They understood masks. They understood faces, mostly. But Tiso confused them. His face was always hidden by his hood.
He'd fallen asleep sitting next to the well. Had he been waiting for something? Regardless, this was a perfect opportunity to learn more about Tiso. They didn't think he'd willingly remove his hood—it was a hood, right? A piece of clothing, not a part of his body? Hm. They'd check that too. But anyway, Tiso would likely refuse to show his face out of stubbornness if nothing else. He liked to be contrary, it seemed.
They snuck close until they were right in front of him.
Tiso looked tired. He sat cross-legged, leaning forward over the shield in his lap, head hanging low.
They hesitated. Maybe he wanted to be left alone? Or, maybe he thought he wanted to be alone but actually would benefit from some company. That happened sometimes. Unfortunately, it was hard to tell the difference.
They had barely processed these thoughts when they flipped Tiso's hood back. Their curiosity overrode any sense of consideration they might have.
Tiso jerked upright and snapped into a kneeling position, holding his shield between them.
They stood unflinchingly, getting a good look at Tiso.
It didn't look like he was wearing a mask. His face was a sleek, roughly triangular arrangement of chitinous plating, wider at the top and narrower on the bottom. Of more interest to them was the set of long elbowed antennae angled over his head.
Tiso shook his head, sending his antennae flying. He stood slowly, as if he was only now fully awake. He stared at them, frowning confusedly.
"Wha—" He stiffened, bring a hand up to his head. He growled and yanked his hood back up, hiding his face again. "You're gonna regret that," he drawled. Blades shinked out from the edges of the shield.
He lunged and struck them with the center of his shield, knocking them back a few strides.
"Trying to catch me off guard? You'll have to do better than that." He stalked forward a few steps.
They shook their head in the negative.
"Tch. Well what were you doing then?"
They pointed at him then gestured to their mask.
"You wanted… to see my face? Why?"
They shrugged.
"You're taunting me." He took another step forward.
They shook their head again and drew their nail, only to set it on the ground and shrug once more.
Tiso tracked their every move. "I don't understand."
They sat down.
He huffed. "Come on, I can't hit you if you're unarmed. It's no fun. You're not enough of a challenge without it."
They pointed at him and patted their cheeks.
"No! I'm not taking my hood off just because you want me to." Tiso relaxed from his battle-ready stance and returned his shield to its usual shape. "You're a strange one." He walked back to his spot by the well and sat back down.
They retrieved their nail and took one last look at Tiso before walking off towards Jiji's dwelling.
…..
He thought he'd timed it right. That garpede shouldn't have been there when he jumped.
Tiso's grimace turned into a snarl as the ground beside him was disturbed from beneath. He rolled towards it, swinging his shield about to catch a dirtcarver right behind its head, killing it instantly. He smirked to himself as the thing twitched and slowly curled up. They tended to take a few more hits than that.
It was just as well that it died quickly, because the moment the threat was no more, the pain swept back at full force.
It felt like he was choking on his own breath. He'd taken countless jabs throughout his body when he was trampled, and when he tried to get up to his knees, part of his leg twisted wrong and sent sparks shooting up his nerves to cloud his vision.
Walking was out then.
Tiso got up on his elbows instead and dragged himself purposefully in the direction of the hot spring indicated by the sign above him. He had originally been heading in the opposite direction, but he'd just have to return later.
He was halfway down the tunnel before he realized he was bleeding. Somewhere. Yellow-green hemolymph snaked down his face to splash on the stone. Great.
Deepnest was possibly the worst place to be found bleeding. He picked up the pace, trying hard to ignore how his leg burned more with each movement.
He could see the hot spring just ahead when he heard the patter of many tiny legs behind him. He raised himself on his functional knee and whipped around to bash another dirtcarver into the wall. He sliced at the two that followed, but they proved hardier than the one he'd killed earlier.
He punched them back with his shield, but one managed to leap past and clamp onto his arm. He hollered, and reared up to bash the thing repeatedly while it was within reach.
Just as he finished it off, another of the two remaining dirtcarvers knocked him on his back. Between gasping breaths, he grabbed the beast and pulled it up to bury his jaws in its softer underbelly. He blindly blocked the last dirtcarver while the one he held thrashed and spit as it died. He tossed it away and began to beat the last bug with more force than skill until its shell split open.
He raised his head to see if there were any more, but his vision darkened at the corners and he was shaking too much to hold it up for more than a second. He painstakingly turned back to the hot spring.
He'd barely pulled himself forward another meter when he stopped, unable to will himself to move any further. He went limp as the all-consuming darkness of Deepnest overtook him.
…..
Warm. Tiso hadn't felt warm since he entered Deepnest. He took a deep, painless breath, and the ease of the action shocked him awake.
His first sight was the empty eyes of that strange, silent little bug he'd run into a few times already.
He pulled up his shield, which thankfully he'd kept a hold of, but encountered an unexpected resistance that resulted in his dumping a shield-full of water on himself. He scrambled upright, only to freeze with a hiss when he jarred his leg.
He glared at the bug, then glanced around at the rest of his surroundings. He was sitting in the hot spring, half-submerged in water. An iron bench sat behind him, where the small warrior's nail lay unattended and quite out of reach.
"What are you doing here?" he asked suspiciously.
They sat down and pointed at him.
He looked down. His arm had a piece of cloth tied sloppily around it. A strip of identical cloth dangled in his periphery. He tugged on it and winced as it pulled on his antenna.
On his—?
Tiso pulled the beginnings of a bandage off his head and painfully forced his arm around to reach back for his hood. "You little gutter crawler," he growled. He shoved his antennae under his soaked hood and leered at the wanderer. "What is your problem?"
They stepped forward and picked up the discarded bandage. They shoved it at him, pointing at the hemolymph blotted all over it.
He snatched it and felt for the wound above his eyes. Just a small fracture, thankfully. He wound the cloth tightly around it, never breaking gazes with the wanderer. "What do you want?"
They shook their head.
He sighed and pulled his shield around to stand between them. The hot spring had helped, and the heat had numbed him a bit, but the pain was starting to creep back. He'd healed just enough that breathing wasn't an ordeal. He leaned back on his good elbow and gingerly felt his upper leg. He'd twisted it, and it sat wrong in the hip socket. The chitin was intact though; it wasn't broken.
He lay back in the water, trying to figure out how he could snap his leg back into place. He glared at the wanderer, who seemed content to sit and watch the exits. He could use the bench as leverage, maybe? Or his shield?
He felt a skittering through the rock and sat up.
The wanderer dashed over to grab their nail and splashed past him into the middle of the pool, looking in all directions. Including straight up.
Tiso planted his shield in the ground and used it to hoist himself up on one leg.
A flash of silver through the tunnel, and the wanderer stalked forward, nail held at the ready.
He tried to put weight on the injured leg but it just twisted awkwardly, sending jolts of nerve feedback so strong he nearly passed out on the spot.
Right. No walking.
Five dirtcarvers streamed in from the far tunnel, followed by one of the weaker husks like those he'd encountered in the crossroads.
The wanderer went straight for the husk.
"Oh thanks," he snarked, settling on his knees for more stability. "Leave the real threats to the guy covered in his own hemolymph. Real sportsmanlike."
He smirked despite himself and engaged the blades in his shield.
He sliced the first dirtcarver neatly in half.
The wanderer took down the husk with a single blow and stood in front of it. They flicked their nail back and diced a straggling dirtcarver, almost as an afterthought.
A dirtcarver leapt at him, only to be met by a shell-shattering swing from Tiso. That was three down. "What are you doing!? You killed it! Give me a hand here! Not that I can't handle it myself, because I totally c—HAAH!"
A dirtcarver had jumped him from behind. Tiso caught it, flipped it over his head, and chomped hard enough on the side of its head that it stilled immediately, blue hemolymph bubbling up from its cracked plating.
He spit and took a breath. One left. No problem.
The last dirtcarver was a little further off.
Tiso grinned and threw his shield at it. He'd anticipated that the bug would try to dodge, and it lunged right into the bladed disc.
He relaxed and sat back smugly. "That's it. We're safe now, no thanks to…" He trailed off, detecting motion past the wanderer. "You killed it, right?"
They nodded, still facing away from him.
Tiso watched as the corpse shook—not like a dying bug, but like there was something rattling inside it. He frowned. These things didn't spawn young like some creatures did. This used to be a person.
He watched, horrified and disgusted, as a set of limbs sprouted from the corpse in all the wrong places, and a set of jaws pushed through the shell with a nauseating crack.
And then it started moving.
Tiso screamed.
It rushed them, impossibly fast and revoltingly loud. The wanderer struck it once, twice, but it bowled them over and snapped Tiso up before he could retrieve his shield.
It lifted him easily from the water and crunched its jaws together, unable to slice into Tiso's shell but perfectly capable of causing him a great deal of pain.
He wailed, but managed to bring his arms up to grip the creature's jaws. He yanked them apart, but couldn't free himself.
The creature made an awful gurgling screech.
He fought to get a good breath. Tiso's hands held the jaws' ends this time, just behind his back. He pulled slowly, gasping with the strain.
The monstrosity, unhappy with this, whipped its head from side to side.
Tiso shut his eyes and held on for all he worth. His wounded leg twisted and tugged, and for a moment Tiso was sure that he'd hurl.
It stopped, distracted by something, and Tiso wasted no time in taking advantage of the opening. He pulled the jaws apart, curling into the motion, and brought his good leg up to shove hard against the creature's mouth.
It dropped him, clacking its jaws angrily, and stepped forward only to fall to the wanderer's nail.
Tiso lay limp in the water, gasping desperately for air. He shut his eyes and focused solely on breathing. Everything hurt. He couldn't even feel his leg. When he opened his eyes, blackness receded from the edges of his vision like hundreds of tiny spiders rushing away from a lantern.
He was so tired.
He hadn't noticed that his eyes had slipped shut again until he was roused by a cold touch on the side of his face.
The wanderer patted him, then pulled his shield from behind them.
Tiso perked up and lifted one shaking hand to pull it over himself. He felt much safer under the familiar weight of his shield. "Thhhaanks," he sighed.
They pushed his hood back, and he scowled at them until they produced a length of cloth or silk or something and once again began treating his injuries, this time starting with the extra scrapes he'd received from the dirtcarver that came at his head from behind.
He shut his eyes and let the hot water soothe his battered body. Already his older, less serious wounds had calmed to a dull ache.
Time passed in fits and starts, measured only by how rested he felt and how much pain he was in. His antennae reached out occasionally to assure him that the wanderer was still nearby, sometimes brushing across their mask when they reached over with a bandage.
They responded to this with a gentle pat to his head, always awkwardly placed as if they'd only just learned the gesture and didn't quite understand that one did not usually plant their chilly appendage right in the center of one's face.
After one such exchange, Tiso chuffed and patted their head in return, squinting up at them with a smirk. "You're alright, pale thing." He took in the shocked posture of the little warrior and laughed. "You're alright."