Chapter Text
The next morning (or to be more accurate, about 6 hours later), Grim woke Yuu up to feed him breakfast. Despite having refused to go to sleep in the first place until Grim declared the plan to be as good as it was ever gonna get and started swiping at anyone who tried to pick up a marker to make another revision, they were reluctant to get up. They didn’t stop complaining from the moment Grim shook them awake until they had handed him his food and made themself some coffee. As punishment, he decided that they were not going to be the one to carry him around today, and instead climbed up onto Sebek’s shoulders. The loudmouth had way more shoulder than Yuu anyway.
Sebek did not, however, seem to see this as a privilege, and immediately started trying to remove him. “Foul cat! I am not your shelf! You’ll shed all over my uniform!”
“First off, I’m not a cat! Ya know, when I’m the greatest mage in Twisted Wonderland, it’ll be an honor to say you were my transport!”
“You will never be the greatest mage, for that is and will always be Lord Malleus!”
He puffed up, but before he could retort Yuu shoved a mug of what looked like warm milk tinged ever so slightly brown-ish into Sebek’s hands. “Hey. It’s too early to be yelling at each other. Sebek, here’s your milk with a dash of coffee, if you want any sugar I already put it all in my cup, so too bad. Grim, don’t provoke him until we’re all awake, okay?”
Grim let out a small hmph but settled down. He didn’t want that jerk blowing out his vocal cords this early in the morning anyway. From what he understood of the plan he was gonna need them later.
Soon enough everyone was breakfasted and caffeinated, and they made their way to Scarabia together. The first half of the plan actually went pretty smoothly, and it was fun to watch Azul and the twins do their thing to someone else for once. That said, Jamil seemed to be unnerved by Yuu’s Look At People When They Talk stare as much as by anything the mermafia was doing.
The Stare looked like this; they would look straight into the eyes of whoever was talking to them, blinking as little as physically possible, and venting all of their constant motion into a single finger, tapping rapidly and hidden from view, so that to their conversational partner it looked as though they were completely still. Yuu claimed that this showed they were paying attention to people, but to Grim they always looked like they were about to shove an expensive and sentimental vase off the table, and wanted you to know. Grim wasn’t sure how Jamil saw it, except that he clearly hated it, and seemed to be cracking even faster than Azul had predicted under it.
So that whole part of the plan worked great. Jamil eventually cracked, gloated about his plan to a seemingly brainwashed Azul, and was confronted by Kalim. As blot started to drip down Jamil’s arms Jade and Sebek corralled everyone to be close enough for Azul to shield them all with Bind the Heart.
And then it turned out Azul hadn’t actually figured out how to use Floyd’s signature spell for anything besides resisting enchantments yet, and they all went flying.
At first, Grim wasn’t quite sure what was happening. All he could see was the desert spinning away from him, all he could feel was wind, rushing past him, howling in his ears, pushing against his chest as he flew through it, so he couldn’t draw enough breath to scream.
And then he reached the top of his arc, and the pressure abated enough to see the dazzling clouds below him. For a single moment, he felt suspended in the air, looking down on the world below him, as was his rightful place. And then he started falling.
“GRIM!” A hand grabbed the ribbon around his neck, and he twisted around to see Yuu, flushed and teary. “Grim! I sorry, I couldn’t- I didn’t-” Wordlessly, he let himself be pulled in, curling up against their chest as they picked up speed. But eventually he realized they weren’t falling any faster, at least, not as much as they should be, and extricated himself enough to see what was happening.
“Hey! Yuu! Look up!”
Blinking, they obeyed, and saw what Grim had. Sebek was gripping their shoulder with one hand, the other pointing his pen straight down, its gem glowing brilliantly from the magic channeled through it.
He yelled something that Grim couldn’t hear over the wind (they were falling slower now, so why was it so much louder?) but Yuu nodded quickly, and said something about air resistance into his ear. After making sure Grim’s claws were firmly latched on to their shirt (and possibly also their skin, based on the wince), they unbuttoned their jacket, letting it flap, and spread their limbs to catch as much of the wind as possible. Still disoriented, Grim focused on the wind magic pouring from Sebek’s wand until he put together how he was using it to push them up and slow their fall. Focusing, Grim’s own magestone sparked to life as he tried casting the same spell himself, and they all slowed further.
Now that they weren’t all hurtling to their deaths, Yuu started looking around for the others, so Grim helped, his sharper vision easily picking out the telltale purpleish glow of several Octavinelle stones all clustered together above them, and a single red pinprick roughly level with them.
They all slowly fell, through gray, wet clouds, towards the dark wasteland below them. Unlike the soft, sandy dunes he’d gotten used to seeing, the ground below them looked hard and rocky, pockmarked with cracks. He could see an empty riverbed, which looked like it must have sprung up out of nowhere, since this place couldn’t possibly have ever seen water. But the worst part was no matter how hard Grim searched the horizon, even if he could almost convince himself he could see dunes on the horizon, he couldn’t spot the dorm at all.