Nicholas wakes up fine.

A bit uncomfortable from a small rock under his back, but otherwise fine. Rafael sits cross-legged on the forest floor beside him, holding Nicholas' hand on his lap. Or rather, holding Nicholas' wrist to check the pulse.

This seems rather unnecessary considering the gently pulsing blue light hovering over his chest to denote his heartbeat but Nicholas isn't going to complain.

Rafael is slumped forward and a bit sideways, elbow digging into his own thigh. He's watching Nicholas. There’s something a bit empty in his eyes.

Nicholas rolls his head around so he can take stock of things without having to hunch up. Nicholas' bag is here - or rather, he has been moved to the bag. The emergency stash for Thoth has been tipped out, most of the potion vials now empty, some smashed into bits of glass that reflect the dawn sun through the canopy.

Nicholas himself is still topless, clean of grime except for the blood ash and cinnabar painted on him for a ritual. There's not even a scar left. Stavros must have done something illegal.

Speaking of Stavros, there are crack-bangs of spell fire not too far in the distance.

Nicholas rolls his head back over to face Rafael's dark eyes. "C'n..." Nicholas swallows thickly and clears his throat. "Can you tell him I'm awake?"

"He left when you woke up," Rafael says, voice perfectly even.

Nicholas blinks a few times. "Are you...angry with me?"

"Thoth wants to eat you so you’ll never leave us," Rafael says. “I didn’t know he could feel complex emotions.”

"I’m sorry you both had to see that,” Nicholas whispers. He still dreams of Adam some nights.

Rafael does nothing for a long moment. Just watches Nicholas. "Do you think I'm joking?"

"Do you think I give a fuck when I don't regret a damn thing-" Nicholas cuts himself off and looks up at the trees. He twists his hand around so he can weave his fingers through Rafael's. "I don't want to have an argument right now."

Rafael bows his head. "You won't have much of a choice when Stavros gets back."

"I'll find him when he's Hearth," Nicholas mutters. "My foxy boy is a sweetheart, he wouldn't dare be mad."

Rafael listens for a moment. "Now would be a good time."

Nicholas realises the spellfire has stopped. "Help me up?"

Nicholas gets to his feet with not as much help from Rafael as he'd thought he'd need. He feels pretty good, actually. Definitely woozy from blood loss and wobbly knees, but no pain in his newly healed muscles. He’s not sure why he’s surprised; they fed him so many potions, it would be strange if he still felt pain.

Rafael takes one of Nicholas' arms over his own shoulders and half carries Nicholas forward even though he doesn't need to. They walk back through the forest along the path they tore through last night, following broken branches and the result of spellfire.

In the daylight, Nicholas realises Rafael is still barefoot, feet bloodied. Of course they’ve been shredded, he was sprinting through a forest, why didn’t Nicholas think of that?

Nicholas fumbles his wand out and practices trying to heal a moving patient. Rafael has also ripped off a few fingernails doing something and has a nasty bite mark on his arm that he might have done to himself, human teeth. Rafael doesn’t acknowledge him, just keeps walking.

The ape corpse is unidentified gore, half of it burnt to a shrivelled black, the rest peeled off down to the bone. The head is just gone, the epicentre of what looks to be an explosion of magic and sheer rage that lingers as heat waves. Surrounding it is a diagram, spent and useless now. Rafael must have broken the curse in the end.

Hearth stands a bit further away, one paw holding down the massive blue heart about the size of his torso while he violently tears off pieces with his teeth, swallowing chunks.

Hearth notices Nicholas and then goes right back to angrily eating the creature's heart.

"Hey," Nicholas coos, sliding down Rafael's side until he's crouched back on his heels against Rafael’s leg, unwilling to detach himself. "Come here, Hearth, I wanna give you a hug."

Hearth rips off one last piece with little jerks of his head and then walks over, stiff and a bit stumbling. If Stavros did the ritual, he would have taken on the injury himself. Nicholas picks him up, blood-matted fur and wet claws against his bare chest, and stands, leaning into Rafael's arms. Hearth flops the piece around until he splats it on Rafael's bare arm.

"I'm good thanks," Rafael mutters, but then his arm jerks a bit and he eats it anyway.

Hearth tucks his chin over Nicholas' shoulder and makes a snuffling sound. Nicholas shifts his grip around until he can pet Hearth as well. The little fox starts heaving, his breath rasping out of him mixed with quiet chirps and a gut-wrenching whining sound.

Foxes can't cry but Hearth shakes in Nicholas' arms and tries his damnedest.

"I'm sorry," Nicholas murmurs, pressing kisses to Hearth's little head between his pressed back ears. "You didn't deserve that." He looks at Rafael too. "I'm sure there was a better way, I just...I was so scared that it’d be one of you instead."

"Yeah," Rafael mutters. He sighs. "Yeah, kind of a shit hand either way."

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Nicholas heals what’s left of Hearth’s injury. The surface level was closed but he was bleeding sluggishly internally, all the way down to cracked ribs that Nicholas seals up.

All three of them are about ready to collapse but Rafael is still the first one to notice, head whipping around.

Hearth leaps out of Nicholas’ arms and snaps into a cold-eyed Stavros who pulls stealth spells over them, so used to hiding from Thoth when they play that he strings them together without pause. They’re cloaked in invisibility, silenced and their scent hidden when Nicholas finally hears people crashing through the jungle.

Rafael slides in front, backing them all up and behind the solid barrier of a large tree. Stavros is taking deep breaths to control himself, lowering into a duelling position with all the earlier emotion locked down because he simply doesn’t have time for it.

There are five people. Three of them wear heavy packs and carry large guns, but two are still fresh-faced and unburdened so they can be easily labelled as mages.

A mage man with a cap pulled low has a tracker up, following the arrow that points at the carved into two pieces, half-eaten ape. They all come to a sudden halt when they see the mangled body and shift into a circle, backs to each other.

“What poor son of a bitch killed it?” a mundane woman asks, sounding amused. Her words are shaped a bit strangely, under the influence of a translation potion or spell. “Well, at least we know it didn’t come back because it’s dead.”

They move closer and spread out slightly, chatting about finding another cut-up body nearby.

Nicholas shares wary glances with Stavros and Rafael. “Those ape-things are used for poaching,” he whispers even when he’s confident in Stavros’ silencing ward. “They hunt other creatures.”

Rafael looks away.

“Hey!” calls out the mage man, sitting back on his heels near a huge spill of dark brown over the leaf litter. He has a spell running. “This is human blood.”

A mundane rolls his eyes. “Are you using the right spell?”

“I can tell an infected human from a healthy one,” the man snaps back. He stands up, looking around. “And where’s that fucking body? Has anyone found it yet?”

“Nothing,” the woman replies for the rest of the confused group, starting to become wary. She adjusts her gun but keeps it pointed at the ground. “But we already know there’s a pack in this rainforest. We released the monkey after the full moon, so maybe they were human enough to drag the dead one away?”

“They’re weak after the transformation, they shouldn’t have even been able to fight back,” the man argues, stalking back over to the ape. “And this cut isn’t claws or teeth.” He scowls. “Shit, I think we have a werewolf mage.”

“That’s a pretty hefty bonus,” the woman muses. “Niaa would want-“

Stavros kills her.

Just lifts his wand and kills her with a blasting hex to the side of her face, snapping her head sideways and throwing her down, dead before she hits the ground with her skull cracked in. The others all whirl around, guns coming up or shield spells raised but Stavros hurls one of the mages into a tree hard enough the bark cracks.

The guns open fire in a burst of screaming noise but bullets ricochet off Rafael’s shield and another mundane is hit by a rebound, dropping to his knees. Stavros takes out the other mundane. Nicholas doesn’t know how, he isn’t looking.

The man with the cap tears down the invisibility and Stavros doesn’t bother to hide, just steps forward, trading barely two spells before Rafael tackles the man down and sinks teeth into him.

Nicholas stops looking at that too. He has a shield spell over Stavros, just on instinct. He drops the spell and tries a few non-specific trackers to make sure no one else is coming to hurt his friends. There’s no one in the general area.

Stavros and Rafael are talking but Nicholas doesn’t really hear them, their voices distant like he’s underwater. He looks around, eyes skipping over bodies, but can’t find the bag. That’s right, they left it behind. There are no more potions in it anyway.

One of the mundanes isn’t dead and Stavros does something. Nicholas doesn’t look. There’s screaming that Rafael quickly steps in to smother. Nicholas tries a few more spells, slowly widening the range in case there was a second team. He finds a cluster of people but pretty far away and not moving.

There’s no more noise, a silencing ward put up, but Nicholas still turns away, his back to whatever is happening so he can focus better on pinpointing where they are and how to get back to the portal. Today is a weekend and Luca won’t be back until early Monday so it’s not like they have to be back at the citadel but-

“Nicky,” Stavros says roughly. “Come on, they let out more of those apes and managed to catch some of the pack in this area.”

Nicholas turns to Stavros but keeps his eyes up, doesn’t look at the ground.

“I’m not surprised the reform centres are so bold,” Rafael mutters, wiping his mouth with the back of a hand but just smearing it more. “The Confederacy probably hires these sorts of people for search and capture too.”

There’s a walk Nicholas doesn’t remember much of and then they reach the base camp, which ends up being a huge truck and some smaller vans encircled by a teleportation ritual diagram. Rafael and Stavros layer on blurring charms to distort their features and the two circle around. There are only four people standing guard.

Now there were only four people standing guard.

Rafael opens the truck to show almost a dozen half-naked people sprawled over the floor, unconscious. They’re scarred and ragged, bigger than normal people even curled up as they are. One of them is a little girl. Rafael looks at him, waiting, so of course Nicholas walks up and starts running diagnostics.

They’re only knocked out with some sort of venom, all of them with rings of teeth marks on their backs. Maybe the ape is venomous and Nicholas couldn’t remember that fact. Did Nicholas get poisoned? Maybe he was scratched on the ankle but he’s pretty sure his hooves just cracked the teeth, unless it was the tail-

Rafael moves past and Nicholas blinks, eyes refocusing. He helps their bodies purge the poison and heals as many injuries as he’s able to while Rafael cracks the collars off, and it takes time even with all of Christos’ previous information.

Stavros is pacing outside. Rafael talks to the werewolves as they wake up. There’s some growling and then a blur of motion, the crunch of bone. Nicholas heals a man’s broken arm and there’s more talking.

Things happen.

Stavros digs a large grave.

They walk back to the portal.

Someone casts a few spells on him.

He’s holding their hands.

They step into the citadel.

They step into the citadel and the morning sunlight washes through a nearby stained glass window, brightening the large hallway in a blur of soft colours. Flick’s familiar voice can be heard off around a corner, berating someone for running down the hall. A piglet trots past, almost tripping over the heels of its Famure student, and snorts cutely at Nicholas when it recognised him.

Stavros is rubbing his thumb over the back of Nicholas’ hand in soothing circles and he lets out a low, steady exhale. Rafael rolls his tense shoulders and settles into a tired slump, eyes fluttering into a half-lidded gaze and free hand shoving into his pocket.

They’re safe, but why can’t Nicholas breathe?

“Nicky?” Rafael asks slowly and then takes a quick step in front of him, hand coming up to cradle Nicholas’ cheek. “Nicholas, deep breaths. We’re okay, we’re all okay.”

Nicholas is wheezing, sucking in sharp, shallow breaths and he’s blinking away blurry vision, a wetness sliding down his face before he even realises he’s crying.

“I’m here,” Stavros says softly, pressing in close. “Nicky, can you tell me five things you can feel? Can you squeeze my hand?”

Nicholas sways. Hands lower him to the ground and he curls into his raised knees, gasping. Someone comes closer. Nicholas is crying. Stavros is curled over him protectively. His hands are shaking. People are saying things.

Nicholas is sobbing, almost sick with it, feeling like it’s being wrenched out of his chest and he doesn’t even know why because they’re safe now.