Chapter Text
Lestera had used to say that the gods had a twisted sense of humor.
Mollymauk had always laughed and agreed with her, but now he was pretty sure that she was wrong. No, the gods’ sense of humor wasn’t twisted. It was downright sadistic.
Molly hadn’t even realized what was going on at first. He’d figured that the Iron Shepherds had simply kidnapped him too, shoved him in the cart with the others. Surely the reason that Jester didn’t seem to notice him, despite looking directly at him, was that it was too dark for her to see him. Never mind that they could both see in the dark. Surely the reason that he couldn’t feel his arms and legs was that the chains were cutting off his circulation. Surely the reason that the wound in his chest from Lorenzo’s glaive didn’t hurt at all was because of… well that he couldn’t explain, but he was hardly the sharpest tool in the box, there was probably some explanation for that that made sense.
It wasn’t until about a day or two later, when the carts finally stopped, that Molly realized that something was wrong. The Shepherds began to unload their cargo, forcibly dragging their unfortunate victims out of their cages into the dreariest looking stronghold Molly had ever seen. The slavers dragged out the rest of the prisoners, but for some reason, they seemed to be looking right past Molly, as though he wasn’t there at all.
When they dragged Yasha, Fjord, and Jester out, however, Molly realized that he was moving too. Not of his own power, or because he was being dragged by a slaver. He was just… floating along.
No one commented on the floating purple tiefling. Jester, Fjord, and Yasha didn’t even look at him. No one seemed to notice that he was there at all.
By the time the Iron Shepherds got to the basement, with all of Molly’s friends shackled and gagged and no one so much as glancing in his direction, Molly had finally come to the conclusion that something was deeply, seriously wrong.
The Shepherds threw Jester and Fjord into one cell, and Yasha into another. No one bothered to take off their manacles or gags before locking the cell doors. Yasha was still unconscious, some kind of magic on the shackles keeping her from fighting back.
“Alright, let’s turn in for the night,” Lorenzo told the others. He turned back to Jester and Fjord, still struggling against their shackles, and flashed a grin which made Molly’s stomach churn. “We’ll get to the fun part in the morning.”
When they left, they took the lanterns with them. Molly had never been so grateful for the ability to see in the dark.
Jester and Fjord, after struggling for what felt like hours, finally managed to work their gags out from their mouths. They managed to wiggle over and prop themselves up so they were sitting against the wall, leaning against each other for emotional and physical support.
Neither of them looked good. Fjord’s face was bruised and puffy, and one of his tusks had been knocked out. He was looking at the door of the basement with a mixture of dread and determination, but Molly could see the cracks showing in his psyche, like he was starting to resign himself to the inevitable. Jester had a black eye and a split lip of her own, and Molly could see some tear stains cutting streaks through the dust and dirt that had accumulated on her face while they were on the road. She was putting on a brave face for Fjord, but Molly didn’t have to be an psychic to realize that she was terrified.
Molly tried to squeeze Jester’s hand, to let her know he was there, but she just shuddered and huddled closer to Fjord.
“This place sure is spooky, huh?” Jester said, trying hard to keep her voice cheery.
Fjord just nodded half-heartedly, which just made Molly’s heart break all over again.
All too soon, the slavers returned. Fjord and Jester were dragged out of the basement to who-knows-where so the torturers could do who-knows-what to them. They fought like hell, but chained as they were, the slavers didn’t have much trouble overpowering them. Molly was left in the basement keeping vigil over an unconscious Yasha, praying for some kind of miracle.
When it finally did come, he almost wished it hadn’t
“Mollymauk Tealeaf.”
Molly jumped. He was sure that if he’d still had a functioning heart, it would have stopped beating.
Molly turned to find a man dressed in black leather armor standing behind him.
The man was attractive, to be certain. Jester would probably call him tall, dark, and handsome. He looks vaguely elvish, but it was hard to tell with the elegant beaked mask covering the top half of his face. A small bony antler peaked out from under his leather armor, right over his bicep. None of that, however, was quite as noteworthy as the two massive raven wings protruding from the man’s shoulderblades.
Under any other circumstances, Molly would have been more than happy to shoot his shot, but at present, he was hardly feeling amorous.
“Who the hell are you?” Molly asked.
“I speak on behalf of the Matron of Ravens.” The man’s voice was strangely soothing. It reminded Molly a bit of Caleb, in a way. “I’m here to take you to the Moonweaver’s domain.”
The Matron… Oh. Well that explained it.
Molly was dead.
Again.
It should have shocked him, he supposed. Or upset him. And it did, distantly. But mostly, Molly just felt numb. So that glaive had killed him on Glory Run Road.
He was able to find some solace in the fact that he seemed to be alone. Beau, Caleb, and Nott weren’t there with him. That must have meant that they and Keg had gotten out of there alive. Lorenzo had made an example out of him, just like he’d promised.
Molly could only hope that they didn’t learn anything from it. Except maybe to come up with a better strategy for next time.
He had a million questions. What his friends had done with his corpse, whether or not Jester, Yasha, and Fjord even knew he was dead yet, if someone new would take his body like he had from that Lucien person.
“Where am I?” he blurted out, then immediately grimaced. Stupid question.
The man, however, didn’t seem to mind. “You’re on the Ethereal Plane. When you died, your soul got tethered to your friends, and you got stuck here, in between the material plane and the planes of the gods. You’re haunting your friends, I suppose is the best way to put it.”
“I’m a ghost,” Molly said.
The winged man nodded. “I suppose you could call yourself that, yes. A soul out of place.”
“And you’re here to…”
“Help you find your way home.”
Something about the way the winged man said that rankled Molly. Like the winged man was doing him a favor.
“Well, job well done. I am home. I’m with my friends. Good job, good day, and goodbye,” Molly said curtly.
The winged man looked around. “You’re in a slaver’s prison.”
“Exactly,” Molly said. “And as long as my friends are here, I’m staying.”
“You can’t help them. Not like this.”
“Can I help them by going with you?” Molly asked. The man didn’t answer. “I didn’t think so. At least while I’m here they’re not alone.”
“They are alone,” the man insisted. “You’re not a person anymore. You’re a spirit. A ghost. You sticking around doesn’t do them any favors. There are people waiting for you on the other side.”
That made Molly laugh. So this angel didn’t know very much after all. He’d been alive for two years! All of his friends were either in the stronghold with him or making their way to it. “I think you’ve got the wrong man, feathers. No one’s waiting for me.”
“Lestera.”
Molly stopped in his tracks. Lestera… his first Love, before even Yasha. Without thinking, he reached his hand into the pocket of his coat where he kept the cards she’d gifted him. To his dismay, they weren’t there. They must have stayed behind in his body, somehow.
Now Molly was angry. No one used Lestera against him. Not like this.
“Now you see here, Feathered Leather,” Mollymauk growled. “I am not leaving my friends alone in this hellhole. So you just run back to your Matron and tell her I’m staying put, and we can both be done.”
“That’s not how this works,” the man said. “The dead don’t belong in this world. You won’t be able to find peace as long as you remain. There’s nothing for you here.”
“They’re here,” Molly said.
“They’d want you to move on. You’d want the same for them.”
Molly knew it was true, but he wasn’t about to give up that easily. “I think they have bigger things to worry about than the state of my soul right now. And so do I, thank you very much. So get lost, before I-”
Before he could finish the threat, Lorenzo returned, carrying a skinning knife dripping blood. Molly’s breath hitched. Which one of his friends’ had been bleeding? He watched helplessly as Lorenzo strode over to Yasha’s cell, dragging her unconscious frame out of the basement to do gods know what.
The winged man could apparently tell that Molly was beyond civil conversation, because when Molly turned back, thinking maybe he could beg for help or strike a deal, he had vanished without a trace.
─── ⋅ ∙ ∘ ☽ ༓ ☾ ∘ ⋅ ⋅ ───
The days passed slowly and painfully. Molly bore witness to his friends’ pain, and prayed that the rest of the Nein would rescue them soon. It was all he could do for them.
The Shepherds seemed the most interested in humiliating Fjord. Forcing him to say degrading things about himself, laughing at him as he struggled to complete impossible tasks, breaking whatever little threads of pride that Mollymauk had spent weeks trying to string in his friend.
Jester, they were more concerned with breaking her unbreakable spirit. They would tie her up and force her to watch them torture whatever poor sap they were working on that day, unable to help or offer words of encouragement. That's why they had left her in the same cell as Fjord, Molly had realized. They wanted her to watch him slowly break down, and realize that she couldn't help him. Molly dreaded the day the Shepherds decided to make her watch them hurt the firbolg child he'd heard screaming from the second floor. He wasn't sure she'd be able to recover from that.
As for Yasha…
The Shepherds didn't seem to know what to do with Yasha. Which Mollymauk wished he could find some comfort in, but really, it just made him scared.
Without a clear path forward for Yasha, the slavers had taken to brutalizing her within an inch of her life, letting her recover just enough to not die, and then doing it all over again the next day. They'd started to make a sadistic game out of it, turning his dearest friend into their living punching bag, seeing how hard they could push her before her body couldn't handle it and she passed out from the pain. Molly knew Yasha could handle the pain- gods, he knew she knew pain- but he was far more concerned about the Shepherds pushing too far, hurting his love in a way that she couldn't come back from.
Molly spend days in that hell. He wanted to do something, anything that wasn’t just watching as his friends were slowly beaten and broken by a bunch of sadistic motherfuckers who wanted to sell them. Sometimes Molly passed the time by imagining what he would do to Lorenzo and his cronies, if he was given just half a chance. He had never been a sadistic person, at least not in this lifetime, but he was discovering that he had limits to how far his charitable nature could reach, and those limits were his friends’ blood.
Barring tearing the Iron Shepherds limb from limb with his bare hands, what he wanted most was to be able to comfort his friends. Molly would have sold his soul for a chance to hug Jester, or give Fjord a squeeze on the shoulder, or hold Yasha for even a moment. But every time he tried, his friends just shuddered and curled in on themselves like they had a chill. And they were doing plenty of shivering without his help in the cold, damp cells. At least Fjord and Jester had each other, and could huddle up for warmth and comfort. Yasha, alone in her cell, had no one to comfort her. She spent her days alone in her cell, under whatever sleep spell the Shepherds kept in those manacles, only being awoken when it was time for Lorenzo and his friends to have their fun.
For days, Molly sat vigil over his friends, watching them be tormented by monsters in human forms, praying for salvation that he was less and less certain was coming with every passing day.
Molly was sure that, if he spent a thousand years in hell, he would never feel as much pain and misery as he did in a single minute of watching his friends suffer in that dank, dark prison.
─── ⋅ ∙ ∘ ☽ ༓ ☾ ∘ ⋅ ⋅ ───
The last straw came when Fjord branded himself.
After hours of toying with Fjord, knocking him to the ground over and over again and taunting him for being too pathetic to stand, Lorenzo had finally left the room. Fjord and Molly had both breathed a sigh of relief, thinking it was over, before Lorenzo returned with a large metal brazier filled with glowing coals and a branding iron.
Fjord had resisted, of course. Molly had even seen a glint in his eye like he was thinking of fighting back, of taking the red-hot brand and turning it against his captors. Molly had briefly allowed himself the fantasy of Fjord ramming the iron so far up Lorenzo’s ass that he’d taste his own burning shit.
Then Lorenzo threatened Jester. Told Fjord all the things he’d do to the little tiefling that made Molly’s skin crawl. Molly hadn't even had time to look away before Fjord pressed the iron into his own chest, searing the Shepherd’s barbed crook into his skin without a second of hesitation.
On one hand, Mollymauk admired his friend's bravery, in a way. His willingness to protect their friends, no matter the cost to himself.
On the other, Molly was going to tear this place down. Stone by stone, brick by brick, and salt the earth after.
What were almost worse than Fjord’s screams of pain were Jester's cries of anguish when they threw him back into the cell with her, limp and listless. She'd thrown herself against her shackles, as if to attack their captors, but all she earned herself was a kick to the head that knocked her back into the wall. It was enough to cause Fjord to stir and start struggling against his own bonds, trying to reach her. The slavers, who seemed to have finally grown bored of tormenting Molly’s friends, just activated the magical shackles, sending both Fjord and Jester into a deep magical slumber.
And Mollymauk stood there, useless as a baby manticore's wings, just watching and letting it happen.
Molly tried to reach out, to hold his friends, to do something, but he just passed through Fjord’s body like it was made of colored mist, making the half-orc shiver in his sleep.
From behind him, Molly heard the rustle of feathers. He didn't bother looking up at the interloper standing behind him.
“No,” Molly said, not waiting for the man to speak. He hoped his voice sounded stronger than he felt. “I’m not leaving.”
“You are dead,” the winged man said firmly. “You don’t have any other choice.”
Molly ignored him.
“You're only hurting yourself! You can't help them. Why torture yourself like this?”
“Shut up!” Molly screamed. “Just shut up!”
The man paused, seemingly taken aback by the outburst.
“You don’t get it, do you?” Molly yelled. “You’ve never had to watch your friends suffer, and not be able to do anything about it! You’re some fucking angel, you don’t have friends, you don’t feel pain, you just do whatever that Raven Bitch tells you to do with a smile and a song!”
Molly waited for the winged man to scream back, to attack him for insulting the Raven Queen or something, but to his surprise, the man just stood there. Something in his posture had changed. He looked almost… pained.
“I understand more than you think,” the winged man said softly.
Then he vanished, like he had never been there in the first place.
Molly huddled himself into the corner, trying hard not to accidentally touch his friends, and sobbed.