Claude de Lune

Cyllene

Claude blinked the sweat from his eyes, heaved in a breath that made his chest burn, and adjusted Amadeus on his shoulders. He had walked with the bastard draped over his back for gods knew how long but had covered little distance. His steps were as short and wobbly, and his path unsure.

Amadeus didn't look like much, slim, wiry, a little tall, but Claude felt as though he was carrying a mountain on his back. It didn't help that every few minutes his hand would cramp so badly that his fingers curled up of their own volition.

"Undine!" In his head, he shouted her name, but from his mouth came a strained whisper. She should still hear it with her necromancer ears. Unless something happened to her too. He shook the thought from his head. If he couldn't find her, he'd head for Viperstone. It couldn't be far.

Claude set Amadeus down next to a tree and squeezed his eyes shut as another cramp burned through his hand. His fingers curved in towards his palm, much like a decaying hand would, the pain akin to someone striking his bones with a white-hot mallet.

Zhen had complained about pain in her arm after Octavia cured her of the blight. But she hadn't batted an eye through any of it, which made her tougher than him.

The pain faded, the rush of blood in his ears ebbed, and something else moved in to fill the void. Crunching, grinding, like someone or something was eating. He stumbled towards the noise and caught a patch of dark brown fur peeking through the trees.

A bison. It chewed away at the patches of grass that had overtaken a clearing. Claude glanced back at Amadeus, passed out under the tree. The bison could carry him, if Claude could get him on its back. And coax it away from its meal.

He picked Amadeus up and dragged him through the underbrush to the clearing. The bison didn't seem to notice or care they were there. If the gods favoured him, he'd get Amadeus onto it without issue. It seemed like a miniscule task, but with his luck, the bison would take off or knock him over. And trample him. So he prayed to whatever gods listened to poor, broken men like him and sidled up to the beast.

It kept nibbling away at the grass, even as he flopped Amadeus' head and arms onto its back. He pushed one leg over the other side and balanced Amadeus over the bison like a sack of grain. Claude pulled his hands under the harness, wrapped the severed rope around his torso and tied it to one of the leather straps. That would have to do.

Heck, if Amadeus wasn't taking up so much space, he'd ride the Bison too. But he'd better serve them out front, in case they ran into a netherborne. Claude pulled a few handfuls of grass from the ground, stuffed some in his pockets. "Come on." He waved it under the bison's nose. "Let's go." The bison snuffled the grass, and he coaxed it away from the clearing. "That's it. Good boy."

Instead of going back to the wagon, he headed south towards Viperstone. The sun sat low in the west, and he didn't want to get lost in the forest at night, when the netherborne were their most active. "Undine!" His voice was a little stronger now, with the little hope he'd gained from the bison.

It snuffled at the grass he'd stuffed in his pockets. He gave it a few blades and plucked some from patches he found along his walk.

"Undine!" Claude grimaced as his voice echoed through the trees. If she didn't find them, with all his screaming, a netherborne would. He should chant instead of scream in case there were stragglers around.

"Claude? Amadeus?"

Claude almost wept at the sound of Undine's voice. "Over here!"

She materialised from the trees, a roll of rope over her shoulders, and his sword at her hip. Unlike them, she wasn't scratched up, unconscious or both. Her eyes moved from him to Amadeus and back. "Dear gods, what happened?"