Cohost writing prompt: @Making-Up-Adventurers — Paladin who isn't breaking their oaths, they're absolutely destroying them
They're a few towns, a dozen small jobs, further on when the paladin abruptly brings it up again.
"You have her pack, aye?" he says, as the three of them stare into the embers of a taproom hearth. "I never knew her to be without the glowing stuff."
"Are you still thinking about that?" The archer raises her brows. "I took it for a joke."
"Aye." The paladin rubs his palms on his breeches. "It was, but as you say...still on my mind. We all would like to mark her — absence, aye? And genuinely, it seems fitting. I asked after the stuff, last we were in a city; they said it's an obscure substance. Opens the mind, they said, but admitted they only knew it from that description in books. Heightens the mind's awareness of space. Tell me that's not an apt celebration of her."
"She did make people more aware of space," the berserker says. "It seemed like a thing safe to take for granted, until you met her."
"Not a goodbye," the paladin adds quietly, looking into the fire. "Not yet. But the three of us, together, just a pinch of it each. To mark her. To remember her." The fire crackles loudly, and he seems to shake himself loose, as if half dreaming. "Not now," he adds, sounding more himself. "Just a thing to think on, aye? One day, if we all agree. Somewhere — well, you recall how she always howled after taking the stuff. I don't think to be thrown out of an inn at this time of night, while not in our right senses."
"Like she was being murdered," the archer agrees, smiling crookedly in remembrance.
"I will," the berserker says. "Any time you are both ready," and at their looks, "no matter how fearful she was, if she was of my people, we'd burn a fire the size of ten men for forty nights at her passing. You recognise the mighty."
The paladin nods solemnly, and raises his long mostly-empty tankard to bump against the berserker's.
"Give me a little longer," the archer says softly. "Just a while longer, to tell myself she might simply — step out of dark corner in an upsetting way, smiling like a biting thing."
"We should write a mourning song, you and I," the berserker says reassuringly. "About that smile, and all the many foes who died in the sight of those teeth."
"I think she'd like that," the archer says, and drains her own ale. "I'm to sleep," she adds, and lets her hand touch each of their shoulders on her way past, before depositing the tankard at the counter and making her way out of the taproom.
There is, somewhat later on, a grateful princeling of a much-diminished people, in a glittering crystal city on the water; his gratitude extends to effusive and indefinite hospitality, an entire quiet wing of interconnected guest quarters overlooking the waves. Space for dozens of people in each apartment, silent save for the noises of the sea, and empty save for the three of them, their needs for food and laundry met by devices of crystal and magic.
"Seems like a place," the archer observes, after a few days of roaming the sparsely peopled waterfront and admiring the sunsets, "where a few people could have as much of a screaming, weeping, clag-addled remembrance of old friends as they liked, without disturbing anyone."
"Aye?" the paladin says. "If you're sure you're ready—"
"It's been a time," the archer says steadily. "And you said: a remembrance, not a goodbye."
They wait, unspoken, for sundown, gathered quietly on one bed large enough for a dozen people, Malia's vial of powder ever more visible in the dimming violet of the evening.
"Well," the paladin says finally, the distant seam of sea and sky dusky rose and gold but fading fast, "my idea, aye? I'll go first," gingerly taps some of the greenish stuff onto the blade of a knife, and inexpertly snorts it.
"You know," the archer says brightly to the berserker, as they watch him cough and gag, "it works just as well to put the stuff under your tongue, aye?"
"Fuck, it burns," the paladin moans. "Ye bastards—"
"It's like—" the archer smacks her lips. "Lemons and snow? At the point of each where they're intense enough to start to hurt...."
The berserker shoves some under his tongue, noisily sniffs the rest of his apportioned share, and makes a terrible groaning noise. "Powerful," he says, eyes watering, and they sit in silence for a minute.
"Are we sure this does anything?" the archer says finally. "Maybe you have to be wizard? Maybe it loses potency."
"I don't feel anything but sore in my nose," the berserker agrees.
"Wouldn't that be a thing?" The archer starts to laugh a little. "If we were all expecting something, and instead it does nothing. She always was surprising, aye?"
"That she was," the paladin says, in a slightly choked way.
"...Oh," the archer says. "Arlo. Arlo. What did you say they told you about it?"
"Opens the mind," the paladin says. "Why, do you feel—"
"I don't think that means what we thought it did," the archer says, eyes wide and pointed determinedly at neither of the others. "I think—"
"My," the berserker says, deep in his chest. "Paladin. I had no idea you're a man of such lusts—"
"Fuck!" the paladin says, attempts to stand, and immediately falls on his side "Oh fuck the angles—"
The berserker roars, staring at nothing.
"Oh my fuck," the archer squeaks, claps her hands over her eyes, then wrenches them away. "Oh no that's worse— both of you stop being so loud in your brains!—"
"I'M NOT LOUD," the berserker says. "CAN YOU HEAR HIM CAN YOU HEAR HIM—"
"I can hear both of you stop shouting!"
"I DON'T THINK HALF THE WAYS HE'S HORNY EVEN HAVE NAMES—"
"Aye, he's a paladin," the archer squeaks.
None of them ever knows in which of them the flickering half-notion sparks.
"Oh wow fucking on this must be—"
"I'M GONNA FUCK HIM."
The paladin just flails uncoordinatedly, making alarmed noises into the blanket.
"Oh this is a terrible idea," the archer moans, hips rutting the air, "ohhhh shit can you see all the directions—"
The berserker writhes across the bed with the uncertainty of man who's not currently sure of the axes on which space works. "How does he even function, so pent-up," he hisses, and lunges onto the paladin, igniting a three-way feedback loop that leaves the archer bow-backed and shrieking.
"The universe is looking at us can you see—" she babbles breathlessly, and three things happen: firstly, the universal gaze lenses on them, every point of space and time folding through a single focal point in some greatly higher dimension, and at the moment of total conjunction, the room rips open for a heartbeat; secondly, ground into the bed by the berserker's weight, the paladin comes in his breeches, sobbing; thirdly, the entire palace judders with a small earthquake.
And Malia falls out of space itself into the middle of them.
"It's hard to focus anywhere when you're everywhere!" she says breathlessly, bouncing, limbs sprawled out, an arm hooked over the archer, legs draped across both men. "Thanks for the focus! Wow! — Wait, are you having an orgy? Are you having an orgy without me?"
"Not any more!" the archer says, and bursts into tears.