They finished breakfast with Lucas, gathered their belongings, and started off on a long day’s walk to their final destination. As they left, Yore noticed Fanner kept glancing around.
“Are you looking for someone?” Yore asked.
“Oh, uh, no. I mean—yes, I suppose so, actually. I haven’t seen Cookie at all this morning.”
“I can do a quick run and try to track her down if you like, but she’s probably down in the mines and I can’t do tunnels.”
“Oh, because of the—” Fanner shook his head. “No, it’s okay. It doesn’t really matter.”
“You know, I’m still surprised how quickly you took to her. It takes most recently freed mages a little while to even adjust to something like me.”
“If I’m honest, I liked the attention, even if she only liked me because of the emotional energy I give out. There is nothing more typical of a Companion than being desperate for attention.”
Yore laughed. “Yes, but they’re not normally that self aware about it. At least not so early on.”
“Mm.”
“I get the feeling this isn’t the beginning of your journey away from being a Companion, though. Lucas mentioned that you told him that the people you were with before this had been hurting you.”
“Oh, um. Yes.” Fanner picked at a loose thread on the shirt Lucas had given him. He seemed determined not to look at Yore.
“Was he not supposed to tell me that?”
Fanner shrugged. “I didn’t ask him not to.”
“I think he thought that it was important that I know, given that I’d already unintentionally put you in a distressing position because I didn’t know what you’d been through. I understand if you’d rather he hadn’t, though.”
“No, it’s okay. I would just rather not talk about it. A—at least not in detail. But you are right. I’m already used to the idea of not being a Companion.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“Well, I wasn’t terribly good at being one, so I suppose it’s no real loss. Though I’m not sure I’m much good at anything else, either.”
“You’re good at giving massages.”
“I am.”
Yore smiled. It was good to hear him have confidence in himself in at least one thing. The only other thing he seemed to like about himself was his physical appearance. Considering his training, there were almost certainly some awful things mixed up in that, but there was no denying he was handsome. He had the kind of good looks that made Yore want to reach out and touch him when he looked at him sometimes. Not even really in a sexual way. He was just… drawn to him.
He’d met other Companions, of course — Lucas was one by breeding — and though they looked similar to Fanner, they had never triggered quite the same feelings in him. Perhaps it had more to do with the circumstances under which they’d met and the protective role Yore had taken on.
They reached the border of the dwarves’ territory and stopped for a quick lunch, then continued on down the barely existent dirt track through the territory they called the swamp lands. The part of it they were walking through wasn’t actually part of the swamp, which was a good thing because the swamp was extremely dangerous. The swamp bordered the far edge of the territory and ensured nobody passed through.
Yore’s hearing wasn’t as good as it used to be and it had never been fantastic in this form, but he was becoming more and more convinced that they were being followed. He couldn’t smell anything over the disant odour of the swamp and it had so far stayed out of sight, but he was certain he wasn’t imagining things.
Yore held a hand up to signal for Fanner to stop walking and calmly put the bag down. “Something’s following us. I’m going to take my clothes off in case I need to shift quickly.”
Fanner’s eyes went wide. “What is it? Are we in danger?”
“The answer to your first question is I don’t know, so the answer to your second one has to be the same.” Yore pulled his shirt off over his head and shoved it into the bag. “I’m not too worried, though. It hasn’t done anything so far, so it might just be curious.”
“If something happens, what should I do? I don’t think I’d be much use in a fight…”
Yore took his shoes off, tied the laces together, and slung them over his shoulder. “Whatever I tell you to do. For some things, I might want you to run so that you’re out of the way of any danger. Other things might want to separate us or might not be a big enough threat for you to run away, so you’re better off staying nearby.”
Fanner nodded. “Okay, um. Yes. How will I find you again if I run away?”
“I’ll find you, like I did last time you ran away. I’m a wolf, remember? Just run until you feel safe, hunker down, and I’ll come and find you. If I tell you to run.”
Fanner’s lips moved, silently repeating the words of the last sentence Yore had said back to himself as though he were afraid he would forget the instructions. He nodded, but he still looked unsure of himself.
Yore was just shoving his pants into the bag along with the rest of his clothes when he saw something leap from one tree to another closer to them from the corner of his eye. It was fast and agile, but definitely smaller than he was. He reached his arm out to guide Fanner behind him.
It leapt from the tree and Yore started to move, but his brain caught up with his eyes by the time it hit the ground and he let out a breath of relief.
“Cookie!” Fanner exclaimed as he moved out from behind Yore. “Why were you hiding, Cookie? You scared us!”
“Maybe that was the point,” Yore murmured as he set the bag down and prepared to get his clothes back out.
“Oh, is my passive fear not good enough for you anymore, Cookie? Because it’s more than enough for me, thank you very much.”
“No wonder I couldn’t smell anything. It’s probably too subtle for you to notice, but she always smells a bit swampy. This is probably where she came from.”
“Aw, you’re the cutest swamp monster, Cookie,” Fanner said as he patted her head. It made a gross tacky sound.
Yore smiled as Cookie butted her head against Fanner’s stomach, playfully pushing him backwards as she chittered. It was good to see Fanner relaxing and opening up a bit. He had heard pets could be good for that, although Cookie was admittedly a rather unconventional choice.
As Yore watched them, his smile slowly morphed into a frown. Cookie wasn’t just playfully butting Fanner with her head. She was intentionally pushing him backwards, away from Yore. Fanner would try to get around her to come back and she would block his path and push him further away.
Yore cautiously moved towards them, but once he was closer it became clear that it wasn’t himself Cookie was trying to get Fanner away from. He lifted his head and sniffed the air, but he couldn’t smell anything but swamp.
By now, Fanner had gone quiet and he was no longer smiling. He had picked up on Yore’s state of alert.
“Stay with Cookie,” Yore told Fanner as he took slow, cautious steps in the direction Cookie had been pushing Fanner away from, every sense he had on high alert. Cookie chittered loudly and he stopped in his tracks a moment before what he had believed to be a pile of boulders began to shudder and lift up off of the ground until a massive, rocky figure stood in front of him.
A fucking rock golem.
As Yore started to shift, vulnerable for a moment, Cookie leapt forward and drew the rock golem’s attention.
Halfway between forms, Yore turned to Fanner. “Run.”
#
As Fanner started to run, he saw the first boulder be thrown, heard the boom of it exploding as it struck a tree. What was that thing? It was vaguely human shaped, but it was huge and made entirely of stone. He hoped Yore and Cookie would be right behind him, that they were just distracting it for a moment to give him a head start, but he got further and further away and they didn’t appear at his side.
He tried to keep to the path, but that didn’t last long. It was hard enough to see at a walk, and once he stumbled off it he had no chance of finding it again without slowing down and he wasn’t about to do that. He could still hear the distant boom of exploding boulders.
He ran and he ran until he couldn’t hear the sounds anymore, and then he found a hidden spot in a dried up creek bed and he hunkered down, like Yore had told him.
Would they be okay? Were they fast enough to evade that thing? Should Fanner have stayed and… and done something? He felt bad for leaving them to fight on their own, but he wasn’t as fast as they were. They would have been in more danger if they had needed to protect him.
Maybe he could have drawn energy from the rock monster and knocked it out like he had Yore, but Fanner wasn’t even sure it was a living thing in that sense. Besides, he would have had to get close enough to touch it and then kept his hand on it for at least a couple of seconds, which almost certainly would not have gone well.
If they died, it would be Fanner’s fault. Or… maybe ‘fault’ wasn’t the right word, but it would be because of him. Yore and Cookie were fast. They both could have easily escaped on their own. The only reason they hadn’t was to protect Fanner.
Fanner heard something shuffling above him and froze, but then he heard a quiet chittering. He lifted his head as Cookie climbed down into the creek bed. For such an awkward looking creature, she was surprisingly agile when she wanted to be. And, frankly, only when she wanted to be.
She sat down in front of him in a way that was disconcertingly human-like and began poking at her back with hands she usually used like feet. Her back was wet with a greyish red liquid that Fanner suddenly realised was blood.
Fanner reached a hand out, slow and cautious in case she… well, not bit him, because she didn’t have teeth. She could probably take a pretty good swat at him with those claws of hers if she wanted to.
Fanner wasn’t really sure how aware Cookie was of her surroundings and wasn’t sure how she got around at all, given her apparent lack of eyes or ears or even a nose. When his hand made contact with her back, though, it didn’t seem to startle her.
“I’m going to help you,” Fanner told her as he started to dissipate the blood so that he could get a closer look at the wounds. She clearly hadn’t been hit by any of the boulders directly, but it looked like some of the small pieces that had exploded off had hit her like shrapnel. It had scratched her up and lodged in her skin in some places.
Fanner carefully picked the bits of stone out of her skin and then healed the cuts. Despite her weirdness, healing her wasn’t much different from healing a human or a cow or a werewolf.
“Is Yore okay?” Fanner asked as he healed up the last of Cookie’s wounds. “I thought he’d be right behind you, but he’s still not back.”
Cookie ignored him — or had no way of hearing and/or understanding him — and wandered off a few steps. She made a retching sound for a few seconds and then threw up a dark, muddy sludge on the ground in front of her. She poked through the vomit, extracted a filthy coin, put the coin in her mouth and swallowed it back down. She wandered over to a shallow puddle in the creek bed and started shovelling mud into her mouth.
“Cookie, you’re a little weird,” Fanner told her.
Cookie ignored him again and started climbing up the creek bank.
Fanner hesitated, wanting to follow, but Yore had instructed him to stay put. “Don’t go too far, okay? Don’t leave me alone. Please.”
Cookie didn’t acknowledge him, just continued up the creek bank until she was out of sight and Fanner was once more alone. Having to just sit, and wait, and hope Yore wasn’t dead was torture. Fanner wasn’t even sure how long it had been. At least half an hour, surely. If Yore was okay, he should be back by now.
Some time later, Fanner heard a sound above him, but it was only Cookie climbing back down the creek bank. She had a fat, ugly fish in her mouth. She spat it out at Fanner’s feet.
“Oh, um, thank you, but I’m not hungry,” Fanner told her. “Though I appreciate that you tried to find something more suitable to feed me than coins and mud.”
Cookie picked the fish back up, stretched her mouth wide, and swallowed it whole.
“Okay,” Fanner said. “For something that supposedly eats emotions, you sure do eat a lot of things that aren’t emotions.”
Cookie put a rock in her mouth, spat it back out, and then exchanged it for a beetle she’d just found.
“Maybe it is to you what energy is to mages. Yore has enough energy in him to keep me at full all of the time if I stole it from him, but I would still need to eat food. I still have a physical body that requires me to ingest physical matter to sustain it.”
Cookie lay down, flat on her back in the mud, and let out a sigh.
“What am I supposed to do if he doesn’t come back? He just told me to wait for him, like him being okay was a certainty. But it isn’t. What if he’s dead? Or what if he’s hurt and I could help him? I’m a selfish coward, but I wouldn’t let him die.”
Cookie’s mouth hung open. She had lips which were the same greyish colour as the rest of her, which was kind of weird.
“Maybe I should go and look for him. He’s been gone for too long. He might need help.”
Fanner started to get up and Cookie reached an arm out and swatted him back down without otherwise moving from her comfortable position in the mud.
“No, you’re right. He told me to stay put. I’m not very good at staying still sometimes.”
Cookie grabbed a fistful of mud and slowly ate it.
“Thanks for staying with me, Cookie. You’re a good friend.”
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