#taako.

----

Taako’s pretty damn certain that as the only one of these chucklefucks who practically grew up on caravans, it absolutely makes him the person with the authority to say that road trips fucking suck. There’s never enough room in the wagon for everyone to sit comfortably, no one can ever decide what music to listen to, somebody always wants to play eye spy or some other toddler distraction bullshit.

So the fact that this particular road trip is a murder road trip only makes it marginally better--Because at least when it’s all over he can take all the pent-up annoyance and frustration and just go ham on the dumb fuck who decided it was a good idea to hurt his family.

Governor Kalen is, as it turns out, not as hard to find as Merle and Taako expected but it’s only because he sent Magnus a goddamn cryptic taunt letter. Like some fantasy Bond villain, a letter that probably would have been more effective if Magnus could remember who Kalen even was. It’s good for them, because Magnus just squinted at the thing and asked if maybe whoever sent it had the wrong address, the thinly veiled death threats either sailing over his head or blocked out by weird lich magic.

So of course it meant that Taako and Merle had to snatch the letter away and look at all of the obvious baiting that Magnus should have recognized--So this clearly was gross lich memory juju, if Magnus couldn’t make heads or tales of the clear goading taunts. Taako would wager money that forgetting Kalen must also have meant the inability to figure out who Kalen was, because it would have made a pretty shitty sacrifice if he could just figure it out again later.

So that’s how he and Merle end up in the entirely shitty situation of fighting off villain minions who had been thoroughly prepared for them. Some sort of anti-magic field and a goddamn rope snare that has Merle hanging upside down fifteen feet up calling out every curse in dwarven, common, and a few in celestial he must have picked up from Pan.

It’s not like Taako is completely helpless without magic, he’s a fucking flip wizard extraordinaire but it’s annoying as fuck to find himself suddenly magicless with about ten creepy mercenary dudes coming at him from all directions. He’s lucky he’s dexterous as shit or else dodging away from them would be trickier, he can see the edge of the ward and knows that if he can just wizard flip his way across it these losers wouldn’t know what hit them.

And as one of the mercenaries goes flying past Taako almost too fast for him to dodge, he certainly doesn’t know what hit them.

His head snaps to attention just in time to see a towering half-orc woman launch two more minions into the air. Taako takes the distraction for the opportunity it is and vaults himself forward, ducking under grabs and tripping one fucker as he cartwheels out of the anti-magic ring. He’s halfway through the incantation for Thunderwave when the woman wretches a stray branch from a nearby tree and just wallops three more soldiers in one swing. Taako pivots and goes to pull Merle out of the snare trap the dumbass had gotten caught up in.

Clearly the Competent Mystery Woman’s got this situation covered.

He keeps one eye on her fight as he snaps the rope holding Merle with a magic missile, just in case she decides that Dos Horny Boys need the same ass kicking as minion crew. However, she seems more than happy to just wail on Kalen’s little brute squad only stopping when she has the last conscious member held up by the throat.

The growl she releases is utterly spine chilling, rumbling and guttural like she gargles with hot glass every morning. She holds the man aloft, just inches from her face and demands, “Did Kalen send you?!”

Oh yeah, Taako’s real grateful big lady’s on their side.

As casually as he’s able Taako saunters closer, resting the krebstar against his shoulder, he isn’t flexing or anything but he’s ready. Just in case this whole deal went south and he needs to get moving.

“Uhhhh, hey there Xena warrior princess, thanks for the assist. Totes appreciate it, but who the fuck are you?”

-----

There’s something entirely fucked up about the whole gods awful situation they’re stuck in, one that the fuckwonder lich twins to blame for this entire murder road trip would appreciate. That Magnus has forgotten Kalen but Julia has forgotten Magnus.

Of course he’s the one that figure it out first, because it isn’t hard to figure out but Merle can be so fucking oblivious to this sort of thing. A woman covered in burn scars named Jewel just happens to be on the same trail of trashed towns they are? That’s one hundo percent suspicious as hell but weirder things have happened in their century and some change of existence so Taako takes it in stride. He has to be certain this is the right woman, he can’t get his hopes up just to get them slammed dunked directly into the trash if this really is some crazy happenstance.

So he takes a chance, Taako leaves a duck on her bedroll.

It’s just a hunch, he’s not actually certain that Magnus ever gave Julia a duck but it’s Magnus, he’d give a perfect stranger a beautifully carved duck and be on his way--So the chances he hadn’t ever given Julia a duck seems astronomically small. So Taako sets his trap and waits, tries to be casual about the fact that he’s clearly lingering closer than he needs to by digging a firepit with mage hand. He might as well get dinner started for these chucklefucks anyway, no one else here can cook worth a shit.

He’s watched these shitty telenovela’s where the tragically dead wife appears out of the goddamn ether healthy and hale and sometimes wearing a sweet eyepatch. Jewel doesn't have an eyepatch but she's got burn scars that travel up her entire left side. On her ring finger is a particularly gnarly scar, and he’s damn surprised she didn’t lose it entirely. Granted, it’s not like she seems to be much of a finesse fighter. He’s watched her practically decapitate a man with the blunt edge of her shield, she could lose a finger or two and do just fine.

Her face is--well, he’s pretty sure even if he’d known what Julia had looked like he wouldn’t have recognized her. She’s missing the distinctive tusks of orckind, the way her lips look like they were sewn back together once makes him inclined to think she didn’t lose them willingly. He’s heard of that, half-orcs filing them down but Taako wagers a glance at her when she’s in deep conversation with Merle he sees the gaps.

When he listens to her speak he can hear the smallest lisp that she’s learned to talk around--She’s had them out for a few years then.

----

Jewel isn’t quite sure what exactly hits her, one moment she heaving string of rabbits off her broad shoulders, ready to pull out her skinning knife from her pack when she spots it. Something small and wooden out of the corner of her eye, sat right in the center of her bedroll

Without thinking she drops the rabbits, forgotten behind her as she makes a beeline for the wooden carving--The scent of cherry wood and varnish hits her nose the moment she picks it up and her mind seems to disengage from the world around her. A duck, small and unassuming but artfully carved and the look of it, the feel of the neat grooves beneath her fingers, it snaps something in her heart.

She’s crying--She’s sobbing and she doesn’t know why all she knows is that this little duck, this small insignificant little object means the entire world to her and she just doesn’t know why. Her legs give out beneath her and she stumbles onto her bedroll. She curls onto her side, her entire body curled tight around the duck so nothing can hurt it--Nothing can take it from her ever again.

She had a duck like this once, she can't remember when or where but she can see it in her mind's eye. An echo of the little duck in her hands, passed from smaller hands into her larger ones with the most delicate care. A duck nestled under her arm, a ring on her finger, someone warm hand resting on her hip.

The wood smells like home. Jewel can't breathe.

----

“Woah there, mountain lady--You--Shit--You okay there? You need like--A snack? Fuck--Merle?! Stop flirting with that pine tree and get your ass over here we have a situation!”

Bad plan, well not bad perse because Taako certainly got a reaction out of Jewel but he’d been hoping for a more eureka moment and less fantasy mental breakdown.

----

“Hey Jewel, you feelin’ better?”

“I--Yeah, I’m sorry, I don’t really know what came over me?”

“Don’t worry ‘bout it, happens to the best of us, ya know?”

“I’m not really sure I do...I’m not really sure I know anything.”

“Well, that’s alright, Taako’s never known anything a day in his life and he’s doing just fine.”

A bark of a laugh made it’s way out of the woman’s throat and Merle felt momentarily satisfied, even as Taako squawked in indignation on the other side of the campfire, “When this is all over, if you’re not completely sick of us yet, I think I’ve gotta friend who might be able to help you out with all that not knowing.”

“Is he another cleric?”

“Oh, hell no, pretty much opposite actually. Real punchy kinda guy, sorta like you actually. A lot like you, he’s from Ravensroost too.”

“Ravensroost...I--I lived there with...my family? I’ve spent as long as I can remember trying to avenge it but--but I can’t even remember why, I just remember the smoke, wreckage, the bodies, and Kalen.”

“Doesn’t seem like a good guy to remember.”

“Understatement of the goddamn century, old man.” Taako snarked as he used mage hand to fiddle with their potatoes roasting in the coals.

“Sometimes I remember things I know how to do, when the innkeeper’s wife took me in when I was healing I helped her make bread, I can’t remember learning it but all the motions are there anyway. One day I was picking up new pans from the blacksmith and I watched him for just a minute and knew he wasn’t quenching his tools right, I think I might have been a blacksmith.”

“Well, then that’s another thing you do know and it’s not anything to do with Kalen!”

“That duck. I remember that duck.”

“Yeah, you sure felt some kind of way about it.”

“It felt like--It felt like home. I didn’t know I remembered home.”

----

Kalen paces across the room, occasionally deigning to glance over at the bound elf. It had been terribly difficult containing him, but Kalen’s been planning this since The Day of Story and Song when he’d learned Magnus was still alive. That had been the moment he’d decided to put an end to the games with His General.

He plans to collect his Lieutenant and they will either play their games again or he will put an end to them once and for all. His chances are so much slimmer, with the revelation as to why his Lieutenant had been so special. An interplanar being, of course, Kalen had been drawn to him--He’s always had such a taste for the exotic.

“Hey, Fuckface. You gonna give me your fantasy Bond speech or do I have to entertain myself?”

Slowly Kalen turns his gaze towards the elf, he’s beautiful enough but so terribly delicate. Like all elves really, all air and no substance--He could place his boot on the thing’s neck and just the lightest weight would snap it. Well, he can’t do that, of course, or else he loses his bait but he puts the thought away for later. After all, he’d obtained quite the interesting polearm from the elf and it will need an accompanying story to tell His General when she’s back to crafting and sharpening his weapons.

“You’re Magnus’ elf. One of them, I suppose.”

“First up, I’m Taako, ya know, from saving the fucking world. Which I know you know because everyone knows. Second, speed up to the monologue," The elf stretches as much as his chains will allow, lounging as if he were a cat in a ray of sun instead of a prisoner in a magic suppressing cell, "I'm getting bored, Governor Fuckboi.”

A slow grin slides onto Kalen’s face as he moves closer and leans against the bars, “Well, what dreadful etiquette to leave a guest without entertainment. Perhaps we can play a game?”

“What about Fantasy Go Fuck Yourself?”

“That’s not very cooperative now is it? I thought you wanted entertainment.”

“Your idea of a game is stalking an amnesiac who you failed to murder. Forgive me if I’m not falling over myself to join you in your fuckboi stalker corner.”

“It should have killed them both.”

“What?”

“I meant to kill them both but they survived. All three of us survived, doesn't that feel like fate?”

“It feels like you’re a goddamn sociopath trying to justify his fucked up murder the hypotenuse plot where he fucking murdered every other member of his delusional love triangle.”

“I’ll admit I jumped the cart a bit, I could have been more patient. If I’d starved the town a little longer or gone after the father they would have handed themselves over. The Burnsides have always been martyrs.”

“With you missing sooner or later Magnus will come, the rest of your little family is a minor inconvenience but with you here as collateral I think that takes care of both fronts nicely.”

“Yeah, lure him here so you can kill Maggie and steal his wife, you’re just a regular fairytale villain.”

“What makes you think I want to kill Magnus? She might be more capable but Waxman is nowhere near so stable without Burnsides to temper her orcish nature.”

“You-You absolute fucking creep! You can't just treat them like a fucking--Some fucking matched set collectible dolls or some bullshit!”

“Of course they're a matched set, The General and Her Lieutenant. I made them what they are, made them heroes, they'd be nothing without me.”

"Magnus has been fifty times the man you'll ever ben for longer than you've been *alive*."

"Perhaps this Magnus isn't the one I knew, but neither is, ah what did you call her? 'Jewel' isn't Julia Waxman, now is she? It's a fresh start, you see sometimes a forest just needs a little *brushfire* to get life growing again. That's what I did for the rebels Raven's Roost, aren't they thriving?"

“I swear to every fucking plane in existence, if I don’t utterly trash your entire fucking face then you can be goddamn guaranteed someone else will do it for me. Your shit has gone on for way too fucking long. Maggie’s got a goddamn army of folks willing to wreck your shit and karma is gonna bite you like a bitch, you despicable troglodyte.”

Kalen licks the blood from his split lip, smearing it against his teeth, and smiles.