I may not always know what's right, but I know I want you here tonight.

Continued on from
this thread.
---
“Mummy? Daddy?”

Ángela’s sweet voice cut through the swathes of sleep, quivering with an uncharacteristic hint of uncertainty. Still swaddled in sleep with one foot in the realm of dreams, Mallos groaned internally and prayed that Croe would attend to their daughter’s needs. She was usually up before him anyway.

Something about that thought generated an urgent sense of unease the shape and size of a drop of ice in his stomach. Why did it feel wrong to think that? Why was his heart suddenly hammering harder than it should be?

“¡Mamá!” The voice said again, more insistently this time. Something soft hit Mallos in the face. “¡Papá! ¡Despertarse!”

The last word shuddered in his mind, unpalatable. He opened his eyes.

The pillow which Ángela had just thrown at him was lying on top of the duvet covers by his head. He must have fallen asleep while he was sat on the bed beside Croe’s recumbent form without meaning to, because he was lying in an awkward position: on his side with his legs over the edge of the bed and his head on her stomach. His head moved up and down to the rhythm of her breathing. Ángela was stood by the bed, watching them both with an expression which was both calculating and unsure. It must have been odd enough for her to wake up in a strange place without also then having to go look for her parents and then finding them crashed out, fully-clothed, on the bed.

Mallos sat up, rubbing the corner of his eye. As was customary for her, Ángie climbed up onto the bed next to him and from there onto his lap, eyeing her mother’s motionless form.

“Mamá,” she repeated, poking Croe’s leg.

Mallos folded his hand over hers, shaking his head to try and clear it of the last remnants of sleep. How could he have dozed off like that? He’d only rescued half his family from Shaman. Ángela’s face was lit only by moonlight through the open window, and the majority of the room lay in inky shadows. Night-time. Dawn had just broken when he’d brought Croe back, so he must have slept for most of the day. How much time had passed on Shaman? Hours? Days? Anything could have happened to Tristan and Morgana by now.

He took a breath, forcing himself to quell the sense of panic rising in his throat, and wrapped his arms around his youngest daughter. Holding her tightly, he stood up and carried her out of the room, ignoring her wriggling and whining for her mother. Fortunately, Abilio - one of the evening cleaners, was passing by further up the corridor outside of the bedroom. Mallos called him over and firmly passed his child over into to the surprised servant’s arms. Ángela’s lower lip quivered. Mallos took her face in his hands and kissed her on the forehead.

“I’ll be back soon,” he promised, “and when I come back we’ll talk, but right now I need to go and take care of some things. Stay here. Be good.”

On every previous occasion where he had said something similar, Ángie had never not cried, screamed, kicked, held her breath, begged him to stay, or any combination of the above. This time, for the first time ever, she just nodded. Her dark eyes were spread wide, glistening with unfallen tears, and her mouth was downturned with genuine upset. Maybe it was something in his tone of voice.

“Can you get someone to sit with her for a while?” Mallos asked Abilio as he released his daughter fully, taking a step back. “I’ll add a bonus - ”

“No sweat, sir.” Abilio reassured him. “I got this.”

He carried Ángela down the corridor towards her bedroom. She held her nerve even as she disappeared around the corner of the corridor, not shedding so much as a single tear. Somehow, that was worse. It would have been easier to deal with the normalcy of an infantile tantrum than this deathly quiet. Mallos glanced over his shoulder at the door to his bedroom briefly before twisting his foot and teleporting into Shaman. He landed in the middle of a forest, right in front of a tree with a poster stapled to it.

WANTED for regicide
Former crown prince Tristan
Any information, contact King Mordred or Lady Morgana at the castle

For a moment, Mallos couldn’t hear anything except the sound of his own heart thudding in his chest. Regicide. King Mordred.

Lady Morgana.

Did that… did that mean…?

His brain registered, belatedly, the sound of oncoming hooves. Mallos reacted automatically by stepping off the path he’d been standing on and slipping behind the tree. Other posters were visible on the ones behind it, some bearing Tristan’s face. The hoofbeats - a plethora of them - clattered ever closer until a single voice halted the thunder.

“Woah there!” The voice, male, shouted. “We’re at the edge of the Kingswood. We should spread out from here.”

“I dunno, you guys.” A second voice interrupted. This one was female and had a twinge of uncertainty in her tone. “Does nobody else think it’s odd that the prince would just murder his own father? It just doesn’t seem like - ”

“We have our orders from King Mordred.” The man replied firmly. “And Lady Morgana has given this mission to hunt down the former prince her seal of approval too. You don’t like it, why don’t you run back to your own world?”

There was a sharp silence, broken only by the sound of the horses shuffling. Apparently the woman bit her tongue, because after a moment the man spoke again to tell everyone to fan out.

Mallos pressed his head against the back of the tree and closed his eyes, taking a few deep breaths. A thousand thoughts and memories - some word-based, some pictorial - all simultaneously wrestled for his attention. There was no time for this. He had to get to Tristan - now. He pushed his hands through his hair, trying to concentrate, but his focus kept waning. He kept seeing images of Morgana, thin-lipped - then laughing - then Arthur - then the words, goodbye, my friend…

It was too much. Too much in too small a time frame. Mallos had always been able to step up when he needed to, but he could never force himself to focus on one thing when his brain was jumping in a million directions. He just wasn’t wired that way. He couldn’t make himself concentrate any more than he could make himself sit still, or stop fidgeting with things, or not notice every tiny thing. It was just who he was.

Stop. He took another breath. If you can’t focus now, they could find him before you do.

Gritting his teeth, he honed in on a picture of Tristan’s face, trying to bat away all the other images vying for his attention. That didn’t work, so he tried Arthur instead. Arthur’s dying wish, that he pass on a message to Tristan. Mallos could focus for five minutes if it meant carrying out Arthur’s last request.

Finally, he could concentrate long enough to coax his magic into performing a locator spell. It didn’t take that long since, fortunately, Tristan wasn’t actually that far away. Mallos twisted his foot and vanished, reappearing in a cave with a domed ceiling and skull-embedded, earthen walls. Bits of jewellery and pottery, some smashed, dotted the edge of the room. He spun around, searching, eyes only for one thing.

“Tristan?” He called. Then, louder: “Tristan!”

Mallos
I've learned enough to know I'm never letting go