Written to the prompt by Making Up Adventurers — Knight who is increasingly certain they’re going to need to kill the party’s wizard. While they still can.

Originally posted on cohost on July 20th, 2024.


Clæv spends every spare moment for a fortnight anxiously keeping an anxious eye on Battennt. He’s anxious about Battennt, he’s anxious about what Battennt might do if he’s caught watching the wizard, and he’s anxious what the Battennt might do if the party catches onto him watching the wizard.

The wizard Battennt spends the time thinking about wizard shit.

The party is several months into their next trek—after a break at a hot spring and all the drama that erupted during their stay—when Clæv starts distinguishing the infinitesimal changes in Battennt. At first he tries to keep mental track but, like watching the sunset and trying distinguish how much darker blue the sky is from its blue a moment ago, the changes are so near gradual they’re hard to keep track from day to day.

So Clæv, the fighter in armour who refused “knight”, “man-at-arms”, and “soldier”, starts keeping a coded logbook.

Half of how troubling it all was, was that Battennt still performed all his wizard duties perfectly fine. Impeccable. Truly one of the most powerful wizards, if only he slept.

And now that he knew how long Battennt hadn’t been sleeping and now that he had been keeping track, Clæv had become all too aware of how far Battennt was in his ‘freefall towards a very bad place’.

“Uh, hey.”

Battennt doesn’t look up because Clæv’s telltale armour shift and clink let him know exactly who was standing over him. Battennt is doing the thing he does when he’s not thinking about wizard shit, which is resting while pretending to be thinking about wizard shit. It’s one of the things he’s been doing more and more. He’s glad that he’s broken Clæv’s usual “hey bud” approach. “Please tell me this is a confession, because I’m not having the sleep discussion with you again.”

While half of the party is in town, seeing if there’s lodging with enough space for all of them, the other half is taking the time to run inventory and maintenance. They’ve travelled so far since Clæv initially approached Battennt that the tree the wizard is sitting back against pretending to do wizard shit looks entirely alien to the one he’d been sitting back against back then.

It’s also hotter here. Clæv has been struggling in his armour. He’s struggling a lot.

“It’s a sort of continuation.”

Battennt tips his head up to the tree’s alien foliage, rests against the alien bark, and grimaces openly.

“I’ll be quick.”

“I prefer you not be at all, but have at me.”

Clæv sits down. He watches the grimace become a sneer, still directed skyward, and steadies himself with a deep breath in. “I’ve been noticing—“

“You’ve been watching me like a hawk.” Battennt is a sort of fatigue-driven annoyed that lacks any fire because fire is energy and Battennt doesn’t sleep, not real sleep, not sleep that replenishes him. He’d make some joke about the party’s falconer in comparison to Clæv but any joke evades him, fatigue-driven and all.

“I’ve been noticing,” Clæv restarts, insistence winning over the fear bubbling in his chest that Battennt had indeed caught him watching the wizard, “how you’ve been progressing—“

“Regressing morelike.”

“—and I think you’re far worse off than you might believe yourself.” Clæv is steadfast, even as Battennt tilts his head enough to land his eyes on him. The fighter has had a healthy respect for Battennt’s and the other party magic users’ ability to smite him before he could even draw a weapon. That healthy respect now comes with a fear response that grows daily when it comes to the wizard in front of him. “If you want to make sure you’re wandering off before you self-destruct.”

Battennt has been dealing with his lack of real sleep for some decades. He is acutely aware of its affects on him. He was pretty sure he spelled out as much to Clæv the last time they talked about this. He blinks slowly and intentionally at the fighter. “You think you’d know better than me?”

The certainty in Clæv’s eyes makes the ever-tired, exhausted, wrung out Battennt twitch. “I think you’re too far gone to notice how far gone you are.”

“Hmm.” Battennt nods appreciatively with a look of appraisal. “I _am_ pretty far gone.” He holds up a hand, ignoring the Clæv’s barely subdued panic response at the movement, and slides his eyes away from the fighter to inspect the back, then palm, then back of his hand.

Clæv has no idea what Battennt could be looking at, but is now at least hopeful Battennt has some distinct and measurable metric for when he needs to wander off to self-destruct.

“But ideally, I’d like to see Grig’s,“ the battlemage, “spirit utterly crushed to dust when they discover all the secrets of their whole situation are one big sham.”

Very aware—everyone was very aware—that the wizard and the battlemage didn’t get along, Clæv frowns, caught between asking if that were true and pushing past Battennt’s diversion from the topic at hand. Clæv knows the timeline for their current quest though. “That might take half a year. I think you have a month.”

“I can hold out.” Battennt sounds so simply sure of himself that it’s almost believable. The ever-tired, exhaustion, wrung out that bleeds and drains everything from his face, his posture, his speech, makes him entirely unbelievable. Nonetheless he’s not spectacularly, painfully lying.

The way Battennt eyes Clæv’s seated position tells Clæv he should leave sooner than later.

“This,“ the conversation, “wasn’t quick at all.”



The brawler, making attempts to grow as a person since their development during the last quest; attempts to approach Clæv on friendly terms by asking him what he’s writing.

Clæv is aware of Battennt’s eyes on him—in a way that’s not just _eyes_ on him but _wizard eyes_ that are brimming with potential smiting. “Almanac of sorts,” he says conversationally to the brawler but not conversationally about the topic. He smiles at them and talks about the weather instead. He puts down the logbook but later logs the feel of the look Battennt gave him.

Battennt’s slipping hold on the forces linked to his emotions in every look and outward expression is one of many infinitesimal changes. Clæv gave it an abstract eye glyph in the logbook. Another glyph represents the increasing amount of time in a day Battennt spends resting. A gradient range indicates mood with listless the darkest shade. Clæv has been doing a lot of scribbling to shade in the logbook.

He approaches Battennt during first watch, before Battennt casts sleep on himself, despite the bubbling fear that it’s the worst possible time to talk to the wizard about the worst possible subject. “So what’s the tipping point?”

Here in this warmer climate, Battennt has been grateful for his blanket being on the thinner side. He pulls it tighter over his shoulder, keeping his back to Clæv, with a lack of care to whether or not it can obscure himself. “You don’t want to know.”

“If you don’t tell me, I’ll keep wondering if every little regression I notice is the tipping point.” Clæv sounds used to this now, settled, calm, come to terms, prepared. It’s almost comforting to Battennt.

Battennt knows what the tipping point is. He knows it is well before what Clæv is probably imagining—losing control and hurting people. Since Clæv is so annoying upright and upstanding, Battennt also knows—and is annoyed that he knows Clæv this well now—that Clæv would find his actual tipping point not nearly regressed enough, to soon to end himself.

He stays silent, not pretending to sleep because he can’t.

“I think you have less time than you figure.”



There are days where Clæv thinks Battennt is out of control enough that he couldn’t kill the wizard if he tried. He moves from wondering if he’ll have to, to being sure of it.

The worst part about watching the wizard all the time is that Clæv starts feeling more genuine concern about Battennt along with the concern he might have to kill him. And then Clæv starts feeling more things about Battennt, not all of them falling under the category of concern.

“This is the worst possible time for a confession.”

Clæv couldn’t agree more. He’s caught the wizard slipping away from camp after the party is asleep but for the houndmaster’s watch that didn’t catch the wizard. He’s wondering if the goosebumps and the tightness in the chest from however Battennt is feeling about being stopped means he should kill him now, while he still might be able to.

Battennt sighs. “It happened.” He stays where he’s standing while Clæv thinks through the day, and probably the past couple days after that, incapable of figuring out the tipping point.

Then Clæv really looks at Battennt. The wizard is carrying his pack, leaving nothing behind. He looks resigned on top of listless; all at once, he looks ready to crumple to the ground absolutely finished and also more sure than Clæv has ever seen him. A small sure, just enough to hold him up, but deep and unshakeable. Clæv looks at Battennt and sees someone who can’t be swayed and who will absolutely follow through on wandering well and far enough away before self-destructing.

“What do I tell the others?”

Battennt smiles. It can’t help but be a weary smile.

The part of Clæv that has been feeling more things about Battennt aches.

What Clæv doesn’t know and can’t figure out, watching Battennt walk away, is the tipping point. No part of today’s journey—a couple rough battles included—clue him into what it could be. He runs over the day and the past couple days before again, again with meticulous detail, again, until it’s his turn for watch and he returns to the camp, and runs the days over again until the end of his watch and he relents to sleep.

Battennt had performed all his wizard duties perfectly fine. He hadn’t struggled or slipped up. During battles he hadn’t miscast or misfired. He hadn’t hurt anyone accidentally or on purpose. Outside of all the mundane signs of losing control Clæv had been tracking, there wasn’t any incident that Clæv could figure.

What Clæv can’t figure out is the moment Battennt’s self-preservation kicked in. That during one of today’s battles Battennt protected himself and only himself first and foremost, in a moment where he and the hunter would have taken a heavy hit—the old guard managed to pull the hunter back some but it was still rough.

The tipping point is not that Battennt was so far gone that he would hurt someone, but that someone would get hurt when he ought to have saved them.

When morning comes around and Battennt’s absence is noticed with even Grig the battlemage showing some concern, Clæv says, “I think he’s out.” They all accept it with little to no further inquiry. Some nod and talk about how hard the road was, that their stays in places with beds too short and too far between. The brawler puts a hand on Clæv’s shoulder as if he knows, hums, pats, and returns to packing up camp.

Written to the prompt by make-up-a-wizard — wizard who can hardly even remember how the world ended anymore

Content warning: memory loss

After writing part 1 and 2 in quick succession, this prompt came around and so here’s what happened to the villain who ended the world. I wrote these as a person with pretty significant memory issues, the first part and this one are pretty much just me.

Originally posted on cohost on June 17th, 2024.


Not because the end of the world wasn’t important. Important things were just as easy to forget. Everything was just as easy to forget, because forgetting happened and there was nothing he could do about it.

It all shifted about and faded, even if he tried to remember exactly as it was. He could wake up every day and tell himself the same story he told himself yesterday but thinking back to the moment, the senses changed; the time of day, the temperature, how many eyes were on him, what those people sounded like, how laboured his breath, the tone of his voice, the weight in his hands. It all changed.

And so did the words. He could tell himself the same story every day, but he couldn’t actually know or rely that those were the same words. First the meanings shifted, the connotations. They slipped about like the senses. And then they were misplaced.

With time, just like how he couldn’t remember when it happened—if there were people there, what he was doing, what he felt—he couldn’t remember the story right. He could repeat it every day and the words would still slip away from him. Everything did, all the time. And he was okay with that.

He had to be. He didn’t have any other choice. He had to be an amorphous, abstract, haphazard semblance of a person. He had to live day to day not remembering who he was, hoping there was some immutable part of him so that he didn’t have to apologize to yesterday’s him, and the day before, and all the days stretching back before then—that today’s him was betraying all those past versions of himself.

But he could hold onto the bare minimum. He knew he ended the world. He wasn’t so sure the world was better for it. It was impossible for him to remember every or even most days spent wandering this ended world to make any sort of judgement on “better”.

So he wanders, unsure of why, until he’s not sure if he wants to. And then he stops someplace, for no particular reason, until the immutable part of him that tells him he should be wandering pulls him away.

And all the while, his memories shift and fade. And every day he feels a different type of guilt about something he remembers different from yesterday.

Written to the prompt by make-up-a-wizard — wizard who is indisputably certain that a pirate’s life is not for them

Originally posted on cohost on April 26th, 2024.


It’s not the seasickness. They got used to the seasickness. They’re still seasick all the time, but they got used to it.

It’s not doing their job (while seasick). Their job is easy, they could just about do it in their sleep (while seasick). A little wind here, a little calm there, a little luck for the rocks, a little protection from the seabeasts. Simple, easy work.

It’s not any sort of ethical or moral concerns. Pirates raid ships that have stuff, that stuff comes from people who can afford to ship stuff or from nations that can afford to ship stuff. They have absolutely no qualms about what they and the captain like to refer to as ‘wealth redistribution’.

It’s certainly not the company. They quite like the company.

It’s when the ship is down too many hands because the alcohol taken from the last raid was maybe not fit for consumption and so someone put a rope in their hands. It was the actual pirate life, actual pirate labour and ache, labour and ache while seasick and hungover from also that alcohol but apparently not as much as some of the crew had, that’s not for them.

Written to the prompt by make-up-a-wizard — wizard who keeps themself frail so their sleep spell will automatically succeed every night

Originally posted on cohost on April 16th, 2024.


It was just past midday so the party was in various states of milling around and shaking out their bones after lunch in various combinations of people sharing company and food. So Battennt was by himself, watching the motion of leaf and branch overhead, pretending to be doing wizard shit after sharing terrible hardtack bread with the hunter and the old guard and, briefly, the battlemage that left not long after it was evident Battennt was staying.

He heard the armour shift and clink of the fighter—the fighter in armour refused “knight”, “man-at-arms”, or “soldier” as there was no such system of military, which bothered the other fighter who was more of a fisticuffs and wrestling sort—well before he got close and near twice as long before he spoke. “Hey bud, can I talk to you about something?”

Battennt had been sitting with his back against the tree, his pretending to be doing wizard shit less and less believable as he’d slumped further and further until he was near lying down. “Uhhhhhh.” Before he can move to sit up or stand and before the fighter, Clæv, can shake palms at him to not get up on his accord, the burly one with axes—a brawler that made the other fighter hesitant to call themself a brawler in lieu of fighter—exhaled a booming exclamation that was the familiar rallying cry to get back on the road. Battennt was already up and moving and almost didn’t hear Clæv’s “later?”. He responded with a waving gesture that was trying for dismissal as though so little would believably dissuade Clæv from any laters.

It’s after dinner some miles away, blanket around Battennt’s shoulders as he prepares his bed, when Clæv sidles to him. “Hey bud.”

He knew it wasn’t so easy to dismiss Clæv, but he’d hoped for at least an entire day to plan an effective evasion. Part of Battennt hoped this was some sort of confession of romantic or sexual interest, because anything else he’d thought of all day would be more awkward to deal with. The rest of Battennt was annoyed he’d spent any time hoping that and thinking up why else Clæv would want to talk about something, wasting precious time he could be thinking about wizard shit.

“I noticed you don’t really eat dinner.”

“Oh.” This was worse than awkward. “Ah.” This was about as worse as it could get. “Ha ha.” He hadn’t thought of this.

“Like, ever.”

The blanket around Battennt’s shoulders was on the thinner side—he could always cast one of many heat spells if he was cold—but now he wished for the thickest of wool to obscure himself in as he felt himself grow stiff and visibly anxious. He rubbed the back of his neck, stiff and visibly anxious, and avoided eye contact. “Yeahhh.”

This is when Clæv sat down.

When Clæv sat down, Battennt lost all hope this would be a quick exchange of few words.

“I don’t think the houndmaster minds you feeding the hounds a little extra, but...”

“But?” Battennt is kneeling on his bedmat, he sits back and doesn’t pretend to busy himself with the rest of his bedding. Battennt is spectacularly, painfully aware of how bad he is at lying and pretending—he only ever fooled the other fighter, only ever some third of the time, and only ever due to the other fighter’s specific timbre of naiveté. All his energy towards lying and pretending right now was attempting to construct a believable excuse for what Clæv was driving at.

Clæv had an expression that said “are you really going to make me say it?”. Instead, he switched his approach and said, “And then you whale down breakfast. I’m not sure that’s good for you.”

There were many things not good for Battennt, namely not sleeping. He’d argue it was the top of the list above things like poisonous mushrooms and fatal stab wounds since it was actively a problem at all times and not just a potential. “I, uh.” Battennt doesn’t like the open expression and wide eyes of Clæv paying his entire attention to him, so he looks out at the wilderness outside the misshapen circle of various combinations of people settling their bones for sleep or watch. “...find it difficult to sleep so soon after eating.”

He could have stopped then.

“But we need the day for travel.”

He should have stopped then.

“And it’s dangerous to wander at night.”

This is where the spectacular and painful lie becomes spectacularly painful to Battennt. He briefly wondered if there was a spell for keeping his foot out of his mouth.

Clæv, who Battennt was only just now realizing was on first watch, shifted how he sat. It gave him the moment to think and at least some sound to cover the silence while he thought of a response to the spectacular and painful lie that might reach whatever Battennt was lying about. “Would you like a companion?”

Long past wondering if there was a spell for keeping his foot out of his mouth and well into thinking what else Clæv would say—not this—Battennt was caught off guard. “Uhm.”

Now leaning back propped up on an arm in a way Battennt read as too casual and now worried some sort of confession would be added to this most awkward situation, Clæv spoke before Battennt could dig himself deeper into the spectacular and painful hole he was in, “I’ve heard everyone’s stories three times over. It would be refreshing to hear more of yours.” Battennt only ever storytold one of a few stories only when he couldn’t avoid the calls for him to storytell.

“Oh. Uhhh.” Battennt’s eyes are flicking side to side, as though reading a spellbook at a furious clip.

“Or is this a quiet wander?”

There are too many thoughts cycling through Battennt’s head at just as much a furious clip. He’s avoiding the ones about how softly Clæv asked, considering the ones about how expending more energy before retiring for the night might help, and mostly clutching at the ones that might even be the right words put into an order that was an actual sentence to reply with. “I might take you up on that.”

Clearly reading the ‘I will never take you up on that’ tone, Clæv nods and departs with the usual rote pleasantries.

Battennt figures he can better hide how he doesn’t eat dinner.

And then he casts sleep on himself.



The bard buffs them all for a fight that starts when they pick the wrong location to camp at for the evening. After the fifth attempt to cast sleep, Battennt tries to do the math on what miserable hour of the morning the buff will wear off enough for his spell to work. He finds Clæv not quite settled in yet next to Clæv’s armour with new scrapes. “Wander?”

Clæv looks utterly exhausted—near all of them did, it had been an exhausting fight and an exhausting change of location and exhausting setting up camp—and hesitates just long enough for Battennt to figure the answer no and start away before he rolls to a weary stand.

The fighter keeps quiet.

The wizard spends the time thinking of wizard shit when he’s not wondering if he’d be better off running laps around the camp except for the part where he couldn’t think of a believable, still spectacular and painful lie for why.

At some point, when they were far enough away and far enough into the walk that it was evident this would be a while, Clæv offers Battennt a flask.

Not wanting to break the silence to ask its contents, Battennt takes it to sniff. Whatever it is is alcohol strong enough he couldn’t guess at the rest of its components.

Drinking doesn’t help him sleep, he’d tried. Drinking enough to be susceptible to his sleep spell was too much for him to adequately cast his sleep spell. He walks pretty far just holding the flask. On an empty stomach, he figures a sip would be potent enough to maybe assist the situation but not inhibit his casting. He doesn’t get to take the sip because Clæv’s question as he tips the flask up has him spit in shock.

“Is this a situation where you sleep better next to a person?”

Battennt is coughing and handing back the flask when Clæv follows up.

“I can do that.”

A still coughing Battennt steps away but Clæv follows because it’s dangerous to wander at night. When he’s recovered enough to speak—which is not recovered enough to look at Clæv—he says, “No, it’s not.” He’d tried that too. If anything, it had made him less able to sleep. He’d tried a lot of things.

Clæv shrugs and stays quiet the whole while Battennt takes to recover enough to walk and the whole while it takes to walk back.



Clæv had apparently been watching Battennt at dinner for some unknown period of time, and then—to the utmost misfortune of Battennt’s peace of mind—Clæv had apparently been watching Battennt after dinner. They’re at a travel house with the entire party excited for actual beds, Battennt included, when Clæv pulls the wizard aside.

It’s been long enough since the last time they had talked that Battennt’s first presumption wasn’t a continuation of the last time but again some sort of confession of romantic or sexual interest instead. Often whenever someone pulls him aside, Battennt hoped for the ease of turning down a confession rather than explain some wizard shit or not-explain why the battlemage hated him so much—this would also be explaining some, other, wizard shit.

“Hey bud.”

Battennt’s stomach flips upside down and he briefly hates himself for noticing a pattern in someone else.

“I noticed you don’t find it difficult to sleep.”

Battennt wished that was true more than anything in the world. He tried to think of good things—mostly wizard shit—to not look as morose as his wish made him. “Uhhh.” He jumped when Clæv’s leather gloved hand landed on his shoulder.

“It was obvious you were lying but—“

The humour of this particular situation isn’t lost on Battennt. It isn’t lost so much that it’s all he can think of until he’s laughing.

Clæv had continued talking—whatever said lost on Battennt—and stopped with a concerned expression that would accompany a hand on the wizard’s shoulder if he hadn’t already one and didn’t want to fully pin Battennt in place.

The particular mania bleeding into Battennt’s peals of laughter wasn’t lost on Clæv. He grew increasingly concerned as Battennt took an uncomfortable amount of time to ease off his laughter and compose himself.

All Battennt wanted was to lie in an actual bed and spectacularly, painfully pretend that lying in an actual bed would help him sleep any better, but here he was stuck in Clæv’s armspan. “All I find is difficult to sleep.” After the catharsis of his outbursting laughter, this admission is another, different, also release. He lets himself go. “I have to—“ he throws his hands up in a shrug, “—myself to sleep.” He’s saying more words—something about how long it’s been since he’s slept without casting sleep on himself, something about how awful it was not being able to just fall asleep—while Clæv squints at him.

“You cast sleep on yourself every night?” Clæv emphasizes every word, the full weight of each its own horrifying realization. He almost surpasses the brawler in volume.

Battennt, a sort of loose and free that he never was, shushed Clæv complete with a sloppy gesture that nearly slapped Clæv across the mouth. “You’re not supposed to know.” No one was.

Clæv shakes Battennt with the hand on his shoulder, as though that would bring Battennt around to the evasive distant wreck he normally was. “That’s not even real sleep.”

A kind of offended that Clæv was able to move Battennt, Battennt ends his shrug reply with a hand on Clæv’s shoulder. He tests shaking Clæv back, but the fighter doesn’t budge.

“Battennt,” Clæv’s voice is so soft, “how long have you been doing this?”

“Oh a good decade before I ever met any of this party.” This knocks Clæv off guard enough that he’s actually shaken a little when Battent again tests a tug and push of his shoulder.

The shake breaks Clæv out of his thoughts. Battennt doesn’t let go when he tries to knock the wizard’s hand away. “Can you not?”

Battennt raises his brows and looks pointedly at the leather clad hand on his own shoulder. After a long moment he only removes his hand from Clæv when Clæv removes his leather clad hand from Battennt. “Anything else before I go—” he throws his hands up in a shrug.

“That’s not even real sleep,” Clæv insists.

Battennt is smiling from the cathartic relief. “Better than none.”

“Barely.” Clæv starts cursing, in a way it’s fun to watch, so Battennt smiles wider. The wider smile is disconcerting. “This has to be seriously harming you.”

“Hey bud.” Battennt is pleased with the snap to attention the reversal gets from Clæv. He’s not aware how his looking pleased and smiling too wide mixed with his intent to be the one to say something morphed into something that made Clæv freeze. “I am extremely, catastrophically, never even remotely okay. Can’t even imagine it. Might become the most powerful wizard if I was remotely okay, whatever remotely okay would be like.” He really couldn’t imagine it, he couldn’t imagine having a slightly better day than his ongoing descent into the ever-deeper hole of truly extreme, catastrophic, not okay. Every day he struggled to recall how much better it was just days prior, nevermind months or years. “It’s probably better I don’t get ‘real sleep’.”

Now Clæv’s stomach was flipping.

“Hah. Oh I wish I could sleep, I wish it all day every day. I had to stop trying to do something about it because it was all I was ever doing. I am spectacularly, painfully aware of the fact I don’t sleep, that that’s not even real sleep, that I am in freefall towards a very bad place that I can only hope hurts only me when I land.” He leans forward, to the slack horror on Clæv’s face and the fighter’s rising panic. “But don’t you worry, that’s a long way off. And I’ll make sure to wander well and far enough away before self-destructing. I’ll make sure I still can before I do.”

Battennt is smiling. Not the disconcerting smile. He looks genuinely calm. “Now, if you’re done and if you’ll excuse me.” He steps back, finds Clæv doesn’t resist, and leaves.

He sleeps better than he has in months.