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spacemonkeysalsa · 20 days ago

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Her Embrace, Her Tears

Multi-chaptered, fluff, angst, eventually smut

Lae'zel probably didn't need a good excuse, or further motivation, to go to war with Shar. But, she is about to get it anyway.

Five years post game, Dark Justiciar/Mother Superior/Chosen of Shar Shadowheart and (with a few notable exceptions) everyone got their bad endings, in that everyone is still alive, but shitty. Lae'zel is thriving though, aside from her relationship.

Read Chapter One on Ao3

or read the rest of Chapter Fourteen below the cut

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Carrying the child, Shadowheart made her way back to the enclave so slowly that by the time she got there, Orla was already waiting. The young sorcerer nervously reported that a commotion from the lower floor of Elfsong had alerted them to the fact that things hadn’t gone according to plan. They had seen the red wizards scatter, and Lae’zel give chase, ultimately tracking her down. But she was too much for them. Predictably.

Only Orla had escaped.

“What a lot of trouble you’ve become,” Shadowheart sighed, one hand tracing along the gith child’s mousey hairline. He was still fast asleep, and she wasn’t entirely sure it was all the magic at this point. He’d had a rather eventful day, after all. Perhaps exhaustion had taken him as much as her cleric’s power.

Or, he was faking.

“I don’t know if they’re dead,” Orla expanded on her story, nervous. “They were certainly hurt, but they just vanished. Like she pushed them through a portal. Only, I didn’t see any portal,” she finished, sounding unsure. “There was a kind of glowing little box in her hand. A curious toy.”

Shadowheart froze, “Many sided?”

“Dodecahedron, I’d guess.” Orla nodded.

“Covered in gith symbols,” Shadowheart concluded, unsure what it meant that Lae’zel had found some use for the astral prism years later. And even more unsure what it meant that she’d never mentioned it to Shadowheart before.

“If they’re alive… should we send a party after them?” Orla sounded truly shaken by her own question, and with a little grim displeasure Shadowheart realized that she thought she understood her feelings on the matter. Clint and Bree had fallen behind, fallen into enemy hands. Abandoning them was probably the right call, that was why they didn’t know much about the mission in the first place. They couldn’t give anything away. They knew the location of the enclave, but so did Lae’zel, so they couldn’t hurt them with that information. At the least, there was no rush.

“We focus on relocating the child to somewhere safe first,” Shadowheart didn’t want to sound like she was giving up on them completely. “With any luck, Lae’zel won’t catch up with us, but we will get the chance to encounter her again. We can learn of their fate then.” That was all the assurance she thought she could afford.

“He’s not staying here? I thought it was her Lady’s will that we rear—”

“We are not staying here,” Shadowheart clarified. They couldn’t. This enclave had grown strong in the last few years, but as the home of the Mother Superior of the church—of two Chosen of Shar. It was compromised. Shadowheart needed to take the child and go someplace where Lae’zel wouldn’t find them. And she needed to bring a few trustworthy and useful acolytes with her. This was her way of letting Orla know she was one of them.

The girl seemed to understand, and hid any surprise, fear or excitement with a stiff nod. “Should I make arrangements? Where are we going? Tonight?”

“Already made, you’ll see when we get there, and yes. Don’t ask so many questions,” she added the last part with a sigh. But first. They needed to get the child to cooperate. “Leave us,” Shadowheart cocked her head at Orla, shooing her. Surely, the girl would have a few goodbyes to say. It wasn’t exactly allowed to have close personal attachments within the enclave, but Shadowheart knew better than to stand on such small details of disobedience. The girl would be grateful for the little notice she had.

It didn’t surprise Shadowheart at all that Orla practically fled the room. She turned back to the child, deciding to take advantage of his continued slumber. She needed to make this as painless for both of them as possible. She gathered him in her arms again, feeling him stiffen.

She was left with the decided impression that he was only pretending to sleep now. But she let him. That suited her just fine. She kept her eyes flitting back and forth to his mouth, ready to interrupt, in case he tried to cast a spell and take her by surprise. She moved silently through the enclave, followed by scant whispers in the dark. Her intent had been to vanish without a formal goodbye, and without informing anyone who didn’t absolutely need to know. But, of course, a few people would have found out, or even guessed. She thought she could feel the nervousness in the air as her acolytes skirted the shadows, keeping a vigilant eye on her and the child.

She stopped walking as she reached her destination, then gently touched the boy’s face. “It’s alright. Please wake up. I need to say something to you, little one.” Sure enough his eyes came open almost immediately, though the second he looked at her he shut them tight again on reflex, his little fingers pressing over his eyelids as though to chastise himself for his quick obedience. She helped him stand upright in front of her, and crouched down, a hand on either shoulder. He still looked frightened, but wasn’t trying to pretend to be asleep or avert his amber gaze any longer. Progress.

“I’m sorry,” Shadowheart started softly.

For a moment the boy remained tense but the longer she held his gaze, she felt his thin shoulders relax.

“I’m sorry that we adults can’t get ourselves in order. That we keep passing you around. It must be so difficult, not knowing where you belong.” She tried to be gentle as she touched his little cheek, fingertips finding dark freckles and brushing at them as though they were tears. “Can I tell you something true? Something that I think will help?”

The child looked at her, wary, but shrugged after a moment’s silent contemplation.

“You belong anywhere you want to be. You don’t need to look for a home. You already have one. I hope you’ll want to stay with me, but if you don’t, we’ll figure out the right place for you. Alright?” She even managed to mean it, in the moment. He’d want to stay, of course. It was never going to be a matter of force. He would choose it. It would be the only thing to choose.

He stayed silent, but from him, Shadowheart had the sense of one who was full of words. Afraid then. That was alright. Good even, for the moment. “Do you like your name? Or would you prefer to choose a new one? What shall I call you?”

At that, his eyes fixed in the middle distance a moment before he shrugged again.

“You can call me Shadowheart. When I first came here, I had a different name. I don’t remember it anymore.”

He looked doubtful at that, amber eyes narrowing slightly as he cast them on her face a little more steadily than before.

“I really don’t,” she shrugged back at him. “But I know where it is, if I wanted it.” She turned her head to look at the looming darkness just to the side of them. The great black glass resembled a large scrying mirror, which in turn, Shadowheart had always thought looked like the depths of a deep well. “It’s gone. Where everything goes.”

“What is that?”

“A mirror. See how you can see us standing there?” Barely. The dark glass seemed to pull at the image, making their forms ever distant shadows. “What do you know about The Lady of Loss? Have you ever heard of her?”

He nodded, but didn’t answer directly. He gnawed on his lip a moment first, before he said, “she’s a goddess. An angry one.”

“You don’t need to be frightened of her. Or of any god, but especially not of the Lady of Loss. She’s above anger. But mortals aren’t so lucky. Don’t you feel angry sometimes?”

The gith child made a face, contemplating that.

“It’s not pleasant, is it?”

He was looking at the mirror. That was a good sign.

“You can give anger away to her. She’ll take it from you. Sadness too. And fear. That’s all she asks, you know. That you take the things you feel, that you don’t need, and you give it to her. It’s no burden for her, the way it can be for us.” Slowly, Shadowheart began to orient them so that he was looking into the mirror directly, and she could stand, just behind him. “Try it. Think about something that makes you angry. Let her take it away.”

A strange twinge coursed through her body—a feeling she didn’t understand, but it was her instinct to ignore. She must’ve done this for the first time, once. Who had been standing behind her?

The gith child wasn’t so tense under her fingertips any longer, his little shoulders slumped inwards as he made eye contact with the endless void captured in front of him. “I just… think about it?”

“And then, never again.”

It was nearly palpable, when he began to pray in earnest. Prayer could be taught, but there was something instinctual about it as well, something that a person either connected with, or didn’t. Shadowheart watched him, some echo of the burden he cast to Shar weighing her down as well.

“I feel… funny,” the gith child murmured.

“Good kind of funny?”

“Yes.”

“What about fear? Were you afraid today?”

“...Yes.”

“I thought so. I would have been. Think about being afraid. About everything that happened to you today.” Shadowheart encouraged him. It wouldn’t be too much at once, surely. Especially not for a new initiate. All the same, some instinct within her told her to mark him closely as he regarded the mirror again.

An hour later, Shadowheart left the enclave for what she knew would be the last time.

They were taking little, so she’d shed treasure and pointless memento and foregone the luxury of individual goodbyes.

She’d expected to feel something inconvenient and stabbing at the prospect of leaving the only home she could remember, forever. But she didn’t look back. She was alone again, having sent the gith child and Orla on ahead. The sun was down, and they would travel in secret, in silence, and cloaked under an unassuming farewell to the city.

Something tugged at the corner of her eye. Some temptation to look back, now that she was on the other side of the bridge? But no, it was a glimmer of light from a balcony up ahead. The home of the High Harper showed some signs of life.

Gradually, Shadowheart let her pace slow and swerve, ever so slightly until she was on Jahiera’s front porch. After she knocked, she worried for a split second that Rion would answer the door—or even one of the little ones. She wasn’t exactly here to transparently wish an old friend goodbye, but she still wasn’t sure she liked the idea of anyone seeing her before she vanished from the city. To her relief, it was Jahiera’s half-orc son Jord. Harmless enough. From what Shadowheart knew of him, he didn’t have enough of a social circle to gossip about her. She wasn’t even entirely sure that he really knew who she was until he didn’t hesitate to let her inside and said, “Jahiera’s upstairs—you can surprise her,” and removed himself from the entryway without further pomp.

Jahiera had been old when Shadowheart met her, but didn’t look older for the years that she had gathered since then. Besides, maybe, there was a little extra exhaustion around her scrutinizing eyes. She blinked a hello at Shadowheart, and cleared her throat before she arose from the chair where it appeared she’d been… knitting? Shadowheart was sure she’d seen a flash of needles and a spool of yarn when she first entered the room, but Jahiera must have stowed it away expertly. There was no sign of any such activity remaining. She would be determined not to play into any kind of stereotype.

“Ah, my friend,” she sounded tired too, Shadowheart was troubled to hear. Would she ever see her again? Would this conversation be their last?

And would she even remember it?

“I’m sorry to just drop in like this,” Shadowheart felt a distant pang as she noticed how her words, her tone, helped uncoil the tension from the High Harper’s body. Until she’d said something, Jahiera’s expectations had been decidedly less pleasant, it seemed. “I’ve been meaning to call for sometime, and I found myself with a few extra moments as I was passing by.”

Jahiera took back just enough tension to look as nonchalant as possible as she conceded, “I understand. You’re a busy woman, and we have to take advantage of what time we find for ourselves in the little moments in between,”she gestured to a chair, and resumed her own seat without betraying any hint of weakening bones. “Have you been meaning to call for some time, due to a particular inquiry?” She more wondered aloud than asked.

“Before this morning? No. Just meant to call. But then I heard something that made me think I perhaps did have a question for you.”

“How very appropriately mysterious,” Jahiera’s sometimes harsh mouth softened into a half smile. “Whatever could you have heard?”

“A hint of something. An implication that I ought to know more than I do on a topic. Not unusual for one such as myself.”

“Do such implications always eat at you so?” wondered Jahiera with a smirk that was somehow both compassionate and a little patronizing.

“No,” Shadowheart admitted, and it was the truth. In as far as she knew it. “Minthara told me once that the problem with prizing and hoarding secrets is that most of them aren’t worth knowing. Sometimes, when I worry that I’ve… forgotten too much, I remember that. I’ve made it a point to keep that little nugget of wisdom because I think she was rather onto something.”

With a roll of her eyes Jahiera’s smirk became a little more prominent, “that one usually is, though it’s not also such a delight to receive such treasures from her.”

For a moment, Shadowheart lost her train of thought, lost her planned preamble into the subject. Jahiera was observing her, content to wait in silence while she found it. Better to just get to it, “Did you ever know a Viconia Devir?”

Jahiera’s shoulders slumped, and Shadowheart observed something stirring in her eyes before she turned them away. “We met her together once, you and I.”

“Did we?” Shadowheart found herself worrying at her dress, and thinking of the piwafwi again. “I’m afraid I don’t recall the acquaintance.”

“That is a quirk of your people,” Jahiera reminded her unnecessarily. “But. I knew Viconia for many, many years before you did. She and I once traveled together in much the same manner that you and I did as well. She was my friend. Sometimes,” she added with a shrug. “Why do you ask?”

“Because I can’t remember her at all,” Shadowheart answered simply.

Jaheira was already nodding, like she’d heard the answer in the air before Shadowheart uttered it aloud. “In all the years I knew her, Viconia never forgot me completely. Though, she had many opportunities to do so, I imagine.”

Shadowheart could imagine that too. There were precious few people who Shadowheart had enough intact memories of to fully keep an accurate understanding of who they really were in her mind.

“She would drop by, often unexpectedly, and we would talk about old times. I would tell her about some of the things we did that she couldn’t recall. She would leave. Years would pass, and she’d drop by again,” the exhaustion seemed more prevalent through Jahiera’s features. “Sometimes she would lie to me, and I would only know it because she didn’t remember that she’d told me the truth before—or that I’d been there,” she laughed, but didn’t sound amused. “If I’d known that she lived so close by, I might’ve made more of an effort to maintain the friendship.” With a sigh, Jahiera added. “I should have guessed about the enclave.”

Something about Jahiera’s tone caught Shadowheart’s attention, though she thought her suspicion a little wild for a split second before Jahiera confirmed it.

“And maybe I did. Maybe that was the arrangement. There are things I can’t remember either. Things I… might’ve given away.” Her confession was light and without guilt.

“You’ve been to the House of Grief. As a parishioner?”

“I have no memory of it. But then again, I probably wouldn’t, would I?” Jahiera shrugged. “My dealings with Sharrans have been largely negative, but we need not dwell on that. Viconia was my friend. She knew my grief. And I knew hers. Often more intimately than she did.”

Shadowheart contemplated that and decided it wasn’t so shocking after all. Even the more dogmatic paladins of Shar’s greatest enemies felt the pull of the Lady of Loss. Everyone did. That was entirely the point. Why had Lae’zel asked her to speak to Jahiera about this? If anything, it was rather affirming to hear.

“Curious, isn’t it, that I remember so much of Viconia, and you, so little?”

Nothing at all, and that pang hit Shadowheart right between the ribs. Was it curious? “I forget a lot of people. Remembering them at all is the exception, not the rule.”

Jahiera looked saddened by that. “Viconia would have been an exception. Unless you actively chose not to remember her. Now why would you do that?”

That pang lingered. “It’s not my place to know,” she said softly.

“I suppose you’re right,” Jahiera did have an irritating way of dropping her own investment in a topic to make you evaluate your own. “It doesn’t matter now, does it? And you can rest assured there’s no great mystery to Viconia. Not anymore. Even without remembering her name, you know her as well as you know yourself.”

“Oh?”

“Half a century ago, she tells me that she has a little half elf waif to bring up in the ways of The Lady of Loss. She wants to know if I have any advice, as the greatest mother she knows,” Jahiera rolled her eyes. “I suppose it could have been someone else she was speaking of. But, in retrospect. It certainly was not.”

#bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 fanfiction #shadowzel #bg3 shadowheart #baldur's gate 3 shadowheart #bg3 lae'zel #baldur's gate 3 lae'zel #dark justiciar shadowheart

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crowholtz · 9 months ago

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Helene Backstory Drabble Word Count: 962 I'm sharing a tidbit taken from a bigger fic I wrote of a time Helene was in Baldur's Gate when she was 18 and one of Strahd's spies was watching her (though he was scrying through the spy's eyes at the time). Even then, she felt him through their weird mental connection they share.

Please imagine Strahd sitting in his study, looking into his orb of scrying, sipping a glass of wine and listening to Danse Macabre on his record player while he spies.

Rapping her fingers against the wood, the young cleric was perched upon a picnic table, waiting patiently for Con to return with food. She was coming down from the buzz of her encounter with the merchant, though there still was a strange amount of giddiness.

Helene scanned the crowds of people which, thankfully, began to thin out or at the very least, calm down with the drag of the day. She always liked to watch people, noting how they behaved and interacted with one another. Some even sparked enough interest for her to write small sonnets about them. For the most part, she simply observed. Fitting in was hard enough, but perhaps if she learned of how they talked and moved with each other, she would eventually.

With a sigh, her gaze shifted to the big stage set up to the north of the group of tables she sat at. It was surrounded by a big red and white striped tent lined at the top with stringed lights. She wasn’t quite sure what sort of entertainment would be playing there - for now, the curtain was half closed, various storage boxes able to be seen being moved behind them from the right angle.

The smell of cheap whiskey wrinkled her nose as a group of rowdy young noblemen passed by her table and sat themselves at one nearby. Helene frowned and angled her body away from them, wishing to withdraw into herself. She kept her posture straight and held high, however, the training of proper etiquette burned into her muscle memory keeping her from indulging in her isolation.

Even so, even with so many lively people around her, Helene still felt alone. The world was wide open, leaving her exposed and vulnerable. There was a time when the open skies made her feel safe and at home. Now… now the Citadel was safer. Even so, no matter if it was the walls of the Citadel or the open air of the Gate, Helene still felt that entrenching loneliness.

Helene continued her people watching. There was always the hope that if she watched enough, it would ease the ache.

And then she felt a small tug. The feeling was nothing tangible – it never was. It was like a light fluttering in her gut, an instinct.

A pull.

A chill ran down her spine and it was as if a string yanked her taut, back straightening even more. Alarm ran through her. Helene looked around, letting the instinctual pull direct her gaze until it fell upon the eaves of a nearby tavern. She squinted her eyes until they adjusted to the darkness shadowed there, the color of the world falling away into dull grays.

Hanging upside down from the eaves was a black bat. It was small, having pulled its wings into itself, its eyes just peeking over the tops of them.

It seemed to be staring directly at her.

This wasn’t an unfamiliar occurrence. Bats are pretty common, at least as far as she’s seen in her life. They’re always around. Even back at the orphanage, a scrawny bat often spent its nights hanging from a tree outside the window by her cot. Hells, even back… even back in the before, Helene recalled her mother shooing them away.

Off you go. Shoo. Out of the house. Tch. Filthy, dirty creatures. Helene, dear, when you see a bat, let mum or dad know, ja? They carry so much sickness and disease. We can't have you getting sick. You're too precious.

The memory of her mother's voice fell away as Helene fully locked eyes with the bat. It stared at her, unblinking, unwavering. She realized it had been watching her the entire time since the sun went down, the feeling of being watched a familiar undercurrent that followed her even here, even to the city.

It was not an unwelcome sensation.

Every bat that lingered by her staved off the loneliness that hung over her head like a black veil. When everyone else would leave her, ignore her, or treat her like an impurity, at least she had solace in the idea that filthy, dirty creatures took succor in their shared ostracization. Birds of a feather flock together.

Or bats, she supposed.

This one was no different, the chill down her spine shifting into a cool breeze on her overheated skin as she smiled softly at it. It continued to stare back at Helene with that unwavering gaze, tethering her. The sounds of busy crowd chatter and the call of seagulls dimmed, becoming muffled and muted in her ears. Helene felt less and less connected to her body as she remained in this staring contest with the bat, becoming so far from herself as though she might drift away. Music began to play somewhere in the distance, unseen. No… it did not have a direction. It was like it was reverberating in her skull. The melody felt entirely separate from the sounds of the city around her. It filtered its way in through the muffled quiet, a violin played with a delicate touch. It didn't sound quite right. It was tinny, echoing on brass through her mind. Even still, the tune was enchanting.

Unbidden, Helene began humming along.

#ch: helene crow #cos blogging #*writing #*mine

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raayllum · 2 years ago

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As a rule, Kpp’Ar doesn’t do people.

They’re too loud and interruptive and always overstay their welcome. It’s almost a relief when his parents pass and he inherits their manor home in his late 40s, a quiet place to conduct his work.

He only lets Viren stay because the young man is an impertinent but intelligent upstart who isn’t dissuaded no matter how many times Kpp’Ar slams the door in his face, and well... The aging man can admit his eyes weren’t quite what they used to be after decades of writing by candlelight late into the night. Viren works as a sort of half-live in servant when he isn’t off cavorting with the young prince of Katolis or bickering with his mother’s, the High Cleric’s, new apprentice.

It takes about three months for the chores Kpp’Ar gives him to start turning into more fruitful, precise lessons. At the very least, Viren is a quick study, focused, even if he’s better at categorizing information than knowing how to use it. He throws himself further into his work, a mechanism that will serve him well in years to come, Kpp’Ar thinks, when he and the prince are fighting, and whatever sort of relationship they were having ends.

“Still friends,” Viren grumbles under his breath while embalming eagle eyes, and Kpp’Ar doesn’t shoo him out of the study like every other night when he falls asleep.

Which is why it gives Kpp’Ar pause when Viren becomes downright distracted, late for his mid-afternoon tending of the garden with a shiny glow to his face, and Kpp’Ar hears — because he must go down to the marketplace sometimes, for food and drink he cannot grow on his own, and ingredients he cannot have delivered — that a delegation from Del Bar is in town.

“Partnerships are a distraction,” Kpp’Ar warns, thinking of his doting mother and dim-witted father. They’d done little but squander their wealth together, relentlessly happy in spite of it all, even as their home became decrepit, and Kpp’Ar did have not the strength to maintain it.

He is not sure of why he’s giving advice. Whenever his father tried, it was always incredibly annoying and unhelpful, the heavy clap of his hand on Kpp’Ar’s shoulder jolting the rest of his body, messing up his precise measurements. “Lighten up, m’boy,” his father would say. “Go see the people. Even a machine needs many cogs.”

They are master and apprentice. Nothing more.

And it’s not like Viren will take it, anyway, as he says “Of course,” with that same ruddy glow in his cheeks.

In spite of himself, Kpp’Ar learns that the woman’s name is Lissa, a proficient diplomat with a mind for chess and gardening as a hobby, and if she’s going to be useful, he can tolerate her coming to pick up his apprentice most afternoons—right before sunset, and not a minute earlier.

They’re wed with very little fuss and Kpp’Ar gives them a handsome grandfather clock, an old family relic with updated gears and a few clever surprises hidden inside—birds and sort of thing—if they’re curious enough to find it. He thinks each of them will enjoy the challenge, and it’s not as though he’s heartless, he just doesn’t like people. Most people.

By all rights, he should hate his apprentice’s offspring. They are loud, even past the point of toddler-hood, in which yelling and tantrums can be tangentially excused. The boy runs and knocks things over and the girl asks so many questions Kpp’Ar thinks his ears will burst.

Viren is lucky Kpp’Ar doesn’t banish him for dumping his children onto him so unceremoniously, citing an emergency that had to be dealt with.

The children are curled up on either side of Kpp’Ar, boxing him in uncomfortably on the chaise lounge by the fire when the funeral bell tolls in the early morning, and Kpp’Ar learns later it is for Prince Harrow’s mother, the now late queen. And supposes, gruffly, that Viren can be somewhat forgiven, the children dewey-eyed when they wake and slurping hungrily at his subpar cooking.

“I hope they weren’t too much of a bother?” Viren says, pale at the door. Lissa is nowhere to be seen.

“They were... alright,” Kpp’Ar says, and while he will insist he doesn’t like having them around, he never stops Viren from bringing them around on occasion, provided they do not touch any of his things. Many of his incomplete or even completed projects are of the more dangerous variety.

It’s a mild spring day when Viren comes to his door, ash-white, and says five words he never has before: “Master, I need your help.”

His son is sick—and Kpp’Ar is not heartless.

He helps, growing more frustrated and weary into the town when nothing works. Every riddle can be solved. Every puzzle reverse engineered. The human body, never mind with magic, should not be an exception. And yet—and yet—

He starts making Claudia and Soren gifts. Tiny trinkets, metal mouses encasing light spells to delight their eyes, an extra-strong shoulder guard for Soren, a long case of hair dye for Claudia and her fascination with the colour purple. He smiles whenever he sees them. He lets them sit on his lap.

It is the least he can do for a little girl who is going to lose her brother. It is the least he can do for a little boy who is doing to die.

Kpp’Ar has performed many spells in his years. More of his wick-like hair is white than dark by now, like black and white candles blurred together, his body ready to be set alight by a spell gone wrong, a trigger pushed too far.

It does not prepare him to see his apprentice gone grey in his doorway, skin cracked and veins pulsing a sick, purple light, eyes blackened. Viren hacks out a shuddering breath, voice raspy, hands stained. Kpp’Ar helps him to a chair and a glass of water. Rummages around for substitutions that can help cure the pre-written death sentence Viren has fashioned for himself.

It is old, ancient magic, and something not to be messed with. A puzzle that should’ve been locked away and naturally eroded by time. Not resurrected so horribly—no matter the price to pay.

“You have done a dark thing, my boy,” he says gravely, stomach squelching with guilt and revulsion.

Viren waves a skeletal hand. “It was for my son.”

Kpp’Ar wonders if he should feel differently—if his horror is unjustified, that of a detached old man rather than a loving parent—but the shadowy look on Viren’s face rivals the prior corruption, when he storms in a few days later and announces his wife is leaving, because of what he did.

The tiny family stays for a week when Lissa leaves — Viren often came back here at night, spitting fire in his eyes and a scowl on his face — which isn’t surprising, even if it is disappointing. Kpp’Ar does the cooking and makes Claudia tidy it up, Soren still resting on the couch.

He leaves two final, parting gifts in his house for them.

He cannot stand his home any longer—and Kpp’Ar will not overstay his welcome.

Not when hell is here, crafted by his own foolish hand, and his apprentice is a like a demon at his door.

#pre series #morally ambiguous fam #tdp #the dragon prince #viren #my fic #fic #ficlet #kpp'ar #mage fam

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mommymooze · 3 years ago

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Can You See What is Growing Before Your Eyes?

seteth & Flayn, Reader & Flayn, Seteth X Reader

Sitting on the fishing dock as the sunset blazes across the skies, it is quiet and peaceful in the monastery. You can almost imagine there is not a war going on, that the Imperial army isn’t marching towards your location to attack you and your friends who have arrived for the Millennium festival. Your thoughts are peaceful as you observe the rose and orange colored skies reflected in the pond Your bobber floats motionless on the calm waters.

“Are the fish biting?” Flayn calls from the far side of the water.

Just as she speaks your bobber begins to twitch. You hold up a finger with one hand as you grasp your pole more firmly in the other. Watching, waiting, suddenly the red and white float goes under, you jerk the line, hooking the fish. It is a short battle, the bullhead gives up quickly.

“It’s about average.” You answer as you look over your basket. “I have 15 fish, so after a few more I will bring them to the kitchens.”

“How are you able to catch such an abundant amount? My brother and I would be here for half a day or more and still not catch that quantity.” Flayn chides, her hands on her hips.

“If I had any fishing secrets, I would not hesitate to share them with you and Seteth.” You smile.

“Perhaps I shall watch you and learn of your mysterious technique.” Flayn decides, sitting on an empty crate nearby.

Retrieving and rebaiting your hook, you toss it back into the water, causing ripples to spread across the pond. You sit, still as a statue. Out of the corner of your eye you watch Flayn switch the position of her legs, then look around, fix her hair, and otherwise appear bored. You have not moved, except to shoo a bug from getting close to your eye. Even that movement was performed slowly and silently.

The bobber twitches in the water, moves left, stops briefly and heads right. It becomes halfway submerged, only to pop back up again immediately. You do not move. It begins moving away from your position. Just as it submerges you yank the line and are fighting the hooked fish. The fish jumps, trying to get away, however you keep steady with your pull on the line, hauling it closer to the dock.

“A golden fish!” Flayn excitedly laughs.

Hauling your catch close to the dock, you grab the fish by its jaw, remove the hook and secure it in your bucket.

“That one will pay for the accompaniments to an excellent fish stew!” You announce, beginning to pack up your fishing equipment.

“I did not see anything special about your technique. You used a worm and I saw no special powder or magic cast upon it. Strange.” Flayne ponders.

“First, you must learn to be one with the water. If it is still, you must be still. If it moves, you can move. The fish will be disturbed by your wiggling, especially on the dock.” You share your wisdom with the lovely young lady.

“I will have to tell my brother of this discovery, and that we will be having a fine fish stew this evening. Thank you!”

Selling your fish in the market, you take the rest to the kitchens. The cooks are thrilled to be able to provide a hearty and protein filled meal to the masses, there will be enough to go around. More and more people are arriving at the monastery to assist with the war efforts.

After returning your belongings to your quarters you head to the Cathedral to give prayers of thanks. Thanks for the food today, for so many willing to help defend the church, for the return of so many students and for the return of Professor Byleth. Now that they are back, hopefully they can lead the church and Blue Lions to victory. Your mind falters at that, observing the wounded and broken man that Dimitri has become. You watch as the Professor approaches him, trying to speak to him, trying to get him to eat. The conversation is one sided. Dimitri says nothing. Your eyes go wide as he leaps at the Professor and throws them against a stone column, then returns to his place at the crumbled goddess statue.

Without thinking you run to Byleth’s side. You are well within Dimitri’s range, but your focus is Byleth. Their head is bleeding, and they are moaning. Quickly you heal the head wound. It is not deep, however there is a lot of blood. You struggle to drag them further from Dimitri to a safer part of the Cathedral.

“Professor, can you hear me? Please?” You whisper to them, your voice shaking. They’ve just returned from being gone for five years, it would be horrible to lose them again so soon.

The professor shakes their head. “I am okay. He caught me off guard.” They answer as you help them to their feet.

“Can I take you to the infirmary? Do you have pain elsewhere?” You anxiously ask as they lean on you slightly while you hold their arm, walking to the pews.

“I am alright.” They nod. “My head was hit. I may have a bruise or two, nothing that will not be fine by tomorrow.”

“If you are sure. There is no need to suffer with pain if we can help.” You smile.

Professor Byleth heads back to the bridge leaving the Cathedral, refusing your offer to accompany them. You remain, offering further prayers for Byleth’s health and healing for Dimitri.

You return to the infirmary, your home away from home. Manuela is no longer here, she sided with the Empire. Being thrust into the position of one of the main healers, you remain out of battle, dealing with the injured soldiers. Before the war you worked your shifts in the infirmary, Manuela handled the serious cases.

When the war started, everyone fled the monastery. You packed more books on healing and treatments than you did clothes. Seteth encouraged you to lead the healers for the Knights of Seiros. Every place you travel, you consult with other healers in the area, trying to increase your knowledge as well as theirs. You hope you are adequately filling the shoes he sets forth.

At the infirmary desk you pull out the file for Byleth and make a note regarding todays treatment. When the Knights of Seiros returned to the monastery, you were happy to find many of the medical notes still here. Thieves must not have a use for them. All potions, salves, bandages, and lotions were gone. You have been working with several other clerics building up your inventory.

A sudden knocking brings your attention to the door of the infirmary.

“Greetings. I see you have no patients today, I hope everything is well.“ Seteth bows.

You look up at the handsome man in the doorway. “Good afternoon, Seteth. Byleth was injured by Dimitri earlier. If you see them, make certain they are not hiding any injuries I was unable to find.”

Seteth nods, “I understand your concerns. There are many that take care and have themselves treated properly. Then there are others, I understand your concerns.” He smiles, “Flayn said you were fishing earlier.”

“Yes. I am not a hunter, however I do want to do my part to keep the food stores filled. An army marches on its stomach.” You answer as you file papers in the cabinet.

“Flayn advises you are considerably successful at fishing. Perhaps I can join you and observe your techniques.” Seteth smiles, it makes him even more handsome.

“I am no master fisherman. Flayn simply is not patient, she can’t hold still.” You laugh. “I have seen you fishing with Alois. You would be more successful if he was not there, he is rather boisterous.”

“True. I suppose I like to fish because it is relaxing. These are stressful times. I do hope you are taking care of yourself too.” Seteth answers, a bit of authority creeping back into his voice.

“Noted, sir.” You nod, then begin to unpack dressings and filling the cabinets.

“I am asking you to take care of yourself as a friend. We have worked together for these many years. I’ve seen you exhaust yourself taking care of the knights.”

“War is not conducive to sleep. I will sleep when the war is over.” You chuckle. “Besides, when I finally do leave to find rest, I notice there is still candlelight coming through the windows of your office. Perhaps you should lead by example, my friend.”

“Touche!” He chortles. “I will put in further effort.” Seteth nods, returning to his office.

You treat minor cuts and bruises the remainder of the afternoon. Flayn stops by and asks you to join her for dinner. After all, you were the one that provided the ingredients for this evening’s meal. You promise to meet her after restocking the supplies.

In the dining hall you take your bowl of fish soup and look for Flayn. She is sitting next to her brother and waving for you to join them. You take a seat opposite them. She is easily excited.

“I am so happy that you are able to join us.” Flayn smiles.

“It is important to keep your body healthy and nourished.” You nod and smile softly at Seteth. You are happy to see him in the dining hall. He has had too many meals in his office, overworking himself.

“Yes. An army runs on its stomach, and it is important for everyone to eat properly, especially those that support the army.” Seteth tells Flayn, encouraging her to eat.

“Does that mean I can have seconds, brother?” She asks, sucking in her cheeks a bit to appear more undernourished.

“Only after everyone else has had a portion.” He waves his spoon around the room at the other diners.

Flayn pouts.

Observing her sad face, you have an idea. “If you would like, we can fish tomorrow early in the morning and hopefully catch more for a fine fish dinner.” You pat her hand that is resting on the table.

Flayn’s face now wears a huge smile. “Really? I am excited! You can teach me more fishing techniques. Oh brother! Maybe you can join us?” Both of you look at him, a hopeful smile on your faces.

Seteth’s brow furrows. “I will have to check my schedule. I will see if I can make the time.”

The next morning you get up at dawn to head to the woods, digging up earthworms and grubs for bait. The ground is still moist from the rains and the worms are close to the surface. You have plenty for everyone, including Byleth, who you share bait with frequently. They buy bait from the merchants when they are out, and every coin is needed for the war.

The day is slightly windy, causing the water to dance on the pond. The sunlight sparkles on the surface as the sun rises higher in the sky. Flayn joins you. Instructing her on proper baiting of the hook you remind her to sit as still as possible. You sit far enough apart to softly talk, yet not interfere with each other’s quest for fish.

Flayn has been listening attentively, her basket of fish is proof of her improvement. She brings a fish to you that has swallowed the hook and you show her how to use a tool you’ve made that will help loosen it. Instructing how to slide her hand down the fish so she will not be pricked by the fins, then use the tool to release the hook. Suddenly a shadow is blocking the sunlight over your shoulder.

“Good morning, brother. We are having a marvelous time fishing!” Flayne giggles.

“I can see that. You both have a surprisingly large catch. Perhaps there are many secrets you can pass along to us.” He smiles at you. That is a very handsome look on his face.

“I would be happy to help.” You smile as Flayn puts her fish in her basket and baits her hook for the next catch. “I have a nice collection of worms today, help yourself.” You point to the can.

“Hmm.” Seteth frowns. “Would you mind giving me pointers on how to set the bait? My wife usually baited the hooks. I can manage with some things, but worms are tricky.”

“I understand. My father would set my bait when I was little. I was afraid of the wiggly bugs and worms. Though he is gone, I will pass along his techniques. It is a good way of remembering him.” You take a worm and quietly show him how to set the worm on the hook, leaving the end close to the barb of the hook to wiggle.

“I always make sure the barb is just through the end there, touching it but not piercing your finger. There. You’re ready to go.” You smile as you let loose the hook and it dangles and spins in the air.

“Appreciated.” Seteth smiles. The relaxed look on his face is a sight to behold.

You cast your line into the water and wait. Flayn is to your right trying very hard to be still. Seteth is to your left, taking a seat on a crate after casting his line in the water. Flayn’s bobber starts to wiggle. You hear her stifle a noise, trying to remain quiet. Suddenly her bobber goes under, she pulls her pole back.

“I have one. Oh, it feels heavy!” Flayn excitedly giggles as she works to haul the fish to land.

You lean to the edge of the pond, grabbing the fish as soon as she has it out of the water. “That certainly is a large fish. I think that fills your basket this morning!” You laugh.

She puts her fish away and gives you a huge hug. “You have taught me so well. I’m going to take these to the kitchen right away. I feel like a successful fisherwoman!” she grins.

“You are an excellent student. What an amazing haul!” You laugh, watching her struggle with her heavy container of fish.

Seteth now gasps as he hooks a fish. You grab the fish by the side of the mouth when he gets it to shore.

“Oh my, it’s swallowed your hook. That’s the fourth time today. They must be really hungry to gobble them down so quickly.” You mutter, heading to your tackle box to grab your tool to remove the hook.

“You can retrieve the hook? I usually have to cut the line and tie on a new one.” Seteth is happily surprised.

You call him closer as you follow the line into the fish’s mouth. You hand him the tool and instruct him as he uses it to free the hook. He stands much closer to you than he normally does. He smells like myrrh, cinnamon, and ginger.

“That was certainly educational today.” Seteth smiles. “Thank you for your instruction.”

“Any time.” You smile softly. “The company was very enjoyable.”

A week later Seteth invites you for tea in his office. Checking the calendar, you note that next week everyone will leave for battle, so he must want to review final plans. You arrive at his door at the exact appointed time, holding several folders of paperwork that he may find useful to allay his concerns.

Seteth invites you inside and gestures to the table by the windows that is set for tea.

His desk is piled high with folders, stacks of letters to be sealed, parchment and inkwells randomly scattered amongst his work. Mounds of opened letters fill the box on one corner of the desk while multiple completed replies occupy a box on the other side.

“Is that paperwork for me?” He appears to be surprised at the bundle in your hands.

“I thought you may want to discuss the inventories and preparations being made for our upcoming march.” You respond shyly. The last thing you want to do is provide more work for him.

Seteth takes the folders from you and places them on a nearby table. “Actually, I have the greatest trust in you and would only speak to you about it if you need my guidance. Please, take a seat and join me for tea.” He gestures to the table and chairs by the window.

Taking your seat, you pull the cloth napkin to your lap. You feel a bit nervous. He has only asked you to his office to discuss matters of the church or war. This is your first purely social visit.

Seteth pours the tea, handing you tongs to take a sweet treat from the basket.

“Apologies, I do not know your favorite tea. I hope you do not mind Four Spice Blend.” He smiles softly as he takes his seat, making certain his chair is at a proper gentlemanly distance from you.

“I drink Four Spice in the cooler weather, the flavor seems to warm me from within.” You return the smile. This must be the excitement the students feel when Professor Byleth invites them to tea.

“I am glad you enjoy it.” Seteth hums. “I have been having conversations with Felix lately about the importance of friends in our lives. I then realized that I have been negligent myself in not taking time to visit with my friends.”

“I am delighted to call you my friend, of course. We have worked together for these many years, but we have not made proper time to simply chat.”

“I am making an effort to correct that mistake, starting today.” Seteth nods and takes a sip of tea. “Do tell me about yourself, what books you like to read, what are your hobbies?”

You chat back and forth until the tea has grown exceedingly cold, exchanging tidbits of knowledge into who each of you are as a person. You speak of the books you’ve read recently and share impressions you have on your allies.

“This has been simply fascinating. A fantastic break from work. I feel very refreshed,” Seteth smiles. “I have learned quite a bit about you and your many talents.”

“I feel the same! I have learned so much about you as well. Thank you for inviting me to a very lovely tea.” You stand and reach for your paperwork.

“Perhaps we can make it a weekly occurrence, to make certain we have the time to check on each other,” He offers.

“Fantastic. I would enjoy it immensely.” You are beaming with happiness as you head out the door. Your heart skips a beat as you head down the hallway. You don’t mind that there are a few patients impatiently waiting inside the infirmary.

It is a few weeks before you can have another quiet tea together. Travel and battle do not allow for much time to socialize. Your hands are full setting up the infirmary tents, organizing the clerics, making certain the army has well stocked bandages and potions for the fighters.

Flayn is going to be on the field for the battle and you worry over her as she finishes attaching the last pieces of her armor. She comes to speak with you frequently, discussing a few adult matters that she is not confident with confiding in her brother.

“Watch out for arrows, if you are hurt, fly straight to the infirmary. Your brother would never forgive me if I cannot get you back into perfect health as soon as possible.” You kiss her on the forehead and send her off to her wyvern. You have become quite close friends and say a silent prayer for her safety. She reminds you of your younger siblings that you raised when your mother passed away.

Now you are standing at the edge of camp, watching what little you can see of the battle. Seteth and Flayn are flying close together on their wyverns, protecting each other. You send a quick prayer for their safety as you head back into the infirmary tent, injured fighters are already arriving.

Wrapping a bandage to a soldiers arm you’ve completed stitching and healing, you hear a wyvern’s roar outside the tent. Running to the front of the tent, Flayn is guiding her brother’s wyvern to the ground next to hers. Seteth is nearly unconscious as you hurry to lift him from the saddle. You have no idea where your strength comes from as you carry him into the infirmary and place him on an examination table. You’ve carried unconscious soldiers before, but Seteth is very solidly built.

Flayn dashes in behind you, filling you in on what happened. “He was hit by a lightning bolt. His wyvern was hit as well, but it dealt with the hit better than he did. I think it was because of the arrows he had taken prior that had weakened him.”

“Help me get his robes off.” You quickly instruct her.

She helps remove his robes and armor as you strip him to his undershirt and trousers. His pants are ruined by two arrows, you cut them off just above the arrow in his thigh and around the other in his calf. Neither of the projectiles are close to arteries, however the one in his thigh is very deep into the muscle. It seems to take forever to remove the arrowhead from leg. You had to cut tissue and pull his flesh out of the way. Finally, you work faith magic deep into the torn tissues, encouraging the flesh to bind back together.

Flayn works on his shoulder where the burns from the lightning strike entered his body. Luckily it traveled down his arm and exited close to his hand. You heal what you can of the burns for now, they will need further attention later.

Two strong soldiers help lift Seteth onto a stretcher, moving him to his tent. Gently you guide him on to his bed with Flayn’s assistance and she stays to watch over him. Before you leave, you examine her for any injuries, healing even the smaller cuts, knowing her brother would not be pleased to waken and see she was not treated.

Returning to the infirmary you triage the incoming soldiers. The new casualties begin to dwindle and those that are well enough leave for dinner. You make certain those that can eat do so. You then proceed to check on Seteth.

Standing at the entrance on the tent you announce yourself. Flayn beckons you to come in. Flayn is sitting in a chair, knitting a sock as she quietly sits by his side.

“I am so happy that you taught me how to knit. It is keeping my hands and mind busy so I do not hover over him so much. He has been sleeping peacefully since he was brought here.” Flayn updates you.

Leaning over the cot that Seteth is silently sleeping on, you check his vitals then his wounds to make certain he has not bled through the bandages. You’ve noticed his and Flayn’s heartrate are not the same as others. There are a few things you have seen over the years that sets them apart from the others. You keep these things to yourself, honoring their privacy.

Looking over at Flayn you smile reassuringly. “Would you like to go visit with your friends a bit? Promise me you will stay right in the middle of camp. No going off anywhere or your brother will have my head. I’m sure you want to check on them as well. When the sound the night bell, be back here very quickly. “

She gasps with excitement, “Yes! Thank you so much.” She hurriedly packs away her knitting and runs from the tent.

Remaining by Seteth’s side, you heal the electrical burns to his shoulder and hand. Exhausted, you doze lightly in the chair with a blanket over your legs and your hand resting on his chest. If he makes the slightest movement your eyes are wide open and you observe him for any discomfort.

Flayn returns a few hours later, tired and happy that she could visit with everyone. She kisses Seteth on the head and tells you good night just as he wakens.

Opening his eyes, his first sight is her. “Flayn!” He gasps. “You are alright.” His eyes close and he visibly relaxes for a moment.

“She is fine. A few minor scratches. Absolutely nothing compared to your injuries.” You pat your hand on his chest.

Seteth moves, attempting to sit up. He shifts his legs then grimaces with pain. With you pushing him back into his cot, he finally settles back into a prone position.

“You were hit by two arrows and then lightning. How you managed to keep perched on your wyvern is a miracle. Flayn brought you back. The battle is long over, you need to rest.” You answer his questions before he can ask them.

“I am happy to see you are recovering. Good night, brother.” Flayn calls as she heads out into the night air to her tent.

“Please tell me if you have any pain. I will help you sit up to have something to drink after I heal you further. I can get you anything you need, food, water, just name it.”

“I feel extremely fatigued, like every muscle in my body has been worked to exhaustion,” he quietly answers. “I only felt pain when I tried to move my leg. You have done a wonderful job, thank you.”

“You are a good patient. Let me change the bandages on your leg and then sit you up to have a drink. You should sleep and let the healing take full hold.” Taking your basket of fresh bandages and healing salves you move to the other side of his cot and begin unwrapping his wounds. Cleansing and applying further deep healing to his leg, you wrap it with fresh, clean dressings.

Taking a waterskin in hand, you help him sit up enough to drink nearly two cups of water. You take a handkerchief to dab his lips.

“There was a significant amount of blood loss. Drinking plenty of fluids will help you replenish them. I’ll make sure you eat a high amount of protein tomorrow for breakfast.”

“Thank you,” Seteth whispers as he lies back and closes his eyes. You pat his chest and he takes your hand in his. You are relieved that he is too tired to notice a slight blush on your cheeks.

Seteth awakens in the morning to the smell of bacon and eggs. You carefully help him to sit up.

“Flayn is in the infirmary tent, helping with those she can.” You begin. “They are tearing down camp and we will be headed back to the monastery soon. Do you need me to help you get a change of clothes? You will need new pants, I had to cut the others to get to your injuries. I can send someone to assist you if you prefer.”

“Let me see if I can stand, perhaps I can manage on my own.” Seteth slowly sits himself up and swings his legs off the cot. You reach outside the tent, then turn around and hand him a training lance.

“This should help you keep steady on your feet for now.“ You say while hovering over him as he takes a few cautious steps to the chair next to the table. Once he is seated you make certain he has fresh water to go with his food.

Back at the monastery you currently have four patients in the infirmary. Riding in the back of a wagon did not help their conditions much and it takes considerable time to heal and stabilize them until you feel that they are settled and without pain.

Flayn appears in front of your desk as you document the charts. “Are you finished with the patients?” She asks sweetly.

“For now. I will have someone monitoring them throughout the night and wake me if their conditions worsen.” You answer as you finish making an entry.

“Good!” Flayn takes you by the arm and pulls you down the hallway to Seteth’s office. Pulling you inside, you see the table set for three. The smell of the delicious dinner is heavenly, you’ve not eaten for many hours. Seteth is already seated at the table

“Please excuse me for not standing.” Seteth blushes slightly

You laugh. “I would be angry if you did. You’re keeping the leg propped up. Excellent.” You see that his color is good, he is healing well. You give a huge sigh of relief.

Flayn guides you to the seat next to him and she sits across from her brother. While the meal progresses, Flayn tells her point of view of the battle and how the Professor led them all to victory.

“This is quite a happy surprise. An excellent dinner and amazing company. I could not ask for more. Thank you both for having me.” You look greatly pleased.

“It is the least we could do to thank you for your excellent care,” Seteth assures. “You have been working nonstop since the battle. When you are finished, Flayn will escort you to your room and you will sleep. The healers here have been under your watchful eye and will take good care of the wounded. We need you to take time to care for yourself.”

“Yes. I will sleep and you should as well. I’m sending Flayn back to check on you. If she finds you working at the desk, I’ll run up here and bring a stick with me to chase you out.” You laugh.

Seteth chuckles. “I do not wish to incur your wrath. I promise to head straight for bed after dinner.”

“Should I change your bandages while I am here?” You ask.

“I did not invite you here to work. Flayn will aid me.” He nods to her.

Flayn suddenly interrupts. “I really should get the dishes back to the kitchens, you know how they can be. Perhaps it would be best that she escorts you to your room and check you this evening. This will probably take me a few trips.” Flayn says as she hurriedly stacks the plates, cups, and cutlery together and heads out the door.

“Do you have salves and bandages in your room? Should I pop by the infirmary for some?” You inquire.

“You had best get them. I know Flayn has some in her room, however I am not certain that I have any myself. I will meet you at the stairs, we can go up together.” He answers as he reaches for a cane to keep himself steady.

You observe Seteth as you follow him up the stairs, he is being especially careful and favoring his leg. He unlocks the door to his room on the third floor. You try not to let the curiosity get the best of you. Briefly glancing about, his quarters are pristine. Comfortable and heavy furniture come into view as he lights a candelabra.

“Would you prefer to change your bandages on the couch or your bed.” You ask.

“The bed I suppose,” he sighs as he leads you to his bedroom.

“Do you have a spare towel in the bathroom? I want to make certain nothing gets onto your bedclothes.”

“Of course, there is a basket by the door.” He gestures to the open door.

Retrieving a towel, you return to his side. Seteth is seated on his bed, his back propped by his pillows. His pants are removed from the wounded leg, the other covered by his blanket.

Raising his leg, you carefully place the towel underneath. You observe his grimace out of the corner of your eye.

“Which wound hurts more, the one in your calf or the one in your thigh?”

“The thigh. That one was quite deep,” Seteth answers, slightly gritting his teeth.

Unwrapping both injuries they appear to be healing well, the scarring is pink, not red at the edges, no signs of infection or bleeding. You slightly lift his lower leg, asking him to move his foot different directions. Turning your attention to the healing injury on his thigh you begin pouring faith magic into the muscles, knitting the torn tissue further together bit by bit. Massaging the muscles around the wound you flex his knee. The healing is progressing quite well.

Briefly you glance to his face, his eyes are closed, he appears relaxed. You are blushing again. His muscles are perfect, his thighs well-toned. Taking a deep breath, you pull your brain back into your professional mindset.

“Any other pain? Any lingering tingling from the lightning in your arm?” You softly ask. “You have walked on that leg too much today. Limping around on a cane will cause pain in your hand and arm as well as throwing off your gait and leading to lower back pain. I’ve done what I can today. I would like to treat your thigh injury one more time tomorrow.” You turn away to gather the soiled bandages and cool the steamy thoughts in your head.

“You are worrying too much. I will be fine.” Seteth answers. He sounds sleepy, which is relieving. You make certain he has a glass of water on his nightstand before you leave.

You make your way back downstairs. Flayn is taking the last of the dishes back to the kitchens. You wish her a good night and tell her to fetch you if you are needed. Once she is out of sight you head to the infirmary to check on the patients. The night cleric is relieved to see you, a soldier woke up and fell trying to get out of bed, undoing quite a bit of the work everyone had put into him. A few hours later you leave the heavily sedated patient, hoping they will retain the use of their arm.

The next day you find yourself being scolded by Flayn when she finds your bowl of oatmeal is still half full on your desk and it is already lunchtime. You are too busy working on the soldier’s reinjured shoulder to eat.

“Stop this at once!” Flayn stamps her foot for good measure. I am hereby relieving you of your duty and sentencing you to complete bedrest until tomorrow.

You turn around to argue with her, however two knights are gently taking you by the arms and leading you from the infirmary to your room. As you close your door behind you, you can hear Flayn giving them orders to stand guard and not let you leave until tomorrow morning.

Your head is pounding as you reach for a glass of water. Being told to take your own medicine is quite the bitter pill to swallow. It is reassuring that the soldier should be fine and rest is the best thing for you now.

The next day Flayn apologizes for her mutiny. Instead of being angry with her, you give her a huge hug and thank her for her bravery. You invite her to bake cookies together later, perhaps some ginger snaps, since her brother may like the flavor.

Meeting Flayn in the kitchens she confesses, “Everyone says I am a bad cook. Before the war I cooked a dish so bad only Dimitri and Raphael would eat it.” She pouts.

“It is not that you are bad at cooking. You simply do not understand the why and because of it all.” You explain as you gather and measure the ingredients for the cookies.

“Butter for example.” You begin, “We’re not using it in this recipe, but many times softened butter is an ingredient in cookies. You can’t use cold butter, it won’t mix well with the sugar. If you melt the butter, it will mix with the sugar, however the consistency will be wrong. If you melt the butter too long, it will brown the butter, giving it a completely different taste. Leaving the butter in a slightly warm place for about 30 minutes should soften the butter enough to mix with the sugar and make a fluffy creamy mixture, perfect for many baked goods.”

“So cooking requires the ingredients to be in the correct state as well as quantity.” Flayn nods in understanding.

“Exactly! And you cannot always substitute items in a recipe. If you want to use a plum instead of a peach, that will not cause problems. However, if you use baking soda instead of baking powder, that may make your cookies or cake refuse to rise.”

“But they both are for baking and making it rise.” Flayn frowns.

“Would you substitute mandrake root for arrow root in a potion?” You ask.

“Goodness no! One has healing properties, the other is a poison!” Flayn shudders.

“Both are roots, both are powdered and about the same color. Always use the correct ingredient.” You nod encouragingly. “It is like brewing potions. The right ingredients in the right quantity will make someone sleep peacefully. Too much and they will be in a coma.”

“I am beginning to understand your instruction. One cannot substitute ingredients willy-nilly. You must have knowledge as to how they work together to understand the effects of changing the composition of the baked item.” Flayn smiles widely.

“Once you get the basics, with experience you will be able to change things in the recipe. Let’s go by the recipe today and experiment another time. So did you measure one cup of sugar or one cup of salt here?” You place the bowl in front of her.

“Um. I am uncertain.” Flayn blushes.

“Taste it.” You push the bowl closer to her.

Flayn takes a pinch between her fingers and puts it on her tongue. “Ew! That would have been horrible!” she gasps as she heads to the larder to obtain a cup of sugar, abandoning the cup of salt on the counter.

Later in the afternoon you join Seteth in his office for Angelica tea. You surprise him with a box of the ginger cookies baked earlier.

“Ginger cookies! I have not had one in quite some time.” Seteth eagerly grasps a couple with the tongs, putting them on his plate.

“Flayn made them this morning.” You smile.

Seteth’s smile falls from his face as his eyebrows furrow slightly. He looks back to see that his door is indeed closed. “You do know what her cooking is like, don’t you?” He whispers.

You laugh. “Really Seteth, I was with her the entire time. We had a very productive cooking session. You may be surprised. Go on, take a bite.”

Seteth brings the cookie to his lips as if he has been requested to bite the head off a viper. He stares down at the cookie for a second and sniffs it. It does not smell as if it is burnt. It smells of ginger and sweetness, which is unusual for a cookie baked by Flayn.

Finally, he opens his mouth and takes a bite, silently praying that his teeth do not break off by doing this. Instead, his teeth sink into the slightly soft, slightly chewy, perfectly baked cookie. The ginger mixed with the molasses and other spices meld together in his mouth in the most delightful and rewarding flavors. His eyes open wide as his lips pull into the sweetest smile.

“You are absolutely certain that Flayn made these? They are delicious!” Seteth gasps.

You nod. You are so proud of her right now. You wish she could see the look on Seteth’s face right now. It’s precious.

“I must thank her later. You are a miracle worker.” He reaches forward and takes your hand in his.

Your face feels as if it is on fire as it heats up with a blush. Taking your teacup you try to hide behind it as you watch Seteth reach for another cookie.

The infirmary tent is outside of Fort Merceus. You can hear the battle raging on the fortress above the wall. You’ve just finished treating the wounds of an armored Knight, closing the lance wound to his shoulder. Suddenly things are quiet. You then hear a strange whistling noise followed by an explosion. Rocks rain down from the skies, causing the large tent to collapse around you. Pain overwhelms you as the world suddenly becomes dark.

You jolt into consciousness. Sitting upright you grab your head as it throbs fiercely between your hands. Your fingers feel wet, they are covered with blood.

“Brother! She is awake!” you hear Flayn’s voice next to you. Bleary eyed you look over to her, it is difficult to focus through the pain.

Seteth kneels at the side of the cot, wrapping his arms gently around you. “I thought that we might lose you.”

You manage to reach your right arm toward, your left arm refuses to cooperate. Taking a few deep breaths, you calm yourself. Your head pounds mercilessly.

“What happened?” Your voice trembling, remembering the last things you saw.

“The Fortress is gone. It is nothing but rubble. Pillars of light came from the skies and caused explosions everywhere. An entire wall crumbled and crushed part of the infirmary. The battle is over, for now.” Seteth’s voice exudes sadness.

You sob uncontrollably into his shoulder. The loss of life must have been great. Slowly the flow of tears subsides.

“Here, you must drink something.” Seteth offers a waterskin.

You drink your fill. Your eyes are more focused now and you notice you are in Seteth’s tent. You open your mouth to speak, his finger covers your lips.

“You need to rest.” Seteth softly says as he holds a potion bottle for you to drink. You smell the bitterness of the sedative. Nodding your head, you drink the contents. He then lays you back on his cot.

You awaken to the sounds of birds chirping and soldiers walking through the camp. This time you are not nearly in as much pain as you were previously. Sitting up, you assess your injuries. Based on the wrappings and pain your left shoulder has been broken. You have multiple contusions on your arms and legs. Feeling your head, your hair has been washed and there are a few spots where cuts are healed.

You watch the tent flap open and Flayn brings two plates of breakfast to set on the table.

“I am glad you are awake. My brother is in the war council meeting. Let me help you walk over here and get something to eat.” Flayn’s smile is soft and encouraging.

As you both eat, she updates you on the status of the camp. The battle was won, then the Fort was attacked. They did lose two clerics and several soldiers when the tent was hit by debris. They repaired the infirmary tent and treatment of the wounded is ongoing. The soldiers are reorganizing, preparing for the march to Enbarr.

“I feel bad for stealing your brother’s bed.” You frown. You are unaccustomed to inconveniencing others, especially your wonderful friends.

“He slept on the floor next to you to make certain you did not wake up and head back to the infirmary.” Flayn giggles.

“He knows me well.” You nod.

“He hovered over you like a mother hen. He was very worried.” Flayn looks at you, her eyes seem to bore into you. “Do you like him?”

“Well, yes, I do. We have been friends for many years.” You answer, deciding that the eggs on your plate are very interesting so you stare at them. They stare back.

“You would make a great couple.” She giggles.

You almost choke on the food you are chewing. Grabbing a drink of water, you take a few gasps of air. “What makes you think that?” Your face is bright red, you can’t look her in the eye.

“I am getting pretty good at noticing these things. When things are difficult, you tend to find someone that you can lean on and support you. Dimitri and Marianne, Felix and Sylvain, Mercedes and Dedue. It is only natural. You and my brother watch out for each other, keep the other from overworking, make sure they eat properly. I think it is inevitable.” She grins and looks quite satisfied with herself.

Your brain goes into overdrive. “I spend a lot of time with you as well. Knitting, cooking, fishing.”

“Yes. However, you do not act romantically toward me, your attitude is more…hmmm,” Flayn puts a finger to her chin. “Motherly.”

“It is true that I am that way toward you. My mother passed not long after giving birth to my youngest brother. Father relied on me to help raise my siblings as I was the oldest. I see so much of my siblings in you. Your naivety, looking at the world through innocent eyes. I feel very protective of you and understand your brother’s concern. I also recognize his attitude of overprotectiveness. You are all he has left.” You pat her hand.

“True. I thank you for your support. He needs to learn and understand that I am no longer a little girl.” Flayn pouts, slightly ruining her ‘I am an adult’ speech.

“Perhaps you should speak with him. Have a heart to heart conversation.” You feel relieved the conversation has shifted to her feelings about her restrictive sibling.

The remainder of your breakfast is quiet. Flayn returns the dishes to the cooks as you slowly make your way to the infirmary tent. Late in the evening you are lying and resting in an empty cot when you hear Seteth’s voice. You sit up as he approaches.

“There is no need to get up.” He apologizes. “I was simply checking on your wellbeing.”

Feeling brave, you reach up to take his hand. “Thank you for helping me. I have been pacing myself and taking frequent breaks. I am very grateful for everything you have done. I am sure you would like to enjoy your privacy and sleep more comfortably.”

Seteth squeezes your hand. “You are not a burden. My door is always open for you. Sleep well.” He smiles as he leaves.

You lie there, overthinking the short exchange. Are you special or simply a good friend? You want to curse Flayn for lighting aflame these thoughts in your head. You eventually drift off to sleep.

Several weeks later you march with the troops back to Garreg Mach. The war is over. Enbarr and the Emperor are defeated. Rhea is rescued and officially appoints Byleth as the new Archbishop. The Knights are busy taking out rogue bands of Imperial troops and bandits, returning to the monastery to be healed and rest up for the next battle.

Seteth is constantly overworking himself along with Byleth as they create the new doctrine for the church. They also communicate with Dimitri by letter, regarding plans for the continent. You find yourself constantly interrupting their meetings, forcing them to break for food or to take a walk to get fresh air.

“I thought we had just stopped for lunch. Is it time for dinner already?” Seteth looks up from the table filled with scattered parchment and books. Byleth doesn’t look up from his writing.

“Yes. Flayn and I have caught some fish and we are having it for dinner. No excuses.” You glare at them sternly. “Join us in the dining hall.” You do not say now, however it is implied and they stop their work quickly.

While eating, Seteth and Byleth attempt to continue their conversation regarding a particular section of doctrine.

“I order both of you to rest. Talk of something not business,” You plead. “I have heard that Dimitri will only work six days a week, taking one day for his mental wellbeing and health. I completely stand behind that mindset. True, there are always some issues that have to be dealt with, however the focus of the day off is to give yourself a break.”

Byleth looks at you as if you have two heads.

“Vessel of the goddess, yeah, yeah.” You frown at them. “You still need to eat, to sleep, and to rest. Keep this up and you’re headed straight for another five year nap. How much work are you going to finish then?” You cross your arms in front of your chest, looking at them smugly.

“She seems quite serious and peremptory. I don’t think we have much of a choice in this.” Seteth acquiesces. “Saucy little woman.” He whispers to his soup.

“What was that?” You snip.

“I said you make a fine spokeswoman.” He quickly shovels more fish into his mouth.

A week later they announce that Sunday shall be a day of rest except for what must absolutely be accomplished. The first week goes quite well. Byleth and Seteth spend much of the day resting in the afternoon sun as they fish in the pond.

They even admit to a renewed spirit as they return to their work the next day, having clearer minds and feeling rested. Things go well until the fourth week.

You are in the infirmary long enough to heal and bandage a burn on Annette’s arm when you cannot help but hear Seteth and Flayn’s very loud and angry voices emitting from his office. Quickly you dismiss Annette, telling her not to utter a single word.

As you approach Seteth’s door, Flayn runs out crying and fleeing to her room upstairs.

Seteth is sitting at his desk, his head in his hands.

“I do not know what has gotten into that child. She simply does not understand that I am trying to protect her.” He groans.

You knock on the door frame. Seteth waves you in and you close the door behind you.

“Apologies. I am sorry you were a witness to our outburst.” He sounds exasperated.

“She has grown to become quite the independent woman.” You disclose. “She has emotionally developed from a child into an adult since I met her all those years ago.”

Seteth groans. “The world is a dangerous place. I only want to keep her safe. Just a few years ago she was kidnapped right under my nose. I cannot let any harm befall her.”

“It hurts. It hurts to let them go. Watching them flee the safe and warm nest you have prepared.” You begin. “Your relationship is like a hand full of sand. Held loosely, with an open hand, the sand remains where it is. The minute you close your hand and squeeze it tightly to hold on, the sand trickles through your fingers. You can hold on to some of it, but most of it spills. A relationship should be like sand held loosely, with respect and freedom for the other person, it will remain intact. But hold too tightly, too possessively and the relationship slips away and is gone forever.”

“I cannot lose her.” The tears flow from his eyes.

You come around to his side of the desk and hold him to your chest. “There are two times when parenting is most difficult. When the baby first arrives and when the adult first leaves home.”

“You are not fully aware…” He chokes on his words.

“That you are her father? She has slipped too many times in her speech. I know you love her more than anything. You have raised her as your child, regardless. The thought of her leaving breaks your heart. I know.” You assure him. You had felt like you died a little every time one of your brothers and sisters left the nest.

“I want to take her and flee. Hide deep in the mountains where I can protect her.” He gasps through his tears.

“Have you asked her if that is what she wants? If you take her and run, she may escape, putting herself out alone in the wild and into even greater danger. If you let her remain, surround herself with friends who love and protect her, just as you have, could she be safe? If you part from her angry, will she ever come back? These are things you need to ask yourself.”

“If I did that, I would truly lose her.” He looks at you knowingly.

You nod and hold him as he shudders, his sobs filling the room. You pat his back and shoulders reassuringly. After a few minutes he takes a few cleansing breaths.

“My deepest apologies, I did not mean to bring you in to this.” Seteth obtains a handkerchief from his pocket, wiping his tears.

“I am here to help you. To help Flayn too. Both of you can be quite stubborn when you want to be.” You rub circles on his back, continuing to bolster him.

“What should I do now. Where do we go from here?” Seteth looks completely overwhelmed.

“Start with a nice tea together, in a neutral territory. Perhaps on the star terrace? I will check with Byleth and see if that is acceptable. Let her know this is the first of several conversations you will have. It is like any negotiation, discuss the good and the bad. Let her know more details of what you are worrying about. If either of you begin to get upset, step away from the table and calm your mind.”

You pause to let him think for a moment. “Remind her that no matter what, you love her, wanting only the best for her. You want her to understand your concerns. You need to understand her concerns, her dreams, her priorities. Keep communicating. Talk and talk some more.” You hug him tightly then head for the door.

“I cannot thank you enough.” Seteth nods as you smile at him before leaving.

Standing guard at the foot of the stairs to the third floor you sip your tea for a bit then return to knitting. They have been up there talking over tea for over two hours. No doors slamming. No yelling. This is a good sign.

Seteth calls from the top of the stairs, asking you to join them.

Flayn is carrying the tea set into Rhea’s former bedroom. She places it on and end table, then rushes over to give you a hug.

“Thank you.” She quickly whispers before heading down the hall to her chambers.

You walk outside to stand next to Seteth at the balcony. The stars twinkle brightly in the cloudless sky. You look up to him as he stares into the heavens. The air is still and cool now that night has fallen. Patiently you wait for him to gather his thoughts.

“We had a productive conversation.” Seteth begins softly.

You hum in agreement, not wanting to interrupt.

“We spoke of many things. Some good, some bad. All of it necessary. You are correct, she has grown up before my eyes and I could not see it. She is a beautiful young woman.” He speaks slowly, each word tearing apart his heart.

You want to take him in your arms and reassure him, you can see the sadness in his eyes. His precious Flayn must be allowed to be free, and he feels like it is killing him. You settle with leaning against his shoulder with yours.

“She said she worries for me just as much as I for her. She fears that when she leaves, I will shut myself off from the world. I have told her many times that she is my world, that all I do, I do for her. She knows the sacrifices I have made for her sake. She is grateful. But she wants to do things on her own. How to fend for herself. I just—” his voice falters.

Seteth hangs his head low, gripping the balustrade tightly for support. “I am terrified.”

“Let her know you will always be there for her. That you are a place of safety for her, a refuge.” You rub his shoulder as you remain looking skyward.

“Of course, I will take her back, in a heartbeat. There is no doubt. I would bring her where I am without question.” He says with conviction. “The hardest part is to let her go in the first place.”

“She is still here, you have time to mend your hearts. You will always worry for her, she knows this. You have earned that right.” You softly pat his opposite shoulder your arm around his back..

“Thank you for being here.” Seteth turns and hugs you to his chest. You hug him back and stand with him in the cool air, sharing warmth with each other.

Flayn and Seteth have several teatime conversations, adult to adult. One day they decided to take a short holiday together, packing belongings on their wyverns and return several days later.

Seteth works twice as hard to make up for the lost time in his office. You spend time with Flayn as she tells you of her plans. Ignatz and Raphael are going to work as knights for Lorenz who has taken over Gloucester lands from his father. Lorenz is fully employing Ignatz to be ‘a knight that paints’. She will join them in a month’s time. She is in love with Ignatz, however does not want to jump into things too quickly. With her other friends there, she will see how the budding romance goes.

You giggle along with her about her exciting plans, what she wants to do for herself and things she will see. She is quite excited about visiting Derdriu. She’s always loved the ocean and the other coast is just north of the territory.

“What will you be doing now that things are settling down? Do you want to travel or start something new?” Flayn looks at you curiously.

“I’m still recovering from going through the war. I’ve always enjoyed working here. Because Byleth is staying here, friends will come to visit frequently. I am not much of a wanderer, so traveling is out. I don’t want to go north, the snow we have here is plenty.” You think for a moment. “Teaching sounds interesting if they decide to reopen the academy or a regular school. I would like to research some additional healing spells. There are many things to do. Deciding is the hard part.”

“You should think about finding someone special to settle down with.” Flayn smirks.

You nearly spit tea all over yourself. “I..um.” You cough into your napkin and gather your wits. “Unlike some people I know, I do not rush into things.”

“I have watched you pine over him for years.” She laughs.

Looking away from her you wiggle nervously in your chair. “I have no idea what you’re alluding to.”

“You both are so hopeless.” Flayn huffs.

A few days later, Flayn leaves a box outside your door labeled ‘Educational Materials’. You take them in your room then head to the infirmary for work. She has left a box there labeled ‘Medical Supplies’. You open the box and restock the shelves with the gauze and bandages. At the end of the day you return to your room deciding to open the box she has left for you. It is filled with romance novels. How strange. Educational? You think as you open one of the books to peruse through.

Flayn has finished packing her belongings. She distributed a few things around the monastery, leaving enough of her belongings in her room so that she will not have to pack anything when she comes to visit Seteth. The wagon from Gloucester territory has arrived and she watches them load her belongings onto the back. Flayn stands outside the carriage saying her goodbyes.

“Byleth, thank you for accepting me in your class. It began my journey to the independence that I celebrate today.” She gives him a hug and kiss on the cheek.

“I must thank you for everything you have done for me. You have taught me how to cook, amazing fishing techniques and patience. Thank you for everything.” She takes your hands in hers as she gazes your face with a sincere smile. She kisses you on both cheeks, like the adult women of the court say goodbye.

Flayn jumps up and gives Seteth a tight hug. She buries her face in his chest so she cannot see his face.

“I will miss you most of all, brother. I promise to write. I will be safe, you’ll see.” She pauses so that he can kiss her on the forehead, then she turns and quickly enters into the carriage before anyone can see a tear fall from her eyes. The carriage pulls away and she waves out the window with her hand.

Byleth stares as the carriage leaves. “Do you think she will cry?”

“She is bawling her eyes out right now.” You manage to chuckle, trying to hold back your own tears. A sniffle still escapes.

Seteth has moved inside the building, most likely to hide his own tears. You stand next to Byleth, not sure what to do with yourself. Byleth eventually looks over to you.

“I’ll go to the wyvern rookery to make sure he doesn’t try to follow her. You should go talk to him.” Byleth announces as they head out.

Heading up the stairs to the second floor of the faculty building, the trip seems much longer than usual. You have no idea what to say to him. You pause outside his door, praying the goddess gives you the proper words.

“Seteth. May I come in?” Announcing your presence as you knock.

“This is not a good time for conversation.” He answers, not opening the door.

“We don’t have to speak.” You answer. “Please?”

The silence from the other side of the door is deafening. You wait, not moving.

“Enter.”

You enter, seeing him seated at his desk, looking toward the wall. You silently close the door. Approaching Seteth like you would a terrified animal, extending your hand toward him slowly and gently, you touch his shoulder.

He hangs his head and weeps into his chest. You place your head on his shoulder and arms around his back, letting him mourn his loss. His muscles are all tight as he pulls into himself, his body shakes with emotion.

When he has run out of tears, he pulls himself from your embrace. He tries to hide his face, swollen from crying. You reach for a pitcher and pour water onto a cloth, chill it with magic and place it on his forehead and eyes. You tilt his head back to rest it on the back of his chair. Moving behind him you massage his temples and apply healing magic to relieve the headache from crying.

He looks as if he is resting, or at least trying to relax after having tensed his entire body for so long.

“I am always here for you.” You say softly before leaving his office.

You arrange for dinner to be brought to his door. Disappointment crosses your face when you see the food is untouched hours later.

The next morning your rise early to fish, but the fish have no interest. You glance at the windows of Seteth’s office and there is no light. Heading to the infirmary you walk past it and stand outside of his office door. You knock, there is no answer. You attempt to open the door, it is locked.

While treating a cut on a soldier’s arm, Byleth enters the infirmary.

“Have you seen Seteth? He is late for our meeting this morning.” Byleth says, looking concerned.

“No. Perhaps you should check on him?” You offer. “I believe he skipped dinner last night and the cooks said he was not there for breakfast. He did not touch his food at dinner last night as well.”

Byleth frowns and heads for Seteth’s office door. You hear his knocking from inside the infirmary. Soon the hallway is quiet. A few minutes later you hear the tapping of Byleth’s boots walking down the hallway and going up to the third floor.

Putting away the bandages and salves, you jump when Byleth bursts into the infirmary.

“Come quick!” He orders.

Dashing up the stairs you head to Seteth’s room. Byleth is with him in the bedroom, having placed Seteth on his bed. He had found him lying on the floor of the front room.

You quickly assess Seteth’s condition. He has exhausted himself. His eyes are dark and sunken, black lines hang below his eyes. He has probably not been sleeping and certainly has not been eating. You knew he had not been sleeping well, he looked tired yesterday however, today is much worse.

“I can take over from here. Let the infirmary know I am indisposed for a day or so.” You announce as Byleth helps you pull a comfy chair from the parlor next to the bed. You also set a pitcher and two glasses on the nightstand.

“I’ll send dinner up.” Byleth says as he leaves the room.

You check Seteth frequently. He is sleeping soundly. You eat, leaving the dishes outside. He still has not moved. Grabbing a throw blanket, you curl up in the chair, settling in for the night. You leave your hand on top of his, you need to wake if he stirs.

The moonlight shining through the windows gives a bluish glow to the room, the sun has not yet risen, however it will in an hour or so. Seteth begins to stir. He yawns and instinctively reaches to cover his mouth. Just as he moves, you bolt upright in the chair and look at him. He notices you there, bolting upright as he realizes you are in his room.

“What are you doing here.” Seteth huffs.

“I am watching over my patient. Apparently, someone cannot be trusted to take care of themselves properly.” You fold your arms on your chest and give him a glare that could frighten a demonic beast.

Seteth attempts to hide his shame behind his hand, using it to cover his face. “My deepest apologies. My mind has not been in a good place. I have been overwhelmed with grief since before Flayn had even left. I know she is alive and well, but that does not lessen my concern for her.”

“I should write to her and tell her exactly what you have done to yourself as soon as she left.” You scold. “She put me in charge of you, no matter how many times I assured her that you are a grown man and capable of taking care of yourself. I have misjudged you. I am certain she will not be pleased to know she was right.”

You get up and hand him a glass of water. He takes a few sips, placing it on the nightstand. You hand it back to him again pointing to the center of the glass. He drinks half of the contents and looks at you. You nod and he puts the glass down. A few moments pass as you stare at each other.

“Are you hungry? I can run to get you something. Do you have any pain?” Your face softens.

“I will be fine. I think I will lie here and rest for a little while longer.” Seteth takes your hand in his. “You should get some rest as well. You don’t need to stay here and watch an old man sleep.”

“Apparently, I do.” You softly laugh, squeezing his hand and moving over to sit on the bed next to him. “You do not look like an old man. Sometimes you act like one, however when I saw you fighting during the war you were on the front lines along with those young men and you were running circles around them. I’ve seen you wield your lance, you are a force to be reckoned with.” You smile warmly at him.

“Oh? So you have been watching me?” He raises his eyebrows a bit.

“Yes. Watching you fight and fly on your wyvern is breathtaking.” You pause, “You are breathtaking.”

“I…I don’t know what to say. Thank you?” Seteth blushes.

Giving him a smile, you whisper, “We have much to discuss. But right now, we are both exhausted. Scoot over, I am not sleeping in that chair one more minute.”

“That is not proper. We shou-“ he gasps.

You lay next to him. “Shhh. Scoot. We are consenting adults who need sleep. I am fully clothed. You are under the covers, I am over them. No different than last night, except I will be comfortable and won’t wake with a pain in my neck.” You snuggle next to him, laying your head on his shoulder and arm across his waist. “Good night.”

Seteth lies there stiffly for a while. Then he heaves a sigh and lays his cheek on the top of your head, drifting off to slee

#fe3h #fire emblem three houses #fe16 #fe3h x reader #fire emblem #Seteth #Flayn #fe3h fanfic #feth #Seteth x reader

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ollieofthebeholder · 3 years ago

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I Remember the Fallen, Do They Think of Me: A Rusty Quill Gaming fanfic

Also on AO3.

They’re none of them in very good shape, really. Well, except for Skraak, who seems to have managed to avoid getting a finger or tendril laid on him the whole time they were in Svalbard. He seems fine. The others might be fine physically, but that purple migraine that came out of the floorboards in the Council chamber did a number on their spirits. Cel’s the worst off, although they’re doing a bit better since their mutagen wore off, but they’re still edgy and tense and more strung up than usual. Azu just looks marginally grumpy, which isn’t a good look on her. Zolf almost wants to say something about how this party only has room for one sourpuss, but he probably won’t be able to make it sound like a joke, and it isn’t really a joke anyway, and Azu is quite capable of taking his head off, literally, if the mood strikes her. Which it well might. She looks like she’s itching to kill something and Zolf isn’t keen to be it. Hamid mostly looks tired, as well he ought with all the spells he cast. There’s a part of him that wants to compliment Hamid on his conduct back there, on strategic use of his spells to help his party members and keeping his head and not only finding the kill switch but figuring out how to use it to save them all, but it probably won’t come out right. Hamid will probably think he’s being condescending or something, or use it as an excuse to pick a fight. They’re both tired, really. And Zolf is feeling every one of the blows he took; nothing a good night’s sleep won’t cure, he supposes, but at least that’s the worst of it for him.

So he doesn’t protest when Einstein teleports them back to Other London and Wilde insists they get some sleep in the back of Gragg’s old tavern rather than risk breaking the surface in the state they’re in. Skraak does, and surprisingly, so does Azu, but all Zolf has to do is point at Cel, looking miserable, and they back down.

“Got a room upstairs,” Gragg says, pointing upwards. “Lots of room for you all. I’ll be down here. Oh—Mr. Smith, right?”

“Yeah?” Zolf frowns at Gragg.

“Letter came for you. From the Poseidon lot. Their messenger said they thought I’d know where to find you.” Gragg shrugs, a little helplessly, and holds out an envelope. “I didn’t, but you’re here.”

Zolf sighs and takes the envelope with a muttered “thanks”. He’s done with the Poseidon lot, has been for close to two years now, but it seems they’re not done with him. He looks over at the others. “Go lie down, the lot of you. I’ll see what this is all about and then I’ll be up in a minute.”

“Surely it can keep until the morning, Zolf,” Wilde says. “Or whatever passes for morning right now. It’s kept this long.”

“Rather not try and sleep with this hanging over my head,” Zolf replies. “Won’t be but a minute.”

“Hmm.” Azu looks at him, then nods once and starts shooing the others up the stairs. Gragg gives him a nod, too, then disappears into the back.

Once Zolf is alone, he sinks down onto a barstool and immediately wishes he hadn’t. It’s not that it’s uncomfortable, or that it’s too tall for him, or even that now that he’s sitting he doesn’t want to get up. It’s that the last time he sat on one of these stools, it was less than twenty-four hours after meeting Hamid and Sasha (and, unfortunately, Bertie), back when he was still just a mercenary, or a Cleric pretending to be a mercenary, or a mercenary pretending to be a Cleric, or just a disillusioned and drifting person desperately looking for something to believe in. Back when Other London was a bustling city full of people trying to live their lives and Gragg wasn’t responsible for anything more than having enough food and drink to last the night. Back before Zolf doomed the world.

He allows himself precisely five seconds to wallow in the guilt of the past, then props his elbows on the bar and turns the envelope over in his hands. ZOLF SMITH, CLERIC is scrawled on the front in extremely shaky, spiky handwriting, along with a series of letters at the bottom that’s obviously in some sort of code, since it’s got far too many X’s and no vowels except a couple I’s. The back is sealed with some very old wax that looks like someone literally just dripped a candle on the envelope and pressed a seal into it. Zolf sighs as he recognizes the shape—it’s a dead match for the ring he still wears on his own finger, his last connection to his family. The Spade of the Harlequins. This letter might have been passed on by a member of the Cult of Poseidon, but it’s coming from a Harlequin.

Probably it’s Curie, writing to say she isn’t dead after all, although why she’d write to him of all people is a bit beyond him. He’s also not sure why she would feel the need to emphasize his Cleric status on the address. But...whatever. Might as well get this over with.

He slides a finger under the flap of the envelope and loosens the seal, then pulls out the folded papers within. It’s a thick sheaf and surprisingly heavy, and when he unfolds them, something slips from between the pages and lands on the bar with a thump and a clatter. Zolf looks down and sees a dagger, etched with some arcane symbols he doesn’t recognize. Great. A magic dagger. That bodes well. He huffs at it. If they want him to identify it, they’re going to be out of luck; that’s not his area of expertise. Maybe he’ll ask Wilde or Hamid in the morning.

He turns his attention back to the letter. It’s the same scrawl as the front of the envelope, scratched out in some places, odd splatters of ink in others, and there are a couple places where it looks like the ink’s run a bit. Gods, he hopes he’ll be able to read this.

Less than a line in, and his blood runs cold as the rest of the world drops away.

Zolf -

It’s gone bad. It’s all gone real bad. I don’t know when this letter’s going to get to you, except I know it’ll be sometime after you left in Prague because—well, you left. You wouldn’t have left if you knew all this before. But it all went wrong, and I need you to know what happened.

It didn’t go wrong right away. At first it was kind of okay. Hamid and I went out and tried to see how many restaurants we could go to, and that was nice. It helped us both, I think, because we both missed you already, but neither of us said anything about that. Like if we pretended it didn’t happen, it wouldn’t hurt. And it worked, at least at first. And then we found Bertie at the last one we went to, and he was causing a huge mess, you know what Bertie’s like. You were right about that. After that it just kept getting worse.

I woke up the next morning and I didn’t feel good again. Everything was bleeding again and I looked kind of bad, but I pretended I was okay and Hamid and Bertie didn’t notice. Well, Bertie never noticed anything that he didn’t want to, but Hamid, I think he was still upset. I dunno. Anyway, I went to the Temple of Artemis to get healed. The lady there wasn’t like you, she didn’t really make me feel all that...I think that’s just what the Artemis lot are like, though. Everyone I’ve met who’s from Artemis, they do what needs doing and go on to the next thing. I didn’t know that then, though. Anyway, I asked her why it kept happening, why I kept waking up hurt, and how to make it stop, and she made me tell her a bunch of stuff and then said it was because I got brought back to life wrong and I’d have to go to a Temple of Aphrodite to get healed right.

Then there were zombies. Loads of zombies, and they were attacking in the middle of the square. We went to fight them off and that’s when we met Grizzop, he’s—he was a Paladin of Artemis, and he helped us fight them. Bertie had this ring, he said it was supposed to make the undead go away, but instead it made them come closer to him. It made me come closer to him, too, and that was really not a lot of fun, Zolf, I didn’t like that at all. I fought it, though. I fought it really hard and it mostly worked. But there were loads of zombies, and even though we fought them off okay, the four of us, I was real worried about you. Part of me wanted to go find you and make sure you were okay, but I knew you didn’t want to be found, so I had to trust you would be all right. Grizzop said he was supposed to be hunting down a rogue mage that was probably making all the zombies, and we were still supposed to go up to the University and stuff, so we said we’d go with him in the morning.

Everything opened up again overnight, so I had to get healed a bit. Hamid kept asking me if I was okay, and I kept telling him I was, partly because I knew he couldn’t do anything to fix it and partly because I’m just so used to pretending I’m fine when I’m not, and partly because I didn’t want to worry him more than I had to. We went up to the University like we talked about, and it just kept getting worse and worse. Mostly by Bertie being Bertie, but also because the rogue mage, Franz Kafka, he had a book that came from Rome and it drove him crazy. He was a Harlequin, the council told us, and they were all Harlequins too, they had rings like yours and Rakefine’s, and they’d kind of lied to Grizzop because they didn’t want people to know it was one of them doing the zombie thing down in the city, but they asked us to go take care of it and we said we would. So we went back down to Prague and fought loads of stuff. We had a map with all the plague pits on them, Kafka was raising zombies out of them, so we decided to try and clear out as many as we could. Hamid had got tickets for the opera and the ley lines crossed at the opera house, so he thought Kafka would choose to try and spring his trap there, but Grizzop and I said it’d be better to take out the zombies before that. We got him to agree in the end, kind of, but we didn’t manage to get all the zombie pits cleared out before the opera was supposed to start.

It got really, really bad at the opera, Zolf. I don’t know if you were still in Prague then, I don’t know if you heard about it, but it was real bad. The basement was full of zombies and Grizzop and I tried to fight them off, but there were so many and a couple of them were really big and even though I had all these bombs I made and Grizzop had his bow and arrows and all that, we couldn’t kill them all, so we had to run up to the top. Then when we got up there, we found out that Hamid was right, that Kafka had tried to attack at the opera, and everybody was frozen and Bertie and Kafka were both flying and facing off each other, and Hamid—Hamid was gone. He was nowhere in the theater, and when I got to the stage I saw his bracelets and what was left of his clothes looking like they’d been torn apart and I knew, I knew Kafka had killed him somehow, and it was my fault because I wasn’t there to help him. And Kafka didn’t just have Bertie, he had Hamid’s sister—she was singing in the opera, it’s why Hamid wanted to go so bad—and he told Bertie that he had to pick whether he’d kill Bertie or Aziza. Don’t think it’ll surprise you which one Bertie picked.

But Kafka cheated. He killed both of them. I wasn’t fast enough, I couldn’t stop him—I tried, Zolf, I tried so hard, but even with Grizzop shooting arrows at him I couldn’t kill him fast enough to stop him from killing both of them. And, I mean, I kind of would have wanted to kill Bertie myself, or let Hamid do it, or at least let Hamid yell at him a lot, but even though Bertie wasn’t a very nice person, he didn’t deserve what happened to him. And his sister—she was just singing. She was just there and doing what she loved and Hamid was so proud of her, Zolf, and Kafka killed her just because he could. It wasn’t right. The guards finally showed up, but they were too late to help. Bertie was dead and Aziza was dead and Hamid...

Well, Hamid wasn’t dead after all. Grizzop found him on the roof of the opera house. Kafka put a spell on him and turned him into a monster, and the monster ran away. So at least he didn’t hurt anybody and not know it. He’d have hated that. I’d have hated that. Grizzop would’ve just killed him, I think, and then I’d have really been alone and I don’t know what I would have done. But he didn’t and I wasn’t, not then. They fixed us up and we had to tell Hamid about what happened. I didn’t tell him about Bertie getting to pick. He was hurt enough by what happened. And we almost got arrested or kidnapped or something like that by the Cult of Mars, but Wilde showed up and got us out of it.

As bad as Hamid wanted to go home with his sister and make sure Bertie was taken care of and all that, when they gave us a job to do, he agreed to do it before Einstein teleported us to Cairo. So then we went into Newton’s study and found his pocket dimension, and it turned out that there was somebody working there who’d been working with Kafka and Edison on Mr. Ceiling, or on something like Mr. Ceiling anyway. And it turned out that she was an old friend of Hamid’s. I think they were dating once. She really didn’t like him anymore, though, so even if she hadn’t done the work that meant Mr. Ceiling could happen, I wouldn’t have liked her, because she was really nasty to him. And he just stood there and took it. He didn’t fight her and he didn’t argue with her and he didn’t try to stand up for himself. He just kept saying she had to come with us.

You’d be proud of him, I think.

Anyway, after that Einstein sent us to Cairo. We wound up in the middle of a real bad sandstorm—Hamid thought we were probably in the middle of the desert, but then it turned out we were on the main street and not that far from the Temple of Aphrodite. That’s when we met Azu, and that was a pretty good thing, but that was the only good thing really. They told us at the Temple they’d been having lots of really bad weather, like they were having in Dover when we were there. I like the rainstorms a lot better than sandstorms, but it still wasn’t fun. And that was the easy bad thing.

This part’s not easy to talk about, and it feels really selfish when I think back on it, because I didn’t handle it in a way that you’d be proud of. I went to talk to one of the healer people about whether or not they could fix how I kept waking up hurting and that the person at the Artemis temple had said I was a little bit undead. He checked me over and said that I wasn’t just a little undead, I was really undead, and that I only had about a month left before I turned into something else. Hamid and Grizzop called it a lich—I hope I’m spelling that right, it’s not like they ever wrote it down, but that’s what it sounds like. Grizzop said they were evil, but Hamid kept saying that maybe I would be the first non-evil lich. Which, I mean, I guess that would have been okay, but...

Eren Fairhands said there were only three ways to fix me—to die all the way and go for a resurrection, to get a necromancer to follow me around and do magic on me to keep me just plain undead, or to get this artifact called the Heart of Aphrodite that the Meritocrats had all locked up because they don’t want powerful magic just floating around for anyone to use. I told Hamid and the others that I didn’t think they’d agree to let me use something that powerful, just for me; Hamid insisted they might because we’d saved the world a couple times, and also his other sister worked for the Meritocrats so maybe it would be okay. But I didn’t believe him. The world doesn’t work that way for people like me, you know? And the other two options...I might have trusted them if you were there to do them, but not someone I didn’t know, or a god I didn’t know.

Anyway, we went to Hamid’s family’s house. Hamid was really scared about seeing his family again, but, I mean, it had to go better than seeing Barret did for me, right? And it sort of worked out okay, at first anyway, but everybody was real upset, not that I blame them. They had the funeral the next day, and it went okay, but a tall figure in a hood like the one that hung out with Barret showed up. We watched it and then it disappeared, but it was after Hamid’s brother, and we didn’t want him to lose anybody else, so we were trying to protect him. And then it came back and we attacked it and we managed to kill it, but I just, I didn’t handle it well at all. I fell apart and then I just shut down. I think I gave up. I decided I was just going to die and that was all there was to it.

Like I said, I don’t think you’d be very proud of me for that. I had options, even if they didn’t seem very likely, but there was still a chance and I should have held onto that. You would have. But I didn’t and that means I did a lot of things I shouldn’t have done.

Hamid’s brother was working for Barret. Kind of. He got in debt and he owed Barret money, and Barret wanted him to rob the bank that Hamid’s family works for to pay him back, but things went wrong and someone died. That’s what Barret gave Hamid the ring for, he wanted him to give it to his brother, but Hamid wouldn’t because he’s a good person and he didn’t want to make his brother suffer. But because someone died, the bank was going to arrest him, but Hamid’s father said he would take the blame instead. Hamid tried to make him not do that, tried to make him see that his brother needed to face the consequences, but his father did it anyway. Then Hamid came back and told us what was happening, and he asked us for advice, and I said a lot of really mean things about his family. Well, all of us did, I guess, but...it’s different with Grizzop and Azu, you know? They didn’t know him. Not like I did. I said a lot of things I shouldn’t have said because I was upset and scared and hurting and I wanted to make Hamid feel that way too, and I shouldn’t have because he already was and I should have known that and it wasn’t fair. I won’t say I didn’t mean what I said, because I did, but I still shouldn’t have said it. And I didn’t mean it about Hamid, at least. He’s a good person, Zolf, he really is, even with what he did before, and he wanted us to help him and all Grizzop and Azu would say was that his brother and father deserved to be punished and I said they could get away with not being punished because they were rich and...

I wish you were there. You would have known what to say, what to do. You wouldn’t have made such a mess of it like I did.

I thought about you a lot that night, about what you would have said and done, and the next day when we went down for breakfast, I tried to do like you would have. I asked Hamid and Grizzop and Azu how their talk went after I left, and Hamid apologized to them for trying to keep his brother out of trouble and mucking it all up, and then he told us what happened to him. He got kicked out of university because someone he thought was his friend tried to get him to make a potion as a prank, but he wrote it down wrong and then the not-friend made it bigger and a bunch of people died, so he joined up with you—us—to try and make up for what he did. He was really worried that all he did was make things worse, because he said you didn’t think what we did in Paris helped, and then he didn’t think he helped at all in Prague. But he did, and he’s trying, and Grizzop said that was what was important. And I pointed out how much better he’s gotten since we met, because I meant it but also because I think you would have said it too, and he said it helped, me saying that. So we had a little bit of good, at least. And Hamid said a lot of really nice things about me when we met Apophis later that day, and Apophis agreed that we could use the Heart of Aphrodite to fix me. And it worked, Zolf, it really did. I’m good as new. Better, even, Fairhands even grew my finger back for me. For a little bit, everything was great, and the only thing that would have made it better was if you were there too.

And then it went bad again. We had to go to Damascus because there was information in the vaults when we got the Heart of Aphrodite that Edison was doing a bunch of stuff with the factories there, and that it might be involved with the Simulacrum and everything. The first factory was run by goblins and they were real proud of what they were doing, and they even gave me a dagger made of adamantine. When we went to investigate the other factory, though, they wouldn’t even let us in and it was really suspicious, so we sneaked in in the middle of the night to have a look around. They’d fired all the people who worked there and they had monsters in the warehouses to guard them, and they were building things like the Simulacrum. Loads of them. We had to fight our way out and then, well, we were going to go back to Damascus and find Wilde and tell him what was going on when someone showed up at the door with two more of those tall things like we killed at the funeral, and I think it was one of Bertie’s friends, you remember those people with the carriage from the Simulacrum unveiling? Wellington. Him. Anyway, Grizzop shot at him and he went away, but then they dropped a body in, only it wasn’t dead. It was Barret and he was tied up and beaten up.

You’d be proud of Hamid. He was all calm and serious and firm, just like you used to do when you were getting information out of bad people. I half expected him to threaten to drown Barret in a bucket. Would’ve loved to see the look on his face if he did. Anyway, Barret eventually told us he was working with the Cult of Hades. They’re the ones who suggested he get in touch with us about the Serpentines, and they’re the ones who helped him take all the kids out of Other London that got sent to Paris to be used for Mr. Ceiling. Then he told us the Cult of Hades had infiltrated the Meritocrats, and that he had too, and he gave Hamid a list of names. Grizzop and Azu wanted to just kill him. Hamid thought he should be arrested, but then they asked me what I wanted to do with him. If you’d been there, I’d have said he was a good candidate for a sacrifice, but...that didn’t seem right. Not just killing him. It’d be too easy to be just like him, and I never wanted that. So Azu and Hamid took him to Damascus to give him over to the Artemis lot to be put in prison, and they said they’d talk to Wilde and come back while Grizzop and I stayed and watched the factory and made sure nothing else bad happened. I went and checked one of the warehouses, and it was like it was raining in there—there was an aqueduct and they were piping water through, which I thought was weird because water was so expensive and hard to find in Damascus. Wilde showed up and asked us to show him the warehouses, then said we had to go because he’d arranged to have the factory destroyed. He said things were getting really bad, that there’d been the riots in London and Other London and a whole bunch of other places too, and that with the Meritocrats being compromised he didn’t trust anyone but our group, which kind of made me feel good and bad at the same time.

I like Wilde. Didn’t think I would, but I do.

Anyway, Apophis came in and turned the whole thing into glass, but there was steam coming up from a crack in it, so we slept on it and then investigated in the morning. There were pipes and tunnels and all sorts of things, and we almost got caught in a couple traps, but we came through okay, and then we found the secret part of the factory where they were making the outsides of the Simulacra (Hamid called them robots, I kind of like that better, actually). It turned out they were stealing the river, too, to make the factory work, so we started destroying it, because they were evil, or at least using evil things to do the work. It was all going so well for once. We were really doing good, even when we had to fight off an assassin that kept trying to turn us into stone.

And then...and then we got a weird magic message. I can’t really explain it in detail, maybe Hamid can tell you about it better, but the Cult of Hades sent us a message and told us that we needed to stop, or else. When we tried to argue with them, they showed us what they’d done.

They took our families.

Bi Ming, and Azu’s big brother, and one of Hamid’s little brothers, and a goblin who must’ve been important to Grizzop (I never got the chance to ask him about that). They had them tied up and trapped, and they said they were in Rome, and if we didn’t go and rescue them they’d...

Well. We weren’t going to let that happen, were we? We couldn’t. At least Hamid and I couldn’t. I think Azu was a little torn, because her brother can take care of himself and all, but Hamid and me, we couldn’t wait. We thought we’d pop back up, tell Wilde what was going on, get him to send in people to take care of it, and get on to Rome. We knew it was dangerous, but we had to. Grizzop argued with us about it, he said the mission was more important, and in the end he stayed behind and took care of everything while we went on to Rome with Einstein.

I’m sure you’ve heard about Rome and what it’s like. You’ve been loads more places than Hamid or I have, you’ve got to know the stories. I don’t think you can really know what it’s like unless you’ve been there, though. Best way I can describe it is, remember when we got across the Channel and you were telling me about that place you sailed through in a storm once, where you could see all the shipwrecks and things? Like that, but on dry land. Nobody lives there but monsters and the ghosts of memories. The air felt bad, and it did weird things to magic, too. Sometimes Hamid’s spells worked really well and sometimes they didn’t work at all and sometimes they were normal, it didn’t make any sense. Azu couldn’t do many spells at all, because her magic comes from Aphrodite and the prayers weren’t working. She said it was like Aphrodite couldn’t hear her, but I think now it’s the other way around—that Aphrodite could hear Azu just fine, but Azu couldn’t hear Aphrodite’s reply, and I think that’s worse. Because it means whatever was strangling Rome wanted people to feel like the gods abandoned them, but also wanted the gods to suffer knowing that people who believed in them and all that were desperately reaching for them and they couldn’t do anything but listen.

It wasn’t easy. It was hot and hard to move around sometimes, and things kept attacking us, all kinds of monsters. Einstein was basically useless, so it was just Azu and Hamid and me having to fight, and I was really glad I wasn’t trying to do this and also not turn into a lich, ‘cause not being able to heal would’ve been really bad. Worse for Hamid, though. He nearly blew himself up and it scared me half to death, but I was honestly too happy he was safe to really yell at him for it. We hid out in a basement overnight to sleep and heal, and the next day we found the place where our families were being kept...kind of. We had to sneak into this big building, and when we got in, we found a big purple cloud, like a hole in the universe or something. I don’t know the details of the magic, that was more Hamid’s thing, but the people we loved were inside it, and there was this Paladin of Apollo there, too, someone who apparently knew Bertie, and he went in there and got stuck. Grizzop got there with Eldarion, she’s—she was my teacher when I was in prison, kind of in prison anyway, and she wanted me to stop running around getting in trouble and go back somewhere safe, but I told her I wasn’t going to do that. Eventually she gave in. Einstein said he’d wait for us to teleport us out when we got out safely, we didn’t know how long it would be, because the magic led to another plane and time might not move the same way there.

Actually getting everybody out wasn’t so hard. It was like a puzzle. I kind of like puzzles, actually. We had to fight a couple monsters, nothing too serious, except one of them broke my favorite ice dagger and I was kind of upset about that. But Bi Ming was okay, and so was Issak, and Azu’s brother, and Grizzop’s friend, and even Ed. We got everything and we got together in a circle and Eldarion transported us back.

And that’s when it went really bad. At least for me.

I couldn’t hold on. There was just so much going on, and my hand slipped, and then I couldn’t grab Bi Ming’s hand quick enough to stop from getting ripped away from the group and getting lost. I didn’t come back with the others.

But, obviously, I’m writing this letter to you and it’s going to get to you, I know it will, so you know I’m not dead and I didn’t go to another reality or anything like that. I landed on the floor, and I recognized the floor of the place I’d been in before, just...newer. Brighter-looking.

I went back in time, Zolf. Grizzop too, his grip slipped too. He said Eldarion stepped out of the circle before we left the other dimension—there were too many of us, she couldn’t guarantee she’d get everyone back safe if she didn’t let go, I think—but she’s not here, so I don’t know where she ended up. But Grizzop and I came here. To Ancient Rome, in the days before it was destroyed. Literally days. I’m alive, I’m healthy...and I’m trapped two thousand years before I was even born, or anybody I love.

It’s still fresh, I don’t know if I can talk about it, but I’ll try. We tried to help, Grizzop and me. We went looking for the Cult of Mars, and the Cult of Hades, to try and take them down and see if we could stop Rome from being destroyed and the world from getting bad in the future.

We couldn’t.

We tried, honest we did, but the fight...it was too much, it was too bad. I think I should have died, but Grizzop took a spear that was meant for me. And then he kept getting hit, but he wouldn’t stop, he was trying to take down the captain. He did, but...but they killed him. I was right there and he went down and then they knocked me out and when I woke up I was strung up from the ceiling like I was going to be fed to something and there were all these dragons and Grizzop was still on the floor and he was dead and I wasn’t and...

I can’t, Zolf. I just...I can’t. Not now. Maybe, maybe someday I can, but not today.

The point is that we didn’t stop the cults, and we didn’t stop the dragons, and we didn’t save Rome, and we didn’t save the world. Maybe we couldn’t have. And Grizzop died and I didn’t. I checked when I got free, after the dragons got away, but I’m not a healer and I’m not magic and I’m not...there was nothing I could do. And I couldn’t even take him with me. I had to leave him there or I wouldn’t have got out.

I think I shut down again. I don’t remember a lot of the walk out of Rome. I just remember telling this man we’d met—his name is Cicero—I told him to show me the way out, and I followed him, and I made sure he didn’t die, because he was the only person I knew anymore and I was not going to lose anybody else. And along the way, there were—there were other people trying to leave, trying to get away, and I just, I grabbed them and I brought them with us, because I wasn’t going to leave them behind, because I couldn’t. Maybe I couldn’t save everybody, but I had to save the ones I could.

That’s all we ever can do, right?

We found a place. It’s...it’s a home. It’s warm, and dry, and safe. I can stand on the roof and see for miles around, but it’s close enough that I can get supplies if we need them, and bring in more people. Refugees from Rome, mostly. People who need a place to be safe. There aren’t as many as maybe you’d think, a lot of people just stop here before going on somewhere else, but some stay. Mostly kids. The ones with families, parents and kids, most of them go on after a while, but the kids who don’t have anywhere else, anyone else, they stay, and I’m trying to take care of them. Trying to teach them a bit.

It’s all been a way of marking time, really, up until now. I know, in my heart of hearts, that Hamid and Azu and the others made it back safe and sound. And I know Hamid won’t give up on me. Every day I’ve been expecting to see him, or a magical effect of some kind. Something to get me home. I’m trying to be patient, trying to tell myself that just because time’s going on for me doesn’t mean it is for you lot. It’s not going to be instant, it’s not—it’ll happen, I keep saying. I’ll get another chance. I’ve just got to wait.

But today, I—Cicero and the kids, they surprised me with a party. I’d told them I didn’t know when my birthday was exactly, which is kind of true because the months aren’t the same here, but I didn’t think about it until today. I got back from a supply run and they’d set up a celebration for me. Cicero told me that since I couldn’t remember when I was born, they’d decided that my new birthday was the day he met me, the day my new life started, I guess.

It’s been a year. A whole year.

I made it through the party, somehow, but as soon as I could I got away and came up here to my room. I was upset and scared and missing you more than ever, you and Hamid both, and I thought suddenly that maybe you didn’t know I was alive, that maybe Hamid thought I was lost and didn’t know where to find me, so I was going to write Hamid a letter at first, but...but I really wanted to write to you.

I really needed you.

I’m a little bit calmer now, though, and I’m thinking a little more clearly. Maybe writing all this out helped some. I just imagined I was talking to you, and that helped, too. I’ve never been all that great with words, but I’ll try here. There’s some important stuff I think I need to say.

Hamid and I were the same age, did you know that? We talked about a lot of stuff while we were going to the different restaurants in Prague, and one of the things we talked about was our birthdays. We thought it was kind of cool that we both had the same birthday. We were both twenty-three.

We were kids, Zolf. Just a couple of dumb kids who thought we were grown up. I’ve got a bunch of dumb kids of my own now, and I know what I’m talking about. We thought we knew everything about everything, and it’s probably one of the reasons we didn’t always get on so much. We both thought we knew how the world worked, and because the way I saw the world and the way he saw the world were so different, we both thought the other didn’t know anything about anything. I’d never been out of London—I’d barely been out of Other London—and Hamid, for all he’d been places, he hadn’t really seen the world, just the part of the world that rich people let their kids go. We had a lot to learn.

We needed you. I don’t blame you for leaving, I know you needed that too, and I meant what I said about how none of us were forced to be there and you could leave if you wanted to, and we both trusted you’d come back when you were doing better. And maybe we both thought we’d be okay on our own. But I thought the whole world worked like Other London and Hamid thought the whole world worked like Cairo and Cambridge. Azu and Grizzop both saw how they thought the world should be, but the difference was Azu didn’t realize that it wasn’t like that, I think, and Grizzop just tried to make it like that. But you knew how my world worked, and how Hamid’s world worked, and how the rest of the world worked, and when you were there, it was a lot easier to see things how they really were and not just how they would have been if we were where we were used to, you know?

But it’s not just that. I didn’t get to be a kid, not really. And now that I think about it, Hamid didn’t really either. I had to be a thief and he had to be a banker’s son, and there were rules and things we had to do and things we were expected to be, and we didn’t get to figure out who we were and who we wanted to be. But you let us be that. You made it safe for us to start figuring ourselves out, even if it upset you sometimes, but you were there to catch us if we went too far. And even when you yelled at us, I think we could tell you weren’t really mad. We both had a lot of growing up to do still, even if we didn’t think so, but we weren’t going to do it without someone to show us how. And you’re the only person either of us ever met who was willing to do that for us.

I don’t know if you can get me back. I know I can’t get back to you from here. Magic isn’t what I’m used to, or the people who can do that kind of magic...don’t. I keep thinking about something Apophis said, about how the Meritocrats took a lot of magic things away from humanity because only the rich people could get at them, and I wonder if it’s not something like that, that I’m just not rich enough to get to someone powerful enough to send me home. But I think I’m going to have to wait, and hope. I’m not giving up that hope, because I know you wouldn’t want me to, but...but maybe there’s a reason I’m supposed to be here.

These kids, they need someone too. Like I did. And right now, I’m what they’ve got. If I leave, I don’t know what’s going to happen to them. So this isn’t me saying “don’t keep trying to find me”, this is me saying that if you can’t get me back...I think I’ll be okay. I just keep asking myself, every time I run up on something that I’m not sure about, I think, “What would Zolf do?” And so far I’m not doing too bad, except for the part where I had to tell Maximus he couldn’t threaten to drown his little brothers and sisters in a bucket every time they annoy him. I’m doing my best, though. That’s all I can do. I’m trying. I’m trying to be you for them.

And it’s a little bit like I’ve got you here with me.

But Hamid doesn’t. He doesn’t have you and he doesn’t have me, and his sister and his friend died, and his father and his brother are going to prison, and someone he thought was his friend doesn’t care that she was doing work that got used for horrible things. He’s still just a kid really. And Azu’s solid, but she’s not what he needs. She sees the world in black and white. Either you’re her friend, or you’re her enemy, and if you’re her friend, you’re a good person. Hamid needs somebody who sees him for who he is, and cares about him as a person and not as what he can be or do. He needs you.

So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to finish this letter, and I’m going to take it to the Temple of Poseidon up in the town, and I’m going to ask them to find a way to get it to you. And then I’m going to come home, and I’m going to get all the kids together, and I’m going to tell them stories. I’m going to tell them about the ocean and the rain, the stars and the sand. I’m going to tell them about monsters and mechanical men and magic. I’m going to tell them about Azu and Grizzop and Wilde and even Bertie, my friends, and I’m going to tell them about Hamid, my brother, and I’m going to tell them about Zolf, the best dad I could ever have asked for.

And what I want you to do—it’s a big favor, but I’m hoping this letter won’t get to you until you’ve had a chance to get right. I want—no, I need you to go find Hamid. Maybe it hasn’t been very long, maybe you’re getting this right after we left, in which case, go to Rome and meet him when he gets back. Or maybe it’s been a bit and you’ll need to ask Wilde. He’ll know where to find him. Tell him I sent you if you have to, if he won’t listen to you, but please, please go find Hamid. He needs someone to be there for him, and I have a feeling you need someone too. Someone who believes in you, too. I’ll feel better knowing you’re together, that you’re helping each other, keeping each other safe. Tell him I’m sorry, for what I said about his family. Tell him I miss him, and I love him. I miss you, too, and I love you, too. I mean that with everything I have in me.

We’ll see each other again. I know that. In your time or mine, in this world or the next. I know I’ll be able to see you both again. And I hope that when I do, I’ll be able to look you in the eye and know that I made you proud.

Love always,

Sasha.

P.S. I want you to have my fire dagger. It’s probably not safe to have around just now, it being magic and all, and I want you to have something to remember me by.

Zolf lowers the last page of the letter slowly to the bar top. For a long time, he doesn’t move, just stares at the sheaf of papers and the dagger without really seeing either of them.

Then he takes a deep breath, slides off the stool, and trudges slowly and quietly up the stairs.

The upper floor of what used to be Gragg’s tavern consists of what can only loosely be described as “rooms” because there are two walls, each going about a third of the way across the room, dividing it into nominally two separate spaces. There are a few crates of supplies scattered about, mostly blankets from what Zolf can see in the half-open ones, but one of them has Skraak curled up inside, sound asleep. It’s not hard to find the group, in a sort of nest of blankets tucked up against one of the dividing walls. Azu lies on her back, one arm flung over her face. Cel’s hair is just visible over the edge of a ball of blanket up against Azu’s side; Zolf can’t see their face, but he guesses they still feel pretty terrible. Sumatnyerl sleeps on her side on the opposite side of Azu, back to the party and face to the dividing wall. Einstein snores lightly, cuddling Azu’s outstretched arm like a teddy bear. Even Wilde is there, half-sitting and half-slumped against Azu’s side, a blanket loosely draped over his lap and one hand resting in the space next to it, looking for all the world like he was trying to sit up and wait for Zolf but fell asleep anyway.

Hamid is nowhere to be seen.

Zolf tries to tamp down his instinctive panic. There’s only one way in or out up here, unless Hamid climbed out a window, and he wouldn’t do something like that. Nothing could have got up here without Zolf hearing it, he’s sure—well, okay, he was lost in the letter, it’s possible, but surely the others would have heard something. Hamid’s got to be nearby. He’s just...not sleeping with the others, for some reason. Maybe as he gets more dragon-ish, he gets more like the kobolds and prefers to sleep somewhere he can’t be found easily. Maybe he just doesn’t want to sleep on the floor and has figured out how to make himself a little bed, or found a bed somewhere.

Unless an assassin with Sasha’s level of skill but no morals sneaked in through the window. Unless there’s another thing like the thing they fought in Svalbard that burned their clothing and damaged their spirits. Unless the one Hamid sucked into the kill switch got out somehow and attacked him. Unless Hamid did do something stupid, maybe testing out a new spell he’d discovered or ability he’d developed...

Zolf moves as quickly and quietly as he can into the other half of the room. It’s been mostly picked over and cleared out, those few boxes remaining pushed to the sides of the room. One, a longer and narrower box than some of the others, is up underneath a single window at the far end of the attic space. And there, sitting atop the box, is Hamid, staring out the window even though it’s pitch dark and he can’t possibly see anything.

Inhaling sharply with relief, shoulders relaxing, Zolf crosses the space. He’s still trying not to wake the sleepers, but he’s pretty sure Hamid can hear him. He sits at the other end of the box from Hamid. “Hey,” he says quietly.

“Hey,” Hamid says. He sounds the way he did in Paris after they destroyed Mr. Ceiling for real—weary and beaten-down. The thought makes Zolf hurt all the way through, partly hating himself for the person he was then and partly because Hamid’s got no reason to feel that way now and partly because it makes him think of Sasha, not that she’s far from his mind right now.

Hamid turns away from the window and looks in Zolf’s direction; he can’t possibly see him in the total lack of light, but Zolf can see him just fine. He almost looks worse than he sounds, and Zolf has a brief moment of wondering if he’s hurt worse than he’s letting on before he convinces himself he’s just being alarmist. It’s just the shadows and dim lighting making things seem worse than they are, combined with the stress of the last day.

Now that he’s here, Zolf has no idea where to start. He tries to think of the best way to begin, then gives up and decides to just say the first thing that pops into his head. The words that come out of his mouth remind him why it’s a bad idea to do that. “Did you seriously almost blow yourself up in Rome?”

Several emotions play across Hamid’s face, too fast for Zolf to read in the darkness. He expects a shrill protest, or an angry denial, or a stammering justification, but to his surprise, Hamid simply sighs and nods. “Sort of? We were fighting something invisible. It had just attacked me, so I knew it was near me, and Azu and Sasha weren’t, so...I cast a fireball centered on me. It should’ve been fine. I can stand up to fire pretty well, so I thought even if I couldn’t get out of the way fast enough, I’d be okay. But something in Rome made magic go...weird...and it was more powerful than I thought it would be. I got lucky, I guess.” He looks up at Zolf, and this time the look in his eyes is easy to read: guilt. Zolf’s not sure why. “When did Azu tell you about that?”

“She didn’t. I—” Zolf flounders for a moment. There’s got to be a better way of saying this. Finally, he just sighs and hands Hamid the letter.

Hamid makes a weary, practiced gesture, and Zolf blinks as the by-now familiar tiny dancing lights appear between them. Hamid blinks, too, then flinches. “Sorry,” he mumbles and starts to make the gesture to dismiss them.

Zolf reaches over and stops him. “It’s—fine. It’s fine,” he tells Hamid. “Nothing out there hunts by sight. Gragg says they can’t get in buildings anyway. I trust him. You’re fine.”

Hamid swallows and nods. Now that the lights are there, Zolf can see him a little better, and he reevaluates his previous assessment. Hamid does look worse than he sounds. He looks either ill or injured, with dark hollows under his eyes, which have a slightly bruised look to them, his skin ashen. There’s a smudge on his forehead of dirt or slime or blood or some combination of the three, he looks like he’s run his hands through his hair in frustration or despair, and his ever-present eyeliner is smeared down his cheeks.

It hits Zolf all at once that he’s literally never seen Hamid not perfectly groomed. Even in the catacombs under Paris, when he’d been injured and panicking, his first instinct had been a shaky prestidigitation to clean himself up. He fusses over his appearance more than anyone Zolf has ever met, with the possible exception of Wilde, and he remembers that Wilde always looked worse off than he was when he couldn’t use his own prestidigitation. It’s no wonder Hamid looks sick. Zolf resists the urge to comment on it and simply waits.

Hamid sucks in a sharp breath as he starts to read, and even more color drains from his face. His eyes fill with tears, but to Zolf’s slight surprise, they don’t fall. He smiles briefly a couple of times, barely more than a flicker, but Zolf also sees him retreat slightly into himself. And Zolf can tell when he gets to the part after they got separated coming back to Rome, because Hamid’s hands start shaking, ever so faintly.

When he reaches the end—apparently—he stares at the paper for a long moment, much like Zolf did, then takes a deep breath, folds the letter back up, and hands it back to Zolf. Zolf isn’t sure whether to be impressed or worried that Hamid hasn’t dissolved into a complete emotional mess.

“She’s right,” he says softly, and his voice is choked and shaking, but he’s not actually crying. “I was just a dumb kid. Still am, I guess.” He looks up at Zolf. “I keep—I think I’m getting better, and then I do something utterly stupid because I think I know what I’m doing, and then I argue with you when you call me out on it. And then I have the nerve to act like you’re—” He chokes off the word and looks away, taking a couple more deep breaths.

Zolf realizes, all of a sudden, what Hamid is doing. He’s trying to stop himself from crying, because he doesn’t want to be overly emotional. He’s trying to be sensible and practical and, well, grown-up about this.

Before he can say anything, Hamid looks back up at him. “I’m not—I’m not trying to justify why I’m right. I just want you to know where I...” He swallows. “When I was growing up, if I made a mistake or—o-or did something wrong, no matter what it was or how bad it was, all I had to do was admit it was wrong and apologize, and everything would be forgiven and it would go away. Like it never happened. And you—you’re kind of the opposite? At least, that’s how it looks to me sometimes. If something goes wrong, it’s in the past. Apologizing for it or—or acknowledging that it might have been a mistake doesn’t change that it was done, so there’s no reason to. Just...move on and try to do better the next time. And I know that’s the better way to handle it, but—”

“It’s not,” Zolf interrupts, his voice thick with emotion. “It’s—look, I don’t have all the answers either, you know. I act like I do, but deep down, I’m just as scared. And I don’t always know the right thing to do. When we were in Paris, I spent three days in my room wallowing, blaming myself for everything that went wrong, every mistake I’d ever made, not just the whole Mr. Ceiling thing, you remember that? The more we went on, the more I questioned everything I’d ever done, and by the time we got to Prague, I couldn’t get away from the doubts. So I walked away, from Sasha and from you, because I didn’t trust myself not to repeat my mistakes. And then Wilde tracked me down and told me you’d gone to Rome and you were gone and...” He swallows hard. “Look, you know how Sasha talks about her...shutting down and just blanking out? I did that, too, I reckon. I blamed myself, thought if I’d just stayed you’d have been okay, but...at that point, Wilde needed an ally and I needed a purpose, so I shut out the past and focused on the present. And it was easier to live like that, for a while, so I just kept doing it and it got worse.” He tries to smile. “There’s got to be something in between, right? Something between ignoring the past and dwelling on it?”

“Yeah,” Hamid says softly, looking down at his hands. They’re dirty, too, smeared with plant matter and ichor and grease, but he doesn’t seem to notice. “And there’s got to be something between acting like acknowledging a mistake makes it all go away and acting like—”

“—like not acknowledging it also makes it all go away,” Zolf completes. “And I think there’s got to be something between ‘this was the only right answer’ and ‘this was the right answer with the information we had so it’s fine,’ yeah? Like your fireball in Rome. You didn’t think that was the only solution, did you?”

“No,” Hamid whispers. “It was a calculated risk. And I didn’t think about magic going...screwy. But I wouldn’t have done it if Sasha or Azu or Einstein had been close enough that it would have hit them. I was the only one in danger, so I thought it would be okay.”

Zolf’s heart lurches, and he has to try twice before he can speak. “If you ever decide to do something like that again...just make sure I can’t see you, all right?”

Hamid looks up at Zolf and attempts to smile. “So you don’t have to yell at me?”

“So I don’t have to maybe watch you die.” Zolf keeps his voice down with an effort. “I can’t—I can’t do that, Hamid. Seeing Wilde’s body after the crash, I—that was bad. That was real bad. If I’d had to actually see it happen? I don’t know that even pushing things into the past would’ve helped. And next to Wilde, you’re the person I’d like to think I’m closest to. I don’t want to watch anyone die if I can help it, but you? Please don’t make me do that.” He swallows hard. “It’s why I took the risk of having us jump into the plant. I thought it would just...lead us straight through to wherever it was connected to, but it was that or watch you torn apart by a bunch of evil trees, and I was not going to risk that. So yeah, it was a bad idea and if I’d known what I know now I would have tried to come up with a third option, but with what we knew then, it was the best hope I had of not losing everything I cared about. Again.”

Hamid makes a tiny, pained noise that sounds like it might be a sob and goes straight to Zolf’s heart. He presses his lips tightly together for a moment, obviously forces back an emotional response, then nods. “I promise. And—and I promise not to yell like that again. I’m sorry. I am. I got scared and I took it out on you and that wasn’t fair.”

“I accept your apology, and I forgive you. And I’m not great with the whole...talking thing, but I promise I’ll try in the future.” Zolf takes a quick breath. “I do forget how young you are sometimes. And I don’t mean that as an insult, just...I forget you don’t always have the experience of the world to understand why I make the decisions I do, and then I get annoyed with you for questioning them, and that’s not fair, either. I’m sorry for that.”

“You don’t—I accept your apology, and I forgive you,” Hamid half-whispers. Zolf can tell he’s not just parroting the words, he’s sincere about them. And he appreciates that Hamid stopped himself from saying you don’t have to apologize. Because Zolf did have to apologize, and they both know it. Hamid looks down at the letter again. “She’s right about that, too. I did—I do need you. I’m...you make me a better person.”

“No,” Zolf says, putting the weight of an entire lifetime’s experience behind his words. “Nobody else can make someone a better person. You make you a better person, Hamid. I just believe you can be one.”

Hamid’s head comes up abruptly, and he stares at Zolf in genuine shock. Zolf is terrible at...people, and emotions, and all that, he doesn’t usually get them, but Hamid’s emotions are so close to the surface and so genuine that even he can read them. Nobody has ever told Hamid anything like that, ever, and Zolf is the last person he would have ever expected to hear it from.

And something inside Zolf breaks.

He reaches out and pulls Hamid into a hug, tighter and more desperate than the one he gave him right after the first quarantine all those weeks ago. Hamid hugs him back just as tightly, burying his face in Zolf’s shoulder. Zolf feels the tears begin hitting his skin, reminding him in a remote, distant way that that purple thing dissolved his shirt and coat and he’s sitting around in nothing but his breastplate, but he pushes the thought out of his mind for the moment.

“She’s right,” he says into Hamid’s hair. “I am proud of you. You stood up for yourself, and you stood up for Sasha. You didn’t give in even when it would’ve been the easiest thing in the world. And back there, in Svalbard? You did a good job. You kept your head and you didn’t argue, you figured out what that device was and how to use it. And you made sure the rest of us stayed safe. I might argue with you, I might yell, but I will never not be proud of you.”

Hamid cries harder. His emotions are usually loud and messy, but whether because he’s trying to keep quiet or for some other reason, his tears are silent. “I missed you,” he whispers, the words muffled into Zolf’s shoulder. “I missed you and I was scared something would happen to you in Prague, and then I got back from Rome and Einstein told us how long it had been and what was going on and I was scared you were dead, and then I saw you again and I was—I was so angry at you and I don’t know why—”

“It’s because I wasn’t there,” Zolf says with a rare flash of insight. “It’s because I left and suddenly everybody around you started getting hurt and dying, and then you came back and everything was different, and you didn’t know what was going on. You were confused and scared, and when you get scared these days you get angry. And I was there to be a good target. You couldn’t be angry at Azu because Azu was angry too, but me—”

“You were safe,” Hamid says softly. “I—I trusted that I could be angry at you, because I knew you’d—you’d let me be angry and we could still be friends after I was done.”

Zolf tightens his arms around Hamid, recognizing the truth in his words. “I missed you, too, you know. As soon as I walked away, I regretted it. If I could’ve taken you both with me, as stupid as that sounds, I would have, but I had to be on my own to get right. But I hadn’t been gone three days before I knew I’d be back. And then you were gone, they told me you were gone for good, and I—I wasn’t lying when I said I’d mourned for you both, but I never gave up hope. I’ve been studying the planes—I was determined, when I had a moment, I was going to go looking for you. I just, I couldn’t leave Wilde and...”

“No, I get it. I get it.” Hamid squeezes him again, then eases back and manages a weak smile up at him. “Thank you. For trying. For not giving up. Maybe...maybe that’s the only reason any of us made it back, was because you had hope.”

“Maybe.” Zolf settles back as well and manages a smile back. “I’m not giving up on her, just so you know. Even though we got that letter from her when she was older...I’m not giving up. Maybe someday...”

“Yeah. Maybe not any time soon, but someday.” Hamid wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. The gesture makes him look impossibly young. “I’m not giving up either. I can’t. She wouldn’t have given up on us.” He pauses. “Zolf—she didn’t know you weren’t with Poseidon anymore.”

“Yeah, that’s probably why the letter came through the Poseidon lot,” Zolf says. “They’ve probably been looking for me since I walked away, so to speak.”

“No, I mean she didn’t know you weren’t with Poseidon. If she lit a candle at the Temple of Artemis for Grizzop every year, and her letter to all of us came through the Cult of Aphrodite...Zolf, what if that’s why Poseidon kept trying to help you?” Hamid’s eyes are wide. “Because Sasha asked him to? Would—is that how it works?”

Ice water floods through Zolf’s veins, and he mutters a word in Dwarfish he hasn’t said since the cave-in. “It might. I don’t know. I’m not—”

“No, I’m not—I don’t think you should go back to him. I mean....clearly he wasn’t—maybe he was Sasha’s god, not yours. I just...wondered, that’s all.” Hamid rubs his face. He looks like he’s lost a fight with a fireplace, there’s so much dirt and kohl smeared over his cheeks.

“Maybe...Hamid, you sure you aren’t hurt?” Zolf gestures to his own face. “You...look a mess.”

“I...oh.” Hamid looks embarrassed. “Sorry, and I—it’s all over you, too. Here.” He snaps his fingers, producing the familiar flurry of handkerchiefs, which set to work on both Hamid and Zolf.

Zolf unbuckles his breastplate and sets it aside, wincing at the sticky sound as it peels away from his chest and the last fragments of his shirt and jacket fall away. “Thanks,” he says. “For the record, though, I wasn’t...complaining about you looking bad or whatever. I was just worried. Last time you didn’t immediately come out of a fight and tidy yourself up was...”

“Paris,” Hamid completes softly. “I know. I-it did feel...a bit like that, I guess. I just didn’t...I don’t know.” He glances over his shoulder uncertainly towards the other part of the room.

Zolf glances over, too. “They’ll be okay,” he assures Hamid, thinking he’s worrying about Cel. “Once I’ve had some rest, I can meditate and get access to a couple spells that’ll help. You and Azu, too. You said it hit you some?”

“Yeah,” Hamid says with a heavy sigh.

The handkerchiefs vanish, and Zolf sighs, too. “Right. C’mon, let’s go in the other room and get some sleep. You want to use the lights so you don’t trip?”

Hamid hesitates, for just a second, then says uncertainly, “N-no. No, I’m—I’m fine.” He snaps his fingers and the lights disappear. “Um...after you?”

Zolf stares at Hamid. He’s usually a skilled liar, almost on par with Wilde, but either because he’s tired or because of what that thing did to him, he’s not doing a very good job of it right now. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing!” Hamid protests, even less convincingly.

“Hamid.”

It’s all he says, but it’s enough. Hamid’s shoulders slump. “I just...I don’t think I’m welcome in there right now. Azu’s mad at me. A-about the kobolds and—”

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Zolf interrupts. “She’s asleep right now, so she won’t be yelling at you. And she’s not....feeling well, is she? Whatever happened to you three, she’s—she’ll be fine once we get that taken care of.”

“She meant it, Zolf. She just wouldn’t have said it if she wasn’t...like this. And she wasn’t wrong.”

“She might not have been wrong, but that doesn’t mean she was right,” Zolf says firmly. He puts his hands on Hamid’s shoulders and looks him in the eye, despite knowing Hamid probably can’t see him. “Just like Sasha. Just like me. Just like you, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Hamid whispers. Tears fill his eyes again. “I—I really didn’t—I shouldn’t have yelled at you like that, Zolf. I’m sorry. I just—I guess I was still upset about what Aziza said and—”

“Wait, who—?” Zolf suddenly realizes that he wasn’t the only one who went through what he went through when they jumped through that plant. His shoulders slump slightly. “I’m sorry. I should’ve—we should’ve talked about this, but—”

“When have we had time?”

“Yeah, exactly. Look, I—when we jumped through that plant, before it tied us up and we fell through those planes?” Zolf sighs heavily. “I was back in the mines. With my brother. He blamed me for leaving, tried to convince me he’d still been alive when I...” He swallows. “So I was...kind of raw, too. Even though it was nothing I haven’t been saying to myself for decades. Even though I knew it wasn’t really him.”

“It wasn’t?” Hamid’s voice is small and fragile, like he was in the catacombs.

“Oh, Hamid.” Zolf hates this, hates every minute of it. “No, it wasn’t—it wasn’t them. Whoever you saw—your sister, right? The one who died in Prague?”

“Yeah. She—she said it was my fault she died. And that I hadn’t done enough to—after. That I was still making everything all about me and not—”

“Yeah, if it had really been her, she never would have said any of that, ‘cause it’s not true,” Zolf interrupts. “You were humming in the garden. I heard you. She was walking with you. That was really her. I could feel my brother with me too, I kept willing him to go away. Cel and Azu, I’m sure they were with someone they’ve lost too. What that—that thing showed us, that was a twisted version of them. Something to make us regret, make us give up. They were lies, Hamid. What happened to your sister, that’s not your fault. You did everything you could. Kafka’s the reason she died. Well, and maybe Bertie too.”

“I didn’t know that,” Hamid whispers. “About him—about Kafka giving him a choice.”

“Tell you what.” Zolf squeezes Hamid’s shoulders. “When this is all over, we’ll go find a necromancer, find where they’ve got Bertie buried, and have him turned into a zombie so we can kill him again ourselves.”

Hamid actually laughs, a bit wetly. “Only if you take the first shot.”

“Sure. We’ll use Sasha’s dagger.” Zolf pulls Hamid in for another hug. He’s not usually the touchy-feely, sort, but it’s just the two of them right now and Hamid’s one of three people he’d be willing to hug like this.

The fact that one of those people is someone he may never get the chance to hug again—or at all—makes his heart ache, but he tries not to think about it.

Hamid hugs him back, and Zolf feels him relax. After a few moments, he pulls back and manages a smile up at Zolf. “Thank you. For all of it.”

“I couldn’t have done it without you.” Zolf smiles back, then slides off the box. “Come on. You need rest.”

This time, Hamid slides off the box too, and he matches stride with Zolf as they head back into the other room. He starts to go off to one side, but Zolf doesn’t let him. Instead, he grabs a blanket and pulls him over to join the pile that is the rest of their friends. Hamid looks reluctant, but he doesn’t argue. Zolf’s glad. He’s tired and strained and really doesn’t want to have to try to choose which of the two people he cares about most he’s going to try and protect tonight.

Wilde half-stirs when Zolf settles down next to him, but doesn’t fully wake, just shifts slightly to lean against him and shoves the blanket in his direction. Zolf tucks the blanket he grabbed around Hamid before accepting the other half of Wilde’s blanket, and he doesn’t object when he feels Hamid’s head drop onto his shoulder.

“Night, Dad,” Hamid mumbles, sounding more than half asleep.

A lump comes into Zolf’s throat. He has to try twice before he can choke out the words. “Night, Hamid.”

With one hand resting on Hamid’s head and the other gripping Wilde’s hand tightly, Zolf closes his eyes and drifts into sleep, feeling, for the first time in almost two years, like some of the grief has been lifted from his heart.

#ollie writes fanfic #rq gaming #rqg #Zolf Smith #hamid saleh haroun al tahan #angst and feels #spoilers for the entire podcast #we love our grumpy sea dad

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klea221 · 3 years ago

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Blood and Gold Part 1

*This is a fic of my own. I have not finished campaign 2 yet but I am being self indulgent and writing because I cannot get enough of Mollymauk. (I refuse to let him be dead!)*

The wind off the river was warm and calming, just like any other day in Marquet.

Merchants bartered and unloaded cargo. Children stopped to gawk at the foreign goods only to be quickly shooed away.

Life here was simple to the untrained eye but for those who knew better, “freedom” came at a cost.

Beginning to climb off the rocks and through the reeds, I realize that my hiding spot is in jeopardy. Stilling, I hope to remain unseen by the guards.

Casting “disguise self”, I make my way to the passenger ship. The price is a steep 300 gold but once I get to the menagerie coast, I can start my new life. Surely, its worth the cost. Hopefully, my sister Yara will keep up the illusion until I’m far enough away…

I limit my time outside the cabin to twice a day to keep up the disguise. The rest of the time I use to plan my next steps. Of course I had never really “worked” before but, I had extensive tutoring and training at the palace which could come in useful. Armed with my bow, a dagger, and my sword, I could become some sort of adventurer! It could be like the stories father used to tell us growing up about the great heroes of the past!

Shrugging it off, I remind myself not to get too carried away. Surely, it would be more reasonable to work in a tavern of some sort…

Suddenly, I am pushed out of my thoughts by my sister’s message,

“(Y/N)! Its me, Yara! I was unable to keep up the act! Father has sent a search party! Be safe”

Even with closed eyes, I can still smell the blood. As quick as the rebellion came and left, the damage was already done. The streets of Ank’Harel were stained red. Noble houses were torn a part and everyone was on edge.

After a week of negotiation, things began to change. Hopefully things would go back to “normal”.

“We will form an alliance! There will be no more bloodshed in this city. We have a duty to the people, Ozai!” commanded the king.

“Yes, of course. There is however, a price for my… compliance” says General Ozai.

“Name it” answered the king, trying to remain prideful.

“Your daughter will marry Omar, He will become the Prince”.

“It will be done”.

I couldn’t breathe.

Omar was just as cruel as his father-if not worse. He was even rumoured to keep many slaves. Surely this man could not ever love let alone be a good husband. I felt sick. As I looked around the room, it spun and no body seemed to care.

“I will not hear anymore of this (y/n). My word is final! You will marry Omar! The wedding will be next month and that is that!” yelled the king.

My father almost never yelled, especially not to me. After the rebellion he seemed to be unhinged and there would be no use in arguing. My fate is settled; marry Omar or go far away-and never return…

“I understand” was all I could muster before storming off to my chambers. I grabbed all that I could and made my way to the docks.

My eyes shot open as I rose from the hard cot. The ship’s horn bellowed, vibrating the floor and walls of the cabin. Looking over to my window, I could see a huge lighthouse in the shape of the Wild Mother. This is it! This must be Nicodranas! Excited for what this new place has in store, I toss all of my things into my bag and leave the ship for the last time.

I cannot help but feel captivated by the delicate blue hues around me. The air is a beautiful combination of warmth, sea salt, and the smell of cinnamon. Looking over to a bakery, I see freshly made pastries and decide I should indulge myself! Why not?

Before I am able to take my first bite, the heavy presence of guards makes me uneasy. Trying to be stealthy, I make my way into an alley and case “disguise self” for the first time today.

“Hey! I can do that too!” says a cheerful accented voice.

Looking over my shoulder, I see a blue tiefling magically transform into a blond human girl in peasant’s clothing.

“My name is Jester! I’ll keep your secret if you give me your donut!” she says happily eyeing my purchase.

Though she is quite forward, I feel comforted by the tiefling and decide that maybe I shouldn’t be alone anymore.

“Why don’t I just buy us some more then! Oh- and my name is y/n!” I tell her as we walk back to the bakery.

Jester can talk nonstop! Normally this would be a little much for me but, having travelled alone for so long, I welcome it. Jester quickly tells me all about the city, her mother, and all the tricks the so called “Traveler” has taught her. Sticking with my plan, I tell her that I am looking for work while in Nicodranas. She happily takes me to her Inn where her mother helps me secure a job. I work hard cleaning up after guests and fetching them any food or drink that they require in exchange for room and board. It is very hard work but, Jester keeps me company most days.

One night as I’m folding tablecloths, I hear a commotion on the stairs. Its Lord Sharpe and he’s livid!

“IF I EVER SEE YOUR DAUGHTER AGAIN I WILL HAVE HER KILLED!”

Oh no! Jester what has she done now!

Trying to stay out of the argument, I look up to see Marion on the staircase with tears streaming down her normally poised face. This was really bad indeed…

Making my way up to Jester’s room, I can already hear Marion and Jester.

“But Mama! It was just a joke! Surely he can’t be serious!” whines Jester. She’s completely unaware of the gravity of her actions.

“Lord Sharpe is an extremely powerful man Jester, I don’t think we should take the risk! I think it would be best if you left the city for awhile. Maybe with time things will blow over” says Marion, pushing the hair out of Jester’s face.

Opening the door, I try to aid Marion in convincing Jester to play it safe.

“Jester, your mother is right-I-I’ve seen what men with power can do…” I say cryptically.

Not sensing that Jester is understanding, I take my chances and tell them both my REAL story. I tell them all bout my engagement and how awful the ramifications would have been had I stayed. Who knows, maybe I would’ve been killed one day to give Omar the throne…

“Jester, we can go together, we can keep each other safe from bad guys. I’m sure the Traveler will help us!” I say, trying to persuade her.

“Thank you for telling us this (y/n). You are a true friend. I know you will keep my little sapphire safe!” she says pulling me into a hug.

“It is settled then, we will leave at once!” Jester says.

“Here, this should help you two along” says Marion, placing a rather large coin purse into Jester’s hands. “Be very careful Jester, and try not to play too many tricks!” warns Marion.

Jester had decided that we would search for her long-lost father (whom she had never even met). Not wanting to crush her hopes, I tag along on the mission.

In Port Damali, our “investigation” runs dead. Despite this, we manage to gain a member into our little group. Having noticed our cleric abilities, a half-orc sailor named Fjord offered to travel with us. He tells us that he wishes to enroll at the magic academy in the Dwendalian Empire.

As we lead the coast and travel towards this new Empire, the air become noticeably cooler. The ocean views become obscured by rocky mountain terrain, and I begin to feel anxious for the road ahead.

As we arrived at Trostenwald, there was a commotion by the lake. Curiously walking closer, we see a giant water snake and a tiny screaming girl curled in its grasp.

In a matter of seconds, a female monk leaps onto the scene in a flash of blue robes. She begins to pummel the beast with her staff. Seeing as she may need help with killing the snake, the three of us run to help.

Aiming by bow toward the beast, I surprisingly manage to hit it right behind the head. However, before I can get too excited, I realize the beast is far too large for one arrow alone to take it down. The snake angrily strikes at the monk who narrowly dodges the attack.

Fjord runs up to the beast and draws his sword while I prepare another arrow. This time, I aim for the eyes.

Now blinded and confused, the creature is unaware of Fjord’s presence. He quickly begins to cut through the beast’s tough skin, killing it.

As the snake falls to the ground, the crowd erupts with cheers.

Jester runs over to the little girl and quickly casts “cure wounds”. My heart finally slows down knowing that the girl is safe.

“YOU GUYS THAT WAS AWESOME!” yells Jester, waving her hands around.

“Ugh, yeah! That was pretty rad” says the monk. “My name’s Beau by the way”

“Oh! I’m Jester! And this is y/n and Fjord!” says Jester, happily.

“Nice to meet you” I say shyly.

“Are you guys travelling too?” asks Beau.

“Yes, we are making our way north to the Soltryce Academy” says Fjord.

“Ah- the Soltryce Academy you say… No offense but you guys are gonna need some serious coin for that” says the monk, knowingly.

“You don’t say… You wouldn’t happen to know anyone who is hiring, would you?” says the half-orc.

“Well I mean, I was going to do some work for the Baumbach Brewery before this snake thing happened… You’re welcome to tag along if you’d like” offers the monk.

“Hey! That sounds like it could be fun!” says Jester.

After living in a palace most of my life, I try not to complain too much about manual labour but this job was BRUTAL. The four of us have done nothing but haul boxes and crates for hours on end. My body was sore and sweaty despite the cool air of Trostenwald.

By the time we got to the Nestled Nook Inn, my body was on autopilot. Not bothering to eat, I head upstairs and crash onto the bed.

With an aching body, I finally pull myself out of bed and open the door. I am greeted with the comforting smell of fresh bread and breakfast meats. Sitting down with the rest of the group, I forget my table manners and devour the food placed in front of me.

Not long into breakfast, the little girl’s father from yesterday enters the Inn. Nervously, he makes his way to our table and thanks us graciously. Before leaving, he dumps a hatful of coin onto our table. The coin pile draws much attention so, I rush to divide the pile evenly.

As Jester begins to converse with the table next to us, quick introductions are made. Before I can dwell on the halfling’s odd appearance, two more strange figures make their way noisily through the Inn.

Quickly turning my head in annoyance to the commotion, my heart stops for a moment. Having lived in Marquet all my life, I was used to Tieflings as they were common to see around the city. This lavender one however, was a sight to behold. And Gods was I in trouble…

#critical role x reader #mollymauk tealeaf #reader #fan fic #mollymauk x reader

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hinabes · 5 years ago

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Inarizushi’s Backstory

A story about hubris, expectations and a surprising amount of worldbuilding.

I. Priestess

“The Inari God has descended!!!”

“It’s the Inari God!!”

“The Inari God has descended!!!”

I opened my eyes to the sound of excited cheering. Humans, dressed in the garb of clerics and priestesses, worshipped on bent knees, the excitement in their gazes genuine.

I looked down to assess myself.

When I was a part of the Chaos, I was to believe that when we were incarnated in this world, our appearances would be determined by our basic intentions.

...Unless the summoner had strong pre-existing obsessions.

“Lord Inari, these are the things we’ve been protecting.”

According to him, this Inari shrine housed holy relics of utmost importance, and if they were destroyed, catastrophe would befall Sakurajima, where we were.

Even though I was slightly annoyed, I looked at his earnest expression and nodded.

So be it, since you summoned me from that boring Chaos, I’ll fulfill your desires.

The man was elderly by human years, with a long white beard flowing from his chin; he looked kind and gentle.

It was just that when he looked at me, it was as if he were actually looking through me at someone behind me.

That must have been their so-called “Inari God”.

The Inari God ought to be true to themselves, to be revered.

The Inari God ought to maintain purity, to resist any and all filth.

So said the old man constantly, and he respected me very much.

Alas, that was restricted to when I acted like his ideal “Inari God”.

“Aw, shucks~ Come see me again, okay? Master Ninetails~”

The courtesan’s soft fingers brushed against the back of my hand. Her alluring smile and longing eyes were calculating, though I didn’t hate it.

After all, when it’s all the same drinks and service smiles, everyone prefers to do it with someone gentle and caring, who understands their heart’s desires.

“Ah, might you be the Master Ninetails whose been in everyone’s good graces lately?”

The voice was teasing and flippant. I turned to look up and the way his long sleeves dragged on the crimson stairs caught my eye. Though it was formalwear, the way he donned it was casual, draped loosely over his shoulders.

The way his eyes crinkled was even more attractive than those of the beautiful courtesans. I raised my head slightly regard him, and when his playful eyes met mine, I understood that this guy was the same type of person as me.

“Master Ninetails, shall I have a drink with you today~”

“That would be wonderful.”

“Eh-- Boss, you can’t be hogging all the business~”

“Then today’s drinks are on you.”

“Fine~ I won’t disturb you~”

Chin propped up on my hand, I arched my brow at the young man who pleasantly shooed off the girl.

“You’re the owner of Shangri-La?”

“What is it? Scared?”

“Nothing, let’s drink.”

I stalked back to the shrine in the dead of night, and was greeted by the old man’s anger the moment I stepped through the torii gates.

“You went to that filthy place again, in this disgraceful form!”

I gave him nothing but a humorless sneer.

To say that returning to my original appearance and doing the things I want to do was filth?

Ridiculous.

II. God’s Intermediary

“Pfft-- You’re saying, you take the female form in the day and pose as their pure Inari god? And you can only return to this form at night to drink and let loose?”

Junmai Daiginjo held in his chuckle, though I was helpless to the humorous glint in his eyes.

Once we got to know each other, his original stunning demeanor didn’t get any less impressive, though, in front of me, he did get livelier and more… infuriating.

In the time I downed the wine in one gulp, he had his elbow on my shoulder.

“Man, in my opinion, what if you left those boring guys and joined my Shangri-La? With your looks, Ninetails, if you took female form, you’d give me a run for my money as Oiran. Though… the male body isn’t bad either. How about you be a man for a day, woman the next!”

“Shoo, keep flattering yourself.”

I irritatedly shook off his hand and side-eyed Daiginjo, already rolling in laughter. Propping my chin up, I gazed at the still sky outside and let out a long sigh.

I didn’t dislike the female form and even liked looking like a woman sometimes.

But… these days were certainly… quite boring…

“You- You- You! You stubborn bastard! Going to that indecent place again! Associating with those filthy people! And that smile, that unbecoming smile!! You!!! Undress and cleanse yourself under the waterfall!!!!”

Even with the flame of his life flickering out, the old man mustered the energy to butt heads with me. My smile dulled, the good mood I built up at Shangri-La ruined once more.

It was winter. Icicles had formed at the top of the waterfall, the water rushing down sticking my clothes to my body. Seeing the old man angrily looking at me, I couldn’t help but shake my head and close my eyes.

It’s not that I wasn’t grateful for him bringing me into this world, and it’s not that we had only bad memories between us.

He brushed my hair gently, he made my soft bed, he prepared my favorite tea.

But he did all this because of his faith in the Inari God. Not me.

So be it, he was my master attendant, I’ll have to do as he pleases. He was already so old, I could think about leaving after sending him off.

Humans really were fragile.

Weak, powerless, feeble.

Fingers thin as twigs laid on the back of my hand. His eyes were already clouded.

“Inari… You’re the Inari God, never forget, you are the Inari God!” “Rest assured, since you revere me as your God, I will assume a God’s duties to the end.”

“Hearing that… puts me… at ease…”

The clerics and priestesses ducked out of my way as I left the room, and they spoke in tones they thought I couldn’t hear.

“Heh, this monster really thinks it’s a god.”

“Tch, as expected of the old fool.”

“That’s right, now we can chase him out! Then the Inari shrine is ours!”

“Yeah! Then all the offerings… hehe…”

“But… they’re for the gods…”

“What gods, the old fool was the only one who believed in them.”

Hah, filthy humans.

Gods aren’t all joy and happiness, they feel rage too.

Blasphemous, to have never respected the gods.

And to be blasphemous is to invoke divine punishment.

III. Monster

The people of this land had long since forgotten what the gods bestowed upon them.

The gods granted them plentiful harvests, bestowed them peace.

Yet the people neglected to pay respects, to be thankful.

And the food souls who came to this world to aid them received no such respect either.

“Hah, monsters should be dealt with by monsters.”

“Hmph, such monsters, if only they’d die sooner than later!”

“Hope they get rid of each other. Saves us from having to look after them.”

Daiginjo looked at the dark sky weighing over their heads as he drank, his brow furrowing.

“Why is it, that we’re the ones with power, yet we have to hide in the darkness and take the form of those weakling humans and pretend… by right… we’re supposed to be protecting them…”

That’s right… Why is it, when we’re the ones protecting them, we don’t get even a word of thanks and are labeled monsters…

“Since they’re calling us monsters anyway, we should act like it, shouldn’t we…”

Daiginjo chuckled, the corners of his eyes crinkling.

I knew that this was his invitation for me to join his world of monsters.

I can never tell what he’s thinking, though that didn’t get in the way of us being friends.

His every word was playful, though each of them I took to heart.

The humans, pampered for far too long, had forgotten their respect for the gods.

As such, another face of the gods shall restart their memory.

I didn’t even have to sully my own hands.

I needed only to take a back seat and watch as the monsters born from their own desires swallowed them whole.

One blood-red night, towering flames engulfed the red shrine.

The mournful cries were muffled by the wind, the blood splattered on the ground scorched black.

When I stepped into the shrine, the cleric who once called the old man an “old fool” grabbed me by the ankle.

“Lord Inari… save me… save me…”

“And for what?”

“I…”

“Bold of you to ask for divine salvation, having never paid the gods any respect. Save yourself, foolish human.”

“...Monster!!!! You’re a monster!!!”

If I have to become a monster for you to remember what you’ve done, then so be it.

IV. Under the Shrine

“Woah, what a thorough burning.”

Daiginjo rubbed his chin, taking in the destruction. I sat on some surviving stairs to drink, watching the humans hard at work, rebuilding the shrine for the gods.

In hindsight, it was pretty funny; while the shrine was standing, the humans paid the gods no mind. Only when disaster befell them had they remembered the gods they forgot.

And only when the “monsters” stopped unconditionally helping them had they remembered the respect these “monsters” were due, building altars and presenting offerings.

Bored, Daiginjo returned to Shangri-La, and only I stayed to watch them work, yawning as I sat on the debris.

“Um… Lord Inari… We found a hidden entrance in the shrine… come look…”

“Hm?”

“We’re… too scared to go in, please come take a look…”

“Alright, it’s quite late, you can all take a break.”

“Also...the… monsters in the fields…”

“I’ll deal with them tomorrow.”

“Thank you, thank you!!!”

Before, I would have never heard this “thank you”.

With a long sigh, I cleared my head of my many laments and headed for the hidden entrance.

It was dark and cold, and I was surprised to discover such a large space under the shrine.

Tucked away underground, in the deepest reaches sat a single altar.

I wanted to investigate, but I was stopped by a huge amount of energy.

Even more unexpectedly, I found the energy oddly familiar.

I reached out to touch the barrier. Flowing through the barrier… as I thought, it was the energy that plucked me from the Chaos initially.

At the center of the barrier, encased in black smoke… could it be…

That guy… To protect the relics, he forcefully stripped away the huge amounts of energy in the summoning process, trapping the food soul that was supposed to be born within the pull of this energy.

If that’s the case… perhaps…

V. Inarizushi

Junmai Daiginjo was dumbfounded. In the time he took to get drinking snacks for his pals, Inarizushi ended up with a mean-looking fox kit glued to him.

“...An illegitimate child?”

“Daiginjo, don’t think I won’t hit you.”

“Ahem, I mean, where’d you find it.”

Thump--

With a muffled thud, Junmai Daiginjo hit an invisible wall while walking towards Kitsune Udon.

“Ow--”

“Don’t you touch Master Ninetails!”

“...Hoh, the little devil’s protective. Ninetails, be honest, where’d you get it?”

Inarizushi glanced at Daiginjo, who was rubbing his forehead, then at Kitsune Udon, who was gripping his clothes and hiding behind him, and laughed.

“What if I said they fell from the sky?”

“Fine, I’ll drop it if you don’t want to tell. Come have a drink, a birthday toast for the kid.”

“I’m not a kid.”

“Hmph, what a kid.”

“I’m not!”

Inarizushi shook his head resignedly, helping himself to Junmai Daiginjo’s wine bottle. He turned his head to look at the pitch-black sky outside distractedly.

“What are you looking at, Ninetails?”

“Nothing. Don’t you think this sky could use some sprucing up?”

“...Heh.”

“What are you laughing at? Don’t you think so?”

Junmai Daiginjo shrugged, clinking glasses with Inarizushi, downing the clear wine in one gulp. He gazed at the sky tenderly, yet there was an underlying apathy.

“Boring things are better off discarded.”

Junmai Daiginjo turned his head to see Kitsune Udon pouring wine for Inarizushi and he quirked an eyebrow in surprise.

“You taught me that. What of it?”

Junmai Daiginjo propped up his chin to observe Kitsune Udon lapping at the wine when they thought nobody was looking.

“Uh… Nothing, the wine’s a bit strong, a kid who just fell from the sky shouldn’t drink so much the first time~”

As Junmai Daiginjo finished speaking, Kitsune Udon downed the rest of the wine, letting out a long burp, head falling to the table with a thud.

“I heard… this part of Sakurajima is protected by relics, and if they’re destroyed, catastrophe would certainly fall.”

“That’s right, what of it?”

“Then this...the key of this kid from the sky, I wonder what it will unlock?”

Inarizushi stopped patting Kitsune Udon’s hair to look at Junmai Daiginjo, who was smiling pleasantly.

“Do you have to know so soon? I don’t want to lose a drinking buddy so quickly.”

“I’m not in a hurry, it’s not too late to think about it once other artifacts have surfaced.”

“You’re not scared of me running off?”

“Master Ninetails is high and mighty, he’d never. Come, have another cup, this is Shangri-La’s best wine! I don’t bring it out for anyone but you.”

“Hoh, great, cheers!”

Translation Notes

(SHOVES INARIZUSHI ASIDE) A SURPRISING AMOUNT OF WORLDBUILDING

The Chaos, which I’ve also referred to as “chaotic energy”: it’s a very vague word to begin with and can mean both. I’m more convinced it’s a real “thing” now, wouldn’t go so far to say “place” but it may be the other side of the Tierra fish (it’s also called Chaos)

It may have something to do with the greek creation myth? idk

Now we know that 1) food souls come from there, 2) they’re told(?) things there, 3) they’re self aware there, 4) its boring

funtoy please give us more concrete stuff i dont want to keep grasping at straws

KITSUNE UDON REAL. funtoy please steal my design xoxo please i will pay u

the 2nd half of ch4 was pretty vague but I’m fairly certain that the black smoke/whatever’s in it was kitsune udon

I’m also not sure if kitsune udon is a separate character or inari’s fox. his art doesnt show him with any foxes but neither does it show nine tails

i also have no idea kitsune udon’s gender so i went with they. there’s literally not a pronoun to be seen in the last chapter bc chinese be like that

i’ve decided to call junmai’s brothel “shangri-la”, you might also see it called “bliss” or “paradise”. it’s more specifically the sukhavati of buddhism

#food fantasy #translations #ff inarizushi #ff junmai daiginjo #ff translations

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laurelsofhighever · 5 years ago

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The Falcon and the Rose Ch. 48 - No Rest for the Virtuous

Chapter Rating: General audiences Relationships: Alistair/Female Cousland Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Fereldan Civil War AU - No Blight, Romance, Angst, Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn Chapter Summary: Someone is waiting for Alistair and Rosslyn in camp, and he has bad news. Featuring Karyna Amell and Cullen Rutherford

First chapter on AO3 This chapter on AO3

----------------------------

Rosslyn and Alistair returned to the camp just as the last light faded. Following from the previous night’s attack, the perimeter of their temporary settlement had been marked with torches, and sentries nodded to them as they passed through the boundary towards the picket lines. They were met under the canvas by Cuno, who wriggled over to his mistress with almost his old level of enthusiasm, and he gifted her with a wide, lolloping smile as she bent down to scrub his ears. Alistair, standing next to her with a hand on the small of her back, was granted a brief, dismissive glare, and then a polite sniff when it became clear he wouldn’t be shooed away.

“I think I’m forgiven,” he chuckled as the dog licked his fingers. He nudged Rosslyn’s shoulder. “You’re quiet.”

“I suppose I’m just still…” She sighed and leaned closer to him. “You don’t mind.”

“You thought I would?”

She dropped her gaze, smoothing her hands over Cuno’s ruff. “Feared it, I think. After all we’ve been through, if this was the thing that made me lose you –”

“Hush,” he said, and pressed his lips to her forehead. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Whether it was the words or the gesture that calmed her, she relaxed and tilted a smile up at him, turning so she could loop her arms around his back. “I’m so glad I met you.”

He grinned at that, the part of him wanting to tease overwhelmed by her confession, and her warmth, and the glint of merriment in her eyes as they fluttered shut to steal a kiss against his neck.

“I wish we could just stay here, and let the world pass us by,” she murmured.

“There’s too much to do, love,” he answered, with the unfamiliar endearment tingling on his tongue.

The curve of her smile played against his skin, her fingers winding tighter into the fabric of his shirt. “You didn’t have to point it out.”

“You’re right, how cruel of me. However will I make it up to you?”

She hummed and began a trail of kisses up the line of his pulse. “Let me think about it.”

“O–oh? I hope my lady won’t –”

Cuno chuffed a warning. They pulled apart, just in time for the hurried clatter of boots to resolve itself into the shape of Lieutenant Hobbs skidding to a halt in the doorway.

“Thank the Maker you’re back,” he panted. “There’s a templar just come in – nearly killed his horse – says there’s a problem at the Circle and you’re needed.”

Rosslyn glanced at Alistair. “The king has no overview of the Circle.”

“All the same. He’s up at the prince’s digs, Your Ladyship.”

After a moment, and a parting squeeze of the fingers, they followed at brisk walk after Hobbs, once more donning the mantles of Prince and Teyrna. The camp was quiet, most not on duty seeking an early night in preparation for the march in the morning, and it was a relief to see that whatever the templar’s urgent news, it had yet to spread and rouse panic among the soldiers.

When they slipped past the royal guard into Alistair’s pavilion, they found the templar seated in one of the chairs, accepting a cup of water from a servant while Eamon looked on with his brows knitted into one creased, hoary line. The young man’s gaze stared glasslike through the haze of his fatigue, but he looked up when they entered, startled. Rosslyn recognised him. He looked smaller and younger, in only a gambeson and with several days’ worth of dark stubble on his chin, but he was undoubtedly the same man she had met outside the infirmary on the first night after West Roth.

“Your Highness,” he croaked. “Your Ladyship…”

“This man is Knight-Lieutenant Cullen,” Eamon supplied, without even a cursory scowl to ask where the two of them had been.

“No need to stand,” Alistair told the young man as he struggled to his feet. “You look like you need the rest.”

The templar nodded and sank back into his seat, slumping as he dragged a hand down his face.

“What’s happened?”

He shook his head, fatigue in ever line of his face. “I don’t – the Circle was – Maker’s breath they’re all…”

“Lieutenant!” Rosslyn snapped.

Cullen jerked upright.

“You will answer our questions,” she commanded.

“Yes – yes, Your Ladyship.”

“Good.” She softened. “Now, who sent you?”

“Knight-Captain Irminric, Your Ladyship.”

“And you came from the Circle?”

“I did.”

“What happened there?”

Slowly, she teased out the story. The Circle, overrun by blood mages, had been barred shut by Knight-Commander Greagoir, to await the Right of Annulment. Irminric had tried to persuade his superior to take a unit in to limit the damage, but the knight-commander had remained firm.

“He said he didn’t want to send in any more of his own men after the ones already locked in the tower.” Cullen curled his hands into fists. “If the alarm had sounded an hour earlier, I would’ve been – Maker, I’d just come off duty…”

He looked up and stuttered to a halt when another figure appeared in the doorway. Enchanter Amell’s round face flushed when she met the templar’s eye, but she turned and bobbed a curtsey to Rosslyn, asking permission to say.

“Someone said I should check him over,” she explained.

Rosslyn nodded and returned her attention to Cullen.

“What did the first Enchanter have to say about the Right?” Alistair asked.

Amell’s hands froze on the stopper of a reviving potion.

“First Enchanter Irving is… missing,” the templar admitted. “He was in the tower. Please – the Knight-Captain is certain not all of the mages have succumbed, but if the Right reaches the tower before other help does, then any who have survived this long will be killed for certainty’s sake.”

Grim silence met this pronouncement. Even now, the Right of Annulment, the edict viewed as a viable last resort by many, might already be racing to Kinloch Hold, ready to give the waiting templars free licence to slaughter all within. The only source of reprieve might be that, with the grand cleric out of reach in Denerim, Greagoir would have had to send for permission from Orlais or Kirkwall, either of which would take at least a week to reply. In the meantime, however, it still left hundreds of mages in thrall to an army of unbound, hungry demons.

“Not every templar would risk so much to dispute the Right,” Rosslyn said eventually. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because –” Hopelessly, he glanced around, first to Amell and then to everyone else when she refused to meet his gaze. “Templars are meant to protect mages, from themselves if necessary, but from demons first of all. If some of them can be saved… that’s what the Order is for. And there are templars locked in the tower as well. If… if they haven’t been killed, then they will be trying to stop whatever blood magic has taken hold of our charges.”

“I don’t believe it,” the healer said quietly. “The first enchanter would have stopped it.”

Eamon huffed. “I don’t recall asking for your opinion, healer.”

Nobody paid him any attention. Instead, Amell turned to Rosslyn, her dark eyes wide.

“Please, Your Ladyship. The Circle is – it’s my home, and I can’t believe everyone there has turned to blood magic. Asking them to sit and wait to be slaughtered is – it’s monstrous. There are children there.”

“The Circle operates independently of the Crown,” Eamon said. “We cannot –”

“There are children there,” Alistair interrupted, with a flat glare. “Children who have magic, who might be, oh, I don’t know, around ten years old, whose families weren’t well-connected enough to send them out of the Chantry’s reach?”

The insinuation drained the colour from the old arl’s cheeks, and though his mouth twisted in a barbed retort, it remained unspoken and he turned away.

“The Chantry might control the Circles, but it is the crown’s concern if there are demons pouring out over Fereldan soil,” the prince declared. “What, will the grand cleric slap us on the wrist for stopping more people getting killed?”

“if the Knight-Commander believes the circle lost, then surely there isn’t much to be done,” Eamon replied, rallying. “Let the Order handle it. They are better equipped, and the war effort will not fall apart if any of them are lost.”

“But they don’t want to help.”

Rosslyn stood up, cutting off Eamon’s argument. “We can’t deal with mages gone rogue,” she pointed out. Her expression hollowed. “I saw the carnage unleashed in South Reach by one blood mage, and even though he was a magister I dread to think what would happen if the templars failed and we had to face dozens of abominations. We’ll help as we can,” she decided, with a nod to where Cullen was still sitting. “But we’ll need to be careful in our approach. We can’t go in with an army.”

“May I remind you we are due to rendezvous with the king.”

“Are you so eager for that meeting, my lord?” she asked in a mild tone.

Once again, the old man dropped his gaze, and in the silence, she called for a servant to fetch a map of Lake Calenhad from the chest in her pavilion. While they waited, another pair of servants carried a desk over from the corner of the space and unfolded it into a large square, preparing it not only for the map but for the food ordered from the quartermaster. It was only bread and a kettle of thin meat broth, nowhere near as pleasant as the picnic Rosslyn had shared with Alistair only hours before, but it kept hunger at bay and would fuel them through the hours to come. As the stew was ladled into bowls, Amell sidled close to Rosslyn, her hand hovering as if she wanted to touch her arm but lacked the courage.

“Please Your Ladyship – and Your Highness – whatever you’re planning, I’d like to come along. I can help.”

“That might not be wise,” Cullen said from the other side of the table.

Amell frowned at him, stung. “You’ll need someone who knows the Circle, and who can dispel any barriers or harmful magic –”

“A templar could do that just as well.”

“Maybe,” she snapped. “But by now the enchanters will have figured out about the Right, and they’ll probably attack any warriors who approach them to try and defend themselves. Especially if they’re wearing the Sword of Mercy.” Remembering who she was talking to, she straightened and folded her hands in front of her, watching her fingers twine together as she continued in a more restrained voice. “They’d respond better to a mage, and they know me.”

The servant returned with the maps and nudged her out of the way, but she didn’t leave.

“If you want to save people, you’ll need someone who can calm them down.”

“No. it’s my duty to protect you.” Cullen’s scowl was a hard counterpoint to the light curl of his hair. “You would be safer staying here.”

“I don’t care.”

“I –”

“The longer you argue the longer it’ll take to get help to the Circle,” Rosslyn interrupted. “We’ll use you both. But for now, you’re dismissed. Go and get some rest.” Turning from them and whatever look passed between them, she helped the servant lay out the maps, overlapping them so the western edge of Ferelden fit against the corner of Lake Calenhad, then fished in the box handed to her for the two sets of markers.

“And my lord,” she added to Eamon once the pair had left, “We will need to leave as early as possible in the morning. Please go and see to it that provisions are packed and ready, and that horses will be saddled in time.”

“Your Ladyship, this is folly,” the arl insisted. He stood with his arms folded, glowering at the obvious dismissal. “You cannot believe that interfering in a Chantry matter is worth the risk when we are so close to victory against Loghain. I assume you intend to go yourself? What if something happens to you? Would you leave Highever without its champion?”

Her glance cut at him, but Alistair stepped up beside her and answered first.

“You heard her,” he said. “Best catch the horsemaster before he turns in for the night, don’t you think?”

For a moment, the old man stayed frozen, but his upbringing as a noble asserted itself under the combined weight of their disdain, and at last he cleared his throat and limped towards the doorway. On the threshold, he paused as if to say something further, but his lips pursed and with a shake of his head he trudged out into the night. It left only the two of them in the pavilion. Guards were stationed outside, of course, still within earshot, but even that small amount of space, the brief interlude before Eamon returned, allowed fatigue to creep in at the corners. Rosslyn busied herself arranging the markers for Cailan’s last known location. Alistair’s hand had once more found the small of her back.

“If I asked…”

“I’m not letting you go in there alone,” he said.

She sighed. “It’s my duty as a subject of the Crown to at least point out that Eamon isn’t mistaken when he says it’ll be dangerous.”

With gentle fingers, he caught her hand and raised it to his lips. “My duty is to you.”

“Not ahead of the kingdom,” she breathed, unable to resist leaning closer.

He chuckled and kissed her hand again. “You already do such a good job taking care of that, it makes more sense to have someone taking care of you, don’t you think? You know I’m right,” he added, when she opened her mouth to retort.

“Kiss me and I’ll forgive you for it.”

“Ha! That’s just an incentive for me to be right more oft–”

He had to keep in mind that Eamon might return at any moment, that even if his feelings for Rosslyn might be common knowledge, having the camp know about their relationship and having them see was a distinction with monumental consequences. It didn’t mean he had to enjoy the moment when he pulled himself away, but cutting one kiss short would always be better than never getting to kiss her again. He coughed. There were footsteps outside, and he didn’t trust himself to look at her.

The maps. Yes. Right. The maps.

“So, uh…” he started. “How are we going to do this?”

The party caught their first glimpse of Kinloch Hold’s tower on the third morning, having left at first light carrying only bare provisions and bedrolls. Eamon had arranged to take the rest of their force north through Lakehead, and then meet up with them and the main strength of the army in Aeylesbide, where Cailan was waiting for them. Each had led a spare horse, and changed mounts first at the waystation at the mouth of Gherlen’s Pass and then in Ridderby, where Rosslyn also sent a raven on to the king. As an unaccustomed rider, Amell had tired the worst from the hard journey, and she slept soundly now in the hold of the ferry they had commissioned from the small port that served the western shore of the lake. Rosslyn, however, had been too restless for sleep, and with propriety overriding the urge to crawl into Alistair’s arms, she had emerged onto the deck to let the chill of morning wake her fully. Ice clung to the forward rail, catching the first of the late-autumn light as it crept over the water.

“Happy Satinalia,” said a voice behind her.

“What?”

She watched Alistair duck under the beam and edge his way along the slippery deck towards her, his arms open wide to catch her from behind and enfold her in the thick material of his cloak. He pressed a kiss against her hair as she leaned into the comfort of his chest.

“It’s Firstfall,” he said. “So, happy Satinalia.”

“Already?” She huffed, leaning back against him. “I didn’t realise.”

“If someone had told me this time last year that I would be spending the day battling a tower full of abominations and mad mages, I wouldn’t have believed them.” His arms squeezed her coser. “And I especially wouldn’t have believed the part about you.”

“Neither would I,” she answered.

Had it only been a year? There had been so much laughter in the hall; Gilmore had complimented her new dress, turning his ears as red as his hair; her mother had rolled her eyes as her father raised the traditional mistletoe over her head; and Oren – Oren had refused to let go of the soft toy mabari his favouritest aunt had made him, no matter its lumpy stuffing and the wonky set of its eyes.

“Hey…”

She found Alistair’s fingers and wound them with her own. “As long as we don’t make the demon-fighting part a tradition,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady.

“Oh, I don’t know…” He pressed his cheek against hers. “It beats sitting by yourself, counting coals in a chilly guardhouse.”

Frowning at the forced brightness in his tone, she turned into him and snuck her hands under the outer layer of his gambeson. A sharp inhale answered the sudden chill brought by her fingers, but a moment later he relaxed and tightened his hold on her waist.

“It’s a good thing we have more than those two choices, then,” she murmured.

They watched the dawn grow behind the Circle spire until details could be picked out on the buildings and the vegetable patch that clustered around the base of the tower proper and their intimacy could no longer be hidden by the darkness. Figures stood at attention on the rocky shore, stonelike but for the gleam of their armour, and as the ferry drew closer to the low pier on the southeastern end of the island, some of the templars retreated from their posts to dart up the steps to where Greagoir no doubt waited for word. Silence engulfed them, a kind of pressure like the change of altitude that renders all sound distant, which grew heavier the closer the came to the tower.

The others were already awake. Grimly, they nodded to Rosslyn and Alistair as they pulled on their armour, checked their weapons sat easy in their scabbards, and climbed up to the deck to wait for the slow bump of the hull against the dock. The crew had barely skipped to secure the ropes when they spotted a full complement of templars clanking down the steps towards them. Greagoir marched at their head, his hand tight on the hilt of the sword at his side.

“Irminric told me what he was doing,” he growled when Rosslyn and Alistair stepped onto the dock to meet him. “I will speak plainly. You have wasted your journey here, Your Highness. The tower is not under our control, and my knight-captain has led you on a fool’s errand.”

“We came to help,” Alistair replied. “You would refuse it?”

The knight-commander shook his head. “Abominations and demons stalk the tower’s halls – we were too complacent, and it would be foolish to send anyone in without the Right to back them.”

“That would be the case only if every mage in the tower were corrupt,” Rosslyn pointed out. “Do you have evidence of that?”

“Your Ladyship, I appreciate your desire to help, and I know your relatives among the Clayne believe magic is not a temptation – Knight-Captain Irminric holds the same misguided opinion – but the tower is overrun. There is no alternative – everything within must be destroyed so it can be made safe again.”

With a growl, Amell pushed forward, ignoring the restraining hand Cullen lay on her arm. “How can you just give up like that? There are hundreds of people in there – your people too! How can you abandon them?”

“What are you doing here?” Greagoir turned to Cullen. “Knight-Lieutenant, all mages were to stay on detachment with the king’s army.”

“Why – so you could avoid having to look any of us in the face? I came here to help save my home.”

“I’ll not throw the demons another bit of fodder. I suggest you all leave immediately.” He shrugged, and the veneer of calm slipped to reveal the tiredness beneath. “Once I have confirmation of the Right from Val Royeaux it will all be over.”

Rosslyn glared at him. “And what will you do in the meantime, sit here and polish your armour? Every moment you delay means more lives lost, people who could have been saved if you had chosen to act – unless,” she added with a cold smile, “that is part of the reason for your hesitation, a hope that by the time the Right arrives everyone in the tower will have killed each other off and given your men an easier time of clearing away the mess.”

“What – how dare you!”

“Your Ladyship, please,” Cullen muttered beside her.

She ignored him and stared the old man down.

“I assure you I do not take this matter lightly,” Greagoir grunted. “But I will not risk more of my officers.”

“You would not be risking your officers.”

He laughed. “No, only the goodwill of the king and any standing I have within the Order.”

“And you value your position over the lives of the people in your charge?”

The force of Alistair’s quiet disapproval, standing before him with arms folded brows drawn in like thunderclouds, defeated the bluster already winded by Rosslyn’s argument. The knight-commander sighed, defeated, and gestured for them to walk with him up to the hall that served as the tower’s entrance. The ranks of templars stepped aside to let them pass. Some turned curious glances on Cullen, and followed after Amell with hostile whispers, but nobody stopped them.

“If you succeeded, I would owe you much,” the knight-commander admitted. “I can let you in, but I will not open the doors again until I know it is safe, not until First Enchanter Irving stands before me and tells me it is so.”

“Very well,” Rosslyn answered. “if you have any provisions to spare, they would be welcome, since we don’t know exactly what we’ll face.”

“The quartermaster is over there.”

“I’m going too.” One of Amell’s hands rested lightly on the staff she slung over her back, not quite enough to be a threat, though Greagoir seemed to mark it as one. “I’m under His Highness’ supervision and you can’t stop me.”

Before the knight-commander could do much more than frown at the defiance in the mage’s eyes, Cullen stepped up next to her.

“I would like to volunteer as well, Ser,” he said.

“You were one of the lads on the last duty shift,” Greagoir realised.

“Yes, Ser.”

For a long moment, his superior said nothing, grinding his jaw as he weighed the options set before him. The guards on the door fidgeted. Eventually, he threw up his hands in frustration, barking a command for the quartermaster to add a spare set of armour and some fresh robes to the list of supplies he was rooting for in the storeroom.

The time waiting for rations and water gave them enough time to check their weapons again and glance at a rough map of what lay beyond the door, as if that alone might prepare them. Rosslyn napped on Alistair’s shoulder, having grown into the soldier’s habit of snatching sleep where she could after such a restless night, and he kept fiddling with the straps of his gauntlets to resist the urge to hold her hand. By the time they were ready to leave, the sun was streaming full through the window at the far end of the hall.

“Remember,” Greagoir warned, “Irving’s word is the only one I will accept.”

“We understand,” Alistair replied.

“Then maker turn his gaze upon you.”

The illuminated image of Andraste on her pyre overlooked them all as they trudged to the door, painting bright shadows over the ceiling. At a nod, the guards drew back the wrought iron bolts on the tower door and hauled on the capstan chains to open it, while yet others stood with ready swords in case an abomination lurched out of the darkness before they were ready. But nothing moved. The corridor was empty. As one, the party strode forward, Rosslyn and Alistair in the lead, and the heavy doors closed behind them like a trap.

#dragon age #dragon age: origins #dragon age origins #alistair theirin #alistair x cousland #cousland #rosslyn cousland #cullen rutherford #amell #posting this to make myself feel better

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jamiebluewind · 5 years ago

Text

Charatcter Descriptions and Summary 2.13

As always, let me know if I need to edit or add anything and tag/ask/PM me about art and stories so I can check them out! I'll try to add warnings later. Also, we have 8 episodes left including this one, so the last one should be number 20.

***

Things

Dusk Moss

Hallucinogenic moss with very few alchemical properties that puts the user into a state of lucid dreaming where they are also concious of waking world (basically fantasy marijuana)

Is a flammable powder that cannot be unlit once lit

Crumpkin said his brother swears by it and that everyone should try it at least once.

It will even you out if you take a little bit and a quarter of teaspon will send one of them on a trip all day (so what about the size and race of the person?)

Can buy in a massive block from Tinkerer's Hall where a dose of the powder can be shaved off the block to use

Mystery Rune

The rune was abjurative magic: metamagic school (instead of protection, wards, and shields) which shapes the nature of magic itself. Specifically, the rune involved curses and a way to mask powerful curses and spells. One can take a tremendous amount of spellcraft (or the ability to cast multiple spells), put it into a curse, and have the curse ride under other curses. In other words, if connected to an object, the object would have been "cursed" to be a vessel for a wealth of other spellcasting (flash drive), but hidden under another curse (advanced encryption and a virus).

The larger and more permeable the curse, the more able it is to ride under another curse.

The curse on top (dummy curse) works best the more widespread, static (can't be easily ended or doesn't have random frequent spell effects), ambient, and passive it is like using a magical landscapes or creatures instead of a spell made by a spellcaster.

***

PCs With Datemates

Kristen

Took a picture on her crystal of the unknown goddess mural (originally wondered if it was a tequila advertisement)

Kissed Tracker and the tree she was hiding behind

Wanted rosé with the cold fratatas, but thought it was weird that he put both kale and spinach in them (as did Tracker)

Looked through the medical papers Adaine and Riz found and figured out how to cure the Kalina infection (greater restoration due to studying records or a tinsure that requires dusk moss, the alchemical supplies Gorgug got from the tinkerers, some things Adaine can pull from her jacket, and one or two things they'd only be able to find beyond the wall)

Her and the group decided on the tincture method despite the risk of curing behind the wall as she can only cast greater restoration once per day (only one 5th level spell slot and 5 infected: Tracker, Sandra Lynn, Ragh, Riz, and herself), but the option of using greater restoration on herself and Riz while leaving the others behind or inside Van was discussed (side note: could she team up with any of the locals bards/clerics/druids/artificers/celestial warlocks who know greater restoration and teach them the specifics of the altered spell while they wait on the others to get back?)

Suggested they pretend they all died after they take the tincture in order to give them an advantage due to Kalina thinking the party was cut in half (all but Adaine agreed)

Owns little handcuffs with her and Tracker's initials on them

"I don't know why I'm saying this, but Go Ball."

Assumed that the team in hell were just stuck in a waiting room, possibly drinking pina coladas

Investigated where Aelwen, Adaine's mom, and Killian entered the briar wall. It was much more tangled, far from Arborly, up a cliff with difficult rocky terrain between them and the temple. It was a place where they wouldn't be looked for, but it would take them longer to get there.

Tracker

Said the thing with Vraz made her werewolf issue with the Shrine of Thorns the second weirdest thing that's happened

Started transforming after glancing at the uncovered mural image of the unknown goddess, growling as half her head transformed as she fought changing before rolling off and hiding behind a tree (per Kristen's suggestion)

Couldn't go to hell because she couldn't enter the shrine

Gorgug

Got springs put in his shoes by the gnomes which gave them thick rubbery soles (Spring Coiled Sneakers of Bounding) and also asked for shock thing from tinkerers which would have a spare the dying effect (unknown if he got it)

Wears size 19 canvas shoes

Looked through a big log book with the alchemic ingredients in tinkerer's shorthand before buying the same alchemical ingredients that Killian bought (magnesium, antimony, and mercury which are used in magical candles) for 350 gold. Killian also bought two huge blocks of dusk moss incense (600 gold for both which he split cost wise with Fabian), but he was nervous about buying it (dusk moss details above).

Explained cell towers to the tinkerers

Considered jumping into space to either get to or place a satellite

Found a picture of his parents launching their satellite into space (Wilma and Digby giving double thumbs up, the van tipped on it's nose with it's back doors open to launch the satellite from the back of it, a lot of papers and a mobile desk in van's glovebox) and found space tech-esk routing info for the satellite in Van which allowed him to make a satellite phone

Originally left his crystal and the info with the tinkerers (original timeframe 1-2 days), but came back to help which speed up the process

Was curious why Gilear wasn't infected by Shadow Cat like Sandra Lynn and was later sorry he brought it up

When they found out they couldn't enlarge/reduce Van, he considered making a massive vest with massive pockets he could wear that everyone could jump in before they used enlarge/reduced on him, but the idea was scrapped

Suggested that if they played dead after taking the tincture to not warn Gilear so he wouldn't be acting when they "died".

"Hey, this is based on nothing, but I feel like Gilear is dead."

Believed that hell wasn't as bad as people said it was, just unfamiliar and like 5 degrees hotter

Ran into the briars after the portal closed

Likes a hot hot tub because warm ones just makes him wonder what's cooking in there

Was up all night sweating with his hoodie off (first time in a long time) working on his phone before finishing up the crystal pack (made his phone into a satellite phone). He felt pretty good about making it work.

Got a slew of unread messages once he turned his phone on (few old ones from Zelda, some from his parents checking in, and tour stuff)

Called Zelda with a video call, putting his hoodie back on as it rang and rang (most of the call is in Zelda section)

Told Zelda he loved her for the first time (after she said it first). Said he wished he was there, but hadn't figured that technology out yet and admitted that he might not have service once they went into the forest ("I'm here to communicate")

The gnomes erupted into cheers over the crystal working, but he was equally exciting over Zelda saying she loved him. They popped some gnome wine (pink fizzy champagne that smelled like cloying sweet strawberries) and shared it with him in celebration

Got a bunch of DMs from the other seven maidens saying "Way to go big guy"

Zelda

Was at Ostentata's house at night for a party (everybody was telling the story of when Gorgug jumped the fire elemental there and when he backyard wrestle smashed the beer pong table while time was stopped) when Gorgug called

Told her adventuring party he was calling before she went outside, but they followed

Answered her phone while still wearing her earbuds and assumed he was back, but was told he figured out how to make his phone work. He did it because he felt like it was important to be able to talk to her, the world, and her (not because it was part of the quest). She asked if they had cell towers, but Gorgug said that he had been working on artificer stuff and used his parents' satellite.

Started crying over Gorgug doing a whole bunch of new science to make his phone able to call back, apologized to him over getting upset, and said she missed him and he was the best

Was embarrassed by the other maidens eavesdropping (they called out "Good lookin out Gorgug! Stand up thing to do! You did it!"). Gorgug went on speaker and said "Well hello guys!" before she shooed them off to talk to her boyfriend

Made sure that Gorgug's friends weren't in danger over him working on his project, but was reassured that he was having down time and it would also help them in the long run

Told Gorgug that she loved him for the first time and freaked out (insulting herself) before he said that he loved her too. This was followed by her saying "oooh I just wanna... I just wish you were here."

Said the Red Waste was super hard, but they were done and thought they would get a good grade on it

Called Gorgug cool (and was called cool by him). Said what he did meant a lot to her. The call ended with one last quick I love you from Gorgug.

Fig

Subpoenaed to be a witness for Gortholax before a tribunal due to him being negligent for his infernal domain (after his 9th and final request for appearence lapsed). The print of her subpoena got so fine that it was mostly illegable without a magnifying glass. It was also in infernal (which she can read)

Asked Vraz if she could leave the door to hell open with them following later (left open, but was yelled at)

Considered disguising herself as Gortholax and offered to disguise herself as a famous lawyer from billboards to help Gilear

Wanted to know more about law so she could defend Gortholax domain and yelled "THE CHOSEN ONE!" when she discovered that Gilear knew the law

Wanted to start a grass roots campaign about the demons working with the nightmare king (as devils hate them both)

Asked her mom why Gilear wasn't infected and discovered her parents had slept together many times, but not in the last 3 years

Got upset with Riz over his opinion on devils (quote in dialogue link)

Had to be the first through the portal to hell, but straddled the flaming doorway with Riz on her back to try to keep it open

Tied a rope around Hangman so she could wakeboard while smoking a clove, library card behind her right ear

Thought Gortholax's home was tasteful and knew the door code.

Blamed herself for the quality of Gilear's life (quote in dialogue link)

To Vraz "What going on with you? Do you need a hug?"

Lit a cigarette in court, told them that Gortholax was trapped in a gem, put her feet up, and said Kalina the Shadow Cat used a proxy to trap Gortholax with the assistance of demons (but was able to hide the fact that she was the proxy from Vraz)

Asked for help getting into the forest of the Nightmare King, but got yelled at because calling a recess does not mean the trial is over

Cut her arm and offered the tribunal her blood as proof she was Gortholax's daughter, but the blood sizzled when it hit the ground and either summoned or created an imp which served as proof

Ayda

Told Adaine what the rune was (details below)

Still working on plane shift

Got upset over Fig getting sucked into hell, insisting that they had to go rescue her "Well, we should do whatever we can to make it happen as fast as possible because I'm going to get another kiss, whatever happens"

Said Fig's lips are the softest things she's ever felt (grossing out Adaine) and "If I don't smell Fig's hair again, I'm going to incenerate"

Asked Adaine for advice as the Oracle, wanting to know how many potential futures there were were Fig wouldn't want to kiss her or be around her anymore and if they could be avoided. She was also worried that Fig might have kissed her, but not felt attracted to her.

"If we kissed a bunch of times over the course of an hour, does that mean we are girlfriends or wives?" (potentially but ask to clarify)

Was worried that she would look sad, weird, or not normal from a social standpoint for asking Fig to clarify if they were girlfriends (to which Adaine said she was not and was in face very very cool).

Worried about her mind being foreign to other people and despite not being the same as Adaine, felt better after talking to someone who understands not being like everyone else.

Told Adaine "You're a very special person to me and your friendship means the world to me. I hope we study magic together for a long long time" and that she loved her.

Has notes on how her brain works and built an entire friendship section in the library because she was so lonely.

Went to the Synod to be alone because she lived "on a dirty pirate island"

***

Other PCs And People In The Party

Adaine

Released an aura in the crime scene and might have put on gloves

Found the non detection runes her mother had placed (to keep elves off the trail) and the remains of two rituals, one to kill Killian and one to put the Devil's Heart (with Gortholax) inside Killian. The rituals happened 24 hours appart, meaning they left the night the teens arrived or her mom knew to kill Killian before Aelwen arrived.

While looking for something in the room (something nice her mom might have said about her), she found a blank piece of parchment on a small desk and revealed a message using "the pencil trick" ("Aelwen is with me. You are betrayed. You have no other choice darling. Come with us.") which she believed was probably for her dad. Later got the original copy (wrote out for a sending spell) by using mend on ashes she found in a trashcan

Suggested a cold fratata picnic

Pulled beautifully printed pamplets out of her jacket for Fig's grass roots campaign, but they had a typo so she tossed them

Told the group to give a thumbs up to someone who had the message spell (currently only Fig and Adaine) if they had something to say to keep it from Kalina

Was caught by briars and ejected from the hell potral, keeping her from entering, but decided that heaven and hell were just reflections of each other so she wasn't worried

On dusk moss, said "I've heard it's good for anxiety." and suggested that they all got high while waiting on their friends to return from hell (but was unable to convince the others)

Discovered that the unknown goddess' spellbook had a distinguishing mark on it, an occult rune that was in a lot of stuff at Compass Points (which Ayda would have studied) and on the coin given to Kalvaxus (more info under mystery rune)

Liked a hot tub that started off very warm at first and then got more comfortable

Messaged Ayda late at night for help "Avast ye scurvy devil. How is plane shift going? Also, need info on rune. It looks like [x]" (answered back "I'm not a scurvy devil. Let's use the synonym. Right jacket pocket.")

Found a key made of glowing blue crystalline energy in her pocket as the keyhole on a nearby door started glowing slightly blue.

Was given a scroll with a first level spell by Ayda that granted her access to the Synod of Spyre which is a meeting place for wizards

Told Ayda "I think your great", made her laugh by telling her that curses were "ten a penny", and told her that she enjoyed talking to her about their magic as Ayda is someone who gets it and is not mean to her

Asked Ayda to tell her everything (about the kiss), but then realized that she didn't want or need to know everything. She did say (about Ayda and Fig) "I support this. I am happy about it. I am amazed. Oooo she's secretive!" and that while on a macro level, some people will kiss without caring, Fig wouldn't because she cared about everybody (she did kiss those two older guys though?)

Admittedly that being oracle only let her help out a little every day and occasionally she got a terrifying vision, but she doesn't know when the event will occur or what will cause it

To Ayda, "If you like a person and they like you and the relationship is good, it shouldn't matter how other people feel about it? I think."

"I want to be alone and also surrounded by my friends at all times."

Riz

Worked the crime scene in the Owl and Harp with Adaine (putting on gloves before starting)

Found that the rituals were specifically to get Kalina into Silvar by bypassing the need for permission from a devil authority by using petrismosis to move from an infected creature into a gem to commandeer the devil within it

Petrismosis: The body's ability to start having elements of the magical gem within it to start permiating orgainic membrane; the process of an organic body and gem to become one which includes osmosis of blood to gem (ragh mom constrantly fights against the being within her gem using her rage, blood, and soul)

Told Adaine "It's great to fin- be around someone who just focuses up. Me and you? Everybody else is super horny. Super emotional. But me and you? *slaps hands together* No emotions between the two of us." (she was looking for something nice from her mom)

Discovered that Adaine's mom had packed WAY more rations than they needed to get to the temple, some alchemical ingredients, and all primary work, leaving only hints behind as well as some research and medical diagrams (which Adaine and Riz took). The medical diagrams were extremely old velum grave robber level medical stuff written in a character based pictogram language (think hieroglyphs, almost like emoji) that was most likely centaur. One medical diagram was of a disected and dismembered centaur with dark, very scary looking cat symbols (refered to as the disease or infection) behind eyes, in ears, on tongue, deep in sinuses, and on spine. It also showed that the brain was carefully taken apart and looked at, but the infection was not present there.

He and Adaine deduced that Kalina could only look through one person at a time using their senses and couldn't get into their brains, but could cause paralysis. The only safe place would be the moon haven/Kristen's hallow, but Kalina might be able to ride one of the infected into the haven if she was actively trying to do it. They could however talk anywhere using telepathy (such as the message spell).

Was worried about going to hell while infected, but later said "I meantioned that I was concerened about going to hell and her possibly being able to see the trial, but hell is also bad so I don't really care if they end up fighting and killing each others. Let's just go to hell. Also, they're super far along already. They have Gortholax and they're in. So it's not like... yeah."

Might have internalized racism/goblinphobia and has bias towards devils (both from his reactions in this episode and his reaction to Gortholax in season 1)

Suspicious of devils and doesn't think they should be super cool with them (quote in dialogue link), later becoming upset over what Hangman said about goblins ("Oh like goblins have such a great reputation.") and the others reaction to his and The Hangman's statement.

Road into hell holding onto Fig's back.

Upon seeing Gilear knocked out, said "See I told you that hell was bad! I mean, this is awesome, but this is bad." Pointed out the irony of Gilear getting mad at him a long time ago for stealing the first aid kit that gave him the healing feat.

After Hangman said the evil souls were murderers, thieves, and liars, he started sweating and said "Liars huh?" (side note: Riz has actually done all three)

Grabbed Gilear's face and investigated him to figure out why he was so confident (he said no to an offer from Sandra Lynn). Hissed at Gilear and then apologized, saying they were in hell, it was weird, and the things said about goblins earlier made him feel kinda crazy

Hissed at Vraz repeatedly, even after she threatened him.

To Vraz "Well I'm Riz The Ball and I'm just gonna ROLL WITH THIS! We're here! We're here for your trial thing! *hiss*" Is held back by Gilear while Fig tried to push him forward towards Vraz (told her to stop it)

Hissed at Vraz again (when she was mean to Fig) saying Vraz calling somebody in the middle of a trial was weird before the pair got in another hissing/screaming match. Asked The Hangman to hold him back and got his foot run over.

Fabian

Ownes 250 to 312 pairs of shoes (depending how many have been thrown away or given to childen), has size 5 feet (and is self conscious about it), said he had delicate feet and was lithe and dexterous, and his father had small feet and mother had normal sized feet

Said "god damn it" when he discovered Krumpkin wore the same size shoes as him, lied and said he had big toes and wore a 5.5 because he didn't to exchange shoes with a gnome, and quietly said "...let's go" when Gorgug asked if he wanted little bells on his shoes (side note: was he teased in the past?)

Completely confused by tinkerers logbook, so he deferred to Gorgug. Tried to help by rubbing his sheet on the gold coins they were buying supplies with, but nothing happened

Was nervous about buying or using dusk moss, saying he knew a guy who tried it while wearing a hat and now he always felt like he's wearing the hat. Told the rest of the group "We bought so many drugs." when they dot back.

Fabian's bardic "You feel the power of Fabian's support and care for you" (the explanation of his new stats is linked below)

When asked if he wanted to stay in the Tinkerer's Hall, he answered "Absolutely. With all these weird little men and women. No thank you. Ragh, let's go!"

Has a bunch of private stuff on his phone that he doesn't want anybody seeing

Tried to ride Hangman into hell, but caught by the briars and ejected as the portal closed

Told Hangman "You are literally the sweetest meanest thing ever."

Mutters "Go off The Ball, go off" while Riz was in a different dimension from him (yelling at Vraz in hell)

Said he didn't worry about his father as he was thriving, but he missed him. When told he could get word to him, originally assumed Bill would be busy, then agreed but asked Hangman not to be needy about it, then tried to pretend that he was cool either way and that he didn't need it and it wouldn't fill him with joy, then admitted that it would fill him with joy, and finally just asking "yes please do it"

Likes a warm hot tub due to it being better for his skin and he can stay in there longer

(Multiple quotes can be found in the dialogue link below)

Hangman

His presence (a devil) closed the portal to hell, seperating him from Fabian. He could still talk to Fabian telepathically, but freaked out. When asked to turn it down, he replied "I can't turn it down, I'm sad!"

Said that the portal was created for the dark tribunal and afterwards the devils are required to deposite them from where they came from

Gave Gilear his mark by making his eyes glow dark red pinpricks and etching an infernal ruin of blood and fire on his forehead

Got pissed off over Gilear having to ride on him, but did it to stop his complaining. Meanwhile, Riz also road on him (with a "Huzzah!") and Fig tired a rope around him so she could wakeboard on her skateboard behind him

Approved of Riz hissing at Gilear

Said the souls falling into The Bottomless Pit were evil and of murderers, theives, and liars

Got the tribunal to allow them to stay at The Bottomless Pit (as Fig was both Gortholax's daughter and she had passage there) instead of prison

When he was told only Fig was going to go in the hot tub, he pouted and said "I want to go too!"

Offered to send word to Bill Seacaster for Fabian

Gilear

Made fratatas (with both spinach and kale) immediately, but they all got very cold due to the teens being away for hours (were so cold that they thought he put them in the freezer)

He was not "the face" when he worked in Fallenel at the elven counsel (where he said he was a glorified paralegal), but was still an expert in international and interplaner law

When Fig told him that it was his moment and she needed him, he immediately replied with "Nope!". He eventually gave his word to help, but was confused about how they got into trouble in Arborly, discovering the trial was both in hell ("what? what? oh no.") and delivered by a really keyed up woman who was probably working through something ("I...what have you done?")

From Adaine's jacket, was given a barrister wig from Fig ("None of the cultures I've worked for use these wigs"), a gavel from Kristen, and a black robe from Adaine

Found that the subpoena had no clause concerning ther souls, but hell would send people to get Fig if she didn't go

Wears boat shoes and had a powerful aura of disease coming from his feet (again Gilear DOCTOR! or have a healer greater restore!)

His bald spot was hit by a bit of fire before a blast of fire hit him and knocked him out, setting his wig on fire. He was healed by Riz, but left with burns.

Was given the Mark of The Hangman, which was an infernal ruin of blood and fire etched on his forehead which caused a red force field to appear that protected him from the fire as long as he was with The Hangman

Noticed how Fig was acting (library card behind ear) and started asking her questions, but she dodged them until Riz confronted him about his confidence and got him to confess "I got confidence because Sandra Lynn asked to sleep with me and I said no!" Said that he and Sandra Lynn talking until morning and towards the end she made an offer, he said "No. Thank you", and everyone was still happy and fine afterwards

Told Riz he was very scary and intense sometimes, resulting in Riz hissing at him

Did not actually help during the trial due to fear.

(Has multiple quotes in dialogue link.)

Sandra Lynn

Covered for the teens messaging by talking about finding where Adaine's mom entered the forest as the teens nodded along

Had to explain to her daughter that her and Gilear slept together, but she could have gotten the Kalina disease anytime in the last 3 years and Gilear wouldn't have been infected ("I love you. It's weird. Sorry for all this weird info.")

On Kristen attempting to handcuff her "So help me god Kristen Applebees. I understand that I work for you, but so help... wow."

No longer with Jawbone, but ended on good terms

Was very kind to Gilear the first night in Arborly. She offered to sleep with him at one point and was turned down.

When she asked what the teens were messaging about (dusk moss), Kristen said Spring Break and suggested Sandra Lynn have a spa day with a hot tub soak and a massage with cucumbers on her eyes. Gorgug suggested cucumbers on her ears. Fabian said they should get the weird gnomes to pound her (dear god Fabian! XD) with Kristen saying "gnomes all over your body", Adaine adding that they would walk on her back, and Fabian adding that the little shoe bells would be meditative

Ragh

Asked for a lost spring from the tinkerers

Wears a size 17.5 shoe (quote in dialogue link)

Was paranoid about buying dusk moss (ARE YOU A COP!?), but after Crumpkin's reaction, he grabbed Fabian and Gorgug's arms and said "I think drugs are legal here"

Took a solid chunk of dusk moss and was found staring at his hand ("My hand is just little animal on the end of your arm")

Came into the van later, shirtless and looking like he'd sweat ten gallons. Said "Everything in the world is connected", (on Adaine thinking of trying it) "Adaine, for real? I can never be anxious again because I don't even know if I can ever be fully in my body again.", and (response to Fabian saying it sounds scary) "No no. I'm part of the universe dude" before drinking a glass of water and going off to go to bed.

***

Gnomes

Crumpkin Springbill

Head Tinkerer of the Tinkerer's Hall of Arborly

Confused as to why anybody would be mad about people buying or using dusk moss

Told Gorgug that it would take a long time and a lot of materals to build a cell tower

Size 5 shoes (but likes a little toe room) with curled toes so he can puts little bells on them (sounds like the general style of shoes for the gnomes there as well)

Said hello to Zelda enthusiastically over a video call

Polly Pullypad and Osmand Wobbletrouble

Accidentally flew into where they stacked all the old pots and pans (Polly)

Brought Gorgug his altered shoes back and bowed to Gorgug

Asked to examine Gorgug's crystal in exchange for the spring shoes (Osmand)

Suggested they try to skip building a cell tower and connect directly to a satellite

(Unnamed Twins)

Shallower cone hats with tufts of fur on the ends of springs

Took gorgug shoes off his feet

***

Devils

Vraz the Mean

Sarcastic erinyes with a +13 insight and a beautiful but uncannoy vally porcelain face with a beauty mark

When Fig and Kristen asked if she could leave the door open so they could follow "Are you guys having a fun time? BECAUSE YOU SEEM PRETTY FUCKING GLIB! Keep your sass to yourself!", but still left the door open

Got hissed at by Riz a lot (multiple quotes in dialogue)

Said she is having a bad time between her title (Vraz The Mean), species (Erinyes), running hell, and her title (Arch Secretary)

Called the tribunal into order (with her two co-jurors in a room with a small 3 seat judges bench), stating that it concerned the issue of Gortholax's infernal negligence

Tried to call her boss Blozo, but he couldn't come due to traffic

Found that being trapped in a gem counted as extenuating circumstances and he would not be punished, but they needed a new regnant for the Bottomless Pit so they called a recess while they consulted the bylaws.

Yelled at Fig for asking for help after the recess saying (in a durr voice) " *points at temple* Do you know what words mean!? Do you know what words mean!? *jacking off motion* Huh?"

Was going to imprison "the mortals", but was convinced by Hangman to put them under house arrest at The Bottomless Pit

Kystrona (Ky-stron-ah) The Chained

Vaguely humanoid figure that is just like

A person with chains coiled where arms would be as well as the torso and head, making a massive mound of chains

Moved with a lot of strain (including trying to shrug) and voice is muffled from all the chains

Lorzug (lore-zug) The Impaled

Bone thin naked person with incredibly pale skin and translucent vains all over

Impaled through the stomach about 10 feet up a jet black iron spike as they kick and scream

Only responded with screams

Retch Rot

Tiny blood red imp with a scorpion tail summoned by Fig's blood (calls her mistress)

Might look like a red Boggy with really long legs for his size (Ally wondered if he looked like "a really famous mouse", including suspenders, but I personally give Emily's description more weight as she is in fact in hell as Fig)

Valet to Fig while in the Bottomless Pit

Wanted to show them to their quarters and the many doors of The Bottomless Pit (but had to make it clear that the doors were just rooms in the pit and not portals)

***

Other Stuff From 2.13

***

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#fantasy high #fantasy high live #fantasy high spoilers #dimension 20 #d20 quotes #d20 character descriptions #d20 descriptions #descriptions #vraz the mean #krumpkin springbill #retch rot

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friendshipcampaign · 5 years ago

Text

Session Recap 6/1/19: Knife to Meat You

Squall gave the party a list of potential individuals to contact in their investigation -- either because they might have information, or might be suspects. It named a rival merchant named Banquin Andriolo, who dealt in swords of lower quality and envied Quest her success, as well as a former customer named Renya Fountenay who had knowingly bought a cursed blade and been angry when she hadn’t been able to break the enchantment herself. Squall also made reference to a Watch officer named Poppy Longmarch who had disapproved of their business.

She also gave them a loose timeline of her time in the city since Quest disappeared. She’d last seen her on the 7th of Blomhath (the current month). On the 9th, too ill to keep searching herself, she hired a private investigator named Eckjeth Siek by printing an ad in the city’s proclamation sheets. On the 15th she’d had her altercation at the watchhouse and also fended off the first attack at her old lodgings, an inn called the Dove’s Tail. A second attack occurred just a day later, on the 16th of Blomhath, led by what seemed to be the same mercenaries even after she’d moved to a new room. The final attack, with the constructs, had come the night of the 18th -- right before the party arrived -- and prompted her to move across the city even in violation of curfew in order to seek safety.

As Squall spoke of the attacks, Voski reached out to offer her a Cure Wounds spell. The aarakocra accepted and used her talons to unwrap her bandage. She explained that she had seen constructs like the smaller spider-like one that had entered her room around the city before. They were typically used to deliver messages or do small tasks that individuals wanted to keep discreet, so that they could deny being present if put under the effects of a Truth spell. Apparently there were rumors they were starting to take on more sinister work.

She also explained that in the wake of the Abyssal breach, the marketplace was currently in ruins. Apparently it had broken through on the 31st of Plomés (the month before last), preceded by a plague of laughter, which had caused people to collapse in the street before it gave way to the monsters below. In the days since, the city had struggled to purge demons from its streets, and the weather had been strange and cursed, with sporadic rains of blood and acid and insects falling thickly from the sky. Quest and Squall had only come to the city because of the particular sale with her old client Winstanus, and had intended to make this a short stay. When asked if she thought there was anything else important, Squall insisted that Quest should have had more than enough time to return to the inn before curfew.

Before the party left, Squall asked the party not to use her name in public or to let anyone know where she was staying. The party discussed their own options for lodgings, but the three who’d been to the city before didn’t have any ideas. Ditto mentioned the place she’d stayed before was too small for all of them, Erwyn didn’t have any ideas at all, and Voski said the places she’d stayed before would be “too expensive.” They decided to ask Kenska if she knew of anywhere that was still somewhat secure, and she recommended the Fox and Hellhound, which was located across the city on Keeper’s Row and was far from the site of the incursion.

Leaving the poorer part of town, the party passed through the open part of the city that was currently filled with temporary structures, alongside walls that had been erected around the exclusion zone. There was standing water -- likely from the river, which had burst its banks -- near the elephant statue that Ditto had mentioned, which was decorated with eye and wing motifs. A crack in the ground stretched towards it, but seemingly stopped at the statue itself, which was a little lopsided but in one piece. A temporary watchhouse stood nearby, with people who seemed to be workers and clerics going in and out.

From there they headed towards the north wall of the city, where it was evident that the craftsman’s corridor had been hit hard by the Abyssal breach. The entirety of Bread Row, the area the bakers were concentrated in, fell behind the exclusion wall, along with portions of the arcanists’ shops on Mage’s Row, the tailors on Needle Row, and the blacksmiths and armorers on Blood Row.

The Fox & Hellhound itself did prove to be fairly sturdy-looking for an inn. Inside, the party was greeted by a goliath man named Ben in a nice waistcoat, who had tattoos of little tankards of ale and other things that spoke to his experience as a tavern owner. They paid for two adjacent rooms for a week, plus meals, which cost seventeen gold that Ditto covered herself without second thought. Voski--still introducing herself as Kasia--asked about security measures in the inn, under the guise of hoping for privacy while workshopping some performing material in the room. Ben replied that the inn had a contract with some magic users who could place a Silence spell and other protective wards around the room for an additional fee.

The quality of the rooms turned out to be surprisingly nice. On getting inside, Kriv opened up the demiplane so that Ditto could stow Mynskay away. Erwyn also placed the Abyssal scroll they’d picked up from the Morkorth’s lair inside to keep it hidden away. Before the party headed out, Voski touched up some of her makeup, adding a slightly different sheen to her scales -- apparently, Kasia was a gold dragonborn.

“You look very shiny!” Ditto commented.

“I always do, but thank you,” Kasia replied.

The party headed out to see Linda the butcher, passing through some of the weapon-seller stalls on Blood Row on the way in the hopes of finding Banquin Andriolo. However, it turned out that the exclusion zone cut through the address Squall had given them, and whatever remained of Banquin’s stall was behind the wall on the side where the portal had formed.

As the party passed through the center of town again, they saw a strange little creature hanging around the market that at first looked something like a pigeon, but revealed itself to be a quasit with more bat-like wings and little hands. It snatched a roll from a haggard-looking person selling them, then spat ice at her when she tried to shoo it. Kriv kicked the quasit and it cursed at him in Abyssal, prompting him to let lightning gather around his teeth until it skittered away.

“More of us are coming,” it chittered in Abyssal, so only Erwyn understood it. “You won’t dare kick us then!”

The shopkeeper thanked Kriv and offered him a roll, before mentioning that there was a bounty for dead demons at the watch house. The watch offered payment for anyone bringing in demonic remains (or, it the body dissolved before it could be brought in as proof, for submitting to a truth spell and testifying to killing one). She also mentioned that there were some anti-demon people who had been called in to help deal with the situation, who wore patches with a symbol of a double-headed ouroboros and a dagger on them. Erwyn seemed nervous at their mention. Voski thanked the woman and purchased a loaf from her, tipping a couple extra copper.

Linda the butcher’s shop was easy to find once they reached the Butcher’s Quarter. Inside, there was a smaller amount of stock on display than in many stores, though it did seem to be kept chilled by cold spells. Linda herself was a shortish (for her race) orc woman with buzzed hair and mithril caps on her tusks. She seemed to be mostly a specialty butcher. Voski asked if she had any bones to sell, saying she was thinking of making a stock. This confused Erwyn greatly, who didn’t realize she actually intended to buy them for Squall, until Voski explained when Linda went to fetch them. The orc reappeared a moment later with a nice assortment and she selected some wyvern bones. She tipped an extra silver piece.

Ditto described Quest to Linda and asked if she’d seen her. The orc woman seemed hesitant to disclose anything, as customer privacy was important to her, but Ditto explained they were just trying to help find her. Linda said she’d had a couple people come talk to her about Quest already. She mentioned a half-elf, likely the private investigator, Eckjeth, though she’d mostly just tried to sell her some junk before leaving. She confirmed that Quest had come in the night of the 7th, cheerful and joking. The two of them had talked a little about the sword at the guildhouse before she went on her way, nothing seeming all that suspicious. She’d had to stay at her own shop close to curfew to help out another customer with limited hours they could visit, so she hadn’t seen Quest after that. Linda said that the other person who’d come and asked about quest was a half-orc watch officer, named Marrash, who she’d never seen before but who didn’t seem to be taking the investigation super seriously.

Erwyn asked Linda a little more about the sword at the guildhouse, and she said that it apparently spoke psychically to those who tried to handle it, though it seemed dissatisfied with any so far who presented themselves as its wielder and would burn their hands when they tried. Apparently it had been discovered by a lizardfolk priest down at the Low Temple, who had started having visions that lead her to a tomb. The sword had been moved to the guildhouse for safekeeping, and would be brought to the upcoming Guildhall Gala.

Voski asked a little more about the private investigator and what she’d tried to sell when she’d stopped by. Apparently they were small tinctures of some kind, which she’d claimed were magical as well as a great business opportunity. Linda also said it had been hard to get her to leave.

The party then started to head towards the Guildhouse, which was nearby, to continue their investigation. Amaranth kept her eyes open for beggar’s marks on the way, noting symbols for “magical defenses” and “off-limits” outside Linda’s shop, as well as several for “good for handouts” and the symbol for “kind owner” outside of another one in the Quarter whose sign was just a picture of a big knife. She also noticed many symbols in the shape of a black triangle with three eyes inside of it, many quickly drawn and scattered all throughout the city. One even seemed to be half-carved into a wall. She asked Ditto if she recognized them, but the gnome didn’t know what they were. Kriv asked Ditto if he could have the Rhymer’s Ring at that point and started to attune to it.

Inside the main hall of the Guildhouse there was a fancy cage with a smug-looking rooster inside, the remnants of a large candle (the “timepiece” used to keep the hours of Candling, Wick’s End, and Cock’s Crow in the city), and the supposedly divine longsword they’d been hearing about. It was covered in feather motifs and had a crossguard shaped like wings, with large gems shaped like eyes in the hilt and pommel. Even without a detection spell, it felt super magical.

Amaranth went and tried to poke at the rooster through the bars of its cage and it started puffing up at her, making angry chicken noises before pecking her finger. A nearby guard asked her to please not bother the rooster, whose name was apparently Roderick III. She pressed him with questions about the bird, trying her best to act interested in the answers, and gestured for the others to snoop around as she provided a distraction. Voski sauntered over and asked a different guard about the sword and was told a similar story to what the party had heard thus far, with the added information that when discovered it had asked to be brought out into the light to bring order and truth to the city.

Kriv eventually joined Voski and asked about the tomb as well. Apparently it was now cordoned off, but at the time of its excavation the sword had been found lying atop a sarcophagus inside. The cleric who’d had the visions leading them to it was apparently not a follower of any specific deity, and more devoted to the general concepts of gods, good, and order. Voski asked the guard if she’d tried to take hold of the sword herself and the guard said no.

While talking about the state of the city, the guard mentioned that they knew there had been some meeting from people outside of the city over philanthropic efforts to help with finances during reconstruction. In particular they spoke of a goliath woman accompanied by a large construct, veined with gold, who had been to the guildhouse several times for meetings with some of the guildmasters as well as the mayor and Watch. Apparently once she’d come specifically to see the sword and had looked at it for a few moments, laughed, and then gone about her business. In parting, Kriv asked the guard’s name, which turned out to be Clouden Greaves.

As the group left the Guildhall, Ditto mentioned that she was interested in checking in on someone she’d known when she lived in the city before, who had a shop in the Butcher’s Quarter. She lead them to the shop with the sign that bore the insignia of a large knife. Inside at the counter was a large, mechanical construct with a bladed hand, cutting meat. When he turned his face to look at Ditto, he stopped and unscrewed his meat cleaver to replace it with a hand attachment. She greeted him enthusiastically, visibly excited to see him, and said she was glad to see that he was okay. While he spoke in a monotone voice, it was clear he was glad to see her as well, and he asked if she’d acquired more names since they last spoke.

Ditto turned to the party and introduced her friend as Knife, telling him the rest of their names -- before pausing at Voski, who again gave her own as Kasia.

“That’s a rad name!” Amaranth said to Knife.

“Thank you. My creator gave it to me before he died,” Knife said, before adding, “I was not involved.”

“So, how did you two meat?” Voski asked. “Get it?”

Though Knife’s face was an expressionless mask, it was clear he had a sense of humor, and a series of monotone laughs followed.

“Kasia, you are very funny.” he said.

“I am,” she replied.

Knife explained that Ditto and her friend used to come through and he would give them meat, though he would pretend that they were stealing from him because it made them feel better. He told Ditto that he had something for her. He said the person who had entrusted it to him had said she would lay many curses on him if he didn’t get it to Ditto, and while he didn’t think she had that power, he felt for many reasons that he should fulfill the duty.

Reaching into an area reserved for storage, Knife pulled out two old packages and gave them to Ditto, saying he had been told that, unlike other humanoids, goblins didn’t like to be interred with items of sentimental value, but preferred that they be given to others as marks of their importance. He added that the one who’d given him the packages had also said to tell Ditto that she didn’t blame her for leaving, though she probably wouldn’t believe it. The gnome started to tear up, and Knife patted her shoulder comfortingly.

#session recap

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