FAM, MEET FAM

"The only time ever that I️ am thankful you've read my mind, Nameless," Shand half-laughs, half coughs as dust swirls around his head.

He takes a look around at the utter destruction, confusion, and chaos that encroaches upon them. The Corruption that's threatening to eat all of them alive, the dragon tearing him apart from the inside. The rest of the group, family and friends and comrades, huddled together unsure of whether or not they'll make it out of this alive.

Determination jolts fire through Shand's exhausted bones and he pushes himself onto his feet, swallowing back a cry of agony. The crystals are starting to take up more space on his arm, growing together, and as droplets of his bright blue glowing blood spatter on the ground, they explode like mini firecrackers, and he has to shield his eyes from them.

The idea of leaving his body altogether gives him a little pause, he won't lie about it. But the alternate option- one where everyone will certainly die and he and Nameless will be stuck on this planet set to be ravaged by whatever awful goddess does those sorts of things, well. That's not a story he particularly wants to see play out.

Does he know what he's doing? Not a chance. Is he going to fling himself headlong into it anyway? Of course.

"Oh, Nameless, one more thing." He struggles to lift his arm and point at Luna's hybrid face. "Don't go snooping around in here where you don't need to. Just hold the fort down, no more, no less."

Shand can't hear any sort of response because the noise of the world falling apart around them has gotten so deafening. Either way, with Nameless's set of abilities, Shand figures he can probably hear him well enough anyway.

"Well, so long old pal." Shand looks down at himself and sighs. "Three, two, one, and...blastoff."

Shand doesn't know what he's doing other than concentrating with every drop of will and energy left in him on where he wants to go right now, and apparently it's enough.

His vision explodes in that dumb blue light, and when he can see again, he opens his eyes to a small, quiet room in which he can hear the crashing going on all around them, only farther off, as if it's happening just outside the walls.

There is a small lamp in the only lit corner of the room, and under it sits Luna, crosslegged and with her eyes closed, like she's meditating.

"Okay, great. You just hold on over there, and pray this all works itself out." Shand nods over at her without a response.

He gets to the middle of the room before the intense pain hits. He can feel the Corruption hanging on him, seeping into his veins. When he looks down, the bright blue that ran freely, pulsed in his veins before looks as though even that is hardening with the crystal, stopping its flow, making his bones feel as though they are disintegrating with every movement he makes.

But he has not come to the middle of this room, Luna's hideaway place within her subconscious, to quit now. In the other corner of the room, he spots it emerging from the shadows. The dragon that he's dragged with him out of his own body.

Suddenly he feels guilty for unleashing the wicked and intensely powerful creature, bent on subjugating everything in its wake, into Luna's private world. She hadn't even consented to it. But he knows that even though it's not a guaranteed success, it's their only hope.

It's a harmless enough switch for Nameless. When he leaves Luna, he takes his markings with him, transferring them to Shand's body, and her hair goes back to its usual plum color, trading off to turn Shand's hair stark white instead.

The pain of the crystals forces a cough out of his new set of lungs but, other than that, it's a similar pain to what he felt when possessing Luna. Still, he's too tired to move so he just rests there, staring up at the collapsing ceiling with new eyes.

"What an idiot. I hope he knows what he's doing."

Luna keeps her eyes closed when he appears, assuming, at first, the presence is just Nameless making himself at home, wanting to stay out of his way. It's only when Shand talks that her eyes fly open and she stands up out of the chair.

"Shand? What the... Wait. Is it...?"

There's a small glimmer of hope in her eyes and momentary relief seeing him. Her mind instantly assumes it's all over and, unlike any time before, she actually made it out of the process unharmed. Her eyes dart around for any sign that she's back to normal but, seeing the poorly decorated space with only a chair, lamp, and oddly ornate solid black window floating in the middle of the air near the chair looking out onto a landscape ablaze, she frowns, shoulders slumping.

"I don't understand, what are you doing here? I thought Name and I were trying to get you back."

There's scars, burns, cuts, gashes, any wound you can think of along her exposed arms, neck, and face, all the places the crystal had formed on her physical body and they seem to spread like ink on paper, blood constantly dripping from somewhere on her body, having stained the chair and now the ground a deep crimson.

She seems highly aware of the agony she's in, but somehow keeps a calm expression, minus the occasional shudder and twitch that she can't keep contained. This obviously isn't her first experience like this.

A realization hits her and she takes an audible sharp inhale.

"Olvreign is coming... I'm dying, aren't I?"

“Shhhh,” Shand holds his hand out to Luna with some difficulty, eyes trained on the dragon in the corner, it’s huge head cocked and eyes glistening.

“You’re not dying, not if I️ can help it. I literally left Nameless alone with complete free reign in my head for the express purpose of you NOT dying. So after all that, you just better not.” Shand’s tone is hushed as he watches the dragon cautiously.

“So much to do, so little time.” His eyes dart back and forth from her to the dragon, and he groans quietly, keenly feeling all the pressure he’s placed upon himself.

“I️ have this plan, and I’m fairly certain it will at least not fail badly.” Shand inches toward her slowly, so as not to arouse the dragon.

“This is gonna be weird, just to let you know right off the bat. But I️ feel like you wanna live probably, so I’m gonna do it anyway.”

Shand quietly, carefully pulls out the same trusty sickle blades knife he had before and takes stock of all the wounds threatening to overtake Luna’s body. He grits his teeth and slices his palm deeply.

Light blue blood with a tar-like consistency oozes to the surface of his skin, several tiny crystals contained in the substance.

“This better work,” Shand mumbles to himself as he presses his bloody palm directly onto one of Luna’s open wounds.

Almost immediately, Luna begins to glow blue, and one by one, her wounds start healing, closing up and covering over with new, healthy skin.

Outside, the sound of a thousand mirrors shattering rattles the room, and Shand looks out to see shards of crystal falling to the ground, the bits and pieces glowing the same color as his blood.

Although it had been part of his plan, he can’t help but be flabbergasted that it’s working. So far.

“Okay, when you get back up there, tell Nameless that the second this dragon comes shooting out of here, he’d better be ready for some hardcore zapping business.”

Shand doesn’t even wait for a response, but turns to face the dragon that has been awakened by the thunderous sound of the crystals breaking off Luna’s body.

“Vessel,” the dragon addresses him in an irritated, challenging, gravelly voice that ends as a rumble deep in its throat. “What is your game here?”

“Aw, nothing, you big ol’ snake. Just like you said, it’s all a game. I mean, I’m having fun, aren’t you?”

Luna stares down at her arm in awe, taking in the bizarre blue color and watching several of the wounds in that area miraculously close and heal.

The quick fascination over, she looks back and forth between Shand and the dragon, wondering how in the world it made it into her headspace too.

"Okay..."

She mumbles, taking quiet but quick steps towards the window, her hand pausing once she makes it to the frame. Her other hand clenches and unclenches several times. She's in for a rude awakening when she gets back out into the world and she's definitely going to lose control of herself, but she's hoping she can last long enough to do what it is she needs to do. There seems to be a lot riding on her ability to hold everything in.

Another main reason she pauses is she's very aware of the fact that now Shand, a stranger, has to see how she needs to exist her headspace and it makes her quickly self-conscious. With a determined shake of her head, she throws the window open.

A terrifyingly hot breeze blows into the space, throwing some flames along with its entry, but she steps up on the window sill like it's all muscle memory. Because it is.

She looks down at the burning forest before her then at the large stone city directly below her. Knowing it's obvious what she's doing now, she doesn't dare look back at Shand before throwing herself out the window.

As soon as her body impacts on the city street below after a long fall, she sees the collapsing reality and worried faces of both groups of people. Gasping for air like she had just come up out of water, he eyes snap to Shand's form, seeing the familiar white hair and red markings she was looking for.

"Nameless! Shand says to get ready to teleport us as soon as you see the dragon."

Finally, back in her own body, she can feel the true, actual pain of everything going on but she fights back the urge to scream.

Not now.

Shand's form sits up and turns to her with a familiar, toothy animal-like smile that is highly disturbing to see on anyone other than Nameless himself.

"Rodger. Ready when he is."

Nameless's voice is a terrible match for Shand's face and, if this were any other time, she'd probably laugh, but not now.

The dragon is quickly becoming angry, watching Luna’s escape from the window. His jaws snap together powerfully, dripping venom on the floors of Luna’s subconscious room.

“That’s really rude,” Shand mutters to himself. “I hope she’s got a mop in here or something.”

“Just give up!” The dragon snarls, patience wearing thin, lunging at Shand and swiping at him with his enormous hooked claws.

Shand ducks and swings and had a series of narrow misses that set his Adrenalin coursing faster than he knew it could. The huge creature is like a bull in a china shop, knocking over Luna’s lamp and slinging its venom everywhere.

When he sees the lamp crash to the floor, Shand turns his wide eyes to the dragon and covers his mouth.

“Now you’ve done it, you big lizard.” Shand watches the animal pace and evades a few more of its less energetic blows, scanning it from top to bottom.

When he’d decided to rush in here willy nilly and save everyone somehow, he hadn’t had an actual, solidified plan as to how he would evacuate the dragon from Luna’s body while also ensuring that it stayed bound to this reality, unable to follow them out.

He’s still not entirely sure he isn’t crazy. But he can sense that time is running out, and he can hear Luna and Nameless outside the walls of this place preparing for the end.

“Just to let you know,” Shand crouches as low as he can go to the floor while still remaining on his feet, the burn in his muscles and the pain from the crystals digging into his arms making him slower than he’d like.

“If this doesn’t go down how I️ want it, I’m fully prepared to jump into your body and ride you around on this godforsaken place for all of eternity, or as long as it takes the crazy villain lady to get us.”

The dragon laughs, finding Shand rather piteous, but is so absorbed in its amusement of him that it doesn’t see him wiping up some of Luna’s blood off the floor,throwing some of the shattered crystals into his palm with it for good measure, rolling it around until it has formed a small, semi-solid ball.

Before the dragon can collect himself, Shand gets a running starts and slides himself along the floor underneath the dragon, ripping a hole in its underbelly and tossing the bloody mass at the cut, hoping for it to hit its mark.

By the sound of the dragon’s wail, the frantic beating of its wings, and the smell of burning flesh coming from under the dragon, it appears to be a success.

The wounded creature goes hopping toward the window near Luna’s overturned lamp. It will never fit through it, but it lumbers on toward it nonetheless.

“She will kill me! Don’t you dare-“ Shand grabs onto one of the huge spikes lining the back of the dragon’s legs as it takes flight, bursting through the wall of Luna’s subconscious, spiraling out into the air, it’s wings and nostrils and neck forming a crystal chrysalis around it at an alarming rate.

High up in the air hanging on for dear life, Shand can see the others far below, waiting for him. He can see his own body, changed in Nameless’s possession of it. He can only hope that Nameless can hear him too. He lets go and starts his free fall.

“Now! For the love of God, NOW!”

Nameless winks, saluting Shand as the realm beings to blow in that blinding light, clearly enjoying have temporary control of Shand's body and flaunting it off.

The world that was freezes over in rigid crystal but, fortunately, the group is gone in a flash and, when they reappear, they're all standing in a field of tall grass with a warm welcoming breeze. The sky is blue and the sun is pleasant.

There's only one building in sight and it's quite a ways off from everyone.

Nameless leaps from Shand's body now that they're in a safe space, taking his usual shape but the smaller version of it, unable to conjure the looming fox version of it currently. He manifests on Shand's shoulder, waiting for him to return to his own body again.

Everyone looks around, not sure whether or not to smile and cheer or fall over in relief but they all turn to each other with at least the happiness that everyone is alive, even if a little worse for wear.

The only one not with the group is Luna. In fact: She's nowhere to be seen. Nameless doesn't bring up the topic even though he's the only one who knows where she is. He's well aware her presence will be known not too long from now.

"I can't believe your stupid idea worked. You have the best luck I've seen. You're lucky you're immortal."

Nameless snickers, casually resting with Shand as if nothing had happened.

When Shand rolls over in the grass, he completely expects to be dead.

He feels dead. His mind feels numb and achy like legs that have run for too long and too far.

Every part of his body burns and aches and even though he knows it’s his fate, his special curse, to slowly but surely heal through anything and make it out alive, he feels so so dead.

So when he opens his eyes and sees Nameless on his shoulder, speaking to him, he has to focus all his efforts on chasing away his existential crisis.

“Name... nameless?” He asks groggily and disoriented. He knows the fox has been talking, but he’s heard none of it.

“We... we made it?” Shand picks his head up just barely, just enough to look around, because that’s really all he can manage right now. But one person is conspicuously absent.

“Nameless, where is she?”

"Hmmm... Who?"

Nameless just continues to stare up at the sky. His joke is in bad taste considering Shand, and several other's, genuine concern for the girl's location, but it doesn't stop him from making it.

"Don't worry, Fengari will let you know soon. Just count back from five in your head. That's how long it'll take for her to realize-"

Before he can finish his sentence, having taken over a count of five to explain, there's a loud almost inhuman shrill scream from the small isolated building in the distance. The ground begins to shake like an earthquake is slowly building in intensity and a, by now, very familiar fiery cyclone shoots up through the roof.

"There she is."

Nameless chuckles, hopping off Shand's shoulder to, very casually, start the walk over to the shaking, nearly burning building.

"Yeah this seems about right. Looks like it all caught up with her."

He makes a pointed look at Ivor who was eyeing the building before there was even concrete evidence she was over there.

"Luna!"

Shouting, he takes off in a sprint towards the structure. Despite their confusion, several others from the group run behind him.

Nameless looks at Shand with a suddenly serious gleam in his eyes.

"See you there."

He vanishes in thin air, obviously going to beat the crowd and get to the drama before everyone else.

For a building, it's a pretty minimalistic sight. Just a small square room with a bed tucked in a corner, bucket of water beside it, and fireplace on the opposite wall. It's all wood that, surprisingly, doesn't burn despite the flames dancing violently around it.

In the middle of the room, at the center of the flames, Luna is crumpled down on her knees, hands clutching at her chest, nails digging into her skin even through her shirt.

Her screaming only temporarily stops when she has to take quick labored breaths, clearly struggling to get the air she needs. Tears stain the floor below her face. Her expression is completely twisted in anguish like someone unseen is torturing her past her physical breaking point relentlessly.

It becomes too much to keep herself up as is so she leans forward, resting her forehead on the floor in a puddle of her own tears. Sobs shake her body without end and, despite all the crying and yelling, her skin is sickeningly pale and covered in a cold sweat. She's actually sweating so much that some of her long hair resting on the back of her neck is already matting together.

Over and over, the screaming causes her voice to break and she's in serious trouble of damaging her vocal cords if she hasn't already.

It's unbearable to even see someone in such a state, like she could fall over on her side and fade away any second, like death has talons digging deeper and deeper into her heart with each passing moment.

Nameless appears seated on the bed, looking down at her silently, waiting there to greet everyone.

Shand, with the others, moves as quickly as possible to follow Nameless to the small structure and although everyone else hurries to get close, to see what is wrong, Shand hangs back, remaining in the open doorframe.

Lunath watches Luna writhe, scream out. He is absolutely frozen and at the same time burns to reach out and touch her, to find some way to calm or soothe her, but he knows he could only serve to make things worse. So he sticks close to Dolan and turns to Nameless.

“What’s happening to her??”

Shand does little more than watch the floor, the color drained from his face as each scream pierces down to the pit of his stomach, leaving him nauseous.

He catches Nameless’s eye. Perched on the bed, the creature seems indifferent to the overwhelming suffering. Shand understands that the fox feels no emotions, but this seems unacceptable. Still, there is something greater worrying at Shand.

Nameless rarely spares a glance in Luna's direction but his ears do twitch back at her screams, not because he cares, but because the sound of her is extremely loud and irritates him.

"That's a simple yet complex question."

He notices Shand's rather upset glance in his direction, pausing to return to gaze. He's not even trying to hide his indifference, at least not to Shand.

"My ability to possess people is an extremely dangerous power. You think she was afraid to agree to allow me to possess her back then because she didn't want to fight? Fengari doesn't care about throwing herself into a fight. No, the problem was with me specifically possessing her. In most possessions the person being possessed has no control or say in what's happening, they're just bystanders of their own body's actions."

With that comment, he clearly looks at Lunath as an example.

"When I possess someone, I allow them to have more control than that. This, in the moment, is fairer than complete domination, but the consequences are far worse, as we can see."

Luna coughs, interrupting him, choking on her own saliva from the nonstop screams and shrieks, making air intake even more of an issue.

"It means that, whether you are aware of it in the moment or not, your mind and soul are in a constant war with someone else, someone typically vastly more powerful than you, and it slowly tears you apart. But you don't feel it until the spirit is gone, then it hits you at once. Still, Fengari's situation is a bit more complicated than that."

Finally, for the first time since he started explaining, he shifts his eyes to her broken form.

"Fengari and Olvreign are very connected to each other in a dangerous way. I would view the crystal from before, The Corruption, as a virus, a virus Olvreign created to infiltrate someone's mind and break them down in any way possible until their emotions and free will were obliterated. During a fight with Olvreign many years ago, Fengari contracted the virus. Most people don't stand a fighting chance against it and have turned into crystal monsters in mere days. Thanks to my intervention, Fengari was and is able to keep the threat at bay extremely well. But it doesn't mean it's not still lost deep in her blood, buried in her mind, waiting for an opportune moment to strike again. And the symptoms of the virus are very painful, as I'm sure Shand knows now. Crystal ripping through your skin is intense, for lack of a better word, not even to mention the agony you feel as you begin to lose parts of yourself and your humanity."

He sighs, closing his eyes, his annoyance with her screams only growing with each second as she continually interrupts him. Her face is absolutely drenched in a mixture of sweat and tears now and the hair around her face clings to her skin. The longer she lies there in torment, the more her body begins to shudder, the worse her situation gets.

"So, Fengari was already weak because I possessed her and then Olvreign's Corruption flared back up, those are two major reasons, but there is a third that makes this situation one where we could potentially lose her..."

His red eyes drift back up to Shand standing behind everyone.

"I'm sure bringing a highly powerful death spirit into her already fragile and crumbling mind didn't help anything, and it was probably only made worse depending on how that entire situation went down. But... Fengari accepted all of this and allowed it, so I suppose the fault really lies with her. She has a martyr's spirit and desire to die, especially if it is in place of someone else. She knew all these consequences and accepted it because that's what she foolishly does."

Shand avoids Nameless’s stare as Luna descends further and further into agony. Of course, they had all known the risks when undertaking their escape from the previous reality, but Luna less than any of them.

Shand had just shown up on the footsteps of her subconscious, dragging with him the final straw in what could very well be her demise.

Shand’s mind is flying in a million directions at once. Honestly, he’s so exhausted that he’s barely able to stand, but that is of little importance to him or anyone else now.

He realizes that what he had done in her subconscious there with her, with his blood, to heal her, it had been a temporary bandage on a gushing wound. His mind grinds to a halt as he remembers, realizes that there is another way.

He watches her continue to worsen and chances a glance back in Nameless’s direction, his eyes testing, unsure of how many times in one day he’ll be allowed to push his luck with the fox.

Her screams are loud enough, though, that he pushes the questions from his mind and waits for Nameless to notice his challenging stare.

Nameless arches an eyebrow at Shand, his tail flicking back and forth off the edge of the bed in irritation.

"What are you planning this time, pirate-boy?"

No one seems to have noticed Shand scheming and his intentional defiant gaze on Nameless.

"Do I need to remind you how well last time went?"

The creature rather coldly motions to the writhing girl on the ground before them.

“Well, are you gonna do anything about it? I️ didn’t think so.”

Shand is intentionally as cold toward Nameless as he can be, half from how his indifference has turned Shand’s stomach and half because Shand is too tired to manufacture anymore facades today.

He takes a moment to ponder if he is physically ready for what this will demand of him, but he shrugs that thought off because it never matters what the demand is. He will come back from it and survive.

Luna, on the other hand, doesn’t have that luxury.

“I️ didn’t realize what toll it would take on her.” Shand scratches the back of his head, willing to make himself smaller as he speaks.

“And seeing as she’s not dead yet, I️ think I️ managed pretty well with what I️ had. What with having never been possessed in my life before today.”

Shand’s tone becomes barbed as he cuts his eyes to Nameless.

“Come to think of it, my track record with plans is actually pretty good today, so if I️ was you, I’d stop with the sass and just roll with it. And by roll with it, I️ mean find me a syringe.”

"A syringe? What are you-"

Nameless's mind fills in the blank the best it can with what he knows about Shand from all their close encounters.

"Are you planning on using your blood again?"

The fox groans, throwing his head back to stare up at the singed ceiling. It's the first time he's really felt annoyed beyond understanding with Shand and, that general feeling alone, is not something he's used to.

"Do you just cut chunks of your body out and prepare a communion of your blood for every life situation?"

“You said the virus is hiding out in her blood, right? Well I️ can fix that.”

Shand really doesn’t have the energy to deal with the Fox’s dramatics, so he ignores them altogether.

“Don’t worry, I’m not gonna slather mine on her or drink hers again.”

Shand’s blank face directed at Nameless is actually more caustic than an animated face could ever be in this situation. He is tired. He is mentally depleted. And he just wants to make sure no one dies today.

“If you hate the idea so much, you don’t have to be here when I️ do it.” Shand shrugs in Nameless’s general direction. “But if I️ can do something and don’t, well then I’m just as awful and unfeeling as you are.”

Dolan is watching uncomfortably and takes this opportunity to cut in and take Shand’s elbow in his hand. “I️ know what you’re about to do, and you don’t have to do it. She wouldn’t hold you responsible if you didn’t.”

“No, but I️ would.” Shand’s eyes, dull as they are, flash the smallest bit of fire and determination, and Dolan knows that look, so he falls silent.

"I said her blood and mind. You don't understand how Corruption works."

He's exasperated at this point. As amusing as Shand can be, he's also idiotic and stubborn, sharing that annoying sacrificial lamb quality that he so detests in Luna.

Nameless watches Shand and Dolan's interaction and, for once, he's inclined to agree with Dolan. He doesn't seem to be thinking past the desire to be a hero.

This is, somehow, one of the more foolish things Shand has suggested so far, which is saying something considering the body-swap idea was part of the reason they find themselves here right now.

"Here."

A flourish of his tail and a syringe materializes on a small table by the door near Shand.

Oh, yes, this idea is potentially terrible but that's not about to stop him from allowing it. If there's one thing he can say his emotionally impaired mind can come close to loving, it's these new risky experiences based on flawed human emotion that he can observe firsthand.

"From personal experience, with myself and from helping Fengari before, if this works and she goes on the mend, she is going to have a substantial fever and probably need to sleep for a long while. Sure you can relate, Shand. Well, not the flaming hot fever part, but the tiredness aspect."

“Fine, just so long as she doesn’t stay like that!” Shand snaps at Nameless, his voice nearly escalating to a yell. The tiniest of sparks jumps from his fingertips, almost as a warning to him.

He takes a deep breath and tries to calm himself. He focuses on the floor for a moment and closes his eyes, reaches out to the wall to give some support.

Nameless is right. Shand feels like he could sleep for days right now, but somehow that also feels empty and as dumb as Nameless thinks this whole venture is.

But of course, there is no good way to explain to an emotion-less Fox the emotional connection and concerns one forms with and for someone once they’ve been in their subconscious, ridden a bucking dragon around it and trashed the place with venom slobber.

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” Shand mutters dryly over to Nameless, his mouth twitching sideways in the closest thing he’s going to get to a grin at the moment.

Shand looks over to Dolan now, who’s not being quite as vocal as Nameless about his disapproval, but he wears enough of it on his face for Shand to still hear it loud and clear.

“I️ don’t want you to do this.” Dolan says when he catches Shand’s eye. “And I know you can, and I️ know you will, and I️ know that since you can’t die it doesn’t seem like you have any reason not to, but.”

Dolan looks down now too, hopeless at talking to Shand in this way, of being open and sincere with him.

“But, you just can’t go around throwing yourself at every exploding bomb, either. You’re exhausted. You’ve been through enough for one day.”

Lunath watches Shand’s eyes closely, not sure what he’s hoping for. Shand inadvertently saved him from Lu, and that’s been rolling around in Lunath’s mind ever since.

He probably hasn’t given Shand a fair shake, and he’s inclined to logically agree with Dolan about Shand’s wellbeing. But then, Luna is still on the floor in visceral, violent pain, dying every single moment. And Lunath is not sure he can take a moment more of this, observing her agony helplessly.

And what Shand won’t say, what he’ll never say to anyone, and what even Nameless won’t be able to pry out of him this side of hell is that deep down, Shand knows he’s not good for anything else. Anything other than throwing himself on bombs, existing as a walking blood bag, tossing his magical, healing blood at every person needing a miracle.

He can see his life, what it’s been in the past, stretching out behind him, shamefully full of dumb and meaningless things, things he’s broken and should have mended, and things he’s mended that should have stayed broken.

And he figures, if he’s got an eternity to waste, he might as well set about earning some redemption now, because it could take him a while.

“Sorry, Pops.” When Shand looks up from the floor, that easy, sideways grin is back on his face and he’s successfully pushed all his warring feelings back down. “Yeah, maybe I’ve been through enough today. But so has she.”

Shand swipes the syringe off the table, not looking at it for longer than he has to, trying not to think about how many times he’s had to do this today already.

He approaches Luna carefully, watching her thrash and trying to come up with the best plan. There seems to be none.

He touches her arm first, gently, but she recoils like the touch is fire.

He hesitates, but then comes closer. “Sorry about this. And about your lamp. And your floors. And your walls.”

He plunges the needle into her neck and she howls, screams in a broken, ragged voice that feels like it’s cutting Shand’s ears. He doesn’t move until he’s filled the syringe completely with her blood.

He avoids everyone’s eyes, especially Nameless’s as he crosses to the bed and sits down at the foot of it, tearing off a piece of fabric from the linens to tie around his arm.

He sets the needle to his skin and cringes, anticipating. He’ll wait forever, he knows, with that needle perched above his skin, so he makes himself stop thinking and shoves it down into his veins before emptying Luna’s blood into them.

“I have done this before,” he finally says to Nameless, perhaps more to calm himself than the fox. “As I’m sure you know.”

“Just because you’ve done it before doesn’t mean it will always work how you wish.”

Nameless watches the blood drain into Shand’s arm. The syringe glass fogs over with how hot her blood is in comparison to normal human body temperature. It’s nothing that alarms Nameless but it is concerning to see if you aren’t used to it.

“Honestly, I am curious to see if this works…”

He finally admits, eyes flicking back to Luna who has fallen over to her side and curled into a ball in a poor attempt to protect herself.

“Usually, if it gets this bad, I have to repossess her and calm her down within her mind space which is always a fun jumbled mess of memories to wade through. Of course that only makes it worse in the moment with, as I said, my possess technique. But, rough or not, it works eventually. If this works, it could be more effective.”

He’s clearly unapologetic at the fact he has to cause more pain to help, which is fair to an extent: As long as it gets fixed, what’s the harm? But it’s Nameless so he doesn’t care on a completely different level. Something does stick out to him from Shand’s little attempt at an apology and probably only makes sense to Nameless since he’s the only other one that has been in her mind before.

“What… Exactly did you do to the room? It’s supposed to be minimalistic for a reason so I hope you didn’t go redecorating.”

Again, his jokes are in poor taste all things considered, but it doesn’t stop him. He sits by Shand’s side, observing every little movement, taking his mental notes as he so often does, fascinated to see where this goes.

“If you cant go back in without hurting her, I️ will then,” Shand says matter of factly as the burning blood slides into his veins. On contact with it, his blood begins glowing, swirling, preparing for war.

The thick fog of pain hits him almost immediately and knocks the breath out of him. It’s the kind of pain he can get lost in, can lose himself to, but he knows that’s not why he’s come this far and chanced all this and made himself look like a fool and an idiot.

“I’ll go back into her subconscious,” Shand says again, jaw clenched and teeth gritted tight as the dark blood dances through his veins. “I’ll clean up my mess and I’ll help her. Tell me what to-“

His words are overtaken by a pointed groan and his arms start to tremble with the pain as his veins glow incredibly bright, lighting up the whole room.

“Tell me what to do in there and do it fast.”

“You’re not going to like what you see when you go back in there cuz you care too much and she WILL defend and isolate herself if you get too close. It won’t look like it did before.”

Nameless glances at the now empty syringe and hides it from side, shattering it in a flash, erasing any trace of it.

“It will either look like everything is Corrupted or most of it is. She’ll probably be lost somewhere in the crystal maze, you’ll have to find her. And she may not...”

He pauses, trying to figure out the best wording for what he needs to say.

“Look too much like herself if you do find her. Other than that, it’s a lot of talking her down and potentially having to fight monsters of her own creation. Oh, and also expect a lot of screaming. You know how some describe hell as having the constant sounds of people in anguish that never ends? Expect that plus the sound echoes thanks to the crystal. It’s irritating.”

He watches Shand writhe much like Luna is, his detached expression never changing. Just as Shand feels set and can’t prolong the inevitable any longer, Nameless adds one final warning.

“Olvreign will be there.”

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Nameless’s warning burns in Shand’s brain as his vision fades and suddenly he knows this is a bad idea. Knows it as well as he knows his veins are on fire and that his father, of course, was right.

But it’s too late for that now, either that or Shand is too stubborn, but maybe a mixture of both.

To his surprise, when he closes his eyes, he doesn’t find himself immediately back in the room in which he’d tangled with the dragon before. He looks up into an endless gray sky and sits up from a slab of solid ice.

As far as he can see all around him is nothing but ice. He is completely alone and the world around him is silent and unmoving. He wonders if maybe this is his mind’s feeble attempts at trying to regulate his soaring body temperature.

But he looks around and spies something in the distance, approaching him slowly, low to the ground.

He touches his forehead and it’s burning hot. Sweat drips down onto the ice, but it remains unmelted.

Suddenly, a small fox jumps up beside him on the ice slab, curls itself into an upright sitting position.

It looks just like Nameless, but as it opens his mouth and speaks, the voice is off. Shand knows his mind, weak as it is, is struggling to create a true depiction of reality for his dreams.

“This is what it’s like.” Re-created Nameless says, swishing his tail and thwacking Shand with it. “This is what it is to be immortal. No one and nothing left. But you.”

There is an initial terror that rises up in response to the words, a deep horror in his gut that he’s shoved down and shoved down before, but somehow lacks the fortitude to do now, as he stares this reality in the face.

The emotions are so crippling- fear, depression, utter loneliness, and they tempt him to lay back down on the ice and become one with it.

But somewhere a long ways off, he hears a bloodcurdling scream.

And he remembers, this is why he can’t lay down, why he can’t go to sleep, why he can’t give up and why he can’t shrug his shoulders and let fate have her head.

If this is going to be his reality one day, a vast wasteland of nothingness void of anyone he cares about, then that much is inescapable.

But in the meantime, he will grab hold of anyone and everything with a vice grip tight enough to make his own hands bleed. And he will not let go of anything, of any of these people, until fate herself comes and pries them from his bloody hands.

He looks down at his veins, still pulsing with Luna’s blood and his, and he slams his fist down hard on the ice, cracking it to its very foundations.

And suddenly he is back, in the heart of Luna’s subconscious and the in the middle of her chaos.

It’s a desolate world of nothing but sharp and jagged crystal that threatens to rip open anyone who touches it at any wrong angle, which there are many.

The bizarre material reaches towards the sky in oddly familiar structures. Upon further inspection, the shapes they take seen to be castles, houses, forts, towers, trees… Remnants of life covered in and consuming by the crystal, the virus leeching off of what once was as the backbone for its structures. The buildings underneath can no longer be seen, all that remains is the rough shape of them that the crystal has taken for its own.

There is movement off in the distance, forms of what looks like creatures dragging their heavy bodies along, the crystal of their bodies sparking as it runs across the crystal of the ground. It looks like torture yet they all move in set patterns like robots without minds, aimless until given a command.

In a way, if one didn’t know what the crystal was, the sight of it could be considered beautiful. It’s an iridescent mix of pinks, blues, and purples that shimmers, chiming with each movement that comes in contact with its surface. The only source of light is from the crystal itself, which pulsates in a calming wave, starting from somewhere off in the distance, rippling out towards the edges where Shand is. The sky above is a looming blackhole.

Beautiful but empty. Ethereal but void.

It’s hollow. The screaming is the only thing that indicates any amount of life may still be left in this place and it echoes, just as Nameless had said, relentlessly across the crystal sea, amplifying along its journey.

A new formless voice greets him from all around. It’s feminine and calm, alluringly so, matching the splendor but unsettling nature of the world they find themselves in.

“You’re a new face. I believe your name is Shand. I have heard about you from Fengari’s memories. Welcome.”

“You must be the crazy psycho goddess lady. I’ve heard about you, too.”

Shand stands and takes in his surroundings cautiously, his eyes moving quickly and refusing to stay focused on one spot too long. The screaming echoes in his head and feels like daggers to his brain, which feels increasingly heavy and foggy and slow- the results of what is now battling inside his bloodstream in his physical body.

He feels at a disadvantage already, but at hearing the disembodied voice, he pretends he can’t feel the pain, like his brain is alert and he is functioning and whole.

There are pinpricks of pain forming on his arm, where he’d plunged he needle into his skin. He looks down to see crystals trying to form in the open wound. When they try to grow over the blood clotting on his arm, though, they still their movements like they’re dying and he flicks them off.

Shand turns his attention to the sky, looking up and around to try and discern where the voice has come from.

“First of all, can I️ just say that from what I’ve seen of your work, you’re rude and tacky and I️ hate you. And secondly, I’m here for Luna, so it will be easier for everyone involved if you’d kindly point me to her.”

“Luna?”

The voice asks smoothly as if it’s her first time ever hearing the name.

“Oh, do you mean Fengari? Why have you come for her?”

The sound of her harmonious voice comes from pinpointed directions yet everywhere at the same time in an eerily confusing manner.

“You don’t even have the manners to address her properly. Why would I willingly tell you where she is? I’m trying to protect her from the influence of people like you.”

Several of the creatures closer to Shand look in his direction abruptly, having received some unheard command. They don’t stalk towards him, though. Just stand and stare. Upon further inspection, he can see they actually have no eyes to stare with or any facial features at all. The place where some sort of expression should be is smooth like a stone slab.

“I’m sorry you’ve come all this way just for that. You see, she means a dear awful lot to me so I’m just protective. She once fought on my side and nearly died for my cause, so I have every right to be. We did have a minor falling out…”

The tone of the voice shifts as she sadly thinks back on a point in history unknown to Shand, the crystal world glowing a deep sorrowful blue to match.

“I couldn’t believe she’d try to hurt me so. I was so upset for so long, over a hundred years… But now she’s back, returned to me like the prodigal’s daughter. I don’t plan to hand over our mending relationship to you, especially not while I’m trying to cleanse her of outside filth. So, please, if you would be so kind as to leave the way you came, we don’t need to fight.”

Every word is slow, deliberate, overly enunciated and elegant, but there is a threat masked by the tranquil voice. In response to it, the creatures take a few heavy steps towards Shand.

“It was kind of that creature to watch over her for me during the rough patch in our relationship but now his service is no longer needed, nor is yours. You have my gratitude, don’t ruin that.”

Shand sighs, trying to hold back some of his exasperation and failing.

“Look, lady. I️’ve had a really rough day. I’ve been subjected to psychological torment by a furry lil sociopathic bully, discovered that I️ can create dimensions and almost killed my whole family, was then immediately possessed by a vengeful wolf spirit, got rid of him and then had the dragon god of death ride my ass for a while, at which point I drank human blood and am not proud of that, and then I️ knocked over Luna’s lamp, invited said death dragon into her subconscious, and proceeded to wrecking ball the hell out of her happy place. Long story short, I️ dont got TIME to deal with your BS. God, bite me.”

Shand takes a deep breath in after his rant, feeling somewhat unburdened but at the same time more and more angry with every passing moment. Lightning flickers about at his fingertips, but goes no further than his hands.

“And I️ dont care what kind of a sick, twisted love you have for her- I️ can tell you it doesn’t go both ways, so just stick that in your juice box and suck it. In the meantime, I’m taking her back up top with me and as a courteous warning, I️ can’t control my powers too well, I’m kinda new at this, but I would stay out of my way. Apparently I️ creep the hell out of people with all the blood stuff.”

The crystal creatures are moving closer to him and Shand’s not entirely sure what to do about that, but he did just promise Olvreign some blood stuff and he’s a man of his word.

He pulls out his sickle blades, one in each hand, and cracks his wrists, twirling them around. His joints are burning with hot pain, but clearly the crystal zombies are of greater concern.

“I’m going to warn you once,” he says to the creatures, which makes him feel slightly strange, what with their lack of faces and all.

“I’m going to sling my blood all over this place, cause I️ can’t die, and this is the closest I️ can come to having fun. So who wants to go first?”