Magnus rushes in

an updated tattoo reference for my beloved gnome…

Taako didn’t understand what was going on.  Something was wrong with his body, and suddenly, Lup was here, wearing her hair wrong and getting herself stabbed.  Taako had a sword for some reason, and he knew magic wasn’t going to work here – clearly, this disorientation had been caused by his blink spell in the first place.

The only thing Taako was fully and consciously aware of was that his sister was in mortal peril, and they were still early in the cycle. There was nothing worse than Lup dying early in a cycle, except Lup dying early in a cycle right in front of him while he stood there like a fucking idiot.  Magic wouldn’t work, and he had a sword.  He might have never used a sword before in his life, but it couldn’t be that hard, right?

He charged.

Somehow, it worked.  One of the thugs and the girl escaped in the fray, but the rest of them lay on the ground, dead or unconscious.  He dropped the sword, panting in exhaustion, and then grabbed for his bag.  He had to have a potion in here somewhere; if he hurried, he could save Lup…

His pack was in the wrong place, and his hands were wrong, and his legs were wrong as he stumbled over to her.  But there was something wrong about her too, besides the fact that she was bleeding out from a stomach wound.  She had her hair cut differently, and she was dressed wrong.  She was wearing his clothes, styling her hair like his.

As he uncorked the potion, he began to understand.  His hands were the wrong color.  His skin was wrong.  This wasn’t Lup on the ground, slowly bleeding to death.  It was him, and he was…in the wrong place.  In the wrong skin.  And in that case, he was already dead and this was some shitty afterlife, or…he was just in someone else’s body.

He decided to worry about it after he poured this potion down his own (?) throat.  Save his body first, worry about what the fuck was going on later.

When Magnus' vision comes back into focus as the healing potion does its job, he finds himself staring up at a sight that his addled brain can't comprehend. He's looking up into his own face. He tries to sort through why that would be, what kind of reflection he's looking up into, but as he reaches a hand up to rub at his face he sees a wrist too slim, fingers too dainty, skin too dark.

"Wh-- what the fuck--" he chokes out, trying to sit up. The pain in his belly is sharp, but the wound is closed up. Nothing but residual phantom pain now, soreness that'll take some time to go away. Wobbling upright, he looks up at his body, and then down at himself. It didn't take a rocket science degree to figure out that he's inside Taako's body, he recognizes his clothes even if they're covered in blood now. But for that to be true, then that must mean...

        There’s plenty of questions to be asked, but they’re shoved to the back of Lup’s mind for now — there would be time for that later, once this situation is under control. What matters right now is that her good friend and teammate is here to tackle the problem with her, which is arguably way better than going it alone.

        They work in perfect tandem, because of course they do; they navigate the burning debris, watching each others’ backs. The heat of the flames is intense, but fire is never something that’s bothered Lup, obviously. 

        She curses when she takes notice of the stairwell — it didn’t seem like they’d be going up that way. She’s certainly not going to give up there, though; they’re going to find a way. “There’s gotta be another way up! C’mon!”

"Fire escape!" he shouts over the roar of the fire, pointing at the metal walkway right outside the window. He helps her through first and sends her scrambling up, charging through thick columns of black smoke with their hands over their noses, and by the time they're breaking in the window on the second story, he has his tee shirt pulled up over his mouth and nose.

"Start kicking in doors!" he tells her, and breaks in the first one, which debris had knocked the door knob from, and ushers the small family out towards the fire escape. Coughing people begin to pour out onto the streets with their intervention, rushing into the arms of horrified onlookers, who watch as the people in the windows disappear one by one as the heroes who ran in rescue them.

They climb the stairs, luckily only the first floor stairs had been collapsed, and as the send the last of the survivors down the fire escape, the stairs creak, and to their horror, begin to detach from the side of the building with the last of the survivors still on them. They wind up unharmed, the stairs just crumple against the building beside it, and the screaming terrified people are able to climb off to the ground, but Lup and Magnus are stranded up on the top floor. Magnus turns to go back the way they came, but the ceiling cracks in and smashes through the floor, giving them only a couple feet of space between the gaping three-story hole and the open window behind them.

Stay focused.

He has to stay focused, he has one primary job here- keep this illusion chugging until its lost its use. For now it was fine, keep things confusing- it would be hard for the real army to see through the fake crowd, and parse whats real and what isn’t. The perfect chance for Magnus to do what he had to.

Arms outstretched, holding the spell aloft, Taako tries to keep an eye on Magnus. To keep watch on if he gets hurt, or if too many people gang up on him. Cause god dammit, he’ll set this whole plane on fire if something happens to him. Not an exaggeration, he’d picked up some pointers from Lup in these past decades, and another swig of that magic water would really make it pop off.

He’d keep a pin in that idea. Maybe, instead, something that wouldn’t torch up Magnus in the process. Cause that’d be a bummer and a half.

Just… focus. Worry about that if you have to, Taako. Worry about this now. 

Magnus is… incredible to watch fight. He always was, he’d watched and fought by Magnus’s side for the better part of a century. This fighting- Magnus’s fighting was like art, because of the true passion behind it. In a way, he loved it- if it weren’t for how dangerous it was, at least.

Magnus fights like an animal, with fire in his eyes and a roar in his teeth. Blood splashes his face but he doesn't even wipe it away as he slashes his way through the confused army towards his father. His father dismounts in order to meet him, sword drawn and vicious. It wounds Magnus' heart the moment their swords clash.

"We don't have to fight!" he tries it once, he has to try.

"We really do," his father responds, and that's all the affirmation that Magnus needs to know that there is no solving this with his parents on his side. They're too fargone. The previous regime must be purged, permanently.

He screams, his sword swings, sparks fly from the side of his blade as it meets his father's. He hears his mother's furious, challenging howls, he hears Taako shriek on the sidelines, desperate to help, helplessly relegated to keeping the illusion up so the army of one thousand doesn't turn their swords on him. He wants nothing more than to not have to fight this battle, he wants to be a little boy again, tugging at the edge of his father's robe just trying to get him to make eye contact with him for a moment.

His sword slashes, and he catches the chain of his father's necklace, dangerously close to his throat. It snaps under the pressre of Magnus' swing, and in a heartbeat, his illusion is broken. It's alarming how much Magnus' father looks like him now, with darker hair perhaps streaked with grey and lines on his face, but with the black eyes and the tusks, they're almost indistinguishable from a distance. His father is furious for being exposed and cuts a painful red line across Magnus' chest, too fast for him to dodge away completely. The pain makes Magnus sharp.

It all happens so incredibly fast. Magnus sees an opening. He'd honestly expected his father to dodge away. He'd always boasted the best sword fighting training in the world, and always chastised his son for his poor form and follow-through. Even with evidence to the contrary, Magnus always believed he was weaker than his father. So when his blade slices through his father's stomach like a hot knife through butter, Magnus is in shock at first.

uhhhhhh whatever happened to just drinking coffee???