that... wasn't exactly somethin' positive. And... well, she's soulmates with him too, that's part of what makes the whole thing delicate for her. From how she talks about the whole thing, I wouldn't be surprised if she took her time approaching him about it."

Elyse seemed to think a while about that. It wasn't until they were plating dinner that she brought it back up.

"She's young. They're all a lot younger than you, of course, but... she was your first, and she's... really young."

"... She is. I... it's strange. Not knowing her long, but knowing her nearly her whole life."

"If you need help wrangling the three of them, I don't have anyone else taking my time."

"You make it sound like I've inherited a gaggle of stray orphans."

"Yes. Yes I do." She quirked an eyebrow at him, and he couldn't help but chuckle.

"I'll keep it in mind. ... Thank you."

-+-

Roy held the little vial of eyedrops in both hands, pacing by Eegan's bedside. They apparently handed them to him a while before the crew got back to Sigil, but he didn't want to use them until Dani arrived. Kyana peeked around the edge of the door frame from the hallway, and VR-LA did the same from the other side.

"What's the hold up?" Dani asked Roy.

"I... nothing? Everything?"

Dani rolled her eyes.

"I believe in you." She said flatly. Roy pouted at her.

"Hey, you wait this long and suddenly you lose a lot of nerve, okay?"

"You can do it." Kyana chirped tentatively from the doorway. Roy shot her a dubious look and she looked away. Dani sighed and rolled her eyes.

"Here, hand them to me."

"No, I can do it!" Roy moved the vial away from Dani's outstretched hand.

"Then do it, dumbass."

Roy took a deep breath and carefully, gently leaned over Eegan. He touched their foreheads together a moment and spoke in Ignan, "Please come back home..."

Slowly, gingerly, Roy dripped half the vial into one of Eegan's eyes, then the other, then set the empty vial on the nearby nightstand. They all watched with baited breath as Eegan's eyes blinked automatically... Then not-so-automatically... Then his face scrunched up and his breathing became more asserted. He reached up and rubbed at his eyes and barely got a chance to open them before Roy and Dani tackled him in a hug.

"I told you to stay off my fucking ship!"

"Don't you ever scare me like that again, how did you sniff out the one way to get into trouble--"

"I better not hear another word about you and Roy's hypothetical baby I'm totally allowed near-"

VR-LA listened to the overlapping ignan as Eegan blinked to catch up. He smiled to himself. He decided he liked helping to make things like this happen. Eegan stretched his neck to look over Dani and Roy's heads. He squinted at VR-LA a moment before recognition appeared on his face and he waved. He looked to Kyana, clearly did not recognize her, and turned to Dani, saying something in ignan.

"You just saw her yest- well, okay, you barely saw her yesterday and also didn't talk." Dani aborted her scolding and gestured to Kyana. "This is Kyana, we plucked her outta the astral sea and she's probably about to apologize to you like three times."

Kyana squeaked indignantly but denied nothing.

"I was going to do the apologizing once you three were finished. And it was only the two things anyway."

"Y'know Dani, I'm starting to think you were right about her blowing things out of proportion." Roy grinned and Kyana crossed her arms grumpily.

"U-uhh... language... hard..." Eegan interrupted. His ears drooped as he struggled for the words in common.

"Oh. Asfni mahzi." Roy cupped Eegan's cheek apologetically. "They did say it'd be an hour or two for the spell to fully take."

Dani told him something in ignan that made his eyebrows scrunch. Roy jumped in to continue explaining and VR-LA decided he could go ahead and make his leave. His eyes caught Kyana's as he turned to go and she seemed to be considering something, glancing between VR-LA and the trio of fire genasi.

"I'll be back to grab you guys for dinner." Kyana said, then crossed the doorway to be next to VR-LA. "Mind if I join you?"

"Be my guest. I was thinking I'd admire the garden we passed through last time. Or find a library maybe. Hira has to have some interesting texts collected."

"Those sound nice."

Kyana's mind appeared to be elsewhere as they walked through the halls. VR-LA decided to wait until they were at a stopping place underneath the garden archway to ask,

"How are you doing now that it's sorted?"

"I..." Kyana looked off into the garden. "I'm doing better. Like, better than I thought I'd be at this point. It's..." She smiled and VR-LA felt all the more right for it. "It's nice. Really nice."

VR-LA nodded. "I'm glad. ... I don't think we had any sort of group meeting about it, but Dani agreed to help me with something... a lead, to... something about my past. I know you don't exactly have any other place to go, but... it feels only polite to ask: Would you like to come with me?"

Kyana blinked up at him. Then drew her eyebrows together, looking at the ground.

"I... I think I'd go anywhere you guys were. I've never... been with people who make... places that would honestly be a bad time otherwise a really good time. It's wonderful to see all these new exciting things, but... it's most wonderful to come back to the ship at the end of it. I never thought the people around you could make the place you're in so, so different. Of course I wanna help you. You're... one of the best things that ever happened to me, honestly."

The mechanisms in VR-LA's chest clicked and buzzed. The swell of... of some profound something was tempered by the change in Kyana's expression. Like she was about to put her hand in a spider web.

"Before you let me go with you..." She continued. "There's something you should know. About me. About... us."

She peeked up at him from the corner of her eye then took a deep breath and grabbed his hand, leading him to a tall trellis alcove where they were mostly hidden.

"What... do you mean by that?" He asked, bewildered. Kyana let go of his hand and crossed her arms in front of her, still not looking directly at him.

"I mean... I found something out... about us... recently. But I... didn't wanna tell you. Because... because how do you say that to someone?

"Say... what?" There it was again. That way of acting that filled VR-LA with a sense of 'not good'. That made him want to readjust whatever needed adjusting and throw out all the garbage crowding out Kyana's mind.

"I... I guess I can... copy how I said it to Dani..... n-no..."

Dani? What's she got to do with it? Is the 'us' the entire crew?

Kyana bit her lip.

Took a deep breath in.

Then out.

She stood up a little straighter and locked eyes with VR-LA, and why oh why did they feel that way looking back at him?

"The reason one of the first things you remember is one of your soulmarks blacking out is... is because I'm your third soulmate. And I was trying to get rid of mine."

Chapter Text

As Eegan began to get a full handle on his faculties, Dani found her mind wandering. She wondered if Kyana decided to just rip the babdage off and tell VR-LA before dinner instead of after. She wondered if she should talk to Finbar before the hypothetical group meeting. She wondered about some modifications she could make to the Per Aspera's engine to get it to run just right.

"Thinking of world domination plans without me?" Eegan nudged her shoulder. The left side, where Kyana was.

"Maybe I'm thinking of ways to outfit my ship with idiot repellant." She shot back.

"Well then how would you ever get on?"

Dani baffed him with one of the pillows and he and Roy laughed.

-+-

Finbar was still in the middle of making dinner, before Elyse spoke on just how little Kyana was.

"Thank you, Rosemary." She said to one of the pixies doing his level best to bring over a ladle that was far too heavy for one pixie to carry. Finbar smiled to himself, Elyse had always been most of the pixies' favorite out of everyone he'd dated.

"Mustard, what have we talked about asking permission?" Finbar raised an eyebrow and the rogue pixie in question froze trying to open a jar that Elyse most certainly had not asked for. Mustard fluttered dejectedly back over and sat down on the emptiest shelf where little Paprika was preoccupied playing with some pixie sized extra dough scraps Elyse and Finbar had given them.

"I still don't understand how you function with... So Much." Elyse said.

"Oh it ain't as much as all that. Sometimes things get a little piled up, but it's all sorted back out eventually."

"Yeah no, I don't think that's how it works. The whole point is that things don't pile up."

"You know you can't control that."

"No, but I can get it under control and then when shit outside my control keeps happening, I already have a handle on things. You on the other hand have one hand perpetually off the wheel."

"Well most spelljammers actually don't have wheels for their helms."

Elyse flicked water at him and he laughed softly. A smile crept into the corner of her mouth and he might have this same conversation again and again and never complain if it ended with a smile from her.

-+-

VR-LA felt so intensely the wall between himself and the memories he did not have access to. Finbar told him such florid stories about each mark from VR-LA and Dani coming in one by one, and it was only now staring into Kyana's eyes and fully recognizing them for the first time that VR-LA realized exactly how badly he wanted for himself those stories of watching her mark take shape.

It really did hurt... having your first memory of someone so important be them disappearing from you.

"Get... rid of..." She didn't want him. Even before she knew him, she decided she didn't want him.

Stop being ridiculous, you know she didn't know that's what she was doing. She learned soulmarks correspond to people last week.

Suddenly her reactions in those conversations made a lot more sense.

"You... how long have you known?"

"Since I saw it on Finbar's arm, after we got out of Acheron."

"I... why didn't you tell me?"

Tears welled up in her eyes and VR-LA moved to wipe them away immediately before stopping short. Kyana sniffled and clutched her arms tighter.

"You said it felt like dying. And I... I didn't know what... what to do with myself when I found out. I didn't know what to say, I didn't know what was right because I... I didn't think... for the longest time I didn't think this thing I hated about my life was... was another person. And how do you just say that to someone? How do you tell someone that one of the worst things that ever happened to them was the last straw and made you do something stupid and horrible and... that you almost got yourself and three other people killed because you were impatient and miserable?"

The tears dripped one after another down her cheeks and VR-LA didn't hesitate a second time, kneeling down so Kyana was a bit above him as he held her face as gently as he could and brushed the tears from her cheeks.

"Kyana... I... I won't deny, it is a bit chilling to know my... incident had such a negative effect on you it resulted in... all of this. But I... Kyana, you might just be the first comfort I ever knew. Your mark is something so beautiful and so close to me. When I found out it was connected to a real person who actually existed, I... all I wanted was to find you and be close to you."

"But... but I did it on purpose..."

"You were literally told everything about me was a vice, Kyana, frankly I'm surprised you don't fucking hate me."

He wasn't sure where that came from inside of him. He hoped it wasn't too caustic. The way Kyana looked at him, he wasn't sure...

"How could I hate you? You... you saved me. You've saved me so many times, I... I didn't want to look. When the new mark came in, I didn't wanna look because it was so big and so much, but then I saw it changed everything on my arm and... and I couldn't think of the vices like hard rules anymore, because it had changed, it changed and that meant I wasn't trapped forever and if I wasn't trapped forever it meant... It meant I could have something that belonged to me. It meant my own life belonged to me."

"Oh Kyana..."

"I... I found out about soul mates and... I didn't want to belong to other people, I don't want to belong to anybody... and... Having people belong to me... it's scary. It's so scary, VR-LA. Being told someone belongs to you."

"I know. It's a heavy thing. I... I wish I knew how whoever I was before coped with it. If they coped with it."

"You shouldn't be anchored to someone like me... I'm not..."

"Enough?"

"No. I'm not. I'm not... easy enough, I... You don't deserve someone like me."

"... I don't think I do, but not in the way you're clearly thinking."

Kyana recognized what he meant impressively quickly. "... You can't mean that. I... I know you waited for me, but... I'm not..."

"I don't think anyone can deserve someone like you, Kyana. Do people deserve stars? Or sunlight? Do people deserve when they find a treasure hidden somewhere?"

"But... but I hurt you. You said it felt like dying."

"You were in distress. You were being lied to."

"That shouldn't matter, it was a stupid thing to do, I shouldn't have done it."

"... You said three other people. Should I be apologizing to the other two when you find them that my amnesia was so inconveniently timed?"

"Wh- no, no you... they would never blame you."

"How can you be sure? I mean, maybe I lost my memories by being impatient and irresponsible and stupid."

"No! No, and even if you were, they... they'd still love you. They love you, they're your family."

VR-LA blinked. "You... talk like..." With a zapping sensation it clicked. "You said... you told Dani..?"

Kyana nodded. "I... I didn't have to tell Finbar. He figured it out when he picked me up from the police station."

"The what?"

"I... didn't wanna tell you. He found me there in Brass because I wasn't supposed to be running and causing a scene in the city."

VR-LA felt something like a furnace flaring in the back of his mind at the thought they would take Kyana into custody over something like that. How dare they?

"And... they asked to see my soul mark for the report. He covered for me enough that they didn't think I had more than one, but..." She held up her left arm. "His is this one."

VR-LA took a moment to properly digest everything.

"So... You found out about Finbar yesterday... and me after Acheron... what about Dani?"

"The Feywild. When Finbar showed everyone his mark for her."

"I see... We all know now, then?"

Kyana nodded. Her face was the kind of neutral-adjacent people will get to when they're emotionally exhausted and there's not much left to be done. VR-LA rose back to his feet.

"Might you like some time alone before dinner?"

She nodded again. But before VR-LA fully turned to leave, she darted through the space between them to give him a tight hug.

"Thank you..." She whispered. VR-LA brought up a hand to pat her head gently.

"Always."

-+-

The perogies were the best thing Kyana had ever tasted in her life. Elyse actually made the spicy taste good! Kyana didn't realize that was a real thing!

"Tell me, how did you and Elyse meet?" Hira asked Finbar at one juncture. "I know, of course, you belong to the same guild, but I simply have to know the details."

"Well, we actually met before joining the guild." Finbar said.

"He was drifting out in the Astral Sea and had to be scavenged up onto the Whipped Crown a bit before I got there." Elyse picked up.

"You were out in the ocean too??" Kyana turned to Finbar who gave her a smile.

"I had a lot goin' on before joining y'all."

"Oohhhh tell me everything!" Hira beamed. Kyana caught how Evrynn smiled fondly at Hira's side before taking another polite little bite of his food.

Dani and Eegan were way more reserved than Kyana expected out of the two of them. Dani was sat between Kyana and Eegan, who was sandwiched between the other fire genasi, and they sat further from Hira than any of the other guests. Kyana remembered the comment Hira made about the cities in the elemental plane of air putting Brass to shame and wondered if there was some kind of collective grudge going on there. She hoped that wasn't the case, it would be unfortunate if her crew had to avoid Hira due to something like that.

From the other section of the table, VR-LA caught Dani's eye and they had one of their usual silent conversations. VR-LA did his best to make it clear he was thinking of what Kyana pulled him aside for shortly before, and when Dani caught it, she raised her eyebrows to confirm they were thinking of the same thing. VR-LA nodded to her and glanced away bashfully for a moment. When his eyes linked up with hers again, he wasn't sure if words properly encapsulated the thing he was trying to convey. He just needed Dani to be on the same page as him. About Kyana, about what he and Dani could work towards for her. Hoping she meant the same amount to Dani as she did to VR-LA. Dani gave him a quarter of a smile that so plainly said 'Yes, you idiot' and rolled her eyes. Then she returned to devouring her food with the minimum required amount of table manners.

The dinner went on without a hitch, and Hira actually went and invited everyone to stay the night. The demiplane had more than enough guest rooms, somehow, and even though Eegan had enough of his bearings back to pick up and leave, he was particularly content with the idea. Dani pouted at the prospect of leaving Plug and the ship at the docks overnight, but Eegan managed to talk her into setting up a sleeping bag in the same room he and Roy were staying in.

"You never sleep with us anymore, you're always off-plane." He gave her these big round puppydog eyes and Dani rolled hers.

"What makes you think I don't wanna share a room with my own soulmates and leave you two to get up to whatever business you two get up to when you're alone?"

"Oh my god, shut up!" Roy's dreads flared with embarrassment at the half of an insinuation. Dani knew they weren't currently like that, but she took every single opportunity to tease them about it. It was too entertaining not to. Unfortunately Eegan was too singleminded about her sleeping over to properly react.

"You're with Finbar and VR-LA all the time, maybe we're doing them a favor giving them a break from you."

"And Kyana?"

"Yeah, she could probably use a break from you too," Eegan did not catch one scrap of the implication. "She's had you nonstop for over two weeks."

Roy squinted and looked between Dani and Kyana who was busy asking VR-LA about the rules for staying over at other people's houses. Dani elected to ignore that.

"Well maybe I got used to having my own room on the ship and I don't wanna go back to bunking with you chucklefucks."

"Aw, c'mon, you know you love us."

"I would sell you to the Potentate Incandescent for one corn chip."

"You would not."

"You're right. I'd want at least a hoagie for Roy."

The three of them heckled their way all the way to the room, and Dani elected to roll out her trusty shitty little sleeping bag.

As she settled in, staring at the texture of the shag carpet strewn across her section of the room, Roy knelt down beside her. Eegan was occupying the bathroom, which Dani suspected would be the only times he got without Roy next to him for the next week.

"Is she the third one?" Roy asked her. "Is that what she wanted to apologize over?"

Dani kept her eyes on the carpet.

"Yeah."

"... Do you forgive her?"

That got her to look up.

"You don't even know what fucking caused it."

"I know it hurt you. Badly. I know how bad it hurts."

"Yeah well why're you acting like it's her fucking fault?"

"Because she sure fucking acts like it is, and I told her when she was being cagey about it that I would forgive her if you did. So I need to know."

Something stung in Dani's chest. She didn't like this version of Roy. She didn't like him acting older. He was supposed to be 14 for forever. He shouldn't have an expression like that on his face. Especially not over her.

"There's nothing to forgive. She's alive now, she just nearly wasn't for a second there."

"... Okay." Roy took a turn staring at the carpet and Dani joined him. "... I'm scared, Dani... We both are. You're our favorite person."

"Aren't you supposed to be eachother's favorite person?"

"We're not eachother's favorite, we're soulmates."

Dani's brow scrunched. Roy heard the incredulity radiating off of her. A soft humming echoed from the bathroom and Dani was struck with how long it'd been since she heard Eegan singing. How she almost never heard it again.

"It's... different than 'favorite'. You pick your favorites. You don't pick your soulmates. Eegan's a piece of me 'cause... there's not any universe I can imagine where he's not the shape I wanna fit inside of some way. Maybe that's just 'cause I don't have as good an imagination as he does, but... it's different. We didn't pick eachother, we found eachother. But... you, we picked. Eegan and I have our thing, and we're a unit now, like... like we can't just... come loose. And you're our favorite. You're our family. And you got hurt and neither of us could do anything. So... so somebody you're supposed to belong to more than you belong to us... who's supposed to slot into your soul the way we're slotted together- coming in saying it wasn't just some freak accident when she hurt you, it was fully her fault... I know you just said there's nothing to forgive, but... I don't like it. I don't think I like you having so many people who can hurt you that bad."

The sting in Dani's chest knotted into a ball.

"... You used to think it was cool."

"Well, yeah, but... what if you never sleep with us again after tonight? What if this is the last time and none of us know it? You... we can't just keep you to ourselves. You're cool and all the marks you have were cool and you were just our Dani... but now..."

The only sound was the muffled noise of the faucet.

"I... thought about them less and less. The more time I spent with you two." Every word drained her like she was shoving aside the stone sealing a crypt. "They were... one of the only good things in my life. And then for once I... had good things right in front of me. Now... I have them and... yeah. I'm not... going back. To how things were before."

"... They better take good care of you."

Dani huffed.

"You worry about your own soulmate, you're the ones still living with Oto."

Roy made the same sound all three of them made whenever the clusterfuck of Things surrounding that relationship were brought up.

-+-

Kyana woke in the night, or at least she figured that's what time it was with how still and quiet the demiplane was. Smoothing her hands through the blankets (she had no idea fabric could be this soft, gods, she could just do this for forever maybe) Kyana... felt the weight in the back of her skull. They all knew now. All that was left was... everyone talking and finding out what their match rings for her looked like...

It wasn't... scary... but...

If she was being honest, she would've liked to belong only to herself for a little bit longer.

Kyana was used to this type of quiet feeling dank and rumbling and heavy. In Hira's demiplane, it was gentle and airy and the kind of still you could dance through.

An idea came to her. If this was her last night officially being exclusive to herself, she should... do something. Stand up. Walk out the door.

Her steps were hushed and expert as she crept through the halls, marvelling at the collection that encompassed Hira's entire home. She heard the beating heart of the god they'd retrieved on her very first proper mission with the crew as she approached the grand hall. It thrummed through her, shaking loose the lingering anxieties over the coming day. She walked up to the door to the demiplane, and it occurred to her she might get locked out if she walked outside.

She paused, her hand on the handle, and decided worst case scenario she could go back to the Per Aspera to get some sleep and loop back to the others early hoping they don't freak out.

Immediately the bustle of the city washed over her like a rush of leaves in the wind. It dashed across her chest and swirled about her arms. She looked out at the band of lights above her head from the buildings on the opposite side of the ring pierced by the spear of mountain Sigil orbited. Like stars.

Kyana had no place to wander to, so she went on for some time just staring at the shapes of everything, hearing the sounds of life and civilization and night time as they pressed into her ears like flowers pushed into a waiting hand, breathing the air she never knew existed until a week ago and change.

She heard a heavy clunking clinking sound around a corner and rounded it curiously.

Ione was cornered.

"Look, I get you definitely don't wanna go back." The drow speaking to her rested a hand on the leg of a giant mechanical spider with its gaze fixed on Ione who was only half succeeding at keeping herself stoic and her breathing steady. "But the situation as I hear it, they seem to need all hands on deck."

Kyana felt sick.

"I... why would you help them?" Ione's voice trembled around the edges.

"What's that supposed to mean?" She said it calmly and conversationally, as she'd been before, but there was an edge in there now.

"You... you don't know what they do? Why the cenobium is above a hole to the Underdark?"

That got the woman to pause.

"You think they're planning on double crossing me?"

"I..." Ione's eyes darted nervously and that's when she spotted Kyana. She didn't have time to hide the recognition and in an instant the woman cornering her turned to Kyana.

"... You know her?" Her gaze and her tone were calm and considering. Kyana wasn't sure how to feel.

"Yeah, we... we've known eachother a while."

"Really? Well, I'm here to get her back to where she's lost from. So if you wanna see her again after this, you should probably check there."

With her left hand, she reached out and grabbed Ione's, but before she could continue whatever her plan was, both of them winced and she dropped it. Ione's face took on a look of confusion and concern as she immediately went to cover up her hand. The woman fixing to kidnap her gasped and seemed to stop breathing as she looked at her hand in pure shock. The spider that was with her shuffled on its legs, looking between the two of them in a slight agitation.

Ione locked eyes with Kyana and years of training for silent teamwork gave her more than enough basis to know what to do. They darted off in different directions, Ione climbing up a wall and disappearing one way while Kyana looped around the long way to where she figured Ione might come back out. The woman's much less calm cry of 'Hold it!' faded quickly.

Ione was curled up in a ball against a wall when Kyana finally triangulated where she was. Her hair was entirely undone and her clothes were rumpled and clinging. She looked physically a little bit better than the last time Kyana saw her, so that was something.

"We've got to stop running into eachother." Kyana said. Ione chuffed out a not-a-laugh and cautiously brought herself to her feet.

"I... I think that spider that was with her can track things. Track me. You don't want..." Ione trailed off, holding the hand the woman grabbed to her chest. Kyana scrunched her eyebrows. She had... a thought. Of what'd phased her so sharply.

"Was that a v- a mark?"

Ione blinked and looked at Kyana like she'd asked if Ione was proficient at wielding omelettes as a weapon.

"I- you remember what I told you. About the marks?"

Ione glanced down, then back up at Kyana.

"I... they're not supposed to appear on your-- we have bigger things to- I have bigger things to worry about. Look, just. She's gonna find you and then she'll probably force us both back there if you don't just go."

She did have a point.

"But Ione, you don't-"

"Kyana, are you done with me or not?!"

That knocked the wind out of her sails.

"Please, I... if you're gonna leave me, just leave me. You can't keep... you can't keep acting like this, you can't keep doing these things, you can't keep going ahead of me then looping back like it's nothing."

"I..." What had she done? What was Ione talking about? It didn't fit. "... Okay. Guess I'll just avoid you next time you're being kidnapped."

Ione pressed her lips together and turned away.

"... Please. Stay with your friends."

Why did so many of the things she said sound like a hopeless prayer?

She disappeared around a corner again. Kyana took a step back, turned, and went in the other direction.

It only took her another block to cross paths with the drow again. Something about the look in her eye pinned Kyana in place as she made a beeline for her.

"You are going to tell me what the fuck is up with you two and wherever it is you come from." She said, somehow managing to strike an exact fusion between all business and simmering frenzy.

"And... I should believe giving you more information about Ione and me is a good idea because...?"

"Because she belongs to me before she belongs to them and I am not hunting down my soulmate just to give her up to people neither of us like or trust."

Kyana blinked.

"Big attitude change there."

"Just tell me what you know."

"... She doesn't know who you are. What you are."

"What?"

"She doesn't know- neither of us knew about soulmates before... last week? Two? Three weeks ago? I was in the feywild for a little there, everyone else has been out here a little longer technically."

"What do you mean neither of you know about soulmates?"

"Well, I do now, but... but I couldn't really give her a lot of details the last time we met, it was... I don't think she's figured it out while running. She doesn't know what the ring means. And I don't know how much she's gonna trust whatever you tell her about it."

The frenzy died down and most of her professional demeanor deflated.

"Where the fuck did you two come from?"

"According to my soulmate: A mindflayer cult." What a thing to say. 'My soulmate'. A strange dose of giddiness added into the blend of emotions running rampant through Kyana.

The woman who was most certainly Ione's soulmate balked.

"Yeah, that's the reaction everyone's had so far. I just... know they're bad. And they sent her after me first, and..." A bitter chuckle burbled up Kyana's throat. "I went and did it again, how do I keep endangering other people's soulmates, fuck."

"I mean, everyone is someone's soulmate, kid. I don't think you gotta be too hung up on that."

"Easy for the mercenary to say."

"Touche. Why aren't you with her?"

"I..." Kyana looked away. "She told me to leave. She didn't want me getting taken back with her and she... didn't want me around in general anyway. After everything."

The woman looked at her a moment longer.

"Well. I'll figure out something to tell her. Probably won't be much use to try and corner her about it. And there's always telling them I found her dead, but then they might want a body."

"I... please take care of her?" Kyana locked eyes with Ione's soulmate, all pleading and reliance. "Please, she... she needs someone... to be good to her. And I- I can't do it. Not the way things are. But if anyone can, it should be you."

Ione's soulmate stared down at her with soft astonishment. Then she smiled and gave Kyana a pat on the head.

"I'll do my best for her. I was already going to anyway."

Kyana nodded, and as the woman turned away, she realized,

"What's your name? I... I'm Kyana."

She turned over her shoulder and made one of those two fingered wave gestures.

"Cressida. See you around?"

"Hope so..."

Kyana watched Cressida breeze down the road and around another corner, carrying all of Kyana's feelings for Ione with her. This had to be a good thing. It just had to.

I hope so...