Sol Regem is a big bastard.

Sol Regem is a big SMART bastard. With good eyes. Real good eyes.

"How did you forget to mention-"

"It's not that I forgot to mention-"

"-the big hulking dragon king guy-"

"-he's usually not HERE - I mean, I mean he is here, but not here here-"

"-the size, Rayla, the size of a castle-"

"OKAY." She brings her hands down onto his shoulders and stares hard at him, like she can will calm into his head. Fat luck. "Shut up, that mouth."

His mouth snaps shut.

"Okay. Ooooookay." She seems to be struggling to find words, which is fine with him, because his thoughts are electricity and chaos right now and all he can focus on are how big those teeth seem from all the way over here.

She half leads, half drags him behind one of the slightly taller rocky growths jutting out of the landscape, Zym close behind. They huddle down, Rayla's teeth worrying at her lip while Callum tried not to explode. She takes in a deep breath, holds it. He sweats.

"We have to lie low," she finally says. Her voice does not shake, and it's very impressive. "We can't let him notice us - I mean, I would be in enough trouble as it is, being out here without an escort, but you-you would definitely die."

"You're amazing at being reassuring, really, the comfort is phenomenal."

"I'm serious Callum!" Oh, now there's an actual tremor in her voice, and yeah, his knees might be shaking. "Regem watches over the borders to make sure nobody gets in or out without proper escorts, and, and the escorts have to activate their abilities full out at all times in order to pass through this land safely, or else he flies down and checks, and sometimes-" she drops to a hiss, "-sometimes not so nicely."

Callum wipes at his forehead and peers at her. "What do you mean, 'not so nicely?'"

"I mean he roasts first and asks questions later."

He can feel the heat rising out of the baked earth through the soles of his shoes. "Roasts like - a sharp dressing-down?"

Her voice is a graveyard. "Like a flametorch."

He lets his head thump down on her shoulder, and she allows it because she's the best. "I figured." And damn, if this isn't the kind of high-stakes life-threatening nonsense he thought he would thrive in when this whole adventure first started. He could kick himself. "What do we do now, then?"

Rayla is quiet while she thinks, and Callum chances a peek around the stone pillar to the dragon, who is just way too big, and way too scary. It's too far too see with any degree of accuracy, but he thinks the dragon's gaze is turned elsewhere, to the left and towards the sun, almost like a giant, murderous flower. It's still for a few seconds longer while Rayla mumbles behind him, and then with an abrupt snap it's wings unfold - and wow but they're gorgeous, bright and red the way Zym's wings are moonpale - and it launches itself into the sky, regal and fatally powerful.

Callum pivots and grabs at Rayla. "It's flying, it's leaving-"

She pushes his head down with an absent hand and peeks over the top of his hair. "Oh good," she says, and for once it doesn't sound a single bit sarcastic. "I think he's going out to meet one of the weekly escorts."

"How long do you think it will take him?"

"If the escort is close, under an hour. If the escort just breached the sun-wards though, the blessing might take upwards of two."

Not bad. The expanse between where they're standing and the outcrop where Sol Regem had been guarding is crossable if they book it fast enough. He says as much and Rayla nods. "I can run faster than you can. I'll-no, shut up, I'm right and you know it - I'll run ahead and make sure the path is clear. This area doesn't get too many wild creatures with Sol keeping watch, but even the weaker creatures can slow us down if we're not careful. You take Zym - you can give him a boost if he needs to fly faster."

"What if Sol Regem comes back?" He can picture it in crystal clarity, Sol's enormous shadow engulfing Rayla before a column of flame incinerates her. "What if he tries to kill you while you're ahead?"

Rayla smiles at him. "It's only humans he kills immediately."

The comfort is astounding.

When Rayla had first said she could outrun him, he'd been somewhat affronted. Granted, it was a very real and true observation, and had been proven multiple times throughout the course of their journey together, but she didn't have to open her mouth and say it with words and everything - she could have lied with the kindness of her elf heart or whatever. Now though -

- sweat streams into his eyes and stings them shut, plasters his tunic to his back and makes his clothes heavy, his mouth is pure sand -

- now he sort of wishes he could lie down and sleep his way across the scorched expanse.

There aren't even plants around. It's that hot.

"Zym," he gasps. He's past the point where he feels embarrassed about how winded he sounds. "You holding up okay?"

Zym's tiny shadow glides above him, bolstered by the intermittent Aspiros he provides whenever Zym strays too close to the ground. A chirp cheerfully answers his question, and Callum trudges on. The heat has his speed down to power-walking. Awful.

Rayla is a blur of blue, black, and silver up ahead, her hair catching the sun and shining like a shard of broken mirror. She'll dart forward and pause before approaching a pillar or boulder, edging forward with her blades raised up in front of her like shields. A scan of the area to confirm they're the only ones around, and then she's off again to the next big rock, banging the flat side of her blade against the rock every to make a high ting noise, which at first sounded kind of cool but quickly became annoying after the thirtieth wack. He would ask her what the hell she's doing it for - it's giving him a headache, and aren't they supposed to be laying low?- but that would require a level of oxygen that he lost a mile and a gallon of sweat ago.

To distract himself from the truly criminal amount of water he's lost so far, he closes his eyes - briefly, he's not suicidal - reaches down into the core of awareness that burst into being after his brush with dark magic, and turns it towards the air. Almost immediately, he's conscious of the drafts of heat rising out of the earth, pressing themselves up against the shape of Zym's wings. He's aware of the thick air hovering near the ground, and the quick-dry streams of wind tumbling high above their heads, light and fast and biting in their speed. At the outer boundary of his perception, he can feel the air sliding in and out of his own lungs, out of Zym's lungs, out of Rayla's, and he can feel - at the very edges of his fingertips, at the liminal spaces between his own mind and the vast unending presence of the world - he can feel his own ability to make that breath stop.

The taste of rot is unforgettable and he shies away from the sudden, unsettling impulse to press down and steal their air. He backs up into a different dimension of awareness, one that tastes much less like decay and much more like he just bit his tongue.

Oh, he thinks. This tastes like Zym's kisses. It's a heavy copper-bright galvanic taste, like a cloud that's cold-hot and knife-sharp. Electricity floods his mouth and lungs, the weight of Fulminis bumping gently against the back of his teeth, and a distant part of him realizes that he could just as easily cast a bolt of lightning as he could Aspiro. It would be so easy, in fact, to bring his hands up in the right position, gather the rising charge in his chest, and unleash it in a white strike of blinding-

"CALLUM-!"

"AAAAH-"

Rayla is inches away from his face, her face warring between irritation and concern, as if she can't figure out whether she wants to make him sit down or wallop him. It's honestly a very familiar expression to see on her face. "I've been calling you for the last three minutes," she says, her voice as conflicted as her face. "You really didn't hear me?"

"No?" He rasps, and wow how did his voice get so hoarse? Was he screaming? Please no, that would be so embarrassing and no no NO maybe he was screaming and that's why Rayla looks so worried and pissed off? And shit Sol Regem did the screaming alert Sol? They're about to die because he's an embarrassment and a fool and-

"Your..." she starts, and her hands flutter around his face, unsure of where to land. Something is dribbling out of his mouth. Great, now he's drooling? Mortified, he reaches up clumsily to wipe it off. His hand comes back red.

"Oh." They both stare at his hand. Rayla seems frozen to the spot. He tries for a grin. "At least it's not drool?"

She gives him an incredulous look. "What?"

"'Cause, you know, that would have been embarrassing."

Rayla's eyes close and her hands come together over her lips as if in deep prayer, perhaps asking whatever it is that moonshadow elves pray to for the right amount of patience to keep from snapping his neck. It's the same look mom would get when he and Ezran would do experiments in the palace kitchens.

She breathes in, out (he can feel the air filling and leaving her lungs, an increasingly constant presence in the back of his mind) and presses the cool back of her hand against his cheek. "You're not still weird after that stupid spell, are you?"

"I-no, I'm fine." He's painfully aware of how hot his own face is. "I feel great."

"You're burning."

"This place isn't exactly cold."

She studies him hard, eyes darting all over his face, before muttering,"Okay, fair." She glances up to where Zym is lazily circling, and Callum takes a chance to look back at how much distance they've covered. They're much closer now to base of the mountain where Sol Regem had kept watch, and with the sun's glare, he can barely make out the border of rocks marking where they had first crossed over into Xadia. "We can keep going that way," she points to a cluster of caverns directly below Sol Regem's perch. "It's the path my team took when we first set out for Katolis, and it has some good spots for rest."

"Does it have water?"

"Does it - oh." She reaches into the bag at her hips and draws out a flask of red juice. "Slowly" she instructs. "And leave some for me."

It might be the meanest thing she's ever said to him, initial death threats and all, because at the first sip he kind of wants to drink another eight full flasks and then pass out in a rainstorm. Cutting himself off at two gulps feels like some sort of cruel punishment aimed at making him cry, except he's not sure there's enough water left in him to do so. "Thanks," he says instead, because his parents raised him with manners.

Rayla takes one long pull from the flask and then ties it back into her bag somewhat reluctantly. "We need to keep moving. We can make good time if we really run, and we'll need to if we want to avoid Sol Regem. It's been close to an hour already, and if he's on his way back we don't want to be caught way out in the open like this."

He tries to surreptitiously wipe his hand on his tunic. "Alright. We can break when we get there?"

"Most definitely. We will break." Her voice brooks no argument.

He looks at her. "Rayla," he says, "I'm okay. I'm fine."

"Yeah, well-" she turns her head to face the caverns, shoulders a tense line. "Either way, we'll be stopping. We both need the rest."

She hasn't, he notices, even broken a sweat. "Right," he says.

She takes off at a slower jog, one blade out to tap against stone every so often, and he struggles to convince his feet to hurry up just a bit more. Zym glides low between him and Rayla, a silver mirage.

In the spaces where the ache used to live now crackles a current of electricity and the sensation of somebody else's breath.

Flinging himself bodily against bare dirt has never before held such appeal, and he suddenly understands why Rayla did it after the boat ride. He pants and leans heavily on the side of the cavern mouth and doesn't slide down through sheer willpower. His clothes are soaked.

Zym sits on Rayla's shoulder, the ceiling of the cave too low for him to fly comfortably. Rayla squints into the dim light. "If we walk a little farther, we'll come across a small spring. The taste isn't the best, but the water is clean."

He nods, breathing hard. "How are you not exhausted?" he manages, pushing himself jerkily away from the cavern wall. The coat is coming off, he decides, propriety be damned.

Rayla swings her arms around and shuffles a bit. "The moon might be waxing again," she finally says. "My invisibility lasts only when I'm in direct light of the moon, but I still get a boost regardless of the moon being visible. The fuller the moon, the stronger I am - kind of like how ocean-based elves gain and lose strength with the tides."

"So, what, you're getting super-powered now?"

"Don't be daft." She pats Zym and waits while Callum strips his scarf, gloves, and coat off and ties them around the strap of his bag. "I'm simply returning to my best state."

"Your "best state" is super-powered. Look at you, your face isn't even red. Watch, look at this-" he squeezes his scarf and it drips to the floor. "You see that? Disgusting. And yet you ran across that whole thing and didn't sweat at all."

Rayla hums. "I still wouldn't say that's super-powered. That's just me being a Moonshadow elf. You're a human, Callum. You work different."

Ouch. "Ah, well-" With the weight of the coat and scarf off, he can finally feel air against his skin and it's so good, like a second wind. The red tunic is short-sleeved, and even though it's drenched it's still light enough to let his arms and back cool off. "I guess so. I think that walk took it out of me."

"We get to the spring and we'll sit down. I promise it gets cooler the farther in we go."

Sitting sounds amazing. Water AND sitting sounds phenomenal. But- "Rayla," he starts, staring into the tunnel leading into the mountain.

"Hmm?"

"It's pitch black in there. We won't be able to see where we're going."

She blinks at him and then looks in the direction he's facing, before turning back to him with a smile. "Don't worry," she says, and there's a lilt to her voice he's never heard before. "Like I said, I'm at my best state."

After avoiding assassination, falling off a waterfall, seeing Ezran dive into a frozen lake, almost getting struck by lightning, and navigating a floor made of actual lava, he would have thought that walking around in the dark wouldn't have registered high on his list of Anxiety-Inducing Activities to Avoid. And yet.

There's something to be said about not being able to see even a bit of sky.

"I've got you, you don't have to look so scared."

"I'm not scared."

"I can see you sweating from here."

"I'm not scared, I'm just-" suffocating "-recovering from the run we did earlier."

"That was half an hour before we got to the spring, and you were fine when we got to the spring. You were the one who wanted to get up and keep going!"

Yeah, well, when he was at the spring he could still sort of tell where the opening to the caves were. Now, with stone pressing in on him on all sides and nothing but stale, dead air to choke on, it kind of feels like he walked into his own coffin. On an oft-ignored, intellectual level, he knows that he just has to turn around and walk and eventually he'll find the sky again, but the intellectual level has taken a backseat to make room for the primitive, paranoid level, which kicked into full throttle the second he realized he could no longer feel fresh air.

Draped along his back, Zym seems to agree, curling his head tight to next to Callum's own and providing a steady background of disgruntled noises. Every few minutes he'll lick his chops nervously and out of the corners of his eyes Callum will catch a glimpse of the lightning arcs constantly sparking at the back of Zym's throat, a brief flash of light in an otherwise pitch canvas. Zym's claws curl around his shoulders and bite through the thin fabric of his tunic, and Callum allows it, Zym's weight and Rayla's solid grasp on his wrist the only contact points keeping him anchored in the endless sensory void.

There's nothing but darkness and the sound of their feet hitting the cave floor, and he finds himself wishing Ezran and Bait were here despite himself. Ezran had never been bothered by small spaces, and Bait could have provided some actual light, mood pending. The thought of his baby brother makes his heart squeeze tight - is he hungry? Tired? Thirsty? Corvus seems dedicated, but does he know that Ezran gets spooked by loud thunder? Or that Ezran sometimes gets nightmares and needs someone closeby for the first three hours? Or that Ezran cries if a bug gets smooshed? Does he know about the snail armor?

"Are you about to cry?"

"N-no!" He wipes at his face, which is blessedly dry. Zym gives his ear a despondent lick and he can feel his hair standing from the static electricity. "I'm just-" he searches for the right words to describe just how much he misses his little brother, struggles, fails."-Worried about Ezran," he finishes quietly.

Rayla doesn't stop marching them forward, but her grip on his wrist changes just enough for her thumb to brush the back of his hand, as if in reassurance. She's quiet for a long second, and then, "Corvus nearly had my horns."

What? "What?"

"The first night after leaving your crazy aunt, that Corvus guy appeared and nearly got the drop on me. He was fast, strong, experienced- it was kind of like going against my teachers, way back when I was first learning how to use my swords. He kept me constantly on the defensive. But-" Again, her thumb brushes the back of his hand. She pauses long enough to turn him a bit so he doesn't smack into a wall, before gently tugging him forward once more. "He never let me forget why he was there."

"To what, kill you?" This whole speech has done nothing to endear him to Corvus.

"To keep you two safe."

Oh.

They're silent for a few more minutes, nothing but the sound of their footsteps and Zym's occasional whine to keep them company in the dark. Finally, "Thanks."

"Yeah." Rayla leads him past a curve only she can see, guiding his hands so he can touch the wall for himself. "I can't promise you he'll keep Ezran and Bait completely safe, but I do know he's a tough fighter, and he cares about Ezran."

"Yeah." The memory of Ezran's head held high, like a prince, like a king, is burned into his brain. "Yeah, you're right."

"Damn straight I'm right. It's been established by now that I'm the go-to authority for all common-sense needs and questions. For all your worries and stupid-idea consultations, visit with me and I'll set you right."

"Your generosity is-"

"Legendary! I know, I know, and my-"

"-ego, pride-"

"Patience - you are such a snot - is renown through all of Xadia. Even Lightning herself takes notes."

Callum snorts "What patience? When have you ever-" Wait. "'Lightning herself'?"

"Mhm." Rayla tugs him past what feels like a strange rocky outgrowth, and the air around him changes, tastes greener, sharper, quicker. They must be nearing an opening.

"Lightning … what comes out of the sky?"

He can't see anything, but he can feel Rayla staring at him. "No, Callum, you- you cannot be serious."

"Serious about wha-"

There's a patently unfair amount of incredulity in Rayla's voice when she says, "Lightning the queen?"

"How am I supposed to know what your dumb queen's name is?"

"She's the queen!"

"So? You know how many queens and kings are running around in the human kingdoms?"

Once again, despite not being able to see her, he gets the distinct impression that Rayla is shaking her head in despair. "There's only one queen that truly matters in all of Xadia, and it's Queen Lightning. She's guardian of the skies and borders, protector of the heavens, and sole bearer of the Royal Burden. Or at least, we all thought she was. Zym kind of changes things."

"How so?"

"Callum." The unspoken 'idiot' leaves an unmistakable shape. "He's her son."

There's a space of silence where his brain chews that over, and then, "Oh my god your queen is a dragon?"

"Callum how dumb are you-"

"Like I knew everybody called that Thunder guy "king" but I didn't know they were serious."

"Of course they're serious, he was ruler supreme of the magic Heavenstreams and the oldest dragon in all the lands! In fact, I had a teacher once that swore Thunder had been there when the first elves were borne of magic."

"But-" he struggles to wrap his mind around it. "Why not an elf for a ruler? Can dragons talk? Do dragons even think the way you and I do?"

"Dragons don't have to think the way we do, that's not their job - their purpose is to champion and protect the primal sources. Thunder spent all those thousands of years of his life guarding the sky magics and weaving power into the wind itself - his magical core would feed into the celestial air systems, and he in turn would lend his power in magic-poor stretches of sky by calling down storms and tempests. He was in constant communication with the sky. I can't believe you don't know this."

Callum can't muster up a defense. He had known, on some level, that Thunder had been the biggest dragon in Xadia, that he'd been incredibly formidable, and that he'd been revered - but he'd had no idea that Thunder had been the actual king of the lands. He'd thought the moniker had come from the fact that Thunder was big and old and powerful, like how large goldeers were sometimes called "forest kings" by the locals, or how flamescales were dubbed "pond guardians" by fishermen unlucky enough to encounter them. The idea that a creature - what was basically an animal with a magical core - had been considered legitimate royalty boggles his mind.

"How can…" he starts, stops. He knows he's about to say something prodigiously rude. In his head, the memory of his mother gives him the imperial warning-look. He ignores her. "How can a creature be king if he can't even talk? How does he give orders, make laws, hold court? How can entire land have…" he waves around a hand he can't see, "a creature be king?"

To his surprise and relief, Rayla doesn't sound angry when she responds. "It's - I should have known you wouldn't've understood, I keep forgetting you don't have a - but, anyways, it's not a matter of holding court or making laws or whatever. That's human kings. Human concepts. In a land like Xadia, where magic is everywhere and in everything, a King and Queen isn't determined by bloodline - it's determined by magic itself.

"But why a dragon - why choose a, a creature that couldn't be farther from an elf to rule over elves than say, you know, an actual elf to rule over elves?"

"You're not getting it. We. Are. Creatures. I'm a magical creature. And the magic - not us elves, not some pointless bloodline, but the magic itself - chooses a ruler that's worthy of presiding over the rest of the magical kingdom. Anything with a connection to a primal source can feel it - I can tell that Zym is my prince, because my very being, my base parts, recognize him as the son of my king. Just as any other magical being in Xadia can recognize Lightning as the queen - her core resonates with our own, and we acknowledge her as a true ruler. It's deeper than anything like blood - it's magic itself. You would know if, well-" she fumbles, trips over her syllables, pauses. "You're not like us. You're, uh, you," she finishes lamely. "I mean, it's probably why humans do dark magic. You don't understand how awful it is, how it feels to be near it."

Callum's blood runs cold. "What are you saying," he says, and it's not a question.

"Dark magic is heinous, it's unforgivable, it's - it's just wrong. Being near it is suffocating - it's every sick, dirty feeling you've ever had, concentrated into one spell. It's the worst - anybody with a magical core would know this. But you - you're human. So you don't know that, I guess."

"But I do know that!" He thinks of how the spell had cracked its way into his mind, out of his mouth, filled his lungs. "I know it feels bad! That's why I was so against it when Claudia tried teaching me!"

"You know it in your head that it's bad, but you can't sense its evil the way we do."

"Rayla, it literally made me sick."

"Yeah, but-" She's so clearly struggling to put together the right words to convince him, but he shakes his head and says, "I'd seen Claudia do it and I knew I didn't like it-"

"That's not the same as-"

"-I sensed it was bad-"

"Then why did you do it?!" Rayla's voice is hard, sharp, angry. "Why did you do something so obviously sick and, and wrong? If you had truly felt how bad-"

"-I DID-!"

"-Then you wouldn't have done it, but you DID! Because you're a stupid! Human!"

Her hold on his wrist stays gentle. His anger is electric.

In and out, the air in her lungs, in Zym's and in his own. The air is damper now, heavy with moisture and charged with his frustration. Distantly, in the kernel of awareness that's now permanently attuned to the sky, he senses a breeze.

He yanks his wrist out of her hands and she lets him.

"Callum-"

"You're right." He breathes in, holds, exhales. "I'm just a, a human, but it really did feel bad. It felt like I'd never breathe again, or like-like I was going to be trapped forever. It was really, it was- it was scary, but…" He thinks of Rayla, surrounded by humans (by Soren and Claudia, and boy that still hurts) with only twin blades to defend a chained, wounded dragon and herself, and swallows. "You were in a bad spot and I…"

She reaches out to take his hand, and he doesn't shy away. She leads him towards clearer, fresher air. "Would you do it again?"

The very thought leaves a sour taste in his mouth, and the water he all but chugged thirty minutes ago threatens to make a comeback. He forces it back down, thinking again of his mom, his dad, of Ezran. "Of course," he says.

Rayla's is silent as they finally, finally, reach the lip of the cave. Light and fresh air filter in through the opening, a narrow tunnel that climbs slightly upwards to meet a bright blue sky that's almost painful after the total darkness of the cave. Near the edges of the cave's mouth, he can see spots of lush green growing in the cracks of crumbling rock. "That's what sets us apart, I guess," she eventually says, before loping up the incline and extending down her left hand for Callum to take. He grabs onto it and she helps him climb the last upslope. "I don't think I could ever bring myself to use it." She admits, and then squints as the sun promptly blinds her. "Ugh. Light."

Around his neck, Zym is ecstatic, squirming around and batting his wings against Callum's head and generally making the opposite of whatever pathetic mewling he'd been maintaining for the duration of their intra-mountain trek, and honestly, Callum can't blame him. The fresh air feels amazing. With one deep breath, he can taste the wet scent of damp soil and recent rainfall, the ribbons of cool breeze cutting through the heavy, waterlogged atmosphere, and the memory of ozone from recent lightning. There must have just been a storm.

Zym's tail smacks against the side of his face as the dragon scrabbles off his shoulders to launch himself at the cave opening, faster than Callum can catch him.

"Wait - I have to check that it's clear first before-" Rayla grabs at him and misses - Zym is surprisingly fast, tiny legs considered - and they both watch as Zym flaps his wings once, twice, and zigzags a sloppy exit from the cave.

"We should maybe-"

"Yeah we definitely-"

They run after him.

Zym makes it a grand total of five feet before Rayla descends on him like the assassin she is and traps his little legs down. "I know you're excited - stop squirming - I have to check to make sure it's - Callum hold him-"

Grinning because he's just as excited (those caves can stay behind forever, the sky is gorgeous) he reaches over to help hold down Zym's limbs -

- glances up -

- grabs Rayla by a white-knuckled hand and drags her and Zym back to the mouth of the thrice-damned cave. Whatever she was going to say dies on her lips the moment she catches his expression, and she follows his pinprick gaze only to grow still beside him.

High above them flies Sol Regem, wings slicing through the air slowly and precisely. The archdragon beats his wings once and the light filtering down seems as if to intensify, each individual sunbeam burning brighter than before.

"Do you think he knows we're here?" Callum whispers. Rayla shakes her head no, eyes locked on Sol's circling form. "No, I think - I think he's waiting for something."

They huddle together, Callum's heart in his mouth, grip tight on a fidgeting Zym. Sol Regem circles for what must only be two minutes, but feels like hours, and then beside him Rayla starts. "Look," she says, and points to what looks like a rapidly-moving flint of light, but resolves into a strange, mirror-winged flock of birds on closer inspection. "Stormwings," she says by way of explanation. "They like to stay near recent weather events and feed off the residual energy. They act as royal messengers for the Queen."

The stormwing birds dip and dive around Sol Regem's massive wings, incorporating him into their flock and weaving around his body. One bird in particular, larger than the rest, breaks off and flies parallel to Sol's eye. As they watch, Sol takes one giant wingbeat upwards, glides serenely for one more beat, and then - to the absolute panic of everybody watching- lets out an enormous, ear-splitting roar.

It's so unexpected that Callum can't quite figure out if the pain in his chest comes from shock alone or is a side-effect of the roar's rib-shaking volume. Rayla presses herself closer to almost form a shield, arms wrapped around his own ready to yank him further into the cave if need be. In his own arms, Zym thrashes violently.

"Zym, stop, be quiet-" he hisses, wincing through the stabs in his chest. Zym twists around, wings flapping erratically, and then Callum feels Zym take in a quick breath, almost as if to-

Callum's hand shoots forward to close Zym's snout before he can roar back and kill them all, but he's not fast enough to avoid the blue flash of electricity that snakes out of the corners Zym's mouth. Rayla has the foresight to slap a hand over Callum's mouth to muffle his own scream as burning bright-hot lightning makes contact, freezes his hand, arm, body, arrests him completely - breathing and all - racing up every single nerve and setting every inch of him on fire with something skating close to but not quite agony.

It's over almost as soon as it started, Zym realizing a half-second too late what he's doing. A distant, numb part of Callum's mind notes the tremors running up his own and Rayla's arms. He can't summon the strength or presence of mind to ask if she's okay, and she seems to be similarly paralyzed, her breaths jerky and forced. He can't close his eyes - that's a level of bodily control still beyond him at the moment - but he can still dip down into the well of awareness in his chest -

which-

blazes blue/white/bright/hot/cold-

(-fulminis rises up and surges against his self-control-)

He pushes past it - whatever it is, sweet and sharp and beckoning and too wild to look at directly - and reaches instead towards the now-constant presence of Rayla and Zym and his own breathing. Steady, in and out, into and out of the blood and back into lungs and through lips to return to air, a continuous cycle. It settles him and gradually overtakes the numbness that settled in his face and fingers. Rayla shifts, shudders, gasps in one big breath before shaking sense back into her limbs, and then drags his still-clumsy body a little deeper into the cave. Zym presses his snout apologetically into Callum's shoulder, and Callum presses his own chin to the top of Zym's head in uncoordinated instinct. "M's'okay," he slurs quietly, and Rayla taps a hand against his lips to remind him to shut the hell up. Smart.

It quickly turns into a moot point, to their immense relief. After the roar, Sol Regem circles once, twice, and then turns back, presumably to his original perch somewhere far behind them, leaving verdant green land to return to his vigil over the Xadian border's deserts. The stormwings loop back around each other, their formation flowing and morphing into a V until the large bird that originally broke off rejoins and takes point. They fly off further into the greener lands, opposite Sol, until the only thing left visible is the occasional glint of sun reflecting off their silver wings. When even that is no longer discernible, Rayla relaxes, letting out a slow breath while bringing her head down to rest on Callum's shoulder. Callum is still somewhat frozen.

"What the hell." She mumbles. It's an incredibly fine point.

Zym nudges his hand and gives it a small lick - and a zap - and Callum creakily looks down at the damage.

Raised, silvery scars adorn his hands, spidering away from his palm like the roots of a young tree. They creep up his arms and - when he traces them up his sleeve - whorl around his shoulders in a twist of bumpy flesh, as if the electric charge had gotten funneled up the length of his arms only to dam up upon reaching his spine. They seem to glimmer blue where Zym is closest, reflective and near-white and nowhere as painful as he'd initially feared they'd be. In fact, in place of the burning sting he'd anticipated, a buzzing sensation seems to run through the scars instead, an echo of the paralyzing energy of the original blast.

Rayla's hands, in contrast, are an angry, weeping red. "Fucking shit," she says, with the kind of inconvenienced tone more suited for a milk spill. "I literally just got the left one taken care." She starts to flex one of her hands and stops, hissing. "This is going to slow us down."

"Do you have bandages? We can wrap them with herbs for protection."

"Yeah, but we should leave those for you, you heal slower than-" she looks up, sees his hands, stops. "Your hands."

"My hands."

She doesn't exactly grab his arms, what with hers being covered in red-raw burns, but she does a close approximation. Violet eyes sweep his skin, taking in the lichtenberg scars. "Are you in pain?" she finally asks.

He considers it. "No?"

"I'm not even going to ask," she mutters, voice flat. Callum peers at her face, and for the first time notices how tired she looks. This - from initial assassination attempt to bonding to boats to Xadia- has been an exhausting journey for her.

"Stop staring and make yourself useful. There's a roll of clean bandages I got from Lujanne in my left back-pouch. Take it out and help me with my hands." Despite her words, her tone is soft, and when Callum does just that and begins wrapping gauze and wound-heal paste onto broken skin, she closes her eyes and bows her head, as if it all at once became too much to hold up.

"We could have died." she says when he cuts off the last bandage and stores the rest back in her pouch. "From Sol, from Zym."

"But we didn't," he reminds her.

"We didn't," she agrees, and he can't exactly pinpoint the emotion in her voice right now, but it brings to heart the same degree of warmth that Ezran would sometimes elicit when they were younger and their mom was freshly gone. Like something he shouldn't let go, like something painfully dear.

"Take Zym and let's go," she says. "There's a good spot I know where we can set up camp and eat. We'll need the rest - it's a long trip to the Queen."

She turns, bandages stark against her skin, stride determined despite the weariness pulling at her frame, and with a strangely full heart, Callum follows.

A/N: april fools! the joke is i updated faster than i ever will again, never expect this from me again lol

also, and i cannot emphasize this enough, i have no idea where the hell this story is going. like for real.

im over at jideni3 on tumblr and ao3, peace!