Many years ago, before the death of his father, the failed assassination attempt, and the resulting loss of his eyesight, Rasp used to wander the neighboring territories at whim. It was mostly boring, unexciting forest, but occasionally he would stumble across a stretch of farmland. To an ordinary citizen of the realm, a farmstead was just another component of everyday life. Home to some, a familiar sight to many, a passing dot along the carriage road, if you were really lucky. But to Rasp, an outsider who had spent his entire life crammed inside the colorless belly of a mountain, farms were a never ending source of wonder.

There were cows and horses to watch, dogs to befriend, and enough rats in the hayloft to keep his stomach full for days. But it was the people who’d fascinated him the most. Rasp never approached any of them outright — except for Priss, of course, the rebellious farmer’s daughter who’d happily demonstrated that haylofts had uses beyond catching rats. Priss had been the exception to the rule, though. Rasp had kept his distance from all other citizens of the realm, content to watch their antics from afar. The farm folk were always coming and going, up from dawn until dusk, laboring away on their little patch of heaven.

It was on one such visit, deep in the late autumn months, that Rasp discovered the love of his life. And no, he wasn’t talking about Priss. He’d been wrestling with the farm dogs behind the barn when an unfamiliar scent struck him low. It was a warm smell, thick with the sweet, tangy aroma of plums and a savory kick of thyme. Abandoning the dogs, Rasp had followed it to the small farm cottage. He found himself near the kitchen, with the love of his life cooling on an open windowsill.

He had never seen a galette before and, consequently, had no idea what it was. But, at that moment, Rasp realized he was in love. Looking back, he wished he’d left money and not a catch of dead rats as payment on the sill, but his understanding of how the outside world operated was tragically undeveloped at the time. He took off with the pastry as fast as his legs would go, nearly dropping his prize several times on account of the blistering heat radiating from the not-yet-cooled plate.

Finding a suitable tree with plenty of leaf cover, Rasp climbed into the boughs and ate the galette out of sight. The first bite nearly made him cry. It was the best thing he’d ever tasted. Warm, sweet, and buttery, with just enough hit of thyme to make the inside of his nose itch. He devoured it in a single sitting and couldn’t move for hours, even after the screams from the farmhouse sent the farmer and his sons racing up and down the property with their pitchforks and shovels in hand.

Rasp never forgot that galette. Sometimes, in the wee hours of the morning, when nature was calling but he was still too cold to take care of business, he would drift between consciousness, dreaming of licking the dark, sticky syrup from his fingertips. Even now, the smell of caramelized plums and thyme called to him, beckoning him to come find it again, and relive one of the best moments of his life.

Admittedly, given Rasp’s circumstances, it seemed strange that memories of a long-gone dessert had become the focus of his thoughts. But after spending an untold number of days trapped underground, being paraded about as designated monster bait, his memories were one of the few safe havens he had left. In some ironic twist of fate, Rasp himself had become the plum galette. At least in the poetic sense. While his companions had kindly not sealed him inside a buttery pastry shell destined for the oven, he was food nonetheless. Fortunately for him, being monster food was relatively easy. All he had to do was sit, wait, and occasionally throw out a spell or two to drive the nameless one mad with hunger.

All in all, not bad, so long as you ignored the part where he stood a good chance of getting eaten.

The days passed uneventfully. Rasp slept in the open, under an endless expanse of soft, green glowing algae in what was once a grand colosseum. It even had a complex system of interconnected rooms built beneath the stands which, according to know-it-all Hop, was called a ‘hypogeum’. While Rasp didn’t care much for the name, nor the accompanying history lesson, he did like discovering that a few of the hypogeum’s old rooms were still filled with abandoned weaponry. He liked that very much. Particularly the part that involved him dragging weapons in and out all day, creating nifty piles in the open arena area above. For what reason? Other than to be a nuisance and play with stabby things, he wasn’t so sure there was one.

It gave him something to preoccupy his time, at the very least. And good gods did he need that more than ever. While he was free to wander the arena grounds and accompanying hypogeum at will, Rasp wasn’t allowed beyond the colosseum walls. Keeping him locked inside was for his own protection, Bromm assured him. The dwarf translator told many a story of a spellbound citizen following the beast’s voice to its lair, destined to never be seen again.

Rasp didn’t like those stories and preferred to think of pie instead.

Sometimes, when he wasn't sleeping, griping, or building giant piles of swords, he and Whisper would practice his magic. His mentor seemed to have taken a special interest in Rasp’s newfound glow spell. They spent hours working to harness the luminescence of the surrounding algae and channel it into a usable light source. At a reasonable glow, Rasp could hold the light for several minutes at a time, but Whisper kept pushing him to make it brighter. ‘Like the sun’ his mentor would tell him each time his attempts to push the spell to a satisfactory level failed to impress.

Normally Rasp would have demanded to know why he needed to emulate the sun. He saved his breath as the inevitable answer would be ‘the worm doesn’t get to ask questions’. Just like the worm wasn’t allowed out of the locked colosseum, or allowed to be apart of the many, many hushed meetings his teammates had without him, or ask questions about how long this side adventure was going to fucking take. In the end, however, he suspected he knew the reason, but even that came with a host of problems.

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If the nameless one possessed the ability to read his thoughts, then it could theoretically know everything he knew. Ultimately, it was better for everyone if Rasp was kept in the dark. And while he felt slightly left out each time his friends left for one of their whispered team meetings, it wasn’t forever. They always came back again, usually with food in hand and some residual argument to keep him entertained. Whisper retired in the evenings to the protection of the charmed chambers, but Faris and June always stayed the night with Rasp. As of late, Hop had started to hang around more and more as well.

Their evenings together were quickly becoming Rasp’s favorite part of the day. For one thing, no one was expecting him to train, and he could lounge at ease, trading stories beneath the otherworldly glow of the bioluminescent algae.

“So there I was—” Faris, the natural born story-teller, had a flare for making even the most mundane shit sound fantastical. It didn’t matter if Rasp had heard the story before or, better yet, been involved, he sat hanging on to every word just like the others “–-alone, wet, freezing my ass off, and running for my life. It didn’t know what it was at first, but it was big, and it kept on my trail like a wolf on a kill.”

“Wolves don’t chase kills,” June interjected. “By definition, a kill’s already dead. You mean prey. Wolves chase prey. And usually as a pack, not as a solitary—”

“Shhh,” Hop shushed. He made an ideal audience member. Whereas Rasp and June made it their unspoken mission to derail Faris’s retelling as often as possible, Hop actively participated, encouraging the story to unfold in the most dramatic way possible. “Will you please let him finish?”

“Nah, don’t worry,” Rasp said. “Faris doesn’t mind a little edging now and then.”

“I don’t know what that means, but I get the distinct feeling that I’m better off that way,” Hop replied.

June, naturally, insisted on remedying Hop’s willful ignorance. “It means—”

“It was a bear! Biggest one I’d ever seen.” Faris kept the story going in spite of the constant interruptions from his easily distracted audience. “It chased me for three days before I succumbed to exhaustion. I didn’t expect to wake up again. And when I did, I was even more surprised to find the damn thing sitting on top of me.”

“Oh please,” June muttered. “It’s not like you would have preferred me sitting on your in my other body.”

Faris flapped one of his ears. “I wouldn’t mind your human form if clothing wasn’t such a foreign concept to your family.”

“No way around it, I’m afraid,” June said. “I’ve got to take the clothes off before I shift, otherwise they’ll rip. And once I’m in bear form, there’s no practical way to carry them. Kind of ruins the illusion to see a giant bear carrying a bag in its mouth, after all. Ergo, I simply travel without. A little nudity never hurt anybody.” She paused, adding with a dramatic sigh, “That is until fuss bucket here insisted he carry some for me in his pack.”

An unexpected yawn escaped Rasp’s open mouth. It was the third one in nearly as many minutes. Despite his best efforts to stay awake, he could feel the weight of the day’s activities pulling his heavy eyelids further down. There was no use fighting it, he supposed. Rasp drew his blanket tight around his shoulders and settled onto the ground. Faris and June’s competing voices rose and fell above his head, their words slowly melding together into a soothing hum.

He was in that in-between state, not quite asleep, not fully awake, when the spongy dirt beneath him began to vibrate. It was gentle at first, like the buzz of a hummingbird’s wings in flight. The intensity doubled, tripled, quadrupled in the span of mere seconds as something worked its way upwards. With a thunderous boom, the dirt tore open, sending a wave of rock and dirt raining down over the enclosed arena. Rasp scrambled, shielding his head against the onslaught as he rolled to avoid the worst of it.

Finally, the buckling ground settled. Rasp squinted near where the rift had torn the arena asunder, gasping when a blurry shadow hauled its gargantuan body from the crevice. A soothing voice rippled across his mind as the beast slithered nearer, its great head rearing in the air high above him. My dear, I have been calling for you. Why do you not answer?

Rasp jumped to his feet and staggered backwards. The soft moss and dirt pulsed beneath him, as if the ground was alive, thrumming with a heartbeat of its own. He opened his mouth to scream but the voice swept over his mind, quieting his troubled thoughts.

Do not be afraid. I am here to help you. Come with me and I will make everything as it should be.

Rasp’s sixth sense buzzed a warning around the edges of his mind, like a fly trapped in a web, but he couldn’t discern the individual words. Panic overtook him as his instinct to fight battled against the rush of calmness surging through his veins.

A firm hand seized him by the shoulder, yanking him from the path of danger. “Rasp!” Hop’s voice was muffled as though he were yards away and not standing right next to him. “The glow spell now!”

Rasp obeyed without question. He drew within, summoning every available thread of magic as he pictured a glow as bright as the sun. The power built within his hands, fighting his control until, at last, Rasp released and willed the light into existence. Three things happened as a result. The first was the blinding light that pulsed across the colosseum, highlighting the decrepit arena in an eerie green glow. Second was the resulting screech from the creature that was far too close to him than it should have been. Third was the blistering sting that struck Rasp’s chest, causing him to stumble several steps backwards as a mysterious heat burrowed deep into his flesh and branched out.

“Hold up! Cut off his magic! It’s not a borrowing dra–” The rest of Faris’s warning was swallowed by distance. It was nothing more than an indistinguishable hum now, melding seamlessly amidst the other droning voices until all three vanished completely.

The searing heat within Rasp’s chest cooled. An overwhelming sense of peace caused his hands to fall uselessly to his sides, the spell on his lips forgotten. Tears leaked from the corner of his eyes as the surrounding glow rained down from above, like algae-frosted snowflakes. He should’ve been bothered that the light was dwindling, some minuscule portion of his mind insisted, but the thought disappeared as quickly as it’d come. Pinpricks of light danced along the edges of Rasp’s muddled vision as the earth began to sway in rhythm to the heartbeat thrumming beneath his feet.

Hush now, my dear. Don’t fret. Don’t fight. Let go of the pain you’ve been holding. You have no need for it anymore.

The voice enveloped him in velvety softness as the fight drained from his body. With a muffled whimper, unaware of the screams coming from all around, Rasp closed his eyes and gave in to the darkness.

Welcome home.