Chapter Text
Arthur was cleaning the aftermath of the giant worm battle from the inside of his chest piece when the giant moth attacked.
He managed to dodge the lump of something that the thing lobbed out of its awful proboscis and had two crossbow bolts in its middle before he had even registered what was happening. Alfred, who had been fetching water at the river below, dropped his pail as he crested the hill and, before Arthur could say a word, let out a high-pitched squeal, immediately alerting the moth to his presence.
Lovely. Absolutely lovely, Arthur thought. Best job he’s ever taken.
“Become a merc, they said.” Arthur muttered, holding the discarded chest piece like a shield before him and moving quickly to defend Alfred from a barrage of slimy missiles. “Easy money, they told me. Easy money my arse.”
“Oh my God,” Alfred whimpered. “Kill it, Arthur, kill it!”
Arthur responded by turning and kicking his client square in the chest, sending him rolling ass over tits down the hill to crash into the relative safety of the riverbed below. He turned back to take stock of the creature attacking them, and found himself flat on his back, face throbbing painfully from the blow of a semi-translucent wing.
“So it’s going to be like that, is it?” Rolling aside, he snatched the blowgun from his belt and shot a dart directly into the moth-things not-a-face. He hadn’t really been aiming there, but patted himself on the back just the same.
The beast gurgled terribly, careening about wildly and nearly crashing into the ground. Satisfied, Arthur snatched what belongings of theirs he could and slid down the hill, nearly crashing into Alfred, who had been making his way back up it.
“Did you kill it?” A rage-filled chittering from above answered his question, so Arthur didn’t bother responding. He grabbed Alfred by the arm and started towing him across the river and toward the steep but short rockface separating them from the woods.
“Arthur, what if it goes toward the village? We have to kill it. I have a spell—”
“No.” Arthur shoved Alfred ahead of him and kept his eyes behind, hearing only the distant frantic flapping of insect wings. “Start climbing.”
They made it up the rock with minimal issue and maximum whining, and Arthur relaxed considerably once they were under the cool shadow of the trees.
“Arthur—”
“No, Alfred. None of your godforsaken spells, not anymore. The village is far better equipped to squash that thing than we are besides.”
Alfred sighed loudly, but continued to follow at Arthur’s brisk pace. He had no idea where he was headed, but he was determined to get away from that thing. He needed to steady his heart rate, and take stock of the situation. Once he was satisfied with their distance from the moth, he scouted out a clear space just at the edge of the wood, and they got back to what they were doing before the latest monstrosity had dropped in on them—arguing, mostly.
“I can’t believe you didn’t kill it.” Alfred huffed. He’d grabbed the pail—thank god for that—and was lowering it on a stick into the river below them.
“Did you bloody see it? It could shoot—something. If it’s related to those ghastly worms, that slime is damned dangerous, as your holey boots can attest. I don’t fancy making the next leg of our journey while naked and blistered, you daft twit. We can’t kill everything.”
Alfred is quiet a moment, wetting a bit of cloth in the pail and settling on his knees to dab at Arthur’s bloodied nose. He hadn’t realized he’d been hit so hard.
While most of what came out of his client’s mouth set Arthur’s teeth grinding, he preferred the inane babble to these quiet moments, when he could so easily observe the way the mid-afternoon sun lit his wheat-blond hair, or count the barely-there freckles which dotted his nose and cheeks, or watch the way he twisted his full bottom lip beneath a too-white tooth in worry.
“Do you think that moth thing was—was like the worm-things mom?”
Arthur snatched the cloth from Alfred’s hand and knocked his boot into the other man’s hip with a snort. “And here I thought you wanted me to kill it.”
Alfred just shuddered, busying himself with their packs. They’d only lost a bag and Arthur’s gloves, both easily replaceable. Unlike their lives.
“I have a spell that wouldn’t have killed it, per se. It would transmogrify—”
“Like you ‘transmogrified’ the panther-woman into a much bigger, much angrier panther-woman?”
“No, this is a different—”
“Or like you ‘pacified’ the walking skeleton into an armoured chariot with a head and many, many teeth?”
Alfred straightened and stomped back toward the wood. Arthur’s stomach turned with worry, but he relaxed when he saw Alfred stoop to gather something growing at the base of a tree.
He returned with all the makings of a poultice, which he bound up and shoved into Arthur’s bruised face. “I thought you were interested in helping people.”
Arthur just gazed at him wearily. “I am interested in keeping you alive until we get to the island, and I am interested in possessing all of my body parts when that day arrives.”
Alfred crossed his arms and looked away from him. “Fine.”
“Fine.”
“Fine!”
“I’m glad it’s fine!”
“I’m so happy that everything is definitely fine!”
And that’s when the fire-breathing salamander ascended from the river and started belching flaming rocks.