Augustine
-
the Endless Truth

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His name was Gullistan Horne

Content warning: References to abuse.

He always looked a little different, every time I saw him; it took me a long time to work out quite why.He called himself Gullistan Horne.I doubt that was his real name, it is rather mundane, isn’t it? I expect his real name was another part of the conundrum that confounded his nature, and made him so spiteful, but I am getting ahead of myself.We’ll start the story where we ought to.

The boy was curious, shifting in the spot alongside his mother at the kitchen table, long dark hair hanging across his eyes a little, determinedly scribbling something down in the smallest writing Gullistan had ever seen, as if he feared running out of paper.“... he’s a good man, Mr Horne, he is - he’s just fallen foul of some hard times, as we all have, you know…”Gullistan knew excuses when he heard them. He’d heard thousands.Evidently, the boy did too - nose wrinkling into a silent scoff at the words, but not looking up.“He just needs a little help to get on top of things, just enough to get our heads back over the water,” his mother continued.“What he needs is to stop paying his debt with debt,” the boy spoke up bluntly, the words coming out without a hint of hesitation, like they were projecting directly from his mind, “and using the church’s collection plate as his ante.”His mother looked at him, eyes widened and face blanching; she’d not been so oblivious to the inappropriate tone, and Gullistan watched her curious battle with herself as her hand lifted - and beside her the boy twitched - instinctive, anticipating something that didn’t come - because she stayed her hand. Decorum stopped her where it had not stopped her son.“Augustine,” she hissed under her breath, “you should not speak of your father so - he’d never do such a thing.”The boy’s lip curled, a little sneer, but he still didn’t look at either of them - he’d not glanced in Gullistan’s direction even once since his arrival. Gullistan rather wanted him to; how old was this child? Fifteen, perhaps?It was hard to gauge their ages; mortals. He so rarely saw the same one twice, and they had a way of rotting rather quickly.Augustine, hm?“Is that a lie?” Gullistan asked of his mother - and she looked to him now, that blanching face draining even clearer of blood - leaving mottled grey on her cheeks.“Don’t listen to him,” she said quickly, “we’re good people.”Ah; the word ‘good’ had extended - not just a shield to protect her husband - not here to beg for his own survival but leaving his wife and child to do it - now she was protecting herself too.Gullistan had such little interest in what was ‘good’.He tilted his head past her, looking instead at Augustine, trying to force his eyes to his own with the movement. Augustine’s eyes flickered up for a moment, but didn’t hold his for long.“You’ve a willful boy,” Gullistan said.Augustine’s fingers curled up against his page - the grim line of his lips turning firm - but he said nothing.“He doesn’t think before he talks,” his mother said, chastising.Gullistan considered the boy.“Or perhaps he chooses not to lie,” Gullistan said, “the truth is a rare commodity, wouldn’t you agree?”The boy’s mother looked confused for a moment, but she nodded regardless. She might’ve agreed with anything he’d said, if he’d phrased it this way.“I will think on your predicament,” Gullistan said, and lifted to his feet.A few more days and her desperation would have ripened to its most delicious point, Gullistan considered.A few more days and she would agree to anything.

The BargainThis body was deteriorating even faster than the others had. A few more days, perhaps, was all he would have.He found the boy by the river, behind the back of the modest house his parents were failing to keep. He was balanced upon one foot, the other on his knee, face pensive as he held a small stalk of white flowers between his fingers, watching as an insect crawled across it, then took flight. Beside him, a small basket filled to the absolute brim with long strands of green.He didn’t startle easily, like many others did; in fact, he barely seemed to move at all as Gullistan approached. Good.“You make a strange tree, Augustine,” Gullistan said.The boy’s eyes flicked to him, small and silver and flinted.“It helps me think,” he said, and his foot returned to the dirt. Although he did not scare easily, his small body was guarded, and he was wise enough to have both feet upon the ground to make an escape, Gullistan guessed.“...and what do you think about, as you collect weeds and enormous amounts of grass?” Gullistan asked, gesturing to the basket.“It’s wild garlic,” Augustine corrected quickly, “not grass, and it’s not worth much to trade. It’s less than it looks.”“... is that what you’re thinking about? How much more you require?” Gullistan asked.“No,” Augustine replied, “it’s worth more if you prepare it.”“Is that what that part is for?” Gullistan asked, and stepped closer, gesturing to the sprig between his fingers.Augustine’s body went still as he drew closer, but shook his head just once, stiffly.“It’s asphodel,” he said, “for tea. My mother hasn’t been sleeping.”He hesitated; he wanted to speak more on it, his interest in this overriding his caution of Gullistan’s presence.“This is something you do?” Gullistan asked, seizing upon that interest, “make such things into tea?”“If it works,” Augustine replied, eyes flicking again, so hesitant, “asphodel is better than the chamomile, which barely works at all - but, if I could extract this - turn it into something else, like the bees do - it would be stronger.”“Clever,” Gullistan said, “it’s worth more if you prepare it.”Augustine nodded.Gullistan took another step closer.His hands landed on Augustine’s chin, tilting his head to the left, seeing a sore mark struck there.“She did this, or him?”“Him to her,” Augustine replied, eyes fixed on the distance, “her to me.”His eyes met Gullistan’s a moment.“It is a … channel.”“A channel?” Gullistan repeated; what a lovely word.He released his chin, pulling back his hand, and watched how the boy pulled himself away immediately, arms crossed and body closed, a stormy expression and a pouting lip. He didn’t need to speak for Gullistan to know his thoughts. He wanted to know why he was here.“You don’t approve of my presence.”“I don’t see how you could help us,” Augustine replied, “we’ve no money to repay you with, all they have is this house, and …”Augustine looked over him, his dress, his clothes.“... why would you want that? There’s nothing to gain from us. We’re nothing, and you don’t seem like the kind of man who wants nothing.”Gullistan’s lips curled into a smile.“Sharp and willful,” he said, “I do enjoy you - Augustine.”He gestured to the doorway.“Show me inside then,” he said, “I’ve returned to speak with your mother.”

“I’ll bring an end to your predicament,” Gullistan offered, straightening in his seat, magnanimously, “you won’t have to worry about your debts ever again.”“You will?” His mother sounded so hopeful; so bright.“I will,” he replied, “for a simple cost.”She nodded.“Whatever you ask for,” she said, desperate.“Your son,” he replied.Her face faltered, just for a second, before she swallowed.She’d already decided, although she would pretend her conscience stayed her, in the same way she’d pretended it had stayed her hand before. Behind her, Augustine’s eyes were wide.His fingers clutched at his sides, tight fists.If Augustine weren’t here, would she have hesitated at all?“What do you want him for?” She asked.“I’m in need of a …” Gullistan considered his word carefully, “bearer.”“Bearer?” His mother didn’t understand the word.“A servant,” Augustine supplied. Mother was not as clever as son, as Gullistan had known.“It must frustrate you,” Gullistan addressed him, smiling, “being so much more than they are. Tell me, is it like wading against a tide, living here amongst them - Augustine?”Augustine was very still.“What kind of servant?” His mother asked, unsure, “like a …”She let absence say words she didn’t have the stomach to say, lest they make reality of what she was already agreeing to. You don’t truly care what manner of servant I’ll make your boy - but you must pretend you do.Gullistan’s smile grew.“Oh it will not all be Master and Servant; your son seems to have a keen interest in the medicinal, I will teach him,” he said, “and in turn, he will pay your debt in service of me.”His mother’s expression shifted.“Like an apprentice?”“Of sorts,” Gullistan replied.‘Apprentice’ was more than permission enough to accept these terms with her dignity intact. It wasn’t selling him if it could be fashioned into something else.“He’s always been too clever for us,” she said, “for this place, and you’re a wealthy man… important, you could make something of him...”Augustine swallowed beside her, his eyes lifting to his mothers, quietly desperate.His voice was terribly small when he spoke.“Mum,” he said.It was a plea.“It’s an opportunity,” she said, and the tiniest notch appeared on Augustine’s brow, a flinch so miniscule his mother could happily pretend she hadn’t seen the breaking of his heart, “you’ll learn a lot from Mister Horne.”Gullistan fixed his smile upon him. The bargain was struck, the payment agreed.“Then we have a deal?” He asked.Augustine’s mother nodded.“Yes, Mister Horne,” she said, her face filled with gratitude, “thank you so much.”

My father was a preacher; as I am sure, perhaps, you might have guessed.Not an impressive man, not a rich man, not a brilliant man. He simply spoke the words he was given.He spoke well, though - and when he spoke, people listened. His voice could carry across a room, and carry it did; through the house, through the walls, as he raised it night after night. Strangers might have described him as kind.My mother was small, of mind and soul, lauding what little power she had over the only creature with less standing in our house than she.My father was also a gambler; and an abuser, an adulterer, amongst other things - you know- a holy man.They were as careless with their money as they were with their promises.They grew too large - debts paid with debts - he was also a fool - and they came for us. Set fire to our home as my parents slept.You’re supposed to stay near the floor, they say. The smoke rises.A beam from the ceiling in the kitchen collapsed, on me. I thought it would be the end of me, I was … weaker. Smaller then.
It was not, but it was the end of my mother and father.I don't mourn their loss. They gave little to this world, and little to me.That was the first burn I ever treated. I've gotten better at it since.

The remains of the boy’s house had been cleared away, and a new home built upon them, and the boy was gone. He found him eventually - behind the desk of an apothecary - many miles from the remains of that house.The brilliant could not hide. Like a fire, they burnt everything they touched, and Gullistan needed only to follow the trail of smoke.The potion maker had bragged about the skills of his apprentice - talented and sharp as a blade - young Augustine.Gullistan watched him for a moment through the window, assuring himself he had found his target, before he stepped inside.Augustine was writing something in a small book, and looked up as he entered.He recognised him - his eyes told Gullistan as much. He looked him over, undoubtedly reconciling his appearance, but if he had any opinions about it, he voiced none.It disappointed Gullistan that his response was so small, so he tilted his head, and sought a bigger one.“Did you think you could run from me, Augustine?”Augustine closed the book.“It’s been six years,” he said, “I hadn’t expected to see you again.”“Has it?”For Gullistan it had not been so long - although he supposed it had not been no time at all - it had been a little frustratingly slow to find this vessel - he could still feel the itching in his limbs for the wait.Certainly, the boy looked different, the years had sharpened his jaw, refined the proud sharp bump in the bridge in his nose, graced his skin with a few more of those dark freckles that couldn’t help but betray the severity of his expression, making him prettier than he wanted to look.And he had become so very pretty.“Why am I seeing you again?” Augustine asked, turning away from him and tending to the shelves and tinctures with great focus. His hair was shorter, cropped in boyish curls.“I’ve come to collect,” Gullistan said simply. “Payment is due.”Augustine barely looked back at him, stacking a few items upon a rack, but his nonchalance was pretense.“Payment? I wasn’t aware you upheld your part of the deal,” he said.“Oh I think I did - tell me, are you parents free of their predicament? Are they still worrying about their debt, as I promised they never would again?”Augustine’s face went hard, and he turned now to him.“Ah,” he said, “so you’re fey; as I suspected you were.”Gullistan would have been disappointed if he hadn’t.“Astute. You wouldn’t guess a devil first? Why?”“Devils like paperwork, and your hands have always been empty,” Augustine replied sharply, then straightened. “I owe you nothing. My mother made that deal.”“Ah, so she did, but its terms did not die with her,” Gullistant smiled, and Augustine didn’t manage to hide his flinching, winding tightness in response.“You are correct, I’m no devil,” Gullistan agreed, “and as such - you cannot step out of what is owed by a technicality. A deal is a deal, and you - my willful boy - were the payment. I’ve come for what I’m owed.”Augustine was very still, but his eyes were full, whirring and rattling - considerations churning behind them.Eventually, they flinched.“Will there be an end?”“Yes,” Gullistan said, “when our work is complete, there will be an end.”Augustine swallowed.“... do we have to leave now?” He asked, voice quietening a little.“Why,” Gullistan asked, sensing a fragment of hesitation, “is there someone you wish to say goodbye to? I can escort you to them to make your farewells.”Augustine shook his head, very quickly.“No,” he said, and Gullistan knew it was a lie, “there is no one.”

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The Dieback

Content warning: References to SA, abuse, gore, noncon, violence and death.

There had always been something about that town; Ebonpass, named as it was for the place it had at the foothill of the Terrenmore Path - a little used route through the peaks beyond now that many feared the creatures that lurked within it.Not that I had had any knowledge when I stumbled upon it; only that I’d run out of food, and my burn was healing poorly - the aloe I had cut to soothe it hadn’t been enough for heat so deep into the skin - when I found Allerton’s apothecary.Allerton let me pay my fee in work, as I had nothing else. It didn’t take long for him to realise the work I could offer was worth more than the salves he’d given me in return, so like any clever businessman, he offered me more of it.I didn’t look back at the town as Gullistan walked me towards the path, and I realised with each step the edge of the world where I had lived now for years, unknowing. Had that been what guided my feet, when they’d stumbled from the crumbling remains of my parents home?You might ask why I didn’t fight him then. Why didn't I run, why didn’t I try to stop this from happening to me?
He’d found me again once. He’d do it again, and next time, he might not find me alone.His grip about my arm tighter and more desperate with each step as we walked through the planar veil and into the mist. I’d never travelled to another plane before.It is a disorienting feeling, like standing in the thickest of fog and not knowing how far it stretched beyond you. In your body, too, like your insides had been numbed but your skin was licked with heat. If I had known that this was only the beginning of that feeling, that I wouldn’t feel as if I stood upon solid earth for another ten years, I might have savoured those last moments before the veil better.I was too focused upon the man that walked me; the smell of him was changing, growing. He’d always had something strange about his smell, one I couldn’t place at first, but understood now as it grew so strong it strangled my throat.The smell of rotting plants, left in a vase too long and turning to grime and mush.Rot. Then iron. Decay.His grip was digging into my arm, and I looked down at his hands and saw the skin splitting around the joints of his fingers. I saw the spread, slow and steady, of dark old blood across the fabric of the shirt he wore. He was bleeding - no, not bleeding - more than blood coming from within that body.With each step through the veil, the body of Gullistan Horne dessicated, his elegant face twisting up into a miserable grit as he forced each step forward even as his form began to crumble.The flesh sloughed away; like it too had been left in water too long, until it collapsed entirely, blood and viscera in the crumpled shape of that discarded suit, the fabric that held it in some false shape sullied, stained and ruined, and from the cuff, the bones of his hand still gripping my elbow.That might have been my moment to escape, but the horror held me as I looked down at what remained of my captor, the bile turning in my stomach. By the time the panic seized me, and I turned to run - he had found me.STILL, AUGUSTINE.He peeled his own fingers from my elbow, and I looked upon Gullistan for the first time - the man I would eventually come to understand as the true Gullistan - blighted exile of the Seelie Court, the Dieback, forgotten princeling.“Let me take you home,” he said, lips spreading wide, a mouth near as wide as his jaw, “my willful boy.”

Gullistan hated routine. I had lived my life by certain rhythms, and suddenly I had none - there was no night outside my window, the horizon trapped as I was at the eternal cusp of day into night. It never changed. Never got light. Never got dark.I tried to keep the minutes in my head at first, but … it was a path to faster madness, especially as I grew hungrier, and hungrier.He told me there would be an end. There would be an end, but at first I wasn’t even sure what was supposed to be the beginning. He gave me a room, a study, but the work he promised me never seemed to start.I knew I couldn’t eat the plates of food he put before me, but my stomach was starting to grow so hollow, my body so weak, it was worse than any hunger I’d felt in my life. I thought my body might eat itself.Starvation would have been one way to bring about an end.“If you die,” Gullistan said to me, as he cradled me, pressing the bread through my closed lips, “how will you fulfil the terms of the deal?”I thought it was a gilded cage at first, that I was some sort of amusement, but it was only my body he wished to keep intact. He cared little for my mind.After I gave in, after I ate, that’s when he took me to his study - and I started to understand the source of his work.I looked across the books, the diagrams, the bits of creatures that he’d pulled apart and pinned, the dissections of a child playing doctor."What are you trying to find?" I asked him, and he smiled.“My willful boy, I couldn’t have chosen you better,” he said, “I knew you were special.”“Special?” I asked him, not understanding.I was no arcanist, no wizard, no brilliant mind. I didn't know what it meant, and told him so.“There is nothing special about me.”

The work

Do you really want to hear this part? I'd rather not relive any more than I must.I will spare you the details; the formless days upon days spent there in his study. Let me tell you what it taught me about Gullistan Horne, instead.

There was only me. I had expected more thralls or servants, but he kept no others.Running was pointless. He always knew where I was.He didn't hide anything from me; I expect my mundanity, my human nature, was security enough that he trusted I'd never be able to do anything with what I learnt.Gullistan was unpopular amongst his own kind, an outcast, he'd been left with his home but no status. Blighted in name and body, and that blight tainted everything he touched except me. Plants, food, water, creatures - all of them would be taken up with rot where his skin touched. He hid it, on his own body, but I could smell it under the illusions.He was rotting, too.It was me that was the exception. To this, I never found the answer; I think it was some part of the deal he'd made for me; the oath bond by which he kept me kept only me.In his notes he called it The Dieback.He was a narcissist, my face matched his own well enough, and he took whatever he pleased from me.I don't want to explain that further, beyond the clue it gave me."I want to know how it will feel," he said, when he touched me.'How it will feel.'

Gullistan was charming; magnanimous and beautiful, offering kindness and hospitality to those that walked through his doors.He gloated that of course I had been drawn to medicine; my skills in this would be the perfect fit to his designs. He'd promised to teach me, hadn't he?He saw everything about me as some sort of service to him.I understood why it had taken him so long to find me again. Not just the dilation of time between the realms, but the time needed to procure another body to use. He relied upon travellers who stumbled upon his beautiful home, in desperation - seeking some passage from the Feywild and back to their own realms.Passage he would give them.The Dieback was a curse, and it bound him to the Feywild. He saw himself as a prisoner too. As if the privelidge of walking from plane to plane were something he deserved, a freedom denied to him.A freedom he deserved to have.Gullistan needed subjects, and he needed them to be kept alive.

I learnt more about medicine in my time working for Gullistan than I ever could have at the Apothecary. I saw bodies pushed to levels of disrepair no tyrant or warlord could design, and was tasked to mend them.In this, he fulfilled his part of the deal.In this alone.

SURRENDER, AUGUSTINE.

...but in the end, the subject was always me.'I want to know how it will feel'The markings he'd been leaving upon my neck, drawing down my spine.He called me to his side, and I knew something was different. The work was complete, he said, and the trap that I had always been in snapped shut.

Do you know what it feels like? To have someone reach into your mind, and pluck at the seam until the threads come free?The symbols placed upon me were the pattern to follow, the path for his channel, designed only for him.

I'd never taken a life before, only failed to save them.
When the feelings returned to me, my hands shaking and bloodied and body burning for the effort, the desperation with which I had fought for my freedom, I felt no satisfaction.
I felt absence.
I sat beside his body for a long time, and then, I stood. I would destroy every single thing in that place, but first, I ...

He left more in me than he'd intended; not just the unfinished channel, but the knowledge he'd stolen to make it, left like residue. He shouldn't have had it.
Nor should I.
Nobody should.

A confession to Boram

"Boram - my sestra - the only other I met in my ten years in that place I could trust. She was like me, a pet, left to heel as our masters conducted petty business.I am sorry. Sorry for the hell you endured. Sorry I could do no more to save you back there than you could save me.I'm so sorry, sestra."

“I’ve always battled with the concept of fate, Boram,” he says, fixing her in his gaze.It’s been unflinching whenever he’s looked at her; he’s met the truth she can’t hide from him with his own, but in this moment, there is more - an unfamiliar expression in there that Boram knows.Doubt.“It’s a thing thrust upon us, handed to us - but I have never believed it had to be. Twice life has offered me a fate, and I have defied it to live. Not luck and chance. I saved myself.”“I might have died in that fire, collateral damage of my father’s sad, miserable life - just another sorry end for another boy born heir to nothing.”“I wasn’t as strong then as I am now; I thought I might die there, but I didn’t.”He gestures now to his back; to the designs that adorn his spine, that Boram knows he’s shared but a fraction of, though she hasn’t told him a word of the design that adorns her own - but they both recognise a mark for a mark.“When Gullistan Horne, that monster - that demon - that thing would have turned me to his weapon - when he scraped my mind from my skull to toy with it - I thought I might die again.”“You don’t know what sort of thing he was,” he said, “although I am sure you’ve encountered your own. Collecting and toying with whatever he chose, plucking their wings like insects, inventing his little tortures to please himself….”“It was my brilliance he was attracted to, he said,” Augustine purses his lips - a cloud crossing his features, dark and heavy, “my ‘fascinating broken brain’ - that it was sweeter to own something so hard to subdue.”“He wanted to make me a vessel. His vessel; a channel, to fill me with rot so I might be his avatar on the material plane. His puppet to do his little evils. Men born with power - they have such weak ambitions - they want such ugly things… you know this more than most, don’t you?”He closes his eyes.“It is my great shame, Boram, that I can’t tell you how I did it. I confess - it is my confession to you - that I don’t know how I broke his hold. I shouldn’t have been able to; but I did.”He opens his eyes, looking instead at his hands.“It’s no easy thing to kill an archfey, but they can die, and he did. I had no weapon. No blade. I killed him with my own hands. Pressed my fingers into his skull until I broke it and broke him.”He takes a breath.“Then I took the mark he’d given me,” he gestures to the symbol between his shoulder blades, “and I made it my own. I could turn his channel to much greater purpose,” he grazes his hand down his spine, “make his petty little ambition into something worthy. If I am to be a weapon it is to be a weapon that can do so much more.”He looks at her, gaze faltering.“When I made it back to this plane it had been over twenty years; my home was gone, my family forgotten as they ought to be, and nothing to return to. So I began the work; the work of gathering as many souls as I would need to create my blade. Heal the sick, bolster the weak, gather my followers on the path to endless truth.”“That is what this is,” he says, “this symbol is my channel - my weapon - through which I will have a blade that can cut through the fabric of reality itself. A blade that could sever our plane from the wheel; and render the material plane free at last, from those influences that would force their fates upon us.”His faltering gaze shakes.“I am walking towards another death Boram,” he says, “and if I stop walking then I will pay the cost for the steps I have already taken… and…”He looks away.“If I save myself this time, what will I become?”

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Endless Truth

Content warning: references to character death, violence, noncon.

"By the time I had returned, the apothecary was shuttered. A decade on my body stretched further, here, on the material plane in my absence.I had not expected to have anything to return to. Even if I had, I was not fit to return to any life I'd had before. It didn't matter. I simply headed North.The road littered with bodies - a skirmish, with soldiers left in the dirt to die. How many bodies had I mended and re-mended, now? I knelt beside him, a young man, younger than I had been when I had been taken, clinging to his life in that godless place.I cleaned his wounds, stitched his flesh, bound his fractured ribs, and pulled him from the ground. Nursed him back to his mind, until he could tell me his name.My first follower. Kaelen. He walks behind me still."

His back is turned to the crowd. He sits on the stone floor before the altar, not kneeling, not bowed in prayer - only regarding the effigies before him with still curiosity.The whispers are gathering, hushed voices, an ushering of noise in this small church. The air is hot; the stone bathed in warm amber from the candles lit and placed upon every surface, and yet somehow the darkness persists.You feel as if you are gathered here at the fringes of the night, drawn to this light.You cannot focus on anything else, anyone else; the crowd faceless to you, you can only see the square line of his shoulders, shifting.Only the dark hair gathered into a tight knot, the hint of ink lines upon his nape you glimpse for only a moment before his head snaps back.It's as if he was waiting for you to arrive. The sharp and sudden eyes upon you pin you to the spot.Your heart shocks still, and you are frozen as he lifts slowly from the floor.His eyes. You had heard about his eyes. As bright as a full moon. As bright as the white light of death.Augustine.The crowd is quiet as he turns slowly. His eyes breaking from you, releasing you from their grasp as he looks across the gathered others.He lifts his hands slowly to his sides, gesturing across them.“What has brought you here?” He asks you all.He rests his fingers splayed across his chest.“What has brought you to me?”No one answers. You don't answer.“Curiosity?” He asks, addressing faces turn by turn. “You've heard of what I've done here? The threats I have defeated? The people I have healed?”His voice is low, a deep vibrating timbre you can feel rattling in your own gut.A smile blooms across his sharp, handsome features; warmer than you expected.Understanding.“Fear. Fear is what brings you here.”His smile vanishes. Replaced with a cloud, darkening his brow.“‘The Absolute.’”You feel it; dread, immediate and abrupt.He raises his hand again, twirling his fingers before him, as if he is turning the name around in the air.“Don't fear it,” he says, “it is a name, and names have only the strength we give them.”“Say it,” he says, urging. Firm. “Say it aloud.”But you can't. You feel the hesitation from all around you. No one can.“I will say it for you,” he says.“The Absolute. The Absolute and its true souls.”A flash again of frustration, irritation. He draws in a steady breath between his teeth before he speaks again.“True souls, yes, that is what they call them. Those to whom the Absolute bestows its power. True souls.”He clasps his fingers together; a tight fist.“Doesn't that stick in your throat? True soul.
True. Soul.”He casts his clasped fist down.“As if there is any ‘truth’ to a soul robbed of choice,” he spits the words, laced with threading fury.“Their illusion of power, of strength, is no truth.”He looks around you all, and shifts, lifting his chest. You feel yourself lifting too.“Let me show you what it really means. What it means to be a ‘True Soul’.”Augustine twirls his fingers before him once again, and as if plucked from the air itself, suddenly, he is holding something. A tadpole.He holds the wriggling creature aloft between his fingertips. His look as he regards it blistering, his contempt so great you can feel the heat of the air starting to burn.“They forced these things upon us; planted them in our skulls, so they might use us. To control us.”Every word is sharper. Angrier, and you feel his fury. It feels like your own.“Power to the few. Subjugation for the rest.”He watches it squirm.“True. Soul.”He casts the wriggling creature to the floor.He looks down upon it, a sneer curling his lips for only a moment before he clears his face, tilting his chin up - regarding you instead.He holds your gaze. Eyes a blinding light as he brings his foot down upon the tadpole, crushing it under his sole.“Another lie,” he says.He begins to smile. He leaves the smear of the creature on the stone behind him as he takes one step closer.“It is not they who seek the truth,” he says, another step forward.“It must spite them to know their deception has failed,” he says, reaching for you.His hand extended.“For they cannot take me, and they will not take you.”Fingers stretch towards you, his smile growing, and his gaze feels like infinity.“I am the Truth,” he says, “and my search is endless.”

This trifling True Soul would be no obstacle; indeed, they could be a most well positioned instrument.Why do the work yourself when another could do it for you? A solution to his Orin-shaped problem could hardly arrive so neatly.Yet, as Enver looked over the gathered patriars, chattering and prattling and preening, he couldn't quite shake the smallest note of anticipation in his gut.So many pieces were about to fall into place; how could he not feel it? No, it was excitement, not anticipation.There was a gentle thumping in the far reaches of the hall; the drums of the bards growing a little louder.No, it was not the bards, at least not his bards. Footsteps, and a drum beat. Slow, steady, marching. Growing.Louder. Louder. Closer. They started to spill into the hall; and Gortash held still as he made sense of the moment - an unexpected one.They were people. Ordinary people. Uninvited people, and more and more of them. Not servants.People.His people, he reminded himself as he watched the crowd growing, spilling up the stairs and gathering at the far end of the ceremony hall.He was not the only one who had noticed. The chittering of the patriars was quietening; as more and more people poured into the room, they were impossible to ignore, and he sensed something else brewing in the air. Now this was anticipation. Anxiety.An unpleasant surprise.The crowd had made no moves to encroach into the room, and Enver wondered why. He didn't wonder for long.A tall figure parted them, cutting through the swathe effortlessly, moving to the front, and once cleared of the crowd he kept walking - a slow and steady march.Once he was a few steps ahead the crowd pulled after him, turning in place, falling into line, marching behind him. People, ordinary people, lined up better than a regiment of soldiers. The air around them crackled, their faces grim and hard.His people were angry.“Sir-” his guard spoke up to his right, with a note of concern, but Enver raised his hand quickly.He could not allow a moment of hesitation here; this needed to be taken as if nothing had changed.Enver straightened his spine as he watched this man approach; observing him from a distance.Their steps met the drum beats, their march like a thudding heart, rattling through the floor, and now the patriars were silenced.This was an elaborate spectacle with simple design, Enver thought, and kept his face schooled and his body still - a small smile held upon his lips.This was him, then; the True Soul that toppled Ketheric. This ‘Augustine’.Had he marched a horde of strays and beggars upon the warlord, too? No; this was for Enver’s benefit, surely?He was only a few steps away now.A head and shoulders above almost all the crowd that followed him. Simply, almost insultingly simply dressed, no weapon on his body - hair the colour of dried blood or richest wine, tied up behind his head.Sharp features. Augustine was handsome - rather disarmingly so, in fact.His most disarming feature, however, became apparent the moment he was at the foot of the steps before Enver.His gaze was fixed upon him.His eyes were so bright and vivid, electric - a chemical reaction burning blinding. His gaze felt as if it pierced through his skull, it was so intent.Enver was most displeased with the sensation that lurched in his gut. One he hadn't felt for a long time; not even when that dribbling maniac Orin had dared press her blade to him.He did not wait for Enver to descend the steps, nor did he ask for permission to climb them before he did, clearing the last few steps and looking down at Enver - tilting ever so slightly forward as he did.Enver didn't flinch as he leant into him, those striking eyes held on his own with that stare unrelenting. Although his lips were smiling, he looked at him with wrath.Enver pushed down his own rage at this utter disrespect; and smiled back in welcome.At least Augustine was audacious; Enver considered. He could still use that.“You sought an audience,” Augustine spoke, “little dictator.”His voice was low. Emollient; filled with drawing gravity.The rage in Enver’s stomach boiled.“Here I am.”“And so many of you,” Enver replied coolly, determined to sound genial in spite of it, “although the invitation I extended was not quite this generous.”Augustine smiled. A cracking, genuine, wolfish sort of smirk.He tilted back, gesturing with a hand to the crowd behind him.“You didn't want your subjects to witness this, too?” He asked, raising his voice enough that it could be heard by the closest reaches of the crowd.“Who will whisper of your moment of triumph as they shiver at their hearths?” he asked.“Who will speak in reverence of your majesty,” his eyes flicked across him sharply, almost scathing, “of your fine dress, starving as the blockades choke your city?”“Who will look at you and utter your strength, desperate for your protection?”He leant in again, a bit too close, close enough that Gortash could feel the heat of him - smell the salt of sweat.“Not these patriars,” he said quietly, now only to him, “who are so complacent with their safety they'll allow their guards to sit downstairs, with idle hands.”He tilted his head.“Do they regret that now I wonder?”Augustine’s smile grew.“I thought you'd be better at this, Enver.”

To allow it to slip past him once was a mistake. To allow it twice - to find himself trapped as the arcane chains tightened around frozen limbs - was a mistake unforgiveable.You've allowed compromise; and you will face the consequences."Can you hear them?" Augustine whispers in his ear as his fingers rest upon his neck, leaning in, "can you hear them sing?"The chorus is quiet at first - overlapping whispers, like the tremoring strings of an orchestra in the moment before they begin. Then it is deafening.Howls. Cruelty. Pain and horror and terror and agony and the pit deep destruction of hearts torn apart. All of it at once. A choir of torment."It is for you. Your chorus of the broken," Augustine says quietly, his voice piercing through the relentless barrage of noise, "the stolen minds you have enslaved and tortured, singing as one."Enver cannot move. His mind screams too as the voices overwhelm him, and it feels as if his skull might crack."So mournful it drove your workers to madness," Augustine's lips brush his ear softly."Bathe in this, Little Dictator. It is all your design."

What is the Endless Truth?

Wyll's heart was pounding, the sensation in his gut of falling - of the world turning on it's side, as he listened to the words the man who called him love, and understood at last what had been lurking within him all along.'The cost will be heavy'; the words echoed in his mind."What happens to them, Augustine?" He asked, "these people believe in you - do they even know what it is you've asked them to believe in?"Augustine's face was cold, so cold - as he spoke.
"....tell me, do you know the tale of the Raven Queen?"Wyll felt his heart beginning to sunder.He'd been blind; hadn't he? Or had he just not wanted to see it?"I see. Your loyal followers, fodder for the cost of equality," he said.His gut turned; a lick of rage in his stomach. How could he be so hypocritical? How could he claim freedom and equality? How could he? Couldn't he see?"... do you believe the shadar-kai would have chosen to become what they are if they knew that's what she had planned?"Augustine shook his head."They were not her plan - they are the remains of her half measure, her failure.""I will not fail - I don't intend to rule anything - if they fall with me, our deaths are the cost that had to be paid. Is it not better to die for freedom than to live in the shackles of injustice?"He took another step - reaching for Wyll - his expression turning from cold to imploring."If it could be only me, it would be, but I am not so naive to believe that this can be done without pain - to take from some to give back to all."Wyll had heard enough."Pain? Augustine - this is not pain. This is ... this is monstrous.""What becomes of us when you've done this? An equal world, or a ruined one?"One face was in his mind, above the others."...and what about Karlach - you're ... you're condeming her - don't you understand?"He reached for the hilt of his blade, his turn to make a final plea."My love, don't make me do this."

There are so many endings a man can walk towards.
In one world, I never escaped Gullistan's grasp.
I became The Dieback
and all that was left of me
withered
empty.
A vessel to be worn when he pleased, like a coat.

In one world I believed myself the hero, and I fell for the virtuous blade...
Who did what all heroes must do.
He stopped the villain.

... but ... in one world ... you found me again,
and my will met it's match.

For a long moment, Dolly was silent, a gentle frown tugging between their brows, their sweet face marred by a swirl of conflicts.Eventually, they spoke."... I want so much with you, Augustine. I only just got you, and ... I want everything. I want to wake up with you, to make love with you, to listen to you talk and know you...
... and I do know you."Their expression hardened a little. Determined."I know you well enough to know I can't stop you. I'll fight your fight darling. I see it.""I see the better world you want and why you want it. I wish you could see some other way to get it, 'cause I can't have what I want and you what you want too, but ..."Dolly reached for his hand."I won't let you do it alone.
Show me how to share your channel."

Augustine's eyes went wide.
"No. Not you. The better world deserves you - istina - you're ..."

"...and I deserve you," Dolly said, smiling even as the tears brimmed in their eyes, "but like I said, we can't both have what we want. You know me, too, so you know I ain't backing down, I'm never letting you go again.
I'm sharing the burden, show me how."

An unwavering path he'd walked for so many years.... and he was so filled with doubt.

• Back

Augustine

...but, once, there was just a young man - working at Allerton's Apothecary, in Ebonpass.
Once...

This story is still being written.

The sign above the door said Allerton’s Apothecary, and as Dominisk pushed inside, they were hit by the scents of must, herbs and something smoky and pungent.The shop was more spacious than it had appeared from outside, the ivy grown front step and shady doorway giving way to a stone walled building with high ceilings - large, high windows casting the fresh morning light amongst tall shelves - some of them housing books, but most of them covered in little drawers and boxes.Quiet, though; for a moment they thought they might be the only person in the store. They drifted in the direction of the wooden desk that was placed parallel to the shelves, where an empty stool suggested there was usually a proprietor.Dominisk clasped their hands together behind their back, braving to venture a little further inside. They weren’t quiet; their plate mail announcing their presence as it always did, but as they caught a glimpse of another figure, they didn’t get the sense they’d disturbed the peace.A tall man stood beside a small stepladder, a paper in one hand, the other opening a little drawer, inspecting its contents - he glanced up at Dominisk, catching their eye for just a second, but barely thatHe was dressed nicely, and from this sidelong view, Dominisk noted his crop of dark auburn curls, framing a sharp jaw and a sharp, hawkish nose; the kind of profile they might’ve called ‘dignified’, but he didn’t look old enough to be an apothecary.“A moment,” he called in their direction, and Dominisk nodded, shooting him a big smile.They lingered by the desk, waiting, eyes trailing to a curling wisp of smoke to their left; a little stick was burning away in a pot filled with grains of rice - the source of that smell they hadn’t been able to place - incense.The young man was heading in their direction now, placing a few little glass bottles on the desk and opening a drawer, producing a small muslin sack from within it and scooping them up to tuck them inside. Dominisk watched this, shifting a little on the spot, easing out the ache in their shoulder from where their pauldron had been really digging in the entire ride into town.“Are y’ Allerton?” They asked, smiling still as he seemed to complete his business, straightening up a bit now to look at them.“My employer,” he replied, “If you’ve an appointment with him, he is out attending to engagements, and will not be available for some time. You are of course welcome to wait.”The way he’d said that was a little stilted, like he’d said that a fair few times already, today, but Dominisk shook their head.“Oh, no, that’s ok - I just thought I’d ask ‘cause of the sign, I was hopin’ I could get a little help with somethin’,” they said.Now he was closer, they could get a proper look at him - he really was tall, a head and shoulders taller than them - and ‘dignified’ wasn’t a good word to describe him at all - not that he wasn’t, his features were certainly refined, but the word they’d use now they were looking him face-to-face was more like ‘beautiful’.A little smattering of freckles, a bit like their own, but only brushed across the sharp bridge of his nose - like someone had run a paintbrush across it in a line and left them behind. His eyes were a really bright colour, too; silver as the blade of the axe hilted to their back, shiny as the breastplate of their armour.Those bright eyes were darting across them, making them straighten a bit; he was taking stock of them.“Well, perhaps I can be of sufficient assistance,” he said, “I’m Allerton’s apprentice. Augustine.”“S’nice name,” they replied, smiling, “I’m Do-”They faltered, hesitating, and his brow raised a little as the name swallowed in their throat.They weren’t quite sure why it had; maybe because he was so pretty - and he hadn’t known them since before they’d decided their name didn’t feel like the right one.“Dolly,” they said, holding out their hand for him to shake, “it’s nice to meet you Augustine.”Augustine took their hand, shaking it quickly, firmly.“Like the Goddess of Passing Song,” he said, “of the Rolling Hills.”Dolly nodded.“Mhmm,” they said, feeling a little flutter in their chest - from the soft touch of his hand, his silvery eyes, and the fact that he’d just known that was where the name was from.Of all the things to have found in this shop when they’d walked into it, that hadn’t been something they could have predicted.“You’re here to deal with the ghouls?” He asked, tilting his head a little to one side.“Huh?”Did he say ghouls?“You’re a paladin of Tyr,” he said, disrupting their thought, nodding his head to the insignia that was etched into their armour, which they kept forgetting was there, “I saw your regiment arrive yesterday - there’s not a lot of reasons to come somewhere like this, so, I thought maybe you were here to deal with the monsters spotted in the pass?”“Oh,” Dolly followed his gaze, furtive, no - that wasn’t exactly it - but they didn’t know how much they were allowed to say, so, “yeah, ‘spose we will - but I‘m not a proper paladin, least not yet, I ‘ain’t taken the oath or nothing.”They broke into a smile, realising something.“Guess that makes me kind of the same, an apprentice, too,” they said, “but they call it initiate, in the temple.”“Hm,” Augustine considered, crossing his arms, “so, you’re here for supplies, for the paladins?”Dolly laughed.“Actually, I’m kinda here about somethin’ a lil more personal,” they said, “we were on the road nine days riding here and …”They leant against the desk.“If I’m honest with you, I’ve been strugglin’ to keep down my breakfast - and it’s no good. Can’t be hunting monsters on an empty stomach, you know?”Augustine’s lips curled into a small smile.“Travel makes you nauseous?” he asked, sounding just a little incredulous.“Oh I can ride horseback,” Dolly supplied quickly, “course I can, it’s the carriages, them lurching wheels through the mud, churning you this way and that…”“Motion sickness,” he concluded.“Yeah, I guess so,” Dolly nodded, “you uh, you got some potions or somethin’ to remedy that?”That small smile grew.“I wouldn’t waste your money on something so costly,” he said, moving now, turning on the spot, an elegant swivel before taking two long strides into the shelves, perching up on one foot and grabbing a box from one of the shelves.He returned to the desk a moment later, placing what looked a lot like a particularly strange potato in front of them, with a golden skin, and presented it with a quick flourish of the fingers.“This will do just as well,” he said.Dolly looked at it, then at him, not really understanding. It was a root - that much they’d worked out.“... I eat it? With the skin and everythin’?” They asked.He reached into the drawers of the desk, producing a little blade - the kind Dolly had seen carvers use for intricate work, and held it up a moment for them to see, giving them a little knowing look, before he made swift work of scraping away the skin to reveal the gold yellow flesh of the root underneath - and casting a fresh, crisp smell into the air between them.He did the whole thing in a matter of seconds, his fingers making deft, quick work of the job, before he shaved a strip of the flesh from one end of the root and held it out for them to take.“Ginger,” he said, “you can take a slice to chew on when you need to settle your stomach.”Dolly took the offered slice, throwing it into their mouth without a second of hesitation. The taste was sharp and immediate, and they knew they’d let out a little sound of surprise.“Oh it zaps your tongue don’t it?” they said, chewing a little, the texture firmer than they’d expected, a bit like an apple, “got a proper punch to it - I like it -”He was looking at them oddly, his brow raised.“You didn’t mean now, huh?” Dolly realised. Oops.But the corner of his lip curled into a different sort of smile than before, a genuine sort of smile, a tiny bit shy, and Dolly smiled back.“It is better as a tea,” he said, avoiding their eyes a little, straightening up a bit, “if you can manage it, with a little honey.”“Oh that sounds good, do you sell that too?” Dolly asked.“Well, this is hardly a market stall,” Augustine replied, folding his arms, but added, conceding, “although, yes, we do. It’s a rather useful tool in medicine, actually.”“Is it?” Dolly sucked the last of the ginger’s residue from their fingertips; zingy and pleasant.“It prevents infection,” Augustine said, “applied to a wound or burn - a protective layer that can reduce the inflammation - and forms the basis of many a good poultice.”“I didn’t know it could do that…” Dolly considered, they’d always just thought of honey as something you put on grits to make them a bit less horrible, “that’s so interesting.”Augustine nodded.“I think so,” he said, eyes meeting theirs now, albeit tentatively. “There are a lot of things we eat that can be used in treatment.”“You know a lot about that kind of thing,” Dolly asked, because they were enjoying hearing him talk about it, “medicine and things?”Augustine’s eyes flitted around the room about them, decidedly an apothecary, full of medicine and things.“I’d hope so,” he said.Dolly couldn’t help it, laughing - a little snort escaping their nose - he’d just said it so flatly. If they’d not stepped right into it with the ginger already they definitely felt foolish now. Still, it made that shy little smile on his lips grow that bit more.Dolly reached for their coin purse.“How much do I owe you for it, the ginger?”Augustine shook his head.“You can have it,” he said, reaching into the drawer once more to produce a sliver of waxed paper, in which he quickly wrapped up the rest of the root into a sort of tiny envelope, and handed it over.Dolly felt bad taking it, even though the gesture was doing a real number on their already fluttery stomach - turning now into full on wings, like a bunch of butterflies taking flight in their stomach.“Some honey, then,” they asked, “as you made the tea sound so nice and all.”Augustine considered them for a moment, then he turned, taking a few steps back to retrieve something from the shelves, which he returned to them. A small jar of honey.“Five copper,” he said.Dolly scooped a few coins from their bag, making a point to look about the shelves in a thoughtful, obvious way.“If we need some supplies we’ll know where to get’em,” they said, feeling hopeful that this would prove to be true.Augustine nodded, and handed them the honey, too.“I hope it helps,” he said.

I saw your regiment arrive yesterday - there’s not a lot of reasons to come somewhere like this.‘Saw’.

Low on mugwort; down to the last three handfuls, and not enough, he expected, to fulfil the order from the Lurwicks.Augustine made a note on the registry and let his foot alight back on the stone floor where he'd perched at the edge of the shelf to reach up, rather than bother fetching an unnecessary ladder. Easier for him to do this part of the job than Allerton, given the several feet of height taller he stood than his employer, which was why he was doing it.It had been a quiet morning, stretching into an equally quiet midday. Or, perhaps not.The dusty, comfortable silence of the shop as Augustine set about this usual work was disrupted by the gentle ripple of sounds from the square.Rare to have much commotion in Ebonpass, but Allerton didn't seem interested; the halfling made no moves to rise from his desk.Augustine drifted towards the window, still marking down a few notes, pulled by his own curiosity to cast his eyes sidelong through the glass.Carts - a pair of them, drawn by a pair of horses - atop which sat gleaming armour and the Scales atop the Grand Warhammer of Tyr picked out in harsh embroidery across draped banners. Paladins?A modest handful of them, at least, stopping and alighting in the square.Augustine's eyes were drawn to a hand shooting up from within the back of the cart, clutching the side tightly to steady, followed by a swinging boot.A moment later the rest of the paladin followed, flopping out from within without a bit of grace, a jumble of wobbly limbs that just about managed something like a landing. They doubled over almost immediately - lurching - like they were about to vomit - but didn't.A mop of blonde curls in a little tie, a hand raking them back from their face as they attempted to right themselves, and an exclamation of relief so loud Augustine could hear it right through the window.“WHEEEEEW - well thump a flumph that was rotten, my life,” the voice proclaimed, as they snapped upright, and Augustine saw the giant smile across their face.Bright as the gleam of the light where the midday sun caught the rain slick ground, and bursting right out from within.“Never been so happy to be on my feet,” they added, talking to one of the others dismounting their horse.He'd never heard a voice like it.Augustine held still, watching just a moment longer as the blonde paladin stretched and wriggled on the spot whilst their stalwart compatriots tied up the horses, businesslike and orderly.With a quick little straightening of the shoulders and a determined little huff across freckled cheeks, the paladin sprung to work, rushing to help one of the others as they dragged some heavy looking crates from the back of the cart.An involuntary but immediate twitch sprung to Augustine’s lips as he watched. A little tugging feeling, like a forefinger hooked between his ribs.“What's the fuss then?” Allerton called from the desk, and Augustine pushed back the smile, turning quickly from the window.“Paladins,” he said, “of Tyr, I believe.”“Tyr?” Allerton replied, confused, “here?”

I was already falling in love with you before we’d ever met.I never thought you’d walk through that door. I never thought we’d talk. I never thought you’d look at me, and smile at me, and see me like I’d seen you.

“We’ll hit the pass at noon, can’t just sit on our hands now we’re here, not when the woman’s still in the wind,” Steon was saying, as Dolly thought about eyes like silver coins and freckles across the bridge of a sharp, regal nose and felt their stomach just wriggling.Had they gone more than a few minutes without their brain falling right off this cliff again the whole night and every hour since they’d woken up this morning? They were trying to focus, really, truly they were - they’d been bad at that their whole life, hadn’t they been told that over and over - by mum and dad, bless ‘em and rest ‘em, by Jo’s mum and dad, by Captain Grits and the sisters of justice and everyone?Caspar’s mouth was flapping open and closed, hands running across a scrappy looking map laid across the table, and Dolly wasn’t hearing a damn word because they were hearing a deep, lilting voice telling them about honey and-“Dom,” Steon was saying, “Dom mate, are you listening?”Oh, Dolly thought, blinking away a little haze, he means me huh?“Y-yeah,” Dolly jumped in quickly and nodded to both Steon and Caspar, as if they had been attentive, “sure have.”Steon’s face twisted, skeptical.“You’re not gonna throw your breakfast at us again are you?” He asked, looking over Dolly’s face, brow raising a bit.Dolly shook their head, holding up the tea in their hands. Ginger, with a little honey, just like Augustine had told them. He was right - it tasted better as tea like this, actually.“Uh uh,” Dolly said, “that’s just when we’re moving, I told ya.”“Sure,” Steon said, but he didn’t sound convinced, sniffing the air a bit, “what is that anyway?”“A remedy,” Dolly said, sitting up a little, “from the Apothecary in town, I was jus’...” they paused, realising that Caspar had turned from his writings to look at them both now, and they’d derailed the work, “asking around, I’m sorry, sir, didn’t mean to…”They shifted.“Carry on what y’ were saying,” Dolly said.“As I was saying - we’re only the five of us yet til Abbot and her lot show up,” Caspar said, and Dolly tried very hard to listen this time, “I’m not sure we can venture far without a thorough scouting, first. I know this woman’s high priority, but we still don’t know what we’re dealing with, and from what I understand the pass hasn’t been maintained for some time, the terrain alone is against us here and the weather’s changing.”“Which is why she’s up there,” Steon countered, “she’s already got days on us, Caspar.”“...and has had days to prepare for capture,” Caspar said, “or, just as likely, perished to whatever perils we’re about to throw ourselves into also. Until our back up is here, scouting is all we need to do, Ste.”“We ought to get a few more potions in,” Dolly chimed in, because they’d checked their supplies just that morning and found they were down to only two small vials - just being prepared of course, “if we’re scouting, and some Keoghtom’s ointment, Aug-”They caught themselves.“The apothecary said there’s ghouls been spotted, in the pass,” Dolly said.“Ah,” Caspar looked appreciative, pointing a finger to Dolly, “good asking around, initiate. I’ll leave that to you, then, Flatwood.”Dolly’s heart trilled away. The prospect of scouting a perilous mountain pass seemed very far away, compared to the much more immediate prospect of seeing Augustine again.They sipped their tea, hiding their smile. I’m gonna get him something, thank him for the ginger…

Dolly didn’t know the first thing about flowers, really, so they’d just snatched up stems and pretty things as they’d walked along the road from their inn, right by the edge of the pass, and down back into the town towards Allerton’s - it wasn’t a big town, not the longest walk, but a walk well furnished with blooms.This town was full of flowers considering how close it was to the mountain pass, and how cold the wind was. Dolly wondered why.They knew dandelions - big and yellow and bright, and that they’d gathered up some of the biggest ones alongside a couple of pinkish bell shaped things and a sprig of lavender stolen from the beds outside one of the houses they passed, and tied up the lot with one of the ribbons they used to tie back their hair now it was getting kind of long again.Not much of a bouquet, and now they’d done it they had no idea if it was actually a good idea to do it.Would someone like Augustine appreciate this when they didn’t even really know what they were handing him? He seemed to know so much about these things, what if they were just handing him a bunch of nothing?Too late now, though, because there he was - their thought of him appearing at the very same moment they laid eyes on him. He was perched up on the ball of his foot, outside the front door of the shop, affixing something to hang in the doorway.He sure was tall - the light catching the loose curls of his dark hair and illuminating it to reveal it was much redder than Dolly had realised seeing him inside - a little ruby like, almost - those dark strands seemed in the light.Gosh but he’s oh so pretty, Dolly thought as he pursed his lips, expression focused as he finished what he was doing and dropped back down, turning a little and seeing them. If they’d surprised him, he didn’t show it, just tilting his head.Dolly held up the flowers.Augustine’s eyes flicked down to them, and then up to Dolly, a tiny notch of confusion quirking through his brow.“They’re for you,” Dolly said, smiling. For a moment he said nothing, mouth opening and closing once, before eventually he spoke.“...for me?” He asked, tentative, but his hand - still somewhat in the air from his business - hovered - fingers curled a little.“Yeah,” Dolly nodded, “to thank y’? For the ginger, it helped a bunch so…”He looked at the flowers a moment longer, and then that hovering hand reached for them, taking them carefully from Dolly’s grip.“Thank you,” he replied, and then lifted the flowers just a little to look at them - curious - but not unhappy.In fact, Dolly thought, even though his face was quite still, something about him had changed in response to it. Their heart fluttered away, watching his eyes looking over the flowers, something like a smile ghosting across his lips.So maybe Dolly wasn’t the best at paying attention sometimes, but, they knew something good when they saw it - and this was good.He likes them, Dolly realised, as his eyes met theirs again, and he drew the flowers against his chest a moment, demeanour shifting straighter and a little inhale through his nose.“Did you need something, Dolly?” He asked.“Oh,” Dolly knew they were grinning, because they were so pleased he was happy, and he’d remembered their name, “yeah, actually, came to get some potions and a restoration ointment from y’ - they wanna scout the pass so…”“Of course,” Augustine said, and nodded his head to the interior of the shop, “we have some in stock, although not much.”As they stepped in after him, they glanced up to what he’d been working on - a bouquet, of sorts, of his own, but one they didn’t really recognise - sprigs of some green plant, tied about a bundle of sticks with red cord, and a seal or something. It reminded them of something else - but it took them a second to know what.Oh, no, they remembered - the bundles of herbs they’d hung from the rafters of the village, that Jolene’s parents told them were to ward off the fire fever, but Dolly knew better now were to mask the smell of death.

Augustine’s final duty of the day, closing up the Apothecary after Allerton had doffed his hat and wished him the usual “get some rest”. He’d been sleeping in the little cubby off the stockroom - a temporary arrangement that had been so for two years.Barely bigger than he was, but it was a room, not a corner.He pulled the heavy front door closed and latched it, careful of the ward he’d hung from the threshold.He hovered for a moment by the flowers on the desk, reaching for them - an instinct to take them with him to his room. The room had no window; the flowers should stay here for the morning light, so he pulled his hand back.Dolly flitted through his mind as he curled his body up into the bed to fit it.As he wrapped his arms around himself, he wondered what it might feel like to wrap his arms around them.He’d never had a thought like that before.

Augustine knew he had been staring at the flowers for too long; his mind whirring though his body was still, taking in the slight curl to one leaf where it was drying up already after just one day in a vase.He wasn't meaning to pause like this. Only, his mind was still making sense of the sentence: Dolly gave me these.These were for me.Dolly.There they were again. The loose rock underfoot he kept missing - an invisible chair in the middle of the shop he kept walking into as he went about the usual patterns and then tripped.Dolly, with their bright smile that notched dimples in their cheek, a little gap between their front teeth, who looked at him. Dolly, who kept asking him questions about remedies for infections like they actually wanted to know. Dolly, who was -There, by the desk, actually - as Augustine span around in his internal workings and tripped right over that chair again.“Oh-” he was startled, which wasn't much like him, he couldn't remember the last time someone had managed that.But sure enough, the paladin-in-training was there, nervous, with a handful of silver coins in their hand.“Well if it isn't you again,” Allerton said.“It's me again,” Dolly replied, smiling, with a little laugh.“More supplies?” Augustine asked, recovering his step as Allerton looked up at him with a look that felt specific but he wasn't at all sure about what.“Spit it out then young man, what do your lot need now?” Allerton shifted by the desk, addressing Dolly, who was shooting glances in Augustine's direction, eyes making lingering contact.“Captain says we should get some wards, for our camp, for evil spirits,” Dolly said, “and I mentioned you had one, hangin’ by your door?”They gestured to the hanging bundle of thyme, foxglove and sticks, thrice bound with thread, sealed and marked with a white ash crest.“Uh huh, saw that did you,” Allerton said, and he sounded dubious. “Augustine makes those. You'll need to ask him, but I expect that's what you came here to do anyway.”Dolly flushed a sudden and thorough shade of pink.“Y-y’do?” They asked, turning to him.“I do,” Augustine replied, “well, I have. We don't keep them as stock, however. I'd have to fetch more foxglove, and I am working.”“Oh,” Dolly said, sheepish. A little look of disappointment crossed their face.A little pause fell over the room, and Augustine sensed he'd said something wrong.The halfling at the desk cleared his throat.“Well they are paying for them,” Allerton said, gesturing to the money in Dolly’s hand, “you can go - Augustine - fetch what you need to make their order.”“I'll help,” Dolly said quickly, “as I'm putting y’ to such trouble.”Augustine nodded. Tugging again, between his ribs, as Dolly's disappointment melted.“Alright,” he replied, and turned to retrieve his satchel where it was hung by the door, “yes.”

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