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"I am no one's son, now," The boy stated coldly.

Chauhn let out a shaky breath, increased with speed every time that the lady touched his face, caressing his skin with the cold leather of her gloves. As she inspected his face, he stared deep into her eyes, locking his gaze to hers with a indomitable strength of spirit only a foundation of fear and loss could build. He had nothing but fear, anger quite rightly stifled by their situation, but fear was, in and of itself, a kind of strength that Chauhn was used to relying on. It was a kind of declaration, how he stared back into the empty black holes of her mask, of his strength, his endurance. The Clemmings boy wouldn't yet give in, nor would he ever, and that staring contest proved it.

In the meantime, while Sloane bantered back and forth with the lady Cultist as she swung herself about and decorated Chauhn's neck with a knife, Artaxerxes beckoned over a pair of eager Cultists. He bent low to their ears, gathering them close as he whispered a set of instructions to them. With energetic nods, they scampered away on their duty. Artaxerxes turned his attention back to Sloane, his movements relaxed and all together unperturbed.

"Not the boy's eyes," he said with an amused grandfatherly chuckle to the female Cultist, "He needs those to see the breaking of his Lord, and to appreciate the full effects of his Lord's refusal to cooperate." Artaxerxes strode close to Sloane then, dragging his fingers along Sloane's broken flesh, pushing his leather fingers into the freshly opened wounds. He itched. "Does that help your itch now? Will you cooperate? Because, if my old ears haven't failed me, you didn't answer my question. And do you remember what I said would happen if you didn't answer my question?" Artaxerxes moved back away from Sloane, kneeling down onto his haunches and out of the way so that Sloane could see the quivering shadows of the Clemmings boy on the wall.

Without waiting for him to answer, the man crooned, "That's right! Thanks to your ambiguous answer, or, more accurately, your lack of one, your young page will take the fall." He lifted up a robed hand, a signal to his assistant to the boy, "Alright, Sicion, you may start. Gentle, so we want him to last so we can hear him longer. But Knight Sloane must understand that, just because his page is but a fledgling, doesn't mean that we will show mercy or restraint."

Chauhn tried to twist his head, his heart racing at the man's words, and he, just barely saw Sloane. The amusing comment from the knight, while meant to lighten his heart, give him strength, did the opposite, since his gut twisted with worry for both he and the Plague. He could see, from the entrance to the room, as a vat of ice water was carefully pushed in on rolling wheels by the two Cultists. Chauhn's gut twisted and he shook his head, unable to do much else than whimper, taking Sloane's clenched fists as a signal of pain rather than strength.

"Oh no..." the Clemmings boy whispered, pushing himself back into his seat. He dug his nails into the wood of the chair, shaking his head.

Pain had never been something that Chauhn was well acquainted with. Sure, there was the emotional battlefield that he was stumbling through as a part of his childhood's transition into adulthood, the pain of honest starvation, and the pain of Clurie's little hot hands upon his neck, but there was little else in the Clemmings' boy's life in terms of physical hurt. He had the luck of never breaking a bone, despite his hazardous work, and he had never been bedridden with a terrible disease, thanks to his motivation to keep up and on his feet. Colds and flus were a part of growing up as a street urchin, something hardly to be considered a toll upon his health, which meant that, as a whole, his physical health was in the realm of innocence in terms to what terrible evils could be done to a human body. Experience was not his, so when he watched, with green eyes round with horror, as the uneven blade of the dagger sank into and through his hand and into the wood beneath, Chauhn could do little else than stare, breathless with shock. It took a few moments for him to register just what had happened. He watched the blood burble up from around the blade's entrance. Underneath, he felt his palm stick and suck to the blood puddling upon the wood, following the dip of the worn table and spilling onto his thighs where, already, his pants were soiled and tainted with blood. He could hear Sloane's shrieking in the background, horrible roars of anguish shaped into his name, calling over and over again until it was choked off with a splash of water. Chauhn didn't notice. He couldn't breathe.

There was a knife in his hand. Through it. Wedged between the bones and sitting comfortably in his soft flesh, which still tingled with the cold brush of the Cultist's human lips. It was there. Chauhn gave a test wiggle of his hand, his fingers spasming as his muscles attempted to flex. He was stuck, and whenever he moved, he could feel the wet suck of his palm against his blood.

Chauhn screamed, a long and terrible scratch of a wail that was backed with all the strength in his lungs. Tears peppered the lips of his eyes and he no longer cared to try and keep himself from crying. The tears fell freely in fitful globs, and he continued to howl with a broken voice, more out of the horror that there was a knife through his hand than the terrible blinding pain. The boy screamed until he grew dizzy, and screamed still when the tips of his toes and fingers began to prickle with numbness. Then, slumping forward, eyes still locked on the horror of his red hand, Chauhn proceeded to weep and whimper Sloane's name without abandon.

Artaxerxes, with his hands cupped by his ears, stood a few steps away, peaceably admiring the sound from the boy's wails of pain against the echoes of Sloane's roaring cries. He made a small motion to the two Cultists now monitoring Sloane's rope, and they pulled the Plague out from the ice cold, straining their arms to lift up his hulk. Just as Artaxerxes began to speak, their arms slipped and Sloane was dunked back into the ice cold again, this time, up to his shoulders in the brine, before he was slowly lifted back out.

"Sorry about that, Sloane, that wasn't intentional. Terribly amusing and inevitable, but unintended. Now, listen to your page. Listen to him, his sobs, poor thing, his voice hasn't even changed yet, he is so little! His voice breaks when he shouts. Don't you feel terrible? I mean, after all, it was your negligence which caused it. You failed to answer the questions I so politely gave to you," the Cultist leaned down onto his haunches, tracing the rim of the ice bin with his leather finger, before he asked sweetly, "Answer them. Or we'll continue with the boy's other hand. Tell me about your Lady. But oh! You are a loyal knight, aren't you? Loyalty is written in blood for you, loyalty bound to your lady with the threads of your own life! Which one is more important to you, sir Sloane? Your Lady or your page?"

On cue, the Cultists dumped Sloane into the vat of ice water again, and with several yanks, pulled him back free from the cold to speak.

Shaking with a gale wind force, Chauhn fought to steady his breathing, his head thick and heavy with the screaming he had given before. As he wrestled his breathing back into control the both heaved dry sobs between the mad chattering of his jaw, he continued to stare at the dagger pierced tightly to his hand. He was so fragile, eerily so. It wasn't just him, he realized, but skin and flesh, in and of itself, was so delicate, so easy to break and easier still to dig into. Face to face with his delicacy, Chauhn felt sick to his stomach, suddenly, and quite firmly, forced into the awareness of his own mortality. Death. Which had so easily claimed his brothers and sisters, his Clurie.

Clurie. Where was Clurie, now? Chauhn wondered. His heart twisting with hurt and worry, he thought of his little Plague sibling, awaiting dumbly on his bed, hands folded atop each other with a piece of paper in his hands, thoughtlessly scattering ashes all over the sheets. He hoped that he was sleeping by now, dragged off to slumber by some whim of weariness, unaware and unworried. How long could he last like that, though? How long would it be until Chauhn returned to him? Would he even return at all? If he did, would he be alive?

These questions plagued him until he burst forth with a new set of tears, choking on his own snot and saliva, and with a frustrated yelp, he tried to wrench his other hand free, the same hand wrapped with a piece of Sloane's cloak, from underneath the pinning of the Cultist's arm. "Please!" he shouted, trembling and wiggling against his bonds, "Stop! Stop, this! You 'ave to stop! 'Ow could you do this? Please, oh, please, stop! Don't...!" Sicion leaned closer and began tracing the dagger against his skin, pulling it with a threatening tickle. And Chauhn replied with a panicked and frenzies outburst. It probably wasn't his best reaction that night, "Don't! Please, not again! Don't! Don't TOUCH me, you whore!"

Patiently listening to Sloane, the Cultist paid each word he said close attention, until he mentioned leeches. Artaxerxes stiffened, and his shoulders perked up close to his neck, and with a fiddling through his robe, the man suddenly lurched forward and slammed a small and thin dagger deep into Sloane's side. He made sure to pull it down a bit, hanging on it with the weight in his arm.

"Listen Sloane," he said just as sweetly as before, "You are a smart Plague, are you not? Remember this: Don't test me." His voice suddenly turned malicious. He ripped out the dagger and slammed it in again into Sloane's side, "Don't chide me." Out with the dagger, and again into his gut. "Don't play with me." Once more."Don't insult me."

Artaxerxes leaned back, leaving the blade sheathed in his gut. The viciousness in his persona, as quickly as it had come, melted away and he gave a happy sigh, "These questions about Lady Estratus, Sloane, not us. She is expecting something. Tell us, who is this other knight she hired to protect her? Is it because you're unfit to the task? Who is this knight and from where does he hail?" He gave a flicker of his wrist, and the two cultists along the side dropped the rope again, dumping Sloane into the ice cold vat for the fifth time, before hauling him up again with the rope.

"NGH!"

The crack of the porcelain mask against his head left Chauhn reeling for stability in a world that was suddenly snapped into a dreadful spin. His head snapped back and for a time he hung limply like that, choking as he tried to affix his gaze back into focus. The crack of the mask left an imprint in the skin of Chauhn's forehead, a scratch against his skin that nicked as she pulled away. With a peppering of blood on his forehead, he weakly pulled his head back to sit atop his spine, gasping and whimpering for fear as Sicion declared punishment.

"No...No...No, please, no..." There was never so wretched a feeling as helplessness.

Locking in place, striped of movement, Chauhn, stewed in a hazy boil of horror with his eyes glossy and blinking free big fitful tears, watching as the fingers of the woman Cultist curled around a heavy weighted hammer. His breath caught in his throat at the recognition of the tool, and he pushed himself back in the chair, as if any smidgen of movement would save him from the weapon's dreadful blow. His fingers were precious, his hands where the only things that he could use to earn himself and his brother a living! Chauhn used his hands to work, and without work, just what was he good for? He couldn't help himself that way, he couldn't help his brother. With a dawning realization, Chauhn's gut pooled with the terror of uselessness, and he could do nothing to save his only saving grace. He weakly shook his head, stammering for Sloane with a small voice, before his voice erupted with a terrible wail. The blow of the dead weight hammer pulled up from his index finger, smeared with blood from his hand and leaving a smashed finger in its place. Howling with such a force that he burst into a fit of coughs, Chauhn ripped wail after throat-tearing wail from his lungs. But the reprieve between the blow of each hammer fall was short, leaving Chauhn little time to fill his chest with air to continue his breaking bawl. Again, the hammer drove into his finger, shattering it and blinding his senses with nothing but bright burning pain. Chauhn tried to flex his fingers, somehow move them out of the way, before he realized that his hand was no longer responding to his movements, it was so swollen with hurt. He was helpless to save himself from the next hammer's blow, which popped the knuckle of his ring finger with a sharp curt crack. Chauhn's voice broke, a voiceless hitching scream, his mouth stretched into a twitching and trembling wail.

Amusement was something that Artaxerxes thrived on. At every sound, choked or shouted, every movement, strangled or frenzied, his air of confidence grew, and with it, so did his courage. He rocked on his heels, stepped on an awkward half-circle as he waited for Sloane's reply, patiently measuring out his time. He could to with waiting. It meant prolonging the torture, and that was perfectly alright with him. What he wasn't alright with, though, was unexpected changes in his plan. The trembling living tendril of blood was one of those unexpected happenstances.

Especially when it sank into his chest.

He had been readying his next set of questions, rehearsing the torture that he would implement on his prisoners if the Plague, yet again, denied his gracious offer to cooperate, when the red spear propelled into his right breast. Stunned by the foreign object, Artaxerxes looked down, blinked, and looked up again at Sloane, before he gave a burble of pain and stumbled back and onto the wall. The two cultists that were holding the fixed line gasped, and without hesitation, dropped the rope once more so that Sloane was plunged into the ice water without the intention of pulling him back up. They rushed to their leader, hurriedly setting to work to try and free him from the blood spear. Others leapt forward, trying to break the blood without thinking, and others still, attempted to stick him full of their own daggers, a mass attack meant to stop Sloane for the grave.

Chauhn, oblivious to the strange happenings going on and deaf to all other sounds besides the rush of air in his own throat and the screaming of his pumping blood in his ears, stared with a quiet horror at his mangled hand, fitted into a red glove of blood. It was quickly swelling up with blood, changing from a deep red shade to a heavy purple, making his knuckles bulge. An unsettling feeling welled up in his stomach, complementing the overwhelming loss of oxygen in his body, the sickening well of nausea that pushed up and bubbled into his throat, and Chauhn began to heave. Strapped in place, he couldn't bend double like he wanted, so his shoulders rolled as he gave into to his body's terror and he threw up onto his chest, wet clumps and chunks of... dirt and roots? He continued to retch, mud dribbling down his chin, and mixing in with his wet face and tears. Sure enough, it was dirt, fresh earth and clay, and roots, stringy and knotted, spilling forth from his mouth.

As he expelled the contents of his stomach, he didn't acknowledge a rising feeling of electric intensity at the back of his neck.

Chaos was the kind of thing that snapped. The Cultists, once they realized that something dreadful was happening began to back away, their steps taking them to the corners of the walls to separate themselves from the dark and motionless puddles of black robes and flesh that used to be their eager companions. Something was going dreadfully wrong and one by one, they, in turn, began to panic. Some Cultists fled at the first sign of trouble, some vaporizing into the air and others making a mad dash for the doors, while others, more courageous than their counterparts, rushed for the table around Chauhn, picking up what weapons they could to defend themselves and somehow incapacitate the bloody Plague. As they stepped near to gather weapons though, something else happened that they entirely didn't expect. The old wood beneath the table warped with a curt and loud snap, breaking up sharp splinters that pieced the reaching arms and tore into the robes of those who pressed too close, an impenetrable fence. The legs of the table twisted into gnarled roots, sprawling across the floor to find and bind unwary Cultists to their place or drag them in closer to the pikes of wood lifted up like an inverted iron maiden around the table and chair. In the midst of it all was Chauhn, dribbling up dirt from his mouth and wide eyed, his hands tightly dug into the foundation of the table.

The lanky Cultist, still pinning Chauhn's hand down, was the first to notice the strange goings-on with the table, and with a courageous show of wit and speed, he snapped up a dagger from the table and slammed it into Chauhn's other free hand, firmly securing him to the table so that he could move again with free reign. The gurgle from the boy was all he heard. Throwing his mask to the top of his head, he reached again for another weapon, this time, a knotted and frayed rope, which he snapped taut, and then laced around Chauhn's neck, pulling it tight after roping it around the back. This time, the boy, his face entirely wet with tears, and choking on dirt, gave a few coughs, from which he expelled a cloud of spores, which rose up into the air to be accidentally inhaled by the quick breathing Cultist. Realizing all too late the mortal hurt he had just swallowed, he pulled the rope tighter about the boy's throat, smiling grimly behind his mask as Chauhn's tongue pressed out of his mouth as he gagged for air, his eyes rolling back into his skull.

It was then that a fitful of roots exploded from within the Cultist's mouth, growing with a magical speed until it clawed and curled out of his lips and up over his face in the crude imitation of a mask, digging into his eye sockets. The man dropped the rope then, reaching up instead to tear and grasp madly at the roots choking his throat, but, in the manic desperation, expelling hideous muffled shrieks, the Cultist fell back onto the length of the table and onto the splinters that pulled up from within. There was a soft squelching noise as he sank deeper on the pikes, his face still being overtaken by a nest of saplings, his gut swelling with writhing earthen roots.

Chauhn sat, still pinned to the table and quite numb, still struggling to find the strength to breathe with the rope around his neck, while around him, the wood of the table and chair he was in writhed to life, curling about him as if in a protective shell, but working instead like a wicker cage freckled with blood.

Against the wall, backed by his cohorts, Artaxerxes had almost made it onto his feet, almost snapped a few orders to placate the impending chaos, before he was suddenly slammed into the wall again, five dagger digits buried knuckle deep in his ribs. He looked up at Sloane, his mask still hiding the emotions unpacked behind, quiet and moving into and against Sloane's hand. He began to laugh, pulling himself along Sloane's arm, raking his fingers into the Plague's bloody skin, as if he were a friend happily trying to gather a long lost friend into a hearty embrace.

"You'd playing with me, you're playing..." he cackled, cooing softly against the porcelain of his mask, "Didn't I tell you not to play with me?" He managed to drag himself so that he laid his arms around Sloane's mighty shoulders, and he pulled himself up to his ear, "We will find Sage. We will find the others. Yes, the others, your close others, your counterparts, we will find them. Eventually. We'll take them all down...One by one...One by one...It'll be a fun game, just you watch. We'll take kings left and right, we'll topper your towers and steal your rooks, mash your pawns to dust...Right now, though, it's your move. We're waiting, we're waiting..."

Artaxerxes fell limp, slumping against Sloane's shoulder.

The moment a thicket began to grow and spill from the table, a strange forest breaking free from the table's shape and cracking, splitting, and doubling in size and girth which each second, Chauhn had become lost. The pain had reached a dangerously high level and when it exploded beyond that restricted line, his small body reacted in the only way it could: It shut down. Sharp agonizing pain suddenly zeroed out to numbness, and the heat from his wounds and the heat in his cheeks, suddenly flipped to an all encompassing cold that domineered his senses. He couldn't feel anything. His green eyes, still as wide as their Imiese shape could stretch, were bright and empty, still wet with tears, and his fingers dug into the wood, giving it his strength to grow. The thicket expanded, pulling itself and twisting into a small indomitable fortress of forest.

There were cracks, snaps and twisting of the branches, renderings of his wooden prison, and someone had broken through. With a movement not decided by him, the Clemmings boy slowly turned his head to watch as a red-haired monster ripped its way towards him, reaching with desperate intention for him. One of the daggers was found by the monster and sloppily ripped free, yanking his hand off of the table and lifelessly to the side. Before he was able to reach for him again, he was suddenly dragged back by the Cultists who had seized the opportunity to launch an offensive attack. But one thing was done, one monumental thing: His hand was free.

Chauhn's face, though vacant of the boy within, still sucked and chattered with his teeth, blinking free frightful tears as he stared with puzzlement at his now freed arm. How long had it been since he had his arm to move by his own free will? How long since it hadn't been his? Chauhn weakly tried to flex his elbow, move his arm up to find that it responded, but only with the most severest focus. Chauhn carefully guided his hand to his other pinned palm, and discovered the handle of the dagger. He curled his slippery hands about the dagger and strained, but when he pulled, his hands slipped slick with blood and weak with pain. The boy gave a ghost of a sound, trying an assortment of different angles until he was able to wiggle the dagger free. A pull and a wiggle, a jerk from his elbow, and, with a terrible squeaking noise, the dagger was coaxed free from his wounded hand. He had both hands now, both quite completely gloved with blood, one hand more swollen than the other, and he looked down to his chest and waist, his thighs where earthen dirt had spilled to mix with his blood upon the binds that kept him in. Slowly, as if he were in a dream, he readjusted the dagger in his hands and tucked it underneath the leather of the binds, firmly squeezing his hands upon the handle to keep it within his bloody grip, and he cut through, one by one, the four straps that kept him in place.

Everything felt loose, and for a moment, Chauhn regretted cutting his binds. He felt unstable now, delicate as if he would be thrown off the tilt of the world at the merest abrupt motion. But then he heard his name. Chauhn slowly, emptily, turned his head towards the edge of the self-made thicket as it slowly sprawled wildly out of control, growing with reckless abandon, towards the red body that was getting pulled beyond it. It was Sloane, no longer a Knight but a monster, and he was in the middle of a feeding frenzy of glinting weapons and black robes. They were going at him with a mad intensity, smashing his ribs until they cracked to press against his lungs, and tearing at his skin so that it hung on his meet only by thin shreds. In moments, he would have been killed, had it not been for the boy who quietly stepped out of the thicket, the daggers that had been pinned through his hands, now wielded in his bloody palms. He moved forward without urgency, slowly, like a tin soldier being made to walk by a child, and with a slow and lazy throw of his arm, he pointed the dagger at one of the foremost attackers upon the Plague. Following after that dagger came a splintered tree, which speared through his side and into the other Cultist beside them, continuing still until it smashed into the wall and rooted itself in the stones. Fitful bursts of bright new green leaves exploded from the top of the thicket, creating a new atmosphere of unsettling sound, and Chauhn let his arm slump again to his side, exhausted from one mere movement. But Sloane was not safe. He continued to walk slowly forward, throwing up another arm, which spurned another tree growth to grow and snap around another group of Cultists, peppering their insides with a multitude of sharp branches. Chauhn's face continued to tremble, his muscles mimicking the motions of fear although behind it, there was nothing but a dim awareness, there was something else moving him and he didn't know what it was. Earth still dripped from his mouth, coughed up in chunks that fell upon his front.

Another cacophony of trees groaning, wood snapping, and the Cultists were thrown up to the ceiling of the room, pinned into place by oaks and bays. The mad scrambling of roots that followed Chauhn greedily snagged up which Cultists had fallen to the ground in a mad dash, burying them underneath a carpet of wiggling roots. Screams were promptly cut short by a gagging of verdure and scrambling limbs were held into place by a cage of copse trees. Blood watered the roots and Chauhn stepped without care underneath the dripping of the bodies pinned up overhead, blinking through the blood that pitter pattered onto his face and hair. He came to stand before Sloane's body, still and slump shouldered, empty-eyed, and he lifted his dagger wielding hands so that a mess of roots and saplings pushed the Plague up onto his feet, a mess of fresh blood spilling from his lap and chest. The forest still grew behind him, and there came a terrible crack as the stone ceiling began to buckle and break, giving way to the determined forest below.

The only sound Chauhn could muster was the quiet scratch of voice against his breathing, but he looked up at Sloane with an overburdened and exhausted face, his cheeks a wet mess of tears, blood, dirt, and snot.

If ever there had been a more pitiful sight, Chauhn had not seen it. What cowered before him, shaking and cloaked in blood, was a living being, still, somehow, stubbornly clinging to life. Not a Plague, not a man, not a Knight, he was just, to Chauhn at that point, living. Still pulsing, breathing...He had a life and feelings, his heart trembled with fear just as his did, and his skin prickled against the touch of the cold, just as his. When Sloane took a breath, he could hear the blood in his lungs burble, and when he exhaled, he could see the blood spill to the edges of his lips. Chauhn wondered how he even mustered the strength to speak, nonetheless reach out and hold onto his shoulder with red painted hands.

Around them, the air was heavy with the stale stench of blood and spilled innards, and the ceiling above them buckled against the strength of the forest still bursting with life behind them. Chauhn slowly looked up to the ceiling, where the bodies of the Obscuvians were pinned, and he carefully stepped his way forward as the stone began to slip free and fall to the ground with a tremendous crash and splinter. From one of the Cultist' hands the boy noticed a glint and he reached upwards to wedge them free and onto the dagger. It was Sloane's bracelets, smeared with blood and cold to the touch. Quietly, he handed them to Sloane, his face still wet with tears. Chauhn didn't offer and words of encouragement, and sobbing apologies or stammer questions for health, he just drew a chattering breath, his lips still shaking too much for him to shape them into words, and he pulled Sloane's arm from one shoulder to the other and around his neck with his better hand out of the two, helping the Plague lift a few feet from the ground. His hands were still clutching possessively onto the daggers, holding them with his ring finger and pinky and refusing to let them go, as if he believed they were worth something for their defense. Chauhn yanked and half-dragged Sloane from the room, which was quickly filling with trees and branches, breaking up into the ceiling and beyond. As they tripped and bumbled over the roots and slipped in the mud, Chauhn still refused to say a word.

Sloane said it was alright, but Chauhn knew better than that. They wouldn't be alright until they were out of the Cultist's hideout, not alright until they were back with the Fellowship. Yet even then, things might not be alright. How could they ever be alright again?

Stepping clumsily onto the dry stone of the outside corridor, Chauhn pulled and beckoned Sloane along with him, still offering nothing for conversation besides the hiccup and sob he managed to make in between grunts of effort. Behind them, the thicket followed after them, as if straining to keep up with Chauhn, clawing after them along the hallway with roots and branches. Like this, they traversed the cold labyrinth to the outside cold of Shyregoad's harshest tundra, the fortress behind them being transformed into a encased and thriving old forest. Cultists that were still within the place attempted to charge after them, and some others attempted to run, but either path they took they were caught and tangled up in the spears of unnaturally fast growing forest. Their dying screams overcast the sound of Sloane's and the boy's dragging feet.

Pushing through a door, Chauhn and Sloane were met with a harsh cold wind. Outside, the edges of the horizon were blushed with pink, the oncoming of a new day, but even the promise of a cold sun rising couldn't warm the intense and terrible cold that awaited them. With meagerly covered feet and scarcely covered shoulders, the awkward duo stepped into the snow. Behind them, the stone foundations of the fortress buckled and broke as the forest left behind took slow and steady control over the fortress. Like that, with Chauhn tucked underneath Sloane's arm and the boy's arm held in support around the Plague's waist, they began the long and hazardous journey back to the Fellowship, one step at a time through the knee-high drifts of snow.



Back in the Fellowship, a set of little feet skittered through the dark unlit hallways, accompanied by a little voice that shouted for his lost Grimm. It was Clurie, his hands rubbing against each other to keep them warm and glowing providing little light for his frenzied search through the colossal hallways of the building.

Clurie pleaded with the echoes answering him back with endless repetitions of his brother's name, "Chauhn!" he shouted, "Chauhn! Where are you? Chauhn!"

In stories, when something bad happened, it had never felt as lonely and as useless as running around the cold stone floors of the Fellowship's terribly gigantic hallways. He grew tired quickly, finding that if he moved too fast and struck up a god gale as he skittered, he would weaken, cough, and pause, his glowing hands on his knees, as he dry heaved the ash from his little lungs. Determination, though, was stronger. He had just concluded that he remained brothers with Chauhn, no matter what differences between them, and to be suddenly and abruptly cut off like this was a stab through the chest. No matter how many times he called, he was sent back the same empty reply from the echoes, which Clurie translated from panicked cries of "Chauhn" to dispassionate statements of "gone". Clurie refused to believe it.

As soon as he had convinced his body to pick up again into a jog, rubbing his hands together with a firm frenzy, another set of footsteps joined the small echoes of his own. It was a woman, who peeled out of the shadows with a similar kind of rushed and hurried gait, in control, and bothered. As she drew closer, Clurie waved his glowing hands about his head, clapping so that sparks and little puffs of flame and ash lit up like a beacon to announce his location.

"Lady! Lady mum!" Clurie squeaked, "My brother, I can't find my brother! He's gone! He told me he would be right back, he said that he would go help Sloane carry firewood and be right back, but he's not back and I'm looking for him everywhere and I can't find him. I can't find him!"

And he was rewarded with an answer, a vague one, but an answer nonetheless: she knew.

He didn't bother with formalities, as, he too, had forgotten the name to her face, and he clambered up onto her downed knee, using the fabric of her clothing to wrench himself up onto her thigh. Balancing himself on his knees and palms, the Plague began his torrential avalanche of questions, "Where is he? Why didn't he come back? How do you know and where can I find him? Can you take me to him? Please, I need to have him with me!"