Vengeful | A Rainbow Quest AU

Chapter 17: Ashes of the Old

TW: Violence, fire, injury

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[Sabre's POV]

The forest is calm and quiet as we make our way back to the cave. I'm excited to be home.

The village was very kind to us, even as we left. Despite most of the villagers being busy from cleaning up all of the mess from the party, they still greeted us and wished us well on our journey home. The Leaders said they hoped we could come back very soon.

Green already split from the group to head back to his house a while ago. Rainbow and Dark have been cracking jokes to each other during the walk, with Time and I occasionally adding a bit. My paralysis can't stop me from smiling as all of us laugh and enjoy ourselves.

"Hey, hey, you guys ever think about how assassins are guys who take murder suggestions?" Dark smiles, continuing a similar joke from a few minutes ago.

"Excuse you, they take commissions." I say, knowing I have to join in on that one.

Rainbow almost doubles over laughing, then runs a bit ahead of the group, turning around and making a goofy face.

"Ooooh, why can't you kill this guy for the ExPoSuRe? Whatever, you suck at killing anyway." He says in an exaggerated, mocking tone.

"Very funny Rainbow, but watch out for that log behind you." Time says, warning Rainbow of an old, hollow tree trunk that's sat on the ground covered in moss and mushrooms.

Rainbow quickly turns around and jumps over it, falling back to the rest of us as we continue joking around.

It's... so nice, getting to just live for once. Of course, we still have our goals in mind, but... a break is good. Besides, none of us have really gotten to focus on something other than survival for a very long time; Rainbow was so occupied with collecting the Crystals and being the Hero before, he told me that he never really had time for himself anymore. I had the same issue, being pushed to be the Catalyst and all, and once everything with the Rainbow Kingdom started... I was basically cast aside and had to fight just to go on another day.

Before being part of the Vengeful, Time had never really known a day without war in his life. First, it was the Darkness and Void. He and Elemental were created soon before everything started to go so wrong, so everything he had experienced for the first time in his life were all things related to the war against Darkness. I remember that around when he first joined us, he didn't know what overworking meant. He was so used to pushing himself for people he believed needed him more, he used to go nights without sleeping sometimes apparently. It's so sad that the bleak reality of warfare was all he'd ever known before... well, I guess that's still true now, given what's going on between the Chromatics and the Darkness again...

And Dark... he was so wired for survival that Rainbow and I had to teach him how relaxing worked. At first, he was so high-strung and jumpy with everything that he almost acted like a scared rabbit. He almost expected danger around every corner. We know it's because of how harshly treated he was by Nightmare; he hasn't told us much, but from the little he's shared and what me and Rainbow discovered from eavesdropping a few times and a lab journal we found while helping the Yellow Leader fix everything around the castle that Nightmare wrecked, it was... really bad. In fact, it was a punch to the gut when Dark saw the leftover healing potions that Green gave us and said that he didn't know that there were potions that weren't made to hurt people.