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They weren’t allowed to stay together for long, and the memory of all three of them standing in a line behind the auction block would haunt Fjord for however long he had left to live.
The last time he’d seen them both came back to him again and again in his dreams. Yasha, standing tall and strong and proud on the block, even as she’d been gagged and chained hand and foot. The very air around her had seemed to crackle with dark energy and the smell of ozone. No one had been scared. “Sold, for eight thousand!” the auctioneer had declared after a fierce bidding war.
Jester, screaming his name and struggling to reach him even as three guards held her back. “No no no, please, please! I need to go with him! You don’t have to pay anything for me, it’s okay! Just let me stay with him, please! Fjord!” She’d been last in line of the three of them. She’d seen Fjord go for five thousand gold. He would never know how much the rich, soulless fucks decided she was worth.
Fjord remembered in that moment how he’d been willing to die in the attempt of getting back to her, even for a moment. His new owners had not been so kind. They’d just dragged him so hard by the iron collar around his neck that he’d fallen, and then they’d just kept dragging him along the dirt, and the last thing he’d heard before the doors of the barn closed behind them had been Jester screaming his name.
He wasn’t quite sure anymore how long ago that had been. Days had already been blurring together when they’d had one another to lean on. It had been long enough that he’d started to give up hope even before they’d all been chained up in a line before the block, even before their worth had been measured in gold pieces and they’d all been ripped apart. Now there were days when Fjord wasn’t even sure why he kept going. He wasn’t even entirely sure where he was, except that it was somewhere closer to the border than he’d ever intended to come. The battle lines had to be prepared before the main force of the army arrived, after all. Ditches had to be dug, trees had to be felled, stakes carved and cargo hauled and boulders broken up.All of that fell to him and countless other slaves, overseen by a small force of soldiers.Occasionally he had to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. So many people looked at him and saw someone strong, someone tough. It was the green skin that did it – the tusks had only reinforced the notion when he’d had them, and that was part of why he’d been glad to have them gone. People looked at him and saw a half-orc and that meant they saw something that was basically an orc and orcs were supposed to be strong. So he’d been sold into a backbreaking existence of hard labor and somehow no one had bothered to check with him if that was something he was remotely capable of.He wasn’t. He was slow, clumsy, weak, and the punishments he endured for being unable to meet the overseers’ brutish expectations did nothing to change that.Occasionally, the reality of how far he’d come, how far he’d fallen, hit him like a kick to the head. I am a member of the Mighty Nein. That thought sometimes rang in his mind, clear as a bell, as he dug and chopped and bled and starved. I am not supposed to be here. None of them were, of course, no one deserved to live and be treated like this.But he’d killed terrifying monsters, he’d saved entire towns. He’d explored long forgotten tombs, bet his life against one of the most feared crime bosses in the Empire and come out on top, won glory before the sight of all the Empire’s most notable dignitaries, and reunited families ripped apart by unjust laws.Somehow, that last one was the achievement that did the most to keep him warm at night, even as the nights grew so very cold.Had it all only happened over the course of a month or two? It felt like a lifetime. But of course, this was the life he’d always lived before, the life he’d probably always been destined to return to. He’d grown up forgotten, overlooked when he wasn’t outright shoved aside. He’d grown up with people making assumptions about him based on parents he never knew. He’d grown up trying to survive even when he wasn’t quite sure if doing so was worth the effort.Then Vendren had saved him, and things had been better for a while. But ultimately, that had come to an end.Then Beau and Jester had saved him, then he’d met the others, then they’d been the Mighty Nein. But it still probably shouldn’t have surprised him when that ultimately came to an end, too.For a little while, he’d at least still had Yasha and Jester, even if he would have given every ounce of blood and every scrap of his soul if he could have made them safe instead. They’d all been shown so little care throughout this hell. That had made it all the more important when they could care for each other.But all of that had come to an end, too, and now he was back where he’d begun – alone in the dirt.*
*
*He did try to escape. He didn’t give up right away, of course, he tried three different times to escape. Fjord had never been the greatest at making plans, just following them. But he still had his magic and he still had his falchion whenever he wanted to summon it to hand. They couldn’t keep his hands chained forever, not if they wanted any work out of him.But they could keep his feet chained, and disguising himself as one of the overseers could hide that but not set him free. That was how the first attempt failed – someone noticed him walking wrong and heard the chains clinking. He tried to blink out at that point, once the shouting started, but the unpredictability of the spell ultimately left him in exactly the right spot to get knocked out during one of the six second spans where he was visible on the material plane.Fighting off a lot of people also got a lot harder when you didn’t have a lot of people to back you up. On the second attempt, Fjord took his chance when he saw the overseers and a few of the soldiers having a meal break to open a portal to a hellscape beneath their feet, blinding them and filling the space around them with thrashing, milky tentacles. It almost worked, almost, it caused an almighty ruckus between the guards and the other slaves and he tried to make a break for it.Then one of the perimeter scouts looked over at the wrong minute and Fjord held onto the spell when the first crossbow bolt took him in the back but the second shattered his concentration like so much spun glass. That still didn’t stop him trying to run but, especially with the shackles, it made him easy to catch up to before he’d gotten very far at all into the woods.It was probably a minor mercy that the three who caught him were different soldiers from the first escape attempt and so didn’t immediately assume the spell had come from him. After all, who’d ever heard of an orc that could do magic? They all probably would have killed him if anyone truly realized Fjord did have magic that powerful at his disposal. By the time the tumult died enough for anyone else to wonder, however, the soldiers who’d caught him already had him strapped to the whipping post and then they’d all been too focused on taking revenge for the dead guard to wonder who exactly had killed him.The first time he’d been punished for trying to escape proved to be unspeakably mild compared to the second. Punishing slaves for trying to escape was routine. He’d been there long enough to see that. The death of a guard was not, and they made an example of Fjord even if they didn’t know he was the culprit, to let everyone else know that this was not to happen again.They whipped him bloody, they beat him until multiple ribs broke. Someone used a knife to cut where the whip couldn’t reach. Someone talked about cutting off an ear. He didn’t know why they ultimately decided not to. Maybe they were satisfied by ripping three teeth out of his head instead. Only two of them were his half-grown tusks.“These’ll make a fine necklace.” And those were the last words Fjord heard before he passed out for a few blessed moments.At least that was the last of their ideas and they left him there for the night, with a few more kicks to his bleeding back and bruised chest as parting gifts. They left him there for the other slaves to watch and wonder when they’d be next and maybe be grateful it was him and not them.What happened to Fjord next wasn’t sleep, because it couldn’t have been. All he remembered later was that he blinked, he closed his eyes and when he opened them again, all was darkness and a sense of pressure and the smell of salt. But he knew even then that he wasn’t truly present in that eldritch, familiar space – there was no true sense of water or cold. He was being kept back, kept apart. Whether it was by exhaustion, pain, or punishment was impossible to say.This couldn’t have been how his patron wished for him to end.Even so, he remembered the great eye opening, staring at him, catching him in its light and regarding him with a will and wisdom older than stars. It did not speak. It was waiting. For what, he didn’t know. He never had. Fjord remembered going for broke anyway. “Please,” he whispered. His chest felt aching and painfully dry when no water rushed to fill his lungs. “Help me.”He didn’t know what he was hoping for, besides anything but this. He was running out of strength and he was running out of time and there was so much more he wanted to learn.He did not want to die here.CONSUME, said the creature at last, a low, familiar rumble that echoed in Fjord’s bones.His arm moved without conscious thought, with a will that wasn’t his. He felt his fingers flex and the falchion appeared, twisted and barbed, its hilt crusted with barnacles and its crossguard occupied by one staring yellow eye, a miniature of the one that dominated his world.
CONSUME.
As he had so many times before, Fjord lifted the sword towards his open mouth.Then he froze, as the full and total understanding of what he was poised to do hit him like a bolt from the blue. He didn’t know how he knew it, but he knew that if he shoved the blade down his throat again, he would not get any stronger. He would find escape, he would find release and rest…but only of the most final kind.It was an out, it was a way to end the pain. It was something, and he knew it was the most direct aid his patron was capable of offering him. But even if it had gotten so hard to see the point of carrying on, Fjord knew that he wasn’t quite ready to bow out yet. I am a member of the Mighty Nein. He couldn’t give up. He lowered the sword, dismissed it with a wave of his hand, and looked the ancient thing right in its enormous yellow eye.“Not today,” he said, and then he woke up to blood and agony and the echoes of something’s approval at the back of his mind.*
*
*The third escape attempt was on shaky ground the start. Three slaves had noticed him opening up the portal under the guards, and they came to Fjord as soon as he was well enough to be put back to work again, which admittedly wasn’t saying much. They came to ask his help and to explain the plan they were ready to put into motion.Fjord had never been the greatest at making plans, only following them, but even he could see all the ways this one could go wrong. But he could also see that there weren’t many other options. The three were adamant about that. This is better than nothing, they said, this is better than living like this, and Fjord had been forced to admit, even if only to himself, that they had a point.He knew they’d go ahead with this idiocy with or without him, he knew that with him he might be able to make it so at least one of them got away, and somehow just that possibility made all the risks seem worth it.In the end, even after things inevitably went wrong – it really hadn’t been the most well thought-out plan – Fjord was able to hold off the guards until the sound of three pairs of retreating footsteps faded into silence behind him, deep into the woods.He made it another two minutes before someone got behind him and knocked him out. He didn’t stay down for long, of course, but it was long enough that when consciousness returned less than a moment later, he was already being swarmed by guards, beaten and chained anew. They shoved a gag into his mouth for good measure – after a fight like that, there could be no pretending that Fjord didn’t have magic far beyond their capabilities, but unfortunately they knew how to handle that. He was surprised they didn’t handle it by killing him on the spot.They dragged him back into camp, instead, tied him once again to the whipping post. But out of the corner of his eye, Fjord could see a great deal of activity as the guards hastened to construct…something. It took them a couple of hours. When they were done, when they started to drag him towards it, Fjord had just enough time to register a big metal box before a door was opened and he was shoved inside it, into a space not quite big enough to sit up in, and that door was closed behind him. The sound of a lock clicking into place seemed to echo very, very loudly.He struggled to take in details as quickly as he could through a mind made sluggish with exhaustion and pain. There wasn’t much to see – four metal walls, already chilled from the cold winter day. A small slot right in front of his face that was enough to let him see out just a little, enough to let him see the guards milling around, talking, laughing, their voices distorted strangely as they echoed through the small space.Someone felt him staring at them. Someone put his face right up to the slot, staring in at Fjord with eyes alight with some dementedly gleeful anticipation, of the sort that Fjord had last seen on the face of a priest who feasted on gnollish flesh. He flinched back reflexively at the look in those eyes, then mustered up the best scowl he could manage with a bruised face and a gagged mouth.
“Cold in there? Don’t you worry – we’ll warm you up soon enough.”
Some of them did something at the base of the box, and then they left him there. After that, he couldn’t see much to do but slump as comfortably as he could in a corner of the box, watch the world go by, and try to breathe without hyperventilating.Molly would hate it in here. The thought came to him unbidden, and it took Fjord a moment to realize why he was so surprised. Then it hit him that he hadn’t thought of Molly at all in days, maybe weeks – not him or Beau or Nott or Caleb. His chest hurt for reasons above and beyond his cracked ribs. How had he just let them slip out of mind like that? They were his friends, but it was like they’d ceased to exist for him for a little while. It wasn’t like he doubted that the four of them would be trying to find him and Jester and Yasha. They’d finally had the chance to realize that not only were they stronger as a whole, but they were better that way as well. The others would be trying to save them.But…should they? Maybe they would find Yasha, maybe they would find Jester, but finding Fjord would have required making their way to the very edge of a warzone if they were able to pick up his trail at all. No, this was one nut even the Mighty Nein wouldn’t be able to crack. They’d die if they came this far for him, and he didn’t want that, and he hoped they realized that.He was on his own.His thoughts were sluggish, and so it took Fjord a treacherous few seconds to realize why his position was starting to get even less comfortable, why sweat was starting to bead on his forehead, mixing with the blood on his face.The box was getting hotter.Panic surged up in his throat like bile as other details assaulted him with brutal intensity, like a dam being broken. The box was getting hotter, starting from the bottom and creeping its way up the walls like a lethal tide. When he stared wildly out of the gap in the front wall, he could see a few stray tendrils of smoke curling upwards from the unseen ground. If he strained his ears to the limit over the sounds of his own panicked breathing, he could hear the telltale sounds of flames licking at kindling.
They’d lit a fire under the box.
Now he couldn’t breathe without whimpering in panic, his heart thudding painfully fast in his chest. They’d lit a fire under the box. Not a big one, or else he probably would have been dead already, but big enough if they kept it burning. Big enough to slowly kill him from exposure if he didn’t roast alive first. It would be a slow and painful death either way, one that they’d surely gather the other slaves to watch after a while.He was going to die alone and in pain and screaming and no one would care and this was not supposed to happen to him, he did not want to die.Fjord spent a precious few moments reviewing what magic he had available to him, and finding that the answer was “none”. Anything he could have cast without his voice needed some kind of material component that had been stripped from him. His hands were trapped behind him so that he couldn’t even call up his falchion. There wasn’t any room for it in here, of course, the box wasn’t big enough, but maybe it would have stabbed through his throat and ended this if he could have at least tried.Someone passed by to throw another few sticks on the fire, and kicked the box before they left. Fjord flinched at the echoing noise, snarled in a way that probably sounded terrifying and bestial to them but mostly sounded terrified to him.Time passed, second by agonizing second. It got harder to think, as it grew slowly but surely warmer inside the box, as the walls grew hot enough to burn his flesh if he rested anywhere for too long. The heat made it harder to think, but in some ways that wasn’t so bad. At least that meant when it finally, truly sank in for Fjord that he was going to die, the horror was somewhat dulled.He’d done good things in his life – or at least, he’d done good things over the past couple of months. He’d killed terrifying monsters, he’d saved entire towns. He’d explored long forgotten tombs, bet his life against one of the most feared crime bosses in the Empire and come out on top, won glory before the sight of all the Empire’s most notable dignitaries, and reunited families ripped apart by unjust laws.He’d even helped some other poor bastards find the freedom he hadn’t been able to regain. That had to count for something.It was getting harder to think, harder to be aware of anything but heat
pressing in on all sides and smothering him slowly. But somewhere, just at the very edges of his frayed and fading consciousness, Fjord became aware that there was a growing commotion audible outside. He didn’t know why. It probably didn’t matter.LEARN.The voice boomed through his mind, jolting Fjord forcibly back to life if only for a few moments. He sat up straight enough to knock his head against the top of the box, making him cry out in pain before reflex took over and he dragged in a few lungfuls of broiling hot air, trying to stay present, trying to think. There was a fight going on outside. The guards were shouting in alarm. He could hear metal on metal, weapons clashing, the sounds of arrows being loosed from bowstrings. He could also hear the familiar, piercingly clear tones of magic energy being formed into spells, followed by the sounds of earth being rent asunder or fire roaring.He could hear voices shouting – the guards, but others, too. “Watch the hostages!” and “Get back here, motherfucker!” and “Caleb, look out!” and “Fjord!”.Jester.Jester, screaming his name like she had the last time they’d seen each other after he’d been sold for five thousand gold pieces.
“Fjord, please, where are you?!”
This had to be a dream but this wasn’t a dream, everything hurt too much for it to be a dream. Jester was here, everyone was here. They’d come to the edge of a warzone and that was impossible and dangerous and yet he felt tears gathering in his eyes when he realized it was true and real and happening anyway.Then he realized with a lurching thrill of horror that they might not be able to find him, he might be too far away and even if he wasn’t, they might not think to check the burning metal coffin. He had to get their attention. He had to do something.Fjord drew in one breath, then another and another and even though his lungs burned with each one, his vision cleared a little and he felt a bit more life returning to him.It was enough for him to throw himself hard against the front wall of the box. He couldn’t get much force behind it, but the small space meant that the sound still boomed and echoed in his ears. He hoped that meant it would be loud enough for whoever was outside. Just in case, he slammed himself into the wall again and again and this time as the echoes faded, it sank in for him that Jester was no longer calling for him.He heard the sound of running footsteps instead, coming closer very quickly. A shadow fell across the slot in the front of the box and then Fjord heard a wrenching scream of metal protesting under impossible force and then the door of the box was ripped off and tossed aside and there was Jester, alive and here and staring in at him in horror.“Oh my god,” she gasped, and then she was reaching in and pulling him out, pulling him free and laying him carefully on the blessedly cool ground in the chill winter. “Caleb! Caleb, Nott, somebody!” The first thing she did was tear out his gag. Then she tried to wrench the locks on his chains open herself. He could hear her straining with effort, and then all of a sudden two loud knocks sounded
nearby and the chains went slack, the locks popping open. Jester wasted no further time getting them off of him, and Fjord discovered that he had recovered just enough strength to lift his head.There stood Caleb, one hand still half-raised from the unlocking spells he’d just cast, staring down at Fjord, looking pale and shaken and scared at the sight of him. But when he saw Fjord looking back, the wizard mustered up a wan, faint smile. “Hello, Fjord,” he said, raising his voice just a little over the sounds of battle still raging. “Sorry we were all a little late.”“S’all right,” Fjord croaked, and mustered up a smile of his own. Without the chains, he felt like he was floating just a little. “Better late than never.”The sound of Caleb’s shaky laughter was just barely audible over the tumult. Then he looked over Fjord’s head to Jester. “He needs water.” And then he turned and raced back into the fray.Jester laid the back of her hand against Fjord’s forehead and
made a desperately upset sort of sound. “You really do.” He wanted to say something reassuring as she helped him sit up but Fjord had a suspicion any attempt would just make things worse.Then she held a waterskin in front of his face and thinking of anything else became briefly, blessedly impossible. He fumbled to grab it but she still had to help him, covering his hands with hers’ to hold him steady as he drank, even taking advantage of her greater strength to tilt the waterskin away whenever she deemed he was going too fast. “It’s okay, Fjord, it’s okay,” she whispered when he made a reflexive sound of protest. “There’s as much as you want, just please, please don’t get sick.”Maybe he should fought her on that – he was so thirsty, he felt scorched inside and out, it felt like no amount of water would ever be enough. Somehow Fjord instead found himself breaking down in tears instead. Because all of it, her warm and familiar presence at his back, her hands over his, all of that served to banish any doubts remaining in his head.She was here, she was safe, he was free.
“It’s okay,” Jester murmured soothingly, her voice shaking just a little as she squeezed his hands. “It’s okay, Fjord. I cried a lot when everybody came for me, too.”Fjord scrubbed at his eyes with the heel of his hand as she took the newly emptied skin away. “It’s just…it’s all kind of a lot, y’know?” He laughed weakly, then wondered if he was hallucinating when Jester held a newly full waterskin out for him to drink some more.“Yeah.” She sounded like she was smiling, at least. “All kind of a lot. But a good lot. Right?”“Yeah. Missed you guys.” Now that he no longer felt about to die on the spot, she trusted him to hold the water himself, and he was able to look over to her and smile - only to feel his heart seize with an icy terror when he saw a guard over her shoulder leveling a crossbow at her back.“Look out!” Fjord cried, trying to shove her behind him, and the guard jerked and he thought for sure he was dead until he saw the man’s head fall off his shoulders and go bouncing along the ground.When the corpse fell into a heap, Yasha was revealed standing behind it, blood dripping from her sword. She stepped on the body to come over to them. “Is he all right?” she asked Jester and then, looking to Fjord: “Are you all right?”Fjord opened and closed his mouth a few times before he finally managed to answer: “Under the circumstances.”“Good.” She smiled, brief and bright as lightning. “I’m very glad you’re alive.” The open warmth in her voice meant that Fjord almost lost his fragile composure all over again.She knelt down beside them, picked up the waterskin where Fjord had dropped it in his panic, frowned at how much had spilled, then passed it back to him. Her hand lingered over his for just a moment, squeezing lightly, and Fjord felt his heart stutter a little in his chest because he knew now that from Yasha this was as good as a kiss.Looking back to Jester, she asked: “Do you want me to watch him so you can go kill some of them?”Jester looked as if she was very much considering it for a moment, but then she glanced again at Fjord and finally shook her head. “I killed some earlier. I’m fine. Go have fun.”“All right. Just yell really loudly if you change your mind, I suppose.” Yasha turned back to face the fighting and hurried to join the others, roaring in rage.“That is nice of her to offer, but I am not going to,” said Jester, primly. She took the skin back from him, then murmured a few words as she stared at it intently. As Fjord watched, it filled back up again, and she passed it over to him. “Here. You drink this, I am going to heal you now.”“Th-thanks.”She smiled at him, bright and brittle as glass. “I don’t really know where to start but I am gonna do my best. Still try not to drink too fast, okay?”He smiled back, though it probably looked even less believable on him. “I’ll try.”The sight of the battle raging around them proved more than enough to distract from his thirst, though not quite enough to dull the pain of healing. Jester was as gentle as she could be, but there was barely an inch of him that wasn’t bruised or burned or cut, nowhere safe for her to touch that didn’t make him tense on instinct or wince in pain. She murmured soft apologies every time. He felt guilty for making her worry and tried to offer reassurances in turn every time. They weren’t even entirely lies, after all.As Jester was healing some of the bruises on his face, she noticed some of the more hidden damage. “Fjord! Your poor teeth.”He could understand her worry. His tusks had been just barely visible above his lower lip before they’d been separated, and his captors damn well wouldn’t have allowed him a file. Now they were obviously gone. “S’all right. Could have been worse.”“Are they gone forever? Will they grow back?”“The tusks might.” He hadn’t been able to keep from worrying at the gaps with his tongue, and so he’d been able to feel what an imperfect removal it had been. Maybe enough had been left behind to regrow. “Doubt I’ll be so lucky with the other one they took.”“I bet we can find a cleric somewhere who knows how to regrow teeth. We’ve got a lot of money now.”“Yeah? That’d…that’d be nice, Jester.” And Fjord found that he meant it. He hadn’t finished deciding yet if he even wanted to let his tusks grow out. But damn it, he’d still wanted that to be his choice. “Let’s get out of here first. Then we can talk next steps with everyone else.”“Right!”And that time was clearly coming soon. Had the Mighty Nein been forced to strike against a full military brigade, the fight would have probably gone much differently. As it was, this was only a comparatively small scouting team of ordinary rank-and-file soldiers with a couple of commanders – no magic, no enhanced abilities, and no chance against his friends. Molly was a whirling, snarling dervish that made men fall to their knees screaming without even having to cut them. Beau was laying out people left and right, leaping about the battlefield almost too fast to be seen. Nott barely spared her targets a glance before she shot them down. Yasha didn’t stop chopping off
limbs and heads even as arrows sprouted from her body like feathers.Caleb was their biggest advantage, however. Everybody else was obviously trying to keep half an eye on the slaves running every which way
in an attempt to escape, so as to keep them from charging right into Caleb’s flames. The wizard clearly had no mind for anything but destruction. Fjord kept waiting for him to fall, kept waiting for whatever bad memories that lay in his past to overwhelm him as they had before. They never did. Caleb watched men fall and burn and die with the light of fire shining red in his eyes and then moved on to the next target with barely a blink.When the fighting was over, when Molly and Beau had corralled a few prisoners and everyone else was laying dead on the ground, Caleb walked mechanically around, dismissing his flames with a gesture here and there. Then he went to an edge of the clearing to be sick, and Fjord felt
a perverse relief at the sight. Jester must have noticed his reaction, as she worked her softly glowing hands along the burns marring his arms. “Everybody missed us a lot,” she said quietly, and when he risked a glance over at her he saw something distant and sad in her eyes. “They all worked really hard to find us.”“…must have been hard on ‘em.” The four who perhaps least believed themselves capable of good things must have all fought long and hard to come to this rescue. Fjord didn’t like to think of the depths they might have had to sink to in order to come this far, because they had come such a long way from where they’d last been all together as a team. It wasn’t that he judged or blamed anything that might have happened.
But their last big accomplishment as a team had been to settle a little girl in a good home and so to have to go from that to this was just cruelty beyond measure, for all of them.“Yeah.” Jester frowned, her eyes overbright for a moment, before she recovered herself with a visible effort of will. “But it’s okay now. We’re all together, like we should be.”“Like we should be.” He could only hope it would be that easy. Then again, Jester had a way of talking the world into being just how she wanted it, even if it sometimes took a while to catch on.The fighting was over, the fires were out, and now Molly was walking quickly over to them, sheathing his bloody scimitars. “Fjord!” he said brightly, clapping his hands together. “It is…my god, it is so good to see you again.” He laughed, shaky and just a little too high-pitched in that way Molly had when he was right on the edge. “Can you walk?” He held out a hand.“If he can’t, I will help him,” Jester declared stubbornly. Fjord merely accepted the offered help up. His legs did indeed try to give out as soon as he put weight on them, but in an instant he had Jester on one side and Molly on the other, each settling one of his arms around their shoulders, each offering him their support.“Terribly sorry we’re late,” Molly said, and the effort he was putting into the cheer in his voice was a nearly tangible thing. He kissed Fjord’s cheek, nodded to Jester, and together they helped Fjord limp his way towards the group of prisoners. “So,” Molly continued, as they went along. “These four made the most noise about surrendering. Nott was just about to shoot them in the head when something occurred to me. ‘You know’, I said to Nott, ‘Our friend Fjord has been enjoying the hospitality of these fine gentlemen for rather too long. We should see if he has anything to say to them first before we have our fun.’”By then, they were close enough that Beau heard them talking from where she was keeping watch on the captive guards. The four had been bound hand and foot, forced to kneel in the dirt. “That’s Molly-talk for ‘hey, did you want to stab any of these guys yourself?’” Only then did she look over, and Fjord saw her eyes go wide with horror. “Fuck, you look like shit.”Fjord chuckled weakly and grinned at her. “Missed you, too, Beau.” If he still looked bad off enough to provoke such a reaction from Beau, even after Jester’s healing, he couldn’t imagine the mess he’d been before. Thankfully, he no longer had to.
He saw her face go a little red, and then her expression softened into one of the most genuine smiles he had ever seen from her. “Welcome back.”He stepped away from Jester and Molly. They let him do so. Fjord swayed a little on the spot as he found himself standing on his own two feet once more. Beau reached out to rest a steadying hand on his back, and with such a tangible reminder of support, he was able to stay upright. All the better to survey the men arrayed before him as an offering from his team.Two of them he didn’t recognize, except by sight at a distance. One of the men, though, had eyes he wouldn’t forget in a hurry. The other was wearing a very distinctive necklace.He summoned his falchion with a flick of his wrist and used the tip of it to lift the necklace up for examination. Three broken, cracked teeth rattled with the movement on the end of the cord. Two were half-grown tusks.“Nice necklace,” said Fjord, perfectly conversational, and then he cut it off and slit the man’s throat in the same swing of his sword. Before the other one had time to even scream in fear, Fjord had shoved the falchion forcibly through one eye and out the back of his head. He dismissed the sword entirely rather than fight to pull it free, and the second corpse thudded into the dirt next to the first.“I don’t much care who takes the other two,” he said, and a crossbow bolt sprouted from one’s throat almost before he’d finished talking. Yasha took the last man’s head off, and then that was that.“Nothing quite like finishing a job you set out to do,” said Molly, and now – perhaps because Fjord was back on his feet – the cheer in his voice didn’t sound quite so feigned. “I only wish the other prisoners hadn’t run off so far. Would have liked to have given them something. Not like we can offer much else in the way of help.”“You gave plenty to the three we met on the way here,” said Nott, replacing her crossbow onto her back.“They deserved it! We would have been wandering around these woods another day at least without them to point us in the right direction.”Fjord felt his heart skip a beat, relief making him momentarily dizzy again. “What three?” he asked, scarcely daring to hope.Jester must have heard that hesitation in his voice. She squeezed his hand. “The three you helped get away!” she chirped. “When we asked them if they’d seen a really handsome half-orc, they couldn’t even stop talking about how strong and cool you’d been.”“Even if that wasn’t enough for them to come back and help,” Yasha added, her voice surprisingly bitter for a moment.It took Fjord a second to realize that bitterness was on his behalf, and then he shook his head, smiling in the most reassuring way he was still capable of. “It’s fine,” he said, and meant it. “Making sure the three of them got out was why I wound up in that mess in the first place. Would have hated for them to give that up. After…after the last little while, I knew that if I could help someone else get away, anything was worth that.” He looked around at all his friends, all here and looking back at him with worry and relief and welcome on their faces. Even Caleb had stumbled his way over to join them, and the wizard still looked pale and shaken but he also looked heartened at the sight of Fjord on his feet. “’Course, that was before I knew I had the cavalry on the way.”“You always did,” said Beau warmly. She looked around at the group as well, seeming to properly see them all for the first time, then she laughed and sounded like she meant it. “Look at us, guys! The Mighty Nein rides again.”“Let’s ride on out of here,” said Fjord, with feeling. He started to step forward, admittedly without much idea of where he was going, just wanting to get out of this clearing and as far away from the site of his attempted burning as possible.He’d barely made it three steps, however, before the world tilted and spun dizzily around him, and he felt himself starting to fall as his brief burst of strength failed him entirely.Then Yasha was there, Yasha was catching him and holding him and then Yasha was picking him up with an infinite gentleness you never would have expected from a woman splattered with so much blood, who’d been a howling, raging nightmare of steel and death scant moments ago. At least, most wouldn’t have expected it. Fjord had had a little time to get to know her better. “I’ve got you,” she murmured gently, as Molly and Jester moved to help her get Fjord settled on her back instead. “It’s all right, I’ve got you.”He was happy to believe her, happy to slump against the broad, solid warmth of her with a shuddering sigh of relief when the exhaustion proved to be more than just a momentary thing. Dimly, he heard her speaking to Jester: “I know you are also very strong, but I am much taller, so this will be less awkward. If you don’t mind, of course.”“I don’t. Thank you, Yasha.” He heard her give Yasha a quick kiss, then felt her move around to check on him. “Fjord? We’re gonna get going now, so we can find a better place to sleep. If you want to fall asleep or something, that would probably be okay. I will heal you more once we stop. Okay?”Sleep was already sounding like a wonderful idea. Fjord managed to mumble something that he was pretty sure was an affirmative, holding on as tight as he could. Whatever he said, it was enough for Jester, who laughed softly and then kissed him on the cheek. “Sleep tight.”“Let us know when you’ve fixed him up enough that it’s okay to start hugging the stuffing out of him,” Molly said, and that was the last thing Fjord remembered for a very long time.When he woke up, it was to the smell of smoke once more, but at least he had friends around him to assure that it was only the campfire and dinner was almost ready. Jester and Yasha sat on either side of him as the Mighty Nein shared a meal together for the first time in weeks. Molly had clearly shelled out for the better class of rations in anticipation of this day. Once they’d eaten, Jester set to work healing him again, and only when she had utterly exhausted her magic did she proclaim that Fjord was in fact fit to be hugged. Everyone took her up on that, even Caleb, even Yasha, and if the amount of affection and welcome got to be a little overwhelming for Fjord in the end, well, everyone was at least nice enough to pretend not to notice.What he’d thought was over, too good to be true and continue, had now begun again. This was where he belonged, here with his friends, a part of a team that could do such good things.This was where he was always destined to return to, and it was a relief beyond any words Fjord could muster to realize they all felt the same.