Around mid-afternoon they stumbled on some wreckage that had torn down part of one of the trees, and while the minions spread out to search for a way around Treias sorted through what the golem could get him to. After only a few minutes of sifting he gave a triumphant cry and held something up for the others to see.
Artan gave Ashraf a sidelong look, and he wracked his brain for what it might be, familiar as it seemed. "Uh… okay, you've got me here."
"It's an igniter," Treias said, as if it were painfully obvious. "There's enough stuff here to cobble together a flamethrower."
Artan and Ashraf exchanged another look while Treias continued gathering parts, one that spoke of a practical fear neither of them wanted to voice: the next time he slipped, would Treias have the presence of mind to toss it aside? Could he? Ashraf could easily survive any onslaught so long as Treias didn't catch him off guard, but Artan might not. By silent agreement Artan stood watch, and Ashraf dropped to his knees beside Treias. "What can I do to help?"
Treias worked until he ran out of light, and then Ashraf called up guardian fire, cold blue flame licking up his arms and dancing across his fingers and giving them enough. So he worked until he couldn't any more, too weary, and Artan's minions brought them more scavenged fruit.
Early the next day he had it finished, configured a little differently so he could use it while being carried by the golem or sitting down. Treias didn't seem to notice the new tension between Artan and Ashraf, and they let it stand as it was, got moving again.
With the sun at its zenith Artan motioned everyone to stop, stood very still as if listening, then said, "They've found something." She pursed her lips. "Other survivors." She started off in a new direction, and the others trailed behind.
They came upon them near a larger stream, a small camp that looked a couple of days established, one of the smaller minions waiting patiently at the edge with a strongly built norn woman in Vigil armor and a large, sleek jungle cat. "I thought there must be someone nearby," she said, glancing down at the minion, "considering the dragon makes a very different use of flesh." She looked up at Treias in the flesh golem's arms, and her lips drew into a thin line. But she addressed Artan when she spoke again. "You don't look like Pact."
"Irregulars," Artan said. "What's left of the Dwayna's Breath."
"Pirates." She didn't make a face, but they heard the distaste in her voice. "It's good to see something moving other than the plant life, regardless. You should talk to Warmaster Longstrider." She leaned in close to Artan, and murmured something.
Artan looked back to Treias, and neither he nor Ashraf needed to hear what the norn had said to know what had passed between them. "I'll be back."
As soon as they were out of earshot Ashraf exhaled heavily. "This isn't going to end well, is it?" Treias asked.
"No, and I know where it's going." Even with no one nearby the few people he saw in the camp kept an eye on them, and Ashraf's hand never left the pommel of his sword.
"If it's the difference between you two being safe or not, leave me. I'm too injured to be any use in a fight, and eventually–"
"No." The vehemence, the finality of it floored Treias, and he shrank back a little. Ashraf looked up at him, glaring–and Treias caught sight of that faint glow again. "Just no. We didn't drag your ass this far to abandon you. Even if we have to fight a gods-damned dragon barehanded we're getting you out of here."
Treias looked down at the muzzle of the flamethrower, occupied himself by inspecting something Ashraf wouldn't know wasn't out of place. They stayed like that for a long time, until the gaze of the Pact survivors grew heavy on them. He didn't see any sylvari among them.
He didn't need to ask what had happened to them.
When Artan left the tent she gestured to them. The golem trundled up, and from his seat in its arms Treias could barely see Ashraf walking next to him, carefully placing himself between Treias and the bulk of the camp. On them reaching her Artan leaned in close and quietly said, "We're staying with this group. They've got a beacon they're working on and they expect to have it up in two days. They've seen some smaller aircraft going overhead from the edge of the jungle, so they expect to get a response quickly." She pointed at Treias. "I told them you could help, and the Warmaster agreed."
Artan fell silent as a very tall, leggy charr in lightweight Vigil gear stepped out of the tent, and she considered the three of them carefully for just a moment, looking down her muzzle cautiously. "You're the engineer?" she said to Treias.
"Yes ma'am."
She gave a short huff, half a growl. "I'd give my tail to know why you're fine and my soldiers are at best dead and at worst ravening off into the jungle, but we haven't the time. Come with me." She started off at a pace Treias might have trouble matching even hale–the golem, however, kept up fine.
Which left Artan and Ashraf alone. They watched in silence until the Warmaster and the golem ducked into another tent, then glanced around the camp to catch the wary stares of others.
"Someone needs to keep an eye on him," Artan said. "And not just to see when he starts to go again."
"We can't fight a whole Pact camp," Ashraf muttered, and he stepped up to stand aside her and look out over the camp from the same angle, one hand on his hip and the other on his sword.
"We might have to. But let's pray it takes them longer than two days to lose their minds." She clapped Ashraf on the shoulder. "Let's make ourselves useful until then."
They understood each other well enough by now that neither needed to say which they found more a threat between the dragon and the paranoia of normally reasonable people put into a desperate panic.
The camp had extra bed rolls considering how low their numbers were and how much they'd salvaged, and Treias fell asleep the moment he laid down, exhausted from days of fear and a full day of hard work. He'd helped, really helped, and the crew working on the beacon had improved their estimate to dusk the next day for activation. It felt good, and he felt he had the trust and gratitude of a large portion of the camp, and he felt safe. Almost as if he had the whole crew around him again, and the din of the jungle turned to the soft sounds of the ship as he drifted off.
He woke to pressure, but not song, and a cool kiss of metal at his throat. He opened his eyes to darkness, and in the gentle light of his own glow the grim features of the norn who had met them at the edge of camp. She seemed a terror all her own in that light, and he opened his mouth, closed it when the blade at his throat bit down.
"You make a sound," she said, "and it happens anyway before anyone can reach you. Then I kill your friends. You're not far gone enough to want them dead, are you?" He didn't dare move or make a sound to confirm or deny her. "But it's coming. I know. It came for all of them. Red and gold, they said. A brilliant song." The blade pulled back, and her voice hitched, but then steel bit again and this time Treias felt it draw sap. "They begged, some of them. Kill us, they said. Before it makes us kill you. We did. It was mercy. Even the ones who didn't show any signs. It was mercy. It's coming for you." And now he heard it, digging claws into the fear crawling up the back of his spine, riding on every rise and dip of her voice like a ship in a storm. He couldn't help it, made a strangled sound, torn between fear of her threat and fear of the song welling up inside him, fear of what he'd do.
"It's there, isn't it?" She smiled, something broken and far gone in her eyes. Then she leaned in close, shifted the blade up to set the point just beneath his jar, under his ear. "Sometimes," she whispered, "I can hear it too."
He sensed it in her, the way he could sense the emotions of other sylvari, the tiniest surge of red and gold, a niggling vine somewhere vital in her flesh–and then blood. Treias didn't cry out, still frozen by her threat, and when he blinked back the sudden spray of it recognized the knife tearing out through the front of her throat. Ashraf caught her weight before she fell, carefully rolled her body into the open spot where he'd been sleeping as she choked out around the gaping hole he'd torn in her throat. It was quiet, hardly more than a bubble and a gurgle, and while Treias had seen enough of this wet knife work it bothered him.
This, he thought, is how it means to kill us. Not brute force or numbers, but fear.
"Did she hurt you?" Ashraf whispered. He settled his fingers on Treias' chin and turned his head aside, looking for the thin line of sap she'd drawn with her knife.
"No." He swallowed thickly. "But she meant to."
Ashraf nodded. "I heard." He looked aside at a sudden sound, perfectly still, then back. "I'll get Artan. We're leaving."
Artan barely asked about the blood on Ashraf's hands, splattered across Treias' neck and face, but she pulled a kerchief, miraculously unblemished, from one of her pockets for Treias. Ashraf didn't seem to care, almost wore the blood as a badge of pride–
No, Treias decided, because he washed it off the first time they found water. That was the song plying sweetly dark notes, more insidious than before, in the back of his head.
They wandered, each privately despairing at the loss of their best hope to get out of the jungle. Treias felt newly useless, still riding in the flesh golem's arms. He didn't say it aloud, knew how they'd react, but he couldn't shake the feeling he'd already killed his comrades by association. By being. It was only a matter of time, now, before they were overwhelmed by dragon minions, or by Pact seeking vengeance.
They stopped at dusk to rest, weary after their hasty midnight flight from the camp. They took the shade of a huge strangler tree, the thinner roots spaced enough to climb between to a more sheltered inner area. The flesh golem proved too large to navigate, so it remained vigilant outside while Ashraf carried Treias in. Artan curled up in the cool dark and resumed her rudely interrupted sleep.
They sat in silence near the entrance for a while, Ashraf staring out and Treias almost afraid to look up at the jungle. He didn't feel right thanking Ashraf for tearing out someone's throat to save him, though he'd seen worse, done worse on some of their runs at sea. He wasn't even sure he felt gratitude. She'd been right, and it was only a matter of time now.
Ashraf started removing his greaves. "How long?"
"Hm?"
He paused, closed his eyes and took a deep breath through his nose, then opened his eyes and continued. "You know what I'm asking."
Suddenly Treias stilled, perfectly motionless and staring. "She told you." He spoke slowly, unsure the words would come out words.
"No," Ashraf said. He pulled off his boots, started going at some of the more restrictive parts of his armor. "She led me to understanding."
Treias tried to focus on anything else, like the dull ache and the growing itch in his injured hip, or the utter silence of the jungle without a breeze. "Since the first time we slept together."
He heard Ashraf pause, the lack of motion full of some strangely subdued surprise. Treias hunched his shoulders, laid out the flamethrower and pretended to be interested in it.
"That's a while," Ashraf said.
Treias nodded. "It is."
He heard Ashraf lay down in the cool shade next to him, so he finally turned back to look, saw the sword still within easy reach. Ashraf had folded his arms behind his head, and stared up at the tree around them. In the shade Treias fancied he still saw the faintest whisper of glow in Ashraf's eyes.
"I do care about you." Ashraf spoke quietly, voice soft and gentle and full of its own kind of sweetness that had nothing to do with lost human magic. "Probably not the way you want. But you're more than crew. You're more than a friend."
"Then what am I?" Treias drew the knee of his good leg up to his chest, wrapped one arm around it. He felt small, and his throat suddenly dry.
"I don't know," Ashraf said. "Do we have to figure it out now? Let's just… take it as it is. When we're not fighting our way out of here we'll figure it out." He pulled one arm from behind his head and held it out in invitation. Treias took it, carefully lowered himself down to pillow his head against Ashraf's shoulder, draped an arm over Ashraf's chest while Ashraf wrapped his own free arm around Treias.
It wasn't what he'd wanted to hear, but it was better than he'd expected. He took the offered comfort, safe in the knowledge that so long as he remained in Ashraf's embrace he wouldn't fall farther.
They walked for days. One they went without water, because the little plants at the edges of the stream sang in Treias' perception, tiny voices echoing distant song. Each day the breeze grew more still, the air between the trees stifling. Ashraf and Artan shed as much clothing as seemed safe, Artan tying up her coat into a sling for what they chose to go without. The heat mattered very little to Treias, save that the air seemed stale.
They heard small aircraft overhead, and determined the edge of the jungle from their flight patterns. With the heavy canopy they never saw them, had no hope of signaling one. Hope came instead in the fact that they flew at all.
They reached the shade of a massive cliff, greenery sprawling up the face–but the huge vines that had torn apart the fleet as well. After some discussion they agreed to follow the cliff, looking for an easy way up. Treias bit back the offer to remain behind since he'd be a burden getting up the cliff face, already knowing the answer.
And not wanting to hear it change if they grew desperate enough.
They passed a night in the shadow of the cliff, Treias no longer ashamed of clinging to Ashraf through the frightful hours before dawn when the distant music seemed loudest.
The next day the trees began to twist, tortured limbs heavy with moss that seemed to writhe if anyone drew too near, the leaves a panoply of colors filtering sunlight to cast stained glass patterns across the jungle floor. Hip-high sundews sprouted between the knees of black-and-green trees, blood red and the tips glittering wet. The great brambles arced out and in of the cliff face like whales breaching, broken stone from their violent expulsion spilled at the base. One or two still lazily chugged along, burrowing through stone with a dim churning and a vibration through the ground. Smaller briars jutted out at odd angles and bore corpses in armor of the Orders, spaced as though handing them down to one another at an inexorable crawl. Here at the edge of the jungle, the very outskirts of the dragon's domain they passed through a cathedral of its macabre glory.
And everything sang, alive and aware, triumphant and sorrowful at the sylvari among the dead on the wall. They echoed distant song, made wordless praise, hymns of tone and tune that made no sense but if he stared at the light against the ground long enough–
"Ashraf." Treias' voice came feeble, he hardly heard himself above the thrum of song and worried that they'd swallowed his voice somehow–but Ashraf stopped, turned, and waited the few seconds for the golem to catch up. He matched pace, reached out for Treias' hand and threaded their fingers together. A jolt of that light brought only silence now, not the more distant but more overwhelming chorus it had at first.
The sun reached zenith and they baked in the steam of the jungle. Artan's minions even started to smell ripe despite the magic in them, but they continued dutifully scouting ahead, steering the group clear of danger. A cat wrapped in vines, the disconnected muscle and bone made motive by them in crude but effective puppetry, snatched one up. Artan steered them away from the cliff face for a while.
Perhaps an hour passed and they drew back close to the cliff face when Ashraf called out, "Artan." She stopped, turned back, and the golem stopped as well. The cathedral's lighting cast them all in maddening, eerie colors, but the glow in Ashraf's eyes as he held back the song from Treias' mind remained constant, cast his face in a calmer light. "We need to turn back."
"We'll lose days," she said. "And the clifftop is descending. There's more of a slope. We're getting somewhere."
"No," he said. "I mean now."
She stiffened, and tilted her head as though listening to something. Fear seized Treias, because she'd mentioned a run in with brambles–was she hearing the song as the norn at the camp had claimed to? She turned, looking up to the cliff face, again adorned with dead as if offerings to the dragon.
"They agree," she said.
She took a step and the ground erupted beneath her, brambles rocketing up to toss her. They grabbed her mid-air by one ankle. She twisted to lay hands on them, but as thorny flesh withered under her touch more came.
The golem dropped Treias and rushed the vines, grabbing at them as if to rip them out of the ground. Treias landed on his injured hip, lost his grip on the flamethrower and laid there dazed and in pain for a second. He looked up to see Ashraf hacking at the vines, guardian fire searing them to stumps that wiggled uselessly. But the vines kept pushing, hauling Artan up into the trees.
Treias dragged himself to the side, trying to find an angle where he wouldn't hit anyone with the flamethrower, but then the vines shredded through the golem like razorwire, twirled up through the chunks of meat and bone and thrashed them against the ground. He hauled up the muzzle of the flamethrower and let loose.
On the other side of the column of vines a smaller one lashed out at Ashraf, curling around his throat and pushing. He released the magic that had kept the vines from simply tossing him with their blows, knowing it was move or break his neck. He hacked at the vine, but others braided up to strengthen it, shot up along the blade of his sword to trap his hand on the hilt. He pushed back with guardian fire, but for every vine that seared away two more lashed up and along to replace it. Finally he shouted, the light in his eyes and under his skin again, and the vines lit up with real fire.
Treias forced himself to his feet, made a weak gasp at the pain in his hip and stepped forward with a halting, half-falling gait. He feared what he'd get out of the ground here but he called up vines to reinforce his injured leg, made a sort of brace to try to bypass the joint but he didn't dare look down, guided them by feel. They did the job but when they burrowed into the wound he knew he only had so much time. He limped forward, gait made strange and shambling like the Orrian dead, and kept up the pressure with the flamethrower. "You can't have them," he breathed, as if anyone would hear.
The vines finally pulled Artan up above the leaves, out of sight. Her minions came scampering out of the woods and up along the vines, which contracted and shuddered trying to dislodge them as they climbed up. Ashraf finally seemed to make headway against his, tearing free his sword and swinging it up alight with fire, as another vine thrust up from the ground and twisted up, drove its tip through his armor, through his stomach like a spear. His sword swing halted just long enough for the vine around his neck to braid runners up his shoulder, to catch his arm in place. Together the two vines lifted him off the ground, and he struggled but the vine around his throat only tightened, the one impaling him only pushed harder until it broke through and slowly began cracking through his armor on the other side. They pinned him to one of the trees at head-height.
Treias finally reached the column of vines as he felt the ones at his hip worrying their way through flesh, as song exploded through his head like his gunshot had exploded Bosun Espen's. He screamed, full of denial and despair, and shoved the muzzle of the flamethrower into viny flesh, jammed the trigger. He tore off the fuel tank, shoved it in among the vines as they began to merge with the ones he'd braced his hip with, the ones already inside began eating at his flesh and tore through the skin of his leg. He pulled out his gun before they could get to it, loaded it with shaking hands, tore off his bandolier of ammunition and wrapped it around the fuel tank–the vines blindly grabbed at it, swallowing all of it, swallowing him. He pressed the mouth of his gun to the tank.
He looked up one last time at Ashraf through the writhing vines, hanging limp against the tree, mouth open and vines crawling their way out as if trying to find the song inside him, the one that had chased them away so long. He pulled the trigger.
Beyond muzzle flash and before flame consumed him he saw Ashraf's eyes open, saw the vines holding him sublime as light seared through them, in the steam of the jungle the outline of golden, ethereal wings behind him. Ashraf lifted his sword as what remained of the vines curled away from the light spilling out of him.
Then the fuel tank exploded.