(A/N: Well I survived the transition from grad school to new career to holidays! I wrote this up during my break from work and I even managed some planning ahead. Fingers crossed that I can, after too many fuckin years, develop a solid release schedule. This story still demands to be written by my muse and so it shall be. Many thanks to loyal readers! Know that your acknowledgement of this monolith, no matter how small, brightens up my whole day. Special thanks Serendipity's Tears who is wonderful and deserves only the best things in life.)
Too late for a warning that there's cursing in this chapter? Oops!
Her memories had slipped so gently back into place that she had hardly noticed at first. She had been so focused on the glittering trail that she followed that she didn't notice the way her stride was suddenly longer and more deliberate, years of training showing in her silent movements.
Then, there was fog. Not just any fog, this was thick and heavy, blanketing the grey shadowscape in white. Water sloshed at her feet and Sparrow remembered why she had always hated traveling through the Wraithmarsh. She stopped short and looked at Reaver, a sense of relief flooded her chest at the sight of him returned to his adult self.
"Reaver?" Sparrow said, her voice tense with fear. It curled around the edges of her voice, undercutting the way she said his name like barbed wire. Fog swirled around them in deep eddies, nearly obscuring Reaver from view. She remembered when she had found him, nearly a month ago, standing bewildered in front of a Demon Door. The broken look on his face in Bowerstone Market as his old ghosts taunted him, unseen by anyone else. She felt a moment of panic, was he strong enough to resist a banshee?
"Remember," Sparrow cautioned, grateful to hear the rich sound of her adult voice again. She eased her gun out of its holster, ready for the next attack. "Whatever the banshee says to you is bullshit. She's trying to throw you off guard. The only thing she has to offer you is death."
"Worried I'll slip up and fall back into old habits, Hero?" Reaver cocked an eyebrow at her and there was something about the way he bared his teeth at her that sent a shiver down her spine.
Sparrow squeezed his hand again. "Don't let go." Another wave of fog washed over them and he was gone. She felt the firm grip of his hand on hers.
"I won't."
Sparrow started at the sound of Reaver's gun firing. She saw a bright streak of red, the tattered garments of a banshee, fleeing from the pirate, screaming as it disappeared back into the thick fog that now surrounded them. Sparrow reached quickly for her own pistol and breathed a sigh of relief when she found it strapped to her hip. This was not her first battle against a banshee and the hero knew she needed to save her mana for later in the fight. The creature's infernal children would be up on them next, skeletal hands grasping weapons that were too large for them.
Sparrow tensed at the sound of impish laughter, a chill crawled up her spine and settled into her scalp. Before she had a chance to react something grabbed her by the hair, the skeletal fingers scraping painful against her scalp as the creature yanked her backwards and down in to the murky water. Another bony hand, it's grip like ice, seized her wrist and yanked powerfully as she fell. Reaver's rings scraped against the sides of her fingers as their hands were wrenched apart.
"Hero!" Reaver cried.
Shots whizzed past her head as the water closed over her and Sparrow struggled to gain a hold on the banshee that held her down. She tried to fire her own gun at her attacker but the mechanisms were useless underwater. She released it and quickly grasped the banshee's bony hand with her own.
"Dear one, close your eyes." A voice like bells and nails scraping against metal whispered in her ear. "You are nothing. You are worthless and when you die you will be forgotten."
Sparrow thrashed against the creature, if she could only gain her footing! She kicked downwards with her feet, hoping to catch the ground with her heels. The water was shallow, she was just standing in it. The water only reached to her ankles.
"I will bring you peace."
Sparrow clawed at the hand tangled in her hair and tried to twist her trapped wrist out the banshee's grip. She reached for her magic, focusing and concentrating her will until her hands burned white hot.
The banshee screeched and suddenly Sparrow was free. Her back slammed against the ground and Sparrow wasted no time in pushing immediately for the surface. Spots began to dot her vision and she breached the surface with a yell. She looked around, gasping for air and drenched in bog water. There was no sign of Reaver, the fog obscured everything. Sparrow wiped the water from her eyes and spat out a mouthful of water.
"That the best you got?" She shouted into the emptiness, her speech slipping into the colorful tenor that was unique to Old Town. "I heard worse in the gutter of Bowerstone, ye red bitch." Sparrow pushed herself to her feet. "You can take your peace an' shove it up yer arsehole!"
Her words hung in the air but never echoed. The dense fog swallowed them whole.
"You think you're a hero?"
Sparrow snorted, flames flaring out of her nostrils, "Aye, bitch, I do." She stomped her foot and flames burst out of the ground, rippling away from her in succession. The water evaporated, rising into the air as steam. The area around her cleared and, though it was geographically the same as the rest of this light forsaken nightmare, Sparrow felt a surge of hope.
"Reaver?" Sparrow shouted and this time her cry echoed a little before falling flat.
No answer.
"Right then." Sparrow began to walk towards the edge of the clearing she had made, not more than a handful of paces away from where she stood. Her hands were still sheathed in flames and she could feel the sting of her will lines cracking apart her skin.
"Taking orders from a weak, old, blind woman; don't you have a mind of your own?"
Sparrow released another wave of flames dispelling another section of fog. "Like I haven't heard that one before. It's a lot better than haunting a moldy bed in an old buzzard's tower! Send in yer wee babies already, 'fore I die o' boredom." She laughed through bared teeth. She couldn't listen to the banshee's words, even if they sounded like they came from her own mind. Sparrow had to find Reaver before he fell for the creature's words.
Sparrow heard the clinking of metal and ducked to her left just as a great axe sliced through the air where she had stood. The hero spun and took in the three rotting bodies that lurched towards her. Well, at least the banshee seemed open to suggestions.
The grotesquely shaped child to her right jerked forward, daggers the same size at its forearms in each hand. Sparrow drew her hands towards her chest, palm first, and then flung them back out towards the undead creature. Lightning leapt from her fingers to the knives and then up the child's arms. It seized up, limbs jerking and twisting into unnatural angles before it collapsed, its decayed skin crumbling into ash.
The others, one holding a mace bigger than its caved in head and the other swinging the great axe wildly, darted forward without hesitation, hoping to catch her off guard. They each fell to her will; their withered bodies crumbling to ash.
Sparrow looked around her carefully, even in a nightmare, banshees seemed to follow the same patterns. Surprise attack, taunts, infernal children, and next was usually another attack from the monster herself.
"Close your eyes. You cannot escape the inevitable."
The hero gritted her teeth, the banshee was ready for her next attack then. Sparrow gazed around the clearing she had created in the mist, the edges of which were still clouded with the impenetrable fog.
"Aye, and neither can you!" Sparrow focused her will into her fists, feeling the power pool first at her fingertips and then slowly crawling up her arms. It was akin to plunging her arms into the sea in the middle of winter. Daggers, sharp and shimmering appeared in the air around her arms. She let out a steadying breath through pursed lips and closed her eyes. She didn't have long to wait.
The banshee took the bait almost immediately. Cool wind rushed by her as the banshee went screaming past, raking her taloned fingers against chest, just missing her throat. Sparrow winced and her green eyes snapped opened. The mystical daggers operated in time with her movements, their points turning to follow her narrowed gaze.
The banshee swooped around her circling the hero once before coming to a rest before her. It bent its cloaked head, looking down at the mangled bodies of its infernal children, and then the creature screamed. Grotesque fingers rending at its hollow form before the banshee's focus fell once more onto the will charged woman standing before it. The creature threw itself forward, racing towards Sparrow, talons outstretched and dripping with her blood.
"My children!" the banshee screamed.
Sparrow held her ground until the creature was just within arm's length and then she released the daggers. The sank into their target, the banshee curled inward at the blows to her chest. The banshee flew backwards, driven back by the force of the daggers driving into the rotten flesh. The daggers flickered and faded into the air like a scattering of embers.
"I'm never sleeping again." Sparrow sighed, wearily stepping away from the banshee's corpse. She lifted her hand and sent out a zap of electricity at the corpse. There was no harm in being extra sure.
"Playing with your dead now? Really Hero, I thought you were going to get us out of this nightmare?"
Sparrow let out a startled yelp and stumbled forward several steps before whirling around on the previously missing pirate. "Reaver, light burn you, do not sneak up on me!" She quickly looked him over, he didn't seem any worse for the wear. A series fresh cuts were trickling blood on his left cheek and, like her, his clothes and hair were soaked through. She skipped over the way his wet clothes clung to his lithe and muscular frame. She buried the thought, stuffing it deep, deep down inside her. Until she noticed that he appeared to be doing the same, his eyes roamed over her body but there was a change in his expression, no lust or lewd twist to his lips. Reaver's grey gaze froze on the cuts on her chest, eyes tracing four cuts from their start at her left collar bone to where they ended unevenly above her right breast.
"It'll heal." Sparrow offered awkwardly.
Reaver nodded and held out his hand. "Good. I'm afraid I'm all out of health potions anyway. Ready to wake up?"
Sparrow took his hand and they began to trudge back the way Reaver must have come. "You promise not to let go this time?"
"Me? You were the one who let go!"
"I was dragged under water by a raggedy, dead bitch, and it's my fault I didn't hold on?" Sparrow rolled her eyes. "Typical, you do this all the time, you know. Nothing is ever your fault."
"On the contrary, hero, I own each of my many faults." Reaver scoffed.
"Mhmm, and is the other banshee still out there, Sir Faulty?" Sparrow raised her free hand and released a more concentrated blast of will at the fog. She could feel exhaustion beginning to set in like a ache in her bones. The swirling will lines on her arm were beginning to fade despite her continued use of will, a sign that energy was low.
"Dead." The pirate's expression darkened. "The…things they say-?"
"Are not true." Sparrow interrupted, "They're all lies. A banshee's words are made to cut at our resolve and sow doubt. Whatever it said to you, forget it."
"Easier said." Reaver whispered under his breath.
Sparrow looked at Reaver and then back at the glowing trail ahead. She wondered what the banshee might have said to him, but she knew from experience that nothing cut quite as deep as one of those demon's cold words.
Their next steps crinkled ad Sparrow and Reaver looked down to see that the water they were sloshing through just a moment ago were gone. Beneath each of their feet was a sheet of crisp, white parchment.
Sparrow lifted her foot and quickly picked up one of the letters. "Dear stranger who used to be Chesty's Super Best Friend but isn't any more." She read. "We've all been so happy that you came to visit us, and we really, really wish you would stay. But Chesty said he would give you a prize, and Chesty never lies. Enjoy it, and think of Chesty whenever you look at it. We will be so lonely without you and die. Love, Chesty." Sparrow grimaced. "Is that it?"
"That can't be the-."
Reaver opened his eyes and stared up at the dusty, cobweb draped ceiling of Garth's tower. Beside him, Sparrow began to stir into consciousness. Reaver blinked slowly, staring up at the ceiling. His cheek stung and his lungs ached from the smoke he had inhaled a week ago during the incident in Bowerstone.
"What. The. Fuck." He muttered dryly.