(*finger guns at ceiling*) Hello. I'm...not really sure who's still reading this or who remembers me or this story at this point, but here I am again. Nine months are a long time, I know, but I hope this at least somewhat makes up for it (*drops chapter into the salty soup of story-ness and offers around a basket of munchy bread*)

Review Replies:

Nova: Hi, Nova! Nice to see you here :3 Honestly, I struggled with the beginning part so much, so I'm happy to hear I got it right. Yeeeaaah, you just know absolutely nothing good is gonna come of that ;-; (*innocently noms on a sandwich*) What could they mean...who knows...

Parakeetlover3: They are, at least, alive and (mostly) unharmed...for now. Ahhhhh, thank youuuuu.

Toni42: (*pokes*) Heeeey, you deserve some credit too. He is, indeed, Angy Soggy Boi ;-; Am very glad you liked!

TheAmberShadow: Yeah, they're struggling in a big way T^T Heh, my original plan was for Aiden to be a one-chapter wonder (so to speak) but then in the middle of writing Chapter 4, I realised what a waste of his character that would be, so I bounced a few ideas off Toni and now I have bigger plans for him :) (*continues innocent sandwich-nomming*)

Small warning: this chapter contains a little bit of Petra's colourful vocabulary.


Being told that this so-called huge smuggling job basically amounted to a glorified escort mission was something Petra could have wrapped her head around. Escorting a teen who, as far as she could tell, didn't have much more than a pig, the clothes on their back and the dented sword they were clutching - no fancy armour or rare supplies, no relation to some big-shot connection of Isa's, nothing that she or any of her 'associates' could be interested in?

Not so much.

Whatever it was that made them so goddamn important to those Blaze Rods, she decided with a blown-out breath, it had better be good.

She led the way most of the time. The four of them crept along the most out-of-sight, out-of-the-way paths she could think of, where clusters of weeds strangled loose cobblestone and pushed through every cranny they could - and there were a lot of those. Scars of time and tragedy. The kid was trying a little too hard to keep up; their feet stumbled over cracks and bumps, very nearly smashing their face into the ground on more than one occasion. Every single time, Petra found herself grabbing them by the back of the shirt to interrupt said meeting between face and ground. And every single time, Ivor gave an over-exaggerated eye roll, muttering words that made Jesse duck their head.

Petra wasn't all that sure where their stream of chatter was directed - at their pig? - but no matter how far they trekked, the voice behind her leapt from topic to unrelated topic, only stopping for maybe thirty seconds at a time whenever Ivor shot them his patented 'do-you-have-a-death-wish' look and then tentatively starting up again.

Well, let them ramble if it made them feel better. She had bigger things to think about. Like the silhouette of a certain building taking shape on the horizon, its sides crusted with vines that trailed like shrivelled veins.

The mountain of rust-gnawed minecarts piled up in front of the wall cavity was still there, their wheels long since beaten off in the hopes of stopping them from being moved very far. Petra reflexively leapt over to what she knew to be the best spot and braced her back and arms against it; with Ivor doing likewise next to her, the heap groaned sideways before long, just enough to expose a passageway as cramped and shadowy as any back alley.

"Where, uh...where's this lead?" Jesse asked, craning their neck like they could beat back the dark that way. They stopped short, a pained smile twitching on their lips, when Ivor fixed them with an obsidian stare.

"Just keep your feet moving and your mouth shut - better yet, don't even look at anything." With that friendly advice, he turned his back on the group and ducked his (annoyingly) tall frame inside.

Petra quirked a half-smile at the kid. "Don't worry about it. He's a greasy old grump to everyone."

"I heard that."

They brushed a hand over their face as if to wipe away a giggle. Petra stepped back for a second to let them squeeze past, the little pig (she hoped to hell that thing wouldn't cause them any trouble or worse, end up dead; suddenly having a kid on her hands was a hassle as it was, let alone a grief-crazed one) dutifully trotting after them, and then, after taking a few seconds to strain her ears for any patrolling guards or particularly rebellious citizens wandering a bit too close, wedged herself into the passage. Dank air dug its fingers into her face.

Right on cue, a pair she vaguely recognised as being in Isa's pocket popped out from a door that would've looked like a solid wall at first glance. Petra spared them a brisk nod, which they returned, only hanging back long enough to send somewhat curious looks in Jesse's direction before moving on. They, she knew, would slip out and haul the minecarts back into place - and thank God, because trying to close the hole up from the inside was a pain in the rear.

That was one of a handful of reasons she and Ivor didn't take this route much. But out of all the hidden ways they knew between them, it had the advantages of being one of the nearest to Ivor's pad and one of the least likely to have anyone unwanted skulking around, so it'd do.

Ivor stalked his way into Petra's spot at the front of the group, steering them down fusty paths where the clammy walls threw their footsteps back at them in a chain of weird, jumbled echoes and then through a wooden viewbox of sorts built into the cave system, where they had to duck down into some kind of crab-walk (something Petra was quietly glad nobody else was around to see) to dodge smeared windows that looked out into a guard-infested street.

After what she considered a way more than reasonable length of time, they finally made it to a more open area, where a man was perched in a rickety chair, thumbing through a book by the small, guttering flame of a torch lodged into the ground. His head darted up at the sound of their steps. Petra couldn't put a name to that face - she was embarrassingly bad at that sometimes - but some part of her brain did, at least, identify him as a guy assigned to keep an eye on the comings and goings in the tunnels.

On recognising her and Ivor, he offered a fleeting smile. "Been a while since you two passed this way," he greeted. "I don't know if you've seen how many of them are prowling around out there, but it's not a great time to be heading out right now."

"Business," Ivor grunted, his eyes nearly black in the semi-darkness.

The man just nodded, gaze lingering on Jesse in much the same way as the others' had. "So I see." He swished a hand towards the battered bookshelf behind him without waiting for further explanation, not that Ivor would've granted one. "Go right in. I'll shut it up after you."

Petra stole a look backwards on her way over to the makeshift door. The kid was craning their neck again, this time over towards the book resting in the man's lap. It couldn't have been any more obvious they were bursting to ask what he was reading. And when she turned back, there was Ivor's finest scowl, practically stamped onto his features by now. She didn't bother hiding the amusement playing upon her lips.

So Ivor's awful with kids. There's a shocker, huh?

The shelf was stacked so high - dog-eared books, knick-knacks pointing in all kinds of directions in a compass of dust and questionable stains, empty item frames shoved together in a heap, wads of crumpled paper with pens littered in their folds - that Petra almost wished they had another minecart pyramid to grapple with. And unfortunately, as the watchmen had bleated more than once, they mustn't pull anything off it or let anything topple to the ground no matter how crammed the damn thing was, mustn't do anything to disturb the dust or the cobwebs in case any nosy intruder realised it had been moved.

Instead of a passageway, it grated aside to scatter the caverns' diluted light upon maybe four or five steps' worth of solid stone before it dropped away, meaning either a drop to a ground of trampled dirt and dregs or a trip down the ladder fixed to the wall. Petra passed over the second option and strode straight towards the edge of the pit, touching down with a muffled thump of boots against grunge, swiftly followed by Ivor (who, to her faint satisfaction, landed with somewhat less dignity), the bottles stuffed into his belt clinking in protest.

That just left Jesse hovering on the ledge, their gaze see-sawing from Petra's expectant face to Ivor's surly one, a splotch of pink peering out from behind their leg.

"We don't have all day."

Maybe it was just Petra's imagination, a trick of the (barely existent) light or something, but she could have sworn that a trace of frustration flashed in the kid's eyes at Ivor's rebuke. But as soon as she glimpsed it, it was gone and they'd turned away to scoop the pig up into their skinny arms - and instead of taking the hint and jumping down into the hole, they grasped the ladder and started to clamber down it.

She let out a huff but said nothing; after all, it took them all of five extra seconds to reach the bottom that way. The jab of her foot against Ivor's ankle was enough to keep him quiet on the matter too.

Their next step was one that always left her grimacing no matter how many times she took it: a rectangular(-ish) metal dingus suspended above a gaping shaft and closed in by discoloured barriers on all sides, more of a basket than anything, really. She instinctively hustled Jesse into the middle of the line that the thinning walkway forced them all to form, keeping herself to the rear as a lookout while Ivor groped his way into the damn thing.

True to his word, the guard had lugged the bookshelf back into place, which - even though any light from the open hole had only spread about as far as one could expect from a torch - had the effect of letting the tunnel's murk free to chase her down the path and pool under her feet.

It wasn't like it made much difference, though. Darkness didn't shiver through Petra the way it had once upon a time; she'd long since adjusted to it. If anything, she understood it a lot better than she did the light.

Twisting back in the direction of the contraption, she was promptly rewarded with the spectacle of Jesse trying to scramble over the wall that stood between it and the path. It wasn't very high, but then again, neither was the kid.

"Oh, just- come here, will you?" That was all the warning Petra supplied before she caught their shoulders, plucking them right off their feet and - ignoring their startled meep - easily hoisting them over the barrier to plonk them unceremoniously into the (excuse for an) elevator, then stepping in herself, doing her utmost not to cringe as it vibrated under the movement.

Ivor's hundredth eye roll of the day didn't quite arrive in time for him to completely hide the quivers at the corners of his mouth. Petra darted a look at him, but he chose to ignore it in favour of tweaking a knee-height lever. She'd never had a lot of faith in this shambly old pile of rust - but thanks to what she assumed was some kind of redstone wizardry, it trembled deeper below the surface without adding three new corpses (and a porkchop) to the endless list.

The ribbon of tunnel at the bottom was doused in streaks of shadow that flitted over the walls, brushing Petra's face, her hands, her blade, broken only by the torches peppered around in an attempt at warding off mobs. Or Withered.

Pity it hadn't done the same thing with the sentries standing guard a little further in.

Petra's steps paused, shadows drowning her scowl at the rankling reminder of the hundred or so times she'd warned the Blaze Rods that this was somewhere ripe for a spot of light ambushing on the guards' part. She redoubled her grip on Miss Butter and spared Ivor one fleeting look before beginning to steal closer. After so many years, that was all either of them needed.

Maybe the one nearest to her sensed an enemy was there. Maybe it was just time for them to do the tunnel-prowling they called a search. It didn't matter. Their black-swathed body barely began to turn around, their gloved hand to stretch for the weapon slung over their shoulder, before a golden sword bit into their back.

It was nothing new to Petra; things like this were near unavoidable if you happened to be a fan of keeping yourself alive. A blade through the kneecaps for anyone who lay in wait for her around corners and in blind spots of caves. Slipping close up behind those dressed in the coal-coloured gear of a guard, one hand piercing their throat with the tip of whatever object she'd snatched up and the other pressing itself over their mouth until the convulsions shuddered to a stop, then letting them fall like paper dolls into still-warm puddles of their own blood.

And other ones, too. All those hunched and twisted bodies, who'd begged her dead-eyed for a quick end instead of waiting for the Wither to ooze through their bodies and minds, or for a firing squad to drag them out and make them that evening's state-sanctioned entertainment.

She gave her head a rough shake to clear it (enough of that, enough of it all), turning away from what was left of the guard in time to watch the other slump to the ground at Ivor's feet. A clean job - except for the thick reddish flecks decorating Jesse's shoe.

Instantly, clumsily, they scraped off as much as they could with their other foot, throat working like they were holding back a gag. But at least they didn't have to be brought round with smelling salts.

Well, they're not a total greenhorn, her head conceded. Not that that was saying a whole lot; in a world like the one that'd been warping and decaying around them over the years, getting a reputation as a wimp was somewhere near to signing your own death warrant.

The tunnel started to lean into an incline now, meaning a slog upwards to a craggy opening blown through the side of what used to be someone's sprawling basement, probably thanks to the house improvement policies of some long-ago Creeper whose ashes had mingled with a crusting of dirt and mildew. 'Peeling' was a polite word for its ceiling and walls, and Petra didn't even want to know what she kept skidding on, but it was unobstructed. It was safe for now (relatively speaking) and they needed every scrap of that they could rake up.

At first glance, the basement would've looked like a particularly charmless dead end, unless that glance ran across either of the narrow doors hunching into its sides...well, door frames, since the doors themselves sagged drunkenly, having either rotted or been ripped almost off their hinges. The nearest one - which she and Ivor normally used whenever they took this route - would take them up and out into the weed-throttled yard at the southern side of the building. The other led north, where Sky City lay. Or what was left of it, anyway.

And of course that just so happened to be the one with a hefty beam rammed right under its frame, wedged firm between it and the floor.

Petra bit back a groan, instead letting her foot lash at the nearest wall to air exactly how she felt about this. One thing at a time, though; making sure they weren't about to get their throats gnawed out was, as usual, the priority here.

That being the case, she nimbly pressed her side up against the right-hand wall and began to trace it with one hand all the way down to the end of the room, eyes ransacking the place and half an ear waiting for the sound of Jesse and their pig trailing after her. And waiting. And waiting, until she flicked her head around to make sure they hadn't somehow been kidnapped from under her nose.

The kid wasn't following on her heels, wasn't even close. And they weren't hovering within pester distance of Ivor, either. While the search unfolded, they'd stayed behind just in front of the gap, stone blade gripped ready, even keeping the pig burrowed into the backs of their ankles as if to shield it...or him, she silently corrected herself. Their face was brimful of a set look of the kind she hadn't seen there before, despite the paleness lingering on their cheeks. Guarding the path. Guarding them all.

She had to admit that that wasn't what she'd been expecting.

It came to the same thing, she guessed. There was still a job to be done, and always possible danger to hunt out. That fact prodded her further, past the mangy remains of a sofa shoved onto its back, the murmur of a seething haze of flies, a scuttling of disturbed rats (at least nobody spotted her involuntary grimace), something beneath her feet that might've been thick mould or dead bugs. Other than that, empty. "Clear," she reported, old habit pushing her voice down low anyway.

"Clear," Ivor announced a few seconds later from the opposite end.

No sooner did the word leave his lips than the ceiling chunks dangling over their heads shuddered faintly, in a way that Petra would've probably called a bad omen if that wasn't kind of stupid. The dull whine of machinery, then strings of nearly inaudible and completely garbled talk from iron-grey voices, blending after a minute with another mechanical scrape. A massive gateway creeping open and then closed again while sentries swarmed over it like spiders in a wood pile. Not wholly unfamiliar, as sounds went.

Jesse didn't seem to share her feelings; their head perked up towards the sounds with interest (getting distracted, rookie mistake). "So we're right below the district limits?"

"Yep," Petra grunted. "Well, yeah and no. Just crossed 'em while we were down in the tunnel. No way for us to get over the border legally and we'd end up shot full of arrows if we were dumb enough to try, so-"

"So we've sunk some time into making our own arrangements," Ivor finished for her, striding over to the barricaded doorway.

Jesse nodded, for once briefly scrabbling for words before they managed to latch onto them. "I haven't really...been, um, out in a while...out there, I mean, and it was different when I got here; at least, I'm pretty sure it was, 'cause I was with someone and they had all this paperwork ready to get us through and I didn't know if we could rest so much on some pieces of paper, but the guards didn't even hold us back to search us like I thought they were gonna, so I wanted to ask what the papers were and how they got 'em, but they didn't seem to...uh..." They tapered off a little sheepishly, apparently not as oblivious to Ivor's incredulous stare drilling into the side of their head as they'd seemed.

Petra meant to nod and move on before she aged five years - that, however, was until she caught a glimpse of something at their collar, stark against its smudgy white fabric. Her brow slowly puckered. "You got an injury?"

They kid frowned back at her for a second, tilting their head in a way that made for an uncanny reminder of a confused dog, until their eyes suddenly widened. "What?" they mumbled, pulling their arms in towards themself. But she had the feeling they'd heard perfectly well.

Her sigh, almost a groan, billowed into the freezing air. "That." She pointed with Miss Butter's tip at the faint edge of something mostly veiled beneath the shirt, its tinges of violet and blue and black feathering into one another. "It kinda looks a lot like a bruise," she added with a tang of impatience.

Their only answer was to shift under the weight of her stare; their mouth opened a quarter inch before quickly snapping shut again.

"Give it to me straight, Jesse," Petra said lowly, muscles tautening for a reason she couldn't really put her finger on. "Why're we even doing this? What the hell do people like Isa and Stella - Stella, for God's sake - want with you?"

"I'd certainly like to know," Ivor cut in under his breath from his one-sided vertical grappling match with the timber.

A deep breath drew Jesse's shoulders up to their jaw and let them drop again. The piggy stood firmly in front like the world's shortest, pinkest stone wall. "I'm not supposed to say anything." Their eyes met Petra's. "And I'm not gonna."

She turned on her heel before they could see the twist of her lip. Practically biting her tongue in two. Frustration prickling in her fingertips.

They were a kid, she reminded herself. They sure hadn't been the one planning this. She wouldn't sink so low as to try and force anything out of them. But- damn it, of course this, of all times, was when Jesse decided to clam up. Didn't they, or Isa at least, or Stella, or her stupid llama or someone owe her and Ivor some kind of explanation when their necks were the ones on the line? When her interest in fighting nearly everything around her just for the sake of fighting it sat at roughly zero?

Teeth bit down harder. It wasn't enough. Her tongue, if not her fists, refused to still. "Okay," she started, wrestling with her voice.

But she didn't have to.

A harsh splintering shot through whatever she'd been going to say, as well as the basement's quiet. Grit hailed down from the corners. And before she could make sense of the half-decrepit bat suddenly flinging itself from its roost with an alarmed squeak - of Ivor stepping through a now open doorway and the beam lying tossed aside on the floor - the world caved in on her.


Jesse squinted through fog, seeing nothing before them but a sturdy, vaguely familiar silhouette. A golem? Or some sort of buff spirit, here to carry them away like Peter Pan? Maybe the ceiling came crashing down on them, squashed them into zombieflesh. Or maybe what Isa had told them was wrong and that- thing was finally coming for them...for a second, that thought wasn't entirely unwelcome...after all, why should they get to-

"Ugh- God fucking- fuck-"

...a spirit with a bit of a mouth, then.

A damp nose nudging their shoulder. Noises - the muffled crunch of footsteps and then something or someone pounding on metal. "Ivor?"

Oh. Right.

With a shake of their dully throbbing (and oddly heavy) head to brush off the last of the blurry spots, Jesse struggled to their feet and instinctively reached out for their extremely dusty but mercifully unhurt piggy, who leaned into their hand right away.

Petra's hair and clothes were plastered with grime too, but she didn't seem to care, or notice. All her attention was on drumming her fist against what had once been a door and was now the mangled heart of a jumble of rubble. Reuben started, pressing himself against Jesse's ankles, as a sudden thud rang out from behind it.

"Ivor, is that you? 'Cause this isn't funny." Nothing. Then another thud, slightly closer this time. Petra slammed her open palm down with a blazing scowl; the walls hemming them in sang along with the sound. Jesse winced a little and snuck a glance at Reuben, wondering whether it would be a good idea for them to cover his ears. "Whoever you are, get over here and say something or I swear I'll bust right through-"

"With what?" a distinctive voice called back around a strained grunt that probably went hand in hand with the low rasp of something heavy being dragged aside. "The power of your imagination?"

The flash of relief across Petra's eyes didn't stop her from throwing her gaze and hands up towards the remnants of the ceiling, mumbling what sounded a lot like "zarky jasshole". Jesse (somewhat regretting not clamping their hands over Reuben's ears when they'd had the chance) picked their way along what floor they could until they stood next to her as if in some sort of solidarity. "At least we know it's him?" they offered.

She didn't even look at them, but a spasm tugged at her mouth, some of the strain falling away just for a second before inching back again. That was something, at least.

Ivor, apparently, was planning to hunt for some hidden other way through instead of bothering with mining, which Petra didn't find an acceptable or not-overdramatic idea. Jesse listened to the debate as they would to some sort of background music, letting their mind drift away from the darkness and the monsters. Maybe it was weird, but it reminded them of home. Of sitting in the treehouse doorway under the goldish smudges of a sunset with their legs propped on the ladder, Reuben nestled in their lap and the sounds of Axel and Olivia bickering over the appropriate use of dispensers in the opposite corner, reassuring Jesse that they were both close by.

If they ever made it back there again.

A sudden knot caught at their throat; they swallowed it down before it could reach their eyes. Cut it out, they told themself, raking their teeth against their tongue. You are going home. It's fine. They're both fine. We. Are. All. Fine.

Petra abruptly tapped her boot toe against the wreckage, the solid little thunk tugging Jesse's focus back into the room. She was kneading her eyelids with scuffed knuckles, an action Jesse recognised from Olivia as a sign that the pulse was beginning to pound in her temples. "Looks like the only way out is through...so it's either wait around for Ivor and his old man knees-" She pointedly ignored the scoff from the other side of the blockage. "-to find this magical secret passage of his, or we dig up and around ourselves."

Awesome.

...bit of a problem with that, though.

Jesse shifted where they stood, examining their sword as though looking hard enough would make it transform. "Um...I don't have a-"

"Then figure something out."

At her thin tone, Jesse resigned themself to crouching by the heaps (and clenching their muscles against the twinges that sliced across their neck and shoulder at the movement, just in case they needed a little reminder of...well...), but they were halted by a sudden "wait, Jesse, your-", along with a deft - but surprisingly light - swipe of fingers against the side of their head. Jesse had always hated letting out sounds of pain, but they couldn't help it; as soon as the contact was made, the stinging throb there shot up about fifty-seven notches and they flinched away with something between a hiss and a dumb whimper, free hand instantly floating up towards that spot. Their fingertips came away streaked with sticky crimson.

Petra made a face, digging around in her inventory in search of anything she could use as a quick-and-dirty dressing...and supplying the silence with under-the-breath words that Jesse was silently a little thankful they couldn't make out. She came up empty. "I'll make Ivor the Grump patch it up," she eventually decided in a half-mutter.

Jesse released their lip from a hard bite (hell, their head was on fire, it felt like ripples from a thrown pebble) long enough to slide a slow gaze over to Reuben, who blinked back at them, and then to her again - well, to her back, since she'd fished out her pickaxe and was busy chipping away at the nearest pile of stone. "And you think he's gonna agree to do it?" they questioned, skimming a thumb over their mouth.

She tossed them a glance over her shoulder. "Point taken. Then I'll just kick his ass until he does, yeah?"

Jesse had to agree with that logic.


As with all of the structures piled over each other at this nigh-deserted fringe of the district, this felt like nothing so much as some manner of godforsaken prison. What few windows weren't clumsily covered with yellowed paper (worn to scraps, as meaningless as the LOCK UP YOUR HOMES edict that it must once have borne) had long since stopped beckoning any noteworthy light inside and its corners coughed out a decayed darkness that gathered narrowly, as though nothing could have illuminated it even if Ivor had cared to attempt it.

Besides his own low tread on the cramped stairway, the only hints of life were the intermittent hisses of spiders skulking behind their lacework somewhere and a spate of quick, dull thuds that probably marked Petra and Jesse embarking on their burrowing plan.

That granted him a flicker of relish. At least he wasn't the one lumbered with the kid and the porkchop this time. And he was damn well going to savour the (comparative) peace, no matter how temporary, no matter how bristling with dangers…

Like this one.

Ivor's grip on his potion vial constricted. A warped husk was sagging against the next door, sealing it shut under a festering growth that sprouted from what were once its neck and back. The floor around it strewn with rancid clumps of flesh, of intestine. And something - no, more than one - bulging black and bloated and putrid from behind its mats of hair.

Not eyes.

Tentacles.

It sensed him. Skeletal stumps no longer identifiable as fingers quivered, a blighted, atrophied throat worked furiously, yet all it could utter were scant, rattling gasps. Dying, of course...assuming that it had enough remnants of humanity left to manage even that.

Ivor drew back his hand, thrust it down to the Withered's neck and watched his bottle sink its shards deep into worm-eaten flesh, watched its contents seethe a web of blistering paths over flayed skin.

It did not shriek; it was long past that, but its convulsions were enough, tentacles thrashing like a whip, hell-bent on condemning him to take its place even as it ripped itself further apart. He drove the jagged sliver between his fingers deeper still, just as he did the first time he ran up against one of these abominations, when reports that the official death toll had climbed to fourteen hundred (and the unofficial was likely a lot closer to two thousand) were seeping into the newly cobbled-together quarantine zones. When those numbers were in some way significant.

It quietened in the end, just as they all did...people and Withered alike. He tossed what was left of the vial under an empty window frame, wiping away the embedded fragments and blood droplets flecking his fingers as absently as he would streaks of dirt. Little point left in to make it seem as if nothing had been here of late, he noted dryly, glaring back towards the now-invisible rubble of that pestilential basement, but the damage could feasibly be blamed on a Creeper.

Even if it clearly wasn't only guard patrols that needed to be fooled.

He forced his boot toe between the monstrous lump at his feet and the door, straining and straining until it finally peeled away and slumped face down with a foul sound. If there'd been one here, it was hardly vanishingly unlikely there were others - whether sunken in on themselves and putrefying into nothing, or else shambling around sightlessly, sleeplessly, mindlessly, until they were. And they could more than feasibly have made a hive inside the walls...the same walls that Petra was, at that moment, ploughing straight through.

He wrenched his mind away, grumbling at himself. There was no reason to think along those lines. None at all.

The room beyond was neither of particular note, except perhaps for the stench woven into everything from the furrows in the tabletop to the cobweb slivers drooping from the ceiling, nor home to any manner of face, humanoid or otherwise. He did not falter (though instinct kept a hand tucked aside his belt, fingers resting simultaneously against the neck of a potion and the side of his sword) until he eventually halted in an alcove adjacent to the door north, making sure that he remained sheathed in shadows, and considered. If he was to determine exactly which direction Petra and Jesse must have headed and cut across to there himself, surely he would come upon them, and preferably sooner rather than later.

He compressed his lips with such force that they briefly lost sensation. Jesse.

It stood to reason, really, that his first piece of cargo in a while not only had the unfortunate ability to prattle and wander and deplete resources, but they were obviously nowhere near as seasoned a traveller as either of their grudging escorts, not to mention rather insistent on dragging around their uncooked lunch everywhere, like its squeals wouldn't grate on his nerves at best and attract things they didn't want to attract at worst. The sole hitch, the rein keeping him from simply casting the pair into a gutter and being done with it, was that if he trusted Petra - and, God help him, he did - the recompense would render his labours worth it.

Even leaving aside the sheer inconvenience of the situation…like Petra, Ivor had divined neither the significance nor the urgency surrounding one undergrown, incompetent child. They seemed no different from any other brat, after all. It was that very fact that let his mind fleetingly slip its confines, dipping into amorphous possibilities and hypotheses that never quite rang true. And it was conceivable that the old Ivor, the Ivor that had bled out alongside Harper and the world they'd known, or they thought they'd known, would have been inclined to press for more information. To demand answers as to just how a kid like the one trailing around with him could benefit Isa, or indeed anyone else.

But for the new Ivor (and he was hardly new anymore, was he? At this point, he was all there was and the traces of twelve years ago were mouldering in a shallow grave)? This was just another errand. Jesse was merely the latest in a long line of deals to make. So each of those useless conjectures, too, were duly swept aside without hesitation. As far as he was concerned, whoever was waiting at the city could do what they liked with Jesse once they were out of his sight.

His senses prickled insistently, jerking him back into the present moment. Long years of instinct pinned him against the wall, chest and hands taut, invulnerable to any surprises. He didn't appreciate those.

But it wasn't the crooked groans or guttural, laborious breathing of Withered that he was confronted by. Rather, it was an intermittent yet distinctly human voice, and one that he could only assume was pronouncing coherent syllables, though he couldn't make out anything of the sort. He followed its (fairly rankling) notes, steps swift and soundless as time itself - and as it trickled closer, flashes of recognition and irritation alike besieged him.

"...shame this house got so...probably used to look...room like this once...banned from going in there after the, uh, toaster incident…"

That struck him as the living embodiment of a headache if ever he'd encountered one. And it was something of a routine, a pattern traced into the dust of his life: that whenever headaches manifested themselves, Petra was involved somehow.

What was it that Gabriel used to say? Speak of the devil and he shall appear. Naturally, it had usually been uttered with Magnus in mind, as opposed to his daughter; more specifically, the man's penchant for materialising out of thin air mid-conversation to offer his wildest stab at what was being discussed.

And just as naturally, Ivor wiped the reminder away like the meaningless bit of junk it was. This was neither the time nor the place for a trip down Memory Lane. There was no time or place for such absurdity anymore.

At any rate...that axiom apparently applied to Petra too, because not a moment later, the wall just to the left started to fracture under the duress of her sword and then she (or rather, a thoroughly dirty, dishevelled version of her) was there, writhing her way free and staggering a little over her feet in a way that she would vehemently deny later. A trail of discarded cobble and granite stacks followed her, a testament to her grousings about inventories and blocks.

Jesse brought up the rear at first with their arms clamped around the pig, but promptly scampered ahead, evidently taking his raised eyebrow as an invitation to pour the story of their adventure all over him.

"Did you hear that really big noise befo- well, you were right there and you were moving all that stuff around, so you must've heard it, right? The whole basement fell in like Petra said and it was worse than we thought so we had to mine all the way around instead of through just a little bit, then we had to take a detour 'cause we heard cave spiders and then we thought it'd be smart to-"

"Let's get out of this hovel before we pat ourselves on the back, shall we?" he cut in testily, making a mental note to fathom out whether or not earplugs were still available somewhere.

He was all too glad to set his back to them, but Petra grabbed his wrist before he could. "Hold up, there's something we gotta do first."

A growl clawed at his throat. "Oh, what now?"

She gestured to Jesse by way of an answer. More particularly, to the splotches glistening wet and dark at one side of their hair.

Ivor hissed a breath through clenched teeth, abruptly wishing a desk would materialise for him to smack his head against. Apparently, being saddled with a babbling adolescent wasn't enough - no, it just had to be a babbling adolescent who couldn't seem to handle themself for longer than ten minutes.

"What's such a huge pain in your rear?" Petra wanted to know, reading the look washing over his face. "Yeah, it's not a bundle of fun times, but we're gonna be here an extra five minutes at most and you've already got some healing stuff on you, right?"

With what he considered rather immense self-restraint, he successfully held back a quiet curse or three. "Brilliantly put, Petra, two arguments that miss the point spectacularly all in one sentence," he retaliated instead, pausing only to direct a glower at Jesse. One finger stabbed towards the most level area of the floor around them. "Sit."

They averted their eyes, mumbling something under their breath that he decided to turn a deaf ear to, but planted themself down anyway, the pig crawling into their lap and huddling close like some sort of oversized, over-squeaky stuffed animal. Ivor saw no point in holding back an eye roll. His lip curled in distaste as his knee met the mildewed excuse for a floor, while one hand ferreted around for his meagre stock of antiseptic agent (almost excruciatingly hard to come by now, despite being less than useless against the Wither, and something Jesse should frankly have counted themself fortunate that he was not only wasting on them but had on his person to begin with). Petra, meanwhile, stayed resolutely on her feet, hand propped on the hilt of her blade, free to assume the role of guard. This, at least, was one thing that would be even more of a nuisance if they were two people, rather than three.

As Ivor well knew from extensive experience, head wounds had an irksome tendency to bleed disproportionate to their severity or lack thereof, which in turn would draw certain unwelcome hordes with its tang. From the way Jesse was tracking his movements with wary eyes, though, they didn't have a concussion, meaning one less thing to contend with. Small mercies, he supposed.

Ivor forced their head up, gnashing out a "hold still" that wasn't entirely necessary, and unceremoniously let as little of the vial as possible fall in colourless drops into their cut, barely visible under its ponds of blood. Jesse let out a quiet, hissing breath, twitching in a tiny spasm as if about to cringe away, but a look from him was enough to convince them to wedge their cuff between their teeth and make no further sound throughout his ministrations.

"Good as new," Petra took it upon herself to comment behind them, examining the slapped-on fragment of gauze that was already staining scarlet.

He straightened with a jerk, barking a clipped, grey laugh. "Oh, of course; forgive the limits of my reserves. I hadn't planned for my being expected to play nurse to a child I had no idea existed until this morning." The corner of his eye told him that said child made a minuscule movement at that - a tightening of the mouth, a dip of the head - but he didn't trouble himself to glance at them; neither did Petra.

"Y'know, I swear I remember Isa saying to keep 'em in good shape before we started out..."

"Yes...just as I seem to remember that agreeing to this little errand in the first place was your bright idea, not mine. Besides, perhaps they'd be just fine if your nannying skills were up to the mark-"

"And what the hell was I meant to do? Grab Miss Butter and poke their head better?"

"It's just a dumb scratch," Jesse murmured, sending fissures into the dispute; two gazes snapped towards them. They were clearly finding their pig the most important, fascinating thing in the world. "I won't get any more, okay?"

Ivor clicked his tongue, deep disbelief colouring the sound. Petra scratched her cheek, nails leaving grooves in the grime, and sighed.

"Just watch yourself...it's nothing hairy this time, but this isn't somewhere you want to get dinged up. And get rid of that stuff," she added, ripping a rag in two and slinging one half towards Jesse while applying the other to the whitish grit smearing her own face. "When it gets dark and the moon's out, anything light is gonna stand out like a beacon." She glanced down at the kid's (admittedly no longer markedly white) shirt but made no further remark.

Ivor heaved a lengthy sigh, wheeling around to the door waiting so tantalisingly close by and reflexively testing its resistance. The handle, hinges, frame had been virtually devoured by wear and corrosion, but after some urging on his part, it reluctantly crawled open to allow a finger of daylight to touch the room.

"Get down," he instructed, not concerning himself with waiting for a reply from anyone before edging around the gap and onto what was a broad, cream-walled porch until it was all but destroyed by some scavenger group or another in a hunt for wood and crept up on by meshes of moss and ivy pencilling their convoluted green graffiti.

Which, as it transpired, also provided an elevated view of the world on the other side of the county gates.

A thin straggle of buildings, scorched and blackened ruins scattered among them, having been set alight in one of the first guard-led 'Purges'. In the gaps between them, trees and vegetation had struggled up from the weeds and dead bushes. Blankets of cloud that still persisted, but whenever they wore thin for a second or two, bars of sunlight threaded through, glancing over it all. And not a spiked barricade within sight, unless he was inclined to turn his head back in the direction of the border crossing.

Silently, Petra pointed with her blade towards the skyline. Silhouettes in the form of sagging towers, still climbing from the horizon and - well, hardly piercing - but prodding the pallid sky in feeble defiance of their ramshackle state. Ivor exhaled, the mist of his breath writing his sentiments in the air. Isa's precious Sky City. His finishing line was within sight and it was damn well going to stay there - because if not…

He shot a narrow-eyed glance at the kid crouching at his elbow, at the pig tucked under their arm, at the faint awe playing across their smudged face as they took in the view almost like there was seriously anything left worth wondering at.

If not...then God help him.


Ah, Ivor, ever affable and upbeat.

Apologies for the longer-than-usual chapter, but hey, it clocks in at 7300 words so that proves how much I love you all ;-; Also, apologies again for the super long stretches of nothing in between my updates; I seriously wish I had a good explanation to give you guys, but I just don't. I hope you've all been well in the interim, though!

A few quick bits of Rainy News that you're welcome to skip: I finally finished university in May and my degree certificate just came through this July with the second-highest possible grade somehow (and, by some absolute once-in-a-lifetime miracle, only 2.07% away from the highest?), I've had my first Covid vaccine (yay for trypanophobia T^T) and there is a kitty curled up in my lap as I'm typing this.

'Til next time, peace, love and mozzarella sticks be with you.

(*tips hat*)

~ Rainy

(PS: #givecreepersahomeimprovementshow2k21)