When did Humans hit walking age?

Of course, the boy'd been able to crawl as soon as I'd latched onto his soul, pushing my focus into toddling around his chunky little legs all while his head rocked back and forth on his pathetically skinny neck... Flop, flop, flop the entire way.

Lyra had yelled at me for that, because apparently I should not be 'forcing her son into dangerous situations' and 'a general hassle to raise', but that was besides the point. Gavin was seven now, which was plenty old enough for adventure, right?

His parents had gone to bed hours ago, Gavin curled up beneath several blankets, but I still paced in the alcove of his mind, a fog-filled world of bright, colourful emotions and the occasional dream. But I didn't care to watch the scene in front of me of his brother, Cynwrig, presenting him a rabbit filled with far too many teeth. The sound of imagined snarling hit me, and the fog shot a greenish-yellow in fear. Seemed it was a nightmare, so really, how caring was I to wake him from it?

"Gav... Gav! Wake up!"

The dream fell away into a new scene, one half-covered by black until the boy fully opened his eyes to show a room filled with toys equally wooden and fabric, a bow, and soon, knives. My knives.

"Whut d' you need?" he asked slowly, his Durnish accent far thicker in sleep.

A smile tugged at my lips as I eagerly pulled at our bond, asking for a more even share. "Wanna go treasure 'untin'?"

"Treasure?" He woke up more with that. "What treasure? Where?"

"Don't worry. It's only a little bit far from 'ere, so whaddya say? Up for a little adventure?"

Human legs were tiny. That was another thing I discovered as we crept out of the window and into the night, or nights, I suppose. It took several to leave the town of Lorne, and several more to leave Durne to head towards the edge of Ulnter. Demon territory.

Though this was a time of peace, no Cearte to guard the borders with their long, white cloaks and shining spears, it was easy to tell from the sharp cutoff of Durne's lush forests to Ulnter's jetties carving into a pitch black sea. Ulnter did have forests of its own, Uldyŋ knew I'd grown up in one myself, but more important than that was the place I died, and that, that I knew couldn't be too far off now.

"Are we almost there?" Gavin whined, his voice seeping out of my throat. "I'm so tired."

"Yes, yes. Really, if you didn't want to walk, you could just give me full control and let me travel in my Demon form. Can't 'ave sore legs without legs," I pointed out, continuing to keep our focus on the grey rocky edges of the land. Here. It was here.

"Cynwrig says giving your Demon full control is bad, and to never ever do it."

"Yes, well 'e had the gall to share a body with Tachir', who I shouldn't 'ave to note, is far less amazing than myself." Slowly, I angled our body down until my boots were pushing against the cliffside, fingers digging into rough, cold notches in the stone. Black waves crashed equally into my ears and the ground below, sending thick, acidic drops along my back.

Taking a deep breath, I lowered us further, biting the forked tip of our tongue to concentrate. "Think about it, Gav. You let me become the giant snake we deserve to be, and imagine what we could do! The towns we could pillage, the castles we could knock down with a simple flick o' our tail..." Excitement ran through me, along with that familiar itch. The itch that always came with troublemaking. "Imagine all the screaming Gavin, like 'ahh' and 'noo, please....'! It could all be ours!"

There was silence for a while as I made the final step down, a crunch sounding as my boots sunk into grey sand before I heard him again. "I think I'll listen to Cynwrig."

"Boring..." I trailed as I started digging in the sand, flinging handful after handful behind us. It was incredibly soft, made smooth by the silkyness of the ocean and coated in midnight-coloured leaves. Once, the ocean had been blue, filled with The Lachulan's creatures, swimming about with webbed feet and fingers, breathing the sea as though it were air as they borrowed their god's Will to command water itself. But they were all dead now, as dead as the body I was searching for, so far beneath the sand, so, so many years old.

"Ew. What is that?" Disgust rippled through me. It wasn't my own though as I finally pulled back, admiring the sleek, white bones arranged before us. They were broken, mostly, as if the person they once belonged to had flung himself off the jetty and dashed himself on the rocks for fun.

Oh, who was I kidding? The man had definitely flung himself off and dashed his head on the rocks for fun, and they'd prayed it hurt.

And it had.

I think.

"Bones, but more importantly, look! Treasure!" I pointed excitedly at two shining blades of silver, hanging loosely from a belt around nonexistent hips. They were ranger's knives, curved at one end with an extra spike for a nasty bite, and curved at the other with a smooth handle carved from dragon bone, all dyed a dull, blueish-green. Truly a beaut, and the gods knew I loved my knives like a man loved a woman: well taken care of and never left behind.

"W-why are they on a dead body?" My hands started trembling, no matter how much I tried to wrangle them still. Gavin was shaking. Gavin was scared.

It shouldn't have mattered to me. All I was doing was picking up where I left off. Gavin was nothing. Just a young Human boy to shave a few years off the grand emptiness of eternity until I got bored again.

So why was the fear cascading through me making me wince? Why was I closing my eyes as I plucked the knives up and slid them onto our belt? I'd seen plenty of bodies, and chances were the kid would too, as much as he didn't support my wonderful dreams of one day becoming a terror to mankind. It was a foolish feeling, this regret about bringing him here. That'd been the entire point of it all. I needed the knives back. I needed to hold them again. They were more important than anything, and I knew that.

I just... couldn't remember why.

"That's simply where the treasure was. 'E's not gonna hurt you. 'E's... gone. Moved onto Astren a long, long time ago, and maybe 'e came back, but the point is these are just bones."

I threw a little kick in their direction, knocking the two snapped pieces of a long-lost arm aside. "The birds picked at the meat, the land's already used up as much as she could, and rest is for the sea. So don't mourn 'is death." My gaze rose up from the corpse, moving to the pitch-black waves. They went on for miles until they faded behind the cloudy, grey wall of Dust that circled the edge of the world. "It was spent giving back after all 'e took."

"How do you know the body was a he? Or that he would have knives?" Gavin asked as I turned away from the water to face the cliffside once more, preparing for the climb.

I thought about my next words carefully. Or perhaps it was my heart that did the thinking, because there was no true reason to lie. The boy's feelings didn't— weren't supposed to matter.

"Well in Astren, there was a map we Demons would share, legends of a great and mysterious pirate dyin' right 'ere on these very shores. It is said that whoever got 'is treasure..." Now at the top of the jetty, I paused, pulling one of the two knives out to twist it in my fingers. The blade had runes carved into it, spelling out my name in Ulnte, not that Gavin could read it. Someone had put them on there, engraving it not even in the normal Demon language, but in the alphabet used only to denote that the message came from a friend. "Well, they'd be able to remember anything."

A flicker of confusion hit me. "I don't remember anything, and we're holding them."

A grin twitched across my face. "Well, then you must be the smartest lad there is, for there's nothing you've ever forgotten!"

With that, I eased it back into the belt, turning tail to face the long, long way back to Durne. I didn't know when South came to mean home, as I'd never been one to stay in any set place, but I couldn't deny that I was looking forward to the return trip.

☽◯☾

The door closed behind me with a slow creak. Perfect! I thought to myself as I went towards Gavin's room. Everyone was asleep, including the boy, tuckered out from the long journey. Not that I wasn't, but it was clear I had far more stamina at this point.

Still, I had the muscles of a child, and they burned and ached from travel, so with that, I headed off to bed.

"Where were you?"

I froze at the demanding voice, my tongue instantly flicking out to get a sense of my surroundings. There was the taste of Human in the air, followed by linen and pressed lavender.

Lyra. Gavin's mother.

Stiffly, I turned to the woman, finding her sitting in a wooden chair. Her arms were crossed, her normally loosely tied, blond hair completely dishevelled, and scarred face furious as she glared at me with pale, green eyes.

I shot her back an uneasy smile, my tail twitching between my legs. "... Treasure 'untin'?"

Her gaze darted down to the knives at my belt, then back up at my face. Instantly, she was up, striding across the room to tug them away from me, holding them at a height far from where my tiny body could reach. "You dragged Gavin to— to who knows where, just so you could get..." She trailed off, scanning the runes along the blade. "Why do you own knives?"

My eyes shot open. "You can read Ulnte?"

"I used to be a soldier, Eldrazi. I fought against Demon soldiers. When Tachir' came to destroy our town, I was on the frontlines. Yes, I have studied your people's culture. So again—" Her voice grew stern once more. "Tell me why you left for six days to get your knives from what? Your old body? Why?"

I bit at my lip, a fang poking out. "I needed them."

Lyra took a deep breath, but it wasn't a sigh. More like the breath one takes before smacking sense into a fellow, except I had no desire for that. The sense, that is. "And what did you need them for?"

I tapped a bare, muddy foot on the floor, having discarded my shoes long ago with the amount of sores they'd been giving me. "...Well! What a lovely chat we 'ad. Anyways, good night."

Then I went back to walking towards my room. I'd take my knives back from her whenever she least expected it. I could wait. I was more than patient.

"Oh no you don't." My head was snapped back as Lyra reached out and gave my ponytail a quick yank. She held it there, refusing to let me go. "You don't get to not answer why you need weapons when as far as I was told, the reason you died in the first place was because of Tachir'." Another yank, this time to turn me around and face her. "But! Like it or not, all of you are my children, and that means no murder, of– or from– any of you."

I met her gaze before closing my eyes in the sweetest smile I could. "But Lyra, surely a good parent would allow their child a little vengeance as an occasional treat? No?"

"No."

My face immediately dropped into a look that could best be described as displeased, and worst be described as the expression made when one is wrongly denied the murder they so kindly asked for. And it wasn't as though I'd actually gotten them for Tachir', although I couldn't deny that having the Wolf Demon out of my lives would be a blessing. No. I had my own reasons for wanting them. I was sure of it. But, if my own memory wasn't privy to that knowledge, then Lyra certainly wasn't. So an elaborate tale of revenge it was then. Perhaps it would help to spread my name in fear.

And yet, she didn't look even the slightest bit worried as she sidestepped my lunge for the knives with ease. "On top of that." She raised them higher, placing them in a cabinet far above either of us, making me wish I did still have my old body. At least I had been tall enough to not be brought down by a mere piece of fastened wood, only further secured by the lock and key that Lyra was attaching. "These are mine now, until you learn to behave."

I raised my brows at her. "So never."

"No," she repeated, her green eyes glaring at me once more. They reminded me so much of Gavin's own, at least, Gavin's when I was forced all the way back in his mind, without a hint of my yellow. But instead of being wide and full of curiosity like his, Lyra's only held two emotions when I was concerned: the tired, exasperated joy of raising a handful, or the wrath of a Human mother who didn't need magik to make threats. It didn't take me long to figure out which was her current mood as she switched to grabbing at the scaled points of one of my ears– not hard, but enough to make me wince and repeatedly mutter 'ow' as she led me to my room.

"I think it is time I made something very clear to you. You want to live in my son's body in turn for keeping him alive, and that is fine, but this is your second chance at life." She threw open the door to my room, switching from holding my ear to my sides as she sat me down on the bed, eventually resting her hands on her own hips. "If you get him killed, then... I don't know! Maybe you just come back like nothing happened, and Gavin I know will eventually reincarnate, but for us?"

It was then that I noticed a tear trailing down her face, a silent sob shaking her chest. "That is it. We lost our time with him in this life, and if we ever meet again, it won't be remembered, or the same. If you both didn't come back from whatever ridiculous, reckless mission you left for on a whim... That would be it."

The words came as a whisper. "And that includes you. What if you never met him again, or you did, and you couldn't remember? What then?"

I always had a response on the tips of my tongue, always, for as long as I could remember. But that was the problem, wasn't it? Remembering. Not that I cared for it much. After all, I'm sure I hadn't forgotten anything all that important. So what of the knives? Perhaps they were simply from a friend that I didn't have anymore. I shouldn't have to mourn someone I didn't know. If anything, I was better off without the knowledge dragging me down for all eternity.

And yet, there was that nagging feeling of regret again, until all I could focus on was the gentle ebb and flow of Gavin's unconscious emotions hitting me in waves. I wasn't watching his dream, far too awake and about for that, but part of me knew that he was picturing me in it, us running as one to carry out many more adventures. Together.

"Please Eldrazi. I'm begging you to start taking better care of yourself. For him, because he only gets us as family once. All of us."

My gaze dropped to the floor, to my feet swinging off the side of the bed. They weren't caked in just mud, now that I thought about it. The mud simply covered the blood, the cuts, the blisters, the sores. Every part of my body hurt from our journey.

No. Every part of our body hurt, from my journey.

A deep sigh left my lungs as I met her eyes again, no smile this time.

"All right."

☽◯☾

"Well, someone has a drooling problem."

Gavin's eyes fluttered open to find Talus standing in front of him, looking very nearly Human with the eyepatch flipped over his single, black eye. His blue one, however, was staring at Gavin's face far closer than he was comfortable with, and his face shot bright red. Instantly, he was flinging himself to sitting, wiping off saliva tinged with purple venom before it could dribble down his chin. He was already well aware of the issue, but no matter how excessive it was, what was he supposed to do about it? Visit a wandering apothecary? Have them stare with their long, bird-like masks as they let his blood? That was impossible with how recognizable he was, which meant continuing to suffer whatever ailment he held, embarrassing as it was.

"Oh. Oh that?"

Gavin wasn't ready for Eldrazi to start snickering, their shoulders leaping forward to cackle, but at what, he wasn't sure yet. "That's not drool. That was me seeing 'ow many times I could spit while 'e slept in. The answer is two 'undred and twenty six by the way."

"What?" Gavin whipped their head slightly towards their shoulder, but of course, there was no one there to yell at. Only himself, or half of himself, anyway. "T-that's you? That was you this entire time?"

"'Course it was, Gav," Eldrazi explained all while Talus started laughing behind a claw. "What, didja think there was something else wrong with you? Come now, the gods know if I found yet another medical mishap whilst floatin' around your barely cobbled together insides, I'd've made a note of it by now. Anyways-" Eldrazi paused as he went to move Gavin's feet over the edge of the bed, and he let it happen. "We have a plan to make and an adventure to 'ave!"

"Yes!" Talus nodded eagerly, forming a grin to match the one Eldrazi had plastered on their face. "Which is precisely what I was waking you up for. Now come on!" His hands grabbed at Gavin's own, tugging him up out of the bed, and Gavin watched his eyes close in a pointed, yet genuine smile. That wasn't the only thing different though as Gavin came to standing, glancing around the room.

All of the furniture, save for the bed he'd slept on, was flipped. The other bed lay upside down, the shelf had been tipped on its side, even the carved, wooden figures were balanced on the tip of a tail or on their ears. It was a mess, and Gavin's brows furrowed as he tried to comprehend it all. "What happened here?"

"Hm?" Talus perked up a bit, glancing around. "Oh." He laughed sheepishly, beginning to head downstairs. "Remember what I told you last night? About that uh... itch?"

Gavin hummed, following behind. "Honestly, I thought Eldrazi did something else while I was sleeping. It wouldn't be the first time."

"Nor the last! Although personally, I think the touch o' chaos really spruces the place up a bit, Talus, so great job on that," Eldrazi cut in, clearly pleased. "Couldn't have done it better myself."

The kitchen was right around the corner now, the others coming into view, all hovering over a large map Róhain had spread across the table. Heading closer, Talus giggled, holding a claw out to lead him forward. "And once again, I feel like I should ask if you have any Shar Drak'na blood in you. Really, with the way you are, I feel like you're much closer to me than you are to Selatan, Demon or no."

"That's simply because Selatan is bor—"

Gavin cut him off as Selatan glanced up, a muted anger sitting in his amber eyes. He really, really did not want to tick the Tiger Demon off. Not when Aoife clearly cared about him as much as she did, and he for her, if his freshly shaven face was any indication. What Gavin needed was to stay on his good side until he and Aoife left to claim the Relics on their own, and then that would be that.

"Oh good. You're both here, and just in time." Róhain's warm, brown eyes glanced up at him through his glasses. "We were just about to delegate who is going on which mission."

"Who on which mission?" Gavin repeated, heading over closer to the map. The three territories of the races stared back at him, all sitting on a pitch black sea. Each empire had a circle drawn on it in just as dark ink, marking a temple in the desert of Tercia, the castle in the rocky terrain of Ulnter, and the closest one: Lorne, of Durne. That was it. That was where the Relics were held. He could almost feel the power in his hands, for it would be his hands, and his hands alone. "I thought Aoife and I would be carrying it out."

"Excuse me?" Róhain blurted, though not from offence. More from shock. "Absolutely not. You all are lucky I'm allowing this to happen in the first place. The mission will be carried out by at least three people at once, preferably four."

Gavin tried hard not to bite his lip. He couldn't show any signs of worry. "Eldrazi makes three?"

"Yes! See Róhain?" Aoife threw a hand out towards him, nodding fervently. "We got this, so just give us the map and we'll be back before you know it."

"Exactly." Gavin nodded with her. So he wasn't the only one then. Perfect.

At least, perfect until Lynette shot him a hard glare, the feathers of her ears flicking down, and she didn't need words for her meaning to come through. The look meant to stay quiet, before they were caught.

A sigh caused Gavin to turn his focus to Róhain, who was pinching at the bridge of his nose. "Look. It is as I told Aoife. As much as you two want to do this on your own, as noble as it is, it's simply too dangerous."

Then he stopped scrubbing at his face, head tilting down until his focus was boring into Gavin, intense enough to make him flinch. "I used to be a Cearte, and I know what they will do if you get caught touching the very core of their power. So you both will be following the plan I am about to disclose to you, or we will not be carrying out the mission at all. Is that clear?"

Gavin gulped at his words, feeling each harsh movement down his throat until the worry had nowhere to sit but his stomach, tying into knot after knot. "Crystal."

Which was accurate, because much like said crystal, this was going to be hard. Much, much harder than he'd planned before.