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“Pray thou allegiance to the mighty Halone, Heretic. Thou shalt need Her mercy in the coming bells.”
Thancred has worshiped, to varying extents, the grand Voyager and the wise Scholar in his ever-ticking amount of time alive—what’s one more upon the pile?
“Take me under the shadow of thy generosity, blessed Fury,” Thancred drawls, his hands bound so tight behind his back his shoulders are drawn square. “I pray, now, that thy sights might be too set upon the ample bosom of beloved Nophica to cast—“
A hand grips his scalp and slams his head down into the altar he is kneeled at. It is solid, polished granite, hewn from the mountains, and in the resulting standoff between its unyielding surface and his pretty face Thancred can surmise the stone is most certainly going to win. He doesn’t feel his brow split on the impact, not amidst some deeply resounding elsewhere pain, but he feels the blood run into his bad eye and wonders absently if he has injured the socket.
He’s in the depths of a temple once-abandoned, so deep in its belly he cannot monitor time. The Coerthas wilderness he was tracking the fractured remains of Aymeric’s least loyal hounds through seems miles away. There is no natural light and there is no rumored grace of Halone.
“Repent.”
Thancred’s knees ache. They are spread wide in case he gets any frisky ideas, such as keeping a steady balance or elsewise wishing to retain some sense of postured dignity. The blood circulation to his calves is low. He hasn’t eaten in two days, roughly, but hasn’t slept for longer. He could surely go for a cup of water, too. He knows he will not be offered it. The former Temple Knights’ motivations are clear: they want him to break.
They haven’t even asked a single question, yet. They want him to beg to tell them everything he knows. They want him to blink first. To any outsider, this was a pit of the Hells’ finest creation. To Thancred, this was a child’s first, fumbling attempt at extraction—textbook to the point of dullness—but he supposed what they lacked in creativity they made up in rigor.
“Mmph,” Thancred says, unintelligible from where his lips have been shoved mercilessly into granite.
The hand softens its grip and for a moment it is gentle upon him. It lays atop his head as if he is a street mutt provided a pat. His mouth is not free, per say, moreso no longer actively shoved into an altar, but Thancred is once again able to speak.
The hand grows heavier, again. Prompts: about that repenting.
“What are the charges, so to speak?” Thancred asks. The Knight at his sweat-slicked hair does not reply, so Thancred explains, “When dealing with the forgiveness of a woman, even one as holy and great as our dear Halone, a man must know the extent of his sins as they are aware to her. Lest he accidentally over-apologize for something she might not know.”
“Corruption of Her name,” the Knight answers, without hesitation, “and use of her visage in words most foul and profane.”
“Ah,” Thancred says. “Guilty.”
“Consorting with Heretics,” the Knight continues.
“What, that whole business with the political insurrection of Ishgard?”
“The assassination of Archbishop Thordan VII, light of Ishgard and highest seat of the Holy See.”
“I wasn’t even there for that.”
The Knight shifts, though Thancred doubts it is in regret or discomfort.
“Courting dragonkin.”
“Wouldn't be wholly adverse, but I’ve yet to meet one interested.”
“Rejecting sacrament.”
“I’ve got my own Patron to have a dysfunctional relationship with, thanks.”
“Sodomy.”
“Now you’re just making educated guesses.”
Thancred’s mouth moves quickly and without remorse. If he talks, he can delay the fun bits of their presumed routine, and if he successfully delays, he can be spared a few minutes of pain before inevitable rescue. That was the plan, wasn’t it—rescue? He was sure enough in his assessment of the situation and in the arms shackled tight behind his back that, unless they started getting very sloppy very quickly, escape was not an option. Still, the thought of rescue tasted bitter on his tongue.
Someone would notice he had not come back from reconnaissance and someone would send a gaggle of Scions to search. That was the nice thing about having people, he supposes. They tend to notice when you’re not around as a symptom of caring about you. (You could build a civilization on such an idea, he thinks. You could give it a catchy name. Families, or some such. Isn’t that an idea.) The Scions knew he was keeping watch on a militarized, fundamentalist Ishgardian breakaway sect. They need only listen for the clunk of armor and occasional murmur of religious shame in the snow. He would be found. He would be pulled from the Hells. He would be freed, and then he would probably be hugged. Coddled and comforted and—Gods, what if they cried over him. It has only been four or five days, roughly, by his internal clock, but Alphinaud especially had been brought teary-eyed by far less. Thancred stiffens at the mere fantasy. These misbegotten Temple Knights should just take a blade to his nicely presented neck and spare him the shame of knowing such love.
“Repent.”
The Scions were supposed to rely on him. If he had been stronger, faster, less smug, more respectful of his target, better aware of the approximate range of sleep magic, then maybe he would not be in this situation. He has failed, though, and now he must suffer the indignity of assistance. Torture, too, though unlike grappling with a state of emotional vulnerability, Thancred has training in torture.
“Repent, or we shall shatter your limbs at every joint.”
The Scions were supposed to rely on him.
“We shall spare you the dignity of a quick, noble death.”
The Scions were supposed to rely on him.
“And we shall slit the Heretic babe’s throat before thine very eyes.”
Thancred draws still.
“…What?” he says, keeping his voice so still it betrays his need for composure. He finds the strength to lift his head up and stare directly at his captor. He can already feel the blinding, deafening panic rising behind his eyes—but he can’t force a conclusion. He has to be sure.
“Ah,” the Knight says, tilting his head. Mocking. “I should have told you sooner, perhaps. I have been preoccupied. The Scion-spawn has been far more of a handful to our efforts than you have been.”
Thancred’s blood has fallen so cold that in the frigid cell he threatens to crystallize.
“Which one,” he demands, hoarsely, venom in his veins and in his throat. He knows, though. He already knows. Two of them are young enough to be called a babe, but only one of them would be so fucking bold and so fucking stupid as to attempt rescue alone.
“We had thought we captured the boy,” The Knight says, voice a spidery crawl along Thancred’s skin. “The one who has made us so much trouble. The one who has brought us so low.” Thancred’s jaw sets so that he might shut down a mammalian instinct to bite. “However, it appears to us now that he possesses a mirror.”
Fuck.
“What do you want,” Thancred says.
“Hm?”
“What do you want,” Thancred repeats, stronger, angrier, broken in an instant and uncaring to that reality. The Knight need not voice details nor threats. He understands the situation perfectly.
The Knight appraises him. He seems genuinely surprised, and it is clear to Thancred that he is mulling over the idea that he perhaps should have mentioned the sixteen-year-old-girl-torture a little earlier. What an incompetent asshole. His captor asks, “So easy?”
Thancred would toss Ishgard under the wheels of fate, truly throw them to the wolves, like honestly what have they even ever done for Thancred or the people and places Thancred calls home, without hesitation. His service to their cause is largely a perfunctory extension of his duty as a Scion. The reward has always been the idea that, someday, maybe, not that they could ever be relied upon before, they might help out against an as yet unknown enemy as a proper member of an as yet untested alliance.
Alisaie is more important than that. Alisaie will always be more important.
“Give me the terms,” Thancred intones, voice lethal. “And the consequence should they be denied. I will give you my answer.”
“This is not a mediation,” The Knight snaps back, though he appears more confident, now, at Thancred’s gifted ilm. Thancred will give him ten malms more. Thancred will not hesitate.
Thancred squares his jaw and glares upwards, expectant. He will cave at the slightest threat to their youngest Scion, but he is not going to beg. If they want information so bad then they can parlay like grown adults.
The Knight bares his teeth. He demands, “Tell us the state of repair on Daniffen's Collar.”
Thancred snorts. “Planning an invasion? With what army?”
He is backhanded for his snide effort, the knuckles of The Knight’s heavy, leather glove striking the soft flesh of his face. Thancred’s head is jerked sideways.
“Fuck,” Thancred says. His mouth tastes copper.
The Knight states, “If you do not know then we will take a finger from her. This shall be the cost of each additional question. Are these terms to your liking? You so wanted this to be a negotiation."
Thancred takes a steadying breath. “Let me see her,” he asks, calmly.
The Knight curls his lip. “To what end?”
“You could be bluffing,” Thancred says. “Besides, even the most inexperienced of torturers know that if you’re going to threaten someone then a visual on the leverage helps seal the deal.” His gaze darkens. He continues, as if his captor is slow, “If you’re going to hold a knife to her throat, it works better if I can see the blade.”
The Knight does not seem fond of Thancred offering him extraction advice. He is quiet for a moment as he thinks through his options. Thancred almost wonders if he has indeed called a bluff, until The Knight makes a soft tch and gestures towards one of the guards standing at attention by the cell door.
“Get the girl,” he says, and the slightest spark of hope that his threat was a mere fabrication snuffs in Thancred’s chest.
It takes an excruciating amount of time. When she arrives, Thancred hears her before he sees her. There is a scrape of boots on the ground. Shouting, both from irritated guardsmen and one particularly headstrong young woman. There are yells of frustration. There is an argument between her keepers. She screeches out a curse and it echoes down the hall and bounces off the high rafters of Thancred’s holding room. Yeah—that’s definitely Alisaie.
The cell door opens with a screech of iron and then she’s there, struggling, hoisted above the ground by her arms, her feet kicking blindly in the air. She is squirming incessantly. Her left eye is blackened and there’s a strip of dried blood marking a trail from nose to chin. She’s fighting, though. She is as aflame as ever. That’s a good sign.
“Bastards!” she shrieks. “Whoresons! Zealot freaks!”
The two guards at her shoulders look absolutely exhausted.
She catches sight of the altar, and pauses her assault. She falls limp. Her feet drop, legs just long enough for the tips of her boot to support some of her weight. She sucks in a short, shocked breath. She calls out, “—Thancred!”
He must look like shit, because her expression is horrified.
“Fine,” he tells her. “Looks worse than it is. Have they hurt you?”
“Don’t worry about me,” she says, and she sounds so genuinely insulted he is forced to assume she is, probably, for now, alright. He has no idea how long she has been here nor what they have put her through but he will do a full field assessment when they’re out of this. For now, they must simply survive.
“Get her kneeling and secure her hand.”
The Knight places his order and the guards jump to fulfill it. Alisaie starts up her writhing again as they attempt to reposition her. She gnashes her teeth. She scrapes her nails down uncaring armor. They haven’t bound her hands, Thancred notes, only confiscated the book she uses to focus her magic. Everyone is distracted. This is his chance. Thancred takes the opportunity to accomplish what he wanted her here for in the first place.
“Alisaie, listen to me very carefully,” Thancred states. Alisaie is busy wrenching her shoulder out of the slipped hand of a corrupted knight but Thancred must trust that she has a spare ear for him in the chaos. He says, “If they take your finger then you must keep yourself centered and focused. You’ll lose blood, but you have to remain conscious.” He says, “If they go for bone then bite down. Don’t move, after. Stay as still as you can until we can get it set.” He says, “If they attempt to drown you, don’t gasp for air beforehand. Take a neutral breath and relax. Lower your heartrate, if you’re able—“
The Knight grips Thancred at the nape of his neck and slams his forehead into the altar again.
“Thancred!” Alisaie cries out, and it echoes out as a smudge of concern and terror within Thancred’s dazed mind. Blackness rims his vision. He sees starlight. The hand scruffing him releases, and he falls slack against the altar. He takes his own advice: breathe slow and deep. Stay centered. Stay focused. He has to remain conscious if he is going to get them out of this.
“‘M okay,” he mutters. He lifts himself back up from the surface of the stone. His arms ache where they are roped with crude cord behind his back, but he must persist.
They’ve managed to force Alisaie to her knees before the opposite side of the altar. This close, he can see the broken blood vessels in the white of her bruised eye and the slice of a split above her top lip. This close, he can see the wet tears of worry rimming her expression as she gazes back upon him.
“—I didn’t mean to get caught,” she says, without prompting, rushed and desperate, “but I overheard them talking about taking your good eye, and I didn’t think I had time to go back and—“
“It’s alright,” Thancred tells her. “You’re going to be alright.”
Her voice cracks when she says, “I haven’t told them anything. I promise.”
His heart hurts for her. His heart hurts for her to know what he is about to do.
A guard snags her wrist and yanks it towards the altar. Alisaie’s defiance disorder kicks in and she forces him to all but wrangle her into position. By the time her arm is slammed down before Thancred she has invented a new Ishgardian slur. She balls her hand into a fist—Thancred must have scared her with the amputation comment.
“Tell her to put her hand palm-down and spread her fingers,” The Knight orders. He has stationed himself behind Thancred’s shoulder, but even if he wasn’t, Thancred would not stray his gaze from Alisaie. Their eye contact is silent and yet subliminal— you are okay, Thancred tells her without need for words— you’re not, the squint of her eyes replies.
Thancred gives her a careful nod. Alisaie hesitates. He blinks at her, slow, like one might do to soothe a cat. She nods back, and unfurls her fingers atop the altar. It is clear she thinks he has some kind of plan. She thinks he will get them out of this. The trust she places in him is both immense and undeserved.
“You know the terms. For every question you refuse, we’ll take a finger.” The Knight’s tone is dismal. Alisaie’s breath picks up, but she says nothing. Her trust in Thancred does not falter. He is going to break it over his knee.
The Knight asks, again, “Tell us the state of repair on Daniffen's Collar.”
“Three gates are fully operational.”
Alisaie’s eyes go wide. She says, “—Thancred.”
“How many of your organization are currently stationed in Ishgard?”
“Four others. One is a non-combatant.”
Alisaie yells, anguished, “Thancred! No!”
“Where?”
“We’ve made our base in House Fortemps.”
“No!” Alisaie shrieks. “No, no—Thancred, please, you can’t—“
“What is the medical condition of Knight Commander Aymeric de Borel in the wake of his altercation in The Vault?”
“Not great,” Thancred replies, “considering he’s been shanked since then.”
It is clear this is news to The Knight. Thancred imagines they don’t have much in the way of informants out here in the snow. They must have been too eager to betray their much beloathed bastard Commander to think of leaving a spy embedded in the ranks.
“Thancred,” Alisaie pleads, “Thancred, don’t do this. They can take what they want. I’m not scared—“
“Where is the leader of your organization?” The Knight inquires, “The so-called Antecedent?”
Thancred goes rigid. His brow furrows. He thinks on this question, and of all it implies. He says, “Why the fuck would a bunch of Ishgardian fundamentalists freezing their asses off in Coerthas care about that?”
The Knight unsheathes a dagger from his waist and slams the tip down onto the altar. He aims true, and the blade stabs itself in the dangerous, taunting space between two of Alisaie’s fingers. He leaves it lingering there, grip tight on the handle.
He commands: “Answer.”
Thancred does as he is ordered. “We don’t know,” he says, truthfully. The pieces begin to fit together in his mind. “…Which means the Ascians you’re in bed with don’t know either, hm?”
“Not good enough,” The Knight states. The Ascian comment goes conspicuously uncommented upon. “Do better, or I’ll start with her thumb.”
“If we knew where the Antecedent was then she would be back safe with us,” Thancred says.
“Not good enough.”
“We don’t know. We lost her in a tunnel beneath Ul’dah.”
“Not good enough.”
Thancred raises his voice. “I do not know—“
Thancred did not intend to cause a scene. His specialty is in light footsteps and exploited blindspots. He is not the man one goes to for distraction. Still, he has drawn attention to himself. Head knight and loyal guard alike have watched him grow agitated, have watched him grow louder, have watched him threaten to pull something. He is not sure what they are expecting him to do, exactly, bound as he is and starved to the brink. He only knows they are too busy anticipating his next move to watch the other prisoner in the room.
Alisaie leans her head forward and bites her teeth into the hand holding the dagger.
The Knight makes a sharp noise, but the fingers Alisaie has been forced to keep closest to the blade bolt their way up to the handle before he can react further. His grip is loose in his shock and she pries the weapon into her own grasp.
Then she turns around and stabs the guard to her left in the sliver of neck between chestplate and chin.
Blood spurts. The other guard attempts to draw his sword but she’s on him in a second, her body in too close of quarters for him to fully unsheath his weapon before she’s—Hells, she’s really going at it, isn’t she? She’s armed and dangerous, pressed to a corner and all the more lethal for it.
The least Thancred can do is give her a hand.
What little will he retains bolsters his strength. The Knight is clutching his hand—he is peeling off his glove, she broke skin through the leather—and yelling at the guard presently being attacked to restrain the prisoner, yelling at the one bleeding out from the throat for his failure, yelling at Alisaie that he’s going to take her whole hand, the whole arm, he’s going to make her choose who dies first—
Thancred shoves his shoulder into the man’s knees. His arms are useless, but he has an element of surprise. He thrusts his whole body into the push until The Knight is forced to take a step back for balance, which is when Thancred headbutts him in the groin.
A groan of pain escapes The Knight, and he promptly falls on his ass. Thancred grimaces in the closest he will ever come to empathy for the man. It doesn’t last long: he’s on their aggressor in less than a breath, scrambling up his body until Thancred can dig a kneecap into his proffered neck. The man’s arms assault him. His sword is sheathed and trapped beneath his prone form, so his fists find Thancred’s torso and legs. The man’s fingers dig sharply into his unarmored body, grasping at him to relieve the sudden, terrible pressure at his throat. He gasps for air. Thancred tilts his weight further into the delicate windpipe.
“Alisaie!” Thancred calls over to his only ally against a wall of inept but armored bastards. “Whenever you and your new blade have a second!”
“Working on it!” she replies. The other guard has managed to draw his weapon, at last. She wields her dagger like it’s a foil, which—works, he supposes, but he should really give her a lesson in the roguish arts when this is all over. And it will be over, he realizes. The taste of freedom is hot and warm and spiced on his tongue. Adrenaline pumps in his veins and hope thuds in his heart. They’re going to make it out of this. They’re going to be okay.
The guard steps into Alisaie’s space. She’s not expecting it, because it is the kind of move that defies both experienced instinct and foundational training. A dagger is a close-range weapon. The guard has a broadsword. He should be keeping his distance. He should be slashing, not twisting his blade the opposite direction and slamming the pommel into Alisaie’s temple.
She staggers. Thancred shouts her name but it is clear she does not hear him as she stumbles, back, and her dagger flounders in an unfocused arc. It scrapes uselessly against an expensive chestplate. The guard goes one step further: he rams her into the wall. There’s a sickening duo of cracks as her back hits ungiving stone and her head snaps against it immediately after. The wind is knocked out of her. Thancred watches the breath literally be pressed from her chest. He watches her eyes shoot open, wide, and then lull closed.
She crumples to the floor.
He is not sure what happens next, exactly. He remembers the initial crunch under his knee. He remembers dragging himself to a stand, a limp body at his feet, and nearly pitching back over when weight hits his unsteady legs. He remembers the first step towards the remaining guard—remembers the final, shaking breath, the one last tug at the bonds lashing his hands behind his back—and then everything goes black.
There is a mess under him when his mind resettles. The guard is beneath him. The man’s eyes are heavensward but blank with unfocus. His sword has been knocked across the room.
There is a great, gaping gash in the Ishgardian fundamentalist’s neck. His throat has been ripped open. It still leaks red, thick and viscous, despite the fact that he is wholly consumed with death.
Thancred realizes he has blood in his mouth. He spits, but it does not soothe the bitter flavor. He takes a steadying gulp of air. He is shaking. A hundred ways he has killed a man, and he still finds new methods to accomplish the deed.
“…Thancred?”
Alisaie calls his name gently, like he might startle and bolt with animal instincts so clearly left unchecked. He looks over to her. His head is clearing, but it still takes a moment for the blur of colors before him to right themselves into a portrait of a girl he considers a keystone of something just short of a family.
She’s still slumped against the wall, but lifting herself to a sit, and he watches her hands struggle for purchase against the rough, stone brick. Something is wrong. She is hurt. He can see it in the spasm of the arm supporting her, in the weak wheeze of air she takes in, and then out, slow and calm, focused, centered, just like he told her.
The room is quiet. There is infuriatingly little manpower among the men that have captured them, and their revolt has gone unnoticed by anyone beyond the cell. Everyone else among the miserable camp must be relegated to guard duty and maintenance. They have a moment. He does not know how long it will last.
He coughs. When he speaks, his voice is hoarse. “Alisaie,” he prompts. She is still, simply staring at him. Is she frightened for him? Is she frightened of him?
He shifts his arms where they are still strapped behind his back, and she gets the picture.
It takes her a moment, but she moves. She crawls over with her stolen dagger and he turns his back to present his binds to her. She digs the blade into the rope. It takes too long, they both feel the tick of time above their heads, but soon there is a final fray of a thick cord and then a blissful release of pressure.
He shakes the rope free, and she helps. His arms are stiff and chilled with limited bloodflow. He rolls both of his shoulders. He draws one arm over his chest, pressing it as far as it will stretch, and then lets it drop. He does the same thing on the other side. He tips his head to Alisaie.
“Thanks,” he says, and then he drags his tunic up to his mouth to wipe at the mess. He’s sure it doesn’t help.
She is looking at him, but she is looking past him. She is not well. They’re both on the floor, but he leans down nearer to where she supports herself on all fours. He lifts a few fingers.
“How many?” he asks.
It takes her just a beat too long. “Three,” she says.
“Wrong.” She threatens panic, so he adds, quickly, “Kidding. I’m fucking with you, there’s three. You’re fine. You are fine, right?”
“Arsehole,” she mutters, an instant before her arms completely give out.
He catches her before her head slams into the floor. It feels good to have his arms back, his hands firm and careful as he lays her down and rolls her onto her back. She murmurs something.
“What was that?” he asks.
“…We don’t have time,” she says, clearer. “I’m not hurt. It was just a hard hit.”
“Hold still. I’m going to check for broken ribs.” Thancred moves swiftly, unfastening her jacket and tugging up the hem of her undershirt.
“I think I’d feel a cracked rib,” Alisaie snips back.
“You’re running on enough adrenaline to spur a dead horse at present.” Thancred places a hand on her flank. “Tell me if it stings.”
He presses on each individual bone composing the cage of her aetheric center, until he reaches a purpling bruise just beneath her left breast. If anything is broken, it’s here. Thancred calms the rage inside himself, and without further hesitation presses his fingers into the injury.
Alisaie hisses in pain.
“Sting or ache?” Thancred asks.
“No stinging. Took a boot to the side when I got caught.”
Thancred nods, and moves his hand to the other half of her. He works quick but diligent. Escape is important, but puncturing a lung would be a death sentence.
“How does your neck feel?”
“Fine,” Alisaie says.
“How about your head? Concussion?”
“Probably not,” she replies, as if that is good enough. As if it does not matter either way.
“Did they give you anything that might have been poisoned?”
“No, nothing.” She cringes. “I’m not about to put you through that again.”
“When did you last eat and drink?”
“Got here yesterday.”
Thancred takes a deep breath. “Did they touch you?”
She looks at him as if he is an idiot. She scoffs, “Obviously.”
“Alisaie. I’m asking if you’ve been raped.”
The fierce expression on her face falls. She pales, and Thancred is about to bathe himself in the blood of Halone’s most despicable chosen, about to toss aside every inch of his humanity in a quest for unquenchable vengeance, about to hunt down they and their ancestors and their descendants for a thousand years hence and a thousand years more, when she confesses: “No.”
She’s not looking at Thancred, and it’s up to him to determine if she is telling the truth.
There is no time. “I’m taking you at your word,” Thancred says, “but if we get back and you need to seek out Y’shtola, or Urianger—“
“Nothing happened,” she says, forceful. Her hackles are raised. Thancred can see she is feeling some brand of humiliation but cannot find a pulse on the extent. There is a hopeful edge to him that she is merely mortified at the idea and not suffering from its fallout. Which is—bad, in its own way, she should not attach a sense of indecency to it—she should know there is no shame—she should be prepared for anything—a wound like that could heal as any other—
“Thancred. I’m alright.”
He must look absolutely manic. He shuts his eyes. Pulls her shirt back down. Pats her on the thigh.
“Think you can walk?”
“Yes. Probably. I’ve caught my breath.”
“Let’s get out of here,” he says, standing. He secures a fallen sword. Its former owner certainly won’t be needing it. He offers Alisaie a hand up and she takes it, which tells him she’s in a rough state because she would usually slap it away with some claim of independence.
He hauls her to her feet, but it takes her a moment to find her footing. She tilts left. He grips her hand, and offers her a sturdier arm of support. He hums a single note of concern. She glares at him, so he drops it.
“Your mother is going to skin me alive,” Thancred says.
“This isn’t getting back to her, I assure you,” Alisaie replies.
“Your brother, then.”
Alisaie still has enough spirit in her to roll her eyes. “He’ll get over it.”
“Let’s hope he makes quicker work of me than our Ishgardian friends,” Thancred says, wry, but he feels the deadened thud of the conversation fall upon him immediately after.
Alisaie is draped over his shoulder. She’s close enough to quietly voice, “...This wasn’t your fault.”
He doesn’t have the strength to argue with her.
He asks, “I ran up against about eight of them when they brought me in. How about you?”
Alisaie says, “You’ve got me beat. I lost against five. Think I killed one, though.”
“Let’s assume there’s at least ten wandering around up there. Keep an eye open.” Thancred rounds up to be safe. Alisaie agrees. And then they’re off.
Thancred isn’t sure what the plan is were they to actually run into trouble. Their shuffle forward hardly lends itself to stealth, and though they are now armed, he estimates their present strength to be a mere fraction of their potential when they are well rested and untortured. They’ve cut off the head, but a power void only leads to a new lackey crowning themselves king.
They reach a staircase. Thancred doesn’t have a full mental map of the temple that has swallowed them, but he knows upwards is good. They climb. They stumble. They press forward. They reach an exit.
The snow outside the reclaimed temple is pristine and white beneath a midday sun. Thancred has no idea what day it is. He squints into the brightness. He shoves Alisaie to the ground.
An arrow sails through the great arch marking the temple entrance. It slices through where Thancred and Alisaie were just standing, smashing against the stone wall behind them. It cannot pierce the brick, so it clatters to the ground.
Alisaie is already crawling back into the shelter of the temple and Thancred is not far behind. Melee combat is one thing—they have blades, now—but dealing with a ranged foe is another mess entirely. They are pinned.
“What’s the plan?” Alisaie calls out.
“Give me your dagger,” Thancred replies. He holds his hand out. She scrambles to provide it to him. It’s heavy and unbalanced towards the blade. Great for stabbing, not for throwing. Thancred will manage.
He peeks out from the archway, just long enough to get a visual on their aggressor. He’s drawing closer. Good, Thancred thinks. He pops back into the temple just as another arrow hits the wall behind the entrance.
“Careful,” Alisaie hisses.
Thancred drags a thumb down the pommel of the dagger. One shot. He’s overcome worse odds in his life. What’s one more spin of the wheel?
He steps back into the sunlight and throws. His blade spins in the air. It’s a perfect, swift arc to its target. It’s a throw he’s made hundreds of times before. He aims for the head. When it hits, it embeds itself deep. The dagger digs into the ranger’s eye.
A half-breath later, an arrow hits Thancred in the chest.
Both of them freeze. Neither of them scream in pain. The ranger seems shocked in the face of his failure. Thancred feels no different. Thancred stumbles forward, into the snow. Thancred feels nothing, and then he feels a single streak of pain, and then he falls into a blanket of bitter cold.
“Thancred!” Alisaie screams.
She’s by his side in an instant. He wants to tell her to run. He wants to tell her to go make sure the archer is dead. He wants to apologize, to tell her he’s sorry, this was all his fault, never hers. He wants to tell her he’s failed her, failed her brother, failed her grandsire, failed her mother—fuck it, he’s failed Fourchenault too, the bastard.
Alisaie reaches for the arrow and Thancred makes a rough, deterrent noise.
“Keep it there,” he says. “It’ll do more damage on the way out.”
The arrowhead has embedded itself too low to be a mere shoulder wound, but not low enough to have punctured an organ. It sticks out of the tender meat beneath his collarbone. Her hands press to the wound. She attempts to spark some raw, white magic. He hisses in pain.
“I can heal,” she says.
Not well, without a tome to channel her aether.
Thancred says, gruffly, “Run.”
“I’m not leaving you,” Alisaie replies, “I just got you back.”
“Get help,” he says.
It’s the simplest and best plan they have. Thancred is losing blood. It’s a struggle to grit through the pain, much less run, much less fight. Alisaie is quick. Alisaie can make it out.
She says, “No, I won’t—“
“Alisaie.”
Alisaie’s eyes are damp. She pulls her hands back, and Thancred can see them stained red with his own blood.
“Please,” he says, softer, and he has always known she is tougher than her brother, more willing to make the hard calls, to cut her heart and her desires out of the equation, because she at last stands. She looks down upon him, and shivers with cold, and offers him a firm nod.
He returns it.
By the time the lone bowman’s reinforcements arrive, she’s long gone. Her snowprint footsteps are trampled over by the rush of roughly six men that descend on Thancred. They are too preoccupied with him to question if she might also be free.
“All yours,” Thancred tells the gathered infantry, but his words sound slurred to his own ears.
One of the zealots shoves a boot into his side despite his wholehearted surrender. All he can think of is the bruise on Alisaie’s flank. Had they done the same to her? Had they forced her hand, knocked her to the ground, and then literally kicked her when she was down?
He wonders, distantly, what they will do to him when they find their leader and lackeys dead around an altar to Halone. He wonders, more distant, if he will die of blood loss before he faces that consequence.
He will never know their reaction, he realizes, as the sole healer among their rank lifts a hand. Thancred knows better than to expect a bolster of his health. He recognizes the spell that befalls him. It functioned so damn well before, why mess with what works?
Thancred’s eyes grow heavy. He has no more strength to fight. He has cleared a path for Alisaie’s freedom. That is all that meant anything to him. That is all he was carrying onwards for, really. Nothing else matters now. He slips under the hold of the sleep spell, and allows himself to fall unconscious.
He awakes in Ishgard proper. His first instinct is to place where he is, and he successfully recognizes the medical ward from where he once watched so diligently over Alisaie. It is wood-paneled and crisp with the scent of medicine. He is alone. He attempts to sit up.
He fails. Everything hurts, but his upper chest radiates the worst of his pain. His wrists sting with rope burn. His joints are sore.
He’s hungry. When he was in captivity, his stomach reached that delirious point of starvation where it stopped complaining—which meant that someone has fed him, and subsequently reset the craving. He has vague memories of stirring in the middle of his sleep, of concerned words above his head, of sipped cups of water and spoons of broth. He remembers the white-hot meld of healing magic on his skin. He remembers gritting his teeth as someone bandaged his shoulder. He remembers discussion of a fever.
He is safe, he realizes. He has been safe for some time. He’s not sure what he is meant to do amidst the sudden safety. He has been on alert for days, and the calm is unnerving in its banality.
The door to his bay room opens. He jumps. He reaches for a dagger that is not at his waist, and the ill-fated movement makes him exhale a pained breath through his teeth.
Y’shtola freezes in the doorway, just long enough to look him over.
“Foolish,” she says. It is all she says. Thancred is not sure if she is commenting on his attempt to stab her with a blade he does not have or—everything else.
“Spare me the lecture,” he groans. His voice comes out easier than he expects. He settles back down in bed. She shuts the door behind her. “I’m alive, aren’t I?”
“Not of your own doing nor intended will,” she says.
“I fucked up.” Thancred isn’t in the mood to fight. He’ll take the heat. He asks, to a more important point, “How is she?”
Y’shtola does not drag out the answer. “Alive,” she says. “Worse for the wear, but recovering. Her brother is watching over her.”
“What is the extent of her—“
“Better than you’re doing,” Y’shtola cuts him off.
“I’m fine,” Thancred says. “I will be, at least. I have training in torture resistance. She—“
“Will make a full recovery,” Y’shtola finishes, severing his words yet again. “What were you thinking?”
Thancred’s throat is parched.
He says, roughly, "Reconnaissance.”
This does not impress Y’shtola. She says, “Well, I’m sure you’ve gathered a hefty amount of intelligence on the breakaway sect of Halonic knights that the Ishgardian military just purged from existence, in entirety.”
They’re dead, then. Alisaie called in the cavalry. Thancred is torn between the news of righteous vengeance and the skewer of concern that has been pricking at his stomach.
“They were conspiring with Ascians,” Thancred says.
Y’shtola’s jaw sets at this news. She is probably thinking what he is: that it would have been nice to take at least one for questioning.
Thancred tells her, further, “They were looking for Minfilia.”
Y’shtola’s head tips at this additional information. Her eyes are deadened in their sockets, but he can still see the mind ticking behind them. She makes a single, disapproving note from the back of her throat.
She says, “They don’t know where she is either, then.”
“‘Tis no relief,” Thancred replies, bitterly.
“It is some relief. Wherever she is, it is not with them.”
“Wherever she is, it’s not with us, either.”
“We’ll find her, Thancred.”
“Can I see Alisaie?”
Y’shtola blinks. Thancred is not sure himself where the question comes from. He was thinking of Minfilia, and then he was thinking of failing her, and then he was thinking of failing all those he considers family, considers siblings, with a great and terrible fraternal ache in his chest, and then—
“She can see you,” Y’shtola states. “She’s well enough to walk. You still have a foot in the aether stream.”
“I’ve strolled out of it before,” Thancred says, but there is no humor in it. Y’shtola avoids further mention of their former doomed venture.
She says, “I’ll fetch them both. Alphinaud has been hovering relentlessly over you in the rare moments he is not hovering relentlessly over his sister. Which is to say, whenever she has shoved him out of her room.”
Thancred cringes. “Can you give him a task? I’m not in the mood to grovel for forgiveness right now.”
Y’shtola falls still. She takes a moment to collect her words, which Thancred does not like. She should be sharp-tongued and ready to dig into him. She should not be cautious.
“…He does not hold this against you, Thancred,” she says, carefully. “Nor do I.”
“Alisaie could have died.”
“Alisaie was there because she made a reasonable choice, the same as you.” Y’shtola executes the pantomime of glaring at him. It’s slightly off-center from his face—she has a hard time locating his exact whereabouts, his personal aether as shattered as it is—but it gets the point across. “We cannot anticipate ease at every turn. To expect all plans to fall in line and all allies to remain hale is, actually, foolish.” She frowns. “You acted in service to our overall mission, as did she. We have only our own infernal ambition to make something safe of this continent as blame.”
Thancred sighs. He doesn’t know what else to say, really. If they will not shovel the blame on him he will make up for it in his own time. He will heal quickly and work even harder. He will make himself useful. He will pay off his ever-accruing debts.
“…You should have seen her,” he says, at last. “Stronger than I’ve ever witnessed. Saved my arse.”
“She said you saved her.”
He shakes his head. “I tried. It wasn’t enough.”
Y’shtola dips her chin. “Regardless, she will be happy to hear you’re awake,” she says. She turns to depart. She reaches for the door.
“‘Shtola.”
Y’shtola’s ears perk towards him at the too fond name, but she doesn’t turn around.
“We have to protect them,” Thancred vows. “We have to. This can’t happen again.”
Y’shtola’s fingers close around the doorknob. She turns it, still not looking back over her shoulder at him. The door creaks open.
“It will happen again. Harden yourself for it,” she replies, simply, and then leaves him to the silence of an empty room.