my brother lay yon by the river

by xfrinz

Summary:

"My brother lay yon by the river, the river,
My brother lay yon be dead.
My brother lay yon by the river, the river,
My brother lay yon be dead.

[...]

My brother get up by the river, the river,
My brother stand up still dead.
My brother get up by the river, the river,
Though his body be without its head."

Notes:

The story of the de Rolos, if Percival weren't the hero.

Cassandra is twelve when the Briarwoods come to Whitestone. She is the youngest of the de Rolo children, so she must be the prettiest and the quietest and the most charming.

Julius only has to be in control, be prepared. Vesper needs to be beautiful (not pretty, because pretty is juvenile) and well-learned and graceful. And stupid Percy, who spends all day shut up in his stupid workshop and barely even tries to act like he’s noble-born, only has to be smart and let his older brother talk first. Ollie and Whitney and Ludwig are all in practically the same boat as Cassandra, except for Whitney gets to play her harp and Ollie and Ludwig get to show off their swordplay out front when the Briarwoods arrive (because stupid everything has to be stupid planned to show how stupid perfect the de Rolo family is) and Cassandra isn’t even meant to do anything during the stupid dinner.

So she waits at the window to watch the Briarwoods arrive, because she’s already bothered Whitney to play catch (no, because Mother did her fingernails nice and pretty for the harp playing and she doesn’t want to chip them) and Vesper to go rock climbing (no, because it would take too long to put on play clothes and then go rock climbing and then change back into a party dress) and Julius to show her how to pick locks (no, because that’s not an appropriate pastime for her anymore and anyway he needs to memorize the rules of diplomacy) and even Percival, who never wants to play with Cassandra, for hide and seek (no-yes-maybe, if he can finish one of his stupid inventions with time to spare).

Nobody ever plays with her anymore, except Ludwig, and he barely counts because he always winds up getting sick and he can’t ever play for more than a half hour either, because it’s too stupid strenuous.

So it’s just Cassandra, sitting on her knees and glaring out at the road to the castle, and feeling like she’s being one of the heroines that are in Whitney’s steamy romance novels that Cassandra isn’t supposed to be reading.

She fantasizes about maybe some handsome royalty from a faraway land- a land that’s warm sometimes, where people go rock climbing for fun and where people don’t have to wear a hundred layers of dresses during the winter- coming to Whitestone instead of the Briarwoods. Probably about her age, and they don’t even want to get married or anything, they just want to bring Cassandra back to their country where things are warm and fun. And they’re smarter than Percy, and stronger than Julius, and more musical than Whitney and better at swordplay than Ollie and Ludwig and better at diplomacy than Vesper.

Cassandra gets so lost in her fantasy of a foreign prince (one with dark skin and light hair, to be the opposite of her stupid family and stupid Whitestone) that she nearly misses the arrival of the Briarwoods completely. She only snaps out of it when she sees a woman who must be Lady Briarwood step out of the carriage, and she is just lovely.

Even though she’s supposedly from Wildmount, where there’s always sun (or at least, that’s what Cassandra gathered from her visits there) her skin is nearly as pale as Percival’s, and Percy leaves the house the least out of all of them, and when he does he usually has sleeves to his wrists and he wears stupid gloves, and he would probably wear a wide-brimmed hat if he could get away with it.

Lady Briarwood descends from the carriage step with her husband escorting her, and Lady Briarwood is so beautiful that Cassandra can hardly tear her eyes away. Her dress is a deep midnight blue that billows just so, and when the Lady moves it twists and shimmers, and Cassandra’s eyes nearly bug out of her head when she realizes that there are gemstones sewn into the dress.

“Pre-mission reconnaissance?” Percy asks suddenly, squatting next to Cassandra. Cassandra looks up at him and grins. Percy is already seventeen, so he’s way too old to talk like a spy or to look out the window at guests while they arrive, but he always stops to talk to Cassandra when he sees her doing it. The twins are much better at it, but they’re always busy doing their stupid twins stuff.

“Percy, look at her dress,” Cassandra says, pointing. Percy drags her arm down (because pointing is rude, Cass) even as he follows the path.

“A lovely item of clothing,” he confirms in his weird, technical-clinical way he has. “It complements her quite nicely.”

“Just say it’s pretty, Percy,” Cassandra admonishes. Percy is really too much sometimes, which is what Mother says when Percy is being rude when he didn’t mean to or when Percy uses eighteen fancy words to say one.

Percy just smirks at her and ruffles the top of her head. Cassandra quickly reaches up to ensure that he hasn’t done any permanent damage to her delicately done curls, and then elbows him sharply in the chest.

“Percy, don’t! It took Miss Bridget hours to do my hair. I’m not messing up your hair!”

Percy had, for once, combed his dark brown hair instead of leaving it in whatever disarray he had woken up with it in. Cassandra suspected (although she wouldn’t say it out loud, since Percy would probably try to mess up her hair again) that it had taken him twice as long to do his hair as Miss Bridget had to do Cassandra’s.

Percy laughs, again (he always laughs at Cassandra, never at Vesper or Ollie or Whitney) and pushes himself back to his feet. He bows at the waist and holds out his hand for Cassandra to take.

“Milady,” he says, in his stupid too-serious nobleman voice that he only uses to make Cassandra laugh, “my parents are hosting a small gala tonight to celebrate some guests. If I may be so bold, would you kindly accompany me tonight?”

Cassandra jumps up to her feet (without taking Percy’s hand) and sticks out her tongue. “I humbly accept your offer, milord, but rest assured that it is only do to the lack of other courtly options.”

Percy laughs at her (again) with his stupid snort-laugh and then takes her by the arm (even though he knows that she doesn’t like touching) and leads her to the stairs.

“Terribly sorry that you feel so averse to my companionship, milady,” Percy says, still in his stupid stuffy voice. Cassandra knows that he’s only trying to make her laugh, because stupid Percy hates it when people are mad at him.

“Well, milord, if you must know, I find it simply horrific when lords of the court attempt to molest the hair of the ladies of the court,” Cassandra retorts primly. She isn’t laughing, not at all, because she isn’t going to give Percy the satisfaction. She wants to have a good time tonight, and charm the Briarwoods enough that her parents let her go out into the forest tomorrow and not have to have stupid tea in the sunroom even though there’s no stupid sun in Whitestone yet.

Percy laughs at her (again! What nerve!) and gently leads her down the stairs. “Such strong language! You’d better not let the lady of the house hear you talking like that!”

Cassandra is about to respond with some much stronger language (because Whitney’s steamy romance novels are educational in many ways) when she and Percy run into Mother at the bottom of the stairs.

“Hear who talking like what?” Mother asks, in the tone of voice that says ‘Nobody should be speaking inappropriately while guests are in the house.’ “Cassandra, Percival, my darling children; Lord and Lady Briarwood are currently waiting in the foyer. If you would be so kind as to entertain them while I track down those few who are avoiding their responsibilities as heirs to Castle Whitestone? Thank you both ever so much.”

Mother brushes past the both of them with a pat to each their heads.

“Well, milord, I suppose we ought go and entertain our guests,” Cassandra says acerbically.

“I suppose I agree,” Percy says, and he’s still trying to make her laugh even though it should be obvious that she doesn’t want to laugh right now.

As punishment, she tugs her arm out of Percy’s grasp (and then has to fix her stupid elbow-length gloves) and stomps ahead.

“Light footsteps,” Percy calls to her, and all she does in response is copy one of the rude hand gestures that she had seen Ollie use once in sparring. “My word, Lady Cassandra, what will the people say?”

Cassandra is tempted to respond to this again, but now she knows that he’s just fishing so that he can laugh at her again, so she keeps moving forward (lightening her footsteps, but not because he told her to, because she wants to impress Lady Briarwood) towards the foyer.

Lord and Lady Briarwood are, in fact, charming guests. They compliment Cassandra on her dress (even though she wanted one that was in blue or purple and not in stupid yellow) and they applaud gently for Whitney’s harpsichord and encourage Julius’ speech on diplomacy and speak earnestly with Vesper about a whole bunch of things that Cassandra is apparently too young to understand.

They even talk to Percy about his stupid inventions, and Percy seems excited to talk to them, even though Percy doesn’t even hardly talk to any of his siblings or his parents. Percy and the Briarwoods get along like a house on fire.

At nine o’clock, Mother sends Cassandra and Ludwig to bed, then Ollie and Whitney an hour later, and makes Percy go to his room at eleven (Cassandra knows because she stayed up to watch and eavesdrop at the stairs, like she always does) and then, after Percy puts his foot on the first stair, is when everything goes wrong.

At the very least, that’s when the pounding at the front door starts. Percy looks over his shoulder, and moves like he’s going to go open the door for the unannounced guests. Cassandra almost wants to call out to him, tries to tell him to come up the stairs instead, because she has a bad feeling about this whole ordeal.

But Percy turns from the stairs, and Cassandra doesn’t reveal her hiding place, and everything goes wrong.

Percy doesn’t even manage to get to the door in time to open it. Instead, it flies off the hinges- and all Cassandra can think is that those doors are inlaid with whitestone and should be too heavy to get broken off of their hinges, even when the corner of the door slams into Percy’s head and he falls back too heavily, like he’s never getting up again. All Cassandra can think is that the doors are too heavy to get broken off of their hinges.

“Oh,” says Lady Briarwood, even though Cassandra should be too far away to hear her by now, “here comes the rest of our little party.”

And now Cassandra can see at the door, the reason that the doors flew off so far, the people who were doing the slamming. There’s a Goliath man, half naked and wielding two enormous axes, and there’s a half-orc woman, also half naked, nearly as tall as the goliath, wielding an enormous crossbow.

That isn’t proper attire for a palace, Cassandra thinks, and she’s still thinking about the stupid doors being heavy and about the stupid lack of proper attire on the people attacking, instead of thinking of anything important like people are attacking or Percy is just lying in the hallway.

And then she hears the screams coming from the dining hall, and she hears Mother and Father in quick succession, but the half-orc and the goliath are still standing in the entrance way.

And then she hears Julius’ scream, and hearing Julius, Julius the grown-up who doesn’t even scream when he goes sledding, who doesn’t even scream when he gets frightened, she snaps out of it. Julius shouldn’t be screaming, and if he is screaming, this can’t be anything good.

So she runs, and she finds herself a small hiding place- being the smallest and youngest means it’s the easiest to hide, and means that it’s less likely for anyone who is searching for her to find her.

She almost feels bad for hiding, for not trying to protect her family, but she gets over it quickly when she sees Ludwig’s eyes as he falls to the floor, with blood pouring out of his neck and his mouth.

She can’t do anything to stop this. She has to wait. Be patient. Wait for your opponent to make a mistake and strike.

She doesn’t wait for a mistake. She is the one who makes the mistake, when she tries to leave her hiding place too early. She thinks that the screams are over, but it must just be a lull, because before she’s so much as halfway across the room, the goliath grabs her by the throat.

“Well, well, well,” he hisses, “looks like the Missus forgot one of you lot.”

“Let me go,” Cassandra begs, before she can stop herself. Begging will do her no good in this situation except make the goliath feel better about himself.

“What was that, chickadee?” he asks, and now Cassandra knows that he is mocking her.

But Cassandra keeps her lips sealed now, and the goliath quickly gets bored of her.

“Fine then,” he grunts, carrying her up the stairs by her neck. “Don’t much matter to me what happens to you. I’ll get my payment, and that’s all that matters.”

He chucks her into the sunroom (so stupid, there’s no sun in Whitestone and there’s probably not many sons left, either) where, when Cassandra looks up, she can see Lady Delilah sitting at the tea table.

“Why,” says Delilah, “if it isn’t darling Cassandra! You know, you were so charming at dinner that Sylas and I weren’t certain that you had any other skills. But look at you, proving us wrong! You managed to avoid the massacre by a good four days, and that’s nothing to sneeze at.”

All Cassandra does is cough, because at this point it’s probably all that she can do after the strangulation by the goliath.

“Well, my dear, I’m sorry to say that the dungeons are quite too full,” says Delilah, pretending to be apologetic. “I suppose that means that you will be spending your time up here with my husband and I. Rest assured, darling, you’ll soon find yourself quite amenable to our cause.”

Lady Briarwood nods her head towards the goliath, who grabs Cassandra by the neck (again, and what use will Cassandra be if she can’t even talk) and this time carries her to her room.

He throws Cassandra to the floor (again) and slams the door behind him, then dragging something or other that’s probably too heavy for Cassandra to move in front of it.

Cassandra stands up, dusts herself off, and reviews her options.

She has none.

Her window has long been unopenable, since she once attempted to rappel down the side of the castle and ended up with a broken arm and a broken leg for her trouble. She isn’t nearly strong enough to shove open the door, judging by the sound of whatever the goliath had dragged in front of it. And her room definitively has no secret passageways (she’s checked, many times.)

All she can do is wait.

And that’s all she does for two days, waits for someone to come to her while her mouth gets painfully dry, waits for Lady Delilah or for Lord Briarwood to come to her room and kill her as they killed the rest of her family, waits for maybe someone to come to her room and rescue her (not the dark-skinned light-haired prince she had been dreaming of earlier; now she will settle for the baker, or for Miss Bridget, or even for Percy, for how much he makes fun of her. When she tries to dream, she sees Percy, standing in the light outside of her room, after he’s set off one of his explosions and killed the Briarwoods, and behind him are the rest of her family, all alright.)

Her wait stops on the third day, when Lady Briarwood comes calling.

The Lady brings a small canteen of water and a bit of food for Cassandra, and even insists on brushing her hair.

“Well, darling,” she says, humming some obscure tune, “how do you feel about joining forces?”

Cassandra doesn’t take the time to answer, busy as she is with drinking the water and eating whatever food she can. She is interrupted by a painful tug on her hair, which certainly came from no hairbrush.

“No,” Cassandra says, after taking the time to consider. After her refusal, she stuffs her mouth full of food and water, so that at least she’ll have a little extra energy for this time.

“What a shame,” says Delilah, not sounding like it’s a shame at all. And she grabs Cassandra by the hair, and pulls her out of the room.

She pulls Cassandra along as though Cassandra were a ragdoll, and keeps pulling her down into the kitchen, where the goliath is sitting.

“Goran,” Lady Briarwood says coldly, throwing Cassandra at the goliath, “hurt her.”

Cassandra refuses to remember what happened in the kitchen with the goliath.

(Probably only a good bashing in with a rolling pin or a chair, maybe some fire, she will think later, but then she will look at her body and her feminine figure and she will wonder.)

But the goliath, after he finishes whatever he did to the youngest daughter of the de Rolos, leaves her there in the kitchen. He does not tie her, he does not take her back to her room, he just leaves her.

Cassandra is not a strong girl by most definitions, but she has enough to stand up (grip the table so you don’t fall, there’s a good lass) and to brush herself off, check around for if anyone is watching (no one is.)

She turns and finds her way to the stairs that lead to the basement.

(Later she will say that she went there to free her family. She will say that she went there because she knew that that was where the Briarwoods had put them, but that is a lie. Now, in this moment, Cassandra goes there because she knows that that is where the passageway to outside the castle is. She goes there to run.)

(Cassandra does not even believe that her family is alive, in this moment,)

Cassandra has only been to the basement twice before, and both times she held Julius’ or Vesper’s hand the whole way through. It’s near impossible to see down there, and the whole thing is just rather spooky to Cassandra.

She doesn’t even realize that there are people in the cells until she passes Percival and he gasps aloud.

“Cassandra,” he whispers, like he’s in shock that she’s still alive (which is fair, because she is as shocked about him.) “Oh, Cassie-jo.”

“Percy,” she whispers back, “oh, Percy, what happened to you?”

Percy looks around the hallway around Cassandra, and he looks so scared, like something is coming out of the corner for him.

“They did a lot, Cassandra,” Percy says, and he doesn’t look at her. “They did a lot. They wanted me to answer their questions, but I couldn’t. I didn’t know the answers, but they wanted me to answer them, and I couldn’t. So they hurt me, a little, to try and make me know, but I didn’t. They kept hurting me so that I would tell them.”

“Who did it, Percy?” Cassandra asks, and she can feel her rage building. Where it had been at a steady level for the past three days, the waves are now lapping at the shore and she fears that she may overflow.

“Oh, Doctor Ripley,” Percival says, like he’s talking about who he invited over to tea. “She has so many tools, so much to make people tell the truth, and she always comes to me first before the others. She likes me best, I think. Likes to talk to me, likes playing with me. She knows a lot, she can use her tools very well.

“Did they hurt you, Cassie-jo?”

Cassandra feels a rush of annoyance at the old nickname, shame for being annoyed at her older brother who’s been being hurt this whole time, and a dull ache at how lost Percival looks, how lost her stupid genius brother looks.

“I’m fine, Percy,” Cassandra says. “I’m escaping.”

Percy’s eyes snap up to Cassandra’s. “Cassie, please help me leave, please pick the lock. I know you can do it”

And she can, too, because playing spy makes you good at a lot of things, including lock picking.

But, what Cassandra is thinking isn’t “Could I pick this lock?” It’s, “Is Percy even strong enough to go with me?”

And she thinks that the answer is probably not. Percy was never the most athletic of the family, but now he looks rotted down to skin and bones. His hair, his beautiful oak-brown hair, is now a shock of bright white, and on his chest Cassandra can see an enormous Y-shaped scar on his chest that can’t be more than a day or two old.

Her head says, “It’s a lost cause. He’ll be dead soon enough, you can’t risk him slowing you down.”

Her heart says, “He is your brother, and for all he’s done to you and all he hasn’t done, he is your brother.”

Maybe later, she will wish that she had listened to her head instead of her heart, but even later after that maybe she will realize that it wouldn’t have mattered, and even later after that, she will wonder if following her heart will be the only reason that she is alive.

But in this moment, Cassandra chooses her heart and picks the lock.

“Cassie-jo,” Percy says, because even when she’s saving his life he can’t give her a moment’s peace, “if they come down here, run.”

Cassandra glances up at his face sharply. “With or without you?”

He takes a shaky breath (he’s so scared and Cassandra feels bad for thinking pathetic), nods in affirmation. “Better one of us escape than neither. And your odds are much better than mine.”

Cassandra, eyes already back on the lock, only nods. She knows what Percy is thinking, and she knows that if the time comes, one of them will have to leave the other behind. And even if it isn’t a good thought, even if it isn’t honorable or true to the de Rolo name, she hopes that she will be the one to keep running.

The lock clicks open near silently, and then all Cassandra has to do is undo the chains that are actually around Percy’s legs and arms (and, oh Pelor, is that a chain around his neck, like he’s some kind of animal being taken to slaughter?) These chains have a thinner lock, weaker, and it barely takes Cassandra half a second to free her brother from his arm and leg chains.

Percival flinches a good dozen and a half times when Cassandra tries to remove the neck chain from him, and she tries very hard not to lose her patience with him, but finally she gives up and pinches his chin with one hand to hold him in place.

“Sorry,” Percival whispers (though it’s somewhat muffled, due to the fact that his mouth is being squeezed into the shape of a four-leaf clover). “Bad habit. Sorry.”

“Shut up,” Cassandra hisses. “Sorry. We can- let’s worry about habits once we get out of here. Be quiet.”

“Sorry,” Percival whispers again. And with a soft fump as the irons fall into Percy’s lap, it’s over.

“Let’s go,” Cassandra says, and she moves her hand from Percival’s chin to his hand.

(Not because she was scared, she will say later. Because she didn’t think that Percy could keep up, with his legs shaking like a kid goat and his eyes darting all over the place, looking for danger everywhere. But that will be a lie. Right now, Cassandra grabs her brother’s hand because she is afraid of going into the darkness alone. Right now, she is scared that if she doesn’t grab Percival’s hand, he will never leave the cell. Right now, she is afraid of a million things. She does not grab Percival’s hand to make him keep up with her. She grabs his hand because what feels like the weight of the world is on Cassandra’s shoulders right now, and Percival is her only elder sibling left, and she desperately wants not to be responsible for Whitestone.)

Cassandra and Percival run through the underground corridors, following the same route that their father shows them occasionally (“Though,” he always said, “we don’t have much to fear that would necessitate use of this tunnel.”)

They burst out of the mountainside, stunned by the cold air. It is still dark out, as though the past three days didn’t happen, as though they are only just escaping from the dinner party.

From behind them, hounds begin to bay. Behind the hounds, Cassandra swears that she can hear the sound of wolves, and she pulls Percy harder.

In the future, she will wonder if her impatience, if her fear, was the reason that Percival fell. She will, over the course of hundreds of sleepless nights, think of what would happened had she been more certain, had she planned her route through the forest better. She will sob onto many shoulders that she should have been more certain, that she shouldn’t have forced Percy.

It is not her fault.

Percival is cold, because he has only been allowed to be half-clothed for the past three days, because he has had cold water thrown in his face as a bath. Percival is in pain, because he has been hurt, tortured, held down in a nondescript wooden chair that wouldn’t be out of place in a small inn, and been forced to experience most, if not all, of the thoughts in Anna Ripley’s ghastly imagination. Percival is tired, because when he sleeps, he dreams only of the death of his family, of what Anna has done to him, of what Anna has told him that she will do to him. Percy is tired, because Anna doesn’t like for him to sleep.

Percy stumbles, because a rock from the top of the hill tumbled down to an inopportune spot that juts out just too much.

Percival stumbles (he does not fall) and he slows, and a smattering of arrows find his bare back.

“Cassandra,” he gasps, as he falls to the cold earth.

Cassandra does not listen. Cassandra felt Percival’s grip falter, felt his hand leave hers, and she remembered his words in the dungeon.

Cassandra runs as though all the dogs of hell are after her, and they may well be.

Percival falls to his stomach on the unforgiving forest floor, and releases her.

Cassandra runs, falls down the last of the hill, splashes into an icy river (too deep, too fast, too early a snowmelt for the chill in the air tonight) and lets it carry her away.

 

Cassandra wakes. She is in a small coastal village, lying in a small bed in the local hospice.

“Well!” says a friendly elven cleric. “Glad that our darling mystery patient has awakened! How do you feel, my dear?”

Cassandra grabs her head, tries to ease away the heavy pounding. “What?” she says, eyes squinting at the elf.

“Common? D’you not speak Common? I know Elvish and a pecking of Celestial, otherwise.” The cleric demonstrates by speaking a quick slurry of words in both languages.

“I speak Common,” Cassandra says slowly. “My name is-”

She falters, a bit, because she can’t say her name, because the de Rolos are cursed by now, if the Briarwoods have done what she thinks they’ve done.

“Come now, there’s no need to be nervous. We’ll get you fixed right up and send you on back to your Ma and Pa, how’s that?”

“I’m Benji,” Cassandra says on a whim, because she used to play jacks with a boy named Benji in the village. “Benji Sarason.”

The elf cocks his head and eyes Cassandra up and down.

“My parents are dead,” Cassandra adds, and manages to cry enough to be at least mildly convincing (she hopes).

“Oh, darling,” says the elf, and he gathers Cassandra up in a tight hug. “There, there, darling, you’re alright. You’ll be right.”

The elf pulls away from Cassandra (Benji, now, no slip-ups) and looks at her sympathetically. “You’ll get through it, darling, no matter what you think. You’ll get through it.”

Cassandra rubs her eyes and her nose (Boys aren’t allowed to cry, Ludwig once told her, and she wants to be a convincing boy.) “Thank you, sir,” she says, tries to deepen her voice to sound more like Ludwig.

“Oh, no, no, no thanks required, sweetheart. You just rest up a few days, and then we’ll send you to the boy’s home that we’ve got here. Everything will be okay.” The elf finishes his consolation of Cassandra then, patting her on the shoulder and leaving the room.

Cassandra rapidly removes the bandages on her head, slams her leg with her fist to stave off the tears, and climbs out of the window.

The small coastal town is rife with opportunities for Cassandra to escape, and she only chooses the ocean because she is promised coin along with meals for her work.

The day before the ship sets off, Cassandra gets her eye slammed by an alleyboy and comes to the boat with a black eye, blaming it on her nonexistent father.

“He’s got a temper, he does,” she says, and looks over her shoulder occasionally to sell the bit. “I’m here for me ma. She ain’t feelin’ too well of late, and I gotta work to get her some medicine.”

The captain accepts wordlessly, shows Benji to his hammock, and pretends not to care. But Cassandra sees that her portions are just a bit bigger than the others’, and she gets praised nearly twice as much for half the work she does of the other men. The story of Benji, the poor village boy whose mother is sick and whose father has a temper spreads around the boat, and she lets herself be a mascot.

She leaves the ship two months later, when it finally returns to the coastal town. She’s made a good fifty-five coin, which she proudly exclaims will go to his mother when she gets off the ship.

She lets the men shove her around a bit when she departs, if only because they slip her a few silver as they do and wish her good luck.

She’ll take it, even if it is under the falsest of pretenses.

Cassandra changes whichever town she haunts often as the moon changes shape, and she finds new costumes to wear every time. She moves more softly, steps more quietly, becomes a thief as well as a scam artist (and she is an artist, with the number of ways she can wear three different outfits to conjure different pasts for her personas, with the way she can steal a secret from an elf. It isn’t high artistry, it wasn’t what she was taught in her lessons, but damned if she isn’t making art out of it anyway.)

She can be a boy named Benji until she is fourteen, and her body betrays her. The monthly bleeding would be easy enough to hide, especially when she can hide in a temple and claim to be running from her father (or her mother, or a brother or an aunt or a million other people), but it's her hips that ultimately ruin her masculinity. Her breasts are never large, certainly small enough to be tied down if she had to, but her hips make her look like an upside-down wine goblet.

From then on, she is always a girl. She is a girl running from the man who her parents want her to marry (an old, old man with lecherous hands and a leering gaze), she is a girl searching for her brother, who is the murderer of her parents. She is a cleric (yes, a young one, she is following in her mother’s footsteps) searching for an artifact of her god (Pelor, usually, but once the Raven Queen, only because no one bothers a holy woman of the Raven Queen.)

She steals more often than she disguises now, which is a shame, because a whore in Westruun showed her some magic with a makeup brush.

Three years to the day after the fall of Whitestone, Cassandra dreams.

In her dream, she sees her family dying. She sees Percy fall, even though she never looked back for him. And finally, in her dream, she sees a monster made of smoke.

“Hello,” it says silkily. “My dear, I come to you to make a deal.”

“What kind of deal?” Cassandra asks, and stares at the image of Percival behind the smoke monster.

“I want to give you the power to avenge your family,” says the beast. “And I only ask for the souls of those you slay.”

“Fine,” says Cassandra, because all she can see is her older brother, falling to the ground three years ago, and Cassandra leaving him behind.

“You will wake up, and you will have the power,” says the demon. “When you complete your mission, I will have their souls.”

“Take them,” Cassandra says. “If they have any.”

The demon laughs, and Cassandra awakes.

She rapidly becomes faster over the following year. Her feet are more graceful, her body more nondescript, easier to hide, and suddenly she can work a rapier.

She has never wielded a rapier before in her life. She was never the one dueling, never the one allowed to spar against her siblings.

Percival could use a rapier, and Cassandra tightens her grip on the handle of the blade and banishes the thought from her mind.

She has no need to use the rapier, often. If she’s doing her job right, she shouldn’t need to draw any weapons.

Cassandra finally encounters one of her quarry when she is fifteen.

The blade, for the past year, has held five names: Lord & Lady Briarwood, Professor Anders, Goran Vedmire, and Anna Ripley.

As she arrives in a medium-sized town on the outskirts of a rather large forest, the name Goran glows.

And she sees the goliath from so long ago, in this town somehow, acting like a proper noble and pretending that all is well.

Cassandra’s hand tightens around the blade, and she remembers the helpless twelve-year-old girl in her family’s kitchen, and she lunges.

 

Cassandra is arrested.

The goliath does nothing but laugh when Cassandra attempts to stab him (he doesn’t even recognize her, for all that he did to her in that kitchen, what she can remember and what she can’t even if everything is wrong.)

The local guard arrest her quickly, take her sword and her bag and her gold, and they lock her in a cell with shackles on her arms and legs.

(It is painfully familiar to the image of her brother, so long ago, chains around his arms, his legs, his neck, and Cassandra tries not to let her discomfort be too obvious.)

She is held in the prison for a good three months, and she quickly grows claustrophobic. She does pull-ups with the window in her cell, does jumping jacks until she passes out, and makes up harsh melodies with the bars on her cell door.

Three months after her first attempt on a life, Cassandra is joined by someone who is neither drunk nor disorderly.

“I was trying to help,” the high voice pleads. “His poor cow was sick, I was only trying to help her.”

“Look, girl,” says the warden, sounding almost sorry for guiding the woman to the single cell in the prison, “I believe you. And your friends probably do too, so they’ll come and get you in a few days. John’s a mighty fool, but he’ll take his cow to the doctor and take care of it.”

“Thank you, sir, but I’m not sure my friends will be able to find me. I’ve never been arrested before! They might not look here!”

“They’ll look eventually,” says the warden. “Here, make friends with your new roommate for half a week.” He guides the woman in much more gently than he had Cassandra, and he spits at Cassandra’s feet as he sits the woman.

“Oh! Hello!” says the (red hair, antlers?, elven or half at least) woman. “My name is Keyleth, of the Air Ashari! It’s a pleasure to meet you!”

Cassandra stares. “You’re awfully chipper for being in prison,” she observes. “Most folks are at least a bit disappointed.”

“Oh, I’m plenty disappointed,” Keyleth assures her. “I’m just trying to be friendly.”

“And you’re doing a terrific job,” Cassandra tells her. “I’m just not a very friendly person on principle.”

Keyleth hmms at this, like Cassandra is a terrific puzzle. “Well, let’s start with an easy question. What’s your name?”

Cassandra almost laughs in Keyleth’s face. That’s only an easy question if you’ve had an easy life, and Cassandra has certainly not had an easy life.

“Which one?” She says, instead of answering.

“Maybe not your first one,” Keyleth reflects. “How about the first name you used after that one?”

“Benji,” Cassandra says easily.

“Alright,” says Keyleth, “Benji.”

Cassandra (Benji) and Keyleth get to know each other quite well over the course of the next two and a half days. Keyleth, Cassandra learns, is to be ruler of her druidic tribe, and is on her spiritual quest to prove herself worthy. She is traveling with a group of people called the shits (though Keyleth insists that it’s an acronym), and that Keyleth could easily destroy the entire jailhouse if she wanted to.

“Why don’t you?” Cassandra asks. With power like Keyleth’s, there’s no reason to keep it hidden. Use it or lose it, as goes Cassandra’s motto towards money, power, and most things in life.

“It would be rude,” Keyleth says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

Cassandra stares, and of course that’s when Keyleth’s friends come to bust her out.

“Kiki!” exclaims the half-elf man who comes rushing down the corridor. “C’mon, it’s time to go. Scanlan is sweet-talking the warden, but we haven’t got half the gold to bail you out.”

He quickly gets to work on the lock on the cell door, and Cassandra recognizes his patterns.

“Can we take Benji, too?” Keyleth (Kiki? Really?) asks, pointing to Cassandra.

Cassandra can see the half-elf measure the risk versus reward of picking up a half-starved human with shackles from wrist to neck to wrist.

“No time to get him unshackled. And we’re done picking up strays.”

“Va-” Keyleth begins to plead, but

“I can pay you,” Cassandra interrupts. “I have five hundred gold in my bag, and it’s yours if you get me out of here.”

The half-elf eyes her again.

“I can pick the damn locks myself, if you don’t want to.”

The man (Va, Vander? Valley? Vactory?) shoves open the cell door and tosses Cassandra his pack of lockpicks.

“Knock yourself out,” he says. He grabs Keyleth and turns to go, but by the time the two of them are at the end of the hallway, Cassandra’s chains fall to the floor with a heavy tang sound.

“Sorry it took me so long,” she says, tossing the picks at the half-elf man’s head. “I’m not used to such refined instruments.”

The half-elf turns (not in time to catch his tools) and glares at Cassandra. “No need to get sarcastic,” he says, somehow holding his tools even though he didn’t bend over after they hit the floor.

“Who’s being sarcastic?” Cassandra asks (genuinely) as she walks past. “Usually, all I have are a few hairpins from my sister.”

“Uh-huh,” says the half-elf, unconvinced. “For now, let’s get to the office and get my sister that gold you owe us.”

Cassandra isn’t listening. At the moment, she’s preoccupied with hearing the war that has somehow broken out in the warden’s office in the past six minutes. She ducks her head through the door (very narrowly avoiding a magic missile as she does) and dashes towards her things.

Everything is still there, surprisingly. She takes out her sack of gold and places it on the counter, then inventories her bag. She has her four disguises (cleric, fancy girl, fighter girl, maid), she has her rapier, she has her rations (rotten, so she tosses them into the fray) and she has her jacket.

The gold thus given (or as given as Cassandra will give it) and the rotten rations thus disposed of (either hit one of the shits or one of the guards), Cassandra tosses her pack over her shoulder and moves to leave the building.

“Oy,” says the half-elf man, putting his arm in front of Cassandra’s face. “Who said you were free to go?”

Cassandra draws her rapier and puts its point in the man’s face. “I did,” she says, “unless you and my sword would like to get into an argument over it.”

“You owe us some gold,” says a higher voice, and when Cassandra glances over, she sees a body that is terribly similar to that of the half-elf man’s, if a few inches shorter and barely more feminine. “And I believe that my bear would win in a fight against your sword.”

“Your money,” Cassandra says, coldly, “is on that counter. I find it best to leave such matters for after the battle.”

“There’s no need for all of us to get bent out of shape,” interjects Keyleth. “Guys, this is Benji! They’ve been keeping me company for the past few days. Benji, this is the shits!”

“I presumed they were shits,” Cassandra says.

“Ooh, new guy’s got a smart mouth,” one of the gnomes snorts. He is dressed (extremely obnoxiously) in bright purple, and Cassandra’s first urge is to punch him in the face.

“Benji!” Keyleth scolds, and Cassandra actually does feel a bit bad. Cassandra hasn’t felt bad after an admonishment since Whitestone.

“”What I was thinking was that Benji could come with us!” Keyleth continues.

“I agree,” says the half-elf, and nearly everyone in the room still conscious turns to look at him in shock. “He’s nearly as good as I am at lockpicking-”

“Nearly?” Cassandra interjects, incensed.

“And he doesn’t look to be half-bad with that rapier, either.”

“Brother,” says the half-elf woman, by her bag of gold. “This is hardly a decision for just you and Keyleth.”

“I’m not saying that it is,” says the half-elf man. “I’m saying, we ought to at least give them a trial run.”

The purple-clothed gnome shrugs. “I’m not opposed.”

“Neither am I,” pipes up a second gnome, this one dressed in ornate plate armor (and making quite a racket with it, too).

“Hell yeah,” says a goliath, and Cassandra tries not to edge away from him.

“New person?” interjects a red-scaled dragonborn. How he escaped her notice, Cassandra will never know, but his arms are piled high with books. “How interesting! I’m Tiberius Stormwind, of Draconia! And you are… Benji!”

“Benji’s given us five hundred gold, so I don’t think an invitation to be part of the shit is out of order,” comments the half-elf woman, who is cleaning her nails with a dagger that Cassandra could swear that her brother had been using.

Cassandra stares. “You fuckers are-” she starts

“Unanimous!” Keyleth squeals. “This is so exciting!” She grabs Cassandra and envelops her in a tight bear hug.

They don’t let Cassandra take watch for two weeks, presumably because they thought that she would rob them blind given half the chance.

(She’s already stolen two hats from the purple gnome (Burt? Scanlan?), five books from Tiberius (various fairy tales), four and a half arrows from the half-elf woman (Vax? Vex?), a belt and a cloak from the other half-elf (Vex? Vax?) and twelve gold from Pike (the cleric)

(She doesn’t dare attempt to take anything from Keyleth, just because of how kind Keyleth is to her, because somehow Keyleth’s admonishments are the only ones that make Cassandra feel bad, because Cassandra blushes and feels too warm whenever Keyleth stands too close to her.

She doesn’t dare try to steal from the goliath (Grog, but if you skip the second ‘g’ it sounds too much like Goran) because whenever he looks at her and bares his teeth (Pike says he’s smiling, but Cassandra isn’t sure) she remembers the kitchen and remembers how he could snap Cassandra in half without breaking a sweat (but most people could, because Cassandra is just shy of six feet and she weighs about a third less than she should), and Cassandra can’t get near him without suddenly being so, so scared.)

There’s no official induction to the shits (super high intensity team, reportedly) but when they finally let Cassandra take watch, she figures they trust her at least a bit.

On Cassandra’s third watch, she is joined briefly by Pike (the cleric).

“Hello, Benji,” says Pike (because Cassandra still hasn’t told them her name, even though she’s fairly certain that they must have noticed her more feminine traits by now), still wearing her plate armor (in case of sudden midnight attack).

“Miss Trickfoot,” Cassandra acknowledges. She focuses on polishing her blade (polishing the five names engraved into it) and doesn’t look at Pike.

“Please, no need for formality. We’re all friends here.” And Cassandra has a bad feeling about where this is heading.

“Is this about the goliath?” Cassandra asks, cutting to the chase. She has no reason to humor Pike and pretend to be friendly (because she is still hoping that she’ll leave these people behind soon enough.)

Pike looks up at Cassandra, and she just looks so disappointed, and Cassandra wants to apologize, but she doesn’t have anything to apologize for and suddenly there’s water in her eyes and her throat feels like it’s closing up.

“Oh, Benji,” Pike says, and she just sounds so sad, like she’s mourning for whatever Cassandra might have lost. It’s just too much for Cassandra, and she stands up like Tiberius just hit her with a lightning bolt.

“I’m going to patrol the camp,” she says thickly, and turns to leave. Before she can get more than half a step away, Pike catches her wrist.

“Benji,” she says (slowly, slowly, like she’s coaxing a wounded animal), “it’s alright to be scared. But Grog isn’t the one who hurt you.”

Cassandra reaches up with her free hand to wipe away the tears threatening to spill over the edge of her eye. “Do you think I don’t know that?” she asks, voice quaking. “If I could stop this, don’t you think that I would?”

Pike guides Cassandra back onto the log by the edge of her sleeve (she’s closer to Pike now, and Cassandra doesn’t like touching people, doesn’t even like bumping into people to snag their coin purses, and she really doesn’t like showing weakness when she’s close to people).

Cassandra wonders if she might be in for a lecture, if Pike is going to offer her some meaningless advice about how to overcome her fear.

All Pike does, though, is grab Cassandra’s hand and pull her into a deep hug. Cassandra stiffens, momentarily, but Pike keeps hold of her and softly rubs Cassandra’s back, and all Cassandra wants to do is burst into sobs.

“You’ll be okay someday,” she whispers to Cassandra. “You don’t have to be okay soon and you don’t have to get okay fast, but you’ll be okay. I believe in you.”

Cassandra pulls away, finally, and turns around so that Pike doesn’t see her wipe away her tears. “I have to keep watch,” she says. “You should get some sleep.”

Cassandra hears the soft ka-link ka-link as Pike shifts off the log and makes her way back to her place.

Cassandra walks away from the log, swinging her sword back and forth as she walks, and continues.

 

Usually, Cassandra doesn’t much like the shits. Tiberius is terribly loud, and he and Keyleth seem to be consistently overly excited about whatever is happening, like a couple of kids. Vex (Vax?) hoards gold like a dragon and keeps swindling shopkeepers out of their wares, always loots the corpses that they encounter, even when there’s no good reason to. Vax (Vex?) runs away from any conversation that he doesn’t want to be in, usually mid-sentence, and somehow Cassandra ended up being the only one who can ever grab him. Scanlan leers at every woman he meets, even though he consistently proclaims his undying love for Pike, and Cassandra constantly feels like she might be next on his list. Then there’s Grog (goliath, which is all that need be said about that) and Pike, who seems to be hellbent on emotionally torturing Cassandra.

Sometimes, though, Cassandra feels like she might have a family-ish.

When she’s tired, Tiberius is almost always the first to notice and usually the first to suggest making camp or taking a short rest. He claims that it’s just for himself, but from what Cassandra’s seen, he doesn’t seem to get tired.

Keyleth always gives Cassandra advice, and it always seems like she’s about to say “Cassandra” instead of “Benji” and she always seems to know more than she lets on. Keyleth is the most good out of their group, and Cassandra sometimes wonders if any of that goodness will rub off on her.

Vex, for how much she hoards her money, is always the first person to give backup if something goes wrong. She always seems scared, but never for herself, always for her friends.

Vax takes Cassandra and shows her how to step quietly, how to check for traps, and he even teaches her thieves’ cant (and buys her an actual set of lock picks, because apparently her hairpin trick is atrocious). He seems to like teaching, likes being a mentor, and he treats Cassandra like his little sister (brother, if he hasn’t realized yet).

Scanlan is the first person that Cassandra confides in.

She wakes up one night, tongue bleeding from biting it to keep from screaming, and Scanlan is sitting watch in a tree, strumming his lute.

“Hey there, kiddo,” he says, softly, and climbs down the tree. “Is, uh, something bothering you?”

Cassandra shakes her head violently to clear her brain of the nightmare (Ludwig falling, Ludwig bleeding, Cassandra twelve-years-old and hiding and crying and tongue bleeding to keep from crying). “Just a dream. Nothing important. I’ll take next watch.”

Scanlan laughs as he walks towards Cassandra. “Nice try, Benji bo-benji, but monsieur Vax has that honor tonight.”

“Look,” Cassandra begins, but Scanlan is already sitting on her legs and strumming his lute again.

“I know, you’re young, you’re free, you’re excited about life. But everybody has bad dreams, and you usually can’t feel worse when you talk about it.”

“I didn’t ask for your opinion,” says Cassandra, more sharply than she had intended.

Scanlan doesn’t notice.

“You don’t have to tell me what you dreamt,” he says, and begins picking out an old Northern folk song that Cassandra once tried to learn to play. “We could just chat. As pals. As shits.”

And as much as Cassandra doesn’t want to, she does talk to Scanlan. They don’t talk about much, because Cassandra has made so much of herself off-limits, but they discuss (mock) Vax, chat about favorite enemies, wonder if this Emon place will actually give them the recognition they so clearly deserve.

It’s nearing time for Scanlan to wake Vax when he asks the penultimate question.

“So, what’s your real name?”

Cassandra starts, and almost shakes Scanlan into the fire. “What- how do you know that Benji isn’t my real name?”

Scanlan shrugs. “You hesitate when you introduce yourself, you’re a half a second late replying- it’s probably been a long time since you’ve used your real name.”

Cassandra eyes Scanlan. Scanlan stares back innocently.

“Cassandra Johanna Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo,” she says, all in one breath, and it feels like a relief to finally say her name after so many years.

“Gesundheit,” says Scanlan, straight-faced. “We can chat more about this later, Cass, but for now I have to go wake up Vax.”

Scanlan stands from his perch on Cassandra’s knees, walks over to Vax (who is cuddling with the bear again) and kicks him in the crotch. Without standing up (presumably he was already awake), Vax punches Scanlan in the sternum. Once Scanlan is gasping on the ground, Vax stands up and effectively vanishes (though Cassandra sees a shadow flit up a nearby tree).

Grog does try to be friendlier, Cassandra thinks. He speaks quieter if he notices Cassandra flinching (though that volume change is generally from shouting to normal speaking volume), he doesn’t hold his weapons up when he looks towards Cassandra, and he doesn’t stand close to Cassandra.

Cassandra sincerely appreciates this, but she doesn’t go out of her way to interact with Grog. She can tolerate him now, she can watch camp with him and fight alongside him, but she doesn’t search him out.

It’s a nice sort of balance.

Pike can always tell when Cassandra gets scared (beyond after the nightmares, more when Cassandra has been in the dark too long and is desperately searching for a way to get out, when Cassandra is desperately cleaning her blade after she heard the Sovereign mention the Briarwoods) and always seems to seek her out. Pike doesn’t pretend that she does this for herself, and Cassandra simultaneously resents and appreciates it.

It’s after everyone has finally gotten used to calling her Cassandra, after they have gotten used to calling themselves Vox Machina, after the dragon, after the Underdark and after Vasselheim that everything goes to shit, as it so often does.

It’s nice, having everyone, and Cassandra finds that she enjoys having allies.

She reveals her name to each of them slowly, one by one. Keyleth first, after Scanlan, then Grog then Vax then Vex then Pike and it takes them a bit, at first, to say Cassandra instead of Benji, but eventually Cassandra falls easily from their lips, and then they replace it with Cass and Cassie and Cassel and Andy and a hundred other nicknames, but she knows herself as Cassandra, Cassandra, Cassandra, secure in her name again.

They stay as nothings for a good long while, long after Cassandra helps them finish off some quest that they claimed to be on to save Grog’s soul.

The first thing that Cassandra does with the SHITS is to travel into a druidic burial chamber in order to seize a something-or-other from a something-or-other’s chest.

Keyleth is noticeably on-edge in the chamber, and snappish and angry, and Cassandra pulls her to the side a few hours into the trek.

“Keyleth-” she begins, but Keyleth interrupts her before she can finish.

“Cassie, you just don’t get it!” Keyleth says loudly. She glances around at the group, and quiets her voice. “This- this- this stupid nobleman stole this crypt from the druids, from my people, because he thought he needed some grand fancy resting place? That’s so stupid! You don’t know, you don’t know what it’s like, to see a place like this after someone’s stolen it away from your people!”

Cassandra takes a deep breath, reminds herself that Keyleth doesn’t know any better. “I do, Keyleth. I know how it feels. But I promise, promise above promises, we won’t be here long. And we can track down this lord, and we can beat the tar out of him. Okay?”

Keyleth looks surprised, then puzzled, then she smiles softly. “We don’t have to beat the tar out of anyone except the golem that we have to find. But thank you, Cass. I appreciate it.” She smiles wider at Cassandra, rubs the back of Cassandra’s hand, and then runs up to walk with the twins.

Cassandra’s heart skips when she sees Keyleth’s smile, like a sunbeam, and she touches her hand where Keyleth had touched it, and she smiles to herself and holds Keyleth’s sun smile in her mind as they traverse the depths.

The second thing that Cassandra does as one of the SHITS, along with the rest of them, is join a fighting ring.

It’s an excellent exercise in both self-restraint and self-expression.

After these missions, it is Winter’s Crest.

They spend the holiday in Westruun, Grog’s and Pike’s hometown, and it’s so different from the Winter’s Crest in Whitestone. There’s an enormous pine tree in the town square, and streamers hung about and the streets are filled with magicians and street vendors, and there’s not a single open-air sermon to Pelor that Cassandra can find. The closest she gets is a small temple on one of the side streets, where there’s a single cleric giving a speech to an audience of maybe six.

Cassandra enters as the speech is ending, but there’s time for her to give a brief prayer before she starts feeling guilty for keeping the cleric away from the celebrations.

She takes a seat towards the rear of the temple, orients herself towards the stained glass sun, bows, and prays. It is brief, as always- she sees no need for formalities, nor for greetings. She asks him to ask the Raven Queen if her siblings are alright- she doesn’t know if that’s how it works or not, but she hasn’t had much religious training since she was twelve, and the idea that the pantheon all sit at in one enormous senate has always stuck with her. She asks him to protect her friends, and then asks him especially to protect Keyleth, then wonders if its too much, then informs him that if he tells anyone about these prayers she’ll break his knees, an old habit from when she and her family were immovable from Whitestone.

Cassandra exits the temple, having only been missing for a few minutes, and is greeted with an enormous snowball to the face.

Cassandra blinks as the chunks of snow and ice drop and slough off the side of her face. She, turns, slowly, face still blank with surprise, to see Tiberius looking intently at various hats, and the rest of the SHITS looking intently at nothing much at all and pretending deeply to be innocent.

“Of course, you realize,” Cassandra says, keeping her facial expression still and unchanging, “this means war.”

War, of course, entails a very involved snowball fight, including Vex, Vax, and Cassandra sprinting around on the rooftops, Keyleth casting a spell that nearly knocked Vex’ahlia off of the roof and onto a snapped spine, and Tiberius is declared neutral territory, because of course he is.

War abruptly ends, however, when the magnificent gem that was the centerpiece of the celebration snaps in two and Westruun is frozen.

The SHITS are nearly frozen along with it, except for an extremely talented mage, who Cassandra swears was just selling trinkets and oddballs, steps in front of them and shields them from the icy winds. They see, past the arcane shield, a slight, nude girl, wearing- absolutely nothing.

The mage holds the shield until the woman produces an arcane portal and then shouts, “Follow her! She’s a dragon, and she must die for Westruun to live!”

The SHITS have no qualms about killing women who are attempting to genocide an entire town, and so they all follow through the portal, into a cold, icy realm.

Vex’ahlia kneels immediately, examines some tracks and determines some sort of plan. “We can track her,” she says.

“Sounds good,” says Cassandra, slipping her blades out of her sleeves. Behind her, she hears the arcane and divine sparks of magic floating along Scanlan, Tiberius, and Keyleth; Pike draw her mace and swing it back and forth in the light, fluffy snow; Grog slam his hammer into his palm; and Vax’ildan draw his own blades.

They track the she-dragon thanks to Vex’ahlia’s occasionally frightening knowledge of dragons and tracking, and then they battle it.

The dragon fights mean, and fights dirty, and the battle is long and mean and angry and ends, finally, with Pike ending it with her mace.

They stay around for a brief moment, enough for Keyleth to steal scales and teeth, and for Cassandra to snatch a dagger from the ruins of what was probably its lair.

They return to Westruun- pristine, unfrozen- and discover that Eskil Ryndarien is being blamed for the impromptu snowfall.

They prove his innocence quickly, with Keyleth’s little morbidities coming in handy.

Eskil, for his part, tells them all that the crystal apparently came from the Clasp, a name that makes Vax’ildan shudder and stiffen. They manage to drag a sad, dreary story out of Vax’ildan, and then he guides them to Emon, to the Clasp.

The Clasp does not immediately make themselves visible to the group, which has made the decision to find a new name, now that they’ve done some important things and are going to the capital city.

In the capital city, they hear whispers of vanishing children- Vex’ahlia and Keyleth call them more whispers, but they’ve got to focus on finding the Clasp and beating the tar out of them.

They also, unfortunately, end up taking odd jobs because living in Emon is stupid expensive, and one of those odd jobs takes them to the twins’ father.

Cassandra does not like him. She doesn’t like him insulting Trinket, she doesn’t like him looking at Vex’ahlia and Vax’ildan like they’re something that he’s scraped off of the bottom of his shoe, she doesn’t like his tone and she doesn’t like his ugly greasy hair and she doesn’t like how he fucking scans her and the rest of the party up and down like he’s trying to determine which one of them is the least unworthy for him to look upon.

He tells them of oddities with the noble family, and how he’s there from Syngorn on a political mission, but Sovereign Uriel hasn’t been open to any sort of communication, and he sends them on an errand to one Sir Gregory’s house.

Sir Gregory’s house stands still and dark and frightful in the surroundings of Emon, and all they can do when they find it is stand outside and look like suspicious persons.

“Shouldn’t we go in?” Vax asks.

“No, we should keep standing outside until someone calls the guards, and then Father can gloat about our ineptitude,” Vex snipes.

Vax grumbles vaguely, but they all stand behind him as he picks the lock on the door and they enter Sir Gregory’s home.

Inside, the house is still empty and frightening, and Pike looks sick and pale and complains of dark presences within.

The dark presences, apparently, are coalesced within the basement, as Pike nearly vomits outside the cellar doors.

They enter the basement slowly, carefully, and they’ve hardly gone a hundred feet before they encounter demons. One is some kind of hideous little crocodile-dragonlet thing, and one is a succubus, and that is absolutely the only thing that needs to be said on that matter.

They finish off the demons quickly- not quite efficiently, however, due to their inability to do absolutely anything efficiently- and discover the corpse of Sir Gregory, hurt and abused and too, too familiar to Cassandra.

Vax squats down and rifles through Sir Gregory’s coat, and discovers various notes and missives on the attempted assassination of Uriel.

“So,” says Vax, remarkably nonchalant about digging through the body of a dead man, “first off, apparently the Sovereign’s wife has been, y’know, acting all super-weird and possessed about everything. And then, there’s some general- Kreeg? Kry-g? K-R-I-E-G, who was apparently involved with the assassination not assassin-ing anyone. We should probably pay him a visit.”

They spend a few more moments skulking around, finally turning to leave and then, rather abruptly, triggering a trap, because can their lives never be easy, and they are separated.

They are flushed underground, and Cassandra is with Vex’ahlia and Keyleth and Grog and Tiberius, while Scanlan and Pike and Vax’ildan are Sarenrae-knows-where, and there’s some fucking monster rising up out of the darkness of the underground lake.

“Why,” says Cassandra, twirling her new Icebite and her Stormslice, “Is there never anything that’s fucking easy in our lives?”

“Easy, darling,” says Vex’ahlia, nocking an arrow, “it’s because we all pissed off the gods.”

“Maybe you did,” Grog grunts, hefting his axe, “I’ve never been anything except a perfect angel.”

Then, the whatever-it-is in the lake attacks, and they actually run, for once, because the odds would have been risky with everyone, but without Scanlan and Pike and Vax they’ve got about half the chance of an ice cube on the plane of fire.

They run, and they find an ancient abandoned city and an old hag and Tiberius makes a bad deal for one of his cultural artifacts and they kill a monster for the old lady, and they escape to the Graveyard District of Emon.

They find their way back to their tavern, and they wait, anxiously, drinking beer and ale until, first, Scanlan walks back in, confused as to where Vax and Pike are, and then for two more hours until the bar is closed and they go to sleep for the night, and then wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of Vex’ahlia shrieking.

“You do not put your fucking blood-covered finger in my ear, Vax’ildan, and if you ever do that bullshit again, I will cut it off!”

Cassandra, still in her nightgown, opens her eyes wide enough to see just in time to see Vax’ildan thrown bodily from hers, Vex’s, Keyleth’s, and Pike’s bedroom.

Pike, standing half-nude next to the dresser, grins. She is covered in gore, same as Vax apparently was. “We killed a chimera,” she says. “I’m gonna take a midnight bath.”

“Good plan,” says Cassandra before flopping back onto her bed, while Keyleth starts fussing over Pike and Vex’ahlia, apparently, decides to drive her threat home by attempting to rob Vax’ildan of all his valuables and ensuring that their family tree can only continue through Vex’ahlia.

They sleep through the night, and then go to General Krieg’s home.

Vax’ildan has a forged letter for them to get into the Cloudtop District, but the guards spend enough time hemming and hawing over it that Cassandra finally marches up to them angrily.

“We are a party on orders from Sir Gregory himself, and if he hears how you have been treating us- me, in particular, Cassandra Johanna von Musel Klossowsi de Rolo, he will have an absolute fit!”

The guards look at Cassandra, red-faced with frustration, and they open the gates.

They speak with General Krieg, and he requests that they leave the investigation to the officials. They attempt to go to the palace, but the palace is guarded and they instead form an alliance with one Allura Vysoren, who Keyleth assists in a scrying spell. Then, they attend to the Clasp.

They are immediately surrounded, even so that they can’t leave.

Then, Scanlan spins some bullshit about a travel agency, and even though Cassandra can’t believe her ears, the Clasp leader seems convinced.

They then go back to Allura’s tower, except for it looks half-knocked down, and they go in to try and find Allura who, shockingly, is not home.

They steal her carpet.

Then, they go to General Krieg’s house, and discover a brainwashed servant and then some bullshit in the basement.

This leads to them killing a dragon, which, Cassandra must admit, is pretty much the most badass thing that they’ve ever done.

Then, they return to Emon after robbing the blue dragon outrageously, and they go to the royal family with Allura and find a demon to battle.

Pike dies, but they kill it.

They run her to the nearest cleric, and she comes back, and Cassandra cries.

The royal family are catatonic, but Cassandra doesn’t care. They restore the family, but Cassandra doesn’t care. The king declares a festival for them, and she still feels like she’s in shock.

“Cassie?” Keyleth asks, three days after Pike dies. “Do you want to talk?”

Cassandra hesitates. “I suppose,” she finally says.

Keyleth takes Cassandra to the nearby woods, finds a perfect little peaceful meadow, and they talk. Cassandra cries, and Keyleth cries, and then Cassandra falls asleep on Keyleth’s lap and when she wakes up, hours later, she forces Keyleth to promise to tell no one, and she trusts her.

Then, it is the festival, and Cassandra manages to have a good time, and then the Sovereign’s son is kidnapped, and they are follow the boy who stole away the royal son to another plane, and they kill him and save most of the children except for Keyleth kills one of them.

“Keyleth,” Cassandra says, after the battle, when everyone is celebrating or sleeping or drinking. And Keyleth turns to face her, looking frightened and uncertain and about to cry, and all Cassandra can do is open up her arms and give her a long, deep hug.

The king constructs them a Keep, and they name it Greyskull Keep because despite their battle prowess, they delight in stupidly scary names.

“And yourselves?” Uriel asks them. “You, what do I call the adventurers who saved my best arcanist and my city and my son?”

“Uhm,” says Keyleth.

“Hm!” Vex’ahlia says.

“Mmm,” Cassandra says.

“Yeah,” says Grog.

“Vox Machina!” Scanlan finally blurts out, and no one else has anything else to say, and so that is their name now.

They make a deal with a certain gentleman merchant by the name of Gilmore for a discount on magical supplies in return for promoting the name of Gilmore’s Glorious Goods.

They travel around and fight as their Keep is constructed, with a room for Cassandra that has fourteen locks on the door, and a training room in the basement, and they test their new guards by way of making them fight a giant fucking scorpion.

Then, Allura asks them to go to Kraghammer to find her friend Kima, and they go because of course they do, but first they ask the Sovereign for permission to get in and he says something about the Briarwoods, and then that’s all Cassandra can think about, but Kraghammer is strange but delightful, in Cassandra’s opinion, and she wins a barrel of wine off an old dwarf in an arm wrestling contest and Tiberius pisses off several mages and Vax’ildan pisses off Vex’ahlia and Scanlan finally kills something and then an old dwarf offers him his lap and then they bribe an old dwarf with some of the fancy wine that Cassandra had won and then they go into the Underdark.

Keyleth hates it, anyone could see (Cassandra thinks) and Cassandra promises, again, just like in the caves that they’ll make it out alive, make it out soon, but that gets harder and harder to believe when they’re saving Kima, and Cassandra fights and spits and screams to kill the duergar that were holding her captive, when they’re fighting a million other things, when they’ve finally reached the mind flayer city and Cassandra doesn’t fucking trust Clarota, for good reason, it turns out, after they defeat the beholder, and then they’re running and Tiberius has given them a way out and Kima is a statue.

They then inconvenience some scholar, do a pub crawl with a statue Kima, Keyleth clearly happier now that everyone is alive and outside, and then they go back to Greyskull Keep and pass out, waking in the morning to some finally half-decent food and reviving Kima, taking her to Allura and then taking the horn to Vasselheim, where they are recruited into a hunting club and Cassandra is forced to kill some fucking dragon again, and it’s getting really old, really fast, and Cassandra prays to someone that dragons are out of her future.

And then they go back to Greyskull Keep, and no, they can’t get any fucking rest.

Seeker Asum comes to the keep to inform all of them of the dinner with the Briarwoods. He invites them, he vanishes, and Cassandra goes back behind the keep to practice her swordplay.

Unfortunately, everyone follows her.

“Cassandra,” Vex says softly, in her faintly accented voice, “is something the matter?”

Cassandra would laugh, if she weren’t slashing at a tree that she has imagined with the face of Lady Delilah. “What makes you say that?”

Vex steps forward, puts his hand on Cassandra’s wrist. “Cassandra,” he says, and Cassandra nearly turns her blade on him before she recovers herself. “Listen to me. We are a family, and you can’t just keep things from us. We want to help you, but you need to let us.”

Cassandra glares at him, and then releases the tension built up in her body. “It’s very difficult to talk about.”

“It’s okay,” Scanlan interrupts. “We love you no matter what.”

Cassandra rolls her eyes, but still manages to smile. “Thanks, Scanlan, but it’s hardly shocking that I’m gay.” She takes a deep breath to ready herself. “You all don’t know why I was arrested.”

“Attempted murder?” Vex guesses.

“Well, yes, attempted murder. But you don’t know why.”

As Cassandra looks around at the semi-circle of her friends (her family) around her, there is complete silence. They are waiting for her to tell them what happened.

“When I was twelve years old, the Briarwoods invaded my family’s castle. Between them and their compatriots, they killed everyone in my family. I escaped, but only barely. The man who I tried to kill was one of the ones responsible,” Cassandra tries to keep her voice steady for this, tries to avoid giving any inkling to how much it hurts to talk about, but her voice quavers minutely on the last sentence and she knows that someone notices.

“So… you’re the only member of your family left?” Vax asks (not trying to hurt, Cassandra knows, but it still stings.)

“To the best of my knowledge, yes,” Cassandra tells him. “I was the only one who ran.”

(The only one who kept running, she thinks.)

“My blade has the names of the people responsible, if you truly wish to see it. Goran Vedmire is the one I attempted to kill.”

She hands her blade off to Vex, who is just staring at Cassandra. “Cassandra, how long ago did all this happen, with the Briarwoods?”

“Five years,” Cassandra says. “Nearly to the day.”

Vax’s eyes widen minutely, and Cassandra can see him doing the math. “You’re only seventeen!” he blurts out. “My god, Cassandra, you’re a child!”

Cassandra sniffs derisively. “I haven’t been a child in a very long time, Vax.”

“Oh, Cassandra,” Keyleth says sadly, and even though it’s been a long time since Keyleth’s admonishments have lost their effectiveness, Cassandra still feels terrible. Keyleth puts her arms around Cassandra’s back and hugs her close. “Oh, darling, sweetheart, honey.”

“Keyleth, I’m fine,” Cassandra says (or tries to say, because her throat suddenly feels terribly constricted and she can’t quite breathe right.)

“Well,” says Vax, after a long-ish pause, “what do you want us to do?”

Cassandra wipes her eyes and stares at Vax. “You don’t- this is my problem, and you don’t need to do anything to help me.”

Vax shrugs and smirks at her. “We’re family, Cassie. We want to help.”

Cassandra sniffles and smiles, nods at the group. “Okay,” she says.

They plan. The end verdict is that Cassandra can’t go as Cassandra, which she would usually take to mean that she’ll be a stranger. Instead, Vax insists that Scanlan can cast invisibility on him (Cassandra just knows that this is a bad idea) and he tries to jam a hat of disguise on Cassandra’s head, even though she can pass as Vax to a fair enough degree without it.

They attend the feast with Cassandra as Vax (even though she knows, she knows that the Briarwoods can probably see through it the whole damn time, and a non-magical disguise would have been much better a counter) and Vax as the air, and Cassandra pretends that she’s fine (even as she nearly cuts off the circulation to Vex’s hand by holding it too hard).

It seems like everything is going fine, until they hear Jenga from the earrings from Vax.

Cassandra runs for her weapons, leaves Vex and Tiberius and Keyleth to find Vax, lets Scanlan and Grog follow her. All they can do is take their weapons and turn and run as fast as they can towards the last place Vax was (and Grog grabs Scanlan by the back of the neck and carries him there), whereupon they discover that Tiberius has gone completely stupid, and a tiefling wearing the palace maid uniform.

On the lawn outside are Sylas and Delilah, and Vax is lying dead (please not dead, please not with arrows sticking out of his back. Vax’ildan can’t die, he isn’t dead, he’s not Percy and he won’t die tonight) between them.

The battle rages, and Cassandra jumps out of the window to get to the Briarwoods.

“SYLAS!” she screams, charging at him with her cursed blade, glowing golden.

Sylas doesn’t even pay her any attention, except to notice her and elbow his wife, say something quietly to her.

“Sy-LAS!” Cassandra screams again, slashing forward. In her rage, in her incandescent rage, she swings too fast and he darts backwards.

Delilah grabs his arm, then, and they vanish around the corner. Cassandra charges after them, still, even as she sees them getting into their carriage. Desperately, she throws one of her daggers towards the wheel, which somehow completely destroys the back corner of the carriage.

“Come out and fight, Sylas!” she shouts again, more desperate this time. She wants blood.

Sylas and Delilah both climb out of the carriage, Delilah with a slight trail of blood from the edge of her mouth.

“What a shame, that you never came back to visit!” Sylas shouts to Cassandra, over the screams of the bystanders and witnesses. “Your family misses you dearly!”

And before Cassandra can figure out what he means, he vanishes.

Cassandra stomps towards the carriage (ignore Keyleth, ignore Vex sobbing about her brother being a vampire, ignore Grog trying to get idiot Tiberius to stop licking him, ignore Scanlan singing to try and fix Tiberius, ignore them) and pulls out the driver of the carriage. He can’t possibly be any older than she is, but she doesn’t care.

“Tell me what you know of the Briarwoods,” she says.

“I- I can’t,” the boy whimpers, plainly terrified. “They’ll kill me.”

Cassandra bares her teeth. “If you don’t,” she says coldly, “then I will kill you first.”

The boy averts his eyes. “I can’t, I can’t. It’s too horrible, what they do to the people that betray them.”

Cassandra shoves her sword into the boy’s hand, slicing off two of his fingers, and he wails.

“Tell me!” she orders. “What do you know?”

“Cassandra,” says Keyleth, suddenly, and Cassandra turns with her sword already towards Keyleth’s head. “Calm down. We can’t- we can’t do this tonight.”

Cassandra wants to rage at her, wants to tell her that part of Cassandra’s family is still alive, and why can’t Keyleth understand that she just wants information.

“We can take him back to the keep with us,” Scanlan interjects. “We do have a cell, Cassie-girl.”

Cassandra spits at the feet of the sobbing carriage driver and sheathes her sword. “Fine,” she growls. “That sounds absolutely fucking fantastic.”

Cassandra manages to thoroughly ignore the totality of Uriel’s lecture on attacking guests (even if they’re fucking vampires), ignores idiot Tiberius trying to lick everyone’s face (though she parries any attempts that he makes on her), ignores everything that goes on in the temple, and ignores everyone most of the way home until they’re suddenly ambushed.

Cassandra doesn’t remember most of the fight. It’s a simple fight, with all the blood rushing through her veins. All she remembers is the tiefling man forfeiting his soul (unless that was a decision that Cassandra made by proxy) and killing him, and taking some kind of sick pleasure in watching Tiberius murder the old woman.

Cassandra sleeps, and she dreams of smoke again.

“The time draws near for my payment,” it hisses.

“The time draws near for mine,” Cassandra agrees.

Cassandra awakes, and is summoned to the palace to discuss her “misconduct” at the dinner.

(Cassandra isn’t scared when she speaks to Uriel, not of punishment or of his death or anything else. Cassandra is angry with the way that he doesn’t believe her when she explains the Briarwoods to him, the way that he doesn’t accept the story of the de Rolos, the way that he calls her a liar and treats her like a child, as though Cassandra isn’t seventeen years old, as though she doesn’t know how to fix things, as though she hasn’t saved the kingdom, as though she hasn’t slain two dragons, as though she’s weak).

They prepare for the journey to Whitestone.

Uriel may have told them not to leave, but that’s no skin off Cassandra’s nose, and her friends (Vax keeps saying family, like he’s begging her to believe it) are with her as well.

Tiberius isn’t at the keep for most of the week (says that he’s busy preparing, and as much as Cassandra wants to pretend to be annoyed, she knows that he’s doing it because he cares) and everyone else is busy making preparations as well.

Cassandra doesn’t want to say it, but she well and truly trusts them now.

The trip to Whitestone is harder than she thought it would be.

(Not the land, because the land is carved onto her brain from all the years she spent playing on it, and no amount of time can erase that, but how much it hurts the closer she gets to it. It hurts to think about who in her family is still alive

(can’t be Ludwig, not with all that blood, and not Julius with that horrible horrible scream, not Vesper or Mother with both of them at the epicenter of the end, not the twins, them desperately rushing into danger to protect their family always, not Father with being the most valuable target, and not Percy with his chest cut out into the shape of an autopsy (and Cassandra has learned too much these past five years) and him shaking like a goat kid and what they must have done to him before finally all those arrows finding his back and him falling to the cold, cold ground and Cassandra is more and more certain that the Briarwoods were lying about her family being alive the more she thinks about it)

and it hurts to imagine how the town has changed, if the people stood with the Briarwoods or if they stood against them or if the Briarwoods have killed them all and it hurts when Tiberius leaves and it hurts to wonder what the Briarwoods have done to the castle, to her home, to one of the last remaining vestiges of the de Rolo family and it hurts when the air begins to smell like her childhood and she can hear the birds singing and it fucking burns when she sees the city from the cliff and sees it looking like the town in one of Ollie’s scary stories.

Not even the behir scares her, not the empty stone giant caves, not the sounds of harpies. Cassandra has long been warned of the dangers in the woods of Whitestone.)

“We should rest before we go into town,” Vex suggests. “And make camp in the trees, so we can put up a fight if we need to.”

“Scanlan and I are going to go scout out the town,” Keyleth says. “See if there’s anything we can see, any information we can collect.”

“Be careful,” Cassandra says, and her heart hurts when they fly away.

(They’ll come back, they’ll come back, she won’t lose two families.)

They camp up in the trees, and are soon relieved that they did. Below them they hear the baying of the hounds, and Cassandra remembers the hunt five years ago and she freezes.

The hounds pass them by, miraculously, and a short time later Cassandra hears the heavy footfalls of Jazna.

Long after the hunt has passed, Scanlan and Keyleth return, bearing news of a changed Whitestone. The streets are patrolled by undead giants, and the people are pale and sickly, and there is no laughter.

Cassandra almost wants to sob at this, at the unfairness of it all, but this is still her city and damned if she’s going to lose it in her own damned city.

Cassandra takes first watch, and would have taken second watch, too, if Scanlan and Vax hadn’t insisted to the point of threats.

When she sleeps, she dreams of her family. At first, all is well- she and the twins are playing tag in a field, while Mother and Father are sitting and having a picnic and Percy is sketching in his notebook and Vesper is reading her novel and Julius is drifting off and Ludwig is making flower crowns. It’s beautiful, and everything is alright.

In the middle of the dream, or thereabouts, Cassandra realizes that all of her family are already dead. She doesn’t know how she didn’t realize it before, because Ludwig is choking up blood clots, and Julius’ mouth is twisted into an obscene howl, and Vesper is holding her head in her lap, and the twins are both covered in bruises and cuts, and Mother and Father are rotting, and Percy is lying on the ground, his skin pinned to the ground so that Cassandra can see all his insides, a dent in his head that she can see his brain through, and in his chest his heart is still beating.

“Cassandra,” gasps Percy from-the-dream. “Cassie, please, help me. Help me. It hurts so much, Cassie.”

Cassandra reaches forward to help him, but then she remembers that she’s only twelve years old. She’s still dressed in her yellow party dress, and she has no weapons.

And then her family vanishes, and Cassandra is surrounded by smoke.

“Your revenge is close at hand,” it hisses. “And my payment, as well.”

Cassandra growls at it. “I am well aware,” she says, and she knows that she sounds feral.

The smoke laughs, if smoke can laugh. And Cassandra is suddenly very afraid.

When Cassandra wakes in the morning, she forgets her dreams.

After a needlessly long winded conversation about how to sneak into town, Scanlan casts Seeming on them all and Keyleth shoves the cap of disguise onto Cassandra’s head, “just to be safe.”

When they walk into town, it’s worse than Cassandra could have ever imagined.

More than half the houses she sees are empty, and all the people walk as though they have chains on their feet.

But what tears Cassandra in two is seeing the Sun Tree.

The leaves are all gone from it, and the tree looks half-dead. And the worst part, the worst part are the bodies she sees.

Hanging from the tree are eight bodies. There’s a man and a woman, dressed identically; a woman with red paint splashed through her hair; a large man shaved bald with no shirt on; another man whose body is painted red; a young boy- probably no more than six years old- dressed in purple clothes; a bear; and finally, in the center of the tree, a young girl wearing a yellow dress. All hanging from the neck.

Cassandra wants to walk away, but she’s frozen in place.

“Is that-” Keyleth begins.

“That’s us,” Cassandra whispers. “It’s a warning.” She slams her fist into her side. “They destroyed the Sun Tree.”

Vex eyes Cassandra. “Cassie, darling,” she says, soft as anything, “what’s the Sun Tree?”

Cassandra stares straight at the Sun Tree, gaze staunch and unwavering. “The Sun Tree,” she says, and she hopes her voice isn’t trembling, “is the greatest symbol of hope in Whitestone. It is the tree that protected the founders of this town.” Cassandra knows that she can’t quite express it, how wondrous the Sun Tree is, all the memories she has of Wintercrest and Midsummer and everything that happened beneath this tree. She can’t express the semi-holiness of the Sun Tree.

Vax claps Cassandra on the shoulder. “We’ll be alright,” he says, sounding so sure of it, even though Cassandra couldn’t be less sure. “Let’s go find some lodging.”

The lodging is too easy to find- the old tavern that Vesper and Julius used to go out to on the weekends is empty, covered in dust and cobwebs, and it’s just so damned cold.

Keyleth begins tunneling towards the Sun Tree, because she insists that she might be able to fix it (Cassandra doesn’t think so. She thinks that maybe the Sun Tree is dead beyond repair.) She tells them that the spell will take twelve hours, and asks them to bring her water and food.

“I know where there’s a well,” Cassandra says. “I’ll go get a bucket of water.”

“I’ll come with you,” says Vax, always stupid overprotective.

“No,” says Cassandra. “Vax’ildan, just stay here. The well is two minutes round trip. I’ll be back before Keyleth can even start the spell.”

“Cassandra,” Vax pleads. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Cassandra half-smiles at him. “I don’t want you to get hurt, idiot. Just stay here.”

She’s swished her way out the door before Vax can continue his argument.

The water that she pulls out of the well is somewhat brackish, but it’s drinkable, and she figures that that’s all that Keyleth needs. And, true to her prediction, when she arrives back at the inn, Keyleth is still starting her preparations.

“I told you,” she sing-songs to Vax as she steps down the tunnel.

“I’m going to kill you before the vampires ever get the chance,” Vax retorts.

Cassandra laughs (she shouldn’t laugh because it isn’t funny, because her family was killed by vampires, but she likes to joke when things get rough) and delivers the water to Keyleth.

“Cassandra,” Keyleth says, before Cassandra can make her exit to finish her errands. “Are you- I mean, do you feel alright?”

Cassandra furrows her brow, confused. “Keyleth, I’m currently attempting to raise a small populace into revolution against vampires that killed my entire family. How would you feel?”

“Cassandra, that’s not what I mean,” Keyleth sighs. She studies Cassandra’s face, and is seemingly unsatisfied with whatever she sees. “Cassandra, what did you mean when you said that that tiefling’s soul was forfeit?”

Cassandra pauses to think about it. “I guess I did say something like that,” she admits.

“Yeah, and! I’m not trying to be rude, because it was really cool, but it was also kind of scary? So, like, are you feeling okay?” Keyleth’s biting her bottom lip, and as cute as it is, Cassandra really needs her off her back.

“I’m fine,” Cassandra says shortly, and turns to go back to the rest of the group.

“Cassie,” Keyleth says, grabbing Cassandra’s arm. “You can talk to us, you know. We’re family, like Vax says.”

Cassandra looks over her shoulder at Keyleth and half-grins. “I know, Kiki. Thanks.”

Cassandra walks away before she can get worried.

“What’s the plan, Can?” Scanlan asks, idly strumming his flute. It’s disconcerting, to say the least, seeing Scanlan “motherfucking” Shorthalt in the guise of a young peasant boy.

“I’m going to the Zenith to find Father Raynal,” she says, checking her bag to make sure she has all necessary materials. “He’s a good man, we can trust him.”

“You’ll need back-up,” says Vax.

“Me and Vax will accompany you,” Scanlan declares, sounding for all the world like a child. “Grog, you and Vex keep guard over Keyleth, alright?”

“Alright,” Grog rumbles from his position in the back corner of the basement.

Vex rolls her eyes, but she doesn’t protest.

As they exit the tavern, Vax and Cassandra keep to the shadows, silent, and Cassandra strongly doubts that any of the townsfolk actually see them.

Scanlan, on the other hand, skips merrily down the middle of the road, happy to pretend to be a little peasant boy.

Cassandra can’t relax the way Scanlan apparently can. This isn’t how Whitestone is supposed to be, and she feels like she’s the only one taking this seriously.

The first real bump in Cassandra’s plan comes when they reach the Zenith, and they can’t open the door.

(Cassandra used to go to the Zenith on alternating weekends with Julius, who besides needing to know diplomacy and peacemaking and ruling, loved and trusted the gods til his last day. She wonders if Julius still trusts the gods, if he has lost his faith, if he still prays or if he curses Pelor every day.)

It takes them ten minutes, three spells, a sword and a window to get everyone through, and after all that, Cassandra feels like it wasn’t even worth it.

All she gets out of the deal is getting knocked out in a fight against a banshee (she wakes up to seeing Vax’ildan above her, looking like he’s the one who got knocked out) and finding Father Raynal’s corpse.

Absolutely useless.

As they walk back, Cassandra sees more and more undead guards. She sees the giants that Scanlan and Keyleth warned her about, but she sees too many humans with the same unnatural, jerky movements as the giants to be a coincidence.

Once they arrive back at the inn, Cassandra stomps upstairs, frustrated with everything that’s happened today, with all the lack of progress. She settles herself in a front-facing bedroom and stares intently at the Sun Tree, trying to see any progress.

After an hour of half-glaring at the tree, she finally sighs and makes her way down to the basement to rest.

“Any luck?” she asks Keyleth, even though she already knows the answer.

“I thought that I had had some,” Keyleth replies softly, “but there’s something under the ground here that’s draining the tree of its life.”

“Hey, it’s alright, Kiki,” Cassandra says, tries to be comforting. Keyleth smiles at her a little, so Cassandra counts it as a win.

“So,” says Vex conversationally, “how are we to go about inciting the populace to revolt?”

Cassandra takes a deep breath. “We start with the nobles,” she declares. “Kerrion, for a start- though he is on my blade, so they may realize that we're here.”

“Cassandra, they had our bodies in that tree,” Scanlan interjects. “I feel like they might already know.”

“They have our bodies from when we were in Emon in the Sun Tree, Scanlan,” Cassandra corrects. “They have Tiberius up there, so it’s possible that they don’t know that we’re here-here.”

Vex and Scanlan hum in agreement.

“Well,” says Vax, “we aren’t getting anything done tonight. Let’s get some rest before we do anything.”

Cassandra nods and takes her place to keep watch.

“Hey,” says Vex’ahlia, interrupting Cassandra’s self-placement. “Get some sleep. Me and Vax are on watch tonight.”

Cassandra wants to argue, but being back in Whitestone, seeing how Whitestone has changed- the people desperate to fill their quotas, but there’s just not enough food, not enough people for what the nobles want, it makes her so tired.

So she doesn’t fight, she just shuffles over to the rest of Vox Machina and curls up next to Keyleth.

Cassandra sleeps, and her dreams are cruel.

She dreams of the twins, being sucked dry by Sylas, she dreams of Ludwig falling but still talking, she dreams of Vesper, tortured and bound by Delilah, she dreams of Mother and Father taking tea, but the tea is made of blood and glass, she dreams of Julius, still trying to bargain his way out while he is clubbed to death by Goran Vedmire and the orc woman, she dreams of Percival, seventeen-year-old Percival, smaller than Cassandra is at seventeen, being cornered by menacing shadows, reaching out and begging Cassandra to save him, and she dreams of herself, seventeen years old, powerful, not too weak to save her brother, not twelve years old anymore, and she dreams of herself turning away from her older brother, the only one she could have saved.

When Cassandra wakes up (seventeen years old, and if she went back in time to that night right now, she could save her brother) she doesn’t feel as though she’s rested at all.

“Good morning, sunshine!” Keyleth chirps, because Keyleth is always chirpy in the morning, for some godsforsaken reason.

Cassandra grunts at her noncommittally. She’s developed a bit of a cough overnight.

“Are you alright?” Keyleth asks, brow crinkling in concern. “Here, have some Goodberries, they should make you feel better.”

Cassandra reluctantly takes the Goodberries, swallows them down (she hates the sugar-sweet taste of them, it makes her want to vomit) and does, in fact, feel a bit better.

“So,” says Vex, sounding appropriately wiped out, “do we know which mansion is monsieur Kerrion’s?”

Cassandra shrugs. “It’s been five years. Presumably, the best course of action would be to ask around.”

“So, Seeming again?” Scanlan asks.

“Ooh, ooh, I wanna have a crazy eye!” Vex exclaims, perking up remarkably quickly.

“You can have two crazy eyes, sweetaboo,” Scanlan says, and before Cassandra can even try to get everyone back on track, Scanlan looks like a child, Vex has a hunchback and two crazy eyes, Grog is a fat old man, Trinket is an ugly donkey, and Vax looks like a sad peasant who doesn’t have the silver to buy a razor blade. Cassandra thanks her lucky stars that she can’t see herself, and then shoves the cap of disguise onto her head.

“Is there anywhere we can get some supplies?” Vax asks, fidgeting uncomfortably. “I can’t help but feel that we’re a bit underprepared.”

Cassandra nods silently, and leads the group to the old shop.

The shop, which Cassandra used to go to with the twins on rare excursions, is destroyed, utterly. She doesn’t react as Vex’ahlia investigates and tells her that it’s empty, nothing in the cellar and dust for at least a year.

Cassandra only nods and turns to continue.

(Cassandra wonders if the twins are the ones alive, or if it’s only one or the other, if Ollie or Whitney ran into danger one time too many, if whichever that’s left is broken beyond repair or is just shaken apart, if either are still danger-prone and desperate to assist the rebellion, or if they’re just too tired, being alone for so long.)

She leads Vox Machina south, towards the wealthier edge of the town. After fifteen minutes of walking, they encounter a single mansion.

“Is this Sir Kerfuffle’s?” Scanlan asks, trying to lighten the mood.

“I don’t know,” Cassandra responds, frustrated. There’s a single lamp lit inside the mansion, but Cassandra can’t make out any details of who the resident might be.

“Well, let’s maybe leave that issue for later,” Vax interjects, gesturing towards the closing sound of giant footsteps. “Cassie, is there any cover we can duck into nearby?”

Cassandra runs through her catalog of memories of Whitestone, and quickly leads the group to The Lady’s Chamber.

As they dart through the alleyways, Scanlan stops a couple as they dig through the trash to interview them. The woman kneels down and pets Scanlan’s face, as though he’s actually a child, and seems to give him directions. The exchange ends abruptly, as Vex smacks Scanlan with her cane- Cassandra wonders if she’s using her bow to hit Scanlan, or if Scanlan is just that good an actor.

“So,” Scanlan says, catching up to the rest of the group, “we know where Kerrion lives, and that house that we were just by belongs to the Countess, who we should apparently avoid.”

“Which countess?” Cassandra asks, mouth twisting into a snarl. It doesn’t really matter which, she knows, because she hates them both equally.

“She didn’t say,” Scanlan replies. “But we ought to avoid her, in any case.”

Cassandra coughs in acknowledgment, and takes everyone into the half-shell shape.

(She used to come here with Whitney on alternating weekends, because Whitney loved the world that people made, not the world that the gods made for them, and she and Julius always fought over take what the gods give us versus make our own path in honor of the gods, and Cassandra wonders if Whitney still believes in carving her own path, or if she’s given up and started taking whatever she is given instead.)

“This is The Lady’s Chamber,” Cassandra says, guiding everyone into seats.

“Hot,” Scanlan comments.

“Scanlan,” Cassandra says, “if you are going to make sexual innuendos about temples, please wait until you don’t look like a child.”

Scanlan just licks his lips and winks at Cassandra, and Cassandra feels a sudden urge to punt him across the city.

Instead, Cassandra just turns her attention to the figure at the podium. She recognizes him fairly quickly- it’s old Keeper Yennen, the arrogant self-important priest of Erathis. She indulges in a quick flash of irritation, remembering him, but when she hears him speak, he seems earnest to help the people of Whitestone. There’s passion in his words, even with all the danger he’s probably in saying this. As he finishes his sermon, Cassandra moves towards the podium.

“Keeper Yennen,” she says, bowing slightly. “A lovely sermon.”

The Keeper eyes her suspiciously. “Thank you,” he says. “It’s important that the people keep hope in times like these.”

Cassandra nods. “I couldn’t agree more,” she says, fishing out a scrap of paper with her family’s crest scrawled on it. She grabs Keeper Yennen’s hands, shakes them heartily, and passes him the paper. “Please, don’t let the people give up hope.”

Keeper Yennen eyes the paper that Cassandra had passed him. “What, precisely, is this supposed to mean?”

Cassandra smiles halfheartedly. “It means that not everything that you thought was gone, is. It means that hope is not yet lost.”

Keeper Yennen nods, crumpling the paper in his fist. “Be careful with the symbols you spread,” he murmurs to Cassandra. “The walls themselves have ears in this city.”

Cassandra nods. “There will be no need to be careful very soon,” she tells him. She turns, and exits.

She leads the group back towards Sir Kerrion’s house. Halfway there, he throat begins to itch and she coughs violently for a good half minute.

“Are you alright, Cass?” Keyleth asks, concerned as always. “Look, you haven’t seemed alright since we got here. Are you feeling okay?”

Cassandra waves her away. “I’m fine, Keyleth,” she coughs. “Right now, we have work to do.”

“Alright,” Keyleth says reluctantly. “But if you start feeling unwell, tell us, right away.”

Cassandra nods, and continues.

They enter Kerrion’s home through the rear, after thoroughly destroying the man’s fence, which Cassandra can’t feel too badly about. Their entrance is surprisingly quiet, and she and Vax take point to find Kerrion.

It’s over almost disappointingly quickly.

She and Vax’ildan are extremely deadly when they catch their quarry unawares, and there’s almost no fun to the fight.

When Kerrion is on his last legs, she walks to him, her feathered mask on- usually only used to be the Mysterious Woman when she wants to do some trickery- smoke swirling from her rapier to her ankles, around her body, making her look unholy.

“Sir Kerrion,” she says, kneeling in front of him, her sword at his throat. “Do you recall what you did, five years ago?”

Kerrion nods in terror. “What do you want to know?” he gasps.

“Oh, nothing,” Cassandra replies, smiling. “I just wanted to make sure that you knew why you were dying.”

She slams her rapier through his neck and pulls it out rapidly, releasing a spurt of blood.

There’s a brief pause, then, as everyone looks at her.

“Cassandra, darling,” Vex finally says, “you seem to be covered with smoke. Are you alright?”

Cassandra looks over to Vex and cocks her head. “I feel fine, Vex’ahlia.”

The fight continues, with Grog knocking out a guard and Keyleth knocking out the other man- which Cassandra suspects may have been nothing more than a happy accident.

Scanlan enters the room (and Cassandra doesn’t even know when he left), walks up to the one remaining guard, and orders him to spread the story of what happened here.

“Also we already left and no one should come in,” Vax interjects, all in one breath.

“Also, the attackers have left the premises already. No one should enter this room, that’s how terrible the scene is,” Scanlan repeats, embellishing a bit.

The guard nods, head bobbing like a poppet, and he walks out of the room.

“Well,” says Scanlan, clapping his hands free of nonexistent dirt, “now that that’s done, what ought we do with old man fuck here?”

“Vouk,” Cassandra corrects drily. She’s busy digging through Kerrion’s pockets, which nets her a healing potion for her troubles. She then takes one of her daggers and begins furiously carving at her rapier.

After she has finally crossed out Kerrion’s name, the name itself glows a soft, vomit-colored green, and vanishes.

When she looks up from her chore, she sees Keyleth watching her. Cassandra catches her eye, and doesn’t look away.

After a bit, it is determined that they ought question Vouk.

They don’t discover much of interest to Cassandra.

Vouk confirms that he is one of those originally involved with the taking of Whitestone, confirms that Delilah is no vampire, and shows them a secret entrance that Cassandra already knew about, and that the Briarwoods have some kind of project beneath the ground of Whitestone.

Eventually, he just starts blabbering any information that he thinks might be helpful, and Vax’ildan re-gags him.

“We should mark him,” Cassandra says coldly. “So that the people know what is happening.”

Keyleth and the twins look at Cassandra, looking both surprised and disgusted by her remark. Scanlan and Grog, on the other hand, both look delighted.

“And we should take his tongue,” Cassandra continues. “To make the guards afraid of what will happen if they continue to stand with the Briarwoods.”

Grog, without waiting for any other input, rips out Kerrion’s tongue. It’s both disgusting and fascinating for Cassandra.

Cassandra, meanwhile, patiently waits for her rapier to heat in the fireplace, and once she is satisfied, she holds Kerrion to the ground and painstakingly carves in her family’s insignia.

Eventually, it is decided that the bodies in the room (including the recently unconscious guard) should be taken outside, and the mansion set aflame.

Before Cassandra can follow the rest of Vox Machina out of the window, Vax’ildan catches her shoulder.

“Be careful, Cassandra,” he says, and she nearly gets the shivers at Vax’s tone. “You’re walking down a dark path, and I’m not sure that we’ll like what we see at the end of it.”

Cassandra glares at Vax, shakes her shoulder free of his grip. “I would like to see what you would do,” she hisses, “if you were in my shoes, and Vex’ahlia had been dead five years, with her murderers free of any punishment.”

She knows that it’s cruel, knows that she shouldn’t have said it, but she’s so terribly angry.

She and the rest of Vox Machina run back to their hideout, Grog hiding their steps with the dust of tracelessness the whole time.

“Cassandra,” says Keyleth, before Cassandra can drop into her dead man’s slumber that she has after battles. “I think we need to talk.”

Vox Machina nods along with Keyleth, and Cassandra feels trapped.

“The smoke is… a bit concerning, darling,” Vex’ahlia adds.

“And you’ve been so cruel, lately,” Keyleth says. “You never used to be so cruel during battles.”

“Cassandra,” Vax interjects, before Keyleth and Vex’ahlia can get too far down the list of Cassandra’s recent faults, “what the hell is happening you, is what we’re trying to say.”

Cassandra hesitates momentarily, searching for a way out of this conversation, but she knows that she’ll have to talk about it eventually.

“Well,” she starts, “I presumed that it was just a dream, at first.”

“Clearly the fuck not,” Vax mutters, and even though Cassandra itches to tell him that that’s why she said ‘at first,’ she lets him get away with his comment.

“I was fifteen years old, I had watched my entire family die, and I dreamt that something offered me a way to avenge my family,” she makes eye contact with Vax’ildan. “What would any of you had done?”

There’s another uncomfortable pause, and Cassandra presumes that everyone is thinking their way through how they would cope with such a thing.

“Cassandra,” Scanlan says, finally joining the conversation, “have you had any more dreams like that recently?”

Cassandra hesitates again, and finally nods. “I’ve been having dreams of the thing that gave me the names since the feast. And nightmares, most nights since, when I don’t dream of the smoke.”

“What the hell is this fucking smoke!” Vax’ildan finally shouts. “Sarenrae’s sake, Cassandra, you were swallowed by that smoke today! You branded a man in cold blood! What the hell is this smoke!”

“I don’t fucking know, Vax’ildan!” Cassandra shouts back. “Dreadfully fucking sorry that I didn’t ask for a fully fucking notarized contract when I was fifteen fucking years old!”

“Cassie-girl,” Scanlan says softly, “it’s alright. You don’t need to know. Just, everyone, let’s calm down, alright?”

Cassandra glares at Vax’ildan, and takes out one of her daggers and begins cleaning her nails. Vax’ildan, she sees out of the corner of her eyes, is mumbling angrily to himself and doesn’t seem to be trying to calm down.

“Cassie,” Scanlan continues. “Just, do you trust yourself? Do you trust yourself to do what’s right?”

Cassandra falters momentarily. “I-,” and she realizes that no, she doesn’t. “No, I don’t. I don’t know if I could stop myself if I went too far. And there’s no reason for any of you to trust me, either.

“But I trust all of you, to stop me if I need to be stopped. I trust you to do what needs to be done.”

Grog coughs. “Cassie,” he says, voice rumbling, “are ya afraid that yer gonna hurt us?”

Cassandra almost laughs. “Not at all, Grog,” she says sadly. “I’m afraid that I wouldn’t help you if you did get hurt.”

There’s a grand silence after that.

“Cass,” Grog rumbles, “we could just whack ya over th’ head and take ya to a temple if ya get out of hand.”

“Good plan, Grog,” Vex agrees.

The conversation continues. Scanlan doesn’t understand why everyone is upset- everything went according to plan, and Vax and Cassandra both agree that ripping out Vouk’s tongue was going too far, and Grog promises to restrain Cassandra if she gets like that again.

Scanlan suggests that they wait for the rebellion to set in, and Cassandra insists that they only have a day, at most, before they storm the castle.

She goes to sleep early, trying to eliminate her cough, and feels Keyleth slide Cassandra’s head into her lap a few minutes later.

In the night, they are attacked by three undead.

What Cassandra sees in that fight is Vax’ildan, clawed across the face, Grog, in a rage, warhammer ablaze, and the maw of a vampire, approaching her throat.

She struggles, probably, and she thinks that she sees an arrow fly just behind the vampire’s head, probably trying to stop it from attacking Cassandra. The vampire’s fangs sink into her neck, and she’s finally shocked into shoving it away. She stabs recklessly with her dagger, hits once, gets a claw across her face and pinned against the wall for her trouble. She’s desperately fending it off with her rapier when Keyleth finally stands up, and saves Cassandra’s life again with a burst of sunlight.

After the fight, the consensus is that they will sleep in the basement of the tavern. Vex’ahlia tries to insist that Cassandra rest, but Cassandra’s too shaken up after nearly becoming an undead to sleep. She and Keyleth take watch, and Vex’ahlia stays awake for a bit, like she’s their nanny. Doesn’t matter much, since Keyleth has told Cassandra many times that they will definitively never be dating, given Cassandra’s unfortunate status of “everyone’s baby sister.”

When morning comes, Cassandra feels neither better nor worse than the previous day. It’s a less than concerning problem.

That day, Cassandra secures that night’s lodgings at an old bookstore that she used to frequent with Vesper.

(Cassandra wonders if Vesper is still alive, if she will find her in Whitestone Castle, and how she will have changed. Cassandra wonders if Vesper is still her semi-vapid romance-obsessed self, if she’s matured and become deadly, if she’s been married off to one of the Briarwood’s nobles, if she’s alright.)

Vax and Scanlan spread rumors of rebellion, and Scanlan comes back with his head soaked in ale, which Cassandra doesn’t want to know the reason behind.

She leads the group back to The Lady’s Chambers to check on Yennen, who’s giving some kind of sermon in Celestial. She has no idea what he’s saying- Percy was always the one with the head for languages. He would know.

(Cassandra wonders if Percy still has a head for languages, or if he’s still his standoffish bookish self, or if he’s the shaky-legged scarred and scared boy that Cassandra left behind all those years ago.)

Keeper Yennen beckons them to his chambers, and offers his doubts on the rebellion. He tells them of a Ziggurat, and of an old children’s myth that Cassandra used to hear every Winter’s Crest. He is joined by old Mr. Archibald, Cassandra’s father’s chancellor, who also offers his doubts.

Cassandra removes the cap of disguise, gestures to Scanlan, who has given his notebook (from Kerrion’s house) to Mr. Archibald. Scanlan dispels Seeming on her, and Mr. Archibald drops the notebook.

“Hello, Mr. Archibald,” Cassandra says, half-smiling.

Mr. Archibald, after a moment of shocked silence, laughs jovially and hugs Cassandra tight. “Cassie!” he gasps. “Oh, Cassie, this is phenomenal! Now we have a de Rolo on our side as well!”

Cassandra freezes. “My- They have a de Rolo on their side?”

Archibald slows rapidly, looks at Cassandra sadly. “Oh, Cassandra, you didn’t know?”

Cassandra pushes his hands away, turns to Yennen. “Who in my family has fallen to the Briarwoods?”

“Cassie-girl,” Scanlan interrupts, trying to cool her temper.

“Not now,” Cassandra replies tightly. “Who has fallen, Keeper Yennen?”

Yennen meets her eyes. “It was not his fault, Cassandra.”

Cassandra slams her fist into the wall. “Who. Has. Fallen.”

“Your brother,” Yennen says. “Percival de Rolo has fallen.”

Cassandra freezes again, remembering her brother, stupid genius Percival who shook like a leaf in that dungeon, who Cassandra abandoned, who Cassandra left to die alone in those woods, who still knelt next to his younger sister to play spies before fancy dinners, and wonders how the fuck Percival fell to the Briarwoods.

“I’m so sorry, Cassandra,” Archibald says softly. “Your brother-”

Cassandra turns and slams her way out the door.

She runs from The Lady’s Chambers, shoving the cap of disguise back on her head as she goes. She runs through the rain, leaving footprints for anyone who cares to follow her, and she runs to the forest and begins slashing at saplings.

“Cassie,” comes Vex’s voice, after several minutes. “Cassandra, darling, look at me.”

Cassandra whips her head around, and the cap of disguise falls off. Her face is ruddy red and tear-streaked, she’s breathing hard, and she knows that she looks half-wild.

“Sweetheart,” Vex says softly, and Cassandra sobs.

Vex hugs her tightly, and Cassandra lets the rapier fall to the muddy forest floor.

“I thought-” she gasps out. “I just wanted-”

“Shh, shh,” Vex murmurs. “I know, darling, I know. It’s alright. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Vex lets Cassandra sob onto her shoulder for a full two minutes, then stands Cassandra up and offers her a handkerchief.

“I just thought,” Cassandra starts, voice still shaking, “that I could at least get someone from my family.”

Vex’ahlia rubs Cassandra’s back. “It’s not too late, darling,” she says. “We’ll get into that castle, and we’ll get your brother back. You’re going to have your brother again, if I have to personally kick the vampire mind control out of his head.”

Cassandra laughs, despite herself, and hugs Vex again. “Thank you, Vex,” she mumbles.

“Of course, darling,” Vex replies, voice muffled as it is from being caught in Cassandra’s shoulder.

Cassandra bends and picks up her rapier again. “We should go back to the others. Finish the rebellion.”

Vex’ahlia nods. “One thing first, darling,” she says. “You have a brother.”

Cassandra’s face nearly splits in two from her grin. “I have a brother,” she repeats.

“Hell yes,” Vex says, and they return to the rest of Vox Machina, who are gracious enough not to bring up Cassandra’s meltdown.

“Reportedly,” Scanlan says, “we have two targets. Sir Goran Vedmire is ex-treme-ly physically powerful, so we want to take him out, whilst Count Tylieri would be a major morale boost, in terms of killing a super evil dude.”

Cassandra remembers the kitchen, suddenly, remembers herself, twelve-years-old and weak, weak, weak, and she clenches her fist.

“I’ll take Goran,” she says. “He’s not vampiric. It’ll be an easy fight.”

“We ought to take out both,” says Vax. “Since Vedmire isn’t a vampire, Keyleth, can you take Tylieri and do whatever you need to do to destroy him?”

Keyleth nods. “I’ll need back-up, though.”

Eventually, the teams are divided as Keyleth, Vax’ildan, and Vex’ahlia; and Cassandra, Scanlan, and Grog.

“Alright, motherfuckers,” Scanlan says. “Stay the fuck alive.”

With those graceful parting words, Vox Machina divides.

Cassandra, Scanlan, and Grog don’t so much enter Goran’s estate as they do completely obliterate the front half of the mansion via Scanlan transforming into a lizardlike beast.

Goran has surrounded himself with guards, and Cassandra calls him a coward, luring him between herself and Scanlan. Grog is busy, occupied with killing as many guards he can get his hands on, just as Cassandra wants it.

“Tell me, Goran,” she says, “do you remember the little de Rolo girl?”

“Less talking,” Goran grunts. “More fighting.”

Cassandra obliges, slashing at him with her rapier. “Do you remember what you did to her, five years ago, in the kitchens of Whitestone Castle?”

Goran lashes out at her, but Cassandra skips merrily out of the way and slashes at him again. “Do you remember why you hurt her?”

Goran lashes out again, and this time catches Cassandra around the middle. “I remember,” he growls. “And I’m gonna hurt her a hell of a lot worse, this time.”

Before Cassandra can even react, Goran’s head is slammed violently to the side by a flaming hammer.

“Get! Your! Hands! Off! Of! Her!” Grog shouts, punctuating each word with a hammer blow. Cassandra steps back, watches as Grog nearly destroys Goran.

“Grog!” she shouts, when she can see that Goran is one blow away from death. “Let me finish him.”

Grog looks over at her, breaking from his rage, and steps back.

Cassandra steps towards Goran, gazes down at him and draws her rapier.

“Are you in pain, Goran?” she asks.

Goran only glares at her.

“If that’s your final answer,” she says, shrugging.

And she plunges her rapier down through his eye socket.

Goran screams, briefly, and then stops when Cassandra shoves the blade further in.

Goran Vedmire is dead, and Cassandra de Rolo, no longer a weak twelve-year-old wearing nothing but her leggings and her undershirt, killed him.

“Alright,” says Scanlan, no longer beast-shaped. “Let’s light this place the fuck up.”

The three of them run out of the mansion as Scanlan sets it aflame, and they return to the bookstore, invisible, after witnessing the people of Whitestone begin to rise by killing one of the undead giants.

“Is it starting?” asks the young gentleman who has been left in charge of the store. “Is this the revolution?”

“Hell yes it is,” Scanlan tells him, panting. “Are you gonna get out there and fuck up the people who fucked your town, or what?”

The boy reaches under the counter and retrieves a large sword.

“Please, don’t damage the books,” he says as he exits.

Cassandra hopes that the young gentleman who hides large swords under the counter in bookstores and reminds his patrons to mind the books before he goes out to murder giants lives.

Keyleth and the twins join them a few minutes later, reporting that one of the giants has been felled and that the other three are on their way down.

“We need to rest, at least briefly,” says Cassandra. “Scanlan has no spells left, and we all need some time to heal.”

They agree- Vax’ildan eyeing Cassandra warily, and Cassandra realizes that she still has smoke sifting gently around her ankles.

“I think we all need to cool off a bit,” he says, the comment punctuating by a far-off thud that shakes the floor a bit. “The people have this under control for now.”

“Only long enough to heal,” Cassandra interjects. “We have no idea what defenses the Briarwoods have prepared.”

The rest of Vox Machina agrees, and they stay in the bookshop only long enough to bandage up their wounds.

“I think,” Scanlan says, as he bandages a small wound on his leg, “that we need to go to the Sun Tree. Desmond said that Count Tylieri was hanged there, so that’s probably where the vampires are spawning.”

Cassandra nods, if only to see the Sun Tree one more time, for some confidence, before they face the Briarwoods.

When they all arrive at the Sun Tree, the first thing that they notice is that the bodies are gone. The amount of the noose left varies, and they can’t tell if the bodies were taken away or if they walked away, and no one asks too many questions.

As they observe the tree (and observe Keyleth scampering to the top), they begin hearing a series of ominous thump thump thumps and clack-a-lack-a-clack-a-lacks coming towards them.

“Skeletons!” Keyleth shouts down.

“Undead giant!” Vex’ahlia shouts back, drawing her bow.

They fell the giant fairly quickly, and Keyleth is pulled down from the tree and they all run from the skeletons.

Halfway to the forest, Keyleth wrenches herself free of the group and sprints back to the skeletons, lifting herself to the top of a ten-foot-tall stone wall. Vox Machina also collides with Keeper Yennen, who is with ten other armed citizens.

“Fuck!” Cassandra curses, and turns on her heel to rejoin Keyleth, with Vax, Vex, and Grog hot on her heels. “Yennen, I hope you have some fucking firepower!”

“We don’t need fire!” Yennen shouts back, as Cassandra leaps and climbs to the top of Keyleth’s wall. “We have her!”

Cassandra turns to look and, as Vax and Vex join her at the top of the wall, she sees Pike Trickfoot emerge from the forest of Whitestone, glowing, holy, and Cassandra grins.

She lets Vax lower her down the wall as Vex fires arrow after arrow at the horde, and she lifts Pike up to the top of the wall. She’s lighter than Cassandra remembers, and she suspects that it’s something to do with the glowy bit. A moment later, Scanlan gets chucked to the top of the wall and lands next to Pike.

“I missed you,” he gasps.

Pike smiles at him. “I missed you too, Scanlan,” she says, and then she leaps off the wall, her body momentarily lifted by heavenly wings. She lands in the middle of the skeleton horde, and she destroys nearly all of them.

Scanlan sighs dreamily. “I do love her,” he laments, and jumps (slips?) off the wall, and destroys a few of the remaining skeletons via dick lightning, and Grog easily dispatches the rest.

“Go!” Yennen shouts, occupied with his own skeletons. “Do what you must, we will survive this!”

Cassandra nods. “We storm the castle at dawn!” she shouts down to him. “Heal over the night, and attack when you see our sign in the sky!”

“Why wait!” Yennen shouts back. “We fight now!”

“To heal, you dense idiot! We may fight now, but we will take the castle on the morrow!” Cassandra shouts back. She jumps off the wall before she gets herself dragged into an argument with the Keeper, and she runs after the rest of Vox Machina towards the giants in the distance.

“We need to split up,” says Vax.

They split, Grog going with Pike on one shoulder and Scanlan on the other towards the South, and the other four head towards the cemetery.

The giant is killed, eventually, although not until after Keyleth nearly burns Vax’s hands off and Cassandra almost gets pinned under the giant’s morningstar and Vex and Vax do a severely amazing attack against the giant.

“We attack at dawn,” Vex’ahlia tells the guard.

“Spread the word,” Cassandra adds.

“Dawn,” the captain agrees.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Cassandra says to Vex.

They get the hell out of there, and find Grog and the gnomes behind the western wall.

“Scanlan fainted,” Grog tattles immediately.

“In fairness,” Scanlan says, striking a ridiculous, lovestruck pose, “Pike is really fucking cool.”

“Thanks, Scanlan!” Pike pipes up from Grog’s shoulder.

“An-y-way,” Cassandra interrupts. “We need to get to the passageway into the castle so that we’re ready in the morning. Let’s go.”

She leads them up the mountain, straight to the old cavern. She remembers this place intimately, has it’s location seared into her soul from all the nightmares she’s had of this place, all the times she’s heard Percy fall, heard Percy cry out for her, all the times that she’s felt his hand leave hers, all the what-ifs that she holds in her head.

Someone’s covered the entrance with rocks, trying to make it look like a rockslide, but Grog makes short work of those.

They enter the cavern, and determine that it is unguarded after a piss-poor attempt by Scanlan to rob Vax. Once they’re all in, Grog begins re-covering the hole with some larger boulders, and Pike casts a glowing guardian.

Cassandra collapses against the cave wall, exhausted, and Pike walks over to join her.

“Cassie,” she says softly, “are you feeling alright?”

Cassandra wonders why, precisely, everyone is asking if she’s feeling alright when she’s about to face down her family’s murderers for the first time in five years. It’s a bit stupid.

“As well as can be expected, I suppose,” she says instead. “Why do you ask?”

Pike examines her closely. “You don’t look well,” she says softly. “If it’s alright with you, I’d like to cast a restoration spell."

Cassandra agrees, and Pike takes some of the darkness out of her.

Cassandra feels a bit weak.

Vax sneaks out for a bit, then scares the shit out of Vex’ahlia for no good reason, and then Cassandra takes watch with him. There’s not much to watch, with Pike’s heavenly guard on patrol, but everyone feels better with a non-summoned creature on watch.

“Cassie,” Vax says, nearly halfway through their watch, “I just wanna say. I’m sorry, about the other day. It was uncalled for.”

Cassandra snorts. “No, it wasn’t. You had every right to be suspicious of the smoke. Obviously, you’re still a shithead, but there was no reason for me to get upset with you over what you didn’t know.”

Vax nods. “Hey, Jojo?”

Cassie sighs. “Yes, Vax?”

Vax idly pulls out one of his daggers and begins cleaning his nails. “I. I hope that we can save your brother.”

Cassie snatches Vax’s dagger playfully and begins playing five finger fillet against the cave floor. “Me too, Vaxy.” She leans her head against his shoulder and, in a matter of minutes, drifts off.

That night, she dreams again of her family. She sees Julius and Vesper and Father and Mother and Ludwig and Ollie and Whitney, all bleeding, all in such terrible pain, all reaching out to her to save them.

“Please, Cassie,” says Julius, vomiting blood as he speaks, hand reaching out to Cassandra. “Please, Cassie, save me. I can protect you. You won’t have to do this alone.”

Vesper takes her by the hand, even though half her head is gone, she keeps talking to Cassandra. “Come with me, Cassandra, come on. We can get out of here, and I can take care of you and I can do all the sneaking so that you don’t have to. It’ll be okay.”

On both Cassandra’s sides now are the twins, Ollie on the left and Whitney on the right.

“Cassie,” says Ollie, and his eyes have been scooped out of his skull and his left arm is gone from halfway down the shoulder. “Cassie, come on, me and Whitney know how to fight, we can take back the castle, come on.”

“Cassie,” says Whitney, and she has her beautiful blue eyes but there’s an arrow from one ear to the other and she’s missing her right arm, a mirror image to Ollie. “Cassie, come with us, Oliver and I can show you how to fight, you can save us from what’s going to happen, come with.”

And then Cassandra sees Ludwig, the same as five years ago, laying prone on the ground, with dead eyes, with so much blood, and he’s still speaking.

“Cassie,” he says, eyes dead as a doll’s, and he follows her without moving. “Cassie, please take me with you, please, please, please, please, please.”

“Don’t leave us with him,” everyone says, and Cassandra turns and sees Percy, stupid seventeen-year-old legs shaking like a newborn foal eyes wide and frightened plays spies with his twelve-year-old sister Percy, with a pair of scissors in his hand.

“Lie down, Cassie,” says Percy, and now he is right in front of her. his scissors in front of her face. “Lie down, let me show you what the Briarwoods have taught me. They did it to me, first, so that I can do it to you, now. It’ll be alright, it’s so much fun. Come here, let me show you.”

Cassandra awakens suddenly, just as Percival was about to pierce her with his scissors. She’s wrapped in Vax’s cloak, with her head in Keyleth’s lap.

“Morning, Cassie,” Keyleth says softly. “Sorry about, um, all of this. You looked like you were having bad dreams.”

Cassandra pushes herself into a sitting position and coughs hard. “I’m fine,” she says gruffly. “What time is it?”

“Half hour til sunrise,” Keyleth replies. “We’re going to have a Heroes’ Feast to be more ready.”

Cassandra grunts in acknowledgment. “Where th’ hell’s Vax at?”

“Where the what’s who at?” Vax asks, appearing suddenly behind Cassandra. As punishment for scaring the pants off her so early in the morning, Cassandra slams her fist backwards into Vax’s face before chucking his cloak at him.

About fifteen minutes before sunrise begins, Pike casts Heroes’ Feast, and they all eat as much as they can, ending the feast with a tribute to Whitestone. After this, Grog de-barricades the cave in order to allow Keyleth to send her signal, and then re-barricades it quickly after.

Vax leads them down the hallway, towards the entrance to the castle, which has been blocked by a large marble bust of a long-ago de Rolo. Vox Machina is foiled by the bust briefly, until Pike steps up and reminds everyone why she’s singularly the best member they have.

Vax’ildan guides them through the dungeons and towards the stairs that lead to the kitchen, and Cassandra nearly freezes at all the memories so suddenly. She sees the empty cells, but she sees piles of bodies, so much blood, so much blood, her fallen brother, looking so scared and desperate.

She is shaken out of her memories when Keyleth takes her by the hand.

“Just keep moving, Cassie,” she says softly, guiding Cassandra past the cells. “You can do this.”

Cassandra does, in fact, make her way out of the dungeons without having a breakdown, but the real problem is the kitchen.

She takes a deep breath and reminds herself that she isn’t twelve years old and helpless anymore, and she walks through.

“Cassandra,” Vax whispers to her, “do we go up or down?”

“Up,” says Cassandra in half a heartbeat. “We ought to clean out the last of the non-vampires before we go down to the Briarwoods’ project.”

Vax nods and turns to his sister. “Sister, are there any undead around?”

Vex’ahlia closes her eyes for a moment and concentrates. “Several below us and to the South,” she says slowly, eyes still closed. “One above us.”

Vax looks back at Cassandra. “Up?”

Cassandra nods and clenches her fist. “Up.”

Vax nods again. “Lead the way, milady.”

Cassandra takes point and guides Vox Machina up the main stairs, the stairs that she sat at the top of and watched as her home was invaded. She walks past her old room without flinching (she thinks), down the hallway to Father’s study.

It’s still much the same as she remembers. The room still smells of the smoke of Father’s pipe and the walls are the same deep brown wood. Even the furniture is nearly completely the same.

“There’ll be important documents in the desk,” she says. “For now, it’s good enough that no one’s in here at the moment. Father hid a great deal of magical artifacts here that we may be able to use.”

Scanlan begins rummaging through the desk drawers and pocketing various pieces of paper, while Vex’ahlia, Pike, and Keyleth investigate the bookshelves for magical artifacts and Vax’ildan and Grog watch the door.

Cassandra occupies herself by gazing at the bookshelves, trying to pick out any familiarity, but these are her father’s books, old tomes about economics and history and various other things that Cassandra wasn’t interested in when she was twelve and under.

Cassandra is abruptly torn from her reverie when Grog grabs her by the scruff of the neck and pulls her towards in old closet.

“In-in-in-in!” Vax whisper-shouts as he ushers everyone into the closet, finally diving in after everyone and landing in an odd noodle shape around Grog’s neck as he closes the closet door. Not three seconds after everyone has managed to get into the closet and pile on top of Grog, the door of the study opens and a pair of shoes click-click-click their way into the room, followed by a softer thud-thud-thud, and then the click-click-clicks take a seat in Cassandra’s father’s chair.

“This is terribly unfortunate,” muses a familiar, too-familiar voice, and Cassandra bristles at the sound of the man who allowed her family to die. “I do wish that I had been warned of this, so that I could have conjured some kind of defenses for the castle, but I’m not in charge here, anyways.”

A pause.

“Percival, please check the room for any dangers,” says Professor Anders sharply, and Cassandra nearly bursts out of the closet at the name.

She hears the thud-thud-thud patrol the circumference of the room before it stops in front of the door of the closet. The door swings open silently, and Cassandra is met by the sight of her brother.

Percival looks nearly unchanged from five years ago. His hair is still a shock of pure white, and Cassandra’s hand goes to her temple unconsciously to play with the streaks of white that she’s developed. It’s unnatural, how little he’s changed, and how much of a reaction Cassandra has from seeing him, same size as seventeen, so much smaller than her, the same Percival that she saw in the dungeons, no longer shaking like a leaf.

Percival apparently goes through a similar thought process himself, but all that Cassandra can see is his eyes widening, then back to normal, and then he closes the closet.

“No danger,” says Percival, so slowly.

“Good job, Percy,” says Professor Anders distantly. “Wait here with me while I finish some paperwork, there’s a good boy. Don’t worry, your dear doctor will come get you in a quarter hour. Good lad.”

Vax carefully pulls out his flametongue dagger from his belt, lighting the space. He looks to Cassandra, and so does everyone else.

Cassandra holds up three fingers, then two, then one, and then kicks the door down.

The battle with Professor Anders is almost disappointingly short, with she and Vax nearly managing to kill the man within the first six seconds, almost entirely making up for Grog fumbling his hammer. The worst part is when Scanlan waits until after everyone else has made their attacks, and then insults Anders to the point of his death.

After Anders dies, Cassandra turns all of her attention to Percy.

“Percival,” she says coldly.

“Cassandra!” Percy says, plainly overjoyed to see her. “Oh, thank Pelor you escaped. They said that you died, but I kept hoping that you had survived. I’m so glad that you’re alive!”

Cassandra is taken off guard by how excited Percy seems to be, given how he apparently fell to the Briarwoods and is working on their behalf.

“Percival,” she says, after a brief pause. “I hear that you have been working with the Briarwoods against the rebellion.”

Percy’s face falls. “Oh,” he says. “I had hoped you hadn’t heard that.”

Before Cassandra can ask what, precisely, Percival means, Vax’ildan slams him into the wall.

“Listen, you fucking ponce,” he whispers menacingly, “Cassandra here has been through more shit than you can possibly fucking imagine, and I suggest that you treat her with some fucking respect.”

“Vax’ildan!” Cassandra half-shouts. She shoves him off of Percival and grabs Percival’s shoulder. “I will handle this.”

“Cassie-jo,” Percy begins, and Cassandra almost cries at how home it feels. “Cassie-jo, listen. Your friend is right to mistrust me. If I were a better person, I wouldn’t be talking to you right now, but I’m selfish so I am. I’m only talking to you for the next two minutes, and then you all need to make your way out of this castle, or you will be in terrible danger. Get as far away from Whitestone as you can, and don’t ever come back.”

Grog coughs in the corner. “Dunno if you’ve heard, mate, but there’s a fuckin’ revolution goin’ on. ‘S a bit late for us to just back off.”

Percival glances over at Grog briefly, then back to Cassandra. “Cassie-jo,” he begins again, then shakes his head. “Cassandra. Do you believe that you can defeat the Briarwoods?”

Cassandra considers her odds, considers her friends, and nods. “Will you stand with us?”

Percy shakes his head, then nods, then just shakes his head free of confusion. “I don’t know. I will, if I can. If I can’t, then I won’t. I want to. You have no idea.” He looks back into Cassandra’s eyes. “If you believe that you can defeat them, Cassandra, then you need to go to the undercroft. That’s where their project is.”

He hesitates briefly, then pulls her in for an awkward hug. And the de Rolos don’t “hug.”

“I always believed in you, Cassie-jo,” he whispers into her ear, but all Cassandra can think of is how cold Percy is. “I always will.”

Percival pulls away from Cassandra and moves towards the door. As he reaches it, Cassandra hears a click-click-click from outside the door, and Percy freezes.

“Oh, no,” he whispers, and he turns to face Vox Machina, stricken.

From the door enters a woman- with only one arm- who Cassandra has never met, but who Percy is plainly very familiar with. She drapes her arm around Percy’s shoulder (too casual, too much) and examines Vox Machina.

“So,” she says, “you’re the rebels?”

“Bitch, we might be,” Scanlan retorts. “Who the hell are you?”

The woman raises a single eyebrow at Scanlan. “I am Baroness Anna Ripley.” She leans down to Percy’s ear (and Cassandra tries not to see Percy stiffen, tries not to see him try to pull away, tries not to see him squeeze his eyes shut like that’ll stop what’s happening.) She whispers something, and the intelligence in Percy’s eyes vanishes, and his jaw goes slack.

“Percival,” Anna Ripley says, removing her arm from Percy’s shoulder and drawing her weapon, “attack.”

Percival moans something that could be taken as an extremely slurred “Yes, ma’am,” before he lunges towards Cassandra.

The fight with Ripley is much more dangerous than the fight with Anders was. Ripley is a skilled fighter, and has terrifying explosive weapons that nearly kill Scanlan; and Percy lunges at anyone who comes within his range to try and bite them.

The fight ends when Ripley says it ends, and Ripley apparently decides that the fight is over after Grog slams her three times with his hammer.

She throws down an enormous smoke bomb that fills the room, and by the time the smoke disperses, she has vanished.

Percival continues, limping around like he’s an undead, for another moment before abruptly returning to his senses.

Before Percival can even try to say anything to explain himself, Vex’ahlia slams him against the wall in the same place that her brother had.

“Percival,” she growls. “What the hell is the matter with you.”

Percival looks over to Cassandra- not for reassurance, she doesn’t think, but only to ensure that she knows that he’s explaining himself to her. “I’m sorry,” he says, then continues in a rush, “I told you that you can’t trust me, and I’m sorry that I attacked you. I had to. I physically can’t refuse any orders that Doctor Ripley gives me. I’m so sorry, Cassie.”

Vex’ahlia applies more pressure to Percy’s neck, but he doesn’t seem to notice. “What the hell is that meant to mean?”

Percival finally glances towards Vex, but then immediately returns his attention to Cassandra. “Cassandra,” he says, slowly, like he’s afraid of hurting her, “the person who told you that I fell to the Briarwoods… they did tell you that I’m not alive anymore, right?”

With this, Cassandra feels as though the floor has fallen out from under her. She sways briefly, then recovers her posture. “What is that supposed to mean, Percy?”

Percy glances towards Vex, and when he sees that she won’t release him, clears his throat. “They killed me, Cassie-jo. After you escaped, they tried to punish me, but they went too far, and they revived me after two minutes and made me come back as this.” He turns his head away from her, and she sees a chunk of skin and hair and muscle and bone has been removed, revealing his brain.

Cassandra just stares at Percy. “No,” she mumbles. “No, it can’t be.”

“Cassie,” says Vax, from behind her.

“Put me down,” she hears Percy say, and then, “Put me DOWN.” She hears him walk over to her, quickly, and she feels her brother’s cold, cold hand on her back.

“Cassandra,” Percy says, but he sounds far, far away. “Cassandra, look at me.”

Cassandra looks up from the floor, looks into Percy’s eyes. They’re still the same eyes that she remembers- she would never have guessed that Percy is an undead, maybe because he was always so pale and barely there.

“Cassie,” Percy says, softer, “what’s wrong, step by step.”

It’s an old phrase, from their mother, mostly. What’s wrong, step by step. What was happening, what changed, why are you hurting.

“I left you behind,” Cassandra whispers. She clenches her fists at her sides. “I left you behind, Percival, and they hurt you and they killed you and they turned you into this!”

“No, Cassie-jo,” Percy says softly. “I told you to leave me. This isn’t your fault. I’m just glad that you got out.”

“You’re undead, Percy! How am I supposed to feel?” Cassandra bursts out. “You’re- you’re under some sort of mind control by Ripley, and I don’t know what the fuck else might be happening!”

“Shh, Cassie-jo,” Percy says, and he pulls her into a hug and begins rubbing her back. Cassandra realizes with a start that she’s nearly half a foot taller than Percy. “It’s alright, Cassie-jo, everything’s okay.”

“Well, maybe it is for you lot,” Grog interrupts, “but there’s a bloody revolution goin’ on, and I don’t like the idea of draggin’ around a fuckin’ zombie with us.”

“I have to agree with the big man, Cassie,” says Vax, and when Cassandra looks over at him, she sees that he’s glaring at Percy. “We don’t know that he isn’t being controlled by the Briarwoods, too. I don’t want a liability with us.”

Cassandra glares back at Vax. “Percy isn’t liable to rush into danger at any second, Vax’ildan.”

“No,” Percy interrupts. “Cassie, your friends are right. I shouldn’t fight the Briarwoods.” He stares Vax’ildan dead in the eyes. “But I can escort you to where they’ll be. I can take you there, and then I’ll leave, so you won’t be in danger from me.”

Vax continues to glare at Percy, and Cassandra is tempted to smack him. “Vax’ildan,” she says, voice chilly, “I think that that is a very generous thing for Percy to offer, considering how much danger he will be in.”

“As long as he isn’t with us when we face the Briarwoods,” says Scanlan. “No offense, kiddo, but I don’t like your odds against a vampire and a necromancer.”

Percival sets his jaw and nods. “I only want to see Cassandra there safely,” he says. “Nothing more.”

“Percy,” Cassandra says softly. “Listen to me. As soon as we get past the traps, I want you to go to your room and wait for us. Don’t put yourself in danger.”

Percy half-smiles at Cassandra. “Cassie, I love you, but if you think that there’s even half a chance that I won’t immediately run outside to help the people of Whitestone attack the guards, then you have another thing coming.”

Cassandra sighs at him. “You are so annoying. Just make sure you wear some armor when you go out there, alright?”

Percy quirks his lip at her. “I’m sure that I could have put that one together by myself well enough.”

Cassandra can only nod. She can’t tell him not to die, because he already has. She can’t tell him to stay safe, because there isn’t anywhere left that’s safe, not in Whitestone at least. She can’t tell him to come with her, to the final battle, because they all know what a bad idea that would be.

“Wait,” says Scanlan. “Before we go, I have an idea.”

Without waiting for anyone else’s advice, Cassandra is suddenly surrounded by various-sized versions of herself and her brother.

“Solidarity,” says Scanlan.

Cassandra looks over at the enormous version of her brother crawling on all fours.

“Scanlan,” she says, “I’m going to be ill.”

“Well, I don’t want to un-cast it, so go be ill in the corner.”

Cassandra rolls her eyes, but isn’t actually ill. The Percy that she thinks is her Percy seems amused by the whole thing, so she lets it go.

Percy walks to the door and presses his ear against it. Apparently satisfied, he opens the door silently (the door always used to creak, Cassandra remembers) and beckons the group forward. He guides them from the second floor into the undercroft, the mausoleum.

Within the mausoleum, they encounter more dead relatives of Cassandra’s, but these don’t seem interested in helping them as much as possessing them.

They finish off the fight okay, even if they have to knock out Keyleth and Vax, but Percy comes out looking rough. In Father’s study, he had looked like a pale young man, nothing too out of the ordinary. After the fight with the spirits, his skin looks rubbery, his eyes glassy, more like the undead he is than the boy he was.

He can’t talk after the fight, not until they’re almost done with their rest, and when he does it seems like a great struggle for him.

“It’s getting harder,” he says, “focusing on staying me. It might be the project that the Briarwoods have, or it might be that I’m too far away from Anna.”

Cassandra doesn’t say anything to this, too busy drinking a healing potion, but she files it away for later, files away that her brother calls the woman Anna and not Ripley, like the two are familiar with each other.

Vax’ildan, on the other hand, takes the opportunity to begin interrogating Percy.

“Percival,” he begins. “We’ve been burned before by seeming allies. I presume you wouldn’t mind if we asked you a few questions?”

Percy hesitates a bit, but nods. “I can understand your caution. I would do the same if I were in your position.”

Before Vax’ildan can ask whatever question that he was going to ask, Cassandra interrupts.

“Percy,” she begins, “what happened to you after I left?”

Percy freezes, then gazes at Cassandra sadly. “Oh, Cassie-jo,” he says softly. “I don’t want you to hear about that.”

Cassandra fixes her gaze on her brother. “I’ve seen many things in the past five years, Percival. I’m certain that I can handle whatever happened to you.”

Percy shakes his head, then nods. “Alright,” he says. And he tells his story.

“I was still alive when I fell. I think. It’s a little blurry. The first time that I woke up, afterwards, I was in the Zenith with Father Raynal. He helped me recover, and the revolution was planned for a month and a half after the Briarwoods first took the castle.

“I was captured three weeks later, when I was confirming who would be fighting with us.”

Percy pauses, steadies himself. “They took me to the dungeon, which they’ve turned into a torture chamber. They did terrible things to me.

“I’m not sure whether they wanted to kill me or not, honestly. It might have been an accident, it might have been fully intentional, so that they could have a de Rolo completely in their thrall. I don’t know. I don’t know why I can speak, when the rest of the undead that Lady Briarwood have created can only complete tasks that she tells them to do. I don’t know anything about why I’m like this now.

“Then, they let Anna ask me questions. She didn’t need to hurt me to get the answers, since I can’t lie to her, but she did anyway. The rebellion was over before it even began.”

“Oh, Percival,” says Pike.

“Why you?” Vax’ildan asks. “Why not one of your family? Someone more powerful in Whitestone.”

Percival shrugs helplessly. “Anna prefers me. She likes hurting me, more than anyone else. She likes… she has a perverted mind, you could say. She likes hearing me scream.”

Vax’ildan nods. “Thank you, Percival,” he says quietly.

Percival nods back. “Shall we continue?”

They continue, with Vex and Vax scouting ahead to mark and disarm the traps. They take the right-hand fork, and that’s when everything goes wrong.

Scanlan suggests that they all need to touch an opal to activate whatever is supposed to happen, but nothing does, even with all the crystals activated. Percival wanders off towards the closed door, and encounters a switch, which Scanlan insists that he flip.

Percy flips the switch, and they are suddenly surrounded by glass.

Cassandra knows that it wasn’t his intent, just because of the sudden horror on his face and the way his head whips around to glare at the door that is opening so, so slowly. She sees Percival try to flip the switch again, and then freeze, suddenly, before his entire body just droops, his jaw goes slack and his eyes stay half-open.

From the door step Anna Ripley and Sylas and Delilah Briarwood.

Ripley steps behind Percy, both her hands on Percy’s shoulders, as though they’re posing for a family portrait. Sylas and Delilah step forward, in front of Ripley and Percy.

Behind Cassandra, Vax’ildan curses and vanishes, and Cassandra sees him reappear behind the Briarwoods and in front of Percy.

However, before he can move enough to attack, Sylas whirls around and, suddenly, Vax’ildan looks at peace with the situation, at peace with the Briarwoods, and Cassandra feels a deep, piercing rage within her heart at all the family that the Briarwoods have taken from her.

Sylas steps forward until he is directly in front of the glass. He eyes every member of Vox Machina individually, and then settles his gaze on Cassandra. A wave of cold passes over her as he stares.

“I’m terribly sorry to take your brother with us,” says Sylas silkily. “But he has made his choice, and he has chosen the Whispered One.”

He flashes back to Delilah, Ripley, and Percival.

Delilah waves to the remaining members of Vox Machina, and, looking up at the sound of machinery above her, Cassandra sees that acid is pouring down onto them.

The Briarwoods and Ripley exit the room, taking Vax’ildan and Percy with them.

“Dammit!” Cassandra curses, slamming the hilt of her rapier into her opal, shattering it. “Damn it all to hell!”

“No time for that now, Cassie,” says Scanlan, who is already much deeper in the acid than the others. “For now, we need to find a way out of here.”

They try smashing the opals, Vex drinks her potion of flying and tries bending one of the acid-leaking pipes out of the way, but nothing helps.

It’s not until Scanlan dimension doors out of the acid with Pike, when the acid was at each of their waists, and flips the switch again in order to stop the acid and raise the walls.

“We,” Keyleth pants, “are in a lot of trouble.”

There’s no time for them to rest, so all they can do is continue.

They walk for a good mile and a half, and then finally come to the opening of an enormous cavern.

Within the cavern, they see what could only be the Ziggurat.

It’s staggeringly enormous, and for a moment, Cassandra wonders how they even managed to fit it underground. It must be near 2000 feet around, and Cassandra can barely see the top of it.

They divide into teams and begin ascending the pyramid.

This is what Cassandra sees at the top:

She sees Sylas and Delilah Briarwood, both standing slightly beneath an awning that opens into the inside of the pyramid.

She sees Anna Ripley, having some sort of argument with Sylas, while keeping her arm around Percy, who is still slackjawed and swaying slightly from side to side.

She sees Vax’ildan, standing slightly behind Delilah, holding his hands in front of him and standing up straight. His posture is perfect, and he looks like a little rich boy.

Cassandra grits her teeth and glances at Scanlan. She points to the top, and Scanlan nods.

Cassandra swings herself over the edge of the pyramid with one hand, and the fight commences.

Her sole target is Ripley, before Sylas and before Delilah. She slashes at Ripley, curses her with whatever the shadow is imbuing her with, stabs her and slices and dodges around her brother so that she doesn’t hurt him, even as he lunges towards her and tries to bite her.

Says Ripley, “It’s too late, foolish child! Your brother is nothing without me! He has already fallen!”

Cassandra says nothing in reply, too busy focusing on breathing and stepping through shadows like Vax taught her, dodging both Ripley’s and Percy’s attacks.

Above her, she can see Vex’ahlia shooting arrow after arrow at Sylas and Delilah, while Grog, behind her, swings his hammer around, looking for a target. Keyleth has already cast sunlight, and Sylas seems to be in dire straits. Pike has restored Vax’ildan, and is casting various spells against him, while Vax dodges in and out of the shadows and sun, the same as Cassandra. Scanlan is singing, and turning nearly blue in the face from it, but Cassandra can see the effect that he’s having on the battle.

Then, before Cassandra can blink, Keyleth and Pike simultaneously cast sunbeam and some kind of holy spell, and Sylas Briarwood disintegrates into ash.

At the same time, Percival freezes in place. His eyes roll back into his head, and he collapses.

Distantly, Cassandra can hear Delilah scream, but she keeps her attention on Percy. She hears Ripley run, hears her as she runs down down the pyramid, but Cassandra just maintains her concentration on Percy.

About fifteen seconds after Ripley first ran, Percival sits straight up.

“I’m sorry,” is the first thing he says, and Cassandra only shakes her head.

“Not your fault,” she says, hauling Percy to his feet. He wobbles when he stands.

“Cassandra,” he says, even in the midst of various spells being volleyed and weapons aimed, “I can’t stay here. Whatever’s inside the Ziggurat- it’s erasing me. I can’t stay here much longer.”

Cassandra nods. Behind her, she can hear Scanlan shouting about how Lady Briarwood has vanished.

“Run,” she tells her brother. “Don’t look back, no matter what.”

Percy smirks at her. “If I think that you might be in danger,” he tells her, “then I’ll come back for you. I’m not going to lose you twice.” He turns and sprints down the pyramid.

Cassandra turns away from her brother, towards the rest of Vox Machina. They are all standing, staring at the awning that is the entrance to the Ziggurat.

They enter the Ziggurat as a group, and they kill Delilah Briarwood before she can complete her ritual. They leave the room, all sprinting, Grog carrying an unconscious Vex’ahlia in his arms, and Delilah Briarwood over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

Once they’re outside the room, they heal Vex’ahlia with a potion and endure a tearful reunion between her and Vax’ildan. Finally, everyone is feeling happy and healthy, and they carry on down the tunnel.

Midway down the tunnel, Cassandra’s shade makes a reappearance, apparently dissatisfied with Pike trying to purify it out, and it attacks them.

Cassandra insists that Percy run, and he does.

The shadow is defeated after a good battle, and it’s defeated by Grog, of all people.

After the shadow is banished, Cassandra looks around and realizes that both Delilah and Scanlan are missing, and, a moment later, sees Percival walking back towards her, carrying Delilah piggyback, and talking to Scanlan, who is walking along his side.

After a few explanations, Cassandra turns to Percival. “What should we do with the body?” she asks. “It’s only fair that you choose, Percy. You’ve- you’ve been dealing with her the longest.”

“Acid pits,” says Percy, before Cassandra has even finished talking. “I am one hundred percent in favor of melting her.”

Grog laughs. “Nice,” he says, and high-fives Percy.

Cassandra rolls her eyes at Grog, but allows Percy to guide them back to the tanks filled with acid, which they dump Delilah’s body into.

“Cassie,” Scanlan says, suddenly, as they watch Delilah’s body disappear, “how are you feeling? Now that we’ve killed that whole smoke thing.”

Cassandra pauses, and considers. “I feel… fine, Scanlan. Why do you ask?”

Scanlan hums. “No reason. Hey, can I see your fancy sword?”

Cassandra eyes Scanlan, eyes the acid pits, and glares. “No, I don’t think that that’s a good idea.”

Scanlan looks into Cassandra’s eyes. “Come on, Cassie,” he says. “We’re all friends here. I only want to see your sword for a minute.”

Cassandra suddenly realizes that it’s a great idea to hand Scanlan her sword, and she wonders why she didn’t do it earlier.

She hands the sword over to Scanlan, watches as he examines it, and watches as he tosses it into the acid, which releases a small black plume of smoke.

“She’s going to be mad as hell when the spell fades, so please don’t let her kill me,” she hears Scanlan say.

“Wanna sit on my shoulders?” she hears Grog ask.

“Yes, please,” she hears Scanlan say, and then realizes that Scanlan just put her fucking rapier in fucking acid, and she whirls towards him and Grog, glaring hard enough to make an egg explode.

“Scanlan-” she starts yelling, and then she can’t move any part of her body besides her eyes. She glances around, notices Keyleth casting a spell, and directs her glare towards her.

“Cassie,” Grog coaxes, “think of it this way. Scanlan just completely destroyed any chance of that smokey-thing coming back! Don’t you feel better?”

Cassandra returns her glare to Grog, and is extremely pleased with herself when Grog stumbles back a step and a half.

“Cass,” says Vax’ildan, who is annoyingly out of her field of vision, “I think Scanlan did the right thing, and I think that you’ll thank him for it later.”

“He’s paying for a new one,” Cassandra tries to say, but it comes out muffled and slurred. She settles for glaring at Scanlan.

“Cassie-jo,” Percy says, stepping between her and Grog. “It does suck that your sword has been completely destroyed. But Scanlan did, kind of, destroy the demon that’s been haunting you for a couple years, so I think that that’s a plus.”

Cassandra glares at Percy, then lets her gaze slip away.

“Are we calm?” Keyleth asks.

Cassandra doesn’t glare, which Keyleth apparently takes as a yes, since she releases the spell.

“You owe me three hundred gold, Shorthalt,” she growls. “And, Grog?”

“Yeh?” Grog asks, trying to act like he wasn’t just intimidated by a seventeen-year-old stick-thin human who is two feet shorter than him.

“Watch your back.”

With that (suitably ominous) warning, she, Percy, and Vox Machina wind their way out of the undercroft and exit the castle, meeting the people of Whitestone at the gate to the lands.

“Have they been killed?” Keeper Yennen asks, pointedly not looking at Percy.

“All who are a danger to Whitestone,” Cassandra confirms. “My brother not being one of them.”

Yennen nods, which Cassandra supposes is the best that she’s going to get.

The next several days are extremely busy, with cleaning up the remainder of the undead in Whitestone that didn’t clear out when the Briarwoods expired, and Cassandra regaining her title, and various arguments about Percy, who has come down with some kind of sickness since the expiration of the Briarwoods and the disappearance of Ripley.

Finally, the day of Winter’s Crest approaches, and Cassandra coaxes Percival out of the castle for once to enjoy the first Winter’s Crest in Whitestone in five years.

After watching Grog lose the arm wrestling competition to a barmaid and watching Trinket, transformed into a human, tie at a pie-eating contest after the twins both vomited, she and Percival walk a bit over to the well nearest the Sun Tree.

“So,” says Cassandra.

“So,” says Percival.

Cassandra scratches the back of her head and wonders what she should say.

“I suppose you’re going to continue adventuring with your friends?” Percival asks, watching as Keyleth terrorizes a magician.

“Probably,” says Cassandra, watching Keyleth fondly. “I’ve known them for a while, now, and I’m quite fond of them.”

Percival nods.

“Cassandra,” he says, “you know that I can’t stay as the leader of Whitestone, right?”

Cassandra looks over at her brother in shock. “Whyever not?” she asks.

Percival undoes his winter cloak and shows Cassandra his bare arm. It’s a deep green color, the color of lake algae, and it looks nothing like how Percival looked when Cassandra first re-arrived in Whitestone.

“I’m losing my composure,” Percival says. “Anna, she was the only one keeping me looking so nice. She liked adolescents, not corpses. Now that she’s not keeping me up anymore… “ Percival shrugs. “I’ll probably expire sometime within the next month, barring any exceptions.”

“Oh, Percival,” Cassandra says in a hushed voice.

“I figure that my brain’ll go first,” Percy says, tilting his head up to the sky for the snowflakes to land on his face. “I’ll start forgetting things, the way Grandfather did. I’ll forget your name, my name, Vesper’s and Julius’ and Oliver’s and Whitney’s and Ludwig’s and Mother’s and Father’s names. Eventually, I’ll forget how to pretend to be human.

“I don’t know what happens after that. Maybe my body will melt, maybe I’ll just wander around, completely mindless, until someone else finds me and fixes me. Maybe I just die, and I look like I died a natural death and stayed dead.”

Percival looks over at Cassandra and smiles sadly. “You should probably find someone to rule Whitestone while you’re out adventuring,” he tells her. “Someone you trust.”

Cassandra sniffles and wipes her eyes. “I just got you back, Per,” she hiccups, relapsing to Percy’s childhood nickname. “I don’t want to lose you again.”

“I know,” Percival says. “I know. I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want you to lose me. I’m going to be looking for something to help me, but I don’t know how successful I’ll be. I have two weeks left of research, and I don’t know what I’ll learn.”

Cassandra nods, wipes her eyes again. “I think that I know someone,” she says thickly. “I’ll- I’ll ask him, today.”

Percy nods back at her, and hugs her tight to him. “I love you, Cassandra Johanna von Musel Klossowski de Rolo,” he whispers into her ear.

“I love you too, Percival Friedrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo the third,” Cassandra whispers into Percy’s ear.

Percival pulls away from her and looks her up and down, smiling gently. “Don’t cry, Cassie-girl,” he says quietly. “I don’t want your friends to think that I’ve been bullying you.”

Cassandra laughs through her tears, and wipes her face free of tears. “I don’t think you could bully me if you tried, Percival.”

Percival shrugs. “Maybe not,” he says. Then, he reaches up and gives her a noogie. “How’s that?”

Cassandra laughs again. “Pathetic,” she teases. “Come on, let’s go join in on the festivities.”

Percival nods, and they finish off Winter’s Crest well.

The next day, Cassandra seeks out the boy who worked in the bookshop.

“Benji,” she says as she walks in.

Benji looks up from a large ledger in shock. “Lady Cassandra!”

Cassandra laughs. “Benji, we used to play jacks together. There’s no need for formalities.”

Benji looks at her and grins. “You always lost,” he says. “How can I help you, madame?”

Cassandra leans on the counter. “Benji,” she says slowly. “we are going to need a leader in Whitestone.”

“Yeeeesssss?” Benji agrees, though he agrees like he’s asking a question.

“And-I-was-wondering-if-you-would,” Cassandra finishes, all in one breath.

She watches as Benji considers the offer, and lets out a sigh of relief when he nods.

“Alright,” he says. “I have a cousin down south who wants to run a store, so this oughta work out just fine.”

He glances at Cassandra, and then back to the ledger.

“What about yer brother?” he asks. “Ain’t he more qualified?”

Cassandra slumps somewhat. “My brother is. Not going to be with us much longer.”

“Ah,” says Benji, and he lays his hand on Cassandra’s. “My sincerest condolences.”

Cassandra nods. “Thank you for helping me, Benji,” she says, and she leaves his store.

The day that Vox Machina returns to Emon, Percival leaves the castle to see them off.

“Thank you all,” he says, speaking so, so slowly, like it’s a triumph with every syllable he gets out. “For all your help. In freeing Whitestone. From the Briarwoods.”

“Hey, you’re Cassandra’s brother,” says Vax. “We’re family, y’know.”

Percy smiles at Vax. “Take care. Of Cassie-jo.”

“Always have,” says Vex.

“Always will,” says Scanlan.

The rest of Vox Machina leave Cassandra and Percy alone for a few minutes to say their farewells.

“Cassie-jo,” says Percy. “Stay safe. Or I’ll kill you.”

Cassandra laughs. “I know,” she says, barely not crying. “I will.”

Percival wraps his arms around Cassandra and hugs her tight. “Cassandra. Cassandra Jo- jo-”

“Johanna,” Cassandra whispers to Percival.

“Cassandra Johanna,” Percival continues. “von Musel. Klo- klossowski. de Rolo.”

“Yup,” says Cassandra. “And you, Percival Friedrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo the third.”

“Cassie-jo,” Percival says again. “Don’t you die, too.”

Cassandra laughs again. “I won’t,” she says. “I promise.”

Percival pulls himself out of the hug and looks at Cassandra. His eyes are milkier than they were, like their Grandfather’s eyes were, before he died. “Good-bye,” Percival says.

“Good-bye,” Cassandra replies. “I promise that I will see you again.”

Percival smiles, shakes his head, and returns to the castle.

Cassandra takes a moment to herself to wipe her eyes and breathe a bit to calm down, then returns to the party and their horses.

“Let’s get the fuck back to Emon,” she says, a bit hoarse.

“Hell yes,” says Vex’ahlia.

They return to Emon completely victorious, and find Pike camping outside. Uriel apologizes for his behavior, and Tiberius leaves them for good.

When they attend the banquet and the dragons attack, they run.

They gather all the survivors that they can find in Greyskull, and they begin to plan.

Grog argues to use an evil skull, but Cassandra has enough Orthax left to stall him long enough for Pike to give him her Look and for Allura to confirm Cassandra's doubts about the skull.

They investigate the city for one day, and manage to make an enemy out of the entire Clasp and Scanlan almost gets eaten by a wyvern.

When they return to Greyskull, they leave to Whitestone with the refugees.

It hurts like bleeding when Cassandra sees Benji in Whitestone, when Benji says that Percival hasn’t been seen since the day after Cassandra had returned to Emon.

There’s no time for a funeral, so all Cassandra does is light a bit of incense in her room as a makeshift shrine.

Life continues on, as is wont to do during an emergency.

Notes:

summary comes from a (heavily modified) folk song that my family sings at sapfest
if u dont know what sapfest is its when u go up 2 ur uncles cabin n u sap all the maple trees 2 make maple syrup
if u dont know what any of that means google 'wisconsin'
heres my tumblr

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of the chronicles of cassandra johanna von musel klossowski de rolo, vox machinan