They looked at each other for a moment – then another – and it was the Wraith himself who eventually broke the tension, having seemed to make the decision to accept the assistance, regardless of the fact he knew he could struggle slowly on by himself, and the journey from there was without objection. Together they trudged through the wreckers yard, around contained fires in old barrels and stacks of gutted cars, between tyre towers and uprooted shards of shrapnel until in the distance he spied the blocky silhouette of the gas station, trilling a low song of relief when finally to the jingle of the bell they crossed the boundary and found themselves inside.

It was safer inside.

The Entity couldn’t see them inside, if ever it felt inclined to try.

Inside, the air felt no fresher, but the dishevelled walls blocked out some of the perpetual cold. The shelves were in disarray, the counter as rotted as it ever had been, balancing atop it the heavy hull of the Wailing Bell and Azarov’s mangled remains. It was dusty and old and a mockery of its reality, but it was the closest thing Philip had to a home, and so it was there that eventually he withdrew himself from the wandering survivor and found himself a corner to sit in, stuffed with sheets stolen from other realms in which he wound his long fingers, clenching until the strength fled his knuckles, at which point his throat rumbled with a pitiful whine and he patted the space before him, inviting his newfound not-quite-friend to join him.

❛  Next time I see you, I have to hurt you.  ❜

He didn’t look at Iraluk when next his hands began to spell slow sentences in the air. Couldn’t. Didn’t want to.

❛  And you hurt me.  ❜

Because that was just how things were here.

❛  I am sorry. Don’t want to. Have to. I am not bad, but I have to. Or …  ❜

The Wraith, still weak and bleeding, carefully motioned towards his own body, each mangled laceration, each glowing, burning wound, each leak of black blood.

In fact, pain was the only thing in this realm that he found reliable ; on occasion his memories fled him, or the crows cawed far too loud, his reflection swirled and twisted the more desperately he resisted, the forests led one way in a moment and another way the next, but no matter what sort of things seemed to change, he could always rely on the fucking Entity to reach down with its spidery claws and remind him that he still had that endless, torturous pain going for him. Allegedly, he was supposed to be GREATFUL for that, and he was, in a way, because the bear trap clinging to his ankle didn’t make him feel half as sorrowful as it might’ve done had he not experienced so very much worse.

But it still hurt.

Fuck, it still hurt, and it was only for his company’s sake that he tried to conceal it. It wouldn’t do well to worry the poor survivor beyond what was natural, especially with Evan’s heavy footfalls leisurely thudding to the source of the SNAP. The Wraith sent one last concerned glance in the direction of the boulder before the Trapper rounded the corner, bringing with him the scent of old blood and coal. His nostrils burned when he breathed it in. Enkindled eyes shifted, snapping upwards to set upon the cold ivory of the beast’s toothy mask, and though his usual demeanour in this one’s presence – largely affected by their initial tensions, Evan having spent too great a portion of an eternity lost in his own God complex – was a tolerant sort of wariness, trapped and bleeding and anxious, the Wraith’s guarded growls grew to a thunderous S N A R L , all teeth, and none of that inherent softness he struggled to maintain. He tried to rise, to tower and threaten, but the iron pulled at his muscles when he moved and he immediately settled again with the intention of saving himself anything worse.

He then turned his attention to the toolbox, reaching one webbed hand to grab for it, then swiftly and suspiciously withdrawing said hand for several moments before again he reached out, this time successfully snatching the metal. Again, though, after a brief shake and several attempts to claw out its contents, the amphibian man lost interest, and thrust it back towards her.

And then . . . then he did nothing.

He didn’t attack, or snarl, or startle when in the distance the clang of a generator heaving to life shattered the tense quiet. He didn’t do anything, and that was perhaps more startling than doing his job. He just looked at her, because though her face was an unfamiliar one it was the first friendly one he had seen in a good long while, and, surely, if anybody knew what one was supposed to do here, it would be her.

TheWraith was a flighty creature, a territorial, anxious beast who did not takekindly to STRANGERS wandering his realm ; the Entity’s suddenintroduction of the Hillbilly had taken him rather aback, and since thefirst tense moment that they had been thrust unwillingly into each other’sspace it seemed that the both of them were on very much the same page of the ‘what is and what is not okay ’ book. The Hillbilly did not bother him past anacknowledging grunt ( and an occasionally half-hearted attempt to lumberclumsily after the disappearing figure when towards their overlord’s constantcall he wandered ), and the Wraith simply … avoided all unnecessary formsof contact.

Itworked.

It wasfine.

TheHillbilly could not rev that snarling chainsaw at what he could not see, andwhen the threat of the Wraith’s bared teeth hung over him whenever he stoodcuriously on the edge of Autohaven he did not seem to have any desire to stayfor particularly long. Until, of course, he did. The voice wasunfamiliar, but its slow drawl was a tone befitting the beast’s lopsided fleshand for a moment the Wraith was frozen in position, feet rooted in the groundlike thick black roots for he hoped if he did not move then the stranger wouldeventually lose sight of his shimmer’s approximate position, and leave.

Right.

He couldn’t talk.

A man could not tell another man his name ( and when he tried for a brief moment to think about it he found that the word was locked somewhere behind a wall of confusion he could not immediately bypass for it had been so many endless years since last anybody had needed to know a name over a title ) if he had no voice with which to speak it.

But then, if there were Gods, the Wraith supposed they’d probably be sort of . . . cross his heart . . . assholes, wouldn’t they? What with all the shit they let happen out there. With everything Azarov had done. Everything Max’s folks had done. At the thought he drew a gentle palm from the Hillbilly’s shoulder down, down, down to the elbow, chest rumbling with this low sort of whine. Was a God who let his children suffer in a place like this a God worth worshipping?

The Wraith did not want to dwell on the intricacies of his internal crisis and so instead he let his quiet attention slowly drift back to his company, whose current task appeared to be hiding his half-melted face beneath that tattered old hat.

Still, no amount of hiding would ever conceal that rush of blood beneath the skin.

It was INTOXICATING; the beginning of life and the end of it, the very essence of existence swirling just out of his reach. The scent was wilding, filling his lungs with every deep, purposeful inhalation, itching at his teeth, throat begging to coat itself with the metallic taste and it sickened him. Absolutely sickened him. His spine shuddered with a tremble not caused by the common cold of this realm. It seemed with every assumed day the Entity dragged him further into its darkness, and he feared that one day he would awake inhuman. More inhuman. Mentally inhuman. Feared the Entity would finally turn him into the animal it so desperately had wanted him to be when first it pulled his broken spirit under its wing, and perhaps that was a part of the reason why he struggled to simply let people care for him, because at least if none of them truly did, they wouldn’t be too irreparably upset by his sudden onset of hostility. But then the Hillbilly’s head was beneath his chin and the hat was gone somewhere in the space that their bodies did not fill and the scent seemed further away. He pressed his cheek atop the beast’s head and huffed, tip tapping his fingertips along the crooked spine.

❛  I have to look at myself. The glass in the gas station is like a mirror. ❜

Sometimes he considered smashing it and cutting himself open with the shards, dying with the hopes it’d stick like it hadn’t the first time he tried it. Then sometimes he thought there was no fucking point, because he’d just wake up here again, equally as destructive to everything and everyone around him.

❛  I like looking at you. ❜

While he still had a mind to know he was doing it.

So he reacted to fill the space in which she – rooted into the thick mud underfoot by fear – did not.

His body rounded, spine and shoulders curving and as the pallid moonlight captured on the sharp ivory of his nails he opened his jaws, mouth lined with rows upon rows of pointed teeth, and from his throat released this otherworldly sort of H I S S that bristled the frills of his jaw, blackened his eyes, tore through the everlasting night.

But it was just the two of them standing upon the lake’s central isle, and no pain ever came to him, no bite of sharp blade nor lick of electric. He stared at her for several long seconds before he shut his jaw, and several more before he dropped curiously to the ground and approached with slow movements, every few steps jerking away with a warning bristle. And when he stopped, several paces from being able to reach out and grab her, he stared intently at the unrustled chest and waited for her to resume her search for its goods.

P H I L I P

Philip.

His name was Philip, and even if the Entity took everything else from him – took his life and his soul and every blind shred of humanity he had ever glimpsed upon rare glances at his reflection in the stagnant pools that within Anna’s forest gathered – it would never steal away his name. The fact that he’d ever had one. The fact that there was something about him that was not entirely monstrous.

Philip.

He’d almost forgotten.

❛  Come. ❜

The Wraith took two unsteady steps ( and wanted immediately to collapse again, to lay curled on the floor in peace until their overlord’s empty belly called for him to be pitied and sent to hunt ) before he stopped, peering over his shoulder. His cloak was ruined. His fleshy roots gathered between them pools of thick blood. He could hardly blame the stranger Iraluk for his wavering uncertainty, but as things were, the Wraith was the only reliably docile creature that resided in the Entity’s woods, and their options were between a mutually tempting follow the dying tree or get brutally murdered by something else.

❛  Safer place. Here bad. Come. ❜

He’d do it again, though, if he had to. Probably owed him a couple of stomps into a bear trap for all the murders.

Khari smelled of desperation one moment and cold terror the next, as all around them, like some terrible thunder, the THUMP. THUMP. THUMPing of fear seemed to breathe from the earth. The Wraith’s head snapped upwards, and for a brief moment he forgot the overwhelming pain.

❛  Go. ❜

For a brief moment his gaze fixated upon the curve of his face, and it was with a newfound fondness ( one he intended to kill the very moment that this one’s returning to the master did not depend upon it, if killing such a thing was even doable in the first place ) that he cupped one palm against his cheek. Then he looked to the blocked out distance. Then back at the survivor, all fond feelings replaced by a sense of urgency with which he used that very same hand to push at his shoulder, attempting to guide him away.

❛  Go. Don’t let him see you. ❜

Because Philip didn’t know what the Entity would want them to do in this sort of situation – did not know what would happen to the servant who killed a survivor where they were not supposed to be wandering – and he did not know what that one would take that lack of insight into its desires to mean. He could hardly protect Khari with the jaws of this awful device latched into his ankle, tearing flesh and muscle, scraping bone every time he moved. And Evan . . . Evan could be good, sometimes, if he made the effort to be, and Evan was prideful to a fault when it came to pleasing their overlord, but Evan was a killer. Evan had wanted to kill, still wanted to, even in here.

The Wraith did not want to test the limits of his goodness with somebody so soft.

Upon their shoulders pressed the great weight of the Trapper’s heavy terror, looming above the both of them like a thick smog of old coal but as the Wraith stared a feral beast down upon the broken brick wall that Evan’s oncoming footfalls seemed to rise behind, a low growl of warning rolling in his throat before it cascaded into a thunderous snarl far more vicious than any he had ever uttered to a survivor, he knew that, ultimately, what Khari would decide to do was entirely on Khari. He never had been the type to cower from a potential danger, not in the more recent half of this eternity, anyway.

THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.

Again he pushed with a gentle insistence the survivor towards a nearby rock. The Wraith, ultimately, wasn’t sure if he would rather he obeyed or not.