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Girl Genius - Nuée Ardente - 2/9
The sky was beginning to light up with predawn when they stopped running.
Sorin had never been out of Vulkanburg's walls at night, never off the paved, patrolled roads even during the day. The pine woods were dark and full of hooting calls, whispery noises, the grating pings and thuds of a wild automated clank falling to rust and still roaming.
But it was fine, wasn't it, because he traveled with the biggest monster of all.
It was fine, wasn't it...
"Hoy."
Oh. Huh. Sorin was on the ground. Sorin was on his knees. It was all over pine needles under him. Almost soft. He looked up and the Jägermonster was staring down at him, head tilted a little like it was weird that after a night like this someone would need to... wouldn't...
"I'm stopping here," he informed him.
"Hokay! Hy carry hyu."
"Um, no thank you?" His voice broke. The Jäger paused briefly in the middle of leaning in. "I think, uh. If your shoulder and my tools interact anymore with my ribs, they'll break." Nope, still leaning in. "And -- and you're not --"
"Right den." Sorin was whisked up. "De princess carry for hyu."
Oh good lords of the abyss.
So many teeth. So close.
Sorin knew he'd been human, once, centuries ago -- he didn't quite look it anymore. He'd chosen this -- to become a monster, a pillager, a cheerful killing machine.
And his mouth was glowing. It was faint, like some kinds of mushroom, not anything someone could have read by. It was green. Irradiated-green.
His mouth, and the inside of his nostrils, just a little. Sorin huddled as far away as he could, in case the Jäger sneezed out anything radioactive.
He thought about asking if it really didn't hurt, that he thought nothing of carrying a grown man with his back burned so badly. He thought of asking where the Jäger's pack was. If he was one of the wild ones, maybe. The feral ones, who'd refused to yield to the Baron's peace, who loved the carnage too much to...
... The Jägermonster's gliding jog rocked him into a daze. He let his eyelids slide closed.
--
Sorin never did fall entirely asleep. He was exhausted enough that he could have, but the fear that something horrible would happen the second he stopped paying attention jerked him back from the brink every time he drifted that far.
Suddenly being dropped several feet to land in water made the point moot, at any rate.
"What was that for?!" he spluttered as he sat up, both hands raking wet curls off his face. The Jäger was dogpaddling at his side, hat askew.
"Whoops."
"Whoops?"
The look on the monster's face was unexpectedly sheepish, scaly nose scrunched up. "Schlipped. Shot op."
"... Oh."
The one good thing he could say was that the river emerged from and ran past several volcanos. Even that far from its source it wasn't mountain-stream cold. He wouldn't have called it warm either, but not cold. He started trying to find his footing to stand back up; the Jäger grabbed his sleeve and tugged him back down.
"Ve float downschtream for a bit, jah? Dey gots to have hounds. Easy to break de trail dat way."
It was pretty much dawn now, the sun not yet visible because of the mountains but the sky turning a pinkish blue. Sorin chewed on his lip, even as he started paddling awkwardly after the Jäger.
"Won't they see us?"
A shrug. "Den I gots to fight. Got to rest mine legs sum, yes?"
Made sense.
In the morning light the Jäger's skin was a muted blue-green; he didn't seem that much bigger than Sorin. The 'towering over him' thing was probably mostly his legs.
His coat only held to the collar and sleeves by a few strips of cloth, the upper half of its back burned away. Underneath his back looked raw and bubbly, with pockmarks whose edges still bled whenever he moved and cracked the crust.
Sorin looked away. "I, um, don't know how to swim very well." Also, his satchel full of tools. He really didn't want to abandon them, but they might well sink him if his drenched clothes didn't manage it first.
"Dat's fine, Hy dun svim at all." He grabbed onto a fallen trunk, heaved it out of the muddy bank, and draped his arms on it.
"Oh."
Sorin paddled after him.
At least there was no way to go fast, so he didn't bother trying; he walked across the muddy bottom, tried to float as much as he could, tried to avoid getting tripped by branches and rocks, but it was almost restful. At least it was tiring in a different way.
"But if they track us to the river--"
The Jäger snorted. Sorin shut up.
"No, no. See, vat we haff here is a schmott gurl." He flicked Sorin a look over his shoulder, an eyeroll, half mocking and half fond. His eyes were dark. "Schmott vuns all tink so complicated dey trip demselves up all de time. Vat if dey cross de river, und then go upstream? Vat if dey make hyu think dey cross, und go back? Ken't be dey chust float down. Too easy. Too obvious."
"... That's pretty devious of you."
The Jäger spluttered, gave him a mildly offended look. "No, dat's lazy."
... Yeah, Sorin was going to give up for a little bit there. Annoying his rescuer... he was still too tired for it. God, but he was sore.
It was a construct they'd yelled for, at first. It was him they'd seen, not Sorin. If he hadn't moved, attracted their attention, would they have missed him?
Probably they would have canvassed the whole tunnel system and found him anyway.
--
The sun was showing over the mountains. Eight AM, perhaps even nine, he couldn't tell exactly. He should have been at work two hours ago. Master Iliescu would be looking, asking around. Maybe he'd already sent one of the neighbor's kids ask his parents.
Who would then tell him they'd seen him go to bed, and never get out of it.
That or they were telling it to the Viscountess, which was a different flavor of distressing.
He tripped for the fifth time in as many minutes, ended up chin-deep in tepid water, shivered.
"... Herr Jäger? Sir?"
The Jäger twitched, and then lifted his nearest ear. Had he been dozing...?
"I'm, uh. I'm cold." And hungry, and exhausted, and he, well, at least he didn't need to piss, which was really the only good thing about being in the river. Urgh.
"Hy iz not a sir," the Jäger said, sounding half-asleep. Of course, he could afford that, with the branch, Sorin thought sourly; and then he felt a little guilty, remembering being carried. "Guess dey vill be looking soon. Might as vell den op somevhere und let dem pass by."
Might as well... then up? Damn up? The heavy Mechanicsburg accent confused Sorin for a minute until he realized the 'den' part actually did mean den.
The Jäger floated closer to the riverbank, rose up, fountaining everywhere. His back oozed and then started dripping red again, wounds reopening. Urk. Sorin dragged himself out of the water on hands and knees, got up on wobbly legs.
The pines had given ground to tall leafy trees; there were more bushes at ground level, some of them enthusiastically thorny, but he could deal with it if it meant more cover.
He stumbled after the Jäger, concentrating on not tripping on anything. The sunlight didn't get to the ground, and his drenched clothes felt even cooler now that he could feel the breeze.
It took them approximately three minutes to attract the bear with the robot limb.
Sorin prudently retreated to a big tree and placed his back against it, in case he was attacked from behind while the Jäger was busy.
It was... a little terrifying, to watch him fight in daylight, against a creature of mostly flesh and blood. He wasn't strong to the point he could lift the bear, or shrug off a slap of that huge paw -- and there went some more blood, and the lower half of his sleeve -- but he was strong enough to grab its upper and lower jaws, and slowly wrench them apart.
There was a resounding crack of bone. The bear howled, snarled. The Jäger punched it in the throat.
After that it devolved into a slugfest. The bear got lucky with a swipe of its metal paw once and sent the Jäger rolling in the dead leaves, and then... stood there, making little choking, retching sounds.
The Jäger got back up, wobbled a little, and kicked it in the forehead.
Crack. It hit the ground like a felled tree.
"Woo!"
Sorin winced. "Don't yell! You're going to attract--"
"OooooooOOOOooo--"
"... Wolves?"
Oh damn it.
The Jäger bounced jauntily back to him, swept him off his feet in another princess carry, and took off at a run. He was laughing like a loon, all his teeth on display. His eyes and his mouth shone green strong enough to see the halo even in the forest's muted daylight.
A huge gray beast burst out of the bushes, and a second.
"Hold on!"
Sorin wrapped his arms around his shoulders, bounced around so hard his sore neck protested.
One of the wolves leapt, missed by two inches. The Jäger leapt up, sank his claws in, and started hauling them up with nothing but his arms.
A wolf jumped up after them. Sorin kicked out blindly, caught it in the jaw. Yipping, it fell back.
"--fff. Ow."
"Sorry!"
"Not hyu." The Jäger grinned down at Sorin, though it looked strained now. The muscles of his shoulders bulged under the strain. It wasn't like he had claws on his feet... hooves. Things. "Grab on vith hyu legs, sveethart, Hy step on hyu oddervise."
Sorin hauled himself up, tried to wrap his legs around him in the least bothersome way possible. It wasn't -- it was -- Good Lord, it was just a bit intimate?
On the other hand, wolves. Getting to be up in a tree sounded worth it.
A gravelly laugh in his ear. "Hyu really could hold on harder. Hy iz not like dem volves, Hy only bite if hyu ask nice."
Sorin growled, face flaming, and his fingers clenched over the burnt patches of skin on his shoulders.
"I will take my tongs to your wounds."
"Hoho. Rwoarr!"
"Shut up!"
"Never."
He had a pretty nice smile when it wasn't so huge it tumbled into terrifying. Sorin looked away. A trio of wolves milled around the foot of the tree, but another was already leaving, disappearing into the bushes. He hoped they'd find the bear carcass and get busy with it soon...
The Jäger bumped him with his pectorals. "You go furst."
Sorin fumbled with the tree and his blood-slick grip before he managed to plant a foot on the Jäger's thigh and push himself up. The tree twisted, forked, left a space to huddle in. The trunk was huge; the tree must be several centuries old -- it didn't mean a lot of space, but enough that once he got his ass settled in a hollow and his back pressed to a branch thicker than he was wide he didn't really fear falling.
Which was good because they were quite a way up.
The Jäger pulled himself in; his hoof slipped on the bark and he almost toppled into Sorin's lap, a hand shooting forward at the last second to brace against a branch by Sorin's head.
"--Whoa. Um."
His smile really was unreasonably charming, Sorin thought muzzily, especially for how toothy, how incandescent it was.
He leaned in and it was probably so he could pull his legs in and he would shift back in a second, he'd shift back, he'd --
His mouth was on Sorin's, insistent enough to push him back against the trunk. His other hand was on Sorin's jaw, lips parting hot and wet and, and Sorin matched him without thought, grunting quietly when the tip of the Jäger's tongue flicked against his own.
A low, rattling growl answered him; a weight settled on his thighs. He felt teeth, pointed, prickling at his lower lip, a hand smoothing down his shirt along his side, too-large hand squeezing his waist, his hip, slipping under his --
"No!"
He braced both hands against the Jägermonster's chest, wrenched free from the kiss. The trunk behind him was unyielding, the monster on top of him too strong, too heavy, there was nowhere to go.
"No, stop --"
Hands closed around his wrists, spreading them open; he strained with all the strength he'd gained from the forge, shifted him two inches, got nowhere else. No, no, no--
"--Hoy. Keed."
Glowing eyes. Glowing lips, mostly on the inside where they were still damp from--
"Hy stopped. Breathe."
Oh, so that. That was what his face looked like when things weren't funny. Oh.
"Hy let go now. Hyu breathe."
He sat up straight, slowly opened his fingers. Sorin didn't yank them free the second he felt the slack, waited. Relief and fear mixed with shame, I was wrong, he wasn't...
"Um."
"It'z okay."
The Jäger shuffled back, found a branching fork of his own to wedge himself into. He moved slow, all telegraphed. His mouth pinched weird for a minute and then he did smile, mouth closed over his teeth; Sorin flinched.
"Sorry," the Jäger said. "Hy see hyu looking at me, und hyu schmell good like maybe hyu want to. Mine mistake--"
"No," Sorin interrupted, unable to even look at him anymore. "No, I -- I did. Look. I looked, I just, you startled me and I. I..."
And he was making excuses for hurting a man who'd been -- rough, okay, and cavalier -- and friendly, even if he was extracting Sorin from that mess for his own benefit.
"I don't know why I assumed you'd just. Keep going if I said no. No, I know why but it's stupid, everyone says you guys are barely under control and--" cruel and, and evil, "but you haven't been like that at all. Sorry." He took in a shuddering breath, released it as slow as possible. "...Sorry."
When he looked up the Jäger was smiling back, not the wide affair of before, but fangs showing again. Sorin blinked, cheeks heating up.
"Doz dat mean hyu wanna try again?"
"No!"
"Aww. My heart, it iz in so many pieces."
The way his eyebrows waggled indicated he was thinking of something a fair sight lower than his heart. Sorin glared at him. Chuckling, the Jäger bowed from the waist, inclined his head.
His hat tumbled off into Sorin's lap. Sorin grabbed it before it could fall off the tree, handed it back, too flustered to meet his eyes.
"Thanks," the Jäger said. He took it back, put it back on. His hair was blue-green too, only much lighter than his skin, and less grayish. Strange. Not bad, just--
"We, uh. Should probably do something about your back. You're bleeding kind of a lot. By which I mean how many liters of the stuff do you have in there?"
The Jäger snorted. "Trade secret, keed. Hy dunno vhat's op, should be closed already."
Rather than unbutton anything, he yanked his shredded shirt and jacket over his head. He dropped the sodden mess in the fork of the biggest branches, and craned his neck to look.
Sorin looked, too, one second only before stopping himself, stomach twisting in shame at his -- curiosity.
"Huh. De hell iz even wrong."
Sorin took a bracing breath, told himself he was being entirely professional and not seductive or inappropriate at all, and said "Let me look," shuffling cautiously closer. The Jäger arched an eyebrow at him like he was about to say something, but turned in his seat, draping a thigh across a rising branch in a way that pulled the cloth of his pants taut over thick muscle. Whoa, no wonder he jumped like a mountain goat -- oh good heavens. No. Bad. Stop.
Sorin leaned in, worked on ignoring the lines of his waist. His shoulders might have been equally distracting had they not been so badly blistered.
"Huh. Okay, the burned parts look... a bit smaller? But you've got pockmarks, and they keep cracking open when you move, I don't know wh -- oh sweet lightning."
"Hmm?"
Sorin slapped his shoulder for that mild, unconcerned tone. "You've got volcanic stone in there!"
"Rocks?" He scratched his chin. "Hy dun fight with no rocks..."
"It's lava, numb-for-brains! It burned you until it cooled and you've been, I bet you've been trying to heal over it, urgh, this is gross."
He couldn't even figure out how it hadn't burned him through. The black flecks were small, the biggest maybe the size of one of his nails, but the temperatures needed to get solid rock to melt were unforgiving to anything even the slightest bit softer. It was a wonder he didn't have charred, fist-sized craters down to his ribcage instead.
Okay. It couldn't be much worse than the time Richter had dropped a mold full of molten iron down his boot.
Granted, they'd had to amputate.
But the fact was, he'd seen burns before. What bothered him here was mostly that the Jäger had been traveling while the flecks of lava cooled down and incidentally burned their slow way through his flesh, and the half-grown-over thing -- and the Jäger didn't look like it hurt him half as much as it ought.
"We don't have salve or clean cloth or anything, but if I... If I just get them out, you'll heal on your own, right?"
The Jäger stared at him over his shoulder for an unsettlingly long time, and then sighed, nodded. "Guess so. Fine, pull dem out."
Sorin opened his satchel, felt around for the smallest tongs he had. They weren't adapted for flesh, nothing as neat and precise as tweezers, but it was that or going digging with his nails, and his nails were gross with dirt and caked blood. He didn't care how unlikely it was that a construct of the Heterodynes would get infections like a common mortal, he wasn't risking it.
In the end he had to get a file, too, to prod and scratch some of the flecks upright enough that he could grab and yank them free.
Every extraction prompted a small spurt of blood, clotted with ash and bits of dead flesh. He sponged the Jäger's back with his own sleeve and kept going. The Jäger entertained himself commenting on what he could hear of the wolves and some kind of giant badger fighting over the bear's carcass.
"Think I'm done," Sorin said as he looked over his back again, nose only one inch away from his skin. There were some spots -- the craters he'd done first -- where he could already see new flesh burgeoning in the holes.
Funny that his flesh was a perfectly normal meaty pink, when his skin was greenish.
He glanced down the dip of his spine, just in case he'd missed anything, and.
And.
Oh.
He swallowed, looked away, wiped the tools he'd used on a cleanish corner of his sleeve and dumped them back in his satchel.
"Yeah. Done."
"So unfair, dat you can get hyu hands all over me, but hy ken't." The Jäger let out a totally unconvincing sniff. "Prodding me in der deepest holes--"
"I will pull out all your teeth next, do not try me."
The Jäger leered at him over his shoulder, long floppy ears flicking up. "Aw, darlink. Hy knew hyu cared."
Blushing hard, Sorin crossed his arms and looked away with a harrumph.
"By de way, mine name iz Velimir."
"--Oh." Oh. Right. They hadn't... done that yet. Sorin wet his lip, bit it a little. "Velimir?"
God, he'd just said so.
"I'm Sorin. Sorin Petrescu."
"Goot name." The Jäger -- Velimir, huh -- turned to sit with his side to Sorin, pressed the lower half of his back against the wood, cautious of his wounds for the first time Sorin had ever noticed. "Jäger dun use der family name much. But mine first name means Great Peace," he intoned, head hanging like it was a shameful secret.
Sorin spluttered, stared at him for confirmation -- this cheerful war machine on devil legs, this Jäger -- and then started to laugh.
Sorin had never been out of Vulkanburg's walls at night, never off the paved, patrolled roads even during the day. The pine woods were dark and full of hooting calls, whispery noises, the grating pings and thuds of a wild automated clank falling to rust and still roaming.
But it was fine, wasn't it, because he traveled with the biggest monster of all.
It was fine, wasn't it...
"Hoy."
Oh. Huh. Sorin was on the ground. Sorin was on his knees. It was all over pine needles under him. Almost soft. He looked up and the Jägermonster was staring down at him, head tilted a little like it was weird that after a night like this someone would need to... wouldn't...
"I'm stopping here," he informed him.
"Hokay! Hy carry hyu."
"Um, no thank you?" His voice broke. The Jäger paused briefly in the middle of leaning in. "I think, uh. If your shoulder and my tools interact anymore with my ribs, they'll break." Nope, still leaning in. "And -- and you're not --"
"Right den." Sorin was whisked up. "De princess carry for hyu."
Oh good lords of the abyss.
So many teeth. So close.
Sorin knew he'd been human, once, centuries ago -- he didn't quite look it anymore. He'd chosen this -- to become a monster, a pillager, a cheerful killing machine.
And his mouth was glowing. It was faint, like some kinds of mushroom, not anything someone could have read by. It was green. Irradiated-green.
His mouth, and the inside of his nostrils, just a little. Sorin huddled as far away as he could, in case the Jäger sneezed out anything radioactive.
He thought about asking if it really didn't hurt, that he thought nothing of carrying a grown man with his back burned so badly. He thought of asking where the Jäger's pack was. If he was one of the wild ones, maybe. The feral ones, who'd refused to yield to the Baron's peace, who loved the carnage too much to...
... The Jägermonster's gliding jog rocked him into a daze. He let his eyelids slide closed.
--
Sorin never did fall entirely asleep. He was exhausted enough that he could have, but the fear that something horrible would happen the second he stopped paying attention jerked him back from the brink every time he drifted that far.
Suddenly being dropped several feet to land in water made the point moot, at any rate.
"What was that for?!" he spluttered as he sat up, both hands raking wet curls off his face. The Jäger was dogpaddling at his side, hat askew.
"Whoops."
"Whoops?"
The look on the monster's face was unexpectedly sheepish, scaly nose scrunched up. "Schlipped. Shot op."
"... Oh."
The one good thing he could say was that the river emerged from and ran past several volcanos. Even that far from its source it wasn't mountain-stream cold. He wouldn't have called it warm either, but not cold. He started trying to find his footing to stand back up; the Jäger grabbed his sleeve and tugged him back down.
"Ve float downschtream for a bit, jah? Dey gots to have hounds. Easy to break de trail dat way."
It was pretty much dawn now, the sun not yet visible because of the mountains but the sky turning a pinkish blue. Sorin chewed on his lip, even as he started paddling awkwardly after the Jäger.
"Won't they see us?"
A shrug. "Den I gots to fight. Got to rest mine legs sum, yes?"
Made sense.
In the morning light the Jäger's skin was a muted blue-green; he didn't seem that much bigger than Sorin. The 'towering over him' thing was probably mostly his legs.
His coat only held to the collar and sleeves by a few strips of cloth, the upper half of its back burned away. Underneath his back looked raw and bubbly, with pockmarks whose edges still bled whenever he moved and cracked the crust.
Sorin looked away. "I, um, don't know how to swim very well." Also, his satchel full of tools. He really didn't want to abandon them, but they might well sink him if his drenched clothes didn't manage it first.
"Dat's fine, Hy dun svim at all." He grabbed onto a fallen trunk, heaved it out of the muddy bank, and draped his arms on it.
"Oh."
Sorin paddled after him.
At least there was no way to go fast, so he didn't bother trying; he walked across the muddy bottom, tried to float as much as he could, tried to avoid getting tripped by branches and rocks, but it was almost restful. At least it was tiring in a different way.
"But if they track us to the river--"
The Jäger snorted. Sorin shut up.
"No, no. See, vat we haff here is a schmott gurl." He flicked Sorin a look over his shoulder, an eyeroll, half mocking and half fond. His eyes were dark. "Schmott vuns all tink so complicated dey trip demselves up all de time. Vat if dey cross de river, und then go upstream? Vat if dey make hyu think dey cross, und go back? Ken't be dey chust float down. Too easy. Too obvious."
"... That's pretty devious of you."
The Jäger spluttered, gave him a mildly offended look. "No, dat's lazy."
... Yeah, Sorin was going to give up for a little bit there. Annoying his rescuer... he was still too tired for it. God, but he was sore.
It was a construct they'd yelled for, at first. It was him they'd seen, not Sorin. If he hadn't moved, attracted their attention, would they have missed him?
Probably they would have canvassed the whole tunnel system and found him anyway.
--
The sun was showing over the mountains. Eight AM, perhaps even nine, he couldn't tell exactly. He should have been at work two hours ago. Master Iliescu would be looking, asking around. Maybe he'd already sent one of the neighbor's kids ask his parents.
Who would then tell him they'd seen him go to bed, and never get out of it.
That or they were telling it to the Viscountess, which was a different flavor of distressing.
He tripped for the fifth time in as many minutes, ended up chin-deep in tepid water, shivered.
"... Herr Jäger? Sir?"
The Jäger twitched, and then lifted his nearest ear. Had he been dozing...?
"I'm, uh. I'm cold." And hungry, and exhausted, and he, well, at least he didn't need to piss, which was really the only good thing about being in the river. Urgh.
"Hy iz not a sir," the Jäger said, sounding half-asleep. Of course, he could afford that, with the branch, Sorin thought sourly; and then he felt a little guilty, remembering being carried. "Guess dey vill be looking soon. Might as vell den op somevhere und let dem pass by."
Might as well... then up? Damn up? The heavy Mechanicsburg accent confused Sorin for a minute until he realized the 'den' part actually did mean den.
The Jäger floated closer to the riverbank, rose up, fountaining everywhere. His back oozed and then started dripping red again, wounds reopening. Urk. Sorin dragged himself out of the water on hands and knees, got up on wobbly legs.
The pines had given ground to tall leafy trees; there were more bushes at ground level, some of them enthusiastically thorny, but he could deal with it if it meant more cover.
He stumbled after the Jäger, concentrating on not tripping on anything. The sunlight didn't get to the ground, and his drenched clothes felt even cooler now that he could feel the breeze.
It took them approximately three minutes to attract the bear with the robot limb.
Sorin prudently retreated to a big tree and placed his back against it, in case he was attacked from behind while the Jäger was busy.
It was... a little terrifying, to watch him fight in daylight, against a creature of mostly flesh and blood. He wasn't strong to the point he could lift the bear, or shrug off a slap of that huge paw -- and there went some more blood, and the lower half of his sleeve -- but he was strong enough to grab its upper and lower jaws, and slowly wrench them apart.
There was a resounding crack of bone. The bear howled, snarled. The Jäger punched it in the throat.
After that it devolved into a slugfest. The bear got lucky with a swipe of its metal paw once and sent the Jäger rolling in the dead leaves, and then... stood there, making little choking, retching sounds.
The Jäger got back up, wobbled a little, and kicked it in the forehead.
Crack. It hit the ground like a felled tree.
"Woo!"
Sorin winced. "Don't yell! You're going to attract--"
"OooooooOOOOooo--"
"... Wolves?"
Oh damn it.
The Jäger bounced jauntily back to him, swept him off his feet in another princess carry, and took off at a run. He was laughing like a loon, all his teeth on display. His eyes and his mouth shone green strong enough to see the halo even in the forest's muted daylight.
A huge gray beast burst out of the bushes, and a second.
"Hold on!"
Sorin wrapped his arms around his shoulders, bounced around so hard his sore neck protested.
One of the wolves leapt, missed by two inches. The Jäger leapt up, sank his claws in, and started hauling them up with nothing but his arms.
A wolf jumped up after them. Sorin kicked out blindly, caught it in the jaw. Yipping, it fell back.
"--fff. Ow."
"Sorry!"
"Not hyu." The Jäger grinned down at Sorin, though it looked strained now. The muscles of his shoulders bulged under the strain. It wasn't like he had claws on his feet... hooves. Things. "Grab on vith hyu legs, sveethart, Hy step on hyu oddervise."
Sorin hauled himself up, tried to wrap his legs around him in the least bothersome way possible. It wasn't -- it was -- Good Lord, it was just a bit intimate?
On the other hand, wolves. Getting to be up in a tree sounded worth it.
A gravelly laugh in his ear. "Hyu really could hold on harder. Hy iz not like dem volves, Hy only bite if hyu ask nice."
Sorin growled, face flaming, and his fingers clenched over the burnt patches of skin on his shoulders.
"I will take my tongs to your wounds."
"Hoho. Rwoarr!"
"Shut up!"
"Never."
He had a pretty nice smile when it wasn't so huge it tumbled into terrifying. Sorin looked away. A trio of wolves milled around the foot of the tree, but another was already leaving, disappearing into the bushes. He hoped they'd find the bear carcass and get busy with it soon...
The Jäger bumped him with his pectorals. "You go furst."
Sorin fumbled with the tree and his blood-slick grip before he managed to plant a foot on the Jäger's thigh and push himself up. The tree twisted, forked, left a space to huddle in. The trunk was huge; the tree must be several centuries old -- it didn't mean a lot of space, but enough that once he got his ass settled in a hollow and his back pressed to a branch thicker than he was wide he didn't really fear falling.
Which was good because they were quite a way up.
The Jäger pulled himself in; his hoof slipped on the bark and he almost toppled into Sorin's lap, a hand shooting forward at the last second to brace against a branch by Sorin's head.
"--Whoa. Um."
His smile really was unreasonably charming, Sorin thought muzzily, especially for how toothy, how incandescent it was.
He leaned in and it was probably so he could pull his legs in and he would shift back in a second, he'd shift back, he'd --
His mouth was on Sorin's, insistent enough to push him back against the trunk. His other hand was on Sorin's jaw, lips parting hot and wet and, and Sorin matched him without thought, grunting quietly when the tip of the Jäger's tongue flicked against his own.
A low, rattling growl answered him; a weight settled on his thighs. He felt teeth, pointed, prickling at his lower lip, a hand smoothing down his shirt along his side, too-large hand squeezing his waist, his hip, slipping under his --
"No!"
He braced both hands against the Jägermonster's chest, wrenched free from the kiss. The trunk behind him was unyielding, the monster on top of him too strong, too heavy, there was nowhere to go.
"No, stop --"
Hands closed around his wrists, spreading them open; he strained with all the strength he'd gained from the forge, shifted him two inches, got nowhere else. No, no, no--
"--Hoy. Keed."
Glowing eyes. Glowing lips, mostly on the inside where they were still damp from--
"Hy stopped. Breathe."
Oh, so that. That was what his face looked like when things weren't funny. Oh.
"Hy let go now. Hyu breathe."
He sat up straight, slowly opened his fingers. Sorin didn't yank them free the second he felt the slack, waited. Relief and fear mixed with shame, I was wrong, he wasn't...
"Um."
"It'z okay."
The Jäger shuffled back, found a branching fork of his own to wedge himself into. He moved slow, all telegraphed. His mouth pinched weird for a minute and then he did smile, mouth closed over his teeth; Sorin flinched.
"Sorry," the Jäger said. "Hy see hyu looking at me, und hyu schmell good like maybe hyu want to. Mine mistake--"
"No," Sorin interrupted, unable to even look at him anymore. "No, I -- I did. Look. I looked, I just, you startled me and I. I..."
And he was making excuses for hurting a man who'd been -- rough, okay, and cavalier -- and friendly, even if he was extracting Sorin from that mess for his own benefit.
"I don't know why I assumed you'd just. Keep going if I said no. No, I know why but it's stupid, everyone says you guys are barely under control and--" cruel and, and evil, "but you haven't been like that at all. Sorry." He took in a shuddering breath, released it as slow as possible. "...Sorry."
When he looked up the Jäger was smiling back, not the wide affair of before, but fangs showing again. Sorin blinked, cheeks heating up.
"Doz dat mean hyu wanna try again?"
"No!"
"Aww. My heart, it iz in so many pieces."
The way his eyebrows waggled indicated he was thinking of something a fair sight lower than his heart. Sorin glared at him. Chuckling, the Jäger bowed from the waist, inclined his head.
His hat tumbled off into Sorin's lap. Sorin grabbed it before it could fall off the tree, handed it back, too flustered to meet his eyes.
"Thanks," the Jäger said. He took it back, put it back on. His hair was blue-green too, only much lighter than his skin, and less grayish. Strange. Not bad, just--
"We, uh. Should probably do something about your back. You're bleeding kind of a lot. By which I mean how many liters of the stuff do you have in there?"
The Jäger snorted. "Trade secret, keed. Hy dunno vhat's op, should be closed already."
Rather than unbutton anything, he yanked his shredded shirt and jacket over his head. He dropped the sodden mess in the fork of the biggest branches, and craned his neck to look.
Sorin looked, too, one second only before stopping himself, stomach twisting in shame at his -- curiosity.
"Huh. De hell iz even wrong."
Sorin took a bracing breath, told himself he was being entirely professional and not seductive or inappropriate at all, and said "Let me look," shuffling cautiously closer. The Jäger arched an eyebrow at him like he was about to say something, but turned in his seat, draping a thigh across a rising branch in a way that pulled the cloth of his pants taut over thick muscle. Whoa, no wonder he jumped like a mountain goat -- oh good heavens. No. Bad. Stop.
Sorin leaned in, worked on ignoring the lines of his waist. His shoulders might have been equally distracting had they not been so badly blistered.
"Huh. Okay, the burned parts look... a bit smaller? But you've got pockmarks, and they keep cracking open when you move, I don't know wh -- oh sweet lightning."
"Hmm?"
Sorin slapped his shoulder for that mild, unconcerned tone. "You've got volcanic stone in there!"
"Rocks?" He scratched his chin. "Hy dun fight with no rocks..."
"It's lava, numb-for-brains! It burned you until it cooled and you've been, I bet you've been trying to heal over it, urgh, this is gross."
He couldn't even figure out how it hadn't burned him through. The black flecks were small, the biggest maybe the size of one of his nails, but the temperatures needed to get solid rock to melt were unforgiving to anything even the slightest bit softer. It was a wonder he didn't have charred, fist-sized craters down to his ribcage instead.
Okay. It couldn't be much worse than the time Richter had dropped a mold full of molten iron down his boot.
Granted, they'd had to amputate.
But the fact was, he'd seen burns before. What bothered him here was mostly that the Jäger had been traveling while the flecks of lava cooled down and incidentally burned their slow way through his flesh, and the half-grown-over thing -- and the Jäger didn't look like it hurt him half as much as it ought.
"We don't have salve or clean cloth or anything, but if I... If I just get them out, you'll heal on your own, right?"
The Jäger stared at him over his shoulder for an unsettlingly long time, and then sighed, nodded. "Guess so. Fine, pull dem out."
Sorin opened his satchel, felt around for the smallest tongs he had. They weren't adapted for flesh, nothing as neat and precise as tweezers, but it was that or going digging with his nails, and his nails were gross with dirt and caked blood. He didn't care how unlikely it was that a construct of the Heterodynes would get infections like a common mortal, he wasn't risking it.
In the end he had to get a file, too, to prod and scratch some of the flecks upright enough that he could grab and yank them free.
Every extraction prompted a small spurt of blood, clotted with ash and bits of dead flesh. He sponged the Jäger's back with his own sleeve and kept going. The Jäger entertained himself commenting on what he could hear of the wolves and some kind of giant badger fighting over the bear's carcass.
"Think I'm done," Sorin said as he looked over his back again, nose only one inch away from his skin. There were some spots -- the craters he'd done first -- where he could already see new flesh burgeoning in the holes.
Funny that his flesh was a perfectly normal meaty pink, when his skin was greenish.
He glanced down the dip of his spine, just in case he'd missed anything, and.
And.
Oh.
He swallowed, looked away, wiped the tools he'd used on a cleanish corner of his sleeve and dumped them back in his satchel.
"Yeah. Done."
"So unfair, dat you can get hyu hands all over me, but hy ken't." The Jäger let out a totally unconvincing sniff. "Prodding me in der deepest holes--"
"I will pull out all your teeth next, do not try me."
The Jäger leered at him over his shoulder, long floppy ears flicking up. "Aw, darlink. Hy knew hyu cared."
Blushing hard, Sorin crossed his arms and looked away with a harrumph.
"By de way, mine name iz Velimir."
"--Oh." Oh. Right. They hadn't... done that yet. Sorin wet his lip, bit it a little. "Velimir?"
God, he'd just said so.
"I'm Sorin. Sorin Petrescu."
"Goot name." The Jäger -- Velimir, huh -- turned to sit with his side to Sorin, pressed the lower half of his back against the wood, cautious of his wounds for the first time Sorin had ever noticed. "Jäger dun use der family name much. But mine first name means Great Peace," he intoned, head hanging like it was a shameful secret.
Sorin spluttered, stared at him for confirmation -- this cheerful war machine on devil legs, this Jäger -- and then started to laugh.