[2] WEEPING MONK║you're not what I was looking for

64| When Storms Gather (Part One) - 𝐈𝐈

[CW// Mentions of blood. Minor injury. Fire. Peril]

Squirrel gets himself into trouble. Tragedy strikes.

Lancelot snapped his head up.

Gawain did too. "Was that—"

"Squirrel," Lancelot gasped.

They dropped the tent that they'd been setting up within this valley and ran. Dodging half-pitched tents and stacks of possessions in the narrow packed space. Horizontal winds battered at their faces— pushing them backwards, weighing down their cloaks.

Lancelot sprinted ahead to follow Squirrel's distant cries, but it was Gawain who called for people to move aside. Parting the crowded twists and turns of steep sided land. Their boots slipped in the soft ground, sending them skidding into mossy rock faces. But it didn't matter what scrapes they gathered along the way— Squirrel, the ever brave boy who always protested being helped, was wailing from somewhere within these weaving tunnels.

Lancelot slipped in a turn and grazed his shoulder against the exposed rock. His pulse galloping away in his chest as he kept on going.

The winds distorted Squirrel's pleas for help— the calling of his name— and his scent wasn't coming from any one clear direction. Growling at himself as he stood twisting back and forth in one junction got him nowhere besides venting his frustration. Out of breath and not knowing which tunnel of this labyrinth in front of him to take.

The Green Knight was not as fast, left within Lancelot's wake. There were other voices too. More than one set of squelching boots following his chase.

Then he heard the boy's desperate call of his name much closer than it had been before. Whirring around, he narrowed his eyes through the winding ravine. Huffing furiously.

Where are you, Squirrel?

"Lance!"

"Squirrel—" he gasped, then darted off to his right. Following the wind.

"Ash man!" Gawain's voice disappeared around the bend of towering earth that he'd left behind.

Lancelot squeezed his way at pace through the damp and moss-coated walls.

"He's here!— He's—" His jaw fell at the sight in front of him.

Gawain stumbled to a halt behind where he'd stopped, panting out shallow puffs of air. A few Fey who had heard the boy's cries as well funnelled in.

The silence of fear quietened even the winds.

They stood looking up at the boy dangling from the lip of the ravine wall. Easily twenty or more feet above them. He was clinging and gasping and struggling to hold on.

"Squirrel!" Lancelot bolted to be beneath him. Followed by Gawain.

"Lance?" The young one strained his voice. "Help!"