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The lodge in which they'd resided for several weeks now was something of a creaky, abandoned mess. When Adal and Georgie stepped first into the dank room that was their Shyredgoedian home, every raw creak accented one eerie echo after another, step by step; the two boys stared into every nook and shadow in fright, anticipation, as if someone was bewitching their abode with their maddened insecurity. The two brothers went their own separate ways when they stepped through the threshold, staring and embracing themselves wryly in the setting before them. Adal released the bag from around his shoulder and quickly threw it onto the table, whose legs were threatening to quake with imbalance when he did.

Cautiously, shoulders tense, Georgie went towards the small pile of blackened wood, where a black iron fence rested with a poker laying on the side for the two boys to work with and pray for fire. The brunette did not take the fire poker, but crossed his legs and sat down in front of the ashen pile, his hands waving in front of the iron fence. Pricks of fire rose from the charcoal mass, and Georgie carefully wrapped his hands around the poker and eased the rest of the wood against the livening log mounds.

Meanwhile, Adal rolled his shoulders and nudged the tiny ashen Excito hidden within his shirt's pocket of clothes and gauze. The three had walked mostly in silence, gravely pondering within themselves just what they would do, could do, let alone how-- when Chauhn would come, even-- but, with a voice as gentle as he could muster it, Adal picked up Clurie from his place and grumbled, "Clurie, we're home. Rest up."

Georgie glanced back at Adal, frowning as the rest of the pricks of fire flared within the amassing charcoal. Autumn colored life sprung into place of dead ash and Georgie stood up, circling around where Adal was to get to a pile of shrewd bits and pieces of wood. The brunette picked up an armful of logs into his hands, and Adal sat down on a creaky chair in front of the table, resting his chin against one hand, halfheartedly sifting through their variety of equipment and books with the other. He sprawled opened a leather booklet and took out a piece of thick cloth from his pocket, laying it out to make the Excito a makeshift rest.

Georgie dumped the logs into the hearth, prying the wood about with the poker, looking back and forth between the livening hearth and the two Plagues. Fire was now crackling, and orange light started to slowly flood the otherwise cricketing and uncomfortable wooden lodge room. Given the misery of the place, the table and hearth were the only things Georgie and Adal seemed to care for, sprawling their paraphernalia where they chose, while the other half of the lodge was shrouded in omnipotent and flickering shadow that were now colossal and overwhelming with the blaring firelight.

Against the loud crackling of the fireplace, Georgie hoped to speak quietly and without notice, so softly that perhaps Adal couldn't hear. "What are we supposed to do, now?"

Yet, one thing the Locos had going for him was his hearing and, glaring at Georgie, he pulled his chair back and stood to pace away from Georgie and towards the corner of their lodge, where a tiny mass of items were stored in wooden boxes. "We'll have to pack our things and move, get Clurie out of Shyregoed. Not a good place in the first place for him, what with him being made of ash--" The Locos talked whilst still facing the shadows, and he glanced over at the fiddle, where the reflection of Georgie stared back at him in hidden scorn. "--and there's not much else to do. We'll pack our things and leave."

Georgie wrapped his hands firmly around the poker, playing with bits of wood that were struggling to catch on fire, and with a skeptical pull of the brows he slowly walked over next to Adal, who was still rummaging through their array of things. "And how do you expect us to do that--?"

"Teleportation," Adal murmured, quickly pulling out a few vials of black elixir from a small canister. He popped open the cork and slowly dripped it into a small cup, barely barely the size of his nail. "I can at least get us to one of the trade cities near Helios. We can take a roundabout back to Mishkan."

"You're--" Georgie paused, jaw gaped as he stared back at the fire with an exasperated sigh, a cough to follow as he choked on the phlegm now irritated from newly arising smoke and gray bits of ash. He wanted to save Chauhn, now, he wanted to go back to the base and make things right with him; he wanted to prove to Clurie and Adal both that they were simply overreacting, that they forgot Chauhn, who Chauhn really was, and that he would never do such a thing. But how could he say this, now, when Clurie came to them crying with all the emotional viscosity and more than most human's tears could convey, his skin now flaky and lined with the gray that haunted him months ago when he nearly died?

He couldn't.

So, blinking away what tired and honestly wary tears threatened to roll down his cheeks, Georgie forced himself to plummet onto the chair that Adal was sitting on earlier. While the Locos returned to the table and handed Clurie driblets of the elixir in silence, Georgie stared at the blistering fire.

They didn't know what to do, and that was about the only thing that they knew.

Within their bouts and throes of silence, Adal and Georgie wrestled between their own ideas of what was best for Clurie, and quietly went to work procuring what items belonged to them to try to beat the other in their own game of repetitive chores around their crude home. Adal sifted around the belongings sprawled about on the table, arms outstretched to grab at things just past Clurie's small booklet refuge, offhandedly checking back on the worn Plague whilst preparing to move out. He saw the fine lines of gray ash filling the contours of Clurie's tiny cheeks and fingertips, and perhaps Georgie had noticed, too, as he was packing the strenuously fragile instruments of their practice with added care and in such quick a pace that he was back where he was just moments before, near their corner of things, packing what he could into burlap bags while maintaining the warmth of the hearth.

The two brothers plopped back onto their respective seats when their lodge was now consumed mostly by empty space, save for a pile stuffed with a few bags and a wooden case wrapped around in thin bits of leather and cloth. Yet, despite their fifty minute's worth of work, Adal and Georgie didn't admire the prospect of getting out of Shyregoed. Adal's stern stance about the matter slowly melted into his psyche, a strange sort of sentience he'd rarely experienced throughout his life, and he noticed just how disturbed and confused Clurie honestly was. What he couldn't place, however, was his growing sentiment for Chauhn, having had glanced over at Georgie's misery-ridden face every once in a while during their concentrated stare at the showcase of fire prancing about their diminishing wooden home. Georgie wore the same kind of trembling and fumbling frown that quivered at every rush of disappointment, earnest hurt and a sense of guilt, that blew over him just like the gusts of wind just outside of their lodge. It was the same kind of doomed frown that Chauhn wore the first day Georgie and Adal had ever even seen Clurie, that impending frown that could not wrap itself around the very idea of death, dolor, of having something being taken away from him time and time again.

In that fifty minutes, Adal wondered, how Clurie could be the brunt of Chauhn's madness, his seeping rage ingrown from the hardships he'd endured after the death of his entire family. Then he recalled something even earlier than the maddening on-surge of cultists in the Irma, a more human and light experience upon where he met Chauhn himself. That momentous itch of memory of Chauhn screaming about the loss of family at Adal, who'd neither had a family nor a true grasp of the concept itself, meshed into Clurie's hollers in the blizzard in an exponentially louder and more desperate chorus. The loss and brotherhood, insanity and loneliness, isolation and the Black Death-- this all led to one eventual eruption of brunt realization that blared through this entire situation like a cacophonous demon.

"I knew that I wasn't his brother ever since Adal spoke to us at the fair, and it was making me sick to think that he thought I was..."

Clurie knew the truth, now-- he was no longer human, but a Plague.

He was a Plague, through and through, the thing that killed the Black Death, the thing that drove Chauhn into isolation. Then the Locos was reminded of an even danker memory, the memory of Beatrix Aamranthe and her cry if insanity jolting through the Gadu marketplace. The Black Death had killed her father, the Black Death had killed Chauhn's family-- and the Plagues, what abominations, could not help neither in their time of need, and then he knew--

Clurie's admitting Chauhn that he was a Plague was akin to admitting he was a murderer.

Chauhn blamed Clurie, the same kind of grief-stricken insanity that had tided over Miss Amaranthe so long ago.

Then, jolting Adal out of his gradually deeper and spacier thinking, Georgie pushed the chair back, which creaked and groaned against the friction of the uneven wooden floor. The brunette turned around to face the momentously content Clurie, extending his hand out for the Plague to climb onto. His voice oscillated with a weary tone, scratchy from coughing and choking wholeheartedly at the plumes of ash looming around the lodge. "Well, Clurie, it's about time that we go."

Blinking at the sight, Adal shook of his slowly gained discovery, a thought he'd detained from the throes of his mind for the sake of his own sanctity, and rushed as quickly as he could to the corner filled with their belongings. Georgie walked over to Adal and grabbed what he could with one hand, wringing satchels around his shoulders. Both of them were hard at work, now, with Georgie offering Clurie space on his shoulder while he reached for the fire poker, slowly dousing the fire, and Adal flipping through a small booklet to find their awaited moment out of the northern lands.

The two had regained confidence and calm, in that brief period of time, but everything went for naught at the sudden flicker in motion and sound. Both of the Malt Brothers jumped in shock at the rasp of noise resounding from the door and, without a moment to ponder, Georgie collected Clurie into his hands and cupped him in between his fingers, betwixt in fright and shock, a familiar face made his grand finale of an abrupt entrance.

Adal let go of the bag ready to wrap around his shoulder and it fell with an echoing clink, one hand immediately upon a leather sheath wrapped on his belt as he came to face a frozen faced Chauhn Clemmings. The Plague stared at the frostbitten boy and said, slowly, cautiously, though he knew well enough with his experiences of madness that voices could do little to shift is clumsily fleeting sanity, "Chauhn, you can't do this...

"You're killing yourself."

Chauhn's foreboding presence leaked into the room like a suffocating gas. Georgie collected Clurie up into his fingers and stuffed him into one of his many pockets beneath a layer of jackets, barely constraining himself from shifting his attention away from Clurie and back at the icy form before him for even a sliver of a second. This was not the same kind of ebbing sadness that had masked Chauhn's true emotions for so long, no; every twitch of Chauhn's maddened face cracked away at the reams of a delicate facade of tired dreariness, revealing callow and bursting anger with a destitute kind of intent that would stop at nothing. Everything Georgie had thought of Chauhn only an hour earlier was completely wiped away from his thoughts, now, and he held a hand near his heart and clutched tightly, holding little Clurie as safely as he could. He could barely muster the ability to stand next to Adal, his wide eyes lowered to the floor as he twitched at every spitfire bite of Chauhn's sarcastic remarks, which reverberated and stuck in the air like a callous plume of ice.

What was enough for Georgie to glance once more up at Chauhn was his final remark, and the Malt boy clutched his hands and moved awkwardly backwards, choking back a gasp. The hand that wasn't holding Clurie close to him could barely twitch in response, and Georgie could feel a nervous tension in his palms and a ripple of Aether beckon at his fingertips.

"I can't..." Georgie whispered, as tiny pricks of fire dissipated from his fingers. Just before he reached the corner of the lodge, however, shaking with both nervousness and a stubborn inability to harm even the brambles wrapped behind Chauhn, Georgie closed his eyes shut and flashed a determinate glance up at the Clemmings boy, breathing in to speak. Before he could, though, a tumult of magic swirled around his feet and wrapped around his heels in an array of vine and wood, and with a clumsy hitch of breath Georgie fell back against the creaky walls, gasping in pain at the sudden shock of force shot through his spine.

Adal snapped his glance back at Georgie, feet quickly locked into motion as he quickly felt a knife's sheath to the side of his belt. The Locos glanced at the bramble now strangling Georgie's already weak knees, thick layers of wood that Adal couldn't cut through in time, if he tried-- brows pressed with anger, Adal balled up what ill temper riled up in his disgruntled frown and stared at Chauhn, the tips of his fingers ever so slightly pulling out the blade of the rusty shank. Looking back at Georgie, who was twisting his hands around his pockets as if to protect Clurie, the Locos could tell already that his Grimm had no intention of fighting the disoriented urchin.

"Where was that Clemmings honor that you were telling me about not so long ago?" Adal glanced offhandedly at the branches blocking the only exit from the lodge, as he dropped the shank near Georgie, "It seems that you've stopped one lie for another, blast, and now you're out for blood... so against stealing bread, but I suppose stealing life is nothing to you."

Georgie glanced at the rusty knife to the side of him, and his eyes squeezed tight as he shivered quietly, "Adal, I-i can't..."

Without looking back at his Grimm, Adal murmured, a scathing hiss tinging his tone, "...Cut yourself free, Georgie, unless you want me to die an idiot for what I'm going to do."

The brunette shook his head furiously at the sight of the knife, staring in pearl-eyed horror while Chauhn swept through to him in minute footsteps. As if a lump obstructed his throat, the boy could barely make out small pleads to Chauhn, all barely audible, as he tried to force himself to wring his fingers around the knife's hilt in complete desperation. Just as his dampened hand wrapped around the knife, however, he was moments too late-- Georgie wailed and squirmed beneath the impaling grip of boughs strangling his thin limbs, red seeping through the layers of green even quicker as he struggled to push up against it, as if to break himself free with raw force.

Right as Chauhn started to press Georgie against the encasement of branches, Adal leaned against the weight of his legs, springing with force from the tip of his toes, and tackled Chauhn away from the front of Georgie. One arm outreached to wrangle around Chauhn's neck as they plummeted to the floor, he lifted their weight against the support of his knee, other arm cuffing Chauhn's wrist to his back. "Revenge? You really have lost your sense of honor, Clemmings!"

Glancing quickly back at Georgie, the Locos shouted, "SNAP OUT OF IT!"

Georgie, who was so seemingly acquiescing in the throes of his own punishments for leading Chauhn to the lodge, had just managed to pucker his form into an awkward sit as he wiggled himself away from the wretched spell, clutching his hands tightly around Clurie, until he scrambled to his knees and flung away what vine threatened to consume his legs once again with tiny prangs of fire, sudden jolts in magic that only formed because of the boy's own desperation. He was panting at the sudden jolt in adrenaline, in fear, and Georgie slipped back into an uneasy sit, back rested against the support of the wall while he felt the throbbing sensation of pain seep through his legs and arms. He could only watch between hazy eyes the fraught and entangling fight between Chauhn and Adal, with the latter being thrown against the floor following a cacophonous rattle of the already rickety table, dull cracks and thwacks resounding between rustles of cloth while Adal relished the bite of aftershock sent through his torso after Chauhn's agitated kick to the gut.

The freckled boy tussled between his coat pockets and collected his bleeding legs up on himself, one arm rested against the wall as he arched his heels, preparing to stand, but all he could do his slide up against the wall and stare momentarily at the holes between his muscles and joints that made it so difficult to move. Sparks of warm white collected around his hands as he slid back down to a sit, palms outreached for his legs, and his gaping wounds slowly started to seep in with a violent splurge of flesh and blood.

"You're a walking ghost, then! Look at yourself-- the ashes of your brother, all you had left--" When Adal rebounded and kicked away what roots entangled around his legs free, Georgie bounded to a stand and rushed to get the knife precariously set only moments away from the two boys, though he couldn't get himself to use it-- instead, he roughly knocked himself against Chauhn's form and backed away from the two. "And you'll throw it away so easily!" The Locos supported his sides with the clutch of his hands and recoiled back towards Chauhn, rapping a fist against the boy's cheek while he grabbed the nook of Chauhn's collar, forcing his fist to slide up against the urchin's face until they met eye to eye.

"Or are those memories nothing to you, Clemmings? All because Clurie is your legacy, not your family's, how dreadful is the thought that you might honor yourself?"

It was true that Georgie never joined a fight, especially not one with Adal in it-- it was both because he was firmly set against being injured, as he'd gotten injured enough with starting fights in the first place, and because he was sure he would do much more harm than he would good. When he watched the two he could feel the bitter reminiscence of watching street fights over and over again flood his growing guilt, the rising need to do something, but the warmth of trembling little Clurie was what overcame his fright.

Yet, from that momentous instance of Chauhn spewing his maddened rant at him only minutes ago, he knew that he was merely a meek and passable shield that was hiding the one true object of his intentions, Clurie, but with a determined sureness he yelled, "A-adal, tell me what to do!"

Adal gripped onto Chauhn's collar and shook him by the sleeves, brows tugged into an amiss smile as Chauhn continued to spill enraged words through his throat. His gloved hands were having a hard time slipping its fingers through Chauhn's dampened clothing, and the glimmer in his eyes shone in an empty light, a tired and truly desperate light, but Adal pressed his own stubborn refute into his strength and racked up what it took to hold the Clemmings boy still, if only for a moment. "You idiot-- he's your's nonetheless! Born from those ashes, born anew, a promise for another companion-- but you threw it all away because you can't see an inch past your past, can you? He's not what was, but he will be, you're supposed to teach him, not remind him of what you once had--"

Mouth pulled back with a tinge of sadness, nearly growing weary of anger, Adal could just barely catch a glimpse of a familiar Chauhn Clemmings, the child he'd seen near the shores of Imisus that reminded him so closely of his own Grimm. A playful wit, a mind for work, the urchin who bode well wishes for the Malts and up-kept his sanity and pride of family in the utmost respect-- that was Chauhn Clemmings. But on that day when they were near the shore, Adal remembered, Chauhn had angrily stomped away from the brothers after the Locos' own plight, and with that came his immediate weakness-- he couldn't get himself to fight Chauhn. No, not even after what he'd done to Georgie, not even what he'd done to him.

Not after what he'd told Clurie at the Festival, not with what he told Chauhn at the beach shore.

Despite his revelation, Adal mustered what strength he could to fight back against Chauhn, though what force he had through the sheer intensity of his anger and irritation were lost to guilt. He grabbed Chauhn back by the sleeve but reacted to Chauhn's grapple just moments too late. The Locos was flung against the makeshift table and slumped against one of its leg like a beaten rag doll, facing the floorboards as he crumped up his fists, slowly raising himself up betwixt the tangle of black and murky potions, his reddened and hair-masked face slowly being drenched against the murky puddle of elixir.

Georgie watched in fixated fear as Chauhn rose from the shadows of the lodge, as he backed up against the hearth, sparks of magical life barely construing themselves from his bandaged and blood-seeped palms. The boy, pale-faced but with a frown marked with determination, a blind but confused kind of courage, Georgie shook his head and shouted, "No... NO! I'm not giving you Clurie..." He tightend his grip aruond his heart, brows furrowed, "I'm not giving you Clurie... he's not your brother. Not like that-- y-- you're not the same, Chauhn..."

Yet, with his eyes flashed open and with a heart as fleeting as a bird's, what Georgie did not expect was Clurie's sudden leap in bravery. He could feel bits of soot floating about in his pocket, dregs of air and ash, and with a frightened gasp Georgie clutched at Clurie's ashes, which were floating into the air and threatened to escape him. Pleading beneath his breath, Georgie extended his arms and quickly ensnared his hands around the mess of ash, but he was too late. Clurie resolidified and formed into the Excito once again, small but tangible.

"No, no, no, Clurie, no, please--" choking, Georgie reached for the little Plague and his scampering feet, as if to drag him back, but Clurie was already well within the reaches of Chauhn's frozen hands. Though boundless, Georgie couldn't get himself to move, now, that flash of determination now flushed down his heart and strewed about the same remnants of his hopes for the Clemmings. When Chauhn pulled Clurie closer towards his shadow-encompassed face, Georgie blinked away tears welling in his eyes, beckoning spiraling flame into his hands. He whispered, trembling, "Chauhn, p-please, I-i don't w-want to hurt you..."

Neither of them did.

Yet, with weakness gripping at his hairs, Adal dragged his cheek up from the puddle of black elixir, cheeks drenched in both black liquid and delicate strands of glass shards that pulled diminutive cuts upon his flesh. Slowly rising, collecting himself into a kneel, Adal bowed his head low towards the floorboards and swept up what elixir he could with the bow of his tongue, eyes closed for an instant while he relished the sweet taste of the potion, which was mixed ever so slightly with driblets of scarlet, which settled in in drops like drips of oil on water.

The Locos quietly ebbed away from the table, now, slinking form slowly rising up from where he was laying, listening to the everlasting syllables of Chauhn's slack breath, and, with his last pull of strength, he tackled his weight against Chauhn's, springing his arms around Chauhn's neck as if to force him away from the light of the hearth.

Adal, his arms cuffed around Chauhn, tried to pull them both away from the heat of the hearth as their shifting weights hobbled and made them trip and stagger away and into the messy shroud of glass shards and liquid, with the Locos bidding what strength he could release into keeping Chauhn stagnant, silent, but as he whispered a slow "I know I did, and what I said was wrong-- I'm sorry--"

Meanwhile, wide-eyed, Georgie knew fully well Chauhn's intentions, his fear developing a big lump in his throat where he choked and fumbled at grasping what futile syllables could be vocalized to express what he felt, now, as Clurie spat back his bitter and earnest feelings at Chauhn with all the spite an Excito could seethe through his eyeless, shrunken form. His hands outreached for the hearth's fire, his eyes glazing over with horror as Clurie's silhouette was chucked into the very heart of the dancing flame, and who seemed to disappear from sight as the wood and charcoal around him grumbled and cracked over him, caging him into a pit of ashes and black.

Then, without a single uttered word, both Malt brothers stared into the light of the hearth, seeing the tiny Excito drown within the crackling forms of black, his small voice drowned out by the surrounding heaping masses. Yet, that itch of noise, Clurie's screaming self who struggled beneath the pile of wood, was enough for Georgie to relish in complete and utter, demented and horrid anger and rigid conviction. He bolted up towards the side of the heart and extended his hands towards the reach of the flame, jolting back as heat rose up his arms and, trembling, extended out his palms towards the hearth. Fire started to lick away ever so slowly, dousing and disintegrating into the humid air in thin strands, but the broken fragments of concentration scattered about in Georgie's breaking mind was nary quick enough to save Clurie, now, yet he continued to whisk away bits and pieces of flame between restless drops of tears welling in his eyes.

"Oh lord, oh l-- Clurie, Clurie! CLURIE, can you hear me? Clurie!"

Just in that moment, Georgie did what Adal couldn't do-- rush up against the flame and try to save the Excito, no, he had no optimism for such a thing as Death and, eyes wide, he watched with jaw slacked as his brother tried to ceaselessly reach for the smoldered Excito. His arms, once tightly clutched around Chauhn, were now loose, and he slowly pulled his wringing arm away from around Chauhn's neck. He took one step forward, until the urchin he held close to him started to melt into a shriveled figure of sorrow once again, the kind of sadness that the Malt brothers really knew Chauhn Clemmings for. When the Locos could barely keep the sobbing boy up with his arms, Chauhn's weight now drooping towards the floor as he trembled restlessly, who was looked tired and amiss of energy, Adal himself crumpled to his knees, the urchin rested against his shoulder, eyes closed as his brows puckered with indeterminate sorrow.

"I'm sorry..."