The Larkwood was, at least, blessedly free of manic happiness. If anything, it swung too far the other direction. The same fog that broke so neatly around the town's little clearing thickened the deeper they went, until the trees themselves were reduced to looming grey suggestions and the ground ahead vanished into featureless white a dozen feet out in every direction. Without the compass, Xavier was fairly certain they'd have been walking in slow, hopeless circles within the hour.
"How far?" Stephan asked, Ember drawn and ready, more out of habit than any immediate threat, his voice oddly flat in all that muffling grey.
"No idea. It just says 'that way.'" Xavier held the compass up, watching the needle correct itself after every turn in the fog-blind path, its faint restless hum the only reliable thing in a forest that had otherwise erased every landmark worth trusting. "Very helpful. Very specific. Also the only reason we're not currently lost forever."
They'd been walking perhaps twenty minutes when the ground ahead began to glow, faint orange light pulsing through the fog between the tree roots like the forest floor itself had a heartbeat.
"...That's new," Bruce said.
The light resolved, a moment later, into a cluster of beetles the size of dinner plates, their carapaces glowing molten orange along deep fissures in the shell, antennae crackling faintly with heat, dozens of segmented little legs skittering against the dirt in a way that made a very specific, very old part of Xavier's brain start screaming.
Xavier did not move. Xavier, in fact, would have very much liked to be several kingdoms away.
"...Xavier?" Bruce glanced sideways at him.
"I'm fine," Xavier said, in the strangled, too-controlled voice of a man who was extremely not fine. His whole body had gone rigid, ice half-summoned and forgotten along one forearm, eyes locked on the glistening, twitching mass of shells and legs like it might lunge if he blinked.
"You look like you've seen a ghost."
"I have fought actual ghosts, Bruce. I would take the ghosts. I would take all of the ghosts, right now, over that." His voice cracked slightly on the last word.
"Fire beetles," Bruce said slowly, filing away the discovery of Xavier's one true weakness for what was clearly going to be later ammunition. "I read about these. They're not usually aggressive unless-"
One of the beetles let out a sharp, chittering hiss, and the whole cluster turned toward them in perfect, horrible unison.
"...Unless provoked, which I'm going to guess we just did by existing near their nest," Bruce finished, considerably faster than before.
"Nope," Xavier said, already backing up a full three steps. "Nope. Somebody else can handle the bugs. I will provide moral support from over here."
"They're on fire and the size of plates, and you want to be moral support?" Stephan, already grinning, clearly delighted to have discovered blackmail material of his own. "Xavier. Buddy. You've endured Elrick's hellish training, fought a pack of wolves effectively by yourself, and actually died once. You're scared of bugs?"
"They have too many legs, and they explode, Stephan. This is a completely reasonable fear-"
The first beetle didn't wait for the debate to conclude, launching itself at Stephan in a low, scuttling charge. He met it head-on, Ember's blade catching it mid-leap and sending it crashing into a tree trunk with a wet crunch that made Xavier physically flinch from ten feet back. Two more scrambled up behind it, faster than their size suggested they had any right to be, carapaces glowing brighter with what Xavier realized, half a second too late, was a building charge.
"Get back!-" he started, forcing his voice steady through sheer will, and the beetle detonated in a small, concentrated burst of flame just as Stephan dove clear, rolling through the underbrush and coming up singed but intact.
"They explode!" Stephan shouted, delighted despite himself. "That's so unfair! I love it!"
"Focus," Bruce called, driving his hammer down into the dirt. A ridge of hardened earth rippled outward, catching two more beetles mid-scuttle and pinning them against a fallen log. "Xavier, some help would be nice!"
Xavier squeezed his eyes shut for exactly one second, muttered something that might have been a prayer, and forced himself forward, flinging out a pair of ice shards with his eyes not quite fully open, freezing the pinned beetles' glowing cores solid before they could build another charge. The moment it was done, he retreated the same three steps he'd advanced, shuddering visibly.
"See? Fine," he said, to absolutely no one's belief.
A last visible beetle made a break for the underbrush, and Xavier, moving on pure adrenaline-soaked reflex rather than anything resembling courage, dropped low and swept a thin blade of ice across its path, catching it mid-stride. It skidded to a stop, smoking gently, and did not get back up. He immediately looked away from the twitching legs.
Which was exactly when a seventh beetle he hadn't even registered came scuttling out from beneath the smoking log, carapace already glowing a furious, urgent orange, moving straight for Stephan's exposed back.
"Behind you!" Xavier shouted, voice cracking somewhere between warning and pure panic, already too far away — and too busy not looking at it — to do anything about it himself.
Stephan spun a half-second too slow, Ember catching only air as the beetle closed the last few feet. Bruce's hammer came down between them, flat side first, close enough to send a shockwave through the dirt that flipped the creature clean onto its back before it could detonate. It thrashed helplessly, glowing legs pedaling at empty air, and Bruce finished it with a short, decisive stomp that made Stephan wince in sympathy and Xavier make a small, involuntary noise from a safe distance away.
"You are unbelievably welcome," Bruce said, breathing hard.
"I had it," Stephan said, in the tone of someone who very much had not had it.
"You absolutely did not have it."
"I was building to having it."
Silence fell over the small clearing after that, broken only by their own ragged breathing and the faint, dwindling crackle of the beetles' cooling shells. Xavier finally allowed himself to peek back at the carnage, confirmed nothing was twitching anymore, and let out a long, shaky breath, sagging against a nearby tree.
"That was annoyingly close," Bruce said, checking a singed sleeve, then eyeing the seventh beetle's smoking corpse with obvious irritation. "We need to actually count these things before declaring an area clear from now on. Also... Bugs? Really? Bugs are the thing?"
"I don't want to talk about it," Xavier said, with tremendous dignity, still not looking directly at the pile of scorched carapaces.
"That was awesome," Stephan said, entirely unbothered, already wiping Ember's blade clean on a patch of moss. "This is definitely coming up again. Frequently. Forever."
Xavier checked the compass again. The needle had steadied, pointing deeper still into the dark, toward a faint, warm light flickering somewhere beyond the trees.
"We're close," he said. "Come on."
They walked the rest of the way in silence, adrenaline ebbing into something quieter and more uncertain, the fire beetles' glow fading behind them until the only light left was the one waiting ahead. Xavier found himself running through the mayor's warning again and again in his head.
'Be careful what you agree to, nothing more, nothing less, nothing you didn't specify,' trying to anticipate every possible wording a demon might twist against him before he'd even opened his mouth.
"You're quiet," Bruce noted, falling into step beside him.
"Thinking."
"About the deal?"
"About all of it. What he'll want. What I'm willing to give up to get Wells his daughter back without signing away something I don't realize I'm signing away." Xavier turned the compass over once in his palm, feeling its restless little tremor against his fingers. "Wells said he's precise. Fair, even, in his own way. I just don't know yet what fair looks like to something that isn't human."
"For what it's worth," Stephan said, unusually solemn, "whatever you decide in there, we'll back it. Even if it's stupid."
"Especially if it's stupid," Bruce added. "That tracks with basically everything we've done since I met you two."
Xavier managed a short, tired laugh despite himself, and it eased something tight in his chest just enough to breathe around. The trees thinned ahead, the warm light growing steadier, and a familiar, cozy little cabin came into view exactly where the compass insisted it would be.
As if it had been waiting for them the whole time.