Stacy Brody Stan

Copper had grown agitated. It felt like with every haggard tree they passed by – a sight which had become more and more common now that they had finally escaped the highlands – Hadeon had to divide his attention evermore unevenly to keep her under control. Her ears were pressed flat against her head despite him checking her over a dozen times to ensure her comfort, if such a thing was possible in these conditions.

Davey had warned him of her temperament, and the lad was certainly not lying. Hadeon would be hard-pressed to recall a horse as particular and imbued with anger as her. Every correction was a battle of attrition, and Copper was nothing if not enduring.

"Ah-Ah!" As he let out another sharp warning to keep her from suddenly veering off the road, he noticed that Davey's head was lolling. He had him sat at the forefront of the saddle, and tucked his arms to his sides to keep him upright while he held the reins. Beforehand, he had merely stared vacantly ahead, yet now his chin sank into his chest. "H-Hey, kid, that hat's gonna fall right off your head if you're not careful—" he tried to laugh, but no sound escaped "—try and keep your chin up, yeah?"

Hadeon's gaze flitted between the road and the young hybrid he held steady. The weak, joyless smile melted the more he did, and he felt a pinprick of fear pierce his back.

"Davey?"

The pinprick doubled. Quadrupled. In a heartbeat, there were a hundred, washing up his spine like they were trying to tap the marrow from his vertebrae.

"Hey- hey, you're alright–" Hadeon uttered, sounding more uncertain than he intended. "We're nearly there, son, I promise. Just a couple more hours, okay?" A hundred became a thousand. "Davey?"

He craned over the boy's shoulder to try and catch a better view of his face.

"Kid– I-I'm gonna need you to talk to me, okay?"

Just a word. Something.

Then, for the first time since the break of dawn, Davey responded.

It was more of a weak groan than it was a reply; a breathy, drawling noise barely audible over the roar of hammering hooves. The sound expressed confusion, as though Hadeon had jostled him out from a deep, disorientating slumber.

It was a reply. That was good. It had to be.

It meant he was still responsive, and that meant he still had time.

Hadeon's heart leapt.

"O-Okay– okay, that's good, you're still with me," he rambled thoughtlessly as he dared to return his eyes to the road, "you scared me for a second there, sweetheart—"

He hooked one arm over Davey's front to keep him from falling, and caressed his thumb in a repetitive motion across his bony shoulder in the hope it might keep him present.

"—how're you doing? You okay?"

He gently squeezed and shook Davey's shoulder for emphasis, his attention once again pulled from the road as he looked down at him.

Davey's eyelids flickered in long, heavy blinks like he was trying to clear away a haze.

"We're nearly there, alright? Just a couple more hours, we'll get you warmed up, a-and Dr Jadestone'll give you something to get you feeling right as rain again, okay?"

Something dripped onto his wrist.

It felt cold, and yet it burned.

Hadeon unlatched his arm from Davey's chest for only a moment to inspect it, but regretted it immediately. His heart leapt again, this time in horror.

Blue.

Fluorescent blue liquid dribbled from the hybrid's nostrils in thick flowing streams. When his mouth fell agape, it trickled between his lips and across his teeth.

He swayed against Hadeon's hold as though his very bones had turned to liquid, then spoke for the final time.

"I.. tth- ink m' nose is bleedin'..." He uttered with shocking coherence before his amber eyes promptly rolled into his head.

"Davey—"

His back bowed, and suddenly he toppled forward.

"Davey!"

Hadeon lurched as Davey keeled from the saddle, clasping his arm back over his chest to halt his descent while he wrenched Copper's reins.

"Shit! Shit, shit, shit!"

Copper barely had time to stagger to a stop – and none to bite – before Hadeon tugged his boots from the stirrups and dismounted. He fell with Davey's body, landing in a clumsy heap as he did everything to keep the young hybrid's head from smashing into the ground.

Davey did not attempt to writhe or cry out; he was all but gone. His head rolled any which way Hadeon's movement tilted him. It fell back against his shoulder, as heavy as a stone, while the rogue struggled to gather him up in his arms.

"No–!" Hadeon shuffled away from Copper's legs and collapsed to his knees. "No, no, Davey– wake up! Hey, talk to me!"

His eyelids were like slits, offering a view into his motionless, bloodshot sclera. His mouth hung open, wide and dyed blue. His hat slipped from his head, leaving tousled locks of feathery auburn hair to flutter in the chilling wind.

Hadeon's composure decayed into brittle ice, swiftly cracking at his throat and melting his reassurance into desperate pleas. With Davey draped across his lap, he shook and squeezed at his shoulders in hopes it might once again urge a response. His hands, trembling from the cold and terror, combed errant curls away from his eyes, only to watch them be swept right back out of place again.

The divine offered no solace to the worn rogue as he held the young man he had come to care for so deeply.

As he cradled his limp head and tried to feel for any sign of breathing, he wished Davey would spring to life and shove him away to flash him the most scornful of looks. Abashed, he would insist he was fine and demand, in that defensive, guarded way of his, that he quit worryin'.

Hadeon would have apologised – of course he would have – but he would never stop worrying. He knew himself well enough that he would only fling his arms around him before the second syllable even left his tongue. He would have bundled him in his arms, held him so very tightly as though he could protect him from anything.

But he couldn't. Davey was not moving. His wings were splayed out beneath him like those of a pinned butterfly.

He could not shield him from this slow, all-consuming death which ate and ate away at him. Fate built this boy from so very little, and now it intended to devour all that he was left with, too.

Panic drowned his judgement, so he dragged it down; crushed it beneath the shuddering, sobbing breath he hauled into his lungs.

"Sweetheart, don't do this to me– talk to me, please—" He laid him flat on his back and carefully tilted his head back to clear his airway. He knew how to do this. He knew. He knew.

Hadeon held his ear to the cowboy's face, and when he felt no breaths brushing against his cheek, he immediately sat up again.

The fingers of one hand locked into a firm fist around the other, then pressed to the centre of his chest over and over and over again. Davey began to jostle violently, and Hadeon sacrificed a thousand thoughts, praying that each time he moved would be of his own volition rather than involuntary impact. Those prayers left his fickle fingers like pages of a book written in a language he would never understand. Pages and pages sweeping rapidly onto the next and the next, rendered useless with each compression—

"Davey! For gods' sake, wake up!" He called out to the boy who could not hear him. "Wake up—!"

—There was no time to have checked for a heartbeat. He could not feel it beneath his hands, not with the way each compression rocked through his chest. Perhaps it was not even there. Perhaps he was already gone, and the acid had eaten the part of him that remembered to keep his heart beating.

When Hadeon met the first milestone, he pinched Davey's nose, tilted his head back again, and breathed air into his lungs. He watched his chest rise in the corner of his burning eyes, counted for two, then pulled back and started over.

All the while, Copper pawed at the stone with increasing impatience, her distress evident in the way she initially paced across the road in aimless, irritated patterns. The agitated lengths she trotted up and down the visible path gradually became shrinking circles, then ultimately zig-zags, which then pulled her in closer to her unconscious owner.

Copper scraped her hoof into the ground beside Davey's head as though it might conjure a response, but her low whines soon rose into high-pitched squeals. She threw her head and startled backwards while bellowing out her distress like she was demanding Hadeon to try harder and bring him back now.

When she inevitably gravitated back towards Davey's body, hooves stomping into the ground, she ducked her head and tried to nudge his pale cheek with her muzzle. Another soft whine escaped her when this, too, garnered no response.

Hadeon had to shoulder her out of the way when she tried to nip gently at his nose, only for her to hammer her hooves back into the stone and take off to frantically pace another length of the road.

Time, once previously irrelevant, suddenly found itself at the forefront, demanding attention beneath a cold sun.

The landmarks Hadeon had decided to bestow importance to became the number of compressions, the seconds which taunted him, and the minutes they then became. Milestones like those haggard trees passed him by, plentiful and meaningless.

He rewarded each with two breaths, and when they did not offer Davey even a thread to grasp onto, they meant nothing.

Tears ran for freedom and left trails to freeze upon his flushed cheeks like frost over rose petals. His arms screamed at him. His head spun wildly. His counting waned back into frantic pleas.

"Davey—" he was in hysterics now. Breathless, exhausted, and wide-eyed. "Please. Please, just—"

Shove him off, tell him to get away, open his eyes. Breathe.

Hadeon felt like his wrists would snap. His hands were so dry that his knuckles split open and bled in the cold, but he still did not stop.

He did not stop, because if he did, Davey would be another soul so very loud and bright and wonderful forced to silence. His guitar strings would forever remain rusted over, left to snap while the body rotted and collapsed.

He was the one who brought them to that cave, and he was the one who could not catch him quick enough when that thing dragged him, kicking and clawing, through the dust and stone.

He may as well have snuffed his light out himself.

So Hadeon hunched over him, cradling his soul like a flickering match in a blizzard. His bleeding, reddened hands cupped around a light so very dim in a landscape so very lonely.

Sixteen minutes passed him by.

"Don't do this—" The rogue sobbed, his voice raw and breathless, "—you're gonna break your Annie's poor heart– w-what am I gonna tell her, huh?"

Sixty intervals. One hundred and twenty breaths. One thousand and eight hundred compressions. Hadeon had not been counting, but Davey's body had through the bruises he would soon pull forth and the ribs he cracked.

"Please, son, for gods' sake, please—"

Davey drew in a breath.

Hadeon stopped in his tracks.

There was no violent gasp, no furious splutter like he had wrenched himself from the soil and forced his soul back into his body beneath the air he swallowed.

He did not cough. He did not cry out.

Instead there was a hiccup, a twitch, then a wheeze.

It was a long, laboured thing; a sound as ragged as the poor boy looked.

Another followed in an identical manner, followed by another, and another.

If even a shard of Hadeon's composure had somehow survived up until that moment, it was then utterly crushed into oblivion as another sob wracked through his chest.

"Davey!" Hadeon clasped his numb hands over the hybrid's cheeks, craning over him while frantically brushing his hair away from his brow. "Oh my gods– Davey! Can you hear me!?"

Only a beautiful, terrifying melody of serrated wheezes could answer him.

Hadeon needn't have whistled for Copper, as the fragile sign of life which echoed up into the stagnant air sent her darting back to her rider's side.

"Stay. Stay here with me, please—" Hadeon pleaded hopelessly as he shook his ruana from his shoulders and bundled it around Davey's shoulders. The cold bit him as viciously as a pack of starving hounds, tearing through any semblance of warmth like the flesh from his tired bones. "—You're gonna be fine, just stay. Please."

Whether Hadeon had dragged him from the Gateway himself or the mention of his beloved had convinced him to turn on his heel, Davey seemed, for once, to listen. Hadeon wanted to laugh at the horrendous absurdity, but whatever sound escaped him was the furthest thing from it, instead echoing something akin to a wail. "Y-You're not gonna leave me to explain what happened to Annie. You're gonna tell her yourself, d'you hear me?"

With the ruana tightly secured around Davey's torso, Hadeon hauled him back up into his arms and climbed back onto Copper's back. He laid Davey across the saddle so his head could rest upon his shoulder without further fear of toppling over, then spurred the mare into a canter.

In his pinhole focus, Hadeon failed to spot Davey's hat, left overturned on the side of the road from where it had fallen right off his head. He had no mind to consider it when all he cared about was ensuring his boy remained warm enough to keep breathing. The hat, like an abandoned dog, caught a burst of wind and chased the dust left behind before eventually snagging in the thorny branch of a bush. A snowy feather tucked within the band was then left to wave at the shadow on the horizon they soon became.

Copper surged onward, regardless of Hadeon's attempts to limit her speed. She had no mind to heed his warnings any longer, even when foaming saliva spilt over her bit, and her breaths became exerted snorts, bursting mist like a dragon's smoke.

It was clear that she intended to make every minute Hadeon worked for worthwhile, whether he wanted her to or not. So, finally conceding against her endless endurance, he let her run.

She ran past haggard trees and meaningless landmarks, until the stone road transitioned into one of packed dirt and sparse grass, and the cold loosened its merciless grasp.

When all that lay ahead of them was that steadfast mountain and its pitch-black maw, Copper did not slow down, nor did Hadeon will her to.

Instead, with arms hooked over Davey's still-wheezing body, Hadeon freed a thick limb of wood from his travel pack. Without a wink of hesitation, he proceeded to tear one of his sleeves right at the shoulder seam until he was left with a strip of fabric. Then, using tension between his thigh and Copper's saddle, the rogue began to bind the pieces into a makeshift torch.

His gaze flitted up and down toward the ever-approaching entrance of the mineshaft, the sunlight perfectly shrouding the creatures waiting, jaws open, at its border. Having burned through all of his panic, Hadeon no longer feared what loomed ahead of him.

Davey wheezed in his ear, that fluorescent blue liquid still trickling from his nose and seeping into the ruana Hadeon had pulled up and over his head.

Hadeon held him closer while his arm trembled from the sheer force of his craftsmanship. Once the fabric was strictly knotted in place, he took it with one hand and used the other to douse it in an entire bottle's worth of oil.

The mouth of the mines seemed to gape wider now.

He could see gnarled limbs twisting and teeth like onyxes gnashing in the dark.

Copper slowed for no one. Hadeon did not want her to.

He scraped a match against the heel of his boot, and let the pinprick flame engulf his handiwork just as they left the sunlight behind.

Spindly hands reached for flesh and fabric and hide, only to rear back in an instant as light reclaimed what was once left abandoned.

Those horribly jagged, branch-like fingers snapped away from the light's domain, instead clasping frantically over hollowed eye sockets. They each moved like a singular mass, a swelling, bulbous collection of bones and limbs all fleeing at once.

In his one hand, Hadeon clung to Davey, pressing his head to his collar to shield him from even the prospect of being snatched up. He held the torch high above his head with the other, and Copper charged ever onward as a symphony of horrible, pained shrieks rang in their ears.

All he heard was his boy's shallow breathing buried beneath it all.

Excess oil dripped from the torch in liquid flames, billowing wildly behind them like a war flag.

Only minutes passed, shrouded bodies with limbs like haggard trees shrinking beneath him, before the white light of the other side came into view.

.

This may be a little messy, so I apologise if that is the case!