ARROWHEAD
Keeping Tristana conscious feels, at this point, like trying to move water between two cups using only one hand. He's been clapping by her ear a couple times every five minutes now, startling her awake, and keeps asking questions that she can't even fully answer anymore—the words slide off into incongruent gargling mid-answer. Every time he stops to inspect her, she appears more pale and sickly, like her soul is leaking out through the wounds along the blood.
Teemo doesn't want to panic, but he's panicking. He's lost his map of the region in the heat of battle; he and Tristana have warded off up to a dozen Vanguard men trying to interfere with the portals, but never quadruple that. They have enclosed a generous perimeter around the portal the two were supposed to defend, and the attitude towards kin in Demacia's soured faster than milk in the sun after the populace found out about Poppy. They had no choice but retreat, but Tristana can't even properly flee at this point; it seems with every step her leg grows duller, giving up on its purpose, the limping slowing their escape. There is no safe way to pull the arrows out—they probably have some kind of embedding method carved in the heads. He's already tried. Demacia's mageseeking has grown more hostile than ever.
His mouth floods with thick drool, stomach spinning with nausea. The leaves of the trees warp into spirals, degrade in a spectrum of colors; he feels like every minute he's aged a year, and they've been moving nonstop for the past three hours. It's the end, he concludes. Not a rational conclusion, but he's sacrificed coherence for consciousness. Tristana looks like Kindred's gonna come for her at any minute. Two arrows shouldn't cause this deterioration in such short time. Something's iffy, but he cannot infer what.
They didn't even mess with the portals until Poppy, he whines inside, cause he's been pushed beyond steadfastness a while ago. The letter she got, that she shared with them, still makes his fur stand on edge: A magical creature should not be one to deliver justice with Orlon's hammer, you are a bastardization of a Keeper, we will purge your bloodline from our land. All with Jarvan's seal of approval. Poppy was destroyed when she shared the letter, barely speaking between broken sobs. He hasn't known much of her since then. The portals have been under constant threat after that, though. This is far from the first time he and Tristana have been deployed to ward humans off. He didn't expect this was how Bandle City's power duo would sink, though.
The radio's stopped receiving signal sometime ago, and he's left a final log with tired goodbyes and a debriefing of the situation for the military base in Bandle while it still allowed transmission. He can't walk anymore: his next spark of awareness, he's placed Tristana to rest in shock position, nested amidst blankets and bags; her eyes look milky, gold irises dull. She still breathes, fighting, cause she's stubborn like that. He's also slumped on the floor instead of walking. He's gripping the hand of his Commander for dear life, or maybe as farewell. Please take us together, he pleads to Kindred, whoever they may be. Don't make me live on without her.
He's startled awake by the rustling of leaves, muffled voices interspersed. One male, one female, is the scout analysis, cause he can't turn off duty mode in full if it killed him. They're not very far. Or maybe they are. Whatever clear picture he got of the forest when his eyes first squinted open has already warped in a maelstrom of textures and shades of green.
A dark blue shadow looms before him, twisting in wisps. Something cold holds his head, lifts it. Kindred? Is he finally leaving?
Something glassy's poking his mouth. He relents. Sour and sweet and sparkling wash his palate. He swallows eagerly. He forgot about drinking at one point. Nothing mattered but keeping Tristana from fainting, keeping her safe. She would have done the same.
The maelstrom reforms into clearer shapes, and he's got the Tiny Master of Evil cupping his head with one hand, holding an empty bottle of a mana regeneration potion with the other. He wants to defend, but his attempt at swapping into combat position resembles a seizure, muscles twitching erratically, and so, he falls limp.
Veigar puts him down in the grass. Blue irises don't ever look away from him. Yellow irises dig back with equal intensity.
"Good morning, sunshine," he spits. Teemo only manages a choked noise back. It can't be morning, the jungle is still tinted blue with dusk like it was just a few leaps in memory ago.
"He still can't talk," the warlock calls away from him, in Tristana's general direction. Oh no. Teemo manages to veer his head just enough to find the Fae Sorceress standing firm to her right. She is holding her own empty vial, and a quick pan of Teemo's eyes down, he spots the gunner, a new spark in her eyes, irises darting everywhere, whimpering weakly in fear and confusion.
"Give 'im another, Love," the enchantress answers. "We need one of them talking, and she's much worse off. I just barely managed to wake her."
Indeed, she looks like she's stuck in a limbo between reality and a hallucination. Her eyes look to him, pupils yelling, what the fuck is going on? Over and over.
He's picked up by the warlock's gauntlet a second time, grunts a second noise, distressed but ininteligible. His tongue, his vocal chords, they weigh a ton each. He can't get them to work together, or independently, mostly not at all. Everything's blurring. He berates himself for the pleased squeak he lets out when he's given more to drink; mouth's so dry it may as well be leather.
A boulder lifts off his mouth with a fresh wave, and he finally manages something coherent to punch its way out. Baby steps. "What...'re you doing?" He manages. The words mash together into paste.
"Messing with you," is the dry reply. "We were on our way to screw with a bunch of Demacians who set up camp around a Bandle portal. Creep them out a bit. But then Lulu sensed yordle mana in the forest, away from the path. Twenty minutes wandering in the wilderness and lo and behold. Something far more entertaining."
Teemo can't do much more than flutter his eyelids. That's too much key information with too little preparation or context. He doesn't understand the minutiae of that narrative; he doesn't want to dwell on it either— he's weak and at the enemy's mercy, and he needs a way out now.
"Do anythin to Tristana and yer last time in jail'll feel like 'twas a walk in th' park."
The words stumble over each other; his voice is hoarse. It sounds pathetic. The warlock knows it. He laughs.
"I'll never stop until I've made y' regret ev'r living."
Veigar's smirk dies immediately, a scowl taking its place. "You're going to want to quit the big talk when you're filled in on what's up with your lady," he drones.
Indeed, Teemo shuts up immediately. He turns to look at the gunner again—She's got a serious thousand yard stare, her breathing shallow, fast, panicked. Her fingers tremble with pain and shock; she looks as if holding to consciousness by a thread that's slowly ripping.
"Good boy," Veigar says snidely. "Zip that mouth up and listen to what we have to say to you for a single goddamn time."
He wants to snap back some real choice words, but Tristana matters more to him that Veigar ever will; he nods in agreement. The motion makes his head spin. The warlock waits until he's regained focus to continue in a display of patience that throws him for a loop.
"Demacia's not a cool place to be a yordle right now," he begins, crouching next to Teemo, holding his weight on a knee and a foot. "Actually, not a cool place to be anything tangentially magic-related. But they really got an itch with us in particular, since mana flows in us like blood; we have magic in every inch, one of us was carrying none other than Orlon's Hammer. Jarvan feels like we've tainted his land." He adds a couple sarcastic air quotes to those three words.
"Anyway, a lot of Demacia's gold is being burned on stuff that can be used to kill and trap mages, and Vastaya, and yours truly. Their newest toy is these cute little arrows with petricite tips."
Teemo feels like his blood is freezing in his veins, and cutting his circulatory system to shreds with every heartbeat.
"I'm sure you got a record of what it is now, but if you haven't got it, it's the same mineral they use around these parts to stomp us magic users into submission. The fairy dust police use it in little badges; get one close enough to someone with mana, and the stone will begin sucking it up like a sponge. Don't even have to touch the poor bastard with it most of the time." He's made a little gesture with his claw, showing Teemo their approximate size. "Get one of those carved so sharp it cuts your eyes if you look at it, and then put that inside a mage... you can figure out the sponge's gonna be sucking up a lot."
Yes, Teemo figures it out. He wants to vomit. His mouth fills up with warm saliva as he struggles not to.
"Mix that up with the fact we have mana in our meat like we do blood, and... well, you may be a lot of things, but dumb ain't one. Go ahead, put two and two together." The warlock stands back up; he can see him take a minute to re-balance and blink—He's playing it cool, but the petricite stabbed in Tristana is starting to kick him a bit, too.
"The assholes even cut the heads so they really dig in, are hard to pull out. Rip a good chunk of meat if you try."
Blue eyes squint tight in a wince of pain. He can't really word what he feels without sitting down to really think about it, and he can't afford that. What can we do, then?
When they open back up, Veigar's are digging inside the depths of his soul. He has a penchant for staring into people like that. "So here's the deal."
Yes, the deal, please. Tristana's spasming in pain on the blanket bed; her eyes roll back and a thin line of drool drips out the corner of her lips. Please, please just tell me the deal.
He tracks footsteps on grass, and Lulu's there too, turning Veigar's glare into a four-eye sonata. "I know how to remove the tips and heal someone who's been stabbed with them. I got... field practice." She doesn't have the debonair inflection Teemo knew her to have. Her words are sour, unusually technical. "Vei knows how to destroy them. You are at least a couple hours away from any path people actually walk. She doesn't have enough time to make it to anything civilized, and even if she did, Demacians will gut her on the spot. I will nurse her back to health, and you will quit your efforts on stopping us and our plans. You will not backstab us, you will not attack us, or berate us, or be hostile in any way. That is our deal."
Speak of a rock and a hard place. Teemo's teeth grind against one another, letting out a few stressed cracks. The sorceress kneels before Tristana, feeding her more mana from a new vial, and she perks just barely; groans adversely at Lulu, stares her down with eyes that yell a feeling somewhere between rage and distress.
"Y'both 're disgusteng," Teemo spits at Veigar, the sentence dull.
"Okay," Lulu says, back on her heels so alarmingly fast it makes his head spin. "Die, then."
She's reaching for her bags, flipping a purple curl behind her ear with surprising grace, and that's when Tristana lets out a broken, bubbling sob. It sounds like she's weeping while half her face is underwater, and when she rests her head again, blood and drool spills down her jaw in a thick glob. That he cannot take.
"We'll d' it," he sighs, fighting every word out. "We'll take't. Just get her okay. Please, tha's all I ask. I'll d'whaddever."
Lulu's frozen into place, still as a statue: She snaps her face to look at Veigar. He nods. Mechanical noises make Teemo's ear twitch, and he turns to see the warlock's gauntlet loosening, falling to the grass with a dull thump. He reaches out, a bare, calloused black hand pointing needle-sharp claws at him. "We're making a pact on it."
He swallows, nods just barely. His arm weighs like a boulder; lifting it off the ground makes his muscles scream. The hand's just an inch off the floor when the mage growls, baring fangs at him. "Glove off, bastard," he threatens; his other hand, still encased in a gauntlet, stabs the soil with his staff as reinforcement.
Teemo has to lean his head down to pull the scout uniform glove out of the way with just his fangs—moving two hands is impossible—and spits the olive mitten out, tongue full of the taste of leather and mud. He doesn't even truly squeeze Veigar's hand, just coils his fingers around awkwardly; and, when the wizard shakes, Teemo's arm bounces like a noodle, no grace or strength to it. As if on cue, the moment he lets the captain's hand drop to the grass, Lulu's already summoning her little fae familiar with a whistle, its small insectoid arms just slim enough to help dig the arrowheads out of his mate.
He allows his own dead weight to pull him away from the view, the fleshy noises and Tristana's whines more than he can bear.
"They're out," he hears the witch chirp, backed by the sobs of the commander. Veigar treads the distance to her with heavy steps. How much does that armor weigh, anyway?
"Gimme," he orders, and Teemo braves through pulling his head up and holding it there to see the bodies of crime: sharpened to an impeccable tip and barbed all through the edge's length. Easy for them to go in, destructive when they're not pulled out with care. Barbaric.
Veigar holds them in a pinch with each hand, mumbles a spell. Dark bolts laced with indigo snake all over the petricite, snapping both tips in two clean halves after a second of buildup. The warlock appears to see Teemo's confusion peripherally, answers his unspoken question. "Breaking petricite is just overwhelming it; giving it a bigger charge than it can absorb. Manageable with small pieces like these—impossible with structures the size of Demacian buildings. This here wasn't even a mild spell. They're not easily destructible for a layman."
Good thing you're not a layman, Teemo muses, detesting the fact that's a positive. He can see Lulu working frantically through the corner of his eye, stopping Tristana's bleeding; she lifts an index to her sweaty forehead, poking it with a dainty nail. "Sleep," she whispers, shooting a pink spark, and the gunner's quiet weeping becomes a peaceful snore. Pix flutters around Lulu carrying needle and thread, and the captain's rather shocked at how deftly she cleans and sutures the wounds, no pause or hesitation; in about ten minutes tops, holding a ball of white light with her staff, she's prepared an antiseptic compress and wrapped the wounds up rather neatly.
Teemo only saw the bud of her healer career, and every time he gets glimpses of her skill after her banishment, he's impressed, bothersome as it is to admit. They're harder to chase and terrorize when he holds admiration towards them. Still, he's not above showing due respect. He can't be. Underestimation is the weakness of a warrior.
Light leaking through his eyelids snaps him out of a brief respite after seeing Tristana doze comfortably, a symbol for mana restoration painted in a gauze on her abdomen glowing gentle purple in even pulses. Heavy eye bags still stain her face, and she's ghostly pale, but her deep, gentle breathing and peaceful face is enough for him. He cracks his eyes open with gargantuan effort, pushes to fully open them only when he feels gauze being taped to the fur of his chest: The sorceress is painting a second sigil on him, using thread wrapped around her finger to make the circle perfect and putting it down in few, expert strokes. It's jarring to see how she's grown since she left; Teemo's weirded out by the empty nest sensations leaking from his heart.
With a tap, the sigil is glowing—Strikingly similar to Tristana's, but tinted green— and he feels like he's been fed after days of hunger; the fur of his back fluffs up in a pleased shiver as the pain and exhaustion simmer and his pupils re-focus and expand to accommodate the dimming light. He sighs contentedly, he cannot help it. Lulu observes him sporting an expression he can't read.
"What?" He croaks.
"Let it kick in and take Trist on your back," she states matter-of-factly. "She's your heart and soul, your mate. You will carry her with more care than Veigar or I could. We will take you to our hideout. We best be there before everything's pitch black. Give it ten minutes at most." She does not wait for him to reply—Looks down at her wrist, though there's no watch; last word and she's gone in a flutter, idly chatting with Veigar in whispers while she packs up her herbs and the gauze, and he buries the arrow heads in quickly dug, shallow crevices, magicking them sealed.
Teemo doesn't really feel like moving, but duty mode's already rooting its way in his brain while he enjoys the leftover minutes of peace. With duty mode comes the heavy realization, seeping in, that he's being taken to the lion's den, Tristana in hand, and not even by force. Adrenaline finishes the pump of mana needed to jerk him out of semi-somnolence, and he inhales, sharp and on edge: Not much left but the Captain of the Mothership Scouts.
By the time Lulu's done buckling the belts of her luggage, he's already geared up and slung the gunner on his back, her head resting on the red scarf around his neck and shoulders. Veigar relieves him off the cannon's weight, loading himself with it, aided by what has to be strength-enhancing magic. Teemo feels like he's filthying his woman's treasured old friend just by touching it—but there is nothing he can do. And off they are, minuscule, traversing the depths of the Demacian wilderness; moonlight leaking through leaves, dotting the grass with sparks of light not unlike the stars sprinkled above, on the vast night sky.