#what if an underground structure had five million skeleton attack

[bluntforcefem]

'the viscera in your teeth' for fic titles? some flavour of sauces oc for this one persnaps,,

the viscera in your teeth – eli and evan get into a bad spot. the phoenix-harbringer gets them out of it.

it's on a shortcut to deeproot that neither of them have taken on foot where everything goes to hell; evan barely has time to throw up his arms in front of his face when the ground beneath them crumbles, and they both tumble down, down, down, into a darkened cavern with no way up or out.

his back aches. he didn't land right and the fall's definitely fucked something in his leg, maybe his ankle - but he's alive, and through his ragged breathing he can admit that's more than he was expecting when it hit him. the dim sunlight through the hole they made barely illuminates a thing. he can see flickers of fire, brief, little spots that don't clarify the shapes in the dark. when he pushes himself away, his back hits a wall. groans of undead begin to filter in.

in front of him, eli stands.

their wings burst into bright, bright flame, so sudden that evan has to jerk his head away, heat searing at his legs. their shoulders are hunched, breathing ragged. he can't see their face, from this angle. can't see if they're hurt.

"don't move," they tell him. evan nods quickly, even though they're probably not looking. he's never heard this tone from them, low and firm and not-all-there. something recognizable seeps in as they glance back. "we'll be alright."

they unsheath two swords from gods-know-where, one lit in a brillant flame like their own, the other a terrifying thing that blends into the dark and that evan doesn't linger on. as the heat rises, the dots of fire around the cavern reveal themselves to be spawners, and the cavern walls coalesce into a coliseum, decrepit and crumbling.

evan can't begin to count the crowd of wraiths.

they fall like dominos, dragged towards eli's blades as they throw themself into the fight, lurching onto their swords and splitting themselves neatly in half, on fire, crumbling to dust, only for their remains to be thrown into the next undead by pure momentum. eli scorches a path through them, slices through spawners like butter, molten metal dripping into the sand. the embers left on tattered cloth and bones provide light, but only briefly. his eyes stay locked on eli. a singular wraith lurches towards him—he doesn't have a second to panic before a tendril of voidmatter slams into it, impaling it on the wall next to him.

he scoots a little to the left, mouth dry.

when they hit the opposite coliseum wall, they finally stop. they lower their blades towards the sand, sweeping around to face evan from across the cavern, unreadable. there's nothing left of the monsters - not their corpses, not their loot, not their spawners. just ashes and sand.

"eli?" evan's voice echoes strangely against the stone. he tries to pull himself up and fails, biting back a cry as his weight leans too heavy on his foot. eli bolts back across the sand towards him, sheathing their swords somewhere along the way, and their hands come up to steady his shoulders. "holy shit, that- that was- gods, we could've died-"

their fingers leave streaks of ash on his t-shirt as they adjust their grip, shaking their head. "no," eli says, voice faint. they lean down and look him in the eye, searching. whatever they find there finally steadies them.

their lips twist, grin lopsided. "no," they repeat. "not on my watch."

evan blinks. he can still see the afterimage of their flames. this close, he realizes they're barely sweating. like it was nothing. like whatever the hell that was- nothing. they hold his gaze for a long moment before it dips down to scrutinize his leg, and he lets them focus on that instead, hands pressing at his shin while he leans against the wall, because it's easier.

adrenaline's been doing fucked things to his head, lately.