Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Every good first day of school begins with an animal sacrifice. This is known.

Closing his eyes, Fabian held the flopping fish in his hand and looked out over the river Marigold, the contents of his breakfast churning in his stomach. In one hand he held the salmon, caught just this morning for the purpose of sacrificing, and in the other he held a ritual dagger to slit the fish’s throat.

Fabian felt someone poke the area between his shoulders. He didn’t turn, not wanting, desperately as he’d ever wanted, to be seen as weak, to be seen as pathetic, for turning away from his sacrifice in this vital moment. He was a cleric of Umberlee, and clerics of Umberlee were not weak, his father said. Speaking of, the person who was currently poking him was his father, William “Bill” Seacaster, who sailed the Celestine Sea, freeing slaves and raising up nations, writing his name upon the face of the world, trying to get him back on track. That track was Fabian sacrificing a fish for good fortune on his first day of high school at the Aguefort Adventuring Academy.

Another poke to his back, and Fabian heard a whisper behind him. “ I, Fabian Aramais Seacaster…”

“I Fabian Aramais Seacaster,” Fabian repeated, swallowing deeply, spurred into repetition by the prayer that he had memorized specially for this. “Sacrifice this fish as a gift to Umberlee, Goddess and Queen of the Undersea and Mistress of Storms. I wish for good fortune in all my scholarly endeavors, for the waves and wind to be on my side, and for my goddess to feast on all that have reached their watery graves.”

Closing his eyes to hide himself from the violence, Fabian grimaced, and drew the knife across the fish’s soft white throat. He heard the creature make a strange, strangled sound, the sound of something dying, he guessed. It flopped once before it stopped being alive. Fabian opened his eyes and held the fish out over the prow of the ship, till its blood dripped, red, into the ocean. Once it had been thoroughly drained, Fabian dropped it into the Marigold, letting the rushing waters wash it away, hopefully into the ocean where his Mistress waited. And for a moment, everything was perfect.

Then Bill pat Fabian on the back, and he knew that it was all over. “You did well, son,” his Papa said quietly, before his footsteps grew distant.

After a beat of silence, Fabian turned, watching as his father descended into the main rooms of their house/pirate ship to drive Fabian to school. “Ok, great!” Fabian shouted. “I love you, Papa!”

But his father did not respond. Sighing, Fabian picked up his backpack and his warhammer, forcing a smile onto his face as best as he could. Today was his first day of school at the Aguefort Adventuring Academy, and he was going to make both the Mistress of Storms and his father proud.

— — —

The dummy in the training yard had been utterly destroyed. The thing had been subject to slashes, kicks, punches, getting spit on, and every type of abuse imaginable, and now it had been left to the mercy of three pre and mid-pubescent boys.

Leaning on the pommel of her halberd, Kristen Applebees wiped sweat off of her brow. After enduring three years of barbarian training, the thing’s straw insides had finally exploded out. Now, the Kristen’s brothers, Bucky, Bricker, and Cork, ran around, playing with its straw “guts,” and throwing them across the yard. Kristen, still tired from her earlier workout, only watched.

For her first day of school, Kristen felt awfully like something was ending. For almost all of her life, the dummy which she had nicknamed “Dummy,” had been there for her to beat up, ever since she had been handed her first ever halberd (it was blunted, don’t worry). The dummy had had had to take countless whacks and slashes from Kristen, and had pretty much become part of the family to her. Dummy may have been made of straw, with a sharpie-d on evil face and an inverted Helioic symbol drawn where the heart should have been, but he was family, and that was really all that mattered.

But now, with Kristen’s first time using an actual halberd on him, dummy had completely collapsed. She watched fondly as her brothers played, never wanting this moment to end.

“Cork Applebees, what in Helio’s name are you doing?!”

Cork looked, dumbfounded, ahead at his mother. Cork was the youngest of Kristen’s brothers, at only eight. He had just lost his two front teeth in a backyard wrestling match. Now, he had straw in his hair and was waving around Dummy’s discarded head. This was an unnecessary action of violence, and he’d probably get punished because of that. Kristen could not allow that, so she rushed forward to get between the two.

“Dummy broke,” she said, trying as best as she could to look her mother in the eye. “We were just trying to clean up.”

Kristen’s mother looked at her, angry, before grabbing Kristen’s hand to wrench her down. Kristen was 5’8, way, way, way, taller than her mom, which usually became a problem for disciplining. Thinking of this, Kristen watched her mother smack her on top of the head. “Kristen Applebees," she whisper-yelled. “Lying on your first day of school? You four are gonna have to clean this up when you get back. For now, you need to get in the car.” With that, her mom stormed off, leaving Kristen alone with her brothers.

Kristen took a heavy breath in. her mom had yelled at her, something that was very rare. Tears threatened to spill from her eyes. She shouldn’t have lied. She shouldn’t. Everytime you lied, baby Helio would cry, she knew that already. She knew it. But still, her brothers were probably experiencing way more duress than she was, so she would have to be brave for them. Turning around, she put on a smile. “Alright, are we all ready to go to school?”

Five minutes later, the Applebees family had crowded themselves into their minivan, and were ready to go. They weren’t anywhere near late, but at the track they were going on Kristen wouldn’t be as punctual as she wanted to be. Looking in the rear view mirror, she tried to get some of the straw out of her hair.

Behind her, somebody snorted. Kristen turned back and saw Cork sniffling “What’s wrong?” she asked, leaning on her headrest.

Cork sniffled once again, wiping his arm and getting snot all over his nice shirtsleeve. Mentally, Kristen cried out about how that would have to be washed later, but focused on her brother, anyway. “Crayon up my nose,” Cork said.

“Crayon up your-?” she sighed, interrupting herself. “Here, I’ll get it out.”

Kristen reached inside her brother’s nose, grimacing as she tried to grasp onto the crayon. In the end, she didn’t get it, and just winded up with snot on her hand. “Get it out at school, okay?” she said, before turning back towards the front seat.

Kristen leaned against the family mini-van’s window and sighed. Today was going to be her first day at Aguefort Adventuring Academy. Aguefort, not Sunpeak, she reminded herself, because she hadn’t gotten her paladin magic yet, and anyway, Aguefort was better, because she wanted to get involved with her classmates. Convert them and such. Still, frustration prickled within her. Sometimes, she wished that she had become a paladin earlier. Sometimes, her anger threatened to bubble over her usually happy personality. Her parents usually told her to put her negative feelings aside, but she just–she couldn’t help it, sometimes, couldn’t help feeling mad.

Kristen sighed and breathed in, trying to manage it all–the anger, the sadness, the everything. Today would be a good day. She was sure of it.

— — —

The title on Gorgug’s spellbook may have read Diary, though it was anything but. Sure, his parents may have bought it for the purpose of him writing down his feelings, but now, it was Gorgug’s refuge for writing down his brilliant solutions, for creating spells. 

Finishing off his last letter of Gnim with a swirl, Gorgug stared loving down at this newest spell that he had added–Shield. From the copy that he’d seen on the Crystal net, he could say that he’d gotten it pretty identical. He hoped that it would work. On any other day, he would’ve tried to cast it, but because it was his first day at actual wizard school, he probably shouldn’t waste his spell slots. But then again-

The door to Gorgug’s room opened. It was his mom, knocking on the door softly so as to give him warning. Gorgug snapped his spellbook shut, shoving it quickly into his already-packed school bag. “Hey bud,” said his mom, and Gorgug looked back at her. “You writing in your diary?”

Gorgug flushed dark green. “It’s not a diary,” he said and zipped up his backpack.

“Ah, right,” his mom responded. Jumping up on the bed, she gave him a quick pat on the head. “Hey, honey, did you break your bed again?”

Gorgug flushed an even darker green. He zipped his hoodie up so that it completely covered his face. “Yeah.”

The hand on his head started rubbing his hoodie’s hood in soft circles. “Oh, buddy,” his mom said, resigned. “Well, I can just fix it later. And you know, sometimes you need to fix something again to-”

“-make it get stronger, I know,” said Gorgug, the sound of his voice muffled by his hoodie. Since he had been a little kid, he had been constantly growing out of his beds. As a half-orc adopted by gnomes, he often felt out of place, literally. Constantly growing out of his beds didn’t help. Today, he had woken up and accidentally kicked all the way through the headboard. In the house they lived in (built inside a literal tree) his head hit even the highest ceilings.

“You ready for your first day of school?” his mom asked him, and he could hear her testing the waters as she spoke.

Gorgug sighed and laid down on the ground. “No.”

“Oh, what’s wrong, bud? If it’s about wizard stuff, well, I just know that you’re the smartest kid I’ve ever met. I’m sure that you’ll impress everyone at the school.” His mom was trying to make him feel better, but, as usual, it wasn’t working.

Aguefort was exactly what Gorgug was terrified of. It wasn’t like he didn’t love being a wizard, he did, but he was just a small fry compared to all the other wizards at school. What if he wasn’t good enough? What if the other kids thought he couldn’t be a wizard because he was half-orc? What if he failed his classes? What if he got detention? What if-

“How about your dad makes you some good luck pancakes? Would that make you feel better?” his mom asked, interrupting Gorgug’s panicked thoughts. “We could even put smiley faces on them.”

Gorgug sighed both internally and externally. He didn’t want to make his parents upset by missing his first day of school, so he shouldn’t. “Yeah,” he muttered to his mom, curling up into a little ball on the ground. “That would make me feel better. And can you make the smile out of chocolate chips instead of blueberries today?”

His mom’s footsteps left the room, and Gorgug uncurled himself from the little ball, looking up from his spot on the floor, into the mirror. He was not remotely prepared for school, not at all. But still, he knew that he couldn’t and wouldn’t make his parents disappointed. So he would have to go to school.

Wiping the tears from his eyes, Gorgug only had one real thought in his head: it was going to be a terrible day.

— — —

Every morning, the Abernant family would sit down to eat breakfast together. For fifteen minutes on those mornings, the invisible servants that the family of the elven diplomat Angwyn Abernant would whisk up soft-boiled eggs, bowls of fruit, and even the occasional pastry for the four elves to eat, if they were feeling particularly bold. Well, usually all four of them would. Not today.

Staring forward at the her most loathed family, Adaine Abernant glared. Of course they didn’t notice that their youngest daughter, the black sheep of the family and the only magicless, wasn’t there. They despised her, had always despised her. They hated her so much that they wouldn’t let her go the Adventuring School that she wanted to go to until she failed the Hudol Arcane Arts entrance exams, which they knew she was going to fail, because, again, she didn’t have magic! But still, now she was going, and everything was going to be great. Quietly, Adaine bit into her bar of Lembas bread, before wrapping it up and putting it back into her school bag, teeth grit.

“Hmm,” said Aelwyn, her despised sister, quietly. She was looking at her crystal just as boredly as she looked at everything else in the world. She was just so superior. “Adaine’s not here for breakfast.”

“Perhaps she overslept,” Adaine’s mother, Arianwen, responded. “You know how those Adventuring Academy students can be. So lazy.”

“Yes, yes,” snipped her father, cutting up his breakfast toast into three triangles. “Aelwyn, would you go check on her for me?”

“I have school today, Father. I can’t be late,” Aelwyn said, and that was it.

Angwyn shrugged, not looking up from his newspaper. “Alright then,” he began. “Let Adaine be late if she wants to. And by the way, did you hear that the Elven Oracle di-”

Adaine was too angry to hear the rest of his sentence. Her father would never let that kind of excuse fly with Adaine, let alone any excuse whatsoever. Briefly, she contemplated throwing something at Aelwyn. No, that would blow her cover. In this house, Adaine was better off not seen and not heard.

Angry, Adaine watched her family speak for a couple more minutes. Eventually she realized that if she kept waiting around in the hallway, she would be late for the bus, which she now had to take. Langidly, Adaine began to get going.

Unfortunately, the same exact moment she decided to get going, Aelwyn did, too. Adaine flattened herself up against the wall, hoping that she wouldn’t be noticed by her sister. She wasn’t. Instead of getting once again harassed by her most-hated sister, she watches Aelwyn walk down the hall, type into her crystal, and then begin walking down the hall once more to get a free ride from their mother to school.

Like usual, Adaine was angry. Her parents were basically just leaving her to rot. They hadn’t noticed that she was gone, and even when they had, they didn’t go bother to check on her. It made her blood boil.

But still, she couldn’t be angry right now. She was going to her dream adventuring school, to become a rogue and gain glory for herself. And one day, she was sure, she was going to be so cool and awesome and her name was going to be so known that whenever anybody heard the name Abernant, they wouldn’t think of her shitty parents or her even more shitty sister, but think of her.

— — —

The clueboard in front of him had exactly five clues attached to it. These clues comprised of: four pictures high school-aged girls, all of them connected by red string to a picture of a high school, the Aguefort Adventuring Academy.

Staring ahead, Riz Gukgak sighed. He had been up all night rearranging the clueboard, but in the end it had just ended up the same way it had always been, which was, in all honesty, an extremely sparse clueboard. Riz rubbed his eyes, trying to see if anything would change if he did, but in the end found nothing.

Riz sighed once again. Ever since his babysitter (shut up, fourteen wasn’t too old to have a babysitter), Penny Luckstone had disappeared, he had been a man obsessed. Riz’s main goal in life was to become an investigative reporter. Do some sleuthing, figure out stuff, reveal stuff, and at the end you got an award for journalism. And you did a good thing. That was the main reason, actually. Riz Gukgak wanted to find the truth. And he would find it, one day. Hopefully soon.

Because he really had no idea where Penny was at all. For the three months that she had been missing, he had had no idea. And that drove Riz absolutely up the wall. She could be anywhere. She could be alive or dead, in Solace or not, he didn’t know anything. He had to find the truth soon. He had to.

So far, he really only had the one clue: Aguefort. After Penny had disappeared, three other girls had, too, and, since they had all been kidnapped in such a short amount of time, it all had to be connected. And he knew exactly how they were connected: the Aguefort Adventuring Academy, which they all went to.

But other than that, there were absolutely no other clues. Naturally, when you were investigating something and hit a dead end, you should follow your previous clues to reevaluate them. So Riz Gukgak was going to the Aguefort Adventuring Academy, no matter what anyone else had to say!

Mentally pumping his fist in the air, Riz stared at his clueboard, wondering if it had changed. It hadn’t. He sighed and closed his eyes, knowing that he still had a couple more hours of staring to do before he could go to school and start investigating.

The door swung open. Riz whirled around, seeing that it was his mom. Uh-oh. He was not supposed to be up this late. If he was, then his mom would likely kill him. Riz’s mind shot into fight-flight-freeze mode, and he chose freeze. He stood up, forced on a smile, and reluctantly faced his mother.

As usual, Sklonda Gukgak did not look amused with her son’s antics. She was Riz’s biggest role model (the second was his dearly departed dad, Pok), because she was a police detective, which was basically the same thing as an investigative journalist, only more affiliated with the government. But still, it counted! She was easily the most fearsome police detective on staff in Elmville! Unfortunately, that fearsomeness did not decrease when she was staring at Riz right now, who was awake when he was definitely not supposed to be awake.

“Riz,” his mother addressed, squinting at him within the dim light of her apartment. Clearly, she could see the evidence of Riz’s chronic insomnia today: the already set-up clueboard behind him, the pile of blankets that he had been wearing up until now, and, the killer piece of evidence in this metaphorical investigation: his favorite coffee mug (green and ceramic, he made it at school). In the metaphorical investigate article, that would be the final piece of evidence that left the reader undoubting in the face of its conclusion. “Sweetie, have you been up all night?”

“No,” Riz lied. He kicked his empty coffee mug underneath the couch, hoping beyond hoping  that his mom would believe him.

His mom stared for a moment, her eyes narrowed. The tension was killer for a moment. Then his mom yawned loudly at him, and walked off into the kitchenette. “Alright then,” she muttered. “Well, have you had any breakfast?”

This Riz did not need to lie about (even though his lying had been super successful). “No,” he said. “What do we have?”

“Cereal,” his mom told him. Hopping up on the counter (the counters in their apartment were too tall), she took out a box of BehOlder’s Loop Cereal and poured it into two bowls. Next, she got the milk–but then, unfortunately, that was when Riz remembered that most of the milk had been used the previous day for Riz’s previous cereal-dinner. So his mom poured milk into his bowl instead of hers, and filled her own up with water. Riz accepted his own hesitantly. While milk with his cereal was good, his mom deserved some, too. Still, if he protested this whole arrangement, his mom would probably protest back, and that would turn into a mini argument. It was just better not to pry. Diving into his cereal, he decided that today was going to be a successful, good day. He was going to make it.

— — —

“ My body is a tool. My body is a weapon. Remember these things and then breathe out-”

“Figueroth Faeth! You get yourself downstairs right now!”

Fig sighed, and opened her eyes. Standing above her was her mother, Sandra-Lynn Faeth, already in her ranger’s clothes, glaring down.

Fig glared back. Sandra-Lynn was always being like this. And by this, she meant annoying. Mega-annoying.

And this was all Sandra-Lynn’s fault in the first place. If Sandra-Lynn hadn’t slept with a demon or whatever, then Fig wouldn’t have turned out to be a tiefling, and then Sandra-Lynn’s stupid ex-husband Gilear wouldn’t have divorced her, and Fig’s life wouldn’t have fallen apart. Petulantly, she glared ahead at her mother. “Ugh! You interrupted my meditation music, mom!”

“You need to get to school!”

“And you need to get a new haircut!”

Her mom actually looked offended by that. “You little-” she stomped off. “You better get on the back of the griffin in ten minutes or I’m leaving without you!”

“Good!”

Sandra-Lynn stomped off downstairs, and Fig felt a sense of victory pump through her. She had beaten her mother, not for the first, or, hopefully last, time. It was her mom’s fault that she was going to stupid adventuring school, anyway. She didn’t even want to. No good fighters learned anything from school. Fig laid down on the floor of her room, and waited.

And waited.

What felt like forever passed. Fig picked at a scab on the back of her elbow. It wasn’t even her fault that all of this had happened. She wanted to be one of those frilly fru-fru dex-based fighters like her mom was, but when her horns had grown in, so had her bicep muscles. What would her cheerleading teammates say to her? Probably whisper and giggle and throw trash at her like they had before. Fig curled up into a ball on the ground.

She’d been trying to meditate, but that had been unsuccessful. Everything she did was unsuccessful. Nobody liked her anymore. She should just-

There was a knock at the door. Fig groaned, and got up. Maybe a package had arrived or something. Hefting her greatsword over her back, Fig went downstairs and opened the door.

It was Gilear on the other side. Gilear, her step-dad who had divorced her mom a couple months ago, who now had a suspicious stain on his green polo. Fig looked ahead. “Gilear?” she said.

“Figueroth,” answered Gilear. “My ex-wife has asked me to bring you to school in the hope that you would listen to me.”

Fig glared at Gilear. “I don’t listen to anybody.”

Gilear turned away from her. “Well, I don’t have to stay here,” he said. “You’re not my daughter anymore.”

Okay, that hurt. Fig stomped ahead after Gilear as he went to his car. “Hey!” she yelled at him. “You can’t just leave me like that! Fatherhood doesn’t stop when you find out the kid isn’t your own!” the car began to speed up. Fig followed, breaking into a jog. “Don’t leave without confronting me!”

Before she knew it, she was on her way to high school.

— — —

Aguefort Adventuring Academy was an impressive building, to say the least. Kristen, who had grown up driving past it all her life, had initially thought that she knew what was to be expected here, but was even more amazed when she actually entered the building. It was all she had ever dreamed of. And more.

Wandering through the entrance hall, Kristen looked around. There were statues of Aguefort in different positions all across the campus. One was holding a skull in its hand, another holding a Bloodrush Ball, another casting a grand spell. Kristen smiled in awe, then looked back down at her schedule, trying to find her homeroom. She was just about to, when suddenly-

“Hey, can you not knock into my stand?”

Kristen looked up. In front of her was a beautiful elven girl with dark brown hair and a mole on the side of her cheek. Kristen gaped. Her mind had suddenly stopped working. Her cheeks were hot. She didn’t know what to say. In the corners of her vision, a goblin was pulling himself up out of a trash can. Kristen blinked. Was any of this real?

The girl in front of her snapped her fingers. “Hello?” she asked. “Hello? Are you listening to me?”

“Uh…”

The girl leaned forward. “Look,” she said. “You look like a freshman, so I’m gonna give you one warning: don’t mess with me, and don’t knock into my stand.”

Kristen looked down. She had indeed knocked into a stand, one that had a banner on it saying, Reinstate Prom King And Queen! So she had knocked into a stand. Curiouser and curiouser. But still, she needed something to say if she didn’t want this girl to get mad at her! Slowly, she let her brain unfreeze. “Uh…prom?”

The girl smiled, seemingly not mad anymore. “Yeah, prom,” she said. “Hi, I’m Penelope Everpetal. This is my boyfriend, Dayne Blade.” Kristen looked up from the girl. Next to her was a giant of a boy, with pale skin and bright blond hair. “He’s the Captain of the Bloodrush Team, and I run Yearbook Club. We want to run for Prom Royalty, but the only problem is that there’s no prom royalty at Aguefort. So will you sign this petition to vote for prom royalty to be reinstated here?” She held out a clipboard with a pen attached to Kristen.

“Yeah,” Kristen muttered. With shaking hands, she signed her name-

“Uf!”

Kristen turned around. A crowd had formed in the center of the hall, around a lanky half-orc clutching his diary. At his feet, hands wrapped around his shins, was an elf wearing a tank top and carrying a duffle bag. Another, pale-skinned elf wearing a mesh top was trying to pull the half-elf off by his duffle bag. People were laughing.

“I punched him!” shouted the elf. “You guys didn’t see it but I punched him! I’m Fabian Aramais Seacaster and I’m here to be great!”

The half-orc frowned. “Should I…can you get off my legs?”

The half elf stood, wiping his eyes. “Get off my legs?” he asked, raising up a fist. “Get off my legs? I’ll show you how to get off my legs-”

This was Kristen’s chance. Her chance to prove to Helio that she was the most devoted paladin ever. She jumped in between them, catching the half-elf’s fist in her hand like she had seen in Helio-approved martial arts movies at Church. Underneath her, the pale elf slid away, disappearing into the crowd creepily. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Kristen shouted. “Let’s not get to agro here! Nobody wants to fi-”

“Shit, there’s a fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!”

Chanting around them began. Suddenly, a voice interrupted the chants. “Well, you know me!” Kristen didn’t. She turned around. There was a tiefling in front of her, even more buff than Kristen herself, with a greatsword strapped to her back. A greatsword that was currently swinging at Kristen. “I love a fight!”

The greatsword came whistling at Kristen’s ear, but narrowly missed, instead cleaving its way into the tile of the hallway. Kristen looked at the tiefling, who was now directly in front of her, desperately trying to get her greatsword out of the floor. When that seemed not to work, she picked up her fist, and swung at the half-elf.

“Fight! Fight! Fight!”

Oh no. Oh no no no no no. This couldn’t be happening. Kristen couldn’t be getting into a fight like this on the first day. Her parents would kill her. Helio would send her to corn hell. Cortisol pumped through her blood, and, lost in her own helplessness, Kristen Applebees went into a rage.

She screamed. She raged, hitting anybody who came at all into her reach, just did anything to express just how angry she was. She was lost in a blind haze, trying to express just how terrible everything in the world was. When she came down off of it, she was sitting alone, in a hallway, Mr. Daybreak facing her.

“Mr. Daybreak?” Kristen asked.

Mr. Daybreak was a man from her church. The man from her church, second only to the priests. He always donated the most to church collection plates. He coached the church baseball team. At church potlucks, he always manned the grill, which was very important. And now, he was staring at her, wearing a whistle, shaking his head and smacking his lips together. “Kristen, Kristen, Kristen,” he said.

Kristen frowned, memories hazy. “What happened?” she asked.

“You got into a fight’s what happened,” he responded. He began to pace around the room, shaking his head furiously. “Really, I didn’t expect it. A good kid like you. And it’s Coach now, by the way.”

Oh, so that’s what happened. Kristen had lost control of herself in a rage. Rocketing herself up to Coach Daybreak’s level, she looked him in the eyes. “But Coach Daybreak, you don’t understand. I was trying to stop the fight-”

“Yeah right,” responded Coach Daybreak. “You got into a fight, is all. And we here at Aguefort have a no tolerance policy for fighting.” He handed her a little red slip. “You can have fun in detention. And get to the assembly!” And then he was off, disappearing away.

Kristen waited a minute, sighed, and then stood up. As it turned out, she had been wrong this morning. Today was most definitely not going to be a good day.

— — —

The auditorium of Aguefort Adventuring was packed to a tee by the time that Adaine got there. She had wanted to get to the Auditorium early, but the four-way fight she’d witnessed in the halls had sent her spiralling into a panic attack, which had made her have to go calm down in the bathroom. So here she was, squeezed against a wall as she watched the principal give an absolutely insane, rambling speech to her. Adaine could help but doze off in the middle. She hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep last night, after all. It was nice to get some re-

Somebody sharply jabbed her in the ribs. Adaine looked up. It was an older-looking student, one with dark hair covering one of her eyes and pointed ears. She was smiling somewhat sleazily. Adaine looked around herself, and realized that the auditorium was empty. Oh no. Had she missed class? What if she got in trouble? No. Adaine shook her head, pretending that the thoughts were falling out. She would not think about these things right now. High school was supposed to be a new start for her. Making her breathing slower, she forced herself to look at the older student.

“Hey, freshman,” said the older student. “You wanna be cool?”

Adaine blinked. “What?”

“You wanna be cool?”

Adaine frowned. “I mean, I don’t not wanna be cool…”

“Well then,” said the student. “All you gotta do is steal a book from the Restricted Section of the Library. Do that, and you’ll go down in Aguefort history.” With that, she disappeared into a puff of smoke.

Adaine coughed loudly as the blue smoke washed over her, standing up. She wiped tears out of her eyes as the smoke dispersed, and started making her way to Sneakery 101. Steal a book? Now why exactly would she do that? Wasn’t that like, not allowed at school, even shitty Adventuring Schools? Wouldn’t that ruin her image, too? And who even stole books in the first place? Poor people or something? Maybe-

She had walked in front of the library. Frowning, Adaine scrunched up her nose, looking ahead. How had she even ended up here? Her rogue class was on the exact opposite side of the school. But, thought a part of her brain, maybe her subconscious mind had led her here. No, that was way too stupid to be true. Adaine was just about to turn her head away from the library and actually try to get to class, when suddenly she spied the Restricted Section, and, in the middle of it, floating perfectly in mid-air a book. It was like fruit, ripe for the taking. Adaine stared at it hungrily.

And like, it wouldn’t even be that weird to steal a book from the Restricted Section. She was a rogue after all, and rogues did crimes. Stealing a book would make her cool and well known. So yeah, it was a good idea, she saw sure. Before she knew it, she was already in the Restricted Section, inches from the book.

Adaine grasped it in her hands. Fully grasped it in her hands. At first, she expected there to be some sort of alarm, something to tell everybody that she was a bad kid. But there wasn’t. Adaine began to breathe heavily. There had to be some kind of alarm, right? Someone to find her. Someone had to punish her. Adaine broke into a run. Oh yeah, she was absolutely having a panic attack.

“What exactly do you think you’re doing, miss?”

Adaine turned around. The voice that had just been speaking had been so powerful that she’d had to turn around. She’d stopped in her tracks without noticing it.

“Did you steal that book?”

Adaine looked up at the dragonborn vice principal, mouth hanging open. “I…”

He handed her a red slip of paper. “Detention!” He then grabbed her wrist and began dragging her off. “Now, you’ve got to return this book to Principal Aguefort’s office.”

Adaine felt her soul leaving her body. She was getting a detention. On the first day of school. Her parents were going to kill her. Her parents were going to kill her. Her parents were going to-

She was outside the office right now. Vice-Principal Goldenhoard pat her on the back. “Well,” he said. “Go on in. Return the book.”

“Yes, sir,” Adaine murmured. Hopefully, if she was nice enough, she could score some brownie points with the Vice-Principal and not get as big of a punishment as she could have. Slowly, she walked into the principal’s office.

There was a goblin. Hiding under the desk. Badly. Adaine stared at him. He stared at her. A full minute passed before either of them said anything. Eventually, the goblin spoke up, voice barely higher than a whisper. “Please don’t tell any-”

“What are you doing here?” Adaine whisper-asked him.

“What are you doing here?” the goblin whisper-replied.

Adaine whipped her head around. “Vice-Principal Goldenhoard!” she yelled. “He snuck into the Principal’s Office!”

A red slip of paper flew across the room, hitting the goblin in the face. “Immediate Detention!” he said. Then he picked both of them up by the collars and threw them out.

— — —

Fabian Aramais Seacaster was not having a good first day of school, to say the least. He was having a terrible day of school, actually. As it turned out, sacrificing that fish had not helped him whatsoever, and he’d ended up in a four-way fight that he’d lost, landing a detention, which, honestly, wasn’t so bad, other than the fact that he’d lost a fight. 

And then, even worse, he’d gotten shoved into a vat of creamed corn by some half-orc brute (not the one he’d punched earlier) in the middle of his day. He’d actually had to grab his bible from the creamed corn, because apparently nobody was going to help him. And then he’d gotten creamed corn all over his nice first day of school shirt. Of course, he’d had to take a shower after that, but in the mildew-ridden showers of the school. Utterly disgusting. Fabian couldn’t stop thinking about how disgusting it was. Internally screaming, he entered the detention room.

There were five people there already, seemingly waiting for him. Fabian saw the three people he had been fighting with, whom he definitely wanted to avoid, a goblin wearing a weird hat, and an elf who seemed to be melting into the shadows. Fabian, not wanting to sit next to the other people he’d fought with, and thinking about how the goblin looked weird, decided to sit next to the elf.

At the front of the classroom were a tiny gnome wearing a sweater vest and…Vice Principal Goldenhoard. Fabian looked away from him, feeling just a little bit scared, which was terribly silly, he thought.

“So,” Fabian whispered to the elf beside him. “What’d you do?” he heard that this was how you made friends in prison, and detention was basically prison, anyway.

The elf turned to respond. “I-”

Vice Principal Goldenhoard clapped his hands together. “Well, well, well,” he said. “Troublemakers.” He stood, and began to pace around. “Troublemaking bothers me at a deep level. This school can be a very dangerous place. Students put a lot on the line here. And you, with your tomfoolery, your jackanapery, and your shenanigans are a liability that cannot be allowed.” He turned around, beginning to walk out of the door. “Mr. Gibbons will handle your disciplinary action while I’m gone.”

The gnome, Mr. Gibbons apparently, waved. “I’m sensing a lot of powerful feelings here,” he said, hopping up onto the desk. “So over the next hour, we’re going to do some intensive group therapy, starting by introducing ourselves, saying what we did, and how we feel. Oh, and our favorite ice cream flavors. Who wants to start?”

The goblin stood up, raising a hand. “Me,” he said, before turning to address the room. “Hi, I’m Riz Gukgak, investigate journalist. Currently, I’m on the case of the missing girls in town, so if you have any tips on that, I would love it. And I got in trouble for stealing tea from the principal’s office. Long story. Basically, I was following these two girls, but they went into, um…an area I couldn’t access, so I asked another girl to spy on them for me, and I ran into this really cool guy, and the girl from earlier challenged me to steal tea from the principal’s office, so I got a detention. Oh, and my favorite ice cream flavor is coffee.”

He sat back down. Fabian frowned, and inched away. That guy was not cool. They would probably never be able to be friends.

“Anyone else?” asked Mr. Gibbons.

The girl who had caught his fist earlier also stood up. Oh, I guess we’re all doing this now, Fabian thought gloomily. “Hello, all,” the girl said. She had a massive halberd strapped across her back, and her biceps were huge. Fabian was pretty amazed. “I’m Kristen Applebees, future paladin of Helio, current barbarian,” she whispered that last part about being a barbarian. “I got in trouble for fighting, which was my fault, I’m sorry everyone, aaand, my favorite flavor of ice cream is corn.”

Fabian wrinkled his nose. “Corn? What kind of ice cream flavor is that”

The girl, Kristen or whatever, seemed shocked. She turned bright red. “Well, I, uh, um, well, um, who are you to even judge, mister?”

This was Fabian’s chance. His moment. He stood up on one of the tables, his head hitting the ceiling, which barely even mattered to him now. “I am Fabian Aramais Seacaster, son of Bill Seacaster, cleric of Umberlee, Mistress of the Seas and I’m here to be great! Oh, and my favorite flavor of ice cream is kippers.”

“We already know your name,” the elf next to him muttered. “You said that to the entire school earlier. Also, what’s a kipper?”

Fabian went green at the metaphorical gills. “Well, I, uh, um, well, um, who are you to even judge me?”

The girl snorted. “Adaine Abernant, and, since you’re asking, I’ve never had ice cream before. Oh, and by the way, shouldn’t I have diplomatic immunity for this?”

“Diplomatic immunity doesn’t apply to detentions, I don’t think,” the goblin said from the corner.

Adaine Abernant stood up, grabbing a rapier from the scabbard at her hip. “You’re just saying that because I got you in trouble.”

“You snitched on me!” 

The half orc started screaming.

Everyone in the room went silent, swivelling their heads towards the half-orc, who had gone completely silent. The elven girl frowned. “Are you…are you gonna say anything?”

The half-orc blushed. “Umm…” his voice was barely above a whisper. “My name is Gorgug Thistlespring, I got in trouble for fighting, and my favorite flavor of ice cream is vanilla.”

Everybody turned to the tiefling in the room, who was the only one who hadn’t gone yet. As they stared at her, she sighed, flipped her hair around, and turned to face all of them. “I’m Fig, just Fig, and you might’ve seen me last year as one of those tiny girls who got flipped for cheer routines. I got in trouble for fighting, which I do not regret, and I hate ice cream, because ice cream’s part of the system.”

Mr. Gibbons clapped his hands. “Well,” he said. “A lot of powerful feelings here. But I did notice how none of you mentioned them. So how do you feel?”

Everyone in the room said at once, “Bad!”

Mr. Gibbons sniffed. “Well,” that makes sense. “You are bad kids.”

The human sighed next to him. “Hmm, I like the sound of that-”

Suddenly, there was a scream. The human immediately stood up. “Someone needs help!” she said, and then rushed off.

The goblin vaulted up off the table, following after her. “Wait for me!” he said.

And then the half orc was off, too. Fabian stared longingly at the door, and weighed his options. On the one hand, he could have boring detention. On the other, he could have an exciting adventure. Fabian chose the adventure, and began to rush off, going frantically through the hallways, following the distant half-orc, until eventually, he got to the cafeteria. Behind him were the other tree who had been in detention. In front of him, the human pushed open the doors, and they walked in, revealing…something absolutely bizarre.

There was a gigantic blob of what looked like creamed corn, one that had somewhere grew arms. And there were husks of corn on the tables, too, who were shrieking and knocking over leftover lunch trays. Also, the lunch lady was there, wielding a now glowing ladle.

“Hey kids,” said the lunch lady, as the door knocked behind all of them, pushing them into the lunch room. “It’s lunch time…again.”

Chapter Text

“That wasn’t very funny!” the goblin next to Gorgug, Riz or something, shouts. “And you didn’t have to include ‘again’ in the statement. We already got the point!”

The lunch lady, Gorgug doesn’t know her name either, points at him with a ladle that is glowing with a queasy yellow energy. “Just for that, I’m gonna try to kill you the most,” she says.

Riz jumps a little bit at that, and Gorgug’s realizes that his heart has begun to hammer in his chest. This is exactly what he was afraid of. Scratch that, this is more than what he was afraid of. When Gorgug woke up, his greatest fear involving Aguefort was not being smart enough to be a wizard. As it turned out, the classes hadn’t actually been that difficult. Gorgug had even felt a little bit ahead of the curve, with his already done wizard research. The real trouble, he had learned, was with the students.

The second Gorgug had arrived at school, somebody had tried to punch him, accidentally making him enter a fight in the process. Then two more people had joined the fight, and Gorgug had gotten a detention. On his first day of school.

Now, facing off against…well, whatever he’s facing off against, Gorgug desperately wishes that he hadn’t played the hero. He should have asked someone for help, at the very least. Now he’s trapped in here with corn and danger.

Gorgug looks around him. He has five “allies,” he guesses, people who want to prevent whatever’s going on from continuing to happen. Three of them he doesn’t particularly like, mostly because they were fighting with him earlier, but still, they’re not evil corn demons, so whatever. Gorgug’s going to stop all this chaos right now. He is. Because he’s a good wizard. And they’re a good team. 

Or, maybe they aren’t, because in the corner of his eye, Gorgug can see Riz, trying to jump up on a table. Unfortunately, he fails and falls to the ground. When that happens, he almost looks like he’s going to cry. But then he stands up, pointing at the corn gremlin. “Shut up!” he shouts at one of the gremlins, which actually look kind of cute. And plus, they must be a really good work of magic. Transmutation and enchantment, must be. Or something like that.;

Meanwhile, the corn gremlin hisses in response, and then it actually starts wilting. Did that-that that actually do something? Oh, Gorgug thinks. He’s a bard.

Next up to climbing on the table is the guy who tried to punch Gorgug, Fabian. He falls over, too, and then begins to shout. “Fuck you!” he shouts at the corn. “You specifically!” he seems to panic, then. “In the name of Umberlee!”

And the corn catches on fire. But not like, normal fire. It’s dark, somehow, and more smoky than normal. Either way, it kills the corn, which falls to the ground, completely and utterly roasted. The human who stopped the half-elf from punching him, Kristen, falls to the ground, crying out mournfully.

“Wait, why are you sad?” the tiefling who tried to hit him with a greatsword, Fig or something, asks. “He was trying to kill us.”

“I worship Helio,” Kristen says.

A beat of silence.

“The god of corn.”

“Ohhhhh,” both Gorgug and Fig say at the same time.

Then Fig turns around. “Watch this!” she shouts. She tries to jump onto a table, and then fails  dramatically back onto the ground. Are these tables cursed or something? Gorgug thinks. Then Fig runs away down the aisle. “Never mind!” she shouts.

Oh, Gorgug thinks, then. I should probably do something. He needs to fight, probably. He came here to save somebody, after all.

Gorgug mutters out a spell that he knows well, and says the Gnim incantation for Mage Armor. Around him, green-silver, almost holographic armor traces itself. He feels safe now, though ever so slightly. He’s about to walk forward when Kristen suddenly yells something.

“Fudge this!” Kristen shouts. A vein’s popped up on her neck. She’s radiating anger. Oh yeah, Gorgug realizes, then. She’s a barbarian. She must be raging. Gorgug takes a step back. This is very, very scary.

He watches, slowly, awed, as Kristen jumps up onto a table without falling. She has a long pole-type weapon in her hands, which she uses to cleave a corn gremlin in half. Then she begins something like a battle cry. Gorgug watches her, mesmerized, for more time than he probably should. What feels like a year.

Gorgug is kind of confused, but nevermind. Ahead of him, things are already going crazy. Everyone else in engulfed in battle. Or, battle is kind of an exaggeration. It’s more fighting. Riz is yelling at corn gremlins until they die and bickering with Fabian about something involving healing spells. (“What kind of cleric doesn’t have healing spells?” he asks). The more…uhh, martial people just seem to be smacking the ever-increasing amount corn gremlins here with their weapons. Speaking of, Gorgug notices that the corn gremlins appear to be…respawning. Something like that. He looks ahead towards the corn blob, which is trying to break apart the doors to the pantry. And then it rumbles.

It has puckered parts on its body, Gorgug quickly notices. They kind of look like assholes. They’re trembling now, contracting and detracting, until something emerges. Something that looks exactly like the corn cuties.

Oh no, Gorgug thinks. Oh no. The real danger, he quickly realizes, isn’t the gremlins, it’s the big ooze.

He hears an explosion somewhere near him. “You like surprises, huh?” asks the lunch lady. She’s talking to Fig, who’s facing off with both her and a gremlin. “Well, I’ll show you a surprise! A tuna surprise!” and just like that, today’s lunch spits out of the lunch lady’s ladle, red hot and steaming. It hits Fig straight in the face, and she falls to the ground. She looks dead.

Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no oh no. This is going terribly. People are going to die, and Gorgug wasn’t able to help them. He needs to do something. He needs to do something. But he can’t. His feet are glued to the ground. He’s going to die.

“Shit!” that’s Riz, being swarmed by corn. “The ooze! Somebody kill the ooze!” he turns wildly to Gorgug. “You!” he shouts, pointing ahead.

Gorgug’s mouth hangs open. “Me?” he asks.

“Yes, you!” Riz replies. “Ummmmm, your hair looks really nice today!”

Abruptly, warmth builds up in Gorgug’s chest. He feels like he can do it all. Kill the ooze, save everybody, that stuff. He looks back at the tiny goblin standing in front of him.

“Bardic inspiration,” Riz explains. “I gave you bardic inspiration.”

“What?”

“Its like…a compliment that boosts all your abilities,” Riz responds, letting out bursts of thunder to send the gremlins away. “You’ll be safe. Just-just go kill the ooze!”

That command-well, it’s not a command, it’s more of a push-spurs Gorgug into action right in that moment. He bounds ahead onto a table, effortlessly climbing it. He feels like a gazelle, elegantly hopping from table to table. Of course, that’s not actually accurate to what he is, he’s more of an awkward teenager than a gazelle, but never mind. He gets to the end of the cafeteria soon enough, beyond the tables, and the he’s feeling pretty happy.

But behind him, things are not happy. The corn gremlins are absolutely swarming around everyone in a seemingly endless horde. Fig is down in a puddle of a mix of corned cream and her own blood. Fabian’s eyes are glowing, calling upon the power of whatever god he serves (under-sea? Is that what he said?), but it doesn’t stop the overwhelming waves of gremlins who are going around towards him. Kristen is the only one who seems to be doing well, chopping in half every gremlin that even approaches her. When Gorgug jumps off of a table, he spots the fallen body of the elf, Adaine, still being viciously attacked by the gremlins. Gorgug runs past them on legs that are much, much faster than he could have previously imagined them being. Bardic inspiration, he guesses.

The corn blob’s right in front of him, bearing down on him. Uh-oh, Gorgug thinks. He looks behind him. More gremlins. He looks at the corn blob’s gigantic, pulsating…asshole? And then back at the gremlins. He suddenly remembers an old adage he learned in a storybook. Can’t go around it, he thinks. Can’t go under it. Can’t go above it.

“Gotta go through it!”

And he dives straight into the corn.

It’s horrible, obviously, at first. Like being reverse digested, going in through the asshole. He can’t breathe. Everything is hot and disgusting and corny. He swims through, almost. An incredibly long stretch of time passes. Forever, might be. Gorgug melts into it, feeling so, so impossibly light.

His life flashes before his eyes, which he thought was really only a thing that happened in movies. He was born, got adopted, and lived a life full of tinkering and magic. And then he died. No, he thinks, despite that, hearing someone else’s long, thin death rattle of someone near him. He’s going to live.

Gorgug’s hands grasp onto something wet and slimy and thin. Paper, he recognizes. And he knows exactly what to do. He may have run out of spell slots (he only had one), but he doesn’t need any to destroy this paper. Gorgug casts the incantation for Create Bonfire.

And everything explodes. Everything. It’s a spell, so it doesn’t need components to set something on fire, including the paper. The corn’s pretty big, but the fire spreads. Gorgug hears a pop. Suddenly, he can breathe. He’s not swimming. He looks up. A dome of creamed corn was formed above him, sparkling in the mid-day sunlight. And then it falls down. He can’t breathe again.

There’s a rush of wind next to him. Gorgug can feel fresh air next to him. A hand yanks him up into a standing position.

Gorgug takes a deep breath of oxygen, his brain feeling deprived of it, and opens his eyes. Kristen is in front of him, looking way, way more calm then before. Definitely not raging, then he thinks, and he’s glad that she’s not. Rages are scary. He’d never want to do one.

Gorgug stares at Kristen for a moment, taking her in. All in all, she’s covered in just a little blood. She’s breathing hard. Both of them are.

Gorgug looks back. There are no more gremlins on the floor, just a wheezing lunch lady in the corner. Four people are lying on the ground right now: Fabian, Riz, Fig, and Adaine. Gorgug looks back at Kristen. “Are they…are they okay?” he asks.

Kristen looks at the ground. “I don’t know. I-they didn’t have a pulse when I checked. Well, umm, the goblin, Riz, did, but that was it. I think they’re…” she swallows. “Dead.”

Dead. Oh. The words strike in Gorgug’s heart. They were alive something like a minute ago. It doesn’t feel real, he thinks, so then it can’t be real. Breathing in, he tries to ignore reality.

And then suddenly, Gorgug realizes something.  He starts running, then, for the door. “Help!” he shouts. “Help!” His hands grasp onto the door handles. They’re still locked. Internally, Gorgug despairs.

Then the doors burst open. Burst open, in fact, with such force that it sends Gorgug flying back. Back onto Riz’s corpse. Gorgug screams a bit, but it pleased to see that he is indeed still breathing. Then he looks up.

It’s Principal Aguefort, accompanied by Mr. Gibbons. Gorgug stumbles back when he sees him, mouth feeling dry. Aguefort was his idol for most of his life. The greatest wizard of the age. And now Gorgug’s in front of him, absolutely covered in creamed corn, with three dead bodies on the ground. “Uh-”

“Principal Aguefort,” says the lunch lady, behind him. “Please, you need to help-”

“Death,” says the Principal, raising up a finger. Everyone in the room is immediately silenced. Gorgug guesses that he just has that kind of power. “Is a part of life, eternal and unforgiving.”

Gorgug blinks. What?

“It exists around us in all places, for energy can neither be created nor destroyed.”

Is the Principal really giving a great philosophical speech at a time like this? What does that have to do with anything?

“Death is an old friend.”

The lunch lady looks like she’s trying to shake Fig awake.

“It’s a glass of-”

“Are you going to help us?” Kristen interrupts, only to be interrupted herself.

“It’s a spoon, when all you need is a knife.”

“What…?” Gorgug can’t tell if it’s him or Kristen or even the lunch lady speaking.

“Death waits for us all, with the exception of some immortal beings such as gods and vampires, some form of undead, but death waits for many of us, maybe not elves, elves are immortal if they live in their homeland.”

Is Aguefort going senile or something?

“However, there are times when great magic can work wonders.”

He pulls a ball of what seems like fire out of his pocket and throws it forward, where it floats in the air.

“The egg of last phoenix,” the greatest wizard ever says to Gorgug, and he feels some hope rise in his chest. “However, death will exact its price.” he looks straight at Gorgug. “There’s foul play in this school. Only you can save us. A life for a life.”

“What?” Doreen asks, as the principal pulls out a gun.

BANG!

BANGBANG!

Glowing red energy surrounds everyone in the room, as they’re all lifted up in the air. The three teachers, Aguefort, Mr. Gibbons, and the lunch lady, all have bullet holes in their heads. Around him, Gorgug can see his dead classmate’ wounds being stitched up as they return to life. By the time that they’re all on the ground again, they’ve all finished the process of revival.

Chapter Text

Fig Faeth has been waiting for death ever since she was born. She’s been expecting death, almost, she thinks. Maybe even wanting it. All those nights lying in bed, horns growing in, thinking of how great it would be to not feel the pain anymore.

Fig died to a tuna surprise shot out by a former mentor with such force that it bashed in her skull. She was only there because she wanted to play the hero, to save the world like a real adventurer. And she died because of it.

And Fig really did expect to go somewhere after she died. You go somewhere, she knows. That’s what she learned, what everyone learns. When Fig still thought she was an elf and nominally followed Galicaea, she had always expected to go Galicaea’s heaven, a soft, cool place where you braided each other’s hair all day and sang songs so beautiful that they coil make the stars cry. That’s where asteroids came from, Fig learned. But when Fig found out she was a tiefling, she renounced Galicaea completely. So then, Fig has to ask, where do tieflings who don’t believe in anything go when they die?

Well, maybe, Fig thinks as she lands wherever she’s landing, maybe she’s in hell. It seems an awful lot like hell.

Yeah, this is hell. Fig can see that now. Or something like hell. It’s dark and it’s smoky, and Fig can barely see past her own hands. She coughs. This absolutely  is terrible. Does she really have to spend eternity in here?

She takes a hesitant forward, and trips. The ground that she’s on is too smooth to find any footing, and sloped, too, so she ends up falling flat on her face. Her nose is bleeding, she notices. She didn’t know that you could get injured in hell. After a moment, she starts to crawl back up along the sloped ground. Then she hits a wall.

Yeah definitely a wall., Fig knows that now, knows it better after her head smacked against it. A nice and thick one. She places a hand on the wall ahead of her, testing its give. No dice. It’s solid as hell (ha, hell). 

Fig straightens herself up, barely managing to stand without slipping once again. With one hand, she steadies herself on the wall, and with the other, she reaches out. Her hands hit another wall, and she reaches out farther. Another. She’s in some kind of weirdly-shaped chamber, or something like that. A small one, too. Fig can just barely feel her horns brushing up against the roof.

Fig frowns. No rest for the wicked, she guesses. And she is wicked. A half demon, evil by nature, that’s what her old cheerleading friends said.

A hand presses itself to the other side of the door. It’s glass, Fig realizes, then nearly jumps when she sees the hand. It’s gigantic, twice the size of her own, bright red, with long, gnarled claws.

A deep voice, both sinister and caring, speaks up. “Fig?”

Knowledge that she didn’t know she had suddenly occurs to her, then. She speaks without thinking. “Dad?”

Her dad responds, and it’s all that she’s ever dreamed of. “Fig-”

And then she’s gone.

— — —

Death is quick, but dying is faster. One moment, Adaine’s being torn apart by corn gremlins, feeling more pain that she had ever imagined existed in the world, and the next one of them’s got her throat. Something warm spills out of her throat, and then she’s drowning, drowning.

Adaine breathes in the water, chokes on it, actually. She spits it up, feeling stupid, knowing that she can swim, and reaches her arms up in desperate search of any kind of escape. She feels air above her, and frantically tries to swim towards it, until she’s aboveground once again.

Adaine takes a breath in. And then she pukes.

In fairness, it’s not really puke. It’s just water. It drips off of and all over her. Adaine wipes her face, and then opens her eyes..

She’s in a pool, she quickly realizes, one that doesn’t seem to have a bottom. It isn’t very big, aside from that, though. If she laid down in it she could probably touch both ends.

This must be Galicaea’s Heaven, judging by the scenery. A full moon up in the sky. Tall, silvery grasses all around. Weeping willows bowing over the pools, providing much unneeded nighttime shade. Adaine wades to the edge of the water and wrenches herself out, shaking the water off her body like a dog. 

Heaven. This is heaven.

All around her, there are elves, chatting and laughing. They are all wearing flowy togas with flower crowns in their intricately braided hair, all perfectly beautiful and happy. Far, far away, Adaine can see a tall elven woman with earrings patterned like the moon. Galicaea, maybe? She doesn’t know.

“Yes, that’s Galicaea, dearie.”

Adaine turns around, noticing how she’s been changed into a toga, too. No flower crown, though. She guesses that you get those at some later date. Past orientation, maybe.

But back to the mysterious voice from before. Adaine can see the person who said it, or at least she thinks that she can. It’s a truly ancient elf, even by elf standards. Wrinkly face, poofy gray hair, eyes blinded by cataracts. The whole shebang. Elf aging really depends on how you emotionally feel, so this woman must be feel ancient. How old if she, then? 1000? More? 

The woman’s wearing a similar toga to everyone else, only hers somehow comes across as a whole lot more regal than the others. Makes them looks like a bunch of country bumpkins. She doesn’t even have a flower crown. And she’s smiling at Adaine with kind eyes.

“It’s Galicaea,” repeats the old woman.

Adaine furrows her brows. “Can you…can you read my mind?”

The woman’s smile grows mischievous. “Maybe.”

Adaine’s mouth twists. She’s had enough mind-reading-without-consent for a lifetime. She turns around. “Alright, well I’m gonna go-”

A hand grasps around her shoulder, one that feels like a claw. It has unexpected strength in it, leaving Adaine rooted to her place. She turns back. “Yes,” the woman tells her. “Yes, you must go, but not further here. No, that path is tangled and ruined, I have seen it. You must go back.”

“What?”

Is this some kind of convoluted prophecy, because if it is, then she’s also had enough of convoluted prophecies for a lifetime, as well. And most of them are BS, anyway.

“You must go back,” the woman repeats. “Back to Spyre, back to your home, back to your school, back. They have dire need of you there. Paths are spreading out, and you must never take the easy one.” Another hand grasps her shoulder. “Remember my words, child. Beware your blood. And learn a lesson from me: beware the flood.”

And then she’s being pushed down into the water, and she’s gone.

— — — 

Fabian’s been both afraid and welcoming of death for his whole life. Afraid of it, because all living beings are afraid of death, but welcoming of it, because he’s known, ever since he was born, practically, that when you die, you get to go to Umberlee’s watery hall and feast on fish for eternity.

So when Fabian dies, he’s a little bit relieved, if only not to feel the pain.

And he doesn’t feel the pain at the very end. He’s not falling to corn gremlins. He’s floating.

Fabian opens his eyes. He’s underwater, he recognizes, likely in Umberlee’s Heaven in the Deep Wilds. This is where only the most devoted servants of Umberlee go when they die.

“Fabian…”

“Fabian…”

He can hear a voice deep as the sea, the voice of his Goddess. Fabian looks around. He’s in an endless void of water, but somehow, he knows where up is. And that means he knows where down is, too.

Fabian wades downwards, realizing that he can breathe. This must be heaven. He sighs dreamily This is all he’s ever, ever wanted. And as the joy feels his heart, suddenly, the water shifts around him. Shifts into a very specific and very familiar face.

“Fabian Aramais Seacaster,” Umberlee hisses.

Fabian bows his head at the face in the water. “U-Umberlee,” he says, ashamed at the stammer in his voice. “I thank you, queen of the seas. Where, um, where am I?”

His goddess’ smile grows large.  “You are in my realm. My heaven. You are my loyal servant, and so you will be given a great reward.”

Fabian smiles at this, feeling pride begin to swell in his chest. “Really?” he asks her, eyes growing wide.

“Yes, yes, of course,” Umberlee says, and then roars. “You are my servant, and so I get to consume your soul.”

The water start pulling at Fabian. He’s screaming, he realizes. He’s being sucked in. Sucked into Umberlee’s mouth. He didn’t sign up for this! He did not sign up for this! Oh, he’s going to die again! He’s going to die again, and this time it’s going to be forever!

Somebody grabs his hand. Fabian turns around, and it’s…his principal, floating in the water above him? What? With strength that an old man shouldn’t possess, Aguefort switches their positions, lurching Fabian upward and himself down. A spell has begun powering itself up in his palm, something bright and purple. “If I’m going out, I’m going out in style!” he shouts. Fabian is being pulled up, up, very suddenly. He screams as he watches his principal go into his goddess’ mouth. But he’s going far, far away.

And then he can’t see either of them at all, and then he’s gone.

— — —

Or, well, he isn’t. Because after he’s gone, he’s able to open his, and see light. A lot of it. So much of it, in fact, that it overwhelms him, and briefly makes him forget that he’s alive once more.

And then he starts actually freaking out. 

What the fuck? He thinks. What the fuck what the fuck what the godsdamned fucking shitting fuck?

 Actually, Fabian is fine. For a second. He’s great, actually. Never been better. Alive. Great, great, great, fucking shitting great. He stands up, then immediately remembers, oh yeah my goddess tried to eat me.

And that really sets his body into overdrive. He sits back down, landing on a table, and remembers how he failed to jump onto it a million years ago. That almost makes him cry for some reason, then almost makes him laugh, and then makes him feel semi-normal or at least semi-functional again, and lets him watch what’s going on in this horrendous lunchroom.

Well, Fabian thinks, at least there’s no more corn. The blob has melted into a thin slop on the ground, unmoving, and the corn gremlins have shriveled into husks on the ground, covered in pools of drying blood. Also, there are three corpses on the ground. Fabian honestly has no idea why he didn’t notice that sooner. Maybe he’s going crazy. He can see three specific corpses here: the lunch lady, which, good, she was pretty evil, the guidance councillor, and the principal. All of them have gunshots wounds in their heads.

“ What the fuck ?” Fabian asks again.

Well, Fabian can think, a little bit crazily, at least there’s only three corpses. The five other students he was fighting with are all miraculously alive, and even more miraculously unwounded. The human and the half-orc, Kristen and Gorgug, he thinks, are standing up, both near to each other, looking the least frazzled out of all of them. The tiefling, Fig, is huddled by the dead lunch lady, crying silent tears. The goblin that Fabian has been told to call The Ball is staring into space and muttering to himself at such a rapid pace and low volume that it almost sounds like he’s singing some bizarre, panicked, song. And Adaine, the rogue he met before, is curled up into a ball on the ground, shaking in a puddle of her own blood.

The Ball has stopped talking, Fabian has noticed. He turns around, facing the Ball, nervously. The talking was very slightly calming to him. “Wait,” the Ball says to everyone, raising one finger up in the air. “What happened here?”

Kristen and Gorgug open their mouths at the same time.

“He jumped into the butthole-”

“-and there was a paper-”

“-and the corn caught on fire-”

“-and then the Principal came-”

“-murder suicide-”

“-and you guys all got revived,” finishes Gorgug.

Revived. The very word sends shivers down his spine. His father has been revived dozens of times, whatever, it doesn’t matter, it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine, but it isn’t. He was dead, then alive. That shouldn’t be possible, but it is. A smile cracks on his face. Goody-goody. He’s alive. Somebody throw a parade.

A million miles away, the Ball is squatting down along a line of soot that’s encircled that cafeteria. “Revival, eh? What kind?”

Gorgug shrugs. “He pulled out something called the egg of the last Phoenix.”

“Jeepers!” Riz shouts.

Fig laughs. “Why are you talking like that?” she asks, choking slightly on the tear tracks that are now running down her face.

The Ball puts his hands on his hips. “Like what?”

Fig sighs. “Nevermind.”

But the Ball raises a hand up in the air. “Anyway!” he shouts. “There’s been a disaster here. An interesting disaster. Which calls for one thing.”

“A funeral?’ Fig asks from he ground. She’s doing something to the lunch lady’s hairnet, ripping it up, which, you know, probably bad. Did she hate her or something?

“A church ceremony?” Kristen asks.

“A wedding?” Gorgug adds.

“A panic attack?” Fabian says miserably.

The Ball laughs, and for once it doesn’t weird Fabian too much. “No!” he shouts. “This calls for an investigation! Gorgug, tell me, you had a paper. What was on it?”

Gorgug frowns. “Uh, I don’t know. It exploded.”

“Damnit!” The Ball shouts. “Does anybody have anything else? Anyone?” 

Gorgug slowly raises a hand. “Umm, Mr. Aguefort did say that we shouldn’t trust the faculty. He said that to me, actually. He said I was the only one who could stop everything that’s going on.”

The Ball jumps up like his moniker describes, leaping onto Gorgug’s chest and holding him by the hoodie strings. “What? That’s amazing! Oh my goshes, Gorgug, you have to tell me everything! You can be my star witness.”

Gorgug sits down, the Ball still on his chest. “Uh, okay.”

From there, the Ball vaults up onto the table, which makes him about as tall as Gorgug standing up, the shrimp. “Don’t you get it, guys?”

“No,” Gorgug says.

“This is my chance,” Riz says, excitedly. “Our chance, I mean, and our chance. A lunch lady possessed? Corn coming to life? A widely-respected wizard committing suicide? Come on! This has all the ingredients of an award-winning, country shocking, heck, whole world shocking, Aguefort is so famous, investigative article! And we’re the people to write it! Come on, guys!”

Nobody says anything.

“Come on, guys! Who’s with me?,”

After a bit, Gorgug raises his hand. “I am,” he says, reluctantly. “Aguefort was really cool. I have to make him proud by finding out what’s wrong.”

Fig raises a hand, too. “I’m in,” she says. “I need to figure out why Doreen went crazy.”

Kristen raises up her halberd, and in sparks in the sunlight above. “Me too!” she shouts. “For Helio!”

Adaine raises a hand, too.

Ugh, well if everyone’s doing it. He raises a hand, too. “I’ll do it,” he get out, feeling choked. “But I was gonna do it anyway. I was just late. And um, for Umberlee.”

The Ball claps his hands. “Great, great, great! We’re gonna solve a mystery!” he turns to Gorgug, eyes intense and burny. “Right. Gorgug. You’re the arcane expert here. The corn stuff clearly had to do with magic. What do you think about it?”

Gorgug chews his lip, and Fabian feels like he should speak up, too. He may not be an arcane expert, but he’s still a spellcaster. And a Seacaster, too, which is probably more important than that other thing.

“Transmutation, probably, for the corn,” Gorgug says, slowly, but for once he’s actually making eye contact, and seems maybe a little tiny bit excited. “And enchantment for Doreen.”

“Multiple spells,” the Ball says. “Damn, this is getting good! Here, I’ll fire up a Detect Magic.” he laughs a little bit, once again. “Should’ve done that the whole time. But I need ten minutes to cast it. In the mean time, guard the doors. I can’t have any cops interrupting my good investigating. No offense to my mother, of course. But please, guard the doors.”

Kristen shrugs a little bit, and walks towards the door. Fabian, does, too. He may not be martial first, but he’s no slouch with a warhammer, either. So he goes to the doorway, sitting against one door, while Riz climbs down onto the ground, spreading out clawed hands over tile. He’s chanting something right now, and moving his hands around. They spread out in front of him, every couple of seconds pressing down, crossing over each other over and over and over again. It’s mesmerizing to watch. Faintly, Fabian can hear music, something beautiful and soft and pleasant.

When the ten minutes are over, the Ball rises, doing a little bow. His pupils burn an electric blue, and he spins on his feet, pointing to the back of the room. “That’s magic,” he says, and runs down the center column, managing miraculously not to slip on corn or blood along the way. He grabs a gigantic drum of corn, which is about the size of his entire body and probably twice the weight. “This corn drum, it has…” he spots mid-sentence, and his pupils stop glowing. The spell’s over. Fabian examines the corn drum.

Memory sparks within him, suddenly. “I know that drum,” he says. “My-this guy, Ragh, threw it into the drum. But I got it out.”

“Maybe the divine magic rubbed off on it, somehow,” Gorgug suggests.

The Ball goes digging into the drum, stuffing himself in it and getting himself covered in corn (well, more corn). “That page,” he says. “Maybe it was a page from your bible. Fabian, does that make sense?”

Fabian frowns. “No,” he says quietly. “I mean, it could’ve. Maybe if that page were enchanted. But it wasn’t, at least to my knowledge.”

The Ball gets out of the corn drum, and nods. “Your bible wasn’t sending off any magic,” he says, putting a finger to his chin. “No more than any cleric’s bible would. But still, it’s our best bet.” he has begun walking back. “I declare this investigation momentarily over.”

Adaine, apparently not panicking anymore, jumps up from her position on the ground. “What next?” she asks.

The Ball looks down at the ground.

“Maybe we should call the police,” Kristen suggests.

The Ball shakes his head. “No,” he says. “No cops. Cops ruin everything.” He begins pacing around, his dress hoes making loud clacks on the tile of the lunchroom. “But still, we can’t just leave. We’ll get blamed. We need to present a story, a good story, maybe even a true story. I know, we’ll tell Goldenhoard!” he pumps a fist up in the air.

Fig frowns. “You sure?” she asks. “You may not know this about me, but I don’t like authority.”

“We can’t tell no one,” Kristen mutters.

“And we can’t tell the police,” the Ball adds.

“So Goldenhoard’s a compromise candidate,” Adaine says. “We should vote. All for telling Goldenhoard?”

Riz, Adaine, Gorgug, and eventually Kristen all raise their hands. Fabian does, too, if only to be in the majority. Fig sighs dramatically. “Alright. You five go on ahead and tell the authority figures, but if you’re betrayed, I’ll laugh.” She slams her greatsword into the ground.

“No,” the Ball says, suddenly. “No, you guys go ahead. I’m gonna hang back and do more investigating. Oh! And we need to communicate. We should exchange numbers.”

So they do. They exchange numbers, the Ball creating a group chat called New Adventuring Party (Fabian immediately changes it to regular group chat, and then Fig changes it to the Bad Kids, after what Mr. Gibbons called them). Ugh, Fabian can’t believe that he’s technically in an adventuring party with all these lamos. It’s like, the Ball even gave him a business card. A business card! Like some kind of businessman. Still, the aforementioned lamos are pretty helpful. And by the end of the exchangement of numbers, he actually feels a little bit (or maybe even a lot a bit) calmer. 

And then, as he leaves, Fabian realizes that, actually, he wasn’t really prepared. Anxiety almost immediately sets in, but he pushes through it, because whatever’s going on right now is way, way more important than his stupid anxiety or whatever. So he strides forward towards where he can see Vice Principal Goldenhoard’s silhouette, everyone following behind him. Fabian almost feels like he’s in charge of something. Like a captain.

So he walks up Vice Principal Goldenhoard with his corn-and-blood covered friends, and taps him on the shoulder. 

Vice Principal Goldenhoard wheels around to face him a look of shock on his face. Behind him, a group of freshmen scatter, some of them screaming. Fabian’s mouth hangs open.

“Vice Principal Goldenhoard,” Kristen says, raising her voice up. “You need to come to the cafeteria.”

And she walks off before there can be any more conversation. Damnit, Fabian thinks, and then follows her.

So they trek themselves all the way back to the cafeteria, opening and shutting the doors behind Goldenhoard, whose jaw has dropped. Well, Fabian thinks, that makes sense. There’s three corpses on the floor, actually, four now, because apparently the Ball is pretending to be dead. Fabian is nervous as he sees Goldenhoard give Riz a once over, before turning his eyes away. Good, he thinks, stupidly. The Ball’s secret is safe.

“Oh. My. Gods!” Goldenhoard shouts. “What happened, children?”

“Long story,” Kristen mutters.

Adaine begins to speak up, then, her voice trembling ever so slightly. “But it could still be explained, probably. Simply, actually. Basically, we were attacked by corn that came to life. And it killed three people. Fabian, Fig, Riz, and me.” she points to each person who died. “But Principal Aguefort came in with Mr. Gibson, and pulled out the egg of the last phoenix. Then he said a life for a life, shot himself, Doreen, and Mr. Gibbons, and then we all came back.”

Vice Principal Goldenhoard sits down, looking like the weight of the world is on his shoulders. “What?” he says, then, “What? Children, I hope you know this situation that you’re in is truly, truly insane. I’m-I don’t even know what to say right now. Go. Go right now, and-and take showers.” he points at Gorgug. “Especially you, corn child. Just get out of my sight, please. All of you.”

A moment of silence.
“Now!”

The fire in his eyes and the fire building up in his throat are, combined, enough, to make Fabian run away, along with the rest of everyone else. They scurry nervously along, all completely silent, until they reach the gym showers at last. Absurdly, Fabian can feel a little bit of worry for the Ball tugging at him, which is stupid. Seacasters don’t care about people, especially not annoying bards who bother you about not having any healing spell slots as a cleric (shut up, that’s normal).

So they hit the showers quick enough (getting interrupted by some stupid coach along the way), but eventually they do get there. And Fabian gets to take a shower.

Fabian’s always liked taking showers. He’s a cleric of Umberlee, liking showers is practically part of his DNA. Anything with water, he likes. Swimming, showering, heck, even washing his hands, it’s what he loves.

Only, not today. Today, when he sees the mouth of the shower drain above him, he can only see Umberlee’s mouth, about to devour him whole. But still, he turns on the water. It ends up cold.

He’s afraid of her, he realizes. Afraid of his goddess, afraid of dying, afraid of everything in the entire world. He wants to…he doesn’t know what he wants. To be away from himself. To be away from everyone.

He wants to stop being whatever he is, stop being the cleric that he is. Wouldn’t it be beautiful to be a fighter, a bard, something like that? It would be beautiful-

No. No no no. He can’t be acting like this. He’s a cleric of Umberlee, that’s what he is. It won’t matter if he’s being devoured. It won’t matter if that happens. Fabian is going to stay the same, no matter what.

Slowly, he turns off the water, towels off, and put on his clothes. Most of the blood is off of him now. Most of it.

He steps out into the open hallway of the school washrooms. Gorgug’s standing there, right in front of him. He’s still wearing his hoodie, which still reeks of corn, albeit less so, and some severely cut off jeans that he probably got from the lost and found. Gorgug begins walking up to Fabian.

And then he hugs him.

Fabian flinches, actually flinches, because Gorgug’s hugging him. He hasn’t gotten a hug from his Papa in months, let alone his mother in her sensory deprivation egg. But this half orc’s oddly comforting, and Fabian doesn't feel entirely disgusted by him, even with his shirt still soaked in creamed corn.

“I’m sorry that you died,” Gorgug tells him, and pats him on the back.

“I…” Fabian really doesn’t want to say this, but he probably definitely should. “I’m sorry I hit you.”

“Tried to,” Gorgug corrects.

“Shut up,” he responds.

Fabian leans into the hug.

— — —

As it turns out, pretending to be a corpse is fairly boring. Riz knows this now.

At first, it’s kind of cool. Panic and exhilaration rolled over his body when Goldenhoard didn’t notice him, but that was pretty much where it peaked. Now it’s just laying on the ground waiting for something interesting to happen.

579, 580, 581…

Riz stops his counting when he hears the door open. Two steps of footsteps, he recognizes, hearing them pound on the tile. Then the doors shut.

A voice sighs somewhere above him. “Arthur dead on the first day. Mr. Gibbons gone. Doreen. That kid. Wild.”

A second voice, deeper and indistinctly accented, speaks up next in deep laughter. “Yeah. Seems things are getting started a little earlier this year than normal.”

Riz decides that he maybe doesn’t trust this guy.

He hears chanting then, vaguely elven, and something that sounds like magic being cast. “My god!” the first voice shouts. “Some kind of Conjuration happened here. Looks like divine in nature. Yeah, some demonic entity, maybe fallen angels from the Helionic faith, something like that. That’s bizarre. What happened to the ward? You shouldn’t be able to summon creatures on school ground.”

The second voice, the untrustworthy voice, speaks up next. “Well, wards are like walls, you know? If you’re strong enough, you can break ‘em, I suppose.”

First voice next. “Everything you say sounds fuckin’ creepy, man.” (right). “I gotta be straight with you about that. I don’t know why you talk that way. I’m trying to make a bridge between you and me. We’re coworkers. I’d like to get along, you know? You’re not required to be my friend, but, like, a little cordiality, man. Like, spoonful of sugar. Help me out, man. I’m here trying to make something happen.”

The suspicious voice coughs. “I’m gonna go check on those kids,” the voice says. “It doesn’t seem right that they’re all alone.”

“Well, hey man,” the first voice responds. “They’re not alone. They have each other. And they kind of do have each other, because they’ve missed the window to form an adventuring party, so they’re kind of a de-facto one, unless they leave school. There’s a couple options open. All right, well, I’m gonna go log this stuff in the sort of arcane register. You have a good one, man.”

Footsteps grow distant in the hall. Riz can feel the warm fuzzies building up in his chest. An adventuring party.  Oh, the very words send good shivers up his back. He can’t wait to have a real adventuring party, and real friends. Combined with the fact that he’s gotten so many more clues, Riz feels like he feels the happiest that he’s ever been since Penny disappeared. After the bliss of that emotion leaves, he starts counting once again. The police should be here soon, and he’s going to listen to them to get data on this investigation. And then probably go home and work on his clueboard. He starts counting again.

He gets to nine hundred by the time that the cops arrive. He hears two footsteps, and then a gasp. “Helio!” shouts a young-sounding voice. “That’s a kid.”

Somebody picks him up, and Riz bristles a little bit at being called a kid. Whatever, he thinks, as he’s put into a bodybag and wheeled away somewhere else. It’s fine. The real annoying thing is that he’s not going to get to hear about the arcane investigation. Once he can’t hear people near him, he unzips the bodybag, and gets out.

He’s in the parking lot, which is absolutely swarming with police. Like flies to honey, he thinks, and then wonders what he’s even thinking about. Among the cops, he spies his mom. “Mom!” he shouts, and jumps up, trying to be noticed among the crowd.

His mom miraculously hears his voice over the din of everyone, and goes running up to him, engulfing him in a hug. “Kiddo!” she practically screams. “Oh, kiddo, I didn’t know what happened to you, I was so worried.  You weren’t responding to any of my texts.”

“My phone died,” Riz lies.

She frowns at him. “You really gotta start charging it more,” she orders him.

Riz nods. A little bit of guilt nags at him for lying to his mom. He stuffs it down into a part of his subconsciousness that he never touches.

“Where were you?” mom asks him.

“Making friends.” That’s not technically a lie, so he doesn’t have to feel guilty about it at all. Nope nope nope. No guilt.

A smile breaks his mom’s face for the first time this day. “You made friends? Sweetie, that’s great.” she squeezes him so hard he can’t breathe.

“Yeah,” Riz says. “We’re gonna be in an adventuring party. Also, I may or may not have been part of the corn massacre.”

Mom pulls away to look at his face. “Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods, Riz. The corn massacre? Honey, did you get hurt? Did you die? Please tell me you didn’t-”

“I didn’t die, relax.” This is true. “I just passed out a little bit.”

She began to smooth down his hair, which had admittedly become a little bit messy. He’s still covered in a little blood, and it was remarkable his mom hadn’t seen that first. “Okay, passed out,” she sighs. “Look, hun, if you were involved in this, I can probably get out of work early. You stay here in the parking lot, and we can get something nice for dinner. You deserve it.”

(Not really. He just passed out. It’s not like he died, or something. He’s fine. He is.) Still, he gets to request food. “Takeout?” Sit-down dinner would take away from clueboard time.

“Yeah, kid,” his mom tells him, and ruffles his hair one last time. “You wait out here in the parking lot, and I’ll come back to get you.”

He watches her disappear into the high school with fondness on her face. She’s whatever the equivalent of a good cop can be. But now for her investigative journalist son to get to the work he needs to do.

Riz turns on his crystal and immediately starts typing. The bluelight prevents him from falling asleep, keeps him active and keeps him energized. He needs coffee stat. He hasn’t slept in over twenty-four hours. Still, he goes into his Messenger app, and begins, frantically, to type into the new group chat.

Riz Gukgak: Overheard two teachers(?) talking about the magic that’s going on the cafeteria. They said the magic was Conjuration, divine in nature, but demonic. Something from a fallen angel of the Helionic faith. Also, apparently a ward was broken on the school, which is what let the monsters in. More to add?

Fig: why do u type like an old person??

Riz ignores that.

Kristen Applebees: i knew it!!!!!! Helio couldn’t have done this. It’s a demon.

Fig: I’m a demon.

Kristen Applebees: Oh.

Kristen Applebees: Sorry for saying that.

Fabian Seacaster: It also couldn’t have been me, then. Umberlee isn’t at all related to Helio.

Fabian Seacaster sent a gif.

Kristen Applebees sent a gif.

Gorgug Thistlespring: Maybe I can check on the wards tomorrow??? I’m an Abjurer, if you don’t know.

Adaine Abernant: So’s my sister.

Gorgug Thistlespring: Oh? Does she go to Aguefort.

Adaine Abernant: No. She goes to Hudol, and she’s a bitch. Don’t talk to her.

“Who are you talking to?”
Riz jumps up nervously. “No one!” he says, and stuffs his phone into his briefcase.

Mom smiles wryly. “Alright,” she says, like she doesn’t believe him, which, fair. “Come on. I already got meat-lovers for us.”

Riz smiles, a smile that doesn’t fade all through the night, nor even when he’s decorating his clueboard. He’s happier than he’s been in a long while. Because he has two equally important things now: clues, and friends.

— — —

They sit together on the curb together. Gorgug, Kristen, Fig, Fabian, and Adaine. The five of them. Fig is smoking a cigarette, of which she offered one to everyone. Fabian and Adaine each took one, but both of them started furiously coughing after one puff, and have since extinguished them.

“What’s heaven like?” Kristen asks,  interrupting the terrible silent silence that lingers around them.

“Bad,” Fig and Adaine say at the same time.

“I saw my dad,” Fig adds. “He was pretty cool.”

“I can’t wait to go to heaven,” Kristen says, somewhat dreamily. “Heaven’s beautiful, you guys. Real beautiful. Just croquet and corn as far as the eye can see.”

Adaine laughs a bit. “Well, that sounds semi-horrible,” she responds. “Not as horrible as Galicaea heaven, though. It’s just hair braiding and singing about things have happened a hundred thousand years ago.”

A laugh from Fig. “Yeah,” she says. “I’m glad I didn’t go there. Just normal hell. That's where my dad’s from. By the way.”

Gorgug wants to say, I know, but he probably shouldn’t because that’ll probably offend his new friend, the closest thing that he has to a friend at all, and probably the first friend he’s made in his entire life. So he just sits there on the curb, staring forward boredly.

beepbeepbeep

beepbeepbeep!
Gorgug can hear the very distinct beeping of avery particular car, and turn around to face it. It’s his parents’ little gnomish car, a Beatle (named because they’re practically the size of beatles), painted sunny yellow and coming right up before them. It’s green, so it doesn’t even blow smoke in their faces. Gorgug can admire them for that.

The window winds down, and Gorgug sees his dad peek his head out from the car window. “We came to pick you up, bud!” he says.

Gorgug stands up, as always as he is, aware of his stature. He dwarfs his parents car, which in turn dwarfs (or gnomes?) them. He also dwarfs his friends sitting down by the curb, though that doesn’t both him so much. Fig is only a foot smaller than him, which is surprising. And she could probably benchlift him easily, which is also a perk. Friends that can benchlift you are probably good. Gorgug doesn’t know. Like he said, he’s never had friends before.

Gorgug opens the door up before him, and manages to squeeze himself into his parents’ gnomish car. It’s tiny, which really sucks for Gorgug, but also is better for him mom and dad, because they don’t make car for gnomish bodies that don’t cost a whole lot to modify to their sizes. So Gorgug’s knees going to his head isn’t really all that much of a problem, all things considered.

“Hey kids,” Gorgug’s mom says to everyone. “Any of you need a ride home? We know it’s been a hard day.”

Understatement of the century, Gorgug thinks. Outside, Fig raises a hand. “It would be easier for my mom,” she says. “To go with you, I mean.”

Gorgug’s parents welcome her in, and Fig joins him in the car, also pulling her legs all the way up to her face, though her knees end ore at her chin because of her stature. They sit together in the car, awkwardly silent in a way that is more familiar to Gorgug than almost anything.

“So,” his mom says. “How’d you two meet?”

“We got into a fight,” Fig answers.

Gorgug’s parents gape for a moment, before attempting to turn their faces into their usual, friendly smiles. “Oh, well, bud, that’s great!” dad says, conspicuously avoiding eye contact with Gorgug.

“It wasn’t his fault,” Fig adds, seemingly getting that Gorgug doesn’t want to tell his family about all the trouble he got in on his first day of school. “Some kid tried to punch him.”

“What a jerk,” his mom says.

“Yeah, a jerk,” his dad agrees.

“He’s in our party now,” Gorgug mutters.

“Oh,” his mom says from behind the wheel. “Oh, wow, um, well, that’s excellent. What a…spunky bunch you’ve got there. By the way, young lady, what’s your address?”

“Ninety-six Thunderift Street,” Fig informs them quickly. She’s looking down at her feet, as best as she can in these cramped conditions. “And it’s Fig, by the way. That’s my name.”

They spend the rest of the ride small-talking, well, mostly Fig and Gorgug’s parents. Fig is acting way more friendly after her death, which Gorgug feels like isn't suppose to happen. Either way, he sort of enjoys being in a car with somebody who doesn’t outright hate him. And is his age. Fig is nice. She talks about her love of combat, swords, and punk rock music, how she kind of wants to start a band one day, everything. Gorgug likes the sound of what she’s saying. He likes most things about her.

When she leaves, Gorgug’s heart feels a little heavy, but also kind of lighter. He feels happy-sad, if that makes sense. Bittersweet. Because Fig’s gone for now, but he knows that she won’t be gone forever. He has five friends now, which is five more than he’s had in his life.

Before he goes to bed, Gorgug presses his face to his pillow, cheeks feeling hot. “ I have friends,” he whispers, and he’s happy for it.

— — —

Fig arrives on her mother’s doorstep feeling like an intruder. That’s what she feels like she’s always felt like since her "growth spurt.” An unfit piece of her family that tore it apart. It doesn’t help that her horns bump against all the ceilings in the house. But today, immediately after dying and meeting her dad, Fig realizes that she somehow feels more out of place than ever.

Behind her, she hears the squeal of tires on pavement as the Thistlesprings’ car drives away.  She should’ve stayed with them, she thinks. Her mom probably doesn’t want her here, not after what she said this morning. Still she knocks on the door anyway.

The door almost immediately opens in response. Fig sees her mom on the other side, looking more stressed out than Fig thinks she’s ever seen someone look stressed out in the entirety of her life.

“Fig,” her mom breathes out.

Fig takes a deep breath in, and then completely breaks. It’s ugly, too. She starts crying, sobbing, actually, the tears running down her face faster than she can count or even process. Snot gets out, too. When she wipes her face, she ends up getting mucus all over her jacket.

“I died,” Fig sobs. “I-I died. And nothing’s ever gonna be the same, and I-I’m sorry. I’m sorry, this is all my fault!”

Hands wrap around her back, suddenly. Gosh, when was the last time that she ever got a hug from her mom? Fig doesn’t know, and she doesn’t care. For now, Fig just leans into it and hugs her mom.

— — —

The Applebees’ family van drives up the road with a big I Heart Helio bumper sticker on the back, with the heart replaced with a corn cob. It makes Kristen want to vomit. All she can think of when she thinks of corn is the stench of dead bodies and blood.

Dead bodies smell bad, she’s noticed. It’s not like what she expected. They stink like crap (she shouldn’t have thought that). Kristen almost puked after she saw Principal Aguefort dead. So, forever, Kristen realizes, her god’s symbol will be associated with blood and death-stink for her. How great.
Kristen gets into the car without a word, bumping her head on the car door along the way. It hurts, but not as much as being stabbed. Kristen decides to be quiet. Anything she says would probably be bad and/or depressing.

“So,” Kristen’s dad says from the front of the car. “How was your first day of school?”

“Six people died,” Kristen responds. She leans her head against the car door.

“Were you one of them?” mom asks?

“No.”

“Well,” dad responded. “You must be awful proud of yourself, survivin’ like that.”

“I…” Kristen’s voice stops. Blood, she thinks. Blood and creamed corn, and slicing apart the creamed corn to save Gorgug from dying. (He was the only one she’d really saved, what kind of crappy paladin is that? (she doesn’t care about saying crap anymore)). “I guess I am.” she chuckles a little bit, the same chuckle she used to use when she was really happy. Bu she’s not happy now. “Not to be vain,” she adds, at the last moment.

“Not being vain is good,” Kristen’s mom hums. There’s a gospel song about loving corn on the radio. It makes Kristen’s stomach turn over at the thought of broken bodies on the floor, things her not-paladin powers didn’t let her save. “When you’re vain, baby Helio cries.” She looks back through the rearview mirror. “Hey, Kris, this is about the time that Bricker and Cork get out of school. We’re gonna drive out to there, probably, surprise ‘em by pickin’ em up, and then we’ll be home. Could you help me with some corn casserole?”

Kristen throws up a little bit in her mouth, but forces on a smile, anyway. “Yeah.”

— — —

It’s nearing dark by the time that Fabian’s Papa arrives in his big red Featherarri, and Fabian feels nervous. Despite being the first of September, the air’s already getting chilly, and he’s only wearing a tanktop. He shivers. 

Adaine looks over at him. Over an hour of waiting, they’ve exhausted pretty much everything there is to talk about. “That your dad?” Adaine asks.

“Yeah,” Fabian answers. “You know him, right?”

Adaine frowns and looks over, looking warm in her uniform blazer. “I know of him, yeah,” she answers in her usual cool, unaffected, tone. “That pirate king.”
Fabian guffaws at his. “What?” he asks, and stands up. “He’s not the pirate king! He gave up being the pirate king! No kings for a captain! You’ve heard of that, right? How Umberlee blessed him to kill the pirate king?”

Adaine blinks at him. “No,” she responds. “I think your dad’s just like, a local celebrity.”

Fabian is shocked “He is not!” he says, as the car pulls up to him. He opens it, and slides into the back. “Now, if you don’t mind me, I’ll be going-”

Adaine stands up, putting a hand up. “Wait,” she says. “I need your help. My parents probably aren’t coming to pick me up. They kind of…well, it’s complicated. I just need you to give me a ride home. Please.” her eyes are wide.

Fabian chews his lips, and shrugs. It’s probably the right thing to do. Probably. He nods at her. “Yeah,” he says. “You can go home with me. I mean, I can drive you home. Come on.” he beckons her into the car, and then sits down.

“My darling boy!” Fabian’s papa shouts as soon as he enters the car. “My darling boy! Oh, and a girl?” his eyebrows wave up and down suggestively, and Fabian blushes.

“Hi,” Adaine says, buckling herself in. “I’m the girl. Adaine Abernant. And um, we’re not…”

“Doing anything,” Fabian finishes for her. “She’s my friend. My um, my adventuring party-mate.” Yeah. That feels right. “She was wondering if you could drive her home.”

“I live in Clearbrook,” Adaine informs. “Just let me in near the gates, I can hop them.”

Papa chuckles. “Ah, a criminal! Jus’ like meself when I was younger.”

Adaine smiles a bit, a rare thing. “Yeah,” she says. “I’m a criminal. Great to meet you, Mr. Seacaster.”

“Call me Bill,” Papa responds. “I can already tell that you and my son are going to be very, very great friends.

— — —

The hall of the Abernant home is long and storied. A dozen or so paintings line the walls, each depicting the Abernants at different ages. There are even more in the family historium depicting their ancestors and family tree, but in the family hall, Adaine at least has to only endure the stares of two generations of her family. She looks at the painting that was made the year that Aelwyn had to wear headgear, and sticks her tongue out.

“Really, Adaine.”

Adaine turns around. It’s Aelwyn, because of course it’s Aelwyn, grinning at her like an idiot.

“How childish,” Aelwyn hisses.

Adaine spins on her heels and starts walking down the hall. It’s not worth it, she decides. She died today. Compared to that, Aelwyn’s a piddily little piss of a problem. A piddly little dog piss of a problem.

“Detention on the first day-”

“Shut up!” Adaine screams. She turns around and points a finger in her sister’s face. “Shut up, I don’t care about you! I have bigger things to deal with!”

Aelwyn laughs in her face, but it doesn’t fucking matter to Adaine, not fucking anymore. She runs ahead, away from her sister, away from the portraits, and a couple of tears creep out of her eyes.

— — —

Fig takes the bus to school that day, and feels nervous as she does it. She hasn’t been on a bus since she accidentally head-butted one of her friends with her horns. (For the rest of eighth grade, she took a griffin to school). But yesterday, her and her mom had a really, really long talk, and Fig thinks she feels better about the whole thing. Everything about her and her being a tiefling. She still feels angry about her mom, but she feels less angry. Her dad’s out there, somewhere, in hell. She knows it now. She’s going to find him, ask him questions, punch him in the face or something.

“Hey.”

Fig looks down. It’s Adaine, sitting on a bus seat. She scoots over so that Fig can sit next to her, tapping the seat along the way.

Fig sits down. Wow, she thinks. She hasn’t sat with anyone like this since last year.

“Hey,” Fig says, unsteadily. “I, um, I didn’t know that you took the bus.” Fig feels extremely, extremely stupid, like her social muscles have atrophied and left her like this .

“Yeah,” Adaine responds. She crosses her arms and looks away. “It’s my stupid parents. They won’t drive me to school.”

“Yeah,” Fig says.

There’s a beat of silence between them.

“So,” Adaine starts. “Umm, so how’s this crazy weather?”

The bus ride is fairly normal, all in all. Fig gets to chat and stuff. Have fun. Fig gets off the bus and into the parking lot with a smile on her face.

“Hey! Hey!”

Fig turns around, hearing a voice.

“Down here.”

She looks down. It’s Riz, the goblin from yesterday. He’s smiling at her toothily. Fig smiles back at him, albeit much less toothily. Riz kind of weirds her out, but he’s helpful. And he’s looking for that babysitter, and probably the most enthusiastic one about solving whatever mystery’s going on around here.

“Okay, you two up for investigation day number two?” Riz asks the both of them, and Fig frowns a little bit.

“Sure,” Adaine says.

“Yeah,” Fig adds.

Riz smiles even more, and it almost looks like his face can’t handle it. “Great!” he says. “I already met up with the others. They’re on the football field. There’s some kind of school assembly going on there. Come on.” he beckons to them, and then is off.

Fig turns to look at Adaine, who shrugs. They start following Riz.

Outside, the bleachers are packed. There’s enough spillover that a solid crowd of students are just milling around on the turf. Fig almost immediately finds Gorgug, a tree amidst a forest of shorter students. (Riz is a toadstool that she accidentally trips on along the way, apologizing profusely for it. Fig has no idea how he can ever see anything in a crowd this big, but he seems to be managing).

A platforms been erected (ha, erected) in the middle of the field, where the faculty stands. There’s three pictures of Doreen, Aguefort, and Mr. Gibbons surrounded by wreaths of flowers. Goldenhoard (more like GoldenROD), apparently seeing enough students to begin talking, the microphone squeaks annoyingly as she begins to speak. Fig pulls out some of Gilear’s old elan whiskey. This is gonna be a long one, she can tell.

Goldenrod clears his throat even louder. “Student of the Aguefort Adventuring Academy,” he begins uncreatively. “I’m not going to lie. Yesterday was not a great day for the school.”

Fig raises up her glass in salute. “Here, here!”

Goldenrod turns his face to her, golden eyes blazing. “Get-get the drink! Get the drink! Do we not-who’s at the front desk letting this happen?”

Fig chucks the flask away. It hits a student in the back of the head, who immediately collapses upon being hit. Wow, Fig didn’t know  she that she had such a good arm.

Goldenrod clears his throat once again, this time to interrupt the chatter that’s broken up at Fig’s antics. “Risk is inevitable in the lives of those that would seek to do great works upon the face of the world. Danger, combat, and even death. These are the things we risk to make a difference. And while we’ve never had three on the first day, for sure, people have died here before. It’s an adventuring school. People die. It’s frankly insane that we’re open. I’ll be for real. It doesn’t fully make sense that we are accredited. We are a publicly funded school. We get money from the government, and we’ve had, again, never three faculty in the same year, let alone the first day. It’s crazy that we’re back to school the second day. There’s not a day off. So. Basically, I just wanted to say to you that you are safe here, but, you know, don't be an idiot. You know, stay on your toes, because it's gonna come up again.”

Fabian starts clapping. Nobody else does.

Goldenrod coughs loudly, and begins speaking again. “I'll never forget Principal Aguefort. The school bears his name. And it will be hard to live up to that. Well, moving on. Some quick announcements.”

“Hard transition!” Fabian shouts. “Crazy!”

Goldenrod sighs. “I know, obviously, obviously hard,” he says. “Obviously this is not taking away from the grief that we are all moving through. If anybody has grief to process, you can talk to Mr. Gib— Nope. You can talk to, I guess, I guess me! I guess it's me you talk to. Come and talk to me.”

“Goldenrod! Goldenrod! Goldenrod!” Fig chants. Nobody replies. Fig blushes.

“Okay!” Goldenrod shouts in response, bearing each and every one of his teeth. Okay! It's different than my name and I guess that's funny to children. Quick announcements! The vote came in. We're bringing prom king and queen back this year, so that's fun! A light note.”

“Maybe it can be Doreen and Aguefort,” Kristen says.

A sigh from Goldenrod. “Okay, it's gonna be, okay, students, but again, this is not really a back and forth. This is more of an announcement situation. We are looking for some new kitchen staff and a guidance counselor, so if you know any adults-”

“Post this in a newspaper!” Adaine heckles. People are looking at the now.

“Okay!” Goldenrod shouts. “Okay. We will also be introducing a new system for safety purposes. Please give a warm round of applause for one of our very own seniors and the head of the A.V. Club, Mr. Biz Glitterdew!”

Somebody flies in the distance. Fig squints. It’s a pixie boy with a serious case of acne and gigantic nerd glasses, staring ahead at all of them. “Hey guys!” he says in a nasally voice. “Wow! Super excited to be addressing the school. A.V. Club spends a lot of time behind the scenes, so you can imagine how excited I am to come up here and shoot the breeze with the number one student body in.”

Riz cheers for him.

“This guy gets it!” Biz shouts.

Riz flushes and hides behind the curtain of Gorgug’s legs.

Biz claps his hands to get their attention back. It slightly works. “So basically, we're gonna be taking a lot of dream crystals and we're gonna be putting them up over the school. These are just basically gonna be recording clairaudience and clairvoyance information, so just sound and picture. It's basically just a security system so we're gonna be able to see what's going on at the school so that this kind of stuff doesn't happen again.”

“Boo!” Riz shouts, suddenly. He’s jumping up and is standing on Gorgug’s shoulders. “Police state! Protect our privacy!”

“Police state!” another kid shouts.

“Panopticon!” Fig add.

Other people start chanting, too. “Police state! Police state! Police state!”

“It’s okay!” Biz tried to shout over the din. “I see that we're having some negative reactions. That's understandable. Actually, guys, it's super cool and if you're interested in learning how it works-”

Riz is grinning like it’s Moonar Yulenear, hissing and booing at Biz. Wow, Fig thinks, maybe he wasn’t so much of a weenie. Anti-surveillance, at least.

Gorgug raises a hand. “I have a question,” he says. His hand inadvertently smacks Riz, who goes splattering down onto the ground. Nobody bothers to help him back up.

Biz flutters forward a bit. “Yeah?”

Gorgug scratches at his neck, eyes glued to the ground, voice practically above a whisper. “Can, um, well, I heard that, um, dream crystals, well, um, they can be, um, magically manipulated. And stuff.”

Biz shrugs. “Well, you’d need to be an extremely proficient wizard to-”

“A member of the faculty?” Adaine adds. Her eyes are clear, sharp, blazing. This is the most “in herself” Fig has ever seen her. It’s cool.

Biz flushes. “This is a bit above my pay grade, people,” he says. “You can visit me after school, if you want.” he winks. “Uhh, bye guys! Hoot!”

“Don’t cheer for him!” Riz shouts from the ground. “He’s infringing on your rights as private citizens!”

Everybody starts booing Biz.

Goldenrod shouts suddenly, stomping loudly. It quiets everyone down. “Everyone get to class!” he shouts. The crowd starts dispersing. Fig disperses with them.

Fig looks down, trying to find a goblin. She does, eventually, ducking and weaving through the crowd.

“Riz!” Fig shouts.

He doesn’t hear her. She yanks him up by the collar, surprised by how little he weighs. Like, a ninety pounds. That’s half of what Fig benchpresses everyday. He turns to look at her.

“Fig?” he asks.

“Gukgak,” she responds. She walks to the side of the school, where the stream of students going in is less intense.  “I never knew that you were cool.”

“Of course I’m cool,” Riz responds, like it’s completely obviously. “I’m a journalist. We stand for freedom. Please let me down.”

She does so, and Riz falls like a sack of potatoes, before running off again, ducking and weaving through the crowd. “Bye, Fig!” he shouts. “I have to get to class! Have a good daaaay!” and then he’s gone.

Fig sighs to herself, leaning against the walls to the school. She skipped class yesterday to hang out with Doreen, who’s dead now. She also skipped class to disappoint her mom, who’s she’s…more empathetic too now. Try it, a desperate, small part of her thinks. It’s all other fighters, probably way, way more buff than you. They won’t judge you. They’ll think you’re normal. Cool, maybe. Come on. Try it. Do it.

Fig takes a deep breath in, and turns around, her combat boots clanking loudly on the linoleum floor.

Another couple of deep breaths later, and she’s in the fighting instruction room. As it turns out, the fighting instruction room is something that exists in her greatest fantasies. There’s a mini-classroom in the corner Behind the simple wooden door is a sprawling gym. We’re talking treadmills, weightlifting, boxing, and rows and rows and rows of training weapons hanging up on the wall. Fig gapes, staring.

“Can I help you, miss?”

Fig blinks. There’s a woman in front of her, mid-twenties, with dark hair pulled back into dreadlocks. She has a sword across her back and a shield on her wrist. She’s frowning.

“I, uh…” Fig looks down. This could be it. This could be it. Her life could change now. She looks up. “I’m here for fighting class.”

“You didn’t show up yesterday,” the woman responds.

“I…I skipped class,” Fig responds. “Can I come today?”

“You need a detention for that, but sure,” the woman replies. “I’m Ms. Jones, your fighting instructor. We were just doing morning exercises.”

“Morning exercises?” Fig asks. She cocks her head to one side. This sounds cool.

“English,” Ms. Jones responds. She turns away, back towards the rest of the class.

Sheepishly, Fig takes a seat near the back of the class. She really, really hopes that today will be good.

And today…kind of is good. Depending on your definition of good. English is kind of hard for Fig, most things are, but it’s not that bad, just starting principles and getting ready to read ome book, Aguefort’s biography, which seems kind of narcissistic to Fig, but nevermind.

The fun part comes after: fitness training. It’s Fig’s favorite hobby to do, so she has a lot of fun with it. Everybody else is exercising, too, not just her. They smile at her when she benches two hundred pounds. Fig feels heat go to her cheeks. She feels good.

She’s pretty much a sweat rag by the end of the morning, so Fig towels off in the school showers (which are gigantic, given the population of fighters going here)<and for once in her life since getting her horns manages not to stare at her new, uglier, body too much while she’s in there. Her and the rest of the fighter students head off to lunch, which is nothing, because they don’t have a lunch lady anymore. But Fig gets to have lunch with Kristen and Adaine, anyway, which is kinda good, still..

And the day continues being good, from magic studies to advanced survival. Fig gets out of class to find a text on her crystal from Riz.

Should we meet at the AV club after school? For more investigating, I mean. I probably shouldn’t be there. Biz might not like me for correctly calling out his flagrant breaking of the law and violation of our civil liberties.

Fig frowns, but a text immediately comes up. Before she can respond.

Gorgug: I’ll be there. Maybe he’ll like me.

Kristen: Count me in!

Fig frowns. On one hand, she could probably go home and smoke cloves. On the other hand, she has some new friends to look out for, real friends. She smiles, not for the first time today, but for a good time, anyway. 

Across the hall, in the barbarian class, Fig sees Kristen getting out, waving, and quickly falls in beside her. “How’s barbarian class?” Fig asks.

Kristen frowns, but then smiles. “Good,” she says. “Not as cool as paladin class will be, but cool.”

Fig glances over towards paladin class, where a bunch of beefy-looking guys are hanging out, most of them wearing sun or corn emblems. Kristen’s eyes are sparkling when she looks at them, so Fig grabs her by the shoulder in response, dragging her along. “We should get Adaine,” Fig says. “She doesn’t have a crystal.”

She drags Kristen down the halls, quick as she can. Kristen is still drooling at the paladins, so Fig takes her down the hallway for Light Martial Education, where she can see a bunch of reedy but still strong-looking kids are walking by. She can’t see Adaine amongst them.

“Hey.”

Fig jumps at the sudden noise, and Kristen does, too. Hiding behind them was Adaine, her hood pulled all the way up.

“Galicaea!” Fig shouts.

Adaine glares at her. “What are you staring at?” she asks.

“You teleported!” Fig says in response.

“Simple rogue trick,” Adaine informs her, beginning to walk down the hall. “I’ve been here the whole time.”

Fig follows after her. “We’re investigating today,” she informs. “The AV club. Trying to figure out why they’re spying.”

A rare smile flickers onto Adaine’s face. “Great,” she says. “I’ll sneak in.” Then she rushes into the crowd, and she’s gone.

Fig turns to Kristen, who looks just as surprised as she does. The other girl simply shrugs, and the two of them walk on through the crowded hallways.

The AV club’s in the spellcasting section of the school, so it’s pretty easy to find, all things considered. Outside the room are Gorgug and Fabian, both leaning on the wall.

“Let’s go in,” Gorgug says, louder than usual.

He goes inside. Next to her, Fig hears Fabian whisper, “Nerd city.”

Fig elbows him in the ribs. “Shut up.”

She goes in, too.

The AV club room is dark, and dank. It looks like it hasn’t been used in like, decades. Fig spots three people in there, their faces illuminated only by the screens inside the room. There’s the pixie from before, Biz, al;ong with an aarakocra and a turtle person, both of whom was looking at them in fear.

“Don’t do anything,” the aarakocra says. “We already gave you our lunch money-”

Fig wrinkles her nose. “Relax,” she says. “We’re not gonna take it from you. We’re just here to…” she sighs.

“Join,” Gorgug finishes for her. He has a big smile on his face, the likes of which Fig has barely seen before on him.

Biz’s eyebrows raise. “Oh!” he says. “New member of the AV club? Well, great to meet you.”

“Do you know anything about the faculty?” Gorgug blurts.

Biz scratches his neck. “The faculty? Oh, um, if you mean our faculty advisor, then that’s Coach Daybreak. He sometimes helps us to record Bloodrush games. Also, you guys seemed pretty mad at us, so I just wanna say that it was the faculty who made us put u all these cameras.

Fig’s crystal buzzes. She opens it up, seeing that it’s from Riz. New info about the case. Come as soon as available. Anyone speak dwarvish?

Fig frowns, and looks down. Biz is still chattering on. She looks towards the door, knowing that she probably won’t be able to get out.

— — —

“Hey.”

In front of her, Riz jumps. He looks scared enough that Adaine kind of feels bad, but then ignores that emotion. She puts a hand on his shoulder, trying to steady him.

“What are you shocked by?” Adaine asks him, feeling a little bit disgusted. Gods, people can be so unaware.

Riz frowns petulantly, like he did yesterday when he was blaming Adaine for snitching on him. Adaine has decided to be nice to him until he does something stupid, and to definitely not betray him to the faculty. “You snuck up on me,” he says. “It’s natural to be shocked by being snuck up on.”

Adaine frowns. He’s got her there. She crosses her arms. “You said you needed us to contact you. Everybody else is talking to that guy Biz, but I was stealthing, so he didn’t see me. So I’m here. What do you need help with?”

Riz pushes up a scrap of paper in front of her face. It’s written in some kind of script she doesn’t understand, and has scribbled a couple of letters beneath them. Slowly, Adaine reads them.

“Peny…Jhny…Cristal…Palympsis…?” What does that mean?

“This dwarven girl gave this to me,” Riz informs. “Yesterday she dared me to steal some tea from Principal Aguefort’s office in exchange for spying. But I saw her in the nurse’s office. Her dad said she wanted to give this to me, so I translated it.” he begins pacing around, taking a tape recorder out of his pocket and clicking the record button. “Penny’s the name of my friend who went missing. Johnny’s the name of a cool guy I met yesterday, but nevermind. They could be anyone. Still, good to consider. Crystals are pretty common, though we’re using dream crystals for surveillance recently, but a palimpsest is…”

“…something that used to have something in it, but has since been wiped clean. Like a blackboard that’s been erased,” Adaine answers for him. Palimpsest was one of her words of the day at school when she was in primary (Fallinel has way better standards than Solace).

Riz smiles at her hopefully. “Wow,” he says. “Good deduction. So like a Penny Johnny Crystal Palimpsest could be like-”

“-a crystal wiped clean,” they say at the same time.

Riz jumps up, stopping his recording suddenly. “Good idea, good idea.” He looks up, suddenly, towards one of the dream crystals hung up on the walls. “Hey, maybe we should talk outside. So we don’t get watched, I mean.”

Adaine shrugs. “Yeah.”

They walk out of the school, then. The fresh air is good on Adaine’s face after spending so much time indoors searching for the rogue professor (it’s really hard and not very fun). She breathes a very, very quiet sigh of relief when she feels the air on her.

There’s a girl in front of her, Adaine suddenly realizes. A familiar girl. She searches her mind for a minute. Oh yeah, she thinks. This was the girl running the prom king and queen booth. Then, guess she got what she wanted.

“Hey, you good?” That’s Riz, hopping up on a nearby rock to talk to that girl, what was her name? Penny? Yeah, something like that. Maybe she’s the Penny in that writing, then.

Penny frowns a moment, glaring. “Who’s asking?”

“Us,” Adaine answers. “We’re…” suddenly, she gets an idea. She pretends to break down, crying. “Sorry, it’s been a very difficult-“

“Are you fucking lying to me?”

Adaine frowns. “What-“

“Yeah,” says Riz, turning on her. He winks. What? Adaine thinks. Is he lying or something? About what? “Why’d you lie to her?”

“Fucking freak,” maybe-Penny adds. “Get away from me!”

Adaine stumbles back. Riz winks. What are you trying to say? Adaine thinks. Hopefully, he’s lying to her. Maybe this is all a ruse or something. Trying to get along with Penny by forming a common enemy. Confused, she stumbles away, turning around the corner and flattening her back against the wall. She feels invisible here. Good, she thinks. Quietly as she can, she listens in on the conversation. She’s decided not to abandon him completely. She kind of doesn’t want him to die. Kind of.

“Yeah! Get away!” Riz shouts.

“Oh my god,” Penny-something replies, and Adaine is already annoyed with her. The most annoying stereotype of a teen girl that could ever exist. Ugh. “Do you know her? She seems like a fucking freak.”

“Yeah,” Riz adds, though his voice is shaking. Hopefully he’s lying. Hopefully. “I don’t know. She’s weird. Just like…why would you lie about that? I was there, and…” he takes a long sigh. “It was just terrible. So many people died. So many…I thought I’d lose another person.”

What? Adaine thinks.

“Oh,” Penny-something says. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry. That must be so hard.”

Riz sniffles a little bit. “I…it is, and it was. Her name was…Penny. Penny Luckstone. She went here. She inspired me to go here and…and help people.” 

“Penny Luckstone?” Penny-something asks. “Oh my gods, I knew her. I literally knew her.”

“She’s not the only one,” Riz says fake sadly, or maybe real sadly. Did he really lose Penny? Is this another ruse? “All the girls have gone missing. I…I don’t know. You should be safe. Everyone should be safe.”

“Yeah,” Penny-something agrees. “But…oh my god, my friend.” her hands go to her face. “Sam. Sam Nightingale. Oh my god. I…” her voice trails off, and she sniffles.

“Hey,” Riz responds. “It’s gonna be okay.”

“It’s just-” she veins to pace around. “She’s been dating this guy, and he’s such a dickhead. And he doesn’t even fuck! I mean, if he’s gonna be a dickhead, he should at least fuck her, right?”

“Totally,” Riz agrees. “He sounds like such a dickhead. I just wanna fight him.”

“Oh my god,” Penny says, suddenly. “Oh my god, you should totally fight him. You should do it. He usually hangs out around Krom’s diner-”

Riz high-fives the air, and is off, suddenly. “Krom’s diner!” he shouts. “Great! Yeah! I’m gonna fight him! Or get my friends to do it! Might not go today! This is my alibiiiiiiiii!” and he’s right in front of Adaine, suddenly. “Pay dirt,” he whispers. He has an infectious smile on his face. Infectious as in diseases. After a beat of silence, he speaks up once again. “We know where Jonny Spells is. We can spy on him.” He types something into his crystal. “I messaged everyone else. They should be here soon.” A notification sound. “Fabian’s calling a car.”

Adaine frowns. “You’re a sociopath,” she says.

Riz is sweating. “What?” He asks.

“You manipulated that girl.”

“Yeah,” Riz insists. “For the greater purpose. It won’t matter when I save everyone.”

Adaine pokes him in the chest. “First of all, we save everyone. Second of all, being a sociopath isn’t this bad in this situation. It’s useful that you’re good at lying.”

Just then, the other four come bursting through the doors. “What is it, the Ball?” Fabian says breathelessly.

Riz smiles a little it. “We got information,” he says. “A lot of it.” And so he explains everything about what they’ve found, about how they need to spy on Johnny Spells and get to Krom’s Diner. Their fantasy Uber driver comes, and they continue talking in the car.

Along the way,  Adaine gets to talk about her pet theory. “That tea, right? It was Aguefort’s.”

Riz nods in confirmation.

“Ostentatia could’ve gotten poisoned by that tea,” Adaine says, “I don’t know-we just have to confirm that she was poisoned by that, but it’s Aguefort’s tea. What if they were trying to poison him?”

“Why would anyone want to poison Aguefort, though?” Fig asks.

“Maybe he was on to them,” Riz suggests. “Whatever their plan was.”

“Maybe that’s why he shot Mr. Gibbons!” Kristen shouts. “And Doreen. They were in on it.”

“Not Doreen,” Fig replies. “I know her. She wouldn’t do that.”

The car comes to a stop. “This is where I let you out,” their driver says.

Fabian tosses some gold at him (Adaine takes one), and then they all run out towards the diner. Adaine’s never seen a diner before. She didn’t know what she expected. Probably one of the restaurants where her parents used to go with her before they realized Solisian food was of a bad quality. But it’s not anything like the gigantic, ostentatious restaurants that Adaine has been to. Instead, it’s a squat, one story building with yellowing glass and tired looking people in them.

“Come on man.”

That’s Riz. Adaine realizes that she’s been staring. She stumbles into the diner, and is immediately greeted by what seems like hundreds of smells, all of them if the mythical, (at least in her household), unhealthy food . She stands there, salivating.

“Spyre to Adaine!” Waving, Fig pats the seat next to her. Ah right, Adaine thinks. She had forgotten to move. Haphazardly, she parks herself at the table, right next to Fig.

There’s a waitress, a halfling woman in what looks like a blue version of a maid’s uniform. Riz is chatting with her. “Do you know a guy named Johnny Spells?” Riz asks.

The waitress shrugs. “Johnny Spells,” she says. “Yeah, I know a guy like that. Him and his friends, they usually come here after school.”

“But they’re not here today,” Fig says. “Why?”

The waitress’ eyebrows raise a bit. “Oh,” she says. “Yeah, they were just here. Went to the factory across the road for dance practice.”

Adaine frowns. “Dance practice?”

“Yeah,” the waitress responds. “Tough guy dances.”

“What’s a tough guy dance?” Kristen asks. Everybody has begun snickering, including Adaine. She doesn’t know who this Johnny Spells guy is, but he seems absolutely ridiculous.

The woman sighs. “Are you six gonna order or not?”

Fig scoots forward. “A round of milkshakes,” she says. “Whatever flavors you want.”

“And coffee,” Riz adds. “A round of it, too. We’re gonna need it.” he laughs just a bit.

By the end of their meal, Adaine has learned three things: milkshakes are good, coffee is not, and her friends are utterly hilarious.

Adaine has a combination of caffeine and sugar jitters by the time she gets to the abandoned factory that Johnny Spells apparently hangs around at. She’s been tasked with breaking and entering, rogue 101. This should be easy, then.

There’s some broken glass up above her. Easy enough to fit through, if she tries. Hesitantly, she grabs the awning above her, and swings her body into a crouched position. From there, she slips her legs through the glass, and drops downwards. She lands hard on her back, but it’s fine. Mostly. She stands up, shakes the dust off of her, and then looks around.

The abandoned factory is dark, but Adaine’s eyes are accustomed to the dark. Hopping from shadow to shadow, Adaine walks to the end of the factory, where a bright red, roofless car, is sitting.

She stares at it with a type of reverence for a while. This car is way cooler than the nonexistent car that Aelwyn has. If Adaine owned this, she would be cool.  Haphazardly, she searches around for keys. She finds them beneath a crate, next to a severely cracked crystal. Inside, she can see a silhouette moving. Adaine pockets the crystal and the keys, and uses her thieves tools to open the crate. There’s leaves inside. Adaine pockets those, too.

And then she moves onto the car. The slim, red-bodied machine seems to sing to her. She opens the door, and then hops in. Slams the keys in the ignition, and then she’s ready. She pumps her foot onto the gas, and the car starts driving towards the exit of the factory. Adaine pumps it more, and the rusting double-doors cleave before her, light spilling in. outside is the rest of the party, most of them smiling at each other. 

“Shotgun!” Fig declares, shoving herself in next to Adaine.

“I was gonna say that!” Fabian adds, and everybody else piles themselves into the back of the car.

“Where’d you find this?” Kristen asks, getting into the very back row.

“Did you find anything?” Riz adds, leaning over her.

Adaine frowns. “Uh, yeah-”
She hears a sound before her, a mix of motors and shouts. She turns around. It’s a group of tieflings in leather jackets. “They’re touching your car, Johnny!” one shouts.

“Shit!” Riz yells. “Shit, shit, shit drive!” 

Adaine doesn’t need to be told twice. She pumps her foot on the gas harder, and then they’re peeling out faster than she can even process, running, running, from a guy named Johnny Spells.

Chapter Text

About five seconds into driving the hot rod down the road, Adaine discovers that she can’t drive. It’s not really that much of a discovery, actually, thinking back on it. She’s never driven before. It’s natural that she’d be terrible at it. Natural, but not ideal.

Adaine makes a right turn so sharp that it sends her slanting all the way to the side of the car. 

There are people screaming at her. There are also people throwing things at her. One of them threw a bottle, probably. There’s glass flying everywhere, glass that isn’t part of the windshield.

She curses and looks back, hand going to the sword at her belt. The greasers are too far away to properly fight with. She slams the breaks, inadvertently smashing her forehead into the wheel, and curses once again. The car’s going slower now, slow enough so that the greasers can catch up to them.

She looks back, back at Riz. “Switch places with me,” she says.

“Wha-”

“Switch places with me,” Adaine says, more orders, actually. “I can’t fight while driving.”

“Can’t Fig do it?” Riz asks, looking towards the tiefling beside them, who’s currently smoking a clove.

“Nope,” Fig responds, popping the p. “I gotta fight, too, shortstack.”

“Shortstack?”

Adaine sighs internally. Obviously, Riz isn’t going to do what she wants. So there’s only one thing to do: force him.

Grabbing him by his shoulders, she pushes him forward and vaults over his back, cleanly reversing their positions. Riz looks back at her for a moment before realizing that, y’know, he’s in an actively driving car, and getting his hands back on the wheel, setting them straight.

Everything’s coming up Adaine. With a twirl of her wrist, she draws her ornamental elvish rapier, and points it at the sky.

“You really shouldn’t have done this, Adaine,” Riz is saying from the backseat.

“Uh-huh.” There’s a greaser’s close to her, close enough to touch.

“You really shouldn’t have.”

Adaine aims her rapier, ducking into the car. He can’t see her now, probably. “Uh-huh.”

The car serves wildly. Go time. She jumps up, going towards the greaser. And her rapier does the work through her. It cuts through flesh like a hot knife through butter. Stabs from the greaser’s neck and through his head. His brain has just enough motor function to look back at her. “Ug,” he says. She takes her rapier out of him, and his hands, passive, let go of his motorcycle, and he goes flying off into the distance.

Adaine turns back to Riz, triumphant. Next to her, swords and spells and flying around, greasers dying left and right. “Why shouldn’t I let you drive?”

Riz points at the brakes below him, which his feet don’t reach. He glares at her. “I’m three goddamn feet tall!”

Oh, Adaine thinks. Sharpy, she turns her head towards anybody who’s going to be useful in the immediate area. “Fabian!”

From where he’s hitting a greaser with a warhammer, the cleric turns towards her. “What?”

“I need you to drive.”

“Isn’t the Ball driving?” Fabian asks, finishing braining another greaser to death.

Riz swerves away from a stop sign. “Drive, Fabian!” he shouts.

“Fine!” Fabian shouts back. From next to Adaine, he leans over, and starts literally backseat driving. The car swerves even more wildly. Riz skitters away from the front seat, switching places with Fabian, too. Adaine pushes Fabian forward by the legs, until he’s fully in the driver’s seat.

And then two very, very bad things happen simultaneously.

Number one is easier to explain, to say the least. It’s simple, actually. They’re speeding towards a tiny, little folk-sized car with a family inside of it.

The second, unfortunately, is way worse.

From behind her, she hears Johnny Spells. “You wanna join my team, hot mama?” Johnny asks. He’s talking to Fig, probably. Or at least, hopefully not Adaine. Because if he is, barf.

“No!” Fig says, voicing Adaine’s thoughts exactly.

“Then eat acid!”

There’s a shadow growing in the sky. Adaine looks up. It’s a fireball, heading straight towards the side of the car. Adaine winces, and hears some screams. She turns around.

Riz and Fig are both covered in acid/fire burns. It’s gross. Really gross. Their skin is just meat. Bile rises up in Adaine’s throat. She can see bone, oh Galicaea, she can see bone. Somewhere, Kristen is shouting. “Heal them!”

“Don’t hit them!” Gorgug shouts at the same time.

“I can’t do both!” Fabian replies. Then he smiles. “Don’t worry guys, I’ve got a plan.”

The car swerves wildly once again. The tired screech, turning away from the family and towards the greasers. There’s one that’s right in front of them. The car slams into him, and the greaser quickly disappears under the roof of the hot rod. Adaine hears screams somewhere, as Fabian continues driving. 

The car continues driving forward, parallel to Johnny Spells and his other greaser friends. Fabian’s foot is high on the glass. “Hold onto your seats!” Adaine’s new party member shouts, and as Adaine does so, the car collides with the two greasers who are still alive.

The rest happens in slow motion. The car hurtles towards the greasers, and the tires squeals even more. Somebody’s motorcycle goes under the wheels, sending the car tipping.

Adaine falls, falls, falls. She cringes, her ears ringing. She hears a loud boom, and then she’s on the ground.

Adaine’s nowhere for a while. Floating. She thinks she might be dead. 

But then she opens her eyes, and she’s sure that she not. But she is in trouble. In total and complete darkness, light flooding. She’s upside down, too, she quickly realizes. When the car flipped, she ended up upside down. The blood rushes into her head. Smoke is everywhere. Panic rises up in her throat. Holding her breath, Adaine forces herself not to panic.

The first thing she does is get her uniform shirt over her nose. It’s good for one things, she guesses. Then she unbuckles herself.

She goes spilling down onto the ground, her head hitting the gravel. Her cheek gets cut up because of that, real hurt. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Adaine army crawls through the burning car when her head bumps something. It’s Riz, his decayed-ish, burnt up, ground-beef looking body hanging upside down. He looks utterly and completely dead. Tentatively, Adaine raises a hand to his wrist. There’s a pulse. Reaching up, she unbuckles his seat. His body falls on top of her, but it’s like, ten pounds, so it doesn’t matter. Whatever. Reaching forward, she finds Fig’s body, too, and a pulse. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound, she supposes. She decides to unlatch Fig, too.

Dragging Riz and the significantly heavier Fig (girl’s like all muscle) through the car, Adaine continues coughing. It doesn’t matter, whatever. The light’s coming. Adaine hefts herself up into it, and lays flat on her back for a while. There’s noise everywhere. And smoke, too. She smiles a bit, just happy to be free of that terrible, burning car.

For a minute, she’s floating again. Or beginning to. Unconsciousness beginning to lap at her. Then she feels something hard tap into her face. She looks up. It’s Faian, glaring down at her. “Stay awake,” he orders. “You’re fine. You haven’t even been hit.” for perhaps the first time since she’s met him, Fabian actually sounds like he knows what he’s talking about.

Adaine sits up. Fabian is currently kneeling over Riz, muttering something to himself, something that sounds sort of like elvish and sort of like something else. Adaine watches for a bit as he does whatever he’s doing. For a moment, Riz’s whole body is illuminated by patterns that look like ocean waves, and his flesh begins to actually regrow over his bones. It’s both gross and fascinating. Adaine notices that Gorgug and Kristen have gathered around Fabian to watch what he’s doing, both with matching fascinated expressions on their faces.

Then after a moment, the spell’s over, and Riz’s eyes snap open. He sits up, looks around for a bit, and then vomits sea-water into Fabian’s face.

It’s really gross, but, like the healing, also fascinating. It’s not puke or anything. Just seawater. When it’s over, Riz is on the ground, breathing in and out rapidly, and Fabian is wiping water out of his eyes. “Did I almost die?” Riz asks them.

“Yes,” Adaine says. She grabs Fig’s non-decayed hand and holds it out towards Riz. “Now heal her.”

Riz’s eyes dart around. He takes in a deep breath, seemingly stressed out about the whole thing. “Heal her,” he mutters. He begins to rub his hands together. “Heal her, heal her, right.” he lays his hands down on Fig’s wrist, then says, “Don’t die.”

Fig snaps awake, wounds already healing. “Oh my gods,” she says. “Did I die again?”

“No,” Adaine responds. “We’re fine.”

“Uh-huh,” Kristen adds.

They’re all silent for a moment. The car’s utterly wrecked, utterly and completely. They’re on the side of the road. All of them have at least a couple of major scrapes and/or bruises across their bodies. Adaine stands, just wanting to do something, and then spies something on the ground. She bounds forward.

“Don’t worry guys!” she shouts. “I’ll get help!”

Johnny Spells’ bike is on the ground, and it’s fucking sick. Slim and sexy as fuck, with a bright red body and a skull on the front. It’s the coolest thing she’s ever seen. Unlike anything Aelwyn has. It would make her cool. So fucking cool. Adaine immediately decides that she wants it. She drags it from the flaming heap of the car, Johnny Spells still on it. He has a large cut in his face that he didn’t before, most likely the result of one of her friends killing him. Pushing the motorcycle up, she shoves him off. From his body she takes the leather jacket, because it’s fucking sick, with a demon on the back, and that creep didn’t deserve it. Adaine takes off her uniform blazer, the one that’s burnt from the wreckage, and over her shirt puts Johnny Spells’ leather jacket. She feels so fucking cool.

In the pockets she finds some keys, the keys. She jams them into the ignition, and hops over the bike to straddle it. From behind her, she hears Fig saying, “Get it, Adaine!” 

“You look so cool!” Riz adds. 

Warmth grows in her chest. She feels good, better than she’s ever felt. The panic’s not there. 

“You ready, baby?” she whispers to the bike below her. Then she puts her hands on the pedals, and the bike takes off.

It’s not even her doing. It just does it. Starts moving, fast and faster and faster. Around her, everything blurs. Her hair flies out of her face, and tears block her vision until everything is a beautiful, blinding blur around her. 

Below, a low, deep voice hums, “ I am yours, Mistress.”

My bike talks, Adaine thinks, then, I’m so fucking cool. 

She smiles.

Chapter Text

“Yep. Penny, Katya, Danielle, Antiope, and Sam. He has all of them in here.”

“So he was like, a humanoid trafficker?” Fig asks from across the table in their cushy little booth in Basrar’s Soda Fountain. For the second time today, their makeshift party’s drinking milkshakes. Adaine could be in heaven. Right now, she’s drinking chocolate, which, in her opinion, is slightly worse than vanilla, but whatever. It’s still good.

After their motorbike fight, that halfling family that they almost ran into re-approached them and asked them if they wanted ice cream. All of them, of course, said yes. So here they are, drinking milkshakes once again.

Riz holds up the palimpsest that that girl’s trapped in, laying it back down on the table. “A magical humanoid trafficker,” he says. “And a trafficker of tea leaves.” he grabs Johnny’s switchblade off the table. “And somehow, whatever this is is magical.” 

Gorgug reaches for the palimpsest in the center of the table, prodding at it with his ice cream spoon. “This is magic, too,” he adds. “I mean, you all already knew that. But um, yeah, like Riz said, powerful abjuration.” he’s looking down intensely, sweating, but this is pretty usual Gorgug behavior, what what Adaine’s observed. He’s almost always this nervous or more. “Keeping something in.”

“But dream crystals are divination, correct?” Adaine adds, feeling like she might have some knowledge here. She had, after all, once tried to be a divination wizard.

Gorgug turns to her, seeming a bit excited. “Yeah,” he says. “Some could’ve edited it, probably. Taken off the wards and made it more abjuration focused. Or something.”

“A crystal scraped clean,” Fig says, a bit breathlessly. “A palimpsest.”

Adaine sighs as she slurps up the rest of her milkshake. “Shit, man,” she says.

“Shit man,” Fig repeats.

“We need to get her out,” Riz says, looking deeply into his own coffee milkshake. “Whoever she is. But…how?” 

Gorgug raises a tentative hand. “The AV club could help,” he suggests.

Fig wrinkles her nose. “Barf. That place smells.”

“I’d drop it off,” Gorgug suggests. “You wouldn’t have to go in there, if you don’t want to. Just me.”

There a beat of silence, before Kristen speaks. “We solved the mystery, right?” she asks, looking at Riz. “Of the missing girls.”

Riz continues looking down. “No,” he says. “We still don’t know why that corn stuff happened yesterday. And look.” he opens up Johnny Spells’ diary or whatever, which includes a daily planner. “‘Teatime.’ What’s teatime?” He grabs the crystal and opens it up. “He has this contact here. People he’s connected with. And the faculty, too, he could be working with them. We don’t know.” he clenches his hand into a fist. “I won’t rest until they’re all brought to justice.” the phone beeps, then. Riz looks down. “A text,” he says. “This is the only contact in his phone.”

“What does it say?” Fig asks.

“Page didn’t work,” Riz reads aloud. “We need another one. Can we organize a meetup?” he frowns more. “Should I text back?”

Fig plucks the phone from his hands. “I’ll do it for you,” she announces, then rapidly begins texting. “Sure thing, daddy-o,” she says, which, fair, matches Johnny’s speaking style. “What time jives for you?”

She hits send, and the response comes almost immediately. “Meetup at the pit instead of teatime.”

“Saxophone emoji,” Fig responds. “Sweet.”

At this, a little bit of light returns to Riz’s eyes. “Great,” he says, quietly. “Great. We’re-we’re gonna get this done. At the black pit.” another beat of silence.

Adaine frowns, then. “What’s the black pit?”

“The best place ever,” Fig says. “They have totally cool shows. I’m like, there all. The. Time.” she bangs the table with each word for emphasis. “We should totally go.”

“I’m there, too,” Kristen says, uncharacteristically quietly. “To help people. With like, sex trafficking.”

“Oh,” says Adaine, quietly. “Well. I guess we’ll have to be careful there.”

“Careful,” Riz repeats. “Right. But…Black Pit on the last Friday of the month. We’ll all be there.” He folds his hands gently, and the conversation slowly drifts away from serious stuff to smalltalk, to anarcho-socialist politics (somehow the halfling family got them there), to curriculum, to what Adaine assumes must be friend stuff. It feels good to think about. Friend stuff. She has friends, friends that value her because she’s her, or whatever. Or something. But still, it’s nice. It makes Adaine feel like she’s floating. Makes her feel right. She has friends now. And it’s fucking awesome.

— — —

Gorgug’s head hits the door to the AV room, but that’s fine. It does that with all the doors in Aguefort, as well as most doors in real life. At least, he thinks, it alerts Biz to his presence. Skrank, Shellford, and Biz all turn to him immediately after he enters. “Hey, man,” Biz says. “You wanted to join the AV club?”

“Uh, yeah,” Gorgug says, quietly. “Maybe tomorrow, or something. For now, I have to um, speak to you. In private, I mean.”

Biz’s face shifts a bit in a way that Gorgug can’t really understand. “Uh, yeah, man,” he says. “Where do you wanna go?”

Gorgug opens the door to the closet next to him. Biz flutters closer, and Gorgug shuts the door behind him, locking it behind him. Next, he pulls the palimpsest out of his pocket. “Listen,” he says. “This is like, secret stuff. Really secret. Hugely secret. Before I tell you anything, you have to promise not to tell anyone anything.”
Biz looks at him for a moment, then swallows. “Uh, okay man. Are you being serious?”

“Yeah,” Gorgug answers. “My friends they said, um, well, if you, like, tell anyone, they’ll kill you.” this is not a lie.

Biz’s eyes go a bit wide. “Shit, man,” he says. “That’s like, crazy.”

“It is,” Gorgug responds. “They are.” he pushes the crystal forward. “Okay, so um, there’s like, a really, really important thing trapped in here. With ummm, I think, like, powerful abjuration. We can’t crack it. So we need you to. And if you don’t, my friends say they’ll kill you.” Gods, he feels bad for being like this. Haphazardly, he hands Biz the stuff, and then immediately runs out of the room, feeling like he’s gonna puke.

— — —

“Hi dad. It’s been a while. I’m sorry that I didn't visit you much this summer. Mom and I have been busy a lot. She has her work, and I, well…you know how I’ve always wanted to be an investigative reporter. And I kind of got my wish.”

“Sorry. That was bad. I didn’t mean that. Penny and some other girls at the Aguefort Adventuring Academy went missing. So I’m trying to find them.”

“The work was kinda slow for a while, but the past couple of days it’s been really crazy. Oh! I’m going to Aguefort, by the way. I joined a party, and they’re all really nice. They’re helping me investigate.”

“I…you wouldn’t want to hear about that stuff. I…bad stuff happened. Nevermind. But still, I’m sorry for not seeing you. I’m getting leads. Lots of them. You’d be-you’d be proud of me, I think, probably.”

He can’t look anymore. Squinting through the rain, he looks at Johnny Spells’ grave, and the footprints in the mud leading up to them. Heavy footprints, he thinks, almost subconsciously. Like from combat boots.

Nevermind. Nevermind. He shouldn’t be thinking about this right now, probably. He should be thinking about his dad. Knowing it’s going to be over, he turns back.

“Thank you.”

“Love you.”

“Your son,”

“Riz.”

— — —

Kristen Applebees feels like that one day she’s gonna have to come to terms with the fact that she’ll never have paladin powers. Never be a paladin.

And it should be fine, probably. It’s not a big problem. Not a small problem, either. Her parents will just never be proud of her, probably. It’s fine. It’s fine. No big deal. 

She stomps as she gets off of class beside Zelda, who’s usually her partner on class assignments. Zelda is nice and cool and sort of kind of makes Kristen feel super good all the time. She’s cool. A good girl friend. 

“What are you, um, doing tonight?” Zelda asks suddenly, eyes completely glued to the ground. She does that a lot, refuses to make eye contact with Kristen. Sometimes Kristen wonders if Zelda doesn’t really like her, but, you know, it’s fine.

Kristen wonders why Zelda would want to know that. “I have plans,” she says.

“Oh,” Zelda responds, quietly. “Can I come with you or something?”

“No,” Kristen says. She spies Fig in the corner, and decides to run up ahead to meet her.

Everything about Kristen feels weird. Something is inside of her, waiting to come out, like puke or vomit or something. She doesn’t know what’s wrong with her. It’s probably…nothing. It’s time to go to the Black Pit or whatever.

Kristen floats through the rest of the day, hanging out with Fabian and everything. Through the Black Pit, the nightclub where people human traffick. Kristen waits in the dark lights of the building by the bathroom. Everything is weird. She’s weird and it’s all her fault. Everything is-

“Hey.”

Kristen nearly jumps from hearing the unfamiliar voice. She looks towards the source. It’s a short girl with a mohawk. Kristen’s whole body gets hot once again. The music is getting louder for some reason.

“Can I buy you a drink.”

The beat drops. The girl screams. Crap, Kristen thinks, and immediately scolds herself for thinking that.

Chapter Text

Shit, Riz thinks as the beat drops, then, in his head, fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. Just as he sees the contact they need to find, people start transforming into werewolves. Shit fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck, he thinks repeatedly.

He needs to do two things: stop whatever’s happening from happening, and also apprehend Zayn Darkshadow. Immediately, he moves Zayn Darkshadow to the top of his list. It’s more important than whatever’s going on, after all. Hopefully, his friends can stop whatever’s going on from going on before anything bad happens.

Just then, a hand tightens against his shoulder. Riz looks up. It’s a tall, pale man wearing an open-buttoned coat, revealing a very toned, very scarred chest. “Hey, little boy,” says the vampire. Riz notices that he has two silvery swords strapped to his back.

Stranger danger, Riz thinks. “I’m uncomfortable with you,” he says. Then he punches the vampire in the dick, and starts running.

Shit shit shit, Riz thinks, and keeps running through the crowd of moshers around him. Zayn Darkshadow’s combat boots are his only focus right now, but he’s very small and it’s very easy to get lost. Unfortunately, such is life for goblins and other little folk. And he’s just reached Zayn Darkshadow when, very abruptly, he disappears from vision.

Shit, is his first thought. Then, you idiot. You didn’t move fast enough. He wants to scream, but he doesn’t, because that would be unproductive. Incredibly unproductive. It doesn’t help solve the mystery or help anyone or anything at all. He looks up. 

Fig is onstage, her sword out, pointed at the DJ. “Fig!” Riz shouts. He hops up and waves his hands around frantically, trying to get her to notice him.

“Riz!” Fig responds, and she looks down at him. “The DJ’s evil!”

“Great!” Riz responds. The music is pounding. Behind him, he can hear the noise of vampires and werewolves clashing. “You’re gonna kill him! I believe in you!”

Fig smiles at him. “Hell yeah I am!” she responds. “Bardic inspiration?” she asks him.

“Bardic inspiration,” he answers. His heart feels light. It’s nice, he contemplates, to have someone who appreciates him. 

And then the music booms, and Fig gets knocked straight off the stage. “Shit!” Riz says, out loud this time. He starts running towards the stage. The crowd is rapidly dispersing. Whatever the DJ did, it pushed everyone away. A sonic boom. Or something. Riz looks up. This guy’s powerful, but he’s also injured. He’s covered in wounds all over. Gross, festering, zombie wounds, but wounds. All he needs is a little push.

Riz presses his way to the front of the crowd, over Fig’s barely conscious body. “Hey!” he shouts at the DJ. “Let’s see how you like being pushed around!”

Boom!
He Thunderwaves the bitch. The zombie explodes all over the stage. Violently. And Riz cackles, right as he begins to hear police sirens in the background.

Chapter Text

Fabian awakens the next morning with a headache. His first thought is: ow ow ow, and then he remembers, oh yeah, last night . He stares up at the mural of his father on the ceiling, and then looks away, supposing that he should probably get ready for school. First, he checks his phone. Nothing. Not even a measly little text from the Ball, who usually texts him in the morning about “case updates,” or just excuses to talk to Fabian. Fabian has never responded to them, but the change in routine shakes him up. He scrolls up through the long row of texts, picks one at random from a couple of months ago, and reacts with a thumbs up, just to have something to do.

Downstairs, Cathilda is waiting for him with his usual breakfast of kippers. She’ll drive him to school today, she says. Papa apparently has a “mighty” hangover, and Mama is in her sensory deprivation egg. Fabian is halfway through the car when he realizes that he forgot to pray for Umberlee.

Shit shit shit shit shit.

She’s gonna kill him. Try to eat him again, anyhow. He needs to pray to her. He needs to-

The car jolts to a stop. “I’ll let you out, Master Fabian!” Cathilda shouts.

Nevermind, Fabian thinks, then, thank you, Umberlee. He’ll do a bigger prayer later. It doesn’t matter. He spots the Bal in the courtyard waving to him, immediately pivots, and then spots Fig and Adaine on the other sid of the quad. He walks up to them. “Hello, fellow party members,” he says.

“Wow,” Adaine responds flatly. “You’re calling us party members. Improvement.”
Fabian sputters for something to say. “Well-I-umm-I-”

Adaine claps him on the back. “Relax,” she responds. “I’m just kidding. They’re having another assembly in the auditorium. Come watch with us?” She holds up a finger before he can say anything.  “ All of us.”

Fabian sighs and glares as Adaine beckons the rest of the party forward. They’re basically a bundle of individual neuroses and things that he doesn’t like, but they have bled with them, which makes them his crew, as his papa would say. So he supposes that he has to stick with them. Even the Ball. Even though the Ball is ignoring him.

Inside the auditorium, Principal Goldenhoard is onstage with some sad-looking elf and…the werewolf who tried to kill Fabian a couple of days ago. Fabian stares agape and in horror, for an instant. Then somebody pats him on the back.

It’s the Ball, thankfully not ignoring him now. “Fabian,” the Ball says, kind of sternly, pushing his odd, disagreeable face up to Fabian. “We need to get to class.”

“Wha-?”

“You spaced out,” says the Ball, hopping down from the seat. “Come on, we have to get to class.” He beckons Fabian forward.

Fabian has no choice but to follow.

— — —

Lunch that day is pasta with meat sauce, garlic bread, and green beans. “That’s my not-dad,” Fig says, pointing at the depressed-looking elf who’s going to be their new lunch lad or whatever.

Adaine frowns, taking a bite off of her Lembas bar. “What’s a not-dad?”

Fig looks down at her food, stabbing angrily at the green beans with her plastic fork. “A dad who thought he was your dad.”

“Okay, then,” Adaine replies, sensing that she’s hit a nerve.

Heedless, Fig continues talking. “I’m trying this new thing where I’m nice to all of my parents,” she says. “Even my not-dad, so I recommended him for the Lunch Lad job. Or, Riz did it for me. They live in the same building.”

“Cool,” says Kristen. “Helio says that parents are the most important people in the world, and you should always listen to them.”

Adaine and Fig share The Look, then, The Look that everyone else in the party (save for Fabian) always share whenever Kristen spouts some religious b.s. 

Fig looks at her phone for a moment. “Any new leads about Zayn?” she asks.

“Zayn?”

Adaine turns around, wheeling, and sees that sitting next to her is now a small satyr girl. Fig looks quite shocked, and Kristen is staring at the girl, almost transfixed, face as red as her hair.

The girl seems to flush. “Sorry, that was bad. I kinda snuck up on you. Oops. Yeah, sorry. Oh my god, I should just go. But-um, you were talking about Zayn, and, um, you know, this is kinda stupid, but like, um, I kinda know Zayn. Or knew, haha, we didn’t really talk a lot. Or ever. We didn’t talk. But um, sometimes I, you know, went to the um, cemetery, Cravencroft, you know it, or um, you don’t, but, um, yeah, Zayn was there a lot, so if you’re looking at like, leads on Zayn, cause like, you know, he wasn’t in school today, I don’t think, you might want to check the cemetery, by the way, you know, um, yeah, um, so, uhh, hi Kristen, by the way. Nice to see you.” The girl aggressively laughs. “But, um, I have to go, so like, um, bye.”

She bolts out the door.

Adaine frowns. “Sorry, who was that?”
“Girl in my class,” Kristen squeaks, and then she bolts, too.

Fig doesn’t bother chasing after her, just starts typing on her crystal. “Looks like we’ve got a lead.” she puts down her crystal, and looks over at Adaine. “Cravencroft Cemetery?"

Adaine nods. “Cravencroft Cemetery."

Later, she’ll look around with the rest of the Bad Kids, ever so slightly confused. “Hey,” she says, quietly. “...Is it just me, or is there a weird number of cats around here?”

Fig, who’s been patrolling the perimeter for this time, calling herself a “guard dog” stops in her tracks. “What?”

Adaine points to a large tabby nearby, staring at her intently. “There,” she says. She points to another one, this one a big fluffy type. “And there.” Two orange cats. “There. There, there, there, and there. There’s like, ten cats here in total.”

“Weird,” Gorgug whispers.

“And birds,” Kristen adds, abruptly. “Lotta birds here.”

“Weird,” Gorgug repeats.

Adaine frowns. “Why would a bunch of birds and cats be here?”
Fabian looks towards her. “Is there something good to eat?”
“What do birds and cats even eat?” Kristen asks. “Together, I mean. Also, they’re being super intense right now. Right?”

Adaine nods. “Don’t they eat…rats, though?”

“Zayn had a rat familiar,” Gorgug whispers.

Fig jumps up. “Somebody’s hunting Zayn!” she yells, too loud.

“Hunting, you say?”

Everyone (save for Adaine) jumps up, shocked. From the shadows emerges an extremely pale human wearing a drab gray suit, with strange, ponderously yellow eyes. “Hunting humans,” the man says. “The most dangerous game.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Fabian asks, meanwhile. “Who enters a conversation like that?”

The man turns, looking a bit sad. “Okay,” he sighs. “I’ll go.”

“No,” Adaine says, before he can leave. “Don’t leave. What were you saying about hunting?”

The man turns back. “Just that,” he opens his palm, and something slides across the ground. “Zayn Darkshadow might not be able to be hunted.” he retreats back into the shadows, and Gorgug picks up the thing that he dropped on the ground.

“What the fuck was that?!” Fabian asks.

Gorgug slides the thing around in his hand. “A pearl of life,” he says reverently.

Fig turns. “Pearl of what now?”

“A pearl of life,” Fabian says, almost automatically. “They belong to necromancers, but sometimes clerics have them.” He opens the locket, revealing a small black pearl inside. “I mean, I have one. Hail Umberlee.”

“Yeah,” Gorgug confirms. “It’s white now, but it should be black. If it’s black, it means he’s dead.”

“Oh,” says the man, re-emerging from the shadows. “He lived above the butcher, by the way.”

“Why are you telling us this?!” Fabian yells at him.

“I have known one of you for a long time,” he goes back into the shadows, and whispers, “Riz Gukgak.”
Riz turns around. He’s been remarkably unhelpful in this part of the investigation, just vaguely staring into the distance. “What?” he asks.

Adaine’s brow furrows. “Do you hang out at cemeteries a lot?”

“No,” Riz says. He’s looking straight at her. For whatever reason, she believes him.

She turns away. “We have to go,” she says. “To Zayn’s apartment. He’s dead.”

Riz sighs, looking at the ground. “Okay,” he says, quietly. His eyes are still a little bit distant. He’s holding one hand in another, pinching a wrist.

“Gotta go break in!” Adaine yells, and begins hopping on her bike.

Zayn Darkshadow’s apartment basically has no security, so it’s incredibly easy to break into. Adaine slides into the thing, which is incredibly dark and dank and-

There’s a dead body on the floor. A full dead body. A dead body with a slash through its stomach, guts spilling out. Adaine can barely react before her body does it for her. It’s all she can do not to actually puke on the body.

Adaine’s near the toilet for a solid five minutes, just barfing. Puking, really. Retching. It’s gross, it’s gross, it’s gross, and Adaine’s breathing hard from it by the end. She’s panicking, she’s panicking, oh god, she’s panicking.

Mistress ?

“What?” Adaine says aloud, even though the voice is in her head, in the voice of her bike, which she’s only ever heard once, when she first rode it.

Mistress, repeats her bike, which Fabian elected to name the Hangman after his father’s ship for whatever reason. Mistress, you seem distressed. 

Oh. She’s going crazy. Yes. this makes sense.

You are not going crazy, the bike responds. As my mistress, you may communicate with me telepathically.

Okay, Adaine thinks, hoping the Hangman gets it.

I am here for you, her bike says. If you need help with anything, I will help.

Adaine takes a breath out, realizing that she’s been breathing better now, no longer panicking so much. Great, she tells the Hangman, and then hesitantly stands up, getting ready to meet her friends.

Her friends are outside, practically vibrating from excitement in Riz and Gorgug’s case. They dive into the stuff in Zayn’s apartment like a pig in a trough. Adaine stands haphazardly with Kristen and a praying Fabian while they watch what Gorgug and Riz are, Fig patrolling all the while.

“Two handed weapon,” Riz says quietly, quickly, as he looks over Zayn’s body. “Something that slashes.” he picks up a bottle of pills. “Body cooling.” A rat cage. “He helped the rat escape.” Kristen is writing all of these down. Adaine feels like she should probably be doing that, too. But she just watches instead.

Riz is going over some of Zayn’s papers now, frowning. “What is it?” Kristen asks.

Riz pulls out a piece of paper from the stack that he’s going over. It’s old and yellowed, with an unfamiliar cursive script on it. “It’s a warlock contract,” he says. “For Johnny Spells with somebody named Gorthalax the Insatiable.”

Fig smiles a little bit. “Cool,” she says. “What does it mean?”

Riz bites his lip. “A lot,” he says. “This contract kinda…well, sorta holds Johnny’s soul. If Zayn had it, he’d have basically total control over Johnny. So Zayn must’ve been manipulating Johnny, or something. I…”

Fabian leans over him, picking up a couple of papers. “These are weird, the Ball,” he tells him, fanning out the papers over the top of their bard’s head.

Riz frowns. “Why?”
Fabian points to a couple of the strange, runicly elven symbols on the page. “Duh,” he responds. “These are religious. They’re like, animating. Like the corn ooze.”

“Wait a minute.”

“Wait a minute what?” Fabian asks.

Riz shoves down some maps onto the floor, laying them out. “That symbol, if it’s animating, then…” he takes out a pen and starts drawing all over them. “It’s like…a map. See, there’s the Big Dipper. But with the numbers here-” he points to one of the papers. “-oh shit, wait, he was trying to…reverse engineer something. He wrote it down. ‘If I can figure out the stars, I can figure out the ritual.’ Wait, no, I’ve got it!” he jumps up. “It’s in…one of two places, I think. But…” he sighs. “Let’s get to the old Durinson Mithral Factory.”

Gorgug stares at him for a bit. “What?”

Riz begins pacing around, which Adaine’s noticed is a symbol of stress for him. She doesn’t interrupt, even though he doesn’t have a Hangman to calm him down. “Durinson Mithral Factory,” he repeats, quieter. “Adaine, I also need you to drive to Strongtower Luxury Apartments. Just make sure everyone’s okay.”

Something is pulling at Adaine, but she tries to ignore it. “Why?”

“I-” Riz pauses, swallows. “-it’s where the ritual could be, too. But…I don’t know. Just-just go.” He snaps his fingers a couple of times. “I don’t know. Go. Please go.”

Adaine shrugs, opens the window, and then hops out onto her bike.

The bike is waiting for her. It has been. The second she’s on it, it starts revving up, going forward.
Where to, Mistress ? Asks her bike.

Strongtower Luxury Apartments, Adaine answers.

Her bike drives ahead, so fast that everything blurs into a blue-white blob around her. The wind turns into a whirling vortex in her ears-and she can hear other sounds, too. Inside sounds. Sounds of the mind.

Ineedtogetgroceriesdamnshe’ssohottheycan’tfindouttheycan’t-

Adaine smiles. Best fuckin’ day ever, she thinks as her bike comes to a stop near Strongtower Luxury Apartments. Best fuckin’ day ever, she thinks as she nears the Durinson Mithral Factory. She doesn’t have a phone, so she supposes that she’ll just have to meet her friends. Slowly, she walks her bike through the abandoned factory, enjoying the peaceful ambience around her. Everything’s probably going to be-

“We’ll defend our forefather’s lands, no matter what you try to do!”

Adaine sighs to herself. Shit.

Chapter Text

This might be the lamest fight we’ve ever done in our lives, Fig thinks as she looks ahead at the dwarven middle schoolers. She can consider herself a veteran now, with three battles under her belt, and out of all of them, the corn, the greasers, the werewolves and zombies, Fig knows which one she would be most humiliated to die to (again), and it’s a bunch of fucking middle schoolers.

Well, at least there’s a golem there, too. Fig wouldn’t be that humiliated if she died to that thing. And it’s not like-

“ Figueroth Faeth…”

“What did you just say?” Fig asks. She looks beside her to Gorgug.

“Huh?” Gorgug asks.

“What did you just say?”

Gorgug scratches his neck. “Oh. well, I didn’t really say anything, but I might’ve, if I, um…”

Fig tunes him out. That voice felt familiar, too familiar. It itches at Fig’s brain. She has to go investigate, she decides.

The voice was coming from…where was it coming from, exactly? She can’t remember. It was down below, she thinks. Down below…

She turns towards a stack of crates beside her. Yes! Yes!  They’re coming from there, she’s sure of it. Raising up her greatsword, she knocks them into the ground.

Jackpot! There’s an open manhole down there, completely with a ladder for climbing down into the sewers. Fig takes it. The voice in her head in getting louder.

“Figueroth…”

“Figueroth…”

“Fig…”

She drops down into total darkness, but it’s no sweat, really, cause demons gets darkvision.

It’s dark inside the sewer, though. And it smells. Like actual shit. Fig covers her nose as she looks around, occasionally coughing. There’s something glimmering in the darkness, a ruby. Fig crushes it in her hand.

Chapter Text

“What’s your favorite ice cream flavor?”

“Uhh, that’s actually a great question, because I can’t eat.”

Twirling the pen that Riz gave her, Fig jots down, can’t eat onto the writing pad (that Riz also gave her).

“Why can’t you eat?” Adaine asks, sipping on her strawberry milkshake (she says it’s her least favorite milkshake flavor yet).

“I’m the Insatiable,” Fig’s new dad answers. “That’s like-my curse.” He grabs Riz’s coffee milkshake and tries to take a sip-it disappears. “I can’t ever eat.”

Kristen stirs her corn milkshake around (barf). “You’re a fallen angel, though, right?”

“I am,” her dad says, looking down, like it’s a sore spot or something. Fig kinda wants to punch Kristen now. Kinda. “I used to be Gorthiel, the Angel of Eating the Right Amount, but then I fell from grace.”

“Whose angel were you?” Kristen asks, seeming a bit more interested.

“Sol’s,” Fig’s dad says. “But that guy fucking sucked, so I fell from Grace.”

“Oh,” Kristen responds. “I worship Helio.”

Dad laughs a little bit. “Oh, that guy fucking sucks, too. He wears like, sandals with beer bottle openers on the bottom.”

Kristen presses her face against the glass of the restaurant.

“Why’d you fall?” Riz asks, abruptly. 

Another laugh from dad. “‘Cause Sol fucking sucked. Did it about the time of Kalvaxus.”

Riz looks up. “The…Emperor of the Red Waste?”

Gorthalax nods.

Riz leans forward on the table. “Alright, Mr. the Insatiable,” he says. “I’ve done enough dilly-dallying for today. Tell me everything.” he has a fire in his eyes that is weirdly kind of scary. Fig leans further into Gorthalax.

Her dad sighs in response. “Alright,” he says.

And so begins the ballad of Gorthalax the Insatiable. Fig jots it all down in Riz’s notebook, which she may or may not be giving back, taking detailed notes the whole way.

Gorthalax fell from heaven during the reign of Kalvaxus, literally, apparently. He fell from heaven into the Durinson Mithral Factory, and got trapped under the indestructible rock for a couple hundred years, and then escaped and did some murder. He tried to hop the border to Highcourt, but got caught by Sandralynn, and that’s how Fig was made (kind of embarrassing).

But then Gorthalax got re-trapped by Principal Aguefort for doing a bunch of murders and stuff, (long story), and got put back in the Durinson Mithral Factory. Then some guy named Johnny Spells found him. Gorthalax agreed to be a pact patron, with the condition that he couldn’t fuck, because Johnny was a creep. But then Johnny failed to rob a bank which was owned by the Harvestmen, some cult group that Kristen’s in, and he got in debt and had to start doing all that weird drug stuff he was doing. So that’s the story.

“Wow,” Kristen says at the end. “Wow, that’s um-that’s like, uhh, woah.”

“Yeah,” Gorthalax says. “I mean, it’s crazy. Oh.” he says. “One more thing.” In his palm, a tiny rat appears. It scurries across the table.

“Shit!” Riz ells. “Somebody get a cup!”

From across the table, Kristen pulls some corn in the cob from her bag. The rat runs towards it and bites some, before taking residence in the front of Kristen’s tie-dye pocket. “Good rat,” Kristen says quietly.

“Zayn Darkshadow’s familiar,” dad informs all of them. “And uhh, by the way, I feel like I should go.”

“Probably,” Riz says.

Fig kicks him from under the table.

“Uhh, guys?”

That’s Gorgug. Everyone immediately swivels their heads towards him.

Gorgug holds up his crystal for all of them to see. It’s a message from Biz. So sorry guys, it says.

There’s a picture attached below. It displays Biz Glitterdew in a hospital bed, absolutely and completely covered in wounds.

Fig looks up at her dad. “Can you teleport us just one more time?”

He nods, and snaps his fingers, and they all disappear in a burst of flame. Fig blinks. When she opens her eyes, she’s at St. Owen’s Memorial Hospital. Riz is rushing ahead, meanwhile. Fig follows him.

“Do you kids want me to come with you?” her dad asks.

“We’ll be fine, Mr. the Insatiable!” Riz yells.

Fig grabs his hat from him. 

“Hey!” Riz yells.

Fig glares. “Don’t talk about my dad like that!”

Riz glares back, and then pulls on Fig’s arm hard enough to send her to his level. “It might not be the wisest things to trust your dad,” he says, quietly. “He was working with Johnny. I don’t…I don’t know. I don’t trust him. Not completely, at least.”

“Oh,” Fig says, quietly. She returns his hat to him and musses up his hair. “Bye dad!” she shouts out at Gorthalax, and keeps walking. 

Yeah, Riz was probably right about that. Just that. Fig was so caught up, for a moment, in the euphoria of having a dad that for a moment she had lived in a world where the concept of betrayal did not exist. She’ll be careful next time, she thinks. Around Gorthalax. Hopefully. Probably. 

For now, Fig just wants to sneak around a hospital.

— — —

Listening through the door to Biz and Gorgug’s conversation, Riz Gukgak suppresses a smile. He’s so close, he can feel it. The article is mostly finished, it just needs the clincher, the part where the truth comes out. But there’s no truth, not so far. Nothing shocking. Violent militant cult is  violently militant, so what? Even with Zayn and Johnny Spells, nothing particularly shocking. What he needs is a faculty clue, someone who really betrayed tangible student relationships. That’s what his editor, Nancy, says. According to her, she won’t run his hypothetical conspiracy story unless he can actually get proof that someone on the faculty is doing something wrong. And their next issue comes out today. In a couple of hours.

Typing down his article by the second, Riz continues listening. Biz was attacked by a man in a harvestman mask, he says, with a big slashing weapon, sweatpants, and a whistle.

Now here’s the question, kiddos: who does Riz Gukgak know who is an intense Helioist, a coach, uses a bladed weapon, and is a member of the faculty?

Rapidly, Riz begins to type into his document, in an utter and complete rapture. It’s the best thing he’s ever written ever.He jumps up from his seat.

“Daybreak!”
Fabian looks up from his bible. “The Ball, I know it’s dawn, but why would you-”

Riz swings open the door. “Fabian, call a car!” he says. “Gorgug, we have to go!”

“Wait-” Biz says.

“It’s Daybreak!” Riz tells all of them. “We have to kill him. Right now.”

“Wait-”

Riz turns away from him. “Shut up, surveillist,” he says. “We’ve got a Harvestman to catch.”

Chapter Text

Hi, just here to let you know the fic will be taking a break

Chapter Text

Being a hero is fuckin’ awesome, it turns out. After killing Coach Daybreak (long story short, an Ice Storm did it), her and the self-named Bad Kids are legends around campus, having saved the world from a hellmouth and all that. Fig gets high-fives all the time.

And that’s not even where her good luck ends! Home’s good, too. Her parents are back together and Gilear’s…part of it, too. Fig doesn’t know. He sleeps over now, and Fig can call him dad! Three parents are better than two, after all.

And two of her parents work at the school, too, so she gets to see them pretty much every day! Gilear’s the lunch lad, and Gorthalax is the coach, and Fig’s on the owlbears with Kristen! Ragh’s there too, and he’s kind of her friend, so that’s cool, too! And they won the junior championship!

Well, it’s like they say: good things happen to good people. Just a couple of days ago, Fig found some horn wax in her locker. Random, right?

Well, Fig’ll probably need it later, anyway. The Hudol Hellions, who they just defeated in the championship, have invited them over to a surrender party. Fig’s super, super excited for it. It’s gonna be great. Nothing’s gonna go wrong.

— — —

Something going on is terribly wrong. Riz knows it, he just can’t prove it.

The mystery has, allegedly, been solved. They had a party for it and everything, one with ice cream cake and everything. Everything should be fine and dandy. Should be, key word here. So why isn’t it?

Well, there’s a very particular reason for it. A terrible, horrible, particular reason for it. Riz knows this very, very well.

Y’see, Riz Gukgak, private investigator, has solved a mystery. But not the mystery he set out to solve. He has set some things right, but not enough. So yeah, things are most definitely not fine and dandy. If things were fine and dandy then Penny would be there at the ice cream party with him and not still missing!

Riz kicks his bedroom wall once again, which, you know, he probably shouldn’t do, but whatever. It helps him get his overwhelming senses of hopelessness and rage out. Kind of. Very kind of.

More annoyed at himself now, Riz switches to banging his forehead into the wall. What kind of investigative reporter can’t finish his investigations? Well, the bad kind to say the least. Stupid, stupid, stupid, he thinks. He can’t help anyone.

His crystal buzzes just as he thinks that. Riz reluctantly turns towards it and looks at his incoming message. It’s from Adaine.

Party 2nite

You comin

Riz rolls his eyes at the message. Adaine talks almost exclusively in grammatically incorrect and short text messages, even though her actual spoken language is extremely proper, usually. He suspects that she must be thrilled to have a crystal, after Fabian bought it for her along with everything else she needed for her alleged makeover.

He heard about the party from Fig, but he has much more important things to do (namely, looking at the same clueboard over and over again).

I can’t come, Riz texts back. Important stuff.

He needs to find Penny. He needs to.

She haunts him. Like, literally. He’s been having dreams of her, terrible dreams. Dreams about being trapped in crystals, trying to get out. (It’s not your fault, Riz, that’s what she told him).

His crystal buzzes once again. More messages from Adaine.

2 late, Adaine responds. Comin alredy. I m pickin u up.

Riz walks back over to his bed, buries his face in his pillow, and then screams. Why did he ever consider having friends?

— — —

Adaine loves being popular. She loves it loves it loves it. More than life itself, more than maybe even her motorbike.

Being popular is the fucking tits. Adaine gives all the high fives, and gets all of them, too. She’s acing her classes, but she doesn’t really have to try, she’s so good. She’s the ideal Adaine, in short, the hottest, smartest, best version of herself that could ever possibly exist. All other Adaines would lose to this one, in short. This has been her best year ever.

Granted, she’s definitely grading on a curve. Her shitty parents didn’t even congratulate her for saving the godsdamnned world! They’re gonna get theirs one day, she knows it. Maybe she’ll even do it herself. Their family’s ancient elven rapier that hangs above the fireplace looks more and more tempting to use every day.

And Aelwyn’s as much of a bitch as usual. Favorite child, Adaine thinks. Just excusing herself out of dinner to go “study” with a friend. Putting an arcane lock on Adaine’s bedroom door. (“Can’t you just counterspell it, Adaine? Oh right, you can’t!”). Well, she’s gonna get hers right now, right before the super cool party that Adaine’s going to.

Carefully, stealthily, she sneaks into Aelwyn’s room. Her parents aren’t home, for whatever reason, so it’s alright. Adaine’s gonna put itching powder in her bed. That’s what Fig said you do for pranks, so she’s trusting that it’ll be good. Trusting.

Aelwyn’s room is basically what Adaine remembers from her childhood. Same blue decorations, same bigger-than-Adaine-bed, same fancier-than-Adaine everything.

Aelwyn’s room feels almost too perfect. There’s nothing hanging up, nothing out of place at all, nothing in the slightest that could hint at Aelwyn having a personality. The books are all on wizardy stuff, mostly abjuration, though she finds a couple of divination books, a Solisian history book, and even Aguefort’s biography, for whatever reason. She flips through the books a bit, learns some cool stuff, and then sprinkles the itching powder on the bed. 

After that, she hops the window and lands on her bike. “Hangman, we’ve got a party to get to.”

— — —

Gorgug feels like a pretty good wizard now. Not a genius, mind you, but pretty good. He’s doing pretty well in his classes and stuff, and his parents are proud of him, and he has friends, too! Life is going great, except for maybe one thing: his parents have been working a lot lately. Some battery or something, Gorgug doesn’t know. He can probably get it for Biz, though, definitely. They free Sam in no time!

Though, right now it’s time for partying, or at least that’s what Fabian says. He’s calling a Cent-Car for all of them, or at least four of them, and Gorgug has to bike there. But nevermind, anyway. He’s excited. Super excited.

After he says goodbye to his parents, Gorgug texts everyone to make sure they’re going, and then smiles. He has friends. 

— — —

Things have been…weird at the Applebees house lately. Weird meaning that Kristen hasn’t really been there lately. Or at all.

Yeah, the whole “being in a cult” thing kinda bummed Kristen out. Well, maybe bummed out isn’t the right word. More like, her life’s been ruined forever and ever.

Here’s a replay of how everything went after the Coach Daybreak stuff: Kristen goes home, Kristen asks her parents about the Harvestmen. Kristen gets into a huge argument, Kristen runs away, Kristen shows up on Fabian Aramais Seacaster’s doorstep.

“Fabian, you’re gonna poke me in the eye!”

Kristen laughs loudly as Fabian attempts to apply eyeliner to Kristen’s face. The Church of Helio isn’t really big on nontraditional makeup, and Kristen was never really big with any type of makeup at all, but when Fabian does it, it somehow feels cool.

“Stop moving and I won’t!” Fabian replies, and holds her face still for a moment. After a bit more poking with the eyeliner brush, he’s done. “There.” he holds up a compact mirror for her.

Kristen stares at herself in the mirror for a moment, admiring the blue-and-purple makeup Fabian’s put on her. “Where did you even learn how to do this?” she asks him.

“Fishmas,” Fabian responds.

“Fishmas?”

Fabian looks at her like she’s crazy. “Fishmas,” he responds. “The day when the sea vomits up fish and everybody gets to eat fish? Wait, is this because you’re in a cult?”

Kristen looks away, flushing.
“Sorry,” Fabian responds. “I mean-like-it’s not-maybe it’s not that popular. Just an Umberlee thing.”

A beat of silence.

“Can I tell you a secret?” Fabian asks.

Kristen nods, if surreptitiously. She hopes this isn’t anything weird.

“My goddess tried to eat me.”

Kristen’s eyebrows raise. “What?”

“My goddess tried to eat me,” Fabian responds. “When I…” he swallows. “…died, my goddess said that since I was a cleric of her, I was going to get the honor of being eaten by her personally. And then Aguefort appeared and saved me and got eaten I think. So…I’m not really sure if I believe in her anymore. But I’m still using her power. So.”

Kristen scoots back on the bed that they’re both sitting on. “Woof,” is all she can say.

“Yeah.”

Kristen stares at him. She needs need to say something. Now. So she does. “I think I’m gay,” she says.

Fabian stares at her. “Woof.”

Kristen’s crystal buzzes. Gorgug and Fig are here. She looks at Fabian. Well, she guesses, there’ll be time for revelations later. Both of them scramble out of the room as quickly as they can, then into Cathilda’s car with Gorgug and Fig. All of them are silent on the ride there until Kristen blurts out, “I’m in love with Zelda Donovan. The girl from my barbarian class. And this moon cleric I met at the Black Pit. I don’t know what to do.”

Gorgug pats her on the shoulder. “Do what your heart says.”

The car halts to a stop in front of a house nearby them. It’s two story building, basically the most typical suburban house that Kristen’s ever seen in her life. There’s no signs of party on the inside. Kristen frowns as she watches it, a frown which only deepens as they all step out of Cathilda’s car. The halfling woman beeps the horn once, offers them a quick goodbye, and then she’s gone.

Fabian sighs and hunches his shoulders as he looks ahead. “Yikestown, population: us,” he says as they walk in. “Where’s the Ball and Adaine?”

Fig shrugs and looks around. “Probably late,” she says. “Adaine likes to arrive after the party’s going. Maybe Riz hitched a ride with her.”

Fabian nods, but looks anxious, anyway. “Let’s go in,” he says. Kristen shrugs, and they follow him in, anyway.

The party is incredibly not bumping, Kristen notices as soon as they walk in. it’s a collection of about a dozen reedy-looking elves and a dwarven girl eating chips on a sofa while they watch the evening news.

The least reedy elf stands up to meet them, extending a hand. “Percy Nevelsline,” he says to them. “Pleased for you to make an acquaintance with us-”

A gust of wind blows open the door. Literally blows it open. It tears itself off its hinges and explodes into the room. Kristen tackles Gorgug and Fabian to get them out of the way, barely missing getting herself a massive concussion along the way. Thank not-Helio, she thinks, and stands up, staring at the door, which has knocked into one of the elves and made him pass out. Kristen turns around, trying to find whomever was the source of that freak gust of wind that shot the door.

It’s the most beautiful girl that she’s ever seen. (Then again, Kristen has seen many the-most-beautiful girls, but like, this one’s crazy). She’s wearing a crop top and cutoff jeans, her long blonde hair going all the way down her back. Kristen stares at her from the ground. “Party’s on!” she shouts.

She walks into the room, and Kristen sees a couple of figures follow her in. Also beautiful figures. Each of them is dazzling, with radiant smiles and pretty faces and abs, and they’re all wearing cheer uniforms. Kristen continues gaping.

One of the cheerleaders leans down and extends a hand. “Hey,” she says. “I’m River.”

Kristen takes the hand. “You smell good,” she says, stupidly. Her cheeks are hot. This is a crush, she thinks. This is a crush. I like girls. Normally, she would do something about this, but she’s in a haze right now, she knows.

Minutes later, she’s in a bedroom alone with River. “You’re funny,” River is saying to her, over and over again. Kristen’s head is spinning.

I’m gay, she thinks. I like girls oh no no no no-

And then everything explodes.