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The cave is dank, cold, and stinks of dragon. Everything about it, about being here, makes Isal want to run. Even the usually bright chime of magic that hangs over the group is too sharp and grates on his nerves, a steady drumbeat of out out out out OUT!
He doesn’t wait for anyone to ask, just gathers the bits of dry wood and other combustibles from around the cave and clears a spot for the fire. It doesn’t even really take magic, just a brush of his fingers and a gentle tug to draw out the flame. He builds the fire as warm and smokeless as he can, then retreats — a little too quickly — to the cave entrance and sits, dangling his feet over the edge where it falls away, a sheer drop into the canyon. Magic behind him, the dark river canyon below. He turns the dragon scale he found earlier over in his hand, listening to the amicable bickering over treasures in the central chamber. Let the others think what they want about him, his withdrawal here, his refusal to partake. Coin has its uses, but he’s never really understood desiring wealth for its own sake, and has no interest in the pickings of this hoard in particular.
Cousin.
Craeg (or probably Renadi, he’s less willing to step around Isal’s silence) will eventually ask about the information they might have gotten from the dragon, or whether they might possibly have won it to their side, and Isal genuinely doesn’t know what he’ll say to that. He doesn’t care — about the intelligence, alliances, treasures, anything. The dragon (and he doesn’t even know its name) had called to him, called him cousin as if they could mean anything to each other, had dared to look hurt at Isal’s rejection. And Isal just…doesn’t care. About any of it.
He’d wanted the dragon dead. And he’d thrown himself after it without thought, angry and desperate, as if killing it would fix anything. Wanted its death more than he cared about the stolen artifact, his friends, the people of Sandpoint— wanted it more than he’d cared about his own life in the end.
It was all for nothing. The artifact was lost to them, the village in ruins. Isal himself was torn by the dragon’s teeth and talons, thrown from the sky. Alone, broken in body and spirit, he bled out his life on the rubble below. The last thing he saw was the dragon soaring off into the distance.
He’s such a fool.
And now? The dragon lies dead — Renadi having succeeded where Isal failed — and there’s no victory in it, just the bitter realization of his hubris. How had he possibly believed he could do this?
The wind pulls at his feet. A step out into the dark and he can go, wrap himself in a shadow, let the wind catch him and be gone before anyone thinks to look, where none of them can follow. Pull his secrets close and...and what? There’s nowhere to go, and his secrets — his shame is laid out where everyone can see. The air is thick with it. He closes his eyes and presses the pad of his thumb against the scale hard enough to cut.
Jharlin is more-or-less used to the hasty ransacking of anything useful or valuable in the aftermath of a fight, but there’s something… unsettling about this leisurely scrutiny of the dragon’s hoard. There’s very little doubt this random collection of coins and the occasional treasure belonged to the young red dragon killed by the Stairs. (Of course, if they are mistaken about that, no one is going to have much time for second guesses.)
There’s too much time to think about where, who it came from. Heaps of poor coppers are easy to connect to the jumble of cracked bones at the cave’s entrance.
Unseemly or not, from a practical standpoint they need the coin. Frost arrows are expensive. So are potions, scrolls, better armor… anything that might give them an edge against the army rallying to Mokmurian’s banner. And eventually useful against… Before following that thought further, Jharlin realizes that Isal has been gone for a while. He volunteered to watch the entrance, but… well, Isal had looked rather thoroughly unnerved since he spotted the scale. To be fair, they were all rather perturbed by that, but had mostly calmed when the cave proved to be empty. Isal… hadn’t.
Alan is still poking around the edges of the cavern where the loot was, re-checking to see if there might be anything interesting (valuable) tucked away that they had missed. Renadi appears to be taking inventory of their remaining supplies. Jharlin steps around them and heads to the mouth of the cave.
Isal is sitting at the edge of the cave’s mouth, staring out into the darkening sky, the cliffs on the other side of the river still partially lit by the setting sun. Jharlin considers the view. It’s not pretty, exactly, but it is striking – a slice of blue-purple evening sky, grey rock tinged golden, and then increasingly deep shadow down into the canyon. They can hear the river rushing below.
Even in silhouette, Isal’s tension is obvious. He hasn’t made a sound, and as Jharlin approaches they notice the scale held tightly in Isal’s hands, tiny beads of blood along the boundary between scale and the fleshy pad of his thumb.
Jharlin looks at him, considering, and then cuffs him on the back of the head. Not hard enough to injure, but not particularly gently, either.
“Ow!” Isal looks up, more surprised than hurt.
It’s satisfying. Jharlin considers hitting him again, just because, but Isal starts to raise his thumb to his mouth. Jharlin reaches down to intercept it.
“Give it over,” they order, and concentrate for a moment to seal the cut. It’s not really magic the way the others think of it, more like a muscle memory, or how Isal can light candles with a thought.
Except Isal had to learn that level of control. Struggled for it. It’s unsettling that sometimes watching Isal rip fire from the air is easier than seeing the simple intimacy of lighting a candle. Or building the campfire. Maybe it comes down to a question of identity. This is who I am versus this is who I want to be.
Jharlin shakes off the feeling and reaches for something lighter to break the mood. “I don’t even want to think about what kind of infection you could get from that.” It falls a little flat.
Isal pulls his hand away, tucking it close to his body, arms crossed and head slightly bowed. Honestly, who knew that six foot four of “scary sorcerer” could look so much like a sullen teenager? A smile nearly ghosts across Jharlin’s lips, then they reconsider. Despite his years—and Jharlin still isn’t sure how old Isal actually is— he really isn’t that far past adolescence, at least from an elven point of view—desperate to be part of a group and simultaneously terrified of it, and of the risk of rejection.
Still standing, looking out at the fading golden light, Jharlin continues more gently. “They all know already, and they don’t care.”
Isal flinches, and takes a breath to protest, but Jharlin cuts him off. “And if you’re about to say something like ‘But they don’t really understand’ – no, they don’t. I’m pretty sure I don’t. I’m not sure you do, entirely, either.”
“That’s not a bad impersonation of me,” Isal admits. No, he doesn’t think Jharlin really understands, but they’re sharper than the gentle facade they present, and Isal has been wrong about things before.
They’ve had this conversation before, and Isal has no wish to re-tread that ground now. He understands what’s happening, who he is. What he is. He lives it, feels it in his bones, in the fire under his breast thrumming out out out out…
Jharlin snorts, refusing to be distracted. “That… winged menace made it clear to everyone you’re some kind of dragon-kin. You might recall the utter lack of surprise among the rest of the team.” Jharlin cocks their head, considering. “Okay, maybe Alan was a little surprised.”
Isal swallows a laugh. Of them all, Alan seems the most…apart. If possible he pays less attention to things than Isal himself does. Hearing it out loud like that, cousin, being recognized… No, he hadn’t seen the others react. Or not react. Hadn’t seen much of anything beyond his own shock. He believes Jharlin, to a point, but a lack of surprise isn’t the same as acceptance.
All of this feels like a loose thread in a tapestry, ready to unravel everything. He doesn’t know how Jharlin can stand it.
“Look, I – no, we – get that this is weird for you. You have literally kept this stuff secret for decades. And now we’re camping in a dragon’s cave and Renadi is teasing you and it’s too much. Too raw and overwhelming.” They pause for breath. “But can you have a little faith that your friends are less concerned with your ancestry than they are with how you, the person they’ve gotten to know over the last few months, is holding up?”
The words hit home, and Isal feels the urge to fight drain out of him, leaving him tired. Two thoughts occur, that weird is far too mild a word for this awful nakedness, and that no, he’s never been a creature of faith. In anything.
Jharlin waits for a moment, then takes that as all the response they’re likely to get for now. The gravel crunches as they turn to head back to the interior of the cave.
Isal looks up, not quite turning around. "You talk about it?"
There's a hard knot of nausea at the thought he's being indulged, or worse, in this sad fantasy that his secrets are safe. He's too comfortable here with all of them. He's never stayed anywhere this long, and the thought presents itself again, that he could — maybe should — just go.
Jharlin barely resists the temptation to smack Isal again, but harder. "No, you idiot, we do not 'talk about it.’
"This is your thing, and you've made it very clear that you are uncomfortable discussing it.” Their words are clipped, frustrated, if not outright angry. “We do not discuss it behind your back. But when the townsfolk described your battle — and yes, they included the insults between you and that dragon, since it so obligingly spoke Common most of the time, well. Craeg nodded to himself, Renadi said ‘Huh’ like it explained things, and Talanah... okay, Talanah wanted to talk about it and I shut her down."
Jharlin looks slightly embarrassed at that. "And Alan... he seemed puzzled for a bit. I think Talanah may have explained. But you'll note the lack of running away in fear since then. Also an absence of pitchforks."
There’s a thoughtful pause. "Wait, do elves do the pitchforks thing when they drive people out? Nevermind, you know what I mean." Jharlin sighs, sounding as tired as Isal feels. "Look, it was a secret, now it's not."
That isn’t something he’s prepared to revisit tonight, or ever, really. Jharlin’s mouth sometimes runs faster than their brain; it’s mostly endearing. "No. No pitchforks, but I didn't really fight them about it."
It's Jharlin's turn to flinch. "Sorry," they mumble.
Isal feels a faint, mean satisfaction. He doesn’t doubt that Jharlin will eventually have the entirety of things from him, but not tonight. He’s in no hurry for so much truth between them.
He offers up something else instead. "We might actually have been cousins, you know." He picks a copper from the dust and throws it off into the deepening shadows. "I'm glad he's dead.” And… not sad precisely, but something complicated he can’t name.
"Me too. He killed you."
Something else he’s not ready to revisit, but some things can’t be avoided. He tosses another copper into the black canyon, looks up and deliberately catches Jharlin's eyes. "I don't think I actually thanked you. For my life.” It's a crude deflection, clumsy and obvious, but it’s somehow easier to talk about this than the dragon. He's not really at his best.
There is more, of course, to be thankful for. Isal remembers most of it, a hazy dreamscape of the Foxglove Manor drawing room pulled straight from his nightmares. He’s relived that particular moment so often—the tragic ghost using him to reenact her own suicide, urging him forward to the window, to freedom.
Choose.
He’ll never know now whether the wind would have known him then, lifting him up effortless and untethered, or if he’d have found a different kind of freedom on the rocks below. Jharlin stopped him then, and clear-eyed at last, Isal had chosen to stay.
Jharlin stopped him this time, too, and led him back from the dark precipice beyond the veil.
Jharlin looks away. There's nothing reasonable to say, so they borrow a note from Isal and say nothing, or well, not much. "I don't want to have to do it again," they mutter. They’re sure it will be misinterpreted, but there's no way to convey the jumble of feelings that memory brings. Words are a poor vehicle for so much fear and anger and exultation all mixed together.
And gratitude. Jharlin is so profoundly grateful to their goddess for allowing Isal to come back, but Isal is... touchy about gods, so again, they say nothing.
"I don't want to die," Isal says carefully, looking back into the darkness, "but I'm going to. I can't..." He takes a deep breath. The river almost pushes out the stench of dragon. Almost.
"I think about it every day. Leaving. But there's nowhere to go, and —and I don't want to leave you." He leaves it there, vague enough that he could mean the whole motley group of them, but they both know what he means. He’s never been especially subtle.
“Is that what you’re doing here, thinking of going?”
Isal sidesteps the question. "I should go, but my desires have always gotten the best of me. It’s selfish... I don't want to do this alone."
"That’s the only sensible thing you've said on the topic," Jharlin replies, a touch more acerbically than intended. "I'd like you not to die, too.” Then, more quietly, "I don't want you to leave."
I'd ask you to to come with me if I did, Isal thinks, but that's something that can't be spoken yet, perhaps not ever. Oh, Din'Isal, he can hear the voice even now across so many years, never satisfied, always hungry for more. “You've never been shy pointing out that sense and I aren't well acquainted."
He flings another copper into the void. "I am going to die,” he says slowly. And if he says it enough, maybe it will be easier to accept. It hadn’t hurt precisely, being dead, but the fear and loneliness… he flinches from the memory. The flare of Jharlin’s light in that place had pierced him more deeply than the dragon’s claws.“I don't want to leave,” he gestures out at the darkness, “but I don't want y— anyone else to die with me. I can't realistically have both things.
“And I don't know what to do." He feels very small, hollowed out by everything that's happened. It’s funny how actually dying doesn’t make this easier, doesn’t ease the heavy knot of fear in his gut. At the time, in Sandpoint, there was only the dragon, and so much rage that there hadn’t been room for fear. Here there was too much time to think. One way or another, time is running out.
Jharlin wants to redirect the conversation to something... less treacherous. Make a quip, say something uplifting. But they're tired, and scared in a sort of distant way, and... sad. Sad for all of them, about to go charging into a fight where they are wholly outmatched.
Isal keeps talking about being selfish, and Jharlin thinks that might be good advice for the moment. They fold themselves down, sitting crosslegged next to Isal, and just lean into him for a moment. The wet stone scent of the river replaces the coppery stink of the cave.
"I don't think any of us know what to do next, really. But... somebody has to try and stop what's coming, and we're here. I... "
Jharlin pauses, taking a breath. This is going to sound so utterly stupid after ... well, after yelling at Isal for the same thing, really. "I want to protect people. That's what I dedicated my life to doing. And yes, it's probably going to get me killed. I don't want to die, but I'm at peace with that choice."
Saying it aloud brings a moment of clarity. "What I'm more scared of is selling my life — or your life — cheaply. I want to win."
There's a rare fierceness in their voice. "I'm scared of failing my companions, of screwing up. Wasting my... our chance."
Isal speaks carefully, and hopes he won’t be misunderstood, “I know you don't need, or probably want my promises — my protection for whatever that’s worth. But know that whatever comes for you will quite literally have to come through me.” It’s a gift already given. It’s strange to speak it aloud, but not the strangest thing they have between them. Or between all of them, he supposes, if the truth of him, or some fraction, is indeed laid bare.
"I'm not Talanah or Craeg,” he continues, “but I like to think I'm formidable in my way. If my life can protect yours, then I count it well spent."
He leans into Jharlin, a warm nudge against their shoulder before he settles an arm around them. Let the others think what they want. "But if it's all right with you, I'd rather it not come to that."
"I believe you," Jharlin breathes out, tension releasing. "And I'd rather it not go that far either."
"You should rest. I won't sleep in this place, despite what Renadi may think. Alan will be glad enough to sleep on the hoard, and happier still to not take a watch." He pauses, just a little. "The fire will burn through the night, but you can stay here if you like." A longer pause, "I can keep you warm."
A muffled snort of amusement and Jharlin snuggling closer for warmth is all the response Isal gets.
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End