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1
"At least it's not a complete downpour. The roads shouldn't have turned to sludge."
Occtis jumped in his seat as the chair opposite him scraped across the tavern floor and an orc woman plopped down on it. She brushed her long dark hair away from her face and looked at Occtis, half-amusement half in expectation.
Right. Shit, right. She's probably waiting for a code phrase or something, to make sure Occtis is the one meant to accompany her on this mission for Thjazi. But wait, was he given a password? If Thjazi said it, Occtis would for sure remember, he was too nervous to forget, clinging to every single one of Thjazi's words when he had told Occtis that he would be meeting…
Occtis blinked.
Wait. Could this be it?
No. That would be ridiculous.
But then again, how else would you make sure that no one accidentally replied with the code phrase? It made sense to make it a little weird.
"Are you alright?" there was something on the woman's face that looked like genuine concern, although she could have been just really good at this job and was trying to cover up before walking away.
Occtis grimaced. This felt so stupid.
"M-mom?" he asked, feeling so dumb saying it.
And — oh no — the woman was raising an eyebrow at him, cocking her head to the side.
Shit. This wasn't the password, was it? But this had to be her, right? No one else had approached Occtis (and he's been waiting in this tavern half an hour before the discussed time) and she looked ready for a long travel and she did have this motherly look, just like Thjazi mentioned and…
"Sorry! I'm so sorry," Occtis scrambled to explain. "I didn't mean… It's not… I mean, it's just that when I asked who I should be looking for, Thjazi said you looked…"
Suddenly realising that he had just said Thjazi's name out loud, Occtis shut his mouth so fast he bit his tongue.
And the woman threw her head back in a laugh, making Occtis want to disintegrate on the spot.
(Was it possible to cast this spell on oneself? If he aimed at his feet… The spell was instantaneous, so he didn't have to worry about pain breaking his concentration and stopping just after disappearing his toes. Was it even painful? Were the nerve endings getting disintegrated in a rate fast enough to stop the sensory input from reaching the brain?)
A hand appeared in Occtis' line of sight, tapping at the table in front of him, making Occtis look up from his boots and at the woman. He immediately opened his mouth to apologise again, but she held up one of her hands and shook her head at him.
"It's okay, our friend isn't the best in giving straightforward directions, I understand how he could have confused you," she said and she seemed honest, which made Occtis feel a little relieved. "Besides, I got my description of you from Murray, so…"
Nope. Back to the embarrassment hole. Oh no. Occtis could imagine in vivid details all of the flowery and utterly unflattering ways Miss Murray had describe him. He knew the older wizard hated his guts. It probably had something to do with him exploding a frog during his first class with her. He could still see the bits of the poor creature stuck to Murray's beard. He wasn't even meant to do anything to the frog. It was just an unexpected victim.
Occtis hid his face in his hands and groaned.
"No, don't… Hey, look, you're all good. But, just so you know for the future, it's okay if you want to call me Thaisha instead."
Reluctantly, Occtis looked at her. "O-occtis."
Thaisha took his hand and repeated, "Occtis," not like she was trying to remember when she had heard it before but as if she was taking it and committing it to the memory. "I can already tell we'll get along just fine."
Occtis gave her a sceptical look.
"What's that face about?" Thaisha asked with a grin that made Occtis already hate whatever she was going to say next. "Haven't you heard that mother's always right?"
2
"How are you planning to get inside?" Thaisha asked. Earlier that day they have scouted from the outside the place from where they were meant to retrieve the box for Thjazi. It was obvious they shouldn't go there looking like themselves, even if the place was weeks worth of travel away from Dol-Makjar.
Thaisha stopped by the window in their room, peeking outside to give the streets a quick scan. It looked like no one followed them. Good.
"You know I can Disguise Self. You've seen me do it before," Occtis said in a slightly offended voice.
Thaisha couldn't help a smal huff of a chuckle escaping her. Occtis was a good kid, yes, but she had noticed that sometimes his brain got stuck on one thing and he tented to have troubles with improvising.
She let the curtain fall back into place as she stepped away from the window. "This is a much smaller town than Dol-Makjar, Occtis. If you just pick a random face you'll see on the street, there's a chance someone will—" Thaisha turned around to Occtis and words died on her tongue.
The person standing with her in the tiny room didn't look like Occtis. It was a young orc, broad-shouldered and tall, dark curly hair and his left tusk crooked just a little to the side.
Thaisha knew this face. She instantly recognised it, even if it's been months since she last saw it, even if it grew into something new, even if the usual expression wasn't quite there.
"Alogar?"
Alogar blinked, eyes growing wide, and this felt wrong too. Her boy was always so focused, always so stoic.
"Thaisha?" it was Occtis' high, squeaky voice coming from Alogar's lips.
Thaisha shook her head. No. Not Alogar's lips. They were never his. He was never here. This was an illusion.
"Sorry. Sorry," she pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to collect herself. "You— Where did you see this face?" she asked, her voice still sounding heavy.
Occtis shifted uncertainly, which meant that the image of Alogar's face shifted and it washed with a new wave of unease over Thaisha.
"It's just… I— I saw him around Penteveral one time, I think? It's not—! He didn't look like anyone special, or anything, not like he was holding an important station or would be recognisable so far away and I figured it would make more sense for us to travel together if we're both orcs and…" Occtis stopped for a moment, fiddling with his fingers in a gesture so alien to her son. "Did I— Am I in trouble? Did I do something wrong?"
And, by the Path, as if the look of guilt on her boy's face wasn't enough and Thaisha needed an added gut-punch of Occtis' anxious voice.
"No, Occtis," she said his name, to make it clear to both of them and the world as a whole, that she knew who he was. "No, you're… It was good thinking. Really. It's just that… I know this person."
"O-oh?"
"Yes. And I'll tell you all about him some other time, but for now… Can you change this face enough for no one to recognise him? Making yourself look like an orc is a good idea, but I don't want to risk someone recognising him."
"R-right. Yeah, I can do that," Occtis nodded and his hands started to move in what Thaisha recognized now as gestures for dismissing a spell.
For one, brief second, Thaisha wanted to stop him. She wanted to just look at her son's face. She wanted to see how it changed, to question Occtis how sure he was of the accuracy of his disguise. She wanted to stand close to him, to lift her hand to the side of the face of this illusion, and hold it close enough to be able to imagine touching it.
(She knew there would be no real skin under her hand - she knew how the spell worked. But Thaisha had imagined holding her kids often enough for the image to become corporeal in her mind, to create an illusion of every sense of them.)
But then the illusion of her son was gone and in front of her stood another boy, who also needed Thaisha's help. So she took a breath and pushed everything else aside for now, and focused on the job.
3
Turns out a bored wizard is even more of a handful than a young kid.
"I'm just saying, if we check this box before we reach Thjazi, we will be able to give him a more thorough report. All I need is a few hours, Thaisha!"
"Is that so?" Thaisha half listened to the same argument Occtis has been making for the past week, since they got on the road back to Dol-Makjar. She swirled the soup in the pot standing over their campfire, tasted it and nodded in approval.
"Just a quick peek inside. I swear, I'll make sure everything's in perfect order when I'm done. No one will be able to tell!"
"Not gonna happen, young man," Thaisha said ladling the soup into a bowl and turning to hand it to Occtis. "Here."
The young wizard was giving her the kind of stinky eye that would have been impressive if Hal and her weren't immune from having to survive Shadia's displeasure whenever they banned her from practising the lyre. Thaisha just kept the hand with the food outstretched, smiling at Occtis until he finally accepted it.
But Occtis still seemed more focused on the silver box they were transporting, not really eating, just moving cut carrots and turnips with his spoon. "But…!"
"I said no, Occtis," Thaisha said calmly, settling down with her own bowl.
"You're not my mom, you can't tell me what to do," Occtis murmured into his bowl, a show of defiance so rare for him but still so demure that it almost made Thaisha laugh out loud.
"Tough luck kid, but on this trip I'm your deputy mom and I say that young wizards need to eat their dinner and go to bed instead of poking at the package we were very specifically told not to poke at," she pointed a spoon at him. "And you're eating all of it this time, including the veggies. I grew some of them with my own magic, it's disrespectful to just throw them away!"
Occtis' grumble in response was too quiet to hear proper words.
"And no feeding it to Pin either unless you want me to force feed you myself next time," she warned him, only half-joking. "Your dead fox doesn't need nutrition, you do."
Thaisha watched with delight as Occtis groaned in frustration but dutifully, spoon after spoon, ate his soup.
4
Nothing was the way it was supposed to.
The news of Thjazi's impending execution had reached Thaisha and him when they were two days outside of Dol-Makjar, suddenly turning upside down their entire timeline, forcing their hand into hastily made deals and fail saves that left Occtis uneasy on his stomach.
Like right now.
They were waiting for a cart that was supposed to appear from around the corner at any moment, carrying one escapee and then also the two of them, carrying them out of the city they have just returned to hours before. And this time, when they made it out of the city, there was no way to tell when or if they'd be coming back - Occtis' entire life would be left behind.
But somehow, Thaisha was still right by his side, even after the last few weeks, even after the chaos of Dol-Makjar and everything happening there could have easily force them into drifting apart.
(Which one of them was holding so tightly to the other one, refusing to get separated? Occtis knew which one of them he'd like it to be. But he also knew what was the more probable answer.)
He gathered Pin in his arms and burrowed his face into the back of his neck, where the fur was so thick and smelled like surgical suture.
"Are you sure you want to leave?" Occtis asked, words muffled. "You have people here."
There was a long pause before Thaisha spoke. "I have already left them. And they have other people who will take care of them when I'm not around. It's not a big comfort but… It's comfort."
Occtis felt something squeezing in his insides. Pin wriggled in his arms to poke a dry, cold nose into his face. "I'm not your responsibility. You're not my mom," Occtis said.
Just a moment later, there was a hand on his head, patting him just the way Occtis sometimes did with Pin. Not ruffling his hair because Occtis didn't like that and Thaisha knew about that and, even when she was teasing him, Thaisha never did things Occtis genuinely disliked.
"I remember."
Occtis exhaled. Of course she remembered. She would remember that Occtis wasn't a kid and she wasn't his mom even if he didn't keep saying it, time and time again.
(It wasn't Thaisha who Occtis wanted to remind about this.)
5
Thaisha was so pretty.
Tyranny couldn't tear her gaze away from Thaisha as the orc wept, holding Tyranny's ear with her fingers, talking about familial love and being in love and duty and world and…
Tyranny knew about duty. She knew about tenets she was supposed to abide by and the pact and servitude. She knew what it was like to be away from home and have mixed feelings about it. Tyranny knew of familial love, but the smoke and fire type she knew sounded nothing like Thaisha's vine and nest. She knew in abstract about the world and wanted to see it with her own eyes one day.
But, most of all, she wanted to know about being in love. So she stared at Thaisha and drank her every word like it was the best alcohol and she started to figure out that Thaisha had been in love before.
What a bullshit. Why couldn't Thaisha be in love with her?
(Be careful of dimming, Wic's voice reprimended Tyranny in her head, but she waved it off. She could do a penance later.)
"…and now he's who knows where and I haven't seen him in so long and I think he hates me and…" Thaisha sobbed into Tyranny's arm and the demon tried to remember who Thaisha has been talking about.
Her son. Right! The boy!
"No! No, he's right here!" Tyranny shouted in triumph, so happy that she could make Thaisha feel less sad by finding the person Thaisha had seemingly lost. "Look, your cute little boy. He's so, so cute!" Tyranny said, placing both of her hands on Thaisha's face, guiding it so Thaisha could look at her son.
For a moment, Thaisha went completely silent, eyes trying to focus on the dark-clad figure of a human boy standing by one of the walls. "He is so cute, isn't he?" Thaisha sobbed even louder and hugged Tyranny even tighter, hiding face in Tyranny's chest.
+1
There was a snarl leftover from her wolf form, curling the corner of Thaisha's lips. There was a growl in her chest, a bite in her furious gaze when she sensed someone stepping inside the room.
It was a once-nice room, now ruined by a fight. The furniture broken, the sheets and curtains slashed and torn, the flower vases broken and flowers that once brightened the room now crushed under boots and paws and the weight of bodies.
Five dead bodies. One too little. One that got away.
But this wasn't the time for a chase. Not when there was one more, barely-alive body, held by Thaisha as she was kneeling on the rich carpet that was still taking blood from her boy's veins, the thick fabric using the red to make more flowers appear underneath them.
(Thaisha knew all of their bodies would end up feeding the land again. That they'll become flowers and trees and fruits. But not like this. Not here, not so soon.)
She held Occtis close to her, cheek resting against his hair that was in such disarray. She patted the raven locks down, pressed her lips to his temple. He always cared so much about the way he looked.
He felt so light in her arms. So small. So breakable. She didn't feel so scared and relieved at the same time since she had held her oldest, Alogar, minutes after he'd been born.
But there was no scream of life in this room, no small hand grabbing at Thaisha's finger with a strength that gave her hope that her child would be strong enough to survive in this world.
No. There was only ragged, wheezy breath. Occtis' hands laying limply at his side. Blood sipping from a huge wound in his torso.
It looked like someone had torn his heart out of his chest.
(It felt like someone had torn Thaisha's heart out of her chest.)
"Let me heal him," said the black figure that came through the door and crouched next to them.
In the first instinct, Thaisha wanted to lash out with a hand that no longer had claws, to bite with a mouth that no longer had fangs, but some part of her mind registered the purple skin and iridescent scars.
Vaelus.
"I need to touch him," the elf said when Thaisha brought Occtis even closer, afraid that Vaelus will ask her to let go of her son.
Thankfully, as old as she was, Vaelus seemed to remember the basic facts of nature.
And one of them was this: It was mother's right to stay by her hurting child.