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Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

The thing about desperate people is they’re known to do some very stupid things. (Tanguish knows this because he is incredibly desperate, and he is getting ready to do something very, very stupid.)

The very very stupid thing Tanguish has decided to do, is follow Helsknight. There’s some logic here. Not a lot, but some. (Plus, he’s desperate. Logic isn’t really his top priority right now.) He’s all emotions like lightning strikes, like sparks and redstone. It’s strange, feeling so full, like a cacophony in his head. Disorientating, flooded by things he’s not used to feeling. He can’t tell if this is good or bad, if this means something else is going wrong with Tango or if he’s just had no reason to be this scared before. But whatever he is, whyever he is it, he doesn’t like it. It’s hard to focus. He needs to focus. He shakes his head and it feels like his loose thoughts are bumping around in his skull.

Tanguish is crouched amidst the gargoyles on a church roof. It’s Helsknight’s church, the one his tenets are in. Tanguish doesn’t know much about knights and tenets, outside of the fact that they have them, and that they respect them a whole lot. If he were any kind of rational, and not a disheveled mess of a person huddled on a rooftop, he’d go downstairs into the church and read the tenets. He’d find out how to hold them against Helsknight somehow. He’d figure out a plan other than ‘follow Helsknight and see what happens’.

Right, his plan. His extremely lacking, extremely stupid plan.

It’s no secret Helsknight spends just as much time in hels as he does in Hermitcraft. The knight slips between the cracks in the world like he’s made of water, like the cupped hands of the universe can’t hold him tight enough to stop him. Tanguish doesn’t know much about what Helsknight does there. They’ve never met on the other side. Tango told him he’s scared of him though, and that makes sense to Tanguish, since he’s scared of him too. Yet here he is, haunting a rooftop he knows the knight will have to pass at some point, waiting. Waiting so he can follow the knight somewhere. Waiting to see how the knight walks between worlds. Waiting so he can follow.

He doesn’t have to wait too terribly long. Helsknight is punctual. Maybe that’s a knight’s tenet; punctuality. Either way, he’s coming down the street now. He looks, predictably, scary. He’s a head taller than Tanguish, maybe more, and he’s wearing that dark armor, pointed and studded with a dragon-horn helm. His sword is sheathed on his hip, and Tanguish figures it’s probably netherite. Helsknight strikes him as the kind of person to just carry a netherite sword. No one is stupid enough to steal that kind of thing, and he fears no death that would see it pilphered. His confidence is awe-inspiring, and terrifying, and oh, Tanguish is wondering if he’s really this desperate. (The answer is yes, yes he is. It’s just that, like most desperate people, he really wishes he wasn’t.)

Helsknight enters the church. Tanguish slips down from the roof to the highest row of windows where he squints through the stained glass and watches, and waits. Helsknight vanishes into the depths of the church somewhere, drops something off with someone (probably a tithe. Knights pay tithes to churches that hold their tenets, and Tanguish knows a bit more about knights than he thought he did) and then exits the church the same way he entered. Tanguish waits for the scary looking knight to walk about a block before stealing across the rooftops after him. 

Following Helsknight turns out to be a more difficult task than Tanguish thought it would be. For one thing, he has to try really, really hard not to be obvious. Most people don’t look up, which is an advantage Tanguish makes full use of. It’s just, most people do notice when someone is sprinting and leaping across roofs so fast they slip on the shingles and almost fall off, and the added necessity that Tanguish not fall screaming off the side of a building suddenly makes it feel incredibly easy to do. Also Helsknight walked incredibly quickly. People moved out of his way, and if they didn’t move fast enough, he shoved them out of his way. You don’t hinder a person like Helsknight without regretting it in some fashion later. Trying to keep track of him from the roofs was like playing eye-spy, except the thing you were spying was always two blocks ahead of where you expected it to be and still moving. If it weren't for that horned helm, iconic and easy to spot in a crowd, Tanguish probably would've lost him twenty times over. 

Instead, Tanguish simply followed from a distance, breathless as he went, until finally Helsknight broke from the main road and into the more residential side-streets. When he did, Tanguish slipped from the rooftops to follow on the ground, hanging back until Helsknight turned a corner ahead before sprinting to catch up again - that is, until he turned a corner and Helsknight was nowhere to be seen. Even more confusing, it was a dead end, with no doors or gates for Helsknight to disappear into. Had he… climbed the wall?

(There was a certain phrase Tanguish had heard before: before you know it. He thought it was a very overused phrase, given he’d never seen it illustrated so completely before - or since - what happened next.)

Tanguish felt a pinch in between his shoulder blades, and became aware of a hand gripping his shoulder. Looking back on it later, he would say his breath hitched around something that shouldn’t be in his chest, caught between a choke and a hiccup. Then he came gasping awake on his favorite roof fresh off a respawn, and he only knew Helsknight had killed him, because he could hear the tail end of his voice still snarling in the back of his head.

“Stop following me.”

An ache, slow and persistent, bloomed in his chest where the sword had been. Tanguish laid on the roof for a few minutes recentering himself, waiting on the ache to subside. It had been a while since he’d died to a person. Most of his deaths tended to be, rather unsurprisingly, due to fall damage. Tanguish climbed slowly to his feet, let out a long sigh and swallowed the rest of the respawn. He took off across the rooftops to find where he’d died. It took some some backtracking and some guesswork, but he eventually made his way back to the dead end alley he’d unsuccessfully cornered Helsknight in. He was pleasantly surprised to see his items were bundled for him in a dark corner against the wall, waiting patiently for his return. At least Hels had been a gentleman about it. (Not that ambushing someone and killing them before they can say their piece is particularly gentlemanly, but this is hels, and one good turn is better than none).

Tanguish sorted through his belongings, scant as they were, to make sure everything was there. He decided he wasn’t desperate enough to try to corner someone else.

The next day, he tried again. He haunted the rooftops. He followed Helsknight. He cut down to the ground. He shadowed his quarry through the twisting side streets. When Helsknight turned into the now familiar dead end, Tanguish waited for the attack to come. It was probably a bit conceited of him to think, even with a heads-up, he could get the upper hand on a trained knight.

Tanguish turned to see Helsknight had somehow gotten behind him again. He side-stepped the lunge that had killed him yesterday. He didn’t expect Helsknight to turn the lunge into a seamless and elegant side-step-slash.

“Whatever it is you’re after, thief--!”

Helsknight did, in fact, have a netherite word. It was so sharp and well cared for, it cut through Tanguish’s side like the sun through a phantom membrane. He barely even felt it, though he tracked the arc of the sword by the spray of his blood. 

“W-wait!” Tanguish stammered, caught up in how quick things were moving. “I don’t--”

“--you’ll have to fight for it.”

There was a blur of color, and then Tanguish was respawning on his favorite roof again. He lay on the shingles, gasping like a fish in the nether, waiting on the cramp in his side and burning in his throat to recede. He thought it was incredibly rude of Hels to take the head off of someone who was just trying to talk. Rude, and frustrating. And Tango needed his help. That was the worst of all of it. Tanguish still couldn’t contact Tango.

Tanguish felt something new, then. Something he didn’t think he’d ever felt before, because it wasn’t an emotion for him to feel. It was one of Tango’s. He felt angry. Something about the futility, and the desperation, and the unfairness. He’d stolen from Helsknight once, and Tango’s life was way more important than the knight’s stupid grudge. Tanguish growled and clambered to his feet. He tore a shingle out of the roof beneath his feet and threw it as hard as he could, watched it bounce off another roof like a stone skipped on water and go skittering off into the distance somewhere.

Tanguish raked his hands down his face, and then wrenched them back through his hair as he started pacing. He was wasting time. Precious time. And that made him angrier. Angry enough to kick him running. Tanguish flew across the rooftops, sure-footed and boiling. His skin prickled, the little skulk-lights on his arms pulsed like bright embers. He thought if the anger in his chest got any hotter he’d spark. He’d catch fire like Tango did, all redstone and flame.

Helknight was halfway through putting Tanguish’s scattered things in a chest when Tanguish came screaming from the rooftops onto his shoulders. The two tumbled to the cobblestones. Tanguish, long used to falling off of high places, threw himself into a roll and was back on his feet as though he’d never left them. Helsknight slammed into the ground like a sack of bricks, his armor clattering in a teeth-grinding clamor. Helknight was a trained knight though, and by the time Tanguish had lunged at him again, he was on his feet, swinging a gauntleted fist in Tanguish’s direction.

Looking back on it, Tanguish couldn’t remember much of their scuffle. Things got so overwhelming, the events poured into his senses and then drained out again like water. He wasn’t used to feeling so many things all at once: anger, despair, determination, the desire to win for once. To do something right for once. To do whatever it took to get Tango the help he needed. Desperation and adrenaline made a fury of him, and he bit and kicked and clawed and he collected bruises like they were riverstones. And then it was over, and Tanguish had Helsknight pinned to the cobblestones, frost curling from his heaving breaths and turning Hels’s wrists purple-black where he held them against the ground, and he had a knee dug into Hel’s ribs which really probably hurt Tanguish more than it hurt him, given the spined armor, but at least it held him still, and it was infuriating, because Helsknight barely looked bothered at all. Sure he was disheveled, and his helmet had been knocked off in the fight, and he had a bloody nose that Tanguish didn’t remember giving him, but his hair was still mostly in place, and the expression on his face was caught somewhere close to bored, if a little breathless, and Tanguish’s hands were shaking.

 “Well,” Helsknight said anticlimactically, “you fought for it. Now what?”

(“Now what?” was really a terribly unfair question to ask someone who hadn’t thought this far ahead.)

“Now, you’re going to stop trying to kill me,” Tanguish growled, except he was tired, and a bit more injured than he thought he’d been, and what was supposed to be a growl sounded a lot more like a whine.

“The minute you let go of me,” Helsknight scoffed, “I’m decking you in the face.”

“I need help.”

“Not my problem.”

“I’m desperate.”

“Obviously.”

Tanguish really, really wanted to hit him. Except hitting him wouldn’t actually help anything, outside of maybe knocking some of the smugness out of Helsknight’s face, and even that wasn’t a guarantee. Instead, he stood up, tottering on legs that were unexpectedly tired. He was getting stiff and sore already. He wasn’t a fighter, and his fight was leaving him fast. But the thing about desperate people is they aren’t above too many things (including what Tanguish did next).

“Please,” Tanguish begged, and he put his whole heart and soul into begging, far more of it than he usually had, since a great deal of it was Tango’s heart and soul as well. “Look, I’m sorry I followed you, and attacked you. But I don’t know who else to turn to and you help people, right? Please. Someone’s in danger.”

Helsknight said nothing, only brushing a scuff from his armor as he clambered to his feet. His sword had been kicked to the ground in the scuffle, and he checked the blade for chips before slipping it in his sheath. There was a solid moment where Tanguish considered getting down on his knees, or crying, or something else on a list of pathetic-isms that might make him more sympathetic. He didn’t, but he thought about it.

“Look, if you don’t help me I’ll find someone who will.”

Helsknight snorted, “Like who?”

That was a good question. That was a really good question.

“Evil Xisuma has admin powers… right?”

Helsknight kicked a loose cobblestone, “Evil Xisuma will kill you before he helps you.”

Tanguish shoved his hands in his pockets, “What kind of jerk would do something like that.”

The two looked at each other, Tanguish looking nearly pathetic as he felt, and Helsknight finally managing some semblance of guilt. Finally their staring contest broke. Helsknight scoffed and looked away.

“What do you want, thief?”

Tanguish felt a spark of hurt pride, and he scowled, but he’d already come this far. He could ignore being called a thief. It wasn’t like it was a lie, anyway. He’d stolen too much, and now he was in trouble. This was all his fault, after all.

“I need you to save Tango. He’s my hermit. He’s hurt and I can’t reach him.” Helsknight’s eyes sparked with something like shock, or maybe anger, and Tanguish started talking faster, like it’d help. “Please! It might be life or death I don’t -- I don’t know.”

“You’re stupider than you look,” Helsknight spat. He spun on his heel and started walking.

Tanguish gasped and scrambled after him, “Wait-wait-wait! Please--!”

“Let the hermits save him. He’s one of theirs.”

“They don’t know where he is! They don’t know he’s hurt--”

“Tch! Sounds like them. Too self-absorbed to take care of their own.”

“It’s not their fault,” Tanguish said defensively, because it wasn’t. He knew exactly whose fault it was. “Tango’s been so busy -- they probably don’t even know to check--”

“All the better for you, then.”

Tanguish was appalled by how callous Helsknight was. He wasn’t sure what he expected really (and maybe this is what he should’ve expected, if he’d had the thought to expect anything in the first place). Helsknight stopped in front of a door, looked around to make sure they were the only two on the street, and then unlocked it. 

“I don’t want this,” Tanguish told him. “Look, you don’t even have to do anything. Just tell me how to get there and--!”

“Why are you helping him?” Helsknight snapped, lurching towards him like he might hit him. Tanguish flinched back a step needlessly. Helsknight seemed angry enough to tower and nothing else. “Do you have any idea how rare it is that one of us wins?” 

“But I don’t--”

“Your hermit is dying out there somewhere! Don’t you feel great? You’ve been a thief since you spawned in here, and finally you have something worth stealing and you’re saying you don’t want it?!”

Tanguish backed another step away from Hels like it’d help. Helsknight was furious. Clench-fist, white-knuckled, teeth-barred furious, and Tanguish had to marvel that someone could ever feel so much. His own anger earlier felt like a pale candle by comparison. If Hels could catch fire, he would. He nearly seemed to, his armor burnished in the red-orange twilight of hels, and his eyes sparking. 

But he’d already come this far.

“It… feels good.” Tanguish admitted quietly. “But… not at someone else’s expense.”

“You’re a thief,” Helsknight pressed, and he almost sounded desperate, like he was trying to remind Tanguish of his place in the world. Like he was giving him permission to steal this once.

“S… some things shouldn’t be stolen.” Tanguish wrung his hands together, nervous, hesitant. “Someone’s happiness is one of them.”

Tanguish looked down at his feet, like the cobblestones had suddenly become the most beautiful rooftop he’d ever lept to. He didn’t know what he was waiting on exactly. Judgement. More condescension. Maybe some cruelty. At the very least, Helsknight seemed due for an explosive, angry outburst. Nothing came, however. When Tanguish finally got the courage to look up, he realized he was standing alone.

The door Helsknight had unlocked was open, and a small, dim room lit by candles greeted Tanguish when he stepped across the threshold. It was a home, cramped. There was a tiny dining and kitchen area, something Tanguish recognized as a bedroom, and a laughably small bathroom. If it weren’t for the fact that Tanguish had no home to speak of, he might call it pathetic. Instead he closed the door and curled up on the little couch in the living room. Tanguish clutched a single coin in his claws and stared down at the blank surface.

Eventually, he fell asleep.

He awoke to shuffling, startled, and then sighed with relief when he saw Helsknight, stepping out of a shadow on the floor as though it were a doorway. Helsknight looked down at him for a moment, and Tanguish felt very much like a bug being studied under a glass. Tanguish stared down at his arms, at the skulk lights that were much duller than they had been the previous few days. He took stock of his own soreness and fatigue, of the heavy feeling in his limbs like he’d lost sleep. He sighed. 

“Do you have a place to stay?” Helsknight asked him tiredly.

Chapter Text

Tanguish slipped through his reflection and found himself standing in… well… Not Decked Out, which made this a new learning experience, because all he had really seen of Tango was Decked Out. Sure there were a few times they’d been elsewhere, but given the general feud between Hermits and Helsmets, those elsewheres had always been in far and unsettled places the Hermits hadn’t touched. This place he was standing in was definitely Hermit-touched. 

(It was funny thinking about it like that: Hermit-touched. It was a very divine sort of description for something. Maybe it said something about Tanguish and how he viewed hels, if he thought hermit-things were nicer. More perfect, somehow. That wasn’t something for unpacking right now, or ever, probably, but it was interesting to note for himself.)

He was standing in a barren-looking haunted house. The only thing that functioned as interior was the storage chests on one wall, a couple chairs, and an occupied bed. Nearest Tanguish could tell, he'd stepped out of the brass hinge of one of the chests.  Through the unfinished ceiling the house continued into a shop, sparsely kept and dust covered from lack of traffic. Through a window he caught glimpses of towering builds, houses (and not-houses), and colors Tanguish wasn't used to seeing as a part of a regular landscape. Green. And blue. They seemed like such gaudy colors compared to the hels red and brown. A hermit-touched landscape for the hermits to live in, just as vibrant as they were. Just as vibrant as most of them were, anyway.

“Hey buddy,” Tango called from the bed, sitting up and smiling weakly. His face was pale, the flame of his hair and the sparking redstone freckles on his skin were dull. He looked exhausted. “Took you long enough to show up.”

Tanguish rushed to Tango’s bedside, and he must’ve looked ridiculous, because the hermit laughed. “Woah hey, bucko, calm down. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Are you okay?”

“Fine. Kinda frustrated." Tango smiled ruefully and laid back in bed. "You can't stay here long, dude. Doc's got me under near constant surveillance… and everyone else keeps popping in on the way to the shopping district." Tango smirked. "You'd think I was made of glass."

"You collapsed," Tanguish whispered.

"You see that through your coin?" 

Tanguish hesitated. He didn't know how much he should explain. The fact that no, he couldn't see anything through his reflection in the coin, and that was the problem. The fact that he'd had to track down other helsmits just to figure out what was going on. The unsettling hels Grian with his (it's?) staring portals, and his repeated deaths to Helsknight. Helsknight, the one who had ultimately helped, stepping through to Hermitcraft to… well, Helsknight had never really explained what he'd done. He just magically reappeared back in his house, sporting the kind of haggard disposition of someone coming back from respawn. Maybe he'd carried Tango to safety and been killed for it? That seemed probable. It also seemed like something Helsknight would've rubbed his nose in, so maybe that hadn't happened.

"Yeah, I saw it through the coin," Tanguish lied, because it was simpler. It's not like the nuance was needed anyway. Tango wasn't used to Tanguish lying (they didn't really do that to each other intentionally: lie. Tanguish wasn't sure if he liked that he was good at it). 

Tango shrugged. "I just overworked myself a little, that's all. I'll be fine after some rest."

Tanguish looked down at his hands. He had grabbed two fistfuls of Tango's blankets, and it felt like a paper-thin barrier between them. Tango was warm beneath them - he always ran hotter than normal people did. Fire and redstone. He still seemed cooler than he should be, though, like Tanguish's ice and sculk did war against it better.

"You'll be fine after some rest," Tanguish parroted automatically, quietly, hesitantly. He was used to agreeing with Tango. It came easy. It made him a better friend. Things were going to be normal again, and that would be nice. Tango would rest. Tango would feel better, and get back to work on Decked Out II. Tango would invite Tanguish to help, and they’d laugh and get into mischief, and that’s what Tanguish had enlisted Helsknight’s help for. 

Right?

Tanguish suddenly felt nauseous. Dreadfully nauseous. It was something in his guts like dread and worry. It was the sated thing inside him that wanted everything to be normal warring with the moral compass he developed at some point when he wasn’t looking. It was a very bad compass. It still let him steal, and guilt trip people, and be overall sneaky. Right now, however, it was reminding him he hadn’t gone through all the trouble of getting Helsknight’s help just for things to be normal. Normal had put Tango in this bed, resting and recovering. Normal would see Tango dead, if Tanguish didn’t do something about it.

“You need to talk to your friends.”

Tango ignored him so smoothly, Tanguish was almost convinced he’d thought the words instead of saying them out loud. “You need to talk to your friends,” he repeated, frowning.

“They’re busy.”

“Why aren’t they here right now?” 

“You’re right here dude.”

“I’m not your only friend.” Tanguish’s frown deepened. “Where’s Impulse?”

Tango waved a hand dismissively. “Off with the Soup Group somewhere.”

“And Zedaph?”

“Impulse and Zedaph aren’t my only friends.”

“They’re your closest friends,” Tanguish said, getting to his feet. “They’re supposed to be, anyway.”

“Yeah well, it’s halfway through the season. Stuff gets hectic.” Tango wasn’t looking at him. His eyes were fixed at the foot of the bed. Lying. “They’re too busy to be here.”

“You need to talk to them. Or… you said Doc was coming to visit regularly? Talk to him.”

“Doc is--”

“Not everyone in your life is too busy,” Tanguish snapped, frustrated. The little ice-tipped spines that followed his vertebrae down his back bristled slightly. Angry. Tanguish wasn’t used to feeling angry. That was a Tango feeling. He wasn’t used to carrying conversation, steering it in a fixed direction. That was also a Tango thing. A thing Tango wasn’t doing, which was worrying. Tanguish wasn’t supposed to be the stronger personality here. “I shouldn’t be here.”

“Why not?” 

“I’m killing you.”

Tango scoffed, and despite how frustrating it was, Tanguish found it reassuring. It proved Tango was feeling something. Annoyance was useful when it wanted to be.

“You’re not killing me,” Tango said, sounding like he only half believed it. “And besides, even if you were, shouldn’t I be allowed to spend my time happy? Not worrying about--”

A burst of rockets fired overhead. The two of them looked up at the ceiling. Tanguish’s hand found the coin in his pocket, ready to retreat back to hels if someone came in. When nothing happened, Tanguish broke the silence first. “Why are you scared of your friends?”

“I’m not scared of my friends,” Tango protested, his hands balling into fists in his blankets. Tanguish raised a condescending eyebrow at him. “I’m not! Look, it's not my fault they’ve all moved on to bigger and better things, alright?”

“You’re scared they’re not your friends anymore?” Tanguish hoped he didn’t sound condescending. He wasn’t trying to be. It was… a very real fear Tanguish himself had felt before. He’d felt it when Tango had first collapsed, and he hadn’t been able to contact him. He’d felt it many times when Tango had talked about his friends and the things they got up to on Hermitcraft. It was an intimate, baleful jealousy, the kind of thing that felt less like you were possessive, and more like you were unworthy.

It was a fear Tanguish was supposed to have, and not one that Tango was supposed to have.

“I’m not-- that’s not what I meant. Stop twisting my words around!” Tango snapped. “What I’m saying is, it’s easier to get work done with your help. When you’re not being--” Tango gestured vaguely in Tanguish’s direction. “--like whatever the heck this riot act is.”

Tanguish shook his head, and Tango scoffed again. “Jeez dude, you’re worrying like, way way more than normal. Are you okay?”

“You collapsed.”

“Yeah well, I hadn’t slept in a few days. Sue me.”

Tanguish rubbed his face with his hands, and then ran them back through his hair exasperatedly. His breath was coming in frosted clouds. Aggravated. Angry. Frustrated? He was bad at feeling things. Emotions were… difficult. He should ask Helsknight about emotions sometime. He felt mad all the time, and he managed to control it somehow.

“You need to talk to your friends. Your other friends.”

“You keep saying that. Why can’t you just be my friend?”

“I’m going to get them.”

“Wh--! Tanguish!”

Tanguish spun on his heel and started walking. He was sure there had to be a staircase around here somewhere, and if there wasn’t, he could always climb the chests to the next floor--

“Hey! Are you listening to me?”

“No, I’m not,” Tanguish said absentmindedly, scurrying up Tango’s wall of chests for storage. The top chest was empty, and for a moment Tanguish was precariously balanced trying not to pull it down. Behind him, he heard Tango rustling. “Stay in bed.”

“You’re going to get yourself killed,” Tango said, ignoring him. He shuffled his blankets off and swung his feet over the side of the bed.

“Stay down, Tango.” Tanguish said louder, like that would make him more convincing. He managed to get to the top of the chest wall, and turning to look down at Tango made his hermit counterpart look small and fragile with distance. “I’ll be right back.”

“You don’t even know where you’re going,” Tango told him, sounding almost pleading. He stood slowly, hesitated on unsteady legs. “And any hermit that sees you is going to kill you on sight, just saying. Hels aren’t really welcome here you know.”

“This is for your own good,” Tanguish said challengingly. “I’m not losing you over something this stupid.”

“You’re not-- gah!” Tango took two steps and fell. Tanguish was his side in a heartbeat. He reached forward to pick Tango up, only to have his hands smacked away. Tango scowled at the ground, at his hands in angry fists, shaking arms, trying to prop himself up. “I will stand up by myself thank you very much.” When he said it, the flame of his hair burned brighter, angrier. His freckles, a smattering of redstone spots on his cheeks and forearms, sparked once, insistently. Tanguish crouched on the balls of his feet, watching nervously as Tango shoved himself to his feet. He stood, swayed, steadied, and then fixed Tanguish in a glare. “See? I’m fine.”

“Walk back to bed,” Tanguish said gently, not rising from where he was crouched. “Please.”

“Why, so you can go running off again?” Tango demanded, refusing to move. Tanguish thought he caught a tremor in his counterpart’s knees.

“I won’t run off.”

Tango nodded. He looked back towards his bed, too nervous to walk on his own. He didn’t protest when Tanguish slowly straightened, wrapped Tango’s arm around his shoulders, and helped him back. This felt better, Tanguish thought. It felt more normal. This was how things were supposed to be. Tanguish was supposed to help Tango do things. Tango was supposed to have big outbursts, while Tanguish quietly reacted and did as he was told. This was how they were supposed to spend their time together. (This was a way out. Tanguish could decide he liked this so much, he would just walk away and let Tango rest and return to business as usual. Tango certainly wanted it that way. So did Helsknight, from what little they’d talked about it. It would be easy. It would be better than easy. It would be normal, expected. The path of least resistance.)

“Fine,” Tanguish said after a silence he hadn’t even noticed passing. “I’m going to make new friends.”

Tango smirked. “I’m not good enough for you either.”

(That hurt. That hurt a lot, actually. One more way out. Tanguish doesn’t want to be a bad friend. He doesn’t want to abandon Tango. Is that what he’s doing? Is he abandoning Tango? Weak, bedridden, because Tanguish is a good parasite. Taken all that’s good out of him, and leaving him for a new host? Is that what he’s doing? What’s worse? Killing someone or abandoning them? Tanguish felt like he was putting nails in someone’s coffin, and no matter how hard he tried to drop the hammer, all he did was hammer harder.)

“I’m not abandoning you.” Tanguish said firmly. “You need to talk to your friends. You need someone in your life that isn’t me.”

“Right, sure.”

“I’m killing you.”

“You keep saying that.”

Tanguish stood and brushed off his hands, like that would help solidify his decision. “If someone like me can make friends, then you can talk to the ones you already have.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“It is,” Tanguish said firmly, trying to convince both of them. He wasn’t sure if it was working. He had stopped thinking about it enough to worry. Instead, Tanguish held out his hand for Tango to shake. “Deal?”

“Deal what?”

“If I make a friend, you are going to set up a meeting and actually talk to yours.”

“When did this become a deal, exchange, thing? I didn’t agree to that.”

“Deal?”

“I feel like this is a lot less of a choice than you’re trying to imply it is--”

“Tango.”

“Fine, fine! Whatever!” Tango grabbed Tanguish’s hand in a vicious handshake that made both of them flinch. Fire and ice, redstone and sculk. It didn’t really hurt. The physical contact was just kind of uncomfortable. It was something they didn’t do often.

“Deal,” Tanguish affirmed. He stood, feeling lighter on his feet than he had a few minutes ago. Maybe that was a good sign.

“Hey, earth to genius.” Tango snorted. “Do you even know how to make friends?”

Tanguish shrugged. “It can’t be that hard, can it?”

Tango laughed.

Chapter Text

“I don’t know how to make friends,” Tanguish lamented to the bustling street in front of him. No one was listening, except maybe the bedraggled looking alley cat sitting on a nearby trash can. That was fine, because in all honesty, Tanguish didn’t want to be heard. 

His plan had been simple in theory: wander innocently around some of the busiest places in hels, strike up a few conversations, and bam! New friends to show Tango. Except so far all Tanguish had done was stand in this alley watching people walk around, being mildly terrified. He was trying his best, really. It’s just, every time he manages to talk himself into stepping out into the street, he realizes just how many people are out there. And this is hels. Some of those people look really scary, or just generally like striking up a conversation is the last thing they’d ever want. So Tanguish danced on his feet nervously, waiting for a good opportunity to strike, and finding none. 

“I’ve never had to make friends before,” Tanguish whined to the cat currently licking an oily paw. “I always had Tango for that, you know?”

The cat continued grooming apathetically. Tanguish pulled his coin out of his pocket and looked down at his reflection. Tango. He wanted to ask his counterpart for advice -- or just hear his voice really. The reassurance would be nice. And he and Tango could workshop ideas, how best to approach the problem. Tango was good at talking to people. He was funny and charismatic, and really, so much better at this kind of thing than Tanguish was. He did the talking, the planning, the everything when they were together.

(Really it was kind of alarming how much Tanguish was realizing he had trouble thinking for himself. In theory he could do it. He did it all the time unintentionally! But trying to do it on command, right now, when he had no idea what to do--)

Tanguish sighed and slipped the coin back into his pocket. The whole reason he was doing this was because the more he relied on Tango -- and the more Tango relied on him -- the worse their situation was. Tanguish was on his own on this one. That was… fine. He’d been on his own before. He couldn’t really remember being on his own before but… it had happened at some point. Tanguish bounced on his toes, took in a few deep breaths, and willed himself to step out into the street. The cat on the trash can paused in its grooming to judge him silently.

“I’m working my way up to it,” Tanguish muttered placatingly. The cat twitched an ear and twisted into a knot to reach some patch of fur near the base of its tail. Tanguish huffed out another sigh and, gathering up what little bit of courage he had, walked into the street.

It was weird being on ground level and not stealing anything -- though the thought did cross his mind a few times. Mostly watches and chains, small trinkets he could feign having found to start up a conversation. It's just, he was used to running on rooftops. The ground seemed claustrophobic by comparison. Bumping into people was almost a foregone conclusion, and there were some people in hels who really didn't want to be bumped into! And Tanguish was bad with people. Even aside from the general awkwardness that came from not carrying normal conversation often, he just wasn't great at reading people. He knew Tango's mannerisms. He knew familiar sarcasm, and sparks in conversation, and the general assumption of good will and humor. The people he passed on the street were nothing like Tango. Here he passed a young lady bristling with swords who glared him down when he approached. There he passed a gentleman with soft features and a wicked iron crown, who gave off an aura of command. Tanguish stalked by the cart he normally stole baked goods from, and guilt stayed his hand and his tongue. What was he supposed to say to them? Hello! Its me, the vagrant who regularly steals your baked goods! Wanna be friends?

(He could say that. It would be a fantastic way of getting a hand taken off as punishment. For as rampant with theft as hels could be, it was punished heavily when it was caught.)

Tanguish lost track of the times he walked up and down the street, looking for someone at least generally on his level. He didn't lose track of the times he wished Tango were here though, wished he could ask his hermit for advice, or really just for a break in the tension. He palmed his coin and his arm itched with the insistence to use it, to just pop over into the other world and be done with the nerve-wracking experience of trying (and failing) to be known. And, really, why should he be known? The whole reason he was in this mess was because he was a bad friend. Well, a good friend, but in a bad way. Time consuming. Dependent. Needy. Appeasing.

Parasitic. 

Tanguish was starting to feel things again. Complicated things. Things that turned his guts in circles, and made his chest tight. 

(Things like: if he hurt Tango while being his friend, wouldn't he hurt someone else? Things like: the only reason he and Tango were friends at all was because they were made for each other, hermit and helsmit. Things like: what if he had no choice but to be Tango's friend? What if this was fate? What if, because hermits and helsmits were the way they were, Tango was the only one who had a choice and he'd made it. What if Tango -- player, stronger, made in a world meant to exist -- had decided for them who would come out of the struggle between hermit and helsmit, and no matter what Tanguish did -- helsmit, weaker, made in a world that was never meant to be in the first place -- it would make no difference. What if he was going to lose Tango anyway, because that's how the world was?)

Tanguish was feeling too many things, actually. Way too many things. It made his head spin. It got hard to breathe. It made him want to cry, and he was very frustrated -- another feeling he didn't want to feel -- because all these feelings were stopping him from the very important (and now, he feels, very pointless) task of trying to make friends to save Tango and---

Tanguish reclaimed his sense of self, not because he found a way to stop all the things he was feeling, but because, like all things in his life, he ran away from them. Tanguish ran down side alleys and back streets like he was being chased by Evil X himself. (Though, rumor held that Evil X could teleport, so if that were the case, it would be a failed race from the start.) He scrabbled over gates and slammed past people holding conversations and skittered onto rooftops and as soon as his feet hit deepslate and netherack tiles he felt like his lungs expanded three times wider. Tanguish ran and he breathed and he stopped thinking and feeling things until he circled back to his favorite rooftop, the big church near the fountain in the market. He climbed up familiar buttresses and gargoyles and scraped his palms on familiar roof tiles and he collapsed on the slope of the roof's tallest side, panting. 

Tanguish stared up at the glass and glowstone ceiling, and like an ache in his teeth, his feelings crept back to him again. Tanguish wanted to cry, or he wanted to throw up, or he wanted to do something physical to rip the feelings out of his guts. If he could just purge them somehow, he was sure he could figure out what to do. If he could just dump them on the roof tiles and leave them behind. If he could just do anything besides laying here gasping and panting and swallowing half-wretches and being overall incredibly pathetic over -- what? Not being able to figure out how to start a conversation? Not knowing how to act normal? He didn't talk to people he never could have imagined it would be this hard to do. There was too much weight attached, too high of stakes if he did it wrong. He didn't know what to do. 

(He was trying hard to remember how he and Tango became friends, but all he could remember was their first accidental meeting, and how Tanguish had been utterly silent his entire life, as far as he remembered, until Tango spoke first. That was the nature of hermits and helsmits surely. But there was no hermit here to speak first. No one who knew their thoughts and emotions well enough. No one with a firm hand and patient optimism to drag Tanguish along until he stumbled out of his shell. There was only hels, and the angry, bitter people inside it, all of them too busy worrying about their own borrowed time to help Tanguish with his.)

Tanguish lay on the roof, freaking out, watching gasts swirl so high in the cavernous ceiling they could've been clouds, and felt wretched and pitiful and hopeless.

(Tanguish was really, really starting to hate feelings. He needed Tango to hurry up and get stronger, so Tango could take over feeling things again. Tanguish desperately, desperately longed for the times in his life when things were simpler and he didn't feel feelings. How own despair over it all annoyed him, and he hated feeling feelings more.)

There was a knock on the roof. Not the knock of something falling, or people throwing rocks (People did that sometimes -- throw rocks at the churches in hels. There were a lot of people who thought breaking pretty glass was fun). It was a knock like knocking on a door, and Tanguish was so surprised by the unexpected noise, that for one entire heartbeat, he forgot to feel too many things at once, and just blinked confusedly at the sky. Then the knock came again, and Tanguish started searching for it. His eyes settled on the bell tower, and he saw Helsknight, looking as dour and serious as the gargoyles Tanguish had climbed past, his spiked armor mimicking the spines of their stone and deepslate wings. He was frowning (Helsknight was always frowning) in a way that suggested something like annoyance (annoyance was the most frequent emotion Helsknight seemed to feel -- at least, around Tanguish he did). Tanguish was used enough to Helsknight's expressions to know whatever the look was, it wasn't anger. Angry on Helsknight was subtle and sharp, like a blade sunk in something -- or someone.

(Angry Helsknight was something Tanguish wouldn't inflict on his worst enemy, much less himself, so it was very, very important he knew what that looked like.)

Tanguish slowly got to his feet, brushed off his shirt, and tried valiantly to pretend he was more put together than he actually was. Helsknight waved him over, scowling, and Tanguish sheepishly approached the bell tower, scrabbling clumsily up the bricks to perch on the railing. He figured Helsknight was about to yell at him for something, probably (Helsknight yelled a lot). Probably because he was on a church roof, and Helsknight was a knight of some church or another, and this was probably disrespectful to his knightly tenets, or something. Tanguish was halfway through coming up with some kind of excuse for being up here, when Helsknight spoke first.

"You alright?"

Well… that was unexpected. About as unexpected as Helsknight being here at all, to be honest. 

"Uhm… I think so?"

"Saw you running through town like a bat out of hels," the knight snorted, his expression somewhere between annoyance and disdain. "Figured I should make sure you weren't being chased by someone."

"Oh," was all Tanguish could think to say for a shamefully long time. He was still learning Helsknight. (Maybe disdain and annoyance was what worry looked like on someone covered in serrated plate mail?) 

Helsknight's lip curled in an expression that could have been disgust or impatience. "You going to tell me what that sprint was for, or are you going to make me drag it out of you?"

The way Helsknight said the word "drag" brought to mind the image of someone yanking a sword out of a body. Tanguish shuddered, and reminded himself that Helsknight's sword was firmly set in its sheath, the leather thong resting securely over its hilt to keep it from bouncing free during a run. (Tanguish, that he could remember, had never felt the business end of a sword, outside of the times he'd respawned too quick to really feel it. He thought maybe that's what drove his unease.)

"It was nothing."

"Well, glad I climbed all those stairs for nothing, then." Helsknight snapped, and kicked something at his feet. Tanguish realized there was a trap door in the floor of the bell tower, revealing a tightly curling staircase. Then he realized Helsknight was starting to step back down that staircase, and it suddenly struck Tanguish that, no matter how unpleasant company Helsknight might be, the last thing he wanted right now was to be alone. Better a bristly knight than being trapped on the roof to feel feelings again.

"Wait--" it was only when Helsknight batted Tanguish's hand away that he realized he'd reached a hand out to grab his shoulder. Tanguish gaped for a moment, not sure how to recover.

"Thorns," Helsknight told him matter-of-factly. Then, when he got no response, "My armor. It has thorns. The enchantment. Don't touch it."

"Oh." Tanguish stood there awkwardly for a moment, fidgeting beneath Helsknight's glare. It occurred to him belatedly that the knight was waiting for him to say something, so he mumbled, "Have you, uhm, ever been on a roof before?"

Helsknight raised an eyebrow at him in reply. 

"This one." Tanguish continued, trying to sound friendly, or at least not as weird as he felt. "Specifically."

"No."

"Do you… want to?" Tanguish asked falteringly, wincing at his own awkwardness. 

If Helsknight noticed, he ignored it, instead demanding: "Are you going to push me off?"

Tanguish tilted his head to the side questioningly. "Why would I do that?"

Helsknight waved a hand, gesturing to hels in general, as if to say pushing people off roofs was a thing that happened often. (It probably was something that happened, though probably not often enough to warrant so much suspicion.)

"I won't push you off," Tanguish promised. Even if he wanted to, he really doubted he could win in a fight against Helsknight and his thorns-enchanted armor. Helsknight studied him a moment longer before looking up towards the sky in a mental shrug and leaping smoothly over the banister. The drop down to the roof wasn't far, though he clattered like a tin can when his armor hit the tiles. Tanguish joined him, landing much more quietly. Helsknight steadied himself against the bell tower, taking in just how perilously high he was with a scowl that could've cut obsidian. 

Tanguish wandered along the spine of the roof, stepping with practiced ease around the spiked crockets that made gothic roofs look like they were baring their teeth at the sky. When he got to the far end of the roof he crouched, his tail twining around his legs, hunched like the gargoyles clinging to the buttresses. Helsknight joined him, swearing once or twice when his armored boot caught on the iron tipped shingles and nearly tripped him. He stood a step behind Tanguish, leaning over him to look down into the square, at the oil-black fountain in its center where people mingled and hawked their goods and gossiped. Helsknight made a noncommittal sound in the back of his throat as he watched, something thoughtful or approving, or maybe just a noise for the sake of making noise.

"This is where I used to respawn," Tanguish told him, feeling a bit nostalgic, and enjoying this feeling a lot more than his previous ones, "before I started sleeping on your couch anyway."

"Sounds…" Helsknight kicked at one of the iron roof spines experimentally. "Uncomfortable."

"It's a beautiful view though."

In the square, a group of rough looking helsmits jostled by, the street crowd parting for them like a rock in a river. They all sported half-moon circle tattoos on the side of their necks, marking them as some of Cleo's gang. Rumor had it when she had first started her crime ring, she had bitten every one of her henchmen. Something to do with her hermit being a zombie. Tanguish was pretty sure those were just rumors.

"Is anything beautiful in hels?" Helsknight asked melodramatically, his lip curling in disdain.

"I'm supposed to be making friends," Tanguish said, blurting out the words without really knowing why he said them. Probably because feelings were starting to crawl back across him again, and he was desperate to get them out. "Me and Tango have this deal and -- well, I'm bad at it."

"Is that what this is?" Helsknight asked, shuffling a step away from Tanguish like he was a snake getting ready to bite him. "We're not friends."

"Oh… I didn't think we were."

"Good."

"I just… I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing."

Helsknight watched him, eyes narrowed, guarded. Tanguish really didn't understand why the knight was always so suspicious. It seemed like the only things he ever did was yell and size people up. Whatever he was measuring Tanguish against, it seemed to appease him, because he said, "Obviously. About the only thing you can make friends with up here are pigeons." Helsknight kicked the roof spike again. "Or ghasts."

"Pretty sure these are made to deter pigeons."

"Didn't deter you."

"I'm… not a pigeon?"

"A pest is a pest."

Tanguish looked down at the street again and pretended that comment didn't sting. Helsknight shifted his weight on his feet uncomfortably, eyeing the perilous roof. 

"How the hels do you sit down on this thing?"

"Oh. Uh." Tanguish stood up from his crouch. "Further down the roof, where it levels out." He clambered down the tiles to where the roof leveled, showing Helsknight where to step. Tanguish didn't like sitting on the shallower slopes. It was harder to see the road and all its busy people. As soon as they got someplace level though, Helsknight sat down between two rows of crockets, sighing heavily. Tanguish hovered over him.

"Are you okay?"

"I've been on my feet all day," was all the knight said in elaboration. Then, much to Tanguish's surprise, he started undoing the straps and buckles that kept his armor on. Helsknight was efficient with it, used to donning and doffing the stuff at least once a day. He fanned the pieces out in a neat semi-circle around himself, a halo of glittering, enchanted metal. Tanguish wondered if it was all netherite. It was hard to tell. Helsknight stained it black, and the purple glow of enchantment made the texture hard to make out.

Helsknight surveyed his armor, making sure all was as it should be, before pulling a flask, a brush and a rag from his inventory. He grabbed up a pauldron and got to work polishing. Tanguish watched him silently for a moment, then asked, "I just showed you the best view in hels, and you're polishing your armor."

"You like church  roofs, I like polished armor," the knight snapped. "Sue me."

"You could polish that literally anywhere else."

"If I polish it down there, someone will steal it," Helsknight told him matter-of-factly. "Besides, I'm up here because you're in trouble. So spill."

"Trouble? What makes you think I'm in trouble?"

"Sprinting across town. You've made a deal with your hermit about something. You've got the overall look of someone who just jumped in the ocean and realized they can't swim--"

Tanguish couldn't help himself. Anger pounced on him before he even realized what he was feeling. "And that's your business?"

"Call it a hobby." Helsknight answered, thoroughly unimpressed by the bite in Tanguish's voice. "But if you're planning to keep sleeping under my roof, your trouble is my trouble. So spill."

Tanguish’s anger abated just as quickly as it had come, and he disliked that nearly as much as feeling it in the first place. He hovered awkwardly above Helsknight, watching as he quietly and stubbornly worked. He inspected the pauldron he had been polishing, then neatly placed it down back where it had been in his halo of armor before moving on to the next piece. Tanguish stood there for several minutes, coalescing his thoughts and watching. It was… oddly soothing watching the knight work, watching each piece of armor get checked over with dutiful care. And the whole time Helsknight worked, Tanguish never felt like the conversation dropped. Not completely. There was a weird sort of attentiveness, more like an aura than anything physical. Helsknight never dropped his guard, or forgot Tanguish was there. He simply bided his time with the patience of someone who had… probably done this before. It was vulnerable, and weird, and scratched an itch somewhere in the back of Tanguish’s head.

Tanguish told Helsknight about his deal with Tango, ignoring the scoff the knight made. He told him about feeling too much, overwhelmed, and scared, and he told him again: “I don’t know how to make friends. And if I don’t, I’m going to lose Tango, and I don’t want that.”

Helsknight was quiet for a long moment, glowering down at the greave he had just finished polishing, running his thumb over a scrape that his polishing hadn’t buffed out. Then he snapped his hand back and wrung out his wrist, having worried at the armor enough to get stung by his own thorns.

"Have you tried not being useless?" Helsknight asked, not looking up from his task. He was too distracted to add his normal venom to his voice. It was as much an insult as a thorn on a rosebush was (and it was hard to count the comment as an insult when Tanguish mostly thought it was true).

"I've never had to make friends before," Tanguish continued as though the knight hadn't said anything, "I always had Tango."

Helsknight scoffed again and held his greave up to the general light of hels, looking for more imperfections. He gently placed it on the roof and surveyed his handy work, his hands on his sides. He picked up his helmet and set to work again, pouring the oily liquid from his flask onto it and beginning the long task of rubbing it in.

"How do you make friends?"

"I wouldn't know." Helsknight answered curtly. "My line of work doesn't make friends."

"You work?"

Helsknight paused briefly to sneer and raise an eyebrow. "I buy the groceries you eat and pay the rent for the roof you're under."

Tanguish held out his hands placatingly. "I just figured… you know…" (What had he figured exactly? Of course Helsknight worked. Most normal people weren't thieves and leeches. Weird. Tanguish had never considered that he wasn't normal for hels.) "... I mean, you've got to be a royal guard or something right? Paid by Evil X?"

Helsknight gave a sharp bark of a laugh and got back to polishing. “Me and Evil X don’t get along.” (Helsknight and most people didn’t get along.)

Tanguish must have said that last thought out loud, because Helsknight laughed, and it sounded more genuine than any others Tanguish had ever heard. It was sharp and staccatoed, and faintly hoarse, like it didn’t fit in his throat right. “Evil X is evil, idiot. I’m not. We clash fundamentally.”

“... oh.” Tanguish supposed that made sense. “But, you’re like, the strongest knight around, right? Wouldn’t he want you working for him?”

Helsknight shrugged, and lapsed into silence again. His conversations, Tanguish was realizing, came in waves, a literal incarnation of the phrase ‘picking his battles’. As if sensing Tanguish’s thoughts, Helsknight said, “I’m not a part of your parasitic bullshit. I have boundaries. You don’t need to know everything about me.”

“I was just asking a question,” Tanguish snapped, that anger (or maybe it was just annoyance? Annoyance that Helsknight could be kind and cruel at the same time) creeping up on him again. “You’re the one who got in my business first.”

“And it's stupid business.” Helsknight retorted. “You should just let your hermit die. It’s better for you that way.”

“That’s--” (unthinkable, cruel, something he doesn’t even want to consider) “-- evil.”

Helsknight rolled his eyes eloquently. He finished buffing out a ding in his helmet, then set about the task of buckling and clasping and shuffling everything back on. Once again, Tanguish found himself falling silent and watching.

“You eaten anything yet?”

The question came while Helsknight was in the middle of buckling on his right vambrace. He barely even had to look at all the fiddly little belts and snaps. He just felt for them through his gauntlet and fashioned them on.

“What?”

“Food,” Helsknight snapped patronizingly, tugging at various places on his armor to make sure they were all snug (they were). “Steak. Potatoes. Carrots. Bamboo--”

“No, I haven't eaten anything yet. Do you have to be so mean about it?”

“I don’t ask questions twice,” Helsknight snorted, then jerked his head in the direction of the belltower. “I’m going downstairs. Feel free to take them -- or do whatever you normally do. If you get yourself killed falling off the roof, I’ll just meet you at the house.”

Helsknight left, and Tanguish watched him go, feeling generally confused, and like nothing productive had happened outside of him just talking about things. Granted, the talking about things did feel… not like it solved anything, but like it was better now. Watching Helsknight clean his armor had been… not fun. Interesting? Soothing. Even for how abrasive the knight was. (Tanguish decided there was a lot he still didn’t get about Helsknight, and a lot he would probably never get, and that maybe that was fine for now. He had just been offered free food, it seemed like, and Tanguish enjoyed food.) So he followed the knight downstairs, and into the street. Helsknight got them some food from a stand, hot and greasy and comfortable. They walked home. They didn’t talk, the sense of Helsknight picking battles again, distant and thoughtful.

Helsknight woke him the next morning, severe and unquestionable as ever. “Get up. You’re going with me to the colosseum today.”

Chapter Text

Tanguish followed obediently after Helsknight as they walked down the (mostly empty) hels streets. It felt early. Hels didn't really have a day and night cycle given its nether-like topography and bedrock ceiling, but it did have times of high and low traffic. Everyone had to rest at some point, and this seemed like one of those times where the city was just waking; a breath-held feeling, like something lying in wait. It was distinctly different from the haunted, hollow empty that came with what passed for their night, when the crowded places deserted themselves and turned derelict. Tanguish yawned, shook his head, and looked forlornly at the various food and market stalls they passed, most of which were still closed, only a handful with their owners preparing for the day. Baked goods sounded divine right about now, though judging by the brisk pace Helsknight kept, he wouldn’t have time to stop for some anyway.

"So, why am I going with you to the colosseum?" Tanguish asked, looking up at the knight who, until this point, had said little more than prompts to get them moving. "I can't fight."

"You're not going to fight," Helsknight snorted derisively, as if that were obvious.

"Then what am I doing?"

"You're making friends."

Tanguish opened his mouth only to close it again, confused. After a few steps he said, "I don't think I'll have much in common with a bunch of fighters? I mean -- I can try but--"

Helsknight cut him off with a loud sigh, casting a long-suffering look at the ceiling, as if to ask the ghasts circling far above, "Do you see the shit I have to deal with?" Tanguish tried very hard not to be offended. Helsknight had never stopped being abrasive, so he should stop being surprised by it.

"Your hermit, Tango. Who would you say his best friends are?" Helsknight asked, pausing at an intersection to survey where they were. They were already close to the colosseum. It was the kind of place that loomed above the rest of the world, all columns and arches and terraces, like the looping bones of some massive creature. It was taller than everything else in hels (besides Evil Xisuma's tower of course) and looked brutal and straightforward as the tournaments it often contained. Tanguish had never been inside. Stealing in a crowd that big always seemed too risky, and stealing from colosseum fighters was just a dumb idea altogether, unless they were alone and didn't know you existed.

Tanguish belatedly realized Helsknight had started walking again, and jogged to catch up.

"Uh, well, probably Impulse and Zed-- oh!" Tanguish brightened, realization dawning. "You know them? Their helsmets, I mean."

"I know the Dragon," Helsknight narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. "Or does he go by the Demon? I can't remember. Impulse's hels. Anyway, you're not meeting him."

"Oh. Why?"

"He's an interdimensional smuggler. Or collector. Or something. He can't travel out of hels, but he has a lot of contacts who do." Helsknight knocked on his chestplate. "He provides the gear for the colosseum fighters. Keeps a lot of valuable stuff."

"I wouldn't steal--"

"Doesn't matter," Helsknight cut him off sharply. "He kills thieves on sight, and holds grudges. Even if you got past the murder bit, he'd find your spawn and do something to it, and right now your spawn is my living room."

Tanguish nodded. He had yet to get on the bad side of the truly dangerous people in hels -- by some miracle -- but he had heard stories. (Well, he had been eavesdropping on those stories. But still, he heard them. It seemed to him there were a lot of things worse than dying that could happen to a person. Really, it seemed like people put too much thought into how to hurt each other. It was a dangerous use of creativity.) Tanguish had never heard of The Dragon before, but in his experience, anyone who went by a title instead of a name was probably someone you didn't want to look at, let alone cross paths with.

"So… Zedaph then?"

"Zedaph." Helsknight agreed with a nod.

"What's his name? Does he have a name besides Zedaph?"

Helsknight shrugged, his armor giving a quiet creak around his shoulders. "No idea, never met the guy. He and EB work together though."

"EB?"

"Evil Beezuma."

"You call Evil Beezuma, the very famous colosseum fighter, EB?" Tanguish asked, astonished. "He lets you get away with that?"

"I'm the Champion of Hels. How's he going to stop me exactly?” Helsknight laughed derisively, something mixed between pride and annoyance flickering in his eyes. “He can't beat me in a fight." After a pause he added a little gentler, "Besides, he asked us to call him that."

Helsknight stopped at another intersection. Tanguish nearly got tangled in the knight's cape as it wafted around him, and it took a moment to figure out why they had stopped. In front of them was a small marketplace, six stalls all tightly clumped together. Brightly dyed banners danced around them, noting items and shop names. Tanguish glanced around each stall and self-consciously scratched the back of one hand. The stuff here was expensive. He could tell by the colors, and what they were made of: Silvers, blues, purples, and greens glinted amongst shimmering fabrics, all burnished bronze in the red-orange light of hels. He even caught the vibrancy of diamond blue amongst them, curling with the sparks of enchantment. If Tanguish had known this place was here, he would have scoped it out sooner. It was a glittering gemstone in the shadow of the colosseum, a prize guarded by a concrete and blackstone dragon. 

As if sensing his growing excitement, Helsknight said, "Touch anything and I'll cut your hands off."

Tanguish shoved his hands in his pockets and glowered. "I wasn't going to--"

"You can steal from literally anywhere else in hels," Helsknight continued relentlessly, "just not here. Especially not when you're with me."

The two glared at each other for a long moment before Tanguish huffed childishly, “They’re pretty though. And valuable.”

Helsknight looked towards the ceiling again, beseeching the ghasts above for patience. The corner of his curled lip twitched, a thousand derisive things queueing up to berate Tanguish, no doubt. Tanguish was on the verge of offering to just wait for Helsknight here when the knight said, “Do you know what the most valuable thing in hels is?”

Tanguish tilted his head to the side questioningly, honestly confused by the question. He glanced out to the market and watched as someone began opening their stall -- an action that mostly consisted of flipping over a sign that said “Open” and dusting off their hands like they’d accomplished some great task. Tanguish shrugged, and then shook his head. He didn’t know.

“Time.” Helsknight told him. “The most valuable thing in hels is time.” He jerked his head in the direction of the little marketplace slowly coming to life in front of them. “All of us, barring maybe Evil X, and lucky little idiots like you whose other half has some kind of death wish, have no idea how much time we have before our hermit, or our mirror or our double or whatever, finds a way to move past whatever made us.”

The unspoken “and then we die” hung in the air like a hornet. Tanguish looked down at the cobblestones beneath his feet. He could feel Helsknight’s withering glare like it was a weight on his shoulders, like it could bury him under the ground with its intensity alone. It was unnecessary. Tanguish knew why he was here.

“These people here are craftsmen,” Helsknight continued. “They spend hours, days, weeks, working on their pieces. When you steal from them, you are wasting that time. Time they could have spent with friends, or family, or doing whatever the hell they sacrificed to make a pretty trinket.”

Tanguish nodded his understanding, and the holes the knight was boring into his shoulders seemed to lessen as Helsknight leaned back. (He had not realized Helsknight was looming. It was something he did very naturally, like a rook on a tombstone. The cape added to the effect. Tanguish wondered briefly if he could loom if he had a cape, and then decided no, he was probably too short for it.) Tanguish huffed out a sigh and straightened a bit, committing to mentally seethe over Helsknight and his rude -- if justified -- opinions on Tanguish stealing things. Then Helsknight said probably the most terrifying and unjustified thing Tanguish had ever heard.

“I’m trusting you.” 

Before Tanguish could recover from the shock of that statement, Helsknight started walking into the market. It felt like he was watching someone step off the side of a cliff. Trusting Tanguish? It was such a simple thing, not stealing. Tanguish did it more often than he stole. Yet now he was convinced, somehow, he would manage to accidentally steal something and destroy that completely unjustified trust. Tanguish crossed his arms, pinning his hands beneath his elbows to keep them from betraying him, and scurried after Helsknight. He stayed in the knight’s shadow, huddling by his cape like he feared getting lost, despite how small and empty the craftsmen’s market was. 

They stopped at the fifth stall, and the owner, a grizzled looking blacksmith with torn rabbit ears and a missing eye, nodded to Helsknight like he recognized him. The stall was full of weapons, just about any kind Tanguish could think of and more. Heavy hammers and double-edged swords bristled fiercely beside their intricately worked scabbards, the firelight of hels lending their edges a burnished bronze. More knives than an ender dragon had teeth studded the velvet bottom of a long glass case, and shields made a sniffer shell of the ceiling.

"My son has been looking for you," the blacksmith said, and Tanguish startled, thinking for a moment the grizzled old rabbitfolk was talking to him. Helsknight shrugged disinterestedly, inspecting a lapis-dyed dagger near the back of the case.

"He's not looking hard enough, obviously."

"I told him you were hard to miss," the blacksmith agreed. "The blue one is enchanted. Illegal for colosseum fights."

"Like that's ever stopped anyone," Helsknight snorted derisively. "What's it enchanted with?"

"Unbreaking."

"That's it?"

"Stick yourself with it and find out."

Helsknight narrowed his eyes at the blacksmith, who simply crossed his arms in reply. For a long moment, Tanguish thought the two might fight (or Helsknight might stick himself with the dagger and find out what it did). Instead, Helsknight counted out an absurd number of diamonds as payment, inspected the little blue dagger’s sheathe for quality, and then passed it wordlessly to Tanguish. It took Tanguish two seconds longer to realize he needed to uncross his arms to grab it, and nearly dropped it on the ground in doing so.

“Go easy on him,” the blacksmith said to their backs as Helsknight led them away. Tanguish didn’t know who he was talking about. What he did know, however, was the moment they left the little stalls behind, it felt as though a weight was lifted off his shoulders. Tanguish felt like he had been holding his breath through the entire interaction. His hands itched terribly, and he only knew his heart had been hammering in his chest because he could feel his heartbeat begin to slow. He looked contemplatively down at the little dagger he was holding, unsheathed it just enough to see the blue coiling of dye through the blade’s metal, and then resheathed it.

“So…” Tanguish cleared his throat and stepped a little quicker to walk alongside Helsknight, “what was that all about?”

“It’s a gift for EB.”

“Why?”

“Because he likes them,” Helsknight snapped, as if that were common knowledge. “The color blue, little knives, detail work -- it’s considerate. You ask him where Zedaph is, you give him that as a thank you, you continue your stupid Tango quest.”

“Wait, I’m talking to him?” Tanguish asked, suddenly nervous again. “But he’s--”

“You realize I am also a scary colosseum knight, right?” Helsknight interrupted. “I am the scary colosseum knight. And you straight up attacked me over your stupid hermit.”

“I know but--” Tanguish huffed a sigh. (It was hard to explain why he thought Evil Beezuma -- because EB was still too ridiculous -- was scarier than Helsknight. Maybe it was because Helsknight actually left the colosseum, so he seemed a bit more… Normal? He was a person who slept in a bed and sat at a table and griped about putting too much salt on his food. Evil Beezuma was a knight in a colosseum whose only image outside those towering walls were posters announcing his fights, and newspaper headings about all the people he had managed to kill or dismember or some other hels-sactioned violence.) “It's scary, alright? You know him. I don’t.”

“And what the hels am I supposed to do about that,” Helsknight snorted, rolling his eyes, “besides what I’m doing now, anyway?”

“He likes the color blue. And patterns. And knives.”

“He can see a straight edge.”

“He can -- what?”

“A straight edge,” Helsknight made a chopping motion with his hand, like a blade coming down. “When a sword sweeps at eye level, if it's fast it's hard to see. He can see it.”

“I’m -- I’m trying to make him less scary, Hels!”

“That’s not scary.”

“It’s swords, Hels.”

“Swords aren’t scary,” Helsknight protested, something like a snarl on his face. “And don’t call me Hels! I got knighted for a fucking reason.”

Tanguish threw his hands up in the air in exasperation. Helsknight rolled his eyes towards the sky and let out a growling huff. They walked in silence for the next two blocks, each step bringing them closer and closer to the colosseum. Tanguish could feel his heartbeat picking up again, fear and nervousness tangling in his chest. He was going to meet Evil Beezuma soon. He was going to be in the colosseum soon. It was a big place, but it was made to be watched. Tanguish couldn’t imagine there would be a lot of places to hide, only run, and if all of the knights inside were as fast as Helsknight, they could catch him. Oh, oh this was a bad idea. This was a death trap, actually. This was --

“He can see the glass in the ceiling.”

Tanguish blinked up at Helsknight, unable to make any sense of the knight’s statement. Helsknight noticed him staring, cast him a sidelong glance, and explained, “The star-glass ceiling Evil X made. It looks like a flat sheet from down here. It’s not. It's a bunch of little facets, like crystals. EB can see it.”

“Oh.” Tanguish said, glancing up at the nether roof high above them. “Why are you telling me this?”

“You wanted something less scary.”

“Oh.” Tanguish really needed to find something better to say to all the strange information Helsknight kept giving him, but ‘oh’ was about the only thing he could come up with. “Does he… like looking at the sky?”

Helsknight shrugged eloquently. “It’s got blue in it.”

Tanguish searched the sky overhead. From near the city center, it was easier to see the colors. The farther into the fringes they walked, the more ash and red haze clouded the view. He could still see glimpses of washed-out color though, like sunlight between clouds.

“You can see it better from the colosseum.” Helsknight said unprompted (because Tanguish was squinting and frowning, and having a really hard time seeing anything besides the dome of the colosseum now devouring half the horizon with its closeness). “Sometimes after a training session we’ll climb to the top. Feels like breathing fire, but it's about as close as you can get to the ceiling without getting shot by ghasts, or, you know, being Evil X.”

“I thought you said you didn’t have friends?” Tanguish asked before his thoughts could catch up with his mouth.

“I don’t.” Helsknight replied guardedly, narrowing his eyes at Tanguish in something like suspicion.

“Climbing to the top of things together is something friends do.”

“I climbed to the top of your stupid church and we aren’t friends.”

Tanguish nodded inwardly to himself, conceding the point. "You know a lot about him though."

"I'm considerate." Helsknight said tersely, like he was biting the words when he said them. He didn't sound angry exactly. Tanguish could be fooled into thinking the knight was deeply, deeply uncomfortable. "When people give you their time, you pay attention -- especially when those people are obviously going through some shit at the moment.”

Tanguish bit his tongue to keep from saying another “oh” in response. Instead, he asked: “Are you -- am I wasting your time, Hels-- Helsknight?”

“Do you think I’m wasting my time?” 

“Well, I… I don’t know. You think it’s stupid. And pointless.” Tanguish looked down at the knife in his hands, flipping it over like he could find his words etched into the crossguard. “I… should just let Tango die. Right? If I were smart. But -- you’re helping me. I appreciate it! I do. But. It. You know. It doesn’t make sense. You using your time like this. I mean -- forget Tango. You don’t even like me. You think I’m a pest. And I’m a thief. And I’ve stolen from you before. I… I should stop talking, actually.” Tanguish gave a quiet laugh. “I’m just giving you more reasons to stop helping.”

Helsknight cleared his throat uncomfortably and found something disproportionately interesting about the windows of a nearby building to study. He scratched the back of his neck awkwardly, and his long dirty-blonde hair caught in his gauntlet when he pulled his hand away. 

“You’re right, I think it’s stupid,” Helsknight agreed, still refusing to look down at Tanguish. “It’s also, in its own idiotic way, kinda brave, you going out of your way to help your pathetic little hermit. Even though that moron would kill you if he had any self-preservation whatsoever.”

Tanguish flashed a wan smile. He doubted that, but Helsknight had a lot less faith in the hermits than Tanguish did. He didn’t really expect any different.

“Bravery is important to me,” Helsknight finished, finally managing to wrench his gaze away from the nearby buildings and look down at him. “It's rare.”

“Uhm… okay. Good… good to know.” It was now Tanguish’s turn to find something interesting to stare at besides the smoldering of Helsknight’s gaze, and the naked intensity of someone revealing something deeply personal. “I’ll… remember that.”

(Because when people give you their time, you pay attention.)

“Remember it, or don’t,” Helsknight shrugged, pretending the moment hadn’t happened. “S’not like it matters in the long run.”

Tanguish thought it probably mattered, but he kept that comment to himself. They crossed into the shadow beneath the colosseum, the dark of hels somehow managing to get even darker. So close to the towering structure, Tanguish had to crane his head all the way back just to get a glimpse of the top. Between the open arches, firelight flickered from lanterns and braziers. Only half of them were lit, conserving wick and oil for days when the colosseum was in use and filled with people. Flickering movement and blotted lights marked the movement of staff and… tourists probably. This seemed like the kind of place people would visit just to say they had been there.

The entrance Helsknight walked them to was draped in banners and fabric, mostly red and orange, and dotted with the iconography of the different fighters. Hanging from the archway, taller than anyone passing through, but still intimidating to pass under given just how big and heavy it looked, was a compass star. In the columns to either side of the arch, carved into their bases, were the statues of a pair of knights, armored and severe. Helsknight walked up to one, looking childishly small in comparison. He pulled his sword from his sheathe and mirrored its pose, his hands across the pommel, the point stuck gingerly against the cobblestones, his head bowed.

Tanguish stood beside him awkwardly. After a few tense seconds, he mimicked the movement as best he could with the tiny knife in his hand, because he didn’t really know what else to do. It felt ridiculous, and silly, and vaguely sacrilegious? Because Helsknight definitely looked like he was praying, which Tanguish should have expected, because knights had tenets and their tenets were dictated by churches, and Helsknight definitely had a church. But Tanguish didn’t know what Helsknight worshiped? If he worshiped anything specific besides just… the idea of knighthood or something. And in theory they’d only been standing there for, max, two minutes, but Tanguish was starting to feel watched for some reason -- not because he was actually being watched, he’d checked -- but because they’d just been standing still for so long. And--

Helsknight sheathed his sword, cracked his neck, and then his knuckles, and pulled his helmet from his inventory.

“You remember what I said about wasting people’s time?” Helsknight asked Tanguish. “The colosseum fighters are impatient people. They’re giving their time willingly to entertaining people, and sating a lot of bloodlusts from a lot of idiot helsmets who would be at each others’ throats otherwise. Respect their time. Honor their sacrifices.”

Helsknight slipped his helmet on. “And relax. They don’t bite. Well -- not outside of the arena anyway.”

Helsknight entered the colosseum. After a bracing breath of his own, and a nervous curse, Tanguish followed.

Chapter Text

Tanguish didn't know what to expect when it came to the colosseum, so instead of expecting anything and being overwhelmed, he decided to expect nothing. He soaked in everything he saw with the understanding that he was way out of his depth and likely to get lost the minute Helsknight left him alone. At least the building was mostly empty, or it seemed so in the outer rings. Their footsteps echoed on the tiles in a way that made Tanguish think of empty caverns, and he found himself glancing up at the vaults in the ceiling, waiting for a spider or creeper to spawn in the dark corners. 

Tanguish's first impression was that, well, it was all very grand, wasn't it? 

The colosseum was a ringed building, each layer beckoning them deeper with glimpses of the arena beyond. A forest of columns that would have made old growth spruce look small, all crowned with floral carvings, lifted vaulted ceilings tiled with glittering mosaics of timeless battles. Knights and dangerous looking creatures from matches past bled and died and respawned in an eternal river of colors guttering in the lantern light overhead. Beneath their feet,  blackstone and glazed terracotta tiles cut in the likeness of swords and shields pointed them in towards the arena floor, occasionally broken by directional arrows that dictated the flow of foot traffic. In the gaps between columns and walls, statues of champions watched them pass with severe, indecipherable gazes, judging their merit with the same mute ferocity as the gargoyles on a church roof. In the dim light of the flickering braziers, they looked almost alive, the shadows of their faces dancing in subtly shifting expressions, their eyes dark beneath helms and crowns. Occasionally a voice or the sound of footsteps would echo in the distance, someone passing through just as Tanguish and Helsknight did, and Tanguish had to wonder if they were as awed and intimidated by the space as he was. 

"Ah man," Helsknight sighed dreamily, snapping Tanguish out of his reverie, "didn’t realize I’d missed this place."

"You haven't been here in awhile?"

"Couple weeks."

"Why?"

"I'm not in the crowd's favor right now," Helsknight shrugged. "Last match was a bit of a wash."

"I thought you were the current champion?" Tanguish asked, glancing up at a passing statue. (Did Helsknight have a statue in here? Probably. He wondered what it looked like, and then looked at Helsknight and stopped wondering.) 

"I am. That's the problem." There was a sneer of annoyance in Helsknight's voice that transcended the helm hiding his expression. "They paired me up with some idiot duelist who was new to the floor and wanted to get some quick notoriety."

"Did you win?"

"I wiped the floor with him," Helsknight said, as if needing to explain that water was wet. They walked in silence just long enough for Tanguish to wonder how winning could be a bad thing when the knight continued. "Crowds don't like easy fights. They like to watch you struggle and bleed. It's more exciting. And when you give a crowd an underdog? They want the underdog to win, or at least get a few good hits in before he goes down. They don't want the star knight to come storming out and just--"

Helsknight made a dramatic hand motion that was probably supposed to mean something -- some flourish or sword stroke.

“The original plan was for me to do some grandstanding, get kicked around a little, make it interesting. But he pissed me off so--” Helsknight gave another of what Tanguish was starting to learn was a large repertoire of shrugs.

“Is that… bad?” Tanguish asked hesitantly. “I mean -- how do you fix something like that?”

“Time. Distance. A necessary evil.” Helsknight messed with the buckle on one of his gauntlets, making sure it was snug. “There’s a tournament next week. They make me the big bad guy at the end of the bracket, me and some crowd favorite try to lop each others’ heads off for half an hour. Toss some big monster on the field in the second half so we’re forced to work together to kill it. Then I’m back to being a cute little hero with severe anger problems.”

Helsknight said the phrase "cute little hero" the same way someone else might describe particularly disgusting vermin. Tanguish thought about asking Helsknight to elaborate, and then decided maybe it was a topic they shouldn't venture towards. He didn't need to make Helsknight unpleasant. Or… more unpleasant. Though, Helsknight did seem marginally less unpleasant than normal. He wasn't insulting Tanguish for a start, just talking about things that interested him. Tanguish might even fool himself into thinking the knight was relaxing a little. Maybe the colosseum brought him comfort?

The trail of columns and statues ended abruptly. Tanguish stepped through a doorway on Helsknight's heels to find he was suddenly standing between two seating blocks. There was a bannister in front of him, behind which the world dropped into a massive pit of soulsand, blackstone and netherrack: the arena floor. It was massive. It had to be, to justify such a large building around it. Still, the suddenness of how wide and open and large the space was gave Tanguish vertigo. He stood against the railing, hands clenched around it like he was scared he would tumble in. The arching ring of seats loomed up in every direction, and he felt like they were leaning on his shoulders, pressing him towards the magnetism of the center. 

(It was like its own little world! Trees and embankments and an artificial hill. Who had built this? Who had that kind of time? It must have taken ages. It was the only thing Tanguish had ever seen in hels that looked anything like the massive builds on Hermitcraft. It was awesome -- and it made him think of Tango.) 

Then Tanguish realized Helsknight hadn't stopped walking, and he ran to catch up, wobbling on unsteady legs, still convinced he would start falling. Helsknight found his way to a ladder and swung a leg over the edge of the bannister, clearing intending to descend. 

Tanguish gave a squeak of alarm. "What are you doing?"

"The cells are on the other side of the arena," Helsknight informed him, annoyance making its way into his voice. "I'm not walking all the way around the colosseum."

"But-- we can't just-- I can't--"

"Hey!!" Helsknight bellowed, leaning over the rail to scream across the arena. Tanguish flinched at the sudden loudness. He expected Helsknight's voice to echo, but the build was so big, it just didn't. "Anyone care if my stupid tagalong walks on our sacred arena floor?" 

Helsknight tilted his head to the side, as though waiting patiently for a response from the empty seats. Then he glared in Tanguish's direction and ushered grandly to the stadium, "No one gives a shit. But by all means, feel free to walk around." Then he pulled his other leg around the bannister and slid down the ladder. Tanguish wrung his hands nervously for a moment, seriously considered going around, and, knowing he would get lost if he did, scrambled down after Helsknight. He ran to catch up, his feet slipping in the loose soil, and nearly grabbed Helsknight's cape to slow him down.

It was terribly, horribly open down here. Tanguish felt like an insect crawling across some massive enclosure. The walls pinned him in, and the arc of the ceiling high above caged him down, and yet still it was all so big it made his head spin. He felt nauseous, and nervous, and his heart fluttered in his chest, and he thought, at this moment, the only thing he wanted in the world was to slip through his reflection on the coin in his pocket and disappear.

"This is terrifying," Tanguish whispered, more to himself than anyone else.

"It's a hole in the ground," Helsknight said, clearly unimpressed.

"And you're a jerk," Tanguish snapped, because he was scared, and fear was starting to make him angry (Ugh, emotions. He still didn't like those). "But fine, whatever. You're probably used to this."

Helsknight shrugged. "You don't get used to it. The fear just takes a different shape."

Well… that was cryptic, dramatic and unhelpful. (Or, maybe it was a little helpful, because Tanguish was so busy trying to puzzle out what in the hels that statement could possibly mean, that he forgot to be scared for a solid ten steps.)

The loose soil beneath their feet gave way to gravel and blackstone, and then a small hill, and then they were past it and striding towards a portcullis-like gate Tanguish hadn’t noticed on the far side of the arena. Laughter bounced up from inside it, muffled and distorted by its echo. The gate itself looked heavy and unwieldy, but Helsknight opened it with practiced ease, and Tanguish had to wonder if the thing was on pulleys. 

“This place is a maze to newcomers,” Helsknight told him as they moved back through a long hall. Long benches with lockboxes beneath lined both sides of the long corridor, and weapons and armor draped themselves ominously across wracks hanging from the walls. The place had a haunting, inanimate presence, silently waiting for its next chance to be used. It felt a bit like entering a dungeon, or what Tanguish assumed a dungeon would be like. “Stay close, stay out of other people’s business and--”

“--don’t steal anything,” Tanguish finished, cutting the knight off. “I get it.”

“Oh, by all means, steal at your own risk,” Helsknight chuckled, a cruel smile in his voice. “Just don’t expect me to save you when you get caught.”

Another burst of sound echoed to them from downstairs, a shout or a particularly loud laugh. Helsknight led the way down, and Tanguish had to walk a few steps behind him to keep from stepping on his cape. (Tanguish had never realized how inconvenient capes were before. Sure it made the knight look bigger and fancier and more intimidating, but he couldn't imagine it would be helpful in a fight. All that fabric was just waiting to be yanked or pulled or tripped on or cut. Then again, Helsknight had been wearing the cape when Tanguish had ambushed him, and, well, that had gone about as well as one would expect.) 

They emerged into a spacious, if utilitarian, common room of sorts. There was a bar-kitchen area against the right wall. Tables and chairs made a cluttered mess in the center of the room, splitting in the middle just enough for people to walk through to the other side. On the left, tools, work benches, and furnaces in various states of repair lay patiently waiting for their use. Nothing by way of decoration marked the place, but the overall well-kept worn-ness of it all made it seem almost cozy, like a favorite reading chair. 

There were people here too. A pair of tired-looking knights (At least, Tanguish assumed everyone here was a knight. He didn't really know for sure. Were all the colosseum fighters knighted? He should probably have asked that at some point, so he wouldn't accidentally insult someone.) hovered over the stove in the kitchen area, making breakfast and talking in hushed tones. Another four sat at a corner table, keeping enthusiastic company, and making another rueful group two tables away miserable with their early-morning spirit. One of the grindstones in the work area was spinning, and someone was stacking swords beside it, preparing to sharpen up the blades for a match. On the far side of the room, where another corridor branched into stairs, two more knights were entering, and one of them was caught mid-yawn.

Given Helsknight's general notoriety, Tanguish had expected their entrance to garner more of a reaction than it did. At the very least, he'd expected a few glares. Instead, one of the corner group waved a greeting -- something the rest of his group laughed at, in that way familiar friends laugh at anything when they've been in high spirits. One of the knights cooking turned around long enough to clock who had entered before getting back to their task. The knight laying out blades to grind did a double-take over their shoulder before stopping what they were doing to lean against the nearby wall, arms crossed, paying attention but overall unamused. Everyone else ignored him completely, and Helsknight didn't offer any conversation of his own, simply nodding to the people who acknowledged him and continuing on his way. It was incredibly, anticlimactically, underwhelmingly normal. 

(So much for 'The Champion of Hels', Tanguish thought. As far as everyone in here seemed concerned, Helsknight was just another knight. Then again, maybe that's just how these sorts of people were. Helsknight himself wasn't all that showy, unless he was angry at something, in which case he got infinitely more dramatic. His whole "Whatever you want, you'll have to fight for it, now off with your head," speech came to mind. Tanguish was starting to figure out that was probably a side-effect of getting mad and swinging a sword in front of a massive audience several times a month, and not just a feature of Helsknight's bristly personality.)

Tanguish followed in Helsknight's shadow as they crossed the common room, then down the following staircase and into another set of hallways. There was a foyer lined with books, where a knight with some pretty angry facial scars lounged in obvious boredom, a book in her hand, her posture clashing so harshly with her grizzled look it bordered on laughably ridiculous. Without even glancing up, she said, "You've got someone looking for you."

"I'm aware." Helsknight answered without stopping.

"Does that happen often?" Tanguish asked, his voice more brittle and quiet than he would've liked. He couldn't help being intimidated though. He was surrounded by a lot of dangerous people, and while none of them had a reason to harm him, the fact they were all capable shook him more than it probably should. It felt like navigating a tightrope made of bear traps, or a den full of sleeping wolves, or some other equally nerve-wracking thing. "People looking for you, that is."

Helsknight shrugged. "It happens."

"Is it… someone we should be worried about?"

"Do you plan on defending my honor if he shows up?"

"No."

"Then shut up about it." Helsknight growled the phrase in a way that reminded Tanguish of a bristling dog. “It’s my problem, not our problem.”

“But it is a problem?”

Helsknight looked like he was about to say something, not because Tanguish could see his expression -- the helm was still snugly in place, obscuring the knight’s face from view -- but because there was a flicker of light there, a spark of bitter fire in his eyes that said he was getting annoyed, or angry, or some similar unpleasant emotion, and he leaned towards Tanguish like he was about to start looming. 

Then a voice, sounding pleasantly surprised, said, “Hello hello, what’s all this then?”

Helsknight stopped walking abruptly and one of the walls -- which Tanguish was starting to realize were actually closed, brick-laid doorways -- slid open with the churn of firing pistons. The man inside was a head shorter than Helsknight, but still just tall enough that Tanguish had to tilt his head a little to make eye contact. His hair was tied back with a black headband, and red eyes mirrored the color of his shirt. The room behind him vanished into a field of banners, alternating zig-zag patterns of white and red interspersed with black canvases embroidered with handprints made a solid curtain, almost a second wall. In the glimpse of some of them settling, Tanguish saw a wooden table and chairs, rare and expensive things in a world made of netherrack and blackstone. The knight looked the two of them up and down, his intelligent, scrutinizing gaze lingering on Tanguish just a second longer than it needed to, before he beamed up at Helsknight. “Well, look what the ghasts dragged in!”

“Hand,” Helsknight greeted with an understated uptilt of his head that was… honestly… ridiculously formal.

“Just Martyn is fine, when RK isn’t around,” Hand (Martyn?) smiled, leaning against his open doorway and crossing his arms. “Never cared too much about borrowing names, you know?”

Now that one doorway had opened, the whole corridor seemed to start moving, doorways appearing in what had once been a solid brick wall. Some peaked open, only curious about the noise, and once sated, sealing their doors shut again to catch more sleep. A few opened completely, knights stepping out and yawning and stretching, and begrudgingly committing to the day. More still stayed closed, but Tanguish had learned to find their seams, and it was disturbing knowing so many people were here hiding behind walls. Helsknight hadn’t been joking when he said the place was a maze.

Speaking of, the two knights were talking. Tanguish hovered quietly in Helsknight’s shadow as they did so, listening but not really comprehending the topic. There was something to do with a fight, something else to do with general upkeep of the cells (that’s where they were, the cells. Tanguish had to wonder why they were called that) and every few sentences, Martyn dropped the name “RK” like it was important. And maybe it was. Tanguish certainly didn’t know enough about the colosseum and its fighters to know who everyone was. Already there were more of them here than he realized. 

Eventually Helsknight held up a hand, pausing the conversation for a moment. He glanced down at Tanguish and said, “EB is that way.” He pointed down the hall with a gauntleted hand, “Go to the second staircase, take it down two flights, turn left and keep walking until you find his cell.”

“EB?” Martyn asked, raising his eyebrows, “Someone’s got important business.”

“It’s just business,” Helsknight corrected mildly. 

“U-uhm… what if I get lost?” Tanguish stammered.

“Take any staircase to the top floor,” Helsknight instructed him. “All those corridors lead back to the common room. Ask anyone there to send you to my cell, and if they give you a hard time, ask someone else.”

“But--”

“Do you want to find him, or not?”

Tanguish looked down at his feet for a moment, feeling… something hard to place. Frustration and anxiety coiled like snakes in his stomach, chewing themselves up into a new and distinctly unpleasant feeling he didn’t really have a word for. Then, when he couldn’t find a compelling reason for Helsknight to finish his conversation and resume escorting him down the hall, he silently turned and padded off. Behind him, Martyn continued talking as though he’d never interrupted, only stopping when Tanguish was too far away to hear him. 

It was a long walk when everything looked the same. 

Tanguish was really starting to doubt another staircase existed in the long hall (cell block?) until he finally passed it, and even then, it was such a small and hard to find doorway, that Tanguish nearly convinced himself he’d missed the first staircase when he finally, mercifully, stumbled into the second. Someone was coming up while Tanguish was descending, leading to an awkward shuffle in the confined space as they tried to wriggle around each other. The staircase itself was a tight spiral, the ceiling claustrophobically close, the lamplight just spaced out enough to leave him in pitch blackness halfway through every turn, and it went down for so long Tanguish had to wonder if he wasn’t going straight down to bedrock. He couldn’t imagine living here, so far away from the open sky and rooftops. Again, Tanguish found his mind wandering towards escape, and what would happen if, for some reason, he needed to run quickly out of here, only to decide the answer to the problem was no quick exit existed. If he wanted to go anywhere, it would come after climbing up several winding staircases.

Finally, Tanguish stumbled onto the floor he needed, or at the very least the one he thought he needed, and into a corridor that was so dark, there were times between lanterns where he could only see his hands by the glowing sculk-light freckles. Most of the doorways down here were open, revealing black depths beyond, empty. One or two he passed were closed, soft light spilling through the seams of the doorways. How was he supposed to know which one of these belonged to Evil Beesuma? None of the doorways were marked, that he could tell. No letters or numbers distinguished them from each other. There was only the claustrophobic dark interspersed by signs of life. But he'd been told to keep walking so Tanguish kept walking. At least he hadn't passed another stairwell. He knew, if nothing else, that at any time he could simply turn around and find the stairs.

One of the doors was buzzing. Tanguish heard it before he saw the source. At first, he thought his ears were playing tricks on him, offering him a noise to offset all the gloomy nothing that was down here. When the buzzing got louder, he realized he was approaching whatever the source of the noise was. When he found the source, it made his skin crawl, and Tanguish gave a full-body shudder that jarred his teeth together. 

The door was crawling. 

Thousands of tiny buzzing insects scurried all over it, and in the dim light the door looked like it was writhing. A few of the insects made lazy patterns in the air, knocked from their perches by the pressing bodies of those around them. They were bees, Tanguish realized, or rather, they were little machines shaped like bees. Tanguish didn't know much about redstone (he had learned some from Tango, basic circuits and a few technical terms, but Tango didn't really stop and explain how things worked while he was making them. He just said what the machine was supposed to do, and make exasperated noises when it didn't work.) but he recognized the distinct, biting smell redstone made when circuits fired, and the bees' stripes, while painted yellow, still sparked red when energy discharged. Tanguish looked up at the scurrying door, the hive surrounding it, and wondered in a sort of muted horror if knocking would swarm all the little machines. He couldn't see any stingers on the buzzing army, but a thousand tiny redstone shocks would feel about as pleasant. 

"Uhm… hello?" Tanguish called tentatively. Then, when nothing happened, he called again, "I'm uh… I'm here to see Evil Beezuma?"

The buzzing stopped. Not abruptly. It was like a tide rolling out. Somewhere in the center of the door a bee stopped buzzing its wings, and then the bees beside it, and then the bees beside them. A cascade of silence fell on the hallway, leaving the memory of the buzzing loud in his ears. Even those that had been flying landed and stilled. The tiny mechanical bees started crawling through the cracks in the doorway, spots of light sometimes shining between their shells. When the door was clear, it opened.

The room inside was bright, and golden, and so dazzling compared to the corridor, Tanguish's eyes watered. He had to shield his face and blink tears away, waiting for his eyes to adjust. Tanguish's first look inside the cell was tear-streaked, but managed to be impressive regardless. The room was large, not larger than Tanguish's favorite roof, but certainly larger than Helsknight's tiny house. Hexagonal shapes broke up the space, making up for missing walls. A table and chairs sectioned off the kitchen from the main living space. A bed, rug and bedside table sectioned off another portion of the room. Something like a tool bench and building equipment sectioned off another, and so on. Even the walls, covered in gold, yellow and amber panels, changed color according to the space they were part of. It gave the cell the feeling of walls without ever actually committing to them. At the back of the room, hovering over a soldering iron and surrounded by a cloud of bees, stood the imposing figure of one of the previous Champions of Hels, before Helsknight swept in and claimed the title for himself. 

Evil Beezuma was… well, he was large, but in the odd, disproportional way an enderman was large. He was tall, all triangular shapes and willow limbs. When he straightened from his work, it had the effect of making him look distended, like his body telescoped taller than it really should be. There was a solid half a minute where Tanguish couldn’t make sense of his arms, either. He was clutching one of the little robots in his hands, while somehow at the same time holding his hands at his sides, fingertips stopping just above his knees, and it was only after much confusion that Tanguish realized the knight had four arms. It took longer still for Tanguish to realize the odd, reflective surface of his body was because he was some kind of robot. Not that that was particularly strange -- helsmets came in all shapes and sizes -- it was just that, given the name, Tanguish had kind of assumed Evil Beezuma was a literal bee, and not just someone who was incredibly on brand. Tanguish’s next surprise came when the knight spoke. It seemed like the entire room was suddenly vibrating, all the little bee-bots buzzing their wings, as the lights on Evil Beezuma’s face (which Tanguish assumed were eyes, given the placement) narrowed. It felt less like Tanguish heard the words out loud, and more like they had somehow vibrated their way into his thoughts.

“Who in hels are you, and what do you want?”

“Oh, uhm--”

“You some kind of vampire?”

Tanguish opened his mouth, closed it again, glanced down at himself and asked, “Do I… look like a vampire? No, I’m not a vampire.”

“Then step inside and close the door behind you."

Tanguish hesitated, glancing back the direction he’d come and making a hearty effort not to fidget. Oh, he wished he wasn’t here alone. He… definitely wished he were somewhere he could run. And now he was being asked to come inside and close a door, and the room wasn’t small, but the person inside it could hurt him, just like everyone else in here could. Colosseum fighters. People like Helsknight. 

People like Helskight.

People who respected bravery, because it was rare, and probably because they used it every time they stepped onto the arena sand. People who had a moral code they followed, that seemed to involve only hitting things once they’d hit you first. People who valued time.

Tanguish was wasting time.

Heart hammering, hands secured under his armpits to keep them from shaking or wandering, Tanguish stepped into the room. He glanced back at the door, found that there was a handhold near the side, and slid it shut. A few of the little bee robots scattered when he did so, climbing out of nooks and crannies in the seam of the door. 

“Uhm, I’m, my name is Tanguish.” He began, trying not to stammer. He stepped carefully across the room, like if he touched anything it would shatter like glass. It helped that every surface seemed to have at least ten bees sitting on it, humming and watching and going about their business. He didn’t think they were like real bees? But he really had no idea. “I’m -- I was told to talk to you. That is, uhm, I’m looking for someone you might know?”

Tanguish remembered, belatedly, that he should probably be making eye-contact while he talked, instead of staring down at the hexagonal tiles that made up the floor. Evil Beezuma and his tiny entourage had approached as Tanguish was talking, long legs covering the space in a handful of strides. A loud buzzing Tanguish hadn’t noticed turned into words in his head.

“--got to look at me when you talk! There.” Evil Beezuma gestured with one of his hands, pointing from his eyes to Tanguish. “Right there.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, yes, it’s all very frustrating with you nervous types.” Evil Beezuma rolled his eyes, and the moment he looked upwards, the sound of his voice faded out into something like radio static. By the end of the sentence, he was looking back at Tanguish again, and like a radio re-tuning itself, the sound was clear and loud again. “Who sent you? Obviously, someone who knows where I live.”

“Helsknight.” Tanguish answered, then realizing he’d looked away again, made pointed eye contact and repeated. “Helsknight sent me.”

Evil Beezuma put his hands, all four of them, on his sides. It made an interesting zig-zag pattern that further confused the black and yellow stripes on his body. “Helsknight?” he looked to one of the little bees buzzing beside him conspiratorially. “Is he here?”

“No. Well, yes, but he’s upstairs.” Tanguish pointed up. “He was going to come with me but he got stopped by someone.”

“So what did he send you to me for?”

Tanguish tried to remember if he was making eye contact when he was speaking earlier, and realized he couldn’t remember. The minute he’d walked past the threshold, everything had narrowed down to nervous sensations. Right. He needed to focus. He was here for a reason. At least Evil Beezuma didn’t seem to be carrying swords around everywhere like Helsknight did. Right. Okay. Okay. Eye contact.

“I’m looking for Zedaph. Or -- his helsmet? I don’t -- I don’t know if he goes by another name.” Evil Beezuma narrowed his eyes down at Tanguish again, and he found himself babbling. “It’s -- I’m Tanguish -- I mean -- I already introduced myself. Not. My name’s not important. It’s, I’m Tango’s hels? You, you know who all the hermits are, right? Anyway, it’s not, I’m not asking because I want to hurt him, or anything. I’m just trying to track down -- Helsknight says I can’t talk to Impulse’s hels? Because he holds grudges. I don’t think I’ve ever crossed him before but-- I um--”

Tanguish managed to stop his word-vomit before it went any further. He took a deep breath and looked down at his feet for a moment, collecting himself before looking up again. Evil Beezuma’s head had tilted to the side slowly as Tanguish had spoken, scrutinizing him with something between suspicion and mild curiosity. 

“I’m sorry,” Tanguish laughed tensely. “You colosseum knights terrify me.”

It was probably something he shouldn’t have admitted out loud. It was the sort of thing that scary, harmful people would use against him, and as far as he knew, colosseum knights were the scariest, most harmful people you could come by. Surprisingly though, Evil Beezuma just snorted something like a laugh, and waved a hand dismissively, clearing the air. When he did so, his cloud of little robots dispersed, landing on the wall tiles and stilling there.

“Not a knight,” Evil Beezuma corrected mildly. “I don’t do the whole church, tenet, tithe thing. Most of us just go by fighter, or gladiator if you’re feeling impressive.”

“Oh.”

“You’re one of Helsknight’s, though?”

“Uhm… I’m sorry, I don’t know what that means.”

“He picked you up and started dragging you around, solving problems?”

(Huh. So this was something Helsknight did often then? Maybe bravery wasn’t as rare a trait as he made it sound.)

“Yeah. I guess.”

“We’re not all that grim.” Evil Beezuma informed him, and this time when his eyes narrowed, Tanguish got the impression of humor. “Helsknight just takes himself way too seriously.”

Tanguish couldn’t stop a furtive glance to the side, suddenly afraid the knight might hear them talking.

“It’s nothing I haven’t told him to his face before,” Evil Beezuma chuckled, and then jerked his head in the direction of his kitchen area, his voice fading in and out with the movement. “Look over here.”

Tanguish followed obediently, mostly because he didn’t know what else to do, and refusing seemed recklessly rude. Evil Beezuma was… a lot less hostile than Tanguish had figured a colosseum kni-- fighter would be. He kind of figured they would all be prickly and unpleasant, or at least vaguely more Helsknight-ish and proud in demeanor. The fact that he wasn’t, was honestly, kind of off-putting. It was unexpected, and it left Tanguish feeling off-balance. He didn’t know what to expect next. So when Evil Beezuma ushered to a picture frame on the wall above his table, sporting a metal plate inscribed with some kind of poetry, Tanguish found himself looking for something insidious in it.

“Have you seen the colosseum? The jaws, the stands, the banners, and blood? The crowds, the roaring magnanimous flood? Their voices, the ocean, the pulse in your ears, the shape of their outcry, the shape of your fear. Your sword is the lightning, the thunder their praise, the silence befallen your hand when it's stayed. You should see the colosseum, the fights in the sand, your soul in your teeth and your glory demand. As if you were thunder, the god of the storm, you, gladiator, the proud and hels-born.”

Evil Beezuma crossed his arms, looking down at Tanguish smugly. “Good right?”

Tanguish, who knew absolutely nothing about poetry, nodded his head.

“Helsknight wrote that.”

“He didn’t.”

Evil Beezuma’s grin was of the psychic variety, more felt in the air and his posture than anything else. “He did. The man’s a dork. You know he writes all his villain speeches too?”

Tanguish let out a snort, and then covered his mouth to try and keep from laughing.

“Go ahead. It’s funny.” Evil Beezuma grinned. “All that doom and gloom all the time, and I promise you he practices his delivery in the mirror every night.”

Tanguish grinned and ran a hand through his hair, reading over the poem again. He really didn’t know anything about poetry, but there was something uniquely ridiculous about imagining Helsknight in full plate leaning over a journal, trying to figure out how to rhyme born and storm. Evil Beezuma nudged him to get his attention again. “So you’re looking for Zed, are you?”

“Yeah.” Tanguish had to stifle the urge to nod. “You work with him?”

“He helped me make my buzzers,” Evil Beezuma held out a hand, and one of the mechanical bees landed on his fingers. “They’re handy little things. Help me do repairs.” Evil Beezuma stopped talking long enough to watch the bee crawl across his hand, and then fly away again. “Haven’t seen him in a while.”

“Do you know where I can find him?”

“Yeah. He’s got a house just south of the Watcher’s Den. No cell. He’s not one of us.” Evil Beezuma ushered to the room around him. “I’ll give you his address if you deliver a letter to him for me. Need the bugger back here to help me build something else, and I haven’t had time to track him down myself.”

“Oh, yeah I can do that,” Tanguish smiled, his heart fluttering in something closer to hope than his previous fear. “Thank you.”

“Make sure Helsknight knows he owes me one,” Evil Beezuma smirked in response. He went to rifle through his work bench, finally pulling out a rumbled letter, sealed with a little bee-shaped stamp. He looked down at it, paused, and then said, “Actually, you said Helsknight was here?”

He offered the envelope, and Tanguish took it gratefully. “Yeah, he is. He was having me meet him in his cell later.”

“Haven’t seen him in a while either.” Evil Beezuma looked off into the middle distance for a moment, and Tanguish thought he could hear mechanical clicking as the android thought something over. “You know how to get to his cell?”

“Uhm… no, I don’t.”

Evil Beezuma rolled his eyes. “I’ll give you directions there too. Tell him to stay put. I want to talk to him before he leaves.”

Tanguish nodded, and stood patiently as Evil Beezuma scribbled down a page full of directions. Tanguish thanked him, started to leave, and then stopped abruptly. “Oh! I got-- wait. Right.” He turned to face Evil Beezuma again, making pointed eye contact. “I have something for you. To thank you.”

Tanguish rifled through his inventory, producing the little dagger Helsknight had given him. Evil Beezuma took a guarded step back when Tanguish offered it, suspicious, maybe, that Tanguish was going to throw it. When he didn’t, Evil Beezuma took it and looked it over. Tanguish shifted on his feet awkwardly, not sure if he should just leave or wait to be dismissed. Evil Beezuma gave the little knife an experimental toss, watching it spin in the air before catching it deftly. “Huh… nice.” He walked to the nearest wall and kicked it. A panel Tanguish hadn’t even noticed slid outward, showing row upon row of collected knives. Now it was Tanguish’s turn to take a guarded step away. He’d been put at ease by the lack of visual weapons in the place. Suddenly the walls seemed more dangerous than they had been before. Evil Beezuma gently placed the little blue dagger amongst the rest of his collection, gave the lot an appraising look, and then snatched one out from one of the back rows. He turned and gently lobbed the still-sheathed weapon in Tanguish’s direction. He just barely managed to catch it before it hit the ground.

“A trade,” Evil Beezuma said, his voice still smiling.

“Oh… thank you,” Tanguish hummed, looking down at the silver sheathe in his hand. He turned it over once, then, deciding it was probably rude to stand there and appraise it in front of its previous owner, bid Evil Beezuma an awkward goodbye and disappeared back out into the dark hall.

Chapter Text

By some unfortunate miracle, it took far longer for Tanguish to find his way out of Evil Beezuma's cell block than it had to find his way in. Compared to the dazzling bright of the fighter's cell, the hallway was pitch black and disorienting. Tanguish half expected to stumble into someone in the dark, and when he didn't, it made him feel lost. He wished he had a light. His hearing was good, and he had a sense about him for finding obstacles (Probably something to do with the sculk lights on his skin. That made logical sense to him.) but it didn't make the dark any less stifling. If anything, it made the world feel more surreal and ephemeral, like he was lost in a particularly confusing dream. He passed dark, opened doorways, and got glimpses and impressions of their insides. Shadows casting shadows. 

Aside from a handful of closed doors streaming dim light from their cracks, it seemed like Evil Beezuma was alone down here. There was something mournful in that, a baleful desertedness. The cells down here didn't feel new. They didn't feel like they were waiting. Many of them didn't even feel empty. They felt a good deal like a bunch of people just got up and left one day, leaving chairs half-pulled from tables, axes, and swords half-sharpened, and dirty dishes still in the sink. If it all wasn’t so cataclysmically haunted, Tanguish might be tempted to step inside one of the rooms and see what had been left behind. The thought, when it crossed his mind, made him shiver. He felt disrespectful, like desecrating a grave, just by entertaining it. 

At length, Tanguish made his way to a stairwell. It wasn't the stairwell he'd come down. Instead of a tight spiral, it zig-zagged jaggedly upwards, lit by a single lantern somewhere out of sight at its top. Tanguish stood by it for a moment, contemplating walking back to find the spiral staircase he obviously missed, and then decided he didn't want to be in this gloomy place any longer than necessary. He started climbing stairs.

Once it was light enough to see, Tanguish read through Evil Beezuma's directions. He was relieved to see there were two sets: one from Evil Beezuma's cell, and one from the common room. Tanguish sighed with relief, and then committed to the ordeal of a long and exhausting climb. He quickly decided he hated this place, maze that it was. The stairs he was on didn't go all the way to the top, instead stopping a flight and a half up, opening up into a short side corridor with only two rooms, and then continuing on to another half flight before ending abruptly down a cell block. It was the most confusing, vindictive, malicious place Tanguish had ever seen, and he had run on rooftops half submerged in cascading lava before.

At least it got lighter the further up he went. The upper floors were significantly more inhabited, and so sported more lanterns and half-opened doorways with pouring light. There were also more people, which, while terrifying because all those people were fighters, at least gave Tanguish the comfort of asking for directions if he somehow got hopelessly lost. It intrigued him that they were all so… pretty. The people. The fighters. The colosseum attracted a certain type of person, and that certain type of person seemed to be of the heroically chiseled statue variety. It was less that they were all physically attractive (very few of them were) and more that everyone seemed to move with certainty, like they were casually falling into place exactly where they were supposed to be. He felt clumsy and awkward by comparison, bumping into people and things, apologizing, tripping on haphazard staircases and overall being… himself. 

(This. This was why he liked hanging out with Tango. There was a certain comfort in being around someone who was so much like you. Both of them were clumsy and inelegant, and laughed at the same stupid things. It made being who he was feel normal. He missed it desperately, and stuck his hand in his pocket to run a clawed finger across his coin. He wasn’t going to use it, but the touch made his skin itch, and his chest feel tight. It would be a sprint and a scramble to escape from this place if he ran, but if he slipped into his coin…)

Tanguish, eventually, on burning legs and bitter knees, found his way back to the common room. He sighed ruefully, knowing his journey was only half over. He found a corner to study his directions, read them over a few times to commit them to memory, and then started walking again. Back down the stairs (two flights!), turn left down the corridor. Walk until the t-fork in the tunnels, turn right. If you pass the weapon’s cache, you’ve gone the wrong direction-- and on it went. Tanguish picked the right turn at the t-fork, and so didn’t have to figure out what the weapon’s cache was. He had his nose back down in his directions, meandering along an empty corridor, when a familiar voice lilted from a nearby doorway.

“So, who’s the charity case?”

“He’s not a charity case,” Helsknight replied, his voice clipped and tight.

"Well, he's sure no colosseum fighter, is he?"

Helsknight snorted, "Definitely not."

"Thank heavens. I was starting to worry you'd taken on a squire."

Tanguish abruptly stopped walking. 

They were talking about him. 

(Well, maybe that was a little self-centered. They could be talking about anyone. But given the pronouns, the whole “charity case” thing, and what Evil Beezuma had said about Tanguish “being one of Helsknight’s”, he didn’t know who else they could possibly be talking about. He should probably stop them. It was, really, incredibly rude to talk about someone behind their back.) 

Tanguish glanced around the corridor, making sure it was empty. Then, his skin prickling with unease, he padded forward, each footfall more silent than his half-held breathing. 

(Really if they didn’t want him listening, they shouldn’t be talking about him, should they?)

"Does your church even do squires?"

"I got knighted somehow, didn't I?"

"Huh... I can’t imagine you as a squire. I always sort of figured you'd spawned into this world knighted and high-horsed."

"High-horsed?" Helsknight snapped, and there was a flicker of movement inside the nearby doorway that made Tanguish freeze again. It took him a moment to realize that movement had been a reflection. There was a shield hanging on the wall inside the cell in front of him. He could just barely see it from his angle down the hall, and through its polished reflection, he could see Helsknight. The fighter he was talking to was the same one who stopped him in the hall earlier (Hand “dramatic over-dignified nod” but you can call me Martyn when RK isn’t around). 

“My bad. You call that chivalry, don't you?" The Hand chuckled, smiling slyly.

“It’s got nothing to do with chivalry. I just like giving people a fighting chance.”

"Ri-ight, right. Your hobby.”

Helsknight grunted in reply and shuffled something over. His back was to the shield, and he was leaning over a table. Going through papers maybe? It really was hard to tell. Shields weren't made to be good mirrors. The Hand was leaning against the wall beside him, arms crossed, looking something like smug. 

“We have been… meanin’ to speak with ye about yer hobby.” This third voice was new, and it belonged to someone standing at the wrong angle to be seen through the shield. Tanguish wouldn’t have known he was there, if he hadn’t spoken. His voice was deep like gravel, and tumbled and meandered when the speaker worked his way around certain words, like the sounds were swallowed wrong. “It seems to be takin’ up a lot of yer time, lad.”

“What do you care what I do with my time?” Helsknight asked scathingly, not looking up from whatever he was doing at the table. Tanguish was increasingly sure it was going through paperwork. He couldn’t imagine what a colosseum knight would need paperwork for, but the way Helsknight focused on it, it seemed important -- or an important distraction anyway.

The Hand looked over his shoulder to the person Tanguish couldn’t see.

“Methinks… perhaps… ye be distancing yourself from more important matters,” the new voice said with something approaching gentleness, like he was feeling his way onto thin ice. “Wounded animals like to hide.”

Helsknight stopped what he was doing, but didn’t look up from the table. “Is that what you think I am? A wounded animal?”

The room fell silent for a long and brittle moment. Tanguish almost had time to feel guilty about eavesdropping. This was a deeply private conversation, or it was turning into one, and he was starting to think he should start staging and excuse to interrupt it -- or maybe to turn and start walking away.

“I ken ye should stop trying to break the laws of our world, lad. It has never worked. It will never work.”

Helsknight didn’t reply, but his hands balled into fists on the table, so slow Tanguish could hear the wood scrape as his gauntlets closed. 

“Ye be missed, Helsknight,” the voice continued soberly, almost beseechingly. “Ye ken ye be happier in the company of comrades?” Slow footsteps fell, a muffled sound like cat’s paws. “Find yer peace here. Ye don’t have to keep fighting the world. Let what will be, be.”

Helsknight gave a scornful laugh. “Didn’t figure I’d be lectured on peace by you of all people. What’s the matter? Winter finally melting in the hels heat?”

“Bare ye teeth if ye wish, Helsknight. Yer bite does not sting me much.”

“I don’t want your pity.”

“Is no pity, lad. ‘Tis care.” The voice sighed heavily. “I would be sad to see ye spend the rest of yer life angry and miserable.”

“My anger isn’t your concern.”

“Well, it kind of is,” The Hand finally spoke up again, his voice a light and airy contrast to the rest of the grim conversation. “You break a lot of things when you get angry, you know. Cause a lot of respawns. Pretty sure it's the closest thing we get to a natural disaster around here.”

It was meant as a joke. No one laughed. Someone shuffled their feet awkwardly. Helsknight finally looked up from the table, crossing his arms and glaring at the person Tanguish couldn’t see. It was a very different arm cross from The Hand’s casual lean. Helsknight’s shoulders were squared, his back straight. He looked bristled and tense.

“Lad--”

“Did you give this lecture to your pet enderman before he left?” Helsknight snapped, his voice an angry growl. “Don’t think he found much peace.”

The Hand slowly straightened from where he was leaning. The motion made Tanguish think of a snake slowly coiling. His voice was low and decidedly unfriendly as he said: “Woah now. That was uncalled for.”

Tanguish didn’t get to find out how the conversation proceeded after that. Suddenly a pair of hands grabbed him from behind, vice-like grips grasping onto his shoulder and the small of his back, and with a yelp Tanguish was half dragged, half thrown into the room. He tripped over his feet and went sprawling, landing in an inglorious heap in the room’s center. Evil Beezuma stormed in after him, glowering, one pair of hands on his sides, the other pair moving through a quick, exasperated motion. The air filled with the sound of buzzing, and Tanguish winced. Evil Beezuma wasn’t looking at him, so he couldn’t hear the words he said. The intention was obvious though. He was angry. Tanguish cursed softly, his gaze screwed to the deepslate tiles beneath his hands. He saw Helsknight’s boots turn to face him.

“Well, that’s a feat,” Helsknight deadpanned. “EB is pretty hard to piss off.”

Tanguish swallowed hard and dared a glance up. Helsknight, of course, was looming over him and glowering. It was a palpable scowl, the kind that came from the posture of his entire body, so Tanguish could feel it even though the knight still had his helm firmly in place. The Hand was leaning against the wall again, smiling blithely. 

The third person in the room was… well… massive. And utterly terrifying. He was grey skinned and black haired, with a fixed scowl on his face, and the overall bearing of someone who was used to taking up space. Wolf ears peeked above a brass and iron crown, the teeth of which extended both above and below the band, blinding him behind blooded metal. A wicked scar crossed his throat, probably the cause of his faltering voice. He didn’t look at Tanguish -- given the blindness he probably couldn’t. Instead, he gazed in Evil Beezuma’s direction, and the fighter stared back. Again, Evil Beezuma moved his hands through a series of motions, and his buzzing crescendoed. The Wolf’s ears twitched.

“Eavesdropping you say?” The Hand grinned, his previous casual tone returning. He also moved his hands as he talked, and Tanguish realized he was translating. “Well, that’s not very neighborly, is it?”

(Oh, that was kind of interesting, actually. Evil Beezuma signed his words so other people could tell what he was saying. The Wolf couldn’t see the signs, so he directed the buzzing at him. Then The Hand repeated the phrases he signed out loud -- this was a well-thought-out system. The three must talk a lot.)

“Spill,” Helsknight demanded, moving his hands as well, and Tanguish amended his thought. (These four talk a lot, and Helsknight was definitely lying when he said he had no friends.) “What did you hear?”

“Or--” The Hand squatted down to Tanguish’s level and said in a frighteningly conversational tone, “-- we could spill your guts for you. Just say the word, m’lord.”

Tanguish felt a shudder start to crowd itself around the base of his spine.

“Don’t say the word,” Helsknight said, his voice muffled by gritted teeth. “He’s harmless. Stupid. But harmless.”

“I-I didn’t-- that is--” Tanguish swallowed hard. “I didn’t hear much. Just… something about an enderman? And, uhm, a little bit about peace. But I wasn’t--”

Evil Beezuma started buzzing again. Tanguish was too busy watching the floor to tell if he was signing, but he figured he was.

“Well, yes, obviously he’s lying,” The Hand said.

“I’m not--”

“Helssakes, does it really matter?” Helsknight groaned in exasperation. Another vice-like grip clamped down on the back of Tanguish’s shirt, and the knight dragged him roughly to his feet. “We weren't talking about anything important.”

The Hand kept signing even though he wasn’t talking, making up for the fact that, with his hands full, Helsknight couldn’t sign himself. The Wolf looked sharply in Helsknight's direction and scowled.

“It matters,” Evil Beezuma responded, his signs massive, agitated motions that The Hand spoke aloud for him. “He’s a guest, and he’s taken advantage of your hospitality.”

“I-- I didn’t mean--" Tanguish began, but was immediately talked over.

“EB’s got an excellent point,” The Hand smirked. “Who knows what other trouble he’s gotten into, sneaking around unattended?”

“I haven’t--”

Evil Beezuma buzzed louder, this time too outraged or too impatient to sign his words.

"When you're right, you're right," Martyn agreed, also not signing, and clearly not understanding a word Evil Beezuma said. 

“Enough.” 

All heads turned to the imposing crowned figure who, ever since Tanguish had been dropped into the room, had said nothing. The Wolf crossed his arms and tilted his head back in an acknowledging nod that, somehow, looked much less ridiculous than when Helsknight did it. Maybe it was the crown. (It was probably the crown.)

"He's Helsknight's charge," the Wolf said regally. "Helsknight will deal with him."

Tanguish felt ice settle in his veins. He had been in… a few… bad situations in the past. He would be hard pressed not to, being a thief. In his experience, when people said the phrase "deal with him", it was never good. He looked at Helsknight, who had a hand resting on the pommel of his sword, tapping the metal agitatedly with a finger. It amused Tanguish somewhat to feel his racing heart sync up with the quiet tapping. 

Normally, this would be when Tanguish started running, and scrambling, and climbing away. But he was in the cells. He didn't think he could backtrack the way he came, and while scrambling up the nearest staircase might get him somewhere, the possibility of that somewhere being a dead end was incredibly high. He could reach for his coin, but making a move towards his pocket was also something people did when they were thinking about drawing a concealed weapon, and being surrounded by bristling arena fighters probably meant he would be sliced six ways to Sunday before he managed to touch the metal. Yeah, he'd messed this up pretty badly.

(So, they're going to kill him, and his inventory is going to scatter here, and without Helsknight to help him get back down here he'd never get the directions for Zedaph's back. He'd be back to square one, but this time without anyone's help. How incredibly, incredibly stupid of him to stand in the middle of a lit corridor listening to a conversation he had no business listening to.)

"Well, you've clearly overstayed your welcome," Helsknight told him matter-of-factly. He waved a gauntleted hand, ushering towards the doorway. "Let's go."

"Awh damn," the Hand smirked. "You're no fun."

The Wolf simply nodded, and it was hard for Tanguish to tell, but it seemed like a tension released itself from his shoulders. Evil Beezuma stepped to the side, all four arms crossed, glaring daggers down at Tanguish.

"Uhm…" Tanguish fidgeted with his hands, "We're… leaving?"

"Obviously." Helsknight said, gathering up a few of the papers on the table and tucking them in his inventory. He took a step towards Tanguish and ushered towards the door again, like he could herd him outside. "Go."

Tanguish took a step backwards and, because he couldn't help himself, glanced around the room. Evil Beezuma was still glaring, and buzzing, but when he and Tanguish made eye contact there were no words, just the distinct impression of being insulted. The Hand had resumed his lean and was looking to the Wolf, which, ironically, gave him the impression of an excitable attack dog waiting on a command from its handler. The Wolf, however, looked somber. Part of it was just kind of… him. The quiet regality of him lended his expression a woeful severity. But there was something else there as well. Disappointment, like he was watching something slip through his fingers.

"I can find my own way out." Tanguish said quietly. "If-- if you haven't seen these people in awhile--"

"You can't be trusted to walk down a hallway," Helsknight responded levelly, anger sparking at the edge of his voice. "Now start moving."

Tanguish did as he was told, slinking out into the corridor with Helsknight a step behind. It was a long, quiet, awkward walk that felt more like he was being escorted through a jail than led out of the cells. Neither of them talked, and they so obviously didn’t talk that the longer the silence stretched, the more Tanguish thought breaking it would end up cutting him like glass. Helsknight was angry. It was a palpable, horrible, quiet thing, and standing so close to it made Tanguish feel sick.

(But he was leaving, and he was in one piece, and he wasn’t going to respawn and lose his directions. This wasn’t a waste of time. And really, he shouldn’t feel guilty about this. He did exactly what he came here to do: his Tango quest. Sure, Evil Beezuma had been kind to him, and he’d ruined that. Sure, Helsknight was helping him and he was probably making the knight regret that. Sure, everyone he’d met in the last few days that might turn into friends, he had absolutely destroyed his chances with. That didn’t mean Zedaph’s helsmit would end up the same way. He wasn’t a parasite who just made everything worse all the time just by existing. He wasn’t. He wasn’t--)

“I’m sorry!” Tanguish blurted out suddenly, twisting his knuckle so hard with his other hand he thought it would bruise. He hadn’t realized he was fidgeting again, but he was. “Really, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

Helsknight didn’t say anything. He didn’t even look at him. He just kept walking. 

(He had ruined everything, hadn’t he? Just like he’d ruined Tango. Oh. This was a parasite thing again, wasn’t it? Feeding off people. Using people. Putting his nose where it didn’t belong. And then losing them. Because he was bad for them. Because he was bad for everyone. Helsknight was going to abandon him, which he shouldn’t be scared of. He shouldn’t. Really he shouldn’t. Wasn’t he thinking all the time that Helsknight was so bitter and unpleasant? That he was mean and made Tanguish feel terrible. He called him a pest.)

(He shouldn’t be scared. But what was he going to do without Helsknight’s help? This was the closest he’d gotten to hope since he came up with this stupid idea! He was going to be alone again, and he couldn’t even go to Tango for comfort because if he spent more time with Tango, Tango would die, and Tanguish would be alone. Tanguish didn’t want to be alone. Tanguish couldn’t be alone. Being alone was suddenly the most terrifying thing he could think of.)

“I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” Tanguish found himself babbling, his voice barely above a whisper, because if he spoke any louder, he thought he would cry. “I mean -- I did, but I thought you were talking about me. And then you weren’t talking about me and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t-- I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Helsknight looked up towards the ceiling and took in a breath so deep, it made his armor creak. Tanguish watched him apprehensively, waiting for some kind of judgment. The knight held his breath for five steps, and then let it out slowly again.

“It's… fine.” Helsknight stated flatly, in a voice that implied it definitely wasn’t fine.

Tanguish looked at the floor. They walked through the common room in silence. This time when the fighters they passed called a greeting, Helsknight ignored them.

“I shouldn’t have expected any differently,” Helsknight continued when they made it to the exit stairs. His voice was cool and dispassionate, every word placed with careful slowness. It sounded like he was convincing himself of something. “You were bound to get in trouble with someone in here. I should be grateful it was me.”

“I’m sorry,” Tanguish whispered again. 

“It’s fine,” Helsknight repeated, this time actually managing to sound… not genuine, but like he wasn’t lying. “I needed an excuse to leave.”

Tanguish nodded miserably. 

“If you tell anyone about what we were talking about--”

“I won’t,” Tanguish promised, latching onto the smallest shred of forgiveness he could find. “Really, I won’t.”

(He waited for Helsknight to say he believed him, but the knight didn’t. That, while deserved, stung. It stung a lot.)

They exited the cells, stepping out first into the barred hall, and then onto the arena sand. Helsknight sighed again, this time sounding resigned. He opened his mouth to speak, but a crescendoing buzz cut him off.  There was a flash of color and a soft blast of sand. Evil Beezuma, insect wings flaring around him, slid to a stop beside them.

“Oh, right.” Tanguish grimaced. “Evil Beezuma wanted to talk to you.”

“Can this wait?” Helsknight sighed irritably. “I’m not in the best mood.”

Whatever Evil Beezuma responded with, Tanguish didn’t know. It was all sign language Tanguish didn’t know how to read, and a constant, reverberating buzz. Trying to glean what the two fighters were talking about mostly came from listening to Helsknight’s side of the conversation, and it was hard to tell anything from all of the knight’s clipped and close-ended statements. There were a lot of yes’s, no’s, and vagaries like “That’s not important” and “Don’t worry about it.” One “No, really, I’m fine. Really. I’m fine.” stood out to him, but all Tanguish got from that was the annoyed tone. There was eye-rolling too. Evil Beezuma was probably grateful the knight was signing as he talked. 

Tanguish didn’t dare leave for fear he’d screw something up again, so he stood apprehensively on the arena sand, waiting. He glanced up to the stands a couple times, tracking a tour group as they walked along the top. Once he saw a ghast pass overhead, too far away to notice them, thankfully. It meandered like a cloud, eyes shut, cries echoing distantly.

Movement much further down the colosseum bleachers caught Tanguish's attention, and he watched someone make his way down the ladder and onto the arena floor. He was a fighter, and like Helsknight, was probably too lazy to suffer walking the full circuit of the colosseum to get to the cells. He was taller than Tanguish (most to the fighters were) and had a feeling of dark imposition about him. Maybe it was the scar over his eye, maybe it was the dark armor and lilting cape, or maybe it was the shadow that seemed unnaturally flat and black, dragging out behind him. Whatever it was, it had the effect of a thundercloud; a billowing, foreboding weight that made the world seem darker as he approached. The man looked first at Tanguish, catching him in a steely gaze that made him flinch. Then he looked at Evil Beezuma, still talking animatedly. When his gaze settled on Helsknight, he bared his teeth in a grin.

"Well well well!" He declared, his voice loud and high, and broken by barely contained laughter. "This must be my lucky day."

Helsknight sighed and rolled his eyes up to the sky as if to say, "If there are gods, they hate me specifically." He signed something to Evil Beezuma, abruptly ending their conversation. The bee-themed fighter nodded and stepped away, putting a hand on Tanguish's shoulder as he did so. 

"Stay out of trouble," Evil Beezuma told him when they met eyes, and Tanguish was relieved to find there wasn't any maliciousness there. He nodded quickly and followed after Helsknight, trying his best not to stumble in the loose soil.

"It's not your lucky day," Helsknight quipped, familiar annoyance claiming his tone. "I'm leaving."

The fighter laughed again. It was a sound that conflicted with the menace of his look, more like a childish giggle than an evil laugh. Tanguish still didn't like it though.

"You owe me a rematch," he grinned, something like glee in his eyes. "The fight wasn't fair last time."

"Then go talk to the scheduler and get on the next bracket," Helsknight said dismissively, intent on leaving.

The fighter rested his hand on the hilt of his sword and stood his ground, dark eyes gleaming. He wasn't barring the way exactly -- though he was standing in the most direct path to the ladder. "I think not," he chuckled. "I'm not letting you slink off somewhere to hide. We're settling this now."

If anger were a temperature, Tanguish thought Helsknight would have caught fire. He was radiating it, trying valiantly to keep it in check. The knight stiffened audibly. His armor clicked with the movement. It sounded painful. (Well, it probably wasn't painful. Armor wasn't made to hurt the person wearing it. But the heavy click reminded Tanguish of someone shutting a latched door, and he knew from experience that it hurt when it caught your fingers.) 

Helsknight's hand was suddenly on Tanguish's shoulder. The knight gave him a heavy shove that almost knocked him off his feet. Tanguish scowled at him indignantly, and then realized Helsknight had been getting him out of the way. They weren't close enough for Helsknight to be between him and the fighter, but he was on the outside of both of the bristling swordsmen, and a bit harder to accidentally stab. 

"You could've asked me to move," Tanguish whispered. If Helsknight heard him, he ignored him.

"I don't have time for this," Helsknight snapped, waving a hand like he was swatting away a fly. "Even if I did, I have things I'd rather be doing right now. Whatever it is you want to settle? Get used to being disappointed about it."

The fighter narrowed his eyes. (Given the dramatic scar over one of them, this also struck Tanguish as a painful thing to do.) His grin twitched, teetering on the knife-edge of smiling and snarling. Whoever he was, he seemed to take personal offense to not being taken seriously. Something in his shadow jerked, like a tail lashing. Tanguish (wisely) took a step farther away and walked a little faster. The fighter didn't move to stop them, only tracked them as they neared. Tanguish's heart was racing. He thought the minute he touched the ladder, he would run up it as quickly as his arms and legs could carry him. He was already plotting his route, straightforward as it was. He could probably skip a few rungs if he got a bit of momentum. Then he would be up and over the side, and it was a straight shot out into the street. He could run if he wanted to (he really, really wanted to).

“I’m disappointed,” the fighter said quietly, his voice an unflinching grin. “I never figured you were a coward, Hels.”

A lot of things happened very quickly. 

The first was that Helsknight drew his sword, an action Tanguish heard more than he saw. The fighter drew his sword less than a breath later, and his shadow darkened into something physical. It snaked up the fighter’s back like a second skin, and when he laughed, his voice deepened into something dark and dramatic. By the time the two swordsmen met steel to steel, Tanguish was running. 

It was an inelegant run. More of a scramble, really. Tanguish wasn’t trying for elegance, he was trying for quick, and not-dead. It didn’t help that he wasn’t used to the arena ground. The sand was all probably very theatrical for people kicking it up with their sword strokes, but it clutched at Tanguish’s feet and made his steps heavy. He almost fell twice before he reached the ladder, but reach the ladder he did. Then he was nearly vaulting up it, arms and legs moving in tandem, half-leaping on every rung. 

There was a burst of laughter behind him, the fighter’s new booming voice menacing Tanguish’s retreat. “What in the hels happened to your hair? And your face.”

That statement puzzled Tanguish just enough to give him pause. He dared a look back from where he clung halfway up the ladder. Helsknight had lost his helmet. He wiped his nose on the back of his gauntlet and spat something into the sand. He had probably been hit. That… made sense. Knights got their helmets knocked off sometimes during battles. Tanguish figured so, anyway. He wasn’t an expert. 

“No wonder you’ve been running scared!” the fighter laughed challengingly, his liquid shadow fanning out like wings on his back. “Do you fight like him t--”

He couldn’t finish his sentence. Helsknight was on him in an instant, a storm of iron and netherite. Tanguish resumed scrambling up the ladder, eager to be far away from the fighting as soon as possible. When he made it to the top, he leaped over the banister and-- and stopped abruptly, not really knowing what to do next. There was a loud metallic shriek, a louder expletive. He glanced back down to see the fighter had been disarmed, his sword a sliver of gray-white in the muddy sand. Tanguish sighed with relief. The fight was over. 

Except it wasn’t.

Helsknight took a step back away from the fighter, clearly giving him room to retrieve his sword -- and he did. It was the kind of thing that should have been chivalrous, if Helsknight weren’t so devilishly angry. The fighter barely had time to gather himself and pick up his sword again, before Helsknight was charging. Tanguish flinched at the crash of steel on steel. Helsknight's sword flicked down the length of his opponent's. Their hilts locked, and there was an arching motion Tanguish's eyes couldn't keep up with. The fighter's sword went flying onto the arena sand, and with a follow-up slash to the ankle, so did the fighter. He hit the ground with a wuff of air leaving his lungs. The whole engagement had lasted, at most, three seconds. 

Tanguish gaped from where he stood, feeling a shiver start to dance its way up his spine. That… was terrifying.

Helsknight started pacing, not away, just circling idly. Prowling. The fighter cursed and clambered to his feet, wincing when he put his full weight down on his left ankle. He retrieved his sword. "Lucky shot."

Helsknight sneered, eyes glittering red, and lunged again. Their swords crashed, then hissed. The tip of Helsknight's sword led the other's downwards, so when he twisted to the side, it was trapped in the crook of his arm where the plate mail made the edge harmless. Helsknight kicked the fighter hard in the chest, disarming him and sending him tumbling into the sand again. Then he tossed the sword at his feet, clearly signaling for the fight to resume. This time when the fighter rose, it was slower. 

Color and movement past the fight grabbed Tanguish’s attention. Evil Beezuma was still on the sand, waving his arms in Tanguish’s direction. Even when they made eye contact, the distance kept him from hearing what the fighter’s buzzed shout was supposed to mean. The signs, however, were nearly universal.

Stop him.

(Stop him? Stop who? The fighter? Even if Tanguish knew the first thing about fighting angry knights, which he didn’t, Helsknight was handling himself just fine. More than fine.)

The fighter hit the sand again. Helsknight resumed his slow, menacing circle.

(Evil Beezuma couldn’t possibly be asking him to stop Helsknight, could he?)

Tanguish shook his head emphatically. No. He was not going down there and getting in the middle of a pair of colosseum fighters. If the previous Champion wasn’t going to intervene, what chance did he have? None. Worse than none. It was too terrifying of a thought to even begin to entertain, and Evil Beezuma must have given up on it too, because he bolted as well. Wings spread, he flew off at breakneck speed for the cells, only slowing when he had to open the gate.

The fighter went crashing to the sand again. 

It was like he was throwing himself at an obsidian wall. Every time he stood, Helsknight disarmed him, inflicted a minor injury, and tossed him back his sword. The fighter had long stopped taunting the knight, and the knight maintained his silent menace. They crashed together two more times, and two more times, Helsknight tore through his opponent like he was made of paper. His movements were quick and precise, the few parries and dodges he was forced to muster fell into place like they were fated. It wasn’t just that the fighter was outclassed -- any number of those sword strokes could have been impressive against anyone else. It was that, ultimately, he was a cliff, and Helsknight was a relentless tide. No matter how strong and sure his stance, the fighter was doomed to crumble, and crumble he did.

Tanguish didn’t know when, but he’d started shaking. There was a lot spinning in his head all at once. He was thinking about ambushing Helsknight in the street, and how easily the knight had dispatched him the first time. He was thinking about all those little arguments after, picking at each other, how many times Helsknight took a deep breath like he was swallowing emotion and continued doggedly on. Grabbing for his sword when he caught Tanguish eavesdropping, and he’d been told to deal with it. The Hand, joking about anger akin to a natural disaster. There was something in the nature of hermits and helsmits, that made them intimate parts of each other. Tanguish had never met Welsknight, but he thought he must be a uniquely terrifying person to create a creature of rage like this.

The fighter fell to the ground again. This time, he didn’t stand up. He lay in the sand groaning, a hand outstretched. The gesture was easy enough to read. The fighter was done. Helsknight was not. Tanguish couldn’t hear what the knight was saying. The murmur of their conversation was just the shape of words without the words themselves, and all Tanguish could read from their body language was the fighter’s abject refusal, and relentless Helsknight, patiently waiting.

(Really, Tanguish should be running. There was a very distant, rational part of his brain that told him he needed to get as far away from this place as physically possible. He wasn’t in any danger. Not unless Helsknight suddenly decided one person wasn’t enough to sate his ire. It was just that this was a very cruel thing to witness, and uniquely terrifying knowing the same person who could be so cruel could also show genuine kindness. Tanguish felt like, for the past few days, he had been sleeping in the den of some monstrous creature. Something that, for no reason he could fathom, had decided he just wasn’t worth it's time to bite. Helsknight had tiptoed around him with an unfathomable patience, and Tanguish had no idea why, or what inevitable thing he would do to break that patience.)

A commotion started on the other side of the arena. Half a dozen colosseum fighters came streaming out of the cells like ants from an anthill. Evil Beezuma led them, signing and buzzing, elytra wings propelling him faster than anyone could follow running. The Wolf was close behind him, bounding in massive strides, his voice booming over the distance so loud it made Tanguish flinch.

“Helsknight! Is this foul behavior befitting a knight champion?”

Helsknight turned his gaze to the colosseum fighters streaming his direction. He didn’t sheathe his sword, and Tanguish really wondered if he planned to fight them all. Then he didn’t wonder anything, because Helsknight turned on his heel and began stalking towards the ladder.

Whatever was rooting Tanguish to the spot finally broke. He bolted.

Chapter Text

Tanguish didn’t make it far. He had not really intended to. Running away only worked when away was more important than anything else, and unfortunately for Tanguish, away in the colosseum stopped being important when he remembered he didn’t really know where he was going. Sure, he could run out of the colosseum and into the street, but then what? He had nowhere to go. He could go try to find Zedaph’s helsmit, but given how shaken up he was, he didn’t know how much he wanted to risk having a conversation with someone. It was too high stakes to screw up again, for the thousandth time today. So, if he wasn’t going to continue his Tango quest, what else was he going to do? Go home? Home right now was Helsknight’s couch, and Helsknight was a terror. 

(Really, Tanguish wanted to see Tango. It wasn’t fair that he couldn’t. He wanted to slip into Hermitcraft and help build Decked Out II, and forget this stupid quest. He wanted it so bad his heart ached. He wanted it so bad it stopped tasting like want and turned into something closer to despair. It was starting to feel more and more like the thing he most desperately wanted was the one thing he could never have.) 

(He wanted things to be simple again.)

Tanguish almost slipped into his reflection, almost gave in. He climbed up one of the pillars in the long colosseum entry hall, found a ledge in one of the vaults, and crouched there. The dark hiding him from sight. Sure, someone looking up would see the twinkle of sculk-lights on the mosaic, but almost no one ever looked up. He crouched and breathed, and shivered, and held his coin in his hand. If he closed his eyes and pressed his face close to it, he thought he could almost hear Tango on the other side, babbling about some cool new thing he was building. He could almost smell the wind on grass, and the tang of ice-bound stone, beckoning to him gently with the promise of comfort, and distraction, and simple. He could have cried. The feeling was there, a bitter pressure behind his eyes and his ribs. He almost did.

Footsteps, loud and heavy and armored, interrupted his misery. Tanguish cringed against the wall, as though pressing himself against it could somehow turn him invisible. (It’s Helsknight. It’s got to be him. This was the way they  came in. It's the direction he was heading. Oh, Tanguish should have kept running. He should have gone somewhere else. He should have--)

It was Helsknight. Tanguish would recognize the armored silhouette anywhere -- though the plate mail looked considerably more awkward without the helmet on; oddly disproportional. That didn’t stop Tanguish from being afraid, though. His heart, which hadn’t had time to slow much from his scramble, started hammering again. He pressed himself so hard against the ledge his foot slipped and he nearly fell. He held his breath and begged the freckles on his arms and face to dim. He even closed his eyes, for all the good that would do. The footsteps stopped below him. Tanguish clasped his hands over his mouth like he could hold his breaths in harder. Nothing happened for a very long moment. Then that long moment stretched into something that felt like an eternity, or at least something Tanguish couldn’t hold his breath longer than. He sipped in a shallow breath of air, and then another, and then finally looked down.

Helsknight was leaning against one of the pillars, forehead pressed to the stone, eyes screwed shut, breathing. He had a fist clenched against it as well, bracing him, or maybe just a punch he had the good sense not to follow through with, for fear of breaking his hand. He just… stood there, and Tanguish crouched near the ceiling watching, silently willing the knight to move on. He didn’t have that kind of luck though. 

“I know you’re up there,” Helsknight said, his voice echoing slightly in the cavernous hallway. Then, after a long pause that bordered on painfully awkward, "You can come down."

“I’ll stay up here, if it’s -- if it’s all the same to you,” Tanguish squeaked, his voice quivering. He didn’t bother trying to sound anything but scared. Given he was hiding, it was fairly obvious. Helsknight sighed and pressed his face a little harder against the cold stone. The two of them fell silent. 

(Tanguish really, really wished Helsknight would leave.)

"I shouldn't have done that," Helsknight said at length. His voice was flat, that tone that felt like he was convincing himself, or talking himself down, or both. "That was cruel."

“... Right.” Tanguish swallowed, and tried to keep his voice from shaking. "Are you… not supposed to be?"

"Knights aren't."

“Oh…” Tanguish swallowed again. His mouth felt dry, and he stubbornly told himself it was because of the run. “Uhm… Evil Beezuma asked me to stop you.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Tanguish laughed, a sharp, nervous sound. He figured that answer was obvious. Apparently, Helsknight didn’t.

“Everything I face must have a fighting chance,” Helsknight said, his voice heavy with the inflection of something memorized. “I couldn’t have harmed you, even if I wanted to.”

Tanguish didn’t respond. He, honestly, didn’t know if it was safe to.

(He wanted very badly to point out that the fighter wasn't given a fighting chance. Sure, maybe the first time Helsknight tossed him to the ground, or the second. Possibly even the third. Every time after that though, when he was bleeding and slow, and so obviously outmatched? None of that had been a “fighting chance”. Certainly, when the fighter had been on the ground, obviously conceding, “fighting chance” had thrown open a window, waved from the ledge, and leapt to its demise. That had not stopped Helsknight, and Tanguish was certain he couldn’t either.)

As if sensing his thoughts, Helsknight said, "He insulted my honor. I had a right to defend that."

"He was… kind of mean," Tanguish agreed, because that felt like the safest thing to do. "And he was asking for it. Literally. He said he wanted to fight you." Helsknight sighed, and he clenched his fist against the pillar so hard the metal and leather of his gauntlet creaked. Tanguish couldn't tell if the knight was angry or not, so he babbled. "I just -- you know that was, uhm, rude. I think your hair looks fine, by the way. I mean, the helmet kind of, it's probably looked better but -- not that it doesn't look nice now. I just -- uhm -- and, anyway, you're obviously a very good fighter. Knight. Swordsman? I mean, you're the Champion, so he shouldn't have challenged you. He should have expected – I mean--"

"Tanguish."

"... Yes?"

"Stop talking."

Tanguish snapped his mouth shut and made himself smaller on the ledge. Below him, Helsknight was whispering to himself. Tanguish realized he was counting slowly; up to ten, then breathing, then starting over. (So, he’s still angry. Great.) 

Tanguish studied one of the nearby columns, measuring his chances of getting down from where he had cornered himself. He thought he could probably find a graceful way to get down, but he knew from climbing up here his claws would slip on the stone. Helsknight would hear him. There would be no sneaking away. Was it rude to just dash down and run? Probably. But he couldn't stay up here forever either. It was a small ledge. His feet would start cramping eventually.

After another long, uncomfortable silence, Helsknight asked, "You're not stuck up there, are you?"

"No," Tanguish said defensively. "I just--" (Don't want to be stabbed.) "-- you know."

Helsknight crossed his arms and turned to watch him. "I don't know."

Tanguish cringed against the wall, gripped by the sudden (irrational) worry that Helsknight would find a way to reach him up here. Not that the knight looked particularly threatening -- with his arms crossed, he couldn’t reach the hilt of his sword. But still, having those blistering eyes watching him made him nervous. He kept searching for that spark of red that signaled anger, and danger.

“You are stuck, aren’t you?” Helsknight asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I’m not stuck.”

“You look stuck.”

Tanguish felt his heart start hammering again. Pride and fear were bickering in the back of his head. Pride was winning.

(Helsknight… probably wasn’t going to hurt him. He had no reason to. And he wasn’t counting anymore, so he probably, maybe, wasn’t angry right now. He wasn’t holding his sword. He had offered for Tanguish to climb down earlier…)

(At least Tanguish knew how to get to the colosseum right? He could find his things again, if Helsknight suddenly decided he was worth shredding? And then it would be over and done with and he wouldn’t have to be paranoid about it anymore.)

Tanguish followed the ledge to the nearest pillar and stepped down. He was a good climber. It was one of the few things he took pride in. The claws of his hands and feet found safe spots in the floral reliefs with ease, and he worked his way lower with quick assuredness. Even the pillar itself wasn't terribly hard to scale, in theory. It was too thick for him to wrap his arms around, but pillars like this weren't one solid chunk of stone. They were just too big for that. Something that size would crack under its own weight the minute it was hoisted upright.  Instead, it was made of several large blocks of stone stacked and sealed together, with seams at regular intervals going up the surface. Tanguish located a seam and, holding tight to the pillar as he could, slipped down to it, letting his claws and fingertips hook in to stop his fall. It left his nail beds feeling bruised, but it beat breaking his legs falling from the ceiling. There was a shuffle below him, and Tanguish dared a glance down to see Helsknight had stepped closer, watching him with an eyebrow raised.

"Told you I wasn't stuck," Tanguish said petulantly, eyeing the pillar for the next seam. He found it and slipped downwards again. Helsknight didn't respond, simply crossing his arms and watching. 

Tanguish descended, his hands aching angrily with every slide downwards. His arms burned. His neck and shoulders threatened to add their own complaints to the mix. It didn't help that the climb up, although easier than the descent, still hadn't been easy. He had been all adrenaline and fear then, the complaints of his body easy to ignore, and while fear still tangled in his chest, the numbing strength of adrenaline had left him while he'd been sitting on the ledge. It was inevitable then, when about two-thirds of the way down, Tanguish's hands slipped. He slid down to the next seam, grimaced at the cramp in his hands, and fell. He had a brief moment to worry if hitting the pillar's base would slow his fall or just hurt a lot. Then, with a startled oof! he landed in Helsknight's outstretched arms.

(Contrary to what any books about knights in shining armor would have Tanguish believe, landing in the arms of a knight was neither glamorous nor romantic. It was instead, only marginally less painful than hitting the floor. Helsknight's arms yielded a little when he landed in them, but they were also covered in enchanted metal -- enchanted metal that flared with thorns when it was hit hard enough. Tanguish felt first the angry bruise of his shoulders and legs on the armor, and then the stinging twinge of the enchantment -- and then a spike of fear, because he was about as close as he could get to the person he currently thought was the scariest in hels.)

Helsknight let out a snort. “Yeah, figured something like that was going to -- hey!”

Tanguish writhed out of Helsknight’s arms, spilling onto the tiles gracelessly. He scrambled to his feet, stumbled, nearly fell, and found himself backing into one of the ominous statues that lined the hall. The desire to run away welled up inside him again, and with the statue at his back and Helsknight standing in front of him, he felt trapped. 

Helsknight threw his hands up in the air. “Alright! Point taken. I’ll just let you fall next time.” 

Tanguish tried to take another wary step back, and scraped his heel on the pedestal the statue stood on. He glanced back at it, betrayed it was still there. When he looked back at Helsknight again, the knight hadn’t moved, but his face had taken on some complicated expression Tanguish couldn’t decipher; softer than anger, but it carried a similar edge. 

“I’m not rabid,” the knight stated, his voice taking on that flat quality again. 

(Not right now, maybe.)

“Sure,” Tanguish agreed dubiously. “You’re just… angry.”

Helsknight looked away from him, scowling like he’d tasted something sour. That red glint was in his eye again, and Tanguish swallowed the growing lump in his throat. He kept glancing down to Helsknight’s hands, which had clenched themselves into fists at his side. His left hand was close to the sword hilt, but hadn’t rested on it yet.

“I don’t know why you’re so worked up about it,” Helsknight growled defensively. “It’s not like I’ve done anything to you.”

“Yet.” Tanguish corrected him, and if he didn’t know any better, he would have thought he saw the knight flinch. “You haven’t done anything to me yet.”

“Oh, shut up!” Helsknight snapped, taking a threatening step towards him, eyes sparking dangerously. “You’ve been following me around like a lost dog for days. If I wanted to hurt you, don't you think I would have by now?”

Tanguish cringed back against the statue, regretting that he had left the ledge above. His hands were still sore from the climb down. He could try to run, but he didn't know if Helsknight would try to stop him. Helsknight, stronger, faster, terrifying Helsknight.

"You did hurt me, though."

"Because you pounced on me!" Helsknight shouted in reply. "What did you expect?!"

Tanguish didn't know what to say. He wanted Helsknight to stop yelling, and looming, and overall being terrifying. Really, he wanted him to leave. (If Helsknight were Tango, he might even be able to figure out how to make him do all those things. Then again, Tango didn't have the habit of making himself scary.)

"Would you stop looking at me like that?" Helsknight demanded bitterly. Tanguish swallowed hard and dropped his gaze to the tiles, hoping that would somehow end this whole interaction. It didn't. 

"Stop!" Helsknight seethed, pacing a step forward and then back again. "For the love of-- would you just--!" The knight let out an angry noise in the back of his throat, something like a growl, but a bit too dismayed to make it all the way there. "Stop doing that!"

"I don't know what you want from me," Tanguish replied, his voice small.

"You could try being normal."

"I… am normal?" Tanguish squeaked, and then something occurred to him. He said a bit more forcefully, "When someone with a sword yells at me, I'm not going to yell back. I'm not a colosseum fighter Hels."

Much to his surprise, Helsknight didn't take another threatening step forward. Instead, he seethed where he stood. "I told you not to call me that."

"W-well you're not acting much like a knight right now, I don't think."

"And what in the hels would you know about it?!"

"I know you're not supposed to hurt someone who's defenseless," Tanguish reminded him tentatively, his voice cracking a bit near the end. Helsknight blinked down at him, the confusion chasing away the hardest edges of his anger. The red spark in his eyes guttered.

"I'm not--" Helsknight started and then stopped again. "I didn't--" He leaned back on his heels like he'd been knocked off balance. Then he started pacing, tiger-in-a-cage pacing, all restless energy and conflicted emotions. He made a few quiet passes, the only sound the empty echo of his footsteps in the hall. When he stopped, he rubbed his face with his hands before raking them back through his hair, finally resting them, fingers interlaced, on the top of his head. He looked defeated.

Helsknight took a deep breath and, doing his best to swallow his anger, said through gritted teeth, "You're right. I'm sorry." Helsknight looked up at the ceiling mosaic beseechingly. "I lost my temper."

"You… uh… you do that a lot," Tanguish said wincingly, praying the knight didn't shout again.

Helsknight snorted a sardonic laugh. "Yeah well, if I was perfect, I'd have nothing to tell the priest at confession."

Tanguish managed a half-hearted smirk, or something close to it. Well, if Helsknight was joking, he probably wasn't about to lose his temper again. Maybe. Probably.

"Are you going to keep cringing at me like that forever?" Helsknight asked him, and he looked… not disappointed. Wounded. He crossed his arms again, but he didn't meet Tanguish's eye, like he worried the answer would sting. 

"Well, I don't--" Tanguish cleared his throat uncertainly and started fidgeting with one of his knuckles. "I mean-- I don't know you. Not like -- If you do that again--"

"I can't tell you I won't lose my temper," Helsknight told him. "That's a doomed promise."

Tanguish laughed, more from chagrin than humor. "I mean, just as long as you don't--" he cast a meaningful look back in the direction of the arena. Helsknight followed his gaze and grimaced. He scratched the back of his neck self-consciously, his gauntlet catching at strands of his hair.

"Yeah… alright."

Tanguish blinked at him uncomprehendingly. "Alright?"

"Yeah," Helsknight sighed, resigning himself to something. He muttered, "Well might as well do this right." 

Helsknight unbuckled the clasp on his gauntlet and slipped it off. He flexed his hand, remembering how it felt to move unarmored. Then he offered it to Tanguish, who flinched at the quick jab of motion. Tanguish gave him a skeptical look before hesitantly taking Helsknight’s hand. Apparently deciding shaking hands was too easy, Helsknight clasped Tanguish's forearm in his pale fingers, and instructed him to do the same. The knight’s touch was warm. It wasn’t quite so feverish as Tango's, but it was close. His hand was rough, old calloused-over blisters from years of sword drills scraped against the sculk-lights of Tanguish’s skin.

In a tone of practiced severity, Helsknight said, "On my word as a knight, I won't raise my blade to you in anger."

"Oh." Tanguish said awkwardly, because he had no idea how to respond to that. "Uhm… thank you."

Helsknight rolled his eyes and broke their weird ritual handshake. "You're welcome."

A silence passed between them again. Tanguish was relieved to find this one lacked some of the angry charge the others had.

Tanguish straightened a little, and braved a slightly joking: "Couldn’t we have just… you know… shook hands?"

"It's symbolic," Helsknight told him with begrudging patience. He rested his hands on his sides, one landing on the pommel of his sword, but it lacked the menace it should have. It felt like he was just trying to find something to do with his hands, not anger. "That's probably a tenet for some knight somewhere. Half the shit we do is symbolic."

Tanguish tilted his head to the side, curiosity chasing away what remained of his unease. "What's it symbolic of?"

"Accountability." Helsknight told him, offering his hand for the weird handshake again. Tanguish clasped the knight's forearm as he explained. "Together we've formed a bond. It… doesn't really work since the promise is one-sided but, if you let go--" Helsknight unwrapped Tanguish's fingers from his arm. "-- I'm still bound by my word. If I let go--" Tanguish grasped his arm again, and Helsknight released him. "-- you're still holding me accountable. The only way the word breaks is if we both decide to release it." They stepped away from each other, and Helsknight busied himself with putting his gauntlet back on. "Normally it's for mutual exchanges. Bargains. Contracts. Binding things..." 

Helsknight gave a dismissive shrug and let his list trail off.

Tanguish nodded thoughtfully. "Do you want me to promise something?"

Helsknight shrugged again, too busy fiddling with a stubborn clasp to bother with an answer. Or maybe he just didn't expect anything in return. Still…

"Okay," Tanguish told him, "I promise I won't call you Hels, unless you're, you know, not acting very knightly."

The knight raised an eyebrow at him. "Well, it is symbolic."

"I've been told knights like that kind of thing."

"Unfortunately, they do," Helsknight sighed, looking back towards the ceiling again. It was something like annoyance, but Tanguish got the sense he was annoyed with himself, or his habits. "I'll hold you to your word then."

Helsknight finished adjusting his gauntlet and ushered down the hall. Tanguish hesitated before awkwardly following. Neither of them seemed to know how close or far away they should be standing from each other, so they walked on either side of the directional lines marked on the floor – too far away to be friendly, but not so far away that they looked like they hated each other. Tanguish wasn't scared, but he'd be lying if he said he trusted the knight's outbursts were over. The weird handshake… pact… thing… was all well and good, but Helsknight wasn't a stranger to lying.

(Actually wait, that's a good point. Helsknight had definitely lied about having friends, so could he lie about this, then? It… probably wasn’t tactful to call the knight a liar though, especially when he’d only just simmered down. Right. Phrasing.)

"Are… are knights allowed to lie?" Tanguish asked quietly, not really expecting an answer.

Helsknight lifted a hand and wiggled it in a so-so gesture. "It's complicated."

"How complicated?"

"Depends on your Order. Most knights agree you have to be trustworthy, so most Orders have a clause thrown in their tenets somewhere about 'your word is bond' or 'truth as a virtue' or whatever."

"And… your Order?"

Helsknight scrutinized the ceiling, his eyes squinted, his nose wrinkled thoughtfully. "Oh… something something, shall your words ring with present truth, something, and may it bind you as blood." He waved a hand dismissively. "It's been a while since I've memorized it all."

"Do good knights forget their tenets?"

Helsknight smiled bitterly, and the red in his eyes sparked. He took a deep breath before answering, "I can't directly quote them, but I know what they mean and, when I'm not a slave to my anger, I follow them dutifully." He took another deep breath and some of the tenseness relaxed itself from his shoulders. "My Order allows that sometimes truth changes based on new information. Also, being bound to your word can be used against you, and sometimes revealing the full truth is stupid. We are required to believe what we say when we say it, and we are bound to our word when it's given."

Helsknight shrugged, "In theory my testimony holds a lot of weight in court."

Tanguish nodded, letting that sink in.

"There's more to it," Helsknight kept talking in that dogged way people do when they recognize they've been given a safe conversation to dwell on. "There's this… way of speaking… It's supposed to be calming, to help people. I can't make it sound right. Too impatient. But if you believe what you're saying… It calms people down. Makes them want to listen to you. We get trained in it."

Tanguish blinked and looked at him thoughtfully. He honestly couldn't imagine Helsknight sounding calm and reassuring, "You're being serious?"

Helsknight hunched his shoulders a bit. "I said I was bad at it."

"Why would you even need something like that?"

Helsknight flashed him another chagrined smile, "Generally speaking, we aren't supposed to inspire fear in people." When Tanguish gave him a skeptical look, the knight shrugged. "I parade around in armor and carry a sword; some fear is expected. But I'm not supposed to be a… well… a living threat. I'm supposed to be a walking beacon of, 'Hey! If someone is harassing you or you feel unsafe, come ask me for help.' Having a comforting way of speaking helps."

"Can you show me?" Tanguish asked suddenly. He couldn't help it. The question was out of his mouth before he could stop himself. 

Helsknight scoffed. "No."

"Why not?"

"Because, for the thousandth time, I'm very bad at it."

Tanguish smirked. "Sure. But you also just spent the morning inspiring a lot of fear in me."

Helsknight missed a step in his walking, caught off guard.

Tanguish did his best to conceal another laugh. "It would, uhm, help calm my fragile nerves."

Helsknight narrowed his eyes at him, probably dwelling on what he said earlier about how stupid revealing the full truth could be. Tanguish looked away, still doing his best to conceal his smile. (Ah well, he hadn't really expected Helsknight to do it. Tanguish would just have to take his amusement in catching the stoic knight off guard and--)

Helsknight’s voice was not a gentle voice. It was gruff and sharp, and had the kind of jagged rasp indicative of shouting until you were hoarse and voiceless too many times. The tail end of his longer words and sentences growled, and he had the tendency to drop his voice into his throat when he spoke softly. He enunciated his words in a way that implied constant condescension, and the lines on his face signaled a lifetime of frowns and sneers. His was the kind of voice that scoffed instead of laughed, hissed instead of whispered, and snarled instead of shouted. It was not pretty, or handsome, or fine. 

So, it was almost alarming when Helsknight, brow creased in concentration and words slightly stilted, spoke next, and his voice managed to be everything it was -- and still be gentle. Gentle. And Genuine. And Kind.

Helsknight looked down at Tanguish and said, “You are not a parasite.”

For just a moment, caught up in that voice, Tanguish actually believed him.

Chapter Text

Helsknight led them into the red mid-morning, the city more awake now than when they first paraded into the colosseum. Once deserted streets were busy with noise and movement and colors, and the inevitable chaos of too many people milling about in one place. The air was a battleground of food cart smells all vying for dominance, their handlers shouting the prices of their wares like battle cries. Banners flew, market stalls bustled, and for once in his life Tanguish didn't feel claustrophobic in the middle of it. That was the thing about knights, wasn’t it? People expected them to take up space. People let them take up space. 

Helsknight walked like a man on a mission, steps long and sure, gaze hardened and forward. His semi-permanent scowl made him look angry, or at least like he wouldn't suffer fools, and there was no way of telling you were foolish until he found you insufferable. People scattered out of his way like a rock in a river, and Tanguish followed in his wake, eyebrows raised, bemused by the response. Walking in the street always made him feel small compared to the hemmed in skyline of buildings. Walking beside Helsknight? Well, it was a lesson in how small he could feel hemmed in by the presence of someone else. 

(Tanguish briefly wondered if Helsknight knew he had that effect on people. Surely, he did, it was so glaringly hard to miss. There was a reason why Tanguish cringed on rooftops. Normally people bumped into and harassed each other, generally assuming their business was more important than yours -- not because it really was more important, but because it was their business, which made it more important to them. However, when a man with a sword and armor came marching down the lane, generally they assumed his business was more important than any other potential business anyone could have going on ever. Of course, behind that was the worry that interrupting that important business meant you became someone’s important business, and when that someone had armor and a sword and an expression that could melt glass--)

“Well I’m starving,” Helsknight sighed, confirming Tanguish’s suspicions that he didn’t know (or didn’t care) that he was scattering the masses like sparks from a kicked campfire.

"Oh, well, I guess neither of us have really had anything yet today," Tanguish agreed tentatively. "Do you have errands to run? Or, I don't know, knightly duties or something?"

Helsknight scoffed a laugh. "I have knee joints and willpower."

Tanguish blinked at him questioningly. "Uhm? What?”

"I was in there swinging my sword around a lot," Helsknight said, ushering back towards the colosseum. "If I just go home and sit, I'm going to get sore, and then I'm not going to move for the rest of the day. And since the day has just started, I’d rather keep moving."

"Oh… I didn't realize -- does that happen after your matches too?"

"Of course it does." Helsknight raised an eyebrow at him. "Do you not get sore running around on rooftops all day?"

"No. Well -- not normally." Tanguish thought for a moment, and then looked down at his hands. His fingers were still sore from climbing, and while he'd shaken some of the ache out, he thought if he were asked to climb a roof right now, his grip would fail halfway up. "Tango must be doing better today."

Helsknight snorted. He opened his mouth to say something hateful (Tanguish could tell from the sneer on the edge of his expression). Then he seemed to think about it for a moment, and rolled his eyes instead.

“You can tell me I’m stupid,” Tanguish offered quietly. “I already know your opinion on it.”

Helsknight grimaced, looked up to the sky beseechingly, and muttered, “Don’t just give me an excuse to be mean to you.”

“You need an excuse?”

The knight’s lips tightened into a tense line, and the tips of his ears started to turn red. It was a hilarious, frustrated blush, and Tanguish had to cough to hide his laughter. 

“I just told you I can’t lie,” Helsknight grumbled woefully. Then, trying to save some face, he asked, “Did EB tell you anything about Zedaph?”

“Oh, yes he did,” Tanguish said, remembering his one small victory of the day. “He gave me directions. South of the Watcher’s Den?”

Helsknight’s nose wrinkled in something like disgust. “That’s Cleo’s side of town, isn’t it?”

“I thought everywhere was her side of town?”

“Her and the Demon have a boundary line somewhere,” Helsknight said, squinting vaguely at some nearby rooftops, as if looking for some visual sign of the city’s divide. “And I think she stays away from EX’s tower.”

“You’ve had dealings with her?”

“If by ‘dealings’ you mean chasing her thugs off, then yes.”

“Oh.”

“We walk that fun little knife edge of I-hate-you-but-you’re-too-much-trouble-to-kill.”

“I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know I exist,” Tanguish laughed nervously. “Though if I’m going through her side of town, I guess I won’t stay that way.”

Helsknight shrugged and paused at a street corner, getting his bearings. “Eh, just make sure you’ve got something to pay some tolls with and you’ll be fine. They deal in iron a lot, more so they can melt it down than for the coins themselves. Wouldn’t bring diamonds though. Keeping too much of value on you is just asking for trouble.”

Tanguish nodded and tried to swallow the nervous lump starting to coalesce in his throat. 

(He should… probably try and memorize the directions to Zedaph’s, just in case he had to respawn. Oh, he really didn’t want to respawn though. It was always unpleasant. Everything leading up to it tended to be too. Why did everyone have to be so violent?)

Helsknight started walking again. Tanguish followed him. They passed through a busy square, Helsknight occasionally pointing out food carts that appealed to him without really committing to anything. Tanguish didn't really care for what the knight chose, just so long as he kept moving. The slower they walked, the more the crowd pinned them in. It was like they could all collectively sense Helsknight wasn't going anywhere in a hurry. Shoulders pressed in closer. People bumped into them, or didn't clear out of the way quite so quickly. 

Then, of course, there was the pickpocket. 

It was an amusing thing for Tanguish to notice, recognizing himself in the mannerisms of someone else. The person was small, brown haired and brown eyed and brown cloaked, like they were tailored to be lost in the crowd. They were so incredibly unremarkable as to be intentional, and they moved quickly, brushing deftly against people with the intrusiveness of a gentle breeze. Tanguish glanced to the aimless knight, whose coin purse was kept on his belt, to the pickpocket making a calculated swerve towards them, and quietly pretended he hadn't noticed anything. 

Helsknight, though a scary proposition, was still alone and distracted. Tanguish couldn't blame the pickpocket for thinking he was a worthwhile mark. There was a tiny, vindictive part of himself that wanted to let the pickpocket go about their business, if for no other reason than to watch someone else get chased down by the relentless knight like he had been. Instead, when the inevitable happened and the pickpocket brushed past Helsknight's side, Tanguish plucked the knight's coin purse out of the thief's hand before they could take three steps away. The two thieves stared at each other, them scowling indignantly, and Tanguish smiling nervously.

"Sorry," Tanguish said, inching a step back towards the knight still making his way through the crowd. "He's uhm… not a good choice. You'll thank me later."

There was a tense moment where it looked like the pickpocket might do something. They took a step forward, pushing a leading shoulder in Tanguish’s direction, in that way people did when they were thinking about drawing a knife they knew how to use. Tanguish, who knew nothing about knife fighting besides its danger to his health, took another step backwards. His heel came down on an armored boot, and then Helsknight was looming over him, too dense to notice a theft, but not so dense as to miss a confrontation in the crowd. The pickpocket paled under the knight’s dangerous scowl and fled.

“Starting trouble?” Helsknight asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Stopping trouble,” Tanguish told him smugly, shoving his purse into his hand. “You really need to stop hanging things off your belt. Even a bad thief thinks it's worth the risk.”

Helsknight looked down at him, bemused, "Have you considered getting a job thief-proofing things for people?" 

"That would work until every thief in hels got the bright idea to stab me," Tanguish said with an indignant sniff. "Unlike you crazy colosseum fighters, I like keeping my bits inside my body, thank you very much."

"Eh, so you get a few holes in you. Big deal. Anything a healing potion can't fix, a respawn can."

"I think after the third respawn with everything I own stolen, it would get pretty old."

"That's what ender chests are for."

"You're unnaturally blasé about this."

"I'm just saying, for someone with a death wish, you care a lot about stab wounds."

"I don't have a death wish."

Helsknight raised his eyebrows. "Remind me again what the point of your Tango quest is?"

Tanguish scowled, “Caring about someone’s welfare doesn’t mean I have a death wish.”

Helsknight looked up towards the sky, a long-suffering sigh stealing his retort. They were creeping up on that dangerous topic again -- blindfolded swordsmen, stumbling in the dark and drawing blood. Though, if that really were the nature of things, Tanguish was certain Helsknight would be the more cutting of the two of them.

“Can we get some muffins?” Tanguish asked, pointing out a cart on the far side of the square and, hopefully, distracting the knight before they could reopen the old argument. It wasn’t subtle, but Helsknight seemed just as keen for the escape as Tanguish was, directing his disdain at something more harmless.

"Muffins? Really?"

"What? They're good!" Tanguish answered defensively, steering them towards the cart he picked. "These here are the best in town! All sorts of berries, chocolate, nuts--"

"Steal here often?" Helsknight smirked.

"Only if it's stale."

"Such high praise, and you haven't even eaten a fresh one yet."

"All the more reason we should get some," Tanguish continued relentlessly, within smelling distance of the cart now. The warmth of fresh bread and the tangy sweet of fruit made his heart flutter excitedly. "Come on, it's not like you were going to pick something anyway."

Helsknight raised his eyebrows at him but followed, condescending in his amusement. Tanguish ignored it. If Helsknight thought he could ruin Tanguish's favorite food, he was sorely mistaken. Tanguish took great care in selecting his breakfast, looking over the myriad of options the little food cart provided, much to the dismay of the line slowly forming behind him. He finally picked for himself a blueberry muffin, basking in the heavenly smell of tart and sweet. He stepped to the side to let Helsknight pick something, only for the knight to shake his head.

"I don't eat sweet things."

Tanguish scoffed, a reaction that brought a curious smirk to the knight's face.

"No wonder you're so angry all the time," Tanguish told him, then looked over the assembled muffins one more time for something the knight might like. Helsknight paid for their food, and the two of them passed onto a side street, away from the bustling square.

“We should really pick a roof to eat on,” Tanguish said, breaking off a piece of his muffin and rolling the crumbly bread into a ball between his fingers. “That’s the best way to eat these.”

“I’m not climbing a roof,” Helsknight grumbled, working one of his gauntlets off and tucking it beneath his arm to carry. “What is this?”

“It’s a banana nut muffin. You said you don’t like sweet things, and it’s a little sweet, but not as much as some of them.”

“You some kind of muffin connoisseur?”

“They’re my favorite,” Tanguish confirmed, beaming pridefully. “They’re soft and warm and, you know, there are definitely some better than others, but you can’t really get a muffin wrong, you know?” Tanguish took an appreciative bite, emphasizing his point. “Tango doesn’t like them very much but, I mean, he can’t be right about everything.”

“He finally has a personality outside of his hermit,” Helsknight mused, eyebrows raised, “and it's about baked goods, of all things.”

It took Tanguish a few steps to realize the knight was joking.

They ate their breakfast and kept walking, taking a long, circuitous route back to Helsknight’s home. It was interesting for Tanguish, seeing so many places from the ground level. He had walked around town before, obviously, but normally it was in short bursts while he was stealing things, scampering down from a roof, running a few streets over, and then scampering back up again. Everything looked so much bigger from the ground. Houses, storefronts, and churches towered. Carts and stalls cluttered the streets like carelessly tossed children’s toys, waiting to be tripped over. They passed Tanguish’s favorite church, and he stopped them for a few minutes to just, stare up at it, marveling at how small he felt in its shadow.

“They build them like that on purpose,” Helsknight told him, ushering to the pointed towers and spider-leg buttresses. “The way it all points up like that. It's supposed to make you think about gods and saints, and the splendor of heaven. If you feel small, you reflect on how much bigger than your problems the gods can be.”

(Grand. It was so very, very grand. Tanguish had always felt small on its roof, but standing beneath its tallest tower, he was surprised he existed at all.)

Two streets over, they stumbled onto a Wall of Remembrance. Or, well, Tanguish stumbled onto it. Helsknight walked up to it with all the reverence of someone approaching a well-known altar to a favored deity. Remembrance Walls weren’t a rare thing. Tanguish knew of at least four in the city, all varying sizes. Hels didn’t have graveyards. There was no point to them. When a helsmet died, they either respawned or they didn’t. Nothing of substance was ever left behind. Still, no matter how the universe felt about the existence of someone’s other half, those left behind cared. They cared, and they remembered.

This Remembrance Wall was a simple one: red-brown bricks stacked haphazardly atop each other in the space between two storefronts, cutting off access to the alley beyond. They were dull, simple nether bricks, the names on their surfaces dark and hard to decipher, hand-carved and obscured by jagged handwriting unused to the task. Some were painted or decorated, carved with icons or additional words. In front of the wall, flowers and candles of various weather and decay marked the visits of mourners and memory keepers alike. Vibrant, newly gathered offerings sat side by side with candles melted to their bases and flowers long blackened by wilt and heat. It was a somber, colorful place. When they walked by, Helsknight slowed, staying a respectful pace away from the line of offerings. His eyes tracked along the surface, reading. Searching.

"Do you know anyone here?" Tanguish asked, his voice soft, not quite a whisper. It felt disrespectful to talk normally, like disturbing some exhausted thing finally resting.

"Yeah," Helsknight said after a few contemplative moments. He stopped and pointed to a name near the base of the wall. "Arena fighter." He pointed to another name. "Arena fighter." And another. "Knight from the Order of Blood." Another. "An arena patron."

Helsknight's eyes searched across the wall again, and he pointed to a name near its top, "That one, he wasn't a fighter, but he hung out with RK and his Hand a lot. He's come back I think… or maybe he's just a new helsmet from the same source." Helsknight's brow furrowed. "At any rate, he doesn't remember those of us who knew him before."

"That must be," Tanguish searched for a word and finally settled on, "hard." Then after an awkward pause, “Uhm -- I assume, that is, emotionally, that sounds hard to deal with.”

Helsknight shrugged. "I didn't know him well." He rested a hand on the pommel of his sword, looking uncomfortable. “You uh… know anyone here?”

Tanguish shook his head. “I don’t know how to make friends, remember?”

Helsknight smirked. “Right.”

Tanguish pointed to a brick near the top of the wall, painted with yellow lightning bolts. “I was on the roof when that one was made though. They were laughing when they added the lightning bolts. I think it was for a friend.”

“Nice of them to remember,” Helsknight mused, and then fell silent.

They stood there quietly, Helsknight with a hand on his sword, still as a statue, and Tanguish fidgeting awkwardly, picking at one of his knuckles with a clawed finger. He got the feeling they were on the edge of something, like standing on a roof gutter and suddenly remembering they feared heights. Tanguish wanted to leave, find some suitable excuse to get them both walking again. He also… really wanted to ask what the knight was thinking so hard about. Anything to break the moment and the odd tension it held. But when he looked up at Helsknight, the knight’s gaze was distant and closed, some complex and barely contained emotion on the edges of his expression, and Tanguish worried that interrupting his reverie would pour whatever that emotion was out on top of him. He didn’t think he could handle the knight’s anger a second time that day.

“Excuse me.” 

Tanguish startled. He hadn’t noticed someone walking up to them. She was just barely shorter than him, with bright green eyes and braided hair and stained overalls. She smiled a quick greeting to Tanguish before looking up at Helsknight. “Are you with the Order of Remembrance?”

“Er, no. Their capes are blue.” Helsknight dragged the hem of his cape around to show her the red color. 

“Oh, darn it.” She sighed and looked down at her feet, disappointed. “Sorry for disturbing you.”

Helsknight glanced in Tanguish’s direction, swallowed, and then pointed to the brick in her hand, “I've carved names before, if you were needing help.”

Tanguish blinked in surprise. Helsknight was using that voice -- the soothing, friendly, believable one. The one he had used to tell Tanguish he wasn't a parasite. The memory of that phrase still made his chest feel funny, and hearing the voice again, even used for someone else, brought the hint of that feeling back. The girl looked up at him, relieved and hopeful. 

"Could you carve a name for me, please?" She asked. "I tried but--"

She flipped the brick over, showing a few illegible scrapes. Helsknight nodded, took the brick from her gently and, once she gave him the name, he unsheathed a knife and started carving. It wasn't a good knife for the task -- the blade was too long, probably made for fighting, and he had to hold it low in his gauntleted hand, fingers clasped around the blade. Still, he worked like someone who had done this before, long sure strokes that removed the surface with every pass. It helped that nether brick was nearly as chalky and porous as the netherrack it was made from, shaving off like sandstone whenever he cut into it. The woman nearly stood on Helsknight's toes to watch him work, staring down at the name like it would disappear when she looked away. Eventually Helsknight passed it back to her, and she held it gently, brushing the last bits of dust away with a thumb.

"Is it for a friend of yours?" Helsknight asked, his voice still that uncanny gentle. He grimaced and cleared his throat, like speaking that way brought him physical discomfort. Or maybe he was just self-conscious.

"It's for me," she sighed, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "Thank you for your time, sir."

She turned to walk along the wall, searching for a good place to leave her name. Helsknight cleared his throat again, obviously uncomfortable, and walked away so quickly Tanguish had to jog to catch up. He worried for a moment that the knight was somehow angry about the whole interaction, but the scowl on Helsknight's face wasn't angry. 

(If Tanguish didn't know any better, and he thought he did, he would say the knight looked shaken. He couldn't imagine why though. Sure, the whole thing had been a bit awkward, and a bit sad, but the moment had passed now, hadn't it?)

“Are you okay?” Tanguish asked him breathlessly, trying to lengthen his stride to keep pace, but inevitably still taking one and a half steps for every one of the knight's.

“I’m f--” Helsknight bit off the reply and fixed his gaze stubbornly ahead, looking vaguely annoyed. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Well, I wasn’t going to, but now suddenly it seems like there’s something I should be worried about,” Tanguish laughed lightly, trying to encourage the knight to relax a little. It didn’t work. “Uhm… that was very kind of you.”

“It wasn’t kind,” Helsknight retorted. “Any decent person would’ve helped.”

“It was very decent of you, then?"

Helsknight scoffed.

“You did the thing, with your voice.” Tanguish pointed out to him. “That was kind, I think.”

“Can we -- look, let’s just ignore that that happened.” Helsknight released a sharp breath, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Why?”

“Because --” Helsknight scowled, glanced down at the street, then searchingly up towards the sky. It felt different than his many prayers for patience, more like he was searching for words. “Because I don’t want to.”

“If you’re scared I’ll tell someone you feel emotions other than angry,” Tanguish offered one more time, smiling nervously, “your secret is safe with me.”

Helsknight glowered down at him.

Tanguish mimed zipping his lips shut. “Thief’s honor.”

The knight rolled his eyes, but mercifully slowed his pace to something closer to a normal walking speed. Tanguish was able to catch his breath a little.

"It's not--" Helsknight started and then stopped again, sighting out another sharp breath. "It's not worth talking about.”

“Is it worth hearing?”

That gave the knight pause. Not enough of a pause to change his mind, Tanguish noticed that immediately. It did make him think though, and when he was turning over an idea, he didn’t have time to be angry, or frustrated, or whatever it was that gave him that bitter expression.

“Have you ever -- oh, hels.” Helsknight rolled his eyes. “You wouldn’t -- you won’t understand.” 

He walked a few steps in silence, choosing his words carefully. Tanguish waited. Waiting for people to talk, to work through fragmented thoughts, was something he knew. He had done it for Tango many times, and while Helsknight was less bombastic and infinitely grimmer, it wasn't so different. Not really. 

 “Have you ever been hurt? And it’s like -- you know it’s bad. Obviously. You’re in pain. It hurts so much; it might even kill you. But… you haven’t looked at it yet.” 

Helsknight didn't look at Tanguish as he spoke, just kept his gaze stubbornly forward, a line weathering itself between his eyebrows, like he was thinking hard on something. 

“Maybe it's just your mind playing tricks on you, or maybe the cut is deep, but it isn’t vital. Or, maybe, you’ve got bones and guts showing, and it's only a matter of time before you're dead -- but as long as you don’t know how bad it is, maybe it isn’t deadly. As long as you don’t look at it, you can keep fighting.” 

Helsknight started fidgeting with the clasp on his gauntlet.

“So… there’s that. And then, there’s words like that. Something is wrong, you know it is. Something needs done about it, but it's so big and so… stupidly impossible, that even giving voice to it will make it too much for you. If it's in your head, it’s not real yet. If it's not real, it can’t -- well it can hurt you, but maybe not as badly. Maybe it doesn’t have to be true yet. The outcome can change. It’s not fate.” Helsknight sighed. "Maybe it's worth hearing. But it's not worth setting in stone."

"If I can't see it, it can't hurt me," Tanguish offered quietly. "If I run fast enough, it can't catch me."

Helsknight looked down at him, and against everything about their conversation, he smiled. It was a humorous, almost patronizing smile, but too amused to quite make it there. "And just what in hels could you possibly be running from?"

It was Tanguish's turn to look stubbornly away, committing to memory the colored glass on a nearby storefront, instead of the look of misplaced sympathy on Helsknight's face. Tanguish didn't know why he felt so vulnerable when it was Helsknight who'd been talking, tiptoeing around some secret in the street. 

(This wasn't how this was supposed to go. It was supposed to be like Tango. Tango who vented and complained and ranted but never expected anything back. It was supposed to be that unassuming one-way listening, not this new and scary thing, with someone pouring their heart out and, for some reason, watching him expectantly like they wanted him to meet them halfway on it. Tanguish didn't like it. And he didn't like that it was Helsknight, who managed to look, for the briefest moment, so terribly fragile, even with the armor on. But still, the knight was looking at him, and for once there was no hint of that dangerous flicker in his eyes, or the turn and snap of anger, or anything besides vulnerable expectation, like holding his hand out to a snake.)

(Had Helsknight forgotten he was a parasite? Given all the events of the day, it really seemed like he had.)

Tanguish looked up at the knight, "I'm running from being alone, I think."

Helsknight gave a thoughtful grunt. "Didn't figure loneliness would be a problem for you."

Tanguish shrugged uncomfortably, "It wasn't for a while. But then I met Tango, and then I started losing him--" he gave another helpless shrug.

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Helsknight told him, that odd, almost pleasant smirk still lurking in his expression. “You’re going to meet Zedaph, the two of you are going to get on like a house on fire. Then after things with you and your stupid hermit have cooled down, you’ll start seeing him again -- just with actual boundaries this time.”

“It's all going to be that easy, is it?”

“Don’t see why it wouldn’t be. Just try not to run so far from loneliness, you run yourself onto the nearest Remembrance Wall.”

“I think I can manage that,” Tanguish laughed.

“Do you remember that pickpocket from earlier?”

The question came out of nowhere, a break in their long, untended silence. They weren’t far from Helsknight’s home now, maybe three blocks away from their turn. The streets on this side of town were nearly deserted, too far away from anything of interest to warrant much more than walking between destinations. Tanguish had been lured into a sense of complacency as they walked, because he was getting tired and the street was empty, and who would bother Helsknight, anyway? But when Helsknight asked, he had his head tilted down and to the side slightly, like he was tracking something in his peripheral. 

“Uhm… yeah I remember,” Tanguish said, looking up at him with concern. “Why?”

“What did they look like?”

“Uh, short. Brown hair.”

“Shorter than you?”

“Maybe?”

Helsknight let out a scornful snort and turned his gaze forward again, scanning the road ahead, planning. “They’re back, with friends.”

Tanguish muttered a curse. He started to look behind them, but Helsknight stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

“They don’t know we’re onto them yet,” Helsknight said quietly. “I saw four. They’re following us a block back, and sticking to the alleys. They’re either planning on ambushing us up the road somewhere, or following us home.”

Tanguish let out a nervous laugh. “How are you so calm about this?”

“I’m a knight wearing valuable armor and carrying around half a stack of diamonds. Some people think it’s worth the risk.” Helsknight shrugged. “I’ve been jumped a few times.”

“Well, I haven’t, and I plan to keep it that way,” Tanguish told him. He tried to subtly find an escape route, but must have failed, because he caught a glance of Helsknight rolling his eyes. “I’m not super familiar with this side of town, but if we can get to the next street over, there’s a house with a low gutter. I can help you onto the roofs from there--”

Helsknight barked a laugh, “I’m not running.”

“There’s four of them,” Tanguish told him, struggling to keep his voice low. “If you don’t run, you’re going to lose all your stuff, and I’m not picking fights to get it back for you.”

“One thief and three untrained thugs, all probably with knives, at most a short sword,” Helsknight countered, raising an unconcerned eyebrow. “I could handle that in my sleep.”

“You handle it then! I’m--”

“Turn here.”

“What?”

“Gods above, you never listen the first time, do you?” Helsknight snapped, shoving Tanguish in the direction of the nearest alley.

“An alley?” Tanguish asked incredulously.  “You want to get jumped, don’t you?”

“It’s a tactical advantage.” Helsknight informed him matter-of-factly, dipping into the shadow between two buildings. “They can only approach two at a time, and they have to think through attacks to make sure they don’t hit each other.” He flashed Tanguish a predatory grin. “Ambushes aren’t just for thieves, you know.”

Tanguish felt cold pool in his stomach, a sinking blend of fear and dismay. How did he keep forgetting Helsknight was dangerous? He got that feeling again, like walking beside a waking dragon, and as it had in the colosseum, the feeling made him want to run. Helsknight took a ready stance a few paces from the mouth of the alley, and Tanguish backed away from him, wary. The knight sure looked confident. Even standing sideways so less of his body was facing the road, his shoulders had a way of filling up the alleyway. He looked bristled, like even his shadow leaned forward with anticipation.

“Helsknight,” Tanguish told him one more time, “we should run.”

“I’m not a coward, and I don’t run,” Helsknight answered him evenly, his tone flat and unwavering, not bothering to look over his shoulder. A long gleam of metal slid from his side to his hand as he drew his sword. “If you’re going to run, then run.”

Tanguish took another wary step back, his heartbeat fluttering in his chest like it wanted to escape just as badly as he did. He glanced behind himself down the alley, to the wall it dead-ended with. He could climb that and get to the roof. It would be easy. His hand had rested since this morning. He could be three streets away in a heartbeat, and far away from trouble.

(Helsknight didn't need him here anyway, he reasoned. He would just get in the way. And if he didn't get in the way, he would still have to watch the knight attack people again, and he didn't want that. It would be just as terrifying as the first time, more so, because he would be much closer to the action.)

Tanguish gave in to the impulse and dashed for the wall. He leaped, pulled himself up and leaped again for the nearby roof ledge. Helsknight made some disapproving noise, but didn't move to stop him. 

(Good. He shouldn't. Tanguish wasn't a knight. He didn't have crazy codes of ethics or vows of courage or, or whatever it was the knight was so fixated on!)

At the top of the roof, Tanguish caught his first glimpse of the group ambushing Helsknight, though they were exactly as the knight had said they were. Four rough looking individuals, one of them so nondescript as to be notable, and familiar from the square. Tanguish watched them turn into the alley, and watched the leading two take startled steps back at seeing the knight prepared to meet them. Their voices echoed up the walls, accusatory shouts and threats, met by Helsknight’s steely silence -- a warning no one could hear, but everyone who saw knew to heed. Well, everyone with a mind for dangerous social cues, anyway. It was Tanguish’s one second of hesitation, crouching there on top of the roof, that let him notice the two in the back of the group talking. It was a quick whispered exchange, some tall helmet with glowing green eyes whispering to the pickpocket while the shouts got louder. The pickpocket nodded and dashed off down the street. Tanguish watched them, concerned, and confused, as they rounded the corner and disappeared, then flinched as the yelling in the alley suddenly turned into lunging and metal, the two forward thieves finally attacking. 

Helsknight had been right about choosing the alley. He stood his ground, the reach on his sword keeping his two assailants back. When they dared to close in, it was a simple matter for him to turn their blades so they had to stagger and dodge out of each other’s way. Tanguish shuddered, took a step back -- and watched as the pickpocket came into view on the roof on the other side of the alley. The two of them made eye contact, a pair of pickpockets hiding on the rooftops. They looked away first, glancing down into the alley and then back to Tanguish again.

“Oh,” Tanguish said out loud, though probably too soft for the pickpocket to hear him. “You’re flanking him. That’s… smart. They’re not supposed to be smart.”

The pickpocket dashed towards the alley, sliding across the shingles on deft and nimble feet.

Tanguish should have run. He really should have. He wasn’t a fighter. He was terrified of the violence happening in the alley below, and if Helsknight got killed because he was overzealous about his bravery, or defending himself, or whatever-it-was, well, it served him right. He should have the good sense to run away from overwhelming odds. Except, in the few seconds he had to think, Tanguish figured this was a little bit his fault, wasn’t it? He had gotten the pickpocket’s ire, which started all this. And besides that, given how the day had gone, it was rude of him to abandon Helsknight in a time of need when he hadn’t abandoned Tanguish, even when he’d been caught eavesdropping, and generally been a nuisance. He had even promised not to hurt Tanguish the next time he got mad.

Against his good sense, and every sense besides that screamed he should run away as fast as his feet could carry him, Tanguish ran towards the danger, bounding down the roof to try and do… Well, do something. He thought maybe he could intercept the pickpocket, or maybe just frighten them off. Instead, his foot slipped on the incline, and Tanguish screeched as he went tumbling off the roof just as the pickpocket jumped into the alley. The two crashed together in a heap of flailing limbs, and landed roughly on the cobblestones. Tanguish was lucky he landed on top of the pickpocket, which absorbed most of the fall for him -- though the loud snap of something breaking and the even louder scream told Tanguish volumes about the person he had landed on. The two of them staggered to their feet and away from each other, Tanguish almost backing into Helsknight, and the pickpocket holding their wrist beneath their arm and grimacing. 

Tanguish felt Helsknight move behind him, a surprised jerk, and he had enough sense to scream, “It’s me! Don’t stab me! I’m helping!”

The knight grunted in acknowledgment, dared a glance over his shoulder, and with casual smoothness thrust his sword into one of his attackers, killing them and scattering their items in a single motion. The final thief stepped into their place, shouting a curse.

Tanguish winced at the ring of steel on steel, cringing away from Helsknight as he fought. He had to stifle the impulse to cover his ears, so close to the sharp and dangerous noise. Every screech and hiss made his heart skip a beat, demanding his attention, like at any moment they could sink into him. The fact that the noise was all behind him where he couldn’t see made it worse. But the pickpocket was starting to pull themselves together, clutching their wounded wrist to their chest while pulling a knife with their other hand. They snarled at Tanguish, brown eyes bright and wild. Tanguish dropped into a half-crouch, trying to make himself smaller. He kept his eyes on their blade, slipping to the side when they stabbed in his direction and jamming his shoulder into the alley wall -- which seemed much too close now that he was stuck in here with so many armed people. Tanguish ducked another stab, and, not knowing what else to do, swiped his claws at the pickpocket. They swiped their knife forward at the same time, and Tanguish yelped as a gouge opened on his hand. 

(Yeah, he should have seen that coming.)

The pickpocket launched forward again, knife-hand leading, and Tanguish managed a half finished thought that being stabbed with a knife would probably suck a little less than being stabbed by a sword. Something swept his legs out from under him. The flash of metal arched in front of Tanguish’s face, and then stars exploded across his eyes as he fell against the cobblestones. Wait. Not stars. Sparks. Sparks as Helsknight’s sword slashed through the pickpocket so fast and powerfully that the blade crashed into the wall on the follow-through, briefly lighting the alley in a shower of tiny meteor-trail sparks. The pickpocket fell back, vanishing into a scattering of items before they could hit the ground. 

Helsknight growled, a brief, shocked noise, and staggered a step, his boot coming down just short of Tanguish’s leg. He jabbed an elbow backwards, bloodying the nose of the thief who had lunged into him. His sword swept around, once, twice. Tanguish scrambled to his feet.

The alley was still. Not silent. Not completely. Helsknight’s heavy breathing seemed overly loud in the absence left by the fight’s end. He gulped in air like he had just finished running a mile, only belatedly remembering to sheath his sword.

“You alright?” Helsknight asked, half-turning to face him. The movement was stiff, like he was loath to move too quickly. 

“Fine,” Tanguish croaked, his voice cracking halfway through the word. He swallowed and said a bit stronger, “I’m fine.”

Helsknight nodded, took a step, and grimaced. His whole body stiffened again, and his breath caught for a moment, the whole alley seeming to gulp into silence in the time it took him to remember to breathe. Tanguish crept over to him, stepping delicately around the scattered items on the ground.

“Are you alright?” Tanguish asked, looking the knight up and down for any outward signs of harm. Between the dark armor and the red cape, and the spattering of blood from the fight itself, it was hard to tell.

“I’m fine.”

“I thought knights couldn’t lie?”

This ripped a laugh out of Helsknight, one of the rare, genuine ones, which was a shame since another wince cut it short.

“Gods you’re a pest,” Helsknight spat at him, though between the rueful grin on his face and the half-present laugh, it didn’t sound like he meant it. “I left myself open and one of them got a lucky strike between armor plates. I will be fine. Just gotta get home before they come back for their gear.”

Helsknight took another deep breath, and with a nod led them out of the alleyway. He walked in tense lurches, a fist clasped against his side to stifle a wound he couldn’t reach with his armor in the way. Tanguish followed and watched him tensely, noting the occasional drip of blood on the cobblestones. He didn’t know much about wounds, outside of “bleeding is bad” and “too much bleeding is really bad”, but he thought if Helsknight could still walk a straight line, they probably hadn’t reached the “too much bleeding” part. Still, he hovered close by, waiting for the knight to stumble or fall or stagger. He didn’t know what he would do if Helsknight did -- try to catch him maybe? Sure, the knight was twice his size, but he could probably help him walk a block or two.

“Thanks for not running,” Helsknight said, cutting off Tanguish’s thoughts. The knight didn’t look at him, too focused on the laborious task of putting one foot in front of the other, but he did manage an exhausted, grateful smile. “Well, thanks for coming back, anyway.”

“Oh.” Tanguish felt something in his chest flutter, something hard to name. He decided it was pride. “Uhm… you’re welcome. Thanks -- thanks for not stabbing me in an alley. And, you know, not letting me get stabbed.”

Helsknight chuckled. “Sure. Anytime.”

“Anytime? So, you would--” Tanguish coughed awkwardly. “Would you --? No wait, nevermind. You’re -- you just got -- nevermind.”

Helsknight glanced down at him, an eyebrow raised. “Would I what?”

“Uhm, well,” Tanguish stammered, starting to fidget with one of his knuckles only to stop when he remembered the cut on his hand. He wrung it out, like it could somehow stop the stinging. “It’s just, I’m going to be looking for Zedaph tomorrow.”

Helsknight’s other eyebrow raised.

“I don’t know. A big scary colosseum knight who knows how to keep me from being stabbed would be nice to have along -- assuming you even want to leave the house tomorrow after getting jumped today.”

Helsknight smirked, then sighed, “Suppose getting jumped has never stopped me from leaving the house before.”

“You sure didn’t stop after I jumped you.”

“You didn’t jump me. You were more like… an angry cat falling off a roof, smelling vaguely of mushrooms.”

Tanguish opened his mouth, closed it again. He brought his arm up to his nose and gave it an experimental sniff. Helsknight laughed.

Chapter Text

Tanguish awoke the next morning nervous. He couldn’t tell if he was nervous-excited or nervous-scared, but nervous was the emotion that seemed the most pressing. Even after the good night's rest his thoughts lingered on all the disasters of the day before. He promised himself over and over that today he wouldn’t make a fool of himself. Today, he wasn’t going to eavesdrop or creep around where he wasn’t wanted. He wasn’t going to ask stupid questions or talk too much. He was going to be witty and fun and earnest, and perfectly, pleasantly, normal. He had to be. He didn’t have a choice.

(Of course, the trouble with not having a choice was he would probably, inevitably, find some way of mucking things up again. Tanguish tried not to dwell on that, for fear he might jinx himself.)

At least Helsknight seemed to be in a good mood, or as close to a good mood as he ever got. He grumbled a bit when he rose for the day, grumbled a bit more when he rebandaged his wound. It had been a shallow cut, annoying because of its location just beneath his ribs. Tanguish helped him clean it the night before, wincing with the knight every time he touched it. It was nothing some good food and rest wouldn’t fix, and already this morning it looked better than it had. Still, every time he looked at it, Tanguish remembered the alley, the shower of sparks and the staggered step, and grimaced wondering if the knight would have fared better if Tanguish had not been there. It was probably just guilt talking -- Helsknight didn’t seem to be holding it against him. Still, the thought that, even when trying to help, Tanguish had only managed to wound someone, stung. 

He thought about bringing it up to the knight that morning, while he waited for Helsknight to buckle and clasp his armor on. The question nearly made it to his teeth. But then Helsknight asked for his help cinching some hard-to-reach buckle, and Tanguish’s concentration was lost to the intricacies of belts and straps and “Not there you idiot, I need to breathe for helssakes!” By the time it occurred to Tanguish to ask again, they were already walking across town, and Helsknight had more pressing things on his mind than the skittish thief’s anxieties. 

“Stick close,” Helsknight told him, “And if I tell you to go somewhere, try to do it the first time I ask.”

“I’ll try,” Tanguish said with a nervous laugh. “Are you expecting more ambushes today?”

“I hope not,” Helsknight sighed wearily, like being attacked in alleys was an inconvenience on the same scale as being asked to walk in the rain. “Cleo and I have an unspoken agreement of sorts. As long as neither of us attacks the other first, no one gets hurt. Means I have to pay her thugs' tolls just like everyone else, but it beats the alternative."

"What's the alternative?"

"A lot of sword swinging."

Tanguish thought back to the knight's wound again, shallow but surely inconvenient. "Should we get some health potions somewhere?"

"Are you planning on starting trouble?"

"No! No. It’s just-- I mean, you’re already hurt, right? Shouldn’t we, I don’t know, be prepared?”

Helsknight shrugged, “It’s barely a flesh wound, and I’ve got netherite gear. I’m not worried.”

“Yeah, you’re probably not.” Tanguish sighed and looked up at the sky beseechingly, and then frowned, because that was something Helsknight would do. When had he picked up that habit? 

(What’s next? Speaking in odd, fragmentary sentences? Long, ominous pauses? Swordcraft? Ridiculous.)

“Watcher’s Den is that way,” Helsknight pointed over a row of houses. “Cleo’s territory is a few blocks south of it. If you want, we can go harass the watcher, see if Zedaph is even home before we make the trip.”

Tanguish thought back to Grian’s helsmet, the undulating room of eyes with their eerie, painful gazes. He shuddered.

“Not a friend of yours, I take it?” Helsknight asked with a mild smirk.

“He’s creepy.”

“He’s harmless.”

“Does something have to be harmful to be unsettling?”

“Things are feared for a reason,” Helsknight answered simply. “If there’s no reason to fear it, why bother?”

Tanguish blinked at that statement, trying to make sense of it. Or, well, the phrase itself was straightforward and easy to make sense of. It was merely the simplicity of it that made it so nonsensical. 

“You’re really not scared of anything, are you?” Tanguish asked finally, incredulously.

Helsknight gave a derisive snort. “I have plenty of fears. Known things just don’t tend to fall into them.”

“Known things?”

“People. Objects. Places. Things with a shape and limits. Anything that can be fought, puzzled through, or reasoned with. Fear someone’s actions if you don’t know what they’ll do. Fear the unknown depths of dark water. That makes sense. But the watcher?” Helsknight shrugged. “He's as mortal as we are. The only thing about him I fear is what he can’t see coming.”

“You’re insane,” Tanguish said pleasantly because he was pretty sure it was true.

“I’m a knight,” Helsknight told him, as if that was explanation enough. 

“I know wardens,” Tanguish told him. “They’re simple, hard to miss, and they’re still terrifying.”

“A warden can be killed though.”

“Just because you can kill it, doesn’t mean it’s not scary, Helsknight.”

Helsknight ruffled his hair, a motion so ridiculous it dispelled the worry Tanguish hadn’t even noticed was tightening in his chest. “Then you go ahead and worry about them for both of us, and I’ll keep my sword ready.”

Tanguish blinked in quiet bewilderment, but let the conversation drop.

They passed the Watcher's Den, the ominous houses with their staring windows and open-mouthed doorways seeming to track them down the road. The place had a look of quiet desolation to it, less a jumble of houses and more a warren. Once an eye blinked open over the structure, tinged in bruised, purple light. Helsknight gave it a mocking salute as they passed, and it narrowed in reply before blinking out again. Tanguish shuddered. Helsknight smirked but didn't comment, practicing restraint or picking his battles. Maybe both.

Eventually the residences resumed, though in a state of disrepair that was almost impressive. Hels had low standards as far as living spaces went. Homes were a jumble of whatever materials could be easily found, mined, or bought. Nether brick was a favorite of the new, the poor, and the destitute; gathering its component parts was as simple as digging a sufficiently deep hole in the ground and baking them for a few hours. The bricks had the tendency to crack under their own weight and, once cracked, crumble. Most of the houses built with them -- most of the houses on this side of town -- were only a story tall, two at most, or else the bricks crowned the tops of sturdier residences made of basalt and blackstone to achieve luxurious three-story heights. Glass was a rarity, sand was a rarity, so most of the windows were shuttered holes in the walls, or else the houses were windowless, foreboding chunks of unwelcoming brick with simple doors cracked open for ambient light. Some buildings had iron bars, though whether that was for improvised windows or something more nefarious, Tanguish neither knew nor cared to investigate. 

The houses leaned; their roofs canted at odd angles on sagging walls. It gave the place an almost organic look. The randomness of an entire city block's slow-motion collapse made shapes that more resembled basalt deltas than a planned district. The cobblestones of the street got lost beneath rusted gravel when there was a street at all. Tanguish didn't know much about the history of hels and its districts, but this place seemed old, made before city planning was a priority for powerful people. Streets meandered and dead-ended, or dissolved into thin alleys and sidewalks before the inward squeeze of collapsing buildings choked them out. Houses weren't marked with numbers. The streets weren't named. Everything was landmarks: specific odd-looking buildings or significant pieces of decay, or walls tagged with graffiti and gang signs. Evil Beezuma's instructions had told them to look for the "parrots" tag, which they found three streets in, but it had been painted over with a snarling ocelot, the sign of a new gang running over their territory. They spent a few minutes trying to figure out if this was the right tag before finally shrugging and picking a direction they thought aligned with their instructions well enough. 

The streets weren’t empty. Just like all life in hels, the people here were tenacious -- maybe even more so than the rest of the city, eking out contentment from crumbling buildings like carving diamonds from deepslate. Those same open doored, windowless houses lilted voices and laughter from inside. A precarious looking two-story building was getting a new roof after some obvious ghast damage. (This side of town also had the misfortune of an uphill slope, and low-flying ghasts sometimes hunted the people below.) Bored-looking bowmen were posted every couple of blocks to try and keep more ghasts at bay, though Tanguish had yet to see any this morning. There were signs of Cleo's people as well. Her half-moon teeth mark appeared on bandanas and jackets and wall tags and, once, a doormat. Most often it appeared in the small roving packs of armored delinquents, the "thugs" Helsknight had so much experience with. They gave the knight an appraising look whenever they passed, but Helsknight simply nodded at them and, with some confusion, they nodded back and continued on their way. It felt a bit like walking through the arena cells again, and Tanguish had to wonder if all the little nods meant something. 

(Respect maybe? We all wear armor and fight things, look at us? It had the feeling of a very ominous, exclusive club. The acknowledgement made the armored people they passed feel included, so Tanguish figured it was probably a good thing. On a side of town where us-versus-them got people robbed and respawned, instilling the thought that Tanguish and Helsknight were "us" was probably a useful thing to do.)

Once Helsknight directed them into an alley, “I recognize those two. Go this way.” And once they were stopped by a roving group and shaken down for a generous amount of iron coins. One of the thugs in that group was wearing netherite boots, and she and Helsknight swapped advice on how they polished their armor while Tanguish nervously counted iron. (You one of those colosseum folks? How do you keep that armor lookin’ so fit? Mine’s been getting holes-- acid in the water? Helssakes I had no idea. What kind of oil do you recommend then? Have you tried that stuff they boil outta netherwort? Smells like burnt hair but it puts on a good shine! Tanguish didn’t try very hard to follow the conversation.) When prompted, that same netherite-booted thug looked over their directions and pointed them to a street they had missed. Tanguish figured that, at least, had been worth the time.

Zedaph’s helsmet’s home, when they finally found it, stood out a bit from those around it. It was a thin, tower-like structure, a base of cracked blackstone that turned abruptly into nether brick just over Helsknight’s head. The windows going up the sides looked more like castle arrow slits than windows, all with closed shutters. Tanguish bounced on his feet nervously as he stood in front of the door, hesitating. Helsknight waited for a moment, arms crossed, before raising an eyebrow at him.

“One generally knocks on a door, if they want to be let in,” Helsknight told him dryly.

“Just… give me a second,” Tanguish said with a bracing breath. “I’m-- I’m working up to it.”

Helsknight waited, his face a mask of false patience. After a few seconds, he raised his fist. Tanguish batted it away.

“I said just give me a second!” Tanguish hissed, nervousness making knots in his stomach. He took another quick breath and shook his head, as if that would clear it. Then he startled when Helsknight wrapped a hand around his.

“What--?”

Helsknight raised Tanguish’s fist to the door for him and, rough, gauntleted fingers wrapped around his, knocked. Tanguish snapped his hand away as if he’d been burned and flashed the knight a furious glare. Helsknight only offered him a long-suffering smile, “I grow old waiting on you. Also, the longer we stand here, the more likely it is we’re going to get robbed.”

“You handled the last thieves just fine,” Tanguish snapped petulantly.

“This entire side of town is thieves,” Helsknight informed him. “Even I, great Champion of Hels that I am, can only fight so many people at once.”

Tanguish rolled his eyes at him and bit off a retort, deciding to stubbornly ignore the knight until the door opened. Except it didn’t open. There wasn’t even sound on the other side, no indication of life or movement, or that the knock had even been heard. Helsknight and Tanguish exchanged a glance, and then Tanguish raised his hand tentatively to knock again. Helsknight scoffed.

“What?”

“If he didn’t hear us the first time,” Helsknight said, raising an eyebrow, “you think he’ll hear that tiny knock this time?”

“What do you want me to do, punch it down?”

“Knocking loud enough for someone to hear upstairs would suffice,” Helsknight said, gesturing to the tower above them. Tanguish rolled his eyes and knocked a third time, this time hard enough to make his knuckles sting. Again, there was no response.

“We walked all this way and no one’s home.” Tanguish sighed disappointedly. “Just my luck.”

“There’s a light on.”

Tanguish startled and turned to face Helsknight, who had stepped several paces back. He stood pointing to a window near the top of the build. Tanguish joined him and craned his neck back. Sure enough, one of the shuttered windows showed light peeking between the slats, flickering slightly -- though whether that was because it was a lantern, or because of the billowing haze in the air, it was hard to tell. 

“That doesn’t mean someone’s home,” Tanguish said doubtfully. “Maybe he just leaves it on to keep the inside lit.”

“Right,” Helsknight said, equally doubtful. They stood there for a long moment, watching the lit window. “We should do a wellness check.”

“A wellness check?” Tanguish asked. “What’s a wellness check?”

“Breaking and entering."

"You're joking."

“Well, it's breaking and entering on the pretense someone might be hurt inside, but the B and E is a big factor.”

“And… why would we do that?”

“EB said he hadn’t seen Zedaph’s hels around for a while,” Helsknight observed, crossing his arms. “And he sent you with a letter because, I’m assuming, any others he’s sent haven’t been replied to. No one’s answering the door, but there’s a light on--” the knight shrugged, “--it paints a picture.”

“Of a hermit,” Tanguish pointed out. “Or a picture of someone who moved out and didn’t tell anyone.”

“Or of someone who lives on a bad side of town who might run afoul of at least six different gangs, all of whom might want a redstoner in their back pocket.”

Helsknight and Tanguish exchanged glances.

“Helsknight, we can’t break into someone’s house.”

“Shouldn’t,” the knight corrected. “We shouldn’t break into someone’s house. We’re more than capable of breaking into someone’s house.”

“Are knights allowed to do that kind of thing?”

“For personal reasons? No. For a wellness check--”

“You’re insane,” Tanguish told Helsknight as he started walking, circling the little tower to find an easy point of entry. “You’re insane, and this is a sure-fire way to ruin what I’m here for!”

“Or a great way to save someone’s life and have them feel deeply indebted to you,” Helsknight countered, circling back around to the front door and trying the handle. It was locked. “Do you have a lockpick?”

“Why in hels would I have a lockpick?”

“Thief.”

“Exactly, thief, not idiot,” Tanguish snapped, and when Helsknight flashed him a (genuine) questioning glance, explained, “If you get caught by the guard, there’s only one reason you carry a lockpick, isn’t there? And that reason gets people's hands taken off, or a jail sentence.”

"Touché," Helsknight said, raising his eyebrows. Apparently, that thought had never occurred to him. After a moment he asked, “Can you pick a lock without a lockpick?”

“Probably, if I had a hook or a wire,” Tanguish said, throwing a measuring glance at the windows above. “I think there’s easier ways of getting in though." Tanguish chewed on his bottom lip, hesitating a few more seconds. He could feel Helsknight watching him, waiting, again, for Tanguish to collect his courage and decide.

(The urge to run away was welling up in him again, directionless, and persistent. But underneath it, Helsknight's insistence at the rareness of bravery picked at him like his conscience. He couldn't keep running from things and expect good to come of it.)

"You promise this isn't going to end horribly?" Tanguish asked finally.

"On my word as a knight, I take full responsibility for any potential repercussions," Helsknight said with great severity and sarcasm. 

"Give me a boost then," Tanguish sighed.

Helsknight made a step with his hands and boosted Tanguish up past the blackstone base to the nether bricks above. Tanguish had expected the knight to struggle with his weight, or at least stumble a little, but Helsknight hoisted him up like he weighed nothing, and so suddenly that Tanguish had to lean into the wall to keep from falling. When he had regained some sense of balance, Tanguish stepped carefully onto the knight's shoulder, then jumped to the wall, his claws finding easy purchase in the cracks of the porous brick. Two springing hand-and-footholds, and Tanguish was on the lowest windowsill, wrenching at the shutter until the latch broke and it fell open. Tanguish had to turn sideways and let the air out of his lungs to wriggle through the thin window, his shoulders scraping painfully against the bricks. There was no windowsill on the other side, and even if there were, with his sideways crawl Tanguish had no hope of grabbing it. He fell, tumbled head-first into a bookcase, scrabbled, slipped, and crashed the rest of the way to the floor. A pair of books fell to the ground beside him, knocked loose by his flailing.

“You alright?” Helsknight called.

“Fine,” Tanguish groaned, pulling himself to his feet. “I’m allergic to falling.”

Helsknight barked a laugh. 

Tanguish brushed himself off and dared a glance around the room, taking in the tiny kitchen, the table with a single chair, and most importantly, the layer of dust over everything. He swallowed nervously and crossed to the front door to let Helsknight in. He had to step over dozens of letters to get there, some clearly older than others, all slipped under the door in the hopes someone would answer. It wasn’t a good sign. Helsknight must have agreed, because when Tanguish let him inside, the knight frowned at the mess on the floor, a worried line forming between his brows. 

“He might’ve just moved,” Tanguish offered weakly.

“Sure,” Helsknight agreed disbelievingly. “Try not to disturb anything.”

“You say that like this is a crime scene.”

“It’s good sense. He’s a redstoner.”

They meandered through the room, Tanguish glancing curiously at the bookshelves while Helsknight made a line for the ladder leading to the next floor. The downstairs was dim, the only light seeping through the closed shutters, but he could still see well enough. The books were a mishmash of topics, redstone and robotics texts mingled with fairytales and handwritten journals. Tanguish leafed through a few, but mostly found things he either couldn’t read or couldn’t fathom. The redstone especially. A few terms he recognized jumped out to him, torch towers and repeaters and an-gates. Others boggled him, and the way they were strung together boggled him more. The words wove in between technical drawings and chicken-scratch scribblings like “It’s a crime this isn’t possible” and “Genius! I hate it!” He got the feeling Zedaph’s hels was quite the character if nothing else. The little notes he scribbled for himself in the margins of things made Tanguish smile.

The click of a trapdoor sounded overhead, and Helsknight swore loudly. 

“What?” Tanguish asked, shutting the journal he was reading and slipping it back on the bookshelf. He ran to the ladder, peering up at the knight still standing on its top rungs, his upper body disappearing through the hatch at the top. “What’s wrong?”

“Someone’s trashed the place up here,” Helsknight said, pulling himself the rest of the way up. “Don’t touch anything. There’s broken glass all over the floor.” He took a few steps away from the ladder, and Tanguish winced at the sharp crunch of his boots on glass shards.

Tanguish climbed the ladder, and when he reached the top Helsknight offered him a hand so he didn't have to brace himself on the glass covered floorboards to finish his ascent. The knight had been right. The place was a mess. There were two long tables on the far wall, one tipped over, its contents scattered across the ground. Redstone fizzled in caustic piles, flickering rusted light. Tools and schematics lay tumbled with it, the papers dotted with burn holes where the redstone powder had scorched them. The second table, still standing, held a toppled stack of books, a few of which had made their way to the floor. The broken glass was from a mirror, tipped over by the bed that was crowded into the corner. A single lantern -- the light they had seen from the window, flickered on the bedside table. 

Tanguish swallowed hard and crept over to the table, leaving the more glass-strewn side of the room for Helsknight's boots to handle. He didn't know what he hoped to find as he picked around the books on the upright table. Maybe a nice note detailing what had happened? He wasn't so lucky. He found two more journals and a sketchbook -- though this book was clearly more personal than the others. What started as schematics and technical musings, mostly on robotic animals and insects, turned into a fixation on drawing sheep. Pages and pages of the things, from cartoons to robotic to realistic drawings, sometimes scribbling little names for them in the corners. 

The most interesting drawing was a self-portrait in the back, which Tanguish paid special attention to if only so he could recognize the helsmet if he saw him on the street sometime. A severe, angular face peered at him, surrounded by black curly hair that fell to half-sketched shoulders. A small pair of horns peaked out of the curls, and tired eyes gazed slightly to one side, looking… sad. Or resigned, maybe. There was a date scribbled in the bottom corner in a shaky hand. The drawing was almost a month old. It made Tanguish nervous. (Well, he had already been nervous, but now that nervousness had a direction and weight. It felt like a stone in his guts, a sinking feeling that made it harder to breathe. He didn’t like the way Zedaph’s hels had drawn his eyes. They looked dark and hollow, deeper than tired. They reminded Tanguish of Tango’s eyes, last time he had seen his hermit; the haunted, weary look of someone feeling soul-deep exhaustion that went beyond a few sleepless nights.)

Helsknight laughed. It was a quiet, miserable sound lended too much weight by the pin-drop silence of the room. Tanguish turned and saw the knight hovering over the unmade bed, a hand pinching the space between his eyes. His teeth were bared in something like a grimace, something like a smile, though it lacked any joy or good humor the expression should carry. The shift in his demeanor was… unsettling. It reminded Tanguish of Helsknight’s anger in the arena, the unnerving still before his cruelty. He felt his heart start to race, the hair on the back of his neck prickling. 

“What a waste of time,” Helsknight whispered. The statement sucked all the air out of the room, terrible in its simplicity. Tanguish shivered.

(You remember what I said about wasting people’s time? When people give you their time, you pay attention.)

“It’s not-- we’re not--” Tanguish stammered, taking a tentative step in Helsknight’s direction. The knight glared at him over his shoulder, that red, dangerous spark glinting in his eyes. Tanguish froze where he stood.

(Had he stopped paying attention? Had he done something wrong? He didn’t think he’d done anything wrong, but Helsknight was clearly angry. Tanguish could feel his anger like it had teeth.) 

“What’s wrong?”

Helsknight gestured to the bedside table, a sharp, bitter motion. Tanguish swallowed hard and crept a few more hesitant steps forward, stealing quick glances at Helsknight as he did so. Helsknight didn’t move. It seemed he hardly breathed, everything about him rigid as stone. He didn’t stare at Tanguish though. His eyes were locked on one of the objects on the side table. It was a single piece of nether brick, the lamp above it lilting deep shadows into the cracks on its surface, so sharp they looked like letters. Or, no they were--

“Oh.” Tanguish said, all the breath leaving him with the word. Then softer, a hand clasped over his mouth. “... oh.” They stood in silence, Helsknight seething, and Tanguish trying to swallow his dread. When Tanguish finally managed to find his voice again he stammered, “We don’t -- I mean, he might be -- we don’t know--”

“Seems pretty obvious to me,” Helsknight said flatly, that dangerous, inflectionless tone making Tanguish flinch against his will.

“It’s not obvious,” Tanguish insisted, taking a step away from the knight, trying to navigate the conversation onto safer ground. “We don’t know if he’s gone. He might just-- maybe he--”

“Maybe he what, Tanguish?” Helsknight asked quietly, tilting his head to the side as if the question were genuine. “He might be somewhere else? Moved and left everything he’s ever worked on behind? Or maybe he was kidnapped, and whoever stole him didn’t bother to take his redstone notes. Or, hels, while we’re at it, maybe he’s just shit at keeping house.”

“I-- w-well -- Maybe he--”

“No. Whatever asinine possibility you’re trying to come up with, no. He’s gone. He felt it coming. He made himself a stone for the Remembrance Wall. He’s gone.”

“I’m… I’m sorry.” Tanguish said placatingly because he didn’t know what else to say.

“You should be,” Helsknight snapped scathingly, his flat tone finally breaking for the rage underneath. “Hels. Helssakes. You should be. I should be. Every god and saint in hels, I should be.” The knight rubbed his eyes so hard with his gauntletted hands, Tanguish worried he would hurt himself on the metal. He whispered again, “What a waste of time.”

“It wasn’t a waste of time,” Tanguish insisted, fighting against that dangerous phrase, the hopeless resignation behind it. “EB wanted to know, right? We can tell him now -- he’ll want to know. And we can -- we can start over--”

“No, we can’t.”

“We can! We just have to--”

“You can do whatever you damn well please,” Helsknight hissed, looming over Tanguish with every ounce of ferocity he could muster, his hands balled into fists at his sides. “I’m done helping you kill yourself.”

Tanguish stumbled a step backwards, feeling like he’d been struck. He gaped at the knight for a moment, his racing heart crowding in his throat with a dozen half-finished thoughts. Finally, he managed, “I’m not -- that’s not what I -- I’m not killing myself.”

“Oh take off your stupid, optimistic blinders for once in your life,” Helsknight shouted, matching Tanguish’s step back with a step forward of his own. “What do you think is going to happen when you and your pathetic hermit make amends, Tanguish? What do you think is going to happen when Tango learns how to make healthy boundaries and make new friends? You’re not here because he was healthy. You’re here because he needed a harmless little shadow fawning all over him to feel like he was worth something. You’re probably not even helping him because you want to. You were made to worship the ground he walks on.”

“I am not--!” Tanguish shouted, but Helsknight, always louder, always stronger, always more than Tanguish could ever be, stormed over him.

“It doesn’t matter how much you think he cares about you, or even if you idiots are actually friends,” Helsknight continued relentlessly. “When he gets over you, when he figures out he doesn’t need you anymore, that--” he pointed to the brick on the bedside table, “--is going to be you! The only reason it hasn’t happened already is your stupid other half has a death wish just as big as yours. Thank your lucky little stars for mirrors and miracles.”

Tanguish didn’t know what to say. He was completely blindsided, unable to even stammer a response. He just stared at Helsknight, bitter, seething emotions battling with his heartbeat for space in his chest. Icy cold was starting to pool in his guts; pooling, and rising, something just south of anger but something that begged him to shout and scream just as loudly as anger would wish him to. Something that made him want to be cruel, and scrambled up his thoughts so badly all he could do was gape and breathe, and swallow down the tightness of tears in his throat.

(Betrayal. This was what betrayal felt like.)

Helsknight seemed to think he’d won this battle. He turned away from Tanguish and kicked open the trapdoor on the floor.

“Where are you going?” Tanguish finally managed to say, his voice smaller than he wanted it to be. He was still recovering.

“Away from you,” the knight retorted. “I never should have helped you with this quest in the first place.”

“You’re abandoning me.”

“Call it what you like.”

“I just told you-- you know I’m scared of--”

“What? Being alone?” Helsknight turned to him again, the smirk on the edge of his teeth mocking. “You’re going to be alone anyway, Tanguish. Get used to it.”

It was Tanguish’s turn to laugh, high and spiteful. “Gods above, I am stupid, aren’t I? For thinking a promise about your sword would keep you from being cruel.”

“It’s not cruel. It’s truth.”

“So, you’re just going to run away?” Tanguish demanded, and he took joy in the way the smirk wiped itself off Helsknight’s face. “That’s what this is, isn’t it? No wonder -- n-no wonder people think you’re a coward.”

Helsknight scowled, and his eyes sparked wicked red.

“What was it that-- that shadow guy in the arena said? Running scared?” Tanguish shouted, his jaw clenched to try and keep his teeth from chattering. He was shaking, and he couldn’t tell if it was his anger or his fear that made him do so. His whole body hurt, every muscle clamping down on his ever-present instinct to run. Not now. Not this time. This time, he wanted to shout. He wanted to scream. He wanted to hurt. “Of course you’re scared. I remind you your time is running out, and mine’s not. How many respawns do you think you have left before the universe pulls you under?”

Helsknight had gone still again, that furious quiet before violence. 

“Or maybe you’re just jealous that s-someone else will find happiness when the only thing your hermit could make was a -- was a miserable jerk like you. It must be grand being the cruel, ugly parts of someone they couldn’t wait to throw up! You’re not a knight. Your hermit is a knight. You’re the terrified bully he threw away! What made you, Hels? Was it shame? Was your bright and shining other half cutting out his fear? Or was Welsknight just trying to be a decent person--”

Helsknight sprung at him. It felt like Tanguish blinked, and then suddenly he was backed against the wall, Helsknight’s armored forearm bruising his collarbone. Tanguish grabbed at it, half-expecting the knight to choke him. He didn’t, but their faces were close, and just the pressure of that armor against Tanguish’s chest hurt, wheezed his breath from.

“You are treading on dangerous ground,” Helsknight growled, his voice low and threatening.

“It’s not cruel if it's -- if it’s true,” Tanguish stammered, terror taking over his voice. His fear, ever bubbling underneath everything else, had clawed its way to dominance, made his veins turn to ice and his every instinct screamed that he should have run. Should try to run again, if only he could get the vice of Helsknight’s arm off him. Tanguish swallowed hard, trying to chase away the dryness in his throat. He whispered weakly, “You said you wouldn’t hurt me in anger.”

“I said I wouldn’t raise my sword,” Helsknight whispered back dangerously, the red in his eyes guttering like a dying star. “Do you see a sword in my hand?”

In spite of himself, Tanguish laughed. “That’s a technicality.”

“I have kept my word, on my honor, as a knight,” Helsknight emphasized the last word, “and no matter how much you hate it, you stupid little thief, I am protecting you.”

“You’re not--” Tanguish’s retort cut off in a painful gasp as Helsknight leaned into him, the ridge of his gauntlet digging against his bone.

“Think, Tanguish. You can do that, can’t you?” Helsknight demanded, his voice still a hiss barely above a whisper. They were so close, Tanguish could only really see the knight’s eyes, the red nearly constant, “You said so yourself, you can tell Tango is getting stronger. So, let's say you finish your quest, and you make him get better. Do you think he’ll stop when he’s not miserable anymore, or do you think he’ll enjoy living his life again?”

He was using that voice: the quiet one, the trustworthy one, the one that made people want to believe. The voice that couldn’t lie. Tanguish hated it. It made him want to throw up, hearing it used like this, and it was getting harder for him to breathe. Not because of the weight, but because of the tears finally catching up to him. He took jagged breaths just to hold them in, but it was a losing battle.

“What happens, Tanguish, when he feels so good, you wake up sore every morning? When you can’t climb on your favorite roofs because of the stiffness in your limbs? What happens when he feels so good, you’re the one collapsing in the street somewhere? Do you think he’ll return the favor?"

“He wouldn’t just leave me.”

“As he is now? No. He needs you, Tanguish. Right now. He needs his other half. But do you think he’ll go searching all over hels for you months from now, after you’ve done everything in your power to make sure he can live without you? Do you think he’ll risk his life here, looking for the half of him that was never meant to exist in the first place? Or do you think he’ll stay safe with the other hermits, knowing you gave him everything he needed to get over you?”

Tanguish’s hiccuping breaths had turned into gasps. He could feel tears running freely down his face, against every effort he made to stop them. He was too overwhelmed, too scared of both the knight and his words. He wanted to say something back, some kind of rebuke or defense. At the very least, he wanted to say something that would make Helsknight stop.

It was neither him nor the knight that pulled them apart from each other. Not directly anyway. Tanguish looked down at the gauntlet still pressed painfully up against him, only to notice the gauntlet was black. Helsknight noticed it at almost the same time. He sprang back away from Tanguish as though he were fire, looking down at his hands, and the darkness creeping up his arms.

"You've got to be kidding me," Helsknight snarled. "Now? Right now?"

A sound floated into the room, the shape of words without the words themselves. The voice sounded like Helsknight's, nearly identical save for the slightly higher, slightly smoother tone. Tanguish blinked. It was Welsknight, talking to his helsmet the same way Tango spoke through Tanguish's reflections.

"I'm not going anywhere," Helsknight muttered darkly, fists clenched as if he could hold himself in hels. "Fight your battles on your own for once."

"Why bother staying," Tanguish said, speaking before his mind could catch up with his words. "You can't hurt me more than you already have."

Helsknight's mouth formed a tight line, and he looked away. At least he has the decency to be ashamed.

"Unless you're scared of fighting someone who can actually fight back."

Helsknight's mouth twisted into a grimace, like he'd just swallowed something foul. 

"I'm not a coward," Helsknight whispered fiercely.

He vanished into shadow, falling out of hels as if he'd never been there in the first place. Tanguish held his breath and waited. When he was sure the knight wasn't coming back, he curled up against the wall and cried.

Chapter Text

Tanguish was sitting on one of Deepfrost Citadel’s lower spires. He had been here for… well… he wasn’t sure how long exactly, huddled in the shadow of one of the curling points, just another teal-black silhouette in a build full of them. He perched with his arms wrapped around his knees, his chin pillowed atop his kneecaps. The persistent breeze so high up made him shiver, but he tried to convince himself it was a pleasant feeling. Cold was something he only felt on Hermitcraft. He should learn to enjoy it. Now, though, he had nearly convinced himself he had never felt joy in his life -- or else, he never would again. His jaded, emotionally exhausted mind found both options equally possible.

Below him, Tango was compiling shulker boxes full of building materials for the interior of Decked Out. He moved slowly, like his arms and legs still didn’t agree with him working, but he still moved. Out of the dozen or so shulkers Tanguish could see, half had been donated by visiting hermits in the time Tanguish had been watching. Probably more had been donated before he showed up. The hermits were almost like a beehive, little winged workers buzzing in to chat and drop off an offering for the game before flitting away again, sometimes crashing into things as they left. Or landed. It was all quite endearing, or it should be. Tanguish's sour mood only found misery in it. All of Tango's fighting about needing him because he didn't have friends, all his whining about being left behind by the people he loved? What a joke.

(Honestly, he was just as bad as Helsknight. Worse even. At least Helsknight could claim none of his friends followed him home.)

Later, Tanguish wouldn’t resent or hate the hermits, people he didn't know and had never met, for showing care, and helping, and generally just being themselves. Later, he wouldn’t resent or hate Tango for it either. Right now, though, he brooded, and he hated, and he felt miserable, and he thought dark thoughts. It was very tempting for Tanguish to think this was the loneliest he had ever felt in his life. He didn’t, if only because it felt like betraying Tango to think so. Surely he had been at his most wretched and lonely when Tango had collapsed. Surely his fight with Helsknight couldn’t be worse.

(It felt worse, though. It felt a lot worse.)

The way Tanguish saw it, at least Tango’s absence had been against his will. He had collapsed, and their tie to each other had been temporarily severed. Tanguish had panicked, and the fear of that panic still surfaced in the back of his head sometimes, but it had been something he was desperate to fix. It had been something he could fix. And it had been inevitable. Not the fixing -- that had been a choice -- but the collapse. The loss. It became inevitable the minute they decided they were friends, as terrible as they were for each other. It was the inevitability of parasites and their hosts. 

Helsknight was different. 

Their knowing each other hadn’t been fated any more than a star falling was. It was just a terrible thing that happened, and burned everything around it when it did. Like a falling star, it had given Tanguish the briefest moment of hope before it destroyed everything, like he could dare to wish things would be fine for just a moment. Like a falling star, he didn’t think he could fix it even if he wanted to. He hadn’t decided if he wanted to yet. His terror at being alone could only carry him so far, and the fear of a possible loneliness was starting to look pale beside the fear of Helsknight’s inevitable anger and cruelty. Tanguish would do a lot, bear a lot, to keep from being alone. He wasn’t sure if he could bear this, though. He certainly didn’t want to. Like a drowning man being dragged back to water, he didn’t want to, like digging in his heels and scrambling and screaming, he didn’t want to. 

That was why he was here, right now. The fear of loneliness. The fear of Helsknight. The fear of -- the fear of his church roof. He had gone there first, after the fight. He had climbed up to the top of the tallest spire, where even the pigeons got nervous of the height, and he chased the familiar comfort of the place. All he got was the glaring, obvious knowledge that he was the loneliest person in hels. All those people milling about below him, talking, laughing, shouting. All those people, in packs and pairs, for good or ill, together. It had made his heart race, tied his stomach so badly in knots he had nearly thrown up. The tears he thought he was past crying spilled over again, and in desperation he fled to Hermitcraft, because the only thing in the universe he wanted was someone who cared about him. He wanted comfort, and for someone to hug him and tell him he was loved and wanted, and not just the product of someone else’s self-hatred. He wanted someone to care for him because of him, and not because they hated what the other half of him stood for. And then he had stood in Decked Out, in one of the black, barely-lit corners, and watched Tango, and cried again because the only person who cared about him was the only person he was the most dangerous to. The only person who might understand the sharpest edges of the abandonment he was feeling was the one he would bleed the most with them. And worse than that, it was what Helsknight would want. He would want Tanguish to give in, to make Tango worse. He would want Tanguish to give up his stupid quest and leech the life away from the only friend he had. He would want -- gods, gods he would want Tanguish to be alone. Miserable and terrified and alone.

Tanguish sniffed, feeling his chest tighten, and his own misery annoyed him. He didn’t want to cry again. It felt pathetic crying so many times in one day. He buried his face in his knees and held his breath, and tried to focus on the passage of frigid air across his shoulders instead.

(There was a brief, terrible, fretful moment where Tanguish wanted to give up. Not give up on his Tango quest -- that was out of the question. He just wanted to give up in the general sense of it all. He wanted to find a place to lay down, somewhere far away from anything that could hurt him, and wait, or sleep, until he disappeared. It would be a long time coming. He would have to lay there for years. But someday Tango would get lonely too, and go talk to his friends, and forget Tanguish existed. Then he wouldn’t have to deal with this anymore. Then it wouldn’t be his problem. Then he wouldn’t even be a brick on a wall. He would just be some bitter knight’s regret, and some forgetful hermit’s backwards glance.)

Tanguish released the breath he had been holding and stared at the fabric of his pants, letting the stitching go in and out of focus.

(No, he thought resignedly. He didn’t want to give up. He enjoyed living, all things considered. Sure, life sucked, but if there was one thing death didn’t have, it was muffins. Muffins, tall rooftops, and bad poetry scratched on cell walls. Even besides that, giving up wouldn’t bring him peace. The end wouldn’t waltz up to him and ask if he’d had enough. No, giving up would look like Tanguish being alone and miserable for a very long time, because whether he liked it or not his future stretched out towards an endless horizon, and it would keep stretching. It would stretch until Tanguish got tired of being alone and tracked down his hermit again, or it would stretch until Tango’s strength waned and he collapsed, and Tanguish’s endless horizon would still be endless. No, the only thing giving up would do was ensure Tanguish spent the rest of forever alone.)

(Alone. The one thing he desperately didn't want to be.)

Tanguish shivered, wiped at his eyes, and stood. He watched Tango for a few more moments, scurrying around his shulkers and color-coding things before building. Tanguish’s hands itched to help him. They could make such amazing things together. They would make such amazing things together, after his quest was done. After Tango was safe from him. Tanguish took his coin from his pocket and flipped it into the air. When it landed in his palm again, he slipped through his reflection and back into hels. There was the rush of falling, then the dry, squeezing hand of heat, the eye-watering stench of sulfur and brimstone, and then the soft release onto hard cobblestones. His body readjusted quickly to the world he was born for. The smell dwindled into a vague atmosphere, the heat a mild discomfort.   

His coin had released him in front of Helsknight’s house, which he wanted to resent, but couldn’t. The coin didn’t care where he wanted to be, it only cared where his spawn point was set. 

At least the windows were dark. 

The knight wasn’t home.

Tanguish tilted his head at the door, trying to decide if he wanted to enter. He didn’t want to be here when the knight returned. At the moment, he never wanted to see Helsknight again. But he also knew he was tired, and about one more tearful episode away from collapsing onto the cobblestones and never standing up again, and if he was going to collapse anywhere, he would prefer it be on that stupid couch he had grown so fond of sleeping on. Tanguish slipped a claw through the door latch, unlocking it and letting himself in. (He really should thief-proof that sometime, just to prove he could.) He shut and locked the door behind him and curled up on the couch, hoping the dark of the house would hide him well enough if Helsknight came back. Then he could slip out the door unheard and unseen, and figure out what he would do next. Yeah, that sounded like a plan. Tomorrow, he would figure things out. 

Tomorrow.

Tanguish startled awake to the sound of gasping. His first half-awake thought was that he had not heard the door open. His second, was that Helsknight was home, and Tanguish wasn’t supposed to be here. He breathed a curse and crawled soundlessly over the arm of the couch. He curled up, hidden against the couch’s far side, daring to peek over the arm and see if the knight had noticed him yet.

The door to Helsknight’s bedroom was open. From where Tanguish was hiding, he could see the knight sitting on the edge of his bed. He looked haggard, a grimace fixed to his face, a hand clutching his chest as he caught his breath. His armor was gone.

(Tanguish sighed inwardly. Helsknight had respawned. He was sure that would do wonders for the knight's mood.)

Helsknight swore colorfully and muttered, "The void? Really? That was my best suit of armor."

When he moved to stand, Tanguish ducked behind the couch again, feeling… well… a lot of things, but foolish was pretty near the top. He shouldn’t have come back here. He knew at some point Helsknight would have to come home, and why wouldn’t he respawn? He was probably the weaker half between him and his hermit. If anything happened, his hermit would win, surely? 

(That’s fine, Tanguish thought to himself, forcing slow and quiet breaths. He didn’t know what time it was exactly, but it felt late. Surely the knight would be going to sleep soon, or start his evening routine, or a thousand other things that wouldn’t bring him into the living room. He would get busy, and when he was, Tanguish would find a reason to slip out the door, and this whole thing would be--)

Helsknight cursed again, loudly, and something crashed to the ground. Tanguish flinched and clapped his hands over his mouth, staring wide-eyed at the wall in front of him. Something else crashed, followed quickly by the sound of shattering glass. One more slam, and one more loud curse from Helsknight. There was a step, two, on glass shards, the hiss of breath, maybe pain, maybe just an attempt to control his breathing. The scrape and slide of someone slipping down a wall to settle onto the floor. The house fell silent.

Tanguish waited, feeling stupid, and eventually, concerned. That had been a lot of broken things, and probably a lot of rage. Tanguish didn’t think he had ever seen Helsknight break things in anger before. He didn’t know if that was normal, or a worrying new development.

(He shouldn’t care either way. Tanguish tried to convince himself he didn’t care, except that he had to try just reassured him he did. He cared because that kind of anger could be turned on him, yes. There was that. He thought maybe, he might also care because, well, destroying things Helsknight might have spent time on -- well, that seemed a bit self-destructive. He didn’t think Helsknight was a very self-destructive person. An angry person. A stupid person, where his principles were involved. Reckless could also be thrown in there, for good measure. But self-destructive?)

(Tanguish shouldn’t care about the knight being self-destructive. He told himself he didn’t care. Fiercely. Adamantly. He told himself that, really, it could have just been the knight throwing a fit. Or maybe it was, somehow, an accident. Or maybe it didn’t matter at all, because it was Helsknight, and Helsknight was cruel, and mean, and terrible and--)

Tanguish rolled his eyes up towards the ceiling and took a long, slow breath. He was starting to understand why Helsknight did that so often. It was soothing. Tanguish let out another deep breath, then turned slowly to peak over the arm of the couch again. 

Helsknight had moved from his bed to the floor. He sat with his back pressed against the wall, his head bowed, his wrists resting on his bent knees. He looked terribly small sitting there, surrounded by the things he had broken; shards of mirror glass, the splinters of a kicked bedside table, the plaster dust of a punched wall. It was probably the missing armor. Tanguish saw the knight with his armor on more often than not, looming more often than sitting, and certainly never on the floor. As he was now, Helsknight looked fragile and defeated and, well, he looked lonely. 

Tanguish’s heart felt a host of complicated things all at once. Vindication was there, the bittersweet joy of seeing Helsknight suffering. Tanguish hadn’t thought he was a spiteful person, but it felt nice in a very guilty, unkind way, to see Helsknight in pain for even a fleeting few seconds. He wanted Helsknight to hurt the way he did, even if it was over something as stupid as being bested by his hermit and losing his armor. He wanted Helsknight to feel terrible and alone, and then Tanguish felt terrible, because he wouldn’t wish loneliness on his worst enemy, and Helsknight, for all his anger and cruelties, wasn’t Tanguish’s enemy. That stubborn, tenacious creature empathy came crawling up through Tanguish’s chest and whispered at him to do something, to ease pain, offer comfort.

(The spiteful creature in Tanguish bit back at it immediately. You’re here because he needed a harmless little shadow fawning all over him to feel like he was worth something, Helsknight had said. You’re probably not even helping him because you want to. And oh, that thought did even more angry, bitter, complicated things in Tanguish. The fierce desire to spite Helsknight and prove him wrong right now by walking out the front door. He could disappear into the streets of hels and never see this terrible knight or hear his angry words ever again, and leave him to whatever misery he deserved.)

Tanguish didn’t do that. He wanted to. For vindication. For spite. For the pain it might bring. He wanted to because Helsknight was terrifying, even when he looked so small and broken on the floor. He wanted to because he desperately, desperately didn’t feel like comforting anyone right now. He was tired, and today had been one more failure on a long list of failures, and everything felt like a battle he was doomed to lose. But Tanguish knew what it felt like to be utterly alone, and he couldn’t let someone else bear that terrible fate, no matter how badly they had hurt or wronged him. He just… couldn’t.

(There, knights weren’t the only people who can be stupidly principled, even when it didn’t make sense.)

Tanguish quietly got to his feet. He hovered by the couch for a moment, watching Helsknight, waiting for… something. Maybe some cue that this was a mistake, and he should just bolt and be done with it. Maybe a better reason to hate him. When that reason never came, Tanguish cautiously crossed the room, carefully picking his way over to the wall and sliding down to sit beside Helsknight. He winced when he did. The broken glass on the floor made him nervous. Pulling slivers out of his skin as an act of solidarity was a step further than Tanguish really wanted to go. The two of them sat in silence for a long moment, Tanguish sizing the knight up out of the corner of his eye, searching desperately for a reaction he should fear. With his head bowed, though, Helsknight’s face was hidden behind the long curtain of his hair that looked nearly brown in the dim light. He clenched his hands into fists, bloody knuckles whitening painfully.

“Why in hels are you here?” Helsknight asked him, his voice too small to be threatening, though he did try. It rasped a bit too much, drowned itself too much in the quiet house. 

Tanguish didn’t answer. He didn’t really know how to answer, and “I had nowhere else to go” seemed too pathetic an excuse to settle on.

“I told you I was done helping you and I meant it,” Helsknight continued, still struggling to muster some false bravado. “It's been a waste of both our -- well, it’s been a waste of my time.”

 Tanguish hugged his knees to his chest and sighed. The silence stretched between them again, thick and miserable. It was, notably, not the same silence as when Helsknight was angry. That was a difference Tanguish could feel. He could also tell Helsknight wasn’t done talking. The knight was too full of unspoken emotions and words. Waiting for people to talk, to work through fragmented thoughts, was something Tanguish knew well. He had done it for Tango so many times.

(You’re probably not even helping him because you want to.)

Helssakes, but he would be bitter about that one for a while.

“You know I wouldn’t have--” Helsknight began and stopped. He swallowed thickly, and his jaw clenched so hard Tanguish very nearly heard the creak of his teeth. The knight tried again. “I wouldn’t have hurt you. You know that, right?”

Tanguish dared a sideways glare at Helsknight, but the knight still hadn’t looked up at him.

“I mean -- I -- I wouldn’t have --” Helsknight’s hands moved, slowly. He ran them up through his hair, fingers curled into the sides of his head like he could hold his own thoughts still, make them make sense. He whispered, “I’m not a monster.”

Tanguish looked away from him. That was something his curdled-up emotions weren't ready to agree with yet. Helsknight cursed, more of a breath than a whisper. 

“I know you’re scared of me,” Helsknight said after another achingly long silence. “Scared of my anger. You have… a right to be. Should be. But I’m not dangerous. I’ve never done anything I didn’t want to do. I’m not a monster.”

“That’s reassuring,” Tanguish snorted, finally breaking his personal vigil. “At least you wanted to shove me into a wall and--”

(You wanted to say all those things you said.)

Helsknight laughed, a pitiful, hollow sound clenched in the grimace of his teeth. His grip on his hair tightened, like he might get upset enough to tear it out.

“Gods damn it all,” Helsknight hissed. “I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter if you’re sorry,” Tanguish told him. “You’re just going to do it again.”

Helsknight screwed his eyes shut and scowled. He swallowed thickly, the downturned corner of his scowl twitching. Helsknight nodded. It was a quiet, inevitable acknowledgement. He knew himself well.

“I need my anger, Tanguish,” Helsknight said, his voice on the very edge of breaking. “It’s all I have left.”

Tanguish didn’t know what that was supposed to mean. It wasn’t the kind of thing someone said when they wanted forgiveness. It was just another of those small statements of fact.

“Everything else is him,” Helsknight continued, as relentless in bearing his soul as he was with anything else. “You know, my hair used to be blonde? Not… not this.” Helsknight finally unclenched his fingers from where they threatened to pull out his hair from its roots. The dirty-blonde strands fell through his fingers, shimmering slightly in the dim light, but still oddly dark. “It so blonde it was white. And I had freckles. You know, I used to think -- I used to hate them so much. They made me look childish. No one could take me seriously with those stupid freckles everywhere. Gods. My name comes from him. My knighthood started with him. I don’t -- I don’t even know if I’m sorry I hurt you, or if it's that stupid -- white knight and his conscience dragging me along behind him.”

Helsknight said it all so viciously, like he was fighting for every word. His breath hitched; his voice growled. There was an edge about him, like at any minute his emotions, whatever they were, would split him open if he didn’t grind his teeth and hold his breath and clench his fists hard enough. It made Tanguish worry that the knight might somehow hurt himself. 

“Why are you telling me this?” Tanguish asked.

“You deserve an explanation.”

“So I’m just supposed to excuse--”

“It’s not an excuse,” Helsknight interrupted him. “It’s just an explanation.”

“There’s no difference.”

“Oh for helssakes, Tanguish,” Helsknight snapped, managing to muster some of his familiar disdain. “You don’t keep a wounded animal around just because you know why it bites. Excuse its behavior and you might.”

"So, you're saying I should be alone for my own sake, then?" Tanguish retorted, a bitter taste in his mouth. "How very noble of you."

"I'm saying you deserve a life without people like me and your hermit, who will make you miserable until the end of your days. Be selfish for once."

Tanguish scowled. 

(You're probably not even helping him because you want to.)

"Honestly," Helsknight took a bracing breath, like he was preparing for a particularly daring charge, "the fact that you're even here right now is stupidity--"

"Gods save me from the pretentiousness of knights who think they know better," Tanguish cut him off, anger bolting through him like a lightning strike. "Just because you wouldn't do it, doesn't mean it's stupid, Hels." 

Tanguish had not planned on his voice being so loud, but it was. He didn't shout, but he was far louder than the knight had been, his words sharper. He felt justified in it though.

Helsknight didn't respond, only relaxed his bloody knuckles and waited. 

Tanguish took a breath and tried to lower his voice a little, tried to sound less harsh, but Helsknight had picked at him where he was still sore. He dug his fingernails into his knees and said,"I am selfish. I do think for myself. Do you think I'm -- I'm mindless, because I'm quiet? I'm not. I'm… alone. I have no one. You have your fellow arena fighters, no matter how much you think otherwise. Tango has the hermits, even if he ignores them. I have no one. I spawned into this world alone, and I was happy to be alone -- until I figured out what it felt like not to be anymore. You have no idea -- it is terrifying, being by myself with my own thoughts. I'm a parasite, Hels. I need other people or I'll eat myself alive." 

Tanguish looked at the knight, whose hair had fallen to hide his face again. "You might think walking out to face the world alone is a selfish thing, but I would rather die than -- I'm -- I'm not thinking about Tango when I want to help him. I'm not thinking about you while I'm sitting here on the floor. This is for me."

Tanguish felt something in his chest tighten, and he fought it with all he was worth. He was so tired of crying. He didn't want to do it again. Not here in front of Helsknight at least.

"Your anger is yours? Fine. But my being here is -- it's mine, okay? Stop taking it away from me." Tanguish huffed out a bitter sigh, glowering at the glass-strewn floor. "And you keep saying I'm the thief."

The room fell silent again, and Tanguish made himself as small as he could against the wall. He kept glancing in Helsknight's direction, waiting for anger, or violence. Waiting for anything, really, if it would give some indication of the knight's thoughts. Helsknight's frown was still there, but it was hard to tell what that frown meant.

"I really have been an asshole to you, haven't I?" Helsknight asked finally, rubbing the side of his face tiredly, like his own thoughtlessness exhausted him. It wasn’t the response Tanguish had been expecting. "You would be well within your rights to hate me."

Tanguish shrugged, guilt crawling to life in his stomach. It crept up on him faster than he thought it would.

"I would beg your forgiveness, but I've done nothing to deserve it."

(Which is good, Tanguish thought, because guilty or not, he didn't think he could forgive Helsknight yet. His heart was still sore. But… he decided, hesitantly, that he had been hard-hearted enough, for now at least.)

"I wasn't very kind either," Tanguish admitted.

"It wasn't wrong," Helsknight said quietly, "And it probably needed to be said."

(Tanguish wasn't sure he agreed.)

"Uhm… Maybe. But it could've been said differently."

Something in Helsknight that Tanguish had not noticed was tensed relaxed just slightly; an exhalation of breath, a knot releasing from his shoulders. He leaned his head back against the wall, exhaustion writing itself in the lines of his face.

(So, this was as close as they would get to apologizing to each other then? Or, well, that was a little unfair. Helsknight had outright said he was sorry, even if they both knew nothing would come of it.)

Tanguish cast around for something else to say. The silence was too heavy, too steeped in regret and bitterness, and he couldn't tell if it was him or Helsknight who bore the worst of the mantle. Everything he thought of would only add to the darkness they were stewing in. There was too much to resent and worry. It felt like for a day they had managed to navigate around each other without cutting each other on sharp edges, only to suddenly forget how -- or be unwilling to remember.

Tanguish glanced at the knight's hands. It was hard to tell, but he thought his knuckles looked swollen.

"You should do something about your hands."

Helsknight looked down at his knuckles as if he had not noticed them before. He flexed his fingers, the crease in his brow the only sign it brought him discomfort. "Nothing a respawn won't fix."

"Are you planning on respawning sometime soon?"

Helsknight didn't respond, which was all the answer Tanguish needed. (It also gave him a good excuse to break the awkwardness this conversation had turned into, and for that he was incredibly grateful.) Tanguish left to rifle through closets and cabinets, finally returning with a bowl of water, a rag, and some bandages. He crouched beside Helsknight, trying to find a clear spot on the floor and, not finding one, simply laid the bandages across Helsknight's leg.

"For someone who gets the shit kicked out of him professionally, you really should have more first-aid stuff around here," Tanguish told him as he wet down the rag. "Give me your hand."

Helsknight looked skyward, that long-suffering look that Tanguish had not realized he missed until just now. "I'll get it later."

"Your hands will be swollen later," Tanguish pointed out. When the knight raised an eyebrow at him, Tanguish sniffed, "You don't have to punch things all the time to know what hand injuries are like."

"You often hurt yourself climbing on rooftops?"

"Once or twice," Tanguish said, brushing aside the knight’s deflections. "Now give me your hand."

"I will get it later."

"I get that you're mourning the loss of your armor or whatever," Tanguish scolded him as much as he dared, "but your body won't forgive you if you ignore it."

"I'm not--" Helsknight started, eyes flickering with annoyance. He huffed a breath and snatched the rag out of Tanguish's hands, nearly knocking over the bowl in the process. He muttered fiercely, "I can pick up my own pieces, Tanguish."

"You let me help you yesterday," Tanguish pointed out.

Helsknight didn't answer him, just got to work wiping the blood off his injured knuckles. Tanguish watched him work for a few quiet moments.

"Is it because I wasted your time?" Tanguish asked, feeling more guilty than he thought he would. 

"You didn't waste my time.” Helsknight sighed resignedly. “If anything, I wasted yours."

Tanguish didn't think that was altogether true, but he persisted, "Is it because I said you were a coward?"

Helsknight hesitated for a moment, on the verge of saying something. He flashed Tanguish a sideways glance, pausing in his work for a fraction of a second. 

"I shouldn't have said that." Tanguish told him, because honestly, he shouldn't have. He had just been so angry-- “Bravery is -- it's important to you. It was cruel of me to -- I shouldn’t have said that.”

“It’s not cruel if it's true,” Helsnight said, flexing his hand a few times and grimacing. 

“We both know that’s a lie.”

Helsknight had stopped cleaning his hands and gone back to staring in the vague direction of the ceiling. He looked tired. Tanguish couldn’t blame him. He himself felt tired, and he didn’t have a respawn piled on top of everything else that had happened that day. But this felt important. If nothing else, the closure would make sleep easier. That didn’t mean Tanguish knew what to say though, or how to apologize for something he didn’t really understand.

“Can I ask what you’re so frightened of?” Tanguish asked, gently reaching forward and taking the rag the knight had abandoned. Helsknight let him.

“I would rather you didn’t.”

“You don’t have to answer,” Tanguish said quietly, and then waited for a moment before adding, “but I did tell you what frightened me, and now you know why what you said was so cruel. If -- if we’re still sitting in the realm of -- of explanations instead of excuses --” Tanguish thought for a moment and then said, “-- I would like to know what I did wrong so I can apologize properly.”

Helsknight turned that over in his mind so intensely, Tanguish could imagine he heard the knight thinking. Helsknight’s eyes searched the air in front of him, like someone might offer a decision instead of forcing him to come up with his own. Finally, the knight cleared his throat.

“I don’t know how much time I have left. All I know is it’s not long.”

Tanguish nodded, encouraging Helsknight to continue. As he did, he reached forward a hand gently, grabbing up one of Helsknight’s in his. Helsknight pulled away from his touch at first, but when Tanguish started wrapping a bandage around his injured hand, he relented and let Tanguish lead his hand where he needed it.

“The not-knowing scares me.”

Tanguish finished with one hand and started on the other.

“It's -- my time is getting shorter every day. I can see it in everything I lose. I just… don’t know what thing will be the last thing that gets taken, or if I’ll even know it’s the last thing. If I could -- if I had any way of knowing -- maybe it wouldn’t be so terrifying.”

Tanguish swallowed and nodded again. He didn’t like the sound of Helsknight’s voice, the way it stuttered, like every word hurt. It was the voice of someone who had tread this path of thought a thousand times, but had never dared speak it out loud.

(Maybe it’s worth hearing, but it’s not worth setting in stone.)

“I wish so badly I could be like you,” Helsknight said, and it surprised Tanguish so much he snapped his head up from his task to look at the knight. He was crying, Tanguish realized. It was a quiet thing, quieter even than Helsknight’s anger. The tears gathered in the corners of his eyes and overflowed, and his breathing barely changed to acknowledge them. “You know what will happen if you finish your quest. You watched your hermit almost fall to a fate that terrifies so many helsmets. And you keep doing what you think is right anyway. It’s the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.”

There was so much genuine admiration in his voice, it was painful. All of the already twisted up emotions in Tanguish’s guts twisted harder, nearly sickening him with their intensity.

“No matter how hard I try,” Helsknight whispered harshly, pulling his hand away from Tanguish so he could wipe fiercely at his eyes, “I just can’t do it. I thought maybe if I helped you, I could figure out where all that fearlessness comes from. I could face down my own fear, make it blink, or blunt the edge. Anything to stop the terror from claiming me when it does. But it didn’t work. Death isn’t -- it’s not some monster I can fight. It’s a time and a place, and no matter how hard I try, I can't shake the feeling I’m sprinting towards it.”

Helsknight wiped at his eyes again and cleared his throat, trying to stave off some of the hoarseness creeping into it. “Is that good enough for you?”

“Yeah,” Tanguish said, surprised to find his own throat felt tight. “You’re… you’re an idiot, by the way.”

Helsknight barked a laugh, one of his genuine ones. “Obviously. Got a specific reason why?”

“For thinking that makes you a coward, for starters.”

“Running from it makes me a coward,” Helsknight told him solemnly. “Getting… getting angry and hurting people because I’m scared does. Trying to put the fear of death into you does. And... I am truly sorry for that.” Helsknight ran his thumb across his bandaged knuckles, quietly admiring Tanguish’s work. “But you’re right. I won’t change. My anger is too important to me.”

(Because it’s all he has left.)

“Does Welsknight write poetry?” Tanguish asked him suddenly, blurting out thoughts before he had finished processing them.

Helsknight blinked at him, confusion breaking his miserable mood for a moment. “What?”

“Oh, uhm, Evil Beezuma showed me some of your poetry.” Tanguish stammered awkwardly, suddenly worried he had been shown that in confidence.

Helsknight rolled his eyes, though his expression was fond. “Of course he did.” After a pause he shook his head. “Not that I know of.”

“Oh. Well. That’s yours then.”

Helsknight blinked at him blankly.

“I mean, it’s not just your anger, right?” Tanguish continued, trying to explain. “Kind of like, well, I steal and Tango doesn’t. I mean -- I haven’t done it as much recently but, I’m capable. And, you have your poetry. It's not all -- you’re not -- the bad things aren’t all yours. You have your poetry, right?”

Tanguish had no warning. Maybe if he had been paying attention, he would have seen a flicker in Helsknight’s eyes, or the twitch of his shoulders before the lunge. He wasn’t paying attention though, and so he was caught completely off-guard when Helsknight suddenly lurched forward and wrapped his strong arms around Tanguish’s neck and shoulders, and hugged him. He pressed the side of his head against Tanguish’s, curled his fingers into the back of Tanguish’s shirt, and pulled him into a hug so desperate, it felt less like endearment, and more like Helsknight was clinging onto him for dear life. Tanguish was worried for a second he had upset the knight somehow, that he was being attacked for something. Then Helsknight’s breathing hiccupped in his chest, and his grip tightened a fraction, and what was happening sunk in. Slowly, Tanguish hugged him back, because what else was he supposed to do?

“You’re right,” Helsknight whispered, his voice once again thick with emotion. “That’s mine.”

“Uhm… yeah. It. It is.” Tanguish rested his chin on Helsknight’s shoulder. “Uhm… I’m… sorry I called you a coward.

Helsknight laughed. Or he sobbed. Or he did both. “Don’t apologize you -- you stupid -- I deserved it. I was being terrible to you. I was -- helssakes!”

Tanguish didn’t know what the knight was cursing at, only that the embrace was warm, and Helsknight’s face had tilted to bury itself in Tanguish’s bony shoulder, wetting his shirt with tears. And Tanguish felt… good. 

(Well, he felt complicated. He felt like he had learned a lot tonight. About himself. About Helsknight. About fear and about grief. He felt like he still had not forgiven Helsknight for what he had said, but that Helsknight’s apology was genuine. He felt like both of them knew enough about each other now to cause so much harm, but also, he thought so long as Helsknight trusted him not to do that harm, maybe he could trust Helsknight not to as well. He felt tired, and awkward, and like he had not expected to make Helsknight cry, let alone get the knight to hug him.)

(He didn’t know Helsknight was capable of things like hugs? Hugs were soft things for soft people, ways of showing you cared, and loved, and could be weak or vulnerable enough to bare your chest to someone -- all things Tanguish wouldn’t think Helsknight could do. All things he didn’t think he could do to the knight either. To Tango? Yes. To Helsknight? But here he was in Helsknight’s embrace, and as awkward and emotional as it was… it was warm. He hoped, he really hoped, the hug he returned wasn’t hard and cold. He hoped Helsknight could feel him returning it even through the skulk and ice. He hoped--)

“You really shouldn’t have come back,” Helsknight whispered. “I didn’t deserve it.”

Tanguish did his best to shrug. “Well… you know… parasites and hosts.”

“Gods -- I am going to throw you out a fucking window.”

It was Tanguish’s turn to laugh, sharp and absurd, caught off-guard by the statement. Helsknight broke their embrace, holding Tanguish at arm’s length. The look he gave him was fervent, with eyes that sparked with red and gold.

“You are not a parasite, Tanguish.” Helsknight said severely. “Parasites take until they kill. You spend every day sacrificing things trying to keep someone else alive.”

Tanguish blinked at Helsknight, surprised by both the statement and the intensity by which the knight said it. Before he could stammer a response though (or even try to come up with one, for that matter) Helsknight pulled away from him and got to his feet. He offered a hand to help Tanguish stand, and Tanguish took it.

“Alright, okay,” Helsknight said, letting out a bracing breath and wiping at his eyes one more time. “We’re -- gods, I’m tired. And I’m starving. And I want out of this stupid house. We’re getting food somewhere.”

“Helsknight, it’s the middle of the night. I think.”

“And I will knock on every storefront until I get something,” Helsknight growled. He didn’t bother putting any armor on -- with his best set gone, Tanguish wasn’t even sure he had any. He grabbed a spare cloak from his closet and some coins from his nightstand. “Gods willing, someone in this city is making muffins this time of night.”

Tanguish chuckled, and when Helsknight held the door open for him, he walked into the city feeling lighter than he had that morning, even in spite of all that had happened. Maybe it was all the crying.

(Yeah. Right. That was probably it.)

(His chest still felt warm from the hug though.)

Chapter Text

Tanguish thought they might rest, at least for a day. He was figuring out in leaps and bounds that emotional exhaustion could be just as debilitating as any other kind. When he slept, he slept dreamlessly, and didn't move a muscle. Waking up in the morning, he felt like he had to pry himself out of the curl he fell asleep in, every joint and muscle protesting being cramped for so long. He was roused by the sound of Helsknight though, and his nervous mind told him if the knight was awake and moving, Tanguish should be too, even if it was the last thing he wanted.

Helsknight had swept up the mess from the night before; that Tanguish had slept through. What he had not slept through was Helsknight rummaging through his closet for a chest in the back, kicking away junk that got in his way. Tanguish peeked over the knight's shoulder curiously as he pried it from the jaws of useless, discarded things; a few old tunics, some empty flower pots, and a wither skull could be recognized in the mess. 

"What's that for?" Tanguish asked as Helsknight dragged his prize against his bed. 

"I lost my armor in Hermitcraft," Helsknight told him, kicking the chest open and frowning down at its contents. Tanguish could make out a battered looking chain shirt, some boots and gauntlets that looked like they had seen better days, an iron sword glittering with weak enchantments, and a pickaxe speckled with rust. Helsknight sighed heavily and grumbled, "It took me ages to get that netherite gear."

“Can’t you just… get it back?” Tanguish asked slowly, and when the knight gave him a blank look, “From Hermitcraft, I mean.”

“Not this time,” Helsknight said, looking away from Tanguish. The tips of his ears reddened with embarrassment. “I… fell into the void. It’s all gone.”

“Oh.” Tanguish raised his eyebrows and pretended not to notice Helsknight’s blush. “How did that happen? The void is in the End, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Helsknight rubbed the back of his neck uncertainly, unsure of how much he wanted to share. “Me and Welsknight meet there. It’s… neutral ground. As neutral as we can get, anyway.”

“Is neutral ground important?”

“It was. Now it’s just kind of… how things are.”

“So… what? You tripped?” Tanguish asked, and when Helsknight winced, Tanguish asked a little more sharply than he meant to, “He didn’t push you off, did he?”

“Kind of,” Helsknight sighed, rolling his eyes up towards the ceiling. "It was more like he shoved me, and I forgot how close to the ledge I was."

"Oh."

"Anyway, I need new gear." Helsknight continued, laying out his old armor on his bed and looking it over critically. "There's a couple things I can do, uhm… most of them take a while."

"I thought you said someone provided the colosseum gear?"

"They do," Helsknight agreed. It was hard for Tanguish to tell, but Helsknight was starting to look a little too absorbed in his armor; less like he was giving it his attention, and more like he was trying to decide on something. "That's for the matches though. It doesn't leave the arena. Personal gear, we take care of ourselves."

Tanguish took a half-step backwards, starting to feel nervous. "Okay?"

Helsknight sighed resignedly, settling something in his mind. 

"I'm going to see the Demon today," he said, straightening his shoulders. "You can tag along… if you want."

"Oh," Tanguish blinked in quiet surprise. "But… I thought you said he hated thieves."

"He does. And he's dangerous, and suspicious of everyone. I'm not sure talking to him would do you much good -- it could do you a great deal of harm, if I'm being honest." Helsknight inspected one of the old gauntlets as though he hadn't seen it a million times before. "But I know your Tango quest is important to you and… he is Impulse's helsmet. You two could find some camaraderie in that, or at least a talking point to get you started. If you still want to try, I'll help you as best I can."

Tanguish felt his chest do something funny, something like confusion and, underneath that, something like grateful hope.

"You also don't have to go with me," Helsknight continued, when the silence stretched too long. "If you want to meet him on your own terms, or if you just don't want me there… well, I haven't exactly made your quest easy or pleasant. I would understand. I personally wouldn't go alone, and I don't think you should you go at all, but--"

Helsknight shrugged, having said everything he planned to. He finally dared a look at Tanguish, who was incredibly busy feeling too many things at once. 

(The most prominent feeling, Tanguish thought, was probably the feeling that hels must have frozen over while he wasn't looking. Surely someone was building a snow golem outside.)

"Uhm," Tanguish stammered, "I -- uhm -- that's --" Helsknight was still staring at him, looking mostly unreadable, and a little expectant. (What response was he expecting?) "I -- I thought you said you weren't going to help me anymore."

The tips of Helsknight's ears started to redden again. "I believed it at the time." 

"Why? Uhm -- I mean -- what changed your mind?" 

Helsknight's ears got redder, and his mouth formed a hard line that could have been angry, if Tanguish didn't know better. The knight looked away from him. "You said so yourself -- the decision to do what you're doing, it's yours."

"You wouldn't be stealing it from me if you chose not to help," Tanguish pointed out, finally managing to unscramble his thoughts. "You don't have to help me if it goes against -- I don't know -- your principles, or…?"

"I wouldn't offer if it did," Helsknight said resolutely. "But I'm not going to drag you around either. You were… very right. About me stealing away your choices. Thinking I knew better. So. It's. It's your decision. Do what you want. But I am… here… if you need me."

It felt like Helsknight leaned back as he said it, not off-balance, not scared. It was like he was trying to do the opposite of looming, to show with the tilt of his head and his spine what he was saying out loud, as if his words weren't enough proof of his intent.

(Honestly it was kind of… not frightening, exactly. Concerning, maybe. Alarming? It was kind of alarming that Helsknight took Tanguish's words from the day before so seriously. It was a relief, sure. It was good to know he had been heard. But Tanguish had also said bitter things while he was angry, and he didn't know if the knight took those seriously as well.)

"Thank you," Tanguish said finally, making up his mind. "I would like your help. And… I would like to try to talk to the Demon. It's -- well, it's worth a shot, right?"

"It's worth a shot," Helsknight smirked, relaxing just a bit. 

Tanguish felt some of his own tension leave. He flashed Helsknight a determined smile. "Okay. I guess... tell me about The Demon."

The Demon, no other name given, was a miserly smuggler who collected rare things, and guarded those rarities jealousy. His hatred of thieves had nothing to do with any actual thefts, and everything to do with prevention -- and it seemed to be working for him so far. He began supplying the Colosseum because, as a professional buyer and haggler, he had a way of coming into diamond and netherite. That, or he made it look easier than everyone else, which made him proficient enough. He was a skilled enchanter, a patient potion master, and, it seemed to Tanguish, was exactly the kind of person who would hate his guts on principle.

"He's not… evil," Helsknight had told him as he assembled his meager armor and got them ready to leave. "He doesn't go out of his way to cause problems and do harm. If you're on good terms with him, he's a reasonable person. When he thinks you've slighted him, though, there's nothing on hels or hermitcraft that'll stop him from getting his revenge."

Helsknight had belted his sword and shrugged.

"Why all the caution then?"

"Because he's cunning, and he's used to getting what he wants." Helsknight explained, grimacing. "You never know what people like that are going to do."

That conversation had been roughly an hour ago. Now, Tanguish was walking through the northside of town, keeping close to Helsknight. The knight looked… well, he looked angry, but the air about him didn't match his anger, so Tanguish decided he looked nervous. His body moved rigidly, his hand stayed on his sword, and his eyes wandered. He tracked anyone who moved too close, scanned dark alleyways and occasionally glanced at rooftops. Tanguish was on the verge of asking what he was so nervous about, when the knight spoke.

"If something happens, we need a place to meet up again," Helsknight said briskly, pausing at an intersection just long enough to get his bearings before walking again. "The Colosseum isn't the closest place, but it is the safest. I recommend going there."

Tanguish swallowed nervously. "You expect this to go that badly?"

"No," Helsknight said doubtfully.

"Then why are you so worried?"

“I hate being without my armor.” Helsknight rubbed his arms like he was cold, and grimaced. “I’m too exposed.”

“I mean -- it’s not that bad?” Tanguish offered lamely, not sure how to comfort this particular problem. “You’ve got the chainmail… right?”

“Chainmail only does so much,” Helsknight grumbled, looking down at the offending rings in disgust. “It can turn a sword point, but it can’t deflect force, and if the other guy has an axe?” Helsknight scoffed and rolled his eyes, and said with all the bitterness of someone talking about their worst enemy: “I hate axes.”

For as nervous as the weapons talk made him, Tanguish couldn’t help but chuckle at Helsknight’s indignation. “I think maybe you’re… thinking too much like a knight right now.”

Helsknight raised an eyebrow at him.

“You’re a very good swordsman,” Tanguish reminded him. “You’re better than most of the people in hels -- you’re at least better than all the other Colosseum fighters. Sure, you’re not at your… uhm… preferred best, but what are the chances anyone could hurt you, really?”

Helsknight scratched the back of his neck self-consciously. His face made a complicated expression that Tanguish couldn’t read, besides looking like Helsknight had eaten something rotten.

“I still don’t like it,” he huffed finally.

“Helsknight, you know normal people don’t wear armor all the time?”

“Well normal people can run away.”

“You run faster than me!”

“I can’t run from fights, Tanguish.”

Tanguish was on the cusp of disagreeing (He opened his mouth to and everything) but he stopped short and gave the statement some thought first. There was something heavy in the word “can’t.” Tanguish gave Helsknight a scrutinizing stare. “This is a knight thing, isn’t it?”

Helsknight shrugged, which was as good an agreement as any.

“That sounds like… a counterproductive tenet to have,” Tanguish said, tilting his head thoughtfully. “I mean, don’t knights need to retreat sometimes?”

“No guts, no glory.”

“Yeah but… surely there are circumstances where confrontation doesn’t give you glory?” Tanguish asked, because really, he had no idea. The world of knights was mostly a mystery to him. “I mean, we don’t really have wars in hels, but if you had to defend a castle or something, and it was obvious you couldn’t win--”

“The turned back is once stabbed and twice deserving,” Helsknight said, his gaze lost in the middle-distance, like he had to drag the phrase from a deep memory. “Be sure no wound or scar rests there, and--” Helsknight narrowed his eyes, then let out a soft tsk! against his teeth, annoyed. “Damn, I can’t remember the exact wording for the second half.”

“You’d think they would make that easy to remember,” Tanguish mused. “Like a nursery rhyme, or something.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“You write poetry, Helsknight.” Tanguish shrugged. “Why not use it for something that's important to you?"

Helsknight’s ears reddened again, but he didn’t call the idea stupid, so Tanguish figured he won that particular argument. Helsknight did seem to relax a little, or at least busy his mind with something other than weapons and armor. Tanguish was grateful for that. He didn't think they were in any danger, but having the knight behave like they were made him nervous. This side of town didn't even have that many people in it. There were people (there were very few places not submerged in lava that were deserted) but not many, walking single or in pairs at most, and always with a look like they had somewhere pressing to be. Twice Tanguish made eye contact with someone only to have them rapidly shift to walk on the other side of the street, as though proximity was dangerous -- and maybe it was. Tanguish would probably act the same if he saw Helsknight, fidgety and intense, stomping up the street.

(He wouldn't anymore. He knew Helsknight, better than he had when he met him, anyway, and he knew what a dangerous mood looked like. It was an odd thing to know about someone.)

Helsknight stopped them at a nearly empty crosswalk, looked both ways, and his eyebrows raised in recognition. He nodded up the street. "There it is."

"It" was a plain-looking storefront in a clutter of too-close-together buildings. It was a humble one-story façade made of blackstone, a shadowy copy of the nether brick buildings on either side of it. It gave Tanguish the impression of something that wanted to be overlooked, and dark, vacant-looking windows only added to that feeling. It was the fact that the windows were glass that tipped Tanguish off to its care -- glass was too rare to leave in an abandoned building. 

Helsknight ascended the three steps to the front door and knocked, a loud and hollow sound that broke the general quiet of the street. Tanguish glanced up at the windows, waiting for a light, or some movement, or any indication of habitation. There was a long silence, long enough for Tanguish to start to feel restless and watched. Then there was the loud ch-chk! of pistons firing, and the ground beneath their feet was suddenly yanked backwards. Tanguish yelped and grabbed onto Helsknight to keep from falling into the hole opened by the moving stairs. Where they had once been standing was a hole two blocks wide, revealing a staircase that spiraled downwards.

“Well… that’s new,” Helsknight said, gazing into the dark.

“How did it know to open?” Tanguish asked, leaning forward a bit to get a better look. There was a soft blue light defining the silhouette of the stairs as they curved. The cramped spiral reminded Tanguish of the cells in the Colosseum.

“The Demon’s probably watching us,” Helsknight hummed, glancing up at the door again. “He’s too paranoid to make a door that will open for just anyone.” 

They hovered above the revealed staircase for another hour-long moment. Then, squaring his shoulders, Helsknight descended, Tanguish keeping as close behind as he could without tripping over the knight’s cape. Once Tanguish’s head was clear of the blocks above, the entry closed behind them, the piston clunks over-loud in the confined space. Helsknight put a hand on the wall, stopping dead in his tracks.

“What’s wrong?” Tanguish asked, stepping closer to look over the knight’s shoulder.

“Just waiting for my eyes to adjust.”

“Oh.”

“You can see down here?”

“Mostly,” Tanguish answered, not willing to try and explain the oddness of being able to kind of see, kind of hear his surroundings. “It’s a sculk thing.”

“Huh. Weird,” Helsknight said, his voice betraying an upturn of admiration. Tanguish felt a flutter of pride in his chest. The knight took a cautious step forward, keeping a steadying hand on the wall to better follow the curve of the stairs. As they walked, the blue glow emanating from below got brighter, and Helsknight moved a little quicker.

“Do the stairs feel uneven to you?” Tanguish asked as he stumbled on a step, the drop longer than the step before it. “They feel uneven.”

“Yeah, it’s an old siege technique. An enemy stumbles more if they don’t know the terrain. Gives the defenders an advantage,” Helsknight informed him. “Walk closer to the inside of the curve. They’re a little more regular where they meet the center spiral.”

Tanguish adjusted his footfalls, frowning in concentration, “Why is he building his stairs for siege warfare?”

“I told you he was paranoid.”

“Does he expect people to siege him?”

“The correct term is besiege,” Helsknight said, and Tanguish rolled his eyes. “And I think he builds these things because he wants someone to besiege him, so he can prove how clever he is.”

Tanguish nodded. 

(It probably shouldn’t have, but that detail made him feel a little more hopeful. It sounded a bit like Tango building Decked Out -- making puzzles and traps just so someone will stumble into them. Granted, Tango’s was a game, and he emphasized the fact that it was all a game, but to The Demon, maybe this was all a game too, and he simply didn’t have anyone to play it with? Tanguish put a pin in that thought.)

Eventually the stairs opened into a large room, not vaulted-ceiling large, but close. The walls were carved with reliefs of fake pillars, braziers flickering with soul fire down their length. Helsknight let out a low whistle, clearly impressed. Apparently, this room was new too. 

“Don’t touch anything,” the knight reminded him needlessly, continuing through the entry corridor towards a larger door beyond. 

Tanguish followed, peering around at the walls, searching for obvious traps. He spotted a few of them: pinholes hiding in friezes where arrows could slip through, tripwires just off the center path, some contraption in the largest chandelier that looked like it might be a dispenser. There were more, he was sure, but they walked by too fast for Tanguish to riddle them all out. They were through the doorway and into the next room, an inner sanctum of sorts, circular in shape and with a domed ceiling. 

Tanguish’s first thought was that it was beautiful. The room was ringed in more pillars, false windows steepling between each one, filled with crystalline glass and backlit by glowstone. The pillars were crowned with dragons, or demons -- some kind of fanged, winged creature that opened its jaws to roar towards the center of the ceiling. Clutched in each of their claws was some brown-purple stone, but the color wasn’t right for nether brick. (Netherite, he recognized it like a lightning bolt.  The Demon just had netherite in his ceiling. Huge blocks of the stuff clutched in statue claws.) Where the pillars met the floor, a spiral floor pattern started, sectioning off the room in lotus-petal curls to meet at what was obviously a throne in the center (it was a large chair, but plain, and Tanguish had to wonder if the helsmet hadn’t gotten around to working on it yet). The different sections in the floor pattern were decorated, short knee-high walls sometimes breaking them apart, giving them the look of a hedge-garden made of blackstone and iron. Instead of plants, there were workstations. Here a set of furnaces shaped like bellowing ghasts surrounded by tools and ores, there a redstone set up decorated like a lava lake. It really did remind Tanguish of a sculpture garden, as utilitarian as it was artful.

Near the back of the room, standing in front of a potion brewing setup nestled between statues of rearing spiders, was a massive helsmet nearly a head and a half taller than Helsknight. The Demon lived up to his name, Tanguish thought as they approached him, blinking in bewilderment at the imposing figure. He wasn’t just tall. He looked strong as well, wide and covered in dark scales that seemed black in the dim light, though whether that was just the lighting or his actual color, Tanguish couldn’t tell. A pair of horns curled back from his forehead, their points ending close to his ears, as though one day they might grow long enough to pierce them. A thick tail curled around his feet, a hand-crafted golden spade attached to its end and gold circlets accented his horns. He turned away from his work to face them as they approached, and what Tanguish first mistook for a long cape shifted and billowed, and a pair of wings arched outward as The Demon stretched, flexing muscles that had stiffened as he had been working.

“Oh,” Helsknight said in a voice nearing pleasant, “You finished your wings.”

“Do you like them?” The Demon asked, grinning, golden eyes sparkling. “It took me ages to build my elytra from scratch, but they were well worth it, don’t you think?”

The Demon’s voice was deceptively warm for someone who brought Helsknight so much worry. He smiled easily, and the corners of his eyes crinkled when he did, making it look all the more genuine. His natural cheerfulness was dampened a bit by the axe on his belt, but it was only one of many tools and bottles buckled and cinched there, giving Tanguish the impression it was more for utility than any use as a weapon.

“Stoic as always, I see,” The Demon chuckled when Helsknight didn’t respond to his invitation for praise. His tail gave a cat-like twitch, his only sign impatience. “What can I help you with today, Sir Helsknight?”

“I was looking to commission some armor.”

“Yes,” The Demon smiled, drawing out the “S” in an amused hiss. “I did notice you were missing that beautiful set I made. You didn’t go wasting all my hard work on something foolish, did you?”

There was a threat there, hiding in the question. Tanguish could feel it like a tingle on the back of his neck, the same way he felt a pressure plate in his bones before he stepped on one. Something like self-preservation made his heart give a startled flutter. He glanced up at the knight, who looked, at most, vaguely annoyed.

“It wasn’t wasted,” Helsknight told him coldly. “It served its purpose, and now I need a new set.”

“I’m just messing with you,” The Demon laughed innocently, settling his wings back on his shoulders so they resembled a cape again. There were two clawed digits on each wing, and he hooked them onto his shoulders in a gesture that reminded Tanguish of someone putting their hands on their hips. “I can have a new set made -- all the same enchantments as before, I assume?”

Helsknight glanced in Tanguish’s direction. “Without thorns this time.”

The Demon raised an eyebrow at him, pulling a notepad and stylus from a hip pocket and making a quick note, “No thorns… well it’ll shave a little off the price. You can pay me out of the funds from your next match. I know you’re good for it.” The Demon paused, and he flashed Helsknight a mischievous smile, “Or you could have me as your patron. I would give you armor for free, then.”

“I’m fine with my current patron, thank you.”

“You really are no fun,” The Demon’s smile didn’t waver. It was an answer he was expecting. “Shall I be making armor for your… guest… as well?”

The Demon’s gaze finally settled on Tanguish, golden and gleaming, and it was more intimidating than Tanguish had thought it would be. It was the kind of stare that carried weight, the kind of eyes that hid things with ease. He felt like he was being measured when The Demon looked down at him. Tanguish held the gaze for as long as he dared before dropping his eyes down to his feet. The Demon smirked.

“No, he’s here for different business.” Helsknight took a bracing breath, preparing himself. “Speaking of which, I have a favor to ask you.”

“I don’t do favors,” The Demon responded conversationally, still smiling.

“I’ll owe you one.”

The Demon snapped his gaze onto Helsknight as though the knight had just offered him some great treasure. His eyes glittered, his smile tightened just a fraction, his tail twitched. Tanguish looked at the knight as well, confused about what that meant and why it was so important. Helsknight smirked unpleasantly, too guarded to be comfortable. He produced a small piece of red cloth from a pouch at his side, stitched with a black sword on one of the corners. The Demon took a step back away from it, watching the little piece of cloth like it was a snake. He narrowed his eyes slowly, suspicion creeping into the expression. He glanced first to Tanguish, then back to the knight.

“You do accept I-Owe-Yous, right?” Helsknight asked, clearly knowing the answer. 

“Helsknight,” Tanguish stammered, concerned. “You -- you don’t have to--”

The knight held up a hand to stop him, “I don’t have to, but I am.”

The Demon looked between the two of them again, reassessing whatever measure he had made of them. His gaze lingered on Tanguish for a little longer than the first time, trying to see what made him so important. Finally he asked, “What is it for?”

Helsknight let out a little sigh, not quite relief, but close. He ushered Tanguish forward.  “This is Tanguish. He’s Tango’s helsmet.”

The Demon narrowed his eyes again suspiciously.

“He’s fallen onto some… difficulties, because of his hermit,” Helsknight said carefully, choosing each word with the same caution he might use to compose a poem. “What he really needs is a friend, and since you’re Impulse’s hels, you are a good place to start.”

The Demon physically flinched at his hermit’s name, like the reminder of his other half was painful. When he looked back down at Tanguish though, the suspicion was gone, replaced by a much more harmless curiosity.

“I just want you to give him a chance,” Helsknight told him with something nearing gentleness.

“Uhm, I would truly appreciate it,” Tanguish said, fighting to keep the nervous stutter from creeping back into his voice. “Your sanctuary -- throne room? -- is uhm, beautiful, by the way.”

“And this is worth an I-Owe-You to you?” The Demon asked, tilting his head to the side slightly.

“Well, if you feel like it’s a bad deal, you can throw on my armor as part of it,” Helsknight shrugged. “Saves me the trouble of counting diamonds later.”

The Demon scrutinized them both for a moment longer, before finally nodding magnanimously. He offered a hand to Helsknight, and the two of them clasped forearms, Helsknight passing the token over in the same motion.

“My I-Owe-Yous come with two conditions,” Helsknight informed him, his voice taking on that rehearsed tone. “I cannot violate my knight’s tenets, and I cannot attack Evil X. We have a previous bargain already made.”

“Drat, all my hels domination plans foiled,” The Demon said in a tone that only halfway made it to joking. He tucked Helsknight’s favor into one of the many pouches on his belt. “Well, if that’s all our business concluded, Sir Helsknight, I will bid you farewell. There is an elevator by the stairs you came down by. Feel free to use it.”

“You’re leaving?” Tanguish asked uncertainly, watching Helsknight turn to go.

“Of course he’s leaving,” The Demon chuckled, placing a heavy hand on Tanguish’s shoulder and grinning down at him. “If you keep a knight around too long, their chivalry starts to rub off, and there’s no fun in that, is there?”

Once again, The Demon’s voice neared joking, but didn’t quite make it there. Tanguish swallowed nervously, but nodded, trying very hard to see the humor.

“I have been known to take myself too seriously,” Helsknight agreed, his smirk hovering on the edge of bitterness. He offered Tanguish one of his half-hearted salutes, his smile a little more genuine. “Good luck.” Then, with a slight dip of a bow towards The Demon that was much more formal. “And it was a pleasure doing business with you.”

Helsknight left, the retreat of his footsteps steady and even. Tanguish watched the knight until he disappeared into the connecting hall, a blue-black silhouette quickly fading. The farther away Helsknight went, the more intense Tanguish’s nervousness grew. He felt as though he were dangling on a rope over the edge of some darkness, and someone was taking away his safety lines one-by-one. He was on his own to climb or fall.

Tanguish took a steadying breath and put the knight out of his mind. He had a quest to complete.

Chapter Text

“So, Tango’s helsmet,” the Demon asked curiously, looming over Tanguish, because it was hard for him not to, “what in the hels did you do to get the Champion of all people interested in you?”

Tanguish rubbed the back of his neck nervously, “Uhm… I don’t know, really.”

The Demon raised his eyebrows exaggeratedly. “You don’t know?” 

“I’m… still trying to figure him out.”

“Well you must have done something important,” The Demon hummed, resituating his wings on his back and turning to his potion setup. “The Colosseum fighters are all so… transactional . They can’t stand to be indebted to people.”

(Oh… Tanguish felt… really disappointed by that… probably more than he should be, but the worry was planted now, and the roots grew fast. Was that really all this was? A transaction? But of course Helsknight thought he owed Tanguish something. They had that fight, and the knight had felt so guilty afterwards. This was all just part of some elaborate apology. The thought put an ache in Tanguish’s chest though, a hollow feeling he hadn’t been expecting. He had really thought… Helsknight might be helping just because… well, the knight had told him they weren’t friends, but he thought they were nearing something like camaraderie. Maybe even care. Tanguish certainly was. It felt bad knowing the feeling wasn’t mutual.)

(Tanguish needed to stop thinking about this. Immediately.)

“Uhm… so you make potions?” Tanguish asked, approaching the work table, his hands crossed securely over his chest so he couldn’t touch anything. “Helsknight said you made armor for the Colosseum… you… it seems like you do a lot?”

“Of course,” The Demon smiled proudly. He liked talking about himself. Good. Tanguish could work with that. “I dabble in everything. It’s one of the few boons my hermit gave me. I have an aptitude for figuring things out. Redstone. Building. Industry…” He was going down the line of brewing stands, clicking off their heating elements with each word on his list. “It’s helped me build a cozy little empire for myself here.”

He glanced down at Tanguish, clearly expecting something. His tail thrashed once.

“Oh… that sounds… uhm… busy,” Tanguish said, hoping that sounded like a compliment. “I -- noticed your traps when we came in.”

The Demon narrowed his eyes to suspicious slits.

“That is--! The figuring things out you were talking about? They were all very well hidden! I just -- Tango, my hermit, he makes things like that. He makes games with them. They’re fun. I’ve -- I’ve built a few before.”

The Demon was still scrutinizing him, and Tanguish got the feeling he was treading on a dangerous topic. Tanguish started babbling. 

(Babbling had an amazing way of making him look harmless, and right now, he really wanted that.)

“Uhm -- one -- one time we -- I built -- well, it was a fall trap, kind of? But, see, if you control a redstone frequency with amethyst and sculk, you can filter specific sounds and -- well, it only picked up footsteps and triggered so… so if you knew it was there you could sneak by it? Sorry it… I make it sound kind of -- it was a fun puzzle to work on.”

“... Interesting,” was all The Demon said for a long moment. He didn’t look upset. He looked… vaguely curious, in the same way someone might be curious about discovering a new and interesting insect on their kitchen floor.

“They are,” Tanguish agreed, ignoring the unsettling stare as best he could.

The Demon raised his eyebrows again, a slow smile spreading across his face. It was a genuine smile that somehow managed to still be unpleasant. “It sounds like you have a lot of experience maneuvering and building traps.”

“Uhm… kind of.”

The Demon turned and started walking, that unpleasant smile still curling the edges of his lips. His tail swept around as he walked, forcing more than ushering Tanguish to follow. 

“I’ve got a test for you, Tanguish,” The Demon said, his voice warm and unsettling. “Helsknight did ask me to give you a chance, and paid a mighty price with his word. Really the least I could do is give you a serious test of your mettle. So I’m going to trust you with something -- something I’ve never shown anyone else."

“O-oh-- you don’t have to--”

The Demon’s tail knocked into him again, sending him stumbling, “ Nonsense . Of course I do. Helsknight entrusted you to me, and it would be a disservice to disappoint him, wouldn’t it?”

The Demon grinned down at him, golden eyes gleaming. Tanguish felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle.

“Uhm… r… right,” Tanguish answered, because he was pretty sure he had no choice.

“ Excellent.”

The Demon’s Lair (because it did very much feel like a lair) was a sprawling complex, and his grand sanctuary room was merely the tip of the substantial underground iceberg. So much space was carved away down here, it was a wonder the weight of the city above didn’t collapse it. 

The place was a labyrinth, but in a way distinct from the cells beneath the Colosseum. The cells were cramped and, in their own hive-like way, organic. They had the feel of people carving out spaces for themselves in the same way that ants carved out an anthill; it was all function, indecipherable to anyone who didn’t live there, and given order by memory and instinct rather than tangible planning. It felt lived in and intimate, a place where people congregated because it was made just as much of camaraderie as it was stone. There was clutter, and debris, and voices, and the pervasive feeling that even in its loneliest places, you weren’t really alone. So many souls passing through it had left sparks of life in the walls and floor, like any day now the place could grow its own soul and start living. 

The Demon’s Lair, by contrast, was sprawling and empty in the same way an abandoned church was empty.  There was the impression of greatness and intent, but any god or saint that had once graced its halls left desolation when it vanished, only vain echoes of glory ringing in its wake. Every room was cold and blue, because of the soul lanterns and braziers, and because of the Demon’s insistent use of blackstone and basalt as his main building blocks. Some of it was gilded, solid structures cracked by displays of richness. Gold blocks and gilded blackstone starred the ceilings, statuary crawled and snarled in grand poses, pillars veined with quartz fractured light onto the walls. It was beautiful, and it was dead: a castle and a catacomb neatly stitched together. There was no sound besides their footfalls, and the occasional shift and groan of the weighty ceiling. The openness of the spaces they passed through echoed with their vastness, emphasizing their own emptiness with a sense of foreboding that discouraged idle conversation.

It struck Tanguish as an incredibly lonely place, and familiar for its loneliness. Maybe it was the color palette, maybe it was the Demon's insatiable pride in his work, but it really did remind him of Decked Out II. It was a place that longed to be witnessed, and the Demon seemed excited to finally share it. He waved his hands grandly as he walked, splayed his elytra wings, and doted lovingly on the things that he made or commissioned. Look here at this mural, as tall as the ceiling and made of mosaic tiles all the size of a fingernail. There, that dragon carving is the same size as a real life Ender Dragon, and there are six in the room. The bannister to this stair came from a world that no longer exists, dragged piece by piece from the rubble of a fallen moon. This chandelier was made from diamonds dredged from stone instead of deepslate. It was all Tanguish could do to come up with compelling awe. After the first few “wows” and “amazings”, it all started to sound as hollow as their steps on the floor. If the Demon noticed, though, he hid it well, or he was too enraptured by the ability to share that the repetitive comments weren’t old to him yet. 

It was a familiar place for Tanguish to be, following in the shadow of greatness, preening someone else’s pride. He… wasn’t sure how much he liked it anymore. He found his mind straying to Helsknight, to that comment in the stairwell, “Weird” but with admiration. How genuinely curious he looked when Tanguish revealed stupid little things about himself, like why he didn’t carry lockpicks, or that his favorite food was muffins of all things. Maybe it was unfair to compare the Demon to the knight. The Demon talked about himself because he didn’t know what else was safe to talk about yet -- probably. And it wasn’t like Tanguish was insulted, or found the conversation boring. It was just that he was figuring out how one-sided it was, and he used to be okay with that one-sidedness. When had he stopped being okay with it? 

(Then there was a new worrying question: When he got to see Tango again, would the one-sidedness between them make him feel this way as well? He discarded that thought almost as soon as he had it. Tanguish would cross that bridge when he came to it, he decided. He didn’t need anything else to worry about right now.)

They kept descending, and moving through connecting rooms, and descending again. They passed long hallways that exited into more rooms Tanguish didn’t have time to see. It was a wonder the Demon ever rested. Tanguish would bet money the man had managed to transcend sleep along the line somewhere. How else could such a sprawling place be built?

Then, of course, there were the traps. There were a lot of traps in here. Tanguish could see them, sometimes he could hear and feel them, and intuition filled in the gaps between his observations. They walked over stones that felt just the barest bit too warm beneath his feet, and he knew somewhere in that room there was a lever or sensor or switch that could throw him to his death in lava below. Every statue with a snarling mouth was coupled with something that could shoot fire or arrows, or some other pitiless violence. Tripwires darned the walls like cobwebs, some of them pulled so taught Tanguish knew just the ice from his breath would spring them. Walking through the Demon’s halls left him feeling like he was walking down the throat of some great beast, its maw wide open, waiting on a misstep to snap it shut. Helsknight wasn’t lying when he said the Demon was clever and paranoid, and Tanguish wondered how many things he missed in the multitude of dangers.

“Ah, here we are,” the Demon smiled at last, finally leading them to a room that was dead-ended. Or, well, it didn’t dead end exactly . There was a large door at the far end, and from the bite of redstone in the air, Tanguish figured it was a piston door. It certainly had the circular arrangement for one, and all the hallmarks of lateral movement for the slotting of components. At its base was intricate tilework, hypnotic patterns of glazed terracotta that danced across the floor. A twist in Tanguish’s stomach told him that many of those tiles were trapped, laying in wait for him to step on the wrong one. He couldn’t see the trapped tiles, the colors on the floor confused his eyes too much, but something made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end and he made sure to follow in the Demon’s steps as he approached the door.

“Where is here?” Tanguish asked nervously.

“This is your proving ground, my little trap maker,” the Demon said glowingly, pulling a key from his pocket and dropping it into a concealed lock near the base of the door. The massive door cracked into eight segmented pieces, opening itself in a jerking motion that reminded Tanguish of spider legs. 

Beyond was something that could have been a museum, but was most likely a treasure room. Cases and exhibits were arranged in neat displays and rows, punctuated occasionally by free-standing builds and objects too large to be fit behind glass. Tanguish gaped, trying to take it all in, his gaze rolling off of coin collections, decorative weapons, petrified trees and statues. There was a beautiful diversity about the objects, all crafted by dozens of different hands, all heralded from dozens of different places. Helsknight had said the Demon was a smuggler, but that seemed too deceptive a description for it. The Demon was a fine art collector, and his collection was impressive, even to Tanguish, who had never taken interest in that kind of work before.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" The Demon asked, beaming with satisfaction. "This is the work of a lifetime. Everything has its place, and every place precious."

The Demon strode into the room, and Tanguish followed dutifully, crossing his arms to dissuade even the thought of touching something.

"Do you know what happens when a world dies, Tanguish?" The Demon asked, his eyes bright as he grinned around at his collection. He didn't wait for an answer. "When the hermits, or whoever made it, discard it and move on, I mean? They don't just disappear like we do, even the realms made to only sustain one life. They stay out there in the void like stars, too many to count, too forgotten to sustain life. But they're there."

The Demon passed by one of his larger exhibits, a boat with colorful sails, a bright sun insignia displayed proudly on the largest one. He ran a clawed hand across the hull, careful not to leave a mark, only the soft tombstone-scrape of his claws indicating his touch.

"Everything here came from one of those worlds. I've been collecting them since the day I spawned in. They're all one of a kind. Sure, replicas exist, whenever their original makers get nostalgic, but I hunt down the originals and preserve them."

The Demon flashed Tanguish an amused smile, "Serves them all right for leaving such pretty things behind. The world might be the hermis’ plaything, but even these discarded toys are worth something."

Tanguish looked around at the room again, his heart doing complicated twists and turns in his chest. It was something like wonder, and something like sadness. He was standing in a graveyard, he realized, one collective memorial, frozen in time. It was a garden of misfit things, so incredibly hels-like, mournful and pretty, and dissonant beneath the Demon’s love of blue light. It felt like everything here should be wreathed in the same red haze as hels above them.

“This is beautiful,” Tanguish said genuinely, his voice a distant whisper even to himself. He leaned towards the nearest thing to him, a string of massive chains that hung like pearls from the ceiling, weathered by blooms of vines and flowers. Stepping closer to them, they seemed to pulse, remembering the heartbeat of something they were no longer attached to.

“It is, isn’t it?” The Demon agreed, looming over Tanguish’s shoulder, though whether he too was reveling in the things around him, or was just keeping a watchful eye, Tanguish didn’t know. “Feel free to look around. Hmm -- don’t touch anything. Some of these things break easily.”

“R-right.” Tanguish agreed, only just then realizing he had reached out a hand. He quickly crossed his arms again. “Why am I here?”

“I told you, it’s a test,” the Demon beamed. “Oh don’t look so frightened. It’s just a little test, very easy. Go on, explore.” The Demon prodded Tanguish in the shoulder with the gold spade on his tail, so hard Tanguish stumbled a step. “If you need me, just give a shout.”

“B-- but--” Tanguish stammered, but the Demon continued walking as if he hadn’t heard the protest, humming a tune to himself as he walked amongst his collection. He looked right at home with his relics, gazing lovingly at them like a proud parent, refamiliarizing himself with their colors and contours. He slipped around the side of one of the display builds -- a scale model of what was once probably a much larger castle, all stone towers and prismarine roofs with a massive rosette window -- and disappeared from sight, leaving Tanguish alone in the aisle. 

It took Tanguish a long time to move from where he stood. Being alone here made him incredibly nervous, like he had suddenly been dropped into a house made of glass. He curled his tail around his feet, crossed his arms as tightly as they could go, and just quietly gazed at the nearest things around him, hoping the Demon would wander back around and tell him he had passed whatever mysterious test he was going through right now. But the Demon didn’t come back, or the circuit he was walking was far too broad to be completed in the relatively short time Tanguish had been hovering there. Then Tanguish’s eyes started to wander, first to the ceiling, where planes and ships hung above all the other exhibits like the world’s largest Christmas bulbs, and then to an arch of concrete and glass that followed one of the walls, and then Tanguish found himself wandering sheepishly around, looking for something recognizable. 

He spotted the bright colors of Tango’s Toon Towers almost immediately -- not the towers themselves, they were too large for this room. One of the trees had been taken, planted in all its cotton-candy splendor in one of the corners. Tanguish stood under it, smiling softly, soaking in the memories it brought back. He and Tango hadn’t known each other when he started Toon Towers, but Tanguish certainly remembered the trees, and the dock where they met, and testing how far the ravagers in Tango’s latest iron-golem-destroyer could throw them. That was the year of Decked Out, and of them planning all the little traps and puzzles inside, and Tanguish hiding in the redstone lines, laughing along as Tango playtested it.

(He wondered how far Tango had gotten into Decked Out II in his absence. How long had they been separated? A week? Maybe two? Was Tango filling that hole with someone else right now? Oh, that made his heart ache again. Gods but he still hated feeling things, every time he felt something inconvenient.)

Tanguish scurried away from the tree, looking for some other pretty relic to get invested in, and hopefully one that wouldn’t make him feel more mournful than he already did. He passed out of what could be called the “Hermitcraft” section and into some other world’s relics. There were conduits on tall spires, flickering their light. There was a sculpture of leaping fish, and a hot air balloon decorated with colorful terracotta. He stood in front of a pair of paintings for a long time, showing some bright and beautiful castle made of corals and prismarine, both during its brightest splendor and after its fall, when the oceans had dried around it. 

Beside the paintings was a coin collection that Tanguish’s eyes glossed over at first, and then he stopped in his tracks when he glanced over it again. They were all bright, fiery copper coins, burnished to a shine, gleaming in display lights. They were lined up in four neat rows of five, alternating between the face of their king and the conduit on the flipped side. The edges of the coins were just a little unsymmetrical, as though they had been hand stamped, and they were so incredibly, obviously familiar. He could almost feel himself flipping each one of them into his favorite fountain, one at a time. All except for one. 

Tanguish’s eyes followed the rows to the bottom corner, where there was a glaringly obvious missing coin. He slipped a hand into his pocket and pulled out his coin, the first one he heard Tango’s voice in, and the only one out of the bunch he had kept. The face of his coin was worn and smudged, and starting to corrode to teal around the edges, but the king and conduit stamps were the same, and the worry-circle in the center from his thumb was still fiery orange. Tanguish stared down at the coin in his hand for a long moment, then back up to the case in front of him, frozen in a wistful daze. He never thought he would ever see these coins again -- he had never particularly wanted to. But now he was standing in front of them, and his heart felt full. It was such a simple thing, but there was a moment where it felt like every star had aligned, and Tanguish was meant to be standing here, right here, right now, if for no other reason than to witness where so many things had started.

His wonder snapped like a bone breaking. 

“Amazing little coins, aren’t they?” The Demon asked, suddenly standing right behind him. Tanguish nearly jumped out of his skin. He clenched his fist around the coin in his hand and stumbled a step away from the Demon, trying to gain some distance between them. The Demon let him, smiling, unmoving for a long moment, so still he could have been stone, if not for those bright golden eyes and the way they seethed like embers in his skull. The Demon took a step towards the coin case (Tanguish flinched another step back) feigning disinterest. “You know the story behind these coins? It’s a very good one.”

The Demon clasped his hands behind his back, his wings slowly unfurling to make room. They cast a long shadow.

“This whole section here is from a place called Empires,” the Demon hummed, not waiting for an invitation to explain. “It’s a broken, doomed world, one that has well and truly ended. If you go back there now, it's all inhospitable desert, and sun-blasted wind. According to the smugglers I employ, it’s very hard to stay alive there for any substantial period of time.”

 The Demon tapped a claw gently against the coin case, “These here were from a place called Pixandria -- a desert even before the world was a desert, abandoned by its king, half-buried in sand before the world ended. It took them months just to sift out these coins.”

The Demon sighed, his wings flexing as his shoulders sagged. “The most disappointing thing about the whole affair, is that after all that time and investment, all the diamonds and resources I spent making sure my little team could go find those coins and bring them back, they were stolen the minute they stepped foot back in hels.”

The Demon grinned down at Tanguish, a dark, predatory smile. “Hels is a terrible place when it wants to be, isn’t it, Tanguish?”

Tanguish nodded mutely, too scared to respond. His fist was clasped around his coin so hard he felt one of the edges dig painfully into his palm.

(It was all falling apart again, he realized, both too slow and too fast to figure out how to stop it. It was falling apart, and this time, he was alone. He was alone, down here under hundreds of blocks of stone and maze and traps. He was--)

“I’ve gotten them back slowly,” the Demon continued, his golden gaze so intense it felt like he was nailing Tanguish to the floor with the weight of it. “Every once in a while one pops up, spent in a shop here or there. It’s taken a lot of watchfulness to reunite them all. Well… all except the one. And, you know, it’s the darnedest thing -- I never found the person that stole them, either. They were so good, my smuggler never noticed the coins were gone, until he came to deliver them. Such a clever little thing was too illusive, too small to catch. He just skulked off into the dark, and slipped right through my claws.”

The Demon spread his wings, and his hand slipped down to rest on his axe. He gave Tanguish a wide, genuine, eye-crinkling smile, the cat that finally caught the canary. He cocked his head to the side and asked, cloyingly pleasant: “Tell me again where you learned so much about traps, thief?”

Chapter Text

[Helsknight]

Helsknight had been standing at the base of the Demon’s elevator for… a long time. Too long to be reasonable. If asked why he was standing here, he wouldn’t have an answer to give. Not a good one. Not an answer someone like the Demon would accept. Probably not even an answer Tanguish would accept, as naive and forgiving as he was. Helsknight didn’t bother making an answer either. He just stood there, his hand against the wall just above the call button, thinking, turning over the same issue in his head like a tumbling stone, like he could find a course of action after his first dozen attempts of gleaning nothing. It was a battle he was ill-equipped to win, but admitting he was losing was the first step in admitting defeat, so he stubbornly continued. Rarely in Helsknight's life, there came a time where his instincts and his knightly tenets -- well they didn't clash, but they played discordant notes together, making whatever he did next a muddled guess at best. This was turning into one of those times.

Helsknight was not clever. Clever implied being able to plan, and scheme, and do mental arithmetic in both the literal and figurative sense. Clever thinkers thought quick on their feet, hid their intentions, and generally made it a rule to outsmart people instead of out-hit people. They were hard to read, and even harder to predict. That was why he disliked clever people. He could never tell what they were going to do. Oh, he could tell they intended to do something clever, but he would be blindsided by it. Every. Single. Time. The most he could do was anticipate it and adapt as quickly as possible. That was what he was doing now. He was standing in front of that stupid elevator, waiting, observing, anticipating the Demon’s cleverness. Because while Helsknight wasn’t clever, he also wasn't stupid. Stupid was rash, and impulsive, and it died more often than it didn’t. Stupid didn’t survive the way Helsknight did, didn’t fight the way he did. More importantly, when the Demon had insisted the knight leave, stupid would have left. Helsknight didn’t. He also didn't worry -- not in this particular instance at least. As clever as the Demon was, Helsknight was sure Tanguish was even more so, whether the little pest knew it or not. 

Honestly, Tanguish was too clever for his own good. He was clever in an intimate way, an emotional way. He picked people apart, got to the heart of them. Deeper than that. Tanguish got down to the marrow and sinew of a person, the bits that bound them together and built their blood. Helsknight left every interaction with Tanguish feeling like he had been dissected, and someone had shown a spotlight on his insides while they poked around. When they had fought? That had been painful.

In his long career as a knight, Helsknight had been stabbed, slashed, and maimed. He had been disemboweled twice. He had broken most of the bones in his body at least once, and had been dismembered more times than he would comfortably admit to. Never had he felt so cut-open and unspooled, so wholly and completely both-fists-tearing-out-organs gutted, as when Tanguish had looked him in the eyes and called him a coward. And when that little idiot had found him in his room and sat beside him in the dark? After all that ugly, teeth-bared, glass-hearted pain Helsknight had spoken?  Never in a thousand years would Helsknight have expected that act of selfless solidarity. Never in a thousand years had he ever felt less deserving of it. Helsknight had been a blind man sitting in the dark, and while Tanguish was no blinding light, he was certainly the outline of stars in a dark place, which made him all the more precious. The sun was made to be bright, to shine. Tanguish was made to be outshone, until it was too dark to see anything else, and then you were never more grateful he was there.

To say Helsknight owed the little pest something was absurd. No one could repay something like that. He could only watch the stars, feel small, and if he was particularly pious that night, pray.

All that to say: Helsknight was not a clever man. He was, however, incredibly intuitive. It was the kind of economy of thought that came from being an efficient knight, from knowing battle, and from experience. He didn’t plan; he made decisions. He didn’t scheme; he acted. He didn’t do arithmetic; he followed his intuition. A good knight wasn’t made because they were smart -- and if a good knight started smart, that sense was bashed out of them the third time they fell off their horse. A good knight was made because everything they were supposed to be became instinctual, be it their tenets, or their weaponscraft, or their moral compass. And a good knight was confident enough in their instincts to follow those instincts, trusting intuition to win in the breaths and seconds where reason would falter in the minutes and hours.

When the Demon had told Helsknight to leave, something about it just… didn’t sit right with him. It wasn’t an unreasonable request, but there was something about the motive. Something about the possessive hand on Tanguish’s shoulder. Something about that phrase, there’s no fun in keeping a knight around too long. Helsknight’s intuition had taken a long drink of the situation and decided it didn’t like the taste. So Helsknight did what his intuition demanded: he stuck around. Even though, if something did go wrong, he had no idea how to stop it. Even though he told Tanguish to meet him at the Colosseum, so he should probably follow through with that word and meet him there. Even though he felt stupid standing in front of the dark elevator, listening to the resounding quiet of the Demon’s Lair, waiting for something to happen. He didn’t question the feeling any more than he would question the north star. He didn’t dissect it for its cause, didn’t try to read into it any further. He simply followed it, because his instincts were rarely wrong. 

The problem with all of this, though, was Helsknight couldn’t very well barge into a place because “he got a bad feeling about it.” He was fallible, no matter what his pride told him. There was also the fact that Tanguish was his own person, and Helsknight had just that morning given a very well-thought-out and mentally rehearsed speech about how he was going to stop running roughshod over Tanguish when it came to making decisions on what to do. He had not given his word in the literal sense -- no contract or bargain had been made -- but he had said the words with intent. There was no rash emotionality to make him wave them off, no convenient "well I believed it at the time" excuse. He had put serious thought into how he had treated Tanguish up until that point, and decided he was going to treat Tanguish differently now. So, it seemed to him that storming back down the hall to grab Tanguish by the arm and say, "I change my mind, this is a bad idea!" would be the same as lying, which was against his tenets. But his intuition told him if he didn't do just that thing, Tanguish might be harmed. 

Collateral damage to Helsknight's mistakes was not against his tenets, but emotionally, allowing his little pest to suffer just felt bad. Generally, when Helsknight wasn't angry and wasn't holding a sword in his hand, he hated causing people pain. He hated causing Tanguish pain even more so. Tanguish was the most selfless person he had ever met, and causing harm to someone who would probably curl up and die the minute they thought they hurt you carried the same moral weight as kicking a puppy: it wasn't technically a sin, but it still made him a shitty person.

Helsknight gave a frustrated sigh and leaned his forehead against the elevator doors. 

"Gods and saints," he muttered in exasperation. He pondered the phrase for a moment, eyebrows raising slightly. Then he said falteringly, because it had been a very, very long time since he had last seriously prayed about anything: "Saint of Blood and Steel."

The hall around him was so terribly quiet, a more superstitious person might convince themselves the world was holding its breath, or some presence was leaning in closely to listen, or both. Helsknight’s heart did a little shudder in his chest, the closest thing to nervousness he was capable of feeling. He didn't like praying. He didn't like gods, and while he was a little more forgiving of saints, he, as a whole, didn't like them much either. Helsknight regarded the concept of faith in much the same way he regarded his temper; he could do something about it, but it was much more cathartic not to bother. He was too spiteful of a person, the world was too unfair, and the divine was too damningly silent. Still, the thing about knights was the religiosity got kind of… baked in with the training, and old habits die hard. Helsknight still occasionally attended confession, he still dutifully paid his tithes, twice a year he gave blood at the altar, and today, because he didn't know what else to do, he was praying.

"We don't talk," Helsknight muttered begrudgingly to the Saint who probably wasn't listening, and probably didn't care, "but if you're in the mood to offer guidance, I'm in the mood to listen."

Helsknight fell silent, because he had been told prayer was a bit like a conversation, and it was only polite in a conversation to give the other person a chance to speak. He got no answer. He didn't expect one. That was the thing about gods and saints: they enjoyed their enigmatic silence. Helsknight did, however, catch the sudden whiff of burning redstone. It was a sharp, biting smell like acid on concrete, distinctly industrial. It made his eyes want to water and threatened the kind of sneeze that made the back of his throat sore. Helsknight checked to make sure he hadn't hit the elevator button by accident and, seeing he hadn't, he cursed. Somewhere in the Demon's Lair, a lot of redstone was firing, which meant someone, somewhere, had set off one of his traps.

The whirling of tenets against promises stopped abruptly in Helsknight's head, and the gratifying calm of a decision made mantled itself over his shoulders. Unbothered by the prospect of future repercussions, Helsknight cloaked himself in shadow and stepped backwards out of the world.

Helsknight found slipping through the worlds easy. He didn't know why, only that it was a gift he rarely got to use. He could move between hels and Hermitcraft at will, alongside a half dozen other little worlds his hermit had left an imprint on. If he wanted, he could think hard about Welsknight and spring out of his shadow like a tenacious dandelion through cracked concrete. That wasn't what he wanted now. He just needed to slip somewhere unimportant. Helsknight felt the brief flash of warm sunlight. There was birdsong and breeze, the chuckle of running water -- and then he stepped backwards and fell again. In the suffocated gasp between worlds, Helsknight pictured Tanguish in his head. He thought of sculk-light freckles, the way objects frosted over at Tanguish's touch, of how soothing and cold their hug had been, like ice water on cinders. He thought of a nervous stutter that belied desperate, resilient bravery -- and then his feet were on solid ground again. Helsknight opened his eyes to a place he had never been before, only identifiable by the Demon’s building style.

There was a massive piston door in front of him, wide open into a museum of knick-knacks and builds. He didn’t bother taking in their details, searching only for Tanguish, who he saw only as a blur of movement and a gasp of surprise. Before Helsknight could move in his direction, ask what was happening, the Demon came crashing down from the ceiling, axe in hand and grin on his face. He fell on Tanguish like a bird of prey, so focused on his chase he didn’t see the knight not more than ten strides away from him. He didn’t expect Helsknight to suddenly be there, tearing him off Tanguish before he could manage any real harm beside the bruising pounce -- which was good, because the Demon was bigger and stronger than Helsknight was, and if he weren’t so bewildered Helsknight doubted he could have dragged him off. He did though, and he threw the Demon onto his bejeweled floor, and took grim satisfaction in the look of utter shock the action brought.

“Helsknight?” Tanguish squeaked, his voice driven nearly an octave higher than normal by fear and surprise, and the barest hint of relief in the crack at the end of the word. “How--”

“Why are you here?” the Demon demanded, rising with the inevitability of the sun. 

“Making sure you’re holding your end of the bargain,” Helsknight answered, careful to keep his fists clenched at his sides and not on his sword. He didn’t want the Demon to see him as a threat. Not yet. “I admit, I didn’t expect you to betray it so quickly.”

"I didn't betray anything," the Demon seethed, grinning madly, his axe in his hand. Helsknight gave it a quick glance.

[Enchanted netherite, because of course it was. He could recognize enough of the symbols to know it was an efficient workman's tool, but sharpness felled people just as well as trees.] 

The Demon brandished his axe and snarled, "You put a thief in my home, knight. I only want back what he's stolen."

"I didn't steal anything!" Tanguish protested, his voice high and terrified and desperate. "Please Helsknight--"

"He stole a coin from my collection," the Demon hissed, spreading his wings to bury them in his imposing shadow. "What a betrayal of trust -- after the knight did so much to help you."

Behind him, Helsknight felt Tanguish flinch back a step. This, more than anything else, sent a bolt of frustration through him. Tanguish should trust the knight to know manipulation when it was being dropped at his feet. Maybe if Helsknight didn't know Tanguish as well as he did, something like that might have worked. The appeal to his honor as a knight, the obvious insistence that a thief will do what their namesake suggests; it was the simple, straightforward, brute-force logic he was made for. The problem was, Helsknight could care less if Tanguish stole anything from the Demon. A quick prod at his morals and knightly tenets told him he wasn't wrong for ignoring the Demon's words, just like he wasn’t wrong to trust Tanguish in the Demon's Lair. What he couldn't abide by, was stepping aside and letting the Demon harm Tanguish; clever, hopeful Tanguish, who had once again put his faith in the knight only for everything to go to shit anyway. Helsknight let out a slow breath and unclenched his fists. The movement bought him a few heartbeats to think, which was all he really needed.

[This is a losing fight. The Demon’s strength, the Demon’s trapped lair, the Demon’s superior weapons, the Demon’s cleverness, the Demon’s mobility -- they were all better than Helsknight’s were. The strength, the weapon, he could do nothing about right now. But emotions ruined cleverness, and without cleverness, a lot of problems about the Demon would solve themselves.]

Helsknight took the barest of steps back and put his hands out gently, appeasing. He said the most frustrating words he could think of to someone who wanted something desperately, and was used to getting what he wanted. "I think… there's been a misunderstanding here."

Whatever remained of the Demon’s patience snapped. He barreled forward, shoving Helsknight roughly aside. He leaped for Tanguish, spreading his great wings, ready to eat up the distance to his fleeing target, who had only just spun on his heel to run. Helsknight’s sword was in his hand before the Demon passed him, and the moment the Demon’s feet left the ground, it was shearing through his elytra. There was a sound like tearing paper and the teeth-jangling clatter of shattering enchantments. The Demon tumbled to the ground in a heap. He gaped in shock at his destroyed elytra, at the crime of wasted time and ambition. A long, wounded-animal sound wound its way from his throat, slowly grinding to a growl as rage rushed in. 

[Control the situation. Put distance between Tanguish and the danger. Keep the Demon busy long enough for escape.]

“Remember where I said to meet me,” Helsknight told Tanguish, who had stopped running to turn and gawk like some startled idiot.

“B-but--!”

It took a great force of will for Helsknight not to roll his eyes. He wanted to scream at Tanguish to run, to stop being brainless in the face of danger for once in his life. The little pest really was incredibly, stupidly brave when he wanted to be. But yelling a warning would remind the Demon that Tanguish existed, and that was the last thing he wanted. Instead, Helsknight turned and darted into the Demon’s vault, and with an enraged roar the Demon followed him. 

Ruefully, Helsknight admitted to himself he was glad he wasn't wearing plate mail, a thing he knew he would regret shortly, but for now worked in his favor. His chest was swelling with the rush of a fight, his whole body thick with lightning and adrenaline, and in the light-weight chain and leather, he felt like he was flying. Every step brushed the ground fleet and light and fast, and had to concentrate hard on his feet and his hands, on not tripping and spearing himself on his drawn sword like an idiot. He sprinted down the long center aisle, past builds that were blurs of color and texture. He turned a corner randomly, some knee-jerk reaction that he thought with his spine instead of his brain. There was a loud crack as the Demon’s axe, thrown with his massive strength, buried itself in some conglomeration of colored wood and terracotta, where Helsknight’s head had been half a second before. The knight stopped and spun; hopeful he could catch the Demon before he could retrieve his weapon. The monster of a helsmet simply leaped over him like a feral cat, his eyes glimmering like neon gold. He landed beside his axe, pulled it from where it stuck with trivial ease, and lunged for Helsknight like a freight train.

The problem with fighting axes, Helsknight knew from bitter experience, was their brutality. No one needed training to use an axe. Not really. Sure, there were some cool tricks a skilled axe man could pull off with proper training -- yanking shields and plate mail off of bodies on backswings, snapping bones with the bludgeoning side of the axe head -- but no one really needed those tricks unless they made fighting their profession. An axe in the hands of someone with weight and strength and half the sense to aim it was deadly. An axe in the hands of someone who used it regularly, even for chopping trees, could take a limb off so cleanly you wouldn’t know it was gone until you were tripping over it. The Demon, angrier than a jealous god, twice Helsknight’s weight and with a longer reach, who spent every day swinging that axe to cut through tenacious nether mushroom stems for his builds, didn’t need tact or grace to be dangerous. All he needed was one good, full-contact hit. Helsknight, trained for years on Colosseum fights and back-alley stabbings, full to brimming with skill and balance and grace, holding an iron sword and wearing old chainmail, knew if that axe connected with him anywhere, it would be the death of him. He was not afraid, not yet. Fear would come later when the adrenaline crashed and all his muscles turned to liquid. Helsknight now, faced with that wicked axehead, bared his teeth like an animal and dodged. 

He ducked under sweeping strokes aimed for his head, neck, and shoulders. He side-stepped two-handed swings meant to cleave his arms off. He danced, counting seconds in his head, estimating how far Tanguish could run in the time it took him to find his next footfall. He fought too, aiming surgical pricks and cuts at the Demon, snaking his sword in between hammer-blow strikes to harass blood from his enemy. The tip of his blade glinted red, and some of those pricks might have been dangerous if it weren’t for the Demon’s scales. It must be terribly convenient being coated in living armor, Helsknight thought bitterly as he side-stepped another strike. He knew knights and Colosseum fighters who mimicked the effect with scale mail. The plates were nearly impervious, unless caught at a sharp upward angle, and given the Demon was taller than Helsknight, he even managed some of those angles. That was the trouble though: the Demon was so damn big, and angry. Helsknight couldn’t close for long, for fear of those powerful arms driving that axe in too quickly to reckon with. He made a nuisance of himself though, and that was good enough for now. 

The Demon was starting to get sloppy. The little cuts were accumulating, the leaking blood was startling, and the axe was heavy. The Demon, for all his brute strength, wasn’t a fighter. Pain wasn’t something he was accustomed to powering through. Helsknight was, and he bided his time, harrying him just enough to keep him angry, staying frustratingly untouched. He thought he saw an opening, a chance to disarm, telegraphed in the way the Demon stepped, the way his shoulders turned. If he could disarm the Demon, he could kill him. He could catch up with Tanguish, and they could get out of here before the enraged helsmet could recover.

[Efficiency was the best way to handle this. The longer they fought, the higher the chance the Demon would get lucky.]

The Demon lunged and swung, and he overextended. He lost force on the downswing as his foot slipped on a blood-slicked tile, carrying him forward. Helsknight stepped into it, careful to keep his blade from connecting with the axe head. If those two bits of metal connected, his sword would shatter like glass. Instead, Helsknight drove the point of the sword across the Demon’s forearm, catching the axe head against the cross guard. It was perilously close to Helsknight’s hand, but he measured the move well. The Demon, stung by the slash across his arm, howled and tore his arm away. Both weapons, locked together, yanked hard to the side -- too hard. Helsknight felt his sword leave his hand as both weapons clattered to the ground. It was then that Helsknight’s instincts, in one of their rare weaknesses, failed him.

Helsknight was used to Colosseum fighting. Sure, he defended himself on the streets of hels when the need arose, but the core of his being was tied inherently to the ideas of showmanship and chivalry. When an opponent was disarmed, when he was disarmed, both parties were meant to step away from each other, to reassess. That was something a crowd wanted -- the carnivorous circle of two fighters trying to gain an upper hand when one or both were weaponless. As a knight, chivalry dictated Helsknight give his opponent a fighting chance. When he disarmed someone, if they were still willing to fight, he should wait until they retrieved their weapon, and they should do the same for him. Every instinct of Helsknight’s told him that, with an axe and a sword on the ground, both he and the Demon should step away from each other, or else both scramble for their weapons at the same time.

The Demon wasn’t a Colosseum fighter, and he wasn’t a knight.

Helsknight took a step backwards, and there was a flicker of movement in his peripheral vision. There was a split second where he prepared himself for the migraine starburst of a fist against his temple, only to face the shock of the Demon’s claws raking across his face instead. Helsknight was blinded by pain and sheeting blood. He screamed, a sound he had not made in such a long time, he didn’t register it was his own voice until he was suddenly breathless from it. He brought an arm up to wipe vainly at his face, managing to squint open long enough to catch a blur of red-black movement. The Demon’s fist connected with his chest in a punch that lifted him off his feet. What little remained of the air in his lungs left him, and Helsknight fell to the floor, sucking in breaths like he was drowning.

[Oh, he was a fucking idiot.]

A kick landed solidly in Helsknight’s ribs, and his entire world devolved into movement he couldn’t control, and breathtaking pain. The Demon pursued him, shouting something with the soaring volume of someone gloating, but whatever he was saying was lost to Helsknight when another kick rocked him. Flaring pain, hot and sharp and evil, sprinted through him. 

[Idiot. Idiot. Do something. Do something.]

Helsknight rolled onto his side, his head spinning, his vision a mess of blood and oxygen-deprived stars. Some animal-instinct survival crawled to life in the back of his head. He propped himself on an elbow, wiping desperately at his face, managing to drag open one eye. The Demon was a blurry smear of color growing larger as he approached. He had retrieved his axe from the ground, which was probably the only reason Helsknight had enough time to remember how to breathe. Breathing had become a very unpleasant activity in the past few seconds. His ribs ached and throbbed like -- well, like ribs that were probably broken, and if not broken, bruised enough they thought they were. There was a hollow ache in his lungs as they protested being emptied so much, and every gasp had him half-swallowing blood. Why in hels did facial wounds have to bleed so damn much?

[Do something.]

Helsknight’s arms were shaking as he tried to drag himself upright. He managed to get a knee beneath himself before another, almost trivial kick from the Demon sent him onto his side again. Helsknight’s pride seethed. His pains seethed worse. He hated being tossed around like this.

[Was he really about to let himself get killed? Really? Against the Demon? Pathetic. If he could best the Red King, and EB, and every other fighter in the Colosseum, he could power through this.]

Helsknight spat onto the ground and forced his arms beneath himself again. His whole chest demanded to know what the hels he thought he was doing, through a myriad of incredibly vocal aches and pains. Even his back hurt, and he didn’t think it had been kicked. He nearly had his breath back though. The spots were fading from his blurry vision. If he could just stand -- his legs worked just fine, and so did his arms. Sure, he was half blind and all the bits in his core that were supposed to hold him together weren’t doing great, but if he could just move--

The Demon was standing over him, a black shadow with fire for eyes. Helsknight wiped vainly at his eyes again, and this time the shape managed to define itself a bit better in the one that would actually open. The other hurt too much, and he found himself squeezing it shut in an impulsive grimace, as if that would do anything besides make it hurt worse.

“That was cheap,” Helsknight scolded the Demon, licking blood off his teeth. 

“So was breaking my elytra,” the Demon responded petulantly, hefting his axe onto his shoulder, and standing in that prideful, insufferable way people did when they were sure they won. Helsknight had never really cared for that kind of posturing. It was too stereotypical.

“No, breaking your elytra was leveling the battlefield,” Helsknight said, trying to keep his voice scornful, but finding it hard when his ribs protested the extra effort of speaking like he had personally wronged them. “Blinding someone is the cowardly thing people do when they know they’re going to lose, and it's objectively a dick move.”

The Demon shoved a booted foot into Helsknight’s ribs again, flipping him off his side and onto his back and pinning him there. It hurt. A lot. Helsknight was starting to run out of ways to recognize what it felt like, outside of deciding this was a bigger dick move than the blinding thing had been. Blearily, in the concussed way of someone desperately trying to not to focus on the present moment, Helsknight thought someone should teach the Demon some manners one of these days. Preferably him, next time he respawned, but he wasn’t picky.

[Oh, that sent a bolt of fear through him he wasn't expecting. Respawn. Dying. Panic was not a thing he felt often, but he could feel it now, caged behind his angry ribs, a bawling, mewling mess of tangled, unparsable feelings that threatened to paralyze him where he lay. He was going to die, and he was going to face the black of respawn and… the irrational fear that this was the death he wouldn't come back from, this was the one that would send him to his hermit and put his name on a Remembrance Wall, hit him like a strike of lightning.]

The Demon was moving above him, raising his axe, saying… something. Something about the mighty falling. Helsknight wasn't listening. He was busy wrestling fear, and doing the mental calculation of the thickness of his chainmail and arm bones against a sharpness five, netherite axe. They weren't good odds, and if he was having trouble standing half-blinded and bruise-ribbed, it wouldn't get easier when he was also missing a hand. He shielded his face with his arms anyway, because he was a knight for helssakes, and he was going to fight for every bloody scrap of life in his body if he had to.

The axe didn't fall. The Demon grunted, and then snarled, and then the merciless weight of his boot on Helsknight's chest released. He staggered backwards, his axe bent awkwardly back over his head in his two-handed grasp. Helsknight, extremely grateful for the release but still, unfortunately, half-blind, couldn't tell what the hels was going on until the Demon stepped sideways, and he could make out the odd blue-black shape of Tanguish clinging to the Demon's axe, keeping him from swinging it.

Helsknight's heart, which had just beat its way through adrenaline and pain and panic and stubborn refusal to die, still managed to soar when he saw Tanguish. He breathed a massive, aching sigh of relief, and he grinned so wide the gashes on his face burned. Despite all of that, he still managed to sound outraged as he shouted, "What the hels are you doing?!"

"Saving you! I think!" Tanguish replied breathlessly, eyes wide and voice shrill with fear. The Demon hauled on his axe, attempting to bring it and Tanguish swinging over his head. Tanguish simply let go. The axe flew through the air with so much force, it cracked through the tiles at the Demon's feet. The blade buried into the floor deep and stuck fast. Tanguish dashed to Helsknight's side, helping drag the knight to his feet. By some miracle, his eyes managed to get wider when he saw Helsknight's face.

"Gods and saints!" Tanguish gasped, impulsively bringing a hand up as though he could somehow stop the wound from being a terrible pain in the ass. "Your -- your face--!"

"It's not as bad as it looks," Helsknight snapped. It probably wasn't a lie, he reasoned to himself, catching Tanguish's hand before he could touch anything and prove him wrong.

Tanguish gave him a look that was equal parts horror and admiration. "Can you even see?"

"Yes." 

It still wasn't a lie. He proved it by noticing the movement of the Demon finally freeing his axe from the ground. Helsknight hastily pulled Tanguish aside, ducking behind one of the Demon's collected builds. He steered Tanguish behind him, making sure he kept his body between the Demon and the brave idiot who had rescued him. The Demon didn’t pursue them around the corner. Helsknight silently hoped they hadn’t been seen retreating. 

"Where's your sword?"

"Dropped it."

"You dropped it?"

"I was busy getting the shit kicked out of me, if you didn't notice," Helsknight whispered scathingly, anger starting to make a home for itself amidst the aches and pains in his chest. He wasn't angry at Tanguish. He was angry at the situation, at Tanguish being here, and needing to be saved, at almost being bested by a beast with an axe. It was the exhilaration that chased his terror of dying, and he was reasonably sure it was the only thing keeping him moving, so he let it be.

Helsknight felt cold metal tap against the hand still gripped around Tanguish's arm. He took the offered knife with a raised eyebrow, and instantly regretted the motion when one of his cuts twinged. "What am I supposed to do with this?"

"More than I can do," Tanguish answered nervously. Helsknight thought Tanguish was grossly overestimating what he was capable of right now, but he didn't argue.

Instead, he asked, "Do you remember the way out of here?"

"Yes! I do.”

"Run for it."

Tanguish scowled abruptly. "No."

"Tanguish--"

"No." Tanguish squared his thin shoulders bravely. It gave him the look of a stubborn child. "I won't abandon you after getting you into a fight you can't run away from."

"You didn't get me into anything," Helsknight hissed, ushering them down a turn in the maze of museum aisles. Not that it mattered. He was probably leaving a very convenient blood trail. "I chose to come looking for you. I chose to pick a fight."

"You wouldn't have picked a fight if I hadn't screwed things up."

"This whole shitty idea was mine to start with."

"Yeah, because of my quest."

Helsknight gripped Tanguish's arm tighter, and it was with every ounce of self-control in his body that he managed not to grab Tanguish by his shoulders and shake him viciously. Gods and saints, it would be so easy to lose his temper now and break his promise about letting Tanguish make his own decisions. It would be so easy to just manhandle the little pest into submission, bully and shout him into leaving.

[They didn’t have time for this.]

“Okay,” Helsknight hissed begrudgingly, his tenet to abide by his word doing a victory lap around his slain pride.

“O-okay?” Tanguish stammered confusedly.

“Okay,” Helsknight said, clasping Tanguish’s forearm like they were making a pact. Tanguish swallowed thickly, but wrapped his fingers around Helsknight’s gauntleted arm in return. “Whatever happens, we’re in this together.”

Tanguish nodded firmly, huffing out a bracing breath. “Obviously.”

There was a creak above them. Helsknight didn’t know what they were standing under, some build from some world that didn’t matter anymore. He saw Tanguish look up and gasp, he heard rushing movement above them. He lunged towards Tanguish, looping his arms around the little helsmet’s chest and half carrying him, half tackling him out of the Demon’s reach. The axe head cracked into the tiles just behind them.

The Demon bellowed a laugh, “Did you really think you could hide from me in my own home?”

Helsknight opened his mouth and said… something. His heartbeat was loud in his ears again, and he was brandishing Tanguish’s knife against his gauntlet like he expected to be able to catch the next axe swing, and his only thought was that he needed to keep the Demon from remembering yes, they were, in fact, in his house, amongst his trapped treasures. So he said the first thing that came to mind, something hateful and vicious about how they were standing in the middle of useless trash, and something that wasn’t important enough to remember. What he did remember was Tanguish’s horrified squeak, the Demon’s enraged howl, and the two-handed axe swing that came sweeping for his head.

Helsknight rolled under it, coming up inside the Demon’s overextended reach and slamming the butt-end of Tanguish’s knife as hard as he could up into the Demon’s chin. His teeth clicked together and his head snapped back in a movement that almost threw him the rest of the way off-balance. The Demon slammed his elbow down in response, hitting Helsknight’s collarbone so hard it sent a shock all the way down his chest and spine. Helsknight staggered backwards a step, ducked an axe-stroke, and stabbed at the Demon’s side. The knife blade sparked off scales, leaving an angry nick, but little besides. Helsknight muttered something about "saints-damned unenchanted Colosseum garbage" before pivoting around to the Demon's side. He caught a glimpse of Tanguish as he moved, a blur of blue color he didn’t have the luxury of focusing on.

He was trying to stay close to the Demon, both for the reach of his knife and to make those two-handed axe swings too awkward to use. It was a tactic that might have worked if he weren't so banged up already. The aches in his core had been shocked back to the forefront of his mind, and seemed vengefully angry he was trying to ignore them. Helsknight side-stepped another colorless blur of an axe-stroke, and then grunted as something in his ribs and back twinged. It traveled all the way down his spine, seizing him in place, a hand clutching at his chest like holding it could somehow make the pain subside quicker. He sensed more than he saw the Demon move, a fluid motion where he stepped back and hefted his axe to the side like a lumberjack squaring up to a tree.

There were a lot of things that happened all at once, blurs of color and movement and sound, so close together Helsknight only made sense of their events later. Tanguish shoved into him, slamming him into one of the Demon’s nearby builds. Tanguish, nimble and quick, staggered backwards enough to save himself being slashed in half, but the top edge of the Demon’s blade still scored a deep line of red just beneath his ribs. He collapsed to the floor, and the Demon, howling triumphantly, caught the axe head in his free hand and lunged in Helsknight’s direction. Helsknight managed to catch the shaft across his outstretched hands before the Demon could strangle him with it, but they were chest to chest, the Demon throwing all his weight and strength into pinning Helsknight against whatever wall he was up against. 

This was ugly fighting. Vicious fighting. This was time, and inevitability, and Helsknight knew he wasn’t strong enough. The fact that he caught the shaft at all was, honestly, a miracle. His arms shook, his chest heaved, his body ached. His elbows were braced against the wall behind him, which gave him some leverage, but it wasn’t enough. His face burned from the Demon’s hot breath so close to his wounds, nearly blinding him all over again. 

[Do something.]

Helsknight kicked, digging his heel into the Demon’s foot and ankle, but whatever boots he was wearing were thick enough, or the knight’s attempts feeble enough, that the Demon didn’t even finch. He just laughed, and shouted something about getting him back for all the damage he had done, or some other villain speech bullshit Helsknight had done better from the Colosseum field a thousand times. He wanted to shove a knee into the Demon, or hook a fist, but he feared losing his balance and his grip slipping towards the inevitable. 

[Do something.]

The axe handle was getting closer to his neck, and Helsknight was getting desperate. It was one thing to die cleanly because someone took your head off your shoulders, or shoved a sword through your chest. Suffocating against a wall like a rat in a trap was something Helsknight could honestly say he had never done before, and he was not curious about how that death would feel. A slow squeeze was not a warrior’s death, and he imagined it would be a painful one. To be begging for breath, stoppered by pressure and all the little bits in your neck that were supposed to stay open but couldn’t. To see stars and fireworks and then inky black. Helsknight couldn’t say it scared him more than any other death might, but he didn’t want it.

[Do something.]

Helsknight shoved against the Demon’s weight vainly and tilted his head to the side, searching for salvation. The Demon eclipsed most of his vision, their faces were so close. He saw the pulsing blue-black of sculk lights on the tiles, and he hoped for a moment that Tanguish might be on his feet again. He blinked, and his vision cleared the barest amount, and he realized, no, Tanguish wasn’t standing. He was curled up into a ball on the ground, gasping, eyes screwed shut in something that was probably shock, arms curled around his wound. 

Despair made itself known amidst all the battling sensations in Helsknight’s chest, knowing he had gotten Tanguish into this mess. Now they were both going to die, and the Demon would take whatever the hels it was from Tanguish that he thought he was owed, and Helsknight would have to square up with the black nothing on the edge of every respawn, and it just wasn’t fair. This was not how the world was supposed to work. Tanguish had tried so hard, and he did so few things wrong-- 

Helsknight’s grip slipped, and the Demon leaned in closer. He could feel the wood of the axe handle against his neck, threatening with its presence. The closer it got, the harder it was for Helsknight to strain against it. Every muscle in his shoulders and arms burned. Everything in his center shook, and his face stung from the permanent grimace fixed there--

-- and there was someone standing behind the Demon. 

Helsknight blinked, and blinked again, because whatever he was seeing confused his vision so much it made his already strained eyes water. Everything in front of him was blurry, only focusing momentarily when every third blink managed to clear the blood from his eyes, but the person standing behind the Demon was crisp and hard-edged and detailed. They wore a suit of full plate armor, a closed helm over their head concealed their face. No skin showed, no glint of eyeshine through the visor, the only movement from the plain red cloak that billowed gently at their ankles. They could have been a statue, crowned in a faint, flickering glow like candlelight. They could have been, if Helsknight didn’t recognize the figure from stained glass windows and illuminated manuscripts and the descriptions of people with more faith in their voices than Helsknight had in his whole body.

“Saint.” Helsknight gasped, his voice strangled in a throat closing in something like awe and something like panic.

The Saint of Blood and Steel didn’t move. They just stood there, a focal point in the desperation and scrambling. The Demon was shouting in Helsknight’s ear again, oblivious to the lock of Helsknight’s gaze. Something about mercy and the lack thereof. Something about betrayal, something about favors and misery. Helsknight didn’t hear it. There was a grip of dread around him, and confusion. He just… didn’t understand. He must be dying, right? This was it? This really was the respawn he wasn’t coming back from? There was no other reason the Saint should be here, surely. Except, the Saint wasn’t there earlier. When Helsknight had been kicked around like a hacky-sack and pinned to the ground. His life was in just as much peril then, wasn’t it? So why now?

The Saint moved, reaching in the slow, fluid motion of the inevitable, and drew their sword. The tip of the longsword hovered just above the tiled floor, glimmering faintly red. That was the Saint’s color. Red. It reflected off the immaculate tiles in a line that drew itself to Tanguish, curled up on the floor.

[No.]

Helsknight’s fists tightened around the axe handle pressed against his neck.

[No.]

The Saint watched him, the tip of his sword unmoving.

[No.]

There was something in Helsknight’s chest, something in his guts, something crawling down his spine. Something like fear. Something like terror. But the shape of it was different, the weight of it, the taste. It wasn’t fear for himself. It wasn’t fear for his death. It wasn’t fear of his hermit, or what losing himself to his hermit might feel like. There were all fears he knew, fears he had seen and felt the shape of a thousand times, memorized as he wrestled them. This new thing was the cold, liquid, devouring fear that Tanguish was going to die, and he wasn’t going to come back.

[No.]

[That’s not fair.]

The Saint tilted their head, inclining it just slightly, looking down at him maybe, or acknowledging a truth.

[You can’t do that. It’s not fair.]

What would Helsknight do if he got Tanguish killed? What would he do if his mistake was Tanguish’s last? How could he live with himself? How could he--

[Tanguish didn’t deserve that. He didn’t. He didn’t deserve any of this.]

The Saint moved, placing the tip of their sword in their other hand, as though holding it out for someone to take.

[Do something.]

Anger, bright and white and brilliant, poured down his spine like ice and fire; the anger that chased fear, snarling and biting, the anger that followed terror like its great black shadow. Helsknight was shaking, from strain, from the crash and ring of adrenaline, from anger and fear. Do something. Do something. 

The Saint extended their arms, offering the sword as though Helsknight could simply reach out and take it.

[Isn’t death supposed to be a minor inconvenience?]

“It isn’t fair,” Helsknight whispered.

“Fair?” the Demon laughed, his voice snapping Helsknight back to the present moment. He had almost forgotten the Demon was there. His voice was high and mocking and triumphant. “It isn’t fair? What are you, a child?”

Helsknight hissed out a breath through gritted teeth, a long swirl of smoke curling out with the sigh. The Demon’s nose wrinkled in something like disgust, and the merciless bearing of his weight slackened just slightly.

“You’re beginning to annoy me,” Helsknight said.

The Demon’s weight against him disappeared, not because it left, but because for a brief moment, it stopped mattering. Helsknight was angry in a way he had never been angry before. It was an anger so sharp and electric that it almost stopped being anger and became something else entirely. Helsknight heaved forward, and the aches and pains in his body didn’t heave back. There was the momentary resistance of the Demon leaning into him, and then it was gone as Helsknight shoved him off so hard he fell backwards off his feet. The Demon gaped up at him, shock turning the liquid gold of his eyes pale. There was a moment where Helsknight felt invincible, made of fire and lightning and anger and justice. There was a moment where he towered, truly towered, and his breaths were wreathed in smoke and sparks, like his very soul was catching alight. He could kill the Demon if he wanted. He could fight every creature in hels in that moment if he wanted. Instead, he looked at the specter of his Saint, at that wicked red sword, and Helsknight did something he had never done before in his life. 

He dove for Tanguish, bundling up the little helsmet in his arms. Helsknight, wreathed in smoke and shadow, slipped between the cracks of hels like he had never existed. 

Helsknight ran away.

Chapter Text

When Tanguish slipped through worlds, it felt like just that: slipping and falling. It felt like suddenly the floor, or wall, or mirror, or whatever he was leaning through had turned into a doorway, and he was falling through it like he might trip over a threshold. After a while, he got used to tripping, and learned to land on his feet. It was repetition and familiarity, and it brought him the comfort of knowing Tango was on the other side. He couldn't control where he went, only that it was near his hermit, but that was fine. That was the only place he wanted to be anyway.

Falling out of the world in Helsknight's grasp, through the cold and black of his shadow, felt like being dragged underwater. One moment Tanguish was lying on the ground, so consumed by the pain from his wound he couldn't think. The next he was swept under inky blackness, gasping in breaths that gave him nothing, head to toe in frigid pressure. His only reassurance he hadn't died and gone through the world’s worst respawn was the sound of Helsknight's heartbeat, and the dampened warmth of the knight clinging to him. There was no direction, no feel of wind or water. There was only cold, and weight, and the persistent vertigo of falling through the fathomless dark between stars. Just as suddenly as Tanguish was dragged by the undertow of Helsknight's leap between worlds, he was spat back out again into bright and warm. Grass prickled beneath his back, sunshine warmed his face, and it was almost blindingly bright.

Tanguish gasped in the long breath he had been fighting for, and the movement pulled on his stomach like a line of fire. Whatever cold had numbed him abruptly thawed into pain, and he found himself whining his breath right back out again through gritted teeth. Panic and fear rushed in where before shock had held them back, and Tanguish clutched at his wound, hands shaking at the smell and feel of blood. His head spun, and stars spotted in his eyes, and his first coherent thought in far too long finally managed to wobble to the forefront of his mind: (Oh, he was going to faint. Thank heavens.)

There was a long string of curses, and suddenly Helsknight's face eclipsed his vision. "Tanguish? You still with me?"

The minute Tanguish registered it was Helsknight he was looking at, he screwed his eyes shut.

(Oh no. Oh gods and saints and everything else. Helsknight's face. The wound looked like it hurt so bad, and he kept the one eye closed like he couldn't see and it made Tanguish's eyes water sympathetically. How was the knight even talking, standing? He acted like it wasn't even there.)

Helsknight swore again and gave Tanguish's shoulder an insistent shake. Just once, but the jolt sent a nauseous shiver of pain through him. 

"Hey hey -- don't do that! Talk to me."

"D-d-don't," Tanguish's hand struggled up to Helsknight's wrist, wrapping around it feebly. "Don't sh-shake me. Please."

Helsknight sighed, a heavy rush of a breath that winced to a stop. He grunted painfully, and then said with a very forced sense of calm. "You've got to stay awake."

Stay awake? Tanguish wanted nothing more than to sink into the depths of a faint, or even a respawn. Anything would be better than being awake and feeling every ragged breath he was breathing. Every inhalation sent a shock through him, like he was tearing whatever wound he had open worse than it already was. He hiccupped and gasped his breaths out just as quickly as he drew them in, shallow and stinging and wrenching, and each time his chest heaved a little more blood oozed between his fingers. 

"Tanguish, hey, you're breathing too fast," Helsknight's voice sounded above him, calm and sure, like he was talking about the weather. Again, Tanguish was amazed by how put-together Helsknight was, how he managed to keep talking, keep moving, keep fighting. He had lunged at the Demon with that tiny knife like he expected to win, and if their roles had been reversed Tanguish was pretty sure he would have been on the ground. Just like he was right now. Hyperventilating. Panicking. Bleeding.

"Deep breaths, Tanguish. I know it hurts, but you need deep breaths. Like this. Can you feel this?"

Tanguish was belatedly aware that Helsknight had pulled one of his hands to the center of the knight’s chest. He could feel the steady breathing, hear the soft creak of his chainmail. He clung to Helsknight's hand like he was scared the knight would drop him straight into the void if he let go, and he focused on the exaggeratedly long rhythm, occasionally broken short, like Helsknight was wincing every few breaths. This, more than anything, forced Tanguish to focus, if for no other reason than to be concerned. Here Helsknight was trying to remind him how to breathe, and he seemed to be having trouble with it himself.

"Great. Great," Helsknight said, more to himself than Tanguish. "You're okay. You're okay. I can't lie to you, remember? And I'm telling you, you're going to be okay."

Tanguish gasped as he felt Helsknight's gauntleted hand brush across stomach. He squeezed the hand he was holding, his eyes flew open, but Helsknight hovered too close to allow him to sit up.

(That was probably for the best, because if he sat up right now, he probably would make himself pass out. Just the tensing of his muscles to try made him gasp again.)

"Calm down, calm down," Helsknight told him, this time with the slightly stilted, soothing knight's voice. Tanguish was amazed all over again by how steady Helsknight was, an anchor sunk deep in an ocean. "I'm just making sure everything is where it should be."

Despite everything Tanguish laughed. It wasn't much of a laugh, just one more painful gasp among many, but it passed his bared teeth in an attempt at relief. "Every-- everything where it-- should be?"

"All your insides are still in your insides. That's a win in my book."

Tanguish laughed again, surprised by how much relief that brought him. He leaned his head back in the grass and closed his eyes, trying very hard to keep his sudden tears from brimming over. "It hurts."

"I know it does."

(Please, please don't cry. Crying would hurt so much right now.)

"I'm going t-to respawn," Tanguish whined, half an admission and half a prayer. He just wanted to stop feeling.

"You're not going to respawn," Helsknight told him, his voice firm and quiet and reassuring. "You're going to be fine."

It didn't feel like he was going to be fine. It felt like he was going to be sick. But Helsknight said it in the knight's voice, the one that told him he wasn't a parasite, the one that couldn't lie. It didn't matter how much Tanguish didn't believe it, he found himself wanting to. So he nodded once, a nearly imperceptible thing. 

Helsknight's hand wound awkwardly around his, clasping his forearm. "We're in this together, right?"

Tanguish swallowed and nodded again, "Of course."

"Okay." Helsknight said, sounding suddenly tired. Tanguish opened his eyes again and tried to take in their surroundings as best he could. Most of what he saw was grass and blue sky. To one side, Helsknight was kneeling, a hand braced on his knee as he prepared himself for the monumental effort of standing. It wasn't just his face that had been hurt. His breathing wasn't right -- not thick, just stilted, and Helsknight scowled when he moved too quickly, like he was scared he was going to leave some part of him behind. Tanguish tried to remember if he saw Helsknight get hurt somewhere along the line, but most of the fight was a blur of fear and panic that he couldn't remember. It was all just noise and running, and being out of breath, and hurting. 

"Are you-- are you alright?"

"Been worse. Been better." Helsknight dragged himself to his feet. He swayed momentarily, a fist balled against his sternum as he waited for some ache to subside. Then Helsknight exhaled a long, slow breath and muttered, "Next time I see the Demon, I'm going to break his legs."

"Are… knights allowed t-to do that kind of thing?"

"I'll challenge him to a duel first," Helsknight said, spitting something into the grass and wiping his mouth. It did a great job of smearing more blood on his gauntlet and little else. "Can you stand?"

(Could he stand?)

The idea of standing in his current state seemed about as possible to Tanguish as climbing a mountain or slaying a dragon. He blinked up at the blue sky, and breathed, and hurt, and bled, and nudged at the idea tentatively, and found himself scared. What if he moved and hurt himself worse? Or just collapsed again into the grass?

"I… uhm," Helsknight began awkwardly, looking away to one side. "I can… probably carry you, but I need help picking you up. If I get down in the grass, I'm not getting back up again."

Tanguish felt alarm creeping up in him again. "You said you were okay."

"I said I’ve been worse," Helsknight corrected him. "It's not a lie." Helsknight offered Tanguish a hand. "If you can stand, I can take care of the rest."

Tanguish let out a bracing breath and took the knight's hand.

It was a legendary battle, getting Tanguish on Helsknight's back and the pair of them moving. There was shuffling and cursing and painful noises. Once, Tanguish -- well, he didn't pass out, but he pulled the cut on his stomach so badly he just… stopped being aware of his surroundings. The world narrowed to the line the axe had cut, and his fist balled against it, and Helsknight's voice in his ear, "You're okay. I've got you. Just breathe." When Tanguish started noticing sensations other than angry nerve endings again, he was clinging to Helsknight's back in the world's most miserable piggy-back ride, the knight's cloak knotted against his stomach just in case he started bleeding more than he already was. Tanguish pressed his forehead into the knight's broad shoulders and screwed his eyes shut, and did his best to keep himself from crying.

"W-where are we?" He asked after several steps passed in silence. 

"Hermitcraft."

Tanguish's eyes fluttered open again, surprised. "Hermitcraft?" He lifted his head to look around and sure enough, they were on a road he recognized. It was the broad granite and basalt roadway that led into the shopping district. Towering builds rose in front of them, beautiful and empty, their windows reflecting sunlight like the facets of jewels. "Why are we here?"

Helsknight shrugged, and Tanguish winced as the movement jostled him. "There's a shop by the river up ahead that sells potions. We'll go there and then figure out the rest."

Potions. Tanguish felt a surge of relief so intense he almost saw stars. He really was going to be okay. Tanguish leaned his face against Helsknight's shoulder again, "You've been there before?"

"No," Helsknight said, surprising him, "but Welsknight has. It gives me some… familiarity. Like a dream."

"Oh." Tanguish said, and then after another long pause, "Can you see okay?"

"Okay enough."

"I mean -- do you need help finding the shop? If you describe it, maybe I can help?"

Helsknight sighed. It wasn't an annoyed sigh, just weary. "Do me a favor and watch the sky instead? If one of the hermits fly over, I don't want to be spotted."

Tanguish nodded and rested his chin on Helsknight's shoulder, eyes skyward. They continued in silence, one plodding step after the other. Not that Tanguish was doing any work, besides holding Helsknight's cape to his wound and listening for rockets overhead. He felt pathetic, forcing Helsknight to carry him like this. It felt like all the knight ever did was save his life or get him out of trouble. He thought about the Demon's words again, about knights and transactions, and wondered what in hels he had done to deserve this.

"You still with me?" Helsknight asked, and Tanguish realized they had been walking in silence for a long time. He blinked dazedly around, and couldn't remember passing most of the builds he saw.

"Still with you," Tanguish mumbled.

"Fighting's exhausting, isn't it?" Helsknight asked him, glancing over his shoulder. “Some of the best sleep in my life was after a bad fight in the Colosseum.”

“Gods,” Tanguish said, closing his eyes tiredly. “I can… definitely believe that.” 

Tanguish could have fallen asleep on Helsknight’s back, if his wound didn’t sting so persistently. It had settled a bit, between the gentle pressure he kept on it and the predictable movement of Helsknight’s steps, but it still twinged him every so often, worrying him awake. More than anything it felt… gross. Tanguish had never bled like this before. He had scraped himself many times while running on rooftops, and once or twice cut himself on iron bars and gutters. Most of his bad injuries had killed him outright, or so quickly he didn’t have time to marvel at things like wounds or bleeding. Blood thick enough to coat his hands and his clothes was probably one of the grossest things he had ever touched, he decided. It smelled bad, and subtle enough he almost didn’t realize the smell existed until it started to make him nauseous. As it dried it got tacky, and he kept having to move his hand from where he clutched Helsknight’s cape and flex his fingers. There was a very strong, morbid curiosity that made him want to move the cape and look down at the cut, but he remembered Helsknight talking about not looking at wounds for fear they’re worse than they feel, and that, more than anything, kept his eyes from wandering.

“You probably think I’m pathetic,” Tanguish said, voicing the thought the moment it surfaced.

Helsknight snorted, “Why would I think that?”

“One little cut, and I can’t even walk,” Tanguish whispered, burying his face in Helsknight’s shoulder again.

“Does it hurt?”

“Y… yeah.”

“Worst pain you’ve ever felt in your life?”

Tanguish squeezed his eyes shut tighter. “... probably.”

Helsknight shrugged, and Tanguish winced from the movement, “Then I don’t think you’re pathetic. I think the fact that you’re awake is a marvel.”

“I don’t want to be.”

“Well, I don’t want to be walking through Hermitcraft right now.” Helsknight glanced around warily. “So, you know, we can’t have everything.”

“Have you ever passed out from wounds before?” Tanguish asked, only belatedly realizing that was probably tactless and unwanted. “Oh… wait, you don’t… you don’t have to answer that.”

Helsknight wasn’t offended. He thought for a moment and said, “A few times.”

“Oh… because it… hurt…? Or…?”

“Blood loss, mostly,” Helsknight hummed. “I forget I’m bleeding sometimes, or I don’t notice. It’s… hard to describe. S’like, I’m injured, but I’ve got shit to do. Then it… catches up to me.” 

He walked in silence for a few steps, then grunted as a memory struck him. "There was one time I was practicing a sword stunt with EB, and our hands slipped and I lost some fingers. Went out like a light. Don't know what it was about it -- didn't feel it, but it leveled me easy enough."

Tanguish cringed, and his hands clenched sympathetically, “Jeez.”

“Hard to ignore something like that,” Helsknight agreed, a smile in his voice. “I woke up after he dumped the third health potion on me. We practiced with wooden swords for a while after that. I think it freaked him out."

“Note to self,” Tanguish smirked, “Helsknight is weak to hand wounds.”

“I will drop you.”

“Please don’t.”

Helsknight chuckled, and then stopped dead in his tracks to wince. He hissed out a long breath. Tanguish tried to hold himself still as well, as though that could help at all.

“Helsknight?” Tanguish asked worriedly, when all the knight did was stand and breathe for a solid minute. “What’s wrong?”

“I am… trying to remember the last time I broke a rib,” Helsknight said finally, taking a tentative step forward, and then committing to walking again. “It’s been a while.”

“You’re carrying me. With a broken rib.”

“It might not be broken,” Helsknight said doubtfully. “It’s probably just bruised. I didn’t hear anything crack when he kicked me, and nothing moves when I breathe--"

“Helsknight.”

“Just don’t kick me. Or elbow me. Or make me laugh.”

“Helsknight.”

“Look, I’d do the spit-test and prove it's fine, but my mouth is all blood right now,” Helsknight said defensively, as if that were what Tanguish was so horrified with. “Everything is going to taste like I licked a lightning rod for a week.”

If Tanguish didn’t think one more touch might crack Helsknight into a thousand tiny pieces, he would be tempted to smack the knight upside the head. Instead, he buried his face in Helsknight’s shoulder and groaned, “I got your ribs broken.”

“Bruised.”

“And I got you blinded.”

“Oh shut up.” Helsknight snapped suddenly, and with so much ferocity Tanguish flinched. “Did you kick the shit out of my ribs? Did you try to take my eyes out with your claws? No. You didn’t. If I remember correctly, you stopped that asshole from taking my head off my shoulders. If you’re going to focus on anything, focus on that.” There was a pause, and then Helsknight asked quietly, "Unless you think it's my fault you caught the sharp end of the Demon's axe?"

It was an honest question, as far as questions went. It sounded almost like Helsknight was asking permission: will you let me feel guilty about this? Tanguish thought it was a ridiculous question, and was forced to relent on his own guilt, if only a little.

"No," Tanguish answered just as quietly as Helsknight had asked, and he hoped he conveyed just as much sincerity when he spoke. "Of course not. That was-- I chose to--"

(Well, that was a bit of a lie. To say Tanguish chose to shove Helsknight out of the way implied he thought about the action enough to make a decision. In reality he just reacted, and then he was in pain, and then he was in the grass--)

"Then we're square," Helsknight said, as though the whole thing were really that simple. "Look, Tanguish, I'm a knight. We're only good to have around for like… three things. Getting the shit kicked out of me? That's one of them."

"You're good to have around for way more than three things." Tanguish said stubbornly, and Helsknight shrugged. Whether he was shrugging off the comment or agreeing, Tanguish couldn't tell. "Regardless… thank you."

Helsknight noticeably hesitated, like he wanted to say something but couldn't. Tanguish didn't know why. 

(Maybe he said something weird? Helsknight probably wasn't used to people thanking him for doing… well… not his job. Helsknight didn't regularly pick fights with big angry helsmets on other people's behalf. But the knight also didn't strike Tanguish as lacking in self-esteem, and he had certainly thanked the knight before for his help. Why then, did his shoulders seem to stiffen, his body frown, like something about his words were undeserved?)

"Are you sure you're okay?" Tanguish found himself asking, concerned.

Helsknight was quiet for a long time, long enough that Tanguish thought he might ignore the question entirely. 

"I'm… a bit shaken," Helsknight admitted finally. 

"Shaken?"

"Don't worry about it."

"That implies there's something worth--"

"Tanguish, I'm very tired, and breathing hurts," Helsknight said abruptly. "Interrogate me about my feelings after we find this potion place."

Tanguish snapped his mouth shut immediately, feeling childish. Of course Helsknight was in pain. He had just talked about bruising -- or breaking -- his ribs. It was just so easy to forget. Even hurt, Helsknight carried him like he was nothing, trudging steadily onward in the fixed way of someone who would only stop walking when the earth stopped giving him ground to stand on. Confronting the idea that Helsknight wasn't invincible was… honestly it was kind of frightening. It brought to him echoes of Helsknight's scream, when the Demon had clawed him. That had been a terrifying sound, a sound he could never forget. There had been a brief moment where, despite how much it sounded like Helsknight's voice, Tanguish thought it must be the Demon yelling like that. Surely Helsknight wasn't capable of so much shock and pain. He certainly didn't seem capable of it now, steadfastly continuing down towards the river, turning his head a bit too much when he looked around, trying to cope with a blind spot he wasn't used to having. 

They descended from the road, Helsknight honing in on a memory that wasn't even his. He paused by the water's edge for a moment before stepping in, wading through a shallow stretch that came up to his knees. They approached what Tanguish took for an embankment on the other side of the river, only for Helsknight to peer around it into a landscaped cave. He sighed, and his voice held a smile as he murmured, "They couldn't put a thing like this in a more inconvenient place, could they?"

"Most people buy health potions before they need them," Tanguish observed. 

"What a bunch of ninnies," Helsknight snorted, as if that wasn't common sense. He waded the rest of the way in, the water deepening until it was up to his waist, and Tanguish's feet dragged in the cold water. There was a small rock ledge inside the tunnel so the display chests could sit without getting soaked. Helsknight deposited Tanguish on it, grimacing as he rolled his shoulders. Tanguish watched quietly as Helsknight went from chest to chest, frowning at the contents until he found what he was looking for. He returned with a pair of stoppered bottles. The vibrant red of the liquid inside reminded Tanguish of blood.

"You ever used healing potions before?" Helsknight asked as he pulled himself onto the ledge beside him. He passed one of the bright red bottles over, and Tanguish cupped it delicately in his hands. The liquid was warm, and bubbled on its own in the glass. Holding it made his hands tingle, the strong magic in the drink anxious to be released.

"They seem pretty straightforward?"

"It'll itch like crazy," Helsknight informed him, "especially if you drink it fast. Drink slowly and it won't be as bad, but you'll scar."

Tanguish nodded and pulled the cork out of the bottle with his teeth. He downed the little potion all in one go, anxious to be rid of his wound. He had enough time to admire the potion's taste -- it was fizzy and light, and left a lingering sweetness on his tongue -- before the itching of a thousand ants rioting beneath his skin devoured his senses. Worse still, he could feel his skin moving as it knit itself back together, a discomfort so intense it made his muscles twitch. Tanguish pulled up his bloody shirt and grimaced down at a wound that had already faded to a pale blue-gray line. Its color darkened as he watched, matching the rest of his skin, until all trace of the wound was gone. He touched his stomach experimentally.

"Sucks, doesn't it?" Helsknight chuckled from beside him. He had only taken a few small sips from his bottle, and stopped drinking to reach down and scoop up a palm full of water. Helsknight washed his face gingerly, wiping away the dried blood that had nearly fused his eyes shut. He squinted blearily, waiting on his vision to readjust.

"Shouldn't you drink yours faster?" Tanguish asked worriedly. "Your eyes--"

"They're healing just fine," Helsknight said with a shrug. He took another sip of the potion.

"But the claws…" Tanguish persisted, frowning at the pale white scars already defining themselves on the knight's skin. The two deepest ones passed over his left eye and crossed the bridge of his nose, and two more left spider-web lines on his cheek. "You just said they would scar."

"I don't mind," Helsknight hummed distractedly. "I want to remember today."

Tanguish frowned. There were a lot of things he wanted to say to that. 

(Mostly, Tanguish didn't want to remember today. He wanted to forget the Demon and his trapped castle and his stupid coins existed as soon as possible. Besides, Tanguish was the one that would have to look at those scars, not Helsknight. He already felt guilty enough without a daily reminder. The scars looked painful, and severe, and really, Helsknight didn't need anything else to make him look scary anyway.)

"Are all your scars things you want to remember?" Tanguish asked instead.

Helsknight raised an eyebrow and held up his arm, inspecting a pale scar there as if he had just remembered it existed. "Yeah. Mostly."

"Oh."

"I'll tell you about them sometime. Well… the interesting ones."

"Sure."

Helsknight threw back what was left of his potion, and shook his head briskly, like he didn't like the taste. He tossed the empty bottle at the far wall, watching the glass shatter. Tanguish winced at the crash, and eyed Helsknight tentatively. The knight didn't look angry, but it was hard to decipher his expression right now, and he couldn't imagine any other reason someone would break glass. Before he could ask if everything was alright, Helsknight beat him to it.

"So, how do you feel?" Helsknight asked, stretching his back until it popped. "That was your first real fight, wasn't it? Think you'll go charging into dark alleys or arena crowds anytime soon?"

"Definitely not," Tanguish grimaced. "That sucked."

"Eh, you just need some self-defense lessons," Helsknight shrugged. "Some light armor, maybe."

"Some invincibility potions."

"They make those," Helsknight told him matter-of-factly. "They make you slow as slime, but you're light on your feet. You could compensate for it."

Tanguish didn't know what baffled him more, that invincibility potions existed, or that Helsknight sounded serious. The knight seemed to actually be considering a world where Tanguish wanted to pick up a sword and go crusading.

"Helsknight, I never want something like this to happen again," Tanguish frowned.

"Oh come on," Helsknight smirked, "It wasn't that bad."

"It wasn't that b-- we almost died!"

Helsknight seemed on the verge of saying something, another attempt at humor, but hesitated just a moment too long. Tanguish filled the silence. 

"I mean -- we -- I -- that -- that accomplished nothing," Tanguish stammered, the despair he had shoved into the back of his mind finally finding the strength to leap forward. "I thought for a second that things might go right! I was -- I was so close. I thought -- he -- he seemed… for a few minutes… b-but it was all just an elaborate trap! What a terrible, cruel thing to do! Just when I was starting to hope--” Tanguish hiccupped and he shook his head rapidly, balling his fists into his hair like that could somehow strangle out the tears coming. “-- and he hurt you and he could have killed us and I just stood there panicking and useless and--!” 

Tanguish scrubbed his face with his hands and growled out a breath that couldn’t decide if it was distraught or frustrated. He dared a glance at Helsknight, who was… remarkably unbothered by the outburst. He sat patiently, fidgeting with one of his gauntlets. After the silence between them stretched long enough to become awkward (and Tanguish decided he didn’t know what else to say without making himself burst into tears) he wiped at his eyes and muttered, “S-sorry.”

“Oh, uh, you don’t--” Helsknight started uncertainly, “I’m used to this. This is normal. You don’t have to apologize.”

Tanguish blinked. “What about this is normal?”

“You were just in a fight. You were scared and you went through a lot of adrenaline and you got hurt. Getting emotional and crying afterwards -- it’s normal.”

“Right,” Tanguish said, feeling another hot flash of frustration. It must have shown on his face, because Helsknight grimaced. “Right. Silly me. I’m just being emotional right now--”

“I didn’t mean--”

“No, you’re right! You’re right. I’m just upset because of the stupid fight, and not because I’m a f-failure or I screwed up my stupid quest to save my best friend’s life again or--”

“Oh shut up I didn’t say that!” Helsknight snapped, his shout echoing in the tunnel around them. He took a deep breath and let it out in an angry snort. “That’s not what I meant just -- I’m sorry, alright? You need someone who’s emotionally equipped or sensitive or whatever right now but I’m not that guy, alright? I told you knights are good for like, three things and saying the right words at the right time isn’t one of them. I’m -- this is the best I can do.”

Tanguish scrubbed at his eyes, frustrated and upset, and doing his absolute best to see reason. It was hard to do when Helsknight was yelling.

"You're -- you're right. You're--" Tanguish sighed bitterly, waited for a few deep breaths and sighed again. "I'm not being fair. You've done so much to help me. You saved my life, you carried me halfway across a server you -- it's just -- you're so unbothered by it all. How are you so normal about this? I was terrified, Helsknight. I screwed up so much -- I almost got you killed. How are you just sitting there?"

Helsknight blinked at him, eyebrows raised in surprise. "You think I wasn't scared?"

"You sure didn't look scared. Still don't," Tanguish laughed, because the knight looked so genuinely incredulous.

"What in hels makes you think I wasn't scared?"

Tanguish gestured to him vaguely, unable to find the specific words. Besides, it was pretty obvious, wasn't it? Everything about Helsknight screamed nonchalance. Well, everything except his eyes, which mostly just looked tired.

"Tanguish, I ran away." Helsknight said, flashing a grim smile. "You understand that's what happened, right?"

Tanguish blinked at him uncomprehendingly. "You didn't run away."

"I did."

"You saved my life," Tanguish protested. He didn't like the way Helsknight was looking at him, all bitter and resigned, like he was confessing some terrible crime.

"Yes," Helsknight agreed. "But that doesn't change the fact that I intentionally broke one of my tenets and ran. No death or glory. No winning or losing. Just retreat."

"Intentionally." Tanguish picked that word out of the lot, because it seemed the most weighted.

Helsknight looked away from him, not quite ashamed but something more complex. It was the uncomfortable look of someone who didn't want to be seen. 

"Intentionally, because you were saving me, Helsknight," Tanguish pressed. "Is there nothing in your knightly tenets about -- about protecting the weak and stupid?"

"You're not stupid."

"That's not the point!”

Helsknight, maddeningly, shrugged.

"It doesn't count," Tanguish told him, intentionally ignoring the knight's sardonic smirk. "You weren't running away because you were breaking a tenet. You were running away because you were trying to keep me safe. It doesn't count."

"It counts."

"And -- and so what if you were scared!" Tanguish continued angrily, because honestly Helsknight was being ridiculous. "Dying sucks! Even without the whole -- you know -- the universe hating us the way it does. It hurts and it's dark and you lose things and with people like the Demon around who kill so -- so meanly -- being a knight doesn't mean you want to die. You're allowed to not want that!"

"Tanguish--"

"And you wouldn't have run away if I wasn't there!" Tanguish continued, too outraged to let Helsknight talk over him. "It's just your stupid knightly obligations, or whatever -- which I don't deserve, by the way. You don't owe me anything, let alone giving the Demon of all people an I-Owe-You. I didn't ask for that! I didn't want -- don't -- don't -- I appreciate it! I do! I -- words can't describe -- but you sacrificed so much for me and for what? I just screwed it all up. Again. Like I always do. I'm -- I'm so sorry. I tried. I really did. I tried to be genuine and nice and pleasant and I didn't touch anything but I still screwed it up before I even met the Demon and it was all for nothing."

Tanguish was, unbelievably, frustratingly, crying. It was the kind of ugly, stupid crying that happened because he was overwhelmed. Not sad, though sorrow was definitely kicking around in his guts with everything else. It was just that everything was so everything, and that meant he was crying. He was too angry and too frustrated and too upset, and Helsknight was just watching him with the battered expression of someone who had no idea how to handle such a quick sprint through emotions. But because he was Helsknight, loyal like a rescued wolf and twice as protective, he sat through it anyway.

“I’m just -- I’m j-just cursed. This just happens. It’s just -- I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m not trying to -- I don’t want to -- I just want to help -- it’s just so stupid. I just keep dragging people down like a -- like -- I can’t -- I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep taking people down with me. But I do every single time. First I just tried to be a good friend for Tango and it started killing him and n-now you’re breaking t-tenets and they’re so important to you and I’m -- I’m trying so hard not to be a parasite but I just keep--”

Tanguish winced, because the minute he said the word “parasite” Helsknight stiffened and scowled. He didn’t interrupt, just loomed threateningly, like Tanguish was one self-deprecating comment away from a broken arm. They sat like that in tense silence for a moment, Tanguish sniffling and wiping furiously at his face, and Helsknight glaring. Eventually the knight asked with a very forced sense of calm, “Are you done?”

Tanguish let out a frustrated sigh.

“Because you can keep going if you’ve got more to get out,” Helsknight said a bit gentler, “but uhm… I think you’re being… a little hard on yourself.”

“I think I’m not being hard enough,” Tanguish sniffled, wiping away one more persistent tear as it tracked down his face. “But yeah, fine. Whatever. I’m done.”

“You don’t have to be done if you’re not actually done.”

“Well I’m done now.”

Helsknight smirked at him in a way that made Tanguish feel childish, like he had been caught in the middle of a tantrum. “Well firstly, you’re not a parasite. We’ve been over this.”

Tanguish rolled his eyes.

“One of these days,” Helsknight said warningly, “I am going to put you in a headlock and hold you there until you agree with me.”

“You can’t force me to--”

Helsknight cracked his knuckles and raised an eyebrow. Tanguish scowled, but didn’t bother finishing the sentence.

“As I was saying, you’re not a parasite. And you’re not cursed. And I didn’t save you because of a stupid 'knight’s obligation'. I gave the Demon an I-Owe-You, and I went back for you when shit went sideways, and I broke one of my tenets--” Helsknight sighed, and he flashed a long-suffering look to the ceiling of the cave and he said, “--because that’s what friends do.”

Chapter Text

There was a long moment where Tanguish stopped breathing. Helsknight watched him expectantly, his head resting on his hand, elbow on his knee, eyebrows raised just slightly. It was the kind of amused look someone might give a child struggling over a new and humorously simple concept. Tanguish for his part, felt a bit how he figured that child would feel: overwhelmed, disbelieving, and kind of stupid. 

“Uhm… what?” Tanguish asked when he remembered how lungs worked.

“Congratulations, crusader,” Helsknight said sardonically. “You have successfully completed your Tango Quest.”

“I-- you--”

“Please, contain your excitement.”

“We’re not friends,” Tanguish stammered. “You said we weren’t friends.”

“I believed it at the time,” Helsknight said, a smirk reclaiming his features.

“Since when?”

“Hmm?”

“When did you decide--?”

“Oh, that,” Helsknight grimaced. “When saving your skin was more important than the oath I made to my Saint.”

Tanguish blinked, bewildered.

“I mean, we were probably friends before that,” Helsknight shrugged. “It was just… easier to ignore until then."

"But I-- you-- but--" Tanguish stammered, his mind still doing little skips and stumbles around Helsknight's words, "--you -- you don't sound very happy about it."

"Neither do you."

"That's because I'm very confused!" Tanguish said, finally managing one coherent thought in his mess of tangled emotions. "What-- why? Why would you ever want to be my friend? I've done nothing but drag you through danger and make you angry since we met!"

"You've also made me laugh," Helsknight pointed out gently. "And cry. And you… uhm. You gave me back my poetry."

"I didn't give you anything," Tanguish said, still confused. "You always had that."

"But I had forgotten it," Helsknight hummed, his gaze fixing itself on a point over Tanguish's shoulder. "I was so angry for so long. Angry, and bitter, and all I wanted to do was hurt something. Still do. But you gave me something else to do with my time. I… forgot what it felt like to want to care about something. Genuinely. Because it was the way it was, and not because I wanted to break it into something else -- and I tried really hard to break you into something else."

Helsknight sighed, and his gaze found its way back to Tanguish's face. "There's a lot of complicated things going on with me, but the simplest one is that I don't want bad things to happen to you. I want good things to happen to you, and I would like to be one of those good things."

Helsknight let the weight of that statement sink in for a moment. Then he smirked, and said with much more levity, "Besides, we shook on it. You're stuck with me now, until we both break our word."

"Right," Tanguish said, latching onto the last statement as the only thing he could make sense of right now. "We did shake on it, didn't we?"

"See, that's what I like about you. You're quick on the uptake."

Tanguish almost forgot to breathe again. He had the sense that there was a great big dam in the back of his head, full of thoughts and feelings about everything Helsknight had just told him. There was a lot of 'undeserving' and 'parasite' lurking in that mess, alongside other things like 'finally something good' and 'took him long enough' and just genuine, transparent, glowing happiness. It was a great big dam of feelings that was springing leaks, and rumbling, and muddy water was starting to soak up from the ground in front of it, and Tanguish thought he just got done crying because of how upset he was a few minutes ago, he couldn't cry again. 

(He also thought it was a shame he drank his potion so fast. He would have nothing to remember today by. Then again, scars for memories were Helsknight's thing. He should… try to find his own thing… at some point in the future when the too-muchness of the universe died down a bit.)

For now, Tanguish hid his face in his hands and just breathed, because he didn't trust himself to speak. Helsknight waited with the patience of someone who preferred waiting to dealing with the emotional fallout of his own words. 

"People don't, uhm, normally just come out and say stuff like that," Tanguish whispered between dangerous sniffles that threatened to be more than just sniffles.

"You're not normal people," Helsknight said matter-of-factly, "and I don't waste time."

"You don't," Tanguish agreed.

"Besides, it sounded like you needed it."

"I did," Tanguish agreed again. He sighed out a long breath, then finally managed to look up at Helsknight. When he did, the knight raised his eyebrows and smirked in his closest approximation of a welcoming smile. Tanguish laughed. "We really are friends, aren't we?"

"It is a terrible plight, I know," Helsknight deadpanned. "Your soul will surely heal one day."

"I'm sure." Tanguish laughed, and out of all his roiling emotions he let grateful drift to the top. "Thank you."

"For what?"

"For existing, I guess."

Helsknight looked away from him, ears turning red with embarrassment. "Same to you, I guess."

They sat in silence for a few moments. Tanguish thought it was a comfortable one, though Helsknight started nervously washing off his chainmail with handfuls of water, like he found the moment awkward. Tanguish looked down at his shirt, which would need a good sewing when they got home. The axe had cut a decent hole in it. To think the day had started so dramatically. And now--

"We should tell Tango," Tanguish murmured.

"Right now?" Helsknight snorted a laugh. "We look like we've been mauled."

"We're already here though. It saves us a trip back."

"That's not a big deal," Helsknight shrugged. "I can get us back here any ti--"

Rockets sounded overhead and they both froze. Tanguish watched Helsknight, while the knight watched the entrance to the shop, expecting someone to come swooping in at any moment. The rockets sounded again, farther away. It seemed like whoever was nearby had simply flown over the shopping district. They sat in cautious silence for long minutes afterwards, just in case.

"I don't want to fight anyone else today, if it's all the same to you," Helsknight said, resuming their conversation.

"You don't have to," Tanguish insisted. "You just said you can come and go whenever."

Helsknight chewed on his bottom lip, clearly disliking the idea. Tanguish remembered the knight wasn't supposed to run away from a fight, and while he had broken that tenet once today, he probably didn't want to do it again.

"I can get us out too," Tanguish offered. "I mean -- I can't control where we'll end up, but I slip back and forth just fine. I don't see why I couldn't take a passenger."

"Alright," Helsknight conceded begrudgingly. "Let's get this over with while no one else is buzzing overhead."

Together they made their way to the entrance of the potion shop, watching the sky warily for any signs of the hermits. Once Helsknight was convinced they were safe, he waded back onto the shore, offering a hand to help Tanguish out of the water. The motion made him want to giggle, suddenly imagining a knight offering his hand to a fair lady stepping out of a carriage. Tanguish wondered if Helsknight had ever done something like that, or if his knighthood stopped abruptly at arena fighting and tenets. Then he smiled, because he realized he had time to find out the answer to that question. They were friends, after all.

Friends. The thought made Tanguish giddy. It was a monumental effort not to just beam blissfully at everything in sight. Tanguish found himself glancing at the knight every few paces, almost scared he would disappear. Making friends with Helsknight really did feel like taming a wolf.

(Not in the sense that Helsknight was tame. Tanguish would never presume to tame a person. Something like that was a bit like saying fire could be tamed, in the sense that you assumed that just because it wasn't burning out of control, you were somehow the one controlling it, when the fact of the matter was fire worked on a bunch of its own invisible rules. You had just happened to learn those rules. Really, when he thought about it, Tanguish thought fire did a much better job at taming people than people tamed it.)

Befriending Helsknight was like taming a wolf, in the sense that a wolf when alone sought company, but still snapped at everything that confused it, on the assumption anything confusing was also threatening. Until one day, miraculously, it learned that you weren't a threatening thing, and upon trusting you, promptly sorted you into the "pack things I will protect with my life" category. Suddenly a world was opened of mutual respect and weird cuddle piles, and growls that could be sometimes interpreted as purrs, and barred teeth that were sometimes smiles instead of warnings. Suddenly this very proud and dangerous thing was proud and dangerous to everything except you, and it was the kind of intimate trust a person gains once, and only once, and would rather shatter the world than break. That trust was precious, and Tanguish, a thief by habit and by choice, found himself turning that precious thing in his mind and memorizing every new curve and surface, like a rare and beautiful coin bound to never be spent.

"So, where do you think your hermit will be?" Helsknight asked, watching the sky warily.

Tanguish shook his head, trying to clear it of over-fond daydreams. (Right. The peril they were in hadn't magically disappeared just because he had a friend.)

"Uhm, Tango has a house in the shopping district," Tanguish noted, leading them towards some multicolored roofs crouched around spawn. "We'll try there first. Oh, I hope he's not building Decked Out right now. It'll be hard to find him in that mess."

Helsknight shrugged. "We'll find him."

Tanguish felt another brush of fondness. Right. They would find him, because Helsknight was here and Helsknight could do anything, he was pretty sure, and when you had someone who could do anything helping you, you could do anything too. (Oh. He really, really needed to stop this line of thought but, well, it was nice, wasn't it? Feeling too many emotions but feeling them nicely? Tanguish was still kind of unsure about feelings, but he thought this was something like joy. It had that… bubbling fizzy feeling in his chest he thought of when he heard that word.)

They meandered between a few buildings, houses that weren't houses, and walked up to the haunted tree-house that Tango used for storage and… very little else. The windows were made to be dark, so there was no peering inside for signs of life. Tanguish knocked on the door and stepped back to wait patiently. Helsknight watched the sky, looking vaguely protective and nervous. His hand kept moving down to a sword he didn't have, and then he would frown and cross his arms, only to have his hand creep back down to his side again. Each time his hand reached the empty space where his sword should be, he scowled, like he had somehow forgotten it was gone and was being reminded anew each time. 

Tanguish knocked on the door again, louder this time, the motion bringing back to him echoes of visiting an empty house. It was so hauntingly familiar, nervousness started to wake in the back of his mind. Then there was a crash from inside the building, and the sound of someone rapidly ascending stairs. Tanguish grinned, his heart fluttering with relief and a swell of excitement. The door opened. Tango, sparking in red-gold radiance, stood in the open doorway.

“Tanguish!” He laughed, lighting up with so much happiness, for a moment the air filled with the sharp smell of firing redstone. He lunged forward, wrapping Tanguish up in a tight hug. “Buddy it’s been ages! What are you doing he--oooohmygodohmygod!”

Tanguish gasped as he was very nearly yanked off his feet and dragged stumbling through Tango’s doorway. Before he even knew what was happening, the door slammed shut behind him, and Tango pressed his back against it, bracing it closed.

“What! What is it?” Tanguish stammered, stumbling a few more paces away from the door and looking around wildly, fully expecting some attack to come hurtling out of nowhere. “What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong?” Tango asked, laughing fearfully, his voice shrill and piping. “Do you have any idea who that was?!”

Tanguish blinked uncomprehendingly. He hadn't noticed anyone approaching, or heard anyone flying overhead. “Who -- who was?”

Tango laughed again and stammered out a few incoherent, flustered noises. Tanguish waited patiently for his double’s words to start working again. “The big knight, Tanguish.”

“Oh." Tanguish smirked, first relief and then humor flooding through him. He relaxed a bit, straightening from the defensive hunch he had unknowingly crouched into. "Yeah I know him. Do you?”

Helsmet and hermit stared at each other, nearly identical mirrors of confusion and incomprehension etched on their faces. Tango stayed pressed up against the door, and Tanguish started fidgeting awkwardly with one of his knuckles. 

(It had not occurred to Tanguish that Tango would know who Helsknight was -- and given his double’s reaction, he still wasn’t wholly convinced Tango did know the knight. Surely he would know -- well, Helsknight wasn’t harmless by any means, but he also wasn’t unreasonable. Not really. Besides, Helsknight would have told him if he and Tango didn’t like each other… right? That felt like something Helsknight would probably mention at some point. He kept tabs on things like that.)

Before either of them could jolt their sluggish thoughts into action, a polite knock sounded at the door. Tango squeaked and jumped away from the door like it burned him. Tanguish smiled. He wrapped up Tango in another hug, much to his double’s stammered confusion.

“I missed you,” Tanguish told him.

Tango laughed, momentarily forgetting the knight behind the door. He hugged Tanguish back. “I missed you too buddy. Jeez, what took you so long to come back?” They broke apart, and Tango rubbed the back of his neck nervously. “I… kinda thought you left for good that time.”

“I would never do that,” Tanguish told him sternly, flashing Tango the most earnest look he could muster. “But I meant what I said when I made my promise.”

Tango blinked, “What -- the -- the friend thing? You were serious?”

“Of course I was serious!”

“But why would you--?”

“Not to break up your happy reunion,” Helsknight shouted, knocking on the door more insistently, “but I stick out like a strider in a river here.”

“Stay sticking out there please!” Tango called back.

“Just a second, Helsknight,” Tanguish called at the same time, and Tango gaped in something like horror. “What?”

“Why is Helsknight following you around?” Tango demanded, stepping in front of Tanguish when he moved to walk around him.

“Because we’re friends,” Tanguish answered simply, attempting to step around Tango again -- and being cut off again.

“He’s your friend?”

“Yes?”

“Since when!”

“About an hour ago.”

“Wh-- I-- wha-- how? Why?”

Tanguish opened his mouth to answer, and then closed it again. “I dunno. Why do your friends like you?"

Tango let out a few more confused syllables, redstone freckles sparking. Finally he said, "You know he's like… Evil? With a capital E?"

Tanguish glanced towards the door, and then back to Tango. "Helsknight isn't evil."

"He's super evil!"

"He is not--!"

"I can hear everything you're saying, you know," Helsknight's muffled voice informed them. 

"He is very evil," Tango continued relentlessly, stepping in Tanguish's way when he made another vain attempt for the door. "Do you have any idea how often he and Wels have at each other?"

Tanguish blinked thoughtfully. "Uhm, no, I don't. But I don't think that really matters? Not to me, anyway."

The red freckles on Tango's face sparked in frustration as he scowled. He opened his mouth to say something -- but his words were immediately lost beneath the loud bang of Helsknight's shoulder forcing itself into the front door. The simple lock splintered, and the door clattered open with enough force to put a dent in the wall. Helsknight grimaced and rolled his shoulder as he stepped through the doorway. 

"You can do that," Tanguish scowled, "but you made me climb through the window at the last locked house?"

"They probably couldn't afford a new door, and weren't there to replace the old one anyway. Your hermit probably has fifty in a chest somewhere." Helsknight said matter-of-factly. "Besides, it's been a trying day, and I'm losing my patience."

There was a glint of dangerous red in Helsknight's eyes like embers in a rekindling fire, and Tanguish found himself stepping between the knight and his double. Helsknight gave him a look that was more hurt and tired than anything else.

"If I was going to hurt him, I would've done it when he grabbed you," Helsknight said witheringly.

"You losing your patience uhm… turns really quickly into losing your temper," Tanguish pointed out.

Helsknight glowered down at him, the flicker in his eyes fading with a concentrated effort. The knight gestured to Tango and said with a deliberate slowness that showed a white-knuckled grip on whatever patience he had left, "The same promise I made to you about raising my sword in anger, I extend to him. We can shake on it again, if you would like?"

Tanguish smiled, both because of the promise, and how absurdly serious Helsknight sounded while making it. "I trust you. We did shake on it."

The two of them exchanged a knowing smirk, one that Tango seemed to notice. He demanded in a voice that was high pitched and nervous, "What? What are we shaking on? Why is that important."

Helsknight stepped forward, and Tango, to his credit, only flinched back a little when the knight did so.

"Shaking hands," Helsknight said with a little too much formal gravitas to be normal, "is a sacred and binding contract that helsmets make to bind their wills as one." 

The knight held a hand out to Tango, and Tango, curious in many of the same way Tanguish was, took it hesitantly. Helsknight smiled pleasantly, stopping a little like he was going to bow, or do something equally impressive. Instead, he yanked Tango towards him, nearly dragging the hermit off his feet. He stowed the hermit under his arm like a sack of potatoes, smirking at Tango's impotent fury as he struggled and writhed. The knight strode for the door, seemingly unaffected by his disgruntled cargo. It was all Tanguish could do to keep from laughing.

"From what I've been told," Helsknight continued over Tango's howled complaints, "you two made a bargain. Tanguish gets some friends, and you talk to yours. You two shook hands on it, even."

"He didn't give me a choice! He just said a lot of stuff about making friends and insisted I shake!" Tango argued, bracing his hands against Helsknight's arm and trying to squeeze out of his grasp. It didn't work. "Stop manhandling me you -- you -- ugh!" Tango went limp in Helsknight's grasp, crossing his arms in angry resignation. "Alright alright we made a deal. Tanguish, tell him to put me down!"

“You promise you won’t run off as soon as he does?” Tanguish countered, too amused to hide his grin.

Tango scowled at him fiercely, “Well I’m definitely not shaking on it.”

“Zedaph’s base has a big Z over it,” Tanguish hummed. “Helsknight, you think you can carry him around until we find it?”

“You wouldn’t dare.” Tango said, glaring up at the knight, who returned it with a wolfish grin. Tango heaved a defeated sigh and cast a withering stare at Tanguish. “You know, I liked you better when I was your only friend.”

Tanguish shrugged.

“I won’t run off,” Tango grumbled, and Tanguish was relieved to see there was some good humor coming back to his voice. “We’ll go see Zed.”

With a nod from Tanguish, Helsknight set Tango back on his own two feet with as much dignity as the motion would allow. Tango straightened out his shirt indignantly and stomped off down the street, outpacing them but not outright running from them. Tanguish followed, determination and guilt dancing circles in his chest. He felt… right. He felt like he was doing something necessary. Tango’s reluctance discolored it though, gave it a bad taste. He didn’t like forcing Tango to get better. It felt like taking away his double’s choices, cornering him for his own good. Helsknight’s hand warmed Tanguish’s shoulder, not restraining or leading, but offering the weight of his presence. 

“Part of shaking hands,” Helsknight reminded him, “is holding the other hand accountable.” 

Tanguish nodded, reaffirming his resolve, before the two of them hurried to catch up with Tango. They walked in near silence for a time, following the street towards rising distant hills. Tanguish thought he could see an entrance in one of them, but it wasn’t until the clouds parted to reveal the colored glass of Zedaph’s roof before their destination became clear.

“Egotistical,” Helsknight snorted, scrutinizing the giant Z that proclaimed its builder.

“A little,” Tanguish chuckled, “but it’s not that much different from the ceiling in hels, is it?”

“At least Evil X didn’t write his name all over the ceiling.”

“Hels has a ceiling?” Tango asked. 

The two helsmits exchanged glances, before Helsknight answered slowly, “You’ve been to the nether, right?”

“Well, duh, of course. But Wels says the nether and hels are different?”

“The nether is a part of every world,” Helsknight said uncomfortably, clearly not used to explaining how the world worked, but getting no help from Tanguish despite his many sideways glances. “Hels is… I guess if the nether was all the world was.”

“Sounds like a pain in the butt,” Tango said, shoving his hands in his pockets and centering his attention on the knight. “Bet you guys have a lot of workarounds for ice in redstone.”

Helsknight shrugged, “Not really. Redstone is an overworld mineral, and we don’t have an overworld. I hear it's worth a fortune to smugglers though.”

Tango glared up at Helsknight, freckles sparking. It wasn’t a look of anger, instead the scrutinizing look of someone milling through a dozen questions to find the best ones to ask. Tanguish smiled as he watched the two, talking back and forth about the differences between their worlds. Tanguish didn’t talk about hels much -- how the world worked wasn’t really something he concerned himself with, and Tango never really asked. But his double was ever curious, and he dug for the knowledge in Helsknight’s words with bright-eyed hunger. It gave Tanguish hope the two might get along, maybe even be friends if given their own time.

That wasn’t the objective of today though.

As they started ascending the walk to Zedaph’s base, Tanguish deftly lifted Tango’s communicator from his pocket, a motion his double was too enraptured by Helsknight to notice. He tapped out a quick message to Zedaph and Impulse, easily mimicking Tango’s voice to implore them to meet at Zedaph’s base. He slipped the communicator back into Tango’s pocket when they stepped inside the hill, ionic columns lined with trophies greeting them into Zedaph’s home. The pair of helsmets stopped, shaded by the hallway, when they reached the central chamber, letting Tango continue a few steps on his own before he realized they weren’t following.

“What, you’re gonna escort me all the way here and just leave me?” Tango asked, laughing nervously.

Tanguish smiled apologetically, “Uhm… I’m not sure your friends would like us, Tango.”

“And I don’t have a sword,” Helsknight sniffed, his hand resting meaningfully on his empty scabbard, "not that I don’t trust you hermits to keep civil.”

Tango grimaced, and scratched the back of his neck. "Yeah well, can you blame us?"

"Yes," Helsknight snapped, "I can."

The two looked like they might be about to argue, but rockets overhead cut them off. Someone shouted Tango's name excitedly, plunging down the central hole of Zedaph's base in a rush of smoke and color. Tango cast one last look at Tanguish before leaping down after them, at about the same time another hermit came diving down. Laughter and excited chatter followed, and Tanguish, curiosity piqued, crept up to the edge of the landing to peer down. Tango stood amidst running water streams and pale tiles, talking hesitantly with two people Tanguish had never seen in person, but who he recognized through the distant echo of borrowed memories. 

Impulse was tall and broad, with the solid, stocky build of someone who spent all day digging stone and carting shulkers. He wore an outfit that looked like it came out of a fantasy novel, or an inspiration sketch from Decked Out. It carried the manicured perfection of a costume, from the cloak and tabard (imprinted with an I, in case there was any doubt of his identity) to the braided beard. There was just the hint of a pair of horns peeking out from his hairline, the only similarity he shared with his helsmet, though instead of the grand, curling displays of his double, his horns were shaved off to the barely discernible nubs. It had a way of making him look tame and humble, like a giant trying to placate a world of children, promising that, despite every fairy tale to the contrary, he wouldn't eat them.

Besides him, Zedaph was like bottled lightning. He talked excitedly to Tango, hands moving with every word, his voice carrying in the high-pitched trill of someone who loved to hear himself talk: not because he loved the sound of his own voice, but because he lived for the sharing of ideas. His hair was the kind of bleached yellow that spoke of long days in the sun, so intent on whatever project he was working on that he forgot to rest until it was too dark to see. Beside him, Tango and Impulse looked withdrawn and tired, but then again, with so much enthusiasm bubbling out of him, Tanguish thought most people would.

"It's humbling, isn't it?" Helsknight asked, his voice freighted with solemnity and dissonant against the cheerful banter below. 

"What is?" Tanguish whispered back, concerned.

"Zedaph." Helsknight murmured, his voice almost reverent. "He's so much… more than the other two."

Tanguish looked up at Helsknight, watching the complicated, somber emotions writing themselves in his eyes and the furrow of his brow. 

"Do you think his hels is still in there?" Helsknight asked, his voice dropping to a whisper, like speaking too loudly might doom whatever was left of Zedaph’s helsmet. "Do you think he's… trapped? That he knows where he is and what happened to him? Or is he just…?" Helsknight trailed off. They stood in silence for a few long minutes, Helsknight searching for something that no longer existed in the faces below. Finally, voice thick with emotion he rasped, "Or is he just gone?"

Tanguish didn't know what to say, what comfort he could hope to offer. Those were questions he desperately wished he could answer, questions he knew the knight would fear less if only some of the unknown could be stripped away from them. But he had no answers. No one did. It was an impossible thing to know. He could guess. He could pray. He could talk about gods and saints and ghosts, the possible rest that the end of a person might bring. But… it seemed to him that none of the speculation he could possibly voice would help Helskight. Tanguish had no answers inside him that could vanish fear. He could only talk around the one void no one could fill, until someday he was swallowed up by it. Even Zedaph probably didn't know the answer to what happened to a helsmet who went back to their hermit. Him, and every other person out there who ever made and conquered their own helsmet, knowingly or not. 

(It was strange, looking down at Zedaph's bottled lightning of a persona, and knowing he was the closest thing to death Tanguish would ever see -- the closest thing besides Tango, when their cluster of binary stars finally merged in the future one day. Tanguish wondered if he would dread it the same way Helsknight did, the same way Zedaph's helmet had, or if he would welcome it. Only time would tell.)

Tanguish didn't share his thoughts with Helsknight. They wouldn't help, and he got the feeling that breaking the silence that had grown between them would be perilous. There was something fragile in Helsknight's emotions right now, something vulnerable. He was looking down at happy, ignorant Zedaph, and seeing visions of his own future. Maybe he was even deciding if it was a future he could live with. Instead of speaking, Tanguish slipped his hand into Helsknight's, entwining their fingers together, letting his presence fill the gap left behind by his lack of answers. Helsknight scowled in something like sorrow, so incredibly still that he hardly seemed to breathe, scared any movement would shatter the moment like glass. He squeezed Tanguish's hand back until his knuckles went white and his hand trembled just slightly. Then, at long last, Helsknight sighed in a long breath, letting go of Tanguish’s hand when he exhaled it. He turned away from the group below, and Tanguish examined the nearby architecture in polite interest when the knight wiped at his eyes

“We should leave them to it,” Tanguish said, retreating back down the hall they had entered. Helsknight followed a step behind him, and they walked back down the road into the shopping district, thoughtfully quiet. Several times Tanguish tried to find something to say, but he looked up at Helsknight -- gaze unfocused and caught on the horizon, watching his thoughts more than his surroundings -- and whatever Tanguish tried to say seemed too insignificant to mention. 

It was Helsknight who finally dragged them free of the silence, saying a somewhat awkward, “It’s pretty here,” and nodding towards one of the shopping district builds. “They’ve uhm… got too much time on their hands.”

“What do you think you would make?” Tanguish asked, mustering his warmest smile. “You know -- if you had all the time in the world.”

Helsknight shrugged, “I’m not a builder.”

“What if you were, though?” Tanguish persisted. “I think I would make a cathedral.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, but the entire westward wall would be made out of stained glass,” Tanguish continued, motioning in the direction of the sun, “so the whole inside of the church was swimming with light in the evening. And the roof would have stair-step spires, so you could jump from one to the other while climbing up towards the sky.”

Helsknight chuckled, “Sounds like you’d fall and break your neck.”

“But I would have a lot of fun doing it!”

“I’d build a garden, then,” Helsknight said, “with a big pond in it so idiots like you can break your fall on the water when you slip off the roof.”

“Just a pond? Not much of a garden.”

“Oh, there would be an orchard too,” Helsknight assured him, as though it was an obvious thing. “Apple and cherry trees, so anyone visiting the church can eat. And there would be statues hiding in the trees, so if people get lost, at least they’re not alone.”

“What kind of flowers would you put in it?” Tanguish asked. “We don’t get a lot of flowers in hels.”

“Lily of the valley,” Helsknight said decisively, and then coughed awkwardly when Tanguish flashed him a questioning look. “They’re my favorite.”

“You have a favorite flower?”

“You don’t?”

Tanguish laughed, “Do sculk sensors count?”

“No they don’t count!” Helsknight gasped, looking appalled. “They’re not even flowers!”

“They’re part of the fruiting bodies on gregarious sculk patches,” Tanguish shrugged, “they’re the same thing.”

“They’re not the same thing.”

“How so?”

“Well for one thing, they don’t smell good.”

“They smell like mushrooms.”

“Exactly.”

They descended into a good-natured argument about sculk and flowers, Helsknight finally relenting enough to say sensors were almost flowers, but shriekers were definitely more an animal than a plant. It opened the argument into trying to classify sculk parts, and Tanguish found it funny. It was such a silly conversation to have, after the day they had suffered through, and Helsknight threw himself into it like a man trying to bury his sorrows in stupidity. So intent were they on their conversation, that Tanguish almost missed the voice he heard singing in one of the nearby buildings, first disembodied harmony and then a resolution of words.

“---will not flee, but farther will I follow 

Boldly to battle 

With broadsword in my hand 

More than my life 

Was the love I bore for Bryhtnoth

Fierce will I fight now 

And so defend this land.”

Tanguish tilted his head to the side, trying to figure out where the voice was coming from. He was too intent on trying to place the voice to notice Helsknight’s conversation drop.

“Come I from kindred 

Of honor and of courage 

Ne'er shall they say

That I nothing was at war 

Stand with me steadfast 

Staunch against the vikings 

Wield ye your weapons 

Like warriors of yore.”

Tanguish realized Helsknight had stopped walking only after he walked several steps alone. He turned to look back at the knight, but the question he was going to ask vanished before he could ask it. Helsknight’s eyes blazed red, his hand clasped on his empty sheath. The knight took an uncertain step backwards, gaze darting between the shops and builds.

“Helsknight?” Tanguish asked, retreating to the knight nervously. “What’s--?”

“We need to leave.”

Tanguish blinked, bewildered, not because of Helsknight’s reaction, but because of his voice. There was a moment where the tone of his harmonized with the voice singing, and they were so similar, despite the singer’s clear ring and Helsknight’s worried rasp, that two of him could be talking. 

“Oh,” Tanguish said dumbly, and after a moment of confused hesitation, strode to join Helsknight, hand fumbling in his pocket for his coin.

“For our hands shall be the harder, and our will shall be the wiser

And our hearts shall be bolder as our strength must end

Come and follow me to glory, so that when they tell the story

We shall not be forgotten in the halls of--”

One of the nearby doorways opened, and the man who stepped through noticed Tanguish and Helsknight at the same moment Tanguish grabbed Helsknight’s wrist. The three of them stood frozen, taking in the shock of each other. Helsknight was tense as a bowstring, his eyes ferocious red, one foot shuffled back like he didn’t know if he should run or lunge forward, the skin of his wrist nearly feverish to Tanguish’s touch. 

The man facing them could have been Helsknight’s brother, though one whom life had treated far kinder. He was maybe an inch or two shorter than Helsknight, wearing a mimicry of the knight’s chainmail, a plain helmet under one arm and a shulker box under the other. His hair was the kind of honey auburn that drank in the sun, and it curled slightly around his face, making circles and curves where Helsknight cut hard angles and lines. His skin was tanned slightly from working in the sun, and there were creases in the corner of his eyes where smiles leaped readily. He wore a blue cloak, cut short at the waist, his armor accented with diamond azure.

There was a moment where Tanguish thought he looked… soft. Despite the chainmail and the sword strapped to his side, he looked like an idealized knight that would walk out of a picture book, hero-ish in profile but untouched by trouble, unblemished by the same scars and calluses that riddled Helsknight. There was an inherent openness to his eyes, the mark of a person used to a kinder world. If Helsknight was a wolf, this was a hound -- long enough in the tooth, but used to the warmth of a hearth.

(And this, Tanguish thought in muted amazement, is Welsknight.)

Welsknight’s gaze locked with Tanguish for a breath, mostly confusion and curiosity. Then his eyes slid to Helsknight, and every soft and kind thing about him hardened into closed, rigid angles in a moment. The two went from being brothers to twins, mirrors of wrath and resentment, and hands on sword belts. Only then did Tanguish remember, oh, right, he needed to do something about this. His grip on Helsknight’s wrist tightened, and his other hand flipped his coin into the air in a flash of spinning metal. There was the muted hiss of Welsknight drawing his sword, the clatter of his helmet and shulker box falling to the ground, the hard line of his frown as he took a threatening step forward --

-- and Tanguish and Helsknight vanished into the coin’s reflection, back to the relative safety of hels.

Chapter Text

The Saint of Blood and Steel guide the hands of those faithful. Pour your strength into the souls of your siblings, that all listlessness be made purposeful. May their swords run red, not with the blood of reckless violence, but with tempered fire. 

Here I list the tenets that guide the blooded sword:

May all that you face have a fighting chance. Any sword raised to the innocent or unarmed in cruelty is blackened by its shame.

May all you face have fighting chance, with sword in hand and warrior’s stance

May all you face have sword in hand lest cruelty be your demand

May all you

May

God Fucking Damnit

Wordswordswordswordswordswordswords

Okay okay, you’ve got this, it's just a shitty rhyme

May all you do be dumb as shit cuz you can’t figure out how to rhyme it

“This is stupid.”

Tenets and words and rhymes and tenets and words and rhymes

Fighting chance

Advance, lance, enhance, can’t (psuedo-rhyme), ranch (psuedo-rhyme), plants, ants, trance, chants, glance, lance again, perchance

Perchance? Who the fuck says perchance? Archaic knight bullshit.

Fighting stance, warrior's stance, perchance

Of chance?

Lance, cruelty's lance

With fighter's stance, may you

Perchance the shed of innoce

May all you face have fighting chance, or else you've gained cruelty's lance

That sounds like a nursery rhyme. The Saint of Blood and Steel and Shitty Poets

May all you face in fighting stance be giv'n of a fighter's chance

May all you face have fighting chance, with sword in hand, a warrior's stance

With sword in hand, in warrior's stance, give all opponent fighting chance for

Something something, cruelty. Fighting chance or else you're committing cruelty? Cruelty's lance was good. Cruelty's trance?

Cruelty's glance

Cruelty's advance too many syllables

Cruelty's reach, cruelty's grasp, cruelty's cage

Grasp

Give fighting chance to opponent's --- else you've fallen into cruelty's grasp

Grasp, asp, rasp, clasp, nasp, masp, pasp, sasp, lasp  none of these are real words

May all you face have fighting chance, with sword in hand and warrior’s stance

For if innocent blood shed perchance, you’ve gained instead cruelty’s lance

“Gods and Saints I suck at this.”

The Saint of Blood and Steel guide the hands of those faithful. Pour your strength into the souls of your siblings, that all listlessness be made purposeful. May their swords run red, not with the blood of reckless violence, but with tempered fire. 

Here I list the tenets that guide the blooded sword:

     I. May all that you face have a fighting chance. Any sword raised to the innocent or unarmed in cruelty is blackened by its shame.

     II. May your wrath be stoked only by the Saint's wrath, tempered by the Saint's fire, and quenched by the Saint's blood. A fool are they who, gifted the Saint's power, use it in wrath or malice alone. 

     III. May you meet every adversary with honor, nor despise them for their challenge. May every battle prove your glory, and every accepted challenge prove their equal.

     IV. May you be steadfast and know no retreat, for the back turned is once wounded and twice deserving. May every wound won show no proof of running. 

     V. May you meet every obstacle with courage, for just as all that emits light must endure burning, all the courageous must make a brother of their fears.

     VI. May your word be law, as binding as chains, and as chains may it drown you when bound in deceit.

     VII. May you seek the counsel of your elders, those more versed in the order and its ways, and respect their word once given, for their communion with the Saint is long, and their wisdom earned. 

     VIII. May you persevere to the end of any enterprise begun, for the folly is theirs that, through unfinished business, never gain wisdom from deeds done.

     IX. May you respect the honor of your fellow helsmet, that none may know you cruel or slave to vice. For no creature, be they sibling of order or beggar or king, is ever deserving of dishonor or pain. 

     X. May you treat all siblings of sword and order as your own, held accountable as you would so hold yourself. A villain are they that stray from their tenets, and a villain they that allow it.

Let this final oath stand above all: May your purpose be divine, for it is through purpose alone that the Saint draws his sword. Serve not yourself nor your vice, nor any purpose not blessed by the Saint, or shall your sword remain ever dulled. For to serve the Saint is to offer the Saint a worthy cause, and it is worth by which your blade is blooded with his blessing. 

“Helsknight, if we wait any longer the stand is going to close, and the only other good muffin shop is on the other side of the Colosseum.”

“I’m almost done.”

“What are you even -- ? Oh! Are you writing poetry? Let me see!”

“Absolutely not.”

“Oh come on, I’m sure it’s--”

The journal slams shut.

Chapter Text

"You need to learn self-defense," Helsknight told Tanguish, breaking the silence of the house.

It had been three days since they had endured their last adventure, three days since they had last done anything besides share meals and sleep, and laze around the house. Tanguish thought it was three days well spent. For all the knight's concerns over wasted time, he still possessed some appreciation for the rest a body needs after a lot of exertion. Tanguish was grateful, if for no other reason than it gave him time to stop being sore.

That was the thing about fighting, Tanguish was starting to realize. Your body worked to, or passed, its limits, because it's scared and wants to survive, and then only remembers later that it isn't supposed to do that. The day they returned from Hermitcraft, Tanguish had been taken by such an extreme thirst, it bordered on spiritual need, like his soul would leave his body in protest if he didn't get water immediately. Helsknight told him it was because of blood loss, and Tanguish got to sit in quiet, stupefied horror, knowing Helsknight had learned that from experience -- not that it bothered the knight any. Then there was the hunger of the next day, so strong it jolted Tanguish awake in the small hours of the morning. It felt like he'd never eaten a meal in his life, so intense it made a hot pang in his guts that he almost confused with nausea. 

"You used a lot of energy yesterday," Helsknight had shrugged, before fixing them a massive breakfast. This brought Tanguish's further revelation that Helsknight was a pretty good cook. He made simple meals: meat hearty breakfasts, stews, flatbreads, biscuits, and roasted vegetables. Things that were filling, and often made with the same handful of ingredients in different combinations; but he cut his own vegetables with quick precision, measured ingredients with the weight of his gaze instead of cups or scales, and managed the miraculous art of having all the various cooking foods finish at the same time. His hands moved, and good meals happened.

It mystified Tanguish, like watching a magician or a juggler. He was a rooftop lurker, a thief. He ate what he could steal, and the closest he ever got to making his own food was occasionally pressing two pieces of stolen bread together with some other stolen things to make a sandwich. The fact that Helsknight could just make food was, honestly, amazing. When Tanguish asked how he learned to cook so well, the knight shrugged and answered, "I live alone and I like to eat," as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

It was after one of these masterfully made breakfasts, noticeably lighter that the ones of the last few days, that Helsknight made his observation: "You need to learn self-defense."

Tanguish stopped in the middle of forking some eggs on his plate., "Uhm… why?"

"Because you don't know how to defend yourself," Helsknight answered simply, not looking up from his breakfast, eating with the intent of someone who had plans he needed doing.

"I don't have to know how, I have you," Tanguish said, only halfway joking. "Besides, I can just run away."

"Can you?" 

"Yes?"

Helsknight rested his chin in his hand and raised a disbelieving eyebrow. "I want you to think really hard about the last two fights we were in, and tell me when, exactly, you intended to run."

Tanguish opened his mouth, then closed it again, scrutinizing his mostly empty plate.

"Take your time," Helsknight smirked.

"Your last two fights were different," Tanguish said defensively. "I got you into those messes. I couldn't just leave you in them."

"I'm an adult capable of facing the consequences of my own actions," Helsknight told him, his infuriating smirk still present. "If I choose to stand and fight, you're not obligated to stay."

"But you wouldn't have chosen to stay if I hadn't--"

"Yes. I would have." Helsknight's smirk bloomed into one of his dangerous, wolf-like grins. "Tenets aside, I like fighting. It makes me feel powerful."

"Terrifying."

"That too."

"Well I don't." Tanguish rolled his eyes, and nudged some of his remaining breakfast around on his plate. "Like fighting, that is. It's scary."

"It's only scary if you don't know what you're doing," Helsknight hummed, his voice taking on a noticeably gentler tone. "You said we were in this together, right?"

Tanguish looked up at him sulkily. The knight smirked again.

"At least let me make sure you're not in over your head."

Tanguish sighed resignedly., "You're going to get me maimed."

"Only a little," Helsknight chuckled, with far more humor than Tanguish could muster. “Maybe just a few scars to put some constellations in those freckles.”

Tanguish looked down at the flickering sculk-lights in his arms and sighed. He didn't like this. He liked it even less when they got to the Colosseum. The Colosseum made him nervous. It was probably because of how intensely unpleasant their last visit was, but walking up to it again felt like walking up to a sleeping dragon. Sure, it sat there harmlessly enough, but that made it far from a harmless place. Just like the first visit though, as soon as they stepped into the arched hallways, Helsknight relaxed. It was more noticeable now, because Tanguish had learned a lot about reading the knight's moods and body language. What had before been just a slight loosening up of his tensed shoulders and a more willing voice, now seemed to him a massive sigh of relief, like coming home after years in some foreign land. In spite of his own misgivings, Tanguish found himself smiling.

"You really like it here, don't you?" 

"Some of my favorite memories are from the Colosseum," Helsknight smiled, looking up at the mosaic ceiling fondly, "and some of the best friends I've ever made."

Tanguish gave a nervous laugh, "Which is… great but… I don't know why I have to be here. I mean -- you can teach me anywhere, right?"

"With what weapons," Helsknight countered, "and what armor?"

"I don't really need--"

"And what space?" Helsknight continued relentlessly. "You think lunging at me across our table with a butter knife will teach you anything about defending yourself in a street fight? Or -- Saints help us -- if the Demon fixes his elytra and comes swooping down on you?"

Tanguish looked down at the tiled floor, shoving his hands in his pockets.

"We've made some enemies, Tanguish," Helsknight told him. "They'll move on to bigger and better things eventually, but until then, they're mean and nasty, and will take a lot of pleasure in hurting someone who's helpless."

"I'm not helpless," Tanguish sniffed, more from wounded pride than anything.

Helsknight grumbled something under his breath and rolled his eyes. "Learn it for me, then."

"Oh, like I would ever get good enough at anything swords to help you," Tanguish laughed, still finding this whole thing kind of ridiculous. "You're invincible, Helsknight."

"I'm not." Helsknight scowled down at him. "I'm really not."

"I mean… you're close enough," Tanguish said uncomfortably, finding it hard to keep his upbeat tone under Helsknight's scrutiny. "If you're scared of the Demon -- I mean, you weren't at your best, but you didn't have the right gear or the right armor. You said so yourself."

"I'm not scared of the Demon," Helsknight said, his lip curling in disgust at the thought. They emerged from the long hall into the center ring of the Colosseum, the wide open space once again twisting Tanguish’s stomach with vertigo. “I just want to give you the tools to not die when the Demon shows up again.”

The knight lead them around the stadium towards the ladder, sliding down it with practiced ease. Tanguish followed, trying not to cower quite as much as they walked across the sand. It helped that Helsknight looked around the place so fondly. Tanguish could forget for a few minutes that this was, at the end of the day, just a very big fighting pit.

“So, have you thought about what you want to learn?” Helsknight asked him, with the same pleasantness one might ask someone picking out a new coat. “I’ll give you the basics of unarmed combat anyway, but the world is yours. Anything I can’t teach you, I can certainly find someone who can.”

Tanguish grimaced. “You are way too excited about this.”

“I don’t get to teach people very often,” Helsknight admitted. “They’re normally too…”

“Terrified?”

“Cautious.”

“Can I cautiously weasel out of this somehow?”

“No.”

“Do you even know how to use anything besides a sword taller than I am?”

Helsknight flashed Tanguish a hurt expression, though his eyes flickered with far too much amusement for the expression to be genuine. “I prefer longswords because they’re fun and they match my aesthetic, but I know a great deal more than that.”

“Evil Beezuma gave me a knife,” Tanguish told him after a moment of consideration. “Can you teach me how to use that?”

“Let me see it?”

They stopped in the sand just short of the entrance to the cells, Tanguish producing the small blade from his inventory. Helsknight unsheathed the little blade, appraising it with a disconcerting amount of attentiveness.

“I mean -- it's the same one I gave you to fight the Demon with.” Tanguish muttered after a few awkward seconds.

“It’s a dagger,” Helsknight told him, sheathing it again and handing it back. “Not a knife.”

“There’s a difference?”

“Daggers are for stabbing.”

“Knives aren’t?”

“Knives are for… a lot of things. Sometimes stabbing is one of them, but cutting and slicing is more in their specialty.”

“Right…” Tanguish said, his stomach giving a nervous lurch. Suddenly the little weapon felt a lot heavier.

“They’re normally paired with something,” Helsknight explained, resuming the lead as he made for the cells. “I know some good guard counters that pair a sword and a dagger. You can also use a dagger by itself; it’s like a little sword, really. Good for thrusting into armor gaps. You'll like it."

Tanguish gave a skeptical huff (as far as he was concerned, a weapon was a weapon, and there was no “liking it”) but he followed dutifully behind Helsknight. He had already come this far, despite his discomfort. He might as well keep going.

The cells were a twisting labyrinth as always, though Helsknight navigated them like someone who had memorized every path walking with purpose, gaze sharp and steps sure. Most people they passed walked out of his way when he approached, though once or twice he still offered some of his deferential nods to people who greeted him by name. They stopped briefly at the armory to pick up some practice gear -- gear that, as far as Tanguish could tell, was still leaps and bounds better than what could be bought easily in the market, despite Helsknight’s disparaging comments about how old or worn it was. He marveled briefly at weapons and armor of myriad shapes and sizes, and didn't know if he should be impressed or horrified that so much creative thought could be used to make harmful things. Helsknight, ever unphased, simply grabbed up some armor he thought Tanguish would like -- leathers, light and mobile -- along with a few differently shaped knives that he tucked into his inventory for safe keeping.

As they made their way back towards the arena ground, they stopped by Helsknight’s cell, where a chest sat beside his bed, delivered at some point during the last few days. When he saw it, Helsknight groaned disappointedly, popping it open to show an array of netherite gear, all glittering with carefully inscribed enchantments. There was also a sword, the bruise-purple metal fractaled with its own jagged enchants that seemed to radiate the desire for blood. Tanguish wouldn’t call the set evil. Inanimate objects couldn’t really be evil. But they harbored an intent and thirst that made him uncomfortable, like he was looking down at a chest full of venomous snakes instead of netherite and diamond. On the neat little pile of garments sat a calling card, blank save for a symbol stamped in golden ink: an open eye with a pair of horns.

"The Demon actually made your armor?" Tanguish asked, genuinely surprised. "But I thought, you know, after what happened--"

"Clever," Helsknight grumbled, giving the chest a disgusted kick. The jolt made the lid slam shut again, startling Tanguish with the loud thump.

"Well -- this is good, right?" Tanguish asked, not really feeling the words, but grasping desperately at any silver lining he could find. “You need this.”

"Yes," Helsknight sighed wearily, "I need it. But it means he honored our bargain. My I-Owe-You still stands."

"Oh," Tanguish winced.

"Oh," Helsknight parroted in agreement. 

Tanguish scratched at one of his knuckles nervously. "Uhm… I’m sorry."

"What are you sorry for?" Helsknight asked, raising an eyebrow. "You're not the one who made a stupid bargain."

Tanguish shrugged. He wanted to say he was sorry the bargain had happened, that it was his fault Helsknight felt compelled to make it. But he knew what Helsknight's response would be. Instead, Tanguish muttered, "I'm sorry it's a problem you have to deal with, I guess."

The knight shoved the chest underneath the bed, out of sight, but still glaringly there. "It'll be fine. Worst case scenario, he makes me do something unpleasant, probably to someone who doesn't deserve it, but there are worse bargains to make."

"There are?" Tanguish asked disbelievingly.

“Sure.”

“Any come to mind?”

“The deal I made with Evil X, for starters,” Helsknight said, moving to his desk to turn over a few sheets of paper someone had left him while they were gone. Tanguish caught the phrase “Next fighting bracket to be announced on--” before Helsknight folded that page and stowed it in his inventory. “It’s been a while since I read the terms, but it basically boils down to: I'm not allowed to harm him physically, and he isn't allowed to meddle in my fights.”

“Is that a thing he does?” Tanguish asked, genuinely curious.

“It's a thing he used to do,” Helsknight snorted, “but it's bad for business, and besides that, it's annoying as hell, so now he plays his boredom games somewhere else--”

The knight turned, intent on leading the way out of his cell, only to stop short. Leaning in the doorway, both pairs of arms crossed over his chest, was EB. Neither of them had heard him approach. He was just there, as if he'd spawned in on that spot. A few of his buzzers perched on his shoulders, their wings still. Realizing he had finally been noticed, EB blinked down at Tanguish and signed, “I didn't want to interrupt.”

 Tanguish put his hands on his sides, finding enough boldness in him to stammer, “Weren't-- didn't you get angry at me for-- you know-- eavesdropping?”

Helsknight snorted half a laugh.

EB glanced conspiratorially at one of his buzzers before saying matter-of-factly: “I physically can't eavesdrop.” He pointed from his eyes to Tanguish’s with two fingers. It wasn't a sign exactly, but the meaning was clear enough. Eye contact.

(Oh. Yeah, Tanguish definitely should've known that. Well -- he did kind of. He knew EB had to make eye contact to talk. Otherwise his voice faded out to radio static, like somehow he was tuning into someone when he was looking at them. His sign language helped fill the gaps when talking to more than one person. The eye contact went both ways though -- he couldn't hear without it either. Tanguish had to wonder how much of EB’s world sounded like misdialed radios. He might be tempted to ask, if the question didn't seem so rude.)

“Sorry,” Tanguish muttered awkwardly, only belatedly realizing his gaze had dropped to the floor. He looked back up at EB again, but before he could repeat himself, EB made a dismissive hand gesture, clearly able to tell what Tanguish had said. Embarrassment at his own awkwardness at the unfamiliar mannerisms kept Tanguish from almost apologizing again, only barely. Gods and saints, he was terrible at talking to people. EB, for his part, seemed content to move on with the conversation, probably long used to the stumbles of talking to new people. His buzzing began in earnest, the lights of his eyes narrowing, hands moving through the fluid motions of signs.

Helsknight frowned. “We need to talk?” He glanced at Tanguish briefly. “In private or all of us?”

EB buzzed thoughtfully for a moment, recrossing his arms. When he spoke again, Helsknight translated. “Yeah sure, I want your shadow to hear this.”

“Shadow?” Tanguish asked. They both ignored him.

“I'm just going to be blunt about this, yeah?” EB asked, though from his tone and the unamused expression on his robotic features, it wasn't really a question. “Everybody in the cells knows you've made a deal with the Demon, and I'm telling you to your face, that was stupid.”

Tanguish winced.

“You went through my stuff?” Helsknight asked, an edge creeping into his tone. 

“It wasn't subtle. We know what his errands runners look like.” EB hesitated a moment, and then admitted a bit ruefully, “Besides, it was Martyn who went through your stuff, not me.”

“Of course he did.”

“This is important, Helsknight,” EB said disapprovingly, the buzzers on his shoulders starting to hum in an echo of his aggravation. “What did you bargain for? Armor? You know I have two spare sets downstairs, and Red has--”

“Since when has he had an enchanter?”

“Don't talk over me,” EB snapped, his shoulders stiffening angrily, his hands a large, emphatic sign, his buzzing going noticeably longer than Helsknight translated for. 

The knight, much to Tanguish's surprise, help up his hands placatingly. “You're right. You're right.”

Tanguish looked between the two of them questioningly, and Helsknight sighed, “I'm a shit interpreter.”

EB rolled his eyes dramatically, and motioned for Tanguish to look at him. “Alright, since that idiot can read my hands and you can't--”

Helsknight scoffed.

EB narrowed his eyes and buzzed furiously. “My point is this: making deals with the Demon is stupid. Even if he wasn't a mean, spiteful person, anything you could possibly need, we already have. Anything we don't have, we can get. We are the Colosseum. We are the chain that binds hels together. Don’t let your pride be the weak link in that chain.”

“I am not going to be lectured on pride by you of all people,” Helsknight snapped, his eyes flickering that dangerous red.

“I am the only one who can lecture you on pride,” EB buzzed back, his voice fading abruptly into a snarl of static as he turned to face Helsknight. The two fighters were eye-to-eye, a glowering, bristling mess of wills clashing. Tanguish found he had backed up into the nearest wall trying to get out of their way, sure they were about to devolve into fists (Or worse. Helsknight did still have a sword).

Helsknight flashed Tanguish a fleeting glance, and something in his anger withered seeing Tanguish making himself small. He took a long, slow, purposeful breath and admitted through gritted teeth, “Fine. You’re right.”

The fight in EB’s body dropped away instantly, replaced by obvious confusion. He took a hesitant step backwards, backing down. He said something, but even without the eye contact or the ability to read signs, the question in his tone conveyed enough for Tanguish to understand. “I'm right?”

“I acted recklessly, and I screwed up,” Helsknight said, crossing his arms petulantly, like a child being forced to admit a wrong. “I was too proud to admit…” Helsknight flashed another glance in Tanguish's direction. “...well, I thought I could keep people from getting hurt, and I couldn't. I'm sorry.”

“Oh,” EB said sheepishly. “Well. Erm. Good.”

The two fighters stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, and, honestly, Tanguish could've laughed. He wanted to tell them to just hug it out or something, or shake hands, or whatever it was fighters did to resolve things. Maybe bash each other over the head or something. They looked so wholly like two people who had never deescalated an argument in their lives before. Finally, Tanguish decided to have mercy on them and change the subject.

“Uhm, EB, Helsknight’s going to teach me how to use a dagger.”

EB took to the new line of conversation like a drowning man to a plank of wood. “Oh? I thought I told you to stay out of trouble.”

“Trouble likes me a little too much,” Tanguish chuckled ruefully. “I was wondering, uhm, if you could explain the difference between a dagger and a knife for me?”

As it turned out, EB was a knife person. (Tanguish thought this made sense, given the rather large collection of knives he kept.) By the time Tanguish, EB and Helsknight made it back up the stairs to the arena floor, EB had not only explained the difference between a dagger and a knife, but that Helsknight’s dagger (used during arena fights) was called a rondel, and was “really rather useful to slipping through ribs, if that’s the sort of thing you’re looking for.” He explained the little blue, curved blade Tanguish had given him was “more for cutting I guess, though really it’s just sort of pretty isn’t it? You wouldn’t want to get blood on something like that.” And that, “Well, you can throw any knife I guess, but throwing ones are really made for throwing, you know?” A few times during the incredibly one-sided conversation, Tanguish hazarded a quick glance in Helsknight’s direction, only to see the knight had affixed an amused smirk to his face, like this was a well-worn rant he recognized. At no point did he offer to save Tanguish from his plight though, only leading the way stolidly through corridors and upstairs until the big metal grate that marked the entrance to the cells finally came into view.

“That’s why knives are better than daggers,” EB was saying, keeping just enough eye contact with Tanguish that, through the fading in and out of static glances, he could follow the conversation. “They’re a lot more versatile. You can use them as tools.”

EB crossed both pairs of his arms behind his back and waited patiently for Helsknight to parse through a panel by the open grate. There were a host of buttons there, and the biting smell of redstone behind them. When EB decided Helsknight had taken too long searching, he politely snaked an arm past him to press one. The air was filled with the susserating sound of pistons slamming one after the other, and in a ripple of moving sand, a small portion of the arena rearranged itself into a little training area -- two armor stands kitted out in leathers, two targets, and a line of plain stone benches. Helsknight flashed EB an annoyed look, and the lights of EB’s eyes squinted in what must have been a wide grin.

“Alright,” Helsknight said, leading the way out onto the sand and promptly dropping the collected gear on one of the benches, “there’s two ways to learn how to fight. There’s show fighting -- hitting your opponent’s weapon -- and there’s real fighting -- hitting your opponent. I’m teaching you the latter.”

“And if I’d rather not?” Tanguish asked, putting one last token effort into getting out of this (it was worth a shot at least). EB sat down on the bench beside theirs, elbows on his knees, watching with intense curiosity. It seemed he too wanted to know how Helsknight intended to teach Tanguish, when Tanguish himself didn’t even want to learn.

“Relax,” Helsknight snorted, rolling his eyes, “You’re not hitting anything today. I’m just going to show you how to put the leathers on and how to hold the knife. When you get used to doing some footwork, we’ll move on. By the time you’re actually swinging the damn thing, you won’t be scared of it anymore.”

Tanguish sighed and did as he was told, donning the unwieldy conglomeration of leather and straps and buckles, finally managing to drudge up some interest when Helsknight began naming all the pieces and what they were used for. Bracers to keep his forearms from being cut, grieves to soften blows to his ankles, an ill-fitting chest piece that Helsknight had to tighten in four places just to keep it from slipping around. There were boots too, big clunky things that made Tanguish feel like he was always tripping over himself, and while they forwent the ugly bell-shaped helmet, Helsknight assured him as soon as they did any sparring Tanguish would be wearing it whether he wanted to or not (and Tanguish thought with an armed Helsknight stabbing knives in his direction, he would probably actually want to wear it). Then, Helsknight showed him how to hold his dagger in a ready position, arm extended, blade level, and stepped him through some simple footwork. 

“Once you’re used to moving your feet,” Helsknight hummed, taking Tanguish through the four-step set for the third time, “I’ll teach you how to actually poke someone with the pointy end of that thing. For now, just try not to trip and poke your own eye out.”

“This feels stupid,” Tanguish complained, already feeling the fatigue in his arm from holding it out straight for so long. “And anyway, say the Demon corners me in the next week -- this isn’t going to help me Helsknight. Running will.”

“Then run,” Helsknight told him sternly. “Always run. But someday, he will find a way to keep you from running, and he’ll figure it out on the same day he corners you alone, where I can’t protect you. Then what will you do?”

Tanguish grimaced, and sighed, and with mute determination continued his set.

Chapter Text

“Honestly I don’t know why he bothers,” Tanguish lamented to Tango, roughly two weeks later when finally, finally, Helsknight relented and let him go a day without training. He laid on the floor of Decked Out, stretching out his sore arms on the cold ice while his double wired a false wall beside him. It was the first time Tanguish and Tango hung out since the intervention, and the first time Tanguish had seen Decked Out in a very long time. His double made a lot of progress in Tanguish’s absence. Most of level one was done, as were portions of level two. The bones of the redstone had been put into place, and the reeking bite of it tanged every breath the pair took.

“Sounds like he’s worried about you,” Tango grunted as he squeezed into a gap beneath the wall, trying to access some hard-to-reach wiring.

“He’s paranoid,” Tanguish said gloomily, throwing one arm over his eyes dramatically. “He’s convinced I’m going to get jumped in a back alley somewhere.”

“Hels is that dangerous?”

“Only if you bother the dangerous people.”

“And did you bother the dangerous people?”

Tanguish scowled and didn’t answer the question. “Anyway, I’m not a fighter, Tango. I’m a runner. I don’t like fighting. It’s scary, and I get the shakes, and I don’t like blood. It’s gross and sticky and gets everywhere and it’s always mine.”

Tango grunted a series of syllables from underneath his wall, legs scrabbling as if he could somehow find better leverage.

“I tried talking him out of it,” Tanguish sighed, flipping onto his stomach to reach for a comparator just past Tango’s flailing arm. He scooted it into his double’s hand. “He just keeps telling me this is good for me and I need to get over it. And it doesn’t help that EB keeps showing up. He’s also big into knives. He’s been practicing throwing them all week. Keeps showing off.”

“I made a knife once,” Tango said, clipping something to something else and fizzling the air with a long redstone hiss. Red smoke wafted lazily from beneath the wall. “It turned out terrible. It was all lumpy. Cuts potatoes pretty well though.”

“I don't even know why he sticks around,” Tanguish continued as though Tango hadn’t interrupted, intent on his monologue. (Tanguish was starting to understand why so many people in his life monologued, and he was learning to enjoy doing it himself. It got a lot of feelings out all at once, and even though most of those feelings were Very Big and a bit irrational, often you meandered around to the reason they were there… eventually). “They argue all the time, and not little arguments either. They shout. And sometimes they punch each other--”

“Seriously?”

“Well, not-- they don't hurt each other. But they shove, and Helsknight punched EB’s shoulder yesterday, and EB put him in a headlock a few times.”

“Do they ever touch you like that?”

Tanguish blinked at the ceiling thoughtfully. There was a hole where he and Tango had dropped down to access the room, they -- well, Tango -- were working on, and through it, Tanguish could see the crisscross of redstone lines. Helsknight would probably look at them and see something poetic, like constellations or highways. All Tanguish saw was redstone spaghetti.

“Uhm. Helsknight ruffled my hair once.”

Tango stopped working, bracing his hands on the wall to slip out from underneath it. His face was set in a mischievous smirk, eyebrows arched. “You know exactly how many times he's ruffled your hair?”

“You asked!”

“You're jealous, aren't you?” Tango continued relentlessly, his voice a shriek of laughter. “Tanguish, of course they aren't going to get rough with you, you're like -- you're like a baby to them.”

“I am not!”

“The man gave you armor for knife practice.”

“I don't like getting hurt,” Tanguish said defensively, sitting up to glare at his double in earnest. “Besides, why would I want them beating me up all the time! That's a dumb way to be friends with someone.”

“You're just upset you're not Helsknight's only friend,” Tango said, with a matter-of-factness that sent a twinge through Tanguish’s stomach.

“He doesn't… have any friends,” Tanguish said cautiously, feeling out the statement for its truthfulness even as he said it out loud. “That's what he told me, anyway.”

“Well obviously he was lying.” Tango snorted, slipping back beneath the wall again.

“He can't lie.”

“It's Helsknight, Tanguish. Of course he can lie.”

Tanguish frowned, feeling the treacherous shift in topic. He didn't like the way Tango talked about Helsknight, as though he knew the knight better, when he so obviously didn't.

“He literally can't lie. It's against his knightly tenets.”

“Then he lied about those too,” Tango said with such authority, Tanguish felt his own belief shaking just a little. “Wels has told us all about him dude, and we've seen his fallout from being on the server. I don't know why he's decided to be nice to you, but everyone on Hermitcraft knows how he treats Wels.”

“Oh,” Tanguish said, feeling a little relieved. “Uhm… I don't think Wels is the best source for Helsknight.”

Tango scoffed, and Tanguish could hear the scorn dripping off every word as he said, “You don't think Welsknight knows what his helsmet is like?”

“Tango, most doubles aren't like us.”

“You think Wels hasn't tried to be friends?”

Tanguish grimaced. He had no idea. Aside from the one brief meeting, he hardly even knew what Welsknight looked like. He countered, “Has he?”

Tango paused, and for a long moment all Tanguish could hear was the clicking of a piston as it attempted to fire, while Tango fiddled with its components. 

Finally, Tango answered, “Probably?”

“I'll ask Helsknight if you ask Wels.”

“You going to make me shake hands on it?” Tango asked with mock suspicion, slipping out from underneath the wall again. “Hey, get another piston from my shulker? This one's got a broken thing-a-ma-what’s-it and I'm tired of messing with it.”

Tanguish, still lingering on the previous conversation, gave a startled jolt when he realized he'd been asked to help. He skittered to his feet and half skated, half jogged to where Tango left his supplies, rifling through a red shulker box for another piston and finding nothing.

“Are you sure you have any left?”

“Of course I do! I have to. Check the other one.”

Tanguish opened another nearby box and peered down at the mixture of ices and snows used for making the frozen first level of the dungeon. 

“Nope.”

Tango let out a string of incomprehensible syllables, clambering to his feet to check through the boxes himself. He heaved a loud, melodramatic sigh that sent sparks flying from his hair. “Oh, of course I'm out of-- why wouldn't I be out of pistons.” He nudged the shulker with his foot moodily. “I don't wanna do a shopping run, I wanna keep working. I'm in a groove.”

(Tanguish, who had just watched his double struggle unsuccessfully with a piston wall for the past hour, didn't think Tango was “in a groove”, but didn't think correcting him would be helpful right now.)

“Couldn't you just make more?” Tanguish asked tentatively.

“I don't want to,” Tango grumbled, sorting through the handful of shulkers littered at his feet with a scowl that implied the contents insulted him. “Besides, all the supplies are back at bulk storage.”

This seemed like a trivial problem to someone who had an elytra draped over one of the rocks nearby, but Tanguish wisely kept this observation to himself as well. He really shouldn't have though, because Tango, faced with solving his own problems in the way he preferred, suddenly brightened.

“Oh hey, you know where the shopping district is from here, don't you?”

“Tango, your friends don't like me,” Tanguish reminded him. It wasn't completely true -- Tango’s friends didn't know who Tanguish was. But they probably assumed all helsmets were bad. They had no reason to think otherwise, and they may even suspect Tanguish had been the cause of Tango’s weird collapse. “I did tell you earlier I don't like getting hurt.”

“Oh, that's an easy fix,” Tango said brightly, slipping off his cloak and tossing it unceremoniously across Tanguish’s head and shoulders. “Just wear this.”

Tango’s cloak was a new addition to his wardrobe, part of the elaborate Dungeon Master costume he intended to wear when Decked Out finally opened for use. He even had a new compound to smear into his hair so the fire would burn blue. He had taken to wearing the cloak all the time, partially to get used to it, but mostly just because he thought it looked cool. The cloak was heavy and unwieldy, a long, black, draping thing that reminded Tanguish of something a cultist might wear, if a cultist wanted to be incredibly unsubtle about their cultist activities. The sleeves were huge and bell-ended, good for dramatic hand motions and bad for just about everything else, and Tango had to hold the bottom hem off the floor with his tail to keep from tripping over it when he turned sharply. Tanguish glowered down at the offending cloth as Tango continued talking. 

“Just pull the hood up really far over your head, and if anybody asks, you're trying out a new costume design,” Tango smiled, already fishing out blocks of ice so he could start building something else. 

“Tango, this is a bad idea,” Tanguish told him, wrinkling his nose at the cloth in his hands.

“Oh, what's the worst that'll happen? You get caught and respawn back in hels?” Tango asked flippantly, waving a hand. “I've got a bed. You can set your spawn here if you want.”

“I don't want to die,” Tanguish said with so much conviction, it made Tango look up from his work. His expression was the baffled smile of someone who’s just been told the sky was green instead of blue.

“Tanguish, buddy, you're not going to die.” Tango chuckled, as though explaining to a child something fundamental and obvious about the world. “The hermits aren't that mean, even to people they don't like. And even if they do decide to kill you, death is, at most, a momentary inconvenience. You'll respawn and everything will be fine. Now skadoodle.” He flicked his hands in a shooing motion. “If you're quick we might even get this stupid wall finished today.”

Tanguish felt his ears burn with embarrassment, both because of the dismissal, and because of the fear he hadn't known he'd had until just that moment when he voiced it out loud. He stared down at the cloak in his hands for a moment longer, quietly lamenting to himself that Tango still expected him to walk out to the shopping district and back again. Stomach twisting with nervousness, Tanguish slipped the cloak on and pulled the hood over his head as far as it could go.

“Just grab some diamonds from upstairs, and get as many redstone components from Scar’s shop as you can.” Tango called as Tanguish left, his voice muffled by the shulker he was digging into. “You've got this buddy!”

Tanguish swallowed hard, and focused on not tripping over the robes as he clambered his way out of Decked Out. 

It was a beautiful day outside, but of course, it was Hermitcraft. All their days were beautiful. The sky was bright blue, the sun was grinning lazily in the cloudless, mid-afternoon sky, and Tanguish felt like an ant trapped beneath a magnifying glass the entire walk to the shopping district. It was a long, lonely walk, filled with the empty scenery of the hermits’ builds and little else. 

There was something… unsettling about the world the hermits worked in, quiet in a way that hels fundamentally wasn't. Hels was a small, cramped, bustling place, the dumping ground of the problems of the universe. Hermitcraft was… well… Tanguish supposed Hermitcraft was everything else. It was big, and sprawling, and crafted to be pretty in the way a painting or a sculpture was. Even hills and trees made by the hermits’ hands felt more like architecture to Tanguish than they did features in an environment. It was all there to sit in picturesque profile, unless it was intentionally made to stand out. Yes, it was very much like walking through a painting, just random enough to suggest natural patterns and just purposeful enough to show a creator's hand. When eventually the open scenery gave way to Shopping District buildings, a mash-mash of styles and incomplete roadways, the feeling of unrealness intensified. Tanguish was a doll strolling through a giant's sandbox, waiting for the distant thunder of its return.

(Helsknight called the hermits narcissistic, said they had too much time on their hands. Tanguish… didn't think that was true. Not completely. He thought the hermits were a bit like children with a room full of too many toys. What else were they supposed to do but play? Left to their own devices, in a universe that was infinitely kind to their existence… The hermits were not gods, but sometimes it felt like divinity was only as far away as the effort it would take them to reach for it.)

Rockets fired overhead, and all Tanguish’s thoughts scattered as he darted blindly for a nearby doorway. He waited, breath held, for any more sound far longer than he probably needed to, his heart pounding in his chest. He didn't remember being this scared last time he was here… and then he remembered Helsknight had been with him last time. Tanguish darted a hand to the coin in his pocket, as though he could will the knight, or just a little bit of his unconcerned bravery, through it. 

“Right,” Tanguish whispered to himself, taking a breath that was supposed to be bracing, but shook a little too much to be any good, “Redstone shop…” 

Tanguish had never been to Scar’s redstone shop. He had no idea where to look for it. But he did remember seeing the big nether portal in the square and a map nearby it. After some scrambling, he managed to find the square, and the large board posted with the many locations in both the shopping district and the world beyond. There was a hurricane in a lake somewhere, it looked like, and -- oh, a tiny little Deepfrost Citadel, and clearly labeled in the shopping district was a golden store with a little redstone tag. Tanguish spent a few moments getting his bearings, and then skittered off as fast as he dared towards a tall, copper and sandstone structure looming out of a half-cleared dark oak forest. 

It was a pretty building, as far as buildings went, though Tanguish thought the architecture was a little lacking. It wasn't built in the same dark, reflective black color palette of the big churches and towers in hels -- probably because reflective walls in a sunny world would blind people. But the white and cream facade flashed in the sun, the tarnished copper adding soft blue-greens to an already gentle color palette. Tanguish thought maybe the shop was going for “elegant,” but it lacked the spider-leg buttresses and honeycomb windows that made his favorite churches elegant, so instead he thought it mostly looked cute, like a child trying its best to look like the other ladies at a fancy dinner party. It sat in contrast to the cottage-like structure beside it, an organic and wild little building that looked like someone had tried to tame a feral house that had been abandoned in some enchanted forest somewhere.

Tanguish peeked inside the redstone shop, scanning every nook and cranny for potential hermits. Once reasonably certain he was alone, Tanguish bolted inside, wincing uncomfortably at the click of his clawed feet on the tiles. He scanned the various tables and barrels, and with the efficiency of a thief scared of the next incoming guard patrol, snatched up items from Tango’s shopping list. Pistons, a good amount of loose redstone dust, comparators and repeaters and a few bundles of torches all clattered into the magical little pocket of a shulker box Tanguish had swiped from the storage room. He left what he thought was the appropriate number of diamonds behind -- some of the signs were a little confusing -- and risked a few more fleeting moments recounting what he'd purchased on his double’s behalf. 

It was while he was recounting his purchases for the second time that he heard whistling coming from outside. Tanguish felt a jolt of panic race down his spine, and instinct took over the space his sense fled from -- and coincidentally, fleeing was exactly what his instincts told him to do. It was just that there wasn't really anywhere to run to, except maybe outside where the whistling was coming from. Tanguish danced on his toes in a half panic, wasting a few valuable seconds before darting beneath one of the display tables, and curling up in the darkest shadow he could find, his legs and tail tangled up in Tango’s gaudy cloak.

The front door to the shop opened, ringing a jolly bell-tone that sent dissonant feelings of foreboding and dread through Tanguish’s stomach. The whistling grew louder, along with the plod of booted feet and the sleighbell tinkle of chainmail. 

Tanguish instantly thought of his coin. (Right. He could just slip through his reflection and back into hels, and whoever this hermit was would never even know he'd been there.) He reached for his pocket and mouthed a curse when the thick fabric of Tango's robe stopped him from dipping his hand inside. Tanguish looked down at himself, feeling around his chest for the cyan hem of the cloak and, after a small eternity of slipping fabric and grasping fingers, managed to peel it open. He followed the seam down to his pocket, only to find he was sitting on the robe, and also the pocket the coin was in. Tanguish mouthed another curse and winced as the stranger passed by his table, trying his best to breathe quietly and be small. Then, moving slowly, he picked himself up into a shaky crouch and shuffled the robe out from its tangle by his tail, and sat back down again.

“Oh?” The voice of the hermit rang out suddenly, and Tanguish, one hand tracing a path towards his pocket, froze. Partially because the whistling and walking had stopped and the room had gotten much, much quieter, and partially because the voice, for all its pleasant confusion, sounded so familiar as to be baffling.

The hermit started walking again, footsteps slow, voice echoing in the empty building. “Hello? Someone around here?”

Tanguish bit his lip. He laid on the floor beneath the table, stuck somewhere between mortified and… what? Curious awe, maybe? Feelings were still a bit weird for him to place specific words to, but his stomach was doing its best impression of a bundle of kicked snakes, and his heart was doing funny little dances against his ribs, as though if it jolted around hard enough it could get him to move.

The voice of the hermit was Helsknight's voice. Or, well, it was Helsknight's voice if he had gone his whole life whistling instead of shouting. It was full and pleasant in a way Helsknight's wasn't, ringing with a brightness that would have sounded forced if it came from the helsmet Tanguish knew. A twin of a voice, from the twin of his friend.

“Anybody leave this here?” The voice that was certainly Welsknight, because that was the only thing that made logical sense, called, and Tanguish buried his face in his hands and bared his teeth. He’d left Tango’s shulker box sitting in the middle of the floor. “If there’s an invisible person around, I’m warning you, I don't flight, I fight.”

Welsknight’s voice held a perplexed laugh, something like singing where Helsknight's would have sounded like gravel. It wasn't just that their voices, save for the absent roughness, sounded so similar. The inflection, the cadence, the way Welsknight hung on some of his vowels and clipped short his s’s was all so incredibly Helsknight it was uncanny. Tanguish could imagine Helsknight speaking those exact same words in that exact same way -- but it wasn't him and that was weird. Logically it shouldn't be. Logically Tanguish knew Welsknight was an origin point, and the two knights were only as similar as Tango and Tanguish must feel to other people, but still. The mirror of it was unsettling. 

Tanguish found himself crouching to his hands and knees, breathing slow, lowering himself to ground to see if he could catch just a glimpse of Welsknight from where he was hiding, to prove his ears weren't lying to him. That this wasn't somehow just Helsknight wandering around, talking out loud to himself. Tanguish caught a glimpse of boots, standing just beside the shulker he'd left behind. They were leather under iron plate, polished to such a shine they looked like they were made of silver, with diamond trim that glittered purple-cyan with enchantments. A pair of blue leggings vanished into the boots, and Tanguish could see the buckles just below the knees of some kind of silver-cyan grieve before the table cut off his view. Tanguish thought the armor looked pretty, artful almost, the enchanted letters dancing like filigree along curves and angles in the metal. Tanguish also thought Helsknight wouldn't be caught dead in it. He took pride in his armor, sure, but his was utilitarian and functional, and always stained dark.

Welsknight crouched over the shulker box, parsing briefly through its contents as though that could glean him the name of the owner. The bottom hem of a blue half-cape flashed into view, along with silver-white mail that vanished beneath the gentle curve of a chest plate, the source of the jingle bell ring that sounded when he walked. The sharp angle of a sword sheath cut down from his belt towards the ground, and there Tanguish got his only glance of bruised netherite from the dark hilt.

The knight eventually stood, rocking back on his heels to look around, before seeming to shrug and get along with his business. He resumed his quiet whistling, going from counter to counter until he’d gotten what he needed. Tanguish crouched patiently, fear slowly ebbing to the studied nervousness that came from waiting for a particularly good moment to run. He reminded himself this wasn't the first time he had to hide from someone who might do him harm -- stealing facilitated that scenario with unfortunate frequency -- and though his muscles started to protest crouching for so long in such a small space, eventually the knight finished his browsing and left, the ringing of his mail overcome by the sound of rockets as he flew away. Tanguish was left alone in an empty building, his shulker box where he'd left it, a tide of pure, unfiltered relief slowly ebbing over him. 

Tanguish waited a few moments longer, just in case the knight realized he'd forgotten something and came back. When he didn't, Tanguish crawled out from under the table, tripping over Tango's long robe as he did so. Swearing at it viciously under his breath, Tanguish rolled up the sleeves as far up his arms as they could go, snatched up his shulker, and made for the door. He waited by the window, checking around for any unaccounted-for hermits, and deciding he was as safe as he could be, Tanguish stepped gingerly from the building. He made it maybe four steps before the cold press of metal against his spine stopped him.

Welsknight’s voice, all sunlight and golden honey, smiled just over his shoulder, and brought to Tanguish images of Helsknight’s confident, wolf-like grin.

“Hello friend, I don't think we've been formally introduced -- though, given the company you keep, I think you already know who I am.” The sword pressed just a fraction harder against Tanguish’s back. “And you don't belong here.”

Chapter Text

Five days into the precise and utilitarian dance steps that Helsknight called “footwork training” and almost ten days before Tanguish was within blade’s reach of the knight’s double, Helsknight clicked his tongue against his teeth with disapproval and said: “You're clearly bored with this.” He waved at Tanguish in a dismissive motion. “Take a break.”

Sweaty and sore and learning to appreciate the phrase “dying of thirst,” Tanguish complied, sitting down on one of the stone benches with a sigh he felt down to his toes. EB poured water from a pitcher and handed him a glass, and Tanguish did his best not to guzzle it down. Between sips he asked, “I've been doing the same thing for days. I kinda thought boredom was the point?”

Helsknight shrugged, pulling off his gloves and unclasping his cloak from his shoulders, in a display Tanguish had begun to decipher as his ‘I’m about to show you something you're going to hate’ preparations.

“Boredom is fine if you know what you're doing,” Helsknight told him. “But boredom can lead to complacency, and if you're complacent, you stop learning. I need you to take this seriously.”

“I am taking this seriously,” Tanguish frowned, and then amended: “Well, as much as I can, anyway.”

Helsknight flashed him a skeptical look, but didn't comment as he finished folding his cloak. He placed it gently on the bench beside Tanguish, and signed, “Help me with some demonstrations, EB?”

EB buzzed, signing something curt before springing to his feet. Tanguish took another long, gloomy drink of his water. (Yep, he wasn’t going to like this.)

“How much do you know about self-defense?” Helsknight asked him, rolling up his sleeves. Tanguish grimaced.

“Uh…”

“I know you know something,” Helsknight rolled his eyes. “You tackled me once.” EB buzzed an obvious question, and Helsknight grinned at him ruefully. “He gave me a bloody nose.”

The lights of EB’s eyes narrowed, and he gazed down at Tanguish with absolute glee. “You didn't.”

“It was an accident… mostly.” Tanguish said uncomfortably. He didn't consider it a proud moment, though EB was beaming like it was. “I just… you know. I was desperate.”

EB shot Helsknight a questioning look, and the knight gave him a quiet sign that could have been “drop it” or “I'll explain later”, but whatever it was, danced them away from the topic.

“Well then,” EB said, all four sets of hands resting on his sides in a confusing zig-zag, “sounds like you know the basics of it then.”

“Erm, right,” Tanguish muttered.

“I'm just going to show you some things to try,” Helsknight said, annoyance hovering on the edge of his tone. “And then we’ll try them a few times. You'll like it, I promise.”

“I won't,” Tanguish said with reasonable amounts of certainty.

“It'll be more engaging than knife drills,” EB reassured him, as though boredom was the problem. Tanguish flashed both he and Helsknight a skeptical look.

“Tanguish, you want to handle conflicts by running away?” Helsknight sighed in exasperation, trying to find a way to appeal to Tanguish’s common sense. “That's what self-defense is. You're convincing the other person to let you run away. It's good to know.”

“Yeah, but I'm not like you guys,” Tanguish pointed out, because in his nervousness it seemed important. “You’re, you know, fighters.”

EB and Helsknight exchanged mirrored, uncomprehending glances. Tanguish grimaced, honestly, starting to get a little annoyed. He didn't know how he was supposed to explain to them that fighting scared him, and no matter how much they were trying to ‘prepare’ him, it would always feel way too dangerous, and that they were a pair of very proficient giants who would snap him in half the minute they gave it even miniscule effort. That probably, they would do it by accident, but that's just how big, scary people worked sometimes. And no, it didn't matter how good their intentions were because they were scary people talking about scary things. Before he could find a way to articulate all that without somehow insulting them, a familiar voice piped up from the cells’ entrance.

“Well well well, if it isn't the new squire,” Martyn, the Hand, chimed as he sauntered over, hands deep in his pockets. He grinned a large, lazy smile at Tanguish and said, “Helsknight’s church is a vampire cult, so think really hard before you drink the sacrament or whatever.”

“It's not a vampire cult,” Helsknight scowled.

“Sorry sorry, my bad, blood saint,” Martyn laughed, making quotes with his fingers.

“And he's not my squire. We’re teaching him self-defense.”

Martyn raised an eyebrow in Tanguish’s direction, and then abruptly burst into laughter. “You’re joking. You're actually joking, right?” he ushered between Helsknight and EB. “You’re what, double his size and weight class? You could sit on him and he'd be helpless.” 

“Everyone is bigger than he is.”

“Don't worry, Squire,” Martyn said, hugging Tanguish protectively around the shoulders. Tanguish stiffened uncomfortably at the unexpected touch. “I won't let them bully you.” 

“Hand,” Helsknight stated flatly, warningly, the red in his eyes starting to flicker.

“Knight,” Martyn returned pleasantly, that easy smile flowing across his face again. He elbowed Tanguish in an overfamiliar way, and Tanguish couldn't tell if it was because Martyn enjoyed making him uncomfortable, or if Martyn just liked getting on Helsknight’s nerves. “Defending yourself against these giants is easy anyway. The bigger they are, the harder they fall, and all that. Just keep your arms close in and kick the shit out of them.”

Tanguish took a step away from Martyn, trying to dissuade any more touching. “Keep my arms in?”

“Of course,” Martyn shrugged, and then splayed his arms out wide to demonstrate. “I mean you keep yourself all spread out you're just asking for--”

Helsknight grabbed Martyn’s wrist suddenly, probably also in demonstration, and yanked the Colosseum fighter towards him. Martyn was a lot smaller than Helsknight. He was built more to Tanguish’s height, just a little taller, with a little more bulk and broader shoulders. It was trivially easy for Helsknight to tear him forward. Martyn, however, was used to being one of the smaller fighters in the room. He lunged into the grab, reaching his free hand up to grip a fistful of Helsknight’s hair, and slammed his knee into the knight’s stomach. The full momentum of Helsknight’s yank and Martyn’s lunge all converged on the point of Martyn's knee, and the air whooshed out of Helsknight’s lungs in a wheeze. 

“Woah woah woah, steady on!” Martyn gave the knight one last solid kick to send him onto the arena floor. He stepped back, dusting off his hands and smirking at Tanguish. “I mean take me to dinner before you grab me like that, bloody hels.”

Tanguish gaped, both because he hadn't expected that to happen, and because it had all happened so quickly, he was barely able to process it all. Martyn gave a saint-like smile in return, gentle and unassuming in all the ways he wasn't. EB joined Helsknight on the ground, laughing hysterically. A few of his buzzers hovered over him in a watchful holding pattern, as if baffled their owner could be incapacitated by laughter.

Helsknight wheezed something from his curled-up position on the ground, which sounded a lot like, “You're a bastard and I hate you,” but could have just been a wheeze.

“Not my fault you're walking around without your armor on,” Martyn sniffed condescendingly before reaching out to help the knight stand. “Oh, get up you big baby, I've hit you harder on the fighting circuit.”

Helsknight brushed his hand away and stood on his own, glowering, eyes so bright and angry they stayed red for long seconds at a time. Martyn just smiled. Tanguish, ever nervous of the tension that seemed to always billow around the fighters, asked in a soft, sympathetic voice, “You alright?”

“I'm fine,” Helsknight said petulantly, and Tanguish thought maybe only the knight’s pride was wounded. Helsknight bristled down at Martyn, and Tanguish thought it was interesting watching the knight loom from this angle. “You didn't have to hit me that hard to prove your point.”

“You didn't have to grab me, now did you?” Martyn answered simply. His hands slipped into his pockets, a motion that should've been nonchalant, but felt a lot like he was reaching for a concealed weapon -- and he probably was. The two fighters glared at each other for one, maybe two seconds. Not long, but long enough that the air between them was intense and alive with their animosity towards each other. Martyn’s smile slipped, and with it, his voice took on the flat promise of danger. “Don't get all big and threatening. We both know you can kick my ass from here to next Tuesday. And when you do, Red will feel the need to defend his Loyal Hand’s honor, and EB over there will make up some honorific about two against one, and by the end of the week we've got a schism in the cells of my side your side that’ll make a crowd really happy. And Red will start having nightmares about things that don’t exist anymore, and my life will get very, very inconvenient. So, let's cool our heads, shall we?”

Martyn gave Tanguish a long, lingering glance, purposefully reminding Helsknight of his presence. “Wouldn't want to get all violent and scare off your new squire anyways.”

Tanguish learned a lot about Martyn in that instant. The first being that, for all his easygoing and flippant façade, he observed a lot more than he let on. The second, more important thing, was he knew very well where to place a knife -- right through the holes in the knight’s armor. Helsknight’s demeanor chilled almost immediately. He took a step back, his clenched fists relaxed, and though he still scowled, the red in his eyes guttered out like a candle. Tanguish knew it was because of him, because Martyn had dragged him back into the conversation, but he didn't feel… threatened. It felt more like Martyn was reminding Helsknight that Tanguish was watching, and expected that to matter. 

Apparently, it did.

“Uhm,” Tanguish said, because it felt like he should be saying something, or at least attempting to diffuse the situation, “that was… very impressive. The -- getting out of the grab, I mean.”

“Thank you,” Martyn said graciously, his easy smile claiming his features again. “At least someone appreciates my skills and talents. Not everyone can cut the Champion down to size.”

“Trust me, it's appreciated,” Helsknight growled witheringly. He jabbed a thumb in Tanguish’s direction. “Will you teach him?”

“What's in it for me?”

“No bargains,” Tanguish snapped, before Helsknight could even open his mouth. All three Colosseum fighters -- including EB, who Tanguish had forgotten was still here -- all looked at him in near unison. Tanguish’s stomach did a nervous flip. Apparently, he said that louder than he planned to. Trying very hard not to drop his gaze so EB could hear him, Tanguish stammered. “I don’t-- uhm… I don't want Helsknight making any more bargains on my account. I don't-- it's-- I appreciate it but… don't. Please.”

As soon as he was done talking, Tanguish dropped his gaze down, and tried very hard not to sink through the floor. Martyn signed something, and while Tanguish didn't know all of what he said, he picked up one of the few signs he was starting to recognize. Demon. Helsknight cleared his throat uncomfortably and signed something back, that same sweeping away gesture he'd signed to EB. Later.

“You're in trouble, aren't you?” Martyn asked. Tanguish looked up, and saw Martyn was watching Helsknight. 

“I will be fine,” Helsknight said evenly, deliberately side-stepping having to tell the truth.

Martyn narrowed his eyes and pointed a wary finger at Helsknight. “Oh no, I wasn't born yesterday, and neither was EB, and I assume your squire knows your stupid tenets--”

“Are you going to help, or not?” Helsknight snapped. “Because right now you're wasting my time.”

Martyn rocked back on his heels like he'd been slapped, “Wasting your-- wa--wasting your--! Alright. You know what? Fine. Yeah, I'll teach your shadow.” Martyn rapped his knuckles once against Helsknight’s chest. “But you and me are sparring when I'm done, yeah?”

“Yeah?” Helsknight smirked.

“Yeah, because when the Demon kills you, someone’s gotta take that Champion’s crown of yours,” Martyn shouted, wiping the smirk off Helsknight’s face in an instant. He gave Helsknight a shove, and the knight took a step back, more to humor the action than anything. “I swear, you're insufferable. Wasting your time. Wasting your -- what about my time huh? Or Red’s? Or EB’s for that matter? Wasting time, I swear--”

Martyn stuck out his hand, this time in a clear gesture to shake. “Alright then, sign it in blood or whatever it is you stupid knights do.” Scowling, Helsknight and Martyn clasped forearms. When they broke, Martyn huffed, “And go talk to Red. He's worried about you -- gods know why.”

Tanguish, who had just asked Helsknight not to make any bargains, opened his mouth to protest, only to have Martyn grab him by the arm and drag him off.

“I am going to teach you the Rule of Glass,” Martyn whispered to him scathingly, “and oh boy, we are going to cut that insufferable man down to size, you and me.”

For the next ten days, after knife practice, Martyn proceeded to teach Tanguish the dubious art of defending himself from a world that was bigger, faster, and stronger than him. His so-called “Rule of Glass.” And while Tanguish certainly wasn't a master of it, he took to it rather well, a point Helsknight was infinitely smug about.

The Rule of Glass was simple: Tanguish was a person made of glass, and the instant he was in danger, that glass broke. Broken glass was sharp on every edge, and no matter how it was handled, it cut. The point was to keep doing harm until they finally let go.

Tanguish had asked, during the several sessions that Martyn tossed him around the arena like a hacky sack, showing him clever harms, how he would know his glass was broken, to which Martyn had given an evil little chuckle and simply said: “You'll know.”

And the moment Welsknight’s sword pressed against Tanguish’s back, his very first coherent thought, underneath the general cacophony of “Gods and Saints this isn't good” and “I knew something like this was going to happen!” and “Swords. It's always swords'' was:

(Huh, Martyn was right. It really is that easy to tell.)

Being held at sword point, suddenly and without warning, and for absolutely no reason, felt very much like accidentally dropping a glass plate all over the floor. His mouth went dry, and his whole body stilled, and there was a lingering feeling in the back of his head of being cheated, because really, he'd been so close to avoiding disaster. Tanguish swallowed. He took the best bracing breath he could manage, and glanced down at the shulker box in his hands. 

(Right. Glass.)

 Alright,” Welsknight said, prodding Tanguish meaningfully in the back. “Turn around slowly, if you please.”

(He was being very polite for someone poking him with a sword. It was really kind of silly that he bothered.)

Tanguish did as he was told, slowly turning to come face-to-face with Welsknight. While this wasn’t the first time he had ever seen the knight, it struck him again just how pretty he was. He didn’t loom like Helsknight did, didn’t cut the same dangerous silhouette, but there was something powerful about him, like a glow just beneath his skin. He didn’t wear a helmet, he probably didn’t need one, and the line of his arm from his shoulder to his sword was strong in a graceful way, like he could hold it there all day if he had to. His eyes were blue like the sky, so crisp and light they seemed nearly white around the pupils, and he smiled. It was not the wolf-grin Helsknight often gave. It was the soft, confident smile of someone who had the tendency to simply fall into place where they needed to be, whenever it was most convenient for them to be there.

Grand. Tanguish thought Welsknight was grand in the way a basalt cathedral was grand, implications of divinity and all.

“Perfect,” Welsknight said coolly. “Now, helsmet, who are you, and what are you doing here?”

It was a simple question. Tanguish swallowed again, and managed to say with only a little quaver in his voice, “U-uhm. I’m, well, I’m shopping? In the shopping district. For redstone. I mean, you saw my shulker box, right? You were looking at it in the building -- really, it's not mine -- not for me. I don’t mean I stole it! It’s just, I don’t really have a need for redstone since--”

Tanguish threw the shulker box at Welsknight mid-sentence, taking both of them by surprise. This was a trick Martyn had taught him, and he thought it paired rather well with his nervous babbling. Most people didn’t seem to think you would interrupt yourself to start fighting -- and Welsknight certainly seemed to be proving the thought right. He staggered back a step, too busy shielding his face to make good on his threat of stabbing something, a fact Tanguish was immensely grateful for. 

Tanguish spun on his heel and bolted. He made it two strides before Welsknight lunged forward, digging the point of his sword into Tango’s cloak, and pinning it to the road. That was fine. As soon as Tanguish felt the tug on his shoulders, he wriggled out of the thing and kept running. He hadn’t wanted to keep it on anyway. Behind him, Welsknight had to stop to dislodge his sword and sheath it, and that was precious time Tanguish was striding down the road, eyes fixed ahead, mind spinning.

EB had told him, during one of his long days doing footwork, to keep thinking, because the moment he stopped thinking, was the moment he would stop being able to defend himself. The problem though was that Tanguish could only remember EB’s voice saying sternly, “Keep thinking,” over and over, playing in a panicked loop while the colored walls of the shopping district blurred past him. Keep thinking to do what? Keep thinking how? He was thinking right now and it sure wasn’t helping! He was thinking this was pointless, because he had no idea where he was going. This was Welsknight’s turf, his home server, and this was only the second time Tanguish had been in the shopping district. 

As if in recognition of his dismay, a rocket blast sounded behind Tanguish suddenly, and Welsknight went blurring past him, an outstretched elytra wing nicking his shoulder and tumbling him off-balance across the pavement. Tanguish tilted, and he knew he hit the ground because the skin on his arms and knees burned from where he caught himself, but by the time his mind caught up with the tumble he had already jumped to his feet. Welsknight glided so low to the ground he could touch it -- and he did, reaching out a gauntleted hand to grab the pavement and pivot, his blue cloak fanning out into a wide, dragon-like spread of wings. He landed crouched, facing back towards Tanguish.

They sprang in unison, Welsknight for Tanguish, and Tanguish for a side street. An armored fist slammed past Tanguish’s peripheral vision, but he ducked it and kept running. It occurred to him in that moment that he was faster than Wels was, which struck him as strange. He was slower than Helsknight, and if Welsknight was the stronger of the two, shouldn’t he be slower than Welsknight? Not that it mattered, because he was certainly slower than rockets and elytra. From the corner of his eye, Tanguish caught a glimpse of Welsknight in the reflection of a window, leaping, rising, wings open, angelic, readying another dive. He was reminded momentarily of the Demon, black and gold wings spreading, lunging for him.

(Always in a straight line. They probably can’t turn.)

It was a marvelous thought, an ounce of common sense that broke through the background static of his heartbeat in his ears and his pounding feet. Tanguish lunged for another side street, feeling the wind as Welsknight’s dive took him past, and his heart soared. He might have cried out in victory, if he weren’t so breathless. 

Rockets hissed overhead, Welsknight dashed upwards, a shadow jilted across the road.

Tanguish burst into the square, the nether portal giving off heat waves through the purple swirls. He thought briefly of running in, but he’d never been to the nether in Hermitcraft. He had no idea if it would open into a lava lake, or dead end in a room. Briefly, he remembered his coin, and would have reached for it if Welsknight didn’t go rocketing towards him at that moment. He couldn’t stand still to toss it, and he didn’t dare dig for it in his pocket while he ran, for fear of tripping himself or dropping it and losing it forever. Instead, Tanguish kept running, searching for anything of use. His eyes landed first on a white pillar building, and the lever running to it. (Someone had made a random redstone circuit and just hooked it up to the square? Why in hels--?)

One of Welsknight’s rockets sounded, and the whistling of his dive shredded through the air. Tanguish dashed for the lever, because at worst it did nothing, and at best it might give him somewhere to escape to. There was a loud sizzle and a trumpetting blast of music, and Welsknight’s wings flared overhead as he tried to abort his dive -- right as a fireworks display roared to life. Welsknight let out an inglorious squawk as colors and sparks concussed around him, threatening to knock him out of the air. Tanguish winced. (Well, if the knight wasn’t angry before, surely he was now.)

Tanguish bolted again, running in any direction that would take him away from the sound of fireworks. Finally, his panicked brain started to pull more coherent thoughts together as the initial shock of the chase began to wear thin. He’d lost track of Welsknight, but that was fine. With any luck he was just confused by all the noise and forced to fly away, and Tanguish, really, really hoped the knight had decided to fly away. He was getting tired, and he was out of breath, and he didn’t want to be chased anymore.

(A reflection, he thought feverishly, if I can just find one reflective surface, I can get home. Tango will understand--)

Tanguish had passed several, he knew. Windows on buildings, lamp posts, even a sculpture with emeralds piled on it. But they were all back towards the square, the last place he’d seen Welsknight, and he wasn’t risking going back. Instead, he jogged down the road, watching in dismay as builds quickly gave way to birch. This area wasn’t as developed, though some great white and gray aqueduct rose ahead of him and -- oh! Aqueducts had water, didn’t they? And he knew for a fact he could slip through his reflection there. Besides, the aqueduct was already rearing up in front of him, weathered calcite and diorite crashing together in swooping arches that reminded him of home. Tanguish looked around and, seeing no one, jumped for the first hand-hold he could find.

Tanguish made short work of the climb. Between the fistfuls of lichen and the natural chips and pores in the surface, there was plenty for him to grab onto, and there was a breeze. All the breezes in hels were hot, solid walls, drafts from fires and moving lava. This was a real, fresh air breeze that tugged at his clothes and felt with sprawling hands through his lungs when he breathed, and for a moment he forgot he was running from a knight on a server that hated him. For a moment he was just reveling in the fun of doing something he was good at. No challenging footwork, or holding up knives in awkward hands, or running through shopping districts for materials he didn’t know how to find. Then he was pulling himself up over the edge, so high up the trees could’ve been grass blades, with clear, cool, knee-deep water ready to greet him. Tanguish splashed inside rather unceremoniously, but he didn’t much care. He waited for the water to still and his reflection to clear and--

“Stop.”

The voice was as firm and unyielding as gold. Everything about Tanguish stilled. Even his heartbeat slowed.

“Don’t run.”

Gentler, more liquid. Not the unyielding weight of gold but the iridescent idea of it, molten and running. Tanguish didn’t move. Couldn’t move even if he wanted to, not when a voice that commanding, that sure, told him to do something. 

There was a hand on Tanguish’s shoulder, and he blinked, a dreaminess he hadn’t noticed dispelling from him. A jolt ran through him. Welsknight. That’s who the hand was. Welsknight grabbed a fistful of his shirt, and his liquid voice was in his ear again, and the dream-like gold smothered his panic before it could even get his heart racing.

“It’s okay. You’re okay. I need you to walk with me, alright?”

Tanguish blinked slowly, and when Welsknight took a step backwards, so did he.

“Good. Good. That’s perfect.” 

Good. Perfect. Another step backwards, guided by a gentle hand, and a voice like gossamer. Tanguish felt less like he was walking, and more like he was floating, stepping airily backwards. There was something, a thought, swimming at the edge of his mind, important. Tanguish frowned. 

“You’re going to hurt me,” he said, or he tried to say. His words fell like marbles out of his mouth and tasted like crude iron. 

“No.” Liquid, reassuring, commanding. Gold. Tanguish’s thoughts left him just as surely as if they had been shoved underwater. “You will be safe if you walk this way. It’s alright.”

The voice obliterated all thought, and every sense shimmered. The water around his knees was cold in the way a reflection off the ice was cold, smeared in blurry lines across a frozen horizon. The hand on his shoulder was warm and bright like sunlight, even as the breeze cooled the rest of his skin. Tanguish walked one step after another, thoughts swimming beneath puddles of gold, gently nudged beneath the surface with every word.

“Good, you’re doing well. Walk with me, it’s alright.”

It could have been a cadence, or a song, or even a prayer. 

And just as abruptly as it came over him, it snapped away as Welsknight twisted his fist into Tanguish’s shirt and very nearly threw him onto a tiled floor. They were at the top of a tower connected to the aqueducts, and all Tanguish’s memories from the past minutes were only smears of color, but he was gasping like he’d been drowning.

“Are you helsmets all insane?” Welsknight snapped, lost somewhere between anger and incredulity. “I understand scared, I understand panic. But jumping off BDub’s aqueduct? Really?”

Tanguish blinked rapidly, thoughts finally, with agonizing slowness, clicking into place. “You thought I was going to jump off the aqueduct?”

“Why else would you be up here?!”

Tanguish laughed, a quick bark of a noise that was more confusion than anything else. “Why would I jump?”

Welsknight flailed his arms meaninglessly. “How should I know?”

“Well, I wasn’t going to,” Tanguish said, trying to sound grateful, or at least a little less insulted. “Thank you, I guess. For caring if I fell off.”

This statement soothed Welsknight somewhat. His shoulders relaxed, the previous argumentative lean falling out of his posture. “Of course. Falling is one of the worst ways to go, I think. Especially if it doesn’t kill you outright.”

Tanguish, who had fallen off rooftops enough times for it to lose all novelty, winced empathetically. An awkward silence passed between them, where Welsknight hovered in the doorway and Tanguish, too scared of setting off more violence, didn’t move from his seat on the floor. The crisp sound of running water was loud in the silence.

“Uhm, the fireworks were clever,” Welsknight offered, a frown creasing his forehead. “Didn’t work, but it was clever.”

“I thought it might be a door or something. I wasn’t trying to hurt you.” Tanguish admitted honestly. He didn’t see a point in lying, and Welsknight seemed to believe him. At least he didn’t scoff, or make some sarcastic return like Helsknight would. Tentatively, Tanguish asked, “Did it hurt you?”

Welsknight shrugged. “Made my ears ring.”

“Ah.”

“But no, I’m all in one piece,” he splayed his arms and looked down at himself as if to check and make sure. His armor had a few scuffs on it, and there was a lingering smell of gunpowder in the air, but yes, the knight looked whole.

(Okay, we’re talking. That’s… Tanguish thought that was… good. Reasonable people who aren’t going to kill each other talk. So he should keep Welsknight talking.)

“Can I stand up?” Tanguish asked, and when Welsknight gave him a questioning look. “I don’t want to get stabbed because you think I’m moving too fast or something.”

“I’m not going to stab you,” Welsknight said, that bell-like incredulous laugh ringing in his voice again. “I was trying to interrogate you.”

Tanguish could feel the conversation dancing towards something precarious. He got to his feet slowly, making a show of dusting off his clothes -- and as subtly as he could manage, slipped two fingers into his pocket to grab his coin. 

“Forgive me, being held at sword point gave me a different impression,” Tanguish told him, cringing back a step and keeping his gaze low towards the knight’s feet. It made him look smaller. It was the kind of thing that would make Helsknight backpedal, because he wasn't supposed to inspire fear or harm people who couldn't protect themselves. If Welsknight had similar reservations about inspiring fear and limiting harm, they weren't bothering him now. He took a step forward, not looming, but making no effort to be less threatening. If anything, he was trying harder to be scary. It made Tanguish nervous, and he shuffled another half-step back away.

“I don't know how dangerous you are,” Welsknight said smoothly, his voice taking on an edge. “Besides, you were with him, and I know he's dangerous.”

(Well, at least Tanguish knew the knights’ hate for each other was mutual.)

“Tango isn't a fighter,” Tanguish pointed out, trying to sound reasonable. “It follows that I wouldn't be either.”

“That doesn't mean anything,” Welsknight scoffed. “Hels has been a better swordsman than me since he spawned in.”

Tanguish blinked, honestly surprised by that. He cast his memory back to the last time Helsknight respawned, after his fight with his double. Tanguish hadn’t witnessed the fight itself, but he remembered the gasped respawn, how angry Helsknight had been. Maybe he hadn't expected to lose. 

“Well, I'm harmless,” Tanguish said quietly, eyes glancing at the sword hung on Welsknight’s side, the pommel of which Welsknight had just rested a meaningful hand on.

“No helsmet alive is harmless,” Welsknight said, with the golden conviction of a perceived truth of the world. He glared down at Tanguish, all might and grandeur. “I’ll ask you one last time. Why are you here?”

Tanguish’s eyes riveted themselves to the undrawn sword, and the way Welsknight tilted it forward, ready to bring it flashing forth. The familiarity of the situation gave him a feeling of nightmare and sore memory. He remembered fearing Helsknight like this, wondering if the knight might suddenly decide, for reasons he couldn’t fathom, to kill him. Tanguish stammered beseechingly, “U-uhm, you said you wouldn’t hurt me.”

“No,” Welsknight said, his voice honey-gold and dangerous, “I said you would be safe if you followed me away from the bridge. You were.”

Tanguish wanted to laugh. 

(No, he really wanted to say that's a technicality, but he said that to Helsknight over something so similar, it verged on the uncanny.)

“You know,” Tanguish said, smiling ruefully, “you two really are a lot alike.”

Welsknight flinched as if he’d been struck, hand coming away from his sword to block the blow the words held. It wasn't a reaction Tanguish had expected, but he had to admit, he wasn't all that surprised either. Deciding not to press his luck any further, Tanguish flipped his coin in the air. In the moment it took Welsknight to recover himself and recognize the motion, Tanguish had already caught it again, and vanished back into hels, where no gold-and-silver knight could threaten to follow.

Chapter Text

Tanguish fell out of his coin ungracefully onto Helsknight’s couch, landed awkwardly on his skinned arm, yelped, and promptly tumbled onto the hard floor. He lay there for a long moment, breathing, and shaking just a little, not thinking about anything. He felt like he could still hear the impressions of gold glittering in his ears, and feel it smearing the colors of the glowstone lamps in the ceiling. Or he was just tired from running too much, which was the more likely scenario. Still, he laid there on the floor, trying to make sure his thoughts were his own, and trying to shake the feeling that, at any moment, Welsknight would somehow follow him into the room. Panic was a wave, ebbing and rising and ebbing again, and he thought if he could just lay here long enough, eventually, the tide would go out.

“I take it our self-defense classes didn’t work?”

Tanguish startled at the soft voice, not a whisper, but casual in a way dissonant to his own emotions. He turned his head to see Martyn crouched at the base of a rather plain looking bed, shoulder deep in a chest. It was then that Tanguish realized he had not, in fact, leaped back into hels near his spawn point on Helsknight’s couch, but instead in Helsknight’s cell beneath the Colosseum. He remembered taking a brief nap down here a few days ago, but he had certainly slept since then, and not here.

“Uhm. Huh?” Tanguish said elegantly, sitting up gingerly from the hard tile floor. 

(Maybe it was his familiarity with the place? He had been back to the Colosseum quite often the past few weeks. Perhaps his coin had sensed he was in danger, and took him to the safest place he knew? That was an interesting revelation. He filed that information away to poke at later.)

“Did they knock your sense out of you as well?” Martyn chuckled, raising an eyebrow, and flashing a half smile.

“No I…” Tanguish briefly entertained the idea of explaining he hadn’t died and respawned, and had in fact just slipped away from another world to dodge the ire of Helsknight’s glorious double. Then he decided Martyn didn’t need to know that, and it was a long explanation besides. “The training worked okay, actually. I lasted longer than I think I would normally, uhm, maybe.”

Martyn beamed, “Well that’s just good progress there! Did you make ‘em regret going after you?”

“I threw a box at his face,” Tanguish said, and when Martyn seemed less than enthused by this answer added, “also I hit him with a bunch of fireworks.”

Martyn gave a vicious little chuckle. “Oh I bet that fried his brain a good bit. Good use of your surroundings, that. Style points for sure.”

“Style points?”

“It’s a Colosseum thing.” Martyn shrugged, and went back to his rummaging. Martyn stayed silent just long enough that Tanguish thought he wouldn’t explain, before he said, “Style points is just doing something that looks flashy. It's a fun little competition for the fighters, you know? Obviously, we know who’s going to win.” Martyn ushered to the room around them to indicate Helsknight. “But he's not always the prettiest fighter. Sure, the man's efficient, but most of his showmanship is in chivalry and speeches.” Martyn paused thoughtfully. “Well, and his temper. Crowd loves it when he loses his shit.”

Tanguish frowned. “Does he lose his temper often?”

“No, that’s why people like it,” Martyn took something out of the chest -- an armor piece of some sort -- and put it on the floor beside him. “I mean, think about it. The calm Champion who’s faced down like, two withers at once with a monologue and a broken sword gets called a mean name once and goes berserk? People eat that up.”

“But… he loses his temper all the time everywhere else.”

Martyn pulled something else out of the chest, inspected it and sat it down. “I know that. You know that. But all the crowd sees are a helmet, a sword, and a fist in the air. Sure, he’ll shout if he gets hurt but you think you can hear that from the stands? Not a chance.”

“Huh.” 

“Anyway, I’d give you a solid 6 style points for the fireworks.”

“Thanks?”

Martyn flashed him a two-fingered salute.

“Uhm… can I ask why you’re going through Helsknight’s stuff?” Tanguish asked, only belatedly realizing that was something Martyn probably shouldn’t be doing. “I thought stealing and snooping was generally frowned upon here.”

“Only if you get caught,” Martyn chuckled. Then, placatingly when Tanguish shot him a glare, “I’m just snooping. Not stealing.”

“What are you snooping for?”

“A loophole,” Martyn said, setting another piece of armor down. “Your boy Helsknight made a bad deal, and I know a thing or two about wiggling out of those kinds of things. Figure if the Demon didn’t make these to specs, or made it with something stolen, we’re in business.”

“Oh. Helsknight… told you about that?”

“No, but I’m not stupid.” Martyn said matter-of-factly. “Helsknight comes back, dragging you along on some mission. Then he disappears for a few days, and the Demon drops off armor and a calling card, and Helsknight is back trying to teach you how to defend yourself? It’s not subtle.”

“Ah.”

“So, how screwed is he?”

“Uhm…?”

“What’s he owe the Demon for this gear?” Martyn asked, rapping on the side of the chest. “Rig a match? Couldn’t possibly be diamonds, we don’t make that much commission.”

“An I-Owe-You.”

Martyn winced. “Ouch.”

“Yeah.”

Martyn looked glumly at the work he’d been doing, sighing dramatically. “Yeah, don’t think he can technicality his way out of that one, I’m afraid. Even if he wanted to, the Demon would have a fit.” He started piling armor back in, with noticeably less gentleness than he’d pulled it out. “Pity he’s got all that chivalry going on. If he just broke his word the Demon could take all this back and be done with it.” He slammed the chest shut with finality. 

“Uhm,” Tanguish fidgeted with his knuckle, “I don’t… think it would be that simple. The Demon… doesn’t seem like the kind of person that would just let something like that go.”

“Surely not,” Martyn agreed, getting to his feet and stretching his back. Clearly he had been crouched there for some time. “But see, if the Demon attacks anyone here outright, this place will be swarming like a kicked beehive, and if things got really bad, well, Evil X still does favors for EB from time to time. Nobody, not even the Demon, messes with EB. We’re lucky the ol sod just likes building his buzzers and playing with knives. You had lunch yet?”

Tanguish blinked, taken off-guard by the sudden change in topic. “I-- what?”

“Mess hall’s open all day -- night -- whatever,” Martyn shrugged. “I’m starving. Figure you would be too after a fight and respawn.”

Tanguish hesitated. Aside from their supervised spars on the arena floor, Tanguish had never been alone with Martyn before. He wouldn’t exactly call them friends, and Martyn certainly didn’t seem to like Helsknight. The offer seemed to be made with good intentions though, and unlike the Demon, he had no reason to suspect Martyn of trying to trap him somehow. Tanguish got to his feet and dusted himself off.

“Uh… sure.”

“That’s the spirit. Nothing like warm food in your belly to shake off a bad respawn,” Martyn grinned and clapped Tanguish on the shoulder, making him wince. He led the way up to the common area, a broad room with tables and chairs, a pair of cooking stations and, on one wall, everything a fighter would need for upkeeping steel. Tanguish had been here a few times, mostly so EB could show him how to properly care for his dagger, and Helsknight to show him how to repair his armor. The room was nearly empty now -- Tanguish guessed it must be an odd hour for food. There was one corner table with a pair of fighters sharing tea and hovering over a fighting bracket, busily chatting about who they thought was a good match up. One of the grindstones on the far side of the room was occupied with someone scrubbing the enchantments off a spearhead, grumbling bitterly as they worked.

Sitting at a table by one of the kitchen units, Tanguish recognized the Wolf, the tall stranger that had been with Martyn the first time Tanguish had been to the cells. He seemed to have been waiting expectantly, ears perked forward.

“Greetings m’lord!” Martyn called to him cheerily. “Think we’ve got room for one more at the table?”

The Wolf tilted his head to the side, the dark crown mantled over his eyes shimmering bronze in the low light. “Suppose we do, lad.” He sniffed the air once, and a toothy smirk slid jaggedly across his face. “Ah, Helsknight’s charge, I take it?”

“Squire,” Martyn agreed.

“I have a name, you know,” Tanguish said wearily.

“Good for you. I don’t,” Martyn said, opening cabinets and drawers. 

Tanguish blinked in surprise. “But… what about…?”

“Martyn is the name of my other half.” Martyn opened a cupboard and frowned at its contents, obviously trying to decide what was worth making. He nodded to the Wolf. “The Loyal Hand is a title Red came up with, and it stuck around.”

“Erm… Red?” Tanguish asked.

“The Red King,” the Wolf, Red, said with a gravity that implied it was a title of great importance. “It be a long tale, and not a kind one.”

“Oh. Would you rather I call you something else?”

“Red serves me fine,” he responded, tilting his head back just slightly and offering Tanguish a regal, gracious smile. “The Hand be only superstitious about th’ names, so he refuses t’ take one for himself. Believes they hold power.”

“Oh sod off,” Martyn grumbled, flicking a burner on and starting to cook pork chops. “I don’t think names have power. I just think it’s harder to get rid of a problem you can’t name.” He poured some oil into a pan and slipped one of his knives from his pocket, turning to rinse it before setting it to use chopping vegetables. “You’re prideful, you can work on being humble. You’re a thief, you can stop stealing. But if you’re some odd thing that just keeps turning back up -- well that’s not a real problem, is it? So I’m whatever you want me to be, but I don’t have a name, and I don’t plan on keeping one.”

“Think ye will find a name when I’m gone?”

“You’re going to live forever, my Lord.” Martyn said, in a voice that implied this was a turn in conversation they made often, and this was how he always responded.

“Thank you, me Hand,” Red said with the same sense of familiarity.

They fell into silence, broken only by the occasional laughter from the far table, and the sound of Martyn’s cooking. Tanguish thought this was supposed to be companionable, but to him it felt prolonged and awkward. Not because Red and Martyn were awkward, but because he felt at any moment, he was in danger of saying something stupid and breaking things in the worst possible way. Which, honestly, wasn’t even a fair thing to feel, because he didn’t plan on talking. He planned to sit here and be quiet, and thank Martyn for whatever food he made, and not make a fool of himself or get himself kicked out of the cells, or make Martyn hate him, or any number of things he felt doomed to do.

So he was caught completely off-guard when Red broke the silence first.

“Ye be a good friend of Helsknight’s.”

It wasn’t a question. 

“Uhm… I don’t think so.” Tanguish stammered. “I mean -- I haven’t known him for nearly as long as you guys have known him. He seems a lot more familiar with -- well, he and EB, and Martyn, uhm…”

Martyn chuckled from where he was cooking.

“I’m a friend,” Tanguish concluded, looking down at his hands and fidgeting nervously.

“... aye,” Red said slowly. “So ye be a friend of his. Ye see each other often?”

“Uhm… yes.”

“How be th’ knight?”

Tanguish picked at one of the scratches on his arm. The scrape he had taken running from Welsknight had already scabbed over, and the rough texture on his skin gave him something to worry about other than the conversation that was starting.

“Do you uhm… mind if I ask why you’re asking?”

“Because he’s asking,” Martyn said conversationally, though there was a subtle threat there, like he thought Tanguish questioning his Lord was disrespectful.

“Because he be not himself,” Red said. It was hard to tell his emotions when his eyes were covered with the crown, but the way his ears tilted backwards, it looked a little like concern. “I don’t know that ye knew Helsknight when th’ lad was at his best, but he was different than he is now. I do not say this in judgment. Change comes for us all. I fear only that his time is running out, and he has yet t’ tell us.”

“Oh… well… uhm…” Tanguish picked a little harder at the scab. “He’s not… carving stones or anything, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Red sat back a little, sighing with something like relief. 

“Is it that bad?” Tanguish asked.

“Bad? Nay,” Red shook his head. “Tis just how the universe works, and maybe th’ changes in him were ones he wanted. But I would be lying if I said it didn’t trouble me when comrades turn out th’ lights in yon cells one day and ne’er return. Ye din’t ken if yer next step on th’ sand is th’ one ye din’t respawn from. Some days the cells feel more like a tomb than a home.”

Tanguish thought of all the empty rooms near EB’s cell, doors left open to display cloaks still hung on chairs and beds unmade, as though the occupants had been there just moments ago, despite the dust on the furniture. 

“Forgetting is th’ worst part,” Red hummed, his voice low, almost meditative. “Sometimes it seems because th’ universe ne’er wanted us, it likes to pretend we ne’er existed when we’ve left. And Helsknight, he’s a right bastard when he wants to be, but he be worth remembering, aye lad?”

Tanguish nodded, and then remembering Red probably couldn’t see him added, “Y-yes. Yes, he be -- uh -- is worth remembering.”

“Next time ye see him, think ye can do me a small favor?”

“I can try.”

“Tell him his comrades are glad he’s back in our halls,” Red said, a small, toothy smile spreading on his face. “Make sure he kens he be welcome here, always.” Then he surprised Tanguish by reaching across the table and putting a hand on his. “And th’ same welcome I extend t’ thee lad, for keeping him company.”

“Oh, uhm… thank you,” Tanguish said, his heart fluttering a little quicker in his chest. Where Red touched him, his skin tingled, like the fighter’s good will could be conveyed by touch alone.

Red sat back in his seat, a slight frown worrying his face. “Ye smell of blood.”

“It’s just a scrape. I… fell.”

“There be potions in th’ chest yonder,” Red motioned vaguely in the direction of the grindstones on the far wall. “Help yerself.”

“It’s okay it’s -- It’s just a scrape.”

“Aye, and time is short,” Red told him with a surprising amount of severity. “Spending any of it in pain when ye din’t have to be a sore waste of it. Go. Me Hand will have his food done by th’ time yer back, and ye can regale me with tales of yer training on the sand.”

Tanguish, feeling a bit silly, did as he was told. It took a little aimless searching, but he eventually found the chest he’d been pointed to. No one stopped him as he grabbed a health potion from inside, and he walked carefully back to the table with it just as Martyn finished putting dishes on the table.

“So, me Hand tells me yer learning t’ be Glass?” Red asked, smiling warmly. “Tell me all about yer progress.”

And while he ate, Tanguish did. Cautiously at first, with a lot of stammering. But the more he spoke, the more Red prompted him, and the more sarcastic quips Martyn added, the easier it got. He thought Martyn embellished it a little too much, giving him victories he didn’t really earn while learning on the sand. But Red laughed a few times as Tanguish told him about accidentally kicking Martyn too hard when being taught how to break a bear hug, and Martyn feigned indignance, and Tanguish was laughing as well. It was warm, and for as scary of fighters that Martyn and Red seemed to be, it was soft, and he wondered briefly in a lull in the conversation where Red began a tale of one of his own fights, if this was what Tango felt all the time when he talked to his hermits. This warm feeling, like for just a moment, the universe was holding him gently in its hands.

They finished their meal. Red bid them a good evening and retreated for the night, stepping cautiously around obstacles he had memorized over years of living in the cells. Martyn piled their plates in the sink and walked with him out of the cells, in something that Tanguish thought resembled good hospitality. They made it almost to the ladder when a thought struck him.

“Martyn, if you don’t mind me asking--”

“I probably mind, but go ahead.”

Tanguish smirked, “Uhm, it’s just… you were trying to find a way to get Helsknight out of his deal.”

“Aye, and?”

“Did Red ask you to do that?”

“Hey now,” Martyn snorted, offended, “not everything I do is on behalf of his Lordship, you know.”

“But you don’t like Helsknight?”

“Absolutely. I think he’s an ass,” Martyn said brightly, shoving his hands in his pockets. “But he’s also one of us, isn’t he? We all bleed on this sand. We all compete so people who watch think we’re not scared of what happens when…” Martyn shrugged. “Brothers in arms and all that. I’d punch his lights out if I thought I could get away with it, but I’ll be damned if someone that isn’t us does it first, you know?”

“That makes no sense.”

“Well, you better figure it out soon,” Martyn said cryptically, turning to walk back to the cells. “You might find yourself feeling the same way.”

Chapter Text

Tanguish didn't really know how to bring up his encounter with Welsknight gracefully, or even when the best time would be. It seemed to him that just naming Helsknight’s double was akin to stashing embers in a powder keg and pretending it wouldn't explode. So, he didn't bother. Helsknight didn't really need to know, did he? There was no priority, no obvious harm about to happen. Welsknight couldn't follow him home and ambush him. Tanguish wasn’t trying to hide it, but, well, if Helsknight didn't ask, he didn't really have to tell him. And it wasn't a betrayal, and it wasn't a lie (and even if it was a lie, Tanguish wasn't a knight, so it didn't matter). 

So Tanguish went home, and Helsknight was scribbling away in his notebook, and Tanguish didn't tell him about Welsknight talking in a voice so golden it made his poetry sound like broken glass. Helsknight cooked dinner, and they ate it, and they talked about everything except Tanguish’s trip to Hermitcraft that day. And Tanguish only felt a little guilty when Helsknight took his sudden interest in their practice as a sign he was maybe starting to get over his fear of it. It was a good night, with pleasant conversation, and Tanguish didn't lie awake for entirely too long, staring at the ceiling, wondering if he was safe. Because of course he was safe. He had no reason not to be. Welsknight was far away in Hermitcraft, the Demon was far away in his lair, and Helsknight was asleep in the other room, snoring in that deep way that only the dead to the world snore. He didn’t imagine scenarios where Helsknight inexplicably hated him, once he found out he’d met his double, and he didn’t imagine being abandoned by the only friend he had. That would just be silly.

Morning came too soon, with the cotton-eyed clumsiness of worry. Tanguish rolled off the couch to breakfast, and an intimate knowledge of the phrase “woke up on the wrong side of the bed.” It seemed to him that every light was both too dark and too bright, every step off-kilter, and every word stilted.

(And he would have to deal with that through every motion of practice today. Lovely.)

At least Helsknight seemed to be in a decent mood. He rose quicker and with less soreness than normal, did his morning stretches with an ease of movement that Tanguish envied, and even offered to buy them a muffin at one of Tanguish’s favorite stalls. It was almost unfair how good Helsknight's mood was. Tanguish had to try very hard not to be jealous, with only marginal amounts of success.

Martyn was already on the sand when they arrived at the Colosseum, sharpening a long knife. The small, lethal noise was a new one to be greeted with. While Tanguish had been taught to sharpen his dagger, he had yet to use it for anything more than practicing forms and cutting air, and so sharpening it hadn't been necessary. The pack of fighters hels-bent on teaching him how to use a knife had all kept theirs sheathed, unless in use demonstrating forms -- or goofing off. Really, he should have taken the knife-sharpening as its intended bad omen. His next meaningful clue was when EB emerged from the cells carrying a small chest. As he set it down on one of the stone benches, it clattered with bottled potions.

“Are we… changing things up today?” Tanguish asked cautiously.

“I’ll say we are,” Martyn said cheerily, wiping his blade clean and running an experimental finger down its length, testing the sharpness. “You got attacked yesterday.”

“Oh, did he?” Helsknight threw Tanguish a meaningful glare, and Tanguish dropped his gaze down to the sand. “This is the first I’m hearing of it.”

“Martyn thinks we should pair him up with someone so he can apply his skills,” EB said, signing quickly. “I agree.”

“I mean let's face it, he's a natural at footwork,” Martyn shrugged. “He's far from perfect, but most of the faults in his form will come out when he's also swinging his knife around.”

“And if I don't want to swing the knife around?” Tanguish asked nervously.

“Then don't swing the knife around,” Martyn chimed, smiling pleasantly. “But whoever got you yesterday is bound to get you again, aren't they?”

Tanguish blinked down at his fidgeting hands. (That… was a good point. Welsknight knew he was a return visitor to Hermitcraft now. The odds of Welsknight finding him again were… disconcertingly high. And while Tanguish still didn't have a prayer of ever actually fighting a knight, giving him a reason to keep his distance would be… nice.)

No helsmet is harmless.

“Uhm… okay,” Tanguish stammered, “but be gentle with me please.”

The sharp snk! of drawing steel drew Tanguish’s gaze as Helsknight unsheathed his dagger. It was a long blade – probably would be a short sword, if it were just a hand span longer. It had a heavy pommel and a studiously sharpened edge, and in Helsknight’s hand it still managed to look small, an extension of his arm instead of a weapon on its own.

“Don't worry,” Helsknight said with a smile that should have been reassuring. “If anyone is getting accidentally stabbed today, it's probably me.”

(That did not make Tanguish feel any better.)

Their set up was simple. Over the past couple weeks, Tanguish had been taught several footwork sets. They weren’t much, mostly different ways of walking back and forth paired with holding the knife one position or another. According to Helsknight, it was so he got used to moving while holding a weapon. That way when Tanguish moved on to the dangerous part -- moving his feet while also moving his arms -- the chances of him accidently flailing around and stabbing himself, or tripping over his feet and stabbing himself, or any other act of clumsiness that could end in making himself bleed everywhere, were much less likely to happen. There had been a very optimistic part of Tanguish's mind that had hoped they would never get past the footwork, that maybe he would be so abysmal at it, or the fighters would get bored enough, that he would never have to actually swing his little knife around. Yet here he was, standing beside Helsknight, watching as Martyn named a footwork set and showed a counter, while EB did a very lazy show of trying to attack Martyn. 

“We’re going to start simple.” Martyn said, twirling his long knife around two of his fingers in a flourish. “Basic blade deflect, for when someone comes at you in a rush--”

Tanguish watched nervously as Martyn and EB went through the motions, explained which direction to cut, and which side of the dagger was supposed to make contact with the other person’s blade. They made it all look unfairly easy, two lengths of steel fated to meet at a certain point, one blade destined to be turned aside, two pairs of feet preordained to move in a certain pattern. Beside Tanguish, Helsknight watched the exercise with a bored expression, more biding time than anything. Then, when Martyn and EB had mimed through their motions a few times, Helsknight turned to him and said, “Ready to give it a try?”

Tanguish wanted to say no, that no matter how easy it looked, emotionally, he wasn’t ready to cross blades with someone. That he was scared of getting hurt, could still remember what the line the Demon had drawn on his stomach felt like. That it didn’t matter that no one here meant him any harm, that they were moving slowly specifically so he wouldn’t get hurt.

Instead he said, “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

Helsknight smiled at him, the warm, confident smile of someone genuinely trying to be helpful. “Alright then. Get your feet set.”

Tanguish did as he was told, feet shoulder width apart, one foot stepped slightly forward of the other.

“Now I’m going to come forward in a stab,” Helsknight did the move slowly. “Your blade is going to come up and meet mine here.” He guided Tanguish’s wrist until their knives were crossed. “And at the same time, you’re going to be stepping back while I lunge forward.”

Tanguish took two steps back, and Helsknight leaned towards him, overextended and slightly off-balance.

“Good, perfect.”

Tanguish, who had been watching their hands, jerked his gaze up to Helsknight’s face. The knight said it so soothingly, intentionally so, trying to keep Tanguish calm. Not honey gold, maybe burnished brass, but still close enough to send a shudder through him. Tanguish’s already nervous heartbeat started to hammer just a little faster. 

“U-uhm… thanks.”

“I knew you’d be good at this,” Helsknight said again, smirking, the illusion of his double breaking. “You’re quick on the uptake. Try it again.”

Tanguish did, moving through the same motion, this time a little faster. Helsknight’s previous slow glide forward was more like a jab, and this time when their daggers crossed, the sharp click! of steel resounded, not nearly so loud as two swords with all the weight and confidence of a fighter behind them, but just loud enough to set Tanguish’s teeth on edge. Helsknight let the parry throw his arm to the side, and he caught Tanguish’s wrist with his free hand before he could swing it anywhere.

“Perfect,” Helsknight told him again. “Do you know what a parry like this is good for?”

“U-uhm… getting someone else’s knife away?”

“Yes. But it also leaves them open.” Helsknight guided Tanguish’s wrist so that his blade tapped the knight’s joint at the elbow. “You can disable someone here, if they’re not quick enough to move their arm. Or you can get their hand or their wrist. Or you can close distance--” he took a step towards Tanguish, guiding his wrist again, his movements slow and deliberate, “--and their arm is up enough for you to get their side. You want to aim just below the ribs, otherwise your blade might get stuck.”

There was something terrifying about Tanguish holding a knife so close to Helsknight’s unguarded chest that he really, really didn’t like. It wasn't just that he was holding a blade, and blades were sharp and dangerous. It was that Helsknight was right there, guiding Tanguish’s hand to the exactly point on his side where he could kill him, and he trusted Tanguish to simply… not do that. Implicitly. The knowledge of that trust brought to Tanguish a deep, irrational fear that he would somehow betray it, that he would slip and draw blood or worse, even though Helsknight’s hand was still sure and guiding around his wrist, keeping just that thing from happening. 

Helsknight stepped away from him, resetting their distance and letting Tanguish go. Tanguish recoiled a step of his own.

“Again,” Helsknight told him, steely and calm in every way Tanguish wasn’t. Tanguish hesitated, and ran through the set again. And again. Their daggers clashed, symbol-like and grating, but Tanguish didn’t trip, and he didn’t drop his dagger, and neither of them got stabbed. It was a relief when, after they had run through the set about twenty times, Martyn called for them to learn the next one. And the next one. 

To say Tanguish relaxed would have been wrong. He was nervous the entire time he and Helsknight paced through their sets. His pulse was quick, his palms sweat just enough that he had to keep wiping them on his pants, and his mouth stayed persistently dry. At any moment his nerves whispered at him to be ready to run, that if he hurt Helsknight or hurt himself, he should bolt as far away from the harm as possible. His body though, his muscles, his subconscious mind, took in everything he was doing and said “Well, this isn’t that different from the footwork, is it?” He stayed loose. His grip on his dagger stayed relatively sure. His feet didn’t falter. Tanguish was scared. He feared the implications that came with knowing how to hurt someone, and he was scared that he even had to know it. The rest of him thought the exercise was an interesting challenge, and one he could attune to rather quickly, if he would just get over the mental hurdles attached to it. It was honestly kind of startling how quickly he was passing through the sets. His arm wobbled a little. Sometimes Helsknight would stop his feet just so he could go through the motion of a slash or a parry, so he could learn how the arm movement was supposed to feel. But Tanguish had good hand-eye coordination from all his practice scaling buildings, and he knew how his body was supposed to move when it all moved together. Sure, he was using his muscles a little differently than he was used to, and he could already tell he would be sore that night when he went to sleep, but how different was a slash to the right than, say, the reaching lunge he might need to do to grab an iron gable?

Before Tanguish knew it, they were breaking for lunch, and his arms were shaky and a little sore, and his hair was plastered to his face with sweat and his body felt almost feverish for how hot and jittery he was. Helsknight seemed nearly pristine, though that didn't surprise him much. The man moved with so much assurity and grace he could have been dancing all morning, except even dancing would have left someone breathless. He had the confident glow of someone who was in his element, doing something he knew he could do well, and had once again proven himself right. It was dangerous grace, wolf grace, and it reminded Tanguish that he wasn't just learning from anyone, he was learning from the Champion of hels. It was such an easy thing to forget, even surrounded by the place the name was won from.

“So, what are we thinking?” Martyn asked, passing around some bread and meat that Tanguish was starting to get used to as a staple in the Colosseum. “Thoughts, concerns?”

“It's good work,” EB said, thumping Tanguish on the back hard enough that he almost dropped his lunch. “We should sign you up for the next bracket.”

Tanguish felt himself flush, partly from nervousness, partly from embarrassment. “I'm definitely not that good.”

“You're coming along well,” Helsknight told him. “You need to trust your movements more, but that will come in time.”

“Hesitation is the enemy of victory,” EB agreed, as though recounting some sage advice.

“Erm… right.” Tanguish muttered into his lunch.

“If you want my advice,” Martyn said, clearly unconcerned if his advice was wanted or not, “you should spend your afternoon on a spar. Apply what you've learned -- slowly. You want a partner with a lot of control.”

Martyn glanced knowingly in Helsknight’s direction. Tanguish felt his stomach drop through the floor.

“I can't fight Helsknight.”

“You're absolutely right, you can't fight Helsknight,” Martyn tutted, either not noticing or not caring about the worry in Tanguish’s voice, “but you can do a practice match with him.”

EB chuckled. “If you're scared of hurting him, don't be.”

“Glad you guys have my safety in mind,” Helsknight said, barely managing to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. 

“Oh, like your dear squire could touch you even if he wanted to.” Martyn waved a hand dismissively. “You play me like a fiddle every time we practice, and I actually try to hurt you.”

“Uhm…” Tanguish fidgeted with one of his knuckles self-consciously, “That's… not exactlywhat I'm scared of.” He glanced at Helsknight, who was frowning down at him, and dropped his gaze just as quickly as he'd looked. “Sorry.”

Helsknight gave a long-suffering sigh that seemed to say a lot about the things he was expected to put up with. With visible, intentional patience he said, “If you're scared I will hurt you, don't be. I cannot raise my blade to you in anger, and even with our lessons, I don’t think you have a fighting chance. You're as safe as you can expect to be while practicing a weapons craft.”

Tanguish kept his gaze firmly on his hands, trying to stamp down his nerves. He didn't know why, but something about the way Helsknight said that last sentence, as safe as you can expect, made him think of Welsknight. There was something in the inflection, in the implication that, should harm actually come, he wasn't technically lying. It made his stomach churn. 

I said you would be safe. You were.

Tanguish shook his head abruptly. He needed to stop this. Helsknight and his double were not the same person. It shouldn't be a hard thing to remember, but they had been so eerily similar their edges were starting to blur and Tanguish didn't want that, not least because if Helsknight knew, he'd be furious. And heartbroken, if the knight could feel heartbreak, and not just a more somber kind of anger. Helsknight was the one who had helped Tanguish on his quest. Helsknight was the one who had fought the Demon on his behalf. Helsknight was the one trying to make sure he could defend himself if, and when, the Demon came back. Welsknight was just a chance meeting with a knight who had broken his word.

“He's clearly still scared,” EB was saying, signing ponderously. “Once he's more familiar with the blade, this will come easier. We should let it rest for now.”

“He got attacked yesterday,” Martyn protested, gesturing with his dagger to emphasize his words. EB leaned back a little, wary of the lethal little movements. “If I were getting jumped on the reg, you'd want me as equipped as possible. I would want me as equipped as possible.”

“If you were getting jumped regularly, half of hels would be missing their shins,” Helsknight said dryly.

“Is that a short joke? Because I will cut you down to my level giant, watch me.”

“I want to see you try, Martyn.”

“You two are insufferable,” EB signed, glaring between the two witheringly.

“Then get used to suffering,” Martyn sniffed. “You asked for my help, remember?”

“Helsknight asked for your help.”

“You saying you don't want me around, ex-champion? I'm wounded!”

“I'm just saying you should be making him suffer, not me.”

“Well what do you think I threatened him for?”

“Oh, was that a threat?” Helsknight asked, raising a sardonic eyebrow. “I'm afraid I couldn't hear you way down there.”

Martyn flashed him a feral grin. “I will feed you your kneecaps, knight.”

EB sighed loudly, putting his face in one pair of hands while signing some unknown expletives with the other two. Sensing they were nearing some invisible line in EB’s patience, both Martyn and Helsknight sat back away from each other, with twin glares that indicated they would pick up this line of antagonism as soon as it was convenient. 

(They reminded Tanguish, however briefly, of a pair of angry tomcats, always ready to fight but somehow always still resting on the same hearth. He thought about Martyn, and their talk the day before that only fighters could mess with fighters, because they all shared the same sand, and he wondered if all this antagonism was just some kind of show. Not that they didn't mean it -- Tanguish imagined Helsknight and Martyn would wrestle each other to the ground the moment they got the chance. But they didn't bite at Tanguish the same way, didn't make the same threats or do the same posturing. It felt almost like all their bickering was them admitting, quietly and implicitly, that they saw each other as equals: equally dangerous, equally experienced, and equally worthy of respect. There was no world where Tanguish wanted to be treated the same way -- the idea that Helsknight or Martyn or anyone would threaten him for fun or validation was terrifying -- but he was very aware they handled him gentler, like he wasn't strong enough to take the full force of their personalities. While Tanguish didn't want to be treated with casual violence, he did want to be strong, and he knew they were trying their best to make him strong in the only way they knew how.)

“Uhm…” Tanguish mumbled into the silence left in the absence of their bickering. “I would like to… try.” He curled his tail around his ankles protectively. “Try the sparring. If you all think it would help.”

Tanguish startled as a hand brush against him. EB had reached out and clasped his shoulder, a gesture as reassuring as it was stern.

“If you're not ready, you're not ready,” EB told him firmly. “These two have been fighting since the day they spawned in, and I have been fighting for longer than I haven’t. Don't feel the need to climb a mountain just because we say it's a jog up the road, yeah?”

“I understand,” Tanguish said, trying to sound surer than he felt. “Thank you. But Martyn’s right. I'm tired of being an easy target.” Tanguish gave Helsknight a smile that was a little too close to a grimace. “And you wouldn't hurt me over something as stupid as a play fight, right?”

“You shouldn't even have to ask,” Helsknight said, his voice sounding a little stung. But his expression still showed some humor, and the red flicker in his eyes was so fast as to be nonexistent, an irritation, not an insult. 

They ate lunch. They talked. EB mentioned the upcoming bracket again, a topic that was popping up more and more often in the steady flow conversation between the three fighters. It seemed the only thing besides Tanguish that could unify them, familiar ground well tread. Martyn mentioned animals being corralled from off hels, phantoms and wolves. Helsknight had already signed his name on the bracket. The Champion always fought. They lingered probably just a little too long. Long enough that Tanguish began to hope they could just stay like this, and no one would make him stand up and make good on his offer to try. Then Helsknight stood and stretched, and popped the fingers on his right hand as if that could somehow limber them up, and nodded towards their practice arena.

“En garde,” Helsknight smirked, and walked onto the sand.

Tanguish swallowed hard.

“Oh don’t worry,” Martyn said, waving a dismissive hand, “knightly tenets or whatever aside, the man’s good enough with a blade not to hurt you unless he wants to, and EB owes me ten diamonds if you somehow manage to hurt him.”

EB elbowed Martyn with two elbows, and offered kindly, “We can stay close by if you like, just in case you want someone to intervene.”

“Uhm… no it’s… okay. It’ll be fine.” Tanguish fidgeted awkwardly for a moment before remembering to say, “Er -- thank you for offering.” Then he unsheathed his dagger and joined Helsknight on the sand.

“Ready to cut me to ribbons?” Helsknight asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Don’t… don’t joke about that please.”

“I am taking this very seriously,” Helsknight said, smiling wolfishly. “Now loosen up and try to stab me already. My time is precious.”

Tanguish gave an indignant huff and, with nothing left to drag his feet over, settled down into one of the ready stances he’d been taught. Helsknight turned slightly, one shoulder forward, making a slightly smaller target of himself.

“I’m going to rush you,” Helsknight informed him, and when he lifted his dagger, the line of his arm from his shoulder to his dagger was strong and graceful. Tanguish felt his heartbeat give a stutter, both from the thrill of the warning, and the familiarity in the stance. Then Helsknight lunged. It was a fraction of the speed Tanguish had seen the knight use fighting the Demon, a sluggish movement well telegraphed by the dip in his shoulder and the jerk of his arm, moving in a precise line towards Tanguish’s knife hand instead of anything vital. Reflex snapped Tanguish’s feet into movement, a quick three pace backstep that carried him away from the blade.

“Good,” Helsknight told him soothingly, his voice dipping into an almost supernatural calm. Not honey gold. Never so smooth as to be honey gold. “I’m moving again.”

Two fast paces and Helsknight had closed the distance between them, dagger arcing, and Tanguish had the presence of mind to deflect it. The steel clashed, and Tanguish ducked Helsknight’s outstretched arm to circle around him, fleet and nimble -- though he noticed Helsknight moved away from him as well, instead of following up with any of the dangerous bladework he surely knew.

“First steel!” Martyn crowed from where he sat. He raised his fist in the air and shouted with spiteful encouragement: “Come on Tanguish! Take his knees out like I taught you!”

“I thought we were knife fighting?” Tanguish squeaked as Helsknight wheeled towards him, not with the knife this time, but with a hard, open-palmed shove to Tanguish’s chest. He was knocked off his feet and landed in the sand with a startled oof! of lost air.

“We’re sparring,” Helsknight corrected, knife held low at his side. “Play fighting. If you see an opening you can use, use it.” Tanguish scrambled back to his feet just in time for Helsknight to make another quick stab in his direction -- more a prompt to get him moving than anything. “Come on Tanguish. You’ve been following me from my church to corner me over your stupid hermit, and I’m telling you to fight for my aid.” Helsknight did another slash, and Tanguish gritted his teeth and parried it, and just barely managed not to flinch at the sound of steel on steel. “Or I’m the Demon, and I’m coming for you, thief.”

Helsknight spat the word thief in such a stunning parody of the Demon’s cadence that Tanguish’s heart skipped a beat. This time when Helsknight lunged, Tanguish parried the knife and ducked, and there was a split second where Helsknight’s side was exposed, and Tanguish knew from what he was taught this was where he would sink a blade if he needed to; beneath the ribs where it wouldn’t get stuck, where muscle parted near the surface for vitals. He didn’t. There was no fear or panic that could make him move his hand and wrist in such a lethal way, but he studied what the moment looked like. And then Helsknight’s backstep, which he didn’t see, slipped his foot out from beneath him, and a hand fisted in his shirt batted him onto the sand.

Tanguish felt incredibly bullied, not because Helsknight gloated, or really hurt him all that badly. He could feel a bruise on his elbow where he’d landed awkwardly, but if that was the only wound he gleaned from his first knife fight, it was nothing. No, it was the trivial ease by which Helsknight tossed him around. It stung his pride like a stab wound, and he could hear Welsknight’s voice in the back of his head saying he’s been a better swordsman than me since he spawned in, and he was starting to wonder how he expected to learn anything from someone that far beyond him.

Helsknight stepped away again, giving him ample space to stand, and his voice was still tawny bronze. “You can do this. You’re quick and you know yourself. Think about what you’re doing.”

Tanguish didn’t want to be soothed. He didn’t want to be reassured. He didn’t want to be drowned in gold, or silver or bronze or any knightly voice made to control how he felt. Warily, he got to his feet, body low, dagger ready. Helsknight stepped slowly to one side, and Tanguish mirrored the motion. They were circling each other, Tanguish trying to think, and Helsknight quietly letting him.

When they paced a handful of steps, the knight said, “Rush me and see what happens,” with a voice like copper flashing in sunlight. And Tanguish did. Three steps and his blade dipped, and the knight’s dipped to meet it, and the metal clashed and he felt a sting fizzle like caustic redstone lines from his fingertips all the way up to his shoulder. The knight’s free hand made a grab for his clothes again, and Tanguish ducked it and stabbed, and the knight was simply gone he dodged so quickly. 

“Perfect,” the knight told him, autumn sunlight, weak and cold and glaring. “Perfect. Again.”

(They’re not the same person) Tanguish lunged again. (Stop getting angry, they’re not the same person.)

The knight parried him, and parried him again, and he said something that Tanguish didn’t bother hearing.

(They were though, weren’t they? Technically.)

Autumn sunlight voice, burnished bronze, clumsy, tactless, alloyed gold. Encouragement, with just the edge of a smug and confident smile.

(He would kill you if he knew you thought that.)

Tanguish back stepped away from a stab he saw coming a mile away, huffed out a quick breath his heart was beating too fast to use properly, and parried a slash. His hand hurt; his arm hurt. His joints were sore from contact. His jaw ached from clenching teeth.

“Good, perfect. You’re doing well.”

Not the smooth, liquid gold. Something half frozen, like the runoff of a melting glacier, half chunk and grit.

“Stop talking to me like that!” Tanguish snapped, dodging beneath the knight’s outstretched arm and placing a well-aimed swipe of his tail against the joint of his knee. The knight let out a grunt and was suddenly kneeling in the sand. Tanguish retreated, breathless and jittery. He was angry, and deeply aware of the irrational fear driving it, cornered despite the wide-open dome that told him he had a world to run away to.

There was a subtle shift in the knight’s demeanor as he rose back to his feet, something confused and calculating in the tilt of his head and the narrowness of his gaze. Closed. This time when he readied his knife, he took a step back, a defensive motion, and he waited once again for Tanguish to make a move. And Tanguish, tired of being threatened and harried and chased, lunged. His footsteps were sure, because his body was sure, and moving his arm to slash was the same movement he used to grab for a gable, and the knight wasn’t where his blade was -- until suddenly, like the movement was fated, steel parted flesh.

Tanguish opened up a thin red line across Helsknight’s forearm, small and insignificant where it landed amidst a cluster of scars. The cut was so glancing that it skipped across the muscle, not one smooth cut but a handful of close scrapes like four dots above a meandering “i” drawn at the end of his reach. Tanguish had enough thought to feel, building in the back of his head, a shift in fear from animal cornered, to mortified shame. Helsknight’s hand came down on his wrist so quickly and so tightly, he almost dropped his dagger in shock. Then his feet were suddenly gone from beneath him, and Tanguish was in the sand again, holding a dagger with a blooded point while Helsknight loomed over him. 

“Stop.”

“You’re going to hurt me.” 

The words were a whisper so small, Tanguish hadn’t even realized he’d said them, wouldn’t have realized, if it weren't for the bitter crease in Helsknight’s brow and the gutter of firelight in his eyes. He was very much Helsknight and only Helsknight, and there was no room inside him to be anyone or anything else, because his eyes were the red sparks of stars.

“Why in hels would I hurt you?” Helsknight whispered, his voice the quiet somber of building anger. He took a step back, and a long, patient breath, and his voice slipped so close to gold it ringed the edges of his words like the corona of the sun. “You’re safe with me. It’s alright.” Helsknight took another breath, one that implied a slow count to five. “Fights like this go to first blood. We’re stopping because you drew it. That’s all.”

First blood. Tanguish remembered the red line, and his eyes flicked to Helsknight’s arm where a beading of blood had welled up and wrapped around the sides of his arm like a ringlet. Helsknight glanced down at it impassively, and then to Tanguish, his face breaking into something like a chagrined smirk.

“Oh, don’t look so horrified,” Helsknight snorted, sheathing his blade with finality. “I told you if anyone was getting hurt today it was me.”

“I’m-- I’m sorry--”

Helsknight waved his words away like he was swatting a fly. “Tanguish, I’ve had larger paper cuts. Get up.”

“But I--”

“It’s alright.” Brass ringed in gold. “You’re okay.”

A gentle hand reaching, ready to trap him in its guiding movements. Tanguish screwed his eyes shut and balled his fists around sand and cold steel.

“Stop talking like that!”

“Would you rather I yelled?”

“No!”

Helsknight huffed another angry breath and flailed his arms in the air, as if beseeching some invisible presence for what he should do. Frowning in something caught between confusion and consternation, he stalked past Tanguish.

“Practice is over for today,” he grumbled, snatching up his things.

Tanguish grimaced, but got to his feet and began gathering his things as well. The group tidied the practice field, working in prolonged and awkward silence, made tense by how barbed Helsknight felt as he moved amongst them. His goodbyes were clipped and abrupt, his movements sharp, and something about it made Tanguish want to wince shamefully every time the knight moved or spoke.

As they made to leave, EB pulled Tanguish aside and passed him a healing potion.

“Make sure Helsknight takes care of himself,” EB told him cryptically. Then he and Martyn disappeared into the cells, leaving Tanguish and Helsknight to walk home in graceless silence.

Chapter Text

It was a long walk home. It wasn't the longest walk of Tanguish’s life (that spot was still firmly held by the walk to the potion store in Hermitcraft) but it was definitely inching its way near the top. Helsknight was quiet in the prickly, guarded way a palisade wall is quiet, his thoughts thoroughly locked away behind the blank, vaguely bitter expression on his face. Tanguish didn't know what the expression meant, and he didn't know what to do about it. What he did know, was he had caused it.

(He didn't like it when Helsknight was quiet and guarded. He needed the knight’s thoughts to be plain on his face so he knew how to react. It made him nervous not knowing. He thought maybe the easiest thing to do was assume Helsknight was angry, because so many of his emotions looked like anger, but also he was always so busy trying to tell the knight anger wasn't his everything, so maybe treating it like it was his everything was… probably bad.)

(Tanguish was starting to figure out one of the many things he disliked about emotions, was that he had to navigate them with other people.)

They walked through the market outside the Colosseum, people breaking for them as Helsknight stormed through, Tanguish following in his wake. They passed food carts and shops, and turned onto the side road that led home, and walked and kept walking. Helsknight still said nothing, and so did Tanguish. The knight’s hand rested briefly on his sword whenever they stopped at crossings, a motion that more and more reminded him of Welsknight -- especially given it was the angry, netherite sword the Demon had made him. The dark blade stood out hungrily and dramatically when Helsknight didn't wear the armor to match it. The bruised purple-black was a scar against the iron mail and the red cloak, a venomous promise. 

They passed the alley they had been ambushed in, a memory that felt ages farther away than it really was. Tanguish spared it a glance, and wondered briefly how different it would be if they were cornered there now. Helsknight, still armed but with no armor besides the chainmail he wore hidden beneath his tunic, and Tanguish with some passing knowledge of daggers. They were different, guarded and unguarded, armed with new teeth, but it wasn't really the objects they carried that implied the most change. Not really.

(Tanguish thought, immediately, that if they were cornered there again, he wouldn't run, and that thought startled him. It wasn't that he was any braver than he was before, or that he thought he had any skill with his tiny blade. If someone cornered him alone, he knew without a shadow of doubt that he would run and keep running. It was just that, if Helsknight were cornered in an alley, Tanguish could no longer imagine a world where he would just leave him there. They had shaken hands, and Helsknight had looked him in the eyes and said “We’re in this together.” and that had meant something. Really meant something.)

So Tanguish was caught completely off-guard when Helsknight finally spoke: “I think if you continue your lessons, someone else should train you.”

Tanguish stopped walking abruptly. “I… what?”

Helsknight walked a few more steps before he too stopped, and half-turned to regard Tanguish with a sidelong glance. “Martyn’s good with a knife, probably better than I am, if I'm honest. I'll ask him to take over as  your sparring partner.”

“Why?”

Helsknight snorted a laugh. “Why? You know why.”

Tanguish looked down at his feet, mind flailing for what “why” he could possibly know. “If-- if this is because I hurt you today -- I really didn't mean to! It's -- EB gave me--”

Helsknight flicked his hand in a dismissive gesture, a motion that, now that Tanguish knew a little more about it, looked a lot like a knife parry. “No, Tanguish. It has nothing to do with the cut. I'm proud of you for that, honestly. It means some of this is actually starting to sink in.”

“B-but--”

“You're terrified of me,” Helsknight said, an incredulous, snort of a laugh sneaking its way into his voice. “You're absolutely terrified of me.”

“I'm not--” Tanguish stopped when Helsknight glared down at him. Then he grimaced, because really, that just proved Helsknight right. “Uhm… I'm not… I wouldn't say I'm terrified.”

Helsknight raised an eyebrow.

“Well, I'm not.”

Helsknight sighed and looked up towards the sky, beseeching the ghasts for the patience he couldn't muster himself. He turned and paced an angry step in Tanguish’s direction, a motion that, for a moment, looked startlingly like Welsknight at the aqueduct, moving to threaten him. It had something to do with the look of steeling himself that came over Helsknight's face, the fact that he stepped with the same foot forward, lead with the same shoulder. Tanguish felt himself take an involuntary step backwards.

Helsknight's scowl broke into something more ironic, and he gestured at Tanguish. “Oh no, Tanguish, not scared at all.”

“I-- that's not fair,” Tanguish stammered. “I'm not-- you know I don't like--”

Helsknight crossed his arms impatiently. Tanguish let out a frustrated sigh and ran his hands through his hair. 

(Gods and saints -- well what was he supposed to say, anyway? “My dear friend Helsknight, who has fought for and would probably die for me if I so asked, I met your other half yesterday. And I didn't tell you because I was scared of you. And now I keep glimpsing him in you because I'm scared of him. And really, I'm not scared of you I'm scared of that one time you pinned me to the wall and said you weren't raising your blade in anger, and it doesn't matter that you've spent all day trying to make me feel safe in a voice that sounds like the double you hate, because everyone agrees you do stupid things when you're angry.”)

(No, he was not going to say that.)

“Look, it doesn't matter. Be scared of me. It’s-- it doesn't matter.” Helsknight said in a voice that tried very, very hard to agree that it didn't matter, but didn't quite make it there. “But you need to be confident in the skills you're learning. You can't do that with me, so we’ll put you with someone else. Simple.”

“I don't want to learn from someone else,” Tanguish said, and he meant it. “You're my friend. I want to learn from you.”

“I'm familiar. You're just scared of being at the Colosseum without me.”

“Maybe… but I would still rather learn from you.”

“Oh really? Is that why you spent all day today cringing and shrinking away from me?” Helsknight snapped, eyes flickering red with mounting frustration. “Helssakes Tanguish, you're too scared to even admit you’re scared of me!” 

Helsknight shifted his weight from one foot to the other, fighting the urge to pace. It was that familiar caged-tiger pacing of too many emotions and not enough space for them. Tanguish found himself feeling the same way, though his far more firmly rooted in dismay.

“I’ve never d-done the sparring before. It was just… it was just new.” Tanguish stammered, and he told himself he wasn't lying, because that part was technically true. “I’ll be better at it tomorrow.”

“You'll be better at it tomorrow if you don't spend the whole session shaking in your boots,” Helsknight scowled. “This isn't a discussion.”

“I thought you said you were done ordering me around,” Tanguish said, latching onto the one bit of this argument he could actually do something about. Helsknight's scowl deepened.

“Tanguish, don't be stupid.”

“Just because you wouldn't--”

“This has nothing to do with what I would or wouldn't do in your place,” Helsknight shouted, making Tanguish jump. The knight closed his eyes and took a long breath, indicative of a count to ten. With purposeful slowness he said, “I'm not teaching someone who flinches every time I move. It's not good for you, and it's not good for me. I can't do it.”

“You can't or you won't?”

“Won't,” Helsknight said decisively, frowning down at him. “It feels… cruel.”

(Well… that explained things a little.)

“This is about your tenets.”

Helsknight gave an embarrassed shrug, like his tenets had somehow surprised him by mattering.

Bewildered, Tanguish snorted a laugh, “So it's cruel to teach me swords and knives, but it's not cruel to make me take the lessons in the first place?”

“You weren't terrified of me then,” Helsknight countered, scowling, “or at least, you didn't act like it.”

“I'm not--” 

Helsknight made another of those cutting gestures, “Besides, you need to learn to defend yourself. Obviously. Since you were, apparently, attacked yesterday. We still haven't talked about that.”

“Martyn doesn't -- it's not -- I didn't respawn,” Tanguish stammered, trying to find a thought that made sense. “He saw me come back from Hermitcraft and assumed I did. I just… I didn't want to explain everything.”

There was a moment where Helsknight visibly began to relax, and Tanguish thought, maybe, maybe, this whole conversation might finally end.

“So nothing attacked you, then?”

Tanguish hesitated. There was a long moment where he considered lying. His hands curled into fists at his sides, and his stomach squirmed uncomfortably, and he weighed Helsknight's ire at learning what happened against his ire at not being told. Unfortunately for Tanguish, Helsknight was a lot better at reading that hesitation than Tanguish was at hiding it.

The knight let out a breath and his hand rested on that wicked sword he carried. “Who.”

Tanguish grimaced. “I-- look, it wasn't a big deal. You don't have to do anything about it. I don't want you to do anything about it.”

Helsknight’s fist closed tightly over the pommel of his sword, like the motion of holding it was the only thing keeping him in place. His voice was very soft, and very still. “Which one of them was it?”

“It doesn't matter.”

“It matters.”

“No, it doesn't,” Tanguish said firmly, “because you're not going over there. You're staying here with me, and not picking fights with people you can't win against.”

“Try me.”

(Welsknight's voice lilted in gold script through his thoughts, he's been a better swordsman than me since he spawned in.)

Tanguish winced and changed tactics. 

“I don't want you getting hurt on my behalf. Look, you're -- aren't you the one who’s always talking about wasting time? Don't waste your time on this. It's not worth it. I didn't even get hurt!” Tanguish gestured to himself. “I got like, one scrape because I tripped, and that's already healed. There's no vengeance to reap in a weird, chivalrous, knightly fashion.”

Helsknight was silent, so Tanguish kept talking. “I mean -- what would you even do? Fight for my honor? Challenge someone to a duel?”

“I might teach them to think twice,” Helsknight growled, though his voice was shifting from silent fury into a much less harmful annoyance.

“Yeah, sure, they'll think twice,” Tanguish said, putting his fists on his hips. “Instead of chasing me on sight they’ll decide to kill me on sight instead. Do you want to get me killed?”

“No.”

“Then stop being stupid about this,” Tanguish snapped, with a little more venom in his voice than he’d intended. “This is exactly why I didn't want to tell you.”

“Because I'd actually bother doing something about it?”

“Because I don't want to get you killed either!” Tanguish said, arms flailing in exasperation. “I, you, me, mutual no-getting-each-other-killed pact.” Tanguish paused, and then said with a note of triumph, “We shook hands on it, even.”

Helsknight's angry scowl dropped immediately into something puzzled and wary, “No we didn't.”

“Yes, we did,” Tanguish said smoothly, a glowing confidence welling in his chest. “We’re in this together.”

“That's not what that meant.”

“Oh, really?” Tanguish said, and this time his grin made the knight flinch back a step. “So, I don't have to learn how to knives, then?”

Helsknight opened his mouth and closed it again. His eyes narrowed, his scowl twitched, his eyes flickered red in caged frustration. Finally he said through gritted teeth, as though whispering the name of a bitter enemy: “Clever.”

“Thank you.”

“It wasn't a compliment.”

“You're just upset I caught you in your own tenets,” Tanguish said matter-of-factly, trying not to sound too relieved. He decided to have a little mercy on Helsknight, who had a look on his face like he'd just been stabbed in the kidney. “This whole knives thing is about me learning to defend myself, right? And you just said a big part of that is learning to be confident in my actions. Trust me to defend myself. I'll get confident. I won’t have a choice.”

This seemed to appease the knight, at least a little bit. Some of the frustration seeped out of him, the square of his shoulders softened, and his hand came away from his sword hilt. 

“Fine,” Helsknight said petulantly, finally turning to resume the walk up the road. With much more gentleness he said, “Of course I trust you.”

Tanguish felt his heart give a prideful flutter. Trusted. That felt nice, and was only augmented a little by the fact that he still hadn't told Helsknight who attacked him, despite the knight asking him outright. Several times. He didn't feel bad about it. Refused to feel bad. Helsknight had dropped the subject and they were moving past it. There was no use in kicking the bees’ nest when it had just settled. 

(I'm not lying.) Tanguish reassured himself, crossed his arms behind his back and looking away down the road. (And I'm not a knight.)

They came to Helsknight’s door. Tanguish waited patiently as the knight unlocked it, and took one aborted step when Helsknight held it closed. 

“I meant what I said about getting you a new partner,” Helsknight told him, refusing to meet his eye.

“But…” Tanguish felt the phrase We’re in this together rise to his teeth again, and swallowed it. He looked searchingly down at the cobblestones, and said what he thought would hold more weight. “I don't think it's cruel, Helsknight.”

“Do you think you know my tenets better than I do?” Helsknight asked, and it sounded, as much as it could sound, like a genuine question. There was no anger, no ire. Only a demand for an answer. “Do you think you know my Saint’s will?”

“... No.”

Helsknight nodded and opened the door for him, standing politely to the side so Tanguish could step in first. Tanguish hesitated on the threshold.

“If it's just because I'm scared… I'll be scared with Martyn. Or EB. Or anyone.”

Helsknight sighed. “It's because you can't trust me not to hurt you, Tanguish. And I find that… understandable. I wouldn't trust me either.”

Tanguish felt Helsknight's anger reenter the conversation, not as an emotion felt, or an ominous red flicker in the eyes, but as an animal on a fraying lead. Its presence was always there by Helsknight’s side, threatening to break and bite.

Tanguish hesitated a moment longer. With gentle hands, he slowly slipped his dagger from its sheath. Then he reached for Helsknight's. That feeling washed over him again of horrified trust. Helsknight didn't move, or stiffen, or flinch. Didn't watch Tanguish’s hands, or make a sound of protest or caution. There was only the implicit, implacable trust that Tanguish wouldn't hurt him, even though two daggers were one dart away from his vitals. It was a terrifying trust to wield, more terrifying than the daggers in his hands, and Tanguish had never felt less deserving of it.

Deftly, Tanguish slipped his dagger into Helsknight's sheath, and Helsknight’s dagger into his. The knight raised an eyebrow at him.

“You can't raise your blade to me in anger,” Tanguish said, his voice just above a whisper. “It's not your blade.”

“That’s a technicality.” Helsknight said slowly, cautiously. “A dangerous one.”

“You wouldn't do it if you were me?”

“No,” Helsknight sighed, and this time it sounded like relief. “But I'm not you.”

“Will you still teach me?”

Helsknight walked past him into the house, not meeting his eye. “We’ll give it one more try tomorrow.”

Tanguish smiled. He resolved to make the try count.

Chapter Text

As it turned out, they didn't “give it one more try tomorrow,” not because Helsknight went back on his word, but because they didn't go to the Colosseum. 

Tanguish awoke the next morning to the sound of a quill scratching its way across a page; a soft, grating noise that invaded his sleep as dreams of walking through dry nether grasses, the red stalks withering when the frost of his skin touched them. Then his eyes were open, and he was trying to place the noise, and found himself staring at the tiny, two-person kitchen table, where Helsknight was already up and working. Helsknight had probably been awake for a while. The stiffness in Tanguish's joints told him he’d slept long and hard, and the morning felt later than he was used to, like he’d slept in. Then he noticed that Helsknight, despite being awake for so long, hadn't bothered to put any armor on. 

“Uhm, good morning?” Tanguish ventured, trying to wrestle words from the haze of freshly broken sleep.

Helsknight paused to lick the end of his quill, dip it in ink, and start scratching away again. “Good morning.” 

Tanguish glanced around the kitchen, then back to the table, and his eyes found the healing potion EB had given him the day before. Tanguish had passed it to Helsknight before they ate dinner yesterday, and the knight had set it aside, claiming he didn't need it. Now it sat uncorked by the inkwell, the contents fizzling brightly. It was still untouched -- Tanguish could see the thin scratch, still an angry red, on Helsknight’s shoulder -- but it was there and it was opened, expectantly awaiting use.

“Everything okay?” Tanguish asked, nodding towards the potion.

Helsknight gave it a cursory glance. “I woke up pretty sore today.”

“Do you need anything?”

“I think… I just need to rest.”

“Oh. Well, you should definitely rest then,” Tanguish agreed, getting to his feet and stretching. His arms hurt, the dull ache of having his muscles jarred over and over when their knives crossed, and when he moved his wrist a certain way it sent a little twinge down to his fingertips. Yeah, rest sounded really good. “Do you want me to walk down to the Colosseum, let EB and Martyn know?”

“You can if you want,” Helsknight said, setting the quill aside and scanning back over his writing. “What's another word for glory? I've already used it once in this paragraph.”

Tanguish tilted his head to the side. “Uhm… would honor work?”

Helsknight wrinkled his nose.

“Merit?”

“Honor was closer,” Helsknight grumbled, jotting the word down begrudgingly. “Not quite right though.”

“Whatcha writing?” Tanguish asked, walking around to stand behind the knight and look over his shoulder. Helsknight's scrawl was a thin, neat, almost illegible cursive, the letters so compact they sometimes seemed to stand on top of each other. Tanguish managed to stagger his way through the first sentence: What glory is this, my siblings in arms, that we have wrought upon the sand this day!

“A speech,” Helsknight said, licking the tip of the quill again and setting it to the paper. “I give one for every tournament.”

“You open the event?”

“No, there's an announcer for that.” Helsknight scratched out a line and wrote something underneath it. “It’s for the fighters, keeps morale up. It's scary, fighting in the Colosseum. Always a chance someone doesn't respawn.”

“Has that happened before?”

“Once or twice,” Helsknight hummed. “I can't remember any names, but I know it's happened.” They dipped into silence while Helsknight wrote a few more quick sentences. Then he said, “It almost happened to EB once.”

Tanguish blinked, surprised. “It did?”

“Yeah,” Helsknight picked up his notebook and started waving it gently, encouraging the ink to dry. “It was an intense match. You should ask him about it sometime.”

“It sounds intense.”

“Wish I could've watched it,” Helsknight agreed. “It was back when he was still the reigning Champion.”

Tanguish crossed his arms on Helsknight's shoulder and leaned there. If the knight cared at all about the extra weight, he didn't show it. “I can't imagine EB as the Champion. He seems too… nice?”

Helsknight chuckled.

“Oh, you know what I mean.” Tanguish rolled his eyes. “He’s not -- well he is scary, but he tries very hard not to be.”

“He didn't used to,” Helsknight hummed, almost absentmindedly, scanning back over his work. “I remember being…” Helsknight paused, searching for the right word. “... intimidated by him, when we first met.”

“You're kidding.”

Helsknight shrugged. “He was a lot louder and sharper back then. It's hard to believe he's even the same person sometimes. I think he felt like he had something to prove.”

“What could the Champion of hels possibly have to prove?”

“If your older brother ruled the server, wouldn't you want to prove you were as impressive as he was?”

Tanguish opened his mouth, thought for a moment, and closed it again. “Oh. Well… maybe?”

“Maybe,” Helsknight agreed. “It's a large shadow to be stuck under. If it were me, I think I would've killed him, just to prove I was strong enough to.”

Tanguish nodded, not because he would do the same, but because he could definitely see Helsknight doing it. A thought occurred to Tanguish then, and he suddenly found himself asking, “Is that why you and Welsknight fight?”

Helsknight’s quill froze on the page halfway through writing a letter. Tanguish promptly stopped leaning on the knight’s shoulder. 

“What makes you think we fight?” Helsknight asked slowly, gingerly feeling his way along a perilous line of conversation.

Tanguish grimaced. “Uhm, because--” Because he's been a better fighter than me since he spawned in and no helsmet is harmless. “-- because when he pulled you away, you didn't come back, you respawned. And uhm… when we ran into him on Hermitcraft, you both reached for your swords.” Tanguish shrugged, and tried to shrug off the half-truth as he did. “It seemed like a good assumption to make.”

Helsknight flashed him a measuring glance, before grunting some form of approval, accepting the answer. “You're too perceptive for your own good.”

It was all Tanguish could do to stifle a sigh of relief. “Stop being so easy to read, then.”

Helsknight laughed at that, a swift bark of sound that brought a genuine grin to his face. “I'll be sure to work on being more cryptic just for you, Tanguish. To answer your question, no. That's not why we fight. You don't prove yourself against someone who thinks they're perfect. If anything, I’m trying to teach the stupid tin soldier some humility.”

Tanguish leaned against the knight’s shoulder again, watching as more words scrawled themselves across his notebook page. Hesitantly, because he didn't think it was a good idea to ask, Tanguish ventured, “Your relationship with him is… very different than mine and Tango’s?”

“Very.”

“Can… uhm… can I ask…?”

Helsknight sighed wearily, a massive swell of breath that billowed Tanguish around as he leaned. “Why do you want to know?”

Tanguish bit his lip, hard pressed to find an answer that didn't involve talking about being attacked by Welsknight. “Uhm… I don't know. It just seems like… I know nothing about him. But he's your other half and -- I mean, you've met Tango.”

“You've met Wels.”

Tanguish felt his heart skip a beat -- and then remembered Helsknight was talking about the day they'd fought the Demon.

“Oh, uh, no, not really. I mean… I caught a glimpse. But that doesn't really… explain much. I don't even think he spoke to us.”

“Good,” Helsknight said, his words getting more clipped and short. “You don't need to speak to him.”

“Uhm… why?”

“Because he’s not your problem,” Helsknight snapped, slamming his notebook shut. “He’s my problem. And he’s staying my problem and only my problem.”

“Okay, okay,” Tanguish stepped away from him, hands up apologetically. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think -- I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Helsknight sighed and pinched the space between his eyes, as if he could somehow pin his patience there. Tanguish waited for him to say something, and when he didn’t, awkwardly shuffled through the kitchen for any leftovers he might have for breakfast. He got through cutting two slices of bread when Helsknight finally spoke again.

“I don’t like talking about him. He brings out the worst in me.” Helsknight ran a hand through his hair, which looked dark in the current lighting. “Or he reminds me I’m the worst in him. Whichever you prefer.”

Tanguish nodded quietly. “That… makes sense.”

“If you really want to know…” Helsknight tilted his head back to glance at the clock on the nearby wall. “I’ll give you twenty minutes, right now, to ask whatever questions you want, and I will do my best not to get… upset. Use it. Or don't. But don't ask me about him again.”

Tanguish looked back down at his hands, too nervous to ask, and then unable to figure out what was worth asking..

“Nineteen minutes.”

“Uhm…” Tanguish looked around the room for inspiration and found nothing. “I guess… uhm… how did you… meet each other?”

“For the first time?”

“Yeah.”

“Rap battle, I think.”

“Excuse me, a rap battle?”

“It was something he wanted to do.”

“He wanted to have a rap battle with himself,” Tanguish tilted his head to the side questioningly, “and he made you to do that?”

Helsknight worked at an ink stain on the table with his finger. “It was more like… he had some issues with himself he wanted to work out, and he needed something physical to work them out on. At the time, it was words. Arguments. Conceptualizing. The rap battle was stupid and fun and cathartic, and it gave him a villain to fixate on.” He fell silent, inspecting the table again. “He started taking me seriously later.”

Tanguish let out an uncomfortable laugh. “How can people not take you seriously.”

Helsknight shrugged, “How does Tango not take you seriously?”

“Tango takes me seriously.”

“If he did, would you have to strike a deal to get him to help himself?”

Tanguish decided not to answer that. “Have you guys always hated each other?”

“Not always. But we have for a long time now.”

“And you've never been friends?”

“No.”

“Have you ever been, you know, kind to each other?”

Helsknight scoffed, and didn’t bother gracing that question with an answer.

“Have you ever wanted to be friends?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Why?”

“Tanguish, are you going to waste your--” Helsknight blinked in the direction of the clock, “-- next fifteen minutes asking stupid questions?”

Tanguish rolled his eyes. He cut up an apple and put some jelly on his bread in silence, trying to figure out what would be best to ask. 

“Uhm… the voice thing you do.” Tanguish ventured cautiously. “The… believing thing?”

“The one you’ve suddenly decided you hate?”

“Can he do it?”

Helsknight tilted his head to the side thoughtfully. “No.”

Tanguish almost missed the apple he was slicing. “No?”

“If he does, he’s either really bad at it, or it doesn’t work on me,” Helsknight hummed, staring off into the middle-distance, replaying memories behind his eyes. “Mine works on him though.”

“Oh, huh,” Tanguish did his best to bite down his confusion. Helsknight was so much worse at it than his double was. At least, to Tanguish he was. “So your voice… reassures him the same way it does me?”

“No.”

“Uhm… could you… explain that?”

Helsknight looked up at the ceiling, eyes narrowed, like he was choosing his words very carefully. “You’re Tango’s… partner isn’t a good word.”

“I’m his friend?”

“But you weren’t always his friend,” Helsknight hummed. “He made you because he needed you. The thing that made you was how badly he needed people. So badly he would take even a harmful relationship, if it meant he felt wanted.”

“... right.”

“My… other half… had an idea of a perfect knight. It was something he desperately wanted to be, more than anything else in the world. And he realized he fell short of that perfect knight. Very, very short.” Helsknight spoke slowly, uncomfortably, like he had to form every word around broken glass in his teeth. “He wanted very badly to like the parts of himself that held him back, and he hated, very much, the voice inside his head that reminded him, over and over again, that he would never be perfect if he kept them. Because knights aren’t kind. What… fool… thinks knights are kind? They can pretend to be, but how kind is someone, really, who is given a creed to follow, that could one day tell them to kill… anyone. For any reason. No. A knight, a perfect knight, only has to be resolved, and determined, and obedient to his tenets. Anything else is… a distraction. So one day, that voice grew angry, and picked up a sword, and decided to show him what a perfect knight could be. It decided it would beat it into him, if it had to.”

Tanguish turned to look at Helsknight, watching with nervous concern as he seemed to crumple just slightly in his chair, bowing beneath the weight of his own words. Helsknight’s fist clenched slowly against the table, and he breathed in long, slow, even breaths.

“But the problem with little voices is eventually, you figure out how to ignore it. Slowly at first, but it gets easier the more you work. And then all the little voice can do is sit, and think about what a perfect knight is, and look around and start to realize it’s not perfect either. And if it’s not perfect… if it can’t be perfect… and the only reason it was made was to be perfect…”

Helsknight suddenly shook his head, as though he could rid himself of the brooding emotions trying to mantle themselves around his shoulders. “No. My voice doesn’t reassure him. I think if it were possible to stab someone to death with words, what I do to Wels gets close.”

“I’m… glad it’s not possible,” Tanguish said, offering a weak laugh. He walked back to the table and set his plate down gently. Helsknight was resting his face in his hand, long fingers disappearing into his hair. Tanguish rested a hand on his shoulder gently, and waited until Helsknight looked up at him. “You’re not just a voice in someone’s head, Helsknight.”

“Of course I’m not.” Helsknight sighed. He carded his hand back through his hair, and drew himself up a little straighter in his seat. “Not anymore, anyway, praise the saints. Doesn’t seem like it's a pleasant place to live.”

“No, uhm… no it doesn’t.”

They sat in silence for a few long moments, before Helsknight flipped his notebook open again. He carded through to the speech he was working on, crossed out the last three lines, and started rewriting them. 

“Thank you for telling me,” Tanguish said.

Helsknight grunted, and after he finished the sentence he was writing, said, “Uhm… thank you for not… deciding I’m not worth knowing.”

“Was that an option you thought was on the table?”

“You’re already scared of me, Tanguish. Admitting to acts of anger and cruelty doesn’t dispel fear in people.”

“Oh. Well. I’m… codependent to a fault, remember?” Tanguish laughed self-deprecatingly. “P… parasites and all that.”

“You’re not a parasite,” Helsknight told him, in a tone that reminded him a bit of Martyn and Red, talking about names and living forever.

“You’re not your anger,” Tanguish told him, trying to sound solid, like he was stating truth. Helsknight smirked, and Tanguish took that as a victory.

Tanguish ate his breakfast in silence, this one getting close to companionable. Occasionally Helsknight would ask him harmless questions about words, and sentences, and Tanguish, who knew nothing of writing eloquent things, gave him the least helpful advice he could imagine. But they didn’t talk about their hermits, or what had made them, and Helsknight wasn’t a cruel, angry voice in anyone’s head. Tanguish cleaned the mess he’d made in the kitchen and stepped outside, promising to be back after he told Martyn and EB they weren’t practicing for the day. And he didn’t think about Welsknight’s honey-gold voice, and the fact that Helsknight, somehow, couldn’t hear it, and he didn’t wonder what that could possibly mean.

(Okay, maybe he thought about it a little. And a little more. And a little more. Until thinking about it a little turned into thinking about it a lot, actually. And Tanguish was nervous, because Helsknight still didn’t know he’d met Welsknight once, and that Welsknight was the reason he was so scared of him at knife practice. And Helsknight had just been very forward and vulnerable? And he kept trusting Tanguish with things, because he had no reason not to. He kept handing Tanguish knives, and showing his chest, and just trusting Tanguish wouldn’t stab him somewhere, and Tanguish thought he couldn’t hold a bunch of knives and be scared of someone and still manage not to stab them.)

(But he wasn't lying, and he wasn’t a knight, and this shouldn’t matter, it really shouldn’t.)

Tanguish was on his way back from the Colosseum when finally, he couldn’t handle the knots in his stomach anymore. He needed to do something about this, and he needed to ask someone for advice. So Tanguish dipped into an alley and pulled his coin out of his pocket.

“Tango,” he whispered into his reflection, and waited patiently until the shadowy image of his double emerged. “I need to talk to you.”

“Oh -- hey buddy. Yeah totally--”

Tanguish let out a sigh of relief. “I knew I could count on you.”

“Yeah, of course, hey, listen before you--”

 Tanguish didn’t hear the end of the sentence. He had already flipped the coin in the air. Tanguish had his palm beneath it when he had the sense to think: (Oh wait, is now not a good time?) Then the coin landed in his hand, and Tanguish slipped out of hels. There was a rush of wind, a flip in his stomach like falling, and he was standing on cold ice, surrounded by the empty sounds of Decked Out. Tanguish opened his eyes to see Tango, grinning nervously, standing with his arms outstretched like he could hold back a tide. And standing not two steps behind him, bright and shining and perfect as the sun, was Welsknight.

(Now was definitely, definitely, not a good time.)

Chapter Text

Tanguish blinked up at Welsknight. Welsknight gaped down at him. Tango stood between them; arms spread out like that could somehow stop… whatever it was he thought was about to happen. Time, however briefly, froze in place and held its breath.

Welsknight moved first. Tanguish felt it more than he saw it, the unquestionable knowing of prey being pounced on. Tango was roughly shoved aside. A gauntleted hand came jerking out to grab him and Tanguish slipped beneath it. His feet moved in a pattern that had been drilled into him over the past weeks. His hand arced out to bat Welsknight’s wrist away. Claws shrieked on metal, and suddenly Tanguish was out of the knight’s reach, Tango firmly between them again. Welsknight's hand flew down to his sword. Tanguish glanced towards the nearest hallway, and weighed his chances of finding a reflection before getting lost or cornered in Tango’s maze. 

“Hey, guys! Guys! Let's cool it for a second, alright?” Tango said hastily, stretching his arms out like he could physically hold them apart. “Nobody needs to do any murderficating!”

“Do you have any idea what that thing is?” Welsknight asked, his voice raised in a liquid shout that sounded so close and yet so far from the shouts Helsknight could muster. 

“Thing?” Tanguish laughed, teeth bared fearfully as he winced a step backward. Welsknight mirrored him with a threatening step forward. Tango’s palm against the knight's chest plate kept him from advancing any further.

“I know exactly who he is,” Tango chided, his freckles seeming to spark with redstone anger. “He's my friend, so back off, dude.”

Tanguish laughed again, fear and exhilaration doing weird, uncontrollable things to his emotions, the feeling of a waking nightmare crawling up his throat. He wished Helsknight were here so he could prove every bad thing the knight had ever said about Tango wrong. (He also wished the knight were here for the much more practical reason of someone big and strong and overprotective standing between himself and Welsknight's sword, which he was currently drawing; a long gleam of metal sliding from his side to his hand.)

“Hey! I said no murdering!” Tango shouted, rounding on Welsknight, the flame of his hair flickering bright and imposing. “Put the sword away. You're not hurting Tanguish.”

“I’m sorry, his name is Tanguish? Like anguish with a T?”

“Well I had to call him something.”

“So you picked Tanguish?” 

“Oh shut up! Yours is just your name with an H in front.”

Tanguish, feeling somehow both relieved and vaguely insulted, started backing away from the pair of bickering hermits. He moved slowly, breath half-held, like they might forget he was there if he was careful enough. Just a few steps would work, just enough that he could get away from Welsknight’s initial lunge. His heart was beating quickly, his hands were starting to shake. He took a fourth step back, and felt the change in texture as the ground went from stone to snow. He curled his claws into it, praying he didn’t slip when he finally went springing away.

“For the love of-- this doesn’t matter,” Welsknight snapped, shoving Tango out of his way again. “It doesn’t matter what his name is. What matters is he’s a helsmet.”

Tango wheeled unsteadily on his feet for a moment and lunged, grabbing Welsknight’s sword wrist in both hands. “What matters is he’s my friend, and you’re not hurting him!” Tango shot Tanguish a pleading look, even as Welsknight twisted out of his grip. “Tanguish, run!”

Tanguish didn’t need to be told twice. He spun on his heel and bolted, vaulting down the nearby hallway towards half-finished ice sculpts. (One reflection. That was all he needed.) Behind him, he could hear Welsknight and Tango scuffling, hear their shuffling feet and Tango’s startled noises every time Welsknight almost wrung free of his grasp.

“Tango -- would you just -- stop!”

Like opening a door in a dark hall to be struck by the sunlight beyond, Tanguish was blinded by the command. His legs forgot what they were doing mid-stride. His breath hiccupped in his throat. Tanguish crumpled to the ground and skid, dragging across stone and ice, momentum knocking him dizzy. He found himself gasping on the ground, staring at the spinning, half-finished ceiling of Decked Out, every color in his vision bleeding like the glare off a stained-glass window. 

(Move… please, please move….)

Tanguish groaned and, with a monumental effort, turned onto his side. He got one arm underneath himself, felt the muscles flex and ache. Through the clearing haze of his vision, he saw Tango had slumped to the floor as well. Their eyes met for an instant, Tango’s gaze hazy and unfocused, like waking from a dream. Tanguish wondered if the expression was mirrored on his own face.

“Stop fighting me.” Welsknight commanded, his voice a cage of gold, and what little stirring Tango had managed stilled instantly. “This is for your own good. I promise.”

Tango murmured something, his voice the staggering gurgle of a sleepwalker. It could have been Tanguish’s name, or it could have been an entreaty to Welsknight, or it could have been just a buried thought that drowned the moment it surfaced.

(Move.) 

Tanguish screwed his eyes shut and tried to picture Helsknight’s voice, rough and jagged, commanding him to run. His other arm responded, and Tanguish shoved to his feet. Welsknight approached him slowly, sword in hand, with the unhurried steps of someone who knew no true opposition, an executioner to his favored gallows. Tanguish felt his panic surge up in him again, but his feet stayed rooted in place. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know where to run. Welsknight opened his mouth to speak, and Tanguish clapped his hands over his ears, praying he could smother the noise--

“Kneel.”

Like a golden collar around his throat, like someone had looped golden thread between his ribs and decided now was the time to pull, like hands on his shoulders made of white fire and sunlight, shoving his head underwater, Tanguish was forced to his knees. He barely caught himself with his hands before his face could hit the floor. He blinked rapidly, his streaming vision bringing tears to his eyes. Boots, leather under iron plate, polished to such a shine they looked like they were made of silver, eclipsed his vision. 

“Please,” Tanguish gasped. His bleary, shifting gaze traced the contours of his own iris looking back at him in the polished plate, “Please d… don’t… don’t hurt me.”

“I am sending you back to hels, where you belong.” Welsknight told him, and Tanguish knew that was what he was going to do. There was no arguing with a voice that strong, ringing, pure, true. He couldn’t rend gold with his bare hands. Couldn’t cut it with his teeth. Couldn’t… couldn’t… 

“This time, don’t come back.”

Honey-gold, inexorable. Like the arc of the sun. Like. 

“I don’t want to die,” Tanguish whispered. His eyelids fluttered, and he could not hear Helsknight’s voice telling him to run. But he could hear, through bleeding colors and the odd black and blue of his iris reflecting back at him on the plate of a perfect boot, he could hear--

(If you see an opening you can use, use it.)

Tanguish moved from his spine, on instinct, like he was taught to, with speed and sleight of hand. He was kneeling at Welsknight's feet, waiting on the inevitable, then his hand was darting to his belt, then his dagger was burying itself in the knight’s ankle, where the plate gave way to soft leather. Welsknight screamed and dropped his sword, the enchanted blade clattering to the ground so close to Tanguish’s shoulder the hilt bruised him. But the spell was broken, the golden chains of the voice making way for cries of pain and bewilderment, and the ache in his shoulder was grounding. Tanguish needed to leave, now. He lunged for his reflection in Welsknight’s armor, gasping an apology to Tango for running away.

Then he was crashing into the kitchen counter in hels, having lunged straight from one world into another. Tanguish was blind scared, animal scared, and hels was dark and his vision was a blur of smearing colors, and his knife was in his hand. Welsknight was still looming over him, somehow. The terror of his presence struck Tanguish like a hammer, and for an instant he lost all sense of self. He was only fear, and panic, and reaction, and the overflowing despair of not having escaped. The knight reached for him, and Tanguish’s back was against the counter, and his hand snapped forward like it was a living thing with its own mind.

The sound the knight made was not honey-gold, nor was it the clear, round, ringing confidence of Welsknight’s voice. It was a punch of lost air that strangled itself out, followed by a quick, experimental gasp, like lungs trying to decide if they could still expand. 

“Yep. I deserved that,” Helsknight choked.

Tanguish didn't have time to feel confusion, or horror, or shame, because suddenly Helsknight was everywhere. His hand was a vice around Tanguish’s wrist, the one still clenched around his dagger, the one bent at an awkward angle, because the thumb and first knuckle were pressed against the hilt, and the hilt was pinning cloth to skin. Helsknight's other arm swept around and hugged him close, forcing Tanguish’s face into his massive shoulder, binding him still. It could’ve been a hug if there weren't a lethal amount of metal buried in one of them.

“Don't move,” Helsknight breathed, a strangled hiccup of sound. He swallowed, and breathed again: “Don't panic. Don't move.”

“I--” Tanguish stammered, his mind blank, “I-- i-i-- thought-- I thought--”

“It's okay,” Helsknight told him, and his voice was neither honey-gold nor burnished brass, nor any other reassuring, knightly alloy. It was slate gray necessity, made colorless by shock and pain. “Just… don't move.”

“Don't move?” Tanguish’s voice was shaking, his teeth threatening to chatter. He was scared, he was terrified. He was-- he needed to-- he’d just--he’d just--

“Don't move,” Helsknight repeated, his own voice squeezing into a wince in the back of his throat, because Tanguish’s hand was still clasped around the knife handle and his hand was starting to shudder. “You might kill me.”

Tanguish could feel every word of that sentence in his hand, a vibration, a movement in the chest. You might kill me.

“M-m-might--”

“Are you hurt?”

The question was so absurd, Tanguish’s fear and horror almost snapped around into anger. The instinct to scream, and the fear he might gag instead, fought in his throat. “Am I hurt?”

“There was blood… on your hand,” Helsknight told him, and Tanguish had to wonder how, how, in the handful of manic seconds between Tanguish stumbling into hels and this happening, Helsknight had managed to notice that. “Are you hurt?”

“No! I'm fine!”

“Are you sure?” Helsknight’s voice hiccupped again. The noise made Tanguish feel sick. He wanted Helsknight to let him go. He wanted to see what he'd done. He wanted Helsknight to stop being ridiculous with that slow, soft, wincing voice. He wanted to stop feeling the hilt in his hand, and the way it moved when Helsknight did, and the ghost of a pulse, quick despite steady voice that reverberated over it. He wanted him to stop asking him if he was okay.

(He definitely, definitely wasn't okay.)

“I'm f-fine,” Tanguish stammered. “S-s-scrapes and bruises.”

“Okay,” Helsknight took a breath. Tanguish could feel the movement in his hand and in the dip of the knife handle, and a new, strong wave of nausea blanketed him. “You're going to… do exactly what I say, alright?”

“B-but I--”

“This is important.”

“I know but--”

Helsknight’s grip on his wrist suddenly tightened, and he snapped with a ferocity Tanguish hadn't been expecting, “Feel like shit after we've gotten the knife out of me, Tanguish! Not before.”

“Okay,” Tanguish whispered. “Okay “

“You're going to wait… until I've got my hand on the hilt,” Helsknight said, teeth gritted as he incrementally relaxed his grip again, “and then you're going to... you’re going to let go of the knife. You're going to get the health potion off the table and bring it to me. And then--” Helsknight hesitated, and Tanguish didn't know if it was because he was concentrating on breathing, or because he’d lost his thought. “You're going to… go into the other room and get me a clean shirt.”

“You're thinking about clothes,” Tanguish squeaked, “right now? Like right now right now?”

“If you prefer,” Helsknight growled through grinding teeth, “I can bleed all over you instead.”

Tanguish felt another wave of nauseous fear twist around in his guts. He felt a shuddering breath cage itself beneath his ribs, the first sign of tears coming. 

(Oh, gods, he couldn't cry right now.)

“Do you understand what I asked you to do?” Helsknight asked, and Tanguish felt Helsknight’s hand slowly unwrap from around his wrist. 

“Y-yes.”

The knight’s hand slipped from Tanguish’s wrist to the knife handle. He didn't so much release Tanguish from his awkward bear hug, as he sort of started slumping forward. His other arm was suddenly busy keeping him from falling into the counter. Tanguish ducked away, grateful, for once, that Helsknight's home was so claustrophobically small. The table was only a handful of steps away, the health potion, open but still mostly untouched, fizzled expectantly where Helsknight had left it that morning. Tanguish plucked it up with exaggerated care and set it on the counter beside the knight.

Helsknight gave a sigh that strangled itself out when it jostled him too much. “Thanks. The shirt please.”

Tanguish jolted, not sure how he'd forgotten that step. He turned and leaped for Helsknight’s room, only just managing not to knock over one of the dining chairs as he did so. Behind him he heard Helsknight give a strangled curse, and the loud clatter of the knife hitting the ground. A sound like spattering water across the tile floor. Tanguish’s stomach turned, and the only thing that stopped him from maybe fainting or throwing up (or both) was the knowledge that Helsknight needed something. So he dug as quickly as he could through Helsknight’s things, grabbed the first bundle of cloth he could find, and ran back into the kitchen.

Helsknight was leaning on the counter, one arm braced against it while the other hand prodded gently at the hole in his torso that was no longer there. (A hole that had been positioned artfully just below the ribs, so the blade wouldn’t get stuck.) Helsknight had already downed the potion. The empty bottle sat beside him, not a drop of its contents remaining, and there was a lot of blood. It stained Helsknight’s shirt, and puddled around him on the tiles, and arched in a dark line out from where he was standing. The smell of it curdled Tanguish’s stomach, and he hugged the bundled shirt against his chest, shivering, because he'd done that. Him. Tanguish. He had done that.

Tanguish found himself suddenly feeling lightheaded, stars dotting the edges of his vision. He was on the verge of collapsing, he thought. His adrenaline was starting to ebb out of him, and the boneless feeling of exhaustion and remorse was filling the spaces it left behind and--

“Hey.”

Tanguish blinked tears out of his eyes and looked up at Helsknight. Helsknight looked… normal. Not angry. Not even tired. He was just there, gently prying the shirt from Tanguish's hands, and speaking in a soft voice.

“You're not done yet,” Helsknight told him. “I still need your help. Can you help me?”

“Y-yes,” Tanguish whispered, trying valiantly to hold himself together, to do anything he could to fix what he'd done wrong. “Yes of course.”

Helsknight looked down, and so did Tanguish. There, in his bloody palm, was Tanguish’s knife, offered hilt-first. Offered simply, and confidently, with all the faith of someone who didn’t expect to be stabbed again. It had been hastily wiped clean, but Tanguish could still see the dark stain of blood where the blade met the crossguard, and along the center edge. His fingertips still twitched with the feeling of the pressure of the handle when it moved with Helsknight’s strangled breaths. Tanguish squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head.

(Anything but that.)

“No. No no no I don't--”

“Tanguish,” Helsknight’s voice was low, but demanded attention. “It's yours. It needs cleaned. It won't clean itself, and I'm going to be busy cleaning the floor. So.” He took Tanguish’s shaking hand in his, and led it to the hilt. “You can use my kit for cleaning armor. It will only take a few minutes.”

“I don't want to,” Tanguiah whispered, shaking his head again, “I-- I just-- Helsknight I just--”

“Do you know what will happen, now that you've stabbed me?” Helsknight asked, and Tanguish looked up at him, swallowing his protests. Helsknight looked so calm, and he just said it like it wasn't a big deal and--

“The blade will rust,” Helsknight finished, after waiting a few seconds for Tanguish to answer. “That's all.”

Tanguish let out a wince of a noise, something like a laugh. “That's all?”

“That's all,” Helsknight told him with soothing finality. “The knife isn't a wild animal. It didn't bite me. It didn't make your hand move. It did what it was meant to do -- protect you when you thought you were in danger. So treat it with respect, and go clean it.”

Helsknight pushed the hilt into Tanguish’s hand. Then he turned, and as casually as if he’d just asked Tanguish to go wash the dishes, went to get some towels to mop up the floor. Tanguish stood there for a few more long moments, staring at the blood on the floor, and the knife that had drawn it. Helsknight was right of course. It was just a knife, and… if Helsknight wasn’t worried, he shouldn’t be either. It didn’t matter what his twisting stomach and his shaking hands said. It didn’t matter that his throat was tense from swallowing tears, and horror at what he’d done, and terror at what had made him do it.

How long had it been? The fear was draining out of him, adrenaline crashing from its dizzying high, and even his legs were starting to shake. The last few minutes could have been hours. And he still felt sick, the smell of blood turning his stomach into tighter knots than it was already in. But Helsknight said he needed help, and Tanguish, feeling guilty and like he was trying to keep from turning inside out, did as he was told. Holding the knife away from himself like it was a snake, he grabbed out a rag and polish from Helsknight’s kit, took it to the sink, and started polishing. Behind him, he could hear Helsknight getting to work on the floor, scouring between the grooves and across the counter, banishing the mess.

They worked in silence, Tanguish’s thoughts turning to mud, his shaking to background static. But he cleaned the knife until the edge began to shine with his familiar reflection and-- he saw Tango there. 

“--nguish? Tanguish! Hey! Oh! There you are! Are you alright?”

Tanguish froze, and his heart, that had barely begun to slow, started hammering in his chest again. The taste of bile rose in his mouth.

“I'm sorry,” Tango told him earnestly, pressing in closer to the reflection. “Are you okay? Did Wels hurt y--” Tango’s image turned to look over his shoulder, angry and sparking, to yell something at someone. Just barely, Tanguish could see the dark silhouette of the knight.

Tanguish dropped the knife into the sink like it burned him. He leaped back a step, tripped over his own tail, and found himself on the floor, scrambling backwards like somehow distance from his reflection might protect him.

“Tanguish, what--?”

Tanguish flinched as Helsknight appeared beside him, his heart leaping into his throat when he saw the silhouette out of the corner of his eye. And then, so close to the floor that still smelled like blood, with fresh terror flooding through him and shame at the look of utter confusion on Helsknight's face, Tanguish did the one thing his body had been threatening ever since his panic started: he turned onto his side and did his absolute best to heave up the contents of his stomach onto the floor Helsknight had just cleaned.

Above him, Helsknight swore. He disappeared from Tanguish’s side. When he returned, he dropped something warm and heavy onto his back. It took until Tanguish was finally done heaving to realize it was Helsknight's cloak. It dwarfed Tanguish like a blanket, folded over his shoulders and hooded around his head. It was a single spot of comfort in what Tanguish had decided, just now, was the worst day of his life. He lay on the floor, sobbing, gasping, face pressed against a cold tile while his cupped hands tried desperately to block out the smell of blood and bile. His everything shook. His teeth chattered. Behind him, Helsknight knelt like a mountain in a hurricane, rubbing circles into his back. 

“I'm s-sorry,” Tanguish gasped, because it was the only thing he could think to say. “I-i-i’m s-so sorry.” Because it was the only thing that mattered. “I th-thought-- I th-thought you were him.” Because Helsknight still trusted him, still helped him, despite how terrible he was. “I th-thought-- I’m s-sorry I thought--” Because he was a parasite, and he was sure Helsknight hated him now, and he needed Helsknight not to hate him. “I thought-- I thought--”

Over and over again, like a broken record, repeating. I'm sorry. I thought you were him. I'm so sorry. Forgive me, please. I thought you were him. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. 

Helsknight just kept rubbing circles into his back, until Tanguish had cried himself out on the floor, and his body finally stopped shaking like he was living in his own personal earthquake. Then Helsknight quietly picked him up and helped him to the couch, where he curled up as small as he could, sniffling pathetically. Helsknight hovered over him for a moment, like it was his turn now to panic and not know what to do. Except he was Helsknight, so he wasn't panicking, and he knew what to do. He always did. Tanguish hid his face in the cloak as the knight made a decision and started working. He finished cleaning the floor and cooked them something. After he pulled the table over to the couch and laid out some food and drink for Tanguish, he took the knife and polished it in the meticulous way of someone setting the only things they could to order. One thing after another, righting the wrongs he could actually manage.

It was a long silence, a fraught silence, characterized by hiccups and sniffles from Tanguish, and Helsknight's small, lethal movements. When Helsknight was done polishing Tanguish’s dagger to a shine, he turned it in the light, and Tanguish got his first glimpse of the knight’s eyes in its reflection, red as stars in the void. He set the dagger down on the table, far out of Tanguish’s reach, not because he thought Tanguish would do harm with it, but because he rightly assumed Tanguish couldn’t handle being near it right now. 

“Tanguish,” Helsknight said, patient as a mountain in the breath before an avalanche. “Tell me what happened.”

Chapter Text

[Helsknight]

The whole mess with the knife had been mostly Helsknight’s fault, he was forced to admit. He saw Tanguish spawn in, panicked and with a dagger in hand, wild-eyed and harrowed. Anyone with common sense would know not to approach. It was the blood that had sealed it, really. Just a spattering on the blade and knife hand. Helsknight should have recognized it for what it was -- the mark of a wounding strike. Instead, he rushed in, assuming Tanguish was hurt, and practically skewered himself on Tanguish’s knife. The Champion in his mind picked apart the scene a thousand times for better ways to handle it: gentle disarmaments, better placed words, or just simply not lunging forward like a brainless idiot.

The blade had taken him just below the ribs, angled upward, where veins and vitals skeined together. It was a very good stab, a very good reflex -- and while some luck was probably involved, given how tall Helsknight was compared to Tanguish, most of the precision felt like the result of practice. Helsknight had to take pride in Tanguish’s training. If he had been an instant slower grabbing the knife, if Tanguish had ripped it out of him like his instincts told him to do, Helsknight would have bled out in the space between heartbeats. It would have been a cold, miserable death, characterized by a lot of gasping and a lot of mess, and, given the way Tanguish had reacted to just the idea of stabbing him, it would have been an absolute disaster. All the crying, the panicking, the retching, was over a simple stab wound. If Tanguish had actually managed to kill him… 

[Well, not all of it was because of the wound, now, was it?]

Helsknight didn't know what to do.

[Do something]

What, pray tell, could he do?

[Do anything.]

Gleaning the story of what had happened on Hermitcraft from Tanguish had been like eviscerating something in the Colosseum. It was pulling painful, gory details from something that wished it was dead for agonizing minutes, all the while promising rest was coming, just as soon as the next entrail came out. There was a lot of crying, and a lot of shaking, and a lot of Tanguish hiding in Helsknight's cloak like it could somehow hide him from his own feelings. And Helsknight was at a baleful disadvantage listening. Tanguish needed compassion and understanding, or at least someone with a normal pain tolerance. As it stood, hearing about Wels chasing Tanguish through the shopping district sounded hilarious to him, not scary. He thought the fireworks were a nice touch. He wished he could’ve seen Wels’ face when they went off.

[Sometimes it really sucked to be the big angry brute whose only depth involved how far he could stick a blade in something. It got hard to take peril quite so seriously, when he was so desensitized to it, especially if the person survived the encounter.]

Of course, there was anger there too. Anger at the fact it was Wels, because of course it was. There was something invasive, intimate, about the problem being Wels. Violating.

Helsknight had been forgetting Wels. Not intentionally. It was just… Tanguish was such a hopeful, consuming thing. He made Helsknight forget that Wels existed. Forget that Wels mattered. They had bigger problems to deal with, like the Demon, and training in the Colosseum. And wasn’t that just amazing? He had problems that were more important than his hermit. Helsknight didn’t realize how content and fulfilled that made him feel until now. Now, when that peace was broken.

For the longest time, Wels had been the bane of Helsknight’s existence, the specter of death hanging over his shoulder, the call of the encroaching void. Helsknight was a simple creature, all things considered. If there was a threat, he would fight it. He fought it with rage and determination, one stubborn knight trying to kill a young, ambitious god. And then he’d gotten… tired. The inevitability of his failure settled in. Fire burned itself out into embers and smoke. His obsession made him a shadow, made him hollow, furthered the sickness of his existence. Defining himself as the simple opposite of something worked its crippling magic, burned him closer to the edge of his life. He really didn’t know what respawn would be his last. It was close, it was perilously, tediously close. So close, there had been days where he wished he would die and just get it over with -- would have, if not for his crippling fear of the end, and what may or may not lie after. 

Tanguish made him forget, gave him something better to do, to define himself with. Tanguish was his -- not possessively, or exclusively. Tanguish was his in the same way his anger was his, the same way his poetry was his, the same way the Colosseum and everyone inside it was his. They were the few things in this world that grounded Helsknight to something that wasn’t Wels. They were the threads holding his soul over the void, begging him to climb out before it suffocated him. Helsknight felt like he was standing on the brink of something, and he had looked up and seen the light, and reached, actually reached, to pull himself out. And suddenly Wels, who had taken no notice, and no care, ever before, who always stayed in his world and never strayed into Helsknight’s, who insisted all he ever wanted was to be left alone -- decided now was the perfect time to sink his teeth deep into Helsknight’s throat.

The only thing Helsknight wanted in the world was to bite back.

Helsknight tried to be calm, because that was what Tanguish needed right now, calm. Stable. He wanted to be calm. But his anger was some fluid thing balanced above his head, and he prayed if he just sat still enough, straight enough, his anger wouldn't pour over. He talked in a gentle voice, trying not to make ripples. He sunk his teeth into his patience with every clench of his jaw. He recited his second tenet like a mantra. 

[May your wrath be stoked only by the Saint's wrath, tempered by the Saint's fire, and quenched by the Saint's blood. A fool are they who, gifted the Saint's power, use it in wrath or malice alone.]

[Do something.]

“I'm sorry,” Tanguish said pitifully for what was probably the hundredth time. “I should've told you sooner.”

“You're telling me now,” Helsknight responded as reasonably as possible. He felt something come alive behind his ribs, an ache with the same aftertaste as his rage, but deeper. He knew, in the abstract way of someone desperately trying not to feel things, that he was feeling a great many things at once. 

[His hands itched for his sword.]

Tanguish had been scared of him all week because Wels had attacked him. Was scared of his voice because Wels had exploited it. And he'd been stabbed because--

“Wels was there again?” Helsknight asked, and he thought it was a victory that his voice stayed even and measured.

“I wanted to talk to Tango,” Tanguish sniffed, hugging his knees to his chest. “But he just attacked me. I don't understand--”

“And you ran?”

“I tried to.”

“He stopped you?”

“Yes. He-- Helsknight that voice-- you have no idea what it's like. All he had to do was command and both me and Tango-- we didn't have a choice. He just-- he told me to--”

Kneel.

Helsknight tried, so very hard not to lose his temper, but he needed to [do something].

He needed to cut that stupid white knight down to size, piece by piece, if he had to. How dare he. His anger was a lightning strike and he shook with it, physically shook. It was anger that made him want to bite, rend and tear. Anger that was nearly holy; inconsolable and indefinite, a mantle of white fire, the burning eye of a god in his chest. It was a feeling too brutal for simple steel, too powerful for the fragile bones in his fists, too unforgiving for a few slitted veins. 

Wels made Tanguish beg for his life. Beg. And still there had been no mercy. What kind of man, what kind of knight, forces someone to kneel for an execution? What kind of man plays god with that kind of power? And in the knight’s voice, no less. The voice of truth. The voice of reason. The voice of reassurance. The soothing, commanding voice made to bind fear and hurt. What man uses that to kill. It wasn’t knightly. It wasn’t right. [It wasn’t fair.]

There was pain. There was maiming. There was torture. There was death, slow and exacting and inexorable. And then there was whatever Helsknight intended to do when he saw Wels.

[Do something.]

Helsknight realized he was standing. It wasn’t a motion he thought about doing. He was just on his feet, and his anger was sharp and electric in his veins, and it ran down his back like a cup running over, hot and white and wrathful. He was made of fire and lightning and anger and justice, and he was moving towards his sword. He knew with absolute certainty what needed to be done. There was a crusader that needed putting down. There was a hels that needed its reckoning. There was a vengeance to be wrought, and he didn’t care how many tenets he had to break to get it.

[How dare he.] 

It wouldn’t be cruel. It would be deserved. It would be necessary. It would be a lesson. It would be a saints-damned reminder. He would cut his hermit down. He would make him kneel. And he would make him know what it felt like to be begging for his life, and be met with only cold fury and merciless steel. It would be so easy. He could see it in his mind, the disarming parry, the bones to break, the words to say. He started his life as the voice of doubt in the back of Wels’s head. Helsknight was made to cut him down to size. It would feel like victory. It would feel like an obsession finally sated after long atrophy. It would feel like vengeance, and justice, and the cup of wrath overflowing, and it wouldn’t matter how many tenets he broke because it would feel amazing.

Then Tanguish, stupid, sentimental, cringing Tanguish, leaped between Helsknight and his sword. His pupils were small with panic, and he was shaking, not in fury but fear.

“Helsknight! Wait. You can’t-- you can’t go after him.”

Can’t?

“Watch me,” Helsknight said, and his throat burned like he was breathing smoke.

“He’ll kill you.”

“He won’t.”

“He will!” Tanguish insisted, terror making him louder than Helsknight thought he’d ever heard him before. “He’ll make you kneel like that t-too and he’ll kill you, and you won’t be able to do anything to stop him!”

“Then I won’t give him the chance to command me.” Helsknight replied, and he must have been terrifying, but he felt so… still. It was the coolness of skin so burned the nerves were gone, the numb of a wrath so intense it transcended simple things like feeling. His heartbeat was fast, too fast to be calm. His body still shook like the innervated sparks of a kicked campfire, but the parts of him that mattered, that controlled his voice and his will, felt so near to nothing it was startling. Transcendent. There was just a simple surety: he was going to make Wels pay for this. 

[Do something.]

[Tanguish was in his way.]

“You can’t -- I can’t -- Helsknight if he kills you--”

“He won’t.”

“Helsknight you can’t die because of me,” Tanguish told him beseechingly, stepping in his way again when he moved for his sword. “You can’t. I’d never forgive myself. Gods and saints -- it’s bad enough I--” The noise Tanguish made was like he’d been stabbed himself. 

[This is ridiculous.]

“If I die, then so be it,” Helsknight said. “But I am taking him with me.”

[Dragging him, kicking and screaming, to demise. Limb from limb and piece by piece.]

“Be reasonable, I’m begging you,” Tanguish shouted. “You can’t fight your hermit. They’re stronger than us. They’ll always be stronger than us. And you’re almost gone! You’ve said so!”

“If that’s my fate then so be it,” Helsknight heard himself say, and it was the first time in a long time the idea of dying held no fear. “But I’m going.”

Tanguish, who was already shaking, whose tears were already running down his face in rivers, who was gasping near to hyperventilating, looked past him for a moment like he couldn’t see him anymore. Like he was seeing a future without him. The very ghost of doubt breathed its first waking breath in the back of Helsknight’s chest.

“You can’t-- you can’t-- you--” shivering like he was lost in a blizzard, his eyes seeing a future that didn’t exist yet. “-- you can’t leave me alone. You can’t. I can’t-- I c-can’t-- I can’t go back to-- to being alone.” Like terror didn’t exist before just this moment. “I can’t be alone again. I c-can’t see Tango because of Welsknight and I c-can’t lose you to him either. Helsknight please, please--” like he was pleading for his life. Like it was his own void opening up beneath his feet, the jaws of the universe ready to swallow him whole.

[Move.]

[He was trying.]

“Tanguish, let me go. I have to do this.”

Tanguish shook his head, and squeezed his eyes shut and covered his mouth with his hands, like he could keep all his emotions in. But he stood as bravely as he could between Helsknight and his sword, and he begged and pleaded for Helsknight to stay. 

“You said we were in this together,” Tanguish said quickly. “Keep your promise and stay.”

“I didn’t promise that.”

“You did!” 

Helsknight felt his breath begin to heave, the silent determination of his wrath giving way to something nastier and more desperate. His fists clenched. 

“Then it's a promise I’m breaking.”

“No!” Tanguish shouted back, suddenly emboldened. “No you won’t. You care about your tenets to much!”

“Get out of my way, Tanguish, or I will move you.”

“No you won’t,” Tanguish said with acidic surety. “You keep asking me to let you go, I won’t. I’m holding you to your word.”

Helsknight took a threatening step forward, and Tanguish flinched back. “Let me through, Tanguish.”

“Are you going to threaten me until I do?” Tanguish demanded. “Are you going to scare me into letting you have your sword? I thought that was cruel to you. Doesn’t your Saint hate cruelty?”

Helsknight’s breaths were coming in shaking heaves. He could feel his composure slipping. Tanguish just stared up at him in terrified defiance.

“You know nothing of my tenets,” Helsknight seethed. “You know nothing of my Saint’s will.”

“I know you’re supposed to meet your enemies with honor,” Tanguish countered. “If you’re not going to give Wels a chance to speak, how honorable is this fight you’re planning?” 

“You can’t use my tenets against me,” Helsknight said, and he didn’t know if it was a statement or a plea. “You can’t twist them around like this.”

“I’m not twisting anything,” Tanguish said. “I’m telling you what you’re doing, because of your stupid anger. You’re going to go, and break all of your tenets, and get yourself killed. Aren’t you supposed to be the better knight?”

For the briefest of moments, Helsknight hated Tanguish almost as much as he hated Wels. He hated him for making him and Wels the same person, for pitting their knighthoods against each other. For forcing them into threatening actions, for begging like Helsknight was threatening his life like Wels had. For making their ripples on the world around them the same. And then he hated him again for trying to rob him of his vengeance, of the reason he was made. The one thing he knew how to do, the one thing he knew was right. He hated him so much, he could feel violence rising in him like a serpent, his need to rip and tear turning itself from Wels and centering itself instead on Tanguish instead. It would be easy. It would be trivial.

[If he won’t move, move him. This must be done.]

[He could shove Tanguish back against the wall, stun him with the blow, and his sword would be in his hands before Tanguish knew what happened. If Tanguish dodged, he could grab an arm, or his shirt, throw him across the room. If he had to, he thought he was strong enough to break his arm, and that would stop him. Tanguish was so small, and so fragile. And he was so scared of pain, maybe all he really needed to do was turn around and grab the knife off the table, and then Tanguish would run.]

Helsknight's fingers twitched. The stillness before a fight settled itself on his shoulders like a mantle.

[What in hels was he thinking?]

Helsknight’s anger snapped like a bone breaking, and in its place a wave of horror rose up to smother him. What precipice was he standing on, how close to what edge? He was inches away from Tanguish, and Tanguish was watching him like he was waiting on lightning to strike. And was he really going to hurt Tanguish because -- because Tanguish wouldn’t let him hurt Wels? There was something like shame crawling to life in him, something like failure and the closeness to it.

“Promise you won’t go,” Tanguish begged, and Helsknight wondered if he could sense he’d won. “Promise you won’t get yourself killed because of me.”

“I can’t promise that.” Helsknight whispered.

“I want your word as a knight.”

“Don’t make me promise that.”

Helsknight spun on his heel and paced. It was a tiny house, he could only move a handful of paces, but he had to stave off the violence somehow, and he thought if Tanguish said another word he would kill him. With his bare hands if he must. For standing in his way. For holding him accountable. For twisting his tenets to his will. 

“Hels.”

It hurt. It hurt like a bone breaking. He wanted to scream. He wanted to rend and tear. He wanted to stop being a knight, damn being a knight. What about defending the weak? What about stomping out the falsely righteous? What about humiliating someone who deserved it? What about forcing the universe to be fair for once?

[A perfect knight only has to be obedient to his tenets.]

[Were he and Wels really so similar, that he would trade his sense of rightness for his tenets? Was he even a knight if he did?]

Helsknight stopped pacing in front of Tanguish, and the look of tortured triumph on Tanguish’s face burned him. Wordlessly, Helsknight found himself taking a knee, because if he made his promise standing, his pride wouldn’t allow it. He needed to be reminded of what he was, like it could somehow bind him. A hand clenched to his chest to keep his wrath from bursting free, his teeth gritted to swallow his fury, Helsknight choked on his anger until it mercifully, mercifully, died. 

“I promise.”

[What good is a sword in the hands of someone who refuses to wield it?]

Tanguish sank to his knees on the floor like a puppet with its strings cut, relief taking what little strength he had left after the intensity of the day. Helsknight could sympathize with the feeling. He felt hollowed out, and gnawed open, and raw, like an open wound. His skin itched, and his chest burned, and he thought his anger wasn’t his anymore. There was something dark beneath him, a thread holding him above the void breaking loose, so he had one less thing to hold on to.

Helsknight felt… tired. But he stood, because someone had to pick them up off the floor, and if he could do nothing else, he could do that. Tanguish curled up on the couch to sleep, and when his sleep turned fitful, Helsknight comforted him, because it didn't matter how bitter he felt, he wasn't cruel. He wasn't allowed to be. More than any other time in his life, Helsknight felt caged in oaths and tenets, bound, for the first time in a long time, against his will. 

[He wondered if being a knight was supposed to feel like being tethered to his hermit, chained above the open jaws of the universe, or if that was just a misery unique to him.]

“Saint help me,” Helsknight said to the darkened house, and immediately felt stupid. The Saint had never helped him before. Why would they start now?

Chapter Text

Morning was a creature that Tanguish was learning to despise. This was not the morning’s fault. It was simply that having bad nights was becoming a theme in Tanguish’s life, and waking up from them always seemed to be just as bad, or worse, than falling asleep was. Waking up was exhausting. Knowing it was morning and the night had been so terrible was exhausting. Tanguish would be tempted to stay wrapped in Helsknight’s cloak, his nose buried in the corner of the couch, stubbornly ignoring concepts like “wakefulness” or “moving on with his life.” However, much like the morning, steadfast, inexorable, and unforgiving, Helsknight got up and made breakfast, and breakfast, against all Tanguish’s personal judgements, sounded like the best thing his body had ever heard of. When the smells of eggs and toast wafted through the tiny house, Tanguish’s stomach first flipped over, and then, deciding the smell was quite good, struck him with a fierce hunger pang. He was forced to remember he’d thrown up yesterday. (He was forced to remember why he’d thrown up yesterday). Eating food, and banishing the terrible tastes in his mouth, suddenly seemed like a traitorously good idea. Tanguish rolled over, Helsknight’s cloak still hooded around him, and he watched the knight set the table.

“How do you do that?” Tanguish asked, and only realized he’d asked the question aloud when Helsknight fixed him with a weary stare.

“A pan and a stove are involved.”

“Oh… I mean… you’re just… up,” Tanguish continued, retreating further into his makeshift blanket to hide his embarrassment. “Yesterday was horrible. And you’re… unphased.”

“You think I’m unphased?” 

Helsknight’s tone sounded dangerous. Quiet. Tanguish briefly searched the knight’s eyes for any flashes of red, trying to gauge how angry he was. There wasn’t any, which didn’t make sense, because every other aspect of him from voice to body language looked… upset. Not nearly as angry as last night, but something was there, simmering. Tanguish looked down at the floor. Helsknight sighed, seeming to regret his temper already. 

“I'm not at my best,” Helsknight told him.

“Uhm… that seems… normal,” Tanguish said, trying to sound forgiving. “You did get-- I mean-- I did… uhm. Hurt you. Yesterday.”

(Stabbed, almost killed, because Tanguish couldn't control his panic. Admitting it out loud was a hurdle that was still too difficult to cross.)

Helsknight had the audacity to shrug. “I have been stabbed by a great many people, Tanguish. You aren’t special.” Helsknight paused long enough to chew a bite of toast, and offered a thin smirk. “You took it the worst by far, though, I’ll give you that.”

“Helsknight,” Tanguish sighed witheringly. 

“Ah, I get the full use of my name today,” Helsknight interrupted, before Tanguish could muster a sarcastic comment.

Tanguish winced and bit his lip. “You weren’t… acting very knightly… last night.”

“I think I was.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“Why, because I was angry?” Helsknight asked, his voice quiet in a way that filled space more than any of his shouting the night before. “I’m allowed to be angry. I deserved to be angry.”

“Uhm…” Tanguish stammered, curling his tail around his ankles, “maybe but… acting in anger… probably wouldn’t be… wouldn’t have… It-- it just wasn’t good, okay?”

Helsknight gave a derisive snort. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t have gone.”

Tanguish frowned down at his claws.

“One good reason that doesn’t have to do with harm to my person.”

“Why can’t you getting hurt be a good enough reason by itself?” Tanguish demanded. It was the wrong thing to say. He knew it the instant it left his mouth.

Helsknight snapped to his feet, the motion threatening to send his plate clattering off the table. “Because my getting hurt has nothing to do with being a knight, and everything to do with your comfort.”

“So I’m just supposed to let you go galivanting off, getting yourself maimed or-- or--- on my behalf?” Tanguish demanded, guilt and anger lending his voice strength. “I don’t want that, Helsknight! We’ve talked about this. No-getting-each-other-killed pact.”

“You wildly underestimate me,” Helsknight growled dangerously.

“I think I’m estimating you fine.”

Helsknight’s eyes narrowed, and there, finally, the barest glint of red glittered weakly around his irises. Tanguish marveled at that for a moment, at how angry Helsknight was, and how little it showed.

“Are you alright?” Tanguish asked, not really caring that he’d derailed the conversation.

Helsknight threw his hands up in the air, as if admitting defeat about something.

“No wait-- I’m serious,” Tanguish insisted, getting to his feet. He crossed to Helsknight, concern outweighing his caution. Helsknight didn’t retreat away from him, though he let out an uncomfortable grunt when Tanguish reached up to touch his face. “Look at me for a minute.”

“I was looking at you,” Helsknight protested, eyebrows knitting together worriedly. “What is it?”

Tanguish searched the knight’s eyes, as though that could glean him anything. He’d never realized they were blue before. They weren’t the wide-open sky blue Welsknight’s were, all ice and glory. They were dark blue, almost black, with a faint ring of tealy-gray around the pupil that looked almost brown-ish against the blue around it. Whatever spark turned them red when Helsknight was angry had retreated, leaving only the darker color behind. 

“Your eyes aren't red,” Tanguish informed him, after an awkwardly long moment of staring. “Did you know they did that -- go red when you're angry?”

“I'm aware,” Helsknight said uncomfortably.  He put a gentle hand around Tanguish’s wrist and guided it away from him. “I'm just tired.”

Begrudgingly, Tanguish decided that made sense. Of course Helsknight was tired. They had a terrible day yesterday, and a pretty bad night. He had no idea how long Helsknight had slept, only that he'd been awake when Tanguish fell asleep, and woke up before Tanguish did this morning. Being tired made sense. Still, it felt too much like Helsknight was side-stepping the truth for comfort.

“Then you should rest today,” Tanguish said.

“I rested yesterday.”

“You rested yesterday morning. The evening wasn't restful.”

Helsknight made a dismissive noise and returned to his breakfast. Tanguish belatedly realized there as a plate set for himself as well. He sat down gratefully to eat.

“I have to be at the Colosseum today.” Helsknight said. “They're announcing the next bracket; the names of the matchups, and the script.”

“Can’t someone just tell you later?”

Helsknight sighed, bone-deep and weary. “Tanguish, time doesn't stop just because I’m tired. I intend to keep moving with it. Besides, I've been to every announcement since I became Champion. If I don't go now, people will notice.”

“So you're going to force yourself to go, just to keep up appearances?” Tanguish frowned.

“It's not just about appearances.”

“Helsknight, they'll forgive you for missing one announcement. You won't drag the whole thing under because you need a day off.” Tanguish insisted, his frustration mounting. “You're just one person.”

Helsknight’s brow wrinkled in a frown that suggested he took offense to that statement. “Tanguish, I'm not just one person. Not at the Colosseum. There, I'm the Champion. That means something.”

Tanguish opened his mouth to argue, but a snapped glare from Helsknight cut him off.

“I don't expect you to understand. You're still new to the Colosseum, and you don't know how it works.” Helsknight grumbled. “This is about leaders and morale and, if nothing else, someone has to sign the paperwork we submit when we order materials to prep the match. So I'm going.”

“Fine,” Tanguish muttered into his plate, trying not to sound as resentful as he felt. “I just hoped we could rest a little longer, is all.”

“Then stay home and rest,” Helsknight said, collecting his half-finished plate to discard into the sink.

“Stay home?” Tanguish asked incredulously. 

(The thought hadn't occurred to him, and if he were completely honest with himself, Tanguish would admit the idea was scary to him, dreadful in the way blowing out a candle was to someone scared of the dark. Be alone in this tiny house, after yesterday? Alone with his thoughts, avoiding his reflection like the plague? Past that, leaving Helsknight alone, after… everything… about last night? Sure, Helsknight had given his word he wouldn't go galivanting after his other half, but Tanguish didn't trust it. Helsknight had been too angry, and violence still sat close to his surface. He seemed too brittle to leave alone.) 

“I’m not doing that.” Tanguish said, wrinkling his nose like the idea disgusted him. 

“Why not?” Helsknight asked, a forced, false patience creeping into his tone. “Rest. Recover. Work through what happened yesterday like a normal person. Don’t follow me to the Colosseum just because I’m going.”

“B-but,” Tanguish stammered, feeling suddenly frantic, unable to shake the creeping panic of being left behind. “But I need-- I-- I don't-- I don't want to be alone.”

“Well I can't stay here all day.”

“Then I'm going with you.”

“Tanguish you're being ridiculous.”

Tanguish felt a spark of anger flicker to life in his chest. “Why do you want me to stay behind so badly, anyway?”

“Because you clearly need it,” Helsknight snapped, glowering at him in something that could've been concern, but was most likely just impatience. “You look exhausted.”

“So do you, but you're going.”

“I have an obligation. You don't.”

“This is just some new way of running away for you, isn't it?” Tanguish said bitterly. It was mean-spirited, he knew it was. But he was tired, and scared of being left alone, and certain Helsknight was trying to get rid of him.

Helsknight, who had moved on to donning his boots, stomped a foot hard onto the ground and snapped. “I am not running away.”

“Sure you're not,” Tanguish sniffed, too bitter to be truly scared of the knight's weak anger, which still hadn't managed to struggle his eyes red. “Just like you weren't running away when that fighter challenged you in the arena, or when you yelled at me when you broke your mirror, or when we found that stone in--”

Helsknight closed the distance between them in two long, quick strides. He loomed over Tanguish, his voice dangerous and low, and with finality in each word he hissed: “I. Am. Not. Running. Away.”

They stared at each other, Tanguish in mute anxiety, wondering how in the world he had forgotten how scary Helsknight could be, and Helsknight leaning with the barely-restrained fury of a wolf on a lead, bleeding wounded pride. Then, Helsknight forced himself to take a long, deep breath, and he reached down to grab his cloak off of Tanguish’s shoulders, as though that were the only reason he’d come over in the first place -- though Tanguish did note the exaggerated slowness and care by which he moved to take it; trying, with a white-knuckled grip around his patience, to be unthreatening.

“You want to come? Fine.” Helsknight said, shaking the wrinkles out of the fabric and tossing it over his own shoulders with practiced ease. “Follow me out to the Colosseum and have another panic attack for all I care. Someone else can drag you back home.”

Tanguish scowled down at his half-eaten breakfast and tried not to feel worse than he already did. Why had he said that? He knew Helsknight hated to be called a coward, knew the knight was, on some level, trying to help. After sitting up with Tanguish all night. After being so forgiving of a stab wound. After sticking by him while he cowered and cringed every time the knight moved. Why had he said that?

(Because he didn't want to be alone. Because being in an empty house with nothing but his miserable thoughts and the residual smell of blood sounded worse than death. Because he was scared if he was alone, Tango would find some reflection to try and talk to him, and if Tango tried to talk to him, Welsknight might be there, and the fear of Welsknight was so strong it was nauseating. So strong it made his hands shake at the briefest thought.)

(He needed to pull himself together.)

The one thing Tanguish did know, without a shadow of a doubt, was he would not, could not, be alone. So he got ready for the day as best he could, and waited by the door for Helsknight. They left in brittle silence. They were cold and uncomfortable to each other, all jagged edges, and Helsknight walked with a purpose and speed that implied he wished he could leave Tanguish behind. Tanguish kept pace as best he could.

The Colosseum loomed like a dragon. Helsknight paused by the entrance, said whatever little prayer he always said before he entered, and continued inside wordlessly. Tanguish waited for him to relax, for the familiar sense of rolling ease to at least soften Helsknight a little, but it never came. Tanguish felt almost ashamed then, when he felt ease creeping over himself. It was a feeling he wasn't expecting. It snuck up on him when they passed from the vaulted halls to the arena dome, and then further into the cells. When they walked down the stairs into the mess hall, he saw EB and Martyn waiting expectantly for them amidst the crowded tables and… he felt like he could breathe deep for the first time that morning. EB and Martyn, at least, were unchanged as the last time Tanguish had seen them.

“Well you two sure look a sight,” EB laughed lightheartedly, signing with an enviable enthusiasm. “I think you're the only people I've ever known to take a day of rest and come back looking worse.”

When neither of them could muster a proper response, the servos in EB’s wiring clicked with thoughtful concern. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”

Tanguish realized Helsknight was looking down at him expectantly, waiting for him to explain. He felt his cheeks grow hot with embarrassment and shame. “I mean… you can…”

“It was your business, and you didn't even want me to know about it,” Helsknight said flatly, and Tanguish winced. “If anyone’s explaining it, it's you.”

“Uhm…” Tanguish felt himself wilting under EB and Helsknight's scrutiny, even knowing EB’s was out of simple concern. His stomach gave a bitter twist.

“Whatever it is, it's not nearly as important as this bracket!” Martyn cut in, smiling with mischievous glee. “Who in hels did you piss off? I wanna shake their hand!”

He offered Helsknight a small, hastily bound book with the Colosseum’s seal on it -- an icon of the building before crossed swords. Helsknight leafed through the pages quickly, pulling up a seat at the table. 

“Congrats on being the star of the show,” Helsknight muttered, and managed to sound like he half meant it. “You and your lord finally getting your standoff?”

“Alas! The epic betrayal of the loyal Hand of his King is yet to come to pass,” Martyn cast his arm over his forehead in a mockery of a dramatic swoon. “No no, we've got bigger fish to fry.”

Helsknight turned another page and scowled. Martyn beamed. 

“Two against one?” Helsknight said, and then repeated, as though he hadn’t believed it the first time, “a two against one match? And they’re letting Red keep his main weapon an ax?”

“And I'm being given a bandolier of throwing knives,” Martyn said, puffing up like a prideful bird. “Have you seen your kit yet?”

“An iron sword? No shield? Nothing? What else are they going to kit me in, leathers?”

“I think they've got you slotted for netherite chain and plate,” EB said consolingly. “But still, it'll be a rough fight.”

“I don't understand,” Tanguish said, looking between the three fighters. “You're fighting each other?”

“It's a bracket,” Helsknight said, as if that explained anything. 

“We put our names in, and whoever is sponsoring the event pairs us up,” Martyn informed him, grinning. “With input from the show runners, who know our skills better, and some help from the writers to make a compelling plot for the matchups. They go for flair mostly. EB’s in for a flight match. Good luck with the acrobatics, by the way.”

EB buzzed his elytra wings in something like gratitude.

“Anyway, everyone knows in a match, the ax beats the sword.” Martyn beamed, resting his chin in his hand, bleeding arrogance. “It's the leverage. Can't block an ax blade with a sword blade, it'll snap like a twig. And a netherite ax against an iron sword?” Martyn chuckled. “Someone wants you to lose, fella.”

“It is oddly specific,” EB agreed, crossing his arms. “This kind of thing doesn’t normally make it past the showrunners, unless it’s a special event, or someone’s pulling in favors.”

“I'll say!” Martyn said, his first hint of any indignation showing. “Like damn, the knight is good, but he's not me and Red good. Maybe if they set him up against some of the up-and-comers.”

“This is on purpose,” Helsknight said, frowning tiredly down at the little book. “This is The Demon.”

“Er… steady on,” Martyn said, wincing, all his previous bravado gone. “You don't know that for sure.”

“When we fought in his stupid hole in the ground, all I had was an iron sword. And he had his enchanted, netherite ax.” Helsknight explained, sliding the book back to Martyn across the table. Martyn’s eyes danced across it, as though he could somehow read truth there. “It’s not just the ax, its the lines as well. The whole plot is about a bad bargain. It’s a parody of our fight. He’s doing this to remind me he’s watching us.” Helsknight glanced over at Tanguish. “I guarantee you the only reason he picked Red as my matchup, was because he's the best ax-wielder in the Colosseum.”

“And what am I, chopped liver?” Martyn retorted, indignation stealing into his tone as he slid the book across the table to EB. “How do I factor into your red-string-board conspiracy theory?”

“You’re there to make sure I lose,” Helsknight said quietly, “because the only way I’m beating Red’s ax is with mobility, and you can out maneuver me.”

Dread stole its way down Tanguish’s spine and pooled in his stomach. The Demon. Somehow, in all the rush of everything else, he’d forgotten about the Demon.

“My Colosseum,” Helsknight said, talking mostly to himself. “He’s rigged my Colosseum.”

There was something very frail and lost in his voice, the realization of something being taken from him, that forced the table into silence. EB and Martyn exchanged unreadable glances, worried.

“Well what you do next is obvious, right?” Tanguish asked, and every head around the table turned to look at him. “You have to withdraw.”

Martyn laughed. It was an odd laugh, both forced and incredulous. “Excuse me, withdraw?”

“Yes,” Tanguish said, frowning at the various startled looks being thrown at him across the table. “If the Demon is trying to hurt Helsknight using the Colosseum, the only smart thing to do is withdraw. And even if this isn't the Demon -- he can't win. There's no point.”

“No point?” Martyn asked, his voice leaping up half an octave, his eyebrows raising in an attempt to follow his tone.

“I can win,” Helsknight said dispassionately, looking down at the table as if he was reading his words in the wood grain. “I just have to figure out how.”

“No, you can't,” Tanguish said, frustration tinging his words harsher than he intended. “I've seen you fight against an ax. If Ren is really that good, you've got no chance.”

“I've beaten Ren before,” Helsknight growled stubbornly. “I've beaten Martyn before.”

“I mean, normally with much better gear, but he can adjust to a gear change.” Martyn frowned pointedly at Tanguish, as if trying to convey something to him through the glare. Whatever it was, Tanguish missed it. 

“And a shield,” EB pointed out. “But we can do something about that. Helsknight, how long has it been since you fought with an arming dagger?”

Tanguish had no idea what an arming dagger was, but his mind conjured the image of Helsknight standing between him and the Demon with nothing but a tiny silver knife in his hand, his face running with blood, and dread spiked through him again fresh and nauseating. He tried to imagine how it would look with Red in the Demon’s place, with that wicked iron crown and his wolf-like features bristling. He tried to imagine Martyn, quick and dangerous at Red’s heel. He'd seen glimpses of how Martyn fought, seen how quick and maneuverable he could be. He thought if Red was half as fast and powerful as the Demon, Helsknight didn't stand a chance.

“This is ridiculous,” Tanguish whined, horrified. “Helsknight, you can't do this.”

“Can, and will.” Helsknight said resolutely. “I want to, and even if I didn't, I have to.”

“If this is just about saving face--”

“Tanguish I could name four separate tenets that would forbid me from withdrawing,” Helsknight interrupted, the pale ring around his eyes managing a soft red flicker. “I only have ten.”

“Hah, ten-ets,” EB chuckled nervously to himself, trying, and failing, to break some of the tension.

Tanguish felt dismay and exasperation battling each other in his chest. “Your tenets say nothing about getting yourself killed in impossible situations.”

“No, but they have a lot to say about not running away, and not giving in to fear,” Helsknight argued back bluntly. “I’m not withdrawing. Drop it.”

“I won't!” Tanguish was starting to feel shaky, all his emotions competing to be the loudest, and above them all, the conviction that Helsknight had somehow grown a deathwish when he wasn't looking. (This was just like last night all over again, but with the Demon instead of Welsknight. Since when had Helsknight grown so eager to leave Tanguish alone?) “The Demon almost killed you. Have you forgotten that? Have you forgotten how much you keep reminding me I have to learn how to defend myself, because you're not going to be here much longer?”

“Stop,” Helsknight demanded, looking suddenly caged. EB had turned to face him, signing a question Tanguish couldn't read, concern tensing his expression. Martyn was gaping at Tanguish.

(Good, Tanguish thought acidly. If more of Helsknight's friends knew what was at stake, there was a higher chance of talking him out of doing something stupid.)

“You were sore all day yesterday,” Tanguish pressed on hurriedly. “You’re too tired to be angry today. You're the one who keeps insisting he has no idea how many respawns he has left--”

“Tanguish--”

“And you're going to throw your life away on a match you know you're going to lose?” Tanguish continued relentlessly. “You're getting mad at the Demon and you're running off and being stupid, like you always do, but this time you might not respawn--”

“Would you shut up?!” Helsknight roared suddenly, snapping to his feet. He loomed over the table, eyes a weak and flickering red, his face a snarl. He clenched his fists at his sides, like he could physically hold himself in place. When Tanguish hesitated to start arguing again, Helsknight hissed through clenched teeth, “The Demon is ruining my Colosseum enough, without you destroying the morale of the place by screaming my weaknesses from the rafters.”

Tanguish blinked, startled. He had expected to be yelled at -- he’d been pressing his luck talking over Helsknight as much as he had been. He had not been expecting to be compared to the Demon, and he could not fathom how he could possibly be ruining the Colosseum. Tanguish was about to ask what in hels Helsknight was talking about, when he realized the mess hall was silent. 

Tanguish dared a quick glance around. They were not alone. If anything, there were more people in the mess hall than there normally was. It wasn’t wall-to-wall packed, but almost half of the myriad tables had people sitting or standing around them, all of them people Tanguish vaguely recognized as other fighters who often slept or prowled around the cells. They huddled in groups around similar books to the one Helsknight and the others had been passing around the table -- all going over the upcoming tournament bracket, the assigned tasks and gear. None of the crowd of fighters in the mess were looking in their direction -- conspicuously so. Some of them muttered in low voices, but Tanguish felt the prickling knowing of being watched, and the damning silence of too many voices lowered to catch an overheard conversation.

I'm the Champion , Helsknight had said that morning. That means something.

(Evidently it meant everyone was privy to his conversations. Though, Tanguish had to admit to himself with a wince, that he hadn’t exactly been discreet.)

“The Demon almost killed me,” Helsknight said with a low, scathing voice, “because he got very, very lucky. I don't fear luck. And I don't fear losing a fight in the Colosseum.”

(Tanguish noted Helsknight didn't say he wasn't scared of dying, because they both knew he very much was. He wondered if anyone else knew, or suspected, now.)

“Oh man,” Martyn hummed, leaning back in his chair and kicking his feet up on the table nonchalantly. His quiet arrogance broke the silence and tension in the room the same way a dropped pin would. “I didn't know you were made of glass, Helsknight.”

“I'm not.”

“Your squire sure seems to think so.”

 “He's not my squire,” Helsknight snapped testily, more annoyed than angry. 

Martyn shrugged. “Regardless, he's sure lost faith in your fighting skills.”

“He shouldn't have.” Helsknight flashed a glare in Tanguish’s direction, “He knows I can fight.”

Tanguish opened his mouth to respond, but Martyn talked over him, kicking smoothly out of his nonchalant lean to sit straight in his chair.

“Suppose you'll prove him wrong when you win the tournament? Of course, I don't plan on losing so, good luck with that.”

Helsknight snorted, “I can beat you easily.”

“Sure sure, whatever. Oh, you know what would be really impressive, though?” Martyn flashed EB a wide grin. “You and EB haven't sparred in a long time.”

EB startled, clearly not anticipating being dragged into the conversation. He buzzed a bit sheepishly. “Our spars get a little intense.”

“But they're fun!” Martyn smiled. “And they're an impressive showing of skill. Everybody loves watching the Champions fight.”

Helsknight let out a slow sigh, clearly catching on to something. He mustered a miserable smirk in EB’s direction. “You think you can still take me, old man?”

EB narrowed his eyes at Helsknight and buzzed something in return that Tanguish couldn't hear. Both of their grins became much more challenging, and much more genuine. 

Tanguish scowled. Helsknight picking fights and getting himself killed was exactly the kind of thing he'd been trying to avoid. He was on the verge of saying as much, getting to his feet as the two Champions turned away from the table -- but Martyn’s sudden hand on his shoulder shoved him back into his seat so forcefully, Tanguish almost tumbled out of it. Helsknight shot Tanguish a concerned look, but before he could do anything, EB had looped an arm around his shoulders and was leading him off, no doubt buzzing challenges as they went. Martyn kept his hand on Tanguish’s shoulder until the two fighters disappeared down the hall. Then he waited a few beats longer, just in case Helsknight decided to turn back. The conversation in the mess hall started to pick up again. Tanguish felt a creeping of nervousness run down his spine.

“I'll always be glad EB can take a hint,” Martyn smiled, giving Tanguish’s shoulder a discomforting squeeze. “Squire, you and I are going to have some words.”

Chapter Text

“You know, I’m surprised Helsknight let me corner you so easily,” Martyn said, with the same chipper brightness one might use to celebrate a beautiful day. “Then again, Red would probably let you corner me, so maybe it stands to reason.”

Tanguish sank down lower in his seat, as if he could somehow hide. He said cautiously. “Should I… not be letting you corner me right now?”

“I very much think you should, but I am the one doing the cornering. I’m biased.”

“... right.”

Martyn had moved to sit across the table from Tanguish, something that brought him a surprising amount of discomfort. It felt different than when he and Helsknight sat across the tiny kitchen table at home. At home, the table was small, and the space still managed to be cozy. Sitting across from each other had more to do with elbow room and ease of eating than anything else, and there was plenty opportunity to fidget or break eye contact, or just not stare blankly at each other across a distance. Here, sitting at a table that was clearly meant for at least four people, that had been intentionally whittled down to two, with Martyn staring over his steepled fingers at Tanguish, he felt scrutinized. Judged. The reflex to slouch even further in his chair, or crawl beneath the table just to get away from Martyn’s intensity, wormed around his spine uncomfortably, and it was made worse by the fact that Martyn clearly didn’t share the same discomfort. He simply watched over his steepled fingers, with the patient meditation of someone choosing their next words with care. The silence between them stretched long and awkward before Martyn finally broke it.

“So, I don’t normally do these intervention talks,” Martyn began, tapping his middle two fingers together rhythmlessly as he spoke. “It’s not my place, you know? This is supposed to be Red’s job: checking in on people, giving mistakes a dressing down, mediating… you know, the touchy-feely stuff. I’m just supposed to stand behind him and suggest the best way to go about it, and threaten the people it clearly doesn’t work on. You know, the fun, easy stuff. But, see, you and me? We’re a lot alike. So, I think this conversation has to come from me, yeah?”

Tanguish grimaced and, despite his attempts to not appear as nervous as he felt, started anxiously picking at one of the sculk-light freckles on his knuckle. If he did it too long, the fidget would start to hurt, like worrying a scab, but his nervousness was beginning to turn to nausea, so he kept doing it for the distraction if nothing else.

“Uhm…” Tanguish murmured hesitantly, when all Martyn did was wait and stare. “I don’t… know what this conversation is. Or what it’s about.” He paused and added, “And I don’t think we’re that much alike.”

Martyn sniffed. “I beg to differ. First point of order though: that thing you just did -- airing Helsknight’s dirty laundry to the whole Colosseum -- that was stupid.”

“I didn’t--!”

Martyn held up a silencing hand, his smile dropping into an abrupt scowl. “Hup-up! Yes. You did.”  He gestured around them to the mess hall, which had cleared out some since Helsknight and EB had left, but still somehow managed to be louder than it was before. “This is not a private place. It's private enough for you and me, because we’re not important. But for the Champion?”

Tanguish scowled, and then flinched when he dug at his knuckle a little too hard. “He’s just one person.”

“Ah, yes, but he's a leader,” Martyn corrected, leaning forward to emphasize his point. “Look, I also don't think he’s all that and a bag of crisps, but the Champion’s the Champion, my friend. He's the heart of the place, like EB was before him. He sets the tone, whether he wants to or not. If he’s excited for a matchup? Everyone else wants to be excited. If he thinks a matchup is unfair, everyone else will start to wonder about the fairness of it. And if someone is yelling in the mess hall that he’s too weak to fight, that scares people. No one wants to be known as the guy that put the Champion’s name on a Remembrance Wall.”

Tanguish felt his stomach give a sudden, painful twist.

“Everyone knows Helsknight can’t lie,” Martyn continued relentlessly. “The fact that he didn’t outright contradict you or call you a liar? Unsubtle. Anyone with half a brain can pick up on that.”

“Alright, I get it.”

“I don’t think you do,” Martyn said, one eyebrow twitching upward in irritation. “You know, when Red asked you about this last, you were a lot less concerned than you were today. If you lied to my Lord--”

“I didn’t lie,” Tanguish interrupted hurriedly, and then amended to Martyn’s scowl: “It wasn’t my intention to mislead either of you. I didn’t know Red’s intentions and… I’m… taking it a lot more seriously now than I did before.”

“What changed?” Martyn said, though the sharpness in his tone suggested it was less a question, and more a demand for an answer. He reminded Tanguish of a hound, relentlessly pursuing something, and like a hound, Martyn didn’t seem to care what he blundered through in his pursuit.

“Uhm… I… I met Welsknight.”

“Oh-ho! The white knight himself?” Martyn grinned suddenly, sitting back in his chair. “And just how in hels did you manage that?”

Tanguish hesitated, and not knowing what else to do, he told Martyn, as succinctly as possible, everything. About his dashing between worlds, his friendship with Tango, the fight with the Demon and, finally, Welsknight. It was probably too much information, too far back, but he thought the context was necessary. 

(And Martyn would doubtlessly ferret it out of him eventually anyway.)

Martyn sat in thoughtful silence through the retelling, offering an admirable amount of patience. He took on a statue-like quality the longer he sat, riveted to the spot, as though everything Tanguish said was the most important thing he ever heard. He didn't fidget. He hardly even seemed to breathe. The only indication he was even aware of the wider world around him was the occasional dart of his eyes sideways when someone entered or left the room. The alertness was uncanny; a watchdog waiting for a reason to bite.

When Tanguish was finally done, Martyn let out a low whistle. “Damn.”

“... Yeah.”

“You two are really in it, aren't you?

“I’m really in it,” Tanguish corrected, moving on to pick at a different freckle on his next knuckle. The first one was getting so sore he worried it might bleed. “Helsknight wouldn't be, but he keeps getting himself involved--”

“You don't understand how this works, Squire,” Martyn cut him off, chuckling. “You're both in this.”

“We’re not. We shouldn't be. I don't want us to be.”

“But you are.”

“But we shouldn't--” Tanguish gave an exasperated snort. “I don't want him getting hurt on my behalf. Especially now that he's so--”

Martyn raised a meaningful eyebrow. Tanguish let his sentence trail off, casting an anxious glance around the mess hall.

“I can't get him killed,” Tanguish whispered, when he was sure no one was listening in. “I can't.”

“You’re absolutely right, you can’t.” Martyn steepled his fingers and resumed tapping the middle two. “Only he can get himself killed. It’s his life.”

“It's not just his life,” Tanguish snapped fiercely, fear and hopelessness flashing through him like a lightning strike. “If was the reason he didn’t come back -- if he gets himself k-killed protecting me and it's his last-- I don’t-- I don’t know what I’d do. I keep trying to tell him to stop, and it just makes him angry, like I’m holding him back! I don’t understand. He's terrified of dying. He shouldn't be acting like this, but he is, and it's-- its--! You have no idea how terrifying it is to know someone would die for you.”

(Just Helsknight’s life? That was ridiculous. As if Helsknight could be just anything, as if losing him forever could be just anything. Martyn’s callousness was galling.)

Martyn had the audacity to laugh. “I have no idea? Buddy, what makes you think you’re unique?”

Tanguish found he was angry. It wasn’t a loud anger, it was the simmering kind that came from being belittled over and over, from someone who clearly wasn’t taking him seriously. He crossed his arms on the table, needing to grab onto something, to root himself in place. “If you understood, you’d agree with me.”

“If I understood.” Martyn hummed, drawing out the sentence ponderously. He tilted his head to the side. “Alright. Fine. You tell me if this sounds familiar, hmm?”

Tanguish narrowed his eyes at Martyn suspiciously, but waited for him to speak. 

“So, you stumble into this absolute brute,” Martyn began, resting his chin in his hand and offering one of his insufferable smirks. “At first, your relationship -- if you can call it that -- is strictly convenience. You need each other. Sure, you can’t begin to fathom why he needs you, but you need him, and this is all just a means to an end anyway. You’ve just got to find the end. He could kill you probably, or at least hurt you more than you can afford, but he doesn’t. He’s got this rigid moral code that keeps you safe when he’s around and, well, it’s a little endearing once you learn the rules. You can’t owe him anything though, so you try to make things up to him -- the help he’s giving you, that he can’t stop giving you, because by some morals you don’t believe in, he’s got to. But he’s helping you too much. He’s giving things up for you that you didn’t ask for, and he trusts you for some reason.”

Martyn’s smile disappeared as he talked, his sentences coming faster, more earnest, and personal. Tanguish tried not to squirm uncomfortably, to ask Martyn to stop, because it was too close to him, but very obviously not.

“Then one day he hands you his ax, and he smiles at you and says, ‘Here, I trust you to know what to do with this.’ And you try to explain he can’t trust you with this. But he does, and you don’t want him to, because he’s just handed you the instrument of his demise and he just trusts you not to betray him with it? And you’re paranoid because you know you’re not trustworthy, you can’t be you weren’t made to be and now you’re sure, sure you’re going to somehow trip and hurt him, and how do you explain that he means so much to you now that if you hurt him, it would absolutely destroy you? You need him, not transactually or because he’s a means to an end but because you like him for helssakes, and you want him to be happy, and safe, but you can’t give him those things -- weren’t made to give anyone those things. You were made to be small, and biting, and scared, and he trusts you too much, and you keep trying to tell him how to be better, to keep people -- to keep you -- from hurting him, and he keeps insisting he's stronger than that but he's not, and one day, one day, you know he's going to sacrifice everything for you and you don't know how to stop it but by gods you've got to try, because who else is going to save that idiot from you except you?”

Martyn dropped into vehement silence, his breath coming too quickly, like he'd just run a mile. He looked away from Tanguish sharply, probably realizing too late that he had shared far, far more than he intended to. But, either out of bravery, or solidarity, or just the simple knowledge that he couldn’t, he didn’t try to take any of the words back, nor did he apologize for them. He just sat, catching his breath, a hand over his mouth like his words were living things he had to keep caged. 

Tanguish looked down at his hands, ashamed. Ashamed for Martyn, for the intense feelings he’d shared. Ashamed for assuming Martyn couldn’t possibly know what he was going through. Ashamed he’d forced Martyn to be vulnerable just to convince him that, not only did he understand, but he knew better.

(All because Martyn had the audacity to try and help him.)

“He gave me a knife,” Tanguish said quietly.

“Pardon?” Martyn said too quickly, trying to hide how distant his thoughts had gotten.

“Uhm. He. Gave me a knife. Not an ax.”

“Right. Of course. That's what I said.”

“Maybe.” Tanguish chewed on his bottom lip nervously. “Maybe you understand.”

Martyn offered a rueful chuckle. “Maybe.”

Another long silence passed between them. Tanguish decided to offer an olive branch, some vulnerability in return for Martyn’s, since it seemed to bother him so much.

“The uhm… the scar.” Tanguish mimicked a slash of claws across his face. “Helsknight got it while fighting the Demon. Trying to… protect me.” His voice dropped near a whisper, a vain attempt to keep his voice from shaking at the memory. “I thought he was blind.”

Martyn offered him a thin, harrowed smile. He gently placed his hand against his throat, fingers resting just below his adam’s apple. “The ax scar. Trying to protect me.” He grinned a little wider, baring his teeth at the memory like a cornered dog. “I thought I’d killed what made him… him.”

They looked away from each other again, inspecting opposite walls of the mess hall like nether brick was the most interesting thing in hels. Tanguish ran a hand through his hair to keep himself from fidgeting his knuckles bloody. Martyn had taken on the strangled look of someone whose memories had them by the throat, and it took him a few minutes to shake it off. He cleared his throat uncomfortably, and couldn’t completely meet Tanguish’s gaze when he continued.

“So… err… this is the part where Red finds gives some… poignant and elaborate metaphor. Like I said, he’s normally the one giving these heart-to-hearts. I’m sort of… emulating that. It works for him most of the time.”

Tanguish nodded and scratched a claw against the wood grain on the table, waiting patiently for Martyn to continue. 

“Well, here goes nothing,” Martyn sighed. “Squire, do you know what a shark is?”

Tanguish’s brow furrowed. “Uhm…?”

“I don’t know what worlds you or your hermit have been on,” Martyn shrugged apologetically. “Sharks aren’t on all of them.”

“The word… sounds familiar?”

“Right,” Martyn breathed out a bracing breath and pressed on. “So a shark is a very big fish. They’re like wolves for the water -- big hunting fish with sharp teeth, that eat most things they come across. Very apex-predator-y. Very few things can hurt a shark. A bigger shark, of course. But also small things, little tiny fish that the shark doesn’t know is a threat until it’s too late.” Martyn leaned forward meaningfully. “A parasite.”

Tanguish felt his breath leave him abruptly. That last sentence hurt like a punch to the chest, and from the point of contact, dread, like ice water, spread through his veins. He had called himself a parasite many, many times, and he believed he was one. But it was one thing to have a secret fear, a vulnerability sheltered in the back of his thoughts where he could fret at it like a scab. It was one thing to call himself something, knowing if he ever said it aloud, other people would scramble to refute it, knowing he was harming himself by naming himself. It was a new pain altogether to have Martyn size him up and agree. You are a parasite. It was like Martyn had caught sight of a bruise on the back of his soul and decided the best way to point it out was to drive a knife through it. Tanguish felt seen the way a dissected animal felt seen, if a dead thing on a table could admit to feeling anything.

Something of Tanguish’s thoughts must have shown on his face, because Martyn, as was his response to most things, laughed. “Steady on, Squire. I told you I'm not good at this heart-to-heart stuff. At least let me finish my stupid metaphor before you take it personally.”

Tanguish started fidgeting at his knuckles again, trying, vainly, to distract himself from one pain with another. “I'm listening.”

Martyn leaned his head on one hand, and took on an expression like someone trying to placate an unreasonable child. “Tanguish, we feed on people. Not just little fish like you and me. Everyone does. I mean for goodness's sake, even if we weren't from hels, literally eating at someone else’s soul, we would still do it. Every morning when we wake up and commit to being alive, we commit to taking up space. When we take up space, we take bites out of each other.” He gestured to Tanguish. “I'm taking bites out of you right now. I watched you do something that threatens me, and I'm stopping it.”

In spite of himself, Tanguish managed a short laugh. “How in hels have I threatened you? I barely said a word to you this morning, before this conversation.”

“Taking bites out of Helsknight like you did,” Martyn shrugged, as if this were all simple logic. “Forgive me for overusing my shark metaphor, but there’s blood in the water now. People can smell it -- my Lord will smell it, when word gets back to him. And when Red finds out his fight could kill Helsknight, he’ll try to throw it in Helsknight’s favor. Don’t get your hopes up,” Martyn interrupted himself when Tanguish sat up straighter. “That’s bad, Squire. That’s cheating. Even if it’s for a good cause. Red loses his integrity if he throws a match. If the showrunners can’t trust him to fight unbiasedly, they won’t trust him to fight in high profile matches, and the less of those he gets, the higher the chance he could be ousted from the Colosseum. Red needs the community here. He needs people to fight for, a pack. Losing it would devastate him. So, this threatens him, and what threatens him, threatens me.”

“You're being… very gentle for someone who feels threatened,” Tanguish observed cautiously. “You've picked fights with Helsknight over less.”

“Would you rather I be meaner? I could be.” Martyn said reasonably, his easygoing smile sharpening around the edges. It was an unpleasant expression, a quiet menace that made his eyes glitter like broken glass. “If you like, I can pin you to that chair, and tell you to knock it off, or I'll put your guts on the floor. I would do it too. I like you Tanguish, but I like my Lord more.”

Tanguish found himself sitting very still, like if he could freeze solid enough, Martyn might forget he was there. It was a stupid reflex, brought on by a threat he had pretty much asked for, but it caught his breath nonetheless. Martyn turned so sharply towards violence when given the chance (And he would. Hadn’t he already admitted he preferred threatening over reasoning?) Then Martyn shrugged, and the dangerousness about him broke like a bubble bursting.

“I could do that, but I don’t want to.” Martyn offered a magnanimous smile. “Like I said: I like you. We’re a lot alike. And little fish have to stick together.” Martyn ran a tongue across his teeth, and added a bit more coldly. “Besides, if someone told me to stay away from Red, or they’d kill me, I think I would just follow him closer. And while I can probably take you, I can’t take Helsknight.”

“You’ve put… a terrifying amount of thought into this.”

“Thank you,” Martyn grinned pridefully. “Someone’s gotta be the planner and schemer ‘round here. Speaking of -- my metaphor.”

Tanguish managed a weary smile. “How much is left in your metaphor?”

“Not much more, I promise,” Martyn steepled his fingers again contemplatively. “In my big, stupid metaphor about sharks and parasites, there is one more fish swimming around. It’s called a remora. Remora are these amazing little fish that swim with sharks, protected, by the shadows of these big, terrifying, hungry things. No shark would dare hurt one. Do you know why?”

Tanguish shook his head dutifully.

“They eat parasites.” Martyn dropped each word purposefully into the air, and they made space for themselves there, gathered their own gravity. Martyn knitted his fingers together, prayer-like, and leaned forward, his eyes narrowed, his voice low, sharing a preciously guarded truth. “Tanguish, you and me, we’re little fish in a sea full of sharks. For some reason neither of us will ever truly reckon, some knight or king has decided we’re worth keeping around. That doesn’t change the fact that we have to feed to live, to make room for ourselves. What you did to Helsknight earlier, biting pieces of him away to make room for yourself, that’s parasite behavior.” He reached a hand forward and hesitated for a moment, before bracing himself and committing to the intimacy of placing his hand gently on Tanguish’s. “But Tanguish, the thing about little fish, is we get to decide what we feed on. You can be a remora. You can eat what’s eating him instead.”

Martyn released Tanguish’s hand and sat back in his seat. Tanguish got the feeling he was waiting expectantly for something, but he didn't know what it was. 

(Honestly, he was kind of still reeling from being called -- being implied to be? -- a parasite. He kept circling back around to that wound as though he expected it to stop hurting, bothering it like his bloody knuckle, and every time it only hurt worse. Martyn saw him for what he was, for what Helsknight and Tango kept denying him to be. Parasite. Parasite. Sculk. It was everything about him, body and soul -- a small thing meant to devour, the thing he was made to be.)

Tanguish realized his hands were shaking, and he didn’t know why. Maybe it was anxiety, or how overwhelmed he was, but it felt more like the twitch of his muscles just before the decision to steal something precious, something he knew he couldn’t get away with having.

“I don't want to be a parasite, Martyn.”

“Then don't be,” Martyn said simply.

“ Don't be?”

“Sure.”

“Martyn I've tried,” Tanguish pleaded, looking up at him desperately, and finding some relief to see that Martyn had stopped smiling. It made him feel like maybe he was being taken seriously. “I've tried not to be, I really have. Everything with Tango, taking these stupid knife lessons like Helsknight asked me to, I'm trying. But you're right, everything is bigger than me, and it's all terrifying, and no matter what I do I'm just a parasite again when their shadows pass over. I can't be anything else.”

“Yes you can.”

“ How?”

“I don't know.”

Tanguish gripped his head in his hands and rested his forehead against the table.

“Hey! Hey! It's not hopeless,” Martyn said quickly, and Tanguish felt a hand rest on his shoulder. Martyn’s touch was cooler than Helsknight’s, and softer. It lacked the feverish heat, and the sword calluses. They were hands like Tanguish’s, meant for quick, nimble work. “I don't know how because I don't know how you and Helsknight work. That's all. You think I didn't stumble around in the dark bleeding Red for ages before I figured this out myself?”

Tanguish buried his head beneath his arms. (He wanted to hide. He wanted not to be here. It was all so dismally frustrating, and Martyn was trying so hard to be helpful, and Tanguish didn't deserve the help. He wanted to go curl up in a corner like a wounded animal and suffer, because finally, finally someone had agreed with him. He didn't want Martyn to drag him back up again, if only to be sure he didn't find a way of latching onto Martyn as well, and start bleeding him dry. But Martyn, like everyone else, for some unknown, stupid reason, was taking the time to try and help him. Why? Why did they bother?)

“I bother because you’re one of us, you idiot.”

Tanguish blinked. He hadn't realized he'd spoken anything out loud, but he must have. He dared to look up at Martyn, who was scowling down at him bitterly. 

“You remember when I told you us folks in the Colosseum stick together?” Martyn asked sternly, his brows knit together in a look that could have been anger, or determination. “Helsknight is one of us, Squire, and it seems obvious he wants you to be too. And that means I'm helping you, now, and you're going to save my ass someday, because we both spill blood on this sand.”

“I… haven't…”

“You have,” Martyn snapped. “You cut Helsknight's arm when you were sparring.”

“That doesn't-- that's not--” Tanguish stammered. “That was an accident.”

“Was there blood?”

“Y-yes.”

“Does it matter if it was an accident?” Martyn leaned in to him again, and spoke fiercely, angrily. “Look Squire, you can feel like you're less than dirt all you want, but don't belittle me by ignoring my help. Pull yourself together. I didn't say you were doomed to be a parasite. I said you need to look at what you're doing and start making choices. You're going to bite, little fish. Figure out what's worth taking a bite out of.” Martyn took a sharp breath, clearly trying to reign in his flash of anger, and managing some success. “Helsknight trusts you to be in his shadow, not me. I can't tell you what's eating him. We aren't friends like that. I can tell you it's possible, and I can tell you it'll be hard. If it were easy , it wouldn't be a problem now, would it?”

Martyn glowered down at him, and Tanguish shook his head, because it seemed like Martyn was waiting on a response. Martyn snorted out another quick breath, content, for now, that he'd gotten his point across. They looked at each other, and then they looked away again to their separate walls. Tanguish felt himself sinking into a hopeless, melancholy silence, and thought with dismal assurity that he should've stayed home like Helsknight had told him to. At least then his stomach wouldn't be tying itself in knots, and Martyn wouldn't be mad at him. 

(Oh. That was interesting. Tanguish didn't want Martyn to be mad at him. He held that thought for a moment, recognized it. It wasn't that Martyn was scary -- he could be, but he didn't hold menace. Tanguish wasn't scared of Martyn’s anger. He simply wanted Martyn to like him, because Martyn was small and strong and sure of himself. And? He was cunning. He disarmed people with it, drove knives through their armor, but Tanguish had yet to see Martyn do it just to hurt someone, only to make people see reason. Tanguish wanted, desperately, to be able to do that himself.)

“You're a very good remora,” Tanguish said.

“I try,” Martyn answered simply.

“Are you going to get rid of me if I can't pull myself together?”

Martyn leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms behind his head, giving this question serious thought. “No.” He said finally. “Mostly because I think you will pull yourself together.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Because you pulled Helsknight back together.” Martyn said. “You know, when he stopped coming back to the Colosseum, we thought we’d never see him again. Had Red pretty messed up for a while.” Martyn laughed dismally. “Wounded animals like to hide.”

Tanguish remembered bits of an overheard conversation; Red trying to be reasonable, a heart-to-heart, with Martyn standing beside him, and bitter Helsknight asking, is that what you think I am? A wounded animal?

“When he’s angry, you make him think twice,” Martyn continued, peering over his steepled fingers again. “I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Helsknight at his worst. I don’t know if his anger can be at its worst when you’re around. I don’t know what you did, but I’ve watched him think about if his anger is worth it, and wait to act afterwards. It’s crazy.”

“He still gets angry.”

“Everyone gets angry,” Martyn smirked. “You keep him from being angry for no good reason. Real, thoughtful, tempered anger, from someone like him -- that is a powerful tool. That’s the kind of anger that fights crusades on your behalf. Fights, and wins.”

They dropped into silence again, but this time, they met gazes instead of looking away. Martyn looked so earnest. It was an emotion he didn’t wear comfortably -- he didn’t like being genuine, showing all his thoughts plainly. Tanguish managed to feel grateful for it, no matter how badly it’d stung. It seemed apparent it came from care. 

“So,” Martyn sighed, and then forced some levity back into his tone, “that’s my heart-to-heart. I expect all five-star reviews to be submitted by the end of the week. Your homework, Squire, is to figure out how to be a remora. There will be a test, but you’ll pass with flying colors. Until then, you’re going to be brave, and you’re going to go with me to watch Helsknight and EB spar, and you’re going to cheer Helsknight on like you’re not scared he’s going to turn into stardust at the first drop of blood.” Martyn smirked. “Do all your shaking and crying behind his back later when he can’t see you.”

Tanguish chuckled. “Is that how you started with Red?”

“Yes,” Martyn said bluntly, all good humor vanishing in the wake of simple truth. “And every time he picks up his ax, my hands still shake. When he gets hurt, it feels like someone has put a hand in my guts somewhere, and decided to make just… really gross macaroni art with whatever they pull out.”

Martyn looked down at his hands, palms open on the table, and for a moment, he looked smaller than Tanguish felt. “But you know… I think that’s how caring for someone is supposed to feel. We take for granted sometimes how great they are to have around. Biting pieces out of each other. Stepping on toes and… I don’t know… smacking elbows. That gut-wrenching fear of what life will be like when they’re gone… gods and saints… it hurts.”

Martyn clenched his fists. “But you can’t take that for granted. It doesn’t dull the way familiarity does over time. If it means my care is real… I’ll feel it. Sometimes comfort is the curse.”

Tanguish found himself standing beside Martyn. He hadn’t intended to stand up and move, but he was drawn, like a parasite to a wound, to the pain in Martyn’s voice. He hovered for a moment, uncomfortable and unsure, nearly talking himself out of doing anything, for fear acknowledging Martyn’s weakness would glean him some punishment or retribution. But he risked it, placing a gentle hand on the small of his back. His hands were cold. He knew it because of the warmth that radiated through Martyn’s shirt. He wanted to apologize, to yank his hand away, to pretend he hadn’t tried. 

Instead, he agreed, “It hurts. Terribly.” And then when Martyn didn’t move or smack him away, he added. “Thank you. For caring.”

“Yeah whatever,” Martyn sniffed, gathering up his pride in unsteady hands. “You owe me one.”

“I do.”

Martyn rolled his shoulders and stood, straightening his shirt and jacket like he had somewhere important to be. “Alright. You saw nothing this didn’t happen, I’m big and scary and mean, grr. Whatever. Let’s go watch your stupid knight kick EB’s butt.”

Tanguish winced, “Do we have to?”

“Yes,” Martyn smiled unpleasantly. “Because he’s a stupidly good fighter, and you think he’s not. We’re going to prove you wrong. Give you some facts to back up your faith with.”

Martyn grabbed some health potions and led the way towards the stairs. Tanguish could hear voices bouncing down towards them, a great many more than just EB and Helsknight’s. They must have drawn a crowd. Tanguish told himself that made sense. They were both Champions of the Colosseum. Of course the other fighters would want to gather around to watch them. And he would watch them too. And he wouldn’t be -- well he would be afraid, but he would hide it as best he could, because he’d taken enough pieces out of Helsknight today.

(Martyn thought there was hope for him. He was going to try, if only for the next hour, while Helsknight was in peril just for the sake of it, to prove Martyn right. And if he could handle the next hour, he might even prove to himself that he could handle more.)

Chapter Text

It was a large crowd, or at the very least, it was more of the Colosseum fighters than Tanguish had ever seen in one place before, so it felt large. There were maybe two or three dozen people all arranged in a semi-circle on the sand, in various states of excitement. All of them were people Tanguish recognized as familiar, glimpsed in hallways and open doors over the past weeks. He didn't know any of their names and he doubted any of them knew his. Introducing himself had never been a priority. Tanguish walked resolutely behind Martyn as the Hand elbowed his way to the front of the crowd, shoving aside people who looked bigger and more impressive than both of them. Aside from a few disgruntled remarks and dirty looks, people let them pass. This was something they had come to tolerate from Martyn. 

(You’re one of us, Martyn had said. He wondered if any of these fighters agreed. He doubted it.)

In the center of the half-circle of expectant onlookers, Helsknight and EB were getting ready for their “spar,” though they clearly anticipated it would be more intense than the little knife practice sessions Tanguish had been given. Helsknight was in full armor: chainmail beneath chest plate, gauntlets, and pauldrons. He was sitting on one of the stone benches, buckling a greave around his shin, a finishing touch. Both his sword and dagger were on the bench beside him. He didn't wear a helmet -- Helsknight hadn't worn a helmet for longer than he'd stopped wearing full plate, and it seemed even a fight with EB wouldn't compel him to put one on.

EB sat on the far edge of the bench, a cloud of his little buzzer drones flitting around him in sharp, wasp-ish movements. He was running diagnostics on himself, making sure necessary systems and programs were working. Tanguish couldn't begin to fathom what any of those programs were. He knew the basics of redstone from his fleeting Tango-osmosis of the craft. The micro programming and circuitry involved with whatever kept EB running and sentient was beyond him -- might even be a bit beyond EB himself. 

“Fighting EB is… hard,” Martyn said, taking notice of Tanguish’s staring. “If he gets beat up too bad, he doesn't respawn right.”

“What?” Tanguish blinked at Martyn in confusion. “How is that possible? Respawn resets… everything.”

“It doesn't reset dents in armor or broken redstone lines. It resets organic stuff. If the wires that handle EB’s major processes get cut, they'll respawn, but the smaller, finnickier stuff--” Martyn made a so-so gesture with his hand. “The universe gets picky. That's what his buzzers are for. They’re his repair team.”

Tanguish hugged himself and looked back at EB, who had turned to buzz something at Helsknight. The knight shoved his shoulder playfully, and they both laughed.

“I don't understand,” Tanguish said, scowling. “Why do they do this? It's painful, it's hard, it's risky--”

“Why don’t you ask them?” Martyn shrugged, then grinned when Tanguish couldn't muster a response to that: “Bet you two diamonds EB does a flip.

“A flip?”

“Yeah, style points!” Martyn chuckled, rummaging through his pockets for a little coin purse and glancing over the contents. “He's got a real dance-y style. I bet he'll do a flip.”

Tanguish looked back to the two fighters, who were pacing apart, preparing their mock match. Helsknight had his sword in one hand, dagger in the other. It warmed Tanguish a little to see it was Tanguish’s dagger Helsknight still carried, the little silver straight blade held loosely in a gauntleted fist. EB had two long knives in his lower set of hands, and a sword in a third hand, leaving one hand free. He looked sharp and dangerous all-over, the lithe competence of a seasoned combatant. It was a noticeable shift from his normal demeanor. It made him look taller almost, like normally he spent his time pulled in, trying to take up less space. Perhaps he did. 

(Was Tanguish really getting that used to the Colosseum, that he could start to forget people like EB were always dangerous, despite their friendliness? That was what this was all about, ultimately. Tanguish's gaze flicked back to Helsknight again, standing stoically on the sand, looking unbothered. He’d said the Demon had gotten lucky when they fought. Tanguish thought he was about to learn just how much luck that entailed.)

“Uhm… I don't think I want to bet on them,” Tanguish said finally, when he realized Martyn was still waiting for an answer. Then he added, “Also I don't think EB will get a chance to do a flip. Helsknight is too fast.”

(Tanguish was thinking about the alley fight, about how quickly Helsknight had swept his legs out from under him to attack the pickpocket. Helsknight moved in the spaces between breaths, eye-blinks, and heartbeats. Even half-blinded by the Demon, he had circled the Demon so quickly, his reckless ax-swings had mostly missed. All save the last one, when Tanguish had intervened. That half thought of a reaction still mystified Tanguish, that moment when action proceeded any thought or will for self-preservation, like divine intervention.)

“EB is pretty fast,” Martyn pointed out, dragging Tanguish from his thoughts. “See the sword he’s got? That's a sidesword. It's a rapier’s older, stronger brother, used best with one hand. The big, rectangle-y knife is a seax, and then the thin one is an arming dagger. The sidesword deflects and slashes, the arming dagger stabs and parries, and the seax blocks and maneuvers. He has to close distance, but everything he’s got is made for punching in quickly, and catching a longer blade.” Martyn stuck his hands in his pockets. “It's like fighting three people at once.”

“Do you have a convenient breakdown for Helsknight?”

“Probably, but it doesn't matter. He's just perfect.” Martyn squinted thoughtfully for a moment, and then shrugged. “I heard once that speed in arms doesn't matter, as long as your blade always makes it where it needs to be in time. Helsknight, a solid eight and a half times out of ten, is always where he needs to be. That’s all you really need to know about him.”

“Are you ready?” Helsknight called, and the chatter amongst the onlookers dwindled. Tanguish glanced to Helsknight, and then to EB as he buzzed his response. A call for final bets was sounded off -- a fact Tanguish rankled at just a little. It seemed absurd to him that anyone would bet on EB and Helsknight fighting. Did they not care if either of them got hurt? A hush mantled itself on the group of onlookers. Martyn put a hand on Tanguish’s forearm and gave it a reassuring squeeze. There was a long, breath-held moment where no one moved, and no sound stirred. Tanguish watched Helsknight’s expression change from the tired obedience to the needs of the Colosseum and his image, to something wolf-sharp and predatory. It was a subtle change, something to do with the squint of his eyes, the tilt of his shoulders, the flex of his knuckles.

Helsknight exploded across the sand, moving from a standstill to a sweeping lunge in the space between thoughts. EB responded in kind, his body a spearpoint of flashing metal. They crashed together with the force of rocks tumbling down opposite slopes, a cascade of momentum and armor. It seemed to Tanguish as if one moment they were simply standing, and the next they were a blurring of colors and shapes and sounds: the tin-can rattle of metal, the glint of a blade, the stagger of booted feet on sand. Like the echo of thunder in the wake of a lightning strike, the gathered crowd roared its encouragement when the two fighters clashed. Tanguish was suddenly jostled in the surge of people behind him, pumping fists and jumping and cheering. It felt like Martyn’s hand, still latched onto his arm, was the only thing anchoring him in place in the wake of their enthusiasm.

Helsknight and EB were a blur, flashing images only reckoned in their infinitesimal moments of stillness. EB overextended, sword thrust forward, parried neatly by Helsknight’s dagger while Helsknight’s longsword caught in the net of EB’s knives. Scuffling movement, the halting steps of disentanglement, the calculated swooping of limbs, the shivering, church-bell ring of steel. They broke apart, circled two, three perfectly mirrored steps. EB stung forward again and Helsknight pirouetted around him, both blades sweeping down to slam into a body that was gone before they could reach their mark, grazing only the ghost of where yellow and black had been. 

Martyn had said EB had a “dance-y” fighting style, and Tanguish tried to see it. He wasn’t an authority on fighting (most of what Tanguish had seen of fighting was what he’d seen from Helsknight, and learned during knife practice). There was something dancerly about the fight itself, in the way they called and responded, made space for each other, engaged and disengaged. There was probably something dance-like in the efficiency, the way their movements seemed effortless, as bound to happen as the wind, or the sun, or the heat in hels. It wasn’t dancing though. Watching them, Tanguish got the feeling of a knife-edge, of teetering on the edge of something. When it leaned one way his stomach dropped into his feet, when it leaned the other his heart soared. It was a dance in the same way watching an ocean swell was a dance, all highs and lows, and crashing noise, and power beyond his reckoning. They grunted and snarled, and Helsknight would flash his vicious grin, and EB would drum back a constant brontide, sometimes purring, sometimes roaring. And neither had drawn blood yet. These warriors who operated in the time between thoughts and heartbeats and reflexes, who could think and move in the time it took Tanguish to breathe, were fighting for long, agonizing minutes.

Tanguish tried to remember, through the rush of watching and the shouting behind him and the magnetism of the spectacle, how long the fight with the Demon had been. At the time, it had felt like forever, when adrenaline slowed the world down to moments he could parse and react to, but in reality, how long had it been? A few minutes to run from the Demon, the handful of heart-stopped seconds when Helsknight had suddenly been there, there, right where he’d been needed. (Helsknight, a solid eight and a half times out of ten, is always where he needs to be. That’s all you really need to know about him.) A minute of staggering dumbfounded as the Demon had turned his rage in a different direction, another moment of fearful indecision, and then the scream that had galvanized him into action long after he should have been moving. Five minutes? Ten minutes? Was that all his terror had amounted to? 

Helsknight and EB broke apart again, EB half-crouching, arms spread, and Helsknight panting, sword pointed warningly in EB’s direction, staving him off. His long hair was starting to stick to his brow with sweat, his chainmail creaked from heaving breaths. He looked winded, but not tired yet. He had the open-mouthed grin of a wolf at play, all teeth and hackles. It was the kind of joy that came from testing limits, and Tanguish thought it was probably the same heady feeling he got when he scaled a new church tower for the first time.

“This is why EB was the Champion so long,” Martyn said into the lull, his voice hoarse from cheering, the tightening of his grip the only thing rooting Tanguish’s thoughts back to the present. “He’s not organic. He doesn’t get tired.”

“That’s cheating,” Tanguish found himself gasping, flinching at the crash as Helsknight and EB tangled again. They were chest to chest for a moment, swords tangled, knife hilts locked.  Helsknight wrenched their arms to the side suddenly, all six limbs interlocked and sprawling. A hint of EB’s composure slipped as he staggered to regain his footing. Helsknight kicked out a leg with speed and intention that seemed nearly preternatural. EB tumbled into the sand, turned his momentum into a roll, and regained his feet in time to dodge another of Helsknight’s lunges.

“Is it?” Martyn laughed.

Helsknight pursued EB relentlessly across the sand, keeping him in retreat, pressing some invisible advantage. The difference between the two fighters was becoming more apparent. EB was struggling, must be struggling, because his parries and slashes and thrusts weren’t quite as perfect as Helsknight’s. EB was fighting, while Helsknight seemed to casually fall into place wherever he was supposed to be, like luck. Despite his panting, and the sweat on his brow, and the inherent downside of flesh and blood against tireless robotics, Helsknight was just too good at fighting. Even when he had two blades against EB’s three, it seemed like he could just tell the next, most logical move EB would make, and had already responded and countered it the second before EB had ever committed to it. The fight was sealed when Helsknight’s dagger -- Tanguish’s dagger -- tangled with one of EB’s and, in a flickering of movement and a shriek of metal, EB’s was sent ripping from his hand. It stuck in the sand near the ring of onlookers, to various cries of victory and disdain. Helsknight smiled and sheathed his dagger, taking his longsword in both hands. EB took a cautious step back.

“There it goes,” Martyn chuckled, shaking his head in defeat. “You should’ve taken my bet. Would’ve won you two diamonds.”

With both hands around the hilt of his sword, Helsknight was stronger, able to use the full weight and leverage of every stroke with more efficiency -- at least, that was how it was explained to Tanguish later. In the moment, Helsknight simply seemed to overpower EB, crashing their blades together with enough strength to nearly wrench EB’s sidesword from his hand with every blow. EB was still quicker, still maneuverable. He darted and dashed and harried, but it was like watching a crow try to battle an eagle. His only upper hand was in being able to get away, and that could only carry him so far when Helsknight kept relentlessly pursuing. The end of their match came when Helsknight tripped EB, intending to send him sprawling. EB lashed out two of his arms to snag Helsknight’s tunic and catch the rim of his breastplate, meaning to drag him down with him. He twisted, for an instant caging Helsknight beneath too many wiry limbs, when Helsknight kicked EB’s ankle, wrapped his arms around EB’s neck and spun. There was a great scuffling of sand and arms and legs, and a loud curse from Helsknight when EB’s elbow caught him in the chin, and then they stopped. Two of EB’s arms were pinned beneath Helsknight’s knees, his sword just out of reach of one outflung arm while his last was pinned beneath Helsknight’s elbow. Helsknight had dropped sword in the scuffle, and his drawn dagger was poised delicately near the thin robotics of EB’s neck, ready to sever something vital to function.

EB buzzed something ruefully that only Helsknight could hear. The knight let out a breathless laugh and rolled off him to lay in the sand, gulping in air. The gathered crowd cheered, or groaned, and diamonds exchanged hands amongst congratulations. Tanguish realized his heart was hammering in his chest, and he was catching his own breath. Watching them fight had felt like sprinting, and now that the fight was over, he didn’t know if he was relieved or disappointed. He could have watched them for ages, but he also thought he would have ground his teeth into oblivion with the anxiety of watching.

Martyn tugged on his arm, pushing him gently forward. “Go make sure he’s alright.” He shoved a health potion into Tanguish’s hand. “Be a good Squire.”

Tanguish stumbled forward a step and frowned back at Martyn, who flashed him a smile of nearly angelic innocence in return. Tanguish sighed, clutched the health potion to his chest and crossed the sand to where Helsknight still lay, catching his breath. EB was sitting up, buzzing and signing, and beaming down at Helsknight. Tanguish caught a couple of the signs (he’d gotten better at reading them, but wasn’t nearly close to fluent in the rapid hand movements). He caught the sign for ‘Helsknight’ once, and ‘knife’ a few times. Helsknight laughed and muttered something back about guard breaks, and form guides.

“Uhm… Helsknight?”

EB looked up; the lights of his eyes squinted in a grin. “I didn’t break him, I promise.”

“Oh, I didn’t think you did.” Tanguish said sheepishly, scuffing a foot against the sand. “That was… uhm… that was intense. You two are very good.”

“Thank you,” EB said graciously. “I used to be the best until this idiot came along.”

“You’re still the best,” Helsknight said, finally shoving himself into a sit. He ran the back of his hand across his chin, wiping away a thin line of blood. “You made me bite my tongue.”

“Don’t slam your face into my elbow then.”

“Are you okay?” Tanguish asked, feeling very much like he was interrupting, but also feeling like he was already here, and it would be more awkward to turn around and slink away. “I brought-- uhm-- well, Martyn gave me--”

Helsknight waved a hand dismissively, “I’m fine. Ready to take this armor off.” He leaned back on his hands and let out a weary sigh. “I’ve gotten soft, walking around in chainmail all the time. The plate is heavy.”

“I don’t think anyone could tell,” Tanguish offered. “I couldn’t anyway. Not-- not that that means much.”

Helsknight shrugged. “Still… I should probably start wearing the plate again.” He looked sourly up at the sky. “But the only set I own is what the Demon made.”

“It’s a set you’re going to be stuck with anyway,” Tanguish offered cautiously. Then he thought of what Helsknight had said about the Demon rigging the match, and he said, “Uhm… I like the chainmail.”

“You do?” Helsknight asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow. It was a weighted sort of expression. It seemed less that he was asking if Tanguish had an armor preference, and more like he was asking if Tanguish liked anything to do with the Colosseum.

“I do.” Tanguish said, searching desperately for something genuinely good to say about armor of all things. Finally he settled on, “It’s… free-er. It feels less like you’re trying to be intimidating, and more like you’re standing on your skills.”

Helsknight frowned up at Tanguish suspiciously, reading him for deceit. Tanguish dropped his gaze down guiltily to the health potion still in his hands. He had to stifle the urge to curl his tail around his ankles and make himself smaller. It wouldn’t help, besides maybe making him feel better. Tanguish wasn’t versed in making himself less threatening, only in making himself less of a target. 

EB buzzed something under his breath and elbowed Helsknight. The knight sighed and, begrudgingly, offered a hand to take the potion. Tanguish passed it to him, grateful for the momentary break in tension.

“Did you bleed out some of your unpleasantness?” Martyn asked, stepping in to join them, his easygoing smile fixed on his face. 

“Didn’t do very much bleeding,” Helsknight smirked.

“I’ve got a knife,” Martyn offered.

Tanguish flashed Martyn a glare. He wasn’t sure what he was trying to convey exactly, maybe just that Martyn’s idea of a joke wasn’t funny. 

Helsknight shrugged. “EB wore me out. Ask me tomorrow.”

“Should you take time to recover tomorrow?” EB asked, hands moving through cautious signs. “You’ll be sore.”

“I’ll be fine,” Helsknight snapped. “I thought this whole song and dance was to prove that.”

EB held up his hands placatingly, buzzing an apology.

“Your Squire’s misgivings aside, you’ve certainly still got your skills,” Martyn agreed.  “You’re insufferably good at fighting, you know that?”

“I work very hard to be,” Helsknight said, a bit of pride creeping into his voice. “And I will be good enough to beat you and Red. Watch me.”

Martyn gave Helsknight a narrow-eyed, withering smile. “So how did the Demon get you anyway? Didn’t figure a guy like that was a fighter. He seems more of the scheming variety.”

“I was stupid.” Helsknight huffed out a frustrated breath through his nose. He sat up a little straighter in the sand and started disassembling his armor, picking at buckles and straps. “I managed to get him disarmed, but his ax-blade caught my sword and both weapons fell. I expected him to try and get distance, most people do. He went for my face with his claws instead.”

Tanguish looked away from Helsknight, suddenly unable to look at his scars. EB winced, a hand coming to his face sympathetically.

Martyn let out a low whistle. “Bloody hels. And he didn’t kill you?”

“He tried.” Helsknight snorted, clenching and unclenching his fists, as if to make sure he could still use his hands when the armor was gone. “Broke some ribs kicking me around. Tanguish distracted him though and… eh. I think we won.”

Martyn turned his gaze to Tanguish, who started fidgeting with his knuckles guiltily. (He was starting to feel a little foolish, and he thought maybe that was Martyn’s intention, bringing it up.) “Uhm… I got hurt. Helsknight had to grab me and run. But he won the fight. He could’ve killed the Demon, I think.”

“And you think he can’t defend himself?” Martyn pressed, leaning into Tanguish as if he could emphasize his point by the weight of his presence alone.

Tanguish stared down at his feet, guilt and nervousness and the discomforting feeling of too many eyes on him, made him wish he could sink through the sand. He wanted to disappear, or flee this conversation, but he also had the feeling that if he tried, Martyn would track him down and drag him back again.

(He really was a relentless remora, if that was what he was doing right now.)

“I think he can defend himself.” Tanguish said finally, when his knuckle was sore from fidgeting and he didn’t think he could dig any more without bleeding. “I just… don’t want him to have to defend himself because of me. Helsknight getting hurt for me doesn’t make sense. I’m not…”

(He wasn’t worth the trouble. He wasn’t important enough for someone to risk their life over. No problem of his could be worth it. But Martyn had glared at him and demanded don't belittle me by ignoring my help, and he wondered how universal of a feeling that was.) 

“I don’t like it.”

“Well, you don’t have a choice,” Helsknight said coolly, and Tanguish finally managed to meet his gaze. “Unless you plan on releasing your word, and mine as well. We’re in this together.”

There that phrase was again. It had been said in earnestness and desperation, and Tanguish was sure neither of them knew at the time what all it would come to encompass. It was starting to feel less like a promise, and more like an oath, binding in a way that was almost spiritual. And Tanguish thought, as Helsknight brought it to their attention again, that Helsknight was using it in the way it was intended: we are in this together, because we are protecting each other. He thought of how he’d used it recently, binding Helsknight to his tenets in ways he didn’t want, a tool to bite pieces of him away.

(Because he wasn’t using it to protect Helsknight. He was using it to protect himself.)

Tanguish wanted to wallow in that, feel miserable about it. He wanted to kick himself for everything he’d put Helsknight through in the past few days, slink off to some hole somewhere to sulk. Languish in his parasitism. But that was parasite behavior, and Martyn had just told him he had to choose against it -- could choose against it.

“Is that what you want?” Tanguish asked quietly, curling his tail around his ankles, and only managing to keep his gaze locked with Helsknight’s by sheer force of will. “Would you like me to release you from your word?”

Helsknight met his gaze levelly. He didn’t answer immediately, giving the question the moment of consideration it deserved. “No.”

“Then we’re in this together,” Tanguish agreed, stifling the sigh of relief he hadn’t realized he’d been holding in his chest. “And… I’m sorry for… trying to force you out of that.”

Tanguish offered his hand to the knight to help him stand. Helsknight had the nerve to smirk and size him up, but he took the hand that was offered and got to his feet. Martyn gave Tanguish an approving smile from behind Helsknight’s back.

“So, the script,” EB said, standing and brushing himself off. “That will need a go-over. And practice times will need to be set and scheduled. And your Demon problem.”

Helsknight grimaced. “Not sure there’s much to be done about him.”

“Maybe not, but this is our Colosseum,” EB said severely. “No one gets away with rigging it. I can talk to my brother, if you like.”

It took Tanguish a moment to realize he was talking about Evil X. On impulse he looked in the direction of Evil X’s tower, obscured by the walls of the Colosseum, but still a felt monolith in hels, the tallest tower on the skyline.

“Pulling your brother into this is a big ask,” Martyn hummed thoughtfully. “This is all insulted pride for the Demon. You wager your brother getting involved will fix that? Because I don’t.”

EB shrugged, “He could ban him from the Colosseum. I don’t think anything is more frustrating than not being able to watch your evil scheme happen.”

“That makes the pride thing worse, EB.”

“The Demon watches the matches?” Tanguish asked, glancing around the empty seats in the arena. He couldn’t imagine the Demon rubbing shoulders with everyone else in hels, just one more face in the sea.

“The sponsors get a box,” Helsknight told him, pointing to the upper seats, where glass-fronted boxes glared down at the arena field below. “Best seats in the house. You can see everything that happens from there, there’s food and drinks provided. During intermission, some of the gladiators will go up and chat with their sponsors, and if there’s a draw, they can vote on the winner.”

“The Champions get a box too,” EB observed. “To give away to friends and family. I give mine to Evil X.”

“Really?” Martyn flashed an insulted look. “All I get are five lousy tickets to give out.”

Helsknight shrugged, “I’m surprised they still reserve mine. I never give it out to anyone.”

“Why not?” Martyn asked, looking even more affronted. “Those are expensive seats to leave empty!”

Helsknight shrugged again, “Who am I going to give it to? Anyone I know who’d like it are all combatants. There are a few knights from my church I guess.” He scoffed. “Tanguish doesn’t like fighting.”

“I dunno, he looked like he enjoyed your match today,” Martyn said, flashing Tanguish a sideways glance. Tanguish blinked at him, trying to figure out if this was some new direction he was being pushed in for remora purposes. Martyn just smirked innocently back, revealing nothing.

“You did?” Helsknight looked down at Tanguish with a guarded sort of expectancy. If Tanguish didn’t know any better, he might even say the knight looked nervous. It was an odd nervousness, something more childish and innocent than fear, or the awkwardness of an unfamiliar topic, like a child worried their parents wouldn’t show up to their school play. It was almost funny.

(Something clicked with Tanguish then, glaringly obvious pieces falling into place. He kept asking why. Why did Helsknight fight. Why did Helsknight want to teach him how to use a knife. Why all the spectacle, and dragging himself to the Colosseum almost every day, and the keeping up appearances that came with being the Champion. Helsknight was proud of this. The fighting. The grit. The terrible, scary bloodiness of it. It should have been obvious -- was obvious. Helsknight joked about it all the time, that he liked being scary. But he talked about how he thought Tanguish would enjoy using knives, how he was proficient with things other than swords, but he liked swords best. And he talked about the Colosseum the same way Tango talked about his redstone, and he sat and wrote speeches for it, and Helsknight loved what he could do. And the moment they’d become friends, the first thing Helsknight had asked him was if he liked fighting the Demon, because fighting was something he loved, and it was the first thing about himself he’d thought to share. He kept offering to protect Tanguish, offering to teach him how to protect himself, talked about how he was excited to teach someone. Tanguish shuffled through his memories for any time he’d shown any enthusiasm about Helsknight’s fighting, and was deeply embarrassed when he came up short.)

“Yes,” Tanguish said, trying to cover his hesitation as best he could. “It was -- you guys are very cool. I’ve never… I mean… I’ve never seen a Colosseum fight before. But today was--” (Scary, very scary, but in the same way leaping between two distant rooftops was scary. The weightless thrill before landing, the worry of what will happen if his foot slips, but unable to fathom a world where it would.) “Uhm… you don’t-- you don’t have to get me a box. But I wouldn’t mind watching your tournament.”

Something in Helsknight’s shoulders relaxed, and he parried the thought away with a motion from his hand. “The box is yours. Honestly the showrunners will be glad I’m finally using it.”

“So… uhm… how do you plan for this?” Tanguish asked. “You said there’s a script?”

“All the fights are themed,” Helsknight explained, a prideful smirk lighting his features. “It helps get the crowd invested. All the fights center around a handful of loose plot points.”

“The plot for this fight,” Martyn butted in, ushering for the group to follow him back towards the cells, “is the Red Winter Betrayal. See, three months ago, they hosted an event that teamed Red and Helsknight against a Wither, where they made a pact--”

Martyn chattered on, leading them back to the table in the nearly deserted mess hall. He talked excitedly about past events, and caught Tanguish up to speed with the current Colosseum standings. EB jumped in on occasion, highlighting subplots going on in the background -- apparently his aerial battle was one of them, the climax of a dare to do with agility and what amounted to an aerial joust. Tanguish had trouble following all the different names. Helsknight leafed through the pages of the script, explaining plot points to Tanguish, how they could be executed. Then he, EB, and Martyn all talked about gear, and what would need made and ordered for their fights. The theater of it all struck Tanguish again, the way they talked like they were preparing for a play, costumes and sets and makeup… and swords. They didn’t discuss the Demon again, and Helsknight didn’t complain about fighting two against one. Tanguish could see the thoughts in his head turning, planning something.

They left the Colosseum that evening in considerably higher spirits than they’d come, rested in the presence of people that cared. It surprised Tanguish how light he felt as they walked home, like a burden had been lifted off his shoulders, just a bit. And Helsknight was talking to him in rambling sentences lacking any sharpness, and while he seemed tired, it was different than the bitter exhaustion he’d left the house with. Tanguish had to wonder if that was why Helsknight had wanted to go to the Colosseum in the first place -- not for the script, but for the fellowship the place brought with it.

“Tanguish,” Helsknight said, catching up Tanguish’s wandering attention. He looked up at the knight questioningly, and Helsknight cleared his throat, uncomfortable. “I uhm… I owe you an apology.”

“You do?”

“Yes, I do.” Helsknight sighed. “I tried to force you to stay home today… because I thought I knew best. I shouldn’t have done that. I just… I thought being around all the fighters would make things worse, since it all scares you so much.”

Helsknight let out a bracing breath, bravely weathering the rest of his apology. “But I was wrong. You clearly needed companionship -- and you know your own feelings better than I do. So I’m sorry.”

“Uhm… thank you,” Tanguish said, looking down at the cobblestones self-consciously. He didn’t think the apology was deserved, but he also didn’t think pointing that out would help anything, so instead he said: “Apology accepted.”

“Thank you.”

“Er… on the subject of apologies,” Tanguish stammered, rubbing gently at one of his over-worried knuckles. “I… owe you one.” Tanguish thought for a moment. “Actually, I think I owe you several.”

Helsknight waited in patient silence for Tanguish to continue. 

“Uhm… Martyn explained to me… well.” Tanguish let out a frustrated sigh. “Yelling at you today was wrong… especially in front of… where everyone was listening. You were right when you said I don’t know anything about the Colosseum… how it works. I learned a lot today at your expense. I’m sorry.”

Helsknight nodded his acceptance, embarrassed, but relieved. “Thank you.”

“Also,” Tanguish found himself saying, his own relief opening flood gate inside him he hadn’t been expecting, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Welsknight. I should have. I don’t know why I-- well I do know-- I was being-- I was scared.”

“I do have a habit of inspiring fear in people.”

“No! No, it wasn’t-- I wasn’t scared of you. You were trying so hard not to be scary -- I just-- he-- I was scared of him. And I was scared of getting you hurt,” Tanguish said frustratedly. “Which is stupid, I get that it’s stupid but--”

“It’s not stupid to want to protect people,” Helsknight said, when Tanguish couldn’t find the right words to continue. “But I can take care of myself, Tanguish. Between me and Wels, I am by far the stronger fighter. If I had known he was terrorizing you, I would have stopped it in a heartbeat.”

“I know.

“He shouldn’t be attacking you anyway,” Helsknight continued, his own frustration creeping into his voice. “He has tenets. He has honor. I always knew his hold on knighthood was tenuous at best, but fighting someone harmless--”

“I wasn’t completely harmless,” Tanguish pointed out ruefully. “I did stab him.”

“His ankle,” Helsknight rolled his eyes, as though being stabbed in the ankle was a small thing. “And only when he had you cornered, literally begging for your life.” 

The spark in Helsknight’s eyes was sudden and fierce, a bright flickering red that Tanguish hadn’t realized he’d missed until now. But he recognized it for what it was -- anger blooming to life -- and redirected the conversation to what he’d been meaning to, wanting to say.

“You’re right, though. He is a lot stronger than me.” Tanguish said gently. “I can’t… defend myself against someone like that.”

Tanguish stopped walking. They were nearly home, he could see the turn off down the street, the few remaining blocks they had to cross. Helsknight stopped at nearly the same time Tanguish did, watching quietly, waiting for him to continue with wolf-like patience. Tanguish felt the first twinge of nervousness about his next words. He scoured himself quickly for what he was doing, trying to figure out if it was right, or just guilt, or if it would somehow be harmful. He couldn’t tell, and that worried him.

 “You said Welskight was your problem and… you’re right, he is. I don’t… I don’t want you to go hunting him on my behalf, but he’s your hermit, not mine, and I’m not protecting you by making you stay away from him just because I’m… scared.” Tanguish took a bracing breath. “So… if you agree… I want to… release you from your promise from last night.”

“Tanguish,” Helsknight said, a warning in his voice. “I’m not a dog on a lead.”

“I don’t think you are! I’m sorry I didn’t mean--”

Helsknight held up a silencing hand. “If you release me from my promise, I will not swear it again.”

Tanguish nodded and buried his hands in his pockets. “I understand. I won’t ask you to.”

“Good,” Helsknight said, his own hand reaching down to rest on the pommel of his sword, as though he was reminding himself it was there. “If he attacks you again, tell me.”

Tanguish nodded again, worry tangling up in his stomach. “I will.”

He startled as Helsknight suddenly reached down and ruffled his hair. “Relax. I’m not going crusading anytime soon.”

Tanguish batted his hand away, allowing himself a laugh. “Could’ve fooled me.”

“I’m far too busy,” Helsknight insisted, smiling easily. “The Champion has a new fight to prepare for after all.”

“You’re really excited about this, aren’t you?”

“Tanguish, this is what I live for,” Helsknight said pridefully, flashing a wolfish grin. “Among a select few other things.”

Tanguish smiled up at him, glad to see the knight genuinely happy. “Well… I’m excited to see it then.”

(And he was pretty sure he meant it, too.)

Chapter Text

Tanguish awoke from sleep like a bubble bursting. One moment all was dark and dreamless, warmth and comfort. The next he was wide awake, staring at the dark ceiling. This was a marked difference from the slow rising tide of normal waking, aided by the sounds and smells of Helsknight already awake and active. Tanguish frowned and tried to figure out what had awoken him. He couldn't remember dreaming, or hearing a loud noise. He wasn't hot or uncomfortable. He was curled up small on the couch, and he could feel the taught stiffness that came from laying in the same position since he'd fallen asleep there.

Really he felt like, if he tried hard enough, buried his face beneath his blanket and screwed his eyes shut, he might be able to force himself back down into sleep again. He considered it. He also considered getting up and reveling in being the first one awake. Maybe he could get up and make breakfast for Helsknight for once (or he could sneak out onto the early morning hels streets and lift a few choice muffins off a cart, which would be much more successful than any cooking adventures.) There was an appeal there that his mind enjoyed, but that the heaviness in his eyelids and stiff limbs disputed wearily. They would probably be going to the Colosseum again today. Helsknight needed to figure out what gear he needed for his matches and he needed to schedule a time to choreograph some stunts with Red and Martyn. He had mentioned possibly training Tanguish a little more with his knife, and if Tanguish was going to be shuffling around in the sand, then he would want these few extra minutes of sleep later.

In the other room, Helsknight made a sound, and Tanguish’s eyes, which he hadn't realized he'd closed, shot back open again. He sat up on the couch, letting his blanket fall away as he turned to look into the dark silhouette of Helsknight's doorway. He prodded his waking memory, trying to pair the noise he'd heard with whatever woke him up the first time, but came up short. It wasn't a loud sound, not a cry, more like a murmur of quiet conversation, but too quick and abrupt to be real words. There was a sleepy, begrudging, rational part of his mind that said Helsknight was talking in his sleep, which, while abnormal, wasn't something for Tanguish to be concerned with. He should just get settled in, pull his blanket over his head, and wait for sleep to take him again. 

(The rest of himself was deeply unsettled, and he couldn't tell if it was because of the otherwise dark silence of the house, or because the muttering was actually concerning.)

Tanguish found himself on his feet, padding silently into Helsknight's room. He didn't know what he expected to find exactly. Helsknight was clearly asleep, sprawled out across his bed in a tangle of limbs and blankets. He slept shirtless, and the network of scars on his chest and side were pale, knotted memories he had promised to explain to Tanguish one day. Tanguish hadn't realized there were so many, but then, he probably shouldn't expect otherwise. Who knew how many Colosseum matches the knight had collected moments from, victories whose aftermath he admired later. 

(Dreaming, Tanguish thought with drifting tiredness. That thing he himself should be doing right now.)

It was a fitful dream, whatever it was. Something that had inspired Helsknight to battle his blankets into tangles around his legs, and to clench one hand back against his pillow, while the other twitched for something just out of reach. He might even be having a nightmare. Helsknight had a set frown on his face, a look of almost feverish consternation.

(Was it bad to awaken someone from a nightmare? It was a situation Tanguish had never had to worry about before. Would Helsknight lash out in his sleep? There was a half-memory in the back of Tanguish's head of Tango waking a friend from a nightmare -- some wolfish man with long brown hair and laugh lines around his eyes -- and being struck at for his troubles.)

Tanguish dithered for a moment longer, wondering what he should do. Finally he decided, well, Helsknight tried very hard not to hurt him when he was awake. It would follow that he probably wouldn't hurt him while asleep. Hopefully. Probably? Maybe. Tanguish brushed a gentle hand against the knight's shoulder and whispered, “Helsknight? You okay?”

Helsknight woke immediately, with an inrush of startled breath and wide, confused eyes. His gaze settled on Tanguish hovering over him, and his surprised gasp exhaled itself much more slowly. He rubbed a tired hand across his face and sat up slowly. “What? What's wrong?”

“Oh, uhm… nothing,” Tanguish answered sheepishly, sitting down on Helsknight's bedside. “You just… seemed like you were dreaming.”

Helsknight scanned the room suspiciously for a moment and, seemingly convinced Tanguish was telling the truth and the house hadn't caught on fire while he was asleep, slumped back against his pillow again. He threw an arm over his eyes and sighed out another long breath.

“Guess I’ll let you sleep then,” Tanguish smirked, giving Helsknight's arm a hesitant pat that he hoped was reassuring, but mostly just felt awkward. 

Helsknight's nose wrinkled. “Your hands are always so cold.”

“Oh. Uhm… sorry.”

Before Tanguish could move, Helsknight had taken his hand and guided it up to his neck, placed at the crook of his shoulder. “It's nice.”

Tanguish sat probably too still on the edge of the bed for a moment, waiting to be released. Helsknight's skin was feverishly warm to him, sinking into his fingers like a thaw. No wonder Helsknight kicked the blankets off in his sleep. 

“Ice and sculk,” Tanguish murmured quietly. “You feel hot to me, like standing by a fireplace.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Oh, no,” Tanguish chuckled. “Tango’s skin is hotter, and he doesn't hurt.”

Helsknight made a sleepy, noncommittal noise, recognizing that Tanguish had spoken. Helsknight released Tanguish’s hand, which he took back gratefully, standing to leave.

“It was a nightmare, I think,” Helsknight said, before Tanguish had made it two steps. “A memory. But when I dream about it, it's scarier. Different.”

Tanguish waited patiently for a moment, before padding back over to the bed. He sat down beside Helsknight and, not really knowing how else to show comfort, rested a cooling hand on his arm. He wasn't used to touching people, beyond occasional brushes to get attention. He felt uncomfortable, not because of the touch, but because he felt like he was overstepping something, taking up too much space. Helsknight didn't seem to mind -- logically he probably didn't. The fighters were always touching each other: pushes and shoves, wrapping arms around shoulders, Martyn keeping a hold of Tanguish’s arm all through the match. Still, it was one thing to watch other people show that sort of familiar intimacy, and something else entirely to inflict it himself.

“I had a match once, where they asked me to fight a sound of hoglins.” Helsknight said tiredly, balling a fist in his blankets at the memory. “It was before I was Champion… I had never fought animals before. I didn't see the harm in it then.” Helsknight paused, swallowed, and said quietly. “I didn't like it. Animals don't have any concept of courage, or glory, or fighting for a cause. They only know hunger, and the fear of dying, and the promise of a handler who leaves them to their fate after they're trained. It's cruel.”

Tanguish didn't know what to say, so he nodded. Then, realizing Helsknight couldn't see the nod because his arm was still over his eyes, he said, “That sounds terrible.”

“It sucked.” Helsknight agreed. “I dreamed every time they bit at me, their teeth and tusks turned into hands, dragging me down through the sand. Every time I tore one off, it was teeth again, and my armor was heavy, and the sand was like water, and I knew if too many of them grabbed me I would drown.” Helsknight finally moved his arm down from his eyes, and frowned at the ceiling. “I was yelling to my Saint, begging them to help me. I could see them just out of reach.”

“Did they help?”

Helsknight shrugged. “I woke up.”

“Should I have let you sleep?”

“No, no. It's fine.” Helsknight raised a hand to Tanguish’s on his shoulder, encircling his wrist in a large, sword-calloused hand. “Tanguish, you're freezing . Are you cold?”

Tanguish snickered. “You're probably just hot from waking up.”

Helsknight snorted and flicked his blanket over Tanguish's head, smothering him in darkness, and what was left of Helsknight's trapped fireplace warmth.

“I'm going to start making you sleep by my feet,” Helsknight laughed. “Like when people put warm bricks under their blankets, but cold.”

“You say that now, until I've put frost on everything, and you wake up sneezing.”

Tanguish considered for a moment, and then turned to flop onto Helsknight's stomach, forcing a startled oof! from the knight. Helsknight cursed and squirmed, and overall did his best impression of receiving a mortal wound (or ice down his shirt).

“You're freezing.”

“Still want to put your stupid feet on me?”

“No!”

“Good,” Tanguish chuckled. “Do you have any hoglin scars?”

“Hmm?”

“You keep scars from fights you want to remember,” Tanguish said, running a claw by one of the pale white lines on Helsknight's side. Helsknight let out a yelp and swatted his hand. “Did you want to remember that one, or do you just remember it when you sleep?”

Helsknight sat up in bed, forcing Tanguish off of him with the movement. He pulled up the leg of his sleeping pants, showing a pale, knotted groove that ran along his calf. It was short and jagged, the kind of wound that implied ripping, blunt and quick. Tanguish winced, doing his absolute best not to imagine the size of the tusk that must have caused it.

“It wasn't a good fight.” Helsknight agreed, noticing Tanguish’s discomfort. Helsknight stood and stretched. Tanguish almost left the conversation there, when he noticed two other scars, faded with time, but familiar, decorating the knight's chest.

“Helsknight? Are those surgery scars?”

Helsknight looked down at himself, as if to verify the scars were in fact there. “Oh. Yeah.”

“We match.”

“What?”

Tanguish lifted his shirt, revealing a similar pair of faded lines on his chest. He beamed. “Uhm… not exactly constellations but, you know.”

“Huh,” Helsknight grinned, his hands on his sides. “Well how about that. He/him pronouns still okay?”

“Oh! Yeah. Uhm. And you?”

“He or they works fine.”

“Oh. Cool. I'm used to using he/him. Can I keep using those?”

“Sure.”

“Awesome.”

They grinned at each other stupidly for a moment, reveling in a new kinship they hadn't even known they had. Then they committed to starting the day at the early hour. Tanguish, whose first thoughts of the day had included muffins, asked as politely as possible if they could leave early and get some for breakfast on the way to the Colosseum. Helsknight graciously agreed.

Being on the hels streets when it was early, and still mostly empty, felt pleasant this morning. There was no weather in hels really, outside of variations in the drifting haze and occasional rains of ash that passed through. Maybe it was a little clearer out, like fog lifting, or maybe it was just the heady contrast of a decent night's sleep against the wretched night before. Either way, Tanguish felt light as they walked through the streets, turning the morning conversation over in his head. He decided it was probably remora behavior, and therefore good. He had asked good questions, and he hadn't told Helsknight his dreams were terrifying or his scars were terrifying. They had simply existed for a few moments in each other's space harmlessly. Tanguish allowed himself a little glow of pride.

The first cart Tanguish suggested for breakfast wasn't open yet, so they walked a little slower to the next one, heading for the main fountain square where more people tended to gather, and so generally came to life a little earlier. This one was open, and Tanguish and Helsknight sat on the edge of the fountain and ate. As the city started yawning to life, Tanguish pointed out people going about their business. There a stall opened that sold hand-pressed paper, and Tanguish noted how the display pages were carefully weighted so they wouldn't curl in the hels heat. There two people slipped down an alley, pickpockets maybe, getting ready to find and chase marks. Helsknight mostly listened, though a couple times he would point out a cloaked figure and say: “They're a knight of Wendarr’s chapel. See the yellow, with the totem emblazoned on?” or some other color, icon, and god.

“Do you know every god and saint in hels?” Tanguish asked, after the third observation, where Helsknight pointed out a priestess haggling over day-old bread for a donation box.

“No,” Helsknight shrugged, “but I've been window shopping.”

“Window shopping?”

“I did my research before I chose my Saint.”

“Oh. Huh.” Tanguish brushed some crumbs off his shirt thoughtfully. 

(He supposed that made sense. If someone was going to dedicate their life to being a knight of something, they probably should know what they're getting into. Still, the idea of Helsknight going from church to church, quietly discussing theology with a dozen different orders, struck him as uniquely silly, like the beginning of a joke. So a knight walks into a church and asks the priest -- and so on. Even more bizarre was the idea that Helsknight might have ended up with a cloak of a different color than the tattered red he had worn since the day Tanguish met him. He wondered if the knight would be just as ferocious if he was in totem yellow or purple or green.)

(Blue would match his eyes though, Tanguish thought. Dark blue, with teal. Or gold.)

He shivered involuntarily, and his stomach gave a sudden, queasy twist. 

( Not gold. )

“Do you know what that church is for?” Tanguish asked, pointing across the square to the large cathedral across the street. It was Tanguish's cathedral, the one that had been his spawn point for so long, until Helsknight came along. It seemed like it had been years since the last time Tanguish was near it, let alone on its roof.

“First Church of Hels,” Helsknight answered automatically. “They house the Order of Remembrance.” He looked up, tracing the bell tower with his gaze as it speared its way into the sky. “It's got the tallest spires in hels. I think they were trying to make a city landmark, like Evil X’s tower. Help keep people from getting lost.”

“It's the best view in the city,” Tanguish mused, suddenly feeling heartsick. It had been a very, very long time since he last climbed that church roof -- or any roof, come to think of it. It wasn't exactly that he didn't have time, though he was much busier now than he used to be. It was just that Helsknight didn't climb roofs. He walked. So Tanguish walked. It was such a simple thing. Tanguish hadn't realized how radically it had changed his life until just now. He used to spend every day on rooftops, climbing anything his hands could grip. Now, he couldn't remember the last time he'd so much as looked at a gable.

“Can you really climb that?” Helsknight mused, dragging Tanguish out of his thoughtful reverie.

“Easily,” Tanguish said, trying not to sound as melancholy as he felt. “Well, no, easy isn’t right. Physically it's hard to do. It's very tall. It takes time. But problems are so small up there. Hels is small up there. It’s worth the effort enough that you just… forget the struggle by the time you’ve reached the top.”

They sat in silence for a moment, Tanguish sinking into inadequate memories of how bright and beautiful and soaring climbing those church roofs had been. More than that, how simple life had been, when his biggest problem was whether he would get caught picking someone’s pocket. There was allure in that, in how untroubled it all seemed, even if he had been lonely. It had only been him and Tango then, and that had been enough for a while. Then Tanguish was remembering the last time he saw Tango, crumpled on the floor while he fled from the terror of Welsknight’s voice, and nostalgic melancholy dropped into dread in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t think he could fix that problem. He didn’t think anyone could fix that problem.

Helsknight said something.

“Hm?”

“I said don’t just sit here and pine all day.” Helsknight made a shoo-ing motion with his hands. “Go do your climbing thing.”

“But--” Tanguish hesitated, frowning. “I mean… I can't just--”

Helsknight raised an eyebrow at him.

“I would leave you behind,” Tanguish explained, nervousness crawling to life in his stomach.

“So?”

(Ah. Helsknight was trying to get rid of him again.)

The thought climbed to the surface of Tanguish’s mind unbidden, buoyed by the anxieties and uncertainties of the last few days. It dug claws into his chest and strangled him there. 

(Had this morning not been a good morning? Had he done something wrong? Why would Helsknight be trying to get rid of him? He hadn't made the knight angry, hadn't done anything to upset him. They talked about the dream, but Helsknight had given that information willingly, hadn't he?)

“I--” Tanguish stammered, not sure how to put his thoughts to words, or even if they were worth putting to words anyway. “N-no it's-- it's fine. I'll stay down here.”

“Why?” Helsknight asked, still looking up at the bell tower, either not noticing or uncaring of Tanguish’s anxiety. “It's something you clearly enjoy. I would be miserable if someone took my sword from my hand.”

Tanguish felt the grip on his chest give an angry squeeze.

(There, that must be the reason why. Helsknight still resented him for forcing the promise the other night. For forcing him to put down his sword. That must be why he was trying to get rid of him now, asking him to run off on his own, so Tanguish couldn't accuse him of running away.)

“I mean, worst case scenario you stay up there for a while and I'll just meet you at the Colosseum later.” Helsknight shrugged.

The feeling of tightness in Tanguish’s chest intensified. 

(He should have seen this coming. He had tried to mend their friendship, releasing Helsknight from his word, but it had been a gesture that came too late. He'd taken too many bites out of their friendship. Helsknight was trying to leave him behind, coming up with excuses to go to the Colosseum alone. This was yesterday all over again.)

Tanguish’s thoughts and emotions stumbled over themselves, incoherent and hard to contain. He didn't know how he should feel. Dismayed. Upset. Angry? Helsknight had apologized for trying to leave him behind, and now he was doing it again. He probably would be angry, if he wasn't so dejected.

Tanguish hugged himself quietly for a moment and blinked up at the church, and tried very hard to keep all his bitter thoughts and feelings trapped inside. There was something compulsive in stewing in his miserable thoughts, like scratching an itch until it bled. He couldn't be alone, didn't want to be alone, and he hated it. The fact that he couldn't be alone was what started all his problems in the first place, with Tango. Maybe he should be mad at Tango instead of Helsknight, that he felt this way. Mad his hermit spawned him into the world with a crippling attachment to people. 

(And maybe he should be mad at Helsknight for not understanding. Wasn't Helsknight the one who always talked about needing his anger? It was unfair of him to begrudge Tanguish’s need for people. Parasites desired a host, couldn't survive without one, everyone knew that. Helsknight should understand, not spurn him like this, punish him like this.)

Tanguish blinked.

Like a single star in a dark place, a thought broke through his brooding, lancing everything else still. It was a thought shaped like Martyn, and the ruthless logic of Martyn’s voice, but it was still Tanguish’s thought.

(Parasite. This is parasite behavior. Refusing to leave Helsknight’s side, for no other reason than the fear of losing something to feed on.)

Tanguish moved. It was the same kind of semi-conscious action he would expect from reflex or instinct: fleeing the idea of behaving like a parasite. His chest still ached with irrational nervousness as he walked away, and he felt the absence of Helsknight's presence like a missing tooth, newly pulled. He kept walking. He convinced himself it would look stupid to turn around now and go running back, when he was already halfway across the square. Then he took his thoughts in both hands and directed them to the task at hand.

Tanguish slipped into a nearby alley, where a stack of discarded items and trash bins made the roof of a shop easy to access. Then from that roof to the next, a two-story building that always sat comfortably in the shadow of the church. He was up the side of it, one hand over the other, claws on a windowsill, on a gutter, on tile, deepslate radiating the hels heat onto his claws. He slipped, scrabbled, regained his feet and ran. Then he was in the air, leaping for the floral carvings adorning one of the grand, spider-leg buttresses of the church. It was a leap he'd made a hundred times, that his unpracticed limbs stretched into like a favorite shirt, relearning the texture and weight in the moments he was airborne. Tanguish’s fingers found the carving he had aimed for, curled and gripped, and his feet cushioned his fall towards the wall.

It was a difficult climb.

Tanguish’s muscles weren't used to the shifts in weight, the constant tension, the pull and release. He couldn't stretch as far as naturally as he used to, and it was evident in his speed, in his lack of it. He picked his way up the side of the church painstakingly, trying to reclaim the confidence he once had, a confidence that seemed so far away now. It kept him busy, just busy enough that his mind couldn't make troubling thoughts, couldn't agonize over what he was doing or why. The ache in his hands where callousses no longer existed, scrapes on his knuckles and knees. The way even the joints in his feet hurt, claws straining to hold him as he pushed himself upward. Though the absence of Helsknight, and all that might (or might not) imply, returned to him with the bitter regularity of an abscessed tooth. There was a voice of doubt in the back of his head that insisted he was doing something stupid, that climbing the church would see him just as alone as when he’d first climbed it, like he was tumbling backwards in time. He got to the pinnacle of the long, spider-leg spire, pulled himself over the side of it, and laid there, catching his breath.

(Good, he’d climbed it. He’d proved he could. He could go down now. Helsknight was probably still there, or if he’d left, he wouldn’t be terribly far.)

Tanguish curled onto his side and hugged his arms to his chest, waiting on their burning to ebb. He didn’t remember the climb being so difficult, but then again, he used to climb every day. It wasn’t that he was weak . Training with Helsknight had made him stronger, if anything. It was just that his muscles had gotten used to the lunge and pull of a knife in his hand, not the balancing act of dragging his body weight up a wall. While he waited on his limbs to stop shaking, he looked out across his little landing, where a handful of gargoyles sat poised, peering down at the city below. Beyond them, the horizonline of hels stretched out, boundless.

Tanguish got to his feet slowly and crossed to the gargoyles, wringing out his wrists as he did. He was taller than the nearby rooftops here, though not nearly as tall as the rest of the church. The flying buttress that led from the spire he stood on to the main walls of the church arched off to his right, beckoning him higher. He paused on the ledge by the gargoyles, looking out at what he could see of the city, and he knew the view from the main spire would be even better. There were spires and buildings and distant churches he had to tilt his head back to see, and Evil X’s tower loomed like a monolith, absolute and distant. Tanguish looked down to the fountain and Helsknight was still there, standing, arms crossed, face turned in his direction. The knight uncrossed his arms, spreading them in a gesture like an invitation, or a compulsion. Is that all the farther you’ll go?

(Again, unbidden and unwanted, the fear that Helsknight was trying to get rid of him clawed its way into his chest.)

Tanguish closed his eyes, balled his fists, and shook his head. Before he could think better of it, he turned and ran up the arch of the connecting buttress towards the church roof. His steps were fleet and sure, though the ground below was perilously far, and he dodged decorative traceries and crockets carved into the arch to add to its beauty, in the likeness of birds, mushrooms and flowers. A few pigeons fluttered off the arch in front of him, a spray of feathers scattering off towards the city. The arch was steep, and near its peak he was climbing again, hands and claws gripping carvings and dragging him upwards. The roof here was blackstone that sometimes gave way to slick deepslate tiles, and his hands dizzied themselves trying to adjust to the textures and grips, to keep himself from sliding and falling. Then he was against the spire that adjoined it to the main church wall, and his hands were digging into gaps in blackstone brickwork, shoulders burning, a flicker of pain in his knee protesting, his breath quick and heavy in his chest.

Then he was on the roof. 

A metal guardrail circled the roof, assistance for anyone asked to repair it, and Tanguish leaned against it as he looked out at the city again, breathless from his rush, and the heady euphoria of it. He couldn’t believe he used to make this climb every day, and he couldn’t believe he stopped over something so petty as walking to the Colosseum. He wanted to laugh, but couldn’t really catch his breath to do so. Everything hurt, everything shook. Even his lungs ached. He wondered if this was what Helsknight felt when he fought, the open-mouthed rush of straining every part of himself and it being good . Not soreness for the universe’s sake, not pain as a reminder of someone else, but the natural strain of a limit tested. 

Tanguish looked down to wave at Helsknight again -- and couldn't see him. Something like ice in his stomach froze him still. He searched the fountain once, twice, then the people around it. He didn't know how long he'd been climbing, but the square had been filling little by little.

(Not enough to lose a knight in a crowd though.)

Tanguish jerked back away from the railing suddenly, like it burned him. Nervousness and disappointment battled in his chest, alongside a growing sense of abandonment.

“Stop it,” Tanguish told himself fiercely, crouching by the railing. “That's parasite behavior. Stop it.”

(But it hurt. Being left behind hurt. )

“He told you where he was going,” Tanguish said, screwing his eyes shut. “You'll see him at the Colosseum. It's okay.”

(He’d been gotten rid of.)

Tanguish shook his head until he felt dizzy. He looked up the roof to the belltower, to its high pointed spire. The tallest spire in hels. He ran for it. The deepslate roof tiles beneath his feet were hot, and steamed at the frost his steps left behind. 

(He resolved not to look down again. Not until he’d reached the spire. No matter how badly he wanted to. He grabbed his thoughts in both hands, and concentrated on his climb, despite of the ache in his chest. To prove he could still do it. To prove it was still worth it.)

Gargoyles, their snarling expressions and claws turned skyward to threaten away ghasts, pointed Tanguish further up the climb. He was past his old spawn point in a matter of strides. Then he was scaling the belltower, one hand over the other. He remembered a time he could nearly fly up this wall, hand over foot, each movement memorized and perfected. Now he slipped, or missed the handhold he reached for. He was grateful for the decorative niches carved at intervals up the side of the bell tower. They offered him places to rest, hugged up against the statues inside their thin nooks. The Order of Remembrance put most of their symbology into books, and niches filled with named writers and poets, books and quills carved into their hands, conspired quietly in their frozen philosophies. Tanguish wondered if Helsknight knew any of them.

(The temptation to not only look down, but to turn around and scramble after the knight reared up in him again, weighed him down like an anchor. The next niche he rested in, he rested longer, paralyzed by indecision and fatigue, waiting on the soreness in his overworked limbs to ebb. When had this climb gotten so hard? Gods and Saints he was tired. How long had he been climbing? Had the climb always felt this endless?)

Once again gathering up his courage, Tanguish continued, bracing carefully against the belltower windows. He didn’t want to break the glass. He’d done it once or twice by accident when he was new to climbing churches, and even in his clumsy fatigue he refused to do it again. There was the wasted time of it, knowing someone had spent months on a piece of art he could shatter with a misstep, but also the stained glass windows were beautiful. Breaking them, even accidentally, felt like a crime. Scrolls with golden words spiraled amongst reverent hands, written in an alphabet he didn’t know, all lines and dots on enameled glass. There were angels amongst falling pages, and holy ink, blurred colors moving in patterns beneath his hands and feet. Then he was past the windows and gables and further up the tower, where the silhouettes of sleeping bells waited their time to ring. They clung to the rafters, silent and weighted with potential, watching him ascend from their perches.

Tanguish climbed past them, remembering belatedly he was at the hardest part of the climb. Once he passed the final window with its scrollwork ledge, there was nowhere left to rest until he reached the top. The roof of the spire was a steep angle that came to a knotted point, crowned in barbed, floral carvings. The very pinnacle of the spire was a long metal rod like a weather vane, the kind of thing that pierced the hazy clouds of hels into tissue paper. By the time Tanguish reaches the roof, he was shaking down to his bones. He had stopped worrying about breaking things, or if Helsknight had left him behind. The immense concentration it took not to slip, not lose his grip, consumed all thought and action. 

Tanguish’s hands found one of the floral carvings on the roof and he hauled himself onto it slowly, the weakness of fatigue making the motion seem impossible. But if he didn't do it, he would fall, and he would die, so he climbed. His arms hurt. His thighs burned and his ankles protested and even the individual digits of his clawed toes felt bruised. His breathing was loud in his ears, every gasp a mist in front of his eyes that unfocused his vision. He didn't even really see the next handhold so much as he felt it was there and reached, and prayed he was strong enough to haul himself higher with it. His foot slipped and for a moment he dangled on the steeply angled roof by only his hands, and he cried out in shock at the suddenness of the slip, and at the painful strain it put on his already taxed shoulders, and Tanguish thought (This was stupid. He was stupid. Why had he climbed up here? Why had he bothered? He was alone, perilously close to the ceiling of the world, so high even a fall to the rooftops below would kill him, let alone a tumble all the way back down to the streets. Stupid. Very, very stupid.)

Tanguish managed, with much scrabbling and the heartstopping fear of his grip failing, to find a carving for one foot to rest on, and then the other. He lunged for the final metal spire, fingers curling around the pole and clinging for dear life. He braced his feet on another pair of carvings and clung as close to the roof as he could, reveling in the momentary respite, his face pressed against the tiles of the roof. Being braced here wasn't true rest. If he relaxed for a moment he would slip and fall, but braced as he was he could at least stop moving for a few seconds and focus on breathing. 

(Almost there) Tanguish screwed his eyes shut and breathed. (Just to the top of the metal spire. Almost there.)

He looked up at the thin metal pole that spear-pointed its way into the sky. He thought about how hard the climb had been so far, and how badly everything shook and hurt, and how difficult it would be to shimmy his way up there. Tanguish didn't want to move. He didn't want to climb any higher. Honestly, all he really wanted to do at that moment was cry, so close he could see the end of the journey, and so far it might as well be on the other side of the world.

“Tanguish?”

Tanguish gave a jolt of surprise that nearly lost him his grip on one of his hand holds.

“I saw you. I know I saw you. Buddy, come on.”

“... Tango?”

“Tanguish! Where are you? I can’t see-- is that your arm? Oh! There!”

Tanguish leaned, and his gaze landed further down the spire. The spire itself had once been capped with something, brass or copper, and it had tarnished over time. It was hard to get people up here to scrub away what the haze of hels caked on. There was a worn little path on the tops of some of the cast florals, places Tanguish’s feet had tread, where his frost had polished down to the metal in glints and flashes. There, peering out of one of the brassy, tarnished reflections, was Tango.

He looked tired. Worried. There was a brief moment where Tanguish wondered if he was doing too well, siphoning energy away from his other half. It was a thought that left him nearly as fast as it entered his mind. For as miserable as we was climbing this spire, for as difficult and painful as it was, he couldn't imagine he was doing better than Tango. He decided Tango looked so rough because he hadn’t slept. Tango’s reflection yawned, confirming his suspicions.

“Tanguish, I’ve been worried about you,” Tango told him, scrubbing at his eyes. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you since everything happened, and it’s just been dark.”

Tanguish grimaced shamefully. He had been avoiding reflections. He leaned his face against the roof tiles and focused very hard on trying to disappear.

“Look, I know you’re freaked out,” Tango said, when Tanguish didn’t respond. “I was too -- I am . Welsknight shouldn’t have treated you like that. I don't know why-- I didn't think-- he’s never… I’ve never seen him react that way to someone before.”

At the mention of Welsknight, Tanguish felt his blood run cold. Dread pooled in his stomach, and a feeling of barely contained danger. It occurred to him again that he was very high up, and very far from anything close to safe. Tango and the inherent threat of Welsknight only  compounded the feeling of precariousness, of being seconds away from demise. One slip on this spire could send him crashing back to earth. One ghast spotting him from a distance, even just a stiff breeze from a geyser beyond the edges of the city, random and sudden. He had put himself in danger. Tanguish’s hands around the pinnacle of the belltower twinged painfully, raw and weak and sore. His legs were shaking, from exertion, from soreness, from fear. Panic roused at the base of his ribs and started scaling higher.

“I’m scared,” Tanguish said, an observation for Tango and himself. 

“I know, I’m sorry,” Tango sighed, pressing in closer to the edge of his reflection. “I’m scared too. I don’t know what to do. I’ve been trying to work it out by myself and I can’t. I need you, Tanguish. You help me think straight.”

Tango pressed against his reflection, a hand reaching out from his world into Tanguish’s. It was such a familiar motion. Tanguish remembered being dragged into Hermitcraft by his other half, with the promise of working together on something grand. He remembered wanting it. Now, terrified and nearly at the top of the world, Tanguish wanted it again. 

(It would be so easy. He could slip into Tango’s world and out of his own, and even if Welsknight was on the other side somewhere, surely running from him would be easier than climbing back down the cathedral. He could pretend it wasn't a problem. Better still, Tango brought the convenient promise of pretending the other day hadn't happened. They could just be together, and Tanguish could forget peril, and the knight that had tried to kill him, and the knight in the square who had left him behind. He could just be safe with a friend, hiding from his problems, and things could be simple like they had been before everything had happened. Tanguish could tell Tango wanted that too. If he didn't, he wouldn't be here.)

Circling back again on him, very much like a shark, came that Martyn-shaped thought.

(A parasite would go. A parasite would prioritize comfort, however fleeting, over his fear of falling, even knowing it would get him hurt in the end. Welsknight was still in Hermitcraft somewhere, and he would hunt Tanguish if he found him. And Tanguish didn't know for sure Helsknight had left him behind. If the little paranoid voice in Tanguish’s head was wrong, and Helsknight was still down there waiting on him, he would be abandoning Helsknight simply because he didn't trust him. And if Tanguish was running from his problems to Tango, he knew Tango would be doing the same with him. Tanguish already knew the peril in that.)

“I… can’t,” Tanguish said, forcing the words into existence, committing to them before he could think too much and give in to Tango’s beckoning.

“You can’t?” Tango demanded quietly. “Of course you can. Come on.”

“Going now won’t help anything, Tango.”

“Please?”

(It hurt like a bone breaking.)

Tanguish swallowed hard, and almost relented. Almost. “Tango, I’m sorry. I need time. We both need time. I will come to you when I’m ready, I promise.”

Tango’s hand slipped back into the reflection, and he gave Tanguish a look of utter betrayal. “You’re abandoning me for real this time, aren’t you?”

“I am not!” Tanguish shouted, startling both of them with his fervency. He reaffirmed his grip on the spire, despite his shaking and sore muscles and raw hands from climbing. “I’m not abandoning you. I would never! But if Welsknight finds us-- I can't go through that again. Not yet.”

“Not yet?”

“Not yet.”

“I don’t want to be alone, Tanguish.”

Tanguish felt so grieved by that statement he nearly felt nauseous.

“I know. I don’t either,” Tanguish said honestly. He took a reaffirming breath, “which is why I’m not abandoning you. But I need time to process, and to stop being… scared.”

Tango gave him one last agonized look, like he wanted to argue more, but he didn’t. Instead, he sighed and said, “Okay… I trust you.” And his reflection disappeared. 

Tanguish clung to the spire for long minutes, staring at his dark reflection. He didn't know what he was feeling, besides bad. It felt like something had released in the back of his soul somewhere, like he'd let go of something, and emotions intense and consuming barrelled into him like a dam breaking. He wanted to wallow. He wanted Tango to come back, and give him a reason to go back on what he’d just said. He wanted to feel less lonely.

Tanguish closed his eyes, and tightened his grip on the spire.

(Parasite behavior.)

With one last shake of his head, Tanguish pulled himself onto the metal spire, the final climb into the sky. He scrabbled up towards the stained glass ceiling of hels, legs and arms shaking as he inched his way upwards. At last he was dragging himself to the very top, both hands cupped around the spear-point spire, one foot dragging shakily up to meet them, every muscle in his body protesting. The metal spire was so thin, there was barely enough room for his feet to rest, but somehow, Tanguish managed to balance there at the top of the world, crouched like a gargoyle, his tail held stiffly out for balance. He waited for something bad to happen; his eyes screwed shut, his body tensed, shaking, breathing, one stiff wind away from something like oblivion, but still standing, still present. 

When nothing miraculous and terrible happened to rip him out of the sky, Tanguish took a deep breath. He steadied his heartbeat, relaxed his shaking body, and opened his eyes.

The sky was clearer today, Tanguish decided. The haze of red-brown clouds lay heavy in the lava lakes far outside of town. Hels spooled out in front of him, a wrinkled quilt of spires and rooftops, broken here and there by punch-hole gaps for gardens, parks and courtyards. He could see all the way out to where the city ended, a hazy line in the distance. He could see Evil X’s tower, a spire so tall it had chains anchored in the ceiling to steady it, its highest balconies obscured by the purple-blue of the stained glass ceiling. The main roads of the city curled out from Evil X’s spire like great cracks in the world, obscured here and there by low-hanging clouds that drifted like fog. A curtain of ash mantled the distance, past the city lines, promising a snow sometime in the near future. Above him, the stained glass ceiling glittered like a clear riverbed dappled with shells and stones. Blue and violent and wine-red glass shattered the light from glow stone and end rods, dazzling the ceiling with pearlescent color. Just past it, a few ghasts wheeled by the patchwork of netherack, great white fish beneath an ocean of glass. 

It was beautiful. Grand. And beautiful. And here. Despite everything. Despite the malevolent nonchalance of the universe that said it shouldn't exist. Despite how every living creature ant-like below him was the dark reflection of something greater and more fulfilled. Despite the Demon, and Welsknight, and parasites and remoras and sharks. It was beautiful. 

Tanguish closed his eyes again and perched there, feeling the wind, hot and dry and persistent, a gentle brushing like bird’s wings around his shoulders. He basked in the heady, rare beauty of it all, concentrating on breathing, because suddenly the view and the feeling it gave him was more important than even that. It was the euphoric beauty of persisting where life shouldn't live, a city of weeds, and weed-like people. It made Tanguish feel small, but proud. He was a grain of sand worn down by a river -- and what a river it was. It was a privilege to be lost in the flow, even if his destiny was to be worn down by it. But destiny was hard to see up here. It was hard to believe something as small as the universe could ever matter.

(He had missed this. He really had.)

Tanguish stood at the top of the world, and opened his eyes. He breathed a deep breath, and rolled his shoulders, and stood tall on the highest spire in hels, consumed by the full-souled satedness of drinking water after months of crawling through desert. 

(He should have never left the rooftops, he wondered why he ever did in the first place. He resolved, now, to walk them again with regularity. He would just have to trust that when he did, Helsknight wouldn't leave him behind.)

Tanguish looked out on his world of ruby and glass and wished he could fly, or at least climb a little higher. Nothing else mattered.

Chapter Text

Tanguish didn't know how long he stood there on top of the spire, admiring the feeling of peace the action brought him. Certainly, it wasn't long enough. He could have perched there all day, assuming his feet didn't get sore, and even then, it would've been worth it. A ghast could have shot him off the spire and it would probably still be worth it. It felt like he was doing something necessary and neglected, like drinking water after wandering a lava field, and he could have kept drinking that view for ages without getting tired of it. As a matter of fact, he fully planned to spend the next hour here. Why shouldn't he? Tango would wait. Helsknight would be at the Colosseum. He might as well just--

“Gargoyle!”

Tanguish blinked, startled at the sound of another voice so high up on the church roof. He looked around, remembered anyone who would be calling for him would certainly be below him, and crouched on the spire to look down. Leaning halfway out of an open window, far below him in the bell tower, was a knight. He cupped his hands around his mouth and called again.

“Hey! Gargoyle! Come down here!”

Tanguish looked around, trying to figure out who ‘Gargoyle’ was, before coming to the jarring realization it was probably him. Just in case, he pointed to himself.

“Is anyone else sitting on top of the bell tower?” The knight called back; his voice bright with laughter.

Tanguish felt a blush heat up his face.

(Okay, maybe he couldn't stay up here all day, actually.) 

As quickly as he dared, Tanguish slipped down the metal spire, hand over foot, from croquettes and floral carvings to roof tiles. Then he was over the side of the roof, down to the bell tower wall, feet braced against the panes for the delicate descent. Descending was much easier than ascending -- a fact Tanguish marveled at, mostly because it didn't make sense. He had been exhausted by the end of his climb, shaking and sore, and while he had perched in place for a little while, he certainly hadn't rested. Climbing back down the tower was nearly as easy as thought, hands and feet flying to the next hold, claws finding purchase with trivial ease. 

(Maybe the climb up had gotten him used to climbing again, and his body was simply reclaiming its old habits? That was probably it.)

Still, Tanguish was almost shocked when he was suddenly on the same window ledge as the knight calling to him. The knight had a vaguely familiar look to him; the kind that suggested Tanguish had maybe spotted him in a crowd before, once or twice, with no real memories attached to the familiarity. It was mostly the freckles. They peppered his face with red-brown, made even redder by the carrot-bright color of his hair, and dense enough to be striking and hard to forget. He wore a blue cape, and Tanguish had to search his memory to place what that color meant. He thought this knight was with the Order of Remembrance, which stood to reason, given this was their church.

The knight flashed him a nervous smile, “Oh good good, you actually came down. I'm about to ring the bells. It's loud and shakes the tower. Didn't want to knock you off.” The knight gave a tense laugh, “Not that you-- I mean I doubt-- I just-- even you probably fall off sometimes, right? That makes sense.”

Tanguish blinked, a little bewildered. The knight talked very quickly.

“Anyway, ringing the bells now. Do you want to? Come inside? Until I'm done? So you don't fall off the roof?”

“Uhm…” Tanguish glanced down at his feet, firmly planted on the windowsill, then through the open window. It occurred to him he had never been inside a bell tower before. He didn't even think he'd ever been inside this church. That made him nervous -- not in a harmful way, but in a tracking-mud-across-the-carpet sort of way. He felt irreverent. But he had been invited in, and the knight was looking at him with anxious expectation. “... I won't break anything by coming inside, will I?”

“Like what, the bells?” the knight laughed. “Trust me, you can't break those.” A pause that was half as long as a normal person might, and then he gasped. “Oh you mean the glass. By ink and stone -- of course you mean the glass. Don't worry! It's fine! Even if you did break it, I don't think the priests would care.”

Tanguish gave the window frame a dubious look over, doubting that statement. He cast one look back over his shoulder towards the ground far below, and then decided he would probably never have another chance to see inside the bell tower. Moving as delicately as he could, Tanguish squeezed through the open window and dropped onto the wooden floor inside. The remembrance knight hovered over him, his face lighting up in a grin that was, honestly, disproportionately giddy for watching someone crawl through a window.

“Ink and stone,” he whispered admiringly, “the Gargoyle is in the bell tower. I can't believe-- oh! Oh, I should -- huh!” The knight offered a hand, helping Tanguish to his feet and, as soon as he was standing, shook it excitedly. “You can call me Flipside! It's nice to finally put a face to the legend -- I mean -- it's nice to know I can put a face to -- you've been gone off the church for so long, Tin, the priest, was starting to think the universe took you. We were going to put a gargoyle on the roof for you in remembrance. But you’re here and I'm the first person who gets to meet you and-- oh right the bells!”

The knight, Flipside, let go of Tanguish and abruptly darted away. Tanguish, overwhelmed and not sure what to do, stayed by the open window, watching the blue, butterfly flutter of the knight’s retreating cloak. Then the knight was gone, disappeared down into the well of the center of the room, slipping down a ladder like he’d done so a thousand times -- and likely had. 

The inside of the tower wasn't nearly as grand as the outside, built more for utility than beauty, but it was still quite beautiful. Tanguish was standing on a catwalk of sorts. A wooden floor clung to the stone walls, a large open space at its center where, if he leaned over far enough, he could look down all the way to the bottom of the tower. Above him, all the way to the top of the bell tower, more boardwalks ringed their way between sheets of stained glass, all latticed together by access ladders and massive wooden beams. On those massive wooden beams, looming and waiting with the quiet anticipation of something born to a well-loved task, hung the bells. Gigantic bells, twice Tanguish’s height, glittering bronze and gold. The bright, metallic surfaces reflected the colorful light streaming in from the stained-glass windows, giving Tanguish the feeling of standing in a building-sized kaleidoscope. They were brilliantly decorated, covered in scroll-work letters so artistically inscribed they stopped being words and instead turned into flowers and leaves. The purple shimmer of enchantment tangled amongst the twisting patterns, some magic that either added to their heartiness, or amplified sound. It gave the bells the illusion of life, a host of sleeping bronze birds, quietly breathing, waiting for their chance to sing.

“Gargoyle!” Flipside called, his voice bouncing up from two catwalks down. He was standing by some sort of panel, grinning wide. The knight hurriedly stuffed a scrap of wool into his ear and warned, “It's about to get really loud in here!”

Tanguish clapped his hands up to cover his ears. Below him, Flipside hit a switch, and the bell tower filled with the smell of sparking redstone. Tanguish’s entire world became the ringing of bells. It shook the floor, vibrated in his chest and knees; loud gongs like the tower’s musical heartbeat. The bells chimed in sequence, and the kaleidoscope light of the bell tower cascaded off the moving gold and bronze in a shower of color. Tanguish found himself awestruck by it, caught in a downpour of light and sound, a musical thunderstorm, lightning and all. (He thought it was the most beautiful thing he had ever witnessed, and it awed him all over again to know it had been in hels, right under his nose the whole time.) The light and noise stilled, the hour’s chime settling into a reverberating ring that Tanguish felt more than he heard, like a new rhythm in his heartbeat. He slowly removed his hands from his ears and stood breathless, staring up at the bells, resting giants waiting on their next command to dance and sing.

“They're beautiful aren't they?” Flipside asked, his voice overloud in the newly reclaimed silence. Tanguish startled to find the blue knight was standing beside him again.

“They are,” Tanguish said, finding the words woefully inadequate. “I've never seen anything like it.”

“Best view in hels,” Flipside agreed, taking the wool from his ears. “Gotta be careful though; they'll make you deaf.”

“You ring them every day?”

“Every hour,” Flipside grinned pridefully, puffing out his chest a little. “I’m the fastest climber out of all the squires -- fastest climber in hels!”

“Fastest climber in hels?” Tanguish asked, raising an eyebrow challengingly. (He'd been hanging out with Helsknight too much, he decided immediately. That was a very Helsknight thing to do.)

“Of course!” The knight (squire?) beamed, and then added a bit more nervously. “Uh, after you, that is. You’re -- I mean, you're the Gargoyle.” That word again, wielded like a particularly weighty title. Tanguish opened his mouth to ask about it, but stopped short when Flipside stammered, “This is-- I mean, this is probably a stupid thing to ask but, do you wanna race?”

Tanguish blinked. “Race?”

“Yeah! I mean-- if you want to. It's just. You know.” Flipside fidgeted with the edge of his cape. “You're an amazing climber? I've always kind of wondered how I would measure up.”

Tanguish blinked, suffering the surreal feeling of being known by someone he'd never met before. “I--”

“You don't have to!” Flipside said quickly, taking a step back. “You know what, pretend I didn't ask, it's fine.”

“It sounds fun!” Tanguish interjected before Flipside could find some way to sink through the floor in embarrassment. “I'm just-- a little overwhelmed. But I'd love to have a race.” Tanguish managed what he hoped was a daring grin. “Can I climb outside?”

Flipside smiled, relief and excitement bright on his face. “Are-- are you sure? I've got ladders in here. That's an advantage.”

Tanguish shrugged. “I always climb outside.”

“Okay,” Flipside bounced on his toes. “Yeah! Okay. Uhm. Start at the window?”

Tanguish climbed back onto the windowsill he entered by, wincing a little at the stiffness that had already started creeping into his arms. There was a moment where he considered if this was a good idea. He'd recovered some from his climb up the tower, but to say he was rested would be a lie. He flexed his fingers and toes, felt their aches, wrung out his wrists. He leaned out the window and looked down.

“Are you ready?” Flipside asked.

“Ready,” Tanguish nodded, committing to the race before he could overthink it too much. He thought if he could go straight down the front facade of the church, he could spare himself some running. There would be some long drops, and he would probably attract attention dropping down the front of the building like that, but he thought -- he hoped -- he could manage it.

“Go!”

Tanguish tumbled out the window, hands and feet seeking out panes and sills like ladder rungs. There was a moment where he could hear Flipside’s retreating feet as he ran for the nearest ladder, and then it was only the sound of Tanguish's breathing, and the scrabble of his claws on wood and stone. He focused on precise movement, on not slipping and falling, occasionally glancing at the roof far beneath his feet to measure distance. When he was close enough, he simply let go of the bell tower and dropped, rolling across the roof, and springing back to his feet again. He dashed to the iron grating on the side, neatly vaulted over it, and began his descent down the facade of the church, his world once again narrowing to his hands and feet, and his occasional glances down. His heart fluttered in his chest, exhilarated from the rush of the race, a very different feeling from the fear of the ascent. He felt giddy and childish, and more than a little stupid as he scrambled past statues and gargoyles, their serious gazes trained on the wider world.

Tanguish’s hubris got the better of him. He was so caught up in the feeling of competency, of the fun of climbing, of the narrow world of hand and foot. He had started ignoring his body’s protests at being overworked as much as he had. He dropped down to a ledge, fingers gripping around the heads of stone flowers, and a sudden pain lancing through his wrist made his grip slip. There was a dangling second where he held on by one hand, and he reached a foot out for anything to catch himself on.

Tanguish fell. 

He thought (ah) and (whoops) and he thought (this is going to hurt very badly--)

Tanguish landed with a grunt in someone’s arms, someone who dropped to his knees with the impact to better cushion the fall. He felt the bruise in his shoulders and thighs where he landed against chainmail, and his breath left him in a gasp that was more surprise than impact. Tanguish found himself blinking up at Helsknight in mute bafflement, too blindsided by the fact that Helsknight was there to really register anything else. He felt foolish for being surprised, and foolish again for assuming Helsknight wouldn't be there still, waiting for him, and then deeply ashamed for his bitterness as he’d climbed the tower, so fixated on his own fears he'd assumed the worst in his friend.

(His friend who, a solid eight and a half times out of ten, was always where he needed to be.)

“Yeah, figured something like that was going to happen,” Helsknight snorted, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. He stood, lifting Tanguish effortlessly and depositing him onto his feet with purposeful gentleness. It made Tanguish feel deeply cared for… and a bit childish. “You alright?”

“I--” (Didn't see you at the fountain.) (Thought you went to the Colosseum.) (Thought you left me behind.) “--fell.”

“Observant,” Helsknight said, prodding him in the ribs with a finger. “Did you break any bones?”

“I don't think so?”

“Pull anything out of socket?”

“No?”

“Successful climb then.” Helsknight took a step back and looked upwards, crossing his arms. “Still can't believe you did that. You made it look easy.”

“I did?”

“Sure made it look easier than I could've.”

Tanguish blinked at Helsknight incredulously for a moment, and then took his own step back to look at the drop he’d fallen from. 

(It wasn't a terrible height, not good, but he didn't think it would have killed him. It certainly would have broken some bones though, and he was grateful Helsknight had caught him.)

(He was grateful Helsknight had been there to catch him.)

Tanguish bravely tried to stave off another, more overwhelming wave of foolishness for thinking Helsknight would abandon him. Helsknight hadn't done that to him yet, not since they became friends. He should have trusted the knight from the beginning.

“Where did you go?” Tanguish asked, looking down at his knuckles, and forcing himself to stop picking at them. “I didn't see you from the roof.”

“Oh, the stall I order my fabric through opened up,” Helsknight shrugged. “Figured I would put an order in for a new cloak. Mine’s seen better days, and I'll need something nice for the tournament anyway.”

“You're really going to buy a new cloak just to get it bloody in the Colosseum?”

“Yep.”

“You're ridiculous.”

“Gargoyle!” Flipside came bursting through the front doors of the church, breathless and smiling. “How in hels did you-- woah!”

He stopped abruptly, staring wide-eyed at Helsknight. Helsknight seemed to weigh the newcomer over with his gaze, before offering a very slight bow of his head. “Good morning squire.”

“How did you know he was a squire?” Tanguish asked.

“The bottom of his cloak,” Helsknight pointed to a small stripe of white stitching that adorned the bottom hem of Flipside's cloak, unnoticed by Tanguish until now. “The white means you're uninitiated. Squires from my church have white stripes running down the sides of their cloaks.”

“Oh! Cool.”

“You’re…” Flipside stammered. “Y-you’re Helsknight.”

Helsknight shrugged. “Last I checked.”

“Oh. My gods.” Flipside said. “Champion Helsknight. And the Gargoyle. At my church.”

Helsknight raised an eyebrow at Tanguish, asking a silent question. Tanguish shrugged. He had no idea what the Gargoyle thing was about either. 

“I-I-- I mean uhm--!” Flipside seemed to remember some knightly decorum he'd been missing. He clasped a fist to his chest and bowed. “It's-- an honor to-- I mean-- Blessings of Memory on you both!”

“Er… Saint keep your sword sharp?” Helsknight responded awkwardly, and it was all Tanguish could do to keep from laughing. It was funny seeing Helsknight on the wrong side of formality for once. “Does the Order of Remembrance even practice swordcraft?”

“We do!” Flipside said hastily, dropping his hand down to an empty sword belt. “I mean-- I don't have my sword with me. It's-- I'm supposed to do drills after the first bell.”

“First bell,” Helsknight said. “The one you just rang?”

Flipside’s grin, which was already nervous, managed to get even more so. “Yes. We. We drill from books. It's. A part of the Remembrance. Thing. Uhm. Yes. So I should go do that soon.”

The squire paused. He seemed to be on the verge of asking something, taking up the edge of his cloak in fidgeting hands. It was exactly the expression he had taken when he’d asked Tanguish for the race. 

(Tanguish thought briefly about how excited Helsknight had been to teach him self-defense.)

Tanguish coughed into his hand and said, “Helsknight loves teaching people swords.”

Helsknight looked down at Tanguish. “I do?”

“I mean, that's what you said when you started teaching me.”

“You're learning swordcraft. From the Champion.” Flipside whispered in awe.

“He's a very patient teacher,” Tanguish said, smiling pleasantly at the knight. “And… we are running a little early still?”

Helsknight sighed, though Tanguish thought he was putting on a larger show of annoyance than he was actually feeling. Helsknight was pretty good at saying no to things he genuinely didn't like. The knight rested his hand on the pommel of his sword. “Would you like me to look over your sword forms?”

Flipside looked very briefly like he might faint. He let out an excited squeak of a noise, followed by a stammered, “F-follow me! We have-- there's a practice room. Gods. And ink. Just. Yeah okay. This is happening.”

The squire disappeared back into the church in a flurry of excited movement, forgetting to hold the door open for them in his rush. Helsknight rolled his eyes and stepped past Tanguish to hold the door instead, ushering him inside. Together, they stepped into the First Church of Hels.

Chapter Text

It was beautiful. Tanguish didn't expect any differently. The outside of the church was grand, so logic dictated the inside would be as well. It was just that, Tanguish had never been inside a church before. He haunted roofs and rafters. He didn't know what to expect, and in all his wanderings on rooftops, he had never stopped to imagine the shape of the interiors beneath his feet. It felt intimate, personal, and oddly presumptuous, like he was arrogant to assume what divinity claimed for its own. In the same way it was good enough to know what a friend looked like without having to picture their heart and lungs, it was good enough to see the outside of a cathedral and simply know the inside lived, and held purpose. 

The entry hall they stepped into was simple and dim, a place for discussion and greeting before the sanctuary. It was the definition of a transitory space, made to be pleasant, but not to be lingered in. The beauty was in the floors, in the hand laid tiles of intricate patterns, all evocative of turning pages, all of those turnings leading inexorably onward down to branching halls, and to the great, grandly carved doors of the sanctuary. The walls held carvings of books and shelves in dark oak, and on every spine of every book was a name. As Flipside led them past, Tanguish a few. He didn't recognize them. 

“Is this a Remembrance Wall?” Tanguish asked, wincing at how loud his voice sounded in the quiet. 

Helsknight was the one who answered. “Yes and no. Everyone here contributed to the building; materials, diamonds, or labor.”

“There's… so many.”

“It's a big church.”

At the end of the row of bookshelf names were a pair of large double doors, almost three times Tanguish’s height. Flipside stopped in front of them and smiled nervously.

“We’re just gonna cut through the sanctuary,” he said apologetically. “It's quicker than walking around. Uhm. People are probably praying in there. So... You know.”

Tanguish blinked first at Flipside, and then at Helsknight for an explanation. 

“He's asking you nicely not to talk.”

“Oh.”

“Sorry,” Flipside said, wringing his cloak in his hands. “It's just -- a lot of the prayers involve memorizing and meditating on names. It's. It's hard. It gets even harder if people are talking.”

Flipside moved to open the doors, but Helsknight stopped him. “Since we’re here -- is there a place where you take…” Helsknight hesitated. “Uhm. Sacrifice.”

Flipside went a shade paler, and gave an expression like he'd just swallowed something bitter. “Sacrifice?”

Helsknight sighed and ushered to his cloak. When Flipside continued to blink at him in quiet bewilderment, he said dryly, “Saint of Blood and Steel.”

“Oh. Oh. You want to give blood here?”

“If you have a place for it.” Helsknight said, lifting his eyes towards the ceiling in narrowing patience.

“I don’t-- we don’t-- I don't think we--” Flipside squirmed uncomfortably. Apparently this was a question he'd never been asked before. “I can get a priest for you?”

Helsknight made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “Never mind.”

Flipside did his best to hide his relief, and entered the sanctuary.

Tanguish raised his eyebrows at Helsknight. “So Martyn wasn't lying when he said you were in a vampire cult?”

“Be respectful you're in a church,” Helsknight deadpanned, shooing Tanguish in after Flipside. Tanguish covered his mouth with a hand, stifling a laugh, then stopped walking abruptly.

The sanctuary was beautiful. 

(He really needed to find something better than beautiful to describe everything, but the problem with Tanguish and very pretty things, was they had a way of striking him dumb. So he thought, in the inadequate way of someone who has very nearly stopped thinking: Oh. It’s beautiful.) 

The sanctuary was massive, lined with warped wood columns that could dwarf trees, so thick Tanguish couldn't circle his arms around them (two or three of him couldn't circle arms around them), and of such a religiously polished blue he almost mistook them for lapis. Only the iridescent veins still pulsing along their surface in the low light betrayed their real origin, and only added to their beauty. The columns ran along the isles of the church in two long rows, separating the naive from the wings, and supporting a second story (something he eventually learned was called a triforium) lined with bookshelves, nooks, statues, and prayer corners. Higher still, the columns clung close to the walls, shimmering stained glass windows peaking between them like light through ancient trees, before weaving branch-like into the vaults of the ceiling. The vaults were decorated, tile mosaics filled with blue-mantles helsmets tangled in long scrolls filled with gold and silver names. They danced, prayed, knelt, and meditated, reflecting the intentions of those seated far, far below them. 

Tanguish was standing in the center aisle, and in front of him rows of chairs curved neatly towards the altar at the end of the sanctuary, all of them neat and simple. Only a handful of them were filled, blue robed and blue cloaked individuals sitting or kneeling, heads bowed in silence. One of them held a prayer book in their lap, which Tanguish suspected was filled with names, people the Order of Remembrance had been asked to remember. At the far end of the room, up three steps into the chancel, there was a tall altar of polished gold and blackstone, surrounded by statues of what Tanguish assumed were important members from the founding of the church, frozen in immortal meditation, mantled in blue. At their center was a grand statue of curling paper scrolls entwined in a river of ink so tall it seemed to pour from the ceiling. At the statue’s base, in both the gilded line-and-dot script, as well as normal text, read the phrase: By Ink And Stone, Our Memory Remains. The cast of purple and blue from the stained-glass windows made the gold text shimmer, pearlescent and alive, like somehow the universe might be bent to their will through beauty alone.

By Ink And Stone, Our Memory Remains.

A gentle hand on the small of Tanguish's back jolted him out of his reverie. He looked up to see Helsknight, who had a dry, knowing smile on his face, as though being wonderstruck by a cathedral was a regular occurrence -- and maybe it was. The teal-y blue of his eyes seemed to shine in the stained light cast by the windows above. He signed something slowly, emphasizing the statement with a nod toward the altar. 

(Tanguish still wasn't the best at reading the motions, but he was improving steadily. It helped that they were used around EB so often.)

“Do you want to get closer?”

Tanguish looked up at the altar, then flashed a nervous look in Flipside’s direction. The squire had moved to one of the side isles shadowed beneath the triforium. He hadn't noticed that Tanguish and Helsknight had stopped. Helsknight followed Tanguish’s gaze, shrugged, and signed something like: “Don’t worry about him. He’ll wait.”

Tanguish hesitated, fidgeting for another unsure moment.

Helsknight raised a questioning eyebrow. “Would you like me to go first?”

Tanguish grimaced and scratched the back of his neck nervously. He managed to fumble a clumsy sign back. “Please? I'm scared I'll bother someone.”

Helsknight nodded, offered a reassuring smirk, and led the way up to the altar. Tanguish walked in his shadow the entire way, even going so far as to match Helsknight’s footsteps, every soft click of his claws smothered by the heavier beats of the knight’s boots. Tanguish was relieved to find they didn't disturb anyone much more than a few curious glances. One of the scattered congregants took special note of Helsknight's cloak, as if trying to decide if Helsknight were one of theirs or not. In the tinted light of the windows above, his cloak looked desaturated and gray-black, the many rips and poke-holes in the bottom hem of the cloth emulating star-like shapes.

(That would be pretty, Tanguish thought, imagining Helsknight in a blue-black cloak, dotted with stars. He thought it would match his eyes.)

The feeling of walking across the floor of the massive cathedral wasn't too unlike walking across the Colosseum sand for the first time. Something between the height of the roof and the steady upward lines of the tree-trunk columns gave the place a feeling of weightless splendor. The cascade of shimmering light from the stained-glass windows danced with the long, liquid shadows cast by flickering torches and chandeliers, and together they rippled like the play of light through water. Tanguish was struck by the feeling that, if he didn't curl his claws hard enough against the tiles at his feet, he might somehow slip and fall up into ceiling, swept away by light and prayer and worship. He wondered if the cathedral had been designed with that feeling in mind, if somehow the heady vertigo emulated the feeling of memory, or if this was just accidental beauty at its most baffling. Tanguish found himself reaching forward and resting a hand on Helsknight's arm, trying to anchor himself to the floor.

Helsknight led them to the altar, stopping just before the stairs. He craned his head back to look up at the statue, and Tanguish found himself mirroring the motion. He couldn't imagine the time or skill it would take to build something like this. The statue was so lifelike it could have been real ink frozen mid-pour, real pages and scrolls stilled as they fluttered to the ground. The praying figures at the cascade’s base could have been real people turned to stone, every fold of their clothing perfect, the dimples of their skin soft, their expressions subtle, and kind, and knitted in concentration. The same breathless feeling of wonder that so often claimed Tanguish when he looked out at the grandness of hels from spire-tops made itself known in the spaces between his ribs.

(And it had always been here beneath his feet.)

Helsknight moved in Tanguish’s peripheral vision, dragging his attention back down to earth. Helsknight drew his dagger quietly from its sheath at his hip and ran his thumb across the edge, cutting his thumb just enough to draw a bead of blood. The phantom smell of Helsknight's floor suddenly bloomed itself across Tanguish’s senses, and a twisting pang of nausea forced him to look away. Helsknight knelt to pray at the foot of the stairs, and Tanguish stood awkwardly beside him, hands pinned beneath his crossed arms, staring intently up at the stained-glass windows. He only dared to look down again when Helsknight finished, wiping whatever remained of his offering (sacrifice?) on the hem of his cloak.

“Are you okay?” Tanguish signed. 

The knight smirked and splayed his hand, showing the cut had already stopped bleeding.

Tanguish looked down at his hands, not sure how to convey ‘I’m asking about your thoughts, not your hands.’ He settled for signing again, “Are you okay?”

Helsknight blinked, clearly puzzled, trying to figure out how best to answer. Eventually, he replied, “I haven't prayed in awhile.” He shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea.”

(Well, that was as good an answer as any.)

Tanguish didn't know the sign for ‘vampire cult,’ so he settled on pointing to Helsknight, and then curling his claws by his face to mime sharp teeth. The knight snorted and smacked him lightly on the shoulder. Tanguish had to cover his mouth to stifle his laughter. Together they retreated back up the aisle, then cut across to an open doorway in the side of the sanctuary where Flipside waited patiently. He ushered them through, and then led the way down the hall into a wide room.

“So, uhm, welcome to the training hall,” Flipside said, laughing nervously as they entered. “I mean, we just call it the Study, because, you know, books. Memory. But. It's. It's functionally the training hall too.”

Tanguish thought library would have been a more appropriate term. The room was circular, the open, plainly-tiled center surrounded by tables and chairs. The walls were lined in bookcases, massive walls of books many times taller than Tanguish was, dotted here and there by empty spots where a tome had been removed for study. The very center of the room, the training area, was a step down from the tables and chairs, the only real indication that it wasn't just more library.

“You learn swordcraft in your library?” Helsknight asked, hands on his sides, looking around with interest.

“Keep your blade sharp and your mind sharper,” Flipside said, in the rehearsed way of someone reciting engrained wisdom. (A tenet of the Order of Remembrance, Tanguish thought.) “Besides, a lot of these books teach swordcraft.”

“They make books for that kind of thing?” Tanguish asked, following the squire as he stepped into the center of the room.

“Of course!” Flipside smiled pridefully, ushering to one of the tall bookcases. “Part of our work for the Order of Remembrance is preserving history! And that includes the history of the Colosseum, transcripts from matches, fighting styles that have been developed, the making of arms and armor-- everything we can save.” Flipside seemed to realize his excitement, and coughed apologetically. “Uhm… we-- I use them to study when I don't have a sparring partner.”

“Huh, resourceful,” Helsknight hummed, his gaze passing over the bookshelves. He missed the look of star-struck awe that swept over Flipside at the thoughtless compliment. Tanguish saw it though, and had to stifle a chuckle. Then Helsknight ushered to Flipside and said, “You wanted me to see your sword forms?”

The squire, suddenly reminded why he’d lead them here, leaped to one of the nearby tables where a sheathed sword sat beside an open book. He fumbled over drawing the blade, and stepped with care into the little sparring circle. Helsknight pretended not to notice the fumbling, carefully unfastening his cloak and passing it to Tanguish before drawing his own blade. The netherite was dark and grim compared to Flipside’s iron blade, a tiger stretching grandly before a house cat.

“Tanguish,” Helsknight hummed, his voice quieting in that dangerous way it did whenever his sword was in his hand, “stay on the outside ring of the tables.” 

Tanguish, who had been busying himself folding Helsknight's cloak, grimaced. “Take it easy on him, Helsknight.”

“Anyone unsure with a blade is dangerous,” Helsknight said patiently, pointing the tip of his sword down towards the tile floor. Flipside watched the simple movement, starstruck still, and nervous. “They don't have as much control. Accidents happen.”

Tanguish was suddenly reminded of the cut he’d given to Helsknight's arm when they had sparred in earnest. The thin red line, Martyn reassuring him Helsknight was too good to hurt him, the laughed admission: if anyone is getting accidentally stabbed today, it's me. It hadn't occurred to Tanguish that he'd been the danger, but in hindsight it made sense. He'd been flailing around, not really sure what he was doing, and now Helsknight was preparing for Flipside to do the same thing.

“Be careful,” Tanguish said somewhat uselessly, looking between the two swordsmen. Helsknight offered him a smile, along with one of his over-formal nods. Flipside laughed nervously and gave Tanguish a thumbs-up, his sword glinting in the light when he moved.

Tanguish did as he was told, retreating behind the innermost ring of tables. He deposited Helsknight's cloak where Flipside's sword had been, beside the open book that Tanguish assumed the squire had been reading before he'd climbed the tower to ring the bells. Tanguish peered down at the pages, surprised to find them filled, not with text, but with drawings of swordsmen posed in different stances, moving through choreographed motions. Tanguish looked up and watched Flipside take on the stance of one of the forms on the page. He moved through the form on the page seamlessly, though hesitantly, the arc of his sword clearly choreographed.

Helsknight smirked when he caught the squire’s sword on his. “I'm not made of glass.” He flicked his wrist, giving Flipside's sword a lazy parry. Flipside grimaced, but his next stroke landed with much more fervor.

“Good.” Helsknight hummed. “Take me through your full set.”

What ensued was a slow parody of what a real fight might be, the squire’s brow wrinkled in concentration, every move committed to with heavy thought and intention. Meanwhile Helsknight showed his prowess by effortlessly meeting Flipside's blade at every opportunity, occasionally giving tips like he had while teaching Tanguish. A foot moved here, a stronger pull of the shoulder, a lean; little adjustments that turned Flipside's strokes from clumsy parodies into something a little tighter, a little stronger. Peppered throughout were Helsknight's little assurances; “Good. Yes. Again.” and “That was perfect. Again.” were stated like they were fact, simple observations instead of praise from someone incredibly skilled.

As the two swordsmen worked, Tanguish flipped through the little book of sword forms, surprised by the number of them he could recognize. Flipside’s rough movements aligned with the images well enough, though Helsknight had been onto something when he mentioned control as a problem. It wasn't that Flipside couldn't replicate the forms. It was that his sword point wavered, his arm didn't form a perfect line, or it did, but he dropped it too quickly. He was sweating, and his face was flushed, and his brow was creased in thought and obvious effort. Meanwhile Helsknight was as solid a wall as he always was.

Tanguish found himself watching Helsknight, watching his perfect, effortless movements and confident angles, and it made him wonder. He flipped through the sword form book, searching for parries and deflections. When he found the section he was looking for, he watched Helsknight again, comparing the little hand drawn images with the movements the knight made, and recognizing them. 

(Huh. Had Helsknight learned his craft from books like these? He’d been impressed when Flipside mentioned doing it himself, and Tanguish had always assumed Helsknight had learned, or at least honed, his skills in the Colosseum. He'd been knighted, so then it followed he'd once been a squire, and some other knight had trained him. Or maybe it had something to do with him and Wels, with being brought into the world as someone's idea of a perfect knight, and therefore being able to learn sword forms perfectly.)

Tanguish smirked as he turned a page and recognized one of the poses, the opening stance Helsknight had taken the day before when he fought EB. 

(And he'd thought EB had an unfair advantage. It must be infuriating for the Colosseum fighters to face Helsknight, knowing he tended to be… perfect.)

Tanguish flipped through the little book again. He frowned and muttered quietly to the pictures of fighting knights, “But he hasn't figured out how to fight axes yet.”

Helsknight had said something about out-maneuvering Red as his only real way of winning, and Martyn had mentioned how fragile swords were against axes, all their force focused on a single, blade-breaking edge. Tanguish didn't know what kind of ax Red used, but the Demon’s ax had been a long-hafted thing made for chopping through mushroom stems, wide-reaching and wickedly sharp. He remembered seeing the Demon’s back as he’d lifted it over his head, both hands strong and sure, ready to bring it down on Helsknight like he was a stubborn log in need of splitting. Tanguish squeezed his eyes shut and waited on a strong moment of sudden queasiness to pass, doing his best not to imagine what Helsknight would have looked like if the ax had fallen.

(If Helsknight fought Red in the Colosseum, he probably wouldn't have to imagine.)

Tanguish flipped through the book again, frowning at all the little knights with swords. Not a single one of them held an ax. He looked at the two fighters, still sparring, still sunk deep in concentration. An idea still only half-formed in his head, Tanguish made his way to the bookshelves ringing the room, looking for covers that matched the book in his hands. He didn't know anything about libraries (the one library in hels was on the startlingly long list of places he had only ever seen the roof of) but he thought, he hoped, he could find more books like this one if he could find a matching cover. It was a long, slow search, and he took his time, craning his neck back to squint at the highest bookshelves, trying to read the curling script on their spines.

Tanguish was three bookshelves from the end of the room when he finally found what he was looking for: a splash of leather-bound volumes halfway up the bookcase. One book in the set was conspicuously missing, a gapped-tooth grin of an otherwise perfect set. Tanguish stood on his tip-toes, trying vainly to reach the shelf. After a second unsuccessful attempt, he gave a chagrined grimace and, as delicately as possible, climbed the shelf. His muscles protested (he had done a lot of climbing today) and his hands cramped against the slow, careful movements. He clung to the shelf and awkwardly flipped through the books one-handed, trying to read quickly, and still somehow read diligently. When his tired muscles started shaking, the whole bookcase trembled, and Tanguish wondered with increasing nervousness if this would end with him being smashed flat beneath an avalanche of falling books. About halfway down the shelf, Tanguish grabbed one volume embossed with the promising image of a crossed ax and sword. He flipped it open, scanned the images, and smiled. With a sigh of relief, he half-dropped, half-fell off the side of the bookshelf, landing so heavily next to a nearby table that one of its chairs rattled.

“Serves you right for climbing the shelves.” a gruff voice above him laughed. “Just ask for a ladder next time. Gods know we have plenty.”

Tanguish leaped to his feet, the book clutched to his chest. He opened his mouth to stammer an apology, or maybe an explanation (really just any reason why he'd been climbing the shelves), but the uproarious laughter of the (priest?) in front of him cut him off. 

The man wore the blue of the Order of Remembrance, but as a wide blue sash around his waist with matching stole, instead of a grand cape. He leaned heavily on a cane, and stroked a broad hand across his beard as he tried, and failed, to reign in his laughter completely. There were deep crow’s feet around the corners of his eyes. Tanguish got the impression he laughed often.

“Don't look so scared, boy,” the priest said, the corners of his beard upturned in a grin. “I might bite, but I've had all my shots.” He gestured to the book Tanguish still clutched close to his chest. “Show me what you've pilfered from my shelf.”

Tanguish felt his ears heat in a blush, and he passed the book over. “I wasn't stealing it, I promise!”

“Of course you weren't,” the priest said, thumbing through the book deftly with one hand. “You can't steal something freely given.” His bushy eyebrows raised. “I will admit, Gargoyle, I didn't take you for the marshal sort.”

There that name was again. Gargoyle. Though the priest didn't throw it around with nearly so much reverence as Flipside, but it still made room for itself in the sentence, like it had a little more gravity. 

“U-uhm,” Tanguish stammered, “well it's. It's not for me. It's for--” Tanguish looked over to Helsknight, and only then did he notice the two swordsmen had stopped sparring. They had been joined by a willowy lady who rested on a pair of forearm crutches. She looked nearly carved from ebony, dark skin just a shade lighter than the plain, functional gown she wore. A flash of azure blazed across her shoulders on a short cape, as well as the braided cord that tied her sword to her side. The knot wound around the sword’s hilt, locking it in its sheath. 

Tanguish was struck by the uncanny feeling he was looking at an angel, or a saint, or some other holy thing that walked just a little too close to the divine for mortal comfort. Tanguish wasn't the only person who thought so either. Helsknight knelt at her feet, the picture of a knight before a great lady. There was something like panic to the tightness around his closed eyes, like he hadn't expected to be seen, let alone approached by her. Flipside hovered a step behind him, mangling the end of his cloak in his hands, his eyes firmly on the ground. Whatever emotion the swordsmen felt in her presence, it wasn't shame, and the lady didn't look at them with condemnation. It was the natural humility of a person who has, by some grand accident, stumbled upon an ocean for the first time, and realized just how small they really were.

(And just as uncanny as the woman, and the strange aura of divinity about her, was the sudden urge Tanguish had to dash over and put himself between her and Helsknight, like he could shield him from her presence. Doubly absurd, because Tanguish couldn't imagine ever being able to shield Helsknight from anything, let alone a small, unassuming woman whose sword was tied in its sheath, and who smiled with the quiet magnanimity of a cherished statue to some heavenly virtue. But he took a step towards them regardless, and his stomach twinged with a protectiveness he wasn't used to feeling.)

“Looks like our Lady has found your Knight,” the priest rumbled, a laugh still on the edge of his voice.

“She’s--” Tanguish breathed out slowly, and lost all words.

“A paladin,” the priest said. “We don't get a lot of them, but damn if they don’t make an impression.”

Something bumped into Tanguish’s arm, and he realized the priest was trying to hand the book back to him. Tanguish took it apologetically, and had to stifle the urge to hug it close to his chest again. The priest looked him over critically. “I have your word you'll bring that back to its home, Gargoyle?”

“I-- of course.” Tanguish said, trying (and somewhat failing) to grab ahold of his wits again.

“And you'll take good care of it,” the priest commanded him. “No liquids near it. No folding the pages. No stains on the cover. And for heaven’s sake don't lose it.”

Tanguish shook his head quickly, “I won’t!”

“Good,” the priest nodded, the corners of his eyes wrinkling in a smile. “Now get gone with you. You've distracted our poor squire long enough. He has duties to attend to.”

“Y-yes sir,” Tanguish stammered, a bit intimidated by the abrupt dismissal. As he scurried over to Helsknight, he watched the paladin reach a hand out and place it gently on the knight’s head, whispering something to him before turning to Tanguish. Her eyes were the deep blue of an inkwell, and when she smiled at him, it felt like a god had lowered their head to peer at him through the keyhole of a door.

“Gargoyle,” she said, nodding to him in something like a bow, and Tanguish was so dizzied by it, he almost forgot to respond.

“That’s -- that’s what people keep telling me.”

“It is a term of endearment -- The Extra Gargoyle on the Roof. It’s nice to finally have you on this side of the roof tiles.” The paladin smiled warmly at him. “We worried we had missed our chance to know you, when you disappeared from our pinnacles. It seems the universe has offered us the kindness of a second chance.”

Tanguish swallowed. He didn’t know how to feel about that -- or how to react. Or what to say. The paladin seemed to be used to this, because she gently dropped her gaze away from his, and Tanguish let out a long breath he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding. The edges of his vision felt like they were colored with stars, though he saw none. It was that same lightheaded feeling that came from standing up too fast, or realizing he’d just narrowly avoiding falling to his death off a rooftop. 

“A word of advice for you, Gargoyle?”

Tanguish swallowed hard again, and had trouble finding his voice. He nodded for her to speak.

The paladin met his gaze, and it seemed to him like she was crying inky tears. There was a depth in her eyes, some god of memory glaring at him through a keyhole in the universe. He thought if he could stare long enough, listen to her quiet voice, past her voice, maybe, to whatever stood politely on the other side of her soul, the whole of the world might open up to him. Every insignificant forgotten thing. Every precious second of remembrance. It all prickled on his skin. And then it settled on him, like heat in his marrow, like acclimating to a summer’s day, and finding for the first time the sun warmed instead of burned. The paladin reached out a hand, clasped his forearm and said something to him, and it felt to Tanguish like she wasn’t the one speaking. Not really. 

The paladin leaned back on her crutches, rubbing her cheek against her shoulder to rid herself of the inky tears on her cheeks. She blinked a few times, hissed, and winced her eyes shut. “Tin, there’s ink in my eyes again.”

“I’ve got you, Lady!” Flipside gasped, very nearly shoving Tanguish aside to help lead the Lady away -- and she was just a lady again, small, and fragile, with a rueful laugh that apologized for her sudden loss of sight. The old priest, Tin, sidled up to Tanguish (and Helsknight, who had stood at some point, and looked just as dazed as Tanguish felt. His hair was spattered in blue-black ink where the Paladin had touched his head, though he hardly seemed to notice.)

“Two miracles in one day,” Tin mused, and Tanguish didn’t know if he sounded impressed or annoyed. “Don’t you boys feel special?”

Tanguish and Helsknight exchanged equally shaken glances.

“You get used to it,” Tin chuckled. He tapped Helsknight’s shin with his cane. “You should already be. That’s the Saint of Blood and Steel’s cloak, isn’t it? You’re up to your eyeballs in paladins. Surprised you aren’t one yourself.” Tin gave an exaggerated sniff. “You’ve got the scent of divine on you.”

Helsknight, who looked less like he’d seen a ghost, and more like he’d seen an army of them just march by, scowled in puzzled frustration. “My Saint doesn’t want me.”

“Too boneheaded to know a sword from a sign, more like,” Tin snorted. He tapped on Helsknight’s shin with his cane again. “Heed the Lady’s words, boy. And get a better poker face. You look that thunderstruck every time divinity knocks on your door, people will stop taking you seriously. And you, Gargoyle.”

Tanguish startled as Tin turned his gaze on him. What the priest lacked in divine resonance, he made up for with the kind of fatherly disapproval that came from viewing most of the world as his disgruntled children. “Use it for good.”

Tanguish was on the verge of asking what Tin meant, when he remembered he was still clutching the book to his chest. He nodded quickly. Tin looked unconvinced, and Tanguish got the feeling he’d missed the point of the phrase somehow.

Tin left them standing there, hobbling after Flipside and his Lady with surprising speed.

“That was…” Helsknight trailed off.

“... yeah.” Tanguish agreed. 

“Did she… tell you anything?”

Tanguish blinked up at Helsknight, surprised. “I mean… yes. While I was standing beside you.”

“Ah.” Helsknight ran a hand through his hair, and looked down dispassionately at his slightly shuddering, ink-stained hand. The cut on his thumb was gone. “Why is it that whenever I let you drag me off somewhere, I end it feeling like I’ve been gutted?”

“You taught me how to use a knife well?” Tanguish hazarded a tentative joke. Helsknight didn’t laugh. “Are you alright?”

“I… don’t know.”

“Did she… say something to you too?”

Helsknight let out a breath, finally managing to steady himself. “She said next time divinity comes knocking, answer.”

Tanguish raised an eyebrow up at Helsknight. “Does that imply gods have come looking for you before?”

Helsknight shrugged.

“Huh.”

“Mind if I ask what she told you?”

Tanguish frowned down at the book he carried. He hesitated, not because he didn’t want to tell Helsknight, but because he felt like he couldn’t do the words justice. He could only hold the shape of them, and not the… everything else… that had been behind them. Finally he said, far less elegantly than she had: “Hold on tight, love. It’s a long fall. But it’s worth it for the view.”

Chapter Text

They arrived at the Colosseum a little late, but neither of them minded that much. Tanguish was tired from all the climbing he’d done, and a little wrung out from his encounter with the paladin. In his memory she was already diminishing, like storm clouds torn apart by wind, and the echoes of her thunder didn’t hold as much weight as they should. Maybe Tin was right when he said people got used to that kind of thing, or maybe it was like the body’s response to pain. When things were too much, sometimes it simply had to forget the shape of them in order to carry on without fear. Tanguish took some solace in the fact that Helsknight seemed affected similarly.

(If one of the strongest people Tanguish knew was shaken by the encounter, maybe his own reaction was, if nothing else, understandable.)

Regardless, they didn’t talk much on the walk across town.

It was a little unfortunate then, when they arrived at the Colosseum to find it was bustling. What was once a den of sleeping lions transformed into something alive and active overnight, all in preparation for the coming match. There were fighters on the sand, practicing and training. The mess hall was filled with the smell of food, and the tired chatter of people who weren't normally up this early. Tanguish saw many faces he didn't recognize, and when he asked, Helsknight would pick people out and explain them. That person there is a showrunner, here to answer questions about necessary equipment. There is a costume designer. That person there sources metals for new weapons. Here, a group of brokers who procure off-world items. There, a pair of script writers helping people finesse their lines. Tanguish saw EB sitting down in front of a line of advertisers, all hoping to get their shops and wares stamped on various locations during the match. Redstoners cluttered around a schematic at one table, discussing set changes with the builders that were going to make them. 

It was all very busy and loud, a kicked anthill of activity. Tanguish, already overwhelmed by the morning’s events, found himself clinging to Helsknight's cloak as he waded through the crowd. Several people called Helsknight's name when they saw him, trying to get his input on questions and regulations. Helsknight acknowledged them with nods and short remarks as he brushed by, clearly not in the mood for all the bustle. They fled to his cell, where Helsknight promptly fell onto the bed, sighing loudly. Tanguish, for lack of anything else to do, joined him.

“There's a lot of people out there,” Tanguish pointed out, after they sat in silence for several minutes. Through Helsknight's cracked door, the sounds of talking from the rooms above could still be heard as a distant rumble. “When you said you'd have to get things sorted here, I thought you meant talking to a show… uh… writer? To write lines? Or maybe practicing with Red.”

Helsknight huffed into his pillowed arms. “It'll calm down in a few days. Once everyone knows what they're working on. Then we’ll split into smaller groups like that.”

“And you have to manage it? Since you're the Champion?”

Helsknight shrugged, and rubbed his eyes like just the thought of it all exhausted him. Tanguish grimaced up at the ceiling, at the imaginary crowd a floor above. After another moment of gathering themselves, Helsknight dragged himself off the bed.

“Guess I should go up there and get started,” Helsknight said, cracking his knuckles like he was preparing for a fight. “You've got free range of the place, if you want it. Most of the fighters should recognize you by now, and anyone else will assume you're supposed to be here.”

Tanguish blinked, surprised. “You're just leaving me here?”

Helsknight grimaced apologetically. “You're welcome to join me upstairs. But… well…” he gestured vaguely towards the ceiling. “That's not clearing out anytime soon. I wouldn't blame you for wanting to hide in here until we can actually get some practice in.”

Tanguish considered this for a moment. “Is there anything I can do to help you?”

Helsknight raised an eyebrow at him, more contemplative than skeptical. “S’pose I could use someone to run errands and help me take notes.”

“I can definitely run errands,” Tanguish offered. “Er… you'll probably have to tell me what notes to take though.”

Helsknight nodded slowly, still thinking. He crossed to the small dresser that sat beside his bed. After some rummaging, he returned with a brooch, the kind he often used to pin his cloak to his shoulders. 

“It's seen better days,” Helsknight said as he pinned it to the throat of Tanguish’s collar, “but you'll look a little more official running errands for me, anyway.”

The metal was a faded gold, tarnished from collecting dust in a drawer for hels knew how long. It was a simple half circle, with the Colosseum's seal in its center, the building with crossed swords. Helsknight rubbed at it with his thumb, grimacing when the patina of age didn't come off.

“You’d probably like silver best. The gold isn't really your color -- but it's a color I use a lot so you're kind of stuck with it.” Helsknight let out a thoughtful tsk! through his teeth, as though who could will the metal into its preferred type just by thinking at it hard enough. Finally he gestured to the shield mounted on his wall, the only thing in his room that could really serve as a mirroe. “Want to see how it looks?”

Tanguish took a step towards the shield, winced, and stepped back again. “Uhm… I… can't. My reflection-- Tango might be on the other side.” Tanguish scuffed his foot against the ground ashamedly. “I can't… face him right now.”

“Because of Wels?”

Tanguish didn't look up at Helsknight, but the severity of the knight's voice was easy to hear. Tanguish nearly whispered as he answered, “He was terrifying. That voice -- I couldn't fight it. If I go back… he’ll kill me. I'm sure of it.” Then he did whisper. “I don't want to die.”

“Couldn't you use your coin?” Helsknight asked gently, his own voice small and quiet. It was close to the knight's voice, but not entirely there. He was trying to be gentle, not inflicting gentleness, and Tanguish appreciated that.

“It's hard to use when I'm running.” Tanguish sighed. “I'm scared I'll lose it, or someone will snatch it from me, and I’ll be trapped.” Tanguish scrubbed his face tiredly. “Though if I don't use it, I guess I'm trapped anyway. Last time, when he got close, I used my reflection in his armor. I don't think I could get that close again.”

(He didn't say that he thought Welsknight wouldn't let him that close again. If the knight knew how his jumping worked, he wouldn't allow it, but that was besides the point. Tanguish didn't think he would have the courage to lunge towards a blade in the hopes of reaching his reflection. That was a race he thought he would lose. He only managed it last time because Welsknight was distracted, and already standing close enough to kill, cold and unhurried. Just thinking about it made his skin prickle, the skulk-light freckles pulsing a little faster.)

Tanguish laughed nervously, trying to dispel some of the gloom creeping up on him. “You're probably happy I'm spending time away from Hermitcraft. You don't like the hermits.”

Helsknight wrinkled his nose in a frown, trying to swallow his disdain. “Yeah well, you went through a lot to see your hermit again. He means a lot to you.”

“We both went through a lot,” Tanguish agreed, his gaze tracing across the scars on Helsknight's face. Guilt he wasn't expecting lanced through him, and Tanguish suddenly found himself wondering if Helsknight would resent him avoiding Tango.